In southern Arabia, between the shallow waters of the Arabian
Gulf to the east and extending southwest to the Red Sea, lies a
desert as broad as the state of Texas. On aerial navigation
charts its 647,250 square kilometers (250,000 square miles) are
shown as a stippled blankness, indicating desert. Map-notes read
laconically, "sand dunes," "undulating plain," "rocks," "no
vegetation." For years, this desert seemed impenetrable. Even
T.E. Lawrence, no novice in desert travel, said that "only an
airship could cross it," and Bedouins warned English explorer
Harry St. John Philby that "where there is no water, that is the
Empty Quarter; no man goes thither." In 1932, however, Philby
was in no mood to listen to such warnings. For 14 years he had
"worked and waited" for a chance to verify a strange Bedouin
story he had heard in 1918 from his guide, Jabir ibn Farraj:
that somewhere out in that forbidding desert lay a ruined city
called Wabar. According to Bedouin legend, Wabar had been
leveled by a destructive wind