When I mention that tracking schools have been established in the United States in recent years that keep alive some of the knowledge developed by Native Americans, Abdulhadi Saleh notes the decline of tracking skills in his own country, without any such schools on the horizon as yet. They provide a specialist service for the Central Province and the capital, Riyadh, in the fight against crime and, more recently, in the war on terror,” he explains.
His trackers today are “deployed in shifts on constant call. Raised a nomad and well-grounded in desert lore, Abdulhadi Saleh took his interest in tracking and guiding a step farther than many, enrolling in the Prince Naif College of Security Studies in Riyadh (now Prince Naif Arab University), where he wrote a dissertation on those subjects for his master’s degree in criminology. Along the perimeter fence of the Mahazzat al-Sayd reserve, rangers patrol for signs of poachers. Above: Many rangers at Saudi wildlife reserves grew up as trackers. Flying out of the Taif airstrip of the National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD), he monitors radio-collared Arabian oryx at the Harrat al-Harra wildlife reserve. Top: Though he grew up riding in pickup trucks more than on camels, Captain Hamid al-Murrah grew up “a reasonably good tracker,” he says. Some scholars believe that their skills, like those of trackers in other parts of the world but here honed over millennia in the desert, point toward the very origins of human rationalism and scientific thought. They make up an elite, uniquely Saudi crime-fighting and conservation corps that has existed, in one form or another, since the early 20th century.
#A tale in the desert ecology skill professional
In every encounter, eye contact is resolute.Ībdulhadi Saleh is the administrative head of some 100 professional trackers employed by the Ministry of the Interior. New arrivals work their way around the assembly, greeting each in turn according to Murrah tradition: a single kiss on the nose or forehead and, for a foreign guest, a warm, firm handshake. Located on the outskirts of the small town of Haradh in central Saudi Arabia, Jaber Mohammed’s modern one-story home is set like a sentinel overlooking the northern fringe of the Rub’ al-Khali, the Empty Quarter. Jaber Mohammed works not with Abdulhadi Saleh in Riyadh but as general manager of some 250 rangers employed by Saudi Arabia’s National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD).
Half of them work with me in Riyadh.”Ībdulhadi Saleh is among more than a dozen relatives and friends who have arrived over the course of the morning at the home of Shaykh Jaber Mohammed al-Amrah al-Murri. “As well as our host, at least 10 of the guests in this majlis are notable trackers. Skilled trackers read such trails as easily as you read the words on this page.Īke a look around you,” says Abdulhadi Saleh al-Murri, declining a fourth pouring of Arab coffee with a shake of the thimble-sized cup. Background photo: Camel hoofprints smooth a desert path in western Saudi Arabia.
#A tale in the desert ecology skill how to
Philby, The Empty Quarter, 1933Ībove: Abdulhadi Saleh al-Murri, administrator of some 100 professional trackers in the Saudi government’s “Tracker Corps,” explains how to determine the direction of a vehicle’s travel from its tire tracks. And so in the Arabian desert the good guide is he who observes carefully, deduces accurately and remembers faithfully.” The habit, derived from generations of instruction., of observing the material facts and applying a certain train of reasoning.can alone account for the miracles of the expert. In both cases the responsible factor would seem to be not instinct.but education. “The higher flights of desert-craft are as uncanny as the soarings of an Einsteinian brain. Written and Photographed by Peter Harrigan
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