MUSIL, ALOIS. - Czech Orientalist and explorer, b. at Rychtárov (Moravia) on 30 June 1868, d. at Otryby on 12 April 1946. Ordained a priest at Olomouc in 1891, he continued his biblical and Oriental studies in Jerusalem (Ecole biblique de St-Etienne) and in Beirut (Université de St-Joseph). A professor of auxiliary Oriental sciences and of modern Arabic dialectology at Olomouc (1900), Vienna (1904), Prague (1920), he undertook numerous exploratory journeys in Syria, Transjordan, Mesopotamia, and Arabia, bringing back valuable results in the fields of history, geography, topography and cartography, ethnology and anthropology, and modern Islam.
In Vienna, M. drew everyone's attention with two monumental works: Arabia Petraea (2 vols., Vienna 1907-1908), and Kuseir 'Amra (2 vols., ibid. 1907). The publication of his other scientific research is, for the most part, due to the American Geographical Society of New York: The northern Hefdz. A topographical itinerary (New York 1926); Arabia deserta (ibid. 1927); The middle Euphrates (ibid. 1927); The northern Nefd (ibid. 1928); Palmyrena (ibid. 1928); The manners and customs of the Rosala bedonins (ibid. 1928).
In 1934 he started in Prague the series Dnešni Orient ("The Modern Orient"; 11 vols. up to 1941) and published there many books in the Czech language in order to make more widely known the knowledge of the modern Orient and of its political, economic, and social problems. To the same end, from as early as 1920 he also wrote some 2000 articles in newspapers. Also worthy of mention is his book on the Christian Churches in the present-day Orient (Olomouc 1939). He was an assiduous contributor to the Archiv Oriental of Prague and to other journals.
Bibliography4 works
Adalberto Metzinger