Hřbetní název: Korespondence Aloise Musila I and Alois Musil and the beginnings of the Oriental Institute in Prague: Correspondence of "founding fathers".
Alois Musil, the Czech Old Testament scholar, priest, topographer and explorer of the unexplored Arabic lands of the Near East before World War I left the scholarly world an immense wealth of information about the Biblical, historical, ethnographical, and archaeological sites he visited, described, noted, and commented on during the years ca. 1896 to 1917. During that time he served as a valuable mediator to the Central Powers (Mittel-Mächte) and the Ottoman Empire seeking to make peace between rival Arab tribes in Arabia. Since he knew the sheikhs of all tribes, and since he was acknowledged by the tribe of the Rualla as sheikh Musa, he was successful in making peace between the tribes of the Rualla, Ibn Rashid, and Ibn Saud. In this way he raised approximately 30,000 camel riders to aid the Ottoman Empire in the fight against the British army in Arabia. Initially his efforts were successful, however due to the shortsightedness of the Ottoman Empire, the British and French military and policy finally triumphed over the tribal confederacies by turning them away from Constantinople. The various episodes of Alois Musil’s sojourn into the Arabian desert, as well as his negotiations with the tribes from November/December 1914 until the middle of April 1915, are described and commented on in this article.