A Danish journalist. Although there is no indication when he converted to Islam, perhaps it may have been among the gentle and hospitable villagers of Muslim Europe that he made his decision to enter the fold of Islam. In his classic of travel writing first published in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1931 and later translated in English entitled Desert Encounter in 1936 in Britain, Knud Holmboe recorded his experience of life in North Africa under colonial rule. Driving through the Sahara in a battered Chevrolet, with knowledge of Arabic, he left the beaten track to discover communities and landscape shrouded in mystery for centuries. Knud had open mind, a profoundly spiritual and human nature, and a great understanding of the Arabs. After completing this book, which was immediately banned in Italy, Knud travelled as a pilgrim towards the holy city of Makkah. In circumstances that were never fully explained, Knud Holmboe was murdered just south of Aqaba on 13 October 1931.