Antoine-Joseph Jaussen & Antoine-Raphaël Savignac

Antoine-Joseph “Antonin” Jaussen (1871–1962) and Antoine-Raphaël Savignac (1874–1951) were French Dominican friars of the École Biblique in Jerusalem. Jaussen, born in Ardèche in 1871, became a pioneer in Arabian ethnography and early Islamic archaeology. He mastered Arabic and became fascinated by Bedouin culture, and in 1907, he wrote “Coutumes des Arabes au pays de Moab.” Savignac, four years younger, was renowned as a Semitic epigrapher and an experienced photographer. Both were trained under Père Marie-Joseph Lagrange at the Jerusalem school and had been colleagues since 1893.

Jaussen and Savignac jointly led the French expeditions to Northern Arabia in 1907, 1909, and 1910. With Ottoman permission, they journeyed to Mada’in Sālih (Hegra), Tayma, Al-‘Ulā, and beyond. On these desert treks, Jaussen kept detailed diaries and studied the local tribes, while Savignac documented the monuments and archaeology they came across with large-format photography. The result was the five-volume Mission archéologique en Arabie, published between 1909 and 1922.