Knud Valdemar Gylding Holmboe (22 April 1902 Horsens Denmark – 13 October 1931 Aqaba, Jordan) was a Danish journalist, author and explorer.

'the Desert is on Fire'), which exposed the maltreatment of the population the author had witnessed on his journey through Libya and the atrocities committed by the Italian colonial power.

This account is especially valuable for its description of the concentration camps into which Italian colonial powers forced the Bedouin and where "torture, humiliation, and famine" were rife.

[2] Knud Holmboe was born as the eldest son of a well-known Danish merchant family in Horsens, Jutland.

In his late teenage years he became increasingly interested in religion and philosophy, and at the age of twenty, he moved into a monastery in Clervaux/Clerf in northern Luxembourg and he converted to Catholicism in 1921.

Back in Denmark, he experienced economic difficulties and in 1928 he ultimately took the decision to leave the country along with his wife Nora and his daughter Aisha who was born earlier that year.

[citation needed] In Libya, he witnessed the shocking treatment of the Libyan Muslim population by Italian colonial troops.

Holmboe bought a camel in Amman and travelled to Aqaba (in modern Jordan) where he waited for an entry permit into Ibn Saud’s territory.