Michaelis' 100 questions for the expedition is a remarkable document. It provides insight into the sources and methods of biblical research anno 1762, at the same time as highlighting the challenges the members of the expedition faced. As the scholarly foundation of the expedition, the questions are crucial to understanding its origins and historical framework - even though the actual expedition was in many ways different to the dense multi-linguistic universe they represent. In this contribution, the botanist Ib Friis engages in a dialogue with the scientific questions posed by Michaelis. Theme by theme, Friis' article explores the rationale behind some of the questions and the answers to be found in Niebuhr's Beschreibung von Arabien from 1772.