This is the first exhaustive study of a piece of furniture that has been used in the Arab world for centuries, and on the East African coast since the early 1800s. The Arab chest caught the attention of expatriates and travellers throughout these regions, and by the mid-20th century it had become a collector's item in the West. The author, Sheila Unwin, first came across the chests in East Africa in the early l950s. Since then she has been determined to discover their provenance and unravel their stylistic origins. This journey of detection is reflected in her historical overviews, which cover the early Arab trading networks, Arabs and Persians in East Africa, the Gulf and Oman, the Mughals in India, and the early explorations and trading expeditions of the Portuguese, Dutch and British from East Africa to the Far East. Her study of these enables her to trace the cultural influences that have combined to produce the chests, and to chart their complex origins. More than a historical survey, the book is also a guide to the classification, care and cleaning of chests. It is lavishly illustrated with archive and contemporary photographs and maps, while line drawings demonstrate the differences in classification and type of chests and fittings. Owners of these fine pieces will find this an invaluable companion and resource. Sheila Unwin greatly enriches our appreciation of an artefact which can now be seen, in the light of her research, as a fascinating embodiment of the old Indian Ocean trading network.

The Arab Chest

Arts & Photography

Unwin, Sheila

History & Criticism

Arabian Publishing Ltd.

Born in Iraq in 1885, Jafar Pasha Al-Askari played a colourful part in the events that led to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, and in the foundation of modern Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s. These memoirs, published in English for the first time, shed a vivid light on the creation of modern Iraq as experienced by one of its prime movers, and provide a timely reminder of the obstacles to building an open Iraqi state. Large and courageous, with a sharp intellect, a talent for languages, and a jovial and commanding personality, he was sent by the Turks for military training in Germany before the 1914-18 War. He was however strongly drawn to the Arab nationalist ideas then current, and his intense Arab patriotism is the consistent theme in his career.As a general in the Ottoman Army, he led the Sanusi regular forces in Cyrenaica in 1915-16. Imprisoned by the British in Cairo, he realized the Arab cause might best be served by Sharif Hussain of Makkah's revolt against Ottoman rule, then getting under way with British support. He was released in March 1917 to take command of the Arab regular forces fighting under the Amir Faisal bin Hussain (later King Faisal I of Iraq) in the Hijaz. After the First World War, he joined the new Iraqi government under the British Mandate, and spent the remainder of his life serving Iraq as Prime Minister (twice), Minister of Defence (five times), and Iraqi Minister in London, even finding time to be called to the Bar (at Gray's Inn). In 1936 he was assassinated outside Baghdad, in a doomed bid to forestall Iraq's first military coup.

A Soldier's Story: From Ottoman Rule to Independent Iraq: The Memoirs of Jafar Al-Aksari

Biographies & Memoirs

Al-Aksari, Jafar Pasha

Historical

Five experts in the field - Dr B. J. Slot, Dr Ulrich W. Haarmann, Prof. G. Bondarevsky, Dr Richard Schofield and Dr Suhail Shuhaiber - explore the historical, political and social processes governing the birth, survival, prosperity and ultimate sovereignty of this unique Arab maritime polity.

Kuwait: The Growth of a Historic Identity

History

Middle East

Current troubles in the middle east have focused much international attention on Saudi Arabia. However, little has been published in English on the background to its culture and its roots in the First Saudi State that arose in 18th-century Najd (central Arabia).The Islamic reform movement that imbued it with its sense of mission, and the life and thought of its proponent Shaikh Muhammad b. 'Abd al- Wahhab (1703/4-1792), have been similarly neglected. Often referred to outside Arabia as Wahhabism, the Shaikh's teachings have been a fundamental influence on the lives of Saudi Arabians and their government ever since his death in 1792. His ideas continue to inspire his many followers, both inside the Kingdom and abroad. A knowledge of his life and thought is vital to a proper understanding of both Saudi Arabia and the Arab world of today. Students of Saudi Arabian history have long recognized George S. Rentz's thesis on the Shaikh's life and the origins of the First Saudi State as a work of pioneering scholarship. Despite this, since its acceptance in 1947 by the University of California, it has never before now been published. Rentz (1912-87) went on to become head of Aramco's research department. Closely basing his account on the local Najdi chronicles which were contemporary with many of the events they describe, Rentz pieces together the life and thought of the thinker who set out to purify Islam as he saw it practised around him, and to direct Muslims back to the fountainhead of their faith. In the process Rentz tells the colourful story of the creation of the First Saudi State (1745-1818) with its capital at al-Dir'iyah, near present-day Riyadh.

The Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia: Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703/4-1792) and the Beginnings of Unitarian Empire in Arabia

G. S. Rentz

Alan Villiers (1903-82), the Australian sailor and maritime historian, first made a name for himself as an adventurer in the 1920s and 1930s by combining his seafaring skills with his talent as a pioneering photojournalist. He visited Arabia in 1938 because he was certain that he was living through the last days of sail, and was determined to record as much of them as he was able. At Aden, Villiers found an Arab dhow master prepared to take on a lone Westerner as a crewman. Ali bin Nasr el-Nejdi and his Kuwaiti crew were making the age-old voyage from the Gulf to East Africa, coasting on the north-east monsoon winds, with a cargo of dates from Basra. The return voyage would be made in the early summer of 1939, on the first breezes of the south-west monsoon, from East Africa to Kuwait. From this voyage, Villiers fashioned Sons of Sindbad . First published in 1940, it is the sole work of Arabian travel to have at its centre the seafaring Arabs. In a real sense the Thesiger of the Arabian Sea, Villiers voyaged with his companions as an equal, while deferring to their toughness and fortitude, and to their superior knowledge of their trade. This great classic of Arabian travel and maritime adventure is reprinted for the first time since 1969, with a new introduction by William Facey, Yacoub Al-Hijji and Grace Pundyk. As in the original 1940 edition, 50 of Villiers' many photographs are published here - images that complement the text with strikingly vivid depictions of the life and skills of the Arab dhow sailors, of the ports along the route, of Kuwait itself, and of the pearl divers of the Arabian Gulf.

Sons of Sindbad

FACEY, William

Pundyk, Grace

Villiers, Alan.

Africa

In the is political life of Mubarak Al-Sabah, ruler of Kuwait from 1896 to 1915, B. J. Slot examines his career in unsurpassed detail, analysing its significance and presenting a balanced assessment of the man and his achievement. In doing so, he draws on a much wider range of sources than any previous biography Mubarak Al-Sabah took control of his tiny state in 1896, just as the Ottoman Empire seemed on the point of swallowing it up. He then played for time, kindling a hesitant British interest in Kuwait by deftly exploiting the rivalry among European powers interested in Kuwait's strategic possibilities as the terminus of a railway - conceived as the vital link in rapid communication between Europe and India. By the Agreement of 1899, concluded secretly, Mubarak contrived to make Kuwait a British protectorate, but in the vaguest and most deniable way. The Agreement's very secrecy afforded him wide freedom of action, especially in tribal conflicts in the Arabian hinterland. He could be confident that well-timed overtures to Turks, Russians, Germans, French or even Persians would serve to keep Britain engaged in Kuwait's protecion. Only with the outbreak of the First World War did Britain dare publicly to declare Kuwait a protectorate, by which time its autonomy had become an accepted fact. Mubarak's reign was thus pivotal in establishing Kuwait as a separate and sovereign entity under international law.

Mubarak Al-Sabah: Founder of Modern Kuwait, 1896-1915

Slot, B.J.

Alan Villiers (1903–82) was a renowned sailor, writer and photographer. Originally published in 1940, Sons of Sindbad is his account of sailing with the Arabs in their dhows in southern Arabia, along the East African coast and in the Arabian Gulf, to record a nautical and cultural tradition that even then was disappearing. Arabian Publishing, in association with the National Maritime Museum, has now republished this sailing and adventure classic in an abridged form and a large format, and with many more photographs, previously unpublished, from the Museum’s Villiers Collection. The book establishes Villiers’s reputation as a photographer to compare with Wilfred Thesiger. Villiers’s lifelong fascination for traditional sailing techniques led to him to embark on his remarkable voyage in 1938. Joining the crew of a large Kuwaiti boom, the Triumph of Righteousness, he sailed with them on the monsoon winds from Aden, down the East African coast, to Mombasa, Zanzibar and the Rufiji Delta. He then made the homeward voyage to Oman, Bahrain and finally Kuwait. Here he spent four months in the summer of 1939, including a month among the pearl divers of the northern Gulf. This book depicts the experiences of the sailors and divers and the hardships they faced in their perilous environment. Villiers’ powerful photographs and words form a fine tribute to the skills and endurance of the Arab sailors, and a fitting valediction to the age of sail before the onset of oil and modernization.

Sons of Sindbad: The Photographs

Asia

This is the exciting story of a forgotten war, fought out on the fringe of the great First World War campaigns. At its centre stands Sayyid Ahmad al-Sharif, the Grand Sanusi, a charismatic Arab leader caught between the rival war aims of the Turco-German alliance and the British Empire. In November 1915 HMS Tara, a requisitioned ferryboat, is torpedoed by a German U-boat off Sollum on the north-west coast of Egypt. The 92 survivors, nearly all Welshmen, are handed over to Turkish and Sanusi soldiers across the border and sent as prisoners of war deep into the Libyan Desert. The Turco-Sanusi Army then overruns Sollum and pushes into Egypt. The British, occupying that country, are caught off guard and forced to launch a military campaign to expel the invaders.Over the next few months, four battles are fought before Sollum is retaken and the threat contained. Finally, the Duke of Westminster leads a large column of Rolls Royce armoured cars and Model T Fords into Libya to rescue the Welshmen. Based on original source material, The Sanusi's Little War tells for the first time the full story of the Turco-Sanusi invasion and the subsequent military campaign. The author describes secret German missions and Turkish efforts to win over the Grand Sanusi. He reveals the fascinating role played in the campaign by British officers, particularly Leo Royle. Most unexpected of all is his discovery that T. E. Lawrence played a role in these events.

The Sanusi's Little War: The Amazing Story of a Forgotten Conflict in the Western Desert, 1915-1917

McGuirk, Russell

As the first British woman convert to Islam on record as making the pilgrimage to Mecca and visiting Medina, Lady Evelyn Cobbold (1867- 1963) cuts a unique figure in the annals of the Muslim Hajj. Anglo-Scottish aristocrat and landowner, Evelyn Murray had spent childhood winters in North Africa.There she had been imbued with the Muslim way of life, becoming, as she puts it, a little Muslim at heart. While travelling widely as an adult in the Arab world, she also maintained a conventional place in society at home, marrying the wealthy John Cobbold in 1891 and devoting herself to her Suffolk and London houses and her Scottish estate, where she became a renowned deer-stalker. Deciding to perform the pilgrimage in 1933, at the age of 66, she stayed with the Philbys in Jeddah while awaiting permission to go to Mecca, and received visits from various dignitaries, notably the King's son the Amir Faysal (later King Faysal). Pilgrimage to Mecca is as much an account of an interior journey of faith as a conventional travelogue. It takes the form of a day-by-day journal interspersed with digressions on the history and merits of Islam. She is the first English writer to give a first-hand description of the life of the women's quarters of the households in which she stayed in Medina, Mecca and Muna - an account remarkable for its sympathy and vividness. Her book was first published in 1934 but has never until now been reprinted. This new edition, with a substantial biographical introduction by William Facey and Miranda Taylor (a great-great-niece of Lady Evelyn), serves to rescue this unique and intriguing Anglo-Muslim from the obscurity that has since befallen her.

Pilgrimage to Mecca

Cobbold, Lady Evelyn

Taylor, Miranda

Turkistani, Ahmad S.

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Books by Arabian Publishing Ltd.

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Arabian Publishing Ltd. publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Arab Chest

A Soldier's Story: From Ottoman Rule to Independent Iraq: The Memoirs of Jafar Al-Aksari

Kuwait: The Growth of a Historic Identity

The Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia: Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703/4-1792) and the Beginnings of Unitarian Empire in Arabia

Sons of Sindbad

Mubarak Al-Sabah: Founder of Modern Kuwait, 1896-1915

Sons of Sindbad: The Photographs

The Arab Chest

The Sanusi's Little War: The Amazing Story of a Forgotten Conflict in the Western Desert, 1915-1917

Pilgrimage to Mecca