Our ideas of the Arabian Peninusula have been hijacked: by images
of the desert, by oil, by the Gulf War. But there is another
Arabia. For the classical geographers Yemen was a fabulous land
where flying serpents guarded sacred incense groves. Medieval Arab
visitors told of disappearing islands and menstruating mountains.
Vita Sackville-West found Aden 'precisely the most repulsive corner
of the world'. Arguably the most fascinating but least known
country in the Arab world, Yemen has a way of attracting comment
that ranges from the superficial to the wildly fictitious. In
Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, Tim Mackintosh-Smith writes with
an intimacy and depth of knowledge gained through over twenty years
among the Yemenis. He is a travelling companion of the best sort -
erudite, witty and eccentric. Crossing mountain, desert, ocean and
three millennia of history, he portrays hyrax hunters and dhow
skippers, a noseless regicide, and a sword-wielding tyrant with a
passion for Heinz Russian salad. Yet even the ordinary Yemenis are
extraordinary: their family tree goes back to Noah and is rooted in
a land which, in the words of a contemporary poet, has become the
dictionary of its people. Every page of this book is dashed - like
the land it describes - with the marvellous.
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