In The Scottish Enlightenment Abroad, Janet Starkey examines the lives and works of Scots working in the mid eighteenth century with the Levant Company in Aleppo, then within the Ottoman Empire; and those working with the East India Company in India, especially in the fields of natural history, medicine, ethnography and the collection of Arabic and Persian manuscripts. The focus is on brothers from Edinburgh: Alexander Russell MD FRS, Patrick Russell MD FRS, Claud Russell and William Russell FRS. By examining a wide range of modern interpretations, Starkey argues that the Scottish Enlightenment was not just a philosophical discourse but a multi-faceted cultural revolution that owed its vibrancy to ties of kinship, and to strong commercial and intellectual links with Europe and further abroad.

Pious Pilgrims, Discerning Travellers, Curious Tourists: Changing patterns of travel to the Middle East from medieval to modern times comprises a varied collection of seventeen papers presented at the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) held in York in July 2019, which together will provide the reader with a fascinating introduction to travel in and to the Middle East over more than a thousand years. As in previous ASTENE volumes, the material presented ranges widely, from Ancient Egyptian sites through medieval pilgrims to tourists and other travellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The papers embody a number of different traditions, including not only actual but also fictional travel experiences, as well as pilgrimage or missionary narratives reflecting quests for spiritual wisdom as well as geographical knowledge. They also reflect the shifting political and cultural relations between Europe and the Near and Middle East, and between the different religions of the area, as seen and described by travellers both from within and from outside the region over the centuries. The men and women travellers discussed travelled for a wide variety of reasons — religious, commercial, military, diplomatic, or sometimes even just for a holiday! — but whatever their primary motivations, they were almost always also inspired by a sense of curiosity about peoples and places less familiar than their own. By recording their experiences, whether in words or in art, they have greatly contributed to our understanding of what has shaped the world we live in. As Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest of medieval Arab travellers, wrote: ‘Travelling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller!’

The Proceedings of Red Sea Project III held in the British Museum, London, in October 2006. Contents: 1) Environment, landscapes and archaeology of the Yemeni Tihamah (R. Neil Munro and Tony J. Wilkinson); 2) The formation of a southern Red Sea seascape in the Late Prehistoric Period: Tracing cross-Red Sea culture-contact, interaction, and maritime communities along the Tihamah coastal plain, Yemen, in the third to first millennium BC (Lamya Khalidi); 3) Products from the Read Sea at Petra in the Medieval Period (Stephan G Schmid and Jacqueline Studer); 4) Continuing studies of plants and animals and their Arabic names from the Royal Danish Expedition to the Red Sea, 1761-1763 (F. Nigel Hepper); 5) Coral reef conservation and the current status of reefs of the Ras Mohamed National Park in the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqabah (Steve McMellor and David J Smith); 6) How fast is fast? Technology, trade and speed under sail in the Roman Red Sea (Julian Whitewright); 7) Warships in the Red Sea, An Outstanding Phenomenon (Sarah Arenson); 8) Features of Ships and Boats in the Indian Ocean (Norbert Weismann); 9) Decorative Motifs on Red Sea Boats: Meaning and Identity (Dionisius A. Agius); 10) The Red Sea Jalbah. Local Phenomenon or Regional Prototype? (James Edgar Taylor); 11) Charting a Hazardous Sea (Sarah Searight); Red Sea Harbours, Hinterlands and Relationships in Preclassical Antiquity (Kenneth A. Kitchen); 12) Sea port to punt: new evidence from Marsa Gawasis, Red Sea (Egypt) (Kathryn A. Bard, Rodolfo Fattovich and Cheryl Ward); 13) The Arabaegypti Ichthyophagi: Cultural Connections with Egypt and the Maintenance of Identity (Ross Iain Thomas); 14) Aila and Clysma: The Rise of Northern Ports in the Red Sea in Late Antiquity (Walter Ward); 15) Shipwrecks, Coffee and Canals: the Landscapes of Suez (Janet Starkey); 16) What is the Evidence for External Trading Contacts on the East African coast in the first millennium bc? (Paul J.J. Sinclair); 17) The 'Arabians' of pre-Islamic Egypt (Tim Power); 18) Red Sea and Indian Ocean: Ports and their Hinterland (Eivind Heldaas Seland); 19) Bishops and Traders: The Role of Christianity in the Indian Ocean during the Roman Period (Roberta Tomber); 20) Arabic Sources for the Ming Voyages (Paul Lunde); 21) From the White Sea to the Red Sea: Piri Reis and the Ottoman conquest of Egypt (Paul Starkey).

The Seminar for Arabian Studies has come a long way since 1968 when it was first convened, yet it remains the principal international academic forum for research on the Arabian Peninsula. This is clearly reflected in the ever-increasing number of researchers from all over the world who come each year to the three-day Seminar to present and discuss their latest research and fieldwork. The Seminar has covered, and continues to cover, an extensive range of diverse subjects that include anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art, epigraphy, ethnography, history, language, linguistics, literature, numismatics, theology, and more, from the earliest times to the present day or, in the fields of political and social history, to around the end of the Ottoman Empire (1922/1923). Papers presented at the Seminar have all been subjected to an intensive review process before they are accepted for publication in the Proceedings. The rigorous nature of the reviews undertaken by a range of specialists ensures that the highest academic standards are maintained. A supplementary volume, 'Languages, scripts and their uses in ancient North Arabia' edited by M.C.A. Macdonald (ISBN 9781784918996, Archaeopress, 2018), is also available containing the proceedings from the special session held during the seminar on 5 August 2017.

This collection of around twenty papers has its origins in a two-day seminar organised by the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) in conjunction with the Centre for Middle Eastern Plants at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (RBGE), with additional support from Cornucopia magazine and the Turkish Consulate General, Edinburgh. This multi-disciplinary event formed part of the Ottoman Horizons festival held in Edinburgh in 2017 and attracted a wide range of participants from around the world, including several from Turkey and other parts of the Middle East. This splendidly illustrated book focuses on the botanical legacy of many parts of the former Ottoman Empire - including present-day Turkey, the Levant, Egypt, the Balkans, and the Arabian Peninsula - as seen and described by travellers both from within and from outside the region. The papers cover a wide variety of subjects, including Ottoman garden design and architecture; the flora of the region, especially bulbs and their cultural significance; literary, pictorial and photographic depictions of the botany and horticulture of the Ottoman lands; floral and related motifs in Ottoman art; culinary and medicinal aspects of the botanical heritage; and efforts related to conservation.