Ṣan ‘ā’, an Arabian Islamic city

Abstract

Anyone glancing casually at this book, weighing as it does nearly 3 kg., with a very attractive dust-jacket, 48 pages of illustrations in colour, and a vast number in black-and-white, besides various maps, might be forgiven for assuming that it was yet another of the many coffee-table productions purporting to display the arts and architecture of Islam. In fact the text is of great interest to scholars in many branches of oriental research and it is one of the most important books about Arabia ever to have been published. Until recently most contributions to our knowledge of the country were made either by untravelled scholars in the West, or by travellers who, even if they spoke the language well, could not, or did not, read the chronicles and other writings, legal, descriptive and poetical, which contain relevant information. Indeed, many of the works to which we can now refer have been published, or even become known, only in the last few decades. The older travellers could not command the literary evidence in the way that Serjeant does. Hugh Scott, for example, wrote an excellent book about the Yemen. He was a meticulous observer with varied accomplishments and wide interests, but he spoke only a few words of Arabic and could not read it at all.