Tim Mackintosh-Smith's Books

Arabs

A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Arabs

A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

A riveting, comprehensive history of the Arab peoples and tribes that explores the role of language as a cultural touchstone This kaleidoscopic book covers almost 3,000 years of Arab history and shines a light on the footloose Arab peoples and tribes who conquered lands and disseminated their language and culture over vast distances. Tracing this process to the origins of the Arabic language, rather than the advent of Islam, Tim Mackintosh-Smith begins his narrative more than a thousand years before Muhammad and focuses on how Arabic, both spoken and written, has functioned as a vital source of shared cultural identity over the millennia. Mackintosh-Smith reveals how linguistic developments—from pre-Islamic poetry to the growth of script, Muhammad’s use of writing, and the later problems of printing Arabic—have helped and hindered the progress of Arab history, and investigates how, even in today’s politically fractured post–Arab Spring environment, Arabic itself is still a source of unity and disunity.

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Page Count

681

Publisher

Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

030018235X

ISBN 13

9780300182354

Arabs

A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Arabs

A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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681

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Yale University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

030018235X

ISBN 13

9780300182354

Travels with a Tangerine

A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Travels with a Tangerine

A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Ibn Battutah set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on the pilgrimage to Mecca. By the time he returned twenty-nine years later, he had visited most of the known world, travelling three times the distance Marco Polo covered. Spiritual backpacker, social climber, temporary hermit and failed ambassador, he braved brigands, blisters and his own prejudices. The outcome was a monumental travel classic. Captivated by this indefatigable man, award-winning travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith set out on his own eventful journey, retracing the Moroccan's eccentric trip from Tangier to Constantinople. Tim proves himself a perfect companion to this distant traveller, and the result is an amazing blend of personalities, history and contemporary observation.

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Page Count

329

Publisher

John Murray

Published Date

ISBN 10

1848546769

ISBN 13

9781848546769

Hall of a Thousand Columns

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Hall of a Thousand Columns

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

All the best armchair travellers are sceptics. Those of the fourteenth century were no exception: for them, there were lies, damned lies, and Ibn Battutah's India. Born in 1304, Ibn Battutah left his native Tangier as a young scholar of law; over the course of the thirty years that followed he visited most of the known world between Morocco and China. Here Tim Mackintosh-Smith retraces one leg of the Moroccan's journey - the dizzy ladders and terrifying snakes of his Indian career as a judge and a hermit, courtier and prisoner, ambassador and castaway. From the plains of Hindustan to the plateaux of the Deccan and the lost ports of Malabar, the author reveals an India far off the beaten path of Taj and Raj. Ibn Battutah left India on a snake, stripped to his underpants by pirates; but he took away a treasure of tales as rich as any in the history of travel. Back home they said the treasure was a fake. Mackintosh-Smith proves the sceptics wrong. India is a jewel in the turban of the Prince of Travellers. Here it is, glittering, grotesque but genuine, a fitting ornament for his 700th birthday.

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Page Count

325

Publisher

John Murray

Published Date

ISBN 10

1848546971

ISBN 13

9781848546974

Yemen

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Yemen

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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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Page Count

267

Publisher

John Murray

Published Date

ISBN 10

1848546963

ISBN 13

9781848546967

Landfalls

On the Edge of Islam from Zanzibar to the Alhambra

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Landfalls

On the Edge of Islam from Zanzibar to the Alhambra

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

For Ibn Batuttah of Tangier, being medieval didn't mean sitting at home waiting for renaissances, enlightenments and easyJet. It meant travelling the known world to its limits. Seven centuries on, Tim Mackintosh-Smith's passionate pursuit of the fourteenth-century traveller takes him to landfalls in remote tropical islands, torrid Indian Ocean ports and dusty towns on the shores of the Saharan sand-sea. His zigzag itinerary across time and space leads from Zanzibar to the Alhambra (via the Maldives, Sri Lanka, China, Mauritania and Guinea) and to a climactic conclusion to his quest for the man he calls 'IB' - a man who out-travelled Marco Polo by a factor of three, who spent his days with saints and sultans and his nights with an intercontinental string of slave-concubines. Tim's journey is a search for survivals from IB's world - material, human, spiritual, edible - however, when your fellow traveller has a 700-year head start, familiar notions don't always work.

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Page Count

554

Publisher

John Murray

Published Date

ISBN 10

1848544464

ISBN 13

9781848544468

Hall of a Thousand Columns

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Hall of a Thousand Columns

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Page Count

325

Publisher

John Murray

Published Date

ISBN 10

1848546971

ISBN 13

9781848546974

Yemen

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Yemen

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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267

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John Murray

Published Date

ISBN 10

1848546963

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9781848546967

Yemen

Travels in Dictionary Land

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith,Martin Yeoman

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Yemen

Travels in Dictionary Land

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith,Martin Yeoman

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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Page Count

304

Published Date

ISBN 10

0719597404

ISBN 13

9780719597404

The Hall of a Thousand Columns

Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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The Hall of a Thousand Columns

Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah

By: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

All the best armchair travellers are sceptics. Those of the fourteenth century were no exception: for them, there were lies, damned lies, and Ibn Battutah's India. Born in 1304, Ibn Battutah left his native Tangier as a young scholar of law. He returned nearly thirty years later having visited most of the known world between Morocco and China, the Prince of Travellers for some, a blatant Munchausen for most. It was India that stretched his readers' credulity beyond the limit. In his highly acclaimed Travels with a Tangerine, Tim Mackintosh-Smith tailed the Moroccan around the old Islamic world. Now he traces in situ the dizzy ladders and terrifying snakes of Ibn Battutah's Indian career as a judge and a hermit, courtier and prisoner, ambassador and castaway. From the plains of Hindustan to the plateaux of the Deccan and the lost ports of Malabar, sleuth-work, scholarship and luck lead him through the incredible memories of a man who died ten lifetimes ago. On the way, he reveals an India far off the beaten path of Taj and Raj, where a dead Muslim poses as a Hindu deity, Jesus pops up in the pulpit of a Mosque, and the rotten tooth of a mad sultan is revered as a saint. Ibn Battutah left India on a snake, stripped to his underpants by pirates; but he took away a treasure of tales as rich as any in the history of travel. Back home they said the treasure was a fake. Mackintosh-Smith proves the sceptics wrong. India is a jewel in the Prince of Travellers' turban. Here it is, glittering, grotesque but genuine, a fitting ornament for his 700th birthday.

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Age

Page Count

333

Publisher

John Murray Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

0719567106

ISBN 13

9780719567100

Book's by Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Arabs

Arabs

Arabs

Arabs

Travels with a Tangerine

Travels with a Tangerine

Hall of a Thousand Columns

Hall of a Thousand Columns

Yemen

Yemen

Landfalls

Landfalls

Hall of a Thousand Columns

Hall of a Thousand Columns

Yemen

Yemen

Yemen

Yemen

The Hall of a Thousand Columns

The Hall of a Thousand Columns

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