TIM MACKINTOSH SMITH

Un fascinante viaje a lo largo de tres mil años de historia de la civilización árabe. En este libro magistral, Tim Mackintosh-Smith recorre casi tres mil años de historia y hace que cobren vida ante nosotros los pueblos y tribus de la peninsula arabiga que conquistaron numerosas tierras y extendieron su lenguaje por medio mundo. Mackintosh-Smith rastrea los origenes de ese proceso hasta los albores de la propia lengua arabe, mucho antes del advenimiento del islam, y convierte al arabe, tanto hablado como escrito, en uno de los ejes que definen la identidad cultural compartida por los arabes durante milenios.Remontandose a la poesia preislamica y a los conflictos entre beduinos y los pueblos sedentarios de Arabia, el autor nos muestra el nacimiento de la escritura arabe, la eclosion de Mahoma y las conquistas del islam, las cruzadas, las dinastias omeya y abasi, el esplendor de al-Andalus, los problemas de la imprenta en arabe, el dominio turco, el colonialismo, el auge y declive del panarabismo, el florecimiento moderno de la lengua arabe, la Primavera Arabe y el ascenso del islamismo radical.Esta es la historia definitiva del pueblo y de la cultura arabes a lo largo de tres milenios; una epica historia cuyos ecos pasados resuenan en el presente y son mas relevantes que nunca, tanto en Occidente como en Oriente.Libro del año segun The Sunday Times y el Times Literary SupplementMagistral y brillante. Los arabes es una historia bellamente escrita y un analisis inteligente, fresco y original, lleno de personajes e ideas fascinantes, con una profunda comprension de la historia tanto anterior como posterior al islam. [] Solo alguien que conoce perfectamente la geografia tanto de la tierra como del alma arabe podria haber escrito este libro.Simon Sebag Montefiore, historiadorBrillante. Un libro de enorme ambicion y asombrosa profundidad.Anthony Sattin, SpectatorUn maravilloso viaje repleto de aventuras y poesia.Kirkus ReviewsUna cronica fascinante y ricamente detallada de la lengua y la cultura arabes que ofrece paralelismos historicos que daran que pensar.The Observer

An expatriate Brit living in Yemen for 17 years explores the life and travels of an explorer named Ibn Battutah (1304-1368). A New York Times Notable Book for 2002.

Ibn Battuta, el más grande viajero medieval, partió en el año 1325 de su Tánger natal en peregrinación a La Meca. Cuando regresó al Magreb, veintinueve años más tarde, había visitado la mayor parte del mundo entonces conocido, atravesando una distancia tres veces superior a la que presuntamente recorrio Marco Polo.

All the best armchair travellers are sceptics. Those of the fourteenth century were no exception: for them, there were lies, damned lies, and Ibn Battutahs 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 Moroccans 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.

For Ibn Batuttah of Tangier, being medieval didnt mean sitting at home waiting for renaissances, enlightenments and easyJet. It meant travelling the known world to its limits. Seven centuries on, Tim Mackintosh-Smiths 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. Tims journey is a search for survivals from IBs world - material, human, spiritual, edible - however, when your fellow traveller has a 700-year head start, familiar notions dont always work.

bn Battutah - ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian and occasional botanist - was just twenty-one when he set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco for another twenty-nine years, travelling instead through more than forty countries on the modern map, covering seventy-five thousand miles and getting as far north as the Volga, as far east as China and as far south as Tanzania. He wrote of his travels, and comes across as a superb ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian and occasional botanist and gastronome. With this edition by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, The Travels of Ibn Battutah takes its place alongside other indestructible masterpieces of the travel-writing genre. Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

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.

bn Battutah - ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian and occasional botanist - was just twenty-one when he set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco for another twenty-nine years, travelling instead through more than forty countries on the modern map, covering seventy-five thousand miles and getting as far north as the Volga, as far east as China and as far south as Tanzania. He wrote of his travels, and comes across as a superb ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian and occasional botanist and gastronome. With this edition by Tim Mackintosh-Smith, The Travels of Ibn Battutah takes its place alongside other indestructible masterpieces of the travel-writing genre. Designed to appeal to the book lover, the Macmillan Collector's Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector's Library are books to love and treasure.

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 Moroccans 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.