The Arms And Armour Of Arabia In The 18th 19th And 20th Centuries

In the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, the Arab nomads who inhabited a great stretch of the Near East from Aleppo in northern Syria to the southern shores of the Arabian peninsula continued a way of life virtually unchanged from the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. Wars and raids were carried out by tribesmen armed like their ancestors with sword, mace and lance. Firearms came slowly to the Bedouin, and multishot weapons were very rare until the end of the 19th century.

This is a lavishly illustrated presentation of the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art's collection of arms and armor. The items range in date from the seventh to the nineteenth centuries A.D. In avoiding the strictly typological classification of most previous catalogues of the subject, the aim is to give a full sense of the panoply of warfare: the stirrup, the drum, and the talismanic shirt were as important to the Muslim warrior as the sword and the mail shirt. David Alexander, the leading authority on Islamic arms and armor, has provided a detailed scholarly guide to this outstanding collection.

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.

A Brief History of Saudi Arabia, Third Edition provides a clear, lively, and comprehensive account of the history of Saudi Arabia from ancient times to the present day. It relates the central events that have shaped the country and details their significance in historical context, touching on all aspects of the history of the country, from political, international, and economic affairs to cultural and social developments. Illustrated with full-color maps and photographs, and accompanied by a chronology, bibliography, and suggested reading, this accessible overview is ideal for the general reader. Coverage includes: Arabia: The Land and Its Pre-Islamic History The Birth of Islam The Islamic Empire and Arabia The Golden Age of Islam The Mamluks, the Ottomans, and the Wahhabi–Al Saud Alliance The First Saudi State Roots of Modern Arabia Unity and Independence Birth of a Kingdom A Path to World Power Oil and Arms The Gulf Crisis and Its Aftermath Challenges and Cautious Reforms At the Center of a Regional Realignment

Omani men carried personal weapons until relatively recently. Swords and daggers were part of daily life attire and are still worn in social events. This book describes all the main types of Omani edged weapons, their origin, structure and accessories, with supporting illustrations and references to examples from museums and private collections.

From Saudi Arabia's pre-Islamic history to the events of today, this book offers a balanced, informative perspective on the country's long history. Complete with black-and-white illustrations, maps, charts, a chronology, and basic facts, this comprehensive overview of the history of Saudi Arabia places the political, economic, and cultural events of today into a broad historical context.

This book presents a detailed overview of the firearms used in Oman over the last four centuries. Portable firearms, rifles and cannons are all discussed in detail with supporting illustrations. The weapons described in this book are mostly from the National Museum Oman and Bait al Zubair Museum in Muscat.

The “Middle East” has long been an indispensable and ubiquitous term in discussing world affairs, yet its history remains curiously underexplored. Few question the origin of the term or the boundaries of the region, commonly understood to have emerged in the twentieth century after World War I. Guillemette Crouzet offers a new account in Inventing the Middle East. The book traces the idea of the Middle East to a century-long British imperial zenith in the Indian subcontinent and its violent overspill into the Persian Gulf and its hinterlands. Encroachment into the Gulf region began under the expansionist East India Company. It was catalyzed by Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and heightened by gunboat attacks conducted in the name of pacifying Arab “pirates.” Throughout the 1800s the British secured this crucial geopolitical arena, transforming it into both a crossroads of land and sea and a borderland guarding British India’s western flank. Establishing this informal imperial system involved a triangle of actors in London, the subcontinent, and the Gulf region itself. By the nineteenth century’s end, amid renewed waves of inter-imperial competition, this nexus of British interests and narratives in the Gulf region would occasion the appearance of a new name: the Middle East. Charting the spatial, political, and cultural emergence of the Middle East, Inventing the Middle East reveals the deep roots of the twentieth century’s geographic upheavals.