Tim Mackintosh-Smith Book order

A riveting, comprehensive history of the Arab peoples and tribes

Tim Mackintosh-Smith concludes his travels in the footsteps of Moroccan traveller Ibn Battutah across the 'worlds beyond the winds'

Tim Mackintosh-Smith continues in the footsteps of Moroccan traveller Ibn Battutah, revealing the rich tales of an India far off the beaten path of Taj and Raj

Tim Mackintosh-Smith's Travels with a Tangerine introduced the modern world to Ibn Battutah, 'Prince of Travellers'. Now they take to the road together once more for the next leg of Ibn Battutah's travels -- the great subcontinent of 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. To many contemporaries his tales were received as Munchausian fantasies -- and it was India that stretched his readers' credulity beyond the limit. Tim Mackintosh-Smith traces in situ the dizzy ladders and terrifying snakes of Ibn Battutah's Indian career -- as judge and hermit, courtier and prisoner, ambassador and castaway. Over the course of his journey he also finds a dead Muslim posing as a Hindu deity, Jesus popping up in the pulpit of a mosque, and the rotten tooth of a mad sultan being revered as a saint. Ibn Battutah left India 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. What Mackintosh-Smith returns with proves the sceptics wrong: India is the jewel in the Prince of Travellers' turban.

'A gripping and accomplished travel book . . . [it] stands out for its integrity and intelligence' Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times Ibn Battutah was the greatest traveller of the pre-mechanical age, journeying for twenty nine years and covering three times the ground Marco Polo covered. Tim Mackintosh-Smith follows the first stage of Ibn Battutah's journey, from Tangier to Constantinople. Destinations include an Islamic Butlin's in the Egyptian desert, Assassin castles in Syria, the Kuria Maria Islands in the Arabian Sea and some of the greatest cities of Medeival Islam. He also cleverly compares the contemporary Muslim world with the past. 'Mackintosh-Smith slips effortlessly between our world and that of the fourteenth century. In doing so, he has created a gripping and accomplished travel book... We will be lucky if there is a better one published this year' Sunday Times 'An immensely engaging book...Subversive good humour without relentless jokiness; and a descriptive eye capable of sketching complext details in a few telling lines' Daily Telegraph

In this work, the author describes his journey through Yemen, portraying hyrax hunters and dhow skippers, a noseless regicide, a sword-wielding tyrant with a passion for Heinz Russian salad, as well as examining the extraordinary history of the ordinary Yemenis.