The Arab of the Desert (Second Edition, Fifth Impression)

DICKSON, H.R.P. The Arab of the Desert: A Glimpse into Badawin Life in Kuwait and Sa'udi Arabia. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1972.

Large 8vo. Original publisher's ochre buckram cloth. Pictorial dust jacket. 664 pp., illustrated throughout with 56 full-page photographic plates, 95 text illustrations, 8 large folding maps and 6 folding genealogical tables. Second edition, fifth impression (first published 1949; second edition 1951).

Harold Richard Patrick Dickson belongs to a remarkable generation of British political officers who served in the Arabian Peninsula during the first decades of the twentieth century and found themselves transformed by what they encountered. 

As Political Agent in Kuwait from 1929 to 1936 Dickson lived amongst the Badawin on terms of a close intimacy, camping and travelling with the desert tribes, learning their language to fluency, and earning the friendship of Ibn Sa'ud himself.

This volume is Dickson's personal accounting of these years. It is the work of a person who came to understand Arabian desert life from the inside: the customs, codes of hospitality and honour, it's marvelled poetry and proverbs, and the profound relationship with the harsh environment that gave birth to these things.

Dickson forms part of a tradition — Burton, Doughty, Lawrence, Philby, Gertrude Bell, Thesiger — that produced some of the most important writing about Arabia in the English language, and The Arab of the Desert is among the most comprehensive single volumes in that tradition, combining ethnographic authority with the warmth of genuine affection for its subject.

Very good in a clipped dust jacket, showing some very mild rubbing along edges with a few small tears. Tear to lower spine at foot. Binding sound, tight and square. Some wear to cover corners. Contents near fine with some very faint scattered foxing. All 13 folding maps and genealogical tables present, unrepaired and in near fine condition.

Catalogue Number: HH000405