with a little help from philby, gertrude bell, freya stark and bertram thomas
NAVAL INTELLIGENCE DIVISION. Western Arabia and the Red Sea. [OUP for H.M. Stationery Office], June 1946.
8vo. Original green cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt; pp. xix, 659, highly illustrated with plates, fold-out maps and panoramas, topographical profiles, colour map in rear pocket; spine and parts of the boards sunned; otherwise very good; the lines This book is for official use of persons in H. M. Sevice only and must not be shown, or made available, to the Press or any member of the public on title-verso covered with later label reading This volume was produced and printed for official purposes during the war 1939/45; ownership inscription by Talal Farah, dated 1970, inside front cover.
First edition. B. R. 527 (Restricted) Geographical Handbook Series. - Probably one of the best-researched books of the time on the region, including Sinai. 'A sub-centre of the Naval Intelligence Division was established at Oxford to recruit contributors of the first quality. It was directed by the Professor of Geography, Lieutenant-Colonel (later Sir) K. Mason who had, after first war service in Mesopotamia and Persia, spent many years in the Survey of India. He himself wrote much of the volume on Iraq and the Persian Gulf. The principal author of the volume Western Arabia and the Red Sea was Dr Hugh Scott of the Natural History Museum, whose book on the Yemen published in 1942 was by far the best available. The volume on Syria was written mainly by J. W. Crowfoot, who had been Director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem and, as a pupil of D. G. Hogarth, the great archaeologist-cum-intelligence officer of the first two decades of the century, had been a colleague of T. E. Lawrence and Leonard Woolley. The main contributor to the volume on Persia was Dr J. V. Harrison, formerly the geologist of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, who made a name as an explorer in little-known parts of Iran and Borneo. Palestine and Transjordan was largely the work of A. H. Hyamson, late Director of Immigration, Palestine, and author of several scholarly books. Not all the contributors were academics and information was collected from many other sources. The Western Arabia volume acknowledges the assistance of St John Philby, while photographs were forthcoming from such explorers as Sir Claremont Skrine, Bertram Thomas, Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark, as well as such organisations as the Royal Air Force, the Royal Geographical Society and the Palestine Exploration Society' (Cambridge Archive Editions, who reproduce the Middle East titles, online).
Provenance: The previous owner was most likely the Lebanese historian and book collector Dr. Talal Toufic Farah. He 'was born in Baghdad in 1939 into a prominent Lebanese family from Hamat, Batroun. He spent his early years in Iraq where his father, a medical doctor, was stationed. Educated at the Tripoli School for Boys, Talal completed his BA in Political Sciences and Public Administration in 1962 at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Following his graduation, his first job was to take up assignments at AUB’s Jafet Library, where he also worked closely with Dr. Kamal Salibi, the renowned historian. This work-relationship became a great friendship and sparked his passion for history. After teaching classes at the International College in Lebanon and working at the Ford Foundation in Saudi Arabia, Talal decided to return to AUB to complete his Master's degree in History in 1970. History was his first love, and he pursued it in London, where he attended the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in 1972 and completed his PhD in 1979. During this period, Talal worked as a historian, lecturer, and consultant, and he established Talis House, a research institute based in London. His PhD thesis would later form the foundation of his book Protection and Politics in Bahrain 1869 -1915' (AUB, online).
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