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This set contains extensive contemporarily pencilled listings of page references verso of the rear free endpapers of volumes 1 and II. The reader’s interests seem to have concentrated on Zakat, “religious considerations”, & inevitably the “Boundary dispute”. 3 volumes, quarto. Original green half roan, green cloth boards, raised bands to spines ruled in blind, lettered in gilt in compartments, marbled endpapers, green speckled edges, binder’s tickets of Tourian Bros. of Cairo to front pastedowns. Brown roan labels lettered “H.R.A.” in gilt to foot of spines. Extremities a little bumped and rubbed, wear to corners of vol. II, negligible splashmark to top edge of vol. I, edges very slightly foxed, inner hinges cracked, contents firm, endpapers reinforced at gutters, a very good and attractive copy. ¶ William Facey, “George Rentz and the Birth of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia”, The Birth of the Islamic Reform Movement in Saudi Arabia: Muhammad bin ‘Abd al-Wahhāb (1703/4–1792) and the Beginnings of Unitarian Empire in Arabia , 2004. £35,000 [159312]
tribe of the ‘Bani Yas’ is a fiction” (p. 68), and to undermine the British protectoral arrangements in the Gulf, pointing to the search for mineral resources being the reason for their “sudden interest in territorial matters about which they knew little and cared less” (pp. 521–2). The Memorial was largely derived from the work of therenowned American scholar, George Rentz (1912–1987). Rentz was an adept historian of the region, rising to prominence as the head of Aramco’s Research and Translation Division, subsequently becoming an adviser to the Saudi government, joining the Saudi delegation to Geneva as a technical expert in 1955. The present work is a political document seeking a partisan outcome; however, Rentz’s reputation for independence and impartiality remains. He is remembered as “a careful and diligent scholar of Arabic and Islam, and as a walking compendium of Arabian erudition” (Facey, p. 13).
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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