Full Description
From within this beautifully crafted and deeply knowledgeable narrative emerges a rare and exquisitely rendered portrait of the customs and cultures of the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula.
Freya Stark is most famous for her travels in Arabia at a time when very few men, let alone women, had fully explored its vast hinterlands. In 1934, she made her first journey to the Hadhramaut in what is now Yemen - the first woman to do so alone.
Even though that journey ended in disappointment, sickness and a forced rescue, Stark, undeterred, returned to Yemen two years later. Starting in Mukalla and skirting the fringes of the legendary and unexplored Empty Quarter, she spent the winter searching for Shabwa - ancient capital of the Hadhramaut and a holy grail for generations of explorers.
A Winter in Arabia is one of the most important pieces of literature on the region and a book that placed Freya Stark in the pantheon of great writers and explorers of the Arab world. To listen to her voice is to hear the rich echoes of a land whose 'nakedness is clothed in shreds of departed splendour'.
Contents
Foreword by Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, K.C.M.G., C.B.E., D.S.O.
1. From the Air
2. Mukalla Revisited
3. Transport and the Cook
4. The Towns of the Kathiri
The Diary
The Journey
5. The Journey Begins
6. Wadi 'Amd
7. Sickness in 'Amd
8. Robin
9. The High Jol
10. The Drawings of Rahbe
11. Across the Watershed
12. Arrivalin 'Azzan
13. Naqb al Hajr
14. Jebel Kadur
15. The Sultan's Caravan
16. The Site of Cana
17. A Dhow to Aden
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Index
