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Document Details :

Title: All at Sea
Subtitle: Recent Research in the Indian Ocean
Author(s): CARSWELL, John
Journal: ARAM Periodical
Volume: 8    Issue: 1   Date: 1996   
Pages: 201-211
DOI: 10.2143/ARAM.8.1.2002194

Abstract :
Just over five years ago, Albert Hourani asked me if I would undertake a revision of his brother George Hourani's famous book, on Arab Seafaring. First published by Princeton University Press in 1952, it was based on his dissertation, “Arab Navigation in the Indian Ocean in the Ninth and Tenth centuries”, which he completed in 1938-1939, and which he tells us he expanded into his book during summer vacations, when he worked in the Library of the Palestine Archaeological Museum in Jerusalem. The book was quickly out of print, and apart from a facsimile edition produced by Paul Khayat in Beirut in 1963, and an Arab translation by Saiyid Ya'qub Bakr published in Cairo in 1958, Arab Seafaring has long been unavailable. Albert Hourani's request was somewhat daunting, for such is the respect which we all had for Albert that it was more like a royal command rather than a solicitation. It was, indeed, a great compliment that he should have asked at all, and there was no possibility of refusal. In my innocence, I imagined that I could polish it off in a few months working on it at weekends. In the event, it took three years of extremely hard work, and I began to fear meeting Albert's eye on the occasions when we met, for there was always the unspoken question of how was it getting along. Happily, I was able to tell him at a party one day that I had just sent off the completed manuscript to Princeton. He died two days later.

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