At a time when the influence of Islam and the Arab world dominate newspaper headlines as a result of bloodshed and terrorist threats, it will come as a welcome relief to learn of Sultan Qaboos. The very term 'Sultan' conjures up shades of peacock thrones and riches beyond the dreams of avarice. This incredible scene has almost vanished . . . but not quite.In today's oil-rich Arabia, one Sultan remains. He is one of the world's very last absolute rulers and presides over daily rituals the Ottomans of old Istanbul would recognise immediately. Arabia's sole surviving Sultan is, however, an arch exponent of the very British practice of discretion and reserve, which is far from surprising given that he owes his throne to the machinations of a very British coup. Indeed, so wide ranging is the cloak of Sultan Qaboo's reticence that his country has been described as the world's most secretive state. It would be quite impossible to divorce the man from the land which he has ruled for the past 33 years, so immediate is his authority, so absolute is his exercise of unfettered power. But who exactly is Qaboos bin Said Al Said? What of the journey without maps which led him to be complicit in the betrayal and overthrow of his own father? What role did he personally take in the Dhofar war of the 1970s, when he became the first Arab monarch to defeat the armed exponents of Marx and Lenin? And what of his hitherto secret connections with Margaret Thatcher and the incident that became known as the 'Thatcher necklace affair'?

At a time when the influence of Islam and the Arab world dominate newspaper headlines as a result of bloodshed and terrorist threats, it will come as a welcome relief to learn of Sultan Qaboos. The very term 'Sultan' conjures up shades of peacock thrones and riches beyond the dreams of avarice. This incredible scene has almost vanished . . . but not quite.In today's oil-rich Arabia, one Sultan remains. He is one of the world's very last absolute rulers and presides over daily rituals the Ottomans of old Istanbul would recognise immediately. Arabia's sole surviving Sultan is, however, an arch exponent of the very British practice of discretion and reserve, which is far from surprising given that he owes his throne to the machinations of a very British coup. Indeed, so wide ranging is the cloak of Sultan Qaboo's reticence that his country has been described as the world's most secretive state. It would be quite impossible to divorce the man from the land which he has ruled for the past 33 years, so immediate is his authority, so absolute is his exercise of unfettered power. But who exactly is Qaboos bin Said Al Said? What of the journey without maps which led him to be complicit in the betrayal and overthrow of his own father? What role did he personally take in the Dhofar war of the 1970s, when he became the first Arab monarch to defeat the armed exponents of Marx and Lenin? And what of his hitherto secret connections with Margaret Thatcher and the incident that became known as the 'Thatcher necklace affair'?

The Sultan's Communists uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation project and examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly-independent Morocco. Closely following the lives of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Léon René Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Lévy, and Sion Assidon), Alma Rachel Heckman describes how Moroccan Communist Jews fit within the story of mass Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 1950s and '60s, and how they survived oppressive post-independence authoritarian rule under the Moroccan monarchy to ultimately become heroic emblems of state-sponsored Muslim-Jewish tolerance. The figures at the center of Heckman's narrative stood at the intersection of colonialism, Arab nationalism, and Zionism. Their stories unfolded in a country that, upon independence from France and Spain in 1956, allied itself with the United States (and, more quietly, Israel) during the Cold War, while attempting to claim a place for itself within the fraught politics of the post-independence Arab world. The Sultan's Communists contributes to the growing literature on Jews in the modern Middle East and provides a new history of twentieth-century Jewish Morocco.

Is Saudi Arabia really a homogeneous Wahhabi dominated state? In 1932 the Al Saud family incorporated the kingdom of Hijaz, once the cultural hub of the Arabian world, in to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The urban, cosmopolitan Hijazis were absorbed in to a new state whose codes of behavior and rules were determined by the Najdis, an ascetic desert people, from whom the Al Saud family came. But the Saudi rulers failed to fully integrate the Hijaz, which retains a distinctive identity to this day. In "Cradle of Islam", the product of years spent in Mecca, Medina, Jeddah and Taif, Mai Yamani traces the fortunes of the distinctive and resilient culture of the Hijazis, from the golden age of Hashemite Mecca to Saudi domination to its current resurgence. The Hijazis today emphasise their regional heritage in religious ritual, food, dress and language as a response to the 'Najdification' of everyday life. The Hijazi experience shows the vitality of cultural diversity in the face of political repression in the Arab world.

"Just how oil, arms, and Allah have served over time either to bind or sunder the United States and Saudi Arabia relationship is the focus of this book," writes David Ottaway, who has chronicled "the special relationship" over the course of three decades at the Washington Post. No two governments and societies could be more different, and yet we have been bound together since1945 by vital national security interests, based on a simple quid pro quo: Saudi oil at reasonable prices in return for U.S. protection of the House of Saud from all foreign foes. However, the balance points of the relationship-often tenuous even in peacetime-have been fractured by the attacks of 9/11 and the U.S.'s subsequent invasion of Iraq: the price of oil has skyrocketed and Saudi Arabia has been powerless to stop its rise; the U.S. invasion of Iraq has unleashed the prospect of a Shi'ite-dominated regime allied to Iran on Sunni Saudi Arabia's borders; and militant elements within Saudi Arabia are ever more threatening. Not since the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran has the House of Saud felt itself in such peril, and the Saudis have not forgotten the inability, or unwillingness, of the U.S. to save the Shah. Nobody has been more emblematic of the Saudi-U.S. relationship, nobody has been at its center for longer, than Prince Bandar, the first Saud royal ever to serve as ambassador to Washington. David Ottaway's personal connection to the prince has allowed him unparalleled insight into the complex geopolitics that govern and have governed Saudi Arabia's dance with the United States, and his book, coming at a crucial juncture, will examine what new common ground may be found between the two countries, and what may ultimately pull them apart.

How has Saudi Arabia managed to maintain its Arab and Islamic values while at the same time adopting Western technology and a market economy? How have its hereditary leaders, who govern with a mixture of political pragmatism and religious zeal, managed to maintain their power? This comprehensive history of Saudi Arabia from 1745 to the present provides insight into its culture and politics, its powerful oil industry, its relations with its neighbours, and the ongoing influence of the Wahhabi movement. Based on a wealth of Arab, American, British, Western and Eastern European sources, this book will stand as the definitive account of the largest state on the Arabian peninsula.

An account of the first crossing of the Omani desert by motorcar, as Jan Morris accompanied the Sultan on his royal progress, with the winds of change - oil and revolution - in the background.