4to. Not paginated, [103 pp], Arabic & English titles & captions, fully illustrated in b/w photos, original cloth, slightly soiled, spine professionally repaired, foxed endpapers, small stain on title page, previous owner’s pencil inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise copy inside clean & in good condition, printed and engraved at the Government Press, Basrah, published by Superintendent, Government Press Basrah, second edition, [circa 1920].

Synopsis

First photographic book ever printed on Iraq and Central Arabia. The final section entitled: “A Tour through Central Arabia, the following pictures were taken by a British officer touring through Central Arabia with an escorts of Arabs”. The officer was Harry St John Philby, who was permitted by Ibn Saud to travel through Najd. After he had served with the British administration in Baghdad from 1915 to 1917, Philby then travelled through the interior of the Arabian peninsula as head of a mission to Ibn Saud. Philby completed a great tour of the Nejd in nine months, covering some 4000 kilometres. “Over 600 photographs were taken, some of which were later published in 1918 in ‘Iraq in War Time’, the first photographic book to appear on Najd” (Badr El-Hage, p. 95f.).
The book is divided into four sections as follows:
I- Groups and portraits.
II- Local events.
III- Views.
IV- A tour through Central Arabia.
All the photographs were taken by Harry St John Philby during his travels in Iraq and Najd. Other photographs were taken by the British Royal Air Force.
COPAC reports only four locations for this work in the United Kingdom at the British Library, Oxford University, London Library and Durham University. Badr El-Hage, Saudi Arabia: Caught in Time, 1861-1939, p. 95. Imperial War Museum 29(567)/3-5. OCLC 757755425. Not in Macro or Wilson.