8vo. 270 pp., [1], Russian, Arabic & English text, contemporary cream buckram, lightly foxed endpapers, light dent to spine extremities, otherwise copy in very good condition, published by Izdatel’stvo Nauka (Izdatel'stvo Oriental Literature), Moscow, 1983.

Synopsis

Vasilev a prominent Russian Arabist and Africanist and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Most significantly, Vasiliev was the first in Russia to study the phenomenon of Wahhabism from the works of its founder, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and his predecessors. Many of the issues raised in his doctoral dissertation, which was devoted to 18th century Saudi Arabia, have remained relevant to the study of Islamic extremism in the 21st century. The most important monograph by Vasiliev is the fundamental History of Saudi Arabia. It is the first study to provide a comprehensive study of social, economic, political and religious evolution of Saudi Arabia over the period of nearly 250 years. The book uses the broadest range of currently available sources in Arabic, Turkish, English, French, Italian, German, and Russian languages. It is also based on materials from Russian and Soviet archives. Some of the conclusions of the book reach beyond the boundaries of Saudi Arabia.