Although the Arabian Peninsula is the heartland of Islam and of the Arab world, for decades it did not receive the attention it deserves from scholars and writers. The School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and the Middle East Centre of St Antony's College, Oxford, jointly organized a series of seminars, culminating in a conference at which the papers in this volume (first published in 1972) were discussed. Together they constitute an authoritative statement of our present knowledge of several areas of the Peninsula, with particular emphasis on the Gulf States. Three chapters trace the history of Oman from pre-Islamic times to the recent past, and in so doing emphasize the theme of continuing conflict between sultan and imam. Other chapters examine the Gulf and the Peninsula from the standpoint of inter-Arab and of international relations. The third section of the book is devoted to a discussion of the increasing rate of social change in the area, and the final section deals with problems of oil and state and of economic development.

Bibliographical Survey. 1. Some Western Studies of Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Aden Derek Hopwood Part 1. History 2. The Development of the Gulf States Ahmad Mustafa Abu-Hakima 3. Wahhabism and Saudi Arabia George Rentz 4. The Origins of the Omani State J.C. Wilkinson 5. Maritime Trade and Imamate Government: Two Principal Themes in the History of Oman to 1728 R.D. Bathust 6. A Prevalence of Furies: Tribes, Politics and Religion in Oman and Trucial Oman J.B.Kelly Part 2. Political Developments and International Relations 7. The Arabian Peninsula in Arab and Power Politics A.R. Kelidar 8. Britain, Iran and the Persian Gulf: Some Aspects of the Situation in the 1920s and 1930s R.M. Burrell 9. Social and Political Change in the Third World: Some Peculiarities of Oil-Producing Principalities of the Persian Gulf Frank Stoakes Part 3. Sociology and Culture 10. Some Social Aspects of the Trucial States P.A. Lienhardt 11. Measuring the Changing Family Consumption Patterns of Aramco's Saudi Arab employees, 1962 and 1968 Thomas W. Shea 12. Education and the Press in South Arabia Ali Muhammad Luqman 4. Economics 13. Oil and State in Arabia Edith Penrose 14. Problems and Prospects of Development in the Arabian Peninsula Yusuf A. Sayigh