Ameen Rihani – Maker of Modern Arabia: The Story of Ibn Sa’oud – 1928 First US Edition

Ameen Rihani was a renowned Lebanese-American traveller and intellectual who authored a series of ground-breaking books on Arabia in the 1920s.

Maker of Modern Arabia is a first-hand account of his time with Ibn Sa’oud and his family, one of the earliest such biographies. It is also notable for being written from the perspective of an Arab, rather than a Westerner, and provides fascinating and highly readable insight into a crucial period in the Kingdom’s history.

First edition, first impression of the US edition. 1928. Hardback, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1928. In very good condition, some small tears and missing areas to extremities of dust jacket, which is unclipped and otherwise intact.

Exceptionally rare to find this title with the original jacket, showing the stylised portrait of Ibn Sa’oud.

The book was published in the UK in the same year under the title: Ibn Sa’oud of Arabia: His Land and People.