Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Tim Mackintosh-Smith (born 17 July 1961) is a British, Yemen-based, Oxford-educated^[1] Arabist, writer, traveller and lecturer. He has written many books on the Middle East, won several awards and has presented a major BBC television series.

Education[]

Mackintosh-Smith was educated at Clifton College, a boarding independent school for boys in the suburb of Clifton in the port city of Bristol in South West England, between the years 1971-78,^[2] followed by a musical scholarship to the University of Oxford, where he read Classical Arabic.^[3]

Life and career[]

Mackintosh-Smith lives in an ancient tower house off the "Market of the Cows" in the old city of San'a, Yemen. He is the author of the Yemen: Travels in Dictionaryland (1997) and Yemen: The Unknown Arabia (2000). He is one of the foremost scholars of the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battutah. Mackintosh-Smith has published a trilogy recounting his journeys in "the footnotes" of Ibn Battutah; Travels with A Tangerine (2001), The Hall of a Thousand Columns (2005) and Landfalls (2010). He has additionally written widely on subjects as broad as alabaster, the collection of frankincense, the stories of M.R. James and the history of umbrellas.

Mackintosh-Smith presented a major BBC documentary series Travels with a Tangerine (2007)^[4] recounting his experiences tracing Ibn Battutah's fourteenth-century travels in the present day. He was featured in a documentary film The English Sheik and the Yemeni Gentleman.

Mackintosh-Smith has won several awards: Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land, won the 1998 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. The Daily Telegraph has described him as "the sage of Sana'a."^[1] He has written about the history of the Arab people in Arabs: A 3,000-Year History of Peoples, Tribes and Empires (2019).

References[]

External links[]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Tim Mackintosh-Smith

• Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah —John Murray, 2003. first part of trilogy following the footsteps of Ibn Battutah by Tim Mackintosh-Smith.
• The Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah —John Murray, 2005. second part of trilogy by Tim Mackintosh-Smith.
• Landfalls: on the Edge of Islam with Ibn Battutah —John Murray, 2010. final part of trilogy by Tim Mackintosh-Smith.
• Moonglow from Underground — Saudi Aramco World article by Tim Mackintosh-Smith (May/June 1999).
• A Tangerine in Delhi — Saudi Aramco World article by Tim Mackintosh-Smith (March/April 2006).
• Mackintosh-Smith's official website
• Travels with Ibn Battutah, interview with Tim Mackintosh-Smith in www.theglobaldispatches.com