About The Book

This translation was chosen for its accuracy, elegance and integrity in maintaining the original language and its historical and scientific terminology. The book is enriched with plentiful indexes and a sound selection of locations and personalities’ names. It is a thoughtful research combining historical and archival skills along with accountability, illustrating an important intellectual phenomenon, closely attached to world cultures, especially the Mediterranean - namely that of hosting travellers. The scholar traces ‘the hotel’ as a commercial and a social organisation, since ancient until modern times and the civil and commercial exchanges between Arab countries and their European and Mediterranean neighbours. Through the history of hotels, the writer highlights how people of the Arab region portrayed travel and journeys and the welcome extended to strangers, or visitors, and how the relationship between host and visitor has changed over time.

Published: 2013