Three Middle Eastern countries are the source for the photographs in this book: Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and the Sultanate of Oman. The book shows some of the splendours of this austere part of the world: pre-Islamic castles and modern cities, mountain-top villages and Ottoman palaces, wadis filled with running water and explosive plant life, forests of cedar, rust red dunes reaching 200ft in height and the second deepest canyon in the world, sunken rivers, Byzantine mosaics, and the home port of Sinbad.



Taken over a period of three years at the start of the Millenium, some of these sights have already vanished—replaced by the rapid modernisation of these countries.