Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Tim Mackintosh-Smith (born 17 July 1961) is a British, Yemen-based, Oxford-educated 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. 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.