THOMAS, Bertram.

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Four Strange Tongues from South Arabia. The Hadara Group. First edition of this work on the historical linguistics of four Modern South Arabic dialects spoken by tribes collectively known as Ahl Al Hadara. This copy was presented by the author to the British journalist Kenneth Williams, who worked for many years in the Middle East and published the first English biography of Ibn Saud in 1933. It is also an association copy, with the ownership inscription of Francis E. B. Witts (b. 1941), who attended the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies and spent his career as a banker in the Middle East.The linguistic materials, gathered by Bertram over five years, complement and update the findings of the Viennese expedition of 1900. After discussing the geographical distribution of Mehri, Shauri, Harsusi and Botahari and their speakers in the Dhofar and West Oman region, Bertram provides a comparative grammatical introduction and comparative glossaries.

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