The military campaign of the Ottomans, when they entered the region of Yemen in the mid-16th century, was chronicled by Qutb al-Din al-Nahrawali, a scholar charged by an Ottoman general to document his army's progress. This book makes this 16th-century Ottoman source document available in English for the first time.

Clive Smith has spent more than two decades in the Arab world and was British Council Director in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.