Papers from the thirty-ninth meeting of the Seminar for Arabian Studies held in London, July 2006. The Seminar for Arabian Studies is the only international forum which meets annually for the presentation of the latest academic research in the humanities on the Arabian Peninsula (including archaeology, epigraphy, numismatics, ethnography, language, history, art, architecture, etc.) from the earliest times to the present day or, in the case of political and social history, to the end of the Ottoman Empire (1922).