PS: I also meant to say earlier that some of the most eccentrically brilliant Britons have been interested in Arabia in a way, I suspect, that the equivalent Americans have not been. Certainly, and rather unfortunately, there has been no comparable interest in the Jews or Judaism. Apart, of course, from Lawrence of Arabia, there's the bizarre Doughty (who believed that all English literature after Chaucer was basically worthless - I read Arabia Deserta (in a good edited version by Penguin) about 20 years ago) and also Richard Burton (who first translated and published the Thousand and One Nights in an almost unreadably bad translation that (apparently!) is only notable for his deliberate exaggeration of the pornographic sections of the Tales).  (talk)