Quotes from Alexei Vassiliev

There were no large-scale irrigation facilities or huge tracts of irrigated and cultivated land in medieval Arabia. Combined with the isolation of the oases, this meant that there was no need for a centralized government.

The camel-breeding nomads' labour was hard and required well-tested skills. They had to know how to exploit their pastures, drive camels from one grazing area to another, treat the animals when they were sick, milk the female camels, cut the wool and so on. Younger camels were trained to perform various tasks and to walk saddled and loaded. The bedouin dug and maintained wells in the desert.

Those who suffer a defeat are often branded by history as lacking in talent, whereas it is frequently circumstances that are unfavourable to them.

life in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Arabia had not changed greatly since medieval times. For the overwhelming majority of people in Najd, al-Hasa and Hijaz, life was connected chiefly with two kinds of economic activity – irrigated farming in the oases and nomadic animal husbandry.