Although there is a plethora of Westerners' accounts of their travels in the Arab world, it is often forgotten that there exists a substantial body of accounts of journeys to the West by Arab travellers. Nazik Yared's study, while acknowledging the importance of major figures in classical Arabic travel literature such as al-Mas'udi (d. 957), Ibn Jubair (d. 1217) and Ibn Battuta (d. 1377), focuses on Arab travellers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Of the many Arab travellers who left their accounts, the author has selected those who either represented a train of thought shared by the intelligentsia of the time or who stood out from other travellers and left their mark on their contemporaries or on future generations. They also cover a wide range of cultural and religious backgrounds.

Among the subjects examined are nationalism and the nation state, democracy, freedom and equality, the principles of the French revolution and Western scientific thought. These crucial issues are discussed by the Arab travellers as they relate to their own societies.