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About the Author Muhammad Asad (leopold Weiss) was born on July 2, 1900 in Eastern Galicia, where he grew up in a strong Jewish Milieu. During the First World War, he joined the Austrian army, but the Austrian Empire collapsed a few weeks later and Leopold Weiss enrolled at the university of Vienna to study the history of art and philosophy. He frequented literaqry cafes of Vienna and , Like so many other young men and women of his times who were disenchanted by Europe, looked eastward for spiritual, intellectual, and emotional nourishment. In the spring of 1922, twenty ? one year old Leopold Weiss received a letter from his uncle Dorian to come and live in his ?delightful Old City near the Jaffa Gate. On a foggy morning the summer of 1922, Leopold Weiss stood on the planks of a ship on his way to the East where he would experience his first Arab encounters as if they were a presentiment of what the future held in store for him. ?It was as when you enter a straqnge house for the first time and an indefinable smell in the hallwaqy dimly gives you a hint of things which will happen to you as if they are to be joyful things, and you feel a stab of rapture in your heart.? After several months of travel in the middle East, Leopold Weiss returned to Germany and published his journal entries as unromantisches Morgenland, aus dem Tagebuch einer Rese. This first English translation of a long forgotten work recaptures his initial experiences in an unkinown and intriguing land where he found a new home and a new sense of belonging. The unromantic orient is not only an impressionistic journal of a young man in se4arch of certitude, it also provides insights into the spiritual transformation of Leopold Weiss who would soon convert to Islam and spend the rest of his life in studying and writing about it. The travelogue starts at the jerusalem train station and takes us through Cairo, Amman, parts of the Trans Jordan, Palestine, Damascus , and istanbul. After his conversion to islam in 1926, Muhammad Asad lived in Arabia, India and later Paqkistan, New York, Sharjah, Lebanon, Switzerland, morocco, and Spain, where he died in 1992. He was buri3ed in the Muslim Cemetery of Granada. His other works include islam at the Crossroads, This Law of Ours, The Road to Mecca, Sahih al-Bukhari Early years of Islam and the Message of the Qur\'an. Elma Ruth harder receved her master\'s degree in contunuing and Vocational Education from the university of Wsiconsin- Madison (1985) and has lived and taught in various parts of Canada. Between 1990 and 1999, she lived in Pakistan where she taught at the International School of isalamabad. She is an editor, translator, home-maker, gradener, and mother of three. Currently, she and her family live in Wuddistan, Alberta, Canada. Table of Contents List of Photographs Translator\'s introduction The unromantic orient Author\'s Introduction The unromantic Orient Chronology of muhammad Asaqd\' life Editors of names