The author set out to journey across Morocco in 1897 by riding through the Atlas mountains and reaching the city of Taroudant But the Sultan had forbidden outsiders, especially Christians, from going there. Cunninghame Graham flouted the danger, saddled his Barb horse and galloped straight into the teeth of one of the greatest desert stories ever told. Disguised in local clothes and calling himself "Sheikh Mohammad El Fasi, " the Scottish author, posing as a Turkish doctor, was only hours away from the elusive city when he was captured and kidnapped. This book, an instant best-seller, brought praises from Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw, who all agreed it was a rare book written by a man so kaleidoscopic in character that he defied belief.