It is a mental journey through texts, an atlas, and time, a wandering without "compasses and maps," which promises valuable encounters with the unknown, but mainly with "the unexpected, the unforeseen, the possible," and intersections with unique individuals, those who marked their place and were marked by it.

Meetings with ambitious and legendary queens, relentless queen mothers, great leaders, enlightened teachers, thinkers and wise men, brave heroes, cunning conquerors and heroic strategists, misunderstood dictators, living legends, fiery rebels, intolerant activists, desperate nobles, pioneering artists, inspired musicians, exquisite poets, saints and madmen, ruthless traders and treasure hunters, uprooted and stateless adventurers, hellish schemers and indifferent, multilingual mercenaries, ironclad Crusaders and turbaned invaders, determined hermits, magicians and ghosts, beautiful and fatal women, renowned courtesans, patriotic philanthropists, emirs and sheikhs, silent camel drivers and Bedouin nomads, courtiers and flatterers, courtly schemers, priestesses and whores, fantasticals of every religion... and hundreds of thousands of "precarious beings, temporary and vain," everyday people with whom your gaze and steps crossed.

They are all those, and many more, who literally haunt their city, cast a heavy shadow over it, are absorbed into its scent, invisible still walk among its people, carry the weight of their habits and daily lives, wander with their enthusiasm and despair, gesture and disagree, live their passions and shape its atmosphere with their existence.

And you, who took care, with the precious assistance of historians, writers and poets, chroniclers, biographers, and travelers, to approach them, if you truly wish and have your eyes open, recall their forms, meet them at every corner, follow in their footsteps, become enchanted by their personal journey, touch the mythology that surrounds them and travel with them beyond space and time, decades, sometimes even centuries back.

[Excerpt from the text of the preface]