Since the author's publication of Die nordjemenitischen Dialekte. Teil 1: Atlas in 1985, a lot of new field work has been done in North Yemen and adjacent areas. Therefore a new atlas of the region in English suggested itself. The atlas consists of 192 fully coloured maps with 30 phonetical and phonological maps, 100 morphological and 60 lexical ones.

Peter Behnstedt, (PhD, 1973, University of Tübingen, Dr. habil., 1997, University of Hamburg) has published monographs, dialect atlases and many articles on Arabic dialects of Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan. In collaboration with Manfred Woidich he co-authored the five volumes Die ägyptisch-arabischen Dialekte (Wiesbaden 1984-1999), Arabische Dialektgeographie (Brill,2005), and the three volumes of > (Brill, 2011-2014).