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If you knew the answers…
Many centuries ago, in the land of the Great Timur, the teacher Nasreddin Hodja wandered the streets shouting, desperate, because his donkey had been stolen.
- Who stole your donkey? How did they rob it from you? asked a judge who was passing by.
- If I knew the answers, an irate Hodja responded, they would not have stolen it!
The curious reader (and we suppose that you are curious, or you would not be reading a preface) could deduce that the robbery probably occurred in the thirteenth or fourteenth century in Anatolia, now Turkey, because Timur Lenk is the same leader known in Europe as Tamerlane; that the robbery could have been an incident reflecting the instability caused by the migrations of peoples from the steppes toward the fertile lands of the Mediterranean; and that the presence of a concerned judge indicates the existence of a State authority and justice system, which is perhaps one of the keys to the rapid expansion of Islam over what was once the Eastern Roman Empire.
We will never know who stole the donkey, or if Hodja ever got it back, but the angry teacher leaves us a lesson in the value of knowing the answers. As with any good reference work, this book is full of them. To ensure that the answers are precise, we dedicate ourselves year after year to compiling new statistics and current and reliable information, submitting the analyses to the correspondents and contributors (and to enthusiastic readers) in each of the countries for review. We also rewrite the articles in light of new research and meticulous re-readings in order to distinguish the relevant from the anecdotal, or to highlight an anecdote when it proves to be more illustrative than a cold, hard fact.
The World Guide's researchers and writers do not only utilize other books, news sources and the Internet in their work, they also rely on a dynamic network of people and non-profit institutions around the world engaged in studying reality and recording history day after day: organizations for human rights, women, the environment, labor and social development. The Third World Institute would not be able to produce the World Guide without this continuous flow of information, and the acknowledgements list only a portion of these important sources.
The people we could never thank enough are the readers, who encourage the efforts we began already a quarter century ago. We are pleased any time someone tells us they have found the answers they were looking for in the World Guide. What drives us to continue, however, is when a reader who was not yet born when the first edition was published says that reading the Guide has prompted even more questions.
Roberto Bissio
Director ITeM, Uruguay
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