1700 Books on Palestine
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Tag: Books You Should Read
The Ignorance of the Jahiliyya
This is an excellent Youtube talk by Ahmad al-Jallad on the evidence from the rock inscriptions and graffiti from the Arabian Peninsula. Also check out his excellent book…
Podcast on Gulf Almanac Lore
My podcast with Ahmed AlMaazmi and Tamara Fernando is posted online on the New Books Network.
Book Launch on Almanac Lore of the Arab gulf
I will be giving a book launch on my recent book on Gulf almanac lore via Zoom for the Qatar National Library on February 22, 2023. Details about…
A Methodist in Palestine
In 1904 the proud D.D. Methodist Robert William van Schroik, at the age of 61, boarded a German steamer in New York for a 70-day trip to the…
Food Sovereignty vs. Food Aid: Why Smallscale Farming Suffers
Traditional farming in al-Ahjur, Central Highlands (photography by Daniel Martin Varisco) The early major civilizations in the Middle East and Asia with their head start several millennia ago…
Picturing Palestine
This is a fabulous new book from the University of California Press discussing photographs from late 19th and early 20th century Palestine from seven notebooks by Wasif Jawhariyyeh…
Omar Dewachi on Iraq
Omar Dewachi, an anthropologist who was an Iraqi physician during the Gulf War, has published an article from his forthcoming book, which is entitled “When Wounds Travel: Ecologies…
Seasonal Knowledge and Arab Gulf Almanacs
I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book: Seasonal Knowledge and the Almanac Tradition of the Arab Gulf. Details about the book, including a free…
Where are the Himyarite Kings?
The war that has dragged on in Yemen for seven years has created a major humanitarian disaster. Yemen has experienced war and conflict before since the early days…
Travels in Arabia
One of the books I picked up over the years was a summary of early travelers to Arabia by Bayard Taylor, a noted traveler and poet. The 1892…
The Syrian Mark Twain
Read the article here.
Who Owns the Holy Land?
As another year draws to a close, it is hard not to think in larger terms of the course of the last century. The world has seen two…
Loti on Palestine
First English translation of ‘La Galilée’, an account of Pierre Loti’s travels in the Holy Land from Jerusalem to Beirut, via Damascus and many other interesting places, in…
With Pierre Loti in Persia
My friend, the historian G. Rex Smith, has recently translated into English a marvelous travel diary by the French military official and traveller Pierre Loti (1850-1923). It is…
Tim MacIntosh Smith
Read the article about Tim, whose writing on Yemen is terrific.
New Studies on History of Yemen
Practising Community in Urban and Rural Eurasia (1000–1600): Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Fabian Kümmeler, Judit Majorossy, and Eirik Hovden (Brill Publishing, November 20…
Egypt in 1876
The British diplomat Sir Valentine Chirol (1852-1929) wrote a memoir entitled Fifty Years in a Changing World (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1928). Among the areas in the…
Goethe, as West embraces East
There is an interesting article on Qantara about the significance of the German poet Goethe’s famous West-Östliche Divan, first published 1819. To read an English translation, click here.
A Wolff in Shepherd’s Clothing, #3
Dervish; photograph by Sevryugin Anton (1830 – 1933), the official photographer of the Imperial Court of Iran In the early 19th century there was a florescence of Protestant…
A Wolff in Shepherd’s Clothing #1
Tabsir Redux… In the early 19th century there was a florescence of Protestant missionary interest in saving Muslim, Jewish and other kinds of Christian souls in the Middle…
The Ghost of Amanullah: Afghanistan Redux
The Khyber Pass in 1923 Historians generally assume that “modernity” jump-started in Afghanistan in 1919 with the crowning of Ghazi Amanullah Khan as emir and later as king…
al-Qazwini Manuscript
check it out here…
Hanbali Resource
This is a useful source with pdfs of books from and about the Hanbali school. including a number by Ibn al-Jawzi.