Category Archives: Jordan

Al-Jallad on Pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions

One of the foremost scholars of the pre-Islamic languages and inscriptions of the Arabian Peninsula is Dr. Ahmad al-Jallad. Here is a Youtube video of a lecture he gave at Princeton University in 2019. I attended the lecture, along with the South Arabic scholar Christian Robin. For a talk now online of a lecture he gave in Kuwait the same year, click here. Al-Jallad edited the journal Arabian Epigraphic Notes while he was at Leiden University. To follow Dr. al-Jallad’s work on Safaitic, check out the Facebook site.

Open Access to Middle East Journals and Newspapers

For anyone doing research on the Middle East for the past two centuries, there is an incredible archive online. Details below:

Alphabetical List of Open Access Historical Newspapers and Other Periodicals in Middle East & Islamic Studies

Below is a list of Open Access historical newspapers and other periodicals in Middle Eastern Studies.
Most titles on the list have been digitized by independent projects across the globe and may not have been fully cataloged. It is often difficult to find and access them on the web or through catalogs such as HathiTrust, AMEEL, Gallica, Revues, WorldCat, etc.
We welcome your comments and suggestions of additional titles to include. Please use the comment feature at the bottom of the page.

For the list of active Open Access journals follow this link:
Alphabetical List of Open Access Journals in Middle Eastern Studies

132 titles as of May 14, 2015.

A trove of old photographs


The photograph illustrates Luce Ben Aben, Moorish women preparing couscous, Algiers, Algeria.

There is a trove of old photographs from around the Middle East at the website http://www.azerbaijanrugs.com/oldphotos/old-photographs-me.htm


Kurds in national costumes


Young girl of Bethlehem. This color photochrome print was made between 1890 and 1900.

Beams and Motes


Large crowd looking at the burned body of Jesse Washington, 18 year-old African-American, lynched in Waco, Texas, May 15, 1916. (Library of Congress)

Growing up on the King James Bible, there are certain passages that are forever embedded in my mind. One of these came vividly to mind after reading a powerful essay by Bill Moyers on the recent horrific burning of a Jordanian pilot by ISIS. The verse is from Matthew 7:5:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Like the jot and the tittel (Matthew 5:18), this is a phrase that not only resonates in the rhetoric of this classic text but serves as a reminder of our all-too-human capacity to selectively forget disagreeable parts of our own past. The issue is not about the barbaric and savage public display of a young Jordanian man burnt alive. This is a despicable act, like the beheadings, perpetrated in order to get a reaction. It is no more a unique “religious” act than the post auto de fe burnings of the Inquisition in Spain, unless you believe that it is only religion that motivates one human being to torture and cause pain on another. I think it does not do injustice to the verse to say that casting a beam out of one’s own eye is important even for casting out the beam in another’s eye.

The beam in the other is the burning of the pilot. The beam in our own eye is microcosmed in the testicle cutting, lynching and burning alive of a young black man named Jesse Washington in 1916 in Waco Texas. Continue reading Beams and Motes

At hand by the Dead Sea


At the Dead Sea

Some extraordinary photographs on {Life}Buzz

Here’s a guy who is following his love to the ends of the earth. Russian photographer Murad Osmann has been snapping photographs of his travels with his beautiful girlfriend Nataly Zakharova, leading the way since 2011. This series is called Follow Me To.

Murad said the first photo happened in Barcelona while they were away on vacation. Nataly was annoyed with him always taking photos of everything, so she grabbed his hand and pulled him forward. That’s when he took the first photo and the rest is history.

Their stunning pictures have earned them over million followers on Instagram.