Monthly Archives: October 2011

Lane’s Lexicon Online

CyberOrient, Languages

The indispensable, even though incomplete, Arabic-English lexicon of Edward Lane is available several places online. You can download online here. Or check out http://www.tyndalearchive.com/tabs/lane/ and http://www.studyquran.co.uk/LLhome.htm

I find it unfortunate that this Victorian era lexicon, valuable as it is, has never been completed in English. Many of the meanings that Lane provides are somewhat archaic and he is also quite arbitrary in what he chooses to record. So it is always advisable to use his text more as an index and then go to Lisan al-Arab, Taj al-Arus or one of his other important sources to see what the original says. The French variant by Kazimirski is also 19th century but at least is complete. Lisan al-Arab and several other lexicons are available and searchable online at http://www.baheth.info/ There are also several earlier Arabic-English lexicons available in pdf at archive.org. But the mother of all Arabic dictionaries, al-Zabidi’s Taj al-Arus is available either online or in pdf for the valuable Kuwait edition at http://www.archive.org/details/alhelawy09

Tea break

Food and Drink, Photography, Turkey


“Tea, made up from the blossoms of this fragrant tree [Linden] serves as an alternative to the caffeinated regular stuff. It’s supposed to be good for you, especially if you’re sick. Here, at this fancy cafe near Istiklal, it is served up in style.” Photo by Deniz.

Looking daily at the news about the Middle East has become frustrating because there is simply too much to digest. Take today, for example. Will more Copts be killed in riots in Egypt? Is Salih leaving Yemen or not? What about the young protester shot in Bahrain? Will Qaddafi be found in a bunker in Sirte? How many Syrians were arrested and will never be seen again? Is Palestine really going to be a state? And Tunis? Iran? And I have yet to mention Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan or Pakistan. There are times when it is nice to sit down with a calming cup of tea. The photo above is from a splendid website by the Turkish photographer Deniz. Enjoy.

Salih and Groucho: “Hello, I must be going”

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Yemen, YouTube Watch


Get ready to roll the dice again. The almost off-again, persistently on-again Ali Abdullah Salih has once again signaled his stage exit. After some seven months of his citizens shouting “Irhal, ya Ali,” the embattled president of Yemen is once again on the ropes. When he announced yesterday that he would be handing over power, most Yemenis were somewhat skeptical. The old phrase “three times and you are out” rings true in American baseball but hardly in contemporary Yemeni politics. Nor does “the third time’s the charm” charm the majority of Yemenis who want a major change at the top. Does he mean it this time?

There is something about the roller coaster politics in Yemen this year that makes a perfect Marx Brothers (and I don’t include Karl in this family) movie. When I heard Salih’s latest swan song, I could not help but think of the classic song by Groucho Marx as Captain Spaulding: “Hello, I must be going”:

Hello, I must be going.
I cannot stay,
I came to say
I must be going.
I’m glad I came
but just the same
I must be going. Continue reading Salih and Groucho: “Hello, I must be going” →

Letter from Islah to Tawakkul Karman

"Arab Spring", Gender and Sexuality, Yemen


Tawakkul Karman

Yesterday I wondered how the Yemeni party Islah would respond to the Nobel Prize being given to one of its members. Here is the official letter, congratulating her, sent to Karman from Muhammad Abdullah al-Yadumi,

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

الأخت المناضلة / توكل عبدالسلام كرمان

رئيس منظمة صحفيات بلا قيود, عضو مجلس شورى التجمع اليمني للإصلاح

تحية وتقدير وبعد :

بكل ابتهاج تلقينا في التجمع اليمني للإصلاح إعلان فوزكم بجائزة نوبل للسلام كأول امرأة عربية تحظى بهذا التكريم وأول شخصية يمنية تمنح هذه الثقة الدولية الهامة.

إننا ونحن نهنئكم بهذا الإنجاز التاريخي نعتبر هذا الفوز مكسبا للثورة اليمنية السلمية وللمرأة اليمنية المناضلة والواعية القادرة على صنع النجاح رغم عوائق التخلف وموروثات الإستبداد التي حالت بين شعبنا وبين الإبداع لعقود من الزمن.

كما أن تكريمكم اليوم بجائزة نوبل للسلام يعد تتويجا مستحقا لجهود سنوات من نضالكم السلمي الدؤوب وكفاحكم المرير ضد منظومة الجهل والظلم والفساد في مختلف الميادين الإعلامية والحقوقية والسياسية ونصرة المظلومين وغيرها من المجالات وصولاً إلى العمل الثوري السلمي الذي مازال شعبنا برجاله ونسائه وشبابه وشيوخه يخوضه دون استكانة أو لين حتى يتحقق له ما يصبو إليه من حرية وكرامة وعدالة وحكم رشيد .

كما أننا نرى في هذا التكريم شهادة أممية على حضارية شعبنا اليمني وعدالة مطالبه وسلامة نهجه السلمي في التغيير، متمنين في هذا السياق ان يرافق هذا الإعتراف من المجتمع المدني الدولي بعدالة المطالب اليمنية إعتراف سياسي دولي بهذه المطالب وان يسارع العالم بأسره الى الوقوف مع الشعب اليمني التواق للحرية والتغيير.

نكرر تهانينا الصادقة لكم ولكل ذوي المبادرات الرائدة في وطننا الحبيب ، مع تمنياتنا لكم بالتوفيق والنجاح ومزيداً من العطاء.

والسلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته،،

أخوكم /

محمد بن عبدالله اليدومي

رئيس الهيئة العليا للتجمع اليمني للإصلاح

Yemeni woman shares Nobel Peace Prize

"Arab Spring", Gender and Sexuality, Journalism and Media, Yemen


The Nobel Peace Prize for 2011 has just been released with three recipients: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Lehmah Gbowee and Tawwakul Karman. All three were chosen “for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” Karman is Yemeni; but beyond this she is the first Arab woman to win a Nobel prize, a point proudly noted on the Yemeni media site Yemen Press. It will be interesting to watch the reaction to the choice. Here is an activist who took to the streets to promote a peaceful transition from the corrupt secular dynasty of Ali Abdullah Salih. She is one of many Yemenis sharing the same goal and not a principle organizer, although her superb English skills attracted attention in the foreign media. She is also actively involved in the powerful Islamic party of Islah.

As always there will be much second guessing as to why these particular individuals were chosen. I suspect that Karman was not near the top of any speculation list. The Nobel Peace Prize, however, is the most symbolic of these “dynamic” Swedish awards, with the aim of promoting an idea more than finding the “best qualified” candidate. The stated aim this year, however, was a focus on the role of women as peacemakers. Fortunately there are many women activists peacefully advocating against corrupt politics and prejudicial practices. The choice this year appears to be a consciously rounded decision, also including the Liberian president Ellen Sirleaf and Lehmah Gbowee, a social worker also involved in the peace movement in Liberia. If it had just been Sirleaf, one might have dismissed the choice as yet another politician, no matter how worthy, but including Gbowee and Karman may have more to do with inspiring more women to participate at the local level than their actual accomplishments or impact.

As a senior member of the prominent Yemeni Islamic party Islah, Karman does not fit the mold most Westerners hold of Muslim women. She covers her hair with a scarf, but without the extreme niqab or even the more ubiquitous Yemeni sharshaf ( a full-length black outer veil introduced to Yemen by the Ottoman Turks). While the media is for the most part fixated on the masculine culture of Al Qaida, the role of women in Yemen is either ignored or stereotyped. So this choice will draw attention to the fact that there are women who are proud to be Muslim and do not view themselves as servile slaves. But it will also, I suspect, result in detractors within Yemen who will be jealous of the attention she is receiving and perhaps even dismiss it as yet another “Western” intrusion. Will the leaders of Islah promote this honor to one of their members? Will rival Islamic groups use her as a wedge issue? Continue reading Yemeni woman shares Nobel Peace Prize →

Walter Dostal (1928-2011)

Anthropology/Sociology, Saudi Arabia, Scholars, Yemen


Eduard Glaser (1855-1908), left; Walter Dostal (1928-2011), right

[In early August the academic community lost one of the pioneers of ethnographic study on the Arabian Peninsula, the distinguished Austrian scholar Walter Dostal. Here is the obituary from the Austrian Academy of Sciences website.]

With Walter Dostal’s passing away in Vienna on August 6th/7th 2011, the anthropological communities in Austria, Central Europe and the German-speaking countries lose one of their best-known representatives shaping the field throughout the latter quarter of the 20th century.
Dostal was best known for his ethnographic studies of Arabian and Middle Eastern societies, but he also contributed substantially to anthropological theory – with particular emphasis on the interplay between environment, society, and history. As a leading expert for the Arab peninsula at this Academy, Dostal continued a remarkable research record into the early 21st century which at the Academy of Sciences goes back to the late 19th century.

Dostal had belonged to the first generation of anthropology students trained after the second world war, and his scholarly work was committed to build a new and internationally oriented foundation for the discipline once called “Völkerkunde” in the German-speaking countries after 1945. Born on May 15th 1928 in Grulich near Brno (today: Czech Republic), Dostal and his family moved at the end of the war to Vienna where he began his studies in anthropology. His critical engagement with the so-called “Culture Circles” theory led him to reject any speculative historical models, and to appreciate the empirical archaeological and textual evidence. Formative influences during those early years of his career were Robert Heine-Geldern (a corresponding member of the AAS) and Joseph Henninger. After his dissertation on Semitic-speaking peoples he began a first sequence of ethnographic fieldwork in the Arab peninsula, which he combined with international research sojourns in Frankfurt and Rome, and his first position as Curator for the Middle Eastern section at Vienna’s Ethnology Museum. Continue reading Walter Dostal (1928-2011) →

A third of a century and counting…

"Arab Spring", Ali Abdullah Salih, Obama Administration, Yemen

Very few people live for an entire century. I had a great aunt who was born in 1899 and lived into the first part of the 21st century, thus straddling three arbitrarily separated centuries. Imagine someone alive before Henry Ford’s “Tin Lizzy” and the airplane but around to see the cell phone. I realize that a third of a century is not a long period of time against the fourscore and ten of biblical proportions, but it is an eternity in political terms. Few leaders these days survive long enough, no matter how popular or powerful. One who has lasted 34 years is Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Salih, who started out in a military coup in 1978 in North Yemen, helped united north and south in 1990 and has ruled both since with the ongoing pretense of national elections. He is in theory allowed two more years in his last election cycle, which he had “reluctantly” agreed to run in. But in February, hundreds of thousands of Yemeni citizens thought enough was enough and Salih’s support has dwindled dramatically. In early June he was almost killed in a bomb blast, but he has now returned to Yemen and his presence makes the situation in the country even more volatile. In 34 years you make a lot of enemies, but Salih has been defiant, pulling out all the stops to protect his wealth and his power.

The best way to visualize 34 years is to look at the photographic trajectory of his power against the various American Presidents he has associated with as a fellow state leader. The extraordinary picture published by Yemen Press and shown above is quite striking. Continue reading A third of a century and counting… →

Tabsir Redux: Hillbilly Heaven and Muslim Paradise

Islam in America, Music and Dance, Terrorism Issue, YouTube Watch

There is an old Tex Ritter song where he imagines going to heaven and hearing the roll call of future Country Western singers. It goes like this:

I met all the stars in hillbilly heaven
Oh what a star-studded night

Then I asked him who else do you expect in the next, uh, say a hundred years? He handed me a large book covered with star dust. Will called it the Big Tally Book. In it were many names and each name was branded in pure gold. I began to read some of them as I turned the pages: Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Gene Autry, Roy Acuff, Eddy Arnold, Tennessee Ernie, Jimmy Dean, Andy Griffith, Roy Rogers, Kareem Salama
Whaaaatttt???
Kareem Salama? Oh, well, that’s when I woke up, and I’m sorry I did, because
I dreamed I was there in hillbilly heaven
Oh what a beautiful sight…

OK, so the original lyrics did not include Kareem Salama, but if Dolly Parton can rearrange the song, why can’t I? So who is Kareem Salama, you ask? Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Hillbilly Heaven and Muslim Paradise →