All posts by tabsir

Leaves from an old Bible Atlas #7

Archaeology and Antiquities, Architecture, Bible and Holy Land, Israel, Palestine, Photography, Travel


Hurlbutt’s Atlas, p. 137


Hurlbutt’s Atlas, p. 133

The Christian fascination with the Holy Land as a window into interpretation of the Bible has a long and indeed fascinating history of its own. Here I continue the thread on Jesse Lyman Hurlbutt’s A Bible Atlas (New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1947, first published in 1882). As might be expected, a large part of the atlas is devoted to Jerusalem. Here are two century old pictures, one of the Dome of the Rock and the other a view of the Garden of Gethsemane looking toward an uncluttered landscape beneath the old city walls of Jerusalem.

Keeping an eye on Karzai

Afghanistan, Humor and Satire, Journalism and Media



Heute, October 7, 2010, p. 5

While in Vienna earlier in the month I picked up a free Austrian tabloid called Heute. Leafing through the pages, it was obviously mainly about the upcoming election, lottery winners, local births in the Vienna zoo, movie stars and “Sexbombe Katy begeistert Fans.” But the layout on p. 5 was too precious not to comment on. Here is the fashion week model in a gold-laced dress with nipples poised not far over the head of Afghan President Karzai. One wonders if this was a total accident or if the editor was nurturing other fantasies.

It’s the Occupation, Stupid

Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli Conflict, Iraq, Iraq War, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism Issue


[Webshaykh’s Note: In the current online issue of Foreign Policy there is an excellent essay by Robert Pape on the post 9/11 missteps and how a faulty narrative has not only bogged us down into two unwinnable wars, but also not made us safer from terrorism. Click here for the full article; I excerpt the ending here.]

by Robert Pape, Foreign Policy, October 20, 2010

Put differently, adopting the goal of transforming Muslim countries is what created the long-term military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, the United States would almost surely have sought to create a stable order after toppling the regimes in these countries in any case. However, in both, America’s plans quickly went far beyond merely changing leaders or ruling parties; only by creating Western-style democracies in the Muslim world could Americans defeat terrorism once and for all.

There’s just one problem: We now know that this narrative is not true.

New research provides strong evidence that suicide terrorism such as that of 9/11 is particularly sensitive to foreign military occupation, and not Islamic fundamentalism or any ideology independent of this crucial circumstance. Continue reading It’s the Occupation, Stupid →

Of Dervishes, Fools and Prime Ministers

Iran, Orientalism, Poetry, Sufism


The poet Robert Browning left a large corpus, including his translation of Goethe’s masterful West-östlicher Diwan. One of his longer poems is an Oriental tale entitled Ferishtah’s Fancies. Recently in a used book shop I bought a copy of the 1885 edition published in Boston by Houghton, Mifflin and Company. There is an ironic epigraph for this Orientalist tale from Shakespeare’s King Lear (Act III, Scene 6) at the forefront:

You, Sir, I entertain you for one of my Hundred; only I do not like the fashion of your garments: you will say, they are Persian; but let them be changed.”

Browning’s verse is as antiquated today as the tale he spun, but still worth looking at if only for the nostalgia of Victorian English prose. Here is an excerpt from the encounter of Dervish Ferishtah with a former high official now beggared:

The Mellon-seller

Going his rounds one day in Ispahan, –
Half way on Dervishhood, not wholly there, –
Ferishtah, as he crossed a certain bridge,
Came startled on a well-remembered face.
“Can it be? What, turned melon-seller – thou?
Clad in such sordid garb, thy seat yon step
Where dogs brush by thee and express contempt? Continue reading Of Dervishes, Fools and Prime Ministers →

Abayas for backpacks

Anthropology/Sociology, Gender and Sexuality, Islam in Europe, Islamophobia 101, Travel, United Arab Emirates


Left to right) Salwan Al Shaibani, 39, Hala Kazim, 47, Maha Jaber, 32, and Aida Al Busaidy, 27, all of Dubai. Kazim recently took the other women on an 80-kilometer hike in Austria through her program, Journey Through Change; Photo by Amy Leang / The National

Hike across Austria raises profile of Emirati women

by Maey El Shoush, The National, October 15, 2010

DUBAI // Five Emirati women who traded their abayas for backpacks have returned from a successful five-day hiking trip through Austria aimed not only at their own personal development but also at breaking down stereotypes outside the UAE.

Their tour was organised through Journey Through Change, a Dubai life coaching and organising company run by Hala Kazim, 47.

Mrs Kazim said: “I wanted to show the ladies and men in our communities, there are more things to life. This was not just a walking trip: I exposed them to different cultures, showed them how to absorb the beauty around them, and counselled them as we walked.”

The group, composed of women from their mid-20s to 40s, walked 80 kilometres, starting at Vienna through Fuschl towards St Wolfgang, across mountainous terrain and past green fields, farms and villages. Dressed down and wearing no makeup, with minimal internet access at the bed and breakfasts where they spent each night, the trip took the women back to basics. Continue reading Abayas for backpacks →

The Poet Adonis

Bible and Holy Land, Poetry, Syria


A Revolutionary of Arabic Verse
By CHARLES McGRATH, The New York Times, October 17. 2010

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Every year around this time the name of the Syrian poet Adonis pops up in newspapers and in betting shops. Adonis (pronounced ah-doh-NEES), a pseudonym adopted by Ali Ahmad Said Esber in his teens as an attention getter, is a perennial favorite to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. This year Ladbrokes, the British bookmaking firm, had his chances at 8-1, which made him seem a surer bet than the eventual winner, Mario Vargas Llosa, a 25-1 long shot. Why Adonis appeals to the oddsmakers, presumably, is that he’s a poet, and poets have been under-represented among Nobelists lately; that he writes in Arabic, the language of only one Nobel winner, Naguib Mahfouz; and that as is the case with so many recent winners, most Americans have never heard of him.

In the Arab world it’s a very different matter. There he is a renowned figure, if not everywhere a beloved one. He is an outspoken secularist, equally critical of the East and West, and a poetic revolutionary of sorts who has tried to liberate Arabic verse from its traditional forms and subject matter. Some of his poems are immensely long and immensely difficult and resemble Pound’s Cantos at their most impenetrable. Others reveal a Paul Muldoonish playfulness, a Jorie Graham-like expansiveness and fascination with blank space. His poems are as apt to cite Jim Morrison as the Sufi mystics, and his 2003 volume “Prophesy, O Blind One” includes some long, leggy lines about traveling that could have been written by Whitman, if only Whitman had spent more time in airports. Continue reading The Poet Adonis →

Selma and the Madrasa

Archaeology and Antiquities, Architecture, Scholars, Yemen


Selma Al-Radi at work at the Amiriya Madrasa; photo by Qais al-Awqati

In addition to the obituary previously posted, the New York Times has recently published this account of Dr. Selma Al-Radi.

Selma Al-Radi, Restored Historic Madrasa, Dies at 71

By MARGALIT FOX, The New York Times, October 14, 2010

On certain dark nights, as a Yemeni legend tells it, Sultan Amir ibn Abd Al-Wahhab would command his servants to set lanterns in the windows of the Amiriya Madrasa, the ornate palace complex he had commissioned at Rada, in southern Yemen. Then, with his daughter by his side, he would ride into the hills above town, to behold his vast edifice ablaze with light.

The sultan was a historical figure, the last ruler of the Tahirid Dynasty, which flourished in Yemen from the mid-15th to early 16th centuries. The Amiriya Madrasa, erected in 1504 and named for him, was then and is now again one of the great treasures of Islamic art and architecture.

Solidly built of limestone and brick, the Amiriya seemed destined to endure as the sultan’s monumental legacy. But after he was killed in battle in 1517, the complex was left to decay. The more puritanical rulers who followed him deemed its lavishness a distraction from the sober business of prayer.

That the Amiriya today stands resplendent after five centuries of neglect is due almost entirely to the efforts of one woman, the Iraqi-born archaeologist Selma Al-Radi, who was for many years a research associate at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Continue reading Selma and the Madrasa →

When the humor bombs …

Iraq, Iraq War, Journalism and Media, Terrorism Issue


Scene from the show

Laugh! There is a Bomb in your Car
by Sinan Antoon, al-Jadaliyya.com, September 11, 2010

Ramadan is a very special time of year for Muslims and it is impossible to overestimate its socio-cultural importance. Additional time and effort are invested in its daily rituals and practices. Familial and social bonds are augmented and celebrated. Traditional games used to be an important facet of the month’s celebratory and festive mood culminating in the feast marking the month’s end. While these games are still popular and are still played in many parts of the Islamicate world, they have been largely eclipsed by visual entertainment. Thus, Ramadan is the month to watch TV and follow the new shows and soap operas. It is the month with the highest rates of viewership as families and friends gather around TVs. Stations and satellite channels invest heavily in their Ramadan productions. It is also the perfect time of year to take the political and cultural pulse. For Iraqis, Ramadan has been more of a challenge this year than it usually is. The country is still without a government after more than five months of fruitless negotiations. Despite claims to the contrary, the government has failed miserably in providing security for its citizens as suicide attacks continue. Continue reading When the humor bombs … →