All posts by tabsir

New Studies on History of Yemen

Books You Should Read, Islamic History, Islamic Texts, Rasulids, Yemen, Zaydi

Practising Community in Urban and Rural Eurasia (1000–1600): Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Fabian Kümmeler, Judit Majorossy, and Eirik Hovden (Brill Publishing, November 2021)

https://brill.com/view/title/60086

This volume explores social practices of framing, building and enacting community in urban-rural relations across medieval Eurasia. Introducing fresh comparative perspectives on practices and visions of community, it offers a thorough source-based examination of medieval communal life in its sociocultural complexity and diversity in Central and Southeast Europe, South Arabia and Tibet. As multi-layered social phenomena, communities constantly formed, restructured and negotiated internal allegiances, while sharing a topographic living space and joint notions of belonging. The volume challenges disciplinary paradigms and proposes an interdisciplinary set of low-threshold categories and tools for cross-cultural comparison of urban and rural communities in the Global Middle Ages.

The articles relevant to Yemen include:

Balancing a Community’s Food and Water Supply: The Social Impact of Rural-Urban Interdependences in Kor?ula (Dalmatia) and ?a?da (Yemen) — Fabian Kümmeler and Johann Heiss

Conceptualizing City-Hinterland Relations and Governance: Medieval Sanaa as a Case Study — Eirik Hovden, Johann Heiss, and Odile Kommer

The Monuments of Rasulid Ta?izz: The Physical Construction of Power and Piety — Noha Sadek 

Defining Rules of Rural-Urban Flows: Endowments, Authority and Law in Medieval Zaydi Yemen in a Comparative Perspective — Eirik Hovden

“To Extol Knowledge”: Celebrating the Completion of Books in Rasulid Yemen — Johann Heiss

Nodal Conglomerates and Their Visions: Comparative Reflections on Urban-Rural Settings across Asia and Europe (1000–1600 CE) — Andre Gingrich

Yemen Military in the early 19th century

Lithographs, Orientalist Art, Orientalist Images, Saudi Arabia, Travel, Wahhabi, Yemen

The Library of Congress has an online print of an engraving by Andrea Bernieri. It does not appear to be based on an actual observation by the artist. Below is the description on the website:

This hand-colored engraving of a work by Andrea Bernieri (flourished 1826–42) depicts Yemeni horsemen with lances exercising in the courtyard of a fort. The horsemen are watched by a soldier holding a musket, and civilians are looking on in the foreground. Bernieri was one of the Italian artists who contributed works to a 15-volume set by Giulio Ferrario (1767-1847) entitled Il costume antico e moderno, o, storia del governo, della milizia, della religione, delle arti, scienze ed usanze di tutti i popoli antichi e moderni (Customs old and new, or the history of government, militia, religion, arts, sciences, and the ways of all nations, ancient and modern) published in Italy in 1823–38. Ferrario was a Milan publisher, printer and librarian whose monumental work contained more than 1,500 hand-colored plates depicting clothing from the classical period through the early 1800s, as well as many architectural drawings and engravings. The engraving appeared as plate 29 in Asia, volume 5 of Ferrario’s work. It is from the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection at the Brown University Library.

Bernieri, Andrea, flourished 1826-1842.

I have not been able to find the exact match of the volume with the image above, although an edition from 1833 includes two engravings of Arabs of the Peninsula in a chapter that is primarily about Mecca. These come across as rather fanciful, especially the females with no veils. These images are attached below.

As pointed out by Noha Sadek, the military image above is a copy of an earlier image in an edition of Niebuhr’s travel account. Below is the earlier image it is based on from the 1774 French edition:

Egypt in 1876

Books You Should Read, Egypt, India, Iran, Syria, Travel, Turkey

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 Middle East that he visited or commented upon were Egypt, Syria, Ottoman Turkey, Persia and the Persian Gulf. He also has some interesting observations on India, Japan, the Balkans, Berlin and Russia. Of particular interest is his commentary on Egypt in 1876 before the British occupation. Below is an example of that.

Al-Jallad on Pre-Islamic Arabian Inscriptions

Archaeology and Antiquities, Jordan, Languages, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Scholars, Yemen, YouTube Watch

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.