Category Archives: Travel

Following Seward’s Folly: #3 Confederates in Cairo

Egypt, Lithographs, Travel


Illustration of Cairo from Seward’s Travels (1873)

William H. Seward, the American Secretary of State who is forever linked with the “folly” of acquiring Alaska from the Russians, spent a year traveling around the world near the end of his life. In two previous posts I posted the comments he and his daughter made about India and Aden, but their trip continued up the Red Sea to Egypt. While in Cairo, Mr. Seward received the esteemed protocol of a traveling diplomat, but in Cairo there came a most civil surprise:

The Americans in Egypt are a mixed though interesting family. The Khédive is reorganizing his army on the Western system of evolution and tactics. Continue reading Following Seward’s Folly: #3 Confederates in Cairo →

On our terrorism problem

Obama Administration, Terrorism Issue, Travel

by Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy, January 8, 2010

Declaring that “the buck stops with me,” President Obama announced a set of new directives in response to the foiled bombing of Northwest Flight 253 by the now-infamous “underpants bomber.” The list of presidential orders is mostly unexceptionable, and may even make a repeat performance less likely. Of course, if al Qaeda is even remotely strategic, trying an exact repeat of this attempt would be silly. Instead, they’ll study the new procedures, look for holes in them, and try some new variation. The good news is that air travel will still be incredibly safe, and no sensible person should alter their normal travel plans because they are worried about the “terrorist threat.”

What’s missing from Obama’s list of new initiatives is any sense that U.S. foreign policy might need some rethinking too. There are several dimensions to the terrorism problem, only one of which are the various measures we take to “harden the target” here at home. Why? Because bombing airliners and other acts of terrorism are just tactics; they aren’t al Qaeda’s real raison d’être. Their goal, as veteran foreign affairs correspondent William Pfaff recently reminded us, is trying to topple various Arab governments that al Qaeda regards as corrupt and beholden to us and establish some unified Islamic caliphate. As Pfaff notes, this is a fanciful objective, but still one that can cause us a certain amount of trouble and grief. And if they can get us to act in ways that undermine those governments (even when we think we are trying to help them), then their objectives are advanced and ours are hindered. Continue reading On our terrorism problem →

Following Seward’s Folly: #2 Hopeless Arabia

Islamophobia, Lithographs, Orientalism, Travel, Yemen


Illustration from Seward’s Travels (1873)

William H. Seward, the American Secretary of State who is forever linked with the “folly” of acquiring Alaska from the Russians, spent a year traveling around the world near the end of his life. In a previous post I recorded his comments on the British rule in India, as reported by his daughter. On April 27, 1871 the Seward party neared the Yemeni port (and British fueling station) of Aden. Here is how the approach is recorded by Ms. Seward:

April 27th. – After eight months travel in the incomprehensible East, with its stagnant civilization, we are now passing into another region still more incomprehensible and hopeless.

On the right hand is Yemen, once ‘Arabia the happy,’ and still known in poetry as a land of light and beauty, but now the dwelling of Arab hordes, who are sinking every day deeper into barbarism. On the left, wee are passing Somali, that part of Africa which stretches from Mozambique to Abyssinia. Continue reading Following Seward’s Folly: #2 Hopeless Arabia →

Following Seward’s Folly: #1 Brits and Hindoos

India, Lithographs, Orientalism, Travel


Portrait of William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, ca. 1865; photo by Matthew Brady

William H. Seward (1801-1872) is remembered primarily, to the extent anyone but a historian would bother to remember him, for his folly. An ardent opponent of slavery, this staunch Yankee republican might well have received the presidential nomination in 1860 instead of Lincoln, but he went on to serve as Secretary of State to both Lincoln and the first President Johnson. It was in 1867 that he pushed through the purchase of Alaska from Russia for 7,200,000 dollars, a sizeable sum for a nation coming out of a costly civil war. Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune wrote in criticism that Alaska “contained nothing of value but furbearing animals, and these had been hunted until they were nearly extinct.” Little did the man who famously said “Go west, young man” know that one day a young woman named Sarah Palin would come to power in this once Russian icebox. In 1870 Seward left politics and went on a trip around the world with his adopted daughter, who kept a record of the trip and published this in 1873. From New York to San Francisco to Japan and China to the straits of Malacca, Ceylon and British India to Egypt and Palestine and Europe and finally returning home to Auburn, New York in October of 1871: this was the folly the old man followed shortly before his death. Continue reading Following Seward’s Folly: #1 Brits and Hindoos →

Just Rain?

Islam and Christianity, Islamic Rituals, Journalism and Media, Saudi Arabia, Travel


Flooding in Mecca in 1941, in which the circumambulation had to be swum

In many parts of the Middle East, where water is not an easily accessible resource, rain is baraka. The Arabic term baraka is only vaguely understood in the English sense of “blessing,” the lexical translation. Context makes this heaven-sent product a blessing some times and a curse other times. Pilgrims to Mecca this year have witnessed torrential rain, dampening the make-shift hotel tents and ihram garb, but perhaps not the enthusiasm of the hajjis and hajjiyyas. An article on today’s Al-Jazeera website notes that about three million Muslims are performing the pilgrimage; as for the number of umbrellas being used, Allahu a’lama. Normally, extra rain in the arid environs of Mecca and Medina would seem something to evoke al-hamdillah from the faithful, but in this case timing is a problem. Some 50 people have already been killed due to these rains, and the fear of spreading disease during an already concurrent high flu season is no doubt troubling to the health officials. The H1N1 flu has already claimed four pilgrims and some 67 have been diagnosed with the virus. Perhaps the Egyptian government missed a few of those dangerous swine of the Christian Zabbalin.

So if one assumes that this ordained ritual is important in the eyes of Allah, an old and nagging question arises: why does the rain fall on the just as well as the unjust. This ethical dilemma played out on the monotheistic stage has a long history. In the Gospels Jesus reminded his followers that God is an equal opportunity Creator: Continue reading Just Rain? →

Ignorance is no Excuse

Anthropology/Sociology, Development, Journalism and Media, Plants, Qat (Catha edulis), Travel, Yemen


Selling qât in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital. Photo: Bryan Denton

These days if you run across an article on Yemen, it will no doubt feature a scenario of gun-toting tribesmen swearing allegiance to Al-Qaeda, the latest German tourist hijackings or feigned shock at the terrible, terrible addictive drug called qât. At least this was the case in Sunday’s New York Times in another piece of mixed journalistic pablum by roving reporter Robert Worth. Entitling the article “Thirsty Plant Dries Out Yemen,”, the author seems unaware that the site of his posting (Jahiliya) is in fact the Arabic term for the time of “Ignorance” before the rise of Islam. I doubt this reporter stepped out of a Queen-of-Sheba-era time machine and interviewed Abraha about his recent defeat at the “Battle of the Elephant” before Mecca. So where exactly is the fabled posting site of Jahiliya? Ironically, it is part of a World Bank irrigation project. I will leave the irony about IMF money being poured into Jahiliya in the strict sense to the imagination of the reader. And I strongly suspect the posting was made from a fancy hotel in the capital Sanaa and not from a rural internet cafe, while sipping qishr. But for a front page article on a major newspaper, ignorance is no excuse. Continue reading Ignorance is no Excuse →

With Van-Lennep in Bible Lands: 3

Bible and Holy Land, Books You Should Read, Lithographs, Orientalism, Travel


Van-Lennep’s album cover

In 1862 Henry J. Van-Lennep published twenty original chromolithographs of life in Ottoman Turkey. These include two scenes of Jewish life in the Ottoman Empire, “A Turkish Effendi,” “Armenian Lady (at home),” “Turkish and Armenian Ladies (abroad),” “Turkish Scribe,” “Turkish Lady of Rank (at home),” “Turkish Cavass (police officer),” “Turkish Lady (unveiled),” “Armenian Piper,” “Armenian Ladies (at home),” “Armenian Marriage Procession,” “Armenian Bride,” “Albanian Guard,” “Armenian Peasant Woman,” “Bagdad Merchant (travelling),” “Jewish Marriage,” “Jewish Merchant,” “Gypsy Fortune Telling,” “Bandit Chief,” “Circassian Warrior,” and “Druse Girl.” The lithographer for Van-Lennep’s paintings was Charles R. Parsons (1821-1910).


Van-Lennep’s illustration of a Turkish Lady of Rank (At Home)

Continue reading With Van-Lennep in Bible Lands: 3 →

With Van-Lennep in Bible Lands: 1

Bible and Holy Land, Lithographs, Orientalism, Travel

The nineteenth century Rev. Henry J. Van-Lennep provided one of the most exhaustive (832 pages) compilations of contemporary customs of “Holy Land” peoples said to be “illustrative of scripture.” In a sense the popularity of the “Bible customs” genre, which included many of the travel accounts of ministers, missionaries and lay Christians, served as an antidote to the Higher and Lower Criticism of the Bible. To the extent the Bible was treated as a literary text, the divine luster wore thin for conservative Christians. By the mid-nineteenth century archaeological discoveries in the Holy Land seemed to vindicate aspects of recorded biblical history. Van-Lennep, however, was less concerned about the spoils beneath the soil than the customs of contemporary Arabs and other indigenous people in what he thought of as Bible lands. Continue reading With Van-Lennep in Bible Lands: 1 →