Category Archives: Books You Should Read

Prologue to Ozymandias

Books You Should Read, Folklore and Proverbs, Islamic History, Literature, Poetry


The fall of the dictators still echoes across North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, with Syria’s Asad teetering at the brink. Mubarak, Qaddafi and Ali Abdullah Salih join the legion of past icons of unchecked power. Pharaohs and kings, caliphs and sultans, whether the divine myth of rule or the blatant Machiavellian Leviathan: oh how the mighty have fallen. No poem seems more poignant to capture the moment that Shelley’s timeless take on Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

But the fantasized Ozymandias has a prologue, in Arabic graffiti and belles lettres. The entertaining text, today as ever before, known as The Book of Strangers and attributed to Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani, reports the handwriting on the wall when the walls come tumbling down. An anecdote related by an old secretary tells of an inscription on the wall of a palace built by the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil:

Money was spent and used up
and buildings were erected for fate to destroy.
When they arrived at the peak of their kingship,
a caravan leader cried out that it was time for the grave,
and he emptied the palaces, giving no respite to either the powerful or the oppressed.

Continue reading Prologue to Ozymandias →

New Work on Mahri Poetry

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Oman, Poetry, Yemen

The Dīwān of Ḥājj Dākōn, published by the American Institute for Yemeni Studies in 2011, is a collection of eighteen poems in the endangered Mahri language of Yemen and Oman, one of the last, non-Arabic indigenous languages of the Arabian Peninsula. This publication marks an important step in the history of the Mahri language since it contains its first literary texts meant for a local readership. Ḥājj Dākōn, a pioneer of modern Mahri sung-poetry, has included an Arabic translation for each Mahri poem, which is supplemented by an English translation and transliteration into Latin characters provided by Samuel Liebhaber. The Dīwān is introduced by commentary that places the innovations of Ḥājj Dākōn’s lyric qaṣīdas in their cultural and linguistic context. A facsimile of Ḥājj’s original handwritten manuscript is included in the Dīwān. Starting in June 2012, audio and visual recordings of each poem in recitation will be accessible online on the site: http://blogs.middlebury.edu/mahripoetry/.

Sample poem, #6 from The Dīwān of Ḥājj Dākōn


English translation


Arabic translation


Mahri

Continue reading New Work on Mahri Poetry →

Ernst on Reading the Qu’ran

Books You Should Read, Islam: Introduction, Qur'an


Carl Ernst, How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide, with Select Translations. University of North Carolina Press, 2011

by Kristian Petersen, New Books in Islamic Studies, February 27, 2012

Recent events revolving around the Qur’an, such as the accidental burning of it in Afghanistan or the intentional provocations of radical American Christian pastors, suggest that Westerns often still fail to understand the role of the Qur’an in Muslims lives. On occasion, the mere suggestion of having Westerners read the Qur’an in order to gain a better understanding of its message has incited anger and lawsuits, as was the case at the University of North Carolina in 2002.

The inability to bridge these cultural differences and the many inherent challenges the Qur’an possesses inspired Carl W. Ernst, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of North Carolina, to write his new book How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide, with Select Translations (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). He wondered how should the non-Muslim read the Qur’an? This comprehensive introduction presents a literary historical approach that enables the reader to understand how the Qur’an’s initial audience encountered it through a chronological reading, traditionally understood through the early Meccan, later Meccan, and Medinan periods of Muhammad’s career. It introduces a reading that understands the structure and form of the text as informing the meaning. Thus, Ernst examines the symmetry and balanced composition of verses, the tripartite structure of certain chapters, intertexuality within the Qur’an, and uses rhetorical analysis and ring composition as a means to approach and understand seemingly contradictory religious claims. Ernst’s text is engaging and informative while achieving its goal of making the Qur’an accessible to the non-Muslim. His new book will certainly motivate a future group of Qur’anic studies scholars and will allow the uninitiated reader to better understand what the previously veiled text says about the cosmos and Muslims position in it.

Note: To hear an audio interview with Carl Ernst about his book, click here and scroll to the bottom.

Lady Burton in Jeddah

Books You Should Read, Orientalism, Photography, Saudi Arabia, Travel


Lady Isabel Burton, wife of Sir Richard Francis Burton

[The following is an excerpt from The Romance of Lady Isabel with her reflections on visiting Jedda on the way to India in 1876. The entire book is available online.]

I was delighted with my first view of Jeddah. It is the most bizarre and fascinating town. It looks as if it were an ancient model carved in old ivory, so white and fanciful are the houses, with here and there a minaret. It was doubly interesting to me, because Richard came here by land from his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. Mecca lies in a valley between two distant ranges of mountains. My impression of Jeddah will always be that of an ivory town embedded in golden sand.

We anchored at Jeddah for eight days, which time we spent at the British Consulate on a visit. The Consulate was the best house in all Jeddah, close to the sea, with a staircase so steep that it was like ascending the Pyramids. I called it the Eagle’s Nest, because of the good air and view. It was a sort of bachelors’ establishment; for in addition to the Consul and Vice-Consul and others, there were five bachelors who resided in the building, whom I used to call the “Wreckers,” because they were always looking out for ships with a telescope. They kept a pack of bull-terriers, donkeys, ponies, gazelles, rabbits, pigeons; in fact a regular menagerie. They combined Eastern and European comfort, and had the usual establishment of dragomans, kawwasses, and servants of all sizes, shapes, and colour. I was the only lady in the house, but we were nevertheless a very jolly party. Continue reading Lady Burton in Jeddah →

Happy Birthday Sir Richard Francis Burton

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Gender and Sexuality, Languages, Orientalism, Photography, Scholars, Travel


Burton in Aden

Today is March 19. Exactly 191 years ago, at 9:30 in the evening in the British town of Torquay in Devon the future Sir Richard Francis Burton was born. Like his 2oth century acting namesake, Burton was a character for the ages. He reveled in adventure and eroticism, for which he was much reviled in public and no doubt admired in private. If any one word can be used to described the persona that Burton pursued it would be “swashbuckling” in life as in spirit. My point today is neither to praise this flamboyant quasi-Victorian Caesar nor bury him (his grave is indeed a monumental site to behold). May his dry bones rest in the kind of peace he never seems to have found in life.

Burton’s biographers are numerous, as befits someone who is remembered as larger than life. His prolific corpus is now almost entirely online in various formats, but the place to start is burtoniana.org. There is much to question and quibble about in Burton’s exploits. Was his surreptitious entry into Mecca, disguised as a pilgrim, a travesty of Islamic values? Did his fascination with erotica in an age of gentlemananged taboos overstep ethical bounds? Was he the bad kind of “Orientalist,” a discourse cum intercourse voyeur that warrants calling him “Dirty Dick”, as Edward Said does in Orientalism (p. 190)? Was he, perhaps, a bit mad in that ubiquitous England manner?

Whatever you might think of the man, it is probably because of what you have read about him rather than what he actually wrote. Regardless of what he is saying, it must be noted that he had an extraordinary capacity for learning languages. Below is a list of the languages and dialects he is said to have mastered to some extent:

English, French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Jataki dialect (he wrote a grammar), Hindustani, Marathi, Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Pushtu, Sanskrit, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Icelandic, Swahili, Amharic, Fan, Egba, Ashanti, Hebrew, Aramaic, Many other West African & Indian dialects

I suspect he would get into Harvard, no matter what his SAT score.

An Orientalist Coverup: Imagine that…

Books You Should Read, Morocco, Orientalism, Orientalist Images, Photography


Cover of Milet’s book

In the Islamic Arts Museum in Qatar last December I bought a copy of a fascinating book of Orientalist Photographs by Éric Milet, who has worked as a tourist guide in Morocco for a number of years. The photographs, from both the 19th and 20th centuries, are accompanied by short vignettes. As Milet notes, “The ‘Oriental’ Maghreb was born in the darkrooms of Western photographers. A land of contrasts, revealed to the public at large by men and women who were delighted to have crossed to the ‘other side’ in their own lifetimes, constantly evoking the delights of this earthly paradise.” The book is well worth owning, not only to decorate your coffee table, but for easy, entertaining and informative reading.

As the author Malek Alloula has written, in his The Colonial Harem (1988), the ‘Oriental’ created by the photographer became “the oriental’ for the general public. The photographic lens is portrayed by Alloula as the structural enemy of the veil; capturing the image thus sought the removal of the veil and exposure of the female body as a voyeuristic object. Of course, the photographers who paid prostitutes to pose as “typical scenes” in the Maghreb were not the prudish Orientalist scholars, who would often render sexual argot in pseudo-scientific Latin (perhaps assuming that Victorian ladies did not know their Latin or at least that kind of vulgar Latin). But in the case of Milet’s book, the cover is a modern-day coverup that allows it to be sold in the likes of a bookstore of an Islamic Museum. The picture chosen for the cover has been altered so that the bare breast exposed by the photographer in this exquisite 1910 image (shown below) is lost in an arabesque and nipple-less swirl.


“Young Woman in Arab Costume, Algeria, 1910

The objectification of the female body, as shown by Alloula and many others, reinforced the image of the exotic and erotic harem girl open to the gaze of the European voyeur. True enough, although photographers of the time would expose the female body no matter what the nationality. Artistic nudes graced the major museums and were admired; the emerging visual realm of photographs quickly elided the erotic into the pornographic. But in the case of Milet’s book, undoubtedly due to the publisher rather than the author, there is a reversal, a kind of commercially smart prudery that removes the apparently offending body part, even though in so doing the very exposure for which such Orientalist photographs are critiqued is erased. It is not unlike sanitizing the Arabian Nights as children’s fairy tales.

In this case I am not suggesting we judge a book by its cover, but that we allow ourselves to be seduced into opening the book to see the range of images, some clearly bordering on the exploitative and others evincing a sensitivity usually reserved for poets.

Daniel Martin Varisco

Traveling with Ibn Battuta

Books You Should Read, Travel


Tim, left; book, right

The superb travelsmith Tim MacIntosh-Smith has recently published the third volume of his fascinating trip in the footsteps and sailing lanes of the 14th century traveler Ibn Battuta. The book is called Landfalls: On the Edge of Islam with Ibn Battutah and is available in paperback or hardback. If you are looking for new year reading, here is a worthy volume to start with.

Here are some of the accolades:

‘The long-awaited and dazzling conclusion to the Tim Mackintosh-Smith trilogy . . . Again and again, this takes us into fascinating territory: into the company of dervish masters, soothsayers and magicians; towards the old rites of blood sacrifice, with demon ships of the Sea God blazing on the surface of the Indian Ocean; or on a quixotic hunt for a sacred musical instrument possessed by a royal dynasty of African kings. At such times, [Tim and Ibn Battutah] are united in a glow of wonder.’ Barnaby Rogerson, Country Life

‘Landfalls is a beautifully written account of Islamic life and culture in the 21st century . . . [and] a joyous celebration of cultural diversity. Just as Ibn Battutah did 700 years ago, Mackintosh-Smith helps make the alien familiar to his readers.’ Ian Critchley, Sunday Times Continue reading Traveling with Ibn Battuta →

Tabsir Redux: Ibn Tufayl’s Fable

Books You Should Read, Islam in Europe, Islamic Sciences, Islamic Texts, Literature, Sufism


What would happen to a child growing up on an island outside any human society? In real life such a scenario would be absurd. No child could survive from birth on his or her own, despite exotic accounts of feral human babies being reared by animals. But as a thought experiment, it makes an intriguing story. Such is the philosophical fable spun by the Andalusian Muslim scholar Ibn Tufayl over eight centuries ago. I have just finished teaching this text and the lessons in it are fresh in my mind.

If you have never read this classic fable, it can be found online in the original 1708 translation into English by Simon Ockley. A more recent translation by Lenn Evan Goodman is available from Amazon. The author was a distinguished Muslim intellectual who borrowed from the earlier Greek icons Aristotle and Plato, as well as the commentaries by earlier Muslim philosophers like Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and al-Farabi. His fable combines logical arguments, inductive scientific observation and a form of intuition that leads to a union with the One. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Ibn Tufayl’s Fable →