Category Archives: Books You Should Read

In Memory of BJ

Anthropology/Sociology, Books You Should Read, Gender and Sexuality, Iraq, Scholars


Elizabeth Warnock Fernea pictured wearing traditional tribal women’s dress of the southern Euphrates area. The headscarf with fringe is the asha, the chin scarf is the foota. These garments are worn under the abbaya or outer cloak Photo: KATHARINE RAMSAY

For many students and professors, the go-to text for Middle East ethnography for several decades has been Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s Guests of the Sheik, still in print, about her life with anthropologist husband Bob Fernea in an Iraqi village during the 1950s. BJ, as her many friends knew her, went on to an academic career in several parts of the Middle East, producing books, articles and films of lasting value. Her passing in December, 2008 was a loss for us all. Now there is a short videography of her life available on Youtube. Check it out. And, if you have not read it in awhile or at all, get a copy of Guests of the Sheik and read it again or for the first time.

Aesop’s Fabulous Camels (and an Ass) #2

Animals, Books You Should Read, camels, Lithographs, Orientalism


Aesop’s Fables, 1888, p. 132

One of the joys of returning home to where I was born is going through the books that my grandmother once owned. In a previous post I mentioned an 1888 edition of Aesop’s Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend. In leafing through the fables I found several that talk about camels and one that refers to an “Arab.”

In this post I provide three of the fables, Continue reading Aesop’s Fabulous Camels (and an Ass) #2 →

Aesop’s Fabulous Camels #1

Animals, Books You Should Read, Lithographs


One of the joys of returning home to where I was born is going through the books that my grandmother once owned. One of these is an 1888 edition of Aesop’s Fables, translated by George Fyler Townsend, as shown in the frontispiece above. The cover, which is dark brown, notes it is a “Caxton Edition” and includes a marvelous quote from Thomas Carlyle: “May blessings be upon the head of Cadmus, the Phoenicians, or whoever it was that invented books.” I suppose today we must add: “And curses upon the creator of the Internet idea of an e-book.” As noted in the preface, not all of these tales date back to Aesop; some indeed were thought up by Christian monks in the Middle Ages. According to the same preface no book, apart from the Bible, had a wider circulation in the era just prior to the printing press.

After commenting that these fables have been translated into languages, East and West, the preface continues by saying that they “have been read, and will be read, for generations, alike by the Jew, Heathen, Mohammedan, and Christian” (p. xviii). In leafing through the fables I found several that talk about camels and one that refers to an “Arab.” Aesop might be surprised to find these, but since it is all Greek to me I am not sure how fluent he might have been with the unflappable ship of the desert.

In this post I provide two of the fables, with the rest to come in a future post. Continue reading Aesop’s Fabulous Camels #1 →

N is for nabidh…

Books You Should Read, Food and Drink, Islamic Law


In a previous post I introduced a delightful read and a handy recipe book entitled Ziryab: Authentic Arab Cuisine by Farouk Mardam-Bey and illustrations by Odile Alliet. The “Logbook” at the end of the text is an entertaining alphabet of stories about Arabic good and drink. Here is the selection on a type of wine that the Prophet Muhammad drunk:

N for Nabidh

In most Arab countries today, the word “nabidh” means “wine.” It used to be quite a different beverage, which was made by macerating grapes, dates, or other fruits for some time in water. The Prophet himself loved it. According to the most authentic hadith, he never let the fruit macerate longer than three days. But such a beverage tends to ferment quickly in the heat, and a furious controversy developed among Muslim lawmakers, about whether or not it was licit to drink it. For most of them, the Malikitesm the Shafi‘ites, and the Hanbalites, as well as the Shi‘a Muslims, it was not permitted, and those who drank nabidh were to be punished with forty or eighty lashes, just like those who drank wine. On the other hand, the Hanafites were nice enough to authorize this drink under certain conditions. And the Mu‘tasilites – Jubba’i among them believed that the faithful could drink it as much as they liked in order to get familiarized on earth with the pleasures awaiting them in the Hereafter. Continue reading N is for nabidh… →

Cruising above the Empty Quarter

Books You Should Read, Oman, Photography, Saudi Arabia, Travel, Yemen


There is a spectacular photographic website devoted to a book by George Steinmetz, who took photographs across the fabled Empty Quarter of Arabia.

I became captivated by Arabia’s Empty Quarter as a young man when I read Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands. The Empty Quarter is larger than France without a single permanent point of water or human habitation. It’s both the world’s largest sand sea and one of the hottest places on earth, and has only been traversed a handful of times. I didn’t want to repeat Thesiger’s epic journeys many decades later, but when I discovered motorized paragliding I found a way to visualize this remote landscape in a new way. I made three paragliding trips into the sands, first for GEO in Saudi Arabia, and then returned two years later to go from Riyadh to Oman and Yemen for National Geographic, and finally made a personal trip to the southern most reaches of the U.A.E. to complete my field work. What I found was one of the most beautiful and unseen wilderness on earth. On its fringes I encountered elements the oil wealth that has forever changed Arabia, but I also found Bedouins still clinging to traditions, and offering up a level of hospitality that was truly humbling. This body of work would simply not have been possible without their kindness.

Empty Quarter is George’s second book, published by Harry N. Abrams. This is the most extensive compilation of photographs ever taken in the Arabian Desert. Measuring 9.5 x 13 inches, the book has 208 pages with 150 color photos and captions.

Quoth the Raven (in Arabic)

Books You Should Read, Egypt, Literature


Edgar Allen Poe

New Release: Translation of the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe into Arabic

The complete works of the macabre and quintessentially American poet Edgar Allan Poe are now available in Arabic, giving more readers the chance to be chilled

Ahram Online, Thursday, June 2, 2011

Egypt’s National Center for Translation has published the complete works of the American poet, Edgar Allan Poe. It is translated into Arabic by Ghada Al-Halawani and reviewed by the novelist Edward El-Kharrat. This comes as a part of a poetry series supervised by Dr Rania Fathi. The first volume is entitled The Valley of Anxiety.

Edgar Allan Poe, born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts, the American poet, critic and one of the greatest short story writers is one of the leaders of American Romanticism. His fame came from his macabre stories and poems that sometimes reach into science fiction. He invented the Gothic horror novels or detective literature.

As life imitates art, his death is surrounded by mystery: at the young age of forty he was oddly found wearing clothes that were not his. The cause of his death remains a mystery – as well as the location of his grave. Continue reading Quoth the Raven (in Arabic) →

When a Baghdadi taught the Spanish

Books You Should Read, Food and Drink, Islamic History, Scholars


For both a delightful read and a handy recipe book I suggest Ziryab: Authentic Arab Cuisine by Farouk Mardam-Bey and illustrations by Odile Alliet. This was published in 2002 by Ici La Press.

Here is a selection from the foreword:

Abu al-Hasan ‘Ali ibn Nafi’ was born in Iraq in 789 C.C. His family, however most likely originated in Persia. With a melodious voice, dark skin, and gentle manners, he was nicknamed Ziryab, the name of the harmoniously mellow black bird. He received a solid education in the humanities and sciences, especially in geography and astronomy, and eventually became the favorite disciple of Ishaq al-Mawsili, the Abbasid court’s most famous musician and singer. Nevertheless, resentment replaced the preferential treatment he received by his master Ishaq al Mawsili who became envious of Ziryab’s immense success with the great caliph Harun al Rashid to whom he had introduced his protègè. As a result, Ziryab had to leave his country when he was just thirty years old. Continue reading When a Baghdadi taught the Spanish →