An Egyptian graphic designer named Mahmoud Tammam has created some fascinating word images in Arabic. Check out a discussion of his work here and here.
Category Archives: Countries
Thesiger of Arabia
Anyone who knows anything about Arabia has no doubt heard of Lawrence of Arabia, even if only via Peter O’toole’s dazzling Hollywood version. But there is also Thesiger of Arabia, especially his extraordinary trips across the Empty Quarter in the 1940s. While in al-‘Ayn in 2014 I was able to visit the old fort, now a museum displaying a number of photographs that Wilfred Thesiger took on his trip from Yemen to the Emirates and his visit with Shaykh Zayed. The albums of Thesiger are preserved online at the Pitt Rivers Museum website. It is well worth looking at these.
I photographed several of the images in the al-‘Ayn exhibit dealing with Yemen, and these are reproduced below:
Views of al-Shihr on the Hadrami Coast
In 1991 while on a World Bank consultancy in Aden, I had an opportunity to visit al-Shihr on the Hadrami coast. Here are some scenes from that trip.
Monument to honor the revolution against the British occupation
Baba ‘Aris (1950)
Youtube has quite a few old Egyptian films with music, dancing, the colorful Egyptian dialect and some very strange plots. Baba ‘Aris is well worth watching… For details on the film, click here.
Nai Barghouti – “About a human” by Mahmoud Darwish
A beautiful song by Mahmoud Darwish, sung by the Palestinian Nai Barghouti.
Marvels and Wonders: Al-Qazwini and Beyond
There is a fascinating talk on Youtube by Travis Zadeh on marvels and wonders in Islamic texts, especially the many versions of al-Qazwini.
The Crisis in Yemen
Egyptian agriculture in 1920
There is an early 1920 video on Youtube with views of agriculture, bread making, spinning and weaving in Egypt at the time. No details are provided on the Youtube page.
