AIYS member and long-time supporter Marjorie Ransom published her beautifully illustrated and diligently researched book on Yemeni silverwork in 2014 . This is a must for anyone interested in Yemeni culture. If you do not already have a copy, it can be purchased from AUC Press. Get your copy today…
The photographs are exquisite as the samples here show.
One of the most impressive architectural sites in Yemen is off the beaten track in the Hadramawt, about 90 miles north of al-Mukalla. This is the shrine of the pre-Islamic prophet Nabi Hud. The local mosque is build around a giant boulder. Hud has a surah in the Qu’ran named after him. For a video on the annual pilgrimage to the shrine, click here. I visited the shrine in 2005 and took these photographs.
In 1917 the British government issued a handbook on Yemen with details on the geography. local tribes and important individuals. It is especially useful for discussion of travel routes in Yemen at the start of the last century. This is a treasure trove of information now available for viewing or download at the Qatar Digital Library (QDL). I attach examples of the information.
My friend Karim Ben Khelifa, an award-winning photographic journalist who I met over a decade ago, has produced an extraordinary film (“The Enemy”) on his experience as a photographer of war and violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Democratic Republic of Congo and El Salvador, as well as 80 countries overall. On Youtube there is a talk he gave in 2019 about his work. including a number of his photographs. His amazing skill as a photographer is matched by his passion to show the reality of treating other human beings as enemies.
Karim has also taken photographs in Yemen over a decade ago. Some of these are archived on the New York Times blog. One of my favorites is the image of the mammoth mosque built in Sanaa by the late President Ali Abdullah Salih.
More and more maps of Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula are appearing in digital resources on the Internet. One of these is the David Rumsey Map Collection, housed at Stanford University. This overall collection with downloadable images in high resolution contains over 150,000 images, including some on Yemen, as well as other parts of the Middle East. The search function is easy to use. The maps are available under the Creative Commons License but not for commercial use.
Below are two closeups of maps that include Yemen.
Joseph Osgood was a Black American sailor who visited the Yemeni port of Aden about a dozen years before the start of the American Civil War. He offers a rich, descriptive account, including information on the coffee cargo that may have brought his ship to this Red Sea port in the first place. You can read the book online here. I attach excerpts on his visit to Aden. This is part 2. For Part 1, click here.
Joseph Osgood was a Black American sailor who visited the Yemeni port of Aden about a dozen years before the start of the American Civil War. He offers a rich, descriptive account, including information on the coffee cargo that may have brought his ship to this Red Sea port in the first place. You can read the book online here. I attach excerpts on his visit to Aden.
more to come
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:
