The illustrations provided in the books of Rev. John G. Wood are interesting not only for what they portray, but how they are described. Here is Wood’s folksy spin on three major fishes of Egypt and Palestine:
In order that the reader may see examples of the typical Fish which are to be found in Egypt and Palestine, I have added three more species, which are represented in the following illustration.
Continue reading Lithographica Arabica 5: Rev. Wood’s Bible Animals, 2
Rev. John George Wood, author of Story of the Bible Animals
Fascination with Bible Lands was so keen in the 19th century that illustrated volumes of scenes and objects were always in high demand. One of the treasures, in a figurative sense, of this age is the work of Rev. John George Wood (1827-1899), an English cleric and writer of popular books on natural history. One of the books passed on to me several years ago is Wood’s Story of the Bible Animals (Charles Foster Publishing Company, 1886), one of several editions of this popular work. The illustrations in my copy are not of the highest quality, but they can still mesmerize across their faded and fraying pages. Continue reading Lithographica Arabica 4: Rev. Wood’s Bible Animals, 1
Arnaut Blowing Smoke at His Dog by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1882.
In two previous posts, The Immovable East and An Unbelievable White Man, I published excerpts from the first-person narrative by Philip J. Baldensperger, published in 1913 about experiences in Palestine during the last half of the 19th century. His sense of humor was acute. Here are the words he imagined that a dog would bark out about life as a canine in an Arab village.
“The sons of Adam disdain dogs, but in many places they raise us up and utilise us. Thus, in the camp where I lived, there were shepherd dogs, with thick fur, and watch dogs, with a smooth coat all over, and the tall, thin greyhounds which are raised for hunting the gazelles on the broad plains of Philistia, near my first home.
I was born in camp, south of Beersheba, and belonged to a family of Azazmeh Arabs. On account of my jet black fur the called me Lail – Night… Continue reading These Sons of Adam
Omani women refreshing clothing with frankincense smoke
The website of the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center has a number of interesting online pages. One of these is a pictorial history of frankincense and myrrh. Here are some of the tidbits about both of these important trade items:
• Almost all frankincense comes from western Oman, where it is used for everything from deodorant and toothpaste to food and drink flavoring.
• Frankincense and myrrh were so expensive in Europe that southern Arabia became known as Arabia Felix, “Arabia the Blessed.†Continue reading History of Frankincense
Nazende al (Flattering Red) from ‘The Book of Tulips’ ca 1725
by Anna Pavord
But as in any love affair, after the initial coup de foudre you want to learn more about the object of your passion. The tulip does not disappoint. Its background is full of more mysteries, dramas, dilemmas, disasters and triumphs than any besotted aficionado could reasonably expected. In the wild, it is an Eastern flower, growing along a corridor which stretches either side of the line of latitude 40 degrees north. The line extends from Ankara in Turkey eastwards through Jerevan and Baku to Turkmenistan, then on past Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent to the mountains of the Pamir-Alai, which, with neighbouring Tien Shan is the hotbed of the tulip family.
As far as western Europe is concerned, the tulip’s story began in Turkey, from where in the mid-sixteenth century, European travellers brought back news of the brilliant and until then unknown lils rouges, so prized by the Turks. In fact they were not lilies at all but tulips. In April 1559, the Zürich physician and botanist Conrad Gesner saw the tulip flowering for the first time in the splendid garden made by Johannis Heinrich Herwart of Augsburg, Bavaria. He described its gleaming red petals and its sensuous scent in a book published two years later, the first known report of the flower growing in western Europe. The tulip, wrote Gesner, had ‘sprung from a seed which had come from Constantinople or as others say from Cappadocia.’ From that flower and from its wild cousins, gathered over the next 300 years from the steppes of Siberia, from Afghanistan, Chitral, Beirut and the Marmaris peninsula, from Isfahan, the Crimea and the Caucasus, came the cultivars which have been grown in gardens ever since. More than 5,500 different tulips are listed in the International Register published regularly since 1929 by the Royal General Bulbgrowers’ Association of the Netherlands. Continue reading The flower that made men mad
Bedouin sur son Dromadaire, Yann Letestu
“It is nothing short of amazing to find how many parts of one’s anatomy come into contact with a camel’s saddle and how quickly that same saddle removes the outer layers of one’s skin.â€
J. B. Mackie, “Hasa: an Arabian Oasis,†Geographical Journal 63:193, 1924.
Thousands of people displaced Hundreds of houses damaged
Abdul Aziz Oudah, Yemen Observer, October 28, 2008
Flood damage in the Hadramawt
Devastation in eastern Yemen after last Friday’s floods caused by heavier than usual rainfall.
Preliminary estimates from the floods in Hadramout and al-Maharah put the death toll at 184 with 100 others still missing.
Seventeen hundred houses were damaged, and ten thousand people have been displaced in the last three days.
The total cost of the damage is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of YR. Continue reading More on Floods in Yemen
Death toll rises in Yemen floods
Al-Jazeera, October 25, 2008
The death toll from floods sweeping through southwestern Yemen following heavy rains has risen to 49, officials have said.
The floods have been most severe in the provinces of Hadramaut and Mahara.
Officials said that four people were killed by lightning in the southern provinces of Tayez and Lahj, and a mother and son were also killed when lightning struck them in the al-Mahwit region north of the capital Sanaa.
Hadramaut and Mahara were both declared disaster zones on Friday, officials said. Continue reading Floods in Yemen
