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
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.
The late 14th century Egyptian savant al-Damiri was introduced in a previous post. His massive Hayat al-hayawan, mostly unknown in English texts, is a treasure trove of esoterica. One way of looking at esoterica is that it is useless information, frivolous and entertaining with little or no pedagogical value. I suppose the same could be said for many of the subjects taught on college campuses, past or present. The previous post focused on remarks about camels, but al-Damiri is not without his pragmatic advice for humans. After all, animals should be our friends and not just our dinner. The following recipe may have few takers in contemporary society, especially the overweight citizens of America; but just in case you ever wanted to know, here is advice on how to get fat:
If you wish a woman to become fat, take the fat of a goose (female), pound it and mix with it borax, Karmânî cummin-seed, and the flour of fenugreek, then mix all together with water, make it into bullets and get a black fowl to swallow them for seven consecutive days, after which it is to be killed and roasted; whoever partakes of it or its gravy will become so fat, as almost to be overpowered by the fat, whether the eater is a man or a woman; but if you wish a person to be still fatter than that, take human bile and place it over as much wheat as can be easily prepared with a little water, then wait until the wheat swells out, after which feed a black fowl on it, and do with the fowl as described before; whoever partakes of that fowl whether a man or a woman will see a wonder of wonders in the shape of obesity and fatness, so much so that he or she will not be able even to stand up; this is a wonderful and tried secret.
Given obesity rates in the United States, I would say that either al-Damiri’s secret is out or it really would be useless advice today.
One of the most common Orientalist tropes about the Middle East is the image of the camel, the ship of the desert. Bernard Lewis angered Edward Said by comparing one of the Arabic terms for revolution (thawra) to a camel’s rising, a point made in the old Arabic lexicons. But the camel strikes back on Sharjah Television. On the program “Medicine and Islam” the benefits of camel’s milk are spelled out, including some rather grand claims.
The video on Islamic Tube is accompanied by the following article from the Khaleej Times:
SHARJAH. A research body here is seeking global tie ups to produce drugs to treat deadly diseases including Aids from the unique antibodies found in camel`s milk. Continue reading Milking the Camel
(A)-Map of tracksite with ornithopod (trackway o1) and sauropod (trackways s1–s11) trackways, (B)-Trackway of the ornithopod (trackway o1: steps 3–10), and (C)-Sauropod left manus and pes print (trackway s6: step 12).
Scientists have discovered the first dinosaur tracks on the Arabian Peninsula. In the May 21 issue of the journal PLoS ONE, they report evidence of a large ornithopod dinosaur, as well as a herd of 11 sauropods walking along a Mesozoic coastal mudflat in what is now the Republic of Yemen. “No dinosaur trackways had been found in this area previously. It’s really a blank spot on the map,†said Anne Schulp of the Maastricht Museum of Natural History in The Netherlands. He conducted the study with Ohio University paleontologist Nancy Stevens and Mohammed Al-Wosabi of Sana’a University in Yemen.
The finding also is an excellent example of dinosaur herding behavior, the researchers report. The site preserved footprints of 11 small and large sauropods — long-necked, herbivorous dinosaurs that lived in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods — traveling together at the same speed. Continue reading Dinosaurs in Yemen
One of the most entertaining Arabic compendia on animal life, taken in the loose sense of the term for things that breathe or are thought to breathe, is the Hayât al-Hayawân (Life of Animals) of the Egyptian savant Kamâl al-Dîn Muhammad ibn Mûsâ al-Damîrî. Writing a century before Columbus discovered America, al-Damiri spins stories about animals with a variety of folklore about uses of animal products and parts. A scientist would no doubt shudder at the magical and literary focus of the text, only occasionally finding description useful today. A partial English translation was made by a British officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Jayakar, and published in two volumes in 1906 and 1908 in India. Unfortunately, this text is virtually inaccessible. I have looked at two copies, one in the New York Public Library and the other at the Library of Congress, and only with trepidation have I turned the fragile pages in this poorly bound volume. So far there is no digital version, which is a shame, since it is a delight to read.
Our author was a prolific copyist, quoting from over 800 other authors and providing a thousand entries, some simply an animal’s name and its more common synonym. Ironically, Jayakar’s Victorian sensitivity makes the translation as much an oddity as the primary work. Continue reading Animal House in the 15th Century: Part 1
