Gems of Arabic Literature #3: On Sicily

With the virtual flood of book digitalization online quite a few obscure books are now available online either at archive.org or through Google. I recently came across a gem: a translation of a high school Arabic text used in Aden by the British at the start of the 20th century. The title page was shown in a previous post. The full text can be downloaded as a pdf here. The excerpt below is from Ibn Jubayr’s travel account of a visit to Sicily. The Arabic text of Ibn Jubayr can be downloaded in pdf form here. Since my grandfather (hence the name Varisco) came from near Palermo, I take great pleasure in providing his account here.