N is for nabidh…

Books You Should Read, Food and Drink, Islamic Law


In a previous post I introduced a delightful read and a handy recipe book entitled Ziryab: Authentic Arab Cuisine by Farouk Mardam-Bey and illustrations by Odile Alliet. The “Logbook” at the end of the text is an entertaining alphabet of stories about Arabic good and drink. Here is the selection on a type of wine that the Prophet Muhammad drunk:

N for Nabidh

In most Arab countries today, the word “nabidh” means “wine.” It used to be quite a different beverage, which was made by macerating grapes, dates, or other fruits for some time in water. The Prophet himself loved it. According to the most authentic hadith, he never let the fruit macerate longer than three days. But such a beverage tends to ferment quickly in the heat, and a furious controversy developed among Muslim lawmakers, about whether or not it was licit to drink it. For most of them, the Malikitesm the Shafi‘ites, and the Hanbalites, as well as the Shi‘a Muslims, it was not permitted, and those who drank nabidh were to be punished with forty or eighty lashes, just like those who drank wine. On the other hand, the Hanafites were nice enough to authorize this drink under certain conditions. And the Mu‘tasilites – Jubba’i among them believed that the faithful could drink it as much as they liked in order to get familiarized on earth with the pleasures awaiting them in the Hereafter. Continue reading N is for nabidh… →

Orientalist Images #2

Morocco, Orientalist Images, Photography


Half of the painting for the inside cover of Richards Cyclopedia, by Edwin Winfield Hall


[With this post I continue a series dedicated to photographs in an “Orientalist” mode. In addition to Reading Orientalism, the title of my last book, the creation of an imagined Orient is very much a pictorial voyeuristic voyage. In this series I focus on Western images of the Middle East and North Africa, both those that perpetuate stereotypes and those that chip away at the bias. Readers of the blog are welcome to send in images they have found and want to share.]

I continue with an image from a 1933 edition of Richards Cyclopedia, with 24 volumes published in New York by J. A. Richards, Inc and edited by Ernest Hunter Wright and Mary Heritage Wright. This is an unusual encyclopedia, arranged by topics in a more or less arbitrary order but replete with images. The inside cover, half of which is shown above, is a collage of cultural references. Across the top one finds the beginnings of civilization (at least in the thinking of the time) in the ancient Egyptian pyramid and sphinx, with a towering medieval castle above and both a modern airplane and image of Saturn looking down on ancient Greece, where a beautiful half-naked Grecian standing odalisque butts up against a knight in shining armor. There are ships and covered wagons in this pictorial representation of manifest destiny. The part not shown is distinctively American progress, though with a Maharajah inexplicably riding an elephant in front of a giant oceanliner. Continue reading Orientalist Images #2 →

One for the record books

Islam: Introduction, Islamic Sciences, Islamic Texts, Orientalism, Scholars


I recently received an interesting email, not the usual spam from the widow of the last military dictator of Nigeria seeking a bank account to deposit here husband’s stolen millions, nor an enlargement claim for a part of my anatomy. No, this was a special announcement from Gerlach Books in Berlin. As you read the announcement, you can imagine my surprise to be on this list with a mere professor’s salary.

Today we would like to draw your attention to the largest scholarly library we have offered as an entity ever.

*** Hans Daiber’s Scholarly Library on Islamic Thought & Philosophy – 12,500 items ***

Each item in this library is listed in the three volume Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy edited by Hans Daiber and published by Brill as part of HdO – Handbuch der Orientalistik.

Hans Daiber’s library includes all known publications in western and non-western languages from the 15th century to the present. The total number of items is approximately 12,500 primary and secondary sources.

Today the library itself is put up for sale.
The total price of the library is 775,000.00 EUR (seven hundred and seventy five thousand Euros) plus shipping.

Apart from the hubris (“all known publications… from the 15th century to the present”), I can only imagine the size in shittim wood cubits of this Noachian bibliographic ark. Continue reading One for the record books →

Cruising above the Empty Quarter

Books You Should Read, Oman, Photography, Saudi Arabia, Travel, Yemen


There is a spectacular photographic website devoted to a book by George Steinmetz, who took photographs across the fabled Empty Quarter of Arabia.

I became captivated by Arabia’s Empty Quarter as a young man when I read Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands. The Empty Quarter is larger than France without a single permanent point of water or human habitation. It’s both the world’s largest sand sea and one of the hottest places on earth, and has only been traversed a handful of times. I didn’t want to repeat Thesiger’s epic journeys many decades later, but when I discovered motorized paragliding I found a way to visualize this remote landscape in a new way. I made three paragliding trips into the sands, first for GEO in Saudi Arabia, and then returned two years later to go from Riyadh to Oman and Yemen for National Geographic, and finally made a personal trip to the southern most reaches of the U.A.E. to complete my field work. What I found was one of the most beautiful and unseen wilderness on earth. On its fringes I encountered elements the oil wealth that has forever changed Arabia, but I also found Bedouins still clinging to traditions, and offering up a level of hospitality that was truly humbling. This body of work would simply not have been possible without their kindness.

Empty Quarter is George’s second book, published by Harry N. Abrams. This is the most extensive compilation of photographs ever taken in the Arabian Desert. Measuring 9.5 x 13 inches, the book has 208 pages with 150 color photos and captions.

The World Was His Canvas: The Legacy of M.F. Husain

Conferences and Talks, Contemporary Art, India


The World Was His Canvas: The Legacy of M.F. Husain
Remembering “the Picasso of India”

By Bruce B. Lawrence, Religion Dispatches, June 9, 2011

Maqbul Fida Husain, known as M.F. Husain, was India’s most famous, and its most infamous, contemporary painter. Often labeled the Picasso of India, his life and work spanned the 20th century and inched into the 21st. He produced over 30,000 paintings, some of which have sold at auction for over $1.5 million.

I organized a conference to celebrate his 95th birthday in Doha last September. It was titled (as Husain himself had requested) “The World is My Canvas.” Husain came back from London, where he also has a home and studio, but as an active participant, not a mere observer. He talked, he doodled, he joked, he even posed for a group photo.

M.F. Husain remained a dynamic, ceaseless explorer of art, life, and beauty until a couple of weeks before his death in London on Thursday June 9. In 2003, to celebrate his 88th birthday, he produced 88 oils across four Indian cities. “After open-heart surgery they said: ‘take it easy, and only paint miniatures,’” he scoffed, referring to an operation he had in 1988.

Yet controversy embroiled him from the mid-’90s because he loved, and painted from, India. Politically-minded Hindu partisans objected to his portrayal of women. He painted not just women but Hindu goddesses, and he painted them as they have been painted for centuries: unclad. But secular Indian courts allowed advocates for the Hindu right to bring a case against Husain. He was accused of causing harm to the sensibilities of others. He faced not one case but multiple cases, along with vandalism of his art and threats against both himself and those close to him. Soon after his victorious 88th birthday, he moved from India to the Gulf; first to Dubai, and then after 2007 to Doha, the capital of Qatar. Continue reading The World Was His Canvas: The Legacy of M.F. Husain →

Israelis and Palestinians: Live Long and Prosper

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Film and Video, Israel, Palestine


by Leonard Nimoy, Americans for Peace Now, June, 2011

Dear Friend,

When I was a teenager, I told my dad I wanted to be an actor. In response, he gave me the only piece of advice he ever offered me–“Learn to play the accordion.” And he was serious. He said, “You can always make a living with an accordion.”

Because I ignored his advice, I never found out if he was right. Instead, I’ve lived 80 creative years pursuing acting and photography, and working as a director and poet.

If I had listened to my father, and hadn’t done any of those things, chances are you wouldn’t have recognized my name and you wouldn’t be reading this. Now that you are, I’d like to ask you to consider what I have to say. I reach out to you as someone who is troubled to see the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians continue apparently without an end in sight.

In fact, there is an end in sight. It’s known as the two-state solution–a secure, democratic Israel as the Jewish State alongside an independent Palestinian state. Even Israel’s nationalist Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has come to see this as the shape of the future. The problem is how to reach that end point. It’s something we should be concerned about–not only as world citizens, but as Americans. Continue reading Israelis and Palestinians: Live Long and Prosper →