Here we continue the thread on the British diplomat Claudius James Rich, whose travel account of Kurdistan is well worth looking at. Here is his description of a Kurdish house in 1820. […]

Old travel books never cease to delight me. While century-and-more books used to be available mainly in rare book collections of major libraries, the magic of archive.org brings digital life to the genre. Take, for example, the travel account of Claudius James Rich, whose 1820 trip from Baghdad, where he was posted as […]

No, this is not about politics, but the real thing. The Yemen chameleon, which is quite colorful, is Chamaeleo calyptratus. Enjoy the pictures. Source […]

Few names are more revered in the early history of botany than Linnaeus, whose taxonomic system systematized the effective ordering of plants and animals according to sexual reproduction. Although he himself did not doubt that certain genera were created by the God of Genesis, his system could easily be adapted after Darwin introduced a […]

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah; Photograph by Wael Hamzeh/European Pressphoto Agency My friend Omar Safi has created a provocative blog entitled What Would Muhammad do? Today I would like to ratchet up the commentary game to an approach which may, at first glance, seem sacrilegious. Given that the Lebanese “Party of God” (Hezbollah) is now known […]

Gérôme’s “The Slave Market,” left; response by Iraqi woman artist, right Before Edward Said revitalized the term “Orientalism” in his seminal 1978 book of the same title, the major use of the term was for a genre of Western art, centering on exotic depictions of an imagined or at least embellished beyond the real “Orient.” […]

Danza Caratteristica Above and below are postcards of scenes in Ghadames, Libya from the 1950s, when it was still a kingdom. Ingresso alla Citt`a Coperta […]

Joseph Massad: an Occidentalist’s Other Subjects/Victims by S. Taha, The Arab Leftist Joseph Massad, an associate professor at Columbia University and a now prominent figure in the US academic field of Middle Eastern studies, came to acquire his status through a hotly debated and highly acclaimed book, Desiring Arabs. Massad, who claims to be the disciple of […]

Hope and Fear: Egypt on the Tipping Point Kickstart the post-production of this Film! Go Deep: View Director’s Cut Trailer - HOPE & FEAR Long Trailer Get Deeper: HOPE & FEAR website - www.HOPEandFEARmovie.com HOPE & FEAR is unlike any documentary you’ve ever seen - providing a rare glimpse into the lives of four young liberal-minded Egyptians as […]

Scene after a massacre in a coastal Syrian village on May 4 Do we care? When the news media report yet another attack on civilians in Syria (or Iraq or Afghanistan or anywhere outside of Boston and New York), do we really care? It is hard to be sympathetic to the picture above without […]