Kevin Bubriski.
2019, powerHouse Books, 978-1-57687-889-7, $50 hb.

Today, many only know Syria as a geopolitical disaster and humanitarian crisis depicted in traditional media. Through his book of photography, Kevin Bubriski presents a poignant look into a time before years of civil turmoil took their toll on the land and its people. Shot in 2003, a hundred black-and-white photos—offered with brief written context—capture the dignity and prominence of several of Syria’s oldest and most captivating cities, including Aleppo, Palmyra and the Dead Cities (abandoned Roman- and Byzantine-era settlements in northern Syria). The collection preserves, at least visually, Syria’s heritage, and becomes an essential archive for enthusiasts of the region. This is especially important to those who wonder if others can ever experience the Syria they knew—a place that was bustling, hospitable and simple. In one haunting picture, a young woman with furrowed brows and flowing hair clutches an object in her sun-scorched hand. Her face, garments and jewelry hint at an untold story, leaving the reader wanting to know more. That is the enigmatic beauty of this book.

Mohammad Gharipour, ed.
2017, Penn State UP, 978-0-27107-779-6 $94.95 hb.

While establishing diplomatic relations and trading goods during the Renaissance, the Ottoman East and European West discovered they also shared a passion for gardens and garden design. European narratives of travel to the major Islamic empires of the day—Ottoman Turkey, Safavid Persia and Mughal India—include descriptions, drawings and sketches of cities and their gardens. These added “to the reciprocal flow of ideas and concepts in terms of architectural and garden design,” including the “exchanges of gardeners” and “horticultural or irrigation techniques.” Vivid descriptions of Ottoman gardens, for example, led to the French court’s replacement of Italian gardeners with Ottoman specialists after 1495. The “gardens of Mughal emperors served as models” for the Lisbon gardens of Portuguese envoys to Goa and became “symbols of wealth and status.” In the cultural rivalry between Rome and Istanbul, “villa gardens constituted a stage for outdoing each other.” This collection of scholarly, yet readable, well-illustrated essays closely examines how Islamic and European garden traditions interacted and influenced one another.

Robert Irwin
Princeton UP, 978-0-69117-466-2, $29.95, hb.

This is not so much a traditional biography as an exploration of one of the greatest minds in the history of thought. There are sections on Ibn Khaldun’s education, travels and government postings in North Africa, Egypt and Spain in the 14th and early 15th century. And we learn of shoulder-rubbing with contemporary historians like Fez’s Ibn al-Khatib, “the single most influential person in Ibn Khaldun’s life,” or Egypt’s al-Maqrizi, who praised his colleague’s groundbreaking analysis of history—the Muqaddimah—as “the cream of knowledge,” composed in a style “more brilliant than a well-arranged pearl.” This study examines Ibn Khaldun’s manifold interests and curiosities (among them nomads, law, astrology and economics), and methodology, particularly “cause and effect,” and “how things work” when they are similar or dissimilar—an unusual approach for a historian of his day. The reflections of modern admirers, from Arnold Toynbee to Mark Zuckerberg, add scaffolding to Irwin’s pursuit of the “sheer depth” of Ibn Khaldun’s thinking.

Neil Cooke and Vannessa Daubney, eds.
2017, Archaeopress Publishing LTD, 978-178491-627-5, £38 bp.

The title refers to a treasure trove of forgotten travelers’ tales recovered in recent years by the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East. This volume features 18 compelling stories discovered in neglected manuscripts and other documents after assiduous research. The tales help solve mysteries about Western contacts with the East in previous centuries, adding insights into the Near and Middle East that are often missing from conventional histories. One account tells about the discovery in 2013 of a forgotten 440-page diary from the Karl Lepsius expedition to Egypt in the 18th century—a document “hiding in plain sight” in an Australian museum. The diarist, a 19-year-old German artist, drew hieroglyphics, murals and monuments for lithographs during the three-year expedition. His recollections add new life to a fascinating archeological adventure.

Olga Bush
2018, Edinburgh UP, 978-1-47441-650-4, $150 hb.

This volume offers an intriguing interdisciplinary look at the Alhambra, the last Muslim bastion in al-Andalus, built in Granada from the 12th to the 15th century. Although the palace complex has been studied extensively, the author, a visiting scholar of Islamic art and architecture at Vassar College, “reframes” it by addressing not only its famous architecture, but also the poetry carved in its walls, and the textile designs and court ceremonials of the period. She then shows how these media interrelate scientifically, artistically and transcendentally. Most significantly, she explores the application of fractal theory—the replication of a geometric structure where each part is identical to the whole—in the Alhambra, filling out her treatment of a structure that, ultimately, reflects both spirituality and state power.

Ian Stewart
2017, Basic Books, 978-0-46509613-8, $16.99 hb.

This book will fascinate readers with even a passing interest in mathematics. Among the “top 25” mathematical pioneers profiled, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–c. 850) will stand out. “[W]hat is easiest and most useful in arithmetic” for resolving legal, commercial and engineering difficulties, al-Khwarizmi pondered in his landmark al-Kitab al-mukhtaser fi hisab al-jabr wa-l-muqabala (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing), written around 830. His answer, identified in the title, was al-jabr, “completion,” later Anglicized to “algebra,” a method he devised to find unknown quantities in what are now familiar, x-and-y equations. And while he was at it, he “almost singlehandedly” introduced medieval Europe to “Hindu numerals”—including the hitherto unknown zero—which ultimately led to “Algoritmi” or algorithms, a term derived from his Westernized name (Algorismi).

Sarah Davis-Secord
2017, Cornell UP, 978-1-5017-0464-2, $59.95 hb.

Sicily lies in the middle of the Mediterranean, off the toe of Italy. Its most prominent physical feature is Mount Etna, whose eruptions have produced the rich soil that make Sicily a breadbasket for the region. Sicily’s role in history remains elusive, in part because of its paradoxical nature as a central island and as a boundary zone between cultures. Conquered many times over the centuries, it boasts a rich cultural and ethnic legacy to augment its agricultural bounty. The author’s primary interest is to probe the island’s role as a trade and travel nexus of the medieval Mediterranean. She illuminates both the intrinsic importance of Sicily and also the roles it played in larger transformations of the Mediterranean Basin. The book focuses on travel records and medieval historians’ details on trans-Mediterranean communication—commercial, diplomatic, military and cultural. Three periods of rule are highlighted: by Byzantium (sixth–ninth century); by Islamic North Africa (ninth–11th century); and by the Latin Normans (11th–12th century), when Muslim-Christian trade experienced its greatest flourishing in the Mediterranean.

Abdesselam Damoussi and Nour Eddine
2019 Arc Music, B07KH8794X, $18.99 cd.

Musician/producers Abdesselam Damoussi and Nour Eddine have recorded and accompanied musicians from various parts of Morocco in this captivating album, crafted in Eddine’s 15th-century home-turned-studio in Marrakech. Some tracks work around found elements—an impromptu jam session in the Marrakech madinah, an old beggar’s prayer, a chance encounter with a local imam. Others are more deliberate, such as Yemdeh Selem’s electrifying vocal from the Moroccan Sahara, accompanied by blazing electric guitar in a richly altered tuning. Still others feature fluttering ilala flutes, keening double-reed gaitas, the Berber rebab and rolling, tripping frame-drum rhythms and voices that soar, chant and ululate, forming and informing this mesmerizing collection.

Anissa Helou
2018, Ecco, 978-0-06236-303-9, $60 hb.

It takes confidence to pull together an authoritative cross section of foods spanning “the Islamic World.” Veteran food writer Anissa Helou rises to the occasion with this 530-page collection of familiar (shawarma, hummus), vaguely familiar (Moroccan tagines, Persian pilaus) and not-so-familiar (Saudi camel meatballs) recipes from nearly every corner of the Muslim world. She presents fish dishes from the Gulf States, along with Saudi Arabia curries from India, Pakistan and Indonesia; savory one-pot rice meals from Afghanistan; sweets from Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq; scallion pancakes from China; and simple bread rolls from Senegal. This exhaustive volume, covering centuries of tradition and tens of thousands of square kilometers, should appeal to serious and curious cooks alike.

Fiona Dunlop
2019, Interlink Books, 978-1-62371-999-9, $35 hb.

In a bid to canvas some 800 years of the cultural and culinary history of Muslim Spain (al-Andalus), Dunlop sets out in search of “dishes that were . . . infused with the aromatic flavors of the Middle East and North Africa.” From Almería in the east, through the famed cities of Granada and Córdoba, to Seville and Cadiz in the west, she encountered food ways “deeply entrenched” in nearly every town and village. Spices introduced by Arabs, “kings of the spice trade,” enhance cod, potato and garlic soup from the Almería coast, redolent with “punchy paprika, cumin, and saffron.” Rice, the “millennial old grain from China,” arrived in al-Andalus in the 10th century via Iraq and is the centerpiece of many dishes, from paella to sweet, cinnamon-rich pudding, studded with almonds, another Arab import. Extensive historical sections add depth to this broad survey of Andalusian cuisine.

Asma Khan
2019, Interlink Books, 978-1-62371-912-8, $30 hb.

Asma Khan’s paternal culinary pedigree stretches back to the spice-rich “food tradition of the [medieval] Mughal courts,” while the comfort food of her youth (rice-and-milk puddings and custardy egg halwas) stems from the “Bihari [pre-Mughal] Muslim food” of her mother’s side of the family. The two meet in this easy-to-use cookbook reflecting Khan’s heritage and a cross section of Indian cuisine, emphasizing its variety. “There is no generic Indian food,” she advises. Chicken chaap, a stew-like korma “infused with mace and nutmeg,” derives from dishes popular with Muslim “traders from Central Asia . . . and the Middle East” who settled in Bengal, in the east. Rich, slow-cooked kali dal (black lentils with kidney beans) is a hearty dish from the Punjab, up north. An introductory section offers tips on techniques and spices essential to preparing these and other historic family favorites.

Joudie Kalla
2019, Interlink Books, 978-1-62371-981-4, $35 hb.

Both these titles explore the time-honored traditions of Palestinian cuisine, viewed from different angles. Kalla, a London-based chef, has a long history with Palestinian food, passed down from her grandmother, aunts and mother, while Khan, a cookbook author, absorbed her knowledge of and passion for the foods of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem during travels to the region as a human-rights worker. Baladi translates variously as “my home, my land, my country,” and Palestinian food is family matter to Kalla, be it her father’s soft-boiled eggs with yogurt, chili and lemon, or her aunt’s ground lamb, stuffed vine leaves with tomatoes and potatoes. She includes a recipe for salmon, “not common in the waters of the Middle East,” yet well suited to a classic Levantine marinade of pomegranate molasses, honey, olive oil and lemon. Khan was welcomed into Palestinian homes and kitchens where she detected the “influences of Armenian, Bedouin, Jewish, Roman, Arabic, Persian and Turkish cultures” on local cuisines. Galilee features “a magnificent array of colourful mazzeh (mezze) dishes” developed on a wealth of local produce, while its coastal towns “make judicious use of . . . fresh fish and seafood.” The West Bank “focuses more on meat and bread, drawing its major influences from the cuisine of Jordan to the east and the Bedouin populations to the south,” where lamb stewed in yogurt (mansaf) and “mussakhan, roast chicken seasoned with sumac and caramelised onions and served on taboon flatbreads”are traditional favorites. In Gaza, “fresh dill, green chillies . . . copious amounts of garlic” and seafood form “the centrepiece for many meals.”

Peter Heine. Peter Lewis, tr.
2018, Gingko Library, 978-1-90994-225-7, $44.95 hb.

This culinary history of the Middle East satisfies the elusive criteria of being all things to all people: broad in scope, yet detailed in discussion, and encyclopedic in its organization, but like a work of narrative nonfiction in its execution. There are sections recounting the importation of ingredients to the region from both the East and West (such as spinach, sugar and tomatoes), and the export of products to Europe (including apricots, coffee and sorbets). Canvasing the distinguishing features of historic cookbooks, Heine provides insights into various cultures. Medieval Arab texts “stress the significance of food and drink as gifts from Allah,” while the Ottomans were most concerned with “how to conduct oneself when invited out to eat.” Recipes for classic dishes like shawarma (grilled marinated lamb) or lokma (fried dough in lemony sugar syrup) add practicality to this scholarly yet readable title.

Yohanis Gebreyesus
2019, Interlink Books, 978-1-62371-963-0, $35 hb.

Ethiopian cooking can be intimidating, especially injera, the country’s hallmark sourdough flatbread, the starter batter for which takes days to prepare and a magician’s touch to pour properly into a skillet. This colorful exploration of Ethiopia’s culturally diverse gastronomy, “influenced by ... different climates and geography,” its role as an historic crossroads of faiths and by its trade with the Arabian Peninsula, Africa’s interior and Asia, guides the reader through dozens of recipes. Spices are key ingredients, especially berbere, a blend of chiles, ginger, cardamom and more, that is “hot, but not blisteringly so.” Fenugreek figures prominently in the meat stews featured here, favored by citizens of Harar, home for many of the country’s Muslims, while dates sweeten date and orange marmalade.

Rebecca Seal
2017, Hardie Grant London, 9-781-78488-103-0, $35 hb.

Recipes for Indian fish curry or tempura-battered, fried green beans in a Portuguese cookbook might seem like publish publishing errors. That is until one recalls how extensively Portuguese sailors, embarking from Lisbon, encircled the globe during Europe’s Age of Exploration, from the 14th through the 17th century. The Portuguese, explains Seal, introduced tempura to Japan, while medieval Moorish influences “changed [Portugal’s] cuisine completely” through the introduction of “figs, almonds, and coffee.” Rich in historical lore, this cookbook’s 80 recipes highlight Lisbon’s status as a cultural and culinary crossroads. There are some intriguing treats, such as “cat’s tongue” cookies, shaped just like they’re called and “originally French or Dutch,” as well as classics such as fiery piri piri sauce, made with African bird’s eye peppers. Like the Portuguese galleons of the past, this title takes the reader on a far-flung and colorful journey.

Barbara Abdeni Massaad
2018, Interlink Books, 978-1-56656-036-8, $50 hb.

Mouneh, “from the Arabic word mana, meaning ‘storing,’” is a custom that “continues to flourish in many parts of Lebanon,” writes Massaad, a Beirut native. Pickling, salting, sun-drying, sweetening with sugar or packing in oil—all these methods date back centuries in the region. They evoke memories of grandparents putting up fruit preserves and pickling garden vegetables. Massaad looks to this know-how, and history, in this expansive volume about how to preserve produce, from fresh herbs (sage, rosemary, wild thyme) to fruit jams (watermelon, fig, black sour cherry), to vegetables (stuffed eggplant in oil, red pepper paste) and cracked wheat and yogurt (kishk), a Bekaa Valley specialty. Reflecting the natural rhythms of food production, the book’s sections are arranged seasonally. Mastering many of these recipes will require time and practice. Yet the rewards of preserving one’s own food, Massad promises, can be gratifying.

John Gregory-Smith
2018, Kyle Books, 978-1-90948-790-1, $29.99 hb.

If you ever tried Moroccan food, then you sampled the cuisines of many cultures. Building upon the foundations of richly spiced Berber and Arab diets, “[e]xiled Moors from Spain brought olive cultivation, citrus fruits, and paprika,” while Moorish Jews introduced pickling and preserving. The Ottomans, with their fondness for fiery grilled meats, added kebabs, while café culture and “an appetite for sophisticated pastries and breads” is a legacy of French colonizers. This book celebrates that mix, with a variety of dishes from all parts of the country. Seffa, a saffron-and-almond-infused chicken braise, is a celebratory dish of desert tribesmen; goat-cheese-and-grapefruit salad hails from the Bouhacem Forest in the north; and rosewater and lemon ricotta cheesecake blends “classic Moroccan fruits and flavors” with “a European style.” Personal stories and lovely illustrations complement the recipes in this enticing cookbook.

The Hubb Community Kitchen
2018, Clarkson Potter, 978-1-984-82408-0, $16.99 hb.

The recipes in this book originated in the Hubb (Love) Community Kitchen in West London, near the site of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire that took the lives of 72 people, most of Middle Eastern or North African descent. After the fire, women gathered to offer comfort and support by making meals for impacted neighbors and friends.  United not only by their humanity, but by their “love of cooking and sharing food,” they prepared traditional comfort recipes—published here—such as braised Algerian sweet lamb, Moroccan chickpea-and-noodle soup and Indian shortbreads. Their efforts attracted the support of the duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, who donned an apron and joined them in a community kitchen that she describes in the foreword as “a place for women to laugh, grieve, cry and cook together.”
 

Martin Rose, ed.
2018, AUC Press, 978-9-77416-8-468, $18.95 hb.

Western writers say there’s an almost dream-like quality to arriving in Morocco for the first time, as one world dissolves into another. The romance of Morocco comes from its heady blend of Arab, Berber and European cultures. The editor of this compact collection notes that in precolonial times Morocco was defined not so much by borders as by declaring the name of the ruling sultan at Friday prayers: The country had “an almost metaphysical existence, with boundaries woven of sound and prayer.” These brief and impactful excerpts from travelers’ stories take readers through Morocco’s four “imperial cities” of Fez, Marrakech, Meknes and Rabat, among other sites. Fes was first among the capitals and the greatest center of learning. Marrakech was the golden gateway to the Sahara, Meknes the fanciful creation of a single sultan, Moulay Ismail, and Rabat (the modern capital) infused by a cultural legacy of Andalusian refugees.

Maan Abu Taleb. Robin Moger, tr.
2017, Hoopoe, 9-789-77416-847-5, $17.95 pb.

There is more than a whiff of Ernest Hemingway in this compelling, crisply written debut about boxing and society at large. The author hails from Amman, Jordan, the city in which his protagonist, a 28-year-old advertising executive from a middleclass family, looks like an unlikely candidate to become a professional boxer. But he pursues the sport to near-obsession, foregoing his career and his relationship with the upper-class daughter of a surgeon. Mocked for his bourgeois ways when he dives into training at a gym on the wrong side of town, he thrives and wins enough bouts to be noticed by British promoters who offer a sizable purse. When he’s placed on the bill in Dubai, he’s nearly killed in the match. After he recovers in the home of his parents, he empties his locker and drives into the mountains, leaving the reader wondering where he’ll wind up—and hoping it’s not back in the ring.

Brian A. Catlos.
2018, Basic Books, 978-0-465-05587-6, $35 hb.

(Reviewed together with To Live Like a Moor: Christian Perceptions of Muslim Identity in Medieval and Early Modern Spain by Olivia Remie Constable. Robin Vose, ed. 2018, University of Pennsylvania Press, 978-0-812-24948-4, $55 hb.)

Brian Catlos offers a fresh treatment of the multicultural tapestry of al-Andalus (medieval Islamic Spain). Drawing on recent North African and European scholarship, plus overlooked “stories of women, slaves, renegades, and functionaries,” he emphasizes that rather than a mono-cultural emirate, al-Andalus was a complex network of more-or-less-independent enclaves and principalities (taifas). In these diverse communities, “episodes of cross-religious and cross-ethnic solidarity; of alliances and friendships … forged between the faiths” of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, were far more common than the polarized, political history of the Reconquista, the Catholic reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula completed in 1492, would have us believe. Not everyone always got along, yet “Islamic Spain” was, for the various peoples living there, as much a cultural identification as a religious one. Digging deeply into that identity, the late Olivia Remie Constable dissects the manifold ways in which “Moorish” customs and lifestyles endured in the wake of the Reconquista, when local Muslims, forced to convert to Christianity, emerged as Moriscos. She explores cultural legacies in chapters focusing on subjects such as clothing, food and bathing. In late medieval Spain, eggplants and couscous might have indicated a Muslim diet, yet ended up on Spanish royal tables as exotic delicacies, for example. The bathhouse, essential for ritual cleanliness in Islam, also served “social, recreational and cultural functions.” Images from 15th-century illuminated manuscripts demonstrate “the similarities and continuities in bathhouse culture and usage in Christian and Muslim regions.”

Olivia Remie Constable. Robin Vose, ed.
2018, University of Pennsylvania Press, 978-0-812-24948-4, $55 hb.

(Reviewed together with Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain by Brian A. Catlos. 2018, Basic Books, 978-0-465-05587-6, $35 hb.)

Brian Catlos offers a fresh treatment of the multicultural tapestry of al-Andalus (medieval Islamic Spain). Drawing on recent North African and European scholarship, plus overlooked “stories of women, slaves, renegades, and functionaries,” he emphasizes that rather than a mono-cultural emirate, al-Andalus was a complex network of more-or-less-independent enclaves and principalities (taifas). In these diverse communities, “episodes of cross-religious and cross-ethnic solidarity; of alliances and friendships … forged between the faiths” of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, were far more common than the polarized, political history of the Reconquista, the Catholic reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula completed in 1492, would have us believe. Not everyone always got along, yet “Islamic Spain” was, for the various peoples living there, as much a cultural identification as a religious one. Digging deeply into that identity, the late Olivia Remie Constable dissects the manifold ways in which “Moorish” customs and lifestyles endured in the wake of the Reconquista, when local Muslims, forced to convert to Christianity, emerged as Moriscos. She explores cultural legacies in chapters focusing on subjects such as clothing, food and bathing. In late medieval Spain, eggplants and couscous might have indicated a Muslim diet, yet ended up on Spanish royal tables as exotic delicacies, for example. The bathhouse, essential for ritual cleanliness in Islam, also served “social, recreational and cultural functions.” Images from 15th-century illuminated manuscripts demonstrate “the similarities and continuities in bathhouse culture and usage in Christian and Muslim regions.”

Rachel Mairs.
2017, Bloomsbury Academic, 978-1-35005-412-7, $39.95 pb.

In 2014 British Professor Rachel Mairs won an Internet auction for a scrapbook into which dozens of old letters were pasted. The slender volume, which had been found in an estate sale years earlier in the hamlet of Rogue River, Oregon, turned out to be a collection of testimonials from clients of Solomon Negima, who worked as a dragoman (local guide) in Palestine in the years either side of 1900. In an engrossing piece of academic sleuthing, Mairs uncovers details of Negima’s life—born in Palestine, he had served with the British military in Sudan. Then she painstakingly investigates letters and testimonials whose authors range from English tourists to American church ministers and military officers, cross-referencing among sources to build a picture of each client. She shows that Negima and his competitors in the Holy Land tourism industry stood at the center of a network of cultural and commercial relationships that extended both regionally and internationally from Jerusalem. This is a fascinating window into Middle East tourism of old, through lives rarely discussed.

John Maier.
2018, SUNY Brockport eBooks digital commons. brockport.edu/sunybeb/4/), 978-0-99762-943-9. Free.

In 1984 an English translation of the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh by academic John Maier and novelist John Gardner restored the poetry that had been lost in many earlier renderings. Now Maier, an English professor at SUNY Brockport, has taken that work a step further in a lengthy digital commentary on this tale of man’s search for eternal life. When Gilgamesh rejects the love of Ishtar, the great goddess of Uruk, she sends the Bull of Heaven to deal with him. But when Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu kill the bull, Ishtar takes Enkidu’s life, leaving Gilgamesh to wander the world in search of immortality. After visiting Utnapishtim, the sole survivor of the Great Flood (the same flood found in the story of Noah), Gilgamesh realizes his life can be extended only through the good works he leaves behind him. Maier explores how various threads of the story, some dating back more than 4,000 years, coalesced about 2,000 years ago into the version we know today.

Farhad Daftary and Zulfikar Hirji.
2018, Azimuth Editions in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 978-1-89859-235-8, $44.95 hb.

The choice of images in this beautifully illustrated historical overview speaks volumes about the multifaceted Islamic world, as does the layout design with double-paged asides of short, themed essays (e.g., on women, the importance of a particular site or how Islam traveled to China). The main narrative is equally compelling. The authors, whose combined expertise covers cultural, social, economic and Islamic history, discuss the influences of cultures on Islamic thought and practice; the role interpretation has played since Islam’s earliest times; and the motivations of individual actors as they have pursued aspirations and responded to changing historical circumstances. One closes the book with a deeper understanding of Islam and an appreciation for the complexities of its journey.

Jamal Mahjoub.
2018, Bloomsbury Publishing, 978-1-40888-546-8, $30 hb.

British novelist Jamal Mahjoub, perhaps better known to readers of his Sudanese detective series under the pseudonym Parker Bilal, has written a bittersweet love letter to his Sudanese father’s birthplace, which he left for England once in the 1940s and permanently in 1990. By that time the author too had left to study abroad. He let decades pass before returning to write this memoir-cum-history of the capital. Mahjoub presents a kind of a stop-motion take on Khartoum, seen through the lens of his late father’s stymied ambitions, updates from struggling relatives who stayed home and his own perceptions of the city as it was and as it is today. He portrays its metamorphoses from a sleepy British imperial backwater to the place embodying the hopes of a new nation after independence in 1956 to a now bursting-at-the-seams, hustling hodgepodge of migrants, war and climate-change refugees, and elite families credentialed years ago in the freedom struggle or by current politics. All these memories and aspirations, fueled by new money and old dreams, make Mahjoub, like V. S. Naipaul in India, an acutely ambivalent observer of his national roots.

Murat Bardakçı. Meyzi Baran, tr.
2017, AUC Press, 9-789-77416-837-6, $39.95 hb.

This biography of Neslishah Sultan, born in Constantinople in 1921 and who died in that same city—renamed Istanbul—at age 91 after decades in exile, is a royal roller coaster through Middle Eastern and European 20th-century history. The granddaughter of the last Ottoman sultan, Mehmed VI (1861–1926), and the last Ottoman caliph, Abdülmecid II (1868–1944), Princess Neslishah was as purebred as they come. She and her family fled for France when she was three, when Turkey became a republic. Raised in Nice, she married at 16 into the Egyptian royal family, only to face exile once more after Egypt’s monarchy was overthrown in 1952. Neslishah “often faced financial problems, political turmoil” and a painful longing for home. Yet, as the last surviving member of the Ottoman dynasty born during Ottoman times, she “never relinquished” her sense of identity as a royal, writes Bardakçı. This translation of the 2011 Turkish biography features lengthy excerpts from interviews with the princess, as well as numerous family photographs.

Michael J. Harrower.
2016, Cambridge UP, 978-1-10713-465-2, $116 hb.

The author of this technical study is an archeologist with experience in Yemen, and a leading specialist on Global Positioning System and Geographic Information Systems mapping. He uses those tools to compare the water histories of two arid regions, Southwest Arabia, c. 3500 BCE–600 CE, and the American West, c. 2000 BCE–1950 CE. He analyzes how the two areas—far removed from each other in time, culture and history—“are unique in similar ways,” emphasizing environmental, social, political and religious factors. This leads him into discourses on xenophobia, Orientalism, water crises, Western water law and even the War on Terror. Surprisingly, he does not discuss a living link between Yemen and the American West: acequias, the gravity-flow irrigation ditches that evolved over 10,000 years in the deserts of the Middle East. Carried to Spain by the Moors and thence to the New World, including the American Southwest, acequia technology endures in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

Barnaby Rogerson
2017, Haus Publishing, 978-1-90996-154-8, $29.95 hb.

North Africa is home to some of the most impressive ruins of classical antiquity, and British author Barnaby Rogerson has been visiting (and picnicking at) those sites for the better part of 40 years. “I have watched with annoyance, which has gradually changed into amusement, how many European[s] … act as if they own the classical part of North Africa,” Rogerson writes—as he presents evidence that clearly shows otherwise. His understanding of these ruins’ geographies informs the illuminating biographical sketches of the prominent North Africans at the core of a book that spans some 1,200 years to the mid-fifth century CE: Queen Dido, King Juba II, Emperor Septimius Severus, St. Augustine, Hannibal and the Berber cavalry commander Massena, who played a key role in Hannibal’s ultimate defeat. Former war photographer Don McCullin’s haunting black-and-white photographs highlight the sites, but sadly, the book lacks maps to help orient the reader on this marvelous journey.

Firas Alkhateeb
2017, Hurst Publishers, 978-1-84904-689-3, £9.99 pb.

Presenting 1,400 years of Islamic civilization in a comprehensive, easy-to-follow manner is no small feat. Firas Alkhateeb has been doing that for years as a high-school teacher in Illinois, and he puts those skills to work in Lost Islamic History, a revised and updated version of the title originally published in 2014. Alkhateeb pays close attention to the foundation of Islam and the early Caliphate. Elsewhere, he focuses on Muslim accomplishments both in the sciences and in governance, and discusses such topics as philosophy (fiqh) and theology (‘aqaidah). Sidebars highlight “lost” aspects of Islamic civilization, from the Bengali architect who planned the Sears Tower in Chicago, to the Islamic school established in China by the Ottomans in 1908. The book is valuable not only for its insights into lesser-known aspects of Islamic history, but also as a general introduction to the subject.

Zayde Antrim
2018, Reaktion Books, 978-1-78023-850-0, £35 hb.

The earliest surviving paper maps of the Middle East are found in Arabic manuscripts dating to the 11th century CE. In this analysis of a millennium of cartography of the ever-changing region, Antrim provides welcome insights into the evolving function and meaning of its maps. This detailed and lavishly illustrated volume spans the “realm of Islam” (11th–16th centuries), where maps served more as memory aids than accurate geographical representation: Ottoman mapping traditions; European colonial mapping; and 20th-century national mapping. It shows that from the start—well before the birth of nationalism—citizens imagined land in relation to aspects of belonging. While early Islamic maps bear little resemblance to modern maps, over the centuries people in the Middle East deliberately chose what, how and why to express this sense of “home” via maps. Academic yet highly readable, this book presents the history behind the maps.

Sebastian R. Prange
2018, Cambridge UP, 978-1-10842-438-7, $120 hb.

Western scholars of Islam and its myriad civilizations have long qualified the religion by many geographical and cultural subheadings: African Islam, folk Islam, urban Islam, or the like. This is the first academic attempt to analyze Islam through the lens of a weather pattern. Prange looks at India’s Malabar Coast, bilad al-filfil (land of pepper), so named by Arab merchants who arrived on the monsoon trade winds beginning even before the first Islamic century. He argues that Islamic expression there and at the far ends of all its commercial traces on the Indian Ocean littoral is a synthesis explained by the seasonality of these traders’ arrivals and departures, permanent settlements, and their commercial and personal interactions among Hindu and fellow Muslim South Indians. By all readings, Prange’s analysis is a success.

Paul-Gordon Chandler
2017, Rowman & Littlefield, 978-1-53810-427-9, $19.95 hb.

Paul-Gordon Chandler takes readers on a fascinating journey across three continents as he explores the life, works and spirituality of Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), the elusive author of The Prophet. Published in 1923, Gibran’s most famous work has been translated into 40 languages, sold more than 100 million copies and inspired millions of readers around the globe. Yet Gibran, who once explained, “My life is a life interior,” is far less known. Chandler exposes that interior life as he retraces Gibran’s footprints from his birthplace in the mountains of Bsharri, Lebanon, to the tenements of Boston where he, his mother and three siblings lived after immigrating to the US in 1895, to Paris and New York, where he emerged as an influential author, artist and poet. Full of contemporary links to Gibran (who knew that Elvis Presley could recite The Prophet by heart?), In Search of a Prophet underscores the timelessness of Gibran’s vision of a shared humanity that crosses all cultural and religious divides.

Jörg Matthias Determann
2018, I.B. Tauris, 978-1-78831-014-7, $95 hb

Arab Islamic contributions to astronomy in the Middle Ages (8th–14th centuries) were crucial antecedents to the European scientific revolution that led to what we know as space science. This meticulously researched book contends that today’s Arab involvement in space science is a fresh, integral part of a modern enterprise blending nationalism with globalism. The cover illustration highlights the 1985 space-shuttle flight of Saudi Prince Sultan bin Salman—the first Arab and Muslim space traveler. But there is much more, with the region’s first modern astronomers, including Syrians Yakub Sarruf and Faris Nimr, emerging in the 19th century. Links between US East Coast universities and newer Mideast institutions led to the expansion of astronomical science in the Arab world, and knowledge sharing aided growth of Arab space science. By the 20th century, Arab astronomers were once again contributing to world knowledge. Shadia Habbal of Damascus University became a recognized expert on solar wind. Farouk El-Baz of Egypt trained Apollo 11 astronauts for their historic moon landing, and more.

Naoíse Mac Sweeney
2018, Bloomsbury Academic, 978-1-47252-937-4, £19.99 pb.

No one, not even Homer, has ever tried to tell the whole story of Troy, but this slim volume comes incredibly close. The author guides us briskly through 5,000 years of fact, fiction and folklore. We walk the ruins of the city at the southeastern end of the Dardanelles in today’s Turkey in each of its physical iterations; we witness layer by layer the excavations of Heinrich Schliemann and others; we wade into the controversies surrounding those discoveries and weigh the theories spun from them; we wind up in the Troy of today with a broad understanding of how and why ancient lives and literatures affect us still. Travelers to the site of Troy need this book in their backpacks. For everyone else staying at home, reading this volume is the next best thing to being there.

Irving Finkel
2017, Medina Publishing, 978-1-91148-720-3, £20 hb., £11.99 pb.

As assistant keeper of ancient Mesopotamian script, languages and cultures in the British Museum’s Near East Department, Irving Finkel is skilled at deciphering ancient cuneiform. He is also good at weaving stories around it. In his latest piece of fiction, he gives us a macabre tale centered on the lead interpreter of inscriptions in a court in Nineveh that closely resembles that of a real Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE). The story begins when the interpreter (called the First Exorcist) receives an inscribed stone he cannot read, and in a bid to gain understanding, sets out on a trail of murder and mayhem. Obscure incantations raise the dead, a golden needle leads to agony and certain death. No one is safe. This erudite but easy-to read book introduces us to a world where demons and dragons lurk around every corner, animated by a character who, the reader is bound to hope, never really existed.

Toby Wilkinson, tr. and intro.
2017, Penguin Classics, 978-0-14139-595-1, $17 pb.

Ancient Egypt was awash in writing, from the surfaces of its monuments to its reams of papyri. Yet “the impenetrability” of ancient Egyptian script (hieroglyphs)—fully deciphered only two centuries ago—largely restricted its meaning to scholars. This title offers general readers access to myriad selections from the “surprisingly rich and varied corpus” of ancient Egyptian writing. Here are stories of adventure as well as dramatic accounts of battles, practical advice, and windows into “the world of everyday life under the pharaohs.” Twelfth Dynasty (second century BCE) maxims remind us that “there is no job without a boss,” that “hippos are grievous” for the farmer, and that “friends are a well-watered field, greater than riches.” Via edict, the 14th-century BCE pharaoh Horemheb sought to “drive out chaos and destroy falsehood.” This is an engaging and entertaining encounter with the distant past—one that sometimes seems to mirror the present.

Karim Maurice, Sid-Ahmed Belksier, La Camerata.
2018, Odradek Records, 859024006006, $15.59 cd.

This groundbreaking ensemble breathes new life into one of North Africa’s most appealing popular traditions, Algerian chaâbi. Vocalist and mandole player Sid-Ahmed Belksier came of age in the Algerian port city of Oran, steeped in passionate works of chaâbi’s great singers. Here, he collaborates with acclaimed French pianist and composer Karim Maurice, who brings the freedom and openness of jazz improvisation and even the subtle swing of Afro-Cuban music and traces of flamenco to chaâbi classics like “Ya Kalek Lechia” (Creator of all things), with its poetic lyrics of yearning and repentance. And there’s more. A string quartet drawn from Gaël Rassaert’s larger ensemble, La Camerata, adds richness and heft to these exquisite arrangements. Maurice’s piano breaks are consistently crisp and eloquent, and at times heworks in synthesizer elements, as on the earthy chaâbi folk melody “Koum Tara” (Stand and behold beauty), which opens with the lope of mambo, and ends in a dreamy swirl of electronica—cross-cultural fusion at its best.

Leon McCarron
I. B. Tauris, 978-1-78831-056-7, $25 hb.

At one point in this personal account of a long-distance trek across the Middle East, the author muses: “There is a convincing case for [US essayist] Rebecca Solnit’s contention that the brain works at three miles an hour.” If anything encapsulates the spirit of Northern Irish explorer Leon McCarron’s inspiring adventure among marginalized people and overlooked landscapes, it’s the idea of walking as therapy—for personal healing, for education, but also for cross-cultural understanding and perhaps even for international reconciliation. It’s a hugely entertaining read, following the ups and downs of this journey on foot from Jerusalem through Palestine and Jordan to the summit of Mount Sinai in Egypt, illuminated with tender, insightful vignettes: McCarron makes light of the time when he turned up exhausted in a remote Jordanian village only to have a stranger take him into his house to wash his feet, feed him and give him a bed, but it’s an affecting passage in an often-moving book. The great British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes called McCarron’s trip “a marvelous adventure.” He’s not wrong.
 

Stephen P. Blake
2016, Edinburgh UP, 978-0-7486-4910-5, $125 hb.

Blake demonstrates that until the late 16th century major advances in science were driven by the astronomers and mathematicians of the Islamic world, explaining that astrology was closely linked to the science of astronomy from earliest times. In both the Islamic and early European periods, scientists frequently funded their research by casting horoscopes, and predicting and interpreting celestial events.Blake traces the advance of scientific knowledge from the Abbasid era (mid-eighth to mid-13th century) to the Renaissance. Astronomer/astrologer Abu Ma’shar, for example, powerfully influenced European thinkers. Al-Khwarizmi’s treatise on the motion and positions of heavenly bodies was the first Arabic work of its kind to reach Europe intact in the 12th century. Contributions of Islamic astronomy included major inputs from Islamic Spain and Central Asia. Blake details the role of Islamic astronomers in developing observatories, astrolabes, celestial globes and other instruments. He tracks the transfer of Islamic astronomical and astrological knowledge to scientists such as Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton.