FirstLook: "In the Marshes of Iraq"
- Arts & Culture
- History
- Photography
Reading time:1min
Photograph by Wilfred Thesiger
November/December 1966
As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of AramcoWorld this year, we are looking back at some of the memorable and visual story spreads in the magazine. In the past, AramcoWorld has written about the cultural impact of a simple reed hut like those in the marshes of Iraq and built recently in Houston, Texas. That journey really began in 1964, with the publishing of Wilfred Thesiger’s book The Marsh Arabs. His travelogue connected the world to a culture and people few had known or experienced. AramcoWorld amplified that connection in the November/December 1966 issue with the story "In the Marshes of Iraq."
“… then I realized that I was looking at great reedbeds. A slim black, high-prowed craft lay beached at my feet—the sheikh’s war canoe, waiting to take me into the Marshes. Before the first palaces were built at Ur, men had … launched a canoe like this and gone hunting here. … Five thousand years of history were here and the pattern was still unchanged.”
— Wilfred Thesiger, The Marsh Arabs
You may also be interested in...
FirstLook: The Beauty of the Streets
Arts & Culture
This photo series began unexpectedly when I found that photographing people behind windows and maintaining a distance made me, and the people I photographed, feel more comfortable. I purposefully frame myself in the reflection of the window to see into the space I’m photographing. I feel every window tells a different story.
Hijrah: A Journey That Changed the World
History
Arts & Culture
Avoiding main roads due to threats to his life, in 622 CE the Prophet Muhammad and his followers escaped north from Makkah to Madinah by riding through the rugged western Arabian Peninsula along path whose precise contours have been traced only recently. Known as the Hijrah, or migration, their eight-day journey became the beginning of the Islamic calendar, and this spring, the exhibition "Hijrah: In the Footsteps of the Prophet," at Ithra in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, explored the journey itself and its memories-as-story to expand understandings of what the Hijrah has meant both for Muslims and the rest of a the world. "This is a story that addresses universal human themes," says co-curator Idries Trevathan.
FirstLook: Kuylu Valley, Kyrgyzstan
Arts & Culture
Little explored for tourism and not a popular destination even among locals, this section of the Tien Shan mountains, some 360 kilometers east of Bishkek, Kyrgystan’s capital, lies near the border with China.