From OUP Blog by Philip Walker the author of Behind the Lawrence Legend: the Forgotten Few who Shaped the Arab Revolt (Oxford University Press, 2018): The aftermath of the Arab Revolt of 1916-18 and the settlement in the Middle East after the… Read More ›
The pyramids of Egypt are among the most recognizable and enduring monuments of the ancient world. Long after they were built, other ancient peoples, such as the Greeks and Romans, wrote about them with as much awe as people do… Read More ›
From the BBC by Raffi Berg: “Arous on the Red Sea, a wonderful world apart,” the glossy brochure says, pronouncing it “the diving and desert recreation centre of Sudan” Illustrated with pictures of putty-coloured chalets on a Sun-drenched beach, a smiling… Read More ›
From Aeon by Josephine Quinn author of In Search of the Phoenicians: Modern nationalism created history as we know it today: what we learn in school, what we study at university, what we read at home is all shaped… Read More ›
Today, Egyptology – the study of ancient Egyptian history, culture, and language – is a worldwide discipline studied and taught at major universities on nearly every continent. It has evolved from a more esoteric study known only to elites in… Read More ›
From History Today by Sarah Rijziger: Arabia Felix, or ‘Happy Arabia’, as the Romans called what is now Yemen, has always attracted explorers, despite being – or perhaps because it was – one of the most inaccessible places in the… Read More ›
From The Atlantic by James Fallows author of Blind into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq: There’s a specific reason it is so hard to be president—in normal circumstances—and why most incumbents look decades older when they leave the job than… Read More ›
The people of ancient Mesopotamia practiced a religion that modern scholars are only just now beginning to understand and the physical focal point of their religion were the monumental, triangular structures known as ziggurats. Today, many people like to compare… Read More ›
From National Security Archive: A passage from a recently declassified document on the 1953 coup in Iran alleges that senior Iranian clerics received “large sums of money” from U.S. officials in the days leading up to the August 19, 1953,… Read More ›
The Ottoman Empire is one of the largest empires in history. In existence for 600 years, at its peak it included what is now Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Macedonia, Romania, Syria, parts of… Read More ›
From Time by Lawerence Wright The new Hulu series The Looming Tower, premiering on Wednesday, is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name, by Lawrence Wright — a book that TIME selected as one of the All-TIME 100 best nonfiction books,… Read More ›
Sharia is an Arabic word, literally meaning “the right path”. It commonly refers to the traditional Islamic law, derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran[1]and the Hadith[2]. Islamic law or the Sharia is therefore the expression of… Read More ›
