It takes a liar…
There is a saying, and a song by the American rock group “Taking Back Sunday”, that it takes a liar to know a liar. In the case of Oliver North, the newly elected president of the National Rifle Association More...
A Kingly look at Islamic Astronomy
All societies have star lore, using the movements of stars and other celestial phenomena to tell time and direction. The formal science of astronomy, with roots in ancient Mesopotamia and Greece, evolved in the More...
Popular Costumes of Turks in 1873
In 1873 the Turkish Imperial Commission for the Universal Exposition in Vienna published a beautifully illustrated, large-sized book entitled Les Costumes Populaires de la Turquie en 1873. It was published in Constantinople More...
Meanwhile in Yemen…
The episode in early April of a poison gas attack in Douma, a city near Damascus, that led to a measured missile attack by the U.S., Britain and France, has understandably been the focus of media attention for the More...
Isolating Qatar
On June 5, 2016 Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain began a boycott of its Gulf neighbor Qatar, the richest country in the world, cutting off land and air travel over their space. No doubt the same countries that More...
No Alibi for Tit for Tat
The Saudi-led bombing campaign of Yemen has entered its fourth year with no end in sight. The humanitarian crisis created by the bombing runs is one of the worst in the world, so bad that the UN has just asked donors More...
Mapping the Islamic World
Maps make the world go round, even when the mapmakers still thought the world was round. There is a wealth of literature on Islamic miniatures found in manuscripts stemming back centuries, but there is less knowledge More...
Washington, Jefferson, Trump, Bin Salman
The Saudi Crown Prince and de facto owner-in-chief of the kingdom’s vast oil wealth and investments visited President Trump at the White House on Tuesday, but he was not alone. Looking down from portraits on the More...
America, Britain and the Saudi War on Yemen
As the humanitarian crisis in Yemen drags on, the Saudi-led coalition has managed to buy off opposition in most of the media and among politicians in the West. Protest Sign on Bus about MBS Visit to England A notable More...
Arabic Dictionaries Online
In 1981, while visiting Egypt for a consulting assignment with USAID, I purchased the old Cairo edition of the massive dictionary Tāj al-‘Arūs of Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1790). This was in about 10 large More...