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Sarajevo Firewood, which was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (IPAF) award in 2020, explores the legacy of the recent histories of two countries - Algeria and Bosnia and Herzegovina - both of which experienced traumatic, and ultimately futile, civil wars in the 1990s. The novel narrates the lives of two main characters, with their friends and families: Salim, an Algerian journalist, and Ivana, a young Bosnian woman, both of whom have fled the destruction and hatred of their own countries to try to build a new life in Slovenia. As Ivana pursues her goal of writing her 'dream play', Khatibi's novel brings to life in fictional form the memories and experiences of the countless ordinary people who survived the atrocities linking the two countries. As such, it represents both a lasting memorial to the thousands of dead and 'disappeared' of the two countries' civil conflicts, and a powerful and novel exploration of the experience of exile to which so many have been subjected over the last few decades.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature is an authoritative reference resource, bringing together entries on key authors, works, genres, terms, concepts and issues in Arabic literature.

Covering material from the classical period through the transitional to the modern, this new paperback edition is now available for the first time in one volume.

This volume:

• combines both classical and modern Arabic literature in one work
• includes diacritics
• offers a broad geographical scope, including Africa, Arabia, Egypt, Persia, Spain and Turkey
• contain chronological tables of the dynasties.

The Routledge Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature contains over 1300 entries by world-renowned experts that combine current research with historical survey. Alphabetically organised and fully indexed, this volume offers useful suggestions for further reading after each entry and a glossary of key terms.

Set in the small town called Tarrana in the Nile Delta in the 1930s, Stones of Bobello revolves around nine episodes in the life of a sensitive young Christian boy - a montage of philosophical, mythical, and psychological perspectives that highlights the struggle between polarities of man and woman, Copt and Muslim, dreams and reality.Told in a heartbreakingly lyrical language that rarefies the most ordinary, mundane events, and brings startlingly to life the torpid climate of the Egyptian Delta, the language in Stones of Bobello allows for moments of erotic fantasy as well as an imaginative space where dreams and memories can flourish. A truly beautiful novel that deserves to be read and re-read.

The year is 1970, a period of identity crisis in the Arab world. Hisham, the young hero of "Adama," is now a university student in the big city, Riyadh. He expands his intellect by day and pursues heady, forbidden pleasures by night, indulging in arak, cigarettes and an illicit affair with his neighbour Sarah, a bold young housewife.
Meanwhile, Hisham's disillusioned childhood friend Adnan abandons his artistic ambitions in favour of a loftier cause, Islamism. The two friends grow apart, ultimately becoming strangers to each other. They come to symbolise the opposite extremes of life in a repressive closed society.
Eventually, Hisham's world becomes untenable as he can no longer reconcile his studious days and licentious nights. This contradictions plunges him into intense turmoil and self-loathing, until his past catches up with him, with surprising consequences . . .
"Adama," the first volume of his best-selling trilogy about his native Saudi Arabia, was published in English by Saqi in 2003. "Shumaisi" is the second volume of the trilogy, which ends with "Karadib."

This volume of essays is the first to be dedicated to the subject of intertextuality in modern Arabic literature. Beginning with a general overview of the topic by Roger Allen, it brings together essays on a range of writers from all parts of the Arab world, including, among others, Edwar al-Kharrat, Sa'd Allah Wannus, Najib Mahfuz, Rabi' Jabir, Salim Matar and the recently deceased Sudanese writer al-Tayyib Salih, whose seminal work Season of Migration to the North heralded a new phase in the modern Arabic literary tradition. The volume, which also includes two essays on aspects of intertextuality in Gulf literature, also discusses transformations of popular medieval literature such as the Alf Layla wa-Layla (the Thousand and One Nights) in modern Arabic literature. -- .

Pious Pilgrims, Discerning Travellers, Curious Tourists: Changing patterns of travel to the Middle East from medieval to modern times comprises a varied collection of seventeen papers presented at the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) held in York in July 2019, which together will provide the reader with a fascinating introduction to travel in and to the Middle East over more than a thousand years. As in previous ASTENE volumes, the material presented ranges widely, from Ancient Egyptian sites through medieval pilgrims to tourists and other travellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The papers embody a number of different traditions, including not only actual but also fictional travel experiences, as well as pilgrimage or missionary narratives reflecting quests for spiritual wisdom as well as geographical knowledge. They also reflect the shifting political and cultural relations between Europe and the Near and Middle East, and between the different religions of the area, as seen and described by travellers both from within and from outside the region over the centuries. The men and women travellers discussed travelled for a wide variety of reasons — religious, commercial, military, diplomatic, or sometimes even just for a holiday! — but whatever their primary motivations, they were almost always also inspired by a sense of curiosity about peoples and places less familiar than their own. By recording their experiences, whether in words or in art, they have greatly contributed to our understanding of what has shaped the world we live in. As Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest of medieval Arab travellers, wrote: ‘Travelling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller!’

This volume is designed as an introduction to the contemporary Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, one of the most important Arabic novelists of the modern era, with an unrivalled reputation for independence and integrity among contemporary Egyptian writers. The first study in any language devoted exclusively to Sonallah Ibrahim, the volume discusses each of the author's novels individually, beginning with the seminal Tilka al-ra'iha [That Smell] (1966) and ending with al-Jalid [Ice] (2011). Each work is discussed individually in its literary, social, historical and political context. The volume traces the evolution of Sonallah Ibrahim's work in terms both of their themes and of their literary technique, and concludes with an attempt at an overall evaluation of the author's contribution to the contemporary Egyptian novel. Paul Starkey's account shows how innovative and stylistically rich the Arabic novel has become over a period of some fifty years, beyond the better-known work of writers such as Naguib Mahfouz and Yusuf Idris. As such, the volume will serve as an introduction not only to the individual author but also to the development of Egyptian (and, more generally, Arabic) literature over the last half century.

This historical romantic novel is set at the time of Saladin, the great religious reformer, mythical leader and unifier of an Islamic world in disarray by political and social contradictions at the beginning of the twelfth century. Princess Sittalmulk, "The Lady of the Realm" is the beautiful and strong-willed sister to the weak Fatimid Caliph al-'Adid in Cairo. She has many suitors: Saladin has been persuaded that his political ambitions would be enhanced by a union with the caliph's sister. Such is also the case for the ruthless and ambitious Hasan who claims Fatimid ancestry and wants to become caliph. But the princess falls passionately in love with 'Imadin, a courageous commoner and member of Saladin's inner circle, after he saves her life and honor. Hasan a conspirator with few scruples arranges to have the princess abducted and uses the Assassins, a religious sect, to threaten and do away with Saladin. One morning Saladin wakes up with a dagger firmly planted above his head with a threatening letter signed by the "old man of the mountains" the Leader of the famous Assassins ready to sacrifice their lives in the service of their cause. But 'Imadin, is determined to come to his master's rescue by personally confronting the Assassins while his loyalty to Saladin raises insurmountable conflicts within himself on how to respond to the princess's advances... The stage is thus set for the contest for the princess's heart interlaced with the battle for the caliphate to succeed al-'Adid. Who will prevail and how? The fast paced action, with lots of twists and turns, is full of suspense that keeps us guessing to the very end....

The Proceedings of Red Sea Project III held in the British Museum, London, in October 2006. Contents: 1) Environment, landscapes and archaeology of the Yemeni Tihamah (R. Neil Munro and Tony J. Wilkinson); 2) The formation of a southern Red Sea seascape in the Late Prehistoric Period: Tracing cross-Red Sea culture-contact, interaction, and maritime communities along the Tihamah coastal plain, Yemen, in the third to first millennium BC (Lamya Khalidi); 3) Products from the Read Sea at Petra in the Medieval Period (Stephan G Schmid and Jacqueline Studer); 4) Continuing studies of plants and animals and their Arabic names from the Royal Danish Expedition to the Red Sea, 1761-1763 (F. Nigel Hepper); 5) Coral reef conservation and the current status of reefs of the Ras Mohamed National Park in the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqabah (Steve McMellor and David J Smith); 6) How fast is fast? Technology, trade and speed under sail in the Roman Red Sea (Julian Whitewright); 7) Warships in the Red Sea, An Outstanding Phenomenon (Sarah Arenson); 8) Features of Ships and Boats in the Indian Ocean (Norbert Weismann); 9) Decorative Motifs on Red Sea Boats: Meaning and Identity (Dionisius A. Agius); 10) The Red Sea Jalbah. Local Phenomenon or Regional Prototype? (James Edgar Taylor); 11) Charting a Hazardous Sea (Sarah Searight); Red Sea Harbours, Hinterlands and Relationships in Preclassical Antiquity (Kenneth A. Kitchen); 12) Sea port to punt: new evidence from Marsa Gawasis, Red Sea (Egypt) (Kathryn A. Bard, Rodolfo Fattovich and Cheryl Ward); 13) The Arabaegypti Ichthyophagi: Cultural Connections with Egypt and the Maintenance of Identity (Ross Iain Thomas); 14) Aila and Clysma: The Rise of Northern Ports in the Red Sea in Late Antiquity (Walter Ward); 15) Shipwrecks, Coffee and Canals: the Landscapes of Suez (Janet Starkey); 16) What is the Evidence for External Trading Contacts on the East African coast in the first millennium bc? (Paul J.J. Sinclair); 17) The 'Arabians' of pre-Islamic Egypt (Tim Power); 18) Red Sea and Indian Ocean: Ports and their Hinterland (Eivind Heldaas Seland); 19) Bishops and Traders: The Role of Christianity in the Indian Ocean during the Roman Period (Roberta Tomber); 20) Arabic Sources for the Ming Voyages (Paul Lunde); 21) From the White Sea to the Red Sea: Piri Reis and the Ottoman conquest of Egypt (Paul Starkey).

Many inhabitants of rural areas in developing countries do not have adequate and affordable access to transport infrastructure services. Insufficient access to transport constrains economic and social development and contributes to poverty. This book focuses on improving rural mobility by facilitating the provision of affordable means of transport and transport services. It concentrates on the many and varied types of transport that provide mobility such as bus service, freight trucks, bush taxis, transport animals, bicycles, and handcarts.

This collection of around twenty papers has its origins in a two-day seminar organised by the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) in conjunction with the Centre for Middle Eastern Plants at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh (RBGE), with additional support from Cornucopia magazine and the Turkish Consulate General, Edinburgh. This multi-disciplinary event formed part of the Ottoman Horizons festival held in Edinburgh in 2017 and attracted a wide range of participants from around the world, including several from Turkey and other parts of the Middle East. This splendidly illustrated book focuses on the botanical legacy of many parts of the former Ottoman Empire - including present-day Turkey, the Levant, Egypt, the Balkans, and the Arabian Peninsula - as seen and described by travellers both from within and from outside the region. The papers cover a wide variety of subjects, including Ottoman garden design and architecture; the flora of the region, especially bulbs and their cultural significance; literary, pictorial and photographic depictions of the botany and horticulture of the Ottoman lands; floral and related motifs in Ottoman art; culinary and medicinal aspects of the botanical heritage; and efforts related to conservation.

This volume is designed as an introduction to the contemporary Egyptian author Sonallah Ibrahim, one of the most important Arabic novelists of the modern era, with an unrivalled reputation for independence and integrity among contemporary Egyptian writers. The first study in any language devoted exclusively to Sonallah Ibrahim, the volume discusses each of the author's novels individually, beginning with the seminal Tilka al-ra'iha [That Smell] (1966) and ending with al-Jalid [Ice] (2011). Each work is discussed individually in its literary, social, historical and political context. The volume traces the evolution of Sonallah Ibrahim's work in terms both of their themes and of their literary technique, and concludes with an attempt at an overall evaluation of the author's contribution to the contemporary Egyptian novel. Paul Starkey's account shows how innovative and stylistically rich the Arabic novel has become over a period of some fifty years, beyond the better-known work of writers such as Naguib Mahfouz and Yusuf Idris. As such, the volume will serve as an introduction not only to the individual author but also to the development of Egyptian (and, more generally, Arabic) literature over the last half century.