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Cairo has for centuries been recognized as one of the great cities of the world, and many travelers have recorded their descriptions of it over the centuries-from the early eye-witness account of Herodotus to the reflections of Sir Richard Burton, Florence Nightingale, and Mark Twain.A Cairo Anthology gathers together the impressions of many of these writers: with them we experience the excitement of exploring the great city, through its crowded streets and colorful bazaars, we enter the hotels, hire donkeys, ascend to the historic Citadel, and look out across the Nile toward the Sphinx and the Pyramids, and we visit those vast monuments that are in reality always larger and more extraordinary than one can believe, and climb to their summits to gaze back at Cairo, the Mother of the World.

Gamal Abdel Nasser, architect of Egypt's 1952 Revolution, president of the country from 1956 to 1970, hero to millions across the Arab world since the Suez Crisis, was also a family man, a devoted husband and father who kept his private life largely private. In 1973, three years after his early passing at the age of 52, his wife Tahia wrote a memoir of her beloved husband for her family. The family then waited almost forty years, through the presidencies of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak, both unsympathetic to the memory of Nasser, before publishing Tahia's book in Arabic for the first time in 2011. Now this unique insight into the life of one of the giants of the twentieth century is finally available in English. Accompanied by more than one hundred photographs from the family archive, many never before published, this historic book tells the story of Gamal and Tahia's life together from their marriage in 1944, through the Revolution and Gamal's career on the world stage, revealing an unknown and intimate picture of the man behind the president. "e;At 6:30am on the morning of July 23, 1952 there was a knock on the door. Tharwat Okasha shook my hand and congratulated me: 'The military coup has succeeded.' I asked him about Gamal. 'He is close by, not more than five minutes away at the General Command.' At 9:30am an officer called: he had come from the General Command at Kubri al-Qubba, sent by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser to tell me that he was fine and would not be home for lunch."e;

Private Pleasures describes the three-day sex, drink, and drug binge of a thirty-something newsreader in the back streets and crumbling apartments of his native Giza, that pullulating mass of humanity that, like an ugly sister, sits opposite Cairo on the Nile's west bank.Pursued by an unshakable sense of impending doom, the narrator observes, with fascinated horror, his own stumbling progress through a world of menace and wonder inhabited by philosophical prostitutes, nightmarish butchers, serene Quran-readers, pious family members, religious con-men, autistic tissue-sellers, and others.

What was it like to live in Iraq before the earth-shaking events of the end of the twentieth century? The mid-seventies to the late eighties witnessed Saddam Hussein's rise to power, the establishment of Kurdish autonomy in the north, and the Iraq-Iran war. It also brought an influx of oil wealth and a parallel influx of Arab talent, including many Egyptians.The narrator has a behind-the-scenes view of what was really happening at a critical juncture in the history of the region. Moreover, she has a mystery to solve: an Iraqi woman, a communist journalist, has disappeared...

Cotton made the fortune of the Fuuda family, Egyptian landed gentry with peasant origins, during the second part of the nineteenth century. This story, narrated and photographed by a family member who has researched and documented various aspects of her own history, goes well beyond the family photo album to become an attempt to convey how cotton, as the main catalyst and creator of wealth, produced by the beginning of the twentieth century two entirely separate worlds: one privileged and free, the other surviving at a level of bare subsistence, and indentured. The construction of lavish mansions in the Nile Delta countryside and the landowners' adoption of European lifestyles are juxtaposed visually with the former laborers' camp of the permanent workers, which became a village ('izba), and then an urbanized settlement. The story is retold from the perspective of both the landowners and the former workers who were tied to the 'izba. The book includes family photo albums, photographs of political campaigns and of banquets in the countryside, documents and accounting books, modern portraits of the peasants, and pictures of daily life in the village today. This is a story that fuses the personal and emotional with the scholar's detached ethnographic reporting-a truly fascinating, informative, and colorful view of life on both sides of a uniquely Egyptian socio-economic institution, and a vanished world: the cotton estate.

Captures in 200 black-and-white photographs the architectural jewels of "modern" Cairo, combining architectural and street photography to produce a portrait of the old and the new. Each photograph is accompanied by a caption that gives the address and architect, if known.

Saleem, fed up with all the violence, religiosity, and strict family hierarchies of his Iraqi village, flees to Spain to establish a new life for himself. But his lonely exile is turned upside down when he encounters his father, Noah, in a Madrid nightclub after not seeing him in more than a decade. Noah looks and acts like a new man, and Saleem sets out to discover the mystery of his father's presence in Spain and his altered life. In doing so, he recalls formative moments in Iraq of familial love, war, and the haunting accidental death of his cousin Aliya, Saleem's partner in the hesitant, tender exploration of sexuality. When the renewed relationship with his father erupts in a violent conflict, Saleem is forced to rediscover his sense of self and the hard-won stability of his life. Through Saleem's experiences and reflections, the fast-paced narrative carries the reader between Spain and Iraq to a surprising resolution.

A chance encounter on a plane throws together Doha, a fashion designer unhappily married to a leading figure in the Mubarak regime, and Ashraf, an academic and leading dissident. The story of their relationship and Doha's self-discovery runs alongside a young Egyptian's search for the mother he never knew, and these intersecting narratives unfold against the background of political protests that culminate in the overthrow of the regime. A moving and at times humorous story, Butterfly Wings is an extended allegory of Egypt's modern experience of authoritarian rule and explores the fractures and challenges of a society at the moment of revolutionary transformation. Mohamed Salmawy's almost prophetic novel was first published in Arabic immediately prior to the events of 25 January 2011, and has been celebrated as 'the novel that predicted the Revolution.'First published in Arabic in 2011 by al-Dar al-Misriya al-Libnaniya as Ajnihat al-farasha.

A new and updated edition of the essential activities book for learning to read the news in ArabicIn light of the rapidly growing number of people studying Arabicin academia, governments, NGOs, and businessMedia Arabic is a unique and timely learning tool for anyone looking to access news information from this important global region firsthand. Media Arabic introduces the language of the newspapers, magazines, and internet news sites to intermediate and advanced level students of Modern Standard Arabic. Using this textbook, students will be able to master core vocabulary and structures typical of front-page news, recognize various modes of coverage, distinguish fact from opinion, detect bias, and read critically in Arabic.Drawing on their long experience as Arabic instructors, Alaa Elgibali and Nevenka Korica have organized the book into six chapters, each covering a dominant news topic: Talks and Conferences, Demonstrations and Protests, Conflicts and Terrorism, Elections, Rule of Law, and Business. In addition, the book offers three self-assessment units and a glossary organized by theme.The book enables students to read extended texts with greater accuracy and speed by focusing on the relationships among meaning, language form, and markers of cohesive discourse. The activities include pre-reading discussions as well as extensive practice on vocabulary in context, organizing information, skimming, scanning, critical reading, and analyzing content.

Set in the ancient Upper Egyptian village of Karnak against the backdrop of the British campaigns in Sudan, the Second World War, and the war in Palestine, The Collar and the Bracelet is the stunning saga of the Bishari family-a family ripped apart by the violence of history, the dark conduits of human desire, and the rigid social conventions of village life. In a series of masterful narrative circles and repetitions, the novella traces the grim intrigues of Hazina al-Bishari and the inexorable destinies of her son, the exile and notorious bandit Mustafa, her daughter Fahima, tortured by guilt and secret passion, and the tragic doom of her beautiful granddaughter Nabawiya. Yahya Taher Abdullah's haunting prose distills the rhythmic lyricism of the folk story and weaves it into a uniquely modernist narrative tapestry of love and revenge that beautifully captures the timeless pharaonic landscapes of Upper Egypt and the blind struggles of its inhabitants against poverty, exploitation, and time-themes that are echoed and amplified in the short stories included in this volume, which span the breadth of Abdullah's tragically short career as one of Egypt's most brilliant writers of modern fiction.

A confessional novel that begins on an unbearably hot August afternoon in downtown Cairo, where the Nubian narrator has just decided, once and for all, to end his life. He seeks to expunge his failed life in the Nile: the river that had been the lifeblood of his country for millennia, and that - with Egypt's new dam - now drowns Nubia.

Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature Ranked by The Arab Writers Union as 8th in its list of the 100 best Arabic novels

Important contributions to the archaeology and history of Christianity inEgypt's largest oasis

Few works about the Middle East have exerted such wide and long-lasting influence as Edward William Lane's An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. First published in 1836, this classic book has never gone out of print, continuously providing material and inspiration for generations of scholars, writers, and travelers, who have praised its comprehensiveness, detail, and perception. Yet the editions in print during most of the twentieth century would not have met Lane's approval. Lacking parts of Lane's text and many of his original illustrations (while adding many that were not his), they were based on what should have been ephemeral editions, published long after the author's death. Meanwhile, the definitive fifth edition of 1860, the result of a quarter century of Lane's corrections, reconsiderations, and additions, long ago disappeared from bookstore shelves. Now the 1860 edition of Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians is available again, with a useful general introduction by Jason Thompson. Lane's greatest work enters the twenty-first century in precisely the form that he wanted.

Trying to evade intelligence agencies out to assassinate him, the Cerebellum, an Egyptian scientist with a past association with the Iraqi nuclear program, rents a room on the roof of a brothel in a Cairo slum. His interaction with the other residents is limited; instead he spends most of his time in the virtual world, where he has a love affair with candygirl, a gorgeous avatar.

This volume presents a pioneering collection of analyses focused on the ideologies and activities of formal women's organizations and informal women's groups across a range of Arab countries. With contributions on Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and the Arab diaspora in the United States, Mapping Arab Women's Movements delineates similarities and differences between historical and contemporary efforts towards greater gender justice. The authors explore the origins of women's movements, trace their development during the past century, and address the impact of counter-movements, alliances, and international collaborations within the region and beyond.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Egyptian women gained the unique right to divorce their husbands unilaterally through a procedure called khul'. Notwithstanding attempts to present the law as being grounded in Islamic law, opponents claim that khul' is a rich-women's law and a Western conspiracy aimed at destroying Egyptian family life and Egyptian society, by extension. Nadia Sonneveld explores the nature of the public debates - including films and cartoons -- and examines the application of khul' in the courts and everyday life, comparing the debate to the actual implementation of khul' in everyday life.

This sequel to the well-known kullu tamam!, on Egyptian Arabic, by the same authors, focuses on the modern written language used in real life by providing short texts taken from Egyptian newspapers, official statements, and the internet, and introduces personal and business letters, some of them in handwritten form (ruq'a). For those who have studied kullu tamam!, the first lessons give contrastive word lists and exercises to make the link with Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. Extensive pattern drills, translation exercises in both directions, and writing exercises aid understanding and encourage active use of the language. The key to the exercises, the Arabic -English / English -Arabic glossary, and the audio CD containing the texts allow for classroom use as well as for self-study.

Waqfs (pious endowments) long held a crucial place in the political, economic, and social life of the Islamic world. Waqfs were major sources of education, health care, and employment; they shaped the city and contributed to the upkeep of religious edifices. They constituted a major resource, and their status was at stake in repeated struggles to impose competing definitions of legitimacy and community. Closer examination of the diverse legal, institutional, and practical aspects of waqfs in different regions and communities is necessary to a deeper understanding of their dynamism and resilience. This volume, which evolved from papers delivered at the 2005 American University in Cairo Annual History Seminar, offers a meticulous set of studies that fills a gap in our knowledge of waqf and its uses.

Using the life and writings of Cyril III Ibn Laqlaq, 75th patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, along with a variety of Christian and Muslim chroniclers, this study explores the identity and context of the Christian community of Egypt and its relations with the leadership of the Ayyubid dynasty in the early thirteenth century. Kurt Werthmuller introduces new scholarship that illuminates the varied relationships between medieval Christians of Egypt and their Muslim neighbors. Demonstrating that the Coptic community was neither passive nor static, the author discusses the active role played by the Copts in the formation and evolution of their own identity within the wider political and societal context of this period. In particular, he examines the boundaries between Copts and the wider Egyptian society in the Ayyubid period in three "e;in-between spaces"e;: patriarchal authority, religious conversion, and monasticism.

A Field Guide to the Mammals of Egypt is the first comprehensive field guide to every mammal species recorded in contemporary Egypt, from gazelle to gerbil, from hyena to hyrax. Each mammal species is described in detail, with reference to identification features, status, habitat, and habits, and with comparisons to similar species. A map is also provided for each species, clearly showing its current, and in some cases historical, range. Every species is meticulously illustrated-the bats and sea mammals in detailed black-and-white illustrations, all other species in scientifically accurate color plates. Additional vignettes emphasize aspects of mammal behavior, cover the minutiae of such features as the nose-leafs and ear structure of the various bat species, and illustrate the tracks and trails of the more commonly encountered mammals. This is an indispensable reference work for anyone interested in the wildlife of Egypt, from professional biologists to desert travelers and interested amateurs. Furthermore, as it describes and illustrates every whale and dolphin species recorded in Egyptian waters, including the Red Sea, it will be of special significance to anyone diving in the region. The book is compact, easy to slip into a daypack, and well up to the rigors of desert travel.

Key selections of Egyptian authors by the world renowned, award-winning translator of Arabic fiction. Ideal introduction to the Arabic short story for anyone studying Arabic.