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It’s Turkey Tuesday! Enjoy this publisher’s binding and these photographs from late 1800s Istanbul. The first photo shows the Valley of the Sweet Waters near the Golden Horn. The second photo shows the Yıldız Palace, which was a former residence of Sultans.

Images from: Clara Erskine Clement’s Constantinople: The City of the Sultans. Boston: Estes and Lauriat, ©1895.

Call Number: DR721 .E951

Catalog Record: https://bit.ly/3l4EBTT

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This late nineteenth century travelogue chronicles the journey of a French delegation from Bombay to Constantinople. It includes numerous engravings created from pencil illustrations completed on the spot.  

Images from: A. Locher’s With star and crescent…Philadelphia: Ætna Publishing Company, 1890.

Call Number: DS48.2 .L8 1890

Catalog Record: https://bit.ly/37qSJBX

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Publisher’s binding from the 1852 travelogue Howadji in Syria by George William Curtis.

Call Number for image: DS94 .C97 1852 Catalog Record: https://bit.ly/3oK2wdo

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The “White Lady” at Zentralfriedhof, Vienna by Marcus Propostus~

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« Nos cavaliers portaient des têtes au bout de leurs lances. »

Simple observation d’un général français en 1840, lors de la conquête de l’Algérie. En 2011, un chercheur algérien a découvert que des têtes coupées de ceux qui résistèrent sont empilées aujourd’hui au Musée de l’Homme à Paris dans l’indifférence générale. Une pétition réclame le retour de ces crânes au pays natal. Il y a un lien entre la terreur colonialiste  d’alors et le terrorisme d’aujourd’hui ; sans justice, la terreur s’enfonce dans l’inconscient des peuples comme ces bombes enfouies qu’un simple choc fait exploser bien des années plus tard.

« … Un plein baril d’oreilles… Les oreilles indigènes valurent longtemps dix francs la paire et leurs femmes, demeurèrent comme eux d’ailleurs, un gibier parfait… » [1]

C’est en ces termes choisis qu’un général français racontait les exploits de ses troupes pendant la guerre de conquête de l’Algérie.

« … Tout ce qui vivait fut voué à la mort… On ne fit aucune distinction d’âge, ni de sexe… En revenant de cette funeste expédition plusieurs de nos cavaliers portaient des têtes au bout de leurs lances… »

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Attia’s piece, “Untitled (Ghardaïa),” is part of an exhibition called “But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa.” He chose couscous as his medium because the dish is more than a thousand years old, predating the Arabs and modern Europeans who invaded the region, and because it transcends religion, serving as a staple not only in Muslim homes but at the Shabbat dinners of North African Jews. Couscous also bears a nifty resemblance to sand, and the work-in-progress could have passed for an elaborate sandcastle. At the center of a circular platform rose a yellowish minaret, surrounded by squat houses with sloping walls, rounded parapets, and roofs topped by domes. Attia said he was amazed to learn that Le Corbusier visited Ghardaïa in the nineteen-thirties and was captivated by its minimalism and its community-oriented urban plan, lessons that he and his fellow-modernist Fernand Pouillon applied to the apartment blocks they later built in France, which now house North African immigrants.

Attia calls his piece a “postmortem dinner” for the architects, chiding them for appropriating North Africa’s aesthetic without giving credit. “Everyone knows that Braque and Picasso were strongly influenced by the tribal, primitive art of Africa,” he said. “This never happened in architecture. We don’t know the influence of traditional architecture on architects like Le Corbusier.”

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Gardens Speak

Across Syria, many gardens conceal the dead bodies of activists and protesters who adorned the streets during the early periods of the uprising. These domestic burials play out a continuing collaboration between the living and the dead. The dead protect the living by not exposing them to further danger at the hands of the regime. The living protect the dead by conserving their identities, telling their stories, and not allowing their deaths to become instruments to the regime.

Gardens Speak is an interactive sound installation containing the oral histories of ten ordinary people who were buried in Syrian gardens. Each narrative has been carefully constructed with the friends and family members of the deceased to retell their stories as they themselves may have recounted it. They are compiled with found audio that evidences their final moments.

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Matiullah Wesa with his niece outside the library he established 3 years ago in his family’s home in Spinbaldak, in southern Afghanistan. Inside, the library has nearly 4,000 books organized on neat metal shelves. A volunteer organization Matiullah started as a teenager is working to reopen schools closed because of violence and to bring books to some of Afghanistan’s worst-affected conflict areas. The organization began a national book drive last year, collecting about 20,000 books that have helped establish 7 modest libraries in provinces with a reputation for some of the worst violence of the war. “If this library was in the city, we would have 100 visitors a day,” Matiullah said. “But to me, the 5 visitors in the village are more important than the 100 in the city.” @andrewquilty photographed Matiullah, now 22 and finishing a degree in political science in India, as a dust storm approached in February. #📚 by nytimes http://ift.tt/1M33InT

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Lebanese schoolgirls play on a hill in the village of Baawerta overlooking the Lebanese capital Beirut. March 30, 2016. Patrick Baz

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Trip to Sinai and Petra, A bedouin woman’s head-dress, 1938.

Bedouin girl (Egyptian type) bringing in the oranges, 1938. 

Source [x].

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On April 22, 353 CE, the famous calligrapher Wang Xizhi traveled with forty friends and family members to the picturesque Orchid Pavilion, a private retreat he had built in a nearby mountain valley. They celebrated an ancient springtime purification ceremony that had transformed into a secular holiday, during which people would gather near water to enjoy the scenery, eat and drink, and compose poetry. Cups were floated down the waterway, and everyone had to compose a poem when a cup arrived at his location—or pay the penalty of drinking three dippers of wine.

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3.

Kamaleddin Behzad (Turkmen period)

a) Battleground of Timur and the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt

b) Yusef and Zuleykha

1488, miniature

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A general view shows a mural painted on the walls of houses in Zaraeeb, created by French-Tunisian artist El Seed, in the shanty area known also as Zabaleen or “Garbage City” on the Mokattam Hills in eastern Cairo, Egypt on April 4, 2016. (Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

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2.

Mehmed Siyah Kalem

Lion and Bull

15th century, Topkapi Saray museum, Istanbul

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But Joan Alvado shows us something different. His photo series, "Cuban Muslims," focuses on the lives of those who have converted to Islam.

"I have learned more things about Islam and Islamic beliefs and their ideas in Havana than working in Turkey," the Spanish photographer said.

"When I learned there was Islam and a Muslim community, I really liked it because I never heard of it," Alvado said. "It was breaking all the preconceived ideas that we have about Cuban society."

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Image taken from page 225 of 'The Conquest of the Moon: a story of the Bayouda' by The British Library Via Flickr: Image taken from: Title: "The Conquest of the Moon: a story of the Bayouda" Author: LAURIE, André - pseud. [i.e. Paschal Grousset.] Shelfmark: "British Library HMNTS 012632.m.10." Page: 225 Place of Publishing: London Date of Publishing: 1889 Publisher: Sampson Low & Co. Issuance: monographic Identifier: 002089008 Explore: Find this item in the British Library catalogue, 'Explore'. Download the PDF for this book (volume: 0) Image found on book scan 225 (NB not necessarily a page number) Download the OCR-derived text for this volume: (plain text) or (json) Click here to see all the illustrations in this book and click here to browse other illustrations published in books in the same year. Order a higher quality version from here.

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Image taken from page 11 of 'De Aardbol. Magazijn van hedendaagsche land- en volkenkunde ... Met platen en kaarten. [Deel 4-9 by P. H. W.]' by The British Library Via Flickr: Image taken from: Title: "De Aardbol. Magazijn van hedendaagsche land- en volkenkunde ... Met platen en kaarten. [Deel 4-9 by P. H. W.]" Contributor: WITKAMP, Pieter Harme. Shelfmark: "British Library HMNTS 10002.g.16-19." Volume: 09 Page: 11 Place of Publishing: Amsterdam Date of Publishing: 1839 Issuance: monographic Identifier: 000001929 Explore: Find this item in the British Library catalogue, 'Explore'. Download the PDF for this book (volume: 09) Image found on book scan 11 (NB not necessarily a page number) Download the OCR-derived text for this volume: (plain text) or (json) Click here to see all the illustrations in this book and click here to browse other illustrations published in books in the same year. Order a higher quality version from here.