How could you determine a man's intention if you didn't speak his language or share his beliefs? She'd happily embarked on a study of ancient Egyptian religion but had no curiosity about Islam, which seemed an amalgam of oddities and borrowings. She felt with conviction what she'd written home more than once--that Egypt would be an exquisite country if not for the Egyptians who lived there.
Enid Shomerريقك بطعم العسل
إيه اللي قلبه مرار
كان نفسي أكون لك ولي
واطفي بإيدي النار
فستان زفافك دبل
ولا عاد فرح يرويه
Tags: poetry revolution egypt
The life of Islamic philosophy did not terminate with Ibn Rushd nearly eight hundred years ago, as thought by Western scholarship for several centuries. Rather, its activities continued strongly during the later centuries, particularly in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam, and it was revived in Egypt during the last century.
Seyyed Hossein NasrTags: philosophy persia egypt islamic
A bare two years after Vasco da Gama’s voyage a Portuguese fleet led by Pedro Alvarez Cabral arrived on the Malabar coast. Cabral delivered a letter from the king of Portugal to the Samudri (Samudra-raja or Sea-king), the Hindu ruler of the city-state of Calicut, demanding that he expel all Muslims from his kingdom as they were enemies of the ‘Holy Faith’. He met with a blank refusal; then afterwards the Samudra steadfastly maintained that Calicut had always been open to everyone who wished to trade there…
During those early years the people who had traditionally participated in the Indian Ocean trade were taken completely by surprise. In all the centuries in which it had flourished and grown, no state or kings or ruling power had ever before tried to gain control of the Indian Ocean trade by force of arms. The territorial and dynastic ambitions that were pursued with such determination on land were generally not allowed to spill over into the sea.
Within the Western historiographical record the unarmed character of the Indian Ocean trade is often represented as a lack, or failure, one that invited the intervention of Europe, with its increasing proficiency in war. When a defeat is as complete as was that of the trading cultures of the Indian Ocean, it is hard to allow the vanquished the dignity of nuances of choice and preference. Yet it is worth allowing for the possibility that the peaceful traditions of the oceanic trade may have been, in a quiet and inarticulate way, the product of a rare cultural choice — one that may have owed a great deal to the pacifist customs and beliefs of the Gujarati Jains and Vanias who played such an important part in it. At the time, at least one European was moved to bewilderment by the unfamiliar mores of the region; a response more honest perhaps than the trust in historical inevitability that has supplanted it since. ‘The heathen [of Gujarat]’, wrote Tomé Pires, early in the sixteenth century, ‘held that they must never kill anyone, nor must they have armed men in their company. If they were captured and [their captors] wanted to kill them all, they did not resist. This is the Gujarat law among the heathen.’
It was because of those singular traditions, perhaps, that the rulers of the Indian Ocean ports were utterly confounded by the demands and actions of the Portuguese. Having long been accustomed to the tradesmen’s rules of bargaining and compromise they tried time and time again to reach an understanding with the Europeans — only to discover, as one historian has put it, that the choice was ‘between resistance and submission; co-operation was not offered.’ Unable to compete in the Indian Ocean trade by purely commercial means, the Europeans were bent on taking control of it by aggression, pure and distilled, by unleashing violence on a scale unprecedented on those shores.
Tags: anthropology egypt travel-writing
كل شىء من حولى كئيب ممل يدعو إلى التململ والقرف، الغريب أنه، وفى تلك المرة بالذات، لم يكن السبب هو مرسى، أو ربما كان هو ولكن فى إحدى صوره أو أسبابه، يقفز إلى ذهنى أحياناً مصير مشابه لانكسار صلاح جاهين أو تحطم نجيب سرور أو الموت كمداً كما صلاح عبدالصبور، وربما عزلة جمال حمدان «لعلى أبلغ الأسباب».
هشام علامToday there is a deep longing in our culture to reconnect to this spiritual world, for we are not whole without it. But our longing cannot be satisfied by embracing religious belief alone, no matter how emotional the embrace, for our longing is at root a hunger and thirst for the experience of interior realities. If, however, we are to forge a new relationship to the invisible world of spirit based on experience, what will distinguish it from the past is the modern necessity that it be based on our own autonomy as free individuals, able to think, decide, and act for ourselves.
Jeremy NadlerTags: nature religion spirituality autonomy egypt
...The queen's mocking laughter cut in. "This is your treasure, Lord Sheftu?"
"Aye. The greatest treasure in Egypt—a maid whose loyalty cannot be bought. Whatever bargain we make, Daughter of the Sun, must include her freedom.
Tags: historical-fiction egypt ancient-egypt ya-fiction
I'm Carter Kane-part-time high school freshman, part-time magician, full-time worrier about all the Egyptian gods and monsters who are constantly trying to kill me.
Okay, that last part is an exaggeration. Not all the gods want me dead. Just a lot of them.
Tags: egypt carter-kane son-of-sobek
Yes. I'm an Israeli citizen living in a dream world; a Jewish princess in Arabia, I should have listened to my own children. For God’s sake. Egypt is not my country!
Linda Ruth HorowitzTags: jewish arabia egypt israeli
The early and relatively sophisticated Egyptians understood that their civilization would be threatened if they bred with the Negroes to their south, so pharaohs went so far as "to prevent the mongrelization of the Egyptian race" by making it a death penalty-eligible offense to bring blacks into Egypt. The ancient Egyptians even constructed a fort on the Nile in central Egypt to prevent blacks from immigrating to their lands. In spite of the efforts by the Egyptian government to defend their civilization, blacks still came to Egypt as soldiers, slaves, and captives from other nations. By 1,500 B.C., half of the population of southern Egypt was of mixed blood, and by 688 B.C., societal progress had ended in Egypt when Taharka became the first mulatto pharaoh. By 332 B.C., Egypt had fallen when Alexander the Great conquered the region.
Kyle BristowTags: egypt mulatto history-repeats pharaoh
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