In this comprehensive study, Michael Gomez establishes tangible links between the African American community and its African origins and traces the process by which African populations exchanged their distinct ethnic identities for onedefined primarily by the conception of race. He examines transformations in the politics, social structures, and religions of slave populations through 1830, by which time the contours of a new African American identity had begun to emerge.After discussing specific ethnic groups in Africa, Gomez follows their movement to North America, where they tended to be amassed in recognizable concentrations within individual colonies (and, later, states). For this reason, he argues, it is possible to identify particular ethnic cultural influences and ensuing social formations that heretofore have been considered unrecoverable. Using sources pertaining to the African continentas well as runaway slave advertisements, ex-slave narratives, and folklore, Gomez reveals concrete and specific links between particular African populations and their North American progeny, thereby shedding new light on subsequent African American social formation.

    Its inscription, recorded in three distinct scripts - ancient Greek, Coptic, and hieroglyphic--would provide scholars with the first clues to unlocking the secrets of Egyptian hieroglyphs, a language lost for nearly two millennia. More than twenty years later a remarkably gifted Frenchman named Jean-Francois Champollion successfully deciphered the hieroglyphs on the stele, now commonly known as the Rosetta Stone, sparking a revolution in our knowledge of ancient Egypt.Cracking the Egyptian Code is the first biography in English of Champollion, widely regarded as the founder of Egyptology. Andrew Robinson meticulously reconstructs how Champollion cracked the code of the hieroglyphic script, describing how Champollion started with Egyptian obelisks in Rome and papyri in European collections, sailed the Nile for a year, studied the tombs in the Valley of the Kings (a name he first coined), and carefully compared the three scripts on the Rosetta Stone to penetrate the mystery of the hieroglyphic text. Robinson also brings to life the rivalry between Champollion and the English scientist Thomas Young, who claimed credit for launching the decipherment, which Champollion hotly denied. There is much more to Champollion's life than the Rosetta Stone and Robinson gives equal weight to the many roles he played in his tragically brief life, from a teenage professor in Revolutionary France to a supporter of Napoleon (whom he met), an exile, and a curator at the Louvre.Extensively illustrated in color and black-and-white pictures, Cracking the Egyptian Code will appeal to a wide readership interested in Egypt, decipherment and code-breaking, and Napoleon and the French Revolution.

    Just who were the Christians in the Arabic-speaking milieu of Mohammed and the Qur'an? The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque is the first book-length discussion in English of the cultural and intellectual life of such Christians indigenous to the Islamic world. Sidney Griffith offers an engaging overview of their initial reactions to the religious challenges they faced, the development of a new mode of presenting Christian doctrine as liturgical texts in their own languages gave way to Arabic, the Christian role in the philosophical life of early Baghdad, and the maturing of distinctive Oriental Christian denominations in this context.Offering a fuller understanding of the rise of Islam in its early years from the perspective of contemporary non-Muslims, this book reminds us that there is much to learn from the works of people who seriously engaged Muslims in their own world so long ago.

    In a bar brawl, he accidentally kills the vizier's eldest son. For punishment, the king renders an unusual verdict: life in the service of the dead at the weryt, the walled-off embalming compound.At the same time, young ladies at the pharaoh's court drop dead without obvious cause. When the corpses are brought to the weryt, Hori, now trained in embalming and organ removal, discovers the girls were murdered. Only he can't leave the place without turning his life sentence into a death sentence—or can he? An adventurous investigation unfolds.

    Alongside his explorations of ancient Egypt's monuments and gods, Brunton encounters a variety of occultists, fakirs, and dervishes, and even manages to become initiated into the deadly art of snake charming. His frank interviews with Muslim leaders remain relevant today, and his description of the Hajj reflects the beauty and inspiring faith of Mohammad's true followers. Brunton's journey to discover the furthest reaches of what the mind and body are capable of--and to distinguish various forms of yoga and magic from true spirituality--lead him to the myth of Osiris and to the mystery that is the Sphinx itself. In the end, Brunton turns his attention to his own spiritual path, connecting all of his experiences into a single discovery: that we are more than the body and that the freedom of our spirit can be experienced here and now. This new edition has been updated to incorporate Brunton's final revisions and includes an introduction by the Paul Brunton Philosophic Foundation.  "Paul Brunton was a great original and got to a place of personal evolution that illumines the pathways of a future humanity." --Jean Houston, author of A Passion for the Possible and A Mythic Life"Any serious man or woman in search of spiritual ideas will find a surprising challenge and an authentic source of inspiration and intellectual nourishment in the writings of Paul Brunton."--Jacob Needleman, author of What is God? From the Trade Paperback edition.

    But what is Orientalism, and who were the Orientalists, and how did Western scholars of Islamic culture come to be vilified as insidious agents of European imperialism? In Robert Irwin's groundbreaking new history, he answers this question with a detailed and colorful story of the motley crew of intellectuals and eccentrics who brought an understanding of the Islamic world to the West. In a narrative that ranges from an analysis of Ancient Greek perceptions of the Persians to a portrait of the first Western European translators of Arabic to the contemporary Muslim world's perceptions of the Western study of Islam, Irwin affirms the value of the Orientalists' legacy: not only for the contemporary scholars who have disowned it, but also for anyone committed to fostering the cross-cultural understanding which could bridge the real or imagined gulf between Islamic and Western civilization. Dangerous Knowledge is a both riveting and entertaining history, a bold argument, and an urgent redress of our conceptions about Western culture's relationship with its nearest neighbor.

    It is both a great monument to Islamic scholarship and a time capsule allowing us into the world over a millennium ago.

    What follows is the story of two British officers whose spirits the Japanese try to break. Yet out of all the violence and misery strange bonds of love and friendship are forged between the prisoners - and their gaolers. It is a battle of survival that becomes a battle of contrasting wills and philosophies as the intensity of the men's relationship develops.

    To better understand them, we need to acknowledge how Western imperialism negatively shaped the region and its destiny in the half-century between World War I and the happenings of the Cold War. That is the challenging argument of The Poisoned Well, which provides a vivid account of the struggle against European colonial rule in ten states stretching from North Africa to south Arabia.Drawing on a rich cast of eye-witnesses - ranging from nationalists and colonial administrators to soldiers, spies, and courtesans - The Poisoned Well brings to life the story of the making of the Middle East, highlighting the great dramas of decolonization such as the end of the Palestine mandate, the Suez crisis, the Algerian war of independence, and the retreat from Aden. It argues that imperialism sowed the seeds of future conflict - and poisoned relations between the Middle East and the West.Bolstered by firsthand accounts and interviews, readers will find a wise and humanistic account of the struggle for independence in the Middle East. Written by a former BBC journalist, it is a far-ranging, landmark work that will serve as the definitive history of Western imperialism in the Middle East for years to come.

    It is this civilization and its destruction at the hands of the West that Richard Hall recreates in this book. Hall's history of the exploration and exploitation by Chinese and Arab travellers, and by the Portuguese, Dutch and British alike is one of brutality, betrayal and colonial ambition.

    Yet, unlike most of his fellow citizens, he is prone to sudden dislocations in time. Armed with his trusty briefcase and his Islamic-calendar wristwatch, he bounces uncontrollably through the Fatimid, Ayyubid, and Mamluk periods, with occasional return visits to the 1990s. Along the way, he meets celebrities such as Jawhar, the founder of Cairo. He also encounters other time travelers, including the historian Maqrizi. In every age, he is forced to match wits with ordinary Egyptians from all walks of life. After his cassette recorder fails to impress a Fatimid caliph, he finds himself trapped in the 1300s. He joins the barbarians, cannibals, and prisoners of war who have taken over the monumental Storehouse of Banners and set up their own state in defiance of the Mamluk order. Forced to play the role of double agent, Ibn Shalabi is caught up in the struggle between the rebels and the ruling dynasty.

    A biography on a grand scale, it brilliantly explicates one man’s life against the background of the social, religious, and political issues of his time.Maimonides was born in Córdoba, in Muslim-ruled Spain, in 1138 and died in Cairo in 1204. He lived in an Arab-Islamic environment from his early years in Spain and North Africa to his later years in Egypt, where he was immersed in its culture and society. His life, career, and writings are the highest expression of the intertwined worlds of Judaism and Islam. Maimonides lived in tumultuous times, at the peak of the Reconquista in Spain and the Crusades in Palestine. His monumental compendium of Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, became a basis of all subsequent Jewish legal codes and brought him recognition as one of the foremost lawgivers of humankind. In Egypt, his training as a physician earned him a place in the entourage of the great Sultan Saladin, and he wrote medical works in Arabic that were translated into Hebrew and Latin and studied for centuries in Europe. As a philosopher and scientist, he contributed to mathematics and astronomy, logic and ethics, politics and theology. His Guide of the Perplexed, a masterful interweaving of religious tradition and scientific and philosophic thought, influenced generations of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish thinkers.Now, in a dazzling work of scholarship, Joel Kraemer tells the complete story of Maimonides’ rich life. MAIMONIDES is at once a portrait of a great historical figure and an excursion into the Mediterranean world of the twelfth century. Joel Kraemer draws on a wealth of original sources to re-create a remarkable period in history when Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions clashed and mingled in a setting alive with intense intellectual exchange and religious conflict.

    Half a decade later, the international media has largely moved on from Egypt's explosive cycles of revolution and counter-revolution - but the Arab World's most populous nation remains as volatile as ever, its turmoil intimately bound up with forms of authoritarian power and grassroots resistance that stretch right across the globe.In The Egyptians: A Radical Story, Jack Shenker uncovers the roots of the uprising that succeeded in toppling Hosni Mubarak, one of the Middle East's most entrenched dictators, and explores a country now divided between two irreconcilable political orders. Challenging conventional analyses that depict contemporary Egypt as a battle between Islamists and secular forces, The Egyptians illuminates other, far more important fault lines: the far-flung communities waging war against transnational corporations, the men and women fighting to subvert long-established gender norms, the workers dramatically seizing control of their own factories, and the cultural producers (novelists, graffiti artists and illicit bedroom DJs) appropriating public space in defiance of their repressive and increasingly violent western-backed regime.Situating the Egyptian revolution in its proper context - not as an isolated event, but as an ongoing popular struggle against a certain model of state authority and economic exclusion that is replicated in different forms around the world - The Egyptians explains why the events of the past five years have proved so threatening to elites both inside Egypt and abroad. As Egypt's rulers seek to eliminate all forms of dissent, seeded within the rebellious politics of Egypt's young generation are big ideas about democracy, sovereignty, social justice and resistance that could yet change the world.

    Out of the depth of her own spiritual experiences, world Christian Corrie ten Boom shares with her Christian readers that the victory has been already won and the enemy of our souls defeated in God's timeless eternity.

     The ancient civilisation is enjoying unprecedented prosperity during the 18th Dynasty under some of Egypt’s most famous Pharaohs – Ahmose I, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III, Amenhotep III, Akhenaten and Tutankhamun. But every empire has its rivals – here the Hittites, the Mittani, Nubians and Assyrians – and every royal family its enemies. Smenkhkare is the youngest son of Amenhotep III and brother to Akhenamun – later to become the ruler Akhenaten – and Thutmose, plus three older sisters. The scheming Akhenamun dismisses Smenkhkare as a mere stripling, but the wise warrior Thutmose takes the boy under his wing and sets out to make a man of him. This is crucial for Smenkhkare whose father has decided that the only role for the boy will be through a marriage of convenience to the beautiful Mittani princess Taduheppa. The bride is ravishing – but older and more worldly – and refuses to consummate the coupling. Full of sympathy for his little brother, Thutmose advises patience and also invites Smenkhkare to accompany him on a raid to hunt down bandits who have attacked a caravan in the desert. It is a fateful moment. Thutmose is killed by an arrow through the neck, igniting a calamitous chain of events as Smenkhkare discovers the arrow did not come from a bandit’s bow. Who, then, did fire the fatal missile? Who would benefit most from the death of the man next in line for the pharoah’s throne? Could the murderer be within his own family? Or was someone else close to the family plotting to seize power? Can Smenkhkare trust his favourite sister Nebetah with his thoughts? Can trusted general Coreb help him in his bid to avenge the death of Thutmose? Who would try to eliminate Smenkhkare by placing a deadly cobra in a basket under his bed? And what are the ghastly contents in two other baskets thrust under Smenkhkare’s nose? David Adkins’ absorbing historical re-imagining The Forgotten Pharaoh, explores the extraordinary and dangerous life and times of a real but little known figure from history – from his child-marriage to exile and then reinstatement in Thebes as pharaoh of one of the most influential dynasties of the ancient civilised world. David Adkins is a retired civil servant who worked for many years at English Heritage. He lives in Letchworth Garden City with his wife. His other historical fiction books to date are The Eagle’s Nest and the Wolf’s Lair, The End of a Dynasty and Season of the Gladiatrix.