Embracing all eras and highlighting the many faces of Sufism, this collection provides a matchless overview of the complex, rich traditional that has touched a dozen cultures and endured for more than fifteen hundred years.Selected works from ancient prophets and sages to contemporary Sufi poets and teachers – including Ibn, Arabi, al-Ghazzali, Hafiz, Attar, Koranic writers, and, of course, the enduringly popular Rumi – make up a delectable feast of writings that will be treasured by devoted Sufi lovers as it will stir the souls of newcomers to this mystical, passionate faith."A treasure of jewels in the tradition of Sufi soul-work. I really love and value this book."COLEMAN BARKS, author of 'The Essential Rumi'

    The United States and Iran have long eyed each other with suspicion, all too eager to jump to conclusions and slam the door. What gets lost along the way is a sense of what is actually happening inside Iran and why it matters. With a new hard-line Iranian president making incendiary pronouncements and pressing for nuclear developments, the consequences of not understanding Iran have never been higher.Ray Takeyh, a leading expert on Iran's politics and history, has written a groundbreaking book that demystifies the Iranian regime and shows how the fault lines of Iran's domestic politics serve to explain its behavior. In "Hidden Iran," he explains why this country has so often confounded American expectations and why its outward hostility does not necessarily preclude the normalization of relations. Through a clearer understanding of the competing claims of Muslim theology, republican pragmatism, and factional competition, he offers a new paradigm for managing our relations with this rising power.

    A principal component of these resources is 'cohesion'. This book studies the cohesion that arises from semantic relations between sentences. Reference from one to the other, repetition of word meanings, the conjunctive force of but, so, then and the like are considered. Further, it describes a method for analysing and coding sentences, which is applied to specimen texts.

    The present work is the first edition of selections from Martial to be published for decades, and the first ever to include a fully representative selection of the oeuvre of the poet, who has often been criticised, unfairly, the authors argue, for obscenity and flattery of the Emperor Domitian. The epigrams included in the selection are organised under various heads, e.g. Martial and poetry, sexual mores, satirical pieces. A very full introduction deals with such topics as the prejudices and predilections of his audience which conditioned Martial's choice of subject matter, Martial's language, the structure and style of the epigrams, the epigrammatic tradition and Martial's creative engagement with it. The detailed commentary is suitable for use with undergraduates and is distinguished by its focus on social history as well as literary interpretation.

    B. Parkinson's new translations bring to life for the modern reader the golden age of Egyptian fictional literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1940-1640 BC). The book features The Tale of Sinuhe, acclaimed as the masterpiece of Egyptian poetry, which tells of a courtier's adventures after he flees Egypt. Other works include stories of fantastic wonders from the court of the builder of the Great Pyramid, a lyrical dialogue between a man and his soul on the nature of death and the problem of suffering, and teachings about the nature of virtue and wisdom, one of which is bitterly spoken from the grave by the assassinated king Amenemhat I, founder of the Twelfth Dynasty. A general introduction discusses the historical context of the poetry, the nature of poetry, and the role of literature in ancient Egyptian culture., while a full set of notes explicates allusions, details of mythology, place-names, and the like. Parkinson's book provides, for the first time, a literary reading to enable these poems to entertain and instruct the modern reader, as they did their original audiences three-and-a-half thousand years ago.Content:TALES1 The Tale of Sinuhe2 The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant3 The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor4. The Tale of King Cheops’ CourtDISCOURSES5. The Words of Neferti6. The Words of Khakheprreseneb7. The Dialogue of a Man and his Soul8. The Dialogue of Ipuur and the Lord of AllTEACHINGS9. The teaching of King Amenenmhat10. The Teaching of King Merikare11. The ‘Loyalist’ Teaching12. The teaching of the Vizier Ptahhotep13. The Teaching of KhetiPHRASES AND FRAGMENTS14. Phrases and Fragments

    All the seven original books are here reprinted together, with all the original edifying illustrations by B.T.B. and Nicolas Bentley. The original square album format has been retained. The world will be undeniably a worse place when Freud supersedes Belloc, and children and their maladjusted parents are no longer brought up on these moral rhymes. The publishers therefore dare to hope that common sense may prevail and this collected volume remain a standard article of British nursery furniture for hundreds of years to come.

    or can it bring us together?Where God Was Born combines the adventure of a wartime chronicle, the excitement of an archaeological detective story, and the insight of personal spiritual exploration. Taking readers to biblical sites not seen by Westerners for decades, Feiler's journey uncovers little-known details about the common roots of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and affirms the importance of the Bible in today's world.In his intimate, accessible style, Feiler invites readers on a never-in-a-lifetime experience:Israel Feiler takes a perilous helicopter dive over Jerusalem, treks through secret underground tunnels, and locates the spot where David toppled Goliath.Iraq After being airlifted into Baghdad, Feiler visits the Garden of Eden and the birthplace of Abraham, and makes a life-threatening trip to the rivers of Babylon.Iran Feiler explores the home of the Bible's first messiah and uncovers the secret burial place of Queen Esther.In Where God Was Born, Feiler discovers that at the birth of Western religion, all faiths drew from one another and were open to coexistence. Feiler's bold realization is that the Bible argues for interfaith harmony. It cannot be ceded to one side in the debate over values. Feiler urges moderates to take back the Bible and use its powerful voice as a beacon of shared ideals.In his most ambitious work to date, Bruce Feiler has written a brave, uplifting story that stirs the deepest chords of our time. Where God Was Born offers a rare, universal vision of God that can inspire different faiths to an allegiance of hope.

    & Ted Hughes, David Rosenberg, et al. A new printing of this large collection by the poet commonly regarded as Israel's most prominent and one of the major contemporary world poets. Born in Germany in 1924, Amichai left with his family for Israel in 1936.

    Ideal for contemporary literature studies. Each book contains the following: text with notes that enhance comprehension, a basic outline of society and culture, a literary analysis of the work by prominent scholars and a chronological chart.

    Ultimately, they came to face disappointment, exile, and, on occasion, death. Brilliantly weaving together the strands of a tumultuous century in Arab political thought, history, and poetry, Ajami takes us from the ruins of Beirut's once glittering metropolis to the land of Egypt, where struggle rages between a modernist impulse and an Islamist insurgency, from Nasser's pan-Arab nationalist ambitions to the emergence of an uneasy Pax Americana in Arab lands, from the triumphalism of the Gulf War to the continuing anguished debate over the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords.For anyone who seeks to understand the Middle East, here is an insider's unflinching analysis of the collision between intellectual life and political realities in the Arab world today.

    A love letter to the country and people of Yemen, a portrait of young Muslim womanhood in New York after 9/11, and an extraordinarily composed examination of what it means to carry in the body the echoes of what came before, Almontaser’s polyvocal collection sneaks artifacts to and from worlds, repurposing language and adapting to the space between cultures. Half-crunk and hungry, speakers move with the force of what cannot be contained by the limits of the American imagination, and instead invest in troublemaking and trickery, navigate imperial violence across multiple accents and anthems, and apply gang signs in henna, utilizing any means necessary to form a semblance of home. In doing so, The Wild Fox of Yemen fearlessly rides the tension between carnality and tenderness in the unruly human spirit.

    He's set to wrestle and study creative writing at Columbia University in New York. These poems are a look into his early experiences with love and loss, an introspective coming of age tale told in verse.

    John R. Bradley uniquely exposes the turmoil that is shaking the House of Saud to its foundations, including the problems within the new leadership. From the heart of the secretive Islamic kingdom's urban centers to its most remote mountainous terrain, he provides intimate details and reveals regional, religious, and tribal rivalries. Bradley highlights tensions generated by social change, the increasing restlessness of Saudi youth with limited cultural and political outlets, and the predicament of Saudi women seeking opportunities but facing constraints. What are the implications for the Sauds and the West? This book offers a startling look at the present predicament and a troubling view of the future.

    detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. According to Department of Defense data, fewer than half of them are accused of committing any hostile act against the United States or its allies. In hundreds of cases, even the circumstances of their initial detainment are questionable. This collection gives voice to the men held at Guantánamo. Available only because of the tireless efforts of pro bono attorneys who submitted each line to Pentagon scrutiny, Poems from Guantánamo brings together twenty-two poems by seventeen detainees, most still at Guantánamo, in legal limbo. If, in the words of Audre Lorde, poetry “forms the quality of light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change,” these verses—some originally written in toothpaste, others scratched onto foam drinking cups with pebbles and furtively handed to attorneys—are the most basic form of the art. Death Poem by Jumah al Dossari Take my blood. Take my death shroud and The remnants of my body. Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely. Send them to the world, To the judges and To the people of conscience, Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded. And let them bear the guilty burden before the world, Of this innocent soul. Let them bear the burden before their children and before history, Of this wasted, sinless soul, Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors or peace." Jumah al Dossari is a thirty-three-year old Bahraini who has been held at Guantanamo Bay for more than five years. He has been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the U.S. military, has tried to kill himself twelve times while in custody.

    Confusion reigns on the island of Ooroo when the letter O is banished.