Kaelen Wilson- Goldie reviews Arabic fiction’s latest succès de scandale.
The Others
Siba al Harez
Telegram Books
Dh68
“What is so frightening, from the start, about our being different?” asks the unnamed narrator of Siba al Harez’s debut novel, The Others. “Is it because we form a storm of question marks, moving fiercely through an undistinguished and previously unnoticed space in this nation, that never before experienced the essence or function of questioning, or of being in a state of difference? Is it because we release an intensity of presence that remains unacknowledged on the map of the world, or between the thighs of a recognised tribe?”
According to her publishers, Siba al Harez is the pseudonym of a 26-year-old woman from Al Qatif in Saudi Arabia. The Others was originally published in Arabic in 2006 and – thanks in part to its transgressive subject matter, including lesbian relationships and sadistic behaviour – quickly rode waves of controversy onto the bestseller lists. The English translation, published this month by Telegram Books in London, comes after a spate of similarly explicit novels, from the first two instalments of Turki al Hamad’s coming-of-age trilogy (also set in Saudi Arabia) to Nedjma’s The Almond: The Sexual Awakening of a Muslim Woman (another pseudonymous effort by a writer living in the Maghreb) and Rajaa Alsanea’s Girls of Riyadh. But while some of those books suffer self-congratulatory prurience or simply bad writing, The Others signals the arrival of a serious prose stylist.
The otherness announced in the novel’s name, and the difference about which the narrator speaks, has little to do with sexual orientation. The real condition of otherness and difference at stake is religious. Like the author, the narrator comes from Al Qatif, a coastal oasis in Saudi Arabia’s predominantly Shiite Eastern Province. In 1979, a violent rebellion broke out there, inspired in part by the revolution in Iran. Tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets, and the ensuing confrontation with the security services left close to 20 demonstrators dead, many of them young activists who had been demanding an end to their political and economic marginalisation.
The conflict in Al Qatif cuts across The Others like a scar. Among other things, it resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of the narrator’s father, who had already been absent most of her life. She seeks refuge in the Hussainiyya, where she organises activities for Ramadan and Ashura. She writes for a religious magazine that is distributed in secret, her meetings with editors murmured, her articles coded on compact discs.
Siba al Harez writes of the body, and its architecture of desire, in a manner that recalls the work of the American novelist Nicole Krauss. The Others opens in the narrator’s voice: “And so there was a long line of them, and I admitted them all. I let them come in through my front door. It was the front door of me, and I, for my part, was about to become something new: an occasion for entertainment, a spectacle.” What follows is a vivid account of the narrator’s affair with her classmate Dai, beautiful, cryptic, violent.
But the relationship cracks under the weight of jealousy, betrayal and the narrator’s inexperience, combined with her mounting curiosity about other women, and men. Turning her back on Dai, she moves on to Dareen, and Rayyan, a young man with whom she pursues a virtual, online-only affair, and Umar, who provides the novel’s unexpectedly conventional endpoint.
In between these dalliances, the narrator peels back the many layers of her otherness: her identity, her age (those toxic teenage years), her illness (epilepsy, which drastically reduces her prospects for marriage and employment), the absence of her father, the mysterious death of her brother, the things mark her as a maskh, “this freak, this deformed creature, this monster”.
In Harez’s rumination on the theme, otherness runs deeper than membership of a social or political minority. It is the experience of being alienated from another, even from the intimacy of one’s partner, to the extent that one becomes a stranger to oneself.
The Others will inevitably be packaged and sold as a novel about sex, particularly in the West. But it should be read as more than that, for it is at its most radical not when the plot dives under the sheets but rather when the author calls attention to the delineation of difference, in the physical body, but moreover, in the body politic.
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie is a staff writer at The Review.
Reproduced from The National: The loves of others
Friday, 13 November 2009
Déjà vu in Astana
We were midway through our tour of Astana, the shiny new capital of Kazakhstan, and our guide was convinced we had taken leave of our senses.
Our group had just been to the top of the Bayterek Monument, a strikingly modern tower that offered views over the attractively designed new buildings aligned along the capital district’s Avenue of the Republic, and it was clear this was our cue to make admiring comments about this city created on the otherwise featureless and treeless plains of the Central Asian steppe.
But for anyone coming from the UAE, that scenario – of the lesser-known capital city of a young but tolerant Islamic nation using its oil wealth to create a modern metropolis in a bleak and unforgiving environment – was a little too familiar to be impressive.
“We’re from Abu Dhabi,” we told our guide. “We don’t want to see new buildings. We want to see nature. We want to see the essence of Central Asia!”
The guide looked at us with blank incomprehension. With the help of the translator, we were told: “There is no nature – only steppe.”
The Astana people we had met so far had all been inestimably proud of this modern new city, basking in the proof they were just like Europe or America and not the Central Asian backwater of popular imagination. It was no wonder the authorities hated the film Borat so much.
So it took a degree of duress to convince our guide to abandon her standard route through the city’s modern architectural marvels and drive us out into the steppe that makes up most of Kazakhstan, the world’s ninth biggest nation.
We eventually found a nondescript village, prompting her to look at us with disbelief, as if to say: “Why on earth would they want to come here?” Instead of mirrored glass, there were sod roofs that traditionally helped the residents cope with temperatures that range from up to 40°C in summer down to -40°C in the depths of winter. Some of the homes had no roofs at all, suggesting a slow depopulation over many years.
But there were also some brand new homes, hinting at an influx of wealth that dated from 12 years ago when the government announced it was moving the capital from the nation’s biggest city, Almaty, in the far south of Kazakhstan, to the outskirts of this hitherto little-known provincial town in the north.
Had we been coming from somewhere other than the UAE, we probably would have been more impressed by how much had been achieved since 1997.
Sited on what had been fields across the river from the historic downtown, nearly everything in the capital district was complete, ranging from the parliament, the presidential palace, government ministries and landmark buildings such as the 77m-high glass pyramid of the multidenominational Palace of Peace and Harmony.
Although there were many international architects brought in (Norman Foster designed three of the buildings) there had also been attempts to incorporate Kazakh themes into the mix, such as the design of the Bayterek Monument, which has a gold-hued transparent orb where the viewing platform is located that is inspired by the ancient Kazakh legend of the samruk bird laying a golden egg containing the secrets to human desires and happiness.
Continue reading: The National: Déjà vu in Astana
Our group had just been to the top of the Bayterek Monument, a strikingly modern tower that offered views over the attractively designed new buildings aligned along the capital district’s Avenue of the Republic, and it was clear this was our cue to make admiring comments about this city created on the otherwise featureless and treeless plains of the Central Asian steppe.
But for anyone coming from the UAE, that scenario – of the lesser-known capital city of a young but tolerant Islamic nation using its oil wealth to create a modern metropolis in a bleak and unforgiving environment – was a little too familiar to be impressive.
“We’re from Abu Dhabi,” we told our guide. “We don’t want to see new buildings. We want to see nature. We want to see the essence of Central Asia!”
The guide looked at us with blank incomprehension. With the help of the translator, we were told: “There is no nature – only steppe.”
The Astana people we had met so far had all been inestimably proud of this modern new city, basking in the proof they were just like Europe or America and not the Central Asian backwater of popular imagination. It was no wonder the authorities hated the film Borat so much.
So it took a degree of duress to convince our guide to abandon her standard route through the city’s modern architectural marvels and drive us out into the steppe that makes up most of Kazakhstan, the world’s ninth biggest nation.
We eventually found a nondescript village, prompting her to look at us with disbelief, as if to say: “Why on earth would they want to come here?” Instead of mirrored glass, there were sod roofs that traditionally helped the residents cope with temperatures that range from up to 40°C in summer down to -40°C in the depths of winter. Some of the homes had no roofs at all, suggesting a slow depopulation over many years.
But there were also some brand new homes, hinting at an influx of wealth that dated from 12 years ago when the government announced it was moving the capital from the nation’s biggest city, Almaty, in the far south of Kazakhstan, to the outskirts of this hitherto little-known provincial town in the north.
Had we been coming from somewhere other than the UAE, we probably would have been more impressed by how much had been achieved since 1997.
Sited on what had been fields across the river from the historic downtown, nearly everything in the capital district was complete, ranging from the parliament, the presidential palace, government ministries and landmark buildings such as the 77m-high glass pyramid of the multidenominational Palace of Peace and Harmony.
Although there were many international architects brought in (Norman Foster designed three of the buildings) there had also been attempts to incorporate Kazakh themes into the mix, such as the design of the Bayterek Monument, which has a gold-hued transparent orb where the viewing platform is located that is inspired by the ancient Kazakh legend of the samruk bird laying a golden egg containing the secrets to human desires and happiness.
Continue reading: The National: Déjà vu in Astana
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
RAK’s sacking still reverberates
RAS AL KHAIMAH // Two hundred years ago, Ras al Khaimah was burnt to the ground. Today, experts say, that sacking by a British fleet has directly affected the shape of the UAE.
Thirteen lithographs on a wall of the Sharjah Art Museum show each grisly scene of the British attack on Ras al Khaimah on November 13 1809. Black smoke rises about a town engulfed in flames as soldiers fight door-to-door through the streets of 19th-century RAK.
The battle was the beginning of a new era in the Gulf: that of British control. It led to the General Treaty of 1820 that brought 150 years of peace and trade to the Gulf under the British and ensured a maritime truce between independent emirates that later formed the UAE.
But so brutal was the massacre of 1809 that its violence is still remembered in song and story two centuries later. Mention of the battle still brings pain to those from the area.
Yet if it had not been for the battle of 1809 and the resulting treaty in 1820, most historians agree, the UAE of 2009 would be a very different place.
“Because of that treaty, we have independent emirates,” said Dr Hasan al Naboodha, a history professor at UAE University. “It was divide and rule. Just imagine if the British didn’t come and attack the Qawasim, would you hear today about the emirate of Ajman or Umm al Qaiwain?”
The cause of the battle between the British and the Qawasim, the seafaring tribe that ruled coastal areas on the Eastern, Persian and Arabian coasts, is still hotly disputed among historians today. “The British accused the Qawasim of being pirates and attacking ships but we don’t know exactly what went on because we don’t have local sources from this time,” said Dr al Naboodha.
Contemporary British accounts depicted the Qawasim tribe as an unruly and ruthless group of plunderers and pirates.
Dr Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed, Ruler of Sharjah, challenged this in his 1986 book The Myth of Arab Piracy, which argued that the British were foreign intruders who sought to expand their power in the Gulf for the East India Company.
Until late in the 18th century, skirmishes between the Qawasim and British were rare. In 1797, however, the Viper, a British ship, was attacked by Qawasim dhows while anchored in Bushire an attack for which Sheikh Saqr bin Rashid, then of Ras al Khaimah, apologised and offered settlement.
In 1804 the British ships Trimmer and Shannon were attacked by Sheikh Qadhib al Qasimi of Lingeh.
In 1806, a treaty was agreed upon by the Qawasim, the British and the British-backed Omanis, long-standing rivals of the Qawasim. Within a few months, relations became strained between the Omanis and the Qawasim over territorial disputes at Qishm and the treaty fell apart.
In October 1808 the Qawasim were held responsible for an attack on the Sylph, an eight-gun British schooner, that killed 30.
The next May, the Qawasim seized the Minerva and took it to Ras al Khaimah with an officer’s wife on board. She was held for ransom. One survivor claimed that the Minerva was attacked by more than 50 dhows in a two-day battle that ended in the deaths of 45 of the 77 on board.
The event fuelled British anger against the Qawasim and a larger confrontation loomed.
Such events were popular in the British media, which, according to Dr Sheikh Sultan, exaggerated the numbers of those killed and vilified the Qawasim.
“It was the power of this saga to stir the imagination, as piracy still does, which ensured it would not be forgotten,” wrote Charles Davies in his 1997 book The Red Arab Flag: An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797-1820. “Contemporary newspapers, travellers, officers and others all felt moved to write about the Qawasim and British measures taken against them.”
But even before the Minerva incident, the Supreme Government in Calcutta had already made a decision to attack Ras al Khaimah.
Reproduced from The National: RAK’s sacking still reverberates
Thirteen lithographs on a wall of the Sharjah Art Museum show each grisly scene of the British attack on Ras al Khaimah on November 13 1809. Black smoke rises about a town engulfed in flames as soldiers fight door-to-door through the streets of 19th-century RAK.
The battle was the beginning of a new era in the Gulf: that of British control. It led to the General Treaty of 1820 that brought 150 years of peace and trade to the Gulf under the British and ensured a maritime truce between independent emirates that later formed the UAE.
But so brutal was the massacre of 1809 that its violence is still remembered in song and story two centuries later. Mention of the battle still brings pain to those from the area.
Yet if it had not been for the battle of 1809 and the resulting treaty in 1820, most historians agree, the UAE of 2009 would be a very different place.
“Because of that treaty, we have independent emirates,” said Dr Hasan al Naboodha, a history professor at UAE University. “It was divide and rule. Just imagine if the British didn’t come and attack the Qawasim, would you hear today about the emirate of Ajman or Umm al Qaiwain?”
The cause of the battle between the British and the Qawasim, the seafaring tribe that ruled coastal areas on the Eastern, Persian and Arabian coasts, is still hotly disputed among historians today. “The British accused the Qawasim of being pirates and attacking ships but we don’t know exactly what went on because we don’t have local sources from this time,” said Dr al Naboodha.
Contemporary British accounts depicted the Qawasim tribe as an unruly and ruthless group of plunderers and pirates.
Dr Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed, Ruler of Sharjah, challenged this in his 1986 book The Myth of Arab Piracy, which argued that the British were foreign intruders who sought to expand their power in the Gulf for the East India Company.
Until late in the 18th century, skirmishes between the Qawasim and British were rare. In 1797, however, the Viper, a British ship, was attacked by Qawasim dhows while anchored in Bushire an attack for which Sheikh Saqr bin Rashid, then of Ras al Khaimah, apologised and offered settlement.
In 1804 the British ships Trimmer and Shannon were attacked by Sheikh Qadhib al Qasimi of Lingeh.
In 1806, a treaty was agreed upon by the Qawasim, the British and the British-backed Omanis, long-standing rivals of the Qawasim. Within a few months, relations became strained between the Omanis and the Qawasim over territorial disputes at Qishm and the treaty fell apart.
In October 1808 the Qawasim were held responsible for an attack on the Sylph, an eight-gun British schooner, that killed 30.
The next May, the Qawasim seized the Minerva and took it to Ras al Khaimah with an officer’s wife on board. She was held for ransom. One survivor claimed that the Minerva was attacked by more than 50 dhows in a two-day battle that ended in the deaths of 45 of the 77 on board.
The event fuelled British anger against the Qawasim and a larger confrontation loomed.
Such events were popular in the British media, which, according to Dr Sheikh Sultan, exaggerated the numbers of those killed and vilified the Qawasim.
“It was the power of this saga to stir the imagination, as piracy still does, which ensured it would not be forgotten,” wrote Charles Davies in his 1997 book The Red Arab Flag: An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797-1820. “Contemporary newspapers, travellers, officers and others all felt moved to write about the Qawasim and British measures taken against them.”
But even before the Minerva incident, the Supreme Government in Calcutta had already made a decision to attack Ras al Khaimah.
Reproduced from The National: RAK’s sacking still reverberates
Sunday, 8 November 2009
The Rise and Rise of Turkey
It is generally accepted that America’s destruction of Iraq overturned the balance of power in the Gulf, opening the way for the Islamic Republic of Iran to emerge as a major regional power, able to challenge the dominance of Sunni Arab states and pose as a rival to both Israel and the United States.
Its influence has spread to Iraq itself — now under Shiite leadership — and beyond to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and even perhaps to Zaidi rebels in northern Yemen fighting the central government in Sana‘a, a development that has aroused understandable anxiety in Saudi Arabia.
However, the Iraq war has had another important consequence that is also attracting serious notice. America’s failure in Iraq — and its equal failure to tame Israel’s excesses — has encouraged Turkey to emerge from its pro-American straitjacket and assert itself as a powerful independent actor at the heart of a vast region that extends from the Middle East to the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The Turks like to say that whereas Iran and Israel are revisionist powers, arousing anxiety and even fear by their expansionism and their challenge to existing power structures, Turkey is a stabilizing power, intent on spreading peace and security far and wide.
Turkey is extending its influence by diplomacy rather than force. It is also forging economic ties with its neighbors, and has offered to mediate in several persistent regional conflicts. It has, however, not hesitated to use force to quell the guerrillas of the PKK, a rebel movement fighting for Kurdish independence.
But even here, Turkey is now using a softer approach. The rebels have been offered an amnesty and Turkey’s influential foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has this past week paid a visit — the first of its kind — to the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. There is even talk of Turkey opening a consulate in Erbil.
In recent years, Turkey’s diplomacy has scored many successes, winning great popularity in the Arab world and strengthening Turkey’s hand in its bid to join the European Union. Some people would go so far as to argue that there is no future for Turkey without the E.U., and no future for the E.U. without Turkey.
Turkey’s dynamic multi-directional foreign policy started to take shape when the Justice and Development party, or AKP, came to power in 2002 under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul, now president of the Turkish Republic. These men are rightly considered to be conservative and moderately Islamic — their wives wear headscarves — but they are careful to stress that they have no ambition to create an Islamic state. Turkey’s population may be largely Muslim, but the state itself is secular, democratic, capitalist and close to both the West and the Arab and Muslim world. Indeed, Turkey sees itself as a bridge, vital to both.
Ahmet Davutoglu is credited with providing the theoretical framework for Turkey’s new foreign policy. He was Mr. Erdogan’s principal adviser before being promoted foreign minister.
Two visits in October illustrate Turkey’s activisim. Prime Minister Erdogan, accompanied by nine ministers and an Airbus full of businessmen, visited Baghdad, where he held a session with the Iraq government and signed no fewer than 48 memoranda in the fields of commerce, energy, water, security, the environment and so forth.
At much the same time, Foreign Minister Davutoglu was in Aleppo, where he signed agreements with Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Muallim, of which perhaps the most important was the removal of visas, allowing for a free flow of people across their common border.
Turkey also broke new ground in October by signing two protocols with Armenia, providing for the restoration of diplomatic relations and the opening of the border between them. Not surprisingly, Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan has strongly objected to this development, since it is locked in conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated pocket of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian forces.
Indeed, Turkey’s protocols with Armenia are unlikely to be fully implemented until Armenia withdraws from at least some of the districts surrounding Karabakh — but, at the very least, a historic start has been made toward Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.
From the Arab point of view, the most dramatic development has undoubtedly been the cooling of Turkey’s relations with Israel. The relationship has been damaged by the outrage felt by many Turks at Israel’s cruel oppression of the Palestinians, which reached its peak with the Gaza War.
Even before the assault on Gaza, Prime Minister Erdogan — a strong supporter of the Palestine cause — did not hesitate to describe some of Israel’s brutal actions as “state terrorism.” A total breach between the two countries is unlikely, but relations are unlikely to recover their earlier warmth so long as Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, remain in power.
Underpinning Turkey’s diplomacy is its central role as an energy hub linking oil and gas producers in Russia and Central Asia with energy-hungry markets in Europe.
One way and another, a resurgent Turkey is rewriting the rules of the power game in the Middle East in a positive and non-confrontational manner. This is one of the few bright spots in a turbulent and highly inflammable Middle East.
Patrick Seale is the author of “The Struggle for Syria,” “Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East” and “Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.” Agence Global
Reproduced from the NY Times: The Rise and Rise of Turkey
Its influence has spread to Iraq itself — now under Shiite leadership — and beyond to Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and even perhaps to Zaidi rebels in northern Yemen fighting the central government in Sana‘a, a development that has aroused understandable anxiety in Saudi Arabia.
However, the Iraq war has had another important consequence that is also attracting serious notice. America’s failure in Iraq — and its equal failure to tame Israel’s excesses — has encouraged Turkey to emerge from its pro-American straitjacket and assert itself as a powerful independent actor at the heart of a vast region that extends from the Middle East to the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The Turks like to say that whereas Iran and Israel are revisionist powers, arousing anxiety and even fear by their expansionism and their challenge to existing power structures, Turkey is a stabilizing power, intent on spreading peace and security far and wide.
Turkey is extending its influence by diplomacy rather than force. It is also forging economic ties with its neighbors, and has offered to mediate in several persistent regional conflicts. It has, however, not hesitated to use force to quell the guerrillas of the PKK, a rebel movement fighting for Kurdish independence.
But even here, Turkey is now using a softer approach. The rebels have been offered an amnesty and Turkey’s influential foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, has this past week paid a visit — the first of its kind — to the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. There is even talk of Turkey opening a consulate in Erbil.
In recent years, Turkey’s diplomacy has scored many successes, winning great popularity in the Arab world and strengthening Turkey’s hand in its bid to join the European Union. Some people would go so far as to argue that there is no future for Turkey without the E.U., and no future for the E.U. without Turkey.
Turkey’s dynamic multi-directional foreign policy started to take shape when the Justice and Development party, or AKP, came to power in 2002 under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Abdullah Gul, now president of the Turkish Republic. These men are rightly considered to be conservative and moderately Islamic — their wives wear headscarves — but they are careful to stress that they have no ambition to create an Islamic state. Turkey’s population may be largely Muslim, but the state itself is secular, democratic, capitalist and close to both the West and the Arab and Muslim world. Indeed, Turkey sees itself as a bridge, vital to both.
Ahmet Davutoglu is credited with providing the theoretical framework for Turkey’s new foreign policy. He was Mr. Erdogan’s principal adviser before being promoted foreign minister.
Two visits in October illustrate Turkey’s activisim. Prime Minister Erdogan, accompanied by nine ministers and an Airbus full of businessmen, visited Baghdad, where he held a session with the Iraq government and signed no fewer than 48 memoranda in the fields of commerce, energy, water, security, the environment and so forth.
At much the same time, Foreign Minister Davutoglu was in Aleppo, where he signed agreements with Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Muallim, of which perhaps the most important was the removal of visas, allowing for a free flow of people across their common border.
Turkey also broke new ground in October by signing two protocols with Armenia, providing for the restoration of diplomatic relations and the opening of the border between them. Not surprisingly, Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan has strongly objected to this development, since it is locked in conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated pocket of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian forces.
Indeed, Turkey’s protocols with Armenia are unlikely to be fully implemented until Armenia withdraws from at least some of the districts surrounding Karabakh — but, at the very least, a historic start has been made toward Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.
From the Arab point of view, the most dramatic development has undoubtedly been the cooling of Turkey’s relations with Israel. The relationship has been damaged by the outrage felt by many Turks at Israel’s cruel oppression of the Palestinians, which reached its peak with the Gaza War.
Even before the assault on Gaza, Prime Minister Erdogan — a strong supporter of the Palestine cause — did not hesitate to describe some of Israel’s brutal actions as “state terrorism.” A total breach between the two countries is unlikely, but relations are unlikely to recover their earlier warmth so long as Israel’s hard-line prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, remain in power.
Underpinning Turkey’s diplomacy is its central role as an energy hub linking oil and gas producers in Russia and Central Asia with energy-hungry markets in Europe.
One way and another, a resurgent Turkey is rewriting the rules of the power game in the Middle East in a positive and non-confrontational manner. This is one of the few bright spots in a turbulent and highly inflammable Middle East.
Patrick Seale is the author of “The Struggle for Syria,” “Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East” and “Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.” Agence Global
Reproduced from the NY Times: The Rise and Rise of Turkey
Friday, 30 October 2009
Palace of myths and legends
The ruins stand atop a 200-metre hill above the village of Shamal in Ras al Khaimah, cloaked in myth and mystery.
“So many legends and stories are associated with this palace, with some people saying it is thousands of years old and others saying it is just a few hundreds years old,” says Dr Hamad bin Seray, an associate professor at the department of history and archaeology at UAE University.
From time to time he pauses on his climb one he has made several times for his studies picking up shards of pottery. By the time he reaches the remains of the building, he has a small collection of shards, which he says are between 400 and 500 years old.
They are tantalising clues about the history of the castle, which is reputed to be the oldest in the UAE.
“There is so much that we don’t know about this palace, except its name,” the historian says.
In fact, even that is debatable.
In English, it is known as Sheba’s Palace. The Queen of Sheba, mentioned in the Bible and the Quran, is said to have ruled the kingdom of Marib in Yemen around 1000BC, though her legend is also told in Ethiopia, across the Red Sea. The Bible dates Sheba’s reign to the 10th century BC. The Quran describes the queen as a sun-worshipper who lived in the Arabian peninsula and was converted to Islam.
“If you choose to believe it belongs to the Queen of Sheba, or Balqis as she is known to us, then it is thousands of years old,” Dr Seray says. “But I am less inclined to believe this as there is no archaeological evidence that the palace is in any way pre- Islamic.”
In Arabic, and among people who live in the area, the palace is better known as the Qasr al Zabba the palace of al Zabba or Queen Zenobia.
Zenobia, the warrior queen of the Roman colony of Palmyra, in what is now Syria, ruled from about 267 to 272AD. She conquered several of Rome’s eastern provinces before she was defeated by the emperor Aurelian.
“The term ‘Zabba’ refers to a masculinised woman, so perhaps there was a local woman ruler here who was tough like a man, and hence was nicknamed by the settlers here as al Zabba,” Dr Seray says. “Not the most flattering title to be crowned with.”
Given the archaeological evidence and his study of the palace, Dr Seray is adamant the site could not belong to either queen, since it is not pre- Islamic. Such was the fame of the two women in Arabia that their names would be linked to ruins built long after their time.
Dr Seray believes the palace most probably dates from the end of the Julfar period. The area of Julfar, now Ras al Khaimah, was a renowned and prosperous trading centre in the lower Gulf from the early Islamic times until around the late 17th century, when it fell into decline during the Portuguese presence in the Gulf.
Keep reading--The National:Palace of myths and legends
“So many legends and stories are associated with this palace, with some people saying it is thousands of years old and others saying it is just a few hundreds years old,” says Dr Hamad bin Seray, an associate professor at the department of history and archaeology at UAE University.
From time to time he pauses on his climb one he has made several times for his studies picking up shards of pottery. By the time he reaches the remains of the building, he has a small collection of shards, which he says are between 400 and 500 years old.
They are tantalising clues about the history of the castle, which is reputed to be the oldest in the UAE.
“There is so much that we don’t know about this palace, except its name,” the historian says.
In fact, even that is debatable.
In English, it is known as Sheba’s Palace. The Queen of Sheba, mentioned in the Bible and the Quran, is said to have ruled the kingdom of Marib in Yemen around 1000BC, though her legend is also told in Ethiopia, across the Red Sea. The Bible dates Sheba’s reign to the 10th century BC. The Quran describes the queen as a sun-worshipper who lived in the Arabian peninsula and was converted to Islam.
“If you choose to believe it belongs to the Queen of Sheba, or Balqis as she is known to us, then it is thousands of years old,” Dr Seray says. “But I am less inclined to believe this as there is no archaeological evidence that the palace is in any way pre- Islamic.”
In Arabic, and among people who live in the area, the palace is better known as the Qasr al Zabba the palace of al Zabba or Queen Zenobia.
Zenobia, the warrior queen of the Roman colony of Palmyra, in what is now Syria, ruled from about 267 to 272AD. She conquered several of Rome’s eastern provinces before she was defeated by the emperor Aurelian.
“The term ‘Zabba’ refers to a masculinised woman, so perhaps there was a local woman ruler here who was tough like a man, and hence was nicknamed by the settlers here as al Zabba,” Dr Seray says. “Not the most flattering title to be crowned with.”
Given the archaeological evidence and his study of the palace, Dr Seray is adamant the site could not belong to either queen, since it is not pre- Islamic. Such was the fame of the two women in Arabia that their names would be linked to ruins built long after their time.
Dr Seray believes the palace most probably dates from the end of the Julfar period. The area of Julfar, now Ras al Khaimah, was a renowned and prosperous trading centre in the lower Gulf from the early Islamic times until around the late 17th century, when it fell into decline during the Portuguese presence in the Gulf.
Keep reading--The National:Palace of myths and legends
Saturday, 24 October 2009
Veils, gold, calligraphy
Kaelen Wilson-Goldie considers the mixed crop of new books surveying Middle Eastern art practices.
In early October, the Dow Jones news agency warned that the emerging market for Middle Eastern art was crashing, with prices falling by as much as 50 per cent. Matthew Girling, a chief executive with the auction house Bonhams, said the global financial crisis had hit the market particularly hard because it was still so new, and because its collector base was still so thin. A week later, Bonhams staged a sale of contemporary Arab, Iranian and South Asian art in Dubai; the results supported this prognosis. The auction fared reasonably well, raking in $1.8 million (Dh6.6m), but this was nowhere near the mark Bonhams made in early 2008, when its Dubai debut earned a thumping $13 million (Dh47.8m) and broke 33 world records in one go, charting some of the highest prices ever paid for Middle Eastern art.
It is too soon to tell whether this drop in prices signifies a market correction or a bubble bursting. But that probably isn’t the most interesting question. More to the point: How did the market for Middle Eastern art heat up so quickly, and why? Five years ago, it was a nonexistent category. Now it is a commodity. What changed, and to what effect?
September 11, 2001 is a convenient place to start the story of how interest in art from the Middle East developed. But in the 1980s and 1990s, artists such as Shirin Neshat, Mona Hatoum and Ghada Amer were gaining prominence in the art world by showing their work in powerhouse galleries and high-profile biennials. Later on, artists such as Walid Raad and Emily Jacir attracted considerable critical acclaim. Before 2001, all five of them were already stars on the merits of their work. Sure, there was noise about their biographies and backgrounds. But they were unknown to each other and working in very different ways.
Ghada Amer was primarily a painter layering muscular, abstract expressionist brush strokes over delicately tangled threads in a peek-a-boo routine with drawings of women in auto-erotic poses. Mona Hatoum, with her deep roots in performance art, was making sculptures and installations that commented on power, domesticity and the industrial prison complex. Shirin Neshat’s photographs and film work could be read, with some generosity, as an embellishment on Cindy Sherman-style role-playing and self-portraiture.
These artists were not clumped together as Middle Eastern artists until after 2001. This made sense: what they shared was incidental. In the near or distant past they had come from a part of the world that was vastly complicated, egregiously misunderstood, faintly exotic and – given a certain convergence of factors that had little or nothing to do with art – in the news all the time. In the 1980s and 1990s, that was not enough to create a curatorial area of interest, much less a sales category.
But that changed after September 11, the war in Iraq, and the so-called war on terror. These events and the discourses they engendered did not in and of themselves lead the international art world to the Middle East. But the mainstream media probably did, albeit indirectly. Against the fear-mongering of, say, Fox News, curators, critics and collectors began to seek out the more nuanced narratives afforded by contemporary art. For some, it was a search for balance and a more complex picture of current events. For others, it was about discovering art’s capacity to make sense of trauma . The experiences of artists from Beirut to Baghdad suddenly offered important lessons for the world.
Unfortunately, although the art world’s visitors to the region in the early years of this decade said they were looking for artists whose work would complicate or contradict stereotypical images of the Middle East, the artists whose work they found often conformed to those same stereotypes. Moreover, plenty of impresarios came to the region to pad sales catalogues and support what would soon be perceived as the nub of an emerging market. For them, the work needed to “look” like the Middle East, or at least some half-baked, abstract, neo-orientalist, harem fantasy of the Middle East – veils, calligraphy, embroidery and gold.
In the last seven years or so, disparate artists have been gathered into groups and presented as collective representations of the region. This has happened through sprawling exhibitions, from Catherine David’s Contemporary Arab Representations and Jack Persekian’s DisORIENTation to Without Boundary at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Arabise Me at the V&A and Unveiled at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The pioneering artists from the 1980s and 1990s have been piled onto the bandwagon of Middle Eastern art, and made exemplars of “the scene” at its best. In reality, there is no such thing as the Middle Eastern art scene. But for better or worse, the group shows – whether strong, thoughtful, crass or confused – created the illusion otherwise.
Continue reading- The National: Veils, gold, calligraphy
In early October, the Dow Jones news agency warned that the emerging market for Middle Eastern art was crashing, with prices falling by as much as 50 per cent. Matthew Girling, a chief executive with the auction house Bonhams, said the global financial crisis had hit the market particularly hard because it was still so new, and because its collector base was still so thin. A week later, Bonhams staged a sale of contemporary Arab, Iranian and South Asian art in Dubai; the results supported this prognosis. The auction fared reasonably well, raking in $1.8 million (Dh6.6m), but this was nowhere near the mark Bonhams made in early 2008, when its Dubai debut earned a thumping $13 million (Dh47.8m) and broke 33 world records in one go, charting some of the highest prices ever paid for Middle Eastern art.
It is too soon to tell whether this drop in prices signifies a market correction or a bubble bursting. But that probably isn’t the most interesting question. More to the point: How did the market for Middle Eastern art heat up so quickly, and why? Five years ago, it was a nonexistent category. Now it is a commodity. What changed, and to what effect?
September 11, 2001 is a convenient place to start the story of how interest in art from the Middle East developed. But in the 1980s and 1990s, artists such as Shirin Neshat, Mona Hatoum and Ghada Amer were gaining prominence in the art world by showing their work in powerhouse galleries and high-profile biennials. Later on, artists such as Walid Raad and Emily Jacir attracted considerable critical acclaim. Before 2001, all five of them were already stars on the merits of their work. Sure, there was noise about their biographies and backgrounds. But they were unknown to each other and working in very different ways.
Ghada Amer was primarily a painter layering muscular, abstract expressionist brush strokes over delicately tangled threads in a peek-a-boo routine with drawings of women in auto-erotic poses. Mona Hatoum, with her deep roots in performance art, was making sculptures and installations that commented on power, domesticity and the industrial prison complex. Shirin Neshat’s photographs and film work could be read, with some generosity, as an embellishment on Cindy Sherman-style role-playing and self-portraiture.
These artists were not clumped together as Middle Eastern artists until after 2001. This made sense: what they shared was incidental. In the near or distant past they had come from a part of the world that was vastly complicated, egregiously misunderstood, faintly exotic and – given a certain convergence of factors that had little or nothing to do with art – in the news all the time. In the 1980s and 1990s, that was not enough to create a curatorial area of interest, much less a sales category.
But that changed after September 11, the war in Iraq, and the so-called war on terror. These events and the discourses they engendered did not in and of themselves lead the international art world to the Middle East. But the mainstream media probably did, albeit indirectly. Against the fear-mongering of, say, Fox News, curators, critics and collectors began to seek out the more nuanced narratives afforded by contemporary art. For some, it was a search for balance and a more complex picture of current events. For others, it was about discovering art’s capacity to make sense of trauma . The experiences of artists from Beirut to Baghdad suddenly offered important lessons for the world.
Unfortunately, although the art world’s visitors to the region in the early years of this decade said they were looking for artists whose work would complicate or contradict stereotypical images of the Middle East, the artists whose work they found often conformed to those same stereotypes. Moreover, plenty of impresarios came to the region to pad sales catalogues and support what would soon be perceived as the nub of an emerging market. For them, the work needed to “look” like the Middle East, or at least some half-baked, abstract, neo-orientalist, harem fantasy of the Middle East – veils, calligraphy, embroidery and gold.
In the last seven years or so, disparate artists have been gathered into groups and presented as collective representations of the region. This has happened through sprawling exhibitions, from Catherine David’s Contemporary Arab Representations and Jack Persekian’s DisORIENTation to Without Boundary at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Arabise Me at the V&A and Unveiled at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The pioneering artists from the 1980s and 1990s have been piled onto the bandwagon of Middle Eastern art, and made exemplars of “the scene” at its best. In reality, there is no such thing as the Middle Eastern art scene. But for better or worse, the group shows – whether strong, thoughtful, crass or confused – created the illusion otherwise.
Continue reading- The National: Veils, gold, calligraphy
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
"Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectived'
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE PRESS RELEASE
Tuesday, October 6 th, 2009.
"Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectived' report released
A report which explores the philosophical and theological perspectives on what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today has been published.
The study, entitled 'Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives', is being launched today (Tuesday, October 6th), and can be downloaded at (http://www.cis.cam.ac.uk/CIBP.html).
It marks the culmination of a nine month research project which was hosted by the University of Cambridge in association with the Universities of Exeter and Westminster.
A total of 26 Muslim scholars, academics and activists representing a diverse spectrum of views from Muslim communities in the UK took part in discussions about what it means to live as a Muslim in modern Britain. The report covers a wide range of issues including secularism, democracy, Shariah law, human rights and citisenship.
The report presents the group's conclusions and aims to act as the basis for a wider discussion with other Muslim leaders and communities around the UK. In time, it is hoped that this will lead to the development of a virtual "House of Wisdom", providing space for discussion among both Muslims and non-Muslims on how Islam should function in modern Britain and contribute to wider society.
Continue reading: "Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspective"
Also read an excellent article in Abu Dhabi's 'The National': Islam’s besieged moderates are making themselves heard
Tuesday, October 6 th, 2009.
"Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectived' report released
A report which explores the philosophical and theological perspectives on what it means to be a Muslim in Britain today has been published.
The study, entitled 'Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspectives', is being launched today (Tuesday, October 6th), and can be downloaded at (http://www.cis.cam.ac.uk/CIBP.html).
It marks the culmination of a nine month research project which was hosted by the University of Cambridge in association with the Universities of Exeter and Westminster.
A total of 26 Muslim scholars, academics and activists representing a diverse spectrum of views from Muslim communities in the UK took part in discussions about what it means to live as a Muslim in modern Britain. The report covers a wide range of issues including secularism, democracy, Shariah law, human rights and citisenship.
The report presents the group's conclusions and aims to act as the basis for a wider discussion with other Muslim leaders and communities around the UK. In time, it is hoped that this will lead to the development of a virtual "House of Wisdom", providing space for discussion among both Muslims and non-Muslims on how Islam should function in modern Britain and contribute to wider society.
Continue reading: "Contextualising Islam in Britain: Exploratory Perspective"
Also read an excellent article in Abu Dhabi's 'The National': Islam’s besieged moderates are making themselves heard
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