As a Christian worker in China, I had first-hand opportunity to see how we "foreigners" interacted cross-culturally. (Usually, the most successful of us were those who were not on a Mission from God.) Having seen people badly suited to live abroad and admiring those who were very able to do so, the joy of this book by Freya Stark was reading about a woman operating cross-culturally with a world-class ability to encounter persons with a much different backround than her own. Her sheer delight in her Bedouin companions is vicariously enjoyable.
Of course, this book journeys not just across cultures but across times, beginning with the author's introduction, which discusses the antiquity of the regioun she explores, especially in the time of great trade in frankincense, which made the region, for a time, wealthy. It is also reflected in the ancient culture and historical monuments and artifacts the author encounters.
Moreover, Freya Stark writes (wrote) beautifully. This book will appeal to anyone who is curious about other peoples, other lands and other times or who enjoys good writing.

In 1934, Freya Stark determined that she would follow the ancient frankincense routes through the fertile Hadhramaut valley to locate and record what was left of the legendary lost city of Shabwa. In 1936 she published _The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut_ which, as did many of her thirty-odd books, became a best seller. It is now republished by the Modern Library, and is a welcome reminder of a brave, erudite, and witty explorer. The current volume has as an introduction a capsule description of Stark's life by her biographer, Jane Fletcher Geniesse. Born in 1892, Stark was only able to indulge in travel in her thirties; she realized that there was a hunger for knowledge about exotic Arabia, and she schooled herself in the language and history of the area, through which she traveled by foot, car, donkey, and camel well into her eighties. She lived to be 101.

The explorations of these exotic lands are rendered now more strange and lovely by time. Few of us will get to see the lands Stark loved, but we will never see them as she did. For most of the steps along the trail described in this book, Stark was the first European woman to come that way, and that she did so unaccompanied by a European escort gave the Bedouin, the learned men, and the sultans something to admire and wonder at. One who thought himself a leader of her group attempted to exclude her by bringing her meals to a separate area. "He was showing a Victorian disapproval of females who do not keep themselves to themselves, a thing I find dull and difficult to do." She finds that she very much likes being in the middle of the group, even as an outsider. "To sit over the fire with one's fellows in the evening, when the work is over and the talking begins, is the only sure way of keeping harmony and friendship. I never had any difficulties with my beduin and found nothing but friendliness and an anxiety to serve in every way, and I attribute this chiefly to the fact that we had our meals together..." On the last night being with one group, one of the Bedouin thanks her for sharing food together (rather than keeping separate as he had expected the European traveler to do), and says it has been pleasant traveling with her. "'Here we are now,' he said, 'all together. And tomorrow?' - he opened his hand out wide - 'all scattered, where?' After this question, so sad, ancient, and universal, we looked in silence to the darkness and the stars."

Stark's quest was unfulfilled because of all things, measles. The discovery of Shabwa awaited a German traveler the next year, for she was too sick to continue toward her goal. One of her hosts, as she was ailing, reassured her: "Here we have no sickness; we are well or we die." She was carried off in a plane of the Royal Air Force, to whom in gratitude she dedicated her book. Her work is a perfect illustration that journeying well, and not achieving the destination, is the better accomplishment. It is impossible to come away from this volume without admiring this spunky, amused and amusing woman, nor to share in her admiration for those among whom she traveled. "The magic of Arabia," she writes, "which so many have felt, is due perhaps less to the sun-wrinkled arid land itself than to the innate peculiar nobility and charm of its people."

Warm, new folk tales which reflect the culture of the Yemenite Jewish people. Humorous, thought provoking and memorable stories. Good to tell to your own children to inspire wonder and delight

YTour Web Site is great altho I can't figure out how to cancel an order in spite of finding "click on the order number to cancel". You've already sent me Arabia Felix, a lovely book, so please take it off back order. Thanx.

Messick's work is perhaps one of the most interesting approaches to studying the shari'ah ever written. His focus and approach is that of an anthropologist, hence the ethnographic character of the book; however, at the same time he maintains a keen understanding of both history and fiqh throughout.

The locus of this work is nearly entirely dominated by the highlands of Yemen and Ibb, the location of Messick's own ethnogrpahic study. Through the filter of Yemeni culture and the vast changes occuring there, Messick weaves a tale of what happenned theoretically, structurally, socially, politically, etc. to the practice of the Shari'ah within Yemeni society--oscillating between pre-modern, pre-bureacratic practices of the imamate, the effects of Ottoman reforms and the nationalist efforts at modernization.

As is fitting in the context, a keen regard is kept throughout the work for the dialectial aspects of textuality and orality and how as the scales increasing tip in favor of textualized, bureacratic order Yemeni society is utterly transformed. We then are able to see how the shariah was reshaped from a central discourse of the Muslim polity into "Islamic Law" as yet another component of governance have been repositioned within the framework of the nation-state.

This book is unlike other photographic books on Yemen, it oes not attempt to tell the whole story but rather examines in closeup the details that form the whole such as the styles, patterns and forms that together distinguish Yemen as a bridge between Arabia and Africa. Similary it looks at the way the Yemenis have sculpted their environment from houses to faces. Remarkable in its detail. This book keeps Yemen's secrets but exposes it's character.

I read this in a university library and found it so engrossing and useful that I needed a copy of my own. An almanac initally sounds very dull, but Varisco's extensive commentary provides so many details on so many subjects, its simply amazing. It's not simply about science or even agriculture, it also contains a great deal of anthropolgical data that you don't find in other similar works. All too frequently, books dealing with the past dwell on the history, rather than the reality of the time. This work really captures the feel of the time period with its lavish details and research. Much of it could really qualify as trivia, but that's really what makes it such a wonderful piece of work, as it isn't just concerned with the big issues of the time, but with what every man knew. If you're at all interested in what the period was like, beyond simple history, this is a great book. It's largely concerned with things related to agriculture as it's a very protracted translation and explanation of an almanac, so covers crops, the weather (a topic everyone's always discussed, past or present), health, astronomy, sex, the environmental, and many things in between. This presents a real portrait of the time period beyond what the title implies. This is a very thorough yet wide ranging work. It's very light on religion, but there's scores of books on medieval Islam, so this is not a great flaw. This is not quite like any other book you'll find on the period and thus why it is so great.

I read this book nearly at one sitting, literally sitting, up in bed one night when I should have been sleeping. Four or five times I awakened my husband, shaking the bed with my laughter, especially when Mohammed moved a sheep into the back seat of his taxi for the next five days, saying, "The sheep won't mind."
Eric Hansen has scored with this book, and I've recommended it to probably 40 people and given it as a gift to 5-6.
Read it and enjoy in - on many levels.

This book not only makes me wish I could afford to travel, but it makes me wish I was a man(Well, kinda). Since most of the interesting stuff can only be experienced by men. Eric Hansen has an easy to read style that easily draws the reader into his story. It's a delightful read, especially since he is not an arrogant traveler and tries a lot of things that other tourists might snub. He also gives a lesson on the Yemen culture, without the reader ever suspecting that they're learning something. This is a great book for travelers at heart.

Within three hours of finishing this book, my copy was flogged by a friend who's off for a year in India on an antique motorbike. These adventurers must have some kind of tribal recognition.

"Motoring with Mohammed" is a book in three parts. The first bit is true adventure, storms at sea, a shipwreck, a desert island, the revelation of character among the survivors, brigands, and an unlikely rescue. It's great writing, deft and light, touching beauty and terror.

The second, and major, part of the book recounts Hansen's return to Yemen ten years later to look for a personal treasure he left on the island. In truth, not much happens, but in Eric Hansen's hands it always manages to not happen in an interesting way. His introduction to the local narcotic "qat", his subtle dance with intransigent bureaucracy, his unwise wanderings in high, misty mountains and along the edge of great deserts of The Empty Quarter make this a great read.

Hansen never meets an uninteresting person. Even the hostile and the dull are intriguing or comical in his hands. He gets to travel with sheep and mystic woodsmen, to meet an ageing Frenchwoman under a tragic spell, a toilet inspector, and the ghost of his grandmother. Along the way, he gets to play with his favorite theme: the essence of "destination". He doesn't labour it, but you know what he means.

The third, and briefest, part of his story is an unexpected twist, which neatly closes the circle even if by that stage we hardly require it.

A friend of mind informed me that Yemen ranks bottom of the world for gender equality. Certainly no woman could have written this book. The more reason for us to be grateful for this window on a little-known world. Eric Hansen has written a beguiling and joyous story. When you've finished enjoying it, seek out his even more extraordinary account of his Borneo travels, "Stranger In the Forest". But with all these books, don't expect to hang on to your copy for long.

The Zohar relates that every generation has an incarnation of the soul of Moses. As Moses was the first redeemer of the Jewish nation, he represented the collective spiritual soul of the Jewish people.In modern timeas the Jews have finally returned to their ancient homeland, Israel, as a free and independent people.Again the Jews had various redeemers and leaders, latter day incarnations of the spirit of Moses. This volume is the story of a latter day redemption of a small group of Jews and their final return to Israel. This was accomplished by the dedicated work of a small group of Jews who were a collective representation of Moses the earliest redeemer of the Jews. Although most Jews had left the Islamic kingdom of Yemen in 1948-1950 upon hearing of the estableshment of the state of Israel, a small group remained behind ' completely forgotten by their brethern in Israel and the free world. Only some 30 years later did a small band of Yemenite Jews in the U.S. and Israel band together to lobby the free world to push for the liberation of the remaining several thousand Jews of Yemen. led by the author of the book, Dr. Hayim Tawil, They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in placing this issue on the dockets of international diplomacy. With much hard work, this so-called track two diplomacy was indeed responsible for the liberation of Yemen'S Jews. This book relates this struggle, in all its detail. Its depicts the unusual and odd characters involved in this struggle, as well as the condition and culture of the Jews of Yemen. All this was done in a very quiet fashion, hence little has been told of this noble struggle until now. The volume reads well, and makes for very interesting reading.There are no real villians in this book, as all parties were interested in allowing the Jews to leave Yemen, it was just a matter of developing the proper mechanism , by which no party would lose face. Thus the heroes are the Yemeni government, the Jews of Yemen themselves, and the United states state Dept. and last but not least the small band of Yemenite Jews who worked with great devotion on behalf of their bretheren. In the end most of the Jews were allowed to leave and were re-united with their families. With their mission accomplished these activists returned to their private lives.Today only a handful of Jews remain in Yemen.

I am a co-author of this book. In operation Esther, we tried to present a precise and honest account of how between 1988 and 1992, private citizens such Dr. Tawil from New York, William Wolf from Phoenix, and a small number of simple US, and foreign citizens such as myself, worked hand in hand with the government of the United States, and with the government of the Yemen Arab Republic towards the "opening of the doors for the last Jews of Yemen". Our focus was not on receiving permission for the Jews to got to Israel. This was not a political issue. Rather it was a purely human-right matter. We simply demanded full implementation of existing laws of the Yemen Arab Republic, granting in theory, freedom of travel, emigration, and family reunification anywhere on the planet, to all Yemeni citizens without distinction of race, sex or religion. Understandably, our description at the beginning of the book, of the situation of the Jewish community in the Yemen Arab Republic before 1988, is very gloomy. I think, however, that as we describe the slow changes that occurred under our pressure, the human face of the Yemeni officials became apparent. Ultimately, when we reached our goal and unrestricted freedom of travel was granted to all the Jewish citizens of Yemen in 1991, the Yemeni government appeared as the true winner. This was the test-case for this government to obtain international recognition of it's new born democratic system. At my opinion, Dr. Abdel Karim Al-Yriani, who is now the Prime Minister of Yemen played the most decisive role in this important page of Middle-East's history. It illustrates how in the last decade, both Dr. Al-Yriani and president Saleh transformed Yemen from a totalitarian, militarily-ruled country into the most advanced democracy of the Arab world, with multi-party parliamentary elections, a relatively free and pluralistic press and a much improved track of human right violations. This book also reports on serious clashes we had with the Israeli Mossad. The situation was very simple. They had been in charge of the whole matter for three miserable decades during which not a single Jewish family had been reunited. Now that we were succeeding restoring contacts between separated families and we were preparing for their departure, the Mossad understandably wanted full control. But, keeping in mind our goal, we refused any Mossad involvement because its presence, even in the back stage of our operation, might have had jeopardize our efforts. Keeping whole issue apolitical and strictly at the level of the Human rights was the way to go. The book tells about our struggle and how we succeeded, despite the contradicting efforts of the Israeli Mossad, to bring to the reunification of the Jewish families in Israel, in the US and in the UK. It should be noted that the hundreds of thousands of Jews born in Yemen, but that left Yemen before October 26, 1962, are still not allowed to travel to Yemen. As in the darkest ages of the Soviet Union, departing Jews from Yemen in the years 1948-1962 became deprived, by default, of their citizenship. This act, which was perpetrated by the previous government of the Imams, was against international laws. However, by preventing Yemeni born Jews that live now in Israel, from obtaining Yemeni passports and reenter their country of origin, the present democratic state of Yemen remains in violation of international laws. This is why, I must confess that the tittle of our book is not yet completely meeting our expectations. The door will be opened only once complete freedom of travel will be granted, both ways, in and out, to all the Yemeni born citizens that still miss their country of origin.

Pierre Goloubinoff Ph. D. Head, Department of Plant Science The Hebrew University of Jerusalem 91904, Jerusalem, Israel email: pierre@vms.huji.ac.il

The modern rescue of the remaining Jews from the Arab nation of Yemen is truly a study of what a small band of determined human rights advacates can accomplish on a global scale. The government of Israel was totally unable for 30 years to do anything about the plight of the remaining Jews in Yemen, with families separated for over 30 years with no contact at all - no letters, phone calls or visits. People would live and die totally separated from their loved ones, with not even information of the situation being available to the other family members. This rescue is an example for all right minded people that hard work can result in human dignity and freedom for the oppressed people in this world, and that they cannot be forgotten.

If you're looking for a glossy coffee-table book with lots of stylish photographs, this is not for you. That said, it is an attractive book, well laid-out, printed in two colours and illustrated with old engravings and photographs. The illustrations are of people and markets rather than the dishes themselves, which underscore the book's focus on the origins of the dishes and the people who made them.

Marks does a great job of explaining why Jewish food is so diverse and how the Jews adapted their recipes to local ingredients, and also adapted the local recipes to the laws of kashrut. He includes recipes from India, Poland and Morocco, and everywhere in between. For many recipes he includes an anecdote or a little bit of history, which bring the dishes to life.

One of the things this book brought home to me was how important food is in Judaism: everything has a symbolic meaning and you don't eat things just because they taste good, but also because they represent something. At Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, apples dipped in honey represent hopes for a sweet coming year, while the challah (bread) is shaped into a round loaf (instead of being braided as usual) to symbolise the cyclical nature of time. Matzo is eaten at Pesach because when the Jews fled Egypt, they did not have time for their bread dough to rise. Thus at every festival meal the participants are reminded of the meanings of the festival and why it is celebrated.

The recipes themselves are clearly laid out and look easy to follow, although I haven't tried any of them yet. I didn't notice any impossible-to-find ingredients and the techniques are mostly within the average cook's capabilities.

The only thing missing in this book (and the reason it got 4 instead of 5 stars) is a more comprehensive section on each festival with a description, which foods are traditionally served, and some sample menus. As it is, if you want to create a Rosh Hashana meal you have to look up the individual recipes in the index. Otherwise a lovely book and well worth the money!

This is absolutely my favorite cookbook. The recipes are simple and delicious and the variations that are included offer even more ways to prepare the same dish. Everything that I have tried from this cookbook has turned out so good and have resulted in some of our favorite dishes.
Rabbi Marks also includes information about spices and vegetables and Jewish culture making the cookbook a fascinating read as well (I actually read the whole cookbook before I even tried any of the recipes!).
It is well worth the money!

This is one of those rare and wonderful cookbooks in which everything you make turns out the way you hoped it would. I've made many, if not most, of the recipes in this book, with no disasters, and without my usual fiddlings and substitutions--the recipes are great the way they are. Some of them are the basic Jewish fare--honey cake and potato kugel--and some of them are more exotic Sephardi recipes. They're all delicious. It's also a good read, but primarily I like it because I can pull it out for every Shabbos and find things to make that I know will come out.

Mr. MacIntosh-Smith has written, not just a guide book, but a real introduction to this beautiful country. His deep knowledge, understanding and love for the country, its history, topography, culture and language are clear. Moreover, he has the gift of conveying this understanding in prose which is succinct and uncloying - an unusual quality in travel writers. This is a beautifully written book which can be enjoyed even by those who have never visited the country, and perhaps have no intention of doing so.

The illustrations are excellent.

I recommend 'Travels in Dictionary Land' both to actual and armchair travellers

Tim writes well, describing himself in gently self-deprecating tones whilst always managing to support the Yemeni perspective. Yemen is inexplicable as it is ungovernable in any other terms than Yemeni, so Tim makes a great job of explaining how Arabic works and how oral traditions keep a living history alive in place where history is now, and possibly will forever be. It's fun to read, there are the weird bits, funny bits, and if you want a lighter introduction to the sometimes enigmatic Tim as a person you can read the bit in Eric Hansen's book where Eric goes walking with Tim and looses his footing on a cliff and falls in love with a bedouin girl. Not so Tim, who is impervious to flirty bedouin ladies (wise man) and skips over mountains powered by a cheekful of qat. My problem is that I love the place, so anything readable is great. This is more than readable, it's a gentle glide through Yemeni history which is complex as anything (and still is) since there is no single entity - it's basically a mass of sub-plots... Lovely. As Tim says in the beginning of his book, a load of digressions. To be dipped into. Holiday stuff. Read it after Yemen and realise what you missed!

This is a wonderful book. Well produced, real artwork (not just photos), beautifully written, and truly inspired. It is rare that a travel writer has such a wealth of experience and knowledge to draw on. This book is set apart though, by the author's deep and enduring love for the country and its people. This is no dry historical chronology, and marks a revival of the storytellers art. Where are his other books???