John. S. Guest – författare

First published in 1992. This book invites the reader to cast the mind a hundred and fifty years back to a short span of time between 1829 and 1842. This was an exciting period when Britain?€?s might, demonstrated to the world at Trafalgar and Waterloo, was fortified by leadership in steam technology and was given a new direction by the liberal philosophy that British statesmen, thinkers and poets proclaimed at home and abroad. The Euphrates expedition was an attempt by well-intentioned British governments to achieve a geopolitical end by a technological means. The objective was to halt Russian expansion in the Near East, where some observers saw a threat to Britain?€?s control of India.

First published in 1993. The Yezidis are a community of around 200,000 Kurds who possess their own religion, quite distinct from Islam, which most other Kurds profess, and from the Christian and Jewish faiths. The Yezidis live in the northern parts of Iraq and Syria, in eastern Turkey, in Germany and in the ex-Soviet republics of Armenia and Georgia. (In Armenia the Yezidis, long classified as Kurds, are now recognized as a separate minority group and the term 'Kurd' is applied only to Moslem Kurds.) This book stems from a conversation with the Yezidi priest of the village who remarked that now the children were learning to read and write they were asking him questions about the Yezidi scriptures and the history of the community. Lacking any written material, he could only repeat to them the oral traditions he had himself learned as a child.

First Published in 1987 The Yezidis: A Study in Survival traces the origin of Yezidi community’s religion, describes the discovery of the people by Western travellers in the early nineteenth century and details the Yezidi community’s traumatic history and their status in the 80s. The Yezidi religious group is spread out over Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and erstwhile USSR and have retained their identity for over 500 years. The Yezidi’s believe that Lucifer, the fallen angel, has been forgiven by God and reinstated as chief angel: their history is, like their faith, characterized by dignity and survival in the face of great odds. Chapters also cover Sultan Abdul Hamid’s cruel but vain efforts to force the Yezidis to embrace Islam, leading to the emergence of Mayan Khatun, a strong-willed Yezidi princess who ruled the community from 1913-1958. They include vivid account of her rivalry with her brother Ismail and the ill-fated marriage between her son and his daughter. The final chapter describes the community in Soviet Armenia and Georgia. This book is a must read for students of Middle East studies and Middle East history.

First Published in 1987 The Yezidis: A Study in Survival traces the origin of Yezidi community’s religion, describes the discovery of the people by Western travellers in the early nineteenth century and details the Yezidi community’s traumatic history and their status in the 80s. The Yezidi religious group is spread out over Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and erstwhile USSR and have retained their identity for over 500 years. The Yezidi’s believe that Lucifer, the fallen angel, has been forgiven by God and reinstated as chief angel: their history is, like their faith, characterized by dignity and survival in the face of great odds. Chapters also cover Sultan Abdul Hamid’s cruel but vain efforts to force the Yezidis to embrace Islam, leading to the emergence of Mayan Khatun, a strong-willed Yezidi princess who ruled the community from 1913-1958. They include vivid account of her rivalry with her brother Ismail and the ill-fated marriage between her son and his daughter. The final chapter describes the community in Soviet Armenia and Georgia. This book is a must read for students of Middle East studies and Middle East history.

First published in 1992. This book invites the reader to cast the mind a hundred and fifty years back to a short span of time between 1829 and 1842. This was an exciting period when Britain?€?s might, demonstrated to the world at Trafalgar and Waterloo, was fortified by leadership in steam technology and was given a new direction by the liberal philosophy that British statesmen, thinkers and poets proclaimed at home and abroad. The Euphrates expedition was an attempt by well-intentioned British governments to achieve a geopolitical end by a technological means. The objective was to halt Russian expansion in the Near East, where some observers saw a threat to Britain?€?s control of India.