Shmuel Moreh - Böcker

This study is the companion volume to the new Arabic Edition of 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti's imposing magnum opus 'Aja'ib al-Athar fi 'l-Tarajim wa-'l-Akhbar (The Marvellous Compositions of Biographies and Events) that was edited by Moreh. Al-Jabarti's work presents the main chronicles and biographies dealing with the history of Egypt between 1688 and 1821. Moreh has responded to the long felt need for a critical scientific edition of this work, based upon its manuscripts scattered all over the world. Moreh has, for the first time, made a rigorous comparison of the entire text as found in the most important manuscripts and in the printed editions. The Arabic text produced is the first three volumes of 'Aja'ib to be based on al-Jabarti's autograph kept at the Cambridge University Library and the fourth volume at the Berlin Staatbibliothek copied accurately from the lost autograph of the fourth volume. This English introductory volume is a product and analysis of the research undertaken for the new Arabic edition. 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1753-1825) was a talented and original historian, best known for his three accounts of the history of Egypt. His account of the French occupation of Egypt (1798-1801) is of particular interest. Al-Jabarti's 'Aja'ib may be regarded as the swan song of medieval Arab-Muslim history and culture and reflects the decline of medieval Islamic civilization and military witnessed and recorded by a historian possessing unusual insight.

This study and edition of nineteenth century Arabic plays, by an Algerian Jew and teachers at the Jewish school in Beirut, reveals the considerable contribution of the Jewish community to the early development of modern Arabic drama. The plays link the Arabian Nights and Jewish Purim-shpil with the comedies of Moliere and the enlightenment drama of Gotthold Lessing.

According to legend, the Garden of Eden was located in Iraq, and for millennia, Jews resided peacefully in metropolitan Baghdad. Memories of Eden: A Journey Through Jewish Baghdad reconstructs the last years of the oldest Jewish Diaspora community in the world through the recollections of Violette Shamash, a Jewish woman who was born in Baghdad in 1912, sent to her daughter Mira Rocca and son-in-law, the British journalist Tony Rocca. The result is a deeply textured memoir—an intimate portrait of an individual life, yet revealing of the complex dynamics of the Middle East in the twentieth century.Toward the end of her long life, Violette Shamash began writing letters, notes, and essays and sending them to the Roccas. The resulting book begins near the end of Ottoman rule and runs through the British Mandate, the emergence of an independent Iraq, and the start of dictatorial government. Shamash clearly loved the world in which she grew up but is altogether honest in her depiction of the transformation of attitudes toward Baghdad’s Jewish population. Shamash’s world is finally shattered by the Farhud, the name given to the massacre of hundreds of Iraqi Jews over three days in 1941. An event that has received very slight historical coverage, the Farhud is further described and placed in context in a concluding essay by Tony Rocca.