Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms (50 page)
For Egypt’s pre-Christian religion I read
Religion in Roman Egypt,
by Max Frankfurter, which provided me with the Oxyrhynchus hieroglyph guild’s lament that their profession was dying out.
The voyages of J. M. Vansleb (aka Wansleben) are recounted in his book
Nouvelle Relations d’un Voyage Fait en Egypte
(an Elibron Classics facsimile of Estienne Michallet’s 1677 Paris edition). Al-Maqrizi tells the story of how the Sphinx lost its nose in his
Kitab al-Mawa’iz wa-al-I’tibar bi-Dhikr al-Khitat wa-al-Athar;
this is also the source for his observations on the Abu Fana monastery
.
William Browne can be read in
The Modern Traveller
(Cawthorn, 1800).
On Egyptomania and its effects on Egyptian nationalism, I owe much—including quotes from Tahtawi and Khedive Ismail—to
Whose Pharaohs? Archeology, Museums and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I,
by Donald Malcolm Reid (University of California Press, 2002). Ismail’s appointments are given in Iris Habib al Masri’s
Story of the Copts
(Saint Anthony’s Coptic Monastery, 1982). For the events of 1919, including Father Sergious’s sermon, I am indebted to Tadros’s
Motherland Lost
.
The Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties’ activities are described by S. S. Hasan in chapter 3 of her
Christians Versus Muslims,
and also in
The Muslim Brotherhood,
by Carrie Rosefsky Wickham (Princeton University Press, 2013).
The Last Arab
is a book by Sa’id Abu Rish (Duckworth, 2005). The figure of 75 percent losses for the Copts from Nasser’s nationalizations comes from Ibrahim et al.,
The Copts of Egypt.
Out of Egypt,
by Andre Aciman (Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1994), evocatively tells how the diverse Egyptian community in which the Jewish Aciman was brought up was dispersed.
Kamal Mougheeth’s recollections came in the article “M Is for Mosque,” by Yasmine Fathi, for Ahram Online, May 4, 2013. Mehdi Akef’s “at-tuz” interview was published by Rose al-Youssef on April 9, 2006 (as reported by International Crisis Group, “Egypt’s Muslim Brothers,” June 18, 2008). The 92 percent reference comes from a Gallup poll in March-April 2011:
www.gallup .com/poll/157046/egypt-tahrir-transition.aspx#1
.
The damage from the Minya riots is listed by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (which gave me the names of the two men who died) at its website,
www.eipr.org/en/content/2013/08/25/1796
. The estimate of 65 percent of violence taking place in Minya is from an article by Soliman Shafiq in the February 15, 2014, issue of
Watani
, online at
http://wataninet.com /watani_Article_Details.aspx?A=51783
. Statistics on poverty and unemployment in Minya can be found in Al Monitor, “Egypt’s Minya Province Flashpoint for Muslim-Christian Violence,”
www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals /2014/04/egypt-sectarian-violence-minya-province.html#
. The statistics from the Pew poll 2011–12 are from “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society” at
www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion -politics-society-interfaith-relations
.
For more detail on the Egyptian curriculum, including recent reforms, see “New Approaches in the Portrayal of Christianity in Egyptian Textbooks,” by Dr. Wolfram Reiss, Cairo, November 2006.
CHAPTER 7: KALASHA
I made my visit to the Kalasha valleys in December 2012. That came after two years spent in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2009 and a visit to the northern areas of Pakistan in 2008. Siraj Ul-Mulk’s excellent hotel in Chitral, where I stayed, is called the Hindukush Heights. I am very grateful to him and his wife, Ghazala, and more especially to the Kalasha people, who received me so kindly. Azem Bek and Wazir Ali Shah deserve special mention. Humira Noorestani very kindly gave me insights into what it is like to be a contemporary Afghan American of Nuristani origin, and helped provide a corrective to the perception of her people as poor and fanatical.
The quotation in the first paragraph is from Peter Mayne’s
The Narrow Smile
(Murray, 1955). The references to Alexander the Great’s travels in the third paragraph come from Arrian’s
Anabasis
in Martin Hammond’s translation (Oxford University Press, 2013). Marco Polo’s remarks are in Latham’s translation of Polo’s
The Travels
(Penguin, 1958).
For context on the Great Game, details on the death of Alexander Burnes, and a great read, I recommend Peter Hopkirk’s
The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia
(John Murray, 2006). News of Burnes’s death reached Britain only in February 1842, which is when his various obituaries were published.
The Memoirs of Alexander Gardner
were edited by Major Hugh Pearse and published by William Blackwood & Sons in 1898.
In 1873 a British missionary called E. Downes wrote
Kafiristan: An Account of the Country, Language, Religion and Customs of the Siah Posh Kafirs: Considering Especially Kafiristan as a Suitable Field for Missionary Labour
(W. E. Ball, 1873), in which—perhaps feeling the need to attract less spiritual interest in the place—he hinted at fabulous reserves of gold and an aphrodisiac plant that might be found there.
McNair’s visit to Kafiristan resulted in two publications: one for the general public, “A Visit to Kafiristan,” by W. W. McNair (Wm. Clowes & Sons, 1884), and one for the Indian government, “Report on the Explorations in Part of Eastern Afghanistan and in Kafiristan in 1883” (Dehra Dun, 1885). He died not long afterward, and his biography,
Memoir of W. W. McNair, the First European Explorer of Kafiristan,
was written by J. E. Howard (Keymer, 1889). A British attempt at cataloguing,
Dardistan and Kafiristan: In Three Parts
(Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1885), only ran to two parts, with that on Kafiristan absent.
G. S. Robertson’s book
Kafirs of the Hindu Kush
, published first in 1896, was reprinted in 2001 by the Lahore-based publisher Sang-e-Meel. His secret report for the British government can be seen at the British Library under the title “Report on Journey to Kafiristan” (HMSO, 1894). His biography,
The Unlikely Hero,
by Dorothy Anderson (Spellmount, 2008), defends him against accusations that he should have done more to protect the Kafirs. Abdur Rahman Khan’s memoirs,
The Life of Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan,
were published by John Murray in 1900.
The Macnaghten quote “Here are your relations coming!” is from a talk that McNair gave to the Royal Geographical Society in January 1884, quoted in Howard’s
Memoir of W. W. McNair
. The Alan Bennett quote is from his play
The History Boys
(1995). The 2014 DNA survey, “A Genetic Atlas of Human Admixture History,” by Garrett Hellenthal, George B. J. Busby, and others, was published by
Science
magazine on February 14, 2014, and an interactive map of its data be seen at
http://admixturemap.paintmychromosomes.com
.
Books on the post-conversion people of Nuristan include Max Klimburg’s
The Kafirs of the Hindu Kush: Art and Society of the Waigal and Ashkun Kafirs
(Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999). Eric Newby gives Nuristan some attention in his travel memoir
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
(Harper, 2010), and a trio of Kabul-based diplomats, Nicholas Barrington, Joseph T. Kendrick, and Reinhard Schlagintweit, visited the region and wrote down their impressions in
A Passage to Nuristan: Exploring the Mysterious Afghan Hinterland
(I. B. Tauris, 2005).
The brothers Alberto and Augusto Cacopardo wrote a book called
Gates of Peristan
(IsIAO, 2001), which looks at the customs of Kafiristan, the Kalasha, and the people of nearby Gilgit and Hunza. R. C. F. Schomberg’s observations on the Kalasha are in
Kafirs and Glaciers: Travels in Chitral
(London, 1938), which is now out of print.
The Man Who Would Be King,
by Rudyard Kipling, is available through Wordsworth Editions in a 1994 reprint.
M.S. Durrani’s book on the Kalash,
Kalash Kafirs—The Urgent Need to Save a Vanishing People
was written in 1982 but did not get published; I found a copy at the University of London’s SOAS Library.
EPILOGUE: DETROIT
Thanks to Dr. Elaine Rumman, Yusif Barakat, George Khoury, Imam al-Qazwini, Wisam Breegi, Mirza Ismail, Abu Shihab, and the Yazidi community of Nebraska.
Information on Iraq’s Christians comes from Dr. Suha Rassam’s
Christianity in Iraq
(Gracewing, 2005) and also Dr. Christoph Baumer’s
The Church of the East
. The story of Markos is touched upon in
Voyager from Xanadu,
by Morris Rossabi (Kodansha International, 1992).
Telling Our Story: The Arab American National Museum
was
published in 2007. Lupieri’s book is cited in the notes to chapter 1. Naomi Schaefer Riley’s book
Til Faith Do Us Part
was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press.
Aaron, 127, 153, 180
A.B.—The Samaritan News,
156, 157
Abbas, Hajji, 57
Abbasid Empire, 61, 92
Abbasids, 63, 125, 126
Abdullah, Abdul-Jabbar, 32
Abraham, 10, 13, 18, 28, 43, 45
Isaac and, 149–150
Abu Shihab, 54, 72, 73, 272–273, 274–275, 277
daughter Naalin, 273, 275
foreign policy and, 272
photo of, 40
son Farhan, 272
Abu Simbel, temple at, 196
Abu Zayd, 267
Abu’l Suud, 197
Academy of Plato, 95, 116
Adam, 2, 6, 10, 13, 23, 25, 62, 69
Adi, Sheikh, 57, 58, 59, 63, 65, 67–68
Adultery, 233, 251
Advent, Copts and, 186
After the Moon
(Haidar), 53
Ahura Mazda, 77–78, 79, 81, 87, 101, 108
Akef, Mehdi, 204
Akhenaten, 191, 192, 206
Akiko (Japanese Kalasha), 239
photo of, 239
al-Ahram,
202
al-Aql, Sheikh, 121–122, 142
al-Azhar mosque, 126, 188, 192, 198
al-Banna, Hassan, 199, 200
al-Bayyada, 143
al-Darazi, Nashtaqin, 127
al-Farabi, 117, 126
al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, 208
al-Ghazali, xxii, 140
al-Gohary, Murgan, Sphinx/pyramids and, 194
al-Hakim bi Amr Allah, 126, 128, 142
al-Ja’di, 90
al-Khattab, Omar ibn: assassination of, 90
al-Kindi, 117
al-Loz, 151, 158, 162, 170
al-Mahdi, Caliph, 17, 126
al-Maqrizi, 209
al-Masri, Munib, 175, 178
al-Mas’udi, 7, 8–9
al-Qaeda, 226
al-Qazwini, Hassan, 266
al-Shaarawi, Huda, 205
Alamuddin, Amal, 142
Alawites, 117, 141
Assad regime and, 53
criticism of, 128–129
described, 51, 52
moon/planets and, 52–53
prayer by, 54
violence against, xxiii
Alexander the Great, 5, 11, 45, 52, 141, 226, 227–228, 248
Arab world and, 81
Aristotle and, 94
death of, 5, 229
Hindu Kush and, 220, 221, 228–229, 232
Kalasha and, 228
Persian Empire and, 81, 220
Samaritans and, 150–151
Ali (son-in-law of Mohammed), 53, 92, 99
Alawites and, 52
Ali, Mohammad (ruler of Egypt), 197, 200