Yemen Books

Yemen: The Unknown Arabia

Tim Mackintosh-Smith

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Englishman Tim Mackintosh-Smith was studying Arabic at Oxford when he visited Yemen, a forgotten country at the heel of the Arabian peninsula, and became obsessed with the place and its language. He's lived there since 1982, and this book--marketed as travel writing but more a blend of personal memoir and national history--is the result. There are certainly travel episodes, such as a trip to the remote island of Susqatra where the Gulf of Aden meets the Indian Ocean. Yet Yemen is more the product of a man gone native than a visitor with an itinerary. Indeed, Mackintosh-Smith offers a forthright defense of the country's lotus-like drug culture, which centers on qat, a leaf that produces a narcotic effect when chewed. "We qat chewers, if we are to believe everything that is said about us, are at best profligates, at worst irretrievable sinners," he writes. Although international health officials have warned against the drug, Mackintosh-Smith assures us this is all "quasi-scientific poppycock." The leaf, he says, helps its users to "think, work, and study." Yemen is surely an exotic land, and one of its charms--fully revealed in Mackintosh-Smith's digressive prose--is the way it has remained quaintly Arabic and seemingly immune to the modern forces transforming its neighbors. Well-received upon its initial publication in the United Kingdom, Yemen may come to be recognized as a small classic. --John J. Miller

A Winter in Arabia: A Journey Through Yemen

Freya Stark

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

One of the most unconventional and courageous explorers of her time, Freya Stark chronicled her extraordinary Travels in the Near East, establishing herself as a twentieth century heroine. A Winter in Arabia recounts her 1937-8 expedition in what is now Yemen, a journey which helped secure her reputation not only as a great travel writer, but also as a first-rate geographer, historian, and archaeologist. There, in the land whose "nakedness is clothed in shreds of departed splendor," she and two companions spent a winter in search of an ancient South Arabian city.

Offering rare glimpses of life behind the veil-the subtleties of business and social conduct, the elaborate beauty rituals of the women, and the bitter animosities between rival tribes, Freya Stark conveys the "perpetual charm of Arabia ... that the traveler finds his own level there simply as a human being."

"A treasure of rare distinction among travel books." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Here, for once in a very long while, is a book upon which the miser of superlatives may pour out his hoard of praise . . . To read such a book . . . is to be proud and thankful. For here is a lovely charity and calm courage, vivid gaiety, the strong peace of truth and understanding; and quietness." (The Times Literary Supplement)

The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut (Modern Library Paperbacks)

Freya Stark

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1934, a 42-year-old Englishwoman named Freya Stark arrived in the British-governed Protectorate of Aden on a singular mission: to locate the fabled, long-lost city of Shabwa.

Located on the high Hadramaut plateau in what is now Yemen, Shabwa was renowned in antiquity as the source of frankincense. Little visited even then, it was also thought to be a particularly forbidding place; Genesis mentions it as the "enclosure of death," and the Roman geographer Pliny reported that it contained 60 great temples and wealth beyond measure. That was good enough for Stark, who, having not long before made a difficult passage across the badlands of Iran, thrived on improbable adventures. And so, by burro and whatever mechanical conveyances she could find, she ascended the high mountains into a world that was sometimes perilous, but that also sometimes approached fairy-tale dimensions, as when, climbing the Hadramaut, she writes, "The path kept high and open, until gradually the valley clefts narrowed again upon us, and shut us in walls whose luxuriant green made a romantic landscape of the kind usually only invented in pictures."

Stark never reached Shabwa; laid low by measles, she had to be evacuated from territory overrun in any event by warring religious factions and gangs of bandits. Though cut short, her time in the Yemeni highlands yielded this superb travel narrative, full of uncommon vistas and milieus (harems, bazaars, and Bedouin camps among them). Anyone who values tales of adventure well told will find Stark's body of work--and this book in particular--to be full of treasures. --Gregory McNamee

The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean (California World History Library)

Engseng Ho

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Editorial Review:

The Graves of Tarim narrates the movement of an old diaspora across the Indian Ocean over the past five hundred years. Ranging from Arabia to India and Southeast Asia, Engseng Ho explores the transcultural exchanges--in kinship and writing--that enabled Hadrami Yemeni descendants of the Muslim prophet Muhammad to become locals in each of the three regions yet remain cosmopolitans with vital connections across the ocean. At home throughout the Indian Ocean, diasporic Hadramis engaged European empires in surprising ways across its breadth, beyond the usual territorial confines of colonizer and colonized. A work of both anthropology and history, this book brilliantly demonstrates how the emerging fields of world history and transcultural studies are coming together to provide groundbreaking ways of studying religion, diaspora, and empire.
Ho interprets biographies, family histories, chronicles, pilgrimage manuals and religious law as the unified literary output of a diaspora that hybridizes both texts and persons within a genealogy of Prophetic descent. By using anthropological concepts to read Islamic texts in Arabic and Malay, he demonstrates the existence of a hitherto unidentified canon of diasporic literature. His supple conceptual framework and innovative use of documentary and field evidence are elegantly combined to present a vision of this vital world region beyond the histories of trade and European empire.

A History of Modern Yemen

Paul Dresch

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Excellent Overview 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

I spent three months in Yemen last year and bought this book before I went. I'm glad I did, because it turned out to be the perfect primer. A HISTORY OF MODERN YEMEN gives a clear, accessible account of the civil wars throughout the twentieth century that preceded the union of the two Yemens in 1990; and towards the end it offers penetrating insights into the way a new upper class has emerged along with a new desperate underclass. Paul Dresch is also good at highlighting how, despite unification, a north-south divide continues to plague a drive for a true national identity. This book struck me as unusally accessible for the general reader/traveller considering it is principally aimed at academics.

Editorial Review:

Yemen's modern history is unique and deserves to be better understood. While the borders of most Middle East states were defined by colonial powers after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, a single Yemeni state was not formed until 1990. In fact, much of Yemen's twentieth-century history was taken up constructing such a state, forged after years of civil war. The book is augmented by illustrations, maps and a detailed chronology.

The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror

Dina Temple-Raston

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Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The acclaimed author of A Death In Texas tells the riveting, morally complex story of a group of young Yemeni-American men from an upstate New York steel town who may, or may not, have been America's first "sleeper cell."

They called themselves the Arabian Knights. They were six Yemeni-American friends, a gang of high-school soccer stars, a band of brothers on the grim side streets of Lackawanna's First Ward, just a stone's throw from Buffalo.

Later, people would argue about why they left western New York in the spring of 2001 to attend an al-Qaeda camp. Some said they traveled to Afghanistan to become America's first sleeper cell--terrorists slumbering while they awaited orders from on high. Others said that their ill-fated trip was a lark, an adventurous extension of their youthful wrestling with what it meant to be Muslim in America.

Dina Temple-Raston returns to Lackawanna to tell the story of a group of young men--born and brought up in small town America--who left otherwise unremarkable lives to attend an al-Qaeda camp. Though they sought to quietly slip back into their roles as middle class Americans, the 9/11 attacks made that impossible.

The Jihad Next Door is the story of pre-emptive justice in the age of terror. It follows a handful of ordinary men through an extraordinary time when Muslims in America are often instantly suspect, their actions often viewed through the most sinister lens.

Socotra: A Natural History of the Islands and Their People

Catherine Cheung, Lyndon DeVantier, Kay Van Damme

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

You must buy it. 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

There is nothing out there like this book. Nothing even comes close. If you're interested in the island of Suqutra, you basically must have this book. Live on the streets. Eat only rice. Sell your children. But buy this book.

"Natural History" contains everything you could possibly want to know about the islands and their people- including that they aren't one island, but actually six, three of which are inhabited. The book goes into great detail on the history, the customs, the flora and fauna, marine life, geology, and the environmental impact and future of Suqutra. Cheung and DeVantier have taken a century and a half of research, countless articles and books, and their own personal experience to present a beautifully photographed and intricate portrayal. Here you can learn about the poisonous animals (and what the possibility is of a giant poisonous snake); how to politely visit a Suqutri home and eat; why the Suqutri marine ecology is so unique; when the island was Christian; and how frankincense and ambergris are formed by battle between giant monsters and from special trees. Perhaps the only thing missing is a more detailed analysis of the centrality of folk Islam in the society, which is only alluded to at times- but that can be found in the ethnography Island of the Phoenix. Truthfully, this book is a bargain- it should be selling at about three times the price, for no other book comes close to matching it.

Some have a thirst for Suqutra and want to learn more about it by reading this book. There may be some reading this review who've never heard of the place. Go buy the book to find out. This is the oldest isolated continental land in the world. Because of this, and fierce winter storms six months of the year with unique alternating encircling currents, the island's biology is unique and has a rate of endemic species comparable for it's size to Hawaii or the Galopogus. Dragon's Blood Trees and actual Cucumber trees (trees grown to the size of cucumbers) are unique to this island, as are the inaptly named Persian Violets (now available from florists). But unlike those other islands of uniqueness, Suqutra is not only continental crust, but also has had an indigenous population of humans for over two millennia. These people have been largely culturally and linguistically isolated as well over that time, and have had specific impacts on their small land, as well as learning valuable environmental tools to care for the ecology and continue to survive.

In it's second to last chapter "Natural History" takes a look at these environmental issues, in a series of studies so engaging they read like short stories. They tell of modern attempts at ecological protection, with successes and failures. But the studies are always encouraging, for even in failures there is at least the recognition of the problem, and what needs to continue to be protected. Due to the public's lack of awareness of Suqutra, and the long history of ecological concern by the islanders, there is time to actively work to identify unique animals and ecology of the islands and protect them before there is great loss, as has occurred in Hawaii. As such, many like the authors are working towards sustainable development and technological application on the islands, without removing natural culture or wildlife, to the extent that this is possible.

I perhaps appreciated most of all the final chapter. Many may have read the recent New York Times article on Suqutra, and are considering it as a pleasing new adventure, and out of the way destination. The final chapter of "Natural History" warns against this. While ecotourism is growing on the island, it is having a greater negative impact on the animals and plants of Suqutra. Suqutra is very hot, with fierce winds, a high chance of contracting malaria, strange customs (for Westerners), dangerous biting insects, extremely limited hospital care and doctors, and water too limited to allow regular bathing. If you're going to go, the authors wish to communicate that it's not for a lark or the faint of heart, and please respect the people and the land, so as to sustain it for future generations. Suqutra is a land of adventure, but the kind of adventure that is grueling and difficult, that involves emotional death to self in changing cultural practices, potentially taking lives and causing a lifetime of injury.

Editorial Review:

This richly illustrated book provides the first comprehensive review of the natural history of these islands. The islands became a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve in 2003 and have been nominated as a World Heritage site. While documenting Socotra's geology, biodiversity, ecology, human history and culture, the book also highlights aspects of the islands' biogeography, evolution, and conservation. Thoroughly researched, with contributions from numerous international and local specialists, the book is packed with up-to-date scientific, historic and cultural information. 300 color photos, 10 maps.

Yemen: Jewel of Arabia

Charles Aithie, Patricia Aithie

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Yemen is the land of the half mythic Queen of Sheba and the "Arabia Felix" coveted by ancient Rome. Yemen's history is ancient indeed, and much is still in the process of being discovered about this country and its influence on the ancient world. Both the country and the book help open the mind to new understandings of the growth of Middle Eastern civilization and the myriad influence of the past on the present.

As the traveling world awakens to the extraordinary glories and richness of Yemen, this large format, full-color photography book will surely become the visitor's standard compendium about the country.

Prepared by a husband and wife team, Charles and Patricia Aithie, deeply knowledgeable about Yemen's landscapes, cities, history, art, and archaeology, this book provides the factual grounding that no visitor will be able to do without. The work is wonderfully illustrated by the authors' photographs-and, as one of the most photogenic countries in the world, makes for a visual feast.

Yemen Chronicle: An Anthropology of War and Mediation

Steven C. Caton

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

The finest ethnomemoir I've ever read. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Tim Mackintosh-Smith, Eric Hansen, and Kevin Rushby have all written excellent books vividly describing Yemen. They give us exciting travelogues and detailed descriptions of qat. And yet this book is the finest I've ever seen to describe what it's like to actually live there, and what modern Yemeni culture is. I felt like I was actually there, in a remote village to the East of Sana'a. I wanted to go to Yemen and experience more of the life Caton describes.

He shows us the mentality and life of the tribe in ethnography; he makes us part of his life through memoir. This allows us to simultaneously experience the emic and etic and gain the best of all worlds, understanding life through the eyes of ourselves and the observed. I feel for Caton as he frankly confesses his failings or perceived failings. He writes honestly, and at times more honestly than he realizes. Because Caton has such a thirst for poetry this book is an artistic work as well, and the poetry interspersed throughout the war and reconciliation attempts addresses both sides of the mind. It was fascinating to see how the possibility of war rested in large extent on what poems were produced, and how well-crafted the poetry was. I am inspired to learn and hear more Arabic poetry through this book.

Editorial Review:

In 1979, Steven C. Caton went to a remote area of Yemen to do fieldwork on the famous oral poetry of its tribes. The recent hostage crisis in Iran made life perilous for a young American in the Middle East; worse, he was soon embroiled in a dangerous local conflict and tribal hostilities simmered for months. Yemen Chronicle is his extraordinary report both on events that ensued and on the many theoretical—let alone practical—difficulties of doing ethnography in such circumstances. Caton also offers a profound meditation on the political, cultural, and sexual components of modern Arab culture.

Yaman, Its Early Mediæval History: The Original Texts, with Translation and Notes by Henry Cassels Kay

Umarah ibn 'Ali al-Hakami

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Editorial Review:

This Elibron Classics edition is a facsimile reprint of a 1892 edition by Edward Arnold, London. Yaman, its early mediaeval history, by Najm ad-Din `Omarah al-Hakami. Also the abridged history of its dynasties by Ibn KhaldЇun. And an account of the Karmathians of Yaman by Abu `Abd Allah Baha ad-Din al-Janadi.