No land on earth has been so comprehensively observed as Egypt, which was attracting awestruck travelers back in the days of Herodotus and Julius Caesar. This rich and varied collection brings the diversity and the continuity of Egypt together to give a picture of this country, its many places, its long history, and its people: the pharoahs, sultans, pilgrims to Sinai, Crusaders, and Napoleon, followed by the Grand Tourists of the eighteenth century and those less grand with Thomas Cook in the nineteenth. The range of voices gathered here is dazzling: an ancient myth from a papyrus next to Naguib Mahfouz’s account of Alexandria, Florence Nightingale describing Abu Simbel side by side with Ahdaf Soueif’s description of Sinai. A description of medieval Cairo by Ibn Jubayr walks hand in hand with one of the modern city by the Egyptian thinker Taha Hussein. Lucie Duff-Gordon sails up the Nile, Edward Lane crawls through a sand-filled temple, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel struggles up the cataract above Aswan.
Egypt and the Nile
Through Writers’ Eyes
Edited by
Deborah Manley
Sahar Abdel-Hakim
244 pp.
15X23cm
ISBN 9789774161742
For sale only in the Middle East
$24.95
Also available by this author
Traveling through Sinai
From the Fourth to the Twenty-first Century
Edited by Deborah ManleySahar Abdel-Hakim
Sinai has long attracted travelers to its ancient caravan routes and haunting landscapes, and visitors have frequently left written accounts of their experiences. In this wide-ranging anthology, Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel- Hakim have collected dozens of accounts and observations from travelers who have written about Sinai, its people, its sights, and its historical and biblical landmarks. Starting with Egeria, a fourth-century Christian who relates her visit to Mt. Sinai and the Burning Bush, Traveling through Sinai offers a diverse collection of voices over the centuries. Among themare the German friar Felix Fabri, who visited in 1492, and nineteenth-century antiquarian William Flinders Petrie, giving his impressions of the Bedouins of the peninsula. French novelist Alexandre Dumas writes of meeting two monks in the desert carrying a letter signed by Napoleon, while others describe crossing the canal at Suez, the ancient inscriptions of Wadi Mukattab, and the harrowing experiences of desert travel.
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13 April 2009
Paperback
272 pp.16 b/w illus.
15X23cm
$24.95
Women Travelers in Egypt
From the Eighteenth to the Twenty-first Century
Edited by Deborah ManleyUntil late in the nineteenth century, few guidebooks acknowledged the presence of women as travelers—although women had been traveling around the world for centuries. Women’s accounts of their journeys, distinct from those of male travelers, began to appear more frequently in the early nineteenth century, and Egypt was a popular destination. Women had more time to watch and describe; they were more dependent on the Egyptian staff; they spent time both in the harems of Cairo and with the women they met along the Nile. Some of them, like Sarah Belzoni, Sophia Poole, and Ellen Chennells, spoke Arabic. Others wrote engagingly of their experiences as observers of an exotic culture, with special access to some places no man could ever go. From Eliza Fay’s description of arriving in Egypt in 1779 to Rosemary Mahoney’s daring trip down the Nile in a rowboat in 2006, this lively collection of writing by over forty women travelers includes Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Isabella Bird, Winifred Blackman, Norma Lorimer, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Edwards, and Lucie Duff Gordon.
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15 March 15
Paperback
256 pp.20 b/w illus.
15X23cm
$19.95
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Grand Hotels of Egypt
In the Golden Age of Travel
Andrew HumphreysFrom the earliest resthouses serving travelers on the Overland Route between Britain and Bombay to the grand Edwardian palaces on the Nile that made Egypt the exotic alternative to wintering on the Riviera, the hotels of Alexandria, Cairo, Luxor, and Aswan were always about far more than just bed and board. As bridgeheads for African exploration, neutral territories for conducting diplomacy, headquarters for armies, providers of home comforts for writers, painters, scholars, and archaeologists in the field, and social hubs for an international elite, more of importance happened in Egypt’s hotels than in any other setting. It was through the hotels that visitors from the west—the earliest adventurers, then the travelers and, finally, the tourists—experienced the Orient. This book tells the stories of Egypt’s historic hotels (including the Cecil, Shepheard’s, the Mena House, Gezira Palace, Semiramis, Winter Palace, and Cataract) and some of the people who stayed in them, from Amelia Edwards, Lucie Duff Gordon and Florence Nightingale to Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle, Winston Churchill, and TE Lawrence.
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21 October 2015
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216 pp.274 illus., including 110 in color
19X24cm
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High above Egypt’s Desert and Oases
Marcello BertinettiForeword byOmar Sharif
Photographed from the sky, Egypt shows the best of itself. The course of the Nile, which cuts the desert in two from north to south, and the enormous Delta provide glorious, lush vegetation sliced by a deep blue band. The white sails that slide over its waters and the spectacular monuments that line its banks, the human ants’ nest of Cairo, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, palm groves and fertile fields, rocky mountains, coral seas, and the ever-changing waves of the dunes in the desert: all of Egypt’s magical panoramas and incomparable light are offered here in this series of five spectacular new books, together constituting the greatest collection of aerial views of the country ever made.
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Hardbound
128 pp.color photographs
22.5X15cm
$19.95
Gardens of a Sacred Landscape
Bedouin Heritage and Natural History in the High Mountains of Sinai
Samy ZalatFrancis Gilbert
Illustrations byAhmed Gheith
This beautifully illustrated book describes the unique environment and the natural history of St. Katherine in Sinai from the perspective of its inhabitants—the Gabaliya Bedouin. The Gabaliya live in the high and rugged mountain massif of South Sinai, enclosed within the St. Katherine Protectorate in an area now declared as a World Heritage Site. St. Katherine is one of the world’s most important protected areas for its special historical, cultural, religious, and environmental heritage. It contains Egypt’s highest mountain—Mount Katherine—and one of the world’s most sacred: Mount Sinai. The Gabaliya have a unique history, and their intimate relationship with their harsh environment is equally unique. In the arid landscape within the great Ring Dyke they have created their own orchard agriculture, growing fruit and vegetables in irrigated walled gardens that seem to grow out of the rock on remote wadi floors or on the steep mountainsides themselves. This book introduces—from their own observations—the gardens and the unique culture and heritage of the Gabaliya, the vegetables and fruits they grow, and the mammals, birds, lizards, and insects associated with their gardens and environment in this remarkable landscape. The book is fully illustrated with photographs and watercolor paintings.
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Hardbound
208 pp.230 illus.
16.5X23.5cm
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Cairo Illustrated
Michael HaagCairo is an exploding modern metropolis of eighteen million people that nevertheless preserves within its heart the finest medieval city in the world, its alleys, mosques, and caravanserais the original setting for the Arabian Nights, whose atmosphere is palpable still for the visitor wandering through its bazaars, while at sunset the Pyramids glow gold against the Western Desert as they have done for one million seven hundred thousand evenings past. The monuments of pharaohs and sultans lie within the city’s reach, making Cairo and its environs an unequaled storehouse of human achievement. In this guide to the largest city in Africa and the political and cultural fulcrum of the Arab world, Michael Haag explores Cairo’s past and present in word and picture, from Saqqara to the Citadel of Saladin, from the ancient synagogue and churches of Old Cairo to the skyscrapers along the Nile, from Khan al-Khalili, the vast bazaar as intricate as inlay work, to the Belle Epoque façades of the downtown streets, and introduces you to the treasures of three great civilizations at the Islamic, Coptic, and Egyptian Antiquities museums. Beautifully illustrated with 150 color photographs, this is a fascinating armchair tour of Cairo in all its variety.
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1 January 2006
Paperback
96 pp.200 color illus.
20X28cm
$19.95