Shati' Tea and Falafel Shop, Gaza

I'll never forgive him for speaking to an Israeli sponsored series on Jerusalem. Even today his writing appears a little bit off-color he analyzes things but never comes to a conclusion that seems logical. Like Grabar, Nassar Rabbat has written things that seem wrong. For example, Rabbat in his book on Mamluke architecture criticizes Cresswell. I can't believe he criticizes Cresswell. Cresswell was one of the pioneer archaeologists who described the great monuments of Mamluke architecture. Let's look at some other Orientalists now. I'm reading from AJ Arberry's "Oriental essays portraits of seven scholars". The first portrait is of Simon Ockley. He was born in 1678. Ockley wrote the history of the Saracens at Cambridge. He translated many manuscripts from Oxford. Arberry calls him the pioneer. Here's another man whom Arberry calls the founder. This is a man named Jones who worked in the 18th century and knew Boswell and even Benjamin Franklin. He wrote a grammar of Persian which was used by Fitzgerald. This William Jones was amazing. He wrote poetry in Persian French Arabic and Sanskrit. I think I'll paste this into my blog.

Shati' Tea and Falafel Shop, Gaza La Méditerranée dangereuse

A couple of days ago Costa Cruises sank one of their ships off the coast of Italy. I have been re-reading Henri Pirenne's Medieval Cities, Princeton University Press 1969. I'm struck by the influence--or, what the Christian historians call the razzias from Arab Spain--in the late 700's. Lérins played a part, as did Massif des Maures. It would be impotrant to check the Arab historians to see if this was not rather merchant influence, like the later interest in mathematics and science by the Po Valley pre-Rennaissance fiefdoms, who invited Arab scholars from Spain.

Joffrey's Café, Dhahran, i.e. from my apartment

J'ai regardé une programme su le nouveau Sudan du Sud indeépendante du vrai Sudan. Tout le monde a oublié les origines Jimmy Carteresque de la guerre pour le petrol du Sudan, commence par le desir de missioner les chrétiens de ce region.

Cafe de Flore, Paris

Gallantry with a red bicycle. Picture of my new bicycle, before I added the Go Sport saddle bags.

McNamara Airport Coffee Shop, Detroit, Michigan

All discussion of the news shall be from McNamara Airport Ground Operations Break Room.

The Militant has a nice way of showing the importance of the long view of History to the young people at the "Occupy Wall Street protests." They quote:
"As long as workers' confidence and practice of solidarity continues to grow as a result of these struggles, we get stronger. 'Now and again the workers are victorious, but only for a time,' says the Communist Manifesto. 'The real fruit of their battles lies not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers.'"
ومن وقت إلى آخر ينتصر العمال انتصارهم هو الى حين. والنتيجة الحقة لنضالهم ليست في النجاح المباشر بل في إتحاد العمل المنعاظن باستمرار.

Flore, Fishawi, Shati, McNamara ...Learning Shati Tea and Falafel Shop

Flore, Fishawi, Shati, McNamara
All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and entertainment, shall be under the article of
Café Flore, Paris; poetry, under that of Fishawi, Jeddah or Cairo; learning under the title of the Shati Tea-and-Falafel-shop, Gaza; foreign and domestic news, you will have from
McNamara Ground Ops Lunchroom, Detroit; and what else I shall on any other subject offer, shall be dated from my own apartment.

Had an interesting conversation with an African American outside Dar Al-Ma'arif Bookstore in Cairo yesterday. Dr. Paul explained the significance of the metaphysics of Avicenna. Ibn Sina explains that the mind is both the individual mind (noos, in Greek) and the activator. Very interesting. Dr. Paul (Hardy) did his thesis on Avicenna at Oxford.

Shati' Tea and Falafel Shop, Gaza City, Gaza

...a democratic secular Palesine, with the Palestinians back on their land, will naturally be also be a refuge for Jews persecuted by Anti-semitism in the crisis-torn capitalist world (The Militant Aug. 8, 2011).

Just thinking of how the Universities no longer have "anthologies" of foreign literature the way they used to, and how the great classics in History of the 60's and 70's have been replaced by a hodg podge of personal reminiscences of interviewby reporters.

café de Flore, Paris Maqamat Al-Hamadhaniمقامات الهمذاني

I just posted this cd I bought from the BNF Richlieu of the manuscript of Hamadhani's Maqamat, which were literary discussions--like the Tatler, but in 9th century Baghdad. They are stories, but also a form of literary criticism took place at these discussions. The early orientalists like de Sacy had access to 15th century manuscripts in the Bibliothèque royale and much was done: Below is a story of talking animals that is from Hamadani's Maqamat which is in de Sacy's Chrestomathie, "anthology." I have pasted in the "Dog"(le chien) story and the reference to the manuscript here. (When I went to Paris, the librarian in the Arabic section used the catalogue to find the manuscript number and then, with that info, I went to BNF Richlieu--right on my favorite bus route from Montmartre, the 75, I think, and ordered the CD. If you want to study the whole manuscript, you can wait for the pdf to download from my university of Michigan server. MSS arabe, BNF # 3923

Below is a copy and paste of story 113 in the Google Books Scan of this old Bibliography of Stories: BIBLIOGRAPHIE DES OUVRAGES ARABES OU RELATIFS AUX ARABES PUBLIES DANS l'Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1885, Victor Chavin, Professeur a l'Universite de LIEGE

in Google books at Link

As you can see, you have to know a little bit about French, since the google scan doesn't OCR French very well. For Manuscrits, they have some gobledegook. My manuscript seems to have been read quite early, at least before 1885 already by these great old orientalists. In the footnotes after the story of the dog, my manuscript is listed as Paris, 639, n" 3923

Hamadani needs further study as an exeplary form of literary criticism, as my colleague at Jeddah Teachers college told me, thus enspiring me to go to the BNF Richleu and ordering it.

113. — Le chien.



8. — Behmauer, 113.— Gibb, 119.



Le saint BAyazîd est mordu par un chien malade qu'il avait recueilli et soigné.
Comme il se plaint, l'animal, à qui Dieu donne un instant la parole, lui dit
que « l'homme agit comme un homme et le chien comme un chien. »



Animaux qui parlent. Nombres, XXII et suiv. Winer, Bibl. Realwôr-
terbuch, 3® édit., 1, 184. — BiKhart, Hicrozoïcon, 1692, 1, 191-198.— Damîri,
1, 228 et 327. — IMâm, 125. — Defrémery, Batoutah, 4, 415 (Journ. asial.,
1843, 1, 216.).— Man. Paris, 346, n^ i93i> 16 et 626, n** 3668, 4.— Man.
Berlin, 20, 23.


113.* — DK SACY, Chre>tomathie arabe. 1H27, tome 3.



C'J Voir aussi :

— Ikockelmanii. 1, 03-^5; <^*dit. Aniclang, 93.

— (îrassc, Lchrbuch, 2, 1, 1, 460.

— H. Halla, 6^ 54. n*' liyoH.

Te Slane, Ibn Khall., 1, 1 12-114.

— D'Ucrlx^loi. y^'^-y/j.

"DoSacy, n" I2(/*', V; n" i?i*^, IIl-IV.
- !)(' Sacv, Hinjy. Miihaud. v" Hamadâni.

— Hainmer, Litcraturgcsch., 5, 994-99^.

— Scliniirrc*r m* donne pas l'édition de Scheid, dont il y a un exemplaire à

la HiMiothètuie de Strasbourg : -iÎAèNû-i*i^Vci ^•./c^.iU. ('onsessus Ilamada-

nensis vul^o dicti Ik*di alzamaan (^.^L« J^ *.5.^? ' *î cckI. Ms. bibliothcae Iratns
siii ejusdenKjue typis arabicis edidit Jaeobus Sclieidius. S. 1. n. d. In-4. 16.
(Catalogue de Strastxmrg, 27.)
("es! la maqame Ae Dhidr.

M\Ni'S(Kn>. (Manuscrits)

— Paris, 639, n" 3923.

— Herlin, 19, 529, n" 3535, 441, S4-8S (la neuvième maqânn- ) et 514. 5.

— Leide, 1, 309, noie et 334-335*

— Hibl. Lindes., 14-15.

— Hrockelmann, 1, ^,^.



- o8 —

Donne les maqâmt;s suivantes : 3, 7, S, 12, 15 et 20. (Texte. 7«S-g4 ;
traduction, 243-258; notes, 25<)-272; additions, 537; errata, 5t)«S.)(^)

('. R. Chêzy, J. des savants, 1829, 409-470.

MacNamara Airport Terminal Ground Operations Coffee Machine, Detroit, Michigan ..Hama, Syria

People throughout Syria held night-time protests in solidarity with the people of Hama yesterday, July 6, since the Syrian army has dealt very severely with Hama after their July 1 demonstration of 1 and ½ million 150,000. Although the attack by the Syrian army cannot be condoned, it was rather hypocritical of the US Secretary of State, Clinton, to express concern, and continue to link these tactics of the Assad regime with something Syria had learned from Iran. She can get away with such hypocrisy since very little is known about how the US condoned and even fostered even worse repression in their support of the Shah against opposition to him throughout the many urban centers of Iran which were subject to hellicopter strafing and the infamous steel bed springs torture racks developed by the American Embassy for use of the dreaded SAVAK.

Macnamara Airport Ground Ops Coffee Machine...the financial crisis and the consequent assault on workers and farmers

Je sais que l'homme ou la femme moyen me dira que j'ai une haine virulante envers les états unis, mais ce n'est pas contre l'Amérique, mais plutot contre la classe dirigeante et leur pragmatisme. Eux, ils n'ont pas besoin de gagner. Pour eux ce n'est que "exister" qu'ils faut faire. Pour nous autres, il faut arracher le pourvoir de leur mains. C'est la crise des banques impérialistes qui provoque la reaction brutale de Assad en Syrie, et des colonels de l'Egypte et de la Lybie. C'est le capitalisme -- ce système qui n'a qu'a détruire comme il peut pour survivre. C'est pour cela qu'il y a ces tueries en Syrie.

Il n'y a qu'une prise de pouvoir aux états unis par la classe ouvrière, prise de pouvoir par une direction révolutionnaire de masse qui n'hésitera pas à prendre le pourvoir des captialistes, qui pourra arreter ce systeme inexorable du capitalisme mondial, qui est l'imperialisme. Et pauvre moi, qui avait meme "un peu peur" quand mes étudiants sont allés "en masse" me dit-on, au doyen pour se plaindre du fait que je n'avais pas enseigné 002, avec les nouvelles bouquins, avant. Et voila que je parle des "masses" maintenant apres avoir récouperé un peu après la semestre scholaire, et avoir re-lu "Capitalism's Long Hot Winter Has Begun."pdf de 2004.

from my appartment ...on Syria

Watched a BBC report by Sue Lloyd-Roberts on the big demonstrations in Syria. It gives an unusual glimpse to the west of what I see all the time on Al-Arabiyya. She shows how the activists get out the pictures.

Women are fleeing to Lebanon so as not to get raped by the regime's soldiers. And soldiers have to flee to Lebanon in order to avoid being killed for not enforcing orders to shoot. Friday of "Get out" jum'a al-rahal today some of the largest demonstrations ever.

Café de Flore, Paris: La France toujours! et Vive Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Freidan, et Hoda Sha'rawi

Link to me thinking about a book I should write. This takes a little time to download. Lien à moi pensant à un livre que je devrais écrire. اتصال(ياخذ قليم من الوقت) وانا افكر عن كتاب ضروري ان اكتبه


With all the news about Syria, I forgot, but was reminded by my friend Cindy, about the importance of what women in Saudi Arabia do.

Avec toutes les nouvelles de Syrie, j'avais oublié, mais mon amie, Cindy, m'a fait souvenir de l'importance de ce que font les femmes en Arabie Saoudite.

مع كل الاخبار عن سوريا, نسيت, و لاكن صديقتي سندي ذكّرتني عن اهمية ما تفعلون النساء في العربية السعودية


Saudi women defy ban on driving cars

Cindy* wrote:
Dozens of Saudi women drove cars in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and other Saudi cities June 17 to protest the ban on women driving.
It was the first major protest against the Saudi monarchy’s reactionary ban since November 1990, when 47 women drove 14 cars in a convoy on a Riyadh highway. That action came after U.S. women soldiers were stationed in Saudi Arabia prior to the start of the U.S. war against Iraq and freely drove military vehicles.

The 47 women were arrested, lost their passports for a year, and were fired from their jobs. A religious order prohibiting women from driving was handed down and quickly embraced by the Interior Ministry.

The ruling Saudi family, a close ally of Washington, has historically invoked Islamic law to justify tight restrictions on political space, not only for women but all working people in the kingdom.

Women are allowed to drive in some rural villages, where they have traditionally taken produce to market, hauled water, and transported people.

In addition to the prohibition on driving, Saudi women cannot vote. They require a male guardian’s permission to take a job or travel.

*July 4th issue of a US paper written in the interests of working people

ٍمن شقتي From my appartment

Today's Friday protests in Syria are called : Legitimate Bereavement فقدان شرعية

McNamara Ground Ops Coffee Machine, Detroit...Al-Jazeera on Syria

دير الزور حلب حمص حماة درعاء دمشق

Deir Al-Zor, Halab(Aleppo), Homs, Hama', Der'aa, Dimashq(Damascus)

Hier soir il y avait des manifestations pour la chute du regime Syrian dans les villes. Les attaques de l'armée syrienne continue dans le nord d'Alep. 10,000 refugiées en Turaquie maintenant dans des camps cloisonnés.

Un lénine de la Syrie expliqurait l'importance de ces paysans du nord de Syrie qui font greve--le seul moyen qu'ils ont,--en quittant leurs récoltes. Des grèves des petits marchands commencent dans d'autres villes syriennes en meme temps.

Il y a pas mal de Kurds syriens dans ces pays au nord d'Alep. Le régime syrien attaque cette région pour jouer avec le stigma raciste contre les Kurds. Mais il ne réussi pas. Tous les syriens sont avec les Kurds. Il y a des manifestations a Qamishli, grand région kurde juste a coté de la Turquie.

écrit pendant le دوام ليمي "night shift" à l'aeroport de Detroit le 23 juin, 2011, correspond à 9h du matin Al-Jazeera, Qatar le 24 juin.

Café de Flore, Paris and Abd Al-Halim Hafez's birthday

As we said before, all accounts of gallantry shall be from Café de Flore, Paris. What is nice about Google in Arabic is that yesterday, June 21, we were reminded that it was Egyptian male singer, Abd Al-Halim Hafez's birthday. No more gallant man than he, yesterday, on this singer-of-love-song's birthday, with the possible exception of Nelson Mandela, who received the elegant Michele Obama in his home town of Soweito yesterday,too. Gallant as he is, I'm sure Nelson Mandela(Freedom Now) won't bother Michele's pretty little head with a tribute to the role of the Cubans at the battle of Quito Canavale-to the role of Cuba in the ending of Apartheid. Michele Obama should read his speech, given in Cuba first thing after his release from prison in 1990 in Pathfinder Press' HOW FAR WE SLAVES HAVE COME. July26-1991-Cuba-and-Africa.mp3 is link to my reading of the speech, and a link to Mandela's speech at the UN, at about the same time, when the Apartheid Government was stalling on pushing De Klerk to step down and set up a democratic, non racial, South Africa. I heard Mandela speak in Tiger Stadium, in Detroit that year.

3011

Macnamara Airport Ground Ops Coffee Machine...Syria

Last night students at Damascus University protested the regime: nothing about it on BBC this morning.

Some of the greats in English Literature at the University of Damascus; my father, Edward Said, and all the Syrians who came to help teach in Saudi Arabia. (above, is a picture of a café in Paris named after my daughter, who met my father in his retirement in East Lansing, Michigan.)
More about English Literature in the Middle East in future blog entries from the poetry café in Gaza, the tea-and-falafel-shop outside Shati' Beach Camp to which yesterday 36 US peace activists set sail to break the Israeli blocade.

From my appartment, Joffrey's Coffee Shop, near Main Gate, KFUPM, Dhahran

All other news shall be from my appartment. This morning, I downloaded and installed Audacity and Lame encoder for making MP3's on my little ASUS Netbook. I am sitting here in the café, missing my students, who are finally free and on holiday. This little café, near Al-Nakhil (The Palm Tree) Restaurant, where I often have Biryani for lunch, is on the formerly deserted site where the father--(Tom Barger)--of my Shemlan colleague, Tim Barger, first discoverd oil in Saudi Arabia.

Shati' Tea-and-Falafel Shop, Gaza - On Learning..Philosophy of TechTalk*

*TechTalk, by Oxford University Press, is the series we use to teach Elementary and Pre Intermediate English to future Engineering students here at KFUPM.
According to Barthélémy, a professor at Lycée Henri IV, where Philippe Daumas* studied, we have to take the Encyclopedists of the Enlightemment, the age of "Les Lumieres" as an approach to a humanistic view of Machines and tools.(picture of Lycée Henri IV, above)

This is summarized in this nice translation of part 1 of Gilbert Simondon's 1958 Ecole Normale Supérieure - Sorbonne Thesis, L'individu et sa génèse physico-biologique, translated here, downloadable in pdf(copy here).

I'll have to put this kind of relation to Diderot's Encyclopedia with the Aleppo soap manufactures and "sina,a" of the Arabs.

Technical Mentality, translated by Arne De Boever, gives a nice summary of what Simondon meant by a culture of Technology(copy here). He has references to the potter making the pot; so this relates very closely to the trades of Syria. This unpublished text of Simondon, given to Jean-Hugues Barthélémy by his son was first published in Gilbert Simondon. Revue philosophique 3 (2006) Paris, P.U.F. 343-357
*Philippe Daumas, great supporter of the Palestinian Cause at University of Montpellier, where Taha Hussein studied, too.

Café de Flore, Paris - Syrian government's gallantry?

Today, Saturday 18 June after the Friday mass demonstrations against the Regime of Bashar al-Assad, BBC TV showed film footage one of their reporters got by going, somehow into Syria and interviewing people in the fields, camped out to avoid the Syrian army going through their village and pillaging and bulldozing houses.

Huge demonstartions in Hama and Aleppo Friday the 17th. Very inspiring, but not covered very much in the Western media. Solidarity candle-lit "Free Syria" on the lawn in Canberra, Australia.

Once again, I'm having difficulty posting this from a computer with Windows 7.

Café de Flore, Paris Syrian gov's gallantry toward Hama' farming women?

Today, Saturday 18 June after the Friday mass demonstrations against the Regime of Bashar al-Assad, BBC TV showed film footage one of their reporters got by going right through the Turkish border into a part of Syria. He interviewed an Syrian woman wearing her long blue robe and a white scarf over her head. She reminded us of those wonderful, proud, Palestinian women with their embroidered black robes selling fruit and vegetables in the main market of Gaza City. (above, Café de Flore, Paris)