A Sultan in Palermo

A Sultan in Palermo PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178168930X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
The fourth novel in Tariq Ali’s ‘Islam Quintet’ charts the life and loves of the medieval cartographer Muhammed al-Idrisi. Torn between his close friendship with the sultan and his friends who are leaving the island or plotting a resistance to Norman rule, Idrisi finds temporary solace in the harem; but his conscience is troubled... A Sultan in Palermo is a mythic novel in which pride, greed, and lust intermingle with resistance and greatness. It echoes a past that can still be heard today. Praise for the Islam Quintet: “A richly woven tapestry that even before its completion meritscomparison with Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo trilogy.” Kirkus Reviews

A Sultan in Palermo

A Sultan in Palermo PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 178168930X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Get Book Here

Book Description
The fourth novel in Tariq Ali’s ‘Islam Quintet’ charts the life and loves of the medieval cartographer Muhammed al-Idrisi. Torn between his close friendship with the sultan and his friends who are leaving the island or plotting a resistance to Norman rule, Idrisi finds temporary solace in the harem; but his conscience is troubled... A Sultan in Palermo is a mythic novel in which pride, greed, and lust intermingle with resistance and greatness. It echoes a past that can still be heard today. Praise for the Islam Quintet: “A richly woven tapestry that even before its completion meritscomparison with Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo trilogy.” Kirkus Reviews

The Islam Quintet

The Islam Quintet PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480448583
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1701

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Book Description
Five nuanced and powerful historical novels depicting the clashes among Muslims, Christians, and Jews from the Crusades to twenty-first-century London. Celebrated British-Pakistani journalist and author Tariq Ali takes a mind-expanding journey through the ages with these five acclaimed works of fiction, available now in one collection. Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree: “Ali captures the humanity and splendor of Muslim Spain” in “an enthralling story, unraveled with thrift and verve” (The Independent). For the doomed Moors, the fall of Granada and the approaching forces of Christendom bring not peace but the sword. The Book of Saladin: After Saladin reclaims the holy city of Jerusalem from the Crusaders, he turns to a Jewish scribe to record his story, which Edward Said calls “a narrative for our time, haunted by distant events and characters who are closer to us than we had dreamed.” The Stone Woman: “Ali paints a vivid picture of a fading world,” proclaims the New York Times Book Review, as a distant descendant of an exiled Ottoman courtier suffers a stroke in Istanbul, and his family rushes to his side to hear his last stories. A Sultan in Palermo: In “a marvelously paced and boisterously told novel of intrigue, love, insurrection and manipulation,” cartographer Muhammad al-Idrisi is caught between his friendship with King Roger of Sicily and the resentments of his fellow Muslims (The Guardian). Night of the Golden Butterfly: A Lahore-born writer living in London is called back to his homeland by an old friend who, at seventy-five, has finally fallen in love. “If Pakistan is a land of untold stories,” writes the New Statesman, Ali is “the country’s finest historian and critic.”

Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree

Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9780860916765
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Tells the story of a family in Moorish Spain and their attempts to survive after the fall of Granada.

The Stone Woman

The Stone Woman PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859843642
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
'Ali spins a web of tales that is as inventive and fantastical as the Arabian nights.'âe"The Times.

The Book of Saladin

The Book of Saladin PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781680035
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The Book of Saladin is the fictional memoir of Saladin, the Kurdish liberator of Jerusalem, as dictated to a Jewish scribe, Ibn Yakub. Saladin grants Ibn Yakub permission to talk to his wife and retainers so that he might present a full portrait in the Sultan’s memoirs. A series of interconnected stories follows, tales brimming over with warmth, earthy humor and passions in which ideals clash with realities and dreams are confounded by desires. At the heart of the novel is an affecting love affair between the Sultan’s favored wife, Jamila, and the beautiful Halina, a later addition to the harem. The novel charts the rise of Saladin as Sultan of Egypt and Syria and follows him as he prepares, in alliance with his Jewish and Christian subjects, to take Jerusalem back from the Crusaders. This is a medieval story, but much of it will be uncannily familiar to those who follow events in contemporary Cairo, Damascus, and Baghdad. Betrayed hopes, disillusioned soldiers and unrealistic alliances form the backdrop to The Book of Saladin.

Night of the Golden Butterfly

Night of the Golden Butterfly PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480448575
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
DIVDIVThe Islam Quintet concludes with a powerful portrait of life and love/divDIVTariq Ali’s epic quintet, which began on the streets of medieval Granada, culminates in present day with Night of the Golden Butterfly. The story darts between the past and present of Dara, a Lahore-born writer who now lives in London. Dara is called back to his homeland by an old friend, the hot-tempered and mysterious Plato, who, at seventy-five, has finally fallen in love. Dara is to help Plato’s newfound inamorata to write a book about his friend’s life./divDIV /divDIVDara retraces not only Plato’s steps but also his own, meeting old friends across the world as they retread the paths of their lives. Night of the Golden Butterfly is a gorgeous and lyrical capstone that finds heart and humor in the passage of time, the practice of reconciliation, and the irresistible draw of home./div /div

British Asian Fiction

British Asian Fiction PDF Author: Neil Murphy
Publisher: Cambria Press
ISBN: 1604975415
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
In this outstanding collection of essays, editors Neil Murphy and Wai-chew Sim seek not so much to demarcate the field of British Asian fiction, but to offer due acknowledgment of the artistic merit of the works of selected authors and simultaneously register their cultural significance. This volume demonstrates in situ the virtues of commentary that engages in a substantial manner with formal and aesthetic considerations, even as it implicates the discourses of alterity that dominate contemporary cultural criticism. Additionally, the essays delineate the complex subject positions explored by authors and texts, and focus on the way writers negotiate the exigencies of their location within and between different social formations. If it is the case that British literature can no longer be discussed in monocultural terms because of the impact of the writers under consideration, it is also the case that the diverse trans-cultural positions they explore are often less specified than proclaimed. Addressing difference, commensurability, and form-related notions of "truth-content," these essays enlarge our understanding of the range of British (and affiliated) identities, as well as the cultural contexts from which they arose. Working as academics and critics from Singapore, a useful vantage point, Murphy and Sim have extended the parameters of "British Asian" to include, not just writers from South Asia as is traditionally the case, but writers whose parents, or who themselves, have migrated to Britain from other regions of Asia, for example, Japan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. This initiative has made it possible for professors Murphy and Sim to bring together, first, an interestingly varied group of authors, among them those who came to prominence in the 1980s--Salman Rushdie, Timothy Mo, Kazuo Ishiguro---as well as their younger contemporaries--Meera Syal, Romesh Gunesekera, Monica Ali, Hari Kunzru, Ooi Yang-May; and, second, a broad and diverse range of novels that span Timothy Mo's Sour Sweet (1982) and Tariq Ali's A Sultan in Palermo (2005), the fourth volume in his Islam quintet.

Art, Trade and Culture in the Islamic World and Beyond

Art, Trade and Culture in the Islamic World and Beyond PDF Author: Alison Ohta
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781909942905
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
The essays in this volume bring to light the artistic exchanges that occurred between successive Islamicdynasties and those further afield in China, Armenia, India and Europe from the 12th to the 19th centuries. All the articles present original research, many of them taking advantage of innovative scientific means allowing us to look at already familiar objects in a new light. Subjects include tile production during the reign of Qaytbay, book bindings associated with Qansuh al-Ghuri, depictions of fish on Mamluk textiles, the relationship between Mamluk metalwork and Rasulid Yemen and Italy respectively. A number of the articles are concerned with epigraphic inscriptions found on the buildings of the Fatimid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, examining the inscriptions on the Mausoleum of Yahya al-Shibihi in Cairo, others trace the revival of building inscriptions in 19th century Egypt, and how a Mamluk inscription from the Madrasa Qartawiya in Tripoli is replicated in Istanbul during the Ottomanperiod. The relationship between ceilings of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo and the MoukhroutasPalace in Constantinople is also explored, as is the unacknowledged debt that European lacquer worksowes to Persian craftsmen. Other topics covered include the architecture of the Nusretiye Mosque in Istanbul, the role played by Armenian architects in the reshaping of Ottoman cities in the 19th century, the role of the hammam in Ottoman culture and representations of beauty on Iznik pottery. Arictles on Port St. Symeon ceramics, the Armenian patrons of Chinese export wares of the 18th century, the history of the art of khatam khari in Iran, the artistic, architectural and literary influences in India between the 15th and 17th centuries, the influence of Timurid architecture in 15th century Bidar and the influence of a 16th century Hindavi Sufi Romance are also included. "

The Duel

The Duel PDF Author: Tariq Ali
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1471105881
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 558

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Book Description
Pakistan stands on the front line of the war against terror. Yet this long-time ally of the West, whose links with the US have caused enormous friction within the country, is in deepening crisis. As President Pervez Musharraf struggles to cling to power through states of emergency, press curbs and imprisonment of his opponents, a range of forces threaten to destroy him and tip the country into a full-blown civil war. Drawing on extensive first-hand research and personal knowledge, Tariq Ali investigates both the causes and the consequences of Pakistan's rapid spiral into political chaos. Shedding new light on controversial questions (did the US greenlight the execution of President Zufikar Ali Bhutto in 1979? Is NATO negotiating to grant the Taliban a role in Afghanistan? Are those now jockeying for power any less corrupt than Musharraf's current cronies?) he examines the various disparate elements and each of the key individuals whose conflicts are tearing Pakistan apart

The Sultan and the Queen

The Sultan and the Queen PDF Author: Jerry Brotton
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143110624
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
The fascinating story of Queen Elizabeth’s secret outreach to the Muslim world, which set England on the path to empire, by The New York Times bestselling author of A History of the World in Twelve Maps We think of England as a great power whose empire once stretched from India to the Americas, but when Elizabeth Tudor was crowned Queen, it was just a tiny and rebellious Protestant island on the fringes of Europe, confronting the combined power of the papacy and of Catholic Spain. Broke and under siege, the young queen sought to build new alliances with the great powers of the Muslim world. She sent an emissary to the Shah of Iran, wooed the king of Morocco, and entered into an unprecedented alliance with the Ottoman Sultan Murad III, with whom she shared a lively correspondence. The Sultan and the Queen tells the riveting and largely unknown story of the traders and adventurers who first went East to seek their fortunes—and reveals how Elizabeth’s fruitful alignment with the Islamic world, financed by England’s first joint stock companies, paved the way for its transformation into a global commercial empire.