Middle East

A prominent novelist, social activist, journalist, and nationalist, Halide Edib Adivar (1882-1964) was one of Turkey's leading feminists in the Young Turk and early Republican period. Memoirs is the first book in her two volume English-language autobiography, published in 1926, while she and her second husband Dr. Adnan were in exile in London and Paris having fallen out of favor with Mustafa Kemal's one-party regime. Edib describes her childhood, her confrontation with her first husband's polygyny, her divorce, and her entry into political and literary writing. Edib's account of her private life provides a unique example of a woman's individual and personal struggle for emancipation and gender equality.

As Anna Bowman Dodd (1855-1929), a New York travel writer and journalist, journeyed to Istanbul with the American Ambassador to France she embarked on a detailed account of the city and its people. Interested in documenting the changes in Turkey brought about by the "embrace" of modernity and progress, she considers Turkish women's rights, harems and marriage, the management of the household, education, slavery, the Sultan's reign, and nationalist movements in the last days of the Ottoman Empire. She caters to the American market for Orientalism but is also reflexive about its employment, both invoking and undercutting stereotypes as she addresses the "Eastern Question."

Born into the Ottoman Muslim elite, Zeyneb Hanoum and her sister Melek Hanoum were given a Western-style education by their progressive father, who expected them subsequently to live the segregated lives of Ottoman ladies. Rebelling, the sisters collaborated with the French author Pierre Loti, hoping that harnessing European intellectual support would speed up Ottoman social reform. Fleeing Istanbul in 1906 for fear of imperial reprisals, the sisters traveled in disguise to Europe, hoping to find "freedom" in the West. With Zeyneb Hanum's letters punctuated by Grace Ellison's introduction, commentary, and footnotes, this book challenges Orientalist stereotypes and documents the vibrant engagement between Eastern and Western women at the fin de siècle.

In this diary recording two voyages to Constantinople, Lady Annie Brassey demonstrates her keen eye for human interest and narrative detail. The modern reader will glimpse natural wonders and cultural distinctions of Portuagal, Spain, Moroco, Italy, Greece, and Turkey during the mid-1870s.

Born as a Greek Ottoman in Istanbul, Demetra Vaka Brown (1877-1946) moved to America where she became a journalist and novelist, revisiting Turkey to write several books about the twilight of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of the Turkish Republic. She based this, her first book, on experiences from 1901, when modernization had made inroads into Ottoman domestic life and the harem was becoming a thing of the past. Her reflections on life in the harem suggest the conflicted nature of her allegiances: Vaka is nostalgic for the Ottoman life that was rapidly disappearing, but she also enjoys the freedoms of a professional American woman.

Hester Donaldson Jenkins (1869-1941), a professor at the American College for Girls in Constantinople from 1900-1909, wrote enthusiastically about the Young Turks who seemed to promise new freedoms for Ottoman women. Jenkins uses her own observations of Constantinople, her students, and their families to construct an account of a "typical" Turkish Muslim woman's life cycle at this turning point in Ottoman history. She directs her comments toward childhood, education, marriage, polygamy, and divorce, in order to correct Western misapprehensions. In its confidence in the bright prospects of American influence and Ottoman reform, this book captures an optimistic moment in which social progress seemed to be thriving.

Melek Hanım, an Ottoman woman of Greek, Armenian, and French heritage, accompanied her husband to various postings in Palestine and Serbia, and shared with him the frustrations of the arbitrary periodic dismissals that characterized late Ottoman politics. Her account of life in Turkey contains details of political intrigue, corruption and demonstrates the influence and mobility available to women in the official households of the Ottoman elite. Filled with maneuvers, murder, divorce, political machinations, and vengeance, Hanım's life was an attempt to gain access to property she viewed as legitimately her own. This book was written during her later exile in Paris.

Grace Ellison (d. 1935) actively encouraged dialogues between Turkish and British women at the outset of the twentieth century. Connected with progressive Ottoman elites discussing female and social emancipation, Ellison stayed in an Ottoman harem. Working as a respected journalist, she published articles about British-Turkish relations, Turkish nationalism, and the status of women across cultures. This book recounts Ellison’s stay with her friend Fâtima and features reports on motherhood, employment, polygamy, slavery, harem life, modernization, veiling, and prominent women writers. Despite an impressive legacy, Ellison and her work have almost disappeared from the historical record; the republication of this 1915 work aims to address this neglect.

Grace Ellison (d. 1935) actively encouraged dialogues between Turkish and British women at the outset of the twentieth century. Despite an impressive legacy, Ellison and her work have almost disappeared from the historical record; the republication of this 1915 work aims to address this neglect.

The Unveiled Ladies of Istanbul (Stamboul) is a picturesque description of women's life in post-World War I Turkey during a period of social and political turmoil. Here Demetra Vaka (1877-1946), an expatriate of Ottoman Turkey, established American journalist and acquaintance of Prince Sabaheddin, returns to her native Istanbul after a 20-year absence. Describing women's lives in post-World War I Turkey, she reports on the successful project of female emancipation pursued by Mustafa Kemal as part of the nationalist agenda. Noting how much this project had benefited upper- and middle-class Turkish women, Vaka nonetheless regrets that the gradual emergence of the monocultural, modern Republic was bringing an end to the multiethnic character of the Ottoman State.

A collection of folktales from Iraq, dating from the 1930s, found in the archives of the famous English Lady E. S. Drower (1879–1972), who was novelist, folklorist, specialist on the Mandaeans, and writer of travel accounts. New tales edited by Jorunn Buckley form a second volume of Drower’s Folktales. The stories—carrying recognizable Near Eastern folk-tale features—feature monsters and heroes, maidens and fairies and they give a vivid picture of a now extinct oral folktale tradition. This Gorgias Press edition includes previously unpublished tales in addition to those of the 1931 edition.

The Unveiled Ladies of Istanbul (Stamboul) is a picturesque description of women's life in post-World War I Turkey during a period of social and political turmoil. Here Demetra Vaka (1877-1946), an expatriate of Ottoman Turkey, established American journalist and acquaintance of Prince Sabaheddin, returns to her native Istanbul after a 20-year absence. Describing women's lives in post-World War I Turkey, she reports on the successful project of female emancipation pursued by Mustafa Kemal as part of the nationalist agenda. Noting how much this project had benefited upper- and middle-class Turkish women, Vaka nonetheless regrets that the gradual emergence of the monocultural, modern Republic was bringing an end to the multiethnic character of the Ottoman State.

This book gives the biography of William Ambrose Shedd (1876-1918), written by Mary Lewis Shedd, the wife of his last years. W. A. Shedd was an American Protestant missionary who was born in Urmia, Iran, and spent most of his life there among the Assyrian Christians of northwestern Iran. He received his education in Princeton.

This book traces the history of American foreign missions of all denominations. Following a historical survey of the missionary activities, the author gives the biographies and works of twenty-nine men and women missionaries. Numerous portraits are included.

Tristram was among the earliest scholars to attempt a documentation of the physical landscape of the Holy Land. This study describes the geography, geology, meteorology, zoology, and botany of the land of the Bible, as experienced in the nineteenth century.

This delightful collection of travelogues from the years c. 700 – 1697 catalogues the views of European travelers and pilgrims in the Middle Ages. Wright includes a series of brief accounts from early in this period from Bishop Arculf, Willibald, and Bernard the Wise. Narratives of Saewulf, Sigurd the Crusader, and Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela give the outlook of Christian and Jewish travelers. The work concludes with the lengthier accounts of Sir John Maundeville, Bertandon de le Brocquière, and Henry Maundrell.

The essays in this informative book were originally delivered as the Jowett Lectures for 1906. They address many critical issues regarding the historical veracity of the Gospels and represent the emerging interest in the historical Jesus that was the spirit of the times. Besides addressing the canonical Gospels, this volume also discusses Marcion and non-canonical gospels.

Pruen’s account of life and its stresses in Equatorial East Africa still has the capacity to open the eyes of those unfamiliar with conditions in Africa. A medical missionary concerned with the role slave trade, Islam, and Christian missionaries played in the lives of these people, Pruen left this narrative of his personal observations.

A sanctioned biography of T. E. Lawrence, known popularly as “Lawrence of Arabia,” this work by the eminent Robert Graves attempts to provide a fair and balanced treatment of the man. Based on interviews with Lawrence and his close associates, this account clearly displays its authenticity.

Consistently referenced as a reliable source on the "Nestorian" missionary movement, this historical account of that movement is a necessary volume for anyone interested in the missionary work of the Eastern Church. Stewart’s engaging account has remained fresh through the years and remains a standard reference on the topic.

As an active missionary to China from a family of missionaries, Broomhall wrote with an authoritative familiarity of his subject. The concern he addressed in this treatise was the presence of Islam in China. Beginning with the history of Islam in China, Broomhall explores the interactions between aspects of Chinese culture and Islamic religion with an eye towards the effect on evangelization.

A nineteenth-century travelogue in a class by itself, Osborn’s account of his travels through the Holy Land is sprinkled with literary, biblical, and scientific observations. This work on the physical geography of the Holy Land remains undiminished despite the years since its publication.

The remarkable narrative of the Medieval traveler Pero Tafur comes from a single manuscript written before the printing press was invented. Letts presents the journeys of Tafur through Europe and the Holy Land during the years 1435-1439 when the voyager was in his mid-twenties. A wealth of information about pre-modern Europe and Palestine await the reader of this account.

Trumbull’s tome was among the first to explore how looking at the Bible from the perspective of those in Palestine might influence the outlook of Western readers. In this volume Trumbull examines the social customs, religious practices, and basic concepts of those living in nineteenth-century Palestine to demonstrate how they bear upon modern understandings of the Bible.

In this personal travelogue, William Seabrook chronicles his adventures in the Middle East in the early part of the twentieth century. Specifically he focuses on his time among four Arabic groups: the Bedouins, Druses, Dervishes, and Yezidees.