People & Stories Worth Knowing
The K ·
This book by the famous Persian Alchemist, Al-Jaldaki, in the 14th Century can be read at The World Digital Library or the Wellcome Collection
The K ·
"Hand drawn table compiled by the East India Company Chart Office to accompany the Chart of the Persian Gulf with transliterated Arabic place names inserted in black ink." Qatar Digital Library
The K ·
Xmas in Aden 1898 from the Qatar Digital Library collection of the British Library: India Office Records and Private Papers.
The K ·
“Aden was the second busiest port in the world after New York in the 1950s.”
Read Cities in the Arabian Peninsula Introduction
Here are some photos taken in the late 19th Century of Aden (with many thanks to the Qatar Digital Library):
The K ·
“A man from Zubayr in Iraq arrived in Kuwait and opened a café where he played cylinder records on an Edison cylinder recorder/record player he had brought along with him (cylinder records are called “Umm glās” in Kuwait where kūb (glass) is called “glās”).”
Tonight's "Evening Listening" treats are two podcasts from Min Al-Tarikh produced by The Arab Music Archiving and Research foundation (AMAR) in collaboration with Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF)
They consist of an interview with Kuwaiti, musician, ethnomusicologist and musical recording expert Ahmad AlSalhi. The audio is in Arabic but English transcripts accompany the podcasts. It offers a wealth of information on Gulf musical heritage of the early 20th Century, with musical recordings that are absolutely beautiful and hard to find. These are two audio gems you need to hear.
Here are some quotes from the interviews to whet your appetite:
“Abd al-Laṭīf al-Kuwaytī recorded with Odeon in Baghdad around 10 or 12 records that were very varied and included some of the tunes he had already recorded with Baidaphon. Moreover, he was accompanied for the first time by a qānūn –an instrument unknown to Kuwaitis until then– played by Iraqi qānūnist Ṣayūn Cohen who had accompanied Muḥammad al-Qubbanjī in his famous Berlin recordings and Ḥabība Masīka in Berlin, added to other great Iraqi muṭrib. Ṣāliḥ al-Kuwaytī accompanied him on the kamān and Dāwūd al-Kuwaytī on the ‘ūd.”
“The local national companies first appeared in the late 1940’s after the World War, and the first founder of a local record company was His Master’s Voice’s representative ‘Abd al-Ḥusayn al-Sā‘ātī. He decided to establish a record company in Bahrain and bought a recording machine from London through a newspaper ad. It reached Bahrain and he started recording”
“Some of the first muṭrib were scared of recording, thinking the microphone would steal their soul... maybe because an artist had died right after recording… maybe they thought that records had to steal a soul in order to produce a voice. This belief was very strong. Ḥuḍayrī Abū ‘Azīz had refused to record the first time for this same reason, saying: “I was afraid the mic would steal my soul”. The point is Muḥammad Fāris refused… there are different versions to this story.”
Happy Listening:
Follow Ahmad AlSalhi on Twitter @AlSalhi1974 and Instagram @alsalhi1974
Listen to a wealth of music at Zeryab which was co-founded by Mr. AlSalhi.
The K ·
The pretty things you can find going through the digital archives of the public domain. The actual manuscript can be found at Miami University.
Syriac- The language was born around the 5th Century BC as an Aramaic dialect and then had its heyday between the 4th and 8th centuries. It bore upon its back the Christianities that came from the Assyrian Church such as the Nestorian church and others, spreading as far as Malabar and China from its Levantine base. It is part of the Semitic family of languages which means it is a cousin of Arabic and Hebrew, which is why similarities can be found between them all.
