Gingko — Spring 2021 Books

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2021

YOU CAN CRUSH THE FLOWERS A Visual Memoir of the Egyptian Revolution

Bahia Shehab £20 STREET ART, MEMOIR Paperback with flaps, 200x300mm JANUARY 2021 978-1-909942-53-0 144 pp | 150 illustrations

'Shehab and her work came to wide attention during the Arab Spring: while her friends were marching in the streets, she protested by tagging the walls of Cairo...' –New Yorker 'Shehab is not aligned with any political party and works alone, but her work can be found adorning the Facebook profiles of a generation of young Egyptian activists, particularly young women.' –The Irish Times This moving and dignified history-from-below chronicles Bahia Shehab's own artistic evolution during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, and the passage of her images from the streets of Cairo to those of cities around the world. It bears important witness to the brutality of the regime during the revolution, and pays tribute to the protestors who bravely defied it.

Part visual memoir, part history, You Can Crush the Flowers is Shehab's unique record of a decade of protest, defiance, turmoil and tragedy as experienced on the streets of Cairo and as reflected in her own street art; telling the story of the creation of such icons of popular resistance as the Blue Bra, the Children of Asyut, and the defiant Rebel Cat. Bahia Shehab is a multidisciplinary artist, designer and art historian. Through investigating Islamic art history she reinterprets contemporary Arab politics, feminist discourse and social issues. She is Professor of Design at The American University in Cairo. She is also the author of At the Corner of A Dream: The Street Art of Bahia Shehab (Gingko, 2019). ................

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Brotherhood at the time; Khairat el-Shater, the Deputy Supreme Guide; and Morsi himself. The three figures are over two metres in height and are painted in a very cartoonish manner, using strong black lines on a lightly whitewashed background. On the left side of the image, el-Shater stands holding a devil’s trident in his left hand. His right arm hangs by his side with the middle finger sticking out, in a gesture signifying arrogance and indifference to his critics. On the opposite side of the image is Morsi, with his right hand making the same offensive gesture. In the centre floats the disembodied head of Mohammed Badie, the Supreme Guide. Wavy black lines stream out of Badie’s ears and into the ears of el-Shater and Morsi on either side of him, as if his ideas are flowing directly into their brains. In between el-Shater and Morsi and under Badie’s head is a large slogan in rectilinear Kufic script declaring that ‘After blood there is no legitimacy’. The word ‘blood’ is painted in red while the rest of the calligraphy is in black.

On either side of el-Shater and Morsi, figures kneel in a prayer position, as if worshipping the Brotherhood leaders. The artwork is by Mohamed Khaled, Mahmoud Magdy, Mohamed Ismail Shawki and Ali Khaled, and the calligraphy is by the artist El Zeft.2 On 4 June 2013, an artist who goes by the name Mozza3 pastes4 three female figures onto the wall, next to the ‘After blood’ mural: two crouching and veiled women flanking a standing belly dancer. The faces of the veiled women are covered; the belly dancer reveals a long, bare thigh but her face has no features, and hence she is also faceless. The image is a brilliant provocation, juxtaposing religious modesty with a distinctly Arab form of sensual display. The three women, covered and uncovered, are a witty rejoinder to the three leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood and an assertion of the diversity of Egyptian women, perhaps even a suggestion that behind every veil is at least the possibility of a belly dancer? Here is graffiti representing another important aspect of social and political life — namely, the position and status of women in different walks of life.

A Thousand Times No, Cairo 2012

** I am out of town when the locals from Zamalek whitewash the wall, otherwise I too would have gone to paint on 2 June. Instead I follow the progress of the wall online and plan my own retaliation.

When I arrive at the wall at 5am on 7 June 2013, the belly dancer has already been slightly damaged. Without having seen Mozza’s work, I too want to address women this time around. The aggressive, organised and targeted sexual harassment campaigns that were used to intimidate Egyptian females and dissuade them from joining the protests on the streets demand a response.5 Intended to feminise the act of rebellion, my ‘Rebel, cat!’ campaign is a call to women to join the revolution. I create a stencil of one of my favourite images, the cat from Théophile Steinlen’s iconic ‘The Black Cat’ cabaret poster, and write next to it the slogan ‘Rebel, cat!’. I use the feminine form of the verb ‘rebel’ to ensure women understand that the campaign is addressing them, and ‘cat’ because it is a common term men call 97

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PA G E S F R O M

You C an Cr u sh the Flowers

THE UMAYYAD MOSQUE OF DAMASCUS Art, Faith and Empire in Early Islam

Alain Fouad George £60 ART HISTORY, ARCHITECTURE Hardback, 240mm x 290mm (Portrait) JUNE 2021 978-1-909942-45-5 Art Series Editor: Melanie Gibson

260 pp | 260 illustrations ART SERIES

‘For the first time we have a book which does full justice to the Umayyad mosque in Damascus.’ –Hugh Kennedy, author of The Caliphate The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus is one of the oldest continuously used religious sites in the world. The mosque we see today was built in between 705 and 715 by the Umayyad caliph al-Walid on top of a 4th-century Christian church which had itself been erected over a temple of Jupiter. Incredibly in the recent war the mosque has remained almost unscathed, but over the centuries it was continuously rebuilt after being damaged by earthquakes and fires.

In this comprehensive biography of the Umayyad Mosque, Alain Fouad George explores a wide range of sources to excavate the dense layers of the building's history and reconstructs what the mosque looked like when it was first built. George has found new information in three previously untranslated poems written at the time the mosque was built, as well as in descriptions left by medieval scholars. He also examines the evidence offered by the many photographs and paintings made by nineteenth-century European travellers, particularly those who recorded the building before the catastrophic fire of 1893.

Alain Fouad George is Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Oxford. He is a historian of Islamic art and architecture with core interests in calligraphy, the arts of the book and early Islam. He is the author of The Rise of Islamic Calligraphy (Saqi Books 2010). ................

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p figure 6 The Great Mosque of Damascus from the south. Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, 1844. Image flipped to reflect the actual orientation.

rejecting names suggested by the Sublime Porte. Initial

writing in 1961 but drawing from a surviving eyewitness and

through a revolutionary technology which now makes it

surviving photographs of the mosque were taken a mere two to

proposals to rebuild the monument in reinforced concrete were

other local sources, notes that ‘the columns of the mosque were

possible to retrieve lost elements from oblivion, if often as

four years later, between 1843 and 1844, as part of an expedition

abandoned on historical grounds.59 An unpublished document

old and most of them, having already been broken and held

blurry details: photography.

suggests that Raimondo D’Aronco, an Italian architect

together by steel collars, were cleaved by the fire.’62 I was able

carried out by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804–92).

The three published daguerreotypes—others may yet surface—

famous for his Art Nouveau work at the Ottoman capital, was

to distinguish, in early photographs from before 1893, seven

The Earliest Photographs of the Mosque

commissioned to produce unspecified work for the mosque.60

columns out of forty with steel collars in the prayer hall, some

On 19 August 1839, the photographic process invented by

Figure 7).64 They mark a change of era: the moment when

of which remained standing after the fire. The history of this

Louis Daguerre, building upon earlier work by Nicéphore

this age-old monument emerged from centuries of verbal

remove the remaining columns of the prayer hall in order to

campaign, which triggered passions locally and throughout the

Niépce, was presented to the public for the first time at the

descriptions—and rare schematic drawings—to a new medium

build the space anew with modern shafts and neo-Corinthian

empire, deserves a fuller investigation.

Académie des Sciences in Paris. Three months later, several

that captured its appearance in facsimile. In an Islamic context,

The most consequential decision made at the time was to

capitals. These were made with stone from the hills near

show the building from the west and southwest (Figure 6 and

French teams were sent to different countries with state-of-

the image was taking over from the word as the primary

Mezzeh, just outside Damascus.61 From photographs, one can

on the fabric of the building by successive French and Syrian

the-art photographic equipment to create a book about the

medium for documenting architecture, its mass reproduction

infer that many of the originals were still standing after the fire,

restorations, especially in the courtyard. The mosque has

monuments and cities of the world. The earliest daguerreotype

facilitated by the process of lithography, invented in 1798. As

including the two large columns of the transept façade (Figure 4).

lost many of its early elements as a result of these different

of Damascus, now lost, was made on 19 January 1840, five

if to underline this turning point, at the same moment, in May

Some may have become structurally unsound: al-Ṭānṭāwī,

interventions. But its previous state was partly documented

months to the day after the launch event in Paris.63 The oldest

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In subsequent decades, additional changes were wrought

the arcade bears mosaics which are no earlier than the Saljuq period.5 In the nineteenth century, two old columns of a darker hue appeared here (Figure 72 and Figure 73). By the early twentieth century, they had been replaced with white columns like those made for the prayer hall in the 1890s (Figure 74).

The west end of the north arcade also has a single original column, with later masonry to the right and above (Figure 75).

In the nineteenth century, a second original column stood here, along with three colonnettes and two pilasters, as recorded

1844, John Gardner Wilkinson produced in watercolour the

chapter 1 • the mosque since the nineteenth century

the Umayyad mosqUe of damascUs

p figure 73 The north arcade from the northeast corner. Tancrède Dumas, ca. 1870.

Badr El-Hage Collection.

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p figure 74 Northeast courtyard corner.

K.A.C. Creswell, early twentieth century. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, EA.CA.396. © Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. p figure 75 The northwest courtyard corner.

Michael Greenhalgh/Manar al-Athar, 2003.

in three photographs by Bedford (1862, Figure 76), a fourth

by Phillips (1866, Figure 77) and a fifth by Bonfils (undated).6

p figure 76 The Bayt al-Māl and northwest courtyard corner. Francis Bedford, 1862.

Later photographs by Bonfils show the upper tier being rebuilt, which suggests that this part of the mosque collapsed towards

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p figure 77 The Bayt al-Māl and northwest courtyard corner. Henry Phillips, 1866.

chapter 5 • structure

the Umayyad mosqUe of damascUs

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PA G E S F R O M

T he Umay yad Mos que of D amas c u s

HIJAB Three Modern Iranian Seminarian Perspectives

Lloyd Ridgeon £40 RELIGION, GENDER STUDIES, IRANIAN STUDIES

Hardback, Royal APRIL 2021 978-1-909942-56-1 320 pp | 20 Illustrations

Available as an e-book

An illuminating contribution to post-revolutionary religious thought in Iran.

No nation has suffered the same extent of sartorial conflict and confusion as Iran during the modern period, caused by the impact of Western views on the hijab in the 19th century, the decree to unveil issued by Riza Shah Pahlavi in 1936, and the imposition of the veil in the wake of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.

The differences of opinion among seminarians on the hijab in the Islamic Republic of Iran is explored here with a particular focus on three representatives: Murtaza Mutahhari, who held the hijab to be compulsory; Ahmad Qabil, who argued for the desirability of the hijab; and Muhsin Kadivar, who considers the hijab's dependence on time and space.

The views of the three scholars are contextualised within the framework of New Religious Thinking, usually understood as a development in jurisprudence in post-Khomeini Iran.

Lloyd Ridgeon is a Reader in Islamic Studies and Head of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of Jawanmardi: A Sufi Code of Honour (EUP, 2011) and the editor of Javanmardi: The Ethics and Practice of Persianate Perfection (Gingko, 2018). ................

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WEST-EASTERN DIVAN Complete, Annotated New Translation (bilingual edition)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Translated by Eric Ormsby £14.99 POETRY, GERMAN STUDIES, IRANIAN STUDIES

Paperback, B Format MARCH 2021 978-1-909942-55-4 640 pp Available as an e-book

TLS Book of the Year (2019) ‘…This fine volume should make the Divan accessible to many more readers.’ – TLS Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s West-Eastern Divan of 1814 came out of one of the great moments of cross-fertilization between the literature of Western Europe and that of the Middle East. Inspired by Goethe’s revelatory encounter with the poems of the fourteenthcentury Persian poet Hafiz (whom Goethe called his ‘twin’), and further influenced by the then 65-year-old Goethe’s love for the youthful Marianne von Willemer, the West-Eastern Divan stands as a highpoint of poetic achievement and of lyrical romance.

This much-awaited new translation by Eric Ormsby, noted in his own right as a poet and authority on Islamic literature, is the first to provide the reader and student with Goethe’s original German verse set against their lucid translations by Ormsby into English. It combines these with authoritative explanatory notes; and as a further significant addition includes Goethe’s own commentary, the ‘Notes and Essays for a Better Understanding of the West-Eastern Divan’.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German poet, novelist, playwright and natural philosopher, considered one of the greatest figures in Western literature.

Eric Ormsby is a distinguished scholar in the field of Islamic Studies. He taught at McGill University where he was Professor and Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies. ................

N E W I N PA P E R B A C K

THE CULINARY CRESCENT A History of Middle Eastern Cuisine

Peter Heine Translated by Peter Lewis £16.99 FOOD HISTORY, MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES Paperback with flaps, Tade SEPTEMBER 2020 978-1-909942-42-4 235 pp Available as an e-book

‘Heine’s book is so packed with fascinating information and anecdotes that if you are anything close to a food aficionado it would be very hard to put it down.’

–Asian Review of Books

The Fertile Crescent region has long been regarded as pivotal to the rise of civilisation.

Alongside the story of human development, innovation, and progress, there is a culinary tradition of equal richness and importance. The Culinary Crescent shows Heine’s deep knowledge of the cookery traditions of the Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal courts.

In addition to a fascinating history, Heine presents more than seventy recipes – from the modest to the extravagant – with dishes ranging from those created by the celebrity chefs of the bygone Mughal era, up to gastronomically complex presentations of modern times.

Beautifully produced, and designed for both reading and cooking, The Culinary Crescent is sure to provide a delectable window into the history of food in the Middle East.

Peter Heine taught at the University of Münster and Bonn and until 2009 was Professor of Islamic Studies at the Humboldt University of Berlin. ................

R E C E N T LY P U B L I S H E D

CHRISTMAS AND THE QUR'AN Karl-Josef Kuschel Translated by Simon Pare £12.99 RELIGION, INTERFAITH, ISLAM Paperback, B-Format OCTOBER 2020 978-1-909942-38-7 250 pp Available as an e-book

‘...a subject of great importance for a more intelligent dialogue between Islam and the Christian tradition. It is a pleasure to welcome the English translation of this book from a seasoned and creative scholar.’ –Rowan Williams ‘Shows convincingly that the beliefs of Christians and Muslims are entwined in unexpected and profound ways.’ –Daily Telegraph The familiar and heart-warming story of Christmas is one of hope, encapsulated by the birth of the infant Jesus. It is also a story which unites two faiths that have so often been at odds with one another. The accounts of the Nativity given by the Evangelists Luke and Matthew find their parallels in Suras 3 and 19 of the Qur’an, which take up the Annunciation to Mary, the Incarnation from the Holy Spirit and the Nativity. Christmas and the Qur’an is a sensitive and precise analysis of the Christmas story as it appears both in the Gospels and the Qur’an and shows startling similarities as well as significant differences. Exploring how Christians and Muslims read these scriptures, Kuschel reveals an intertwining legacy that serves as a base for greater understanding.

Karl-Josef Kuschel is Professor Emeritus of Catholic Theology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. He was a member of the advisory board of Theology and Literature (London). ................

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COMPLETE BACKLIST Architectural Heritage of Yemen | 9781909942073 | £35 | pbk.

Art, Trade and Culture in the Islamic World and Beyond | 9781909942905 |£60 | hbk.

Christmas and the Qur'an | 9781909942080 | £30 | hbk.

Democracy is the Answer | 9781909942714 |£30 | hbk.

Iran's Constitutional Revolution of 1906 | 9781909942912 | £65 | hbk.

Iran, Islam and Democracy | 9781909942981 | £30 | hbk.

Javanmardi | 9781909942158 | £40 | hbk.

Making the Modern Middle East | 9781909942998 | £14.99 | pbk.

The Makers of The Modern Middle East | 9781909942004 | £35 | hbk.

Memories of Bygone Age | 9781909942868 | £30 | hbk.

New Thinking in Islam | 9781909942738 | £28 | hbk.

Ottoman Explorations of the Nile | 9781909942165 | £40 | hbk.

Pagan Christmas | 9781909942844 | £40 | hbk.

Religious Imagination | 9781909942202 | £35 | hbk.

The Age of Aryamehr | 9781909942189 | £30 | hbk.

The Culinary Crescent | 9781909942257 | £30 | hbk.

The First World War and Its Aftermath | 9781909942752 | £56 | hbk.

The Mercantile Effect | 9781909942103 | £50 | hbk.

The Mercantile Effect | 9781909942301 | £30 | pbk.

The Phoenix Mosque | 9781909942882 | £50 | hbk.

East-West Divan | 9781909942028 | £50 | hbk.

Hafiz, Goethe and the Gingko | 9781909942820 | £25 | hbk.

At the Corner of a Dream | 9781909942394 | £25 | pbk.

West-Eastern Divan | 9781909942240 | £30 | hbk.

The Early Ottoman Peloponnese | 9781909942325 | £40 | pbk.

Environmental Challenges in the MENA Region | 9781909942219 | £50 | hbk.

A New Divan | 9781909942288 | £20 | hbk.

The Image Debate | 9781909942349 | £60 | hbk.

The Other Prophet | 9781909942363 | £30 | hbk.

Off Limits | 9781909942431 | £14.99 | hbk.

Off Limits | 9781909942479 | £9.99 | pbk.

On Literature and Philosophy | 9781909942776 | £28 | hbk.

Essays of the Sadat Era 1976-81| 9781909942806 | £28 | hbk.

The Early Mubarak Years 1982-1989 | 9781909942110 | £28 | hbk.

After the Nobel Prize 1989-1994 | 9781909942134 | £28 | hbk.

The Unfinished Arab Spring | 9781909942486 | £40 | hbk.

The Non-Fiction Writing of Naguib Mahfouz 1930-1994 | 9781909942523 | £95 | Set

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Gingko aims to inform and educate the interested public and work with scholars to increase understanding of the Middle East and North Africa through publications, public events, student retreats and other cultural activities.

Our purpose is to foster constructive, informed and open discussion that gives a voice to a new generation of thinkers and opinion formers, and thereby help bridge an increasingly virulent divide between the West and the MENA region.

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