(Part 2) Best egyptian history books according to redditors
We found 82 Reddit comments discussing the best egyptian history books. We ranked the 37 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
![The History of Modern Egypt: From Muhammad Ali to Mubarak ([Asia Africa series of modern histories])](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41IZZc4PDuL.jpg)
Translated by u/Zorikinu (part of the Skeleton warriors group); special thanks for an advance access (Though by now the chapter may be on Mangadex already)
Many things going on, Refit Ayanami making an appearance (due to the LNY skin), a few small shots of Nimi in that dress, and swimsuit Middy playing cutely with a cat.
Twitter commentary is people talking about other skipping out and their reasons (I think one is U-47)
Next comic: Oct 4 (next friday) Japan timing
Danbooru link w/twitter commentary translated
Hori's danbooru profile w/ links
Original Tweet
Mangadex gallery of the manga (with book bonuses)
Physical book sold here, Here too
Previous comic had translated commentary added.
You are perfectly right. According to Saudi Arabia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-vows-to-back-egypts-rulers.html
You are perfectly wrong. According to :
https://www.amazon.com/Coups-Revolutions-Mobilization-Egyptian-Military/dp/0190071451
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2013_Rabaa_massacre
Not OP, but I asked the same question years ago and I compiled this list:
​
​
​
​
​
​
A book on the fall of the Ottoman Empire is another good place to start. I have not read this one yet. I've heard that it is a good read.
​
​
I really loved 5 books we read, so I’ll just mention them all and you can pick if any sound good.
First was Amina Wadud’s Quran and Woman . It’s basically exegesis on the Quran from a female perspective. It challenges a lot of what is presented as evidence that Islam is inherently sexist using textual support. It’s a controversial book, but it’s worth reading for sure. Wadud is brilliant and the perspective definitely gave me some food for thought.
We also read So Long a Letter by Mariama Ba. It’s fictional, but still extremely insightful. It’s essentially a narrative told through letters that discusses polygyny in Senegal. It is a critique of the affects of the Islamic tenet of taking multiple wives, but one from an actual Muslim perspective. It’s fair and from a place of understanding. This is also just one of the best pieces of 20c African literature in general. I love reading outside of the canon.
Next is Sex and the Citadel by Shereen El Feki. This is about sex and sexuality, primarily in urban Egypt. It was extremely readable and gave absolutely fascinating insight on a taboo topic. It’s shocking how much El Feki was able to get women to reveal.
Engaged Surrender by Carolyn Moxley Rouse focuses on African American Muslim women. Once again, we’re getting their stories on their terms. It helps to shed light on why they convert, how Islam affects their lives, and what their religion means to them. As an American, I found this really fascinating. There was a lot of valuable commentary on America within the book.
Finally, I’m gonna bring up a book that deals with men. Farha Ghannam’s Live and Die Like a Man covers the construction of masculinity in Egypt, specifically Cairo, from birth through death. Each chapter essentially tells the story of 1 or 2 men and their experiences. This book was a really important complement to the rest of the course, as it mainly focused on women. Reading an ethnography on men was a shockingly unique experience.
The last 3 I mentioned are ethnographies that I feel are extremely well-done. All of the writers were extremely fair in their analysis. There’s not really explicit praise or criticism of Islam, but just discussion of how it manifests and affects the life of Muslims. Or how Muslims navigate being Muslim in their day-to-day lives. Two of the authors are Muslims themselves and the other discusses how she considered conversion in the book.
I didn’t really leave the class with a different opinion on Islam, as I was never anti-Islam or anti-religion despite being non-religious. I just now have a much more nuanced opinion and ideally a better understanding. As it was a woman’s studies/anthropology course, we were just focused on understanding the lives of Muslims on their terms. Obviously discussion of how we felt about these things and how we can navigate morality across cultures came up, but my professor was wonderful and we primarily focused on understanding, even when we didn’t necessarily agree.
I think if you read literally any of these books, you’ll be left feeling similarly to how I do. They’re all wonderful. Hopefully this was helpful and sorry it was so long! I could talk for hours about this class.
(Also none of these actually discuss Iran even though that’s what I initially brought up. We mainly covered that through lecture)
> I must say I can understand how he must have felt, although I do not agree with his feelings.
My feelings as well. I bought "Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism" and his experiences in the West (early chapters) seem universal to any intellectual who feels isolation and alieness among "happy, healthy, busy" people.
It goes without saying, but you shouldn't overlook the Jewish roots of Jesus. Too many want to skip right to the juicy bits, when in reality, this Jesus guy wasn't wholly original even in a Jewish context (nevermind how the gospels portray him).
That mentioned, no scholar can conclusively state that the authors of the New Testament borrowed from any particular mythology, and part of the reason for that is that some myths, such as dying and rising gods, are plentiful in the ancient world. (On dying and rising gods, check out Baal, Dionysus, Ra, Persephone, Osiris, Ishtar, Baldr, Quetzalcoatl, and Adonis. See The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors: Christianity Before Christ for more on this topic as it links to Christianity.) The cult of Mithras was a very popular Persian religion that spread through Roman legionnaires, which Manfred Clauss details well (IMO) in his book. I also enjoyed Glenn Holland's Gods in the Desert as a beginning overview of various Near Eastern mythologies. I can't say it's a good ending point for scholarship, but for an introduction it does the job well enough. John Allegro is a controversial writer, but I think he has some good arguments worth hearing, at least.
I've seen it argued (I believe by Dennis MacDonald in "Homeric Epic and the Gospel of Mark," but I may be mixing that up with a scholarly article - sorry, it's been years ago that I read this argument) that the heroic descent into the underworld is a literary map for Jesus's journey across the Sea of Galilee and back again (Mark 5), where his destination is an earthly allegory for Hades. Obviously The Odyssey is the best known example of this journey, but it exists in Gilgamesh too, and many other narratives. Sisyphus is one of my favorites, though that's Greek too, as is the Herakles example.
The virgin birth myth is almost certainly borrowed from elsewhere because Paul, his earliest authentic writings likely from before 70 AD because he doesn't mention the destruction of the Temple, also doesn't mention the virgin birth when discussing Jesus. It doesn't help that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke have different accounts too. The number of virgin births in the ancient world is exhaustive. I can't tell you just one or two to look at, but Dionysus is usually a good place to start (he doesn't have a virgin birth, but he is born prematurely, so Zeus lets him finish developing in his own body before he is "born again," this time "perfect").
If you have a question about a particular story, that would be helpful in showing you similar stories from the ancient world. I hesitate to say that I can show you its roots, as that can be difficult to show, but I will tell you the borrowed/ coopted tale that sucked me into the history of thought. I'll take you down the same intellectual path that I went down before discovering that I hadn't discovered anything novel. This is long, but please bear with me. I think the journey is worth it.
If you look in the synoptics ( Matthew, Mark, Luke ), there's a story about the Sadducees telling Jesus of a woman whose husband died without children. According to Mosaic law, she marries the brother, who dies without children, and she goes through seven brothers like this. They ask, "At the resurrection, to whom is she married?" Jesus answers, "Don't you know the scriptures? She will be like the angels in heaven and there will be no marriage." I ask you, and see if you can answer this before moving on to my next paragraph, to which scriptures is Jesus referring?
It isn't in the OT. The nearest source material we have that Jesus could be referring to is the Book of Enoch, which tells of the second fall of the angels. It isn't important if he quoted from Enoch so much as believed in the Enochian tradition. Basically, Satan and some angels come to Earth to copulate with human women, and then they get buddy-buddy with the men and teach them "every kind of evil," such as astronomy and mathematics and how to make a mule. Yahweh vows to destroy the angels and their offspring, but Enoch intercedes and Satan pleads that the souls of his children be left on the Earth in order to help him "tempt this evil generation." Yahweh allows this but destroys them bodily in a great flood. This sounds awfully familiar, though, so flip over to Genesis 6. "The Nephilim were on the earth both in those days and afterward." Which days? The days leading up to the flood. How were the Nephilim on the earth afterward unless they 1) were on the boat or 2) lived on spiritually? We know Noah's family is never associated with the Nephilim, and for good reason: Noah's bloodline was pure. That only leaves a spiritual continuation, as spirits who wander the earth. "The sons of God saw that the daughters of mankind were beautiful." Who are the sons of God? If you consult a Protestant commentary, they'll tell you the sons of Seth, but this doesn't really ring true. The Hebrew is beney elohim, the same words used in Job 1-2 for the angels in heaven. So we can fairly state that the "sons of God" must be demigods (elohim, I should note, is a plural, so "sons of gods" is a better translation - in fact, if you check out Genesis 1, you'll find the elohim are the creators, not a single deity, but several/ many, and the elohim show up again at Babel). Well this is all well and good, Jesus referencing a tradition and it possibly being mixed into our flood narrative. What else do we have?
Jude quotes directly from the Book of Enoch 1:9. He also references their destruction. "Just as the angels did." Goosebumps, friend. That gives a new light to go back and look at the Sodom story, but that's for another day. Suffice to say, this Enochian tradition is pervasive in the Christian scriptures, suggesting the authors may have believed in it strongly.
Another group that believed in and preserved the Book of Enoch text were the community living in Qumran. Yep, the Dead Sea Scrolls. The most interesting one of the bunch is The Book of the Giants, which appears on various fragments. There are bits that reference Enoch in here, placing the story before the Flood, but the most interesting name of all is a giant named Gilgamesh. Yes, that Babylonian one-third-divine man with a were-bear as a best friend. There's no Enkidu in the Book of the Giants, but there is a very hairy fellow that Gilgamesh seems to be friendly with. This, in my opinion, ties the Enochian tradition that Jesus references with Babylonian mythology, a position that has been argued for decades by better scholars that me.
I hope this helps get you started while you wait for other historians to answer.
If you're looking for well-detailed academic works, you'll find nothing (except 2-3 titles mentioned above). Sure, there are various research papers published by - for example - various students at US military education facilities. However, all of these are based on standard sources of reference - say, works like those by Pollack, Oren, Abrahamovich, Herzog, O'Ballance, Dunstan etc - which in turn are all based on de-facto hear-say (in this regards, see also this article by Guy Laron).
Indeed, and while it might sound absurd, but even researchers of Arab air forces (and armies) are far more serious in this regards. For example, about 10 years ago, Dr. David Nicolle has published a big, three-part story on the Egyptian Air Force in the 1948-1949 Palestine War - based on a cross-examination of the War Diary of the Eastern Command of the Royal Egyptian Air Force, interviews with numerous participants, their log books, private diaries etc. (see 'Fury over Palestine', AirEnthusiast magazine, volumes 127, 128, 129). It turned out a mass of Israeli claims from that war belong within realms of 'legends'. This starts already with the 'famous' downing of 'two Egyptian Dakota bombers over Tel Aviv' by Modi Allon (photos supposedly 'confirming this' are actually showing a REAF Dakota escorted by a REAF Spitfire).
Similarly, Dani Asher wrote a brilliant Egyptian Strategy of the Yom Kippur War, based on documentation captured when the Israelis overrun the HQ of the 3rd Egyptian Army, at the Km 101 in 1973. One can learn more about this war from this little book than from anything else published so far. One of Asher's findings was that the (supposed) 'Biggest Tank Battle since Kursk', on 14 October 1973, was none of that: rather a small Egyptian show-operation, which both sides then exaggerated for PR purposes.
Anyway, since you asked about works on the Israeli strike on Iraq in 1981, here few additional recommendations:
Finally, there are two recently-published books by Iraqi engineers that worked on that reactor - but both in Arabic:
Together, they are covering the entire Iraqi nuclear program from 1960s until 2003, and - between others - show the Iraqis didn't work on any nukes at the time of the Israeli air strike (if for no other reason, then because there were barely 200 trained Iraqi nuclear engineers, and they simply couldn't launch such a project; on the contrary, it was the Israeli strike that prompted them to launch such a project, in September 1981).
....though, with that, I'm moving away from the actual topic.
Let me thus end with the following recommendation: take Aloni's The June 1967 Six Day War, Volume A: Operation Focus (finally found at least one link to that one), and then cross-examine with Cooper's/Nicolle's Arab MiGs, Volume 2 (for an animated preview, see here), and Arab MiGs, Volume 3 (for an animated preview, see here).
As the other poster wrote - it doesn’t seem that there are a lot of books written on modern Egypt. There are many on the Middle East with some chapters about Egypt, Then, there are books dedicated to a specific event like the revolution of 1952, the Suez war in 1956, etc.
Anyway, here are some books specifically about modern Egypt:
Egypt on the Brink: From Nasser to the Muslim Brotherhood, Revised and Updated https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300198698/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_OGO9Ab3TRKCEK
The History of Modern Egypt: From Muhammad Ali to Mubarak ([Asia Africa series of modern histories]) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0801823404/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_OVO9AbRK6RW6J
Making the Arab World: Nasser, Qutb, and the Clash That Shaped the Middle East https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691167885/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_03O9AbGY8P10X
In the benefit of the history sub, I suggest that you post a couple of questions about modern Egypt.
This is a tricky thing in terms of online sources, since the form sort of lends itself to pointing towards contemporary issues, rather than strict historicism. I'll recommend a few books that I think directly address some of the issues you're interested in below. What I might actually suggest is digging around for primary sources on the internet for this issue. One kind of nice side effect of the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict is that pretty much all of the major primary documents have been reproduced online! And many of the non-English ones have been translated into English! I suggest taking some time to actually read the Balfour Declaration, the Sykes-Picot agreement, UN Res. 242, the Hamas Charter, the Israeli Constitution, the Oslo Accords, etc., etc..
Additionally, if you want even deeper primary source info, you can get that too. The US National Archives has made public and digital thousands of primary documents related to this subject on it's website. A simple search for Israel, as an example, returns over 1,700 documents that are in the Online Public Holdings. Similar searches at the British Public Records Office can be done as well.
Some recommended reading:
Israel Gershoni, Confronting Fascism in Egypt
Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim, The War for Palestine, 1948
Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian Identity
I'm sorry if I was unclear - I fully support colonialism. I think it leads to less suffering and more prosperity than what we have now. Here's a 56-year old Time magazine article: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,866343,00.html
Here is a book written by a guy who knew a thing or two about colonialism in case you want to learn more: http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Volume-Evelyn-Baring-Cromer/dp/1144078679/ref=sr_1_4
Religion is very, very interesting. But the religious text themselves have been manipulated to ridiculous levels, precisely to avoid any arguments. The best you can do with them is find internal inconsistencies, but there are many meanings that you can only get from the historical context.
Unless you know what are the arguments they try to discredit.
If you read other texts, you can put your teacher and most priests to shame.
It is for a history class called "Neighborhood Bully? The superpowers and the middle east since 1945". I have looked at 1: http://www.amazon.com/Sowing-Crisis-American-Dominance-Middle/dp/0807003115 or 2: http://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Crossfire-History-American-Relations/dp/157488820X/ref=pd_cp_b_1 as possible alternatives. What do you think?
> It's rather interesting that you're commenting on a day old thread, and that too not even on the set of comments you see when you open the thread.
Yeah maybe I am stalking you.Really No. If that's what you wanted to say if could have said directly.
>I personally don't really give a fuck about the problems about the Muslim or Christian community because they barely affect me.
What load of bull. Do you even know how much money those goody two shoes christian missionaries are pumping in the hands of Maoist rebels in orissa? How about the fact of Qataris and Saudis pumping money directly to Islamists in the subcontinent. Islamist (not sunni nationalists) are direct threat to integrity of the country, especially one like India. If you think for half a second you could come up with countless other reasons why you should give some more fucks about them.
Read this: http://www.amazon.in/Gods-Terrorists-Wahhabi-Hidden-Modern/dp/0306815702
Radical Islamists were and are a HUGE problem to any nation's integrity.
> Most minorities tend to either live in ghettos or tribal areas, with very little contact with the majority.
I don't get you people. Who is a minority in India? Biharis in TN? Tamils in Himachal? Bengal has a population of 100 million. Move over because wherever you are in India, someplace you are a minority. But I guess by Minorities you mean SC's and ST's. Oh well.
> Most minorities tend to either live in ghettos or tribal areas, with very little contact with the majority.
From where do you get this bullshit? Most INDIANS live in ghettos and tribal areas which are in short mostly ethnic enclaves of their own people. If you move to even tier 3 cities there are plenty of your "minorities" living and working white collar jobs along with the "majority".
> But what's messed up in Hinduism has affected India for more than a 1000 years.
Wut? If you are going to shill at least make some sense.
Hardly, there were exclusive strands from the beginning as well but it's no secret that Jewish and Arab nationalism both lay claim to the same territory and that increased animosity between the two groups.
Edit: To further clarify Arab nationalists felt threatened by the existence of Jewish nationalism and this gave fuel to already extant hardliners who wanted to exclude Jews from "Arabness" and thus there was a massive uptick in anti-Jewish violence & legislation in the mid-twentieth century. Now this is a bit of generalization and there certainly were other factors that contributed to the exclusion of Jews from Arab nationalism which would become more apparent were we to start dissecting each individual Arab country but it was certainly a general trend. I'm not saying there wasn't plenty of persecution and discrimination prior to that, quite the opposite in fact if you would read the first half of my original comment, but I really don't think it should be controversial to say that relations between Jews and non-Jews have significantly worsened in the MENA region over the last century. All that I was trying to say was that in the first half of the 20th century it wasn't too uncommon to find Middle Eastern Jews who supported Arab national movements because those movements offered them the opportunity to overcome the societal and political disadvantages of Jewishness by embracing Arabness but as the century progressed it became harder and harder for them to do so.
You can see a similar trend in the Ottoman Empire before its collapse. Between the 1890's and 1917 it was very common for Jews to adopt the newly emergent Ottoman national identity for the same exact reasons, especially when they didn't qualify for extraterritorial citizenship of European countries. I highly recommend you read Becoming Ottomans by Cohen and Extraterritorial Dreams to understand that aspect of it.
But I got most of my info on the other stuff from the following resources:
A History of Jewish-Muslim Relations: From the Origins to the Present Day edited by Meddeb & Stora
The Jews of the Middle East and North Africa in Modern Times edited by Laskier, Simon & Reguer
North African Jewry in the Twentieth Century: The Jews of Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria by Laskier
I haven’t read it, so I can’t speak to it’s quality, but I listened to an interview recently with the authors of this book, which may be of interest: https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Israeli-War-1967-1973-Intervention-Egyptian-Israeli/dp/0190693487
History books and books on the subject matter like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Rule-Law-Arab-World-Cambridge/dp/0521590264 or this one https://amzn.com/0791418782