ABOUT US
BOOKS
SUBJECTS
SERIES
PUBLISH WITH US
CONTACT
LOGIN
PROFILE
ORDERS
LOGOUT
0
vikramjain@sanctumbooks.com
×
x
x
LOGIN
PROFILE
ORDERS
LOGOUT
x
ABOUT US
BOOKS
SUBJECTS
SERIES
PUBLISH WITH US
CONTACT
Home:
Subjects:
History, Culture & Politics
x
Front Cover
Back Cover
A Physician on the Nile: A Description of Egypt and Journal of the Famine Years
Authors:
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (author)
,
Tim Mackintosh-Smith (translator)
,
Mansoura Ez-Eldin (foreword)
Series:
Library of Arabic Literature
ISBN:
9789376542031
Binding:
Hardcover
Year:
2027
Pages:
260
Size:
15 x 23 cm
Price:
INR
1795.00
FORTHCOMING
About the Book
Flora, fauna, and famine in thirteenth-century Egypt.
A Physician on the Nile
begins as a description of everyday life in Egypt at the turn of the seventh/thirteenth century, before becoming a harrowing account of famine and pestilence. Written by the polymath and physician ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī, and intended for the Abbasid caliph al-Nāṣir, the first part of the book offers detailed descriptions of Egypt’s geography, plants, animals, and local cuisine, including a recipe for a giant picnic pie made with three entire roast lambs and dozens of chickens. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s text is also a pioneering work of ancient Egyptology, with detailed observations of Pharaonic monuments, sculptures, and mummies. An early and ardent champion of archaeological conservation, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf condemns the vandalism wrought by tomb-robbers and notes with distaste that Egyptian grocers price their goods with labels written on recycled mummy-wrappings.The book’s second half relates his horrific eyewitness account of the great famine that afflicted Egypt in the years 597–598/1200–1202. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf was a keen observer of humanity, and he offers vivid first-hand depictions of starvation, cannibalism, and a society in moral free-fall.
A Physician on the Nile
contains great diversity in a small compass, distinguished by the acute, humane, and ever-curious mind of its author. It is rare to be able to hear the voice of such a man responding so directly to novelty, beauty, and tragedy.
About the Authors
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (557–629/1162–1231) was a Baghdad-born physician and scientist who wrote books on a wide range of topics, including medicine, philology, mathematics, and philosophy.
Tim Mackintosh-Smith
Tim Mackintosh-Smith is a noted British travel author, best known for his trilogy on the renowned Moroccan world-traveler Ibn Baṭṭūṭah, which earned him a spot among
Newsweek
’s top twelve travel writers of the past hundred years. Since 1982, he has lived in Sanaa, Yemen.
Mansoura Ez-Eldin
Mansoura Ez-Eldin is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer whose works have been translated into more than ten languages. She is the deputy editor of the Egyptian weekly cultural magazine
Akhbār al-Adab
.
Editorial Reviews
“In
A Physician on the Nile
, Mackintosh-Smith, an award-winning writer and translator, provides no less than an exemplary access to the enthralling as well as abhorring diversity of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s words.”
—
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Customer Reviews
Books of related interest
The Book of Monasteries
The Discourses: Reflections on History, Sufism, Th...
Love, Death, Fame: Poetry and Lore from the Emirat...
The Philosopher Responds: An Intellectual Corresp...
In Deadly Embrace: Arabic Hunting Poems
The Rules of Logic
The Essence of Reality: A Defense of Philosophical...
The Requirements of the Sufi Path: A Defense of th...
Impostures
Kalīlah and Dimnah: Fables of Virtue and Vice
The Yoga Sutras of Patañjali
The Divine Names: A Mystical Theology of the Names...
The Book of Travels
The Doctors’ Dinner Party
Bedouin Poets of the Nafūd Desert
Fate the Hunter: Early Arabic Hunting Poems
The Book of Charlatans
The Breakup of India and Palestine: The Causes and...
Fictions of 1947: Representations of Indian Decolo...
Meditation, Vol. I: History And Present Time
Women, Wealth and the State in Early Colonial Indi...
J.S. Mill’s Encounter with India
Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern Sout...
Comparative Constitutional Traditions
After Belsen: Christian Encounters with Holocaust ...
Remembering Empire: Power, Memory, & Place in ...
Asians ahead after the first round?: Indo-British ...
Media, Knowledge, and Contemporary India
God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, an...
The Supreme Refuge, Volume 2: History, Myths, Wors...
Economic Dimensions of Buddhism in Early India: Fr...
The Center of the World: A Global History of the P...
License to Travel: A Cultural History of the Passp...
Between Life and Death: Governing Populations in t...
God’s Shadow: Sultan Selim, His Ottoman Empire, an...
Negotiating Historical Change Hindu Style
Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional F...
Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of World Histor...
The Socialist Opposition in Nehruvian India 1947–1...
Insecurities of Expulsion: Afro-Asian Entanglement...
Education, Labour & Science: Perspectives for ...
The Politics of Muslim Identities in Asia
Parting Gifts of Empire: Palestine and India at th...
Life at a Distance: Medicine and Nationalism in In...
Artificially Intelligent: The Very Human Story of ...
Religion, Orientalism and Modernity: Mahdi Movemen...
Old Stacks, New Leaves: The Arts of the Book in So...
The Discovery of Insulin: Special Centenary Editio...
Ancient India: Insights into Social & Economic...
Decolonization and the Struggle for National Liber...
India in the World since 1947: National and Transn...
Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature...
South Asian Technospaces
Literary Orientalism, Postcolonialism, and Univers...
Clearing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature...
Motilal Tejawat: Life and Work
Islamic Law on Trial: Contesting Colonial Power in...
Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient In...
Global South Rising?: BRICS and the Reconfiguratio...
Reading across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Lit...
Turning Wind into Power Effects of Stakeholder Net...
From Ravidas and Nanak to Waris Shah: Texts, Langu...
Origin and Growth of Satī in Early Medieval India:...
The Rise of a Multipolar World: Papers presented a...
Respectability on the Line: Gender, Race, and Labo...
A Story of Ambivalent Modernization in Bangladesh ...
The Greater Second World War: Global Perspectives
The Islamic State in Afghanistan and Pakistan: Str...
Die Rani von Jhansi – Rebellin wider Willen: Biogr...
Civilisation, Education and School in Ancient and ...
Exile and the Nation: The Parsi Community of India...
The Japanese Image of India: From the Heavenly Wor...
Un-Disciplining Literature: Literature, Law, and C...
Education and Training in a Globalized World Socie...
City of Lyrics: Ordinary Poets and Islamicate Popu...
The Audacious Raconteur: Sovereignty and Storytell...
Muslim Cultures of the Indian Ocean: Diversity and...
Machiavelli on War
Federalism and Second Chambers: Regional Represent...
Ireland: Looking East
The Road to Empire: The Political Education of Kha...
Literarische Selbstverortung als historische Handl...
The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature and Hi...
Images of India in British Fiction: Anglo-India vs...
Outsiders and Insiders: Perspectives of Third Worl...
Across the Color Line: Indians, Blacks, and Landsc...
Songs of Home & Loss: Reconstructions of a Tam...
Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal: François Bern...
Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and...
A Post-Liberal Peace: How Emergent Powers Are Resh...
Pakistan and the New Nuclear Taboo: Regional Deter...
Haram in the Harem: Domestic Narratives in India a...
Taking Territory: The Persistence of Conquest Sinc...
Warriors after War: Indian and Pakistani Retired M...
The Physics of Capitalism: How a New Political Eco...
Sacred Sovereignty: Kingship, Heritage, and Politi...
Killing in the Name of the State: State-Sponsored ...
"The Ethos of Britain": Delderfieldʼs Sw...
Myth and History in Ancient Persia: The Achaemenid...
Indian Agents: Rulers of the Reserves
Lineages of the Global City: Occult Modernism and ...
Kings and Dervishes: Sufi World Renunciation and t...
Visions of Empire and Other Imaginings: Cinema, Ir...
The Literary Thing: History, Poetry and the Making...
Strategic Dynamics and Nuclear Weapons Proliferati...
South Asian Technospaces - Hardcover
Rule-extension Strategies in Ancient India: Ritual...
Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves: America and the I...
Democracy’s Second Act: Why Politics Needs the Pub...
The Supreme Refuge, Volume 2: History, Myths, Wors...
Emotion, Mission, Architecture: Building Hospitals...
Locating Hybridity: Creole, Identities and Body Po...
The Rise of the Modern West: Europe, 1400-1599
L’idee separatiste dans la presse anglo-musulmane ...
The Guardian of the Hills: Devata Culture and Livi...
Contemporary Global Governance: Multipolarity vs N...
An Environmental History of Postcolonial North Ind...
Nationhood and Identity in Indian Adaptations of S...
Against Heritage: The Reinvention of Traditional F...
Earthquake Disaster Management: Focussing on the E...
Shelter for the Night: On Afghanistan, Language, a...
Under Osman’s Tree: The Ottoman Empire, Egypt, and...
US Hegemony Global Ambitions and Decline- Emergenc...
Medieval Worlds: Origins, Nature, Debates, and Exc...
Female Militants in South Asia: Fighters and Facil...
The House of the Satrap: The Making of the Ancient...
Independent Kashmir: An Incomplete Aspiration
The Rise of the Modern West: Europe, 1600-1799
Globalisation and the Changing Face of Port Infras...
Fictionalising Trauma: The Aesthetics of Marguerit...
The Political Economy of Education in South Asia: ...
Serendipitous Translations: A Sourcebook on Sri La...
Determinants, Consequences and Perspectives of Lan...
ADD REVIEW
Review Title
Review
Reviewer Name
Email