The True Origins of Hummus
A New Lines scoop (pun intended) has placed the magazine squarely in the middle of an historic tug-of-war over the origins of hummus.
How America Fell Out of Love With War — with Samuel Moyn and Faisal Al Yafai
“American presidents, to gain power, have to run against war,” Samuel Moyn tells New Lines magazine’s Faisal Al Yafai. Between Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and the rise of the isolationist “America First” Republicans, public support for military intervention abroad might be on the brink of collapse. But is America ready to end its love affair with the use of force?
Medieval Arabic Culinary Literature Offers Lessons for the Present
Excess was in vogue at the zenith of the Abbasid Empire. The wedding of its seventh caliph, al-Mamun, cost 50 million dirhams, according to the historian al-Tabari. It required 140 mules to make three trips a day for an entire year to transport wood for the stove. It then took two days and nights to burn through all the wood as the food cooked above it.
An Expensive Bribe for a Syrian ID
During a recent trip back to Syria, I found myself in the precarious position of having to replace my national identity card, which had gone missing. Thus commenced my journey into the belly of Assad’s bureaucracy, which had become hungrier and more emboldened than I remembered.
Sri Lanka’s Fishers Face a Tangled Future
The perilous combination of climate change, pollution and overfishing means that the catches themselves have been dwindling as well. There are fewer commercially viable species like snappers, tuna and prawns in the more shallow waters adjacent to the coast — places that have sustained thriving communities for centuries.