Arabs
The Jewish-Arab Novelist
The novelist Sami Michael died last year aged 97. Born and raised in Baghdad, he introduced characters previously marginalized or omitted in Hebrew literature: immigrants, Mizrahim, women and especially Arabs. His portrayals are sympathetic but unsparing, and his writing tackled issues central to Israeli society that were previously cloaked in silence.
The Wine Critics of Early Islam
The language used by early Arab poets to appraise wine shows striking parallels to the style of wine criticism we know today. Arab and Muslim poets writing hundreds of years ago used a vocabulary to evaluate wine that would only become current in the West in the late 20th century.
How Godless Arabs Changed Europe
In the world of Islam, some philosophers went against religion. The secularist ideas that European scholars found in these thinkers’ writings shook both Muslim and Christian theologians.