ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΜΕΣΟΓΕΙΑΚΩΝ, ΜΕΣΑΝΑΤΟΛΙΚΩΝ & ΙΣΛΑΜΙΚΩΝ ΣΠΟΥΔΩΝ

"I know the black ditches
I always carry a rocket launcher on my shoulder;
I know the hot trenches
I always ambush the enemy;
I know war, conflict, and disputes
I will tell the truth even if I am hung on the gallows..."

A new anthology of Taliban poetry aims to bring some cultural understanding of the ‘violent, suppressive and fearsome Taliban’ to English speakers. The book Poetry of the Taliban is now on sale through Amazon and Hurst Publishers in the UK, and coming out in June in the USA. It is a collection of over two hundred contemporary poems, originally combining Urdu, Persian, and Pashtu verse.

African architecture is usually associated with temporality. Building methods are based on earth and water. Yet Ethiopia is endowed with grand religious architecture made out of rock, dating as far back as the 10th century.

History, especially in lands where the arts are immediately associated with court patronage, can be very much clarified and better apprehended by looking at the material culture of the period in question. In this series of articles dealing with the arts and the material culture of Middle Eastern lands, the immediate aim is to represent the connection between history, religion, ethnic/royal identity, politics, norms, society and how these are mirrored through art. A second aim is to highlight near-hidden gems of the Islamic artistic repertoire, bringing into question widespread assumptions that Islam may have prohibited the blossoming of artistic production.