Topics

Issue 05 Love and Death

The Ghazal

The ghazal, or love lyric, evolved out of the pre-Islamic Arabian qasida, or ode, and the origins of the qasida go back to a time before Arabic…

Robert Irwin
Issue 04 Pakistan?

Karachi in Fragments

Shahid kept his pigeons in a coop on the roof of his home, nested somewhere in the anthill labyrinth of Karachi's oldest neighbourhood, Lyari. The…

Taimur Khan
Issue 04 Pakistan?

Atia Jilani: Writing the Qur’an

Atia Jilani is a self-taught calligrapher, a painter and a writer living in the village of Mohammad Abad. She is the first Asian woman to inscribe…

Syed Haroon ur Rasheed Ahmed
Issue 03 Fear and Loathing

Neocon Orientalists

Barely six weeks after the 9/11 attacks in America, a prominent New Yorker and ‘liberal’ intellectual, Paul Berman, published an essay in American…

Abdelwahab El-Affendi
Issue 03 Fear and Loathing

Park51

The Park51 project, originally called Cordoba House, is a planned community centre located in Lower Manhattan, New York. When it was first reported…

Michel Abboud
Issue 01 The Arabs Are Alive

Griots

Griots hold the memory and history of a community. They are the storytellers, musicians and singers of songs of praise. They are the archives. They…

Jean Ann Ndow
Issue 01 The Arabs Are Alive

Istanbul Poems

Mevlut Ceylan