ASTENE Publications
New Publications
Knowledge is Light: Travellers in the Near East
edited by Katherine Salahi
For thousands of years travellers wandered to, and spread out through, Egypt and the Near East, seeking trade, adventure and knowledge. For centuries travellers to - and from - the Near East carried knowledge with them and then carried home the new knowledge acquired in the region. And knowledge, as the Arabic proverb states, is light. The travels which are the subjects of these nine papers continue to represent the work of The Association for the Study of Travel in the Near East, which was set up to follow, study and record the experience of travel and travellers in the Near East.
The book features travellers of great character. John Covel was in Constantinople in the 1670s where he became Chaplain and took away in his little-known diaries an extraordinary account of what it was like to be an Englishman in late 17th-century Greece and Asia Minor. James Rennell came to be considered as "one of the first geographers of this or any other age". He spent thirty years researching classical and modern sources on the geography of the Near East, including his splendidly intriguing study of the rate of travel by camels to establish distances.
For full details and to order this publication, please visit the Oxbow Books website.
ASTENE Special Offer Book Sale
The following Astene publications are being offered at a special price of £6.50 each (excluding postage and packaging costs):
Travellers in the Levant: Voyagers and Visionaries
Edited by Sarah Searight and Malcolm Wagstaff.
Egypt Through the Eyes of Travellers
Edited by Nadia El Kholy and Paul Starkey.
Desert Travellers from Herodotus to T E Lawrence
Edited by Janet Starkey and Okasha El Daly.
In addition Oxbow Books are advertising a special price of £9.95 for
Who Travels Sees More, Edited by Diane Fortenberry.
Women Travellers in the Near East (2005)
co-published by ASTENE and Oxbow Books, is also on sale at £5.00 (originally £25.00).
Orders should be placed through Oxbow Books as usual.
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Diane Bergman of the Sackler Library in Oxford has produced a bibliography of relevant books and articles by ASTENE members.
Click here to view.
Saddling the Dogs:
Journeys through Egypt and the Near East.
Edited by Diane Fortenberry and Deborah Manley
(Oxbow
Books in association with ASTENE, 2009, 170 pp)
In the absence of horses, saddle the dogs.
This Arab proverb, suggesting the uncompromising determination of nomads to keep moving, whatever the obstacles, epitomizes also the travelling ethos of many early visitors to the 'exotic East'. The journeys examined here are linked by the light they shed on the experience of travel in Egypt, Greece and the Ottoman Balkans, and the Near East from the 17th to the early-20th century, not so much what was seen as how one got there and how one got around once arrived; the vicissitudes and travails, both expected and strange that characterised the passage. The purpose of the trips examined range from religious pilgrimages to diplomatic, commercial and military journeys, and to middle-class package tours. Each of them is of interest for what it reveals about the realities of travel in Egypt, the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East at different times: the means by which travel was carried out, the dangers and discomforts encountered, and the preparations made.
Special ASTENE member price for Saddling the Dogs is £14.95 (full price £20) plus P & P.
Who Travels Sees More:
Artists, Architects, and Archaeologists Discover Egypt and the Near East
Edited by Dr Diane Fortenberry
Who Travels Sees More is an Arab proverb appropriate for
this book - and for ASTENE in general. This impressive book is a collection
of essays based on papers given at our biennial and overseas conferences
and study days.
The travellers included had backgrounds as artists and architects of one
sort or another - and so responded to what they saw in visual ways - in
many cases taking the revelations of their travels home with them to inspire
their own work.
The book is illustrated with 75 black and white pictures and 16 pages
of colour plates.
Published in association with Oxbow Books, members can purchase it at a special price of £9.95 (plus postage and packing).* See above for Special Offer. (The usual retail price is £45.)
Order from Oxbow Books, 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW, UK
Telephone: 01865 241249
Email: orders@oxbowbooks.com
Web: www.oxbow books.com
NEW ARRANGEMENTS FOR ASTENE BOOKS
Oxbow has moved
Oxbow who publish and distribute ASTENE's books and much else of interest
to members has moved from one side of Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford to the
other - and lower down! Their new address is 10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford
OX1 2EW where they will continue to welcome visitors between 9 am and
5:30 pm. Their website is www.oxbowbooks.com.
Customers in America should order through The David Brown Book Company,
PO Box 511, Oakville CT 06779.
In December 2003 Oxbow Books took over
the distribution of ASTENE's existing books, previously available through
the Museum Bookshop. These are now in stock at Oxbow's showroom, and are
available in North America from Oxbow's US branch office, The David Brown
Book Company in Connecticut.
Oxbow books is a specialist mail order bookseller and distributor, and
books may be ordered by phone, mail, e-mail or through the internet.
Books can be sent speedily and economically to any part of the world,
and payment is accepted by credit card, cheque and wire transfer. Please
order from your nearest Oxbow office - contact details listed below.
Oxbow Books stocks a large number of titles on the cultures of Egypt and
the Near East, and about their re-discovery by later travellers. Free
catalogues are sent on request.
ASTENE members receive 15% discount on the lowest advertised price of
ASTENE books. Please remember to identify yourself as an ASTENE member
and claim your discount with your order.
Outside North America
10 Hythe Bridge Street, Oxford OX1 2EW,
Tel: 44 (0) 1865 241249; Fax: 44 (0) 1865 794449 E-mail: oxbow@oxbowbooks.com
website www.oxbowbooks.com
Within North America
The David Brown Book Company, PO Box 511
(28 Main Street) Oakville, CT 06779, USA.
Toll free tel: 800 791 9354; Tel: 860 945 0329;
Fax: 860 945 9468;
E-mail: david.brown.bk.co@snet.net
Books of interest to members may be found at
http://www.cornucopia.net/bookspage.html
and at Eland Books
http://www.travelbooks.co.uk/book_detail.asp?id=148
Edited
by Charles Foster
120 pages, soft bound, 156 x 234 mm portrait
ISBN: 1900988 712
Price: £18.50
Publication Date: Autumn 2003
The Orientalists were a breed apart. Amateur enthusiasts with a thirst
for adventure, entrepreneurs hunting for eastern treasures,scientists
and early anthropologists and individuals desperate to escape the confines
of Europe, these men and women were pioneer tourists in unknown lands.
They have left us a legacy of fascinating romantic and enlightening insight
into the Near East from a European perspective, and Charles Foster brings
together a collection of studies of some of the most vivid and memorable
of them in this book, which is published in conjunction with the Association
for Study of Travellers in Egypt and the Near East.
This is a publication generated from papers given in Edinburgh at the 4th ASTENE biennial conference in 2001.
Egypt Through the Eyes of Travellers
Edited
by Nadia El Kholy and Paul Starkey
Illustrated. ISBN 0-9539700-2-7. Published 2002.
This volume presents a further fascinating array of images of Egypt, as seen through the eyes of Western travellers, from the Enlightenment onwards. Missionaries, Egyptologists, novelists and painters all offer their own perspectives. £19.95 (£14.95 for ASTENE members).
Edited
by Sarah Searight and Malcolm Wagstaff.
Illustrated, ISBN 0-9539700-1-9 Published April 2001.
Orientalists came to the Middle East with their own ideas and agendas. As we try to disentangle fact from fiction, the Middle East is explored from many perspectives, among them those of artists, novelists, archaeologists, tourists – and spies. Illustrated. £19.95 (£14.95 for ASTENE Members)
Edited by Janet Starkey and Okasha El Daly.
Illustrated, ISBN 0-9539700-0-0. Published December 2000.
Travellers in the deserts of the Middle East left a wealth of information on everything that caught their eye. From Herodotus, through medieval Arabic and European sources, to those of dare-devil travellers of the last 150 years, including James Bruce, William Eaton, Ameen Rihani and T.E. Lawrence, this book shows that close encounters in deserts can produce vivid images of an Oriental environment. Yet some travellers perhaps reveal more about themselves, through their experiences, than about the surrounding environment. Illustrated. £19.95 (£14.95 for ASTENE members).
Click here for contents of book
Also Available:
Edited by Paul and Janet Starkey (London: I.B. Tauris,
1998). Based on papers from the 1995 Durham conference.
ISBN 1 86064 674 3. £14.95 (pb) March 2001.
Edited by Paul and Janet Starkey (Reading: Ithaca, 2001). ISBN 0-86372-257-1. £35.00
Based on papers from the 1997 Oxford Conference. A fascinating miscellany, with papers on pilgrims, Middle Eastern dress worn by travellers, the Grand Tour, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and others from the period before Middle Eastern travel became commonplace. Illustrated.
Ithaca press: orders@garnet-ithaca.co.uk
http://www.garnet-ithaca.co.uk
Edited by Paul and Janet Starkey (Reading: Ithaca, 2001). ISBN 0-86372-258-X. £35.00.
Click here for contents
This book, also based on the 1997 Conference, continues the sequence of travellers in Unfolding the Orient, and develops a number of themes, with an emphasis on nineteenth-century travellers: painters, writers, adventurers and others. A fascinating volume in its own right. Illustrated.
Both of the above books were reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement (week beginning 23 July 2001) http://www.the-tls.co.uk. For a brief summary of the review click here.
Ithaca press: orders@garnet-ithaca.co.uk
http://www.garnet-ithaca.co.uk
In the Wake of the Dhow:
The Arabian Gulf and Oman
Dionisius A. Agius
Ithaca, September 2002, 276pp, 235 x 155 mm, Cased £35.00, ISBN
0 86372 259 8,
Illustrated
The Arabian dhow, with its characteristic features, is one of the most evocative images of the Gulf, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Documenting the dhow as an important element in the prosperity of the area before the discovery of oil, we find in this book the geographical conditions and the historical-linguistical background of each dhow-type, the life-pattern in its role as cargo, pearl-diving, pirate and slaving vessel and also how the seafaring communities interacted with the dhow world.
Ithaca press: orders@garnet-ithaca.co.uk
http://www.garnet-ithaca.co.uk
How Many Miles to Babylon?
Travels and Adventures to Egypt and Beyond, from 1300 to 1620
Anne Wolff
Liverpool University Press, HB 0-85323-658-5 £37.99, PB 0-85323-668-2
£11.50
Order from Marston Book Services, PO Box 269, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, OX14 4YN (Tel: 01235 465500; Fax 01235 465555; email: direct.order@marston.co.uk P&P UK £3.50, Europe £3 surface/£4 air, Rest of World £8. Quote code 200303
Traveling through Sinai, From the Fourth to the Twenty-first Century
Edited by Deborah Manley, and Sahar Abdel-Hakim, Cairo. AUC Press, 2006
http://www.aucpress.com/pc-3539-7-traveling-through-sinai.aspx
Traveling through Egypt. From 450 B.C. to the Twentieth Century
Edited by Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel-Hakim, Cairo, AUC Press, 2008
Egypt and the Nile. Through Writers' Eyes.
Edited by Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel-Hakim, Cairo, AUC Press, 2008
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