Travel to Iraq

The Marsh Arabs (Travel Library)

Format: Paperback
Author: Wilfred Thesiger
ReleaseDate: 26 May, 1983
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Rating:

Another fascinating picture of a vanishing way of life
He was one of those Englishmen who are happiest when living far away from the comforts of modern life in dangerous surroundings with seemingly "primitive" people. Wilfred Thesiger led an amazing life. Following many years living with the Bedu of the Empty Quarter, Thesiger traveled to Iraq to immerse himself in the life and culture of the Marsh Arabs.

What he found was a fusion of Arabic/islamic culture into a older life style which had existed for well over three thousand years, hunting and gathering within the Marshes which form the end of the Tigris and Euphrates river systems. What he found was a culture which was rich in protocols and customs, no less advanced than that of modern man, but rather a culture superbly adapted to the life within the marshes, a culture whose key feature of hospitality which is seemingly lacking from our modern life.

And ultimately he finds the tragedy of a society which in the short term was being subsumed by western value and greed for possessions and which would ultimately be destroyed by a dictatorial government who would drain the Marshes in retribution for the locals support of an attempted coup.

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