1
00:00:01,070 --> 00:00:08,480
[Auto-generated transcript. Edits may have been applied for clarity.]
My book. Prophecies of Reason. Reason as as Eugene said about, um, somebody he's also worked a lot on, uh, behind the shop.

2
00:00:08,990 --> 00:00:13,630
Um, who lived through most of the 19th century in what is then Ottoman Syria.

3
00:00:13,640 --> 00:00:17,150
So, um, Syria, Lebanon as of today.

4
00:00:17,210 --> 00:00:23,420
Um, he also spent some time in Egypt. Um, he's born in the 1800s and dies in 1888.

5
00:00:23,990 --> 00:00:34,400
Um, and I suppose the money sort of way into, uh, his life or the reason why I became interested in his, his life was,

6
00:00:35,060 --> 00:00:41,360
um, to do with a kind of problem that we have in addressing the the 19th century in historical scholarship.

7
00:00:41,780 --> 00:00:49,680
That's. Reading some kinds of accounts of the 19th century Arab world and particularly, you know, like Germany and Egypt.

8
00:00:49,890 --> 00:00:53,880
One can see this is the origin point of, uh, tendencies like, um,

9
00:00:54,600 --> 00:01:02,219
secularism or the idea of a secular society, um, new engagement with, um, modern science, uh,

10
00:01:02,220 --> 00:01:06,959
the idea of a kind of public sphere, uh, which is multi-religious with different sets of people can,

11
00:01:06,960 --> 00:01:12,420
can debate, um, that sort of not the image, if you like, of the 19th century.

12
00:01:12,690 --> 00:01:18,569
On the other hand, it's also the century of modern style sectarian violence, things like, um,

13
00:01:18,570 --> 00:01:29,280
the famous 1860 massacre of Christians in Damascus, um, by a large crowd of uh, um, Muslims, which Eugene has just published a book about.

14
00:01:29,640 --> 00:01:38,880
Um, uh, and also of the rise of, you know, religious revivalist movements, um, Christian, uh, Jewish, also Muslim, you know, uh,

15
00:01:38,970 --> 00:01:46,440
early Salafi movement and things like that that are defining religious identities, often in rather harder and more clearly bounded ways.

16
00:01:46,560 --> 00:01:50,700
So there's a bit of a paradox in how do we see the 19th century as embodying,

17
00:01:50,720 --> 00:01:54,000
you know, the beginnings of both of these tendencies in their modern form.

18
00:01:54,300 --> 00:01:56,550
And I found, you know, mentioned the chocolate helps us.

19
00:01:56,550 --> 00:02:02,130
I hope to answer some of those questions, because he belongs in the sense to the history of both of these tendencies.

20
00:02:02,550 --> 00:02:05,550
So very briefly, he is born in 1800.

21
00:02:05,550 --> 00:02:13,470
He grows up, um, as a Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic in, uh, the former the capital of the Emirate of Mount Lebanon.

22
00:02:13,500 --> 00:02:21,330
His family is very close to the ruling shabby, uh, family, the, uh, Amir Bashir have um.

23
00:02:21,930 --> 00:02:27,780
And at the age of 17, he travels to Egypt, to the port town of, uh, Damietta.

24
00:02:28,200 --> 00:02:34,410
Um, and. Encounters basically two things, one of which is the plague, um,

25
00:02:34,430 --> 00:02:40,310
which comes to town regularly in the spring and remains for many months into the, uh, into the summer.

26
00:02:40,820 --> 00:02:45,709
Um, and poses a problem to everybody and to me because, you know, it's killing many people.

27
00:02:45,710 --> 00:02:49,850
You have that at its height to 100 funeral processions leaving the town every day.

28
00:02:50,330 --> 00:02:55,879
Um, but people react in different ways. And the, the wealthy Christians that's become the shock is living along.

29
00:02:55,880 --> 00:03:01,280
Most go into a kind of lockdown, uh, conflicts actually, I call it what you call lockdown.

30
00:03:01,700 --> 00:03:07,459
Um, to hide away from, uh, the plague. And so these sort of quarantine regulations, um,

31
00:03:07,460 --> 00:03:13,160
other people would resort more to prayer or indeed to magical means of warding off the plague doctors,

32
00:03:13,160 --> 00:03:17,600
uh, uncertain and, you know, divided on what the best way is to deal with it.

33
00:03:17,600 --> 00:03:25,219
And so one can see through this example in particular, plague, you know, different ideas of what one should do about these problems in one's life,

34
00:03:25,220 --> 00:03:31,370
whether religious or medical or magical, kind of rubbing up against each other and the problems of what to believe.

35
00:03:31,370 --> 00:03:37,370
What? Why don't you think about this? That this gives rise to the other thing that may come a shock, uh, encounters in,

36
00:03:37,370 --> 00:03:42,739
uh, Damietta is a set of writings translated from European languages into Arabic.

37
00:03:42,740 --> 00:03:51,740
The first time that, um, modern science of the kind that's written after Isaac Newton or, um, the enlightenment thought of, uh, French deists,

38
00:03:51,740 --> 00:03:54,770
people like Voltaire and Volant is available in Arabic,

39
00:03:54,770 --> 00:03:59,089
and this is the result of a particular translation movement which is based in that city of doom.

40
00:03:59,090 --> 00:04:08,870
Yup. Um, and through reading this and through other experiences that he has in, um, Damietta, Midtum a shopkeeper loses his faith.

41
00:04:09,470 --> 00:04:16,100
Um, he decides that all of the religious faiths that are available to him in Egypt or Syria at the time, uh,

42
00:04:16,100 --> 00:04:24,829
false colours should out on up and, um, that we should instead act according to the natural light which has been planted in us by God.

43
00:04:24,830 --> 00:04:27,889
So he adopted deist position. Um, not publicly.

44
00:04:27,890 --> 00:04:30,290
He remains, for public purposes, a Greek Catholic.

45
00:04:30,830 --> 00:04:37,340
Um, and then he goes back to Mount Lebanon and he lives there, um, for, uh, the next part of his life,

46
00:04:37,340 --> 00:04:42,620
he, uh, becomes an advisor and chancellor to a set of the local rulers and,

47
00:04:42,620 --> 00:04:47,419
uh, towns because by and by the time, um, he becomes a great polymath,

48
00:04:47,420 --> 00:04:51,200
he teaches himself a whole range of different disciplines, from music to mathematics.

49
00:04:51,530 --> 00:04:55,700
Um, and, you know, medicine. He falls ill, he decides to teach himself medicine.

50
00:04:55,700 --> 00:04:58,430
So, um, because he doesn't trust the other doctors, you know?

51
00:04:58,760 --> 00:05:05,750
Um, so he has this great faith in his own ability to, um, you know, think his way to the end of any problem he's presented with.

52
00:05:06,230 --> 00:05:08,010
Then in the 1840s.

53
00:05:08,030 --> 00:05:14,659
Well, the 1830s and then the 1840s, there's there's a new set of problems which present themselves because there's new political changes.

54
00:05:14,660 --> 00:05:20,240
In addition, an invasion by the army of the governor of Egypt, Um Ali Persia,

55
00:05:20,480 --> 00:05:26,810
and then a European intervention to get him out, uh, and restore Ottoman power.

56
00:05:27,050 --> 00:05:34,070
And through all of these political changes, um, Mithun Michalka, he's very involved in the local politics.

57
00:05:34,070 --> 00:05:37,070
He works with the Egyptians. He then works closely with, uh, the British.

58
00:05:37,070 --> 00:05:46,160
And he's negotiating, in a sense, parts of the ending of the old order of the submissives and those sort of political forces in, uh, in,

59
00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:56,810
in Mount Lebanon, um, and in one of the sort of outcomes of this is the emergence of a new form of sectarian politics and sectarian violence.

60
00:05:57,080 --> 00:06:03,230
Um, in 1841, in Mount Lebanon, there's a conflict between Maronite and Druze Christians in the in the course of this,

61
00:06:03,470 --> 00:06:07,940
um, his own family home is burned down in their squabbling.

62
00:06:08,270 --> 00:06:14,510
Uh, one of his brothers is killed. Um, the rest of the family flee to safety with him in Damascus.

63
00:06:14,930 --> 00:06:19,639
And this I think him very deeply. And it's not coincidental that it's a few years after that,

64
00:06:19,640 --> 00:06:25,430
that he begins becoming interested in religious ideas once again, instead of simply being a deist,

65
00:06:25,910 --> 00:06:30,020
he begins to take seriously writings which have been translated into Arabic by Protestant

66
00:06:30,020 --> 00:06:34,940
missionaries who've come from America to the Eastern Mediterranean in the 1820s,

67
00:06:35,240 --> 00:06:39,950
particularly, uh, rather peculiar book, uh, by a man named Alexander Keith,

68
00:06:39,950 --> 00:06:46,910
who's a Church of Scotland minister, um, which purports to show that the Bible is true based on archaeology.

69
00:06:47,570 --> 00:06:54,230
So he reads this stuff, he becomes, then meets and becomes a close friend of one of the American missionaries, a man named Eli Smith,

70
00:06:54,650 --> 00:07:00,410
um, in the town of Speyer, which is where he spends a large part of his life and where a group of people have become Protestants.

71
00:07:00,410 --> 00:07:06,049
Recently, um, and as a result of this, uh, eventually in 1848, decides to become,

72
00:07:06,050 --> 00:07:13,010
for public purposes, a Protestant, um, so goes through a formal sort of open conversion process,

73
00:07:13,010 --> 00:07:19,249
leaves his Greek Catholic community, and he then engages in a very bitter polemic with, um,

74
00:07:19,250 --> 00:07:23,720
the head of that community that he's just leaving the patriarch, um, blacksmiths Muslim.

75
00:07:24,210 --> 00:07:29,480
Um, but he is adopted this new Protestant position in a sense, because I think he, um.

76
00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:33,930
He sees it as a rational religion. He sees it as a form of religion that can be rationally justified.

77
00:07:34,080 --> 00:07:41,800
And he retains that position for the rest of his life. Um, he lives through and survives the massacres of 1860 and provides, um,

78
00:07:41,910 --> 00:07:46,890
one of the most vivid, probably the most vivid testimony to, um, that that set of events.

79
00:07:47,190 --> 00:07:50,880
Um, he writes his memoirs in 1873. He dies in 1888.

80
00:07:51,150 --> 00:07:59,430
You know, as a respected, um, member of the, uh, Damascene community under the, you know, new style, uh, Tansy met Ottoman Empire.

81
00:07:59,430 --> 00:08:03,570
But in many ways, looking back still to the shabby emirate of of his youth.

82
00:08:04,560 --> 00:08:08,520
So through all of this, this theme of reason, a lot is very central to me.

83
00:08:09,450 --> 00:08:13,229
And I think that in a sense, um, so, you know, to conclude,

84
00:08:13,230 --> 00:08:18,959
can provide us with one of these clues to, um, what's going on, uh, between these two tendencies,

85
00:08:18,960 --> 00:08:24,870
if you like to, um, secularity on the one hand and religious identitarian ism on the other in the 19th century,

86
00:08:24,870 --> 00:08:32,639
because, you know, he belongs to both of these. He's massively interested in science and reason and, um, thinking his way to the end of a problem.

87
00:08:32,640 --> 00:08:38,520
He's adopted as a figure of the author by later sort of publicises that like George's day.

88
00:08:38,520 --> 00:08:41,350
Then, on the other hand, he's very much a religious activist.

89
00:08:41,370 --> 00:08:48,240
He's also central to shaping a Protestant community in Syria and takes attacking Catholicism in particular very seriously.

90
00:08:48,540 --> 00:08:53,459
Um, so, you know, but both to both of these projects, reason is central for him.

91
00:08:53,460 --> 00:09:02,070
And I think one can see him as part of a shift towards, um, a new style of religious debate that emerges by the late 19th century in Arabic,

92
00:09:02,250 --> 00:09:11,430
in which it becomes very important to justify whatever it is one believes in terms of reason, um, and that can lead in rather different directions.

93
00:09:11,430 --> 00:09:17,970
One can say, okay, I'm going to judge all of these different religious faith according to the light of reason and stand outside of them all,

94
00:09:18,120 --> 00:09:22,830
and this can lead to a secular position. On the other hand, if you place yourself within one of these faith.

95
00:09:23,250 --> 00:09:28,020
One has to then rationally justify that as against other positions.

96
00:09:28,200 --> 00:09:33,540
And this means getting rid of all of the things which can be seen as superstitious, inconsistent,

97
00:09:33,840 --> 00:09:38,970
ambiguous, um, and coming up with a more sharply bounded sense of what one's religion is.

98
00:09:39,180 --> 00:09:44,700
And so that in a sense, is how I would, you know, relate Michaelmas chocolate to the general problem that I began with.

99
00:09:44,940 --> 00:09:49,110
But there's very many other aspects of his life and, you know, weird and wonderful details that we can also discuss.

100
00:09:49,110 --> 00:09:56,070
And great. And they're all documented for you here, Prophet of Reason, because you really have only just scratched the surface.

101
00:09:56,430 --> 00:10:00,840
But that was the point, a taste point. We'll come back and questions for more detail.

102
00:10:01,170 --> 00:10:05,220
Could we beg you to describe a little more about what you got up to?

103
00:10:05,890 --> 00:10:11,720
Well, you don't have to beg me, except I do have to apologise for my voice, and I hope I can, um.

104
00:10:11,730 --> 00:10:17,040
I hope you can hear me at the back. And if it gives out, that will just give more time to my colleagues.

105
00:10:17,550 --> 00:10:21,209
Um. It's always a pleasure to speak here in my alma mater.

106
00:10:21,210 --> 00:10:28,500
And I want to start by saying that literally my entire career, I've been thinking about the study of biography,

107
00:10:28,500 --> 00:10:33,240
although for most of that it's been the study of biography as a genre.

108
00:10:33,630 --> 00:10:43,530
And when I say literally, I mean going back to my undergraduate honours thesis on Maisie Edda um and her biographies of other women's lives,

109
00:10:43,770 --> 00:10:48,690
which Albert Hourani read. And that's what led him to urge me to come to Saint Anthony.

110
00:10:48,720 --> 00:10:57,930
So, um, so I've really been interested in that, and particularly the question of how feminists use biography.

111
00:10:57,930 --> 00:11:00,959
And this is something not, of course, specific to the Arab world.

112
00:11:00,960 --> 00:11:09,270
I mean, women in, in many societies have used biographies of earlier women to try to counter the way

113
00:11:09,270 --> 00:11:13,920
in which women's lives and life stories and accomplishments have been suppressed.

114
00:11:14,250 --> 00:11:18,150
So I've been very interested in that. Um, and I've written a lot about it.

115
00:11:18,570 --> 00:11:22,799
And that led me to Zainab for because she was very important in this.

116
00:11:22,800 --> 00:11:34,350
Her best known work is a monumental, um, biographical Dictionary of World Women in Arabic, published in 1895, in Cairo.

117
00:11:34,680 --> 00:11:38,880
My previous book, um, was a book history of that book.

118
00:11:38,910 --> 00:11:44,970
So, as you can tell, I'm I'm rather obsessed with this woman, having now written two monographs on her.

119
00:11:45,480 --> 00:11:52,500
So, um, I but I then went on and I wanted to work more on her because she is such a fascinating figure.

120
00:11:53,010 --> 00:12:00,600
Um, she was really I see her is very unusual among feminist and gender activists in the late 19th century.

121
00:12:01,020 --> 00:12:09,690
She was she her work came from a very deep, very explicit, um, Muslim believer perspective.

122
00:12:10,140 --> 00:12:11,190
And within that,

123
00:12:11,490 --> 00:12:20,250
she uses that perspective to really mount a thoroughgoing critique of patriarchy and to have a much more anti essentialist view of gender,

124
00:12:20,730 --> 00:12:29,040
um, much less focussed on sort of natural gender roles than was true of of most people writing on gender in the late 19th.

125
00:12:29,140 --> 00:12:34,460
Century. And so what I do in the book, it's an intellectual biography.

126
00:12:34,510 --> 00:12:41,200
I spend a lot of, um, a lot of it really looking closely at her works.

127
00:12:41,200 --> 00:12:48,640
So her essays in the press in the 1890s, which covered everything from social justice to marriage,

128
00:12:49,150 --> 00:12:58,270
um, to, um, the question of natural gender and, and other topics, girls education.

129
00:12:58,930 --> 00:13:03,670
And I do that by really trying to place her in a community of writers,

130
00:13:03,970 --> 00:13:09,580
not all of whom when I say community, that and the community can be antagonistic, um, as well as friendly.

131
00:13:09,880 --> 00:13:14,170
So I look closely at the way that she was engaged in various public debates.

132
00:13:14,170 --> 00:13:22,360
And within that, I also try to look at some some other writers who were actually not very who were somewhat well known at the time,

133
00:13:22,570 --> 00:13:31,240
but are not the writers that we remember now. Um, I also have chapters on her two novels, which are both historical novels and her play.

134
00:13:31,240 --> 00:13:40,570
She was the first woman, as far as we know, as far as I know, any way to have written, uh, to have her name on a play that was published.

135
00:13:40,600 --> 00:13:43,780
There may have been others that women published anonymously.

136
00:13:44,350 --> 00:13:50,320
Um, and in that chapter, I try to imagine the relationship between, um,

137
00:13:50,500 --> 00:13:56,830
women and theatre in the 1890s because it was not women didn't necessarily have access to the theatre.

138
00:13:57,340 --> 00:14:00,610
So I try to look at all these different kinds of writing.

139
00:14:00,820 --> 00:14:04,240
Now, as a person, who was she? Um, fascinating.

140
00:14:04,240 --> 00:14:10,630
And when I read Peter's book, I was so India's because you have so much information on Mishawaka,

141
00:14:11,020 --> 00:14:15,400
and I have a very different situation than the San Antonio Bears. So she was born.

142
00:14:15,550 --> 00:14:26,320
And here the problems start. She was born sometime between 1846 and 1860, in the town of two men in Jebel Amel in the south of Lebanon.

143
00:14:27,460 --> 00:14:31,660
And different sources, um, you know, support these different dates.

144
00:14:31,660 --> 00:14:39,100
I tend to think, um, it was she was probably born in the late 1840s, early 1850s.

145
00:14:39,460 --> 00:14:43,330
But, you know, I'm not sure because I have no real evidence.

146
00:14:43,330 --> 00:14:47,080
And that's that's a generation 1846 to 1860.

147
00:14:47,080 --> 00:14:56,260
And it makes a huge difference in terms of her relationships with people whose dates we do know and with whom she was closely, um, engaged.

148
00:14:56,320 --> 00:15:10,510
Um, so she was born there. She spent her childhood in the, um, the the castle, uh, in to nine, um, the seat of the local feudal ruler.

149
00:15:10,510 --> 00:15:21,579
And this is also fascinating. And and her first novel, which came out in 1899, is actually based on the story, um, of that family.

150
00:15:21,580 --> 00:15:25,870
But she changes it, um, for her own, I think, political purposes.

151
00:15:25,870 --> 00:15:29,710
So I look very closely at the history and then what she does to it in the novel.

152
00:15:30,460 --> 00:15:33,190
Um, at some point she emigrated to Egypt.

153
00:15:33,730 --> 00:15:43,150
Again, there are many stories about that, including one that she married an Egyptian army man and immigrated from Lebanon to Egypt.

154
00:15:43,150 --> 00:15:48,430
The problem with that is that there is no Egyptian husband in evidence when she gets to Egypt.

155
00:15:48,670 --> 00:15:54,760
So I actually don't believe that story. And I think probably it's an indication of the fact that people just could not

156
00:15:55,060 --> 00:15:59,920
believe that a woman would immigrate unless she was following her husband,

157
00:15:59,920 --> 00:16:09,550
you know? So I think some of the stories about her life, um, have to do with people's attempts to explain things that don't seem very explicable.

158
00:16:10,150 --> 00:16:16,270
Um, so she she's in Egypt, she wrote I won't again, I won't go into all the details.

159
00:16:16,360 --> 00:16:24,639
I can certainly go into the more if you if you wish. At one point she went to Damascus, um, to marry a man.

160
00:16:24,640 --> 00:16:31,840
They'd had a correspondence, they'd never seen each other. And one of the possibly apocryphal stories is that she gets to Damascus,

161
00:16:31,840 --> 00:16:37,270
and they both discover that the photographs they sent each other were from a much younger age.

162
00:16:37,630 --> 00:16:45,430
Um, she also discovered that he had either 2 or 3, um, other wives, which he had sort of forgotten to tell her about.

163
00:16:45,880 --> 00:16:52,510
And the marriage did not last, um, a very long time, although apparently the main one of the I don't want to say the men,

164
00:16:52,510 --> 00:16:58,630
but one of the reasons for that is that she just she missed the intellectual life of Cairo, and she missed the Cairo newspapers.

165
00:16:59,170 --> 00:17:05,590
Um, so she came back to Egypt and was still did some writing.

166
00:17:05,590 --> 00:17:15,190
But then the last she died in 1914. For the last several years, um, she suffered from eye disease and was not very active,

167
00:17:15,490 --> 00:17:20,620
although there are certain spots, but and I will probably end with this.

168
00:17:21,010 --> 00:17:28,950
There is one source. Um, my only real archival source on Salem photos are the informant reports.

169
00:17:29,040 --> 00:17:32,580
Words that she did for best help me.

170
00:17:32,790 --> 00:17:38,129
Um, in the period sort of 1905 to 1907. These are absolutely fascinating.

171
00:17:38,130 --> 00:17:42,000
They are in the archives in Durham. The others held me archives.

172
00:17:42,360 --> 00:17:47,280
I want to do more writing on those. What's fascinating is that here she is, a woman.

173
00:17:48,060 --> 00:17:57,030
She was hired to basically to go and hang out with her friends in elite homes, the other women,

174
00:17:57,420 --> 00:18:03,629
and she transcribes their conversations, or at least her the person she wants the regime to have.

175
00:18:03,630 --> 00:18:09,300
And it's completely fascinating. I mean, for one thing, it shows that women were not at all isolated from politics.

176
00:18:09,300 --> 00:18:18,300
They knew exactly what was going on. Um, Zina Handler, in writing to, I guess, help me or someone close to him.

177
00:18:18,990 --> 00:18:26,280
Um, wanting to justify hiring xenophobes said she said, listen, I think she can be of use to us.

178
00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:31,020
She can go into these homes. After all, husbands tell their wives everything.

179
00:18:31,590 --> 00:18:35,160
And she really she really pulls out this information.

180
00:18:35,370 --> 00:18:39,000
Now, for a feminist biographer of a feminist.

181
00:18:39,450 --> 00:18:42,450
This is quite difficult material. Um.

182
00:18:42,450 --> 00:18:48,320
She's nasty. She lies to people. She uses the concept of girls education cynically.

183
00:18:48,330 --> 00:18:56,790
That's what hurt me the most. Um, she she participates in basically, um, getting a journalist thrown into jail.

184
00:18:57,270 --> 00:19:03,870
Um, you know, this is not nice. And I reading this just like saying if you do this to me.

185
00:19:04,350 --> 00:19:12,450
Um, but it's but it does humanise her. You know, it really, again, shows us the the complications of a life, the messiness of a life.

186
00:19:12,690 --> 00:19:18,839
And also, I think sometimes we sometimes maybe forget is the way that people change as they get older.

187
00:19:18,840 --> 00:19:24,210
And maybe they have new needs, new, um, agendas, new loyalties.

188
00:19:24,420 --> 00:19:29,879
We do know that she was, um, she was quite poor after her brother died.

189
00:19:29,880 --> 00:19:33,780
Her brother was a lawyer in Cairo. He died in 1894.

190
00:19:34,260 --> 00:19:41,880
Um, you know, she was single, and I think partly she did this probably because she needed money.

191
00:19:42,090 --> 00:19:46,740
I think also that she wanted to be involved. And somehow this was this was something.

192
00:19:47,010 --> 00:19:52,170
And I also trace that, you know, into sort of 1900.

193
00:19:52,800 --> 00:19:59,910
Um, as things are becoming harder and harder in term as Egyptians are losing even more and more hope about the Egyptians,

194
00:19:59,910 --> 00:20:04,170
about the English leaving, about the end of the British occupation.

195
00:20:04,890 --> 00:20:12,570
Um. She becomes a more hardline nationalist, and the nationalism tends to subsume her feminism a bit.

196
00:20:12,570 --> 00:20:14,880
So I try to to trace that as well.

197
00:20:14,890 --> 00:20:22,799
So, you know, it's just fascinating dealing with the complexity of the human being and trying to think about her role in history,

198
00:20:22,800 --> 00:20:27,480
but of course, also how her history shaped her and how it shapes our thinking now.

199
00:20:27,780 --> 00:20:37,470
So thank you. Thank you Marilyn. And again, Career and Communities of Zina was another community of impossible friends.

200
00:20:38,190 --> 00:20:44,579
Yes. So yeah, thank you very much. So, um, first of all, it's wonderful being back at Oxford.

201
00:20:44,580 --> 00:20:48,300
So thank you, Eugene, and everyone who organised this.

202
00:20:48,540 --> 00:20:52,589
Um, it's wonderful also to see my former professors,

203
00:20:52,590 --> 00:21:01,890
but also to see my former students from AOB who are now doing that, PhDs, um, here at Oxford and at Cambridge.

204
00:21:02,430 --> 00:21:14,610
All right. So, um, my book tells the story of this really extraordinary circle of friends in Jerusalem who came together across religious lines,

205
00:21:14,610 --> 00:21:22,440
so across Christianity, Islam and Judaism before 1948.

206
00:21:22,980 --> 00:21:26,490
And, um, my book consists of two parts.

207
00:21:26,490 --> 00:21:37,710
So the first part, um, I go back to I try to reconstruct in fragments what brought them together, what made their friendship possible.

208
00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:44,609
And then the second part, um, I look at the afterlives of that friendship.

209
00:21:44,610 --> 00:21:50,610
So what happened to them? And what happened to their friendship after 1948?

210
00:21:51,060 --> 00:21:58,139
Um, and I like to think that my book is as much about the present as it is about the past.

211
00:21:58,140 --> 00:22:10,500
Because, as we all know very well, this past 1948, the Nakba is not past its ongoing and Nakba, and it's an ongoing Nakba.

212
00:22:10,980 --> 00:22:14,580
And, um, I felt when I was writing this book.

213
00:22:14,580 --> 00:22:25,110
So it took me quite a while. Um, I felt it was an urgency, really, to telling the story because the individual lives are being lost,

214
00:22:25,110 --> 00:22:28,409
not only because they are all, uh, what he called.

215
00:22:28,410 --> 00:22:32,879
He's the only one who's still alive who turned 99, uh, this summer.

216
00:22:32,880 --> 00:22:37,560
He's a gentleman on the left. Um, not only because of that,

217
00:22:37,560 --> 00:22:48,720
but also because their lives are really being erased against the background of current ideologies in the Middle East and elsewhere,

218
00:22:48,810 --> 00:22:51,330
also in Europe, maybe in the UK.

219
00:22:51,330 --> 00:23:03,690
It's not as bad as in Germany, but I believe also here it is a problem that we have these ideologies of one people, one religion and one language.

220
00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:07,529
Uh, so I felt there was an urgency to telling their story.

221
00:23:07,530 --> 00:23:13,650
But certainly this urgency has increased since October 7th.

222
00:23:13,950 --> 00:23:21,330
And the horrors, um, we are witnessing in Gaza, in Lebanon and, uh, elsewhere.

223
00:23:21,780 --> 00:23:28,230
Uh, since now I use the word story because for me, it was very important to tell a story.

224
00:23:28,590 --> 00:23:38,370
So I tried to liberate myself and also to encourage my students to do that from this academic straitjacket.

225
00:23:38,370 --> 00:23:42,359
My book still has way too many footnotes, because at the same time,

226
00:23:42,360 --> 00:23:52,620
I felt it was important to document everything carefully because there is such a battle over narratives when it comes to Israel Palestine.

227
00:23:53,430 --> 00:23:56,760
Um, but for me, it was very important to tell a story.

228
00:23:56,880 --> 00:24:08,540
And, um, I, uh, drew a lot of inspiration also from colleagues in creative writing, because I think we do need more storytelling, because, uh,

229
00:24:08,550 --> 00:24:13,140
stories connect us across time and space as human beings,

230
00:24:13,140 --> 00:24:22,650
and because stories give names and faces to a history that all too often has been reduced to numbers.

231
00:24:23,040 --> 00:24:33,000
Um, and I try to. So I'm also very fascinated, um, uh, uh, obsessed a bit with life writing, with biography.

232
00:24:33,360 --> 00:24:44,160
But I really try to bridge biography, which is more closely linked to literary studies, um, with micro history.

233
00:24:44,820 --> 00:24:50,250
Um, so to link literature and to social sciences.

234
00:24:50,760 --> 00:25:00,239
Uh, so to use this group portrait, if you want, as a lens to try to teach myself to understand better,

235
00:25:00,240 --> 00:25:05,470
but also to shed light on a larger context, which is the.

236
00:25:06,420 --> 00:25:12,239
Palestinian conflict. Right. Maybe I'll just say a few words about my protagonist.

237
00:25:12,240 --> 00:25:16,530
So many of you in this room, I assume, are familiar with some of them.

238
00:25:16,950 --> 00:25:24,420
Let me start with the one person that maybe he and the UK people are not so familiar with, which is Wolfgang Hildesheim.

239
00:25:24,580 --> 00:25:27,930
He's seated in the middle, uh, of this portrait.

240
00:25:28,230 --> 00:25:33,900
He was born in 1916, uh, in Hamburg, in the city that I grew up in.

241
00:25:34,440 --> 00:25:39,690
Um, and he left, uh, he was born into a German Jewish family,

242
00:25:40,170 --> 00:25:48,900
and he left Germany as a teenager with his parents and his sister, uh, in 1933, when the Nazis came to power.

243
00:25:49,260 --> 00:25:57,030
First to London, his father, uh, negotiated with Unilever to open a factory in Haifa.

244
00:25:57,480 --> 00:26:01,440
And then from London they went to, uh, Palestine.

245
00:26:01,680 --> 00:26:11,900
And when he first arrived in 33 and Palestine, he was really very much moving in the German Zionist circles of his parents.

246
00:26:11,910 --> 00:26:17,730
His parents were really convinced, uh, Zionists, um.

247
00:26:18,860 --> 00:26:22,280
But then when he obtained a passport. This is.

248
00:26:22,430 --> 00:26:25,579
So it's a whole issue of passport. Maybe we can come back to that later.

249
00:26:25,580 --> 00:26:34,820
Is very intriguing also. So in 37 he obtained a Palestinian passport, um, which was issued by the British Mandate.

250
00:26:35,270 --> 00:26:40,850
He immediately left, uh, went back to London to study graphic design.

251
00:26:41,090 --> 00:26:45,740
But then with the outbreak of World War Two, he returned to Jerusalem.

252
00:26:46,070 --> 00:26:50,870
And having lived in London in the golden 30s, maybe we can say, I don't know.

253
00:26:50,870 --> 00:26:54,590
Before World War Two it was very cosmopolitan.

254
00:26:55,190 --> 00:26:58,339
Uh, coming back then to Jerusalem,

255
00:26:58,340 --> 00:27:07,960
he took a distance from the German Zionist circles of his parents and moved in British and Palestinian Arab circles.

256
00:27:07,970 --> 00:27:16,930
And this is when he met Walid Halliday and Gibran Ibrahim Jabbar, who are seated at the far end of this portrait.

257
00:27:17,420 --> 00:27:24,320
Uh, well, it was a pipe in his mouth and zebra, um, a pipe in his hand.

258
00:27:24,710 --> 00:27:28,670
Um, I'm I'm sure some of you are familiar with by him.

259
00:27:28,670 --> 00:27:35,959
Deborah. He later became a really, uh, well-known figure in modern Arabic literature.

260
00:27:35,960 --> 00:27:41,360
Translated Shakespeare. Also painted, was an art critic, literature critic, and so on.

261
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:51,200
Well, Israeli, the great, um, Palestinian historian and public intellectual who co-founded the Institute for Palestine Studies,

262
00:27:51,200 --> 00:27:54,970
which has branches today in Beirut and Washington, DC.

263
00:27:55,190 --> 00:28:01,190
So, um, these people up, these three men are, uh, pretty well known.

264
00:28:01,550 --> 00:28:10,310
Uh, Wolfgang Simon became very well known in post, uh, war German literature.

265
00:28:10,700 --> 00:28:22,940
He returned, actually, to Europe, first to London and then to Germany in 46, convinced that his place is in Europe and not in Palestine.

266
00:28:23,510 --> 00:28:26,830
Um, maybe I'll say more about that later.

267
00:28:26,840 --> 00:28:33,890
So, uh, just very briefly. So he returned to London, tried to establish himself as a graphic artist in London.

268
00:28:34,370 --> 00:28:38,270
Um, but that was difficult. So he had to earn some money.

269
00:28:38,570 --> 00:28:43,490
He heard that the US embassy was looking for translators.

270
00:28:43,490 --> 00:28:47,120
Interpreters. Uh, so he applied for a job.

271
00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:52,009
He got it. And this is how he returned to Germany with the allies.

272
00:28:52,010 --> 00:28:58,219
And then he worked as an interpreter in the Nuremberg trials and decided to stay in Germany.

273
00:28:58,220 --> 00:29:06,320
And then he got involved with, uh, the so-called, uh, Gropius in on Third City, which is a very important literary group.

274
00:29:06,320 --> 00:29:14,000
Günter Grass in a book land and so on, and started to write in German late 50s.

275
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:21,620
He was very fed up with Germany, thinking that Germany's going fascist again and left for Switzerland.

276
00:29:21,620 --> 00:29:26,450
And this is where he remained until he passed away in the 90s.

277
00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:36,020
Um, now, I'm not going to say more about Jabbar and Walid, but let me very briefly say something about the two women.

278
00:29:36,590 --> 00:29:40,710
Uh, so, like many other women the world over.

279
00:29:40,730 --> 00:29:44,420
They did not leave any publications behind.

280
00:29:44,750 --> 00:29:49,520
And thus also it was very difficult to find out more about their lives.

281
00:29:50,030 --> 00:29:55,519
Uh, I was very lucky that, um, uh,

282
00:29:55,520 --> 00:30:07,910
Wally Kolody trusted me and gave me access to his personal archive and also to the unpublished, uh, memoirs of his wife.

283
00:30:08,030 --> 00:30:19,100
Uh, in Russia. So, Russia. Salam is from a big Lebanese family who championed which championed, uh, women's emancipation and Arab nationalism.

284
00:30:19,580 --> 00:30:23,000
And, um, she later married Walid.

285
00:30:23,030 --> 00:30:26,419
And much later in the 80s, she wrote her memoirs.

286
00:30:26,420 --> 00:30:31,220
So that helped me to really, uh, find out more about her life.

287
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:35,540
Sally Case. Uh, unfortunately, I wasn't that lucky.

288
00:30:35,540 --> 00:30:43,309
And this is why also, I do not devote a chapter to Sally in my book, and we can talk more about this also.

289
00:30:43,310 --> 00:30:51,800
Maybe, um, later. What do we do when we are confronted with gaps and silences in the archive?

290
00:30:52,250 --> 00:30:59,650
Do we try to use our imagination to fill these gaps, or do we mark them as gaps?

291
00:30:59,720 --> 00:31:02,720
How do we deal with that? Um.

292
00:31:02,840 --> 00:31:09,800
All right, um, a few words about, um, the archives.

293
00:31:10,190 --> 00:31:13,430
So I'm telling this story.

294
00:31:13,880 --> 00:31:18,350
Um, really? Um, if you want, I try to.

295
00:31:18,410 --> 00:31:21,850
To let the archive guide me. Right.

296
00:31:21,860 --> 00:31:31,530
So I draw on a lot of unpublished material, as I mentioned, memoirs, photographs, letters.

297
00:31:31,580 --> 00:31:38,510
Um. Um, but certainly this also means that sometimes it's a bit like a puzzle, right?

298
00:31:38,510 --> 00:31:43,460
Because you find bits and pieces and then you are putting that together.

299
00:31:43,850 --> 00:31:50,930
And also there are a lot of surprises. So here I was in Beirut working about this group of friends in Jerusalem.

300
00:31:51,260 --> 00:32:03,800
But then the archive sent me back to Germany, to the UK, to the US, because Palestinian archives are as dispersed as Palestinians, um, themselves.

301
00:32:04,340 --> 00:32:15,560
Um, all right. Maybe let me fast forward a little bit and say, um, now go back and fast forward.

302
00:32:15,890 --> 00:32:24,130
So, uh, in addition to these two parts, my book has a prologue and an epilogue and the prologue,

303
00:32:24,140 --> 00:32:32,420
I open my book with the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 for two reasons.

304
00:32:32,780 --> 00:32:40,069
First, because this group of friends used to come together at the bar of the King David Hotel for drinks.

305
00:32:40,070 --> 00:32:43,400
So this is where they used to meet regularly.

306
00:32:43,430 --> 00:32:52,639
This is one of the reasons, and the last time they came together was actually the day before that bombing,

307
00:32:52,640 --> 00:32:56,510
which was a terrorist attack carried out by the Irgun.

308
00:32:57,140 --> 00:33:06,860
Um, and symbolically speaking, we can say that it was that bombing that made their friendship impossible.

309
00:33:07,460 --> 00:33:18,800
Now, let me fast forward to my epilogue. So in my epilogue, I look at a belated correspondence between Russia and.

310
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:26,640
Wolfgang. So in Jerusalem, it was actually Wolfgang and Salih who were known as a couple.

311
00:33:26,940 --> 00:33:33,670
But Russia seems to also have had a crush on Wolfgang because they all had a crush on each other.

312
00:33:33,690 --> 00:33:38,520
It was fairly, uh. I mean, there are some juicy stories in my book as well.

313
00:33:39,030 --> 00:33:45,960
Um, so it's, I mean, the 40s, early 40s in Jerusalem, a lot was possible, not only friendship.

314
00:33:46,380 --> 00:33:56,010
So, um, yeah. So apparently she had a crush on Wolfgang back then and, um, in the 80s.

315
00:33:56,280 --> 00:34:10,950
So 40 years later, after she and her husband Walid had left Beirut after 82, um, with um, 43 alien invasion and Sabra and Shatila massacres and so on.

316
00:34:11,310 --> 00:34:15,450
She finds herself in the US and she starts writing her memoirs.

317
00:34:15,450 --> 00:34:18,240
So those memoirs, which remain unpublished.

318
00:34:18,810 --> 00:34:26,760
And, uh, when she was writing her memoirs, she reached out to Wolfgang and started this really amazing correspondence,

319
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:31,290
which I found more or less by accident in the archives.

320
00:34:31,320 --> 00:34:36,510
Uh, Wolfgang's Archives, which was at the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

321
00:34:36,960 --> 00:34:49,920
Um, so in this this belated correspondence, it's it's really, uh, moving, touching to see how they reconnect.

322
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:54,270
Right. And I'll just leave you now with the last letter.

323
00:34:54,270 --> 00:34:57,330
In the last letter that is preserved in the archives.

324
00:34:57,690 --> 00:35:09,150
Wolfgang writes to Russia that he and his wife, uh, Sylvia, that they would like to become Arabs.

325
00:35:09,900 --> 00:35:13,890
But he doesn't know. He's saying. But how does one go about that?

326
00:35:14,460 --> 00:35:18,000
And it took me a while. So this is in the 80s, right?

327
00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:25,770
People change their messy contradictions. Uh, Wolfgang also didn't remain anti-Zionist all his life.

328
00:35:25,770 --> 00:35:35,219
In 1967, unfortunately, he defended very much, um, Israel and this idea that it was fighting for its very existence and blah,

329
00:35:35,220 --> 00:35:44,970
blah, blah, which we know the New Historians um, Slam is here that this is right, um, that this is not true.

330
00:35:45,420 --> 00:35:52,470
So, um, uh, but in the 80s, he became, again, critical, uh.

331
00:35:54,010 --> 00:35:57,130
Israeli politics critical of Israel.

332
00:35:57,850 --> 00:36:02,620
And so when he writes it, he and his wife would like to become Arabs.

333
00:36:02,620 --> 00:36:08,229
I had some problems really understanding first what he meant by that.

334
00:36:08,230 --> 00:36:16,209
But then I read it in constellation, which something else which he wrote about his boss in Jerusalem.

335
00:36:16,210 --> 00:36:23,920
He was working for the Palestine Information Office, which was kind of the British Ministry of Information at the time,

336
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:29,080
putting up exhibitions and so on, um, uh, across Palestine.

337
00:36:29,530 --> 00:36:35,110
And his boss, um, Christopher Holm, who later worked for the BBC.

338
00:36:35,380 --> 00:36:40,090
They became very close friends later, and at one point Wolfgang said, yes,

339
00:36:40,090 --> 00:36:47,350
one could be friends or one could become friends when the colonial constellation was over.

340
00:36:47,950 --> 00:36:54,189
So why? What does he mean with we would like to become Arabs?

341
00:36:54,190 --> 00:37:02,080
I think what he want is saying that would like to become local, integrated into the Arab world.

342
00:37:02,650 --> 00:37:11,770
But we see that this is impossible as long as this colonial constellation remains intact.

343
00:37:11,770 --> 00:37:17,380
And let me just end with a few words on my book title.

344
00:37:17,770 --> 00:37:25,420
So the title is borrowed from, uh, Mahmoud Darwish and his Rita poems.

345
00:37:25,930 --> 00:37:31,719
And I like this idea of an impossible love or an impossible friendship,

346
00:37:31,720 --> 00:37:36,280
because certainly, at least in English and Arabic doesn't really make sense like that.

347
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:46,660
But in English, the possibility of that impossible friendship is inscribed in the very word impossible.

348
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:53,529
So yeah, let me end with that. And then maybe we can go back to also some of the, uh, characters.

349
00:37:53,530 --> 00:38:01,810
I like to call them my famous fight. So, uh, maybe we can go back, um, to them, uh, in the discussion.

350
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:07,690
Thank you, Sonia, and thank you all for giving us such, um, an enticing taste of your books.

351
00:38:08,140 --> 00:38:12,520
And there's so much to pick out of even the small sampling you've given us.

352
00:38:13,060 --> 00:38:20,170
But I going to pick up on something you've said. So, yeah, about what one does with the gaps in your documentation.

353
00:38:20,740 --> 00:38:22,570
And I'm going to jump right over you,

354
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:31,570
because one of the things that's fun about your books is that you're able to write men and women into history in a way which,

355
00:38:31,570 --> 00:38:34,570
uh, is all too often not done.

356
00:38:34,930 --> 00:38:38,200
And so much of the history has been a history of men.

357
00:38:38,530 --> 00:38:44,830
Now, Peter, you're probably guilty of that in the three books we have for us.

358
00:38:45,310 --> 00:38:53,620
And I wonder what that says about the place of women in the Damascus or the Syria of Machakos time and of his life.

359
00:38:53,950 --> 00:38:57,069
So where are the women in the Vishakha book?

360
00:38:57,070 --> 00:39:01,959
Where are the women? I mean, they're not very present. I mean, I admit it.

361
00:39:01,960 --> 00:39:07,780
And certainly this is you know, Michelle Malhotra is quite unique, as we've said.

362
00:39:07,780 --> 00:39:14,169
But, you know, the amount of documentation that one can find about him for somebody in Syria of the 19th century.

363
00:39:14,170 --> 00:39:14,889
But she's a man.

364
00:39:14,890 --> 00:39:22,210
And, you know, one can't find for a woman, even a prominent woman like they for was one has, you know, a story with many, many more holes in it.

365
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:27,639
And the women in Machakos life, I mean, in a lot of the records that one has,

366
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:31,000
the more public records, they're even more absent than they are in my book.

367
00:39:31,270 --> 00:39:34,420
So, again, you know, to go back to this question of sources, one has become a shock.

368
00:39:34,450 --> 00:39:37,450
But writing his own autobiography, one has his religious polemics,

369
00:39:37,450 --> 00:39:42,189
one has his correspondence with Eli Smith, his great friend, the American missionary, and has,

370
00:39:42,190 --> 00:39:45,759
you know, traces of him in all sorts of other archives and descriptions of him and,

371
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:48,310
you know, bits and pieces of annotations and manuscripts and so on.

372
00:39:48,730 --> 00:39:54,880
It was only towards the very end of the project that I managed to get in touch with the descendants of the family,

373
00:39:55,360 --> 00:40:02,350
um, who had preserved a family archive in Damascus, which they then took abroad out of Damascus a few years ago.

374
00:40:02,620 --> 00:40:07,509
Three suitcases? No. And among this one has mission massacres.

375
00:40:07,510 --> 00:40:16,090
Um, private notes on family affairs, um, where he has written in the flyleaf of a book accounts of important life,

376
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:18,880
important moments in the lives of himself and members of the family.

377
00:40:19,180 --> 00:40:25,840
And it was only when I found these that I could get, for instance, the original baptismal name of his wife,

378
00:40:26,350 --> 00:40:34,660
who is referred to as a shopper, you know, lady or, you know, sort of honorific title in all of these public facing accounts.

379
00:40:35,020 --> 00:40:39,209
And in his record of his marriage, he has her as Elizabeth a little.

380
00:40:39,210 --> 00:40:47,200
Well, um, and it's the first time I found that, you know, and so it's even that level of information to find, you know, is, is is difficult.

381
00:40:47,200 --> 00:40:53,460
And who was kind of who was Elizabeth? She was the daughter of another, um, you know, Greek Catholic.

382
00:40:54,450 --> 00:41:00,600
In Damascus. Um, and she married Michael Michalka when she was at a very young age.

383
00:41:00,630 --> 00:41:03,690
How young? 11, I think. Yeah.

384
00:41:04,500 --> 00:41:08,510
And he was in his 30s. mid-Thirties. This was not uncommon.

385
00:41:08,520 --> 00:41:14,550
His son, um, in the next generation, uh, had a similar, you know, age gap at the time, at the time of marriage.

386
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:18,630
And again, you know, what does one do with the bits of information that one finds about this?

387
00:41:18,660 --> 00:41:27,630
There's a comment in, um, a book by another missionary later on, women of the Islands by Henry Harris Jessup saying, talking to me from a shotgun.

388
00:41:27,660 --> 00:41:33,010
So. And him commenting on the fact that they used to marry at such a young age with these age gaps.

389
00:41:33,030 --> 00:41:36,420
He said, well, you know, we have to train our wives to look after us.

390
00:41:36,450 --> 00:41:40,859
You know, they they don't know how to look after us properly unless we have, uh, you know,

391
00:41:40,860 --> 00:41:44,940
raised them up in the tradition of doing this from from being very young girls, this kind of thing.

392
00:41:45,330 --> 00:41:53,760
Um, and again, there are, there are these not only gaps, but rather alienating things about the characters the one encounters.

393
00:41:54,120 --> 00:42:00,820
Um, there's there's rather little about, you know, um, other female characters in history as well, unfortunately.

394
00:42:00,930 --> 00:42:05,870
But I wanted you to go to the background of his marriage because it was something that came out of your book.

395
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:10,320
I certainly never saw references in his personal writings that I had access to.

396
00:42:10,860 --> 00:42:15,839
And, you know, it's quite extraordinary to see him marrying someone so young.

397
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:21,329
He he sounds practically like a Trump Cabinet nominee. Thank you.

398
00:42:21,330 --> 00:42:24,840
Audience. Yeah, but she she doesn't.

399
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:31,590
It's not that that she doesn't play a role, you know, or have independent views of her own because she never becomes a Protestant.

400
00:42:31,920 --> 00:42:36,210
She's strongly opposed to the idea of him becoming a Protestant. I think she remains a Catholic.

401
00:42:36,450 --> 00:42:42,450
And there's a later letter, one of the few places she does turn up in his correspondence with, um, Eli Smith is when he's saying,

402
00:42:42,450 --> 00:42:49,379
well, she's trying to turn our son against me by, um, you know, convincing him not to be so favourable to Protestantism.

403
00:42:49,380 --> 00:42:53,670
So I need to send him away to your mission school to get him out of his mother's influence.

404
00:42:53,820 --> 00:43:00,110
So what that household was like, I don't know, but that's the thing one doesn't know behind the doors of the household.

405
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:04,070
But I'm going to say one thing you said, Peter, which is that, you know, this complicates to life.

406
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:08,309
You find out these details and you realise that there are some things about people that maybe you don't like.

407
00:43:08,310 --> 00:43:16,770
And that comes right back to your explanation of, of, of I was and I want to come back to the question about her opposition to girls education,

408
00:43:17,340 --> 00:43:21,329
and I'm wondering whether that was in any way linked to Cosima.

409
00:43:21,330 --> 00:43:25,380
Mean. And the debates going on the end of the 19th century. Did I miss?

410
00:43:25,640 --> 00:43:31,130
So, no. That's fine. That's a it's a good question. She was not opposed to girls education.

411
00:43:31,140 --> 00:43:34,770
She uses this at a moment in 1906.

412
00:43:34,770 --> 00:43:39,030
I think it is in order to try to she uses it cynically.

413
00:43:39,030 --> 00:43:46,810
I wouldn't it's not necessarily opposed to it. She uses it in order to try to get another woman involved in this by network, the spider.

414
00:43:47,340 --> 00:43:50,880
Well, informant network, I should say. Yeah. More of the videos.

415
00:43:51,390 --> 00:43:52,470
Um, yeah. Yeah.

416
00:43:52,680 --> 00:44:01,140
So she's trying to get other women involved, and, um, she entices this woman by sort of saying, oh, we're thinking of setting up a school.

417
00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:05,489
Can you come to a meeting? So it's not. I don't want to say it's an opposition.

418
00:44:05,490 --> 00:44:07,140
I may have I may have, um, put it badly.

419
00:44:07,170 --> 00:44:15,180
No, you did say so, but it's but it's, um, you know, but she's she's using a concept, but she's really interesting on education.

420
00:44:15,330 --> 00:44:19,139
She's definitely not against it, but she does not,

421
00:44:19,140 --> 00:44:25,260
at least not very often and not very loudly go into the journalist discourse that

422
00:44:25,260 --> 00:44:31,229
was so important and so grounding for arguments about girls education at the time.

423
00:44:31,230 --> 00:44:39,690
That is, you know, the standard argument was we've got to have girls schools because we have to teach girls how to become good wives and mothers.

424
00:44:39,750 --> 00:44:42,990
Um, which kind of links into what you were just saying about Elisabetta?

425
00:44:43,530 --> 00:44:51,509
Um, and, you know, there was a strong focus on domestic arts or, and also, you know, okay.

426
00:44:51,510 --> 00:44:58,559
Yes, you need to teach girls to read because they're going to need to do, you know, they're going to need to do some reading.

427
00:44:58,560 --> 00:45:02,370
You need to teach them elementary math so that they can do the household budget.

428
00:45:02,640 --> 00:45:08,940
But it was very instrumentalist. Um, now, of course, girls could use that for other purposes.

429
00:45:08,940 --> 00:45:17,429
So, you know, it's it's a, it's one of these things. But, um, but she, she did not for Wes did not emphasise the maternal East.

430
00:45:17,430 --> 00:45:24,360
I mean, I think, you know, one of the things that one has to do when writing a biography or any history really is also listen to the silences.

431
00:45:24,360 --> 00:45:26,639
You know what? What did she not say?

432
00:45:26,640 --> 00:45:36,150
And so in terms of education, I think she was she was quite canny about what she said, but she wasn't at all against, against it.

433
00:45:37,140 --> 00:45:42,650
Well, keeping the focus on women in our histories, you know, I wonder, Sonya,

434
00:45:42,660 --> 00:45:47,520
whether you would have chosen the five people who were the focus of your group biography,

435
00:45:48,120 --> 00:45:53,490
were it not for this photograph, and specifically you were saying that for one of the two women in the photograph.

436
00:45:53,730 --> 00:45:58,860
You have such a gap in the documentation. You've got so much material, you've got your diaries.

437
00:45:59,400 --> 00:46:06,000
And so, you know, it's quite an interesting lens to bring as you want to frame a study,

438
00:46:06,450 --> 00:46:10,679
but maybe it's just unfortunate that the one woman's in the picture,

439
00:46:10,680 --> 00:46:14,970
and that there would have been another friend for whom you would have had better documentation.

440
00:46:15,450 --> 00:46:21,060
Possibly. This said, I think it is actually important also to mark the gap.

441
00:46:21,180 --> 00:46:26,190
So okay, to have a woman there and to have her picture.

442
00:46:26,190 --> 00:46:29,999
And everyone I interviewed, I interviewed quite a lot of old man.

443
00:46:30,000 --> 00:46:37,110
I have to say, um, they always pointed out that, you know, she's so good looking and I don't know what, so.

444
00:46:37,410 --> 00:46:41,250
But it was really difficult to find out more about her.

445
00:46:41,250 --> 00:46:51,570
But I eventually did. Um, and sometimes I think maybe I should have written a very short chapter, but she does pop up in the other chapters.

446
00:46:52,020 --> 00:46:52,980
Definitely.

447
00:46:53,460 --> 00:47:05,640
Um, so I feel it's a bit like, you know, um, you have a spotlight on certain characters, and then when it comes to her, she's a bit more in the dark.

448
00:47:06,360 --> 00:47:09,810
Um, but she's still there and, um.

449
00:47:10,150 --> 00:47:13,709
Um, yeah. So I think, um, it's important.

450
00:47:13,710 --> 00:47:22,680
I agree with, uh, what Marilyn said to, um, uh, give a place also to those silences.

451
00:47:23,940 --> 00:47:32,520
I actually think it adds something quite ambiguous and enticing to the group biography to have one who is a bit mysterious in that way,

452
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:34,620
for whom you don't have complete information.

453
00:47:35,220 --> 00:47:42,030
And, um, of the three of our panellists, of course, you're the only one who's had the privilege to talk with one of your subjects.

454
00:47:42,510 --> 00:47:47,630
And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about your engagement with Valises charity,

455
00:47:48,090 --> 00:47:56,400
his role in opening up Russia's writings of world to you, in the sense he really helped you make this project, realise this project.

456
00:47:57,030 --> 00:48:05,430
So yeah, when I uh so first of all, I should say that I started working on Jabra because I worked on him for my PhD,

457
00:48:05,550 --> 00:48:09,300
and I always felt that that was the weakest chapter.

458
00:48:09,300 --> 00:48:18,300
My supervisor seems to agree, so I wanted to go back to him and, um, started working on him.

459
00:48:18,300 --> 00:48:22,200
And then how, you know, sometimes things happen by accident.

460
00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:26,579
So I ran into my colleague, uh, Tariq Khalid on campus.

461
00:48:26,580 --> 00:48:31,110
He asked me, what are you working on? I told him Jabra, he was excited.

462
00:48:31,410 --> 00:48:36,270
Told me you should meet my half brother Walid. Uh, he was friends with him in Jerusalem.

463
00:48:36,630 --> 00:48:41,040
So next time, when it comes to Beirut, I meet Walid, and Walid tells me.

464
00:48:41,040 --> 00:48:47,070
Yes, we were this very close group of friends and he tells me about Wolfgang and so on.

465
00:48:47,550 --> 00:48:51,450
I honestly wasn't really familiar with, uh, Wolfgang.

466
00:48:51,820 --> 00:48:57,479
I might even zone. He's quite well known, as I said earlier, in post-war German language literature.

467
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:07,920
So then when I was on sabbatical later in Berlin for a year, I went to check out those archives of Wolfgang Hymer in Berlin.

468
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:10,650
And this is where I found really amazing material,

469
00:49:10,710 --> 00:49:17,640
beautiful letters that Jabra sent to Wolfgang in the early 50s when he was on a scholarship in Harvard,

470
00:49:17,670 --> 00:49:24,690
trying to reach out after 48 to his friend, also telling him what happened to him in 48.

471
00:49:25,260 --> 00:49:37,860
Um, and I found those letters between Russia and Wolfgang, and then I got in touch again with, uh, Walid and, uh, I think he.

472
00:49:38,580 --> 00:49:46,800
So I went to see him a number of times afterwards in, in the US, um, and with the idea to interview him.

473
00:49:47,250 --> 00:49:52,649
But then, I mean, you know what he did? He's not, like, the kind of person you can go and interview.

474
00:49:52,650 --> 00:50:00,990
Right. So those interviews and I describes it a bit in my book, um, kind of turned into private tutorials.

475
00:50:00,990 --> 00:50:05,740
Right. That's a format he was, uh, familiar with since he was in Oxford.

476
00:50:06,210 --> 00:50:10,170
So, uh, and I was, uh, very grateful.

477
00:50:10,170 --> 00:50:17,370
So I had these private tutorials. He was teaching me, uh, about the history of, uh, Palestine.

478
00:50:18,060 --> 00:50:28,440
Um, so I think, um, through Walid also, I became friends with this group of friends.

479
00:50:28,440 --> 00:50:37,860
Right. And he, I would say, became not only my tutor, my professor, but also, um, uh, a friend.

480
00:50:38,250 --> 00:50:48,420
And he trusted me, I think, because he saw also that, that I had already done some archival research before coming to him,

481
00:50:48,720 --> 00:50:53,160
and he was actually also very happy and grateful because he's also.

482
00:50:53,290 --> 00:51:05,769
Writing. I mean I think he's he finished now his his own, uh memoirs and I was able to help him quite a bit with information about his friends.

483
00:51:05,770 --> 00:51:16,480
Right. So things he didn't know about Wolfgang. Uh, but also in the archives, um, at a job, for example, I found a lot of material.

484
00:51:16,870 --> 00:51:32,290
Uh, so. Tim. Um, Salaam. This son of Uppsala, um, uh, who is Russia's brother, uh, gave the archives of his father and grandfather to a job.

485
00:51:32,710 --> 00:51:36,010
Uh, so they had lots of family photographs.

486
00:51:36,010 --> 00:51:43,930
And among those photographs, I also found a number of pictures, also of Walid as a young boy and so on.

487
00:51:44,410 --> 00:51:49,780
Um, so, um, yes, uh, archival research really.

488
00:51:49,780 --> 00:51:51,939
I got a bit obsessed also with that.

489
00:51:51,940 --> 00:52:00,730
And with my friends, I was really living day and night with them, uh, especially during Covid when I finished writing my book.

490
00:52:01,180 --> 00:52:07,600
Um, so, um, yes, archival research takes you places like you travel.

491
00:52:07,630 --> 00:52:18,880
Um, uh, it's it's a journey. And, um, yeah, you make a lot of friends also with archivists, but sometimes also with people you interview.

492
00:52:19,210 --> 00:52:24,730
Well, you're lucky having that opportunity to actually meet and talk with one of the subjects of your I mean,

493
00:52:24,730 --> 00:52:33,040
basically historical research you talk about, well, how did these Oxford experiences, they ended, what, 68 years ago with the Suez Crisis,

494
00:52:33,040 --> 00:52:37,389
and he resigned his post in protest here at the Faculty of War Studies.

495
00:52:37,390 --> 00:52:42,190
As it was done. I'm going to end with one that I'd like the three of you to talk about.

496
00:52:42,430 --> 00:52:48,850
And then I promise, audience, I am going to open up to you. Um, because at the heart of your books are community.

497
00:52:49,980 --> 00:53:04,310
And rupture. You talk about communities, Maryland, you know, you talk about the break with the Greek Catholic community and obviously, 1948,

498
00:53:05,240 --> 00:53:12,770
the number scatters this community in ways that they could not have anticipated when they first forged their friendship.

499
00:53:13,190 --> 00:53:18,800
So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about community and rupture in the histories that you've written.

500
00:53:19,550 --> 00:53:22,480
And let's start with you, Maryland. We'll come back this way. Sure.

501
00:53:22,490 --> 00:53:29,600
Um, you know, I think I think one thing that all of our books do, if I may, um, presume and you can of course,

502
00:53:29,660 --> 00:53:36,709
disagree with me, is that we really break up the notion that, um, that Sonia referred to, uh, this sort of,

503
00:53:36,710 --> 00:53:43,280
you know, a community defined as X, a community defined as why it's often in the Middle East, you know,

504
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:51,919
these, um, these these assumptions about communities that are defined according to religious origin.

505
00:53:51,920 --> 00:53:58,100
And one of the things that's really interesting to me about Saint Louis is that now, as I said,

506
00:53:58,100 --> 00:54:08,810
she is very much speaking from within a, a perspective as a believer and drawing on Islamic sources in her work.

507
00:54:09,260 --> 00:54:14,390
However, she also worked with um, women of other backgrounds.

508
00:54:14,870 --> 00:54:22,219
And I have a chapter on um as the the first women's magazine, the first magazine in Arabic,

509
00:54:22,220 --> 00:54:30,020
1890 to Alexandria, um, that was edited by women, and it was specifically for a female audience.

510
00:54:30,020 --> 00:54:34,489
And I see that journal. It's usually been ascribed to sort of one woman's initiative.

511
00:54:34,490 --> 00:54:36,350
I see it as a collective project.

512
00:54:36,620 --> 00:54:45,830
And the reason I'm mentioning it is that it was, you know, it was Muslim, Christian, Jewish women, um, women from Ottoman Syria and from Egypt.

513
00:54:45,980 --> 00:54:57,860
Um, it was a community of a different sort and a kind of associational, um, attempt and associational project across kind of boundaries.

514
00:54:57,860 --> 00:55:07,309
And so I think, um, I think that all of our work shows these, these kind of communities that might not be expected, um,

515
00:55:07,310 --> 00:55:14,630
or that one might not necessarily know about until looking closely at the lives of some of these people who were involved.

516
00:55:14,900 --> 00:55:22,000
But then rupture comes in not necessarily with this particular group, but, you know, as I said, I mean, for Liz,

517
00:55:22,010 --> 00:55:30,650
as time went on, she got angry or about, um, as did many others about what was going on with the British occupation.

518
00:55:30,860 --> 00:55:32,299
She was also very angry.

519
00:55:32,300 --> 00:55:42,920
She she has a couple of articles where she very, um, sharply rebukes the elite men of Egypt for, you know, laziness and hypocrisy.

520
00:55:43,220 --> 00:55:48,890
Basically, she says, you know, you're not doing enough. You're not doing what you should be doing for this, for this nation.

521
00:55:49,550 --> 00:55:56,060
Um, and I suspect that that, you know, that caused some splits, but then other kinds of community.

522
00:55:56,060 --> 00:56:01,520
One thing that I've learned more about due to another archive, um, another press archive,

523
00:56:01,520 --> 00:56:06,379
since publishing the book, you know, this is always your nightmare, right? You know, you publish the book, it's done.

524
00:56:06,380 --> 00:56:09,410
And then you're you find this great source and you're like, oh, my God.

525
00:56:09,950 --> 00:56:16,310
Um, I found out that her brother was actually quite important in Masonic circles in Cairo,

526
00:56:16,520 --> 00:56:24,770
which is fascinating because for Wes, her family, you know, they were really identified with the nationalists.

527
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:29,090
Um, and with that, she, she published articles in elsewhere.

528
00:56:29,660 --> 00:56:39,440
Um, and, and here her brother Mohammed is like Shaheen Makarios, his right hand man, and he was a major supporter of the British.

529
00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:43,610
So, you know, then you you start having to really think about what is community mean.

530
00:56:43,610 --> 00:56:47,780
And of course, there's just so much we don't know because we only have the writings.

531
00:56:47,780 --> 00:56:52,879
We don't we can't listen to the conversations. So, um, I don't know if that it does.

532
00:56:52,880 --> 00:56:59,690
Bridge building. Bridge burning is a fascinating elements of our complex individuals and the communities in which they lived.

533
00:57:00,410 --> 00:57:03,860
Peter. Yeah, I mean, it's very much a theme.

534
00:57:03,860 --> 00:57:11,720
I mean, there is, I suppose early on in the Shawcross story, there is one of these rather sort of lost communities, which is the young men,

535
00:57:12,050 --> 00:57:19,280
mainly Greek Catholic men in terms of their sort of formal religious affiliation, but who are like him, attracted to deist ideas.

536
00:57:19,280 --> 00:57:24,290
And they're discussing Voltaire and Volney, you know, um, in, in Damietta,

537
00:57:24,290 --> 00:57:28,370
probably in one of these kind of, you know, you can Michael is overlooking the Nile.

538
00:57:28,610 --> 00:57:34,760
Um, and these are young men in their teens and 20s, you know, trying out these new ideas and,

539
00:57:34,790 --> 00:57:41,179
um, pushing the boundaries of what you can believe, um, and, and think and again, you know,

540
00:57:41,180 --> 00:57:45,110
it's perhaps a sort of counter community like that that makes you think, well, you know,

541
00:57:45,110 --> 00:57:51,379
what are these boxes into which we put people in this case, religious boxes, um, you know, um, Christians.

542
00:57:51,380 --> 00:57:59,840
Muslims. Jews. Catholic. Orthodox, Sunni. Shia. What happens if you open the box and you see that there's a rather messy reality inside?

543
00:58:00,080 --> 00:58:05,720
Um, and that manifests itself in an individual, like the commercial shocker, but also in communities of discussion like that.

544
00:58:06,260 --> 00:58:14,120
But of course, later in his life, he very much is, you know, part of a community in a more formal religious sense, which is the Protestant one.

545
00:58:14,120 --> 00:58:17,810
And so he has to go through an experience of rupture to get there.

546
00:58:18,260 --> 00:58:21,120
Um, and it's interesting to think of him again in Damascus.

547
00:58:21,140 --> 00:58:30,260
You know, a sort of prosperous, um, Ottoman subjects, uh, with very good connections among people of many different religious communities.

548
00:58:30,560 --> 00:58:38,530
Um, but even before he becomes a Protestant, having problems with the Greek Catholic community under Maximus Loom,

549
00:58:38,540 --> 00:58:43,160
the reforming patriarch, defining itself in a rather more rigid way, in a way that,

550
00:58:43,400 --> 00:58:53,420
um, tends to, you know, uh, sap the authority of, uh, the kind of wealthy elite families such as his own,

551
00:58:53,720 --> 00:58:58,370
um, and put them more on the clerical authority and, you know, um, tell them what to do.

552
00:58:58,370 --> 00:59:01,790
And he doesn't like being told what to do. In particular. He doesn't like being told what to believe.

553
00:59:02,150 --> 00:59:07,610
Um, and, and so there is a kind of individualism of rupture with a new style,

554
00:59:07,610 --> 00:59:14,809
communal project that nonetheless, this is a thing has to lead him in that moment into a new community,

555
00:59:14,810 --> 00:59:21,020
into the Protestant community that he's then very central to actually, you know, forming as something distinct in Damascus.

556
00:59:21,290 --> 00:59:23,749
So there is something of a tension, I think, um,

557
00:59:23,750 --> 00:59:32,450
between him trying to forge an individual intellectual pathway and finding a way of doing this in moving between these religious communities,

558
00:59:32,450 --> 00:59:37,129
which are themselves becoming more sharply defined. And you can find other examples of that at that moment,

559
00:59:37,130 --> 00:59:41,360
in the sort of mid 19th century of intellectuals, I think, thinks of, uh, Ahmed Ferdowsi should.

560
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:44,899
Yeah. For instance, you know, there are many other issues one could point to, um,

561
00:59:44,900 --> 00:59:48,650
who go through different transitions from one religious community to another.

562
00:59:48,980 --> 00:59:57,950
Um, and in a society that is coming to define itself even more sharply than before, I think in terms of religious affiliation, in one sense,

563
00:59:58,250 --> 01:00:06,260
this is then possible to, you know, as a form of individuality to find some, um, you know, through moments of rupture, if you like.

564
01:00:06,710 --> 01:00:13,010
And this is that also prior to another moment when it is actually possible to think of a secular project in a secular public sphere and,

565
01:00:13,010 --> 01:00:17,990
you know, defining oneself in, in that way and not having to worry so much about religious affiliation.

566
01:00:18,140 --> 01:00:24,890
So it's this it's this rather kind of awkward transitional moment that is difficult to define you, uh, in terms of our later understandings.

567
01:00:25,310 --> 01:00:33,500
Um, yeah. So I guess in my book I look at two different kinds of communities.

568
01:00:33,500 --> 01:00:41,620
First, uh, maybe communities, the social religious communities that my protagonists were born into.

569
01:00:41,630 --> 01:00:48,410
And in each chapter, I try to really also shed light on, um, that context.

570
01:00:48,410 --> 01:00:57,229
And it's quite astonishing that they actually came together not only in terms of religious, um, uh, diversity,

571
01:00:57,230 --> 01:01:10,010
but also really social background and class, because there you have this was kind of, you know, old Jerusalem, my family, uh, Muslim family.

572
01:01:10,040 --> 01:01:13,570
Uh. Sort of aristocracy, if you want.

573
01:01:13,810 --> 01:01:22,719
And Gibran, who was really, uh, who is Syriac Christian, uh, was born in the region of Adana and came as a young boy,

574
01:01:22,720 --> 01:01:30,760
uh, two, three years old to Bethlehem as a refugee and was barefooted, uh, throughout his childhood.

575
01:01:30,760 --> 01:01:36,880
And then really through education, scholarships, had this, uh, social mobility.

576
01:01:36,910 --> 01:01:45,580
He was, uh, admitted to the Arab College, which was the highest educational institution or Arab educational institution in Palestine,

577
01:01:45,940 --> 01:01:50,499
and then later obtained scholarships to go to Exeter and Cambridge, um, uh,

578
01:01:50,500 --> 01:01:56,860
before he returned, um, then to teach um at his former school, uh, in Jerusalem.

579
01:01:57,100 --> 01:02:03,040
So there's this social and religious, uh, uh, community's background.

580
01:02:03,340 --> 01:02:10,570
But then, you know, there's friendship, which is the kind of community or the communities we build.

581
01:02:10,690 --> 01:02:18,010
Right? Which depends maybe on our choices, the choices we make on our preferences and so on.

582
01:02:18,550 --> 01:02:32,320
Um, um, but then this friendship really, um, which, um, became impossible or then the rupture really caused certainly by the Nakba,

583
01:02:32,680 --> 01:02:39,610
that by political violence, we can say, or by with every bomb being right,

584
01:02:39,970 --> 01:02:48,520
there is also the possibility of friendships that is, um, being, um, destroyed.

585
01:02:48,820 --> 01:02:54,010
I talked earlier about the interviews I did with, um, well,

586
01:02:54,010 --> 01:03:03,850
it was very interesting because he distinguished between the friendship that was possible between Arabs and Jews.

587
01:03:03,850 --> 01:03:11,980
And we know these are categories that are not carved in stone, but were very much invented by,

588
01:03:12,040 --> 01:03:18,849
uh, European and in particular British colonialism, just like the Middle East.

589
01:03:18,850 --> 01:03:27,450
Right. Um, so he told me he drew a difference between this generation, where such friendship was already really rare.

590
01:03:27,460 --> 01:03:38,440
I mean, he remembers a few, um, Jewish boys in his schools where Arab Jews, uh, but they didn't have much contact.

591
01:03:38,530 --> 01:03:45,519
Uh, but he said the generation of his father, there was much more friendship.

592
01:03:45,520 --> 01:03:55,479
Right. And he really draws a line with 1917, the Balfour Declaration and one such friendship that I look at.

593
01:03:55,480 --> 01:04:07,150
But it's really on the fringes of all this. Um, but that I hope now to write an essay about, um, is the friendship between his father, Ahmad Sami,

594
01:04:08,080 --> 01:04:21,310
who was the head of the Arab College, and, um, you the Magnus, who was, um, the rector, the first president of the Hebrew University.

595
01:04:21,580 --> 01:04:26,950
They were friends. And it makes a lot of sense that they were friends because they were also colleagues.

596
01:04:26,950 --> 01:04:35,799
They worked together. They were both the heads of the highest Jewish and, uh, Arab, uh, educational institutions.

597
01:04:35,800 --> 01:04:44,950
And there were also plans of turning the Arab College into a university, but their friendship is nowhere mentioned.

598
01:04:45,100 --> 01:04:48,220
Right. I mention it briefly, and now I'm writing about it.

599
01:04:48,520 --> 01:04:53,320
But if you read there, I think there's 1 or 2 biographies on Magnus.

600
01:04:53,890 --> 01:05:05,650
No mention of Ahmad. Um, I really think there's a reason for this, because we always read these histories as separate histories, right, Magnus?

601
01:05:05,650 --> 01:05:14,709
We read in terms of Israeli history, right, and in terms of Palestinian history, but we don't read them together.

602
01:05:14,710 --> 01:05:23,740
So one of the aims, what I found very intriguing, I didn't plan it like this, but just following my characters,

603
01:05:23,740 --> 01:05:31,930
if you want life trajectories, made it possible for me to read these histories together.

604
01:05:32,230 --> 01:05:40,870
And also because of Wolfgang Hildesheim, um, and also his experience later on as an interpreter at Nurnberg,

605
01:05:41,290 --> 01:05:48,459
which really traumatised him, uh, to read together the Holocaust and the Nakba.

606
01:05:48,460 --> 01:05:53,140
Not in comparison, but as linked and tangled histories.

607
01:05:53,410 --> 01:05:59,680
So I was able to. It wasn't planned like this, but just like following these life trajectories.

608
01:05:59,680 --> 01:06:02,770
Yes, you have to read these histories together.

609
01:06:02,770 --> 01:06:05,770
So for me, that was also really eye opening.

610
01:06:06,680 --> 01:06:11,569
Well. These are rich and fascinating books about rich and fascinating lives,

611
01:06:11,570 --> 01:06:17,390
and I can't recommend them to you strongly enough just for your own reading pleasure.

612
01:06:17,870 --> 01:06:24,820
Or who knows for a little bit of inspiration of where you might want to go next to fill the gaps in the lack of biography in this field.

613
01:06:24,830 --> 01:06:28,940
But if you want to know where are the people in the history of the Middle East?

614
01:06:28,940 --> 01:06:32,540
Where are the people? These books will give you a good answer.

615
01:06:32,900 --> 01:06:36,170
Will you please join me in giving the very warm us to thanks to our country?

616
01:06:41,280 --> 01:06:44,290
You want to mention that they're on fire upstairs and.