Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in Middle East

Hieroglyphs were far more than a language. They were an omnipresent and all-powerful force in communicating the messages of ancient Egyptian culture for over three thousand years; used as monumental art, as a means of identifying Egyptianness, and for rarefied communication with the gods.

In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of Hobby Lobby, announced a purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragment of papyrus carrying lines from Paul's letter to the Romans, and dated to the second century CE. Noted scholar Roberta Mazza was stunned. When was this piece discovered, and how could Green acquire such a rare item? The answers, which Mazza spent the next ten years uncovering, came as a shock: the fragment had come from a famous collection held at Oxford University, and its rightful owners had no idea it had been sold.

Who really built Europe's finest Romanesque monuments? Clergymen presiding over holy sites are credited throughout history, while highly skilled creators remain anonymous. But the buildings speak for themselves.

A close look at failed US policies in the Middle East, offering a fresh perspective on how best to reorient goals in the region.

Decolonizing Palestine challenges the weaponization of biblical texts to support the current settler-colonial state of Israel. Raheb argues that some of the most important theological concepts—Israel, the land, election, and chosen people—must be decolonized in a paradigm shift in Christian theological thinking about Palestine.

The island city of Tyre along the coast of Lebanon was for centuries an impregnable fortress and key to unlocking Phoenician and Persian power in the Near East. Its fall was first prophesied in the Book of Ezekiel; but it would not be Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, who would take the city as the Bible foretold, but a Macedonian warrior king, Alexander. Alexander's siege of 332 BC was one of the most remarkable events in the classical world. The Siege of Tyre is the first book-length treatment of this critical and fascinating campaign

Originally published by Drum & Spear, the publishing arm of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Enemy of the Sun: Poetry of Palestinian Resistance links 12 poets working in a poetics of refusal and of hope.

The sacred chest said to have been built by the Israelites to house the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were written, the Ark of the Covenant has long captured the popular imagination. According to the Bible, the Israelites carried it with them as they wandered in the wilderness and...

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took the entire diplomatic staff hostage. While President Jimmy Carter initially pursued a diplomatic solution to the crisis, he authorized the military to begin planning a rescue mission.

As bombs rained down on Gaza in October 2023, images of mass death and destruction gripped the world, and openly genocidal statements from Israeli leaders foretold the magnitude of horrors to come. But the United States media was quick to downplay, obscure, and repackage an emerging campaign of extermination into a slick "war on terror" framework.

Holy Wars describes three thousand years of war in the Holy Land with the unique approach of focusing on pivotal battles or campaigns, beginning with the Israelites' capture of Jericho and ending with Israel's last full-fledged assault against Lebanon.

The titan is Habib Elghanian—a self-made industrialist and the foremost Jew of his time in Iran, whom the Islamic theocracy targeted as the first civilian executed during the 1979 revolution. With Iran continuing to generate front-page news, his previously untold story is painfully relevant, shedding light on that country's persistent economic, political and social problems.

Across Cultures and Empires is above all an immigrant's story. Mahir Ibrahimov's fluency in multiple languages offers the perspective of someone who found a way to successfully cross boundaries amid the fall of empire and the resulting cascade of conflicts, even as he provides the listener with insight into an era where mass migration has become a defining dynamic. In the course of telling his personal story and reflecting upon his experiences, Ibrahimov offers clear observations on the deep connections he has made about freedom and America's role in the world.

Combining poignant memoir and historical research, a son of Holocaust survivors grapples with the dream of Zionism and its consequences. Israel: A Personal History takes off where Göran Rosenberg's internationally acclaimed and award-winning childhood memoir, A Brief Stop on the Road from Auschwitz, ends. After his father's suicide in 1960 in a small industrial town in Sweden, the remainder of the family, a single mother with two children, emigrates to Israel.

What do you do when divine law and the justice demanded by your conscience clash? Muslims have wrestled with this problem since the earliest caliphates. The mazalim courts, dating back to the eighth century, were the answer: courts where any subject could appeal directly to an Islamic ruler...

American wars in Iraq were a defining feature of global politics for almost thirty years. The Gulf War of 1991, the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the campaign against the Islamic State beginning in 2014 each had their own logic. Each occurrence was a distinct conflict; however they must not only be considered in isolation. The United States spent the 1990s trying but failing to implement the Gulf War's cease fire agreement. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, American leaders decided to settle the open-ended aftermath of the Gulf War by launching the Iraq War of 2003.

Drawing on an array of primary sources in multiple languages, Farzin Vejdani argues that the ambiguity in defining the boundaries between private and public in Qajar Iran often corresponded with the jurisdictional friction between government authorities and religious scholars regarding who had the authority to police and punish public crimes.

As the world recently commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun, our fascination with the pharaoh begs for a balanced view. Most recovered mummies have not escaped the modern trafficking in ancient bodies and body parts. The story of Ankh-Hap, a Ptolemaic-era mummy seized in the nineteenth century from the infamous mummy-pits of Egypt, provides a salutary example of what most mummies have endured.

Using Szold's copious letters, diaries, and essays, along with other archival documents, Francine Klagsbrun traces Szold's life and legacy with an eye to uncovering the person behind the Zionist icon. She reveals Szold as a complex human being who had to cope with controversy and criticism, a workaholic with an outsized sense of duty, and an idealist who fought for her beliefs even as she questioned her own abilities. With deep insight, Klagsbrun introduces listeners to this extraordinary woman, whose impact on women's lives as well as on education and health systems still resonates.

Now, as awareness of the apartheid nature of the State of Israel continues to grow, Omar Barghouti, founding member of the Palestinian Civil Society Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, presents a renewed call to action. Aimed at forcing the State of Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights for the Palestinian people, here is a manifesto for change.