In this volume, Miranda Morris and Ṭānuf Sālim Di-Kišin present material from the rich poetic tradition of this remote island, in Arabic and English, as well as in the unique Soqoṭri language.

What is the nature of slavery as practiced and at times reintroduced over the past two centuries in the Middle East and North Africa? In spite of the rich regional diversity of the areas studied – from Morocco to the Indian Ocean to Iran – this anthology demonstrates clear commonalities across the super-region. These include the regulation of slavery by Islam and local traditions, the absence of a rigid racial hierarchy as in North American slavery, the management of the sexuality and reproductive capacity of female slaves, and views on identity and heritage among descendants of slaves. Authors also examine the economic and theological underpinnings of contemporary slavery and human trafficking. The book is among the first to focus on slavery across the Islamic world from the 19th century to the present – a period constituting the endgame of institutionalized slavery in the region but also the persistence of forms of de facto enslavement. Each chapter scrutinizes from a different vantage point – institutions, economics, the abolitionist movement, literature, folklore, and the moving image – creating a multi-dimensional picture of the phenomenon. The authors have mined government archives and statistics, memoirs, interviews, photographs, drawings, songs, cinema and television. Not only are Arabic, Persian and Turkish sources leveraged, but a variety of materials in minor and endangered languages, such as Soqotri, Balochi and Sorani Kurdish, in addition to European languages.

Regions of the world with greatest biodiversity are shown to exhibit greatest linguistic diversity, strongly suggesting that the relationship between language and ecology is both symbiotic and spatially and temporally determined. This volume examines the expressions of, and threats and challenges to, this relationship in southern and eastern Arabia. Exploring the ways in which indigenous languages reflect the close relationship between people and their natural environment, this book presents an overview of the key threats and challenges, and introduces the methodologies used to investigate them. Across the chapters, case studies are presented dealing with language, gesture and ecology, the significance of naming, the role of narratives in the language–ecology relationship, and conservation and revitalisation of bio-cultural diversity in Arabia. Taking a multidisciplinary view, this book argues for the central role that language plays in facing the challenges and threats to bio-cultural diversity, and presents methods for the study of the language–nature relationship that can be applied globally.

In the bilingual English-Arabic work, The Oral Art of Soqoṭra: A Collection of Island Voices, Miranda Morris, in collaboration with Soqoṭrans from all parts of the island, present over a thousand examples of poems and songs, prayers, lullabies, work-chants, messages in code, riddles, examples of community wisdom encapsulated in poetic couplets, and stories cenetred on a short poem or exchange of poems. These were documented by oral transmission directly to the scholar, or through recordings collected. They are presented in Soqoṭri (transcribed phonetically in Roman and in Arabic script), and in English and Arabic translation."--

This book focuses on Socotra Island, geographically based in Yemen, and aims to explore the island from the social sciences point of view. This book focuses on people indigenous to Socotra, Socotri cultures, heritage and also offers contributions from business, tourism, linguistic, communication, and anthropology. While a lot has been published in natural science about Socotra’s endemic species, biodiversity, and nature in general, social scientific research of the island is very limited. This book addresses therefore addresses this gap and explores various topics of tourism, behaviours, cultures, and language. This book focuses on a clear social science approach of Socotra. The purpose of this book is to publish research about the people, behaviors, heritage, and potential tourism of Socotra. The Socotra Archipelago has long been a land of mystery. It is unknown as a tourism destination for many, however, is a popular destination for adventurers, photographers and travelers who like to travel to remote and undeveloped places. This book explains how Socotra has limited resources of electricity, which is provided by diesel generators, Internet is very slow and limited to certain points on the island. There are no shopping malls or five-star hotels. Roads, schools, and hospitals have been built only recently. This book shoes how these island people do not know the development as we do, which makes it principally interesting to research. Previous interviewers of Socotri people about tourism development in the island have faced many challenges such as language barriers, lack of understanding the meanings and interviewing content, lack of support for the anticipated research results. This book successfully undertakes this challenge as not only in understanding the language, but understanding phenomena like e.g. tourism. Whilst acknowledging the ways in which indigenous island people have never travelled or seen a developed city. Thus, words like ‘developed’, ‘tourism destination’ or ‘washing machine’ may be unfamiliar terms for them. Therefore, new and innovative research methods that are sensitive to Socotra people were implemented in the creation of this book.

Soqotra, the largest island of Yemen's Soqotra Archipelago, is one of the most uniquely diverse places in the world. A UNESCO natural World Heritage Site, the island is home not only to birds, reptiles, and plants found nowhere else on earth, but also to a rich cultural history and the endangered Soqotri language. Within the span of a decade, this Indian Ocean archipelago went from being among the most marginalized regions of Yemen to promoted for its outstanding global value. Islands of Heritage shares Soqotrans' stories to offer the first exploration of environmental conservation, heritage production, and development in an Arab state. Examining the multiple notions of heritage in play for twenty-first-century Soqotra, Nathalie Peutz narrates how everyday Soqotrans came to assemble, defend, and mobilize their cultural and linguistic heritage. These efforts, which diverged from outsiders' focus on the island's natural heritage, ultimately added to Soqotrans' calls for political and cultural change during the Yemeni Revolution. Islands of Heritage shows that far from being merely a conservative endeavor, the protection of heritage can have profoundly transformative, even revolutionary effects. Grassroots claims to heritage can be a potent form of political engagement with the most imminent concerns of the present: human rights, globalization, democracy, and sustainability.

This two-volume book offers a panoramic explanatory narrative of Soqotra Island’s rediscovery based on the global significance of its endemic biodiversity. The first volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra: A Mesography of an Indigenous Polity in Yemen initiated the analytical inventory of the four key vectors of Soqotra’s transition process through a discussion of the first two: economic disarticulation and political incorporation. This volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra: Cultural & Environmental Annexation of an Indigenous Community completes the analytical inventory by exploring the other two pivotal vectors of transition: cultural modernization and environmental annexation. These two vectors encompass the critical sociocultural spheres and environmental domains in which Soqotra’s transformation process is unfolding. The origin of these vectors is situated within Soqotra’s long history of exogenous mediations by external actors and their symbolic appropriation of the island into an imaginative geography. The legacy is a “symbolic curse," which has made Soqotra into an ideal playground for fantasist cultural or environmental experiments. Accordingly, this volume undertakes, first, a systematic inventory of the communal effects engendered within the domains of cultural modernization: dissonant linguistic attitudes, alienating consumption practices, divergent religious affiliations, and differentiating economic aspirations. Second, it anatomizes the process of environmental annexation through the reconstruction of the formulation and implementation process of a biodiversity conservation and sustainable development experiment in which the island and its residents are appropriated into an anachronistic paradigm – a pastoral ecotopia – as a blueprint of their future.