The Sultan's Communists uncovers the history of Jewish radical involvement in Morocco's national liberation project and examines how Moroccan Jews envisioned themselves participating as citizens in a newly-independent Morocco. Closely following the lives of five prominent Moroccan Jewish Communists (Léon René Sultan, Edmond Amran El Maleh, Abraham Serfaty, Simon Lévy, and Sion Assidon), Alma Rachel Heckman describes how Moroccan Communist Jews fit within the story of mass Jewish exodus from Morocco in the 1950s and '60s, and how they survived oppressive post-independence authoritarian rule under the Moroccan monarchy to ultimately become heroic emblems of state-sponsored Muslim-Jewish tolerance. The figures at the center of Heckman's narrative stood at the intersection of colonialism, Arab nationalism, and Zionism. Their stories unfolded in a country that, upon independence from France and Spain in 1956, allied itself with the United States (and, more quietly, Israel) during the Cold War, while attempting to claim a place for itself within the fraught politics of the post-independence Arab world. The Sultan's Communists contributes to the growing literature on Jews in the modern Middle East and provides a new history of twentieth-century Jewish Morocco.

The renowned Turkish author’s memoir of serving Sultan Mehmed V provides a rare look inside the palace politics of the late Ottoman Empire. Before he became one of Turkey’s most famous novelists, Halid Ziya Usakligil served as First Secretary to Sultan Mehmed V. His memoir of that time, between 1909 and 1912, provides first-hand insight into the personalities, intrigues, and inner workings of the Ottoman palace in its final decades. In post-Revolution Turkey, the palace no longer exercised political power. Instead, it negotiated the minefields between political factions, sought ways to unite the empire in the face of nationalist aspirations, and faced the opening salvos of the wars that would eventually overwhelm the country. Usakligil includes interviews with the Imperial family as well as descriptions of royal nuptials, the palaces and its visitors, and the crises that shook the court. He also delivers an insightful and moving portrait of Mehmed V, the man who reigned over the Ottoman Empire through both Balkan Wars and World War I.

The Arabic culinary tradition burst onto the scene in the middle of the tenth century, when al-Warrāq compiled a culinary treatise titled al-Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes) containing over 600 recipes. It would take another three and half centuries for cookery books to be produced in the European continent. Until then, gastronomic writing remained the sole preserve of the Arab-Muslim world, with cooking manuals and recipe books being written from Baghdad, Aleppo and Egypt in the East, to Muslim Spain, Morocco and Tunisia in the West. A total of nine complete cookery books have survived from this time, containing nearly three thousand recipes. First published in the fifteenth century, The Sultan's Feast by the Egyptian Ibn Mubārak Shāh features more than 330 recipes, from bread-making and savoury stews, to sweets, pickling and aromatics, as well as tips on a range of topics. This culinary treatise reveals the history of gastronomy in Arab culture. Available in English for the first time, this critical bilingual volume offers a unique insight into the world of medieval Arabic gastronomic writing.

A PROFOUNDLY ORIGINAL DEBUT FROM HIGHLY ACCLAIMED EGYPTIAN WRITER Youssef Rakha’s extraordinary The Book of the Sultan’s Seal was published less than two weeks after then Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, following mass protests, in February 2011. It’s hard to imagine a debut novel of greater urgency or more thrilling innovation. Modeled on a medieval Arabic manuscript in the form of a letter addressed to the writer’s friend, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal is made up of nine chapters, each centered on a drive our hero, Mustafa Çorbaci, takes around greater Cairo in the spring of 2007. Together these create a portrait of Cairo, city of post-9/11 Islam. In a series of dreams and visions, Mustafa Çorbaci encounters the spirit of the last Ottoman sultan and embarks on a mission the sultan assigns him. Çorbaci’s trials shed light on the contemporary Arab Muslim’s desperation for a sense of identity: Sultan’s Seal is both a suspenseful, erotic, riotous novel and an examination of accounts of Muslim demise. The way to a renaissance, Çorbaci’s journeys lead us to see, may have less to do with dogma and jihad than with love poetry, calligraphy, and the cultural diversity and richness within Islam. With his first novel, Rakha has created a language truly all his own—an achievement that has earned international acclaim. This profoundly original work both retells canonical Arabic classics and offers a new version of “middle Arabic,” in which the formal meets the vernacular. Now finally in English, in Paul Starkey’s masterful translation, The Book of the Sultan’s Seal will astonish new readers around the world.

Page-turning mystery, grandly seductive romance and full historical immersion into Moroccan court history, this exquisitely depicted and intensely absorbing novel follows in the bestselling tradition of The Tenth Gift and The Salt Road. 1677, Morocco. Behind the magnificent walls and towering arches of the Palace of Meknes, captive chieftain's son and now a lowly scribe, Nus Nus is framed for murder. As he attempts to evade punishment for the bloody crime, Nus Nus finds himself trapped in a vicious plot, caught between the three most powerful figures in the court: the cruel and arbitrary sultan, Moulay Ismail, one of the most tyrannical rulers in history; his monstrous wife Zidana, famed for her use of poison and black magic; and the conniving Grand Vizier. Meanwhile, a young Englishwoman named Alys Swann has been taken prisoner by Barbary corsairs and brought to the court. She faces a simple choice: renounce her faith and join the Sultan's harem; or die. As they battle for survival, Alys and Nus Nus find themselves thrust into an unlikely alliance--an alliance that will become a deep and moving relationship in which these two outsiders will find sustenance and courage in the most perilous of circumstances. From the danger and majesty of Meknes to the stinking streets of London and the decadent court of Charles II, The Sultan's Wife brings to life some of the most remarkable characters of history through a captivating tale of intrigue, loyalty and desire.

A history of 600 years - an epic story of a dynasty that started as a small group of cavalry mercenaries to become the absolute rulers of the greatest and longest lasting Islamic empire in history.

"There is only one known copy of the Sultan's Book of Delights in existence and it is held in the Oriental and India Office Collections of the British Library (BL. Persian 149). The manuscript is illustrated with fifty elegant miniature paintings, most of which show the Sultan, Ghiyath Shahi, observing the women of his court as they prepare and serve him various dishes. The book is fascinating in that the text documents a remarkable stage in the history of Indian cookery whilst the miniatures demonstrate the influence of imported Persian artists on the style of the Indian artists employed in Ghiyath Shahi's academy."--Jacket.