Juan Cole

John Wreford writes at Yourmiddleeast.com Photographer John Wreford has lived in Syria for many years and still remains in his house in Damascus’ Old City. Here, he gives a very personal account of the last couple of weeks’ events. A warm summer evening sitting in a central Damascus restaurant overlooking the city, the mountain of […]

The Olympic Games are rooted in an ancient Greek custom, but they were revived in the 1890s very much in the framework of the emergence of a world of nation-states. Athletes are envisioned as representing their nation, and the abstraction, that everyone now has a nation-state, covers up a lot of cultural conflict that besets […]

Sughra Rababi, The Bride, 1986 Sughra Rababi (1922-1994) is a major modern Pakistani painter. She studied in Karachi and at Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan Fine Arts University in Bengal.

The Baath regime of President Bashar al-Assad is preparing for a major military operation to crush the uprising in Aleppo on Friday afternoon, according to rebel and Western sources. Even as the regime continues to pound rebel-held neighborhoods with tank and helicopter gunship fire, it is massing troops and armor to invest the city. But […]

Mitt Romney, astonishingly, managed to turn what should have been an easy set of photo-ops and feel-good platitudes into a diplomatic comedy of errors that raise strong questions about his readiness for the presidency. First, an adviser to the Romney campaign referred to “our” common Anglo-Saxon heritage with the United Kingdom, and said that President […]

Mahmoud Said (Egyptian, 1897-1964) The Whirling Dervishes signed and dated ‘M. SAID 1929’ (lower right) oil on panel 38 3/8 x 27½in. (97.5 x 69.8cm.) Painted in 1929 Sold by Christie’s. Mahmoud Said was a central figure in modern Egyptian art, born in Alexandria. He is called the “father of Egyptian modern art.” He abandoned […]