I spent more time over the winter holiday than I probably should have playing Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception on the PS3 (I actually forbade my partner from taking the PS3 with him when he went to visit his family so that I could keep going).  If you’re not a gamer, you might just want to skip this post. Unless you’re a history geek like me.

Kill the bad guys, but stop blowing up the historical treasures!

This third installment in the Uncharted series, an Indiana Jones-style series of adventure games that follows anti-hero Nathan Drake and his companions as they venture off to the far corners of the globe in search of lost treasure, has earned stellar reviews and several awards, including the top spot on several “Best of 2011″ lists.

Drake’s Deception puts players on a trek to find the real lost city of Ubar—believed to be Iraam of the Pillars of antiquity, mentioned in the Qur’an and 1001 Nights–deep in the Empty Quarter (Rub’ al-Khali) in Saudi Arabia.  On the way, the story takes a surprisingly accurate voyage through a few Middle Eastern locations.  And, being the history nerd and Middle Eastern-ist that I am, I thought to myself, “Wow, someone should put together a resource guide to all the stuff in this game.”

And then I realized that I’m probably one of the best qualified nerds for the job.

Making allowances for the fact that this is a video game and that the action has to move forward in a suspenseful manner–not every dark alley in Sana’a leads to a secret chamber of secrets waiting to be discovered–the overall plot outline incorporates an impressive corpus of research on topics near and dear to the Middle East historians’ hearts: Players read through excerpts from T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom and learn about his career for British intelligence in World War I; explore nearly every inch of a crusader castle in Syria (clearly based on the Crac des Chevaliers near Homs); chase bad guys across rooftops in an painstakingly accurate digital re-creation of a Yemeni souq (complete with locals who engage you in Arabic); solve puzzles that incorporate old Sabaean script and pre-Islamic South Arabian civilizations; and finally find themselves on a sun-baked trek across the sands of eastern Arabia before finally landing in what is the least accurate part of the game for the climax: the lost city of Ubar itself (fortunately, this most fantastical part of the plot resolves itself somewhat satisfactorily for the nit-picky among us, but I won’t spoil it).

Below, I’ve compiled some resources to offer up for anyone else whose curiosity about the people and places visited may have been piqued over the course of game play.  Naturally, this effort came entirely out of my dedication to research <he says, looking innocent>.

This isn’t an actual walkthrough — there are plenty of those out there if you just Google it.
On with the nerdening!

Ubar / Iram of the Pillars
Ubar–the real one–was a city in ancient Arabia. Legends speak of a fabulously wealthy trading center, active from around 3,000 BC to around 1,000 AD.  The city was identified as Iram of the Pillars in the 1001 Nights. According to Arabian tradition, the city was founded by the grandsons of Noah (he of the Ark), and cast into the sands by God after failing to adhere to warnings by the Prophet Hud, whose tomb lies in the nearby Hadramaut region of Yemen.

The ruins of what is believed to be Ubar were found in the 1980s, using geo-sensing technology and photographs taken by the space shuttle Atlantis.  The quest was the subject of an installment in PBS’s NOVA series (unfortunately, the video isn’t online, but the transcript is). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ubar/

The discovery was further discussed in the New York Times: “The Frankincense Route Emerges from the Desert” (April 21, 1992)

And (at least) two books have been written about the discovery of Ubar:
Nicholas Clapp, The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands, Mariner, (1999).
Fiennes Ranuph, Atlantis of the Sands: The Search for the Lost City of Ubar, Bloomsbury (1992), ISBN 0747513279.

Arabian/Indian Ocean Trade:

Ubar grew wealthy by serving as a trading center for goods coming off of the Indian Ocean, as well as the trade in Arabian goods, notably incense and scented woods.  The first stop for anyone should be Indian Ocean Trade resource developed by the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center: http://www.indianoceanhistory.org/

In the November/December 2000 issue of Saudi Aramco World, Eric Hansen discussed the trade in scented wood such as frankincense, which was one of the commodities that made Ubar so wealthy “The Hidden History of Scented Wood.”  Saudi Aramco World is a cultural magazine put out by the Saudi state oil company. As long as they’re not talking about modern Saudi Arabia (which they tend to depict as the most fun place in the world except maybe Disneyland), the material is pretty good. Subscriptions are free, and the entire backlog is online.

More on the trade routes across Arabia can be found in “The Roads of Arabia” article from the March/April 2011 issue of Saudi Aramco World.

The Rub’ al-Khali desert was the subject of “The Living Desert“, which appeared in the March/April 2010 issue of Saudi Aramco World.

Ancient Arabia:

Not much is known about the kingdoms of ancient Arabia (in comparison to, say the period immediately preceding and after the advent of Islam), although it is known that Yemen has been populated for millennia.

An article from Saudi Aramco World: Norman M. Whalen and David W. Pease, Early Mankind in Arabia.

The British Museum: The Kingdoms of ancient South Arabia online exhibit.

Sana'a, Yemen. Photo by Ai@ce

Yemen:

My biggest nitpick of the game (other than the magical/fantastical Ubar) was the lack of specificity in the Yemen portion. Yemen is a country, not a city, and the designers did such a great job creating a digital version of old Sana’a that it’s kind of amazing that they let other details drop. Plot required a coastal city, though, and Sana’a is in the mountains–so it’s just “Yemen.”  Complete with “Yemen International Airport” (which, for the record, does get service on real planes, not just rickety second hand DC-3s and Antonovs as in the game).

On the other hand, I don’t think I could have dealt with the characters trying to say “Sana’a” properly. Elena’s “Arabic” ability when she asked someone to open an iron gate … well, it was a nice try

Fotopedia freaking loves Yemen. Check out these photo essays:

• Yemen through the eyes of Marco Becher
• Sana’a, The Well-Fortified City

Some articles:
Eric Hansen: Sana’a Rising (Saudi Aramco World, Jan/Feb 2006); see also Tim Mackintosh-Smith in the same issue, The Secret Gardens of Sana’a, (Saudi Aramco World, Jan/Feb 2006).

Another piece by Tim Mack-Smith: Moonglow from Underground (Mar/Apr 1999).

Richard Covington, A New Light on Old Yemen (Saudi Aramco World, March/April 1998).

G. Lankester Harding, Inside Arabia Felix (Saudi Aramco World, Jan/Feb 1965):

Crac des Chevaliers, Syria. Photo by Bernard Gagnon.

Syria’s Crusader Castles:

The part of the game set in Syria was clearly inspired by the Crac des Chevaliers, a well-preserved castle in the Syrian mountains on the highway between Homs and Lattakia. Drake’s castle is a might bit larger and more rambling, but the influence is there.

Check out the UN World Heritage entry on Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’at Salah El-Din: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1229
Robin Fedden, The Castles of the Crusaders (Saudi Aramco World, May/June 1970): http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/197003/the.castles.of.the.crusaders.htm

T.E. Lawrence:
Seven Pillars of Wisdom, quoted at some length, is in the public domain in Australia: http://www.wesjones.com/lawrence1.htm

The T.E. Lawrence home page (maintained by his official biographer): http://telawrence.info/telawrenceinfo/index.htm

History geeks of the world, unite!

My parents decided to take me to Puerto Rico for Christmas. We missed by a day, but no worries there. My job, in turn, is to make sure they don’t spend the entire trip eating at Outback or Applebee’s (because without firm intervention, they would).

This was kind of a ho-hum year for Christmas shopping — did you feel it, dear readers? I really couldn’t think of anything I had to have to put on my wish list, and most of the people around me seemed to feel the same way. Hence this trip.

Oh, and Delta is offering thirty free minutes of in flight wifi. Even I’m not enough of a sucker to pay for it unless I really, really have to be in touch during the flight, in which case it goes down as a business expense for reimbursement.

Anyway, Feliz Navidad, y’all!

It’s been ages since I posted anything of substance. As I suspected, being in school all of the fall semester seriously put a dent in my desire to spend more time being creative and writing anything, what with all of the non-creative reading that goes along with that.

So, the fall went pretty well. I took six hours worth of courses (that’s two graduate seminars), which impressed the graduate coordinator in the History department; she had been expecting me to do the coursework one at a time. If I can keep this up, I’ll be able to get the courses done in another two years, at which point the real work begins, but we’ll focus on that later.

It was weird being back in school, not least because I feel like a dinosaur among my history cohort; several of them were born the year I entered high school for God’s sake! They’re a pretty affable group, though. Class didn’t really get started each week until someone pronounced the readings “bullshit,” or we had an extended argument about whether it was possible for someone to be racist in the 15th century when the modern concept of racism wasn’t invented until the 19th. (Yes. My answer, and I’m sticking to it, dammit.)

The other class I took was a classical Arabic course, that reduced me to tears a few times at the beginning of the semester when I had to read through some 10th century poetic verses, and not because the poetry was so beautiful. All in all it came out well, but at the end of the day, what I learned in the class was to try to avoid reading poetry when and where possible. I kind of saw this coming, though — I mean, I’m not a huge fan of poetry in English.

And so.

Tomorrow, the parents and I are going to Puerto Rico for a few days – just long enough to get away from the unseasonably cold weather, then zip back here for New Year’s Eve … and back to work. And then the next semester begins.

I may need a few more days off.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Order now! Supplies are limited. $10, plus $5.00 shipping and handling (Texas residents will be charged sales tax). For international orders (outside the US), e-mail me and I’ll invoice you via PayPal.

This month’s theme is called “Vertigo” for no reason other than the obvious. It’s a shot I took in the Bardo Museum in Tunis this summer of this spiral staircase that looked kind of creepy. It is October after all.

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None of this is neither here nor there, but the reason I’m bringing it up is that it’s about to become a huge theme in these pages, either because I’ll be referring to it frequently, or actively trying not to.

I am starting graduate school next week. Again.

I made a vague reference some months ago to submitting an application to a doctoral program, but I seem to have never actually mentioned that it was successful and that I’m one of about twenty five students (out of an applicant pool of around three hundred) who have been accepted to the graduate program in the History department. I don’t plan to quit my job — in fact, the staff educational benefit pays for three credit hours per semester, and I don’t think I can realistically enroll for more than six hours in any given semester while working forty hours a week.

The orientation started yesterday. One of the lighter moments involved a young man whose name I don’t remember (most people know that I’m absolutely terrible with names — I’m good with faces, but not names. I have, given my office’s location outside the reading room in my own department, had genial conversations with people I’ve seen every day for six months and I have no idea what their name is).  We had been asked to introduce ourselves to the group, say where we’re from (I decided that after thirteen years I’m allowed to say I’m from Austin), and what we’re interested in.

“Well,” he said, “I’m not a nudist, but I’m interested in 19th century German social movements like nudism.”

I can already tell that he will be known as The Nudist for the rest of his time here.  The things people say!

Yesterday, after three hours of orientation, I came back to my office and thought to myself, “What the frak am I doing?”  Even as a full time student, it would probably take me at least five years (six or seven, more realistically) to finish this degree all the way to fruition. Theres goes my evenings and weekends. So long, free time! And then, of course, were the nagging little doubts as I watched the graduate adviser and coordinator talk: “Can I really do this? I don’t know …”

This morning, during a roundtable of grad students in the program, one of them said that for three years she suffered from what she called “imposter syndrome.”  “Basically, I spent the entire time thinking, ‘What am I doing? Can I really do this? I don’t think I can do this … ‘ Then I finally said something, and it turned out that everyone else in the program was having the same thoughts!”

So, at least I’m all set there. But it’s a little weird being all the way back at square one and starting something from scratch…again.

So … posts may get a little scarcer…er…than they’ve been, but I’m still plugging along.  See you soon … or in December, once the semester ends!

After a weekend of “rest,” I promptly moved into the vortex that I knew would be waiting for me on my return. Two days after I got back to the office, I gave probably one of the most rambling talks I’ve ever delivered (it wasn’t quite as bad as the Tina Fey version of Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric, but it wasn’t much more focused. And also.)  Then there was a workshop that I was responsible for co-running (kinda; others had to do all the work since I wasn’t around for the organizational phase), that … well, I’m not actually sure I could tell you what we did. Others were responsible for delivering the actual content and it was pretty unfocused. Made me feel better about that earlier talk, let me tell you.

I’ve gotten through the first pass on the photos from the summer–I have more (a lot more), but this will suffice for now.

Other than that, I sit at my computer and stare at it.  The orientation for my doctoral program starts a week from tomorrow — and I won’t lie, I do keep having those thoughts of “what the hell am I doing?” So much for summer!

At any rate, I’ll try to be a better blogger and post more soon…

I set out forty days ago on this seminar to explore the topic of religious diversity in North Africa, and, as we face our final couple of days as a group before heading our separate ways either in Marrakech, Casablanca, or New York, the question has been raised more than once: what have we learned on this seminar?

Well, ironically, what I’ve learned is that there really isn’t much religious diversity in North Africa. There used to be, once upon a time, but there is rather little of it today, and a good chunk of it is diversity that’s either celebrated beyond proportion (Moroccans and Tunisians are damned proud of their Jews, which combined probably equals the Jewish population of any good sized city in the United States), or completely ignored altogether (Djerba is home to one of the largest Ibadi communities outside of Oman (in which they form a majority), and most Tunisians have no idea). Christianity doesn’t exist in any real capacity in either country; it’s a foreign religion (although it didn’t used to be, back before Islam) now serving the handful of hangers-on from colonialism who were born here and refuse to “go home” to a country that they have no attachment to, or to the growing number of sub-Saharan Africans who have landed here in what they hope is their way to somewhere else.

This exercise in exploring religion has opened other doors, however. Inadvertently, we’ve gotten insight into the new Berber awakening in Morocco. The village where I am currently is Berber, although the inhabitants happily engage the rudimentary Arabic of our group, mostly because they’re so damned friendly. Never mind that a good number of them don’t speak much more Arabic than we do, which was not the impression voiced by our dapper Arabic instructor in Rabat, who announced his confusion about why Amazigh should be named an official language in the constitution since, “they all speak Arabic and they only need to speak Berber with each other.” The adult Americans studying diversity were far more into the concept of Amazigh’s official status than he was, not that it mattered.

Despite the fact that barely anyone we spoke to had any intention of participating in the constitutional referendum, the result was announced the morning we visited the Jewish Museum in Casablanca: 78% of registered voters turned out, and they approved the new constitution with 95% of the vote. Allegedly. And this, at least according to major news outlets, is one of the more promising reform attempts in the Arab world. I’m not sure what Abdullah is doing on his throne over in Jordan, but that’s been labeled a distant second.

Then, of course, there’s Tunisia, which apparently exploded into demonstrations the morning we left to come back to Morocco. It’s hard to say what’s going on there: as I mentioned in my last blog post, most of the Tunisians themselves seem pretty certain that the revolution has stalled, and they haven’t had the hundreds of thousands gather in Tahrir to try to jump start it again. People are scared of “the Islamists,” although that faceless organization claims in Tunisia as well as Egypt that it just wants to participate in the process that long been denied to it. Those of the generation of our guide in the country (the one who isn’t an organized crime boss, no matter what certain people in this group say) were brought up in a system only slightly less militantly secular than Turkey’s, and they fear what a more visible Islamist presence will bring. I asked point blank the question about Tunisia’s family code, modeled on the French system and far and away the most egalitarian in the Arab world—do the Islamists indicate a desire to change it? The speaker, a firebrand who went on at length about the Islamists, ending with an explosive, “They have no value for human life!” didn’t take the bait I offered, replying simply that all parties want women involved in re-writing the constitution. Which wasn’t the question I asked.

This afternoon, unable to nap (there was a fly that took a liking to my hair), I pulled out my Kindle and fired up a special issue of Foreign Policy about the Arab Spring I bought a while back, mostly on the recommendation of Issandr El Amrani, who is a featured contributor. When I first bought it, I read all the articles on Egypt and skipped the ones on Tunisia. Like the Greek –opolous-es and –ides-es, Tunisian names all seem to be Bou-something, and they run together for the non-initiated. Now that I can tell a Bou Azizi from a Bourguiba, I went back to see how much of it I can get now, and it all spits out the same: Ben Ali grew increasingly isolated after years of justifying his harsh rule on the basis that Tunisia had worked too hard to turn into Algeria, mired in civil conflict with its own Islamist factions. As people realized that the Islamists weren’t a threat – had never been, perhaps – things grew worse. And then, in January, the unthinkable happened: Ben Ali fled off to Saudi Arabia after his streets filled with the unhappy, disenfranchised youth who, thanks to plentiful university education, are vastly overqualified for jobs in the dominant agriculture, tourism, and industrial sectors.

The airline we flew to Djerba—formerly owned by the family of the hated first lady–had been so hurriedly combined with the national carrier after January 14 that they had only had time to paint over the title on the airplane, leaving the rest of the logo intact. Our ticket may have said TunisAir Express, but everything about the flight was a SevenAir operation. Even on the airport directory pointing the way to check-in, someone had crossed out “SevenAir” with a magic marker and written in “TunisAir Express” by hand. And they really try to pretend this is always how it’s been.

On the other hand, on Djerba, the Shaykh of the Ibadi community offered up a much simpler and possibly more eloquent statement about the outcome of the revolution: “I wouldn’t have been able to host you in my house this time last year,” he said. “It just would not have been possible. I would have gotten in trouble and so, perhaps, might you.”

This seminar isn’t about the revolution, but it’s hard not to have it front and center when you’re in a country that just had a revolution – and appears to be desperately trying to get back to normal. In fact, much of North Africa appears to be about imagining the way things should be—we should be a multi-party democracy, we just aren’t; we should have a large celebrated Jewish population, we just don’t; we should welcome Muslims of all stripes, we just ignore the ones who don’t practice exactly the way we do; we should celebrate the Berbers, but not too much—rather than recognizing the way things are.

And so, as with my sojourn to Turkey in 2004, I feel as though I’ve just scratched the surface. But at least now I know which questions to ask. In many ways, I feel as though this isn’t the end – it’s just the end of the beginning.

So. Djerba. If the coast where we’d been previously is the Tunisian version of the Riviera Maya, Djerba is like Cozumel, only with a vibrant traditional culture that is not entirely coexistent with the rampant tourism that feeds the island economy. And, as I mentioned, a lot of rich Libyans who are weathering the civil war in their country (the border is about an hour and a half drive away) in all-inclusive resorts. There was something really weird about watching the Libyan ladies in their veils lounging next to topless European women.

Side note: I have come to the following two conclusions: first, European women who swim topless really have no self-awareness. They’ll just whip off their tops and let the boobs swing like one of those perpetual motion devices with the clacking balls you find on executive desks. It’s a little disturbing to watch, at least for this semi-prudish American. Second, men in this part of the world have absolutely no issue with adjusting themselves … often and repeatedly … for all to see. A couple of times I’m wasn’t sure they if were making adjustments so much as hitting the reset button. I’m sure the issue here is that I’m the prude, but … dude. Move it over and let go already.

Where was I? Right. Djerba.

So, Djerba is home to one of the few sizable Jewish communities left in Tunisia, and one of the oldest synagogues that claims to have a stone brought by Jewish refugees from the destruction of the Temple in 571 BC. This was also the site of an al-Qaeda attack in 2002, so security is ramped up, if a little weird. You go through security and x ray machines before you’re allowed to enter the complex, but security is across the street, so … the effectiveness seems a little limited. Anyway, it was a fascinating experience, and I got some nice photos of the group in reflective moments there. As in Morocco, Tunisians are proud of their Jews even though there’s desperately few of them left–200 or so in Tunis; the synagogue is surrounded by razor wire and armed guards, and that has preceded the revolution. There’s another 5,000 on Djerba, where the community did rally around the Jewish community in the wake of the 2002 attack, which consisted of a car laden with explosives being driven into the wall of the temple. You can’t tell where it happened, so competently has it been rebuilt.

The other thing that Djerba is known for is its Ibadi population. The Ibadis are a sect of Islam that is neither Sunni nor Shi’ite, and trace their origins back to the Sunni/Shi’i split when a third group decided that, by attempting to negotiate to prevent the divide that the caliph had lost his legitimacy, and so they went off to form their own community. These people were known as Kharajites, from the Arabic kharaja, “To go out.” Everyone hated the Kharajites and, it has been made very clear by the high ranking members of the Ibadi community that we met on Djerba, the Ibadis are not Kharajites. They look like Kharajites, they walk like Kharajites and quack like them, but they’re not them. Got it? ‘Cos I don’t.

At any rate, since Paul, our cat herder, does his doctoral work on the Ibadis, specifically on Djerba, we got in to see one of their manuscript libraries (fascinating and terrifying at the same time, since leaves from 8th century manuscripts were blowing all over the room, and at one point their hired cameraman put his tripod down on the only existing copy of a 10th century manuscript (!)). We also got to meet the Shaykh of the Ibadi community of North Africa. It was really quite interesting.

And then we went back to the pool and drank beer with the veiled Libyan ladies and the topless European women.

Back to  Tunis we came, where we actually had—Lord Almighty—a free day! I was probably a little too excited to go to a grocery store for the first time in five weeks, but it was neat. With some time to explore the Tunisian capital, it was nice to cap the experience here. One of the highlights of the program was a visit to Sidi Bou Said, a whitewashed (with blue highlights) village that clings to a cliff overlooking the point where the Gulf of Tunis (green-blue) meets the Mediterranean (blue-green) that is quite reminiscent of a Greek island. Sue and I ditched the group when they moved on to another beach area for free time and stayed in Sidi Bou Said and had a wonderful time exploring alleyways and nooks and being pestered by the desperate, desperate shopkeepers trying to earn a living in these revolutionary times.

Tunisians are, by and large, pessimistic about the status of the revolution. This week I read two completely contradictory articles, one in Foreign Policy and one in The Economist. FP’s article talked about the massive frustration among the young and disenfranchised who started the revolution (they’re still disenfranchised), while the Economist had an article that was so upbeat it seemed like a different country. Quite frankly, I’m more inclined to take the FP article seriously because it seemed to match more of what we saw on the ground, and what we heard from people we spoke with (with the exception of the resident conspiracy theorist who is convinced that our last tour guide was an organized crime boss for reasons that I don’t quite understand. “I just saw things,” she says. “What things?” ask I. “You know, things.” I remain unconvinced, based on her previous conviction that the reason that no one was voting in the little village that we stopped in on Referendum Day was that the residents were afraid to vote in front of foreigners – ?!).

Unlike in Egypt, where the military seized control (and clearly wants to hand it back as quickly as possible), in Tunisia the parliament still functions. The current prime minister is a crony of the ex-president, and there’s a lot of speculation that he doesn’t really want change. There are protests daily, but none the size of the tens of thousands who have been demonstrating in Cairo to restart that country’s revolution, which has also stalled out. In the meantime, Tunisia limps along. In the souq, the sellers are desperate, and thank you not only for buying, but for coming to Tunisia. Tourism is down by half, and in a country where tourism is the largest segment of the economy, that’s bad. Last night a couple of us went to what is clearly a cute little row of restaurants and shops for dinner. We got there at 7:30 and half of the restaurants were closed, and by the time we were done with dinner at 9:15, pretty much everything was closed. This on a Friday when things should be hopping. This is life in the new Tunisia, and it’s clear that no one’s happy with it.

And so, I’m about to go back to Morocco for the last five days before heading home to the US. Moods are picking up now that we’re in the final stretch, and it seems like we can deal with anything now that the end is in sight. It’s been interesting, but, man … it’s been long. And there’s still new stuff to go: the Atlas Mountains and our finale in Marrakech!