Daily life in Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon

Tannous, Afif. The Arab Village Community of the Middle East.

€ 450,00

A highly detailed Smithsonian report illustrating daily life in 1940s Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, profusely illustrated from photographs of buildings, markets, and rural life. The text is produced from an excerpt of the Smithsonian Report for 1943 and retains its pagination. Smithsonian reports, given annually to the institution's board of regents, cover a wide array of topics relating to the operations and expenditure of the institute; as a cultural institution and museum, they often went into detail regarding underlying social and economic structures when describing communities. Here, village life is illustrated via carefully described examples. Land ownership, inheritance, and family traditions are examined in economic, social, and cultural terms, along with relevant vocabulary (i.e., the four different terms for owned or leased property, or the worst insult one could level at a family). Much space is given to farming techniques and staple cereal crops (in order, wheat, barley, maize, dura, and rice) and to the central and unifying role of Islam in economic and cultural life. In the final years of WWII, American and other Western governments and institutions were increasingly interested in both the present and the future of countries like Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon.

Binding a touch delicate, otherwise in good condition.