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Cover of The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger

The Marsh Arabs

Wilfred Thesiger

  • 238 pages · about 4 hours
  • First published 1964
  • 10 editions
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1 About this book

During the years he spent among the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq-long before they were almost completely wiped out by Saddam Hussein-Wilfred Thesiger came to understand, admire, and share a way of life that had endured for many centuries. Traveling from village to village by canoe, he won acceptance by dispensing medicine and treating the sick.

In this account of a nearly lost civilization, he pays tribute to the hospitality, loyalty, courage, and endurance of the people, and describes their impressive reed houses, the waterways and lakes teeming with wildlife, the herding of buffalo and hunting of wild boar, moments of tragedy, and moments of pure comedy in vivid, engaging detail.

Good for readers who want: history and a true life story.

  • Arabs
  • History
  • 20th century
  • Biography
  • Middle east
  • Personal Memoirs
  • Biography & autobiography
  • Social life and customs

2 About Wilfred Thesiger

1910–2003

Sir Wilfred Patrick Thesiger (3 June 1910 – 24 August 2003), also known as Mubarak bin Landan (Arabic: مُبَارَك بِن لَنْدَن, the blessed one of London), was a British military officer, explorer, and writer. Thesiger's travel books include Arabian Sands (1959), on his foot and camel crossing of the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula, and The Marsh Arabs (1964), on his time living with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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