A man I saw

In Diyarbakir, south-east Turkey, 2008

'Faces' from the Yemen No. 5

Woman in traditional dress, Thulla

When I was in Yemen, three years ago, I commented on the colourful traditional dress that many Yemeni women wear, and got an interesting reaction. Traditional dress was dying out, a Yemeni man told me. Instead, he said, more and more women were wearing black abayas - influenced by Saudi habits to the north.

Woman in Saudi-influenced dress, Shibam

It struck me then, and much more now, that there is an important metaphor here. As local and international politicians seek to blame Yemen for the problems that are festering there, it would be useful to ask the question of where the influence that drives them comes from. The answer, as with fashion, is, from the fundamentalist state that lies directly north.

Faces from the Yemen No. 4

Early evening, Sana'a

"The poorest nation in the Arab world struggles with 27% inflation, 40% unemployment and 46% child malnutrition. Half of its 22 million citizens are under sixteen and the population is set to double by 2035."

Ginny Hill, Yemen: Fear of Failure, Chatham House, December 2008

Faces from the Yemen No. 3

At the juice bar, Seiyun, Wadi Hadramawt

After I took this man's photograph, he took one of me, using the camera on his mobile phone.

Faces from the Yemen No. 2

A girl carrying fresh water in Hababa

Clean water supplies would free her to go to school.

Faces from the Yemen No.1

In the capital, Sana'a

Yemen

Wadi Hadramawt, in eastern Yemen: now a stronghold for Al Qaeda

With all eyes suddenly focused on Yemen, here are a couple of posts I wrote about the country in 2006 following a visit earlier in the year.

Various reports say that western governments are pledging military support to the regime in Yemen to help it tackle Al Qaeda. Certainly the Yemeni government needs help, but the fact that it is widely seen by the people it governs as hopelessly corrupt may mean that well-meaning efforts to prop it up have unintended consequences.

How Rome linked Britain and the Arab world

The grave stone of Cautronius, a troop standard bearer, at Tyre, southern Lebanon

We spent a few hours deciphering Roman inscriptions when I studied Latin at school, but unfortunately not long enough for any of what I learnt to stick. Which is a pity for they yield a lot of information. When I spotted the elegantly-lettered tombstone of Cautronius, a standard-bearer of the Italian troop [I think], when I visited Lebanon last year, I thought it worthy of a photograph.*

An inscription I saw in a museum in St Albans a while ago points to some interesting linkages across the Roman world, and hints at a tragic love story. It is dedicated to Regina, and reads:

D[is] M[anibus] Regina Liberta

et Coniuge Barates Palmyrenus

Natione Catuallauna An[nomum] XXX

To the spirits of the departed and to Regina his freedwoman

and wife, a Catavellaunian by tribe, aged 30

Barates of Palmyra set this up.

Barates, a Syrian from the eastern edge of Rome's empire found himself posted to its North-West Frontier. For the gravestone of his wife was found at Arbeia Roman Fort near South Shields, on Hadrian's Wall, where Barates served. Regina's tribe, the Catavellauni came from the area around St Albans.

As the almost tangible warmth of a photograph I took several years ago in Palmyra shows, South Shields is a long way off.

*The inscription mentions something about a "falca" - which appears to mean a scythe or sickle. Any help with translation gratefully received...

A shatter'd visage

The fallen head of a statue on Nemrut Dagi, 2150m, south-east Turkey

OZYMANDIAS

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

This shatter'd visage is fully visible, and stands 2,150m above sea-level, but it reminded me of one of my favourite poems, Shelley's evocation of hubris, Ozymandias. At the orders of King Antiochus, statues of himself and various gods were erected on the summit of Nemrut Dagi, a few decades before the birth of Christ. At some stage in the intervening 2,000 years, the heads of the statues have fallen off. Since righted, their torsoes lie broken on the ground behind them. But one wonders: would Antiochus be disappointed, or delighted, that his visage yet survives?

Look up, look up

The Temple of Jupiter, Baalbek

"Four hundred piastres for that room? Four hundred did you say? Good God! Away! Call the car. Three hundred and fifty? One hundred and fifty you mean. Three hundred? Are you deaf, can't you hear? I said a hundred and fifty. We must go. There are other hotels. Come, load the luggage. I doubt if we shall stay in Baalbek at all."

So starts Robert Byron's description of his arrival in Baalbek in his book The Road to Oxiana (1937). He secures the room eventually for two hundred piastres and sets out to view the ancient site, pursued, just as you are today, by hordes of souvenir sellers. His description of the ruins struck a chord when I re-read it yesterday. What hits you is the scale of the place and the size of the enormous stones it is built from. "Look up, look up; up this quarried flesh, these thrice enormous shafts, to the broken capitals and the cornice as big as a house." It is quite unlike any other Roman structure I have ever seen.

Unspoilt by progress

Tyre

Since the discovery and exploitation of oil in the 1920s the Middle East has changed dramatically. Once flat skylines are now interrupted by towerblocks; cars and buses, rather than donkeys, are the usual form of transport. But now and then you spot ways of life that are utterly unchanged. That was the thought that made me take the photograph above, last Friday. It shows fisherman on the shore in the ancient city of Tyre, in southern Lebanon. Many of them carried on far after dark.

Tension in Lebanon

Hezbollah's flag, flying high at the infamous Al-Khiam detention centre, near the Israeli border

Early this year I wrote a piece about the Kalashnikov Index: the changing price of an AK-47 depending on supply, and demand due to perceived changes to security. In Iraq, where security appears to be improving, the Index should be falling, though I have seen no recent price data.

One nearby country where the Index has surged is Lebanon. There, says this report, the cost of buying an AK-47 has recently trebled to $1,000 a weapon. Rising expectations of violence lie behind the rise. Lebanon's politicians are currently deadlocked over the choice of a successor to replace Emile Lahoud, the Syrian-backed president of the country. A replacement needs to be found by 23 November when Mr Lahoud's term ends, but as the Index suggests people are pessimistic that an acceptable compromise candidate will be found.

I got back from a short visit to Lebanon this morning, and my impression was that the country, though outwardly calm, is close to the abyss. Having given the Israeli army a bloody nose last year, Hezbollah is reputedly preparing for trouble. Its distinctive green on yellow flags (depicting a forearm clenching an AK-47) were flying everywhere that I went, south of the River Litani and up the Beqaa valley, where souvenir sellers offering Hezbollah t-shirts congregate outside the famous ruins at Baalbek. It is clear that the spectacular damage to the country's infrastructure done by Israel (and supported without demure by Britain and the United States) during last year's war, let alone the deaths the war caused, has only reinforced Hezbollah's support. And I watched a procession of cars of another pro-Syrian faction, streaming down the main road from the Syrian border towards Beirut, flapping their disconcerting, rather fascist-inspired, red, black and white banners from the windows. Despite the signs of wealth and renovation of Beirut's battered city-centre there seems to be a fatalism among the few Lebanese I spoke to about their ability to influence events, and even a certain ambivalence towards the current, if uneasy, peace. Perhaps this has always been the case. This was my first visit to Lebanon and I have nothing to compare it with.

Remembrance Sunday

A grave at Guillemont Road cemetery on the Somme

Apparently there are more marchers at the annual Remembrance Sunday parade on Whitehall this year than there have been for many years. Many people have expressed their surprise that, instead of withering as the two world wars grow ever more distant, the commemoration has only gathered strength.

Edward Marsh, Churchill's private secretary, described the first anniversary of the Armistice in 1919. At eleven o'clock in the morning - it was a Tuesday - everyone had halted where they stood, for two minutes, he said. "It was really solemn and impressive - everyone standing like statues, and the dead silence." Winning the war had cost Britain 723,000 lives, and a further 198,000 soldiers from the colonies had – willingly or otherwise – given theirs. Half a million more had been seriously wounded: nearly half of these were amputees. And sixty thousand men had shell-shock.

Marsh, however, had not fought in the war, and when I was researching Setting the Desert on Fire, I came across a surprising comment on the anniversary which made me wonder whether former combatants felt differently. It was made, some years later, by T.E. Lawrence. Writing to his confidante Charlotte Shaw (the wife of George Bernard Shaw) on 10 November 1927, he remarked: "Tomorrow … this horrible celebration of an armistice of long ago."

It would be interesting to know whether Lawrence's view was widely shared, or whether he was simply being provocative. It may be, though, that he did not appreciate the reminder. Like many former soldiers he must have suffered flashbacks to the violence he had witnessed. "It's like malarial bugs in the blood", he wrote later to his friend, the writer Robert Graves, "coming out months and years after in recurrent attacks." Perhaps too, as the years went by, while others continued to appreciate the sacrifice made on their behalf, Lawrence realised that the Great War had created more problems as it solved.

Back from the Caucasus

Alaverdi, Northern Armenia

Back from three weeks in the southern Caucasus: a full report to follow shortly. It's good to return to find that there's now no longer any need for the Free Alan Johnston banner. Here is an interesting report from Conflicts Forum which provides more of the background to this welcome development, and emphasises the need for direct talks with Hamas, no matter how unpalatable that organisation's views can seem.

Hay fever

Railway carriage, near Toweira station, Hijaz Railway

So the weather forecast isn't great but I am eagerly looking forward to my weekend trip to Hay-on-Wye, where I am speaking at the Festival at nine o'clock on Sunday morning, hail, rain or shine.

There will be slides - both pictures familiar if you've seen or read my book - and photographs like the one above that I took in the Hijaz mountains on the railway while doing my research in the Middle East. And there will be time for questions and ideas too.

Venice - gateway to the east

Venice: built on the infamous Fourth Crusade

The sun was shining in Venice this morning, where I've just spent a few days. What I liked most about the city was the feeling that it is the gateway to the east. Lofty campanili poke like minarets above the skyline. Buildings like the fifteenth century Doge's Palace have distinctly arabesque architecture. The canals smell rankly of sewage. The galleries are full of paintings of the martyrdoms of saints by men in turbans. The zenith of this genre came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, just as the threat from the Muslim Ottomans was at its height. The paintings were designed to rally public opinion against the enemy in no less compromising a way than the crusading rhetoric of George W Bush.

Venice was the starting point for the infamous Fourth Crusade. Viewing the expedition as a commercial opportunity, the Doge apparently offered the crusaders transport and armed galleys if they would agreed to a straight split of any booty. Having watched money evaporate from my wallet over the last four days, I know the sensation.

The numbers volunteering for the crusade proved disappointing however, and the expedition plunged into debt. At this point, the Venetians offered to restructure what they were owed if the crusaders would help them capture the city of Zadar on the opposite coast of the Adriatic. The only hitch was that Zadar was then part of Hungary, whose king had himself supported the crusade. The pope - who had called for the crusade in the first place and could see its momentum ebbing - forbade this diversion. When the crusaders ignored him and captured Zadar late in 1202, he excommunicated them. It was there that the crusaders were approached with yet another plan, to restore the former Emperor of the Byzantine Empire, Isaac Angelus, on the throne. The Doge, who wanted to cut a better set of trade agreements with Constantinople, supported this idea. Thus it was that Constantinople was sacked by the crusaders in 1204, who had entered the city on ladders made from the spars of the Venetian ships which had carried them there. St Mark's Cathedral in Venice today is a rococo confection of stones taken from Constantinople. Venice, the gateway to the east, was built on the profit of this most infamous crusade.

Speaking on Thursday in Oxford

The Oxford skyline

I'm speaking at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival this Thursday about TE Lawrence and the Arab Revolt, the subjects of my book. I'll be showing some slides I took during my travels in the Middle East as well and there will be time for questions and discussion.

The venue is Festival Room 1, at Christ Church, starting at 2.30pm. Tickets (yours for the princely sum of £7) can now be bought at the Festival Box Office, which is located beside the college in a Marquee in Christ Church Meadows off St Aldates.

My next planned talk is at the Royal United Services Institute, on the inauspicious Friday 13th July.

Shootings in Saudi

Madain Salih, Saudi Arabia

The BBC is reporting that a number of French tourists have been shot dead at Madain Salih in north-west Saudi Arabia. Details are sketchy.

Madain Salih (which means City of the Dead, I think I'm right in saying) was founded by the Nabataeans on the frankincense trade route running parallel with the coast north towards Gaza. The site, which is protected by a fence and a guard post, comprises a series of tombs hewn from sandstone outcrops on a sandy plain. It is often seen as Petra's sister city: it too was founded by the Nabataeans and the style of architecture is the same, though the effect is nothing like as dramatic as at Petra. It is Saudi Arabia's top tourist attraction (not that that is saying much) but a popular weekend destination for ex-pats working in the country nonetheless. Visitors have to have permission from the Department of Antiquities to visit. When I visited in 2005 the site was almost completely deserted.

Madain Salih is also regarded as the gateway to the Hijaz: the holy area of Arabia in which non-Muslims were traditionally extremely unwelcome, and this may help to explain the significance of the attack - though it is not clear whether the victims were Muslim or not.

UPDATE: AFP quote an unnamed French diplomat saying that none of the group attacked were Muslims.

Advanced geometry

The ceiling of the mosque in the Amiriya Madrassah, Rada, Yemen

Abstract Islamic decoration produces some fantastic patterns. I took the photograph above of the painted ceiling of a mosque in Yemen last year. But the very finest examples are found in Central Asia, using glazed ceramic tiles coloured with lapis lazuli. An article in Science now shows that some of these patterns could not have been created with a ruler and compass, as previously thought. They use what are known as quasicrystalline designs instead. As the co-author of the article, Peter Lu, observes, from the thirteenth century onwards the artisans responsible "made tilings that reflect mathematics that were so sophisticated that we didn't figure it out until the last 20 or 30 years."