The Makings of History – The ‘German Lawrence of Arabia’
In a little known Nazi program in North Africa and Middle East, operatives were sent in to create hostilities between the Arabs and British. The Haaretz Daily Newspaper reports on Franz Wimmer-Lamquet who was dubbed the “German Lawrence of Arabia.”
Franz Wimmer-Lamquet loved his past. He gave interviews to journalists and wrote memoirs
about his activities on behalf of the Third Reich, and found his way into neo-Nazi circles. If he is still alive, he may have felt great satisfaction this week when it became known that even the British nicknamed him the “German Lawrence of Arabia.” The Franz Wimmer-Lamquet file is among the materials the British security agency MI5 made accessible this week to scholars at Britain’s National Archives. And from it one could see at least one characteristic this man shared with the legendary Lawrence of Arabia: He too had a tendency to make things up.
Anyone who has ever conducted historical research is familiar with the difficulty of deciding which is more dubious: biographical reports that are buried in secret files of intelligence agencies, or autobiographies that people write themselves. Autobiographical interviews that people give to newspapers are quite often the most dubious of all.
Read more of the article at The Makings of History / The ‘German Lawrence of Arabia’ – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.
Lawrence of Judea
T.E. Lawrence—better known in Britain and throughout the Middle East as Lawrence of 
Arabia—was a lifelong friend of Arab national aspirations. In 1917 and 1918 he participated as a British officer in the Arab revolt against the Turks, a revolt led by Sharif Hussein, later King of the Hedjaz. He was also an adviser to Hussein’s son Feisal, whom he hoped to see on the throne of Syria. For generations of British Arabists, Lawrence was and remains a symbol of British understanding of and support for the Arab cause. Virtually unknown, however, is his understanding of and support for Jewish national aspirations in the same era.
In mid-December 1918, a month after the end of World War I, Lawrence was instrumental in securing an agreement between Emir Feisal and the Zionist leader Dr. Chaim Weizmann. The meeting was held at the Carlton Hotel in London.
Read More at The Cutting Edge News.
Story by Martin Gilbert
The Moors
Historical clothing design of the day is the Moors. Each day a new design is chosen and an article is posted to highlight the historical significance of the design.
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of Berber, Black African and Arab descent from Northern Africa, some of whom came to conquer and occupy the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed other religions. They called the territory Al Andalus, comprising most of what is now Spain and Portugal.
“Moors” are not a distinct or self-defined people. Medieval and early modern Europeans applied the name primarily to Berbers, but also at various times to Arabs, Muslim Iberians and West Africans from Mali and Niger who had been absorbed into the Almoravid dynasty. Mainstream scholars observed in 1911 that “The term ‘Moors’ has no real ethnological value.”
The Andalusian Moors of the late Medieval era inhabited the Iberian Peninsula after the Moorish conquests of the Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates, and the final Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The Moors’ rule stretched at times as far as modern-day Mauritania, West African countries, and the Senegal River. Earlier, the Classical Romans interacted (and later conquered) parts of 
Mauretania, a state that covered northern portions of modern Morocco and much of north western and central Algeria during the classical period. The people of the region were noted in Classical literature as the Mauri.
The term Mauri, or variations, was later used by European traders and explorers of the 16th to 18th centuries to designate ethnic Berber and Arab groups speaking the Hassaniya Arabic dialect. Today such groups inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, western Sahara, Morocco, Niger and Mali. Speakers of European languages have historically designated a number of associated ethnic groups as “Moors”. In modern Iberia, the term is applied to people of Moroccan ethnicity living in Europe. “Moor” is sometimes colloquially applied to any person from North Africa.
Read More about the Moors on Wikipedia.com
Archaeological City of Al-Bara
The archaeological city of Al-Bara in Idleb governorate contains a large number of ruins dating back to Roman, Byzantine and Arab eras that were used for 
religious, economic, social and military purposes in these eras.
Tourists visiting Al-Bara will see a beautiful heritage and architectural tableau surrounded by olive trees. The city has an overall area of 6 square kilometers and is located on the western slope of al-Arbaeen mountain 850 meters above see level, between the cities of Idleb, Aleppo and Lattakia.
A stone found in an ancient structure within the city shows that Al-Bara was known as “Kafar Adbarta” and had a degree of significance during the 2nd century BC. In the Roman era, it was known as “Karo Bira” and later “Kafat Albara.” Later, Arab historians referred to it as Al-Bara.
Read More at Archaeological City of Al-Bara | English | TOURISM | DayPress.
A cup of history for coffee lovers
Because this is the story of coffee — rather, stories of coffee.
It’s not my story though (well, it is my story and yours if you are a java-junkie like me); this is the story of an intrepid firangi journalist who followed the ancient coffee route in Indiana Jones fashion, from the forbidden city of Harrar to war-torn Yemen to Kolkata’s cavernous Coffee House. And finally to Mysore and filter coffee.
I had always been content to believe that story about goats eating coffee seeds in Ethiopia as the beginning of the discovery of coffee in the world.
It is such a good story, and I’ll tell it here again, before I tell you what the more likely origins of the bean are in the gospel according to The Devil’s Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee.
An Ethiopian goatherd named Kaldi noticed that some of his goats after having eaten the bright red berries of a plant were prancing and dancing as though drunk. He eats the fruit himself and becomes highly caffeinated. This, says author Stewart Lee Allen, is a nice myth.
The use of coffee probably began around 1,500 to 3,000 years ago by the Ethiopian tribe of Oromos, nomads from the kingdom of Kefa, who munched on the bean rather than brewing it. Kefa could also have been the root of the word coffee, and not, as long believed, the Arabic qahwa (which became the Turkish khave). “The Kefans also gave us the world’s first baristas”, notes Allen, “a caste called the Tofaco, who not only brewed the king’s coffee but also poured it down his throat”
Read More at A cup of history for coffee lovers.
Story by Pradeep Sebastian
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