The Marsh Arabs

The Marsh Arabs

1964 • 292 pages

Ratings3

Average rating5

15

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.


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October 13, 2019
Daren
DarenSupporter

This is brilliant. I have no justification for having given it only 4 stars when i finished it!!

January 5, 2013

An excellent read on a world that no longer exists.

July 12, 2015