The Marsh Arabs

By Wilfred Thesiger

Subjects: Essays & Travelogues, Tigris river valley, Vida social y costumbres, Thesiger, Wilfred, 1910-2003, Middle East - General, Iraq, Manners and customs, Marsh Arabs, Middle East - History - 20th Century, Arabs, Iraq, social life and customs, Personal Memoirs, Travel writing, Social life and customs, Social Situations And Conditions, Description and travel, Cultural Characteristics, Biography / Autobiography, Ethnology, History, Travel, Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, Iraq, description and travel, Euphrates river

Description: 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.