Nov 19th, 2012 at 10:00AM:
I'm in Samarra, in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, the birthplace of the insurgency and a hotspot for sectarian tension in war-torn Iraq. My heart is racing and my mouth is dry. This is the most frightened I've been in months.
But I'm not scared of the Sunnis, I'm scared of plummeting to my death.
I'm climbing one of the famous spiral minarets of Samarra, a pair of towers with a narrow ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
islamicarchitecture posts
10 Minutes Of Terror On Vacation In Iraq
Nov 19th, 2012 at 10:00AM:
I'm in Samarra, in the heart of the Sunni Triangle, the birthplace of the insurgency and a hotspot for sectarian tension in war-torn Iraq. My heart is racing and my mouth is dry. This is the most frightened I've been in months.
But I'm not scared of the Sunnis, I'm scared of plummeting to my death.
I'm climbing one of the famous spiral minarets of Samarra, a pair of towers with a narrow ...Visiting The Sacred Sites Of Shia Islam
Nov 17th, 2012 at 1:00PM:
"She wants you to take her picture," a man said when the old woman in the black abaya came up to me.
We were standing in the mosque of Imam Husayn in Karbala, Iraq. This is one of the holiest shrines for Shia Islam. It was near here that Imam Husayn, son of Imam Ali, was killed along with his supporters by the Caliph Yazid. The Shia believe that Ali and Hussein were the rightful successors to ...Last Ottoman dies, but the civilization endures
Sep 26th, 2009 at 1:30PM: It was only a blip on the world news last week, but historians will remember it as the end of an era. Ertugrul Osman, the last heir to the throne of the Ottoman Empire, has died at the age of 97. He was the last grandson of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II, and would have become Sultan himself if the caliphate hadn't been abolished in 1922 as the remnants of the Ottoman Empire remade itself into the ...Five places Obama should have seen in Egypt
Jun 9th, 2009 at 2:30PM: When Obama visited Egypt last week he took time out from making historic speeches to see the country's most famous sights--the Pyramids and the Sphinx at Giza. It's surprising he had the time, considering he was only in the country for nine hours. It reminds me of some of the package tours that zip through the world's most historic country faster than you can say Tutankhamun.
OK, Obama's a busy ...Tourist returns ancient piece of Jerusalem
Jun 2nd, 2009 at 1:30PM: The Israel Antiquities Authority got an interesting package from the U.S. recently, Archaeology News reported. It contained a piece of early medieval stonework and came with a note.
The note said that the sender, who apparently remained anonymous, had been an archaeology student 12 years ago and stole the stone from the excavation he was on so that he would have a memento with which to "pray for ...
