Middle East Cuts

Bread seller in Damascus, circa 1910. Source: mideastimage.com

Box in the shape of a duck (13th century BC). From Minet el Beida, Ugarit port, now Ras Shamra (Syria). Louvre Museum.

Ernest R. Ashton, Evening near the Pyramids, 1898.

Arab woman wearing a traditional mask in Muscat, Oman, c. 1919. Photograph by Frederick Simpich Sr. / National Geographic.

The Al-Malwiya minaret at the Al-Mutawakkil Mosque, in Samarra, Iraq. Photograph by Karim Kadim / AP.

View of the city and port of Alexandria, and the Isle of Pharos, Egypt. Illustration c. 1750.

Photograph by Morteza Soorani, from the book Iranian Living Room (Fabrica, 2013).

The round city of Baghdad in the 10th century, the peak of the Abbasid Caliphate. Illustration by Jean Soutif / Science Photo Library.

Red Sea, 1860. By August H. Petermann, from Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes’ Geographischer Anstalt uber Wichtige Neue Erforschungen auf dem Gesammtgebiete der Geographie (Volume 6, 1860).

Jaffa, 1947. Photographer unknown.

Pasargadae, Iran. The mausoleum of Cyrus in a cyanotype from a glass plate negative from the papers of Ernst Herzfeld. (Sackler Gallery of Art)

Nasir al-Mulk mosque, Shiraz, Iran. Photograph by Miguel Quental, National Geographic Your Shot.

Persian talisman. According to The New Inquiry, "a brass amulet to render its bearer more attractive and help her capture and subdue a lover. The lover is symbolized here as a beast of burden."

(vía Flower Power | REORIENT – Middle Eastern Arts and Culture Magazine)

Jebal Shugruf, Haraz Mountains, Yemen. Morning mist rising from the valley. Photo by Matjaz Krivic.