Black Tents of Arabia: (My Life Among the Bedouins) (Hungry Mind Find Series)

by Carl R. Raswan

Release Date: June, 1998

Edition: Paperback

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First person story of life with the Bedouin by a Westerner.

The author was a German soldier in WWI who lived with the Bedouin for 22 years after the war. His initial attraction was his love of Arabian horses, but he eventually acquiired the language and customs of the Ruala tribe. Incredibly violent scenes are described in great detail as he rides in raiding parties and fights gun battles with other tribes. One compelling scene describes the sound of bullets smacking into the chest of his best friend. The food scenes are also not for the faint of heart; you may not want to know what they do with the contents of a dead camel's stomach. There is also much in the book that makes one admire the laws of the desert and the nomadic customs that have evolved. This is not a scientific book or an anthropological text, but it should be of extreme interest to any one who seriously studies these people. My interest in oriental rugs caused me to pick it up at a local junk store, and I found it thoroughly engrossing.

Captivating story of experiences, knowledge and triumph...

This is an expanded edition of the book first published in 1935, in which the author re-counts his desert experiences in pursuit of knowledge of the Arabian horse. He later used what he learned to become a principal agent in building up the breed in the United States and Europe in the 20th century. Traveling in the Arabian Peninsula shortly before the founding of Saudi Arabia in 1932, Raswan was renowned among the tribes for his deep respect of Bedouin ways, especially horsemanship and horse breed-ing. Born in Dresden in 1893, he emigrated to the United States in 1921, where he as-sisted in the historic Davenport importation and with the establishment of the country's earliest Arabian stud farms. This edition contains 100 pages of photographs. DD