Robyn Creswell

Jan 23, 2025 | nybooks.com | Robyn Creswell

‘Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second caliph and conqueror of Jerusalem, was initially one of the prophet Muhammad’s fiercest enemies. According to early Muslim historians, ‘Umar was an exemplary pagan Arab: physically imposing, short-tempered, and somewhat sentimental, he was a lover of gambling, wine, and poetry. His conversion occurred in 616, three years after Muhammad began preaching to the polytheists of Mecca.

Jul 1, 2024 | nytimes.com | Robyn Creswell

EMPIRE'S SON, EMPIRE'S ORPHAN: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah, by Nile Green"The East is a career," Benjamin Disraeli wrote in his 1847 novel "Tancred," two decades before he became the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The dictum rang true for generations of colonial officers and swashbuckling scholars, from Richard Francis Burton to Lawrence of Arabia.

Mar 2, 2024 | nybooks.com | Sam Needleman |Robyn Creswell

In our February 22 issue, Robyn Creswell writes about one of the most fabled episodes in Arab history in his review of Eric Calderwood’s On Earth or in Poems: The Many Lives of al-Andalus.

Feb 1, 2024 | nybooks.com | Robyn Creswell

Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “Averroës’ Search” begins one afternoon in twelfth-century Andalusia, in the shady Cordovan home of Ibn Rushd, later known in Europe as Averroës. The philosopher is at an impasse in his commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics: two words, “tragedy” and “comedy,” are everywhere in the Greek but opaque to the Arab, who has no notion of dramaturgy.

Mar 15, 2023 | cbc.ca | Robyn Creswell