Al-Masjid al-Ḥaram, The Sacred Mosque in Mecca

Public Domain Photo: Modern buildings rise over Al-Masjid al-Ḥaram, photo by Meshal Obeidallah, Al Qassim Province, Saudi Arabia, taken on May 23, 2006, photo dimension: 1600x1200 pixels, size 366 KB.

Al-Masjid al-Ḥaram (The Sacred Mosque), located in the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, is Islam's holiest place and the largest mosque in the world. The mosque surrounds the Kaaba, the place which Muslims worldwide turn towards while offering their daily prayers. Also known as the Grand Mosque, it can accommodate up to four million Muslim worshipers during the Hajj period, one of the largest annual gatherings of people in the world.

A Yemeni doctor examines an infant

Photo: A female physician in the Republic of Yemen examines an infant in a USAID-sponsored health care clinic, photo (2006) by Ben Barber (USAID). Over the past several fiscal years, Yemen has received on average between $20 and $25 million annually in total U.S. foreign aid.

Muslims were in fact the first to employ women in hospitals, as it was necessary due to the segregation between male and female patients in Islamic hospitals. A unique feature of medieval Muslim hospitals was the role of female staff, including female nurses. Muslim hospitals were also the first to employ female physicians, the most famous being two female physicians from the Banu Zuhr family who served the Almohad ruler Abu Yusuf Ya'qub al-Mansur in the 12th century AD. Later in the 15th century, female surgeons were illustrated for the first time in Şerafeddin Sabuncuoğlu's Cerrahiyyetu'l-Haniyye (Imperial Surgery).

Favorite of the Emir by Benjamin Constant

Image: Favorite of the Emir (1879) by French painter Jean Joseph Benjamin Constant (1845-1902), oil on canvas painting, 142.24 cm x 220.98 cm (56 in x 87 in), located at National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA.

The painting depicts the favorite woman of the Emir, a slave or Eunuch and another woman of the Emir’s harem. A harem refers to the sphere of women in a polygynous in households or palaces and their quarters which is enclosed and forbidden to men. The word originated in the Near East and came to the West via the Ottoman Empire, and the word has been recorded in the English language since 1634. A centuries-old theme in Western culture is the depiction of European women forcibly taken into Oriental harems.

The harem exerted a certain fascination on the European imagination, especially during the Age of Romanticism, due in part to the writings of the adventurer Richard Francis Burton. Many Westerners imagined a harem as a brothel consisting of many sensual young women lying around pools with oiled bodies, with the sole purpose of pleasing the powerful man to whom they had given themselves.

A harem need not necessarily consist of women with whom the head of the household has sexual relations (wives and concubines), but also their children and other females. It may include staff such as slave women and eunuchs. It is being more acknowledged today that the purpose of harems was for the royal upbringing of the future wives of nobles and royal men. Some women of Ottoman harem played very important political roles, and at times it was said that the empire was ruled from the harem.

It is claimed that harems existed in Persia under the Ancient Achaemenids and later Iranian dynasties -- the Sassanid Chosroes II reportedly had a harem of 3000 wives, as well as 12,000 other women -- and lasted well into the Qajar Dynasty. Ancient Egyptian pharaohs are said to have made a ‘constant demand’ of provincial governors for more beautiful servant girls. In Mexico, Aztec ruler Montezuma II, who met Cortes, kept 4,000 concubines; every member of the Aztec nobility was supposed to have had as many consorts as he could afford.

Harem is also the usual English translation of the Chinese language term hougong, meaning the palaces behind. Hougong are large palaces for the Chinese emperor's consorts, concubines, female attendants and eunuchs. The women who lived in an emperor's hougong sometimes numbered in the thousands.

Sleeping Venus by Giorgione on Ajman airmail stamp

This is a scan of the 1- Riyal AIRMAIL postage stamp of ‘AJMAN STATE AND ITS DEPENDENCIES’, on which the famous painting, Venus Dormida: Sleeping Venus’ by Giorgione (CLICK TO VIEW the original painting’s picture) is printed. It seems to be one of the commemorative stamps issued by AJMAN STATE to celebrate art by Western painters, with some of the best paintings included in the set of 16 stamps. Ajman is one of the seven emirates constituting the United Arab Emirates (UAE). CLICK TO VIEW THE FULL SET of similar stamps.

The Sleeping Venus, also known as the Dresden Venus, one of the last works by Giorgione, was incomplete at the time of Giorgione's death, and the landscape and sky were painted by Titian in 1510 to complete the work, which is currently in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden, Germany.

Danae on postage stamp of Ajman, UAE

Danae by Rembrandt van Rijn, was included on a set of commemorative postage stamps issued by Ajman, one of the Emirates of United Arab Emirates (UAE). The scan of the set of 14 such stamps can be found in this blog - CLICK HERE to view.

Ajman postage stamps with Western nude paintings

The scanned image of a set of one-Riyal Airmail postage stamps issued by Ajman State with the printing AJMAN STATE AND ITS DEPENDENCIES seems to be of an era before Ajman joined the present day United Arab Emirates (UAE). On 2 December 1971, Ajman joined the United Arab Emirates, and Ajman is now one of the seven emirates constituting the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the others being Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Umm al-Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah and Fujairah. Interestingly the stamp seems to be a commemorative issue to celebrate nudes in art by Western painters, with some of the best nudes paintings included in the set of 16 stamps, out of which two stamps are removed, and shows 14 stamps in the set. CLICK on the above image to enlarge and view the individual stamps.

The Hookah Lighter, painting by Jean-Leon Gerome

Image: The Hookah Lighter (1898), oil on canvas painting by French painter and sculptor Jean-Leon Gerome.

The hookah or waterpipe is a single or multi-stemmed device made of copper or glass for smoking tobacco. In a hookah the smoke is cooled and filtered by passing through water. Originally from India, hookah has gained popularity in the Middle East and is gaining popularity in North America, Europe, Australia and Brazil.

Iraqi singer Dalli Hadad performing on stage

Photo: Dalli Hadad performing on stage in Jordan

Iraqi singer Dalli Hadad, known for her singling of genres Iraqi music, Arabic pop music, Arabic music and pop music, became famous when she sang the official Iraqi football anthem on winning the 2007 AFC Asian Cup. The 28-year-old Hadad’s first name is also spelled as Dally, Daly and Dali.

In 2002, Dalli Hadad began performing as a singer with an Iraqi folk music band in Baghdad at Festival Babel, and since then she has been performing in Jordan and Syria for the large Iraqi communities present in these countries. Because of moving to Jordan, where she is currently settled (in the Jordanian capital Amman), she had to leave her old band. However, it helped her progress in her career with a change in musical direction. Her debut album ‘Mashtaka Athamk’ and her singles ‘Salam Allah’ and ‘Yemshy Habebe Dala’ (the first song on the album) were well-received.

New Seven Wonders of the World: Petra

Petra, a historic and archaeological city in Jordanian that has rock cut architecture and water conduits system, established around the 6th century BC as the capital city of the Nabataeans, is a symbol of Jordan. It is the most visited tourism attraction in Jordan, on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), a valley extending from Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. Petra is a World Heritage Site since 1985, and it was chosen as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007.

Cave where Dead Sea Scrolls were found

Photo: the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in this cave in Qumran in the West Bank near Dead Sea in Israel.

According to Wikipedia ‘the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in Israel.’

These include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and other documents of great religious and historical significance, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek on parchment and papyrus. These manuscripts date between 150 BC and 70 AD. The scrolls are identified with the ancient Jewish sect Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and some scholars argue that the scrolls were written by priests, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups. Click on the photo to enlarge it. You can use it as a wallpaper (size: 1600x1200 pixels) on your computer or post it in your blog! Read more on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Church of the Beatitudes, Israel

Photo: the Church of the Beatitudes on the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee in Israel, the spot where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount.

The Church of the Beatitudes, near Tabgha in Israel, is a Roman Catholic Church built on the traditional site of the Sermon on the Mount. The current church was built in 1938 near the site of a fourth-century Byzantine church. The floor plan of the church is octagonal, representing the eight Beatitudes (meaning ‘blessed’ or ‘happy’), which are blessings from Jesus recorded in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke.

Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 over Afghanistan

Photo: This Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter plane was conducting a mission over Afghanistan on May 28, 2008 after receiving fuel from a KC-135R Stratotanker aircraft. The KC-135R is assigned to the 22nd Expeditionary Air Refueling Squadron, 376th Air Expeditionary Wing deployed from Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington, USA. Author: Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway.

The rough mountainous terrain of Afghanistan can be seen in the background, well below the fighter plane, as you see in a relief map.

Fighter planes of the class F-16s have been used by the United States in Afghanistan since 2001. In 2002, a tri-national detachment, the European Participating Air Forces, consisting of Denmark, The Netherlands and Norway forces, of 18 F-16 fighter planes in the ground attack role deployed to Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan to support Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

Here is a bit of history of involvement of F-16s in Afghanistan. Since April 2005, eight Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16s, joined by four Royal Norwegian Air Force F-16s in February 2006, have been supporting International Security Assistance Force ground troops in the southern provinces of Afghanistan. On 31 August 2006 a Royal Netherlands Air Force F-16AM crashed in Ghazni province and the pilot, Capt. Michael Donkervoort, was killed, but the cause of the crash could not be determined. However, the investigation report referenced the fact that a camel spider and other creatures had been found recently in the cockpits of Dutch aircraft in Afghanistan. Could it be that the spiders and other creatures in the cockpit had bitten the pilot of the crashed aircraft?

Camel spider is also known as wind scorpion, jerrymuglum, sun scorpion, red Romans, haarskeerders, baardskeerders and sun spider. Scientifically, they are Solifugae, an order of Arachnida with over 1,000 species in about 140 genera.

Camel spiders have appeared in many urban legends. In the Middle East and to some extent in Afghanistan, it is rumored among American and coalition military forces stationed there that camel spiders will feed on living human flesh. The foreign forces there believe that the creature will inject an anesthetic or venom into the skin of its sleeping victim, and then feed voraciously, leaving the victim to awaken with a gaping wound. However, they do not have such an anaesthetic or poison, excepting some species found in India. And they do not attack humans unless threatened.

Other stories about camel spiders say they leap into the air, disembowel camels, scream, and run alongside moving humvees. The greatest threat they pose to humans is their bite in self-defense. There is no chance of death directly caused by the bite, but, due to the strong muscles of their chelicerae, they can produce a proportionately large, ragged wound that is prone to infection.

Click HERE to view Camel Spider.