[Sca-cooks] Books

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Cadoc MacDairi wrote:
>It is time for me to cram my head with more knowledge.
>I want to know what folks have been reading lately (ISBNs
>  are nice) and what I would need to go along with it.
>I need to expand my knowledge outside of what I know already
>(don't ask me what I know already, that has caused
>lesser being's heads to explode with a partial answer)

Well, my bed is full of books.

Quite a few (about seven) are on modern knitting, including Horst
Schulz's two books, both of which are in German.

I'm working on stopping feeling guilty when i knit something modern
that i can use in my mundane life instead something from 12-14th c.
Egypt for SCA use.

"Ethnic Socks & Stockings: A Compendium of Eastern Design &
Technique" by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts - from which i am reproducing
a pair of 20th century Turkish red-and-yellow two-color stranded-knit
knee socks

Then there are:

"The Neapolitan Recipe Collection - Cuoco Napoletano" by Terence Scully

"Mamluk Playing Cards" by Leo A. Mayer (from the library) - has color
plates of playing cards that bear a striking resemblance to early
Tarot suits.

"Saracenic Heraldry" by Leo A. Mayer - on Mamluk heraldry, this is
the principle work on this topic.

"Timur and the Princely Vision: Persian Art and Culture in the
Fifteenth Century" by Thomas Lentz and Glenn Lowry - obviously this
is on the Timurid dynasty

"The Golden Age of Persian Art: 1501-1722" by Sheila Canby - this is
on the Safavid dynasty

"Travels in Persian, 1673-1677" by Sir John (actually Jean) Chardin

"Arab Dress: A Short History" by Yedida Stillman - covers clothing in
the Arabo-Muslim world from Roman times to modern times and from
al-Andalus through al-Maghrib even to Persia, with a long stop with
the Abbasids

"The Muslim Discovery of Europe" by Bernard Lewis - mostly out of
period for the SCA - it's not about "voyages of discovery" but rather
the gradual awakening of interest in Europe within Muslim cultures,
especially, but not limited to, Ottoman Turkey

"Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to al-Madinah and Meccah" by Sir
Richard Burton - his famous trip to Mecca for which he disguised
himself as a Persian-born Afghan and carried it off. It took me a
while to get into it, as it was hard for me to get past his
white-male-English racism-sexism-elitism.

and

"Therapeutic Herb Manual" by Ed Smith

Anahita