Caliph's House - A Year In Casablanca

Travel

Tahir Shah

Africa

BANTAM BOOKS

Tahir Shah’s The Caliph’s House, describing his first year in Casablanca, was hailed by critics and compared to such travel classics as A Year in Provence and Under the Tuscan Sun. Now Shah takes us deeper into the heart of this exotic and magical land to uncover mysteries that have been hidden from Western eyes for centuries.… In this entertaining and penetrating book, Tahir sets out on a bold new journey across Morocco that becomes an adventure worthy of the mythical Arabian Nights. As he wends his way through the labyrinthine medinas of Fez and Marrakesh, traverses the Sahara sands, and tastes the hospitality of ordinary Moroccans, Tahir collects a dazzling treasury of traditional stories, gleaned from the heritage of A Thousand and One Nights. The tales, recounted by a vivid cast of characters, reveal fragments of wisdom and an oriental way of thinking that is both enthralling and fresh. A link in the chain of scholars and teachers who have passed these stories down for centuries like a baton in a relay race, Shah reaches layers of culture that most visitors hardly realize exist, and eventually discovers the story living in his own heart. Along the way he describes the colors, characters, and the passion of Morocco, and comes to understand why it is such an enchanting land. From master masons who labor only at night to Sufi wise men who write for soap operas, and Tuareg guides afflicted by reality TV, In Arabian Nights takes us on an unforgettable journey, shining a light on facets of a society that are normally left in darkness. From the Hardcover edition.

In Arabian Nights

Random House]

IN SEARCH OF KING SOLOMON'S MINES

Religion & Spirituality

John Murray

King Solomon, the Bible's wisest king, also possessed extraordinary wealth. He built a temple at Jerusalem that was said to be more fabulous than any other landmark in the ancient world, heavily adorned with gold from Ophir. The precise location of this legendary land has been one of history's great unsolved mysteries. Long before Rider Haggard's classic adventure novel King Solomon's Mines produced a fresh outbreak of gold fever, explorers, scientists and theologians had scoured the world for the source of the king's astonishing wealth. Tahir Shah takes up the quest, using as his leads a mixture of texts including the Septuagint, the earliest form of the Bible, as well as geological, geographical and folkloric sources. Time and again the evidence points towards Ethiopia, the ancient kingdom in the horn of Africa whose imperial family claims descent from Menelik, the son born to Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. Tahir Shah's trail takes him to a remote cliff-face monastery where the monks pull visitors up on a leather rope, to the ruined castles of Gondar, and to the churches of Lalibela, hewn from solid rock.In the south, he discovers an enormous illegal gold mine where thousands of men, women and children dig with their hands. But the hardest leg of the journey is to the accursed mountain of Tullu Wallel, where legend says there lies an ancient shaft, once the entrance of King Solomon's mines.

In Search of King Solomon's Mines

Christian Books & Bibles

In 1572, the Spanish Conquistadors stormed the Inca stronghold of Vilcabamba in Peru, searching for golden treasure, only to find the city deserted, burned, and already stripped of its wealth. Myth has it that the Incas had retreated deep into the jungle, where they built another magnificent, secret city. For centuries, explorers, adventurers and archaeologists have searched for the lost city and its gold, known by locals as 'The House of the Tiger King'. Falling victim to this obsession himself, Tahir Shah selects a motley team of desperados for an expedition into the dense jungle in search of the lost city. As his thrilling but ultimately hapless quest unfolds, Shah is drawn to considering why such legends are so enduring.

House of the Tiger King : The Quest for a Lost City

John Murray Publishers, Ltd.

Arcade

. 1998 cover creased light tanning to pages

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Asia

Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd )

Forty-five million years ago, the supercontinent of Gondwanaland split apart. This created what are now known as India, Africa and South America. The huge landmass was named after the Gond people of India. Meeting a Gond storyteller on a visit to Bombay, Tahir Shah heard their ancient saga. He vowed to visit all three parts of Gondwanaland. As he travelled he met an extraordinary range of wanderers and expatriates, attended magical ceremonies and sought mythical treasures. Roughing it most of the way, Shah's expeditions move through sweltering India and Pakistan, Uganda and Rwanda, Kenya and Liberia, Brazil and finally Argentina's Patagonian glaciers. Roughing it for most of the journey, Shah shared his travels and his tales with a diverting mix of eccentric and entertaining characters, from Osman and Prideep, Bombay's answer to Laurel and Hardy, to Oswaldo Rodrigues Oswaldo, a well turned out Patagonian version of Danny De Vito.

Beyond the Devil's Teeth : Journeys in Gondwanaland

Octagon

For centuries, the greatest explorers of their age were dispatched from the power-houses of Europe London, Paris and Berlin on a quest unlike any other: To be the first white Christian to visit, and then to sack, the fabled metropolis of Timbuctoo. 
 Most of them never returned alive. 
 At the height of the Timbuctoo mania, two hundred years ago, it was widely believed that the elusive Saharan city was fashioned in entirety from the purest gold everything from the buildings to the cobble-stones, from the buckets to the bedsteads was said to be made from it. 
 One winter night in 1815, a young illiterate American seaman named Robert Adams was discovered half-naked and starving on the snow-bound streets of London. His skin seared from years in the African desert, he claimed to have been a guest of the King of Timbuctoo. 
 Thought of an American claiming anything let alone the greatest prize in exploration was abhorrent in the extreme. Closing ranks against their unwelcome American guest, the British Establishment lampooned his tale, and began a campaign of discrediting him, one that continues even today. 
 An astonishing tale based on true-life endurance, Tahir Shah s epic novel Timbuctoo brilliantly recreates the obsessions of the time, as a backdrop for one of the greatest love stories ever told. Timbuctoo will be released on June 28, 2012. This is a limited edition hardback, very very high spec, and designed along the lines of the travel books of two centuries ago. It weighs 2 kilos (almost 4.5 lbs), has fabulous marbled endpapers, a silk bookmark, a pouch at the rear with inserts, and six huge fold-out maps. The paper is wood-free, and the cover embossed with raised gold type. In addition, each copy contains the clues needed to begin a treasure hunt that could result in locating one of four golden treasures of Timbuctoo. The book is a thing of extraordinary beauty, and the kind of book that will last two hundred years or more.

Timbuctoo

Secretum Mundi Publishing

Phoenix Paperbacks

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Books by Tahir Shah