Review (PDF) Unknown Oman
Book by Phillips, Wendell
Hardcover: 319 pages
Publisher: Intl Book Centre (June 1972)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0866850252
ISBN-13: 978-0866850254
Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 6.2 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
Best Sellers Rank: #4,733,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #99 in Books > History > Middle East > Oman #4621 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > History > Middle East
The book's content is pretty amazing, and you'd have to be a really rotten writer not to be able to write something interesting about Oman at that time, But Wendell is not a rotten writer; and perhaps a prototype for Indiana Jones.Wendell turns up in the area as an artchaeology grad student in hsi 20s and talks his way into a major 'dig', in the Yemen. Finds some stuff that indicates that it's Sheba's city (or one of them), the war starts in the Yemen, he and his crew have to literally drop everything and run for the border of Oman. He gets befriended by the old Sultan and goes off to look for a lost city in the Rub al Kali. As well as this does some research and digging in Sohar and other places.The information on the digs is interesting, but what is really interesting in this book are his comments documenting contemporary Oman - before the oil was found. This was a place that had no roads no schools no hospitals, and yet had fallen from the position of having had a trading empire (slaves) that included the E coast of Africa as its sphere of interest and Zanzibar as the sister city of Muscat. They sent an equipped warship to America as a present - and yet it had become utterly forgotten by the rest of the world. Unknown indeed.Its a fascinating read. It could have been an account by Burton or Speke (if he could have written anything) but its not a report of 19thC Africa, this is the middle of the 20thC. Its quite extraordinary.The chapter on 'medical' practices alone is worth having the book for. It's a bit gruesome, but made sense of thing that i saw in Oman while i was there. Lots of men with burn scars. Searing was a sort of arabic form of acupuncture - runny nose? hmm red hot iron to the back of the neck should fix it.
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