Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar - Couverture souple

Ruete, Emily

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0486471217 ISBN 13 : 9780486471211

Editeur : Dover Publications Inc., 2009

Synopsis

Return to an era when Zanzibar was ruled by sultans, and enter a vanished world of harems, slave trading, and court intrigues. In this insider's story, a sultan's daughter who fled her gilded cage offers a compelling look at nineteenth-century Arabic and African royal life. After years of exile in Europe, the former princess wrote this fascinating memoir as a legacy for her children and a warm reminiscence of her island home. Born Salamah bint Said, Princess of Zanzibar, in 1844, author Emily Ruete grew up in a harem with scores of siblings. The royal family maintained its fabulous wealth and luxury with a robust traffic in ivory, spices, and human bondage. Ruete ventures beyond the palace, into the city and plantations where European traders, missionaries, and colonists exercised a growing influence. After her dramatic elopement with a German trader, Ruete attained the perspective to form a comparison of the lives of women in Muslim society with those of their European contemporaries. Originally published in 1886, this remarkable autobiography will captivate readers interested in Zanzibar and Eastern Africa as well as students of Arabic, Islam, and women's studies.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

"[A]n intriguing account of court life in an outpost of the Islamic empire in Africa." Journal of World History

In 1844, Salamah bint Saïd was born into royalty of the sultanate of Zanzibar and Omar.

She was the youngest out of Sayyid Said bin Sultan Al-Busaid’s thirty children and daughter of a Circassian concubine, and through her early years spent in a variety of great palaces she experienced vast wealth.

This is the story of Saïd’s life, written after she had left Zanzibar and eloped with Rudolph Heinrich Ruete to Germany to begin life under her new name, Emily Ruete.

From an early age she was witness to the intrigue and politics of the harem, even involving herself at the tender age of fifteen to the factional infighting and an attempted coup by her brother Barghash against another brother.

But this is more than merely an interesting story of one Arabian princess’s life in East Africa, as Saïd provides a fascinating insight into the social and cultural history of Zanzibar.

She writes on numerous topics from schooling to fashion, medical treatment to slavery, thus giving a vivid impression of when she lived.

After she married Rudolph Ruete and converted to Christianity, they spent the rest of their lives in Hamburg. She wrote Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar in German in 1886. It was the first known autobiography of an Arabian woman. She died in 1924 in Germany at the age of 79. This edition was translated by Lionel Strachey and published in 1907. Strachey died in 1927.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Dover Publications Inc.
• Date d'édition: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0486471217
• ISBN 13: 9780486471211
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 288