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FURTHER READING
Cairo: 1001 Years of the City Victorious. Janet Abu-Lughod.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.
Out of print, but you may be able to find this in a
second-hand bookshop. I found some copies listed on
Amazon.com. It remains probably the best history of the
development of Cairo.Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Lila
Abu-Lughod. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000.
This is a compelling ethnography based on the author’s
living with Bedouins in the Egyptian Western desert that
is hard to put down.The Koran Interpreted: A Translation. Arthur J Arberry. New
York, NY: Touchstone, 1996.
Many scholars regard this as the most literary English
translation of the Qur’an.Egyptian Religion Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life. E A Wallis
Budge. New York, NY: Cosimo Books, 2005.
Originally published in 1899, you may find this book
tedious, but it is worth it if you are interested in ancient
Egyptian religion. In particular, this book discusses how
ancient Egyptians regarded resurrection and future life.
The major source is the collection of religious papyri
named the ‘Book of the Dead’. If you are interested in
the topic, see also Budge’s works entitled The Book of the
Dead (New York, NY: Gramercy Books, 1995) and Egyptian
Magic (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003).Islam: The Straight Path. John Esposito. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press, Inc, 2004.
Put together with Esposito’s Islam and Politics (Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998), you can get a good
introduction to Islam and the issues related to modern
Islamic activism.