Thread by @JonathanACBrown

@shahanSean San'a: what do you get the (non-Yemeni) man who has everything? What every Yemeni man has: a jambiyya! (jambiyya belt sold separately) (shot from San'a market, 2007)

@shahanSean [Break from Yemen]: Interesting photo from a bookstore in Dupont Circle, Washington DC, July 2019

@shahanSean Yemen: inventive advertising in the San'a market (2007)

@shahanSean Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, England: the first purpose built mosque in England (1889)

@shahanSean England: graves from the Woking Mosque (Shah Jahan Mosque) cemetery

@shahanSean England: graves from the Woking Mosque (Shah Jahan Mosque) cemetery - Pickthall

@shahanSean England: graves from the Woking Mosque (Shah Jahan Mosque) cemetery

@shahanSean San'a: grain and spice shopping (2007)

@shahanSean San'a: men in the market (2007)

@shahanSean San'a: jambiyya salesman (2007)

@shahanSean San'a: the jambiyya's for show, the hatchet's for work (2007)

@shahanSean San'a market: traditional medicine shop (2007) (site of the only actual jambiyya fight I saw in Yemen)

@shahanSean Mukalla: local minaret (2007)

@shahanSean San'a: minbar of Filayni Mosque (2007)

@shahanSean San'a: Qibla of Filayhi Mosque (Filayni was an error in previous tweet), which is also where Muhammad bin Ali al-Shawkani (d. 1834) is buried

@shahanSean Tarim: Hadrami skyscraper at night (2007)

@shahanSean Tarim: Dar al-Mustafa (2007)

@shahanSean Tarim: Dar al-Mustafa, and behind it the lunar landscape out of which the massive Hadramawt valley network is carved

@shahanSean Tarim: late night visit to the mosque (2007)

@shahanSean Tarim: what kind of anthropologist (amateur) would I be without a picture of the 'Graves of Tarim'?!

@shahanSean Hadramawt: looking out across parts of the massive valley network

@shahanSean Hadramawt: valley greenery

@shahanSean San'a: a typical San'a house (2007)

@shahanSean San'a: Yemen's famous windows, sorry for shoddy quality

@shahanSean San'a: Yemen's famous windows, sorry for shoddy quality

@shahanSean Yemen, Tihama coast of the Red Sea: actual Yemeni restaurant

@shahanSean Mukalla, on the Gulf of Aden coast of Yemen: song & dance from the Mahrajan al-Bilda festival (2007, summer)

@shahanSean Mukalla, on the Gulf of Aden coast of Yemen: song & dance from the Mahrajan al-Bilda festival

@shahanSean Hadramawt Valley, Yemen, the small village of Mashhad: there is not much here but a famous madrasa, many of whose students were from Malaysia and Indonesia in 07. Here it's good, clean fun & dancing (before politics rent all asunder, but ما زال التوافق الروحي يؤلف بيننا) (2007)

@shahanSean Bayt al-Faqih, Yemen: a small town between the larger port city of Hudayda and the ancient entrepot of Zabid, in the Tihama plain. Market day. This woman was not happy with me taking her photo. Tihama is the hottest, humidest place I've ever been (summer 2007)

@shahanSean Zabid, Yemen: between the Red Sea and the route into the cool and green mountains, Zabid was a major center of trade and Islamic learning well into 1800s. This is the mosque of the Prophet's Companion and a governor of Yemen, Abu Musa al-Ash'ari

@shahanSean Zabid, Yemen: Zabid I think is a UNESCO site, and the old city is dusty dirt roads and whitewashed buildings. But the dust and the evening light cast it in filter colors

@shahanSean Zabid, Yemen: an old house

@shahanSean Zabid: qat market time. Tragically, Tihaman folk are as obsessed with chewing qat as San'anis. And motorcycles, transport of choice on the plain, zoom and purr as bags of the green leaves change hands

@shahanSean Zabid: allegedly the room where the master Hadith scholar, Hanafi jurist and author of the greatest of all Arabic dictionaries (Taj al-'Arus), Murtada al-Zabidi (d. 1791) of Gujarat, then of Zabid, then finally of Cairo, lived as a student, with its contemporary occupant

@shahanSean Zabid: minaret

@shahanSean Zabidis out and about on the town

@shahanSean San'a: butcher brothers. These guys really knew their way around a bird

@shahanSean Hadramawt valley, Yemen: regional doors

@shahanSean San'a: Qubbat al-Mutawakkil Mosque

@shahanSean I'll end all these photos with poetry praising the Prophet read in Hajrayn in Hadramawt before, if memory serves, al-Habib 'Alawi al-Kahf, who had never backbitten in his life. الفضل الخالص للرب الكريم الذي أنعم على عبده الناقص بسير في أرضه العجيب