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Jan 18 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Egypt’s 1977 Bread Intifada, a story about the power of collective action and people power in the Middle East:
“The most recent and vivid memory of bread and revolt in Egypt is tied to the 25 January revolution slogan: “eish, horeya, a’dala egtema’eya” (bread, freedom, and social justice).

Before that there was“Intifadet Al-Khobz” (The Bread Intifada).”

egyptianstreets.com/2022/01/18/45-…
The burning down of police stations, the local centres of repression, was central to the Bread Intifada:
A podcast on the Bread Intifada:

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More from @alexshams_

Alex Shams Profile picture
Dec 16, 2021
Imamzadeh Yahya, a beautiful shrine in Varamin, near Tehran, Iran, dating back 700+ years.

Notice the white gaps between the wall tiles.

What you see is a holy place stripped of its beauty by Western archaelogists.

A thread about archaeology, colonialism, museums, and theft:
In the 1800s, Western archaeologists began excavating in Iran.

The French pressured Iran, weak and indebted, to give it a monopoly.

This allowed them to take half of what they found.

Religious sites were exempted.

Yet, Imamzadeh Yahya was pillaged. ALL tiles were stolen.
Hundreds of lustrous tiles once covered the shrine's wall, many from the 1200s.

They were stripped and stolen by archaeologists, spirited away to Western museums.

This is what those tiles looked like.

These images are taken from the sites of the museums that keep them today.
Read 17 tweets
Alex Shams Profile picture
Dec 15, 2021
The history of the Sikh community in Iran, historically based in Iranian Baluchistan.

It's said that Zahedan ("Ascetics") was renamed in their honor (from Dozdab, meaning "water-thieves").

Today most Iranian Sikhs live in Tehran, home to a gurudwara.

scroll.in/magazine/10122…
Some images I took a few years back of the Sikh gurudwara in central Tehran from the outside. ImageImage
For more information, here's an academic paper about the Sikh community in Zahedan, focused on the languages (mostly Persian and Punjabi) that they speak

ijli.uoz.ac.ir/article_33195_…
Read 6 tweets
Alex Shams Profile picture
Mar 9, 2021
The story of Tehran Street in Seoul, South Korea.

In the 1970s, Tehran and Seoul became sister cities and renamed streets for eachother.

Tehran Street, Seoul was located in a farmland area called Gangnam.

It would soon grow to become Seoul's most important economic hub...
Teheran-ro got its name in 1977, following a visit by Tehran's mayor.

Tehran was more developed than Seoul at the time. What is now Teheran-ro was mostly farmland and gravel.

But in the decades that followed, Gangnam grew into an economic hub as Korea's economy boomed.
When Tehran Street was named, the name was largely aspirational- expressing hope that Seoul could grow like Tehran had

Teheran-ro indeed grew quickly.

Today Gangnam is a business and tech hub- and Teheran-ro it's biggest street, nicknamed "Tehran Valley," after Silicon Valley.
Read 7 tweets
Alex Shams Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020
Proposed designs for the Palestinian flag, submitted by readers to Filastin magazine amid the 1929 Palestinian Revolt against British colonialism and Zionist incursion.

Arab colors were a constant, and some included the Jaffa orange and/or the Cross and Crescent

THREAD:
The addition of orange to the Arab colors reflected the importance of the Jaffa orange in Palestine's coasts

The Cross & Crescent, meanwhile, was likely an inclusive Arab response to the Zionist mvmt's use of exclusively Jewish symbols

More info: plaza.ufl.edu/tsorek/article…
Beginning in the mid-1800s, citrus groves were planted around Jaffa in Palestine's central coast, and became a key prt of local identity and economy.

The famous "Jaffa orange," appropriated by Israel as their own symbol following the mass expulsion of Palestinians in 1948
Read 12 tweets
Alex Shams Profile picture
Sep 21, 2020
Historical gems from/about Pakistan, found in Tehran’s second hand book markets
First off is this 1966 magazine of The Voice of Pakistan, the Persian-language Pakistani radio station that broadcasted nightly into Tehran

On the cover is “Hazrat President,” Ayub Khan, as he was referred to in the Persian
The magazine was printed in Karachi and flown by post to a Tehran- notice the postal stamps
Read 14 tweets
Alex Shams Profile picture
Sep 13, 2020
The countryside of Lorestan, in western Iran, is dotted by dozens of old bridges and aqueducts.

They carefully bring precious water down from western Iran’s springs and glaciers across great distances. ImageImage
Qaleh Hatem Bridge, Negar Borujerd, is an example of both in one.

It’s an aqueduct across a river that connects an old castle on the hill with the town across the river, and also separates drinking water from that used for watering the fields along the riverside. ImageImage
Among the hillsides, pools keep water together for irrigation, and they serve as watering holes for shepherds and nomads bringing their flocks to drink up. ImageImageImage
Read 4 tweets

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