In An Antique Land

In An Antique Land is a good historical and modern source of the social and religious life of the Middle East. Amitov Ghosh, a European anthropologist without a Muslim background, gives a first hand account of his relationships with Muslims during his stay in Egypt in the late twentieth century. Ghosh’s accounts portray his “outsider” view of the way people in Egypt acted during the late twentieth century, while at the same time giving a historical view of the area. The relationships he describes in his accounts prove that he was thought of as an “outsider.” He also recalls the difference in how women were treated during the time of his stay in Egypt, compared to the way they had been treated in other historical accounts. This paper will focus on the Muslim and non-Muslim relations, as well as the treatment of women as depicted by Ghosh in his diaries.
Ghosh was trying to track the life of a slave who had died 700 years earlier. He traveled to Egypt in order to trace t...