All posts by Islam ElShazly

AHMED HASSANEIN PASHA (20th Century CE – 14th Century AH): DIPLOMAT AND LEGENDARY EXPLORER

By | June 1, 2015 | Explorers, History, Pax Islamica | Comments Off on AHMED HASSANEIN PASHA (20th Century CE – 14th Century AH): DIPLOMAT AND LEGENDARY EXPLORER

By Islam El Shazly

If anyone deserves the title of “Legendary Explorer” in our modern times it has to be this man, Ahmed Hassanein Pasha. At the very least he would have to be on the top of a very short list.

In his lifetime he had been many things, a writer, diplomat, Chamberlain and the very reason he’s on this list, an explorer. Just like his predecessors from the golden age of exploration, he was a man of many talents, and these talents and insatiable curiosity to discover the unknown is what led him to leave civilisation behind and embark on a journey that would take him across the unforgiving Sahara, not once, but twice, and with none of the modern day comforts of SUV’s. Read more…

IBN JUBAYR (12th Century CE – 6th Century AH): THE FIRST TRAVEL WRITER

By | February 10, 2015 | Explorers, History, Pax Islamica | Comments Off on IBN JUBAYR (12th Century CE – 6th Century AH): THE FIRST TRAVEL WRITER

By Islam Elshazly

A week ago–and 823 years in the past– the father of the travelogue genre set out on a two year trip that saw him and a friend travel thousands of miles from Granada and back again, this is a glimpse into that journey and the character of the man from whom countless travellers after him based their writings upon his own. There are thousands of travel blogs and modern travellers on the internet today, many of which – including myself – owe him a debt of gratitude, even if some of us have never heard of him before. Personally, I have done some travelling in the past, while the inclination to write about them never occurred to me at the time, the experience it left me with was — and still is — priceless. The genre of travel writing or the travelogue was born on board a ship in the year 1183 CE, Friday 25 February 1183 CE to be precise (30 Shawwal, 578 AH), at the hands of Ibn Jubayr, on his way on a trip that would take him two years around the same time as one of the most dangerous times in history, the build up to Third Crusade. Read more…

AL-IDRISI (12th Century CE – 5th Century AH): GEOGRAPHER AND CARTOGRAPHER

By | January 15, 2015 | Explorers, History, Pax Islamica | Comments Off on AL-IDRISI (12th Century CE – 5th Century AH): GEOGRAPHER AND CARTOGRAPHER

By Islam El Shazly

Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Abdullah Al-Idrisi, also known as AsShareef Al-Idrisi, was one of the greatest geographers and cartographers in the 12th century CE, if not the top geographer of his time, one whose capacity at visualising and putting into words what the world looked like was not matched by any contemporary mind in Europe where he resided at the court of King Roger II of Sicily. His book, Nuzhat al-Mushtaq, would live on inspiring countless future explorers from Ibn Battuta to Marco Polo.
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EUROPE TO HOST FIRST-EVER INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HALAL TOURISM

By | July 17, 2014 | Reviews | Comments Off on EUROPE TO HOST FIRST-EVER INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON HALAL TOURISM

Recently I have been getting a significant amount of press releases to my inbox, mostly they are related to some award or the other, or some new product or service that is launched by a hotel or that relates to F&B. I usually rummage through them and set them aside, the reason being is that Al Rahalah is not a magazine, and was not intended as one. However, one of these press releases did grab my attention enough to have me post it right here. It falls right within the core of this site: Halal Tourism, and I thought I would share.

It’s about time Halal Tourism got the focus it deserves.

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UNSEEN EGYPT: LANTERN SLIDES PLACES WEEK VIII

By | June 24, 2014 | Egypt, Heritage + Conservation, History, Unseen Egypt | 2 Comments

Deserts have always had a mesmerising, almost terrifying, effect on men. It’s vast, well-nigh endless, and very confusing. It is alien in its features, eerily quiet and when a sound ruptures the silence you would think it is screaming at you from all directions at once.

But they are also magnificently serene, and it is hard to beat a desert’s night sky for its glory.

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LAND OF EXTREMES: SURVIVE IN THE DESERT

By | June 11, 2014 | Be Prepared, Survival | Comments Off on LAND OF EXTREMES: SURVIVE IN THE DESERT

Deserts are some of the most unforgiving habitats on the planet, they are barren wastelands where only the hardiest of creatures can have a hope of surviving. They are harsh and cruel, exceptionally hot during the day, and very cold during the night. During colder periods of the year, temperatures can plummet below freezing come night-time. Distances are another dilemma in the desert, they are dangerously deceptive; objects in the distance seem very close that you can touch them, while in reality they are far enough you could probably perish before reaching them.

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UNSEEN EGYPT: LANTERN SLIDES PLACES WEEK VII

By | June 4, 2014 | Egypt, Heritage + Conservation, History, Unseen Egypt | Comments Off on UNSEEN EGYPT: LANTERN SLIDES PLACES WEEK VII

Not all who visited Egypt, whether in ancient or relatively modern times, were impressed with the ancient architecture of the early Egyptians. Some, like Herodotus and Diodorus of Sicilia, didn’t think very highly of the pyramids builders, especially Kheops and Khefren, they thought they were tyrants and heretics. Others, like French writer Pierre Loti who visited Egypt in 1907, thought the sight of the Pyramids, the Sphinx and the surrounding desert, looked apocalyptic, awful, and surreal! Read more…

BE PREPARED

By | May 31, 2014 | Be Prepared, Survival | Comments Off on BE PREPARED

Be Prepared. If ever a motto was needed in this age of couch potatoedness (I just made this one up!), it has to be the Scout motto. Humanity has advanced so fast over the past five or six decades and has become very dependant on the latest of technologies and gadgets to make our lives even easier than it already is. There’s almost an App for everything! The more advanced (read higher standard of living) the society we live in is, the more complacent we become. We take things for granted, things that our great grandparents couldn’t even dream of, let alone experience.

Skills we learned and developed over thousands of years—turning them into instincts to live by, have now become skills that, we hope, our kids might learn in summer camps, only for some of them to forget after the first stint in front of the television. Read more…

UNSEEN EGYPT: LANTERN SLIDES PLACES WEEK VI

By | May 26, 2014 | Egypt, Heritage + Conservation, History, Unseen Egypt | Comments Off on UNSEEN EGYPT: LANTERN SLIDES PLACES WEEK VI

A confession… Irregularity has become part of the publishing process on this blog, a trend that we’re working hard to reverse! We can blame it all we like on the events taking place in Egypt, and though they can deflate the most enthused of writers, they’re not completely to blame for the randomness of postings. Insha’Allah a noticeable change is on the horizon, so we would like to extend our gratitude for staying with us all this time.

In 1867 One of the greatest literary minds in American history along with a group of Americans toured Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Holy Land (Palestine). The writer is non other than Mark Twain, and the trip was aboard a retired Civil War ship called Quaker City, the trip lasted for five months and his humerus chronicles would eventually be published in 1869. Read more…

FROM HURGHADA TO MASA ALAM ON PEDAL POWER

By | May 13, 2014 | Egypt, Off the Beaten Path, Travel + Leisure, Travel Chronicles | Comments Off on FROM HURGHADA TO MASA ALAM ON PEDAL POWER

By El-Qamar
Photography by El-Qamar and Michael Manoly

Back in March we had a couple of excellent guest posts about cycling trips from Hurghada to El Quseir (here and here), now here’s the latest instalment in the series: from Hurghada to Marsa Alam, a 284 km (176.5 mi) road trip on two wheels over two days. Enjoy. Read more…