 My presentation is in two parts, and the first part is the background. More or less, the generic information about what Middle Eastern region, as we know it, has contributed to Western civilization. And so that is in the areas of math, medicine, sciences, a lot of other things. I was going to show a brief clip from Michael Woods documentary, which I recommend, an excellent documentary. It's called, very relevant to our session, is called Iraq, the cradle of civilization. But when I looked at the time constraints, I decided to just do the homework, make the notes for you. So on a slide, I put them there. So I will not be showing that, and we'll have more time to cover the second part, which is more difficult in terms of access. You can get the kind of information about contributions on the internet. The second part is the literary influences from the Middle East on some great Western writers. So I'll be spending more time on that than on the first part. So before I get started with my presentation, I would also like to announce that it's a good news that at City College, we have started a certificate program in Middle East Studies. And I have some brochures here. Please help yourself as you leave. It is important to add that you don't have to be a candidate for a certificate to enjoy the richness of such courses. The courses are open to anyone with interest. The card system, I know some of you may not like it. You can ask your questions. But I just think it economizes on time. And also more participation, people can write. Sometimes somebody is making a very good point, but takes a long time. I've done that many times. So it was for that reason I thought the cards would be a good way to economize. So to start with my lecture or talk or presentation, so this is the title, as you can see. And the second part of this slide is what I was going to show you in the video clip. So we can just look at it very quickly. What is so important about the Middle East? So as a Potamian contributions to Western civilization, writing, first astronomy, first map of the world, first laws, King Hammurabi's code of law, first sciences, first literature, all these first time achievements. And then the three Abrahamic faiths also came out of the Middle East. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Sufism is another contribution which is embraced by the whole world, regardless of one's faith. One can warm up to Sufism, people who don't like orthodox religions. They love Sufism because of its warmth and its openness. I think it is something which we will look at a little bit in more detail when we talk about Rumi, one of the great Sufi writers. So you can read the rest of the script here. And I want to mention, toward the end of the slide, you will notice it is very relevant that there are two books, primarily the first one, which says, for specific Middle Eastern and Islamic influences, Philip Pascini's recent book, Domes, Arches, and Minerates, a history of Islamic-inspired buildings in America, it is an essential resource. Nothing could be more relevant for our purposes. And the author of the book himself happens to be here. So I'm honored to have Phil right here. The second book I have mentioned there is also interesting and relevant. It is titled, very interestingly, All America. All is the Arabic for the All America. And as you can see, the subtitle tells you what the book is really about. It travels through America's Arab and Islamic roots. Phil's book is very scholarly. And I think if you pick it up, you really want to finish it, because it's so interestingly presented. So it's really a rare book. We're also fortunate today that our event is being covered by a journalist of high integrity who writes for Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. And the person happens to be here. That's Elaine Pascini. So we are very fortunate to have these two individuals interested in this program. I'm going to just read maybe one or two lines from here. In the news you see or hear some names these days. One city is Talafar, T-A-L-A-F-A-R, second word. That is probably the only city according to Michael Wood, which has continued through all these millennia and survives. It still is there. And right now, there is an attempt to take Talafar back from ISIS. So what will happen there? Something similar to what happened in Mosul. When Mosul was captured, thousands of innocent people were also slaughtered in the process. And the other city besides Talafar is Uruk. And Uruk, U-R-U-K, it existed up until 300 AD. And the gate of Uruk, you can see that gate even today in some sort of condition, dilapidated, but it's still there. So the continuity of city life, so that is something which is a great contribution from Mesopotamia, specifically Sumer, which is the southern part of Iraq. Writing begins there. It is known as the cuneiform writing, the badge-shaped symbols. And it is a miracle of archaeology. I would say that I can hold a little book in my hand, The Epic of Gilgamesh, which was inscribed on tablets of clay. And then it was found through rigorous efforts of archaeologists. And deciphering that language is really a miracle. So we are very fortunate we have a lot of archaeologists still working on some other scripts of other civilization. So that's basically the information that I wouldn't want to share with you. He doesn't mention what I would like to add that there are other contributions made by people much later from the Middle East. One contribution which must be acknowledged is the translation into Arabic of all existing Greek and Roman manuscripts. The Arabs were great translators, and they translated everything they could put their hands on. It was because of those translations, availability, that the European Renaissance was possible. The standard encyclopedia of medicine of the medieval time was by Avicenna. He wrote this encyclopedia known as the kanun, C-A-N-U-N, which means the law. And another person who is very, very famous and well-known and made huge contributions is known as Razi, R-A-Z-I. Their names are there, but they're buried in too much verbiage. I am still trying to cut down on the words. He wrote about 200 books, and it was these people who for the first time diagnosed smallpox and a few other diseases, and they introduced the idea of words, separate words for separate contagious illnesses. So this was something huge. Al-Khwarizmi is known as the father of algebra. Al-Khwarizmi's name became Algorithm. Al-Khwarizmi in Algorithm. And so the algebra comes from the Arab scholars. The Indian concept of zero and the Arabic numerals, which also are of Indian origin, they were introduced to Europe by the Arabs. So I'm going to move on to the literature part of this presentation. I have to keep my eye on the clock also. The epic of Gilgamesh, as I mentioned, is the first book of literature known to humanity. What does it contain? I have it with me. It's a very thin book. You can have a look if you want. If you promise not to handle it carefully, because it may fall apart. The epic has themes which are still extremely relevant, like the quest for everlasting life. And then at the same time, a very simple recipe for living a contented life. I would like to draw your attention to the recipe for the contented life. If you look at the middle of the slide, the words in bold letters, Gilgamesh, where are you hurrying to? You will never find that life for which you are looking, everlasting life. Gilgamesh, fill your belly with good things. Dance and be merry. Feast and rejoice. Cherish the little hand that holds your hand and make your wife happy in your embrace. For this, too, is the lot of man. It's not just that you have to be out on adventures, the impossible adventures. You could be doing these small things, and they can give you fulfillment. So Gilgamesh was on his quest for everlasting life after he lost his closest friend, brother-like, by the name Enkidu. It's also a good theme of the brotherhood of these two people, very strong relation. So much so that after Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh has no desire to live unless he can vanquish just the very existence of death. And Enkidu is known as the man from the hills, very different. And Gilgamesh is the king of Uruk, and very, very much of a city kind of a person. So the two diverse people can unite and be so close that life would be meaningless without the other person. So these themes run through this great epic. I'm taking you to the next slide, which I'm sure you will enjoy very much if you are not familiar with it. This is a poem inscribed on a Persian carpet and given to the United Nations by the government of Iran as a gift. The words are in Farsi on the right, and the translation is, the sons of Adam are limbs of each other, having been created of one essence when the calamity of time affects one limb. The other limbs cannot remain at rest. If you have no sympathy for the troubles of others, you are unworthy to be called by the name of a human. Interestingly, former president, I hate to say the word former for him, Barack Obama, he used reference to this poem in his first message to the Iranian people on the eve of the new year, which in Iran they call Naaruz. So also if you want to really know more about the Middle Eastern contributions to Western civilization, listen to his lecture of 2009 that he gave from Cairo. Easily available. So nice to learn about the history through some eloquent, elegant speeches, isn't it? The tweets can teach you that much. OK, Sadhi's prose tales are also very captivating. One prose tale is about Sadhi feeling bad that he doesn't have slippers. And he walks barefoot to the mosque to pray. When he goes inside the mosque, he sees a man without feet. So he was complaining about slippers. And he is somebody who is without. It's a very classic tale, which most of us probably are familiar with. And then another very comic story about a conversation between a Jewish and a Muslim man. And Sadhi says, everyone thinks himself perfect in intellect. And should wisdom disappear from the surface of the earth, still no one will acknowledge his own ignorance. So he has a very open attitude. And he just says that no one is perfect, but we are all hung up on the idea of presenting ourselves as we are flawless. One other story which I think you will enjoy reference to is about the advice. If you know something, of course, speak up, participate, and share your knowledge. But if you don't know something, the best approach is silence. And Mark Twain said something very funny on that topic. Also, you may have heard it, but I want to repeat it. Twain said, if you don't know something, it is better to act dumb and keep your mouth shut rather than open it and remove all doubt. He's classic in the way he puts things. He is eulogized by Emerson in the last paragraph you can see. And Emerson, a very famous American author, wrote about Sadhi, about half his, and some other Persian poets, and he made an audience for them because of his stature. It was very helpful. Hafiz is the next author I want to introduce you to. His full name is Sham Suddin, but he's known as Hafiz. Goethe used the title of the works of Hafiz, Diwan, D-I-V-A-N, which means collection. And Goethe used, borrowed that from Hafiz to write his East-Best Diwan. That's Goethe. And many French writers, and Emerson, as I mentioned, they translated his works, and they wrote very highly, very complimentary words about him. Gertrude Bell, the British author and also someone who was very much involved in the Middle East, spent a lot of time there. She translated Hafiz. I think it's very admirable when somebody whose language is not Farsi, is able to become so good at it that can translate. So Gertrude Bell introduced Hafiz in a long introduction. She died in the middle of 20th century. So some of her views are a bit dated for me, but she did a wonderful job. And I want to just read some of her words that she has to say about Hafiz and the poetry of Hafiz. So the very last section has lines from Hafiz. And Gertrude Bell says that these lines are always relevant, whether they are written today or 500 years ago. The first one is, my beloved is gone, and I had not even bid him farewell. How many times do we think that we have time, and then when the time comes to say goodbye, you are not able to really do a good job, even express yourself? And the second one about the loss of his son. Very painful. He lost his son and also his wife, and he had a pretty sad time of his life at that time. And he says, then said my heart, I will rest me in the city, which is illumined by her presence. Already her feet were bent upon a longer journey, but my poor heart knew it not. The next set of verses from Hafiz, these are what have made him very famous. If the scent of her hair were to blow across my dust, when I had been dead 100 years, my molding bones would rise and come dancing out of the tomb. That's an ultimate compliment, we love it. And the last one is very popular with Nietzsche, the German philosopher, love this quotation, because he uses the words ecstatic wisdom to describe Hafiz. So wisdom can be boring or it can be also ecstatic. So he finds ecstatic wisdom in Hafiz's poetry. So this is what Hafiz had to say. I have estimated the influence of reason upon love and found that it is like that of a raindrop upon the ocean, which makes one little mark upon the water's face and disappears so much for the reason and for passion to love. I have 15 more minutes, so I want to see what else I can introduce you to. I won't be able to cover all that. I knew that, not enough time. But Umar Khayyam is very important. And if you haven't studied him, I think it is really easy and very captivating. After every world war, first world war, the second world war, hundreds of Umar Khayyam clubs sprang up all around the globe. And you wonder, what is it that is so appealing, so captivating about him? He was basically an astronomer, a scientist. And writing poetry was his best time. And he wrote these quadrants. A quatern or rubai is a four line, complete poem. So we can look at a few of them together. So these are some of the recipes people want to embrace. Perplexed no more with human or divine, tomorrows tangle to the winds, resign, and lose your fingers in the tresses of the Cyprus slender, minister of wine. Not hard to figure out what he wants us to do. And the theme that you are talking about here is known in literature as Carpe diem theme. Seize the day, seize the micro moment of the passing time because it is not going to come back ever. And then the next one, Khayyam, if you are drunk with wine, be happy. If you sit with a beautiful one for a moment, be happy. The end of all worldly existence is nothingness. Think of nothingness as being, be happy. Very hard to do that, which is good advice. And the last one, I think it echoes in John Milton's Paradise Lost also. Sometimes it is not a matter of borrowing. It is things happening at the same kind of thoughts coming to different authors. I sent my soul through the invisible, some letter of that afterlife to spell. And by and by, my soul returned to me and answered, I myself am heaven and hell. The words from Paradise Lost, Milton wrote, are the words given to Satan. And he says, the mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell and hell of heaven. It's a very similar idea there. These next two quadrants are very, very controversial because if you look at them, they could be raising questions about the imperfection of the creator. If there is imperfection in the creation, then does it mean there is some imperfection in the creator also? So it's kind of a very bold questioning of the scheme of things and the imperfections in life in human beings. The second quadrant, none answered this. But after silence spake, a vessel of more ungainly make. So this is the scene where Khayyam is saying, I walked into Potter's shop, where vessels are made by the Potter using clay, the needed clay. And this vessel is called of ungainly make, has some kind of a flaw. And so they sneered at me for leaning all over I. What did the hand then of the Potter shake? The Potter's job is to create a perfect vessel. If the vessel is imperfect, then the hand of the creator also has to be blamed. So this is the kind of writing which gave him the notoriety of having some blasphemous idea. Or he could be saying, everything is God's creation and should be accepted on its face value as it is, as perfect. And if you cannot see it, there's the problem with your vision also. It could go either way. The last two are very famous, and you have probably read them, the moving finger of fate. Nothing can change your fate. You can cry all you want, but once it is recorded, it is done. And the last quad train, live for the day. Don't worry about tomorrow or yesterday. Rumi is the most popular poet in America. I really don't know if it would be the case if there were not some very good, accessible translations. Because Rumi is quite complex, and he writes in language which is not simple. Coleman Barks, our poet, American poet, has done a very good job of translating, making Rumi accessible. He is one of the major founders of the Sufi faith. I love the words which are inscribed at the entrance of his shrine in Konya, Turkey. What are those words? The last words in the first paragraph. This is the Kaaba of lovers. Kaaba is a sacred place. Whoever comes here lacking becomes complete. It's very optimistic. And the doctrine of fana, F-A-N-A, which means extinction, is associated with his name. It is the extinction of the ego in order to blend completely with the beloved. The ego is always what gets in the way. So the two poems which are there on the slide, one is about Sufism is called the heart-based version of Islam, heart-based. And this poem that I have on the slide is the best exemplar of the importance of the engagement, involvement of the heart in any search. So I searched for God among the Christians on the cross, and therein I found him not. I went into the ancient temples of idolatry. No trace of him was there. I entered the mountain cave of Hira, and then went as far as Kandahar, which is Kandahar, as we call it today. But God I found not. He mentions all these places he went to, and he traversed the globe looking for the truth. And he says, in the end, he found it in his heart. So that's the famous. And the most famous of his poems is the next one, which is sometimes referred to as the read poem, R-E-E-D. It is the poem about the pain of separation from the beloved. You could call the beloved as the divine, or it could be the beloved as a person. So it applies to both. It is on the next slide. And before I read that slide with you, and this last one here, the famous British author, Somerset Mom, he adapted one of the stories of Rumi. And it is called An Appointment in Smyrna. The original story is Rumi's centuries before Somerset Mom. And the story is about fate, that you can't run away from death. And there is a certain comfort that comes to you if you believe that there's a moment when you are going to be no more. And then there's no reason to be frantic about, worry about how it will all end, because it is going to happen a certain way. So that is the idea that is still very much fixed in the Middle Eastern Islamic world, that the moment of death and the manner of death is predetermined. So this story is that Solomon is very interesting about Rumi that he will bring in the holy prophet of Islam. He will bring in the Jewish prophets, Moses, Jesus, Abraham, many others. And so the story is that Solomon had these very supernatural powers. A man came to him trembling with fear and begged him to send him to India, dispatch him to India. Because he had seen the angel of death, his name is Azrael, looking at him with a look that frightened him. So Solomon knows this person and he dispatches him to India. And then he runs into the angel of death and asks him, why did you look at that person and frightened him? And Azrael says, no, I didn't want to frighten him. I was just bewildered myself that I have an appointment with this person in India and he will need 1,000 wings to get there. So that's running away from fear. It is running toward it. Interesting kind of a take on that. So the next slide is the last one that I will be able to share with you. Listen to the story told by the read of being separated. Since I was cut from the read bed, I have made this crying sound. Anyone, apart from someone he loves, understand what I say. Anyone pulled from his source, longs to go back. At any gathering, I am there mingling in the laughing and grieving, a friend to each. But few will hear the secrets hidden within the notes, the notes of the read. The last author that I will have time to share with you is Najib Mahfouz. And he is, I think, maybe the second Middle Eastern author who got the Nobel Prize for literature. He got that in 1988. The story that I want to share with you is really very simple, very short story. He writes long novels, very complex novels, like Midak, Ali, was also controversial. And the children of Gabal were very controversial, in which he is almost making fun of Orthodox religions. Just look at his words in the first paragraph. Today's interpretations of religion are often backward and contradict the needs of civilization. You can put it more succinctly. And that is the reason for so many problems in the world of our interpretation. He's not finding fault with religions because they have in them the potential to bring people together, if you mean to do that. But we latch on to the negatives which every religion has. If your intent is to bring people together, why not focus on those areas that have that impact? So simple. So in this story, it's a conversation between a very young little girl and her dad. She's saying that I am with Nadia, who is a Christian girl, all the time. But when the time comes for religion class, we are sent into different rooms. I don't want to be separated. So the discussion goes on. And the father says, well, you are a Muslim. She is a Christian. And so that is natural that you will be instructed in your religions separately. And then she asks him, who makes these rules? Why are these rules there? And who is God? Can I see him on TV? I want to see him. And then she asks questions which are receiving glib answers from the father. And the mother is listening. She's embroidering and enjoying the cornering of her husband by this little girl. And she finally says, what is heaven? And who will go to heaven? And she says, and she gets the answer. If you do good deeds, then you will go to heaven. And she realizes toward the end that the answers that she's getting are really not good enough. She says, I am going to be with Nadia everywhere, also in my religion class. And the story ends whether or not she will get her way. The implication is she might because she has the implicit support of the mother as well. And the author gives these lines to the father. You can read, out of frustration, all that he can tell his daughter is that she has to remain a Muslim like her mother and father. But that doesn't satisfy the little girl. And then all these questions I mentioned. And then toward the end, the author says he didn't know how much of what he said was right and how much was wrong. The stream of questions had aroused the question marks deep inside him. So he says, a child teaching awareness, bringing a new perspective to the father. It reminds me of a very famous statement from the prophet by Khalil Gibran. He says, give your love to your children. But don't try to give them your morals and edicts how to do things, because they will have their own. There's something similar happening here. The last item, and that's the last line, excerpts from his speech. In that speech, which I don't have time to open up and read to you, he talks about the sacredness of knowledge. And he says he comes from a tradition which holds knowledge as sacred. And he gives the example that in one of the wars with the Byzantines, the Byzantines had many prisoners of war in the captivity of the Muslim conquering army. And the Muslims offered to free all the prisoners in exchange for a few manuscripts of Greek writing. So he says that writing is sacred in his culture and his civilization. I am reminded of my recent experience in Palermo, Italy. I went to the archaeology museum there. And I was astonished and very pleased to see a whole room dedicated to this Syrian archaeologist whose name is Khalid al-Assad. He was an archaeologist who was murdered by ISIS because he would refuse to give away the secrets of certain very important historical sites. So I think it's really something which we don't register today, because in the old tradition it has to be revived. He ends his speech by saying what Sadi said, we are all one family. It is the duty of the powerful countries to reach out and stamp out the famine, the disease. It is your duty. And then he ends by pleading, please end the misery of Palestinians and also save the Jews from compromising their values too much because he doesn't believe that what is happening in Israel is 1988, things have gotten much worse. So I think I would like to say that as you think about this whole presentation, think of the possibilities of what you can do. In, for example, in the case of Syria, why am I saying, why don't you do something about Syria? I'm saying you, I can do something about solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem because we live here and this country is the only stumbling block in the solution because we veto the UN Security Council resolution that would enforce the perfectly legal accepted Resolution 242. So I think we all have that obligation and I appreciate that Najib Mahfouz articulated that so well. So thank you very much. These are the cards here. And if you can write your question, that will be great. Thank you.