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Sahara Desert: Key Environments
358 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1984
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February 22, 2021
This book conveys the experience of the Sahara and the effects of that experience on its people. It shows how the desert’s poets have spoken of the danger and primal fear in a deadly landscape, and the sense of redemption from death’s gate.Even today with all our technological safety nets, those who travel in the true desert still know that anxiety. Perhaps inter-planetary astronauts will know such fear of being lost forever. And partly with that literal fear in mind, the ancient desert Muslims prayed daily,
"In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, king of the day of judgment, lead us into the straight way, and not as those who have gone astray ... "
So Cloudsley-Thompson gives the Tuareg poet Shaykh Muhammad Hamma Al-Suqi's message to God,
"Thou art among the shepherds of creation, secretly or seen. If Thou sleepest and ignore us for an hour or for a day, then we are those who in a desert lose their way."
"In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, king of the day of judgment, lead us into the straight way, and not as those who have gone astray ... "
So Cloudsley-Thompson gives the Tuareg poet Shaykh Muhammad Hamma Al-Suqi's message to God,
"Thou art among the shepherds of creation, secretly or seen. If Thou sleepest and ignore us for an hour or for a day, then we are those who in a desert lose their way."
Displaying 1 of 1 review