“Egypt is a land of wondrous monuments and strange stories.” So begins the seventh/thirteenth-century work A Physician on the Nile by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī, edited and translated by Tim Mackintosh-Smith. The work begins as a description of Egypt written for the Abbasid caliph al-Nāṣir before becoming a harrowing account of pestilence and famine; it is … Continue reading “Gaping Jaws, Sharp Fangs”: An Excerpt from A Physician on the Nile