Bibi Salme

Bibi Salme is an Arabic translation of 'Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar', published in German and English in the late 1800s. First released with no author and circulating mostly as 'harem literature', the Memoirs are in reality an autobiography penned by Emily Reute | Sayyide Salme bint Said, who was born Princess SayyideSalme bint Said, one of the thirty six children of Sayyid bin Sultan (1791-1856), ruler of Muscat and Oman and of Zanzibar. In these pages, the reader...
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Bibi Salme is an Arabic translation of 'Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar', published in German and English in the late 1800s. First released with no author and circulating mostly as 'harem literature', the Memoirs are in reality an autobiography penned by Emily Reute | Sayyide Salme bint Said, who was born Princess SayyideSalme bint Said, one of the thirty six children of Sayyid bin Sultan (1791-1856), ruler of Muscat and Oman and of Zanzibar. In these pages, the reader will learn about the history of the royal courts of the Omani-Arab Swahili coast from the perspective of a controversial family figure, who taught herself how to write Arabic on a camel calf, who liked pistols more than needlework, and who fled her home to Germany in her adult years. Her recollections offer a complex historic narrative on family, governance, Islam, East-West divisions, as well as a cultural critique on the ignorance of Europeans about Arabs.