Today’s Post – August 7th

Rany Jazayerly: Abd el-Kader and the Massacre of Damascus. A lot of folks have pointed to this article. I think there’s a little bit of “Hey, look: There’s a dermatologist who normally blogs about the Kansas City Royals and here he is writing a long piece about 19th century Middle East history. Weird!” Anyway, it’s a really good piece. I definitely had never heard of el-Kader despite the fact that there’s a town named after him just up Route 52 from Dubuque.