Lebanon and Egypt are the only two Muslim-majority countries to boast of significant alcoholic beverage industries. For the Lebanese this means Arak, the anise-flavored grape-wine whose production (and consumption) is nothing less than a matter of national pride. Egyptians, for their part, have a similar reputation with regard to beer-making, though this has not been quite as visible since the 1970s, when Sadat began appeasing the Islamists.

One recent book tells the story of a woman’s journey into the Arab feminist movement, at home and abroad – a journey that took her to the city of Chicago in the late 19th century. Hanna Kasbani Kourani (alternatively Hanna K. Korany) was born in 1870 in the town of Kfershima, a village that today is part of Lebanon. Throughout her travels, however, she was referred to as from Ottoman Syria. Kourani was educated at American and English missionary schools and taught in Tripoli’s American Girls School. Syrian writer and novelist Taissier Khalaf’s “The Early Women’s Movement in Ottoman Syria: The Experience of Hanna Kasbani Kourani, 1892-1896” (2019) traces Kourani’s accomplishments during her stay in Chicago, when she toured the United States giving lectures on Syrian life. She arrived in Chicago as the Syrian women’s representative for the World’s Congress of Representative Women in 1893.