The cover page is adapted from Western Gentleman in Oriental Costume, a painting completed between 1840 and 1845 by An Unknown Artist. The cover and title pages feature the League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by The League of Moveable Type. www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/
The Mercy of Allah
章节(15)
- Dedication 0:00
- I: Al-Rafsat, or “The Kick” 0:05
- II: Al-Durar, or “The Pearls” 34:18
- III: Al-Tawajin, or “The Pipkins” 58:36
- IV: Al-Kantara, or “The Bridge” 1:25:37
- V: Milh, or “Salt” 2:09:18
- VI: Al-Wukalá, or “The Lawyers” 2:52:43
- VII: Ghanamat, or “The Sheep” 3:53:59
- VIII: Al-Bustán, or “The Orchard” 4:24:01
- IX: Al-Jamal Wa’l-Nakhl, or “Camels and Dates” 5:14:30
- X: Al-Hisān, or “The Horse” 5:44:16
- XI: Al-Wali, or “The Holy One” 6:12:21
- XII: Al-Mahallat al-Jadida, or “The New Quarter of the City” 6:37:03
- XIII: Al-Fulús al-Masnú Min al-Qirtás, or “The Money Made of Paper” 7:31:17
- XIV: Itmi’nán al-Nafs, or “The Peace of the Soul” 8:16:40
The Mercy of Allah is a humorous, satirical novel on the methods by which the merchant Mahmoud rises from humble beginnings to massive wealth. The setting in a fictionalized Middle East provides deeply Catholic author Hilaire Belloc a “far-off land” in which to attack what he saw as the rapacious nature of the British businessmen, industrialists, and bankers of his day.
Each episode of Mahmoud’s life satirizes greed, from small frauds and outright theft, to market manipulation, money-printing, and funding both sides in a long war. Mahmoud justifies all his dealings as simply the way things are: “For Allah, in his inscrutable choice, frowns on some and smiles on others. The first he condemns to contempt, anxiety, duns, bills, courts of law, sudden changes of residence and even dungeons; the second he gratifies with luxurious vehicles, delicious sherbet and enormous houses, such as mine.”
First published in 1922, this satire fits into Hilaire Belloc’s growing advocacy for the economic and social philosophy of “distributism.” It was selected as one of four books by Belloc for Arnold Bennett and Frank Swinnerton’s influential Literary Taste: How to Form It.