Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: NBN Book of the Day
Episode: Rudi Matthee, "Angels Tapping at the Wine-Shop's Door: A History of Alcohol in the Islamic World" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Description: When meeting an expatriate friend on my first trip to Dubai, the host at the restaurant where we were meeting quickly ushered me up to the second floor. For foreigners, he said—before handing me a wine list.Dubai’s tolerance of alcohol is a more formalized version of Muslim tolerance—and clandestine drinking—of alcohol that dates back to its very inception, despite religious commands to the contrary. Professor Rudi Matthee tells that story in Angels Tapping at the Wine-shop's Door: A History of Alcohol in the Islamic World (Oxford University Press / Hurst, 2023).In this inter...