Bedouin / J.P. Sebah. - Public domain portrait print

Albumen prints of various places and archaeological sites on the Nile River and other parts of Egypt in 1856

Pascal Sebah was a pioneering photographer in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the late 19th century. He was born in Istanbul to an Armenian family and began his career as a photographer in the early 1850s. Sebah quickly gained recognition for his work, which included portraits, landscapes and architectural photographs. He became particularly famous for his images of Ottoman architecture, which were widely distributed throughout Europe and helped shape Western perceptions of the Ottoman Empire. Sebah's studio, which he founded in 1857, became one of the most important photographic studios in Constantinople, attracting clients from all over the Ottoman Empire. Today, Sebah's photographs are highly prized by collectors and considered important historical documents of Ottoman society and culture.

A semi-nomadic group of tribes, the oldest desert people of the Arabian Peninsula. Known for their ingenuity and hospitality, the Bedouin have adapted to living in a harsh climate. Their tribes moved constantly from place to place, travelling thousands of miles across the sand dunes. They used the sun to determine east and west, and the stars to determine north and south. They also used the shape of the dunes as a guide to the direction of the prevailing winds. The Bedouins were excellent trackers and could not only tell the difference between human and animal tracks in the sand, but also whether they belonged to a man, a boy, a woman or a girl.