Dr. Fuad Matthew Caswell, BA, MA (London), MSt, DPhil (Oxon), Barrister Email: matthew.caswell@hotmail.co.uk
Fuad Matthew Caswell was born to a Baghdadi family and arrived in England as a student in 1950. He pursued courses of study at the University of London (School of Oriental & African Studies and King’s College) followed by Oxford University (St. Catherine’s Society). He acquired a B.A. in English and a London M.A. in Classical Arabic. He met and married a Yorkshire girl and they started a family, which coincided with several years spent setting up and running an import venture which was to continue as his Baghdadi family’s business. The law being always his main interest he then set out on the path of becoming a barrister, qualifying as a member of the Middle Temple in 1968. To improve his prospects of establishing a practice at the time he adopted his wife’s name Caswell and went on to have a long career as a barrister. In 2002 he returned to academia (Wadham College, Oxford), completing a doctorate in Arabic, the doctoral thesis appearing in print as The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The Qiyān in the Early Abbasid Era.
Publications
Limā al-Ḥarb (in translation Why War?, a discourse in correspondence between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud).Baghdad 1948. Out of Print.
Menashi’s Boy, Matador, Leicester, 2010 (A collection of short stories).
The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The Qiyān in the Early Abbasid Era, I. B. Tauris, London & New York, 2011.
Voices of the Arab Streets. Saws and epithets of the Baghdadi street: their place in the colloquial poetry of ‘Abbūd al-Karkhī. Matador, Leicester, 2013.
Three Master Musicians: Medieval Islamic Music, Matador, Leicester, 2013.
Stefan and Other Plays: (A collection of Theatre Plays) including (with Daphne Thomas) “Stefan”, first performed under the title “Ivan” at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith, London, Feb 1997. (with Daphne Thomas) “May Day New”, first performed at the New End Theatre, Hampstead, London, May 1998. “La Mort De Roland” “The Garden”
The Khamriyyāt of Abū Nuwās: Medieval Arabic bacchic poetry Matador, Leicester, 2015
Tales of the Near and Far, (A collection of short stories), Mira Publishing House, Leeds, 2018.
One contribution, “al-Khayzurān”, Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3^rd Edition
Al-Khayzurān, The Queen of Baghdad (A play of four acts), World in Panorama CIC, Leeds 2021.
Houses, World in Panorama CIC, Leeds, 2021.