Bleeding Fingers and Failing Eyes: Occupational Health and the Manual Crafts of the Islamic Middle East

The manual crafts practised in the Middle East present a range of potential health hazards. These issues have been highlighted in published scholarship on contemporary crafts across the Islamic world, but much less attention has been paid to historical material as a source on the impact of craft specialization on long-term health. This article concentrates on the evidence that can be extracted from late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photographs from Greater Syria, supplementing this with observations drawn from primary written sources and extant objects in public and private collections.