New on Archive.org, and seemingly for the first time there, a scan of the pulp Oriental Stories for Summer 1932. It has extensive commentary in The Souk on the historicity of R.E. Howard’s depiction of wine in his then-recent story “Lord of Samarcand”. Howard responded in the January 1933 issue (not online), by which time the title had been re-named The Magic Carpet Magazine.
I’m unsure if Lovecraft would have read Oriental Stories in summer 1932, and anyway studies in the history of Near, Middle and Far East were not generally a subject he favoured with much attention. Although I recall he undertook a long bout of intensive reading on Abyssinia, which likely then informed Dream-Quest — but that’s Eastern Africa, now Ethiopia, so is a bit too far south and although adjacent to Arabia it has a different religious culture. Yet he certainly had a lifelong interest in alcohol and prohibition and would have perused the Oriental Studies notes with interest had he seen them.
greyirish said:
This was discussed a couple years ago in “Prohibition in the Souk” by Bobby Derie – including Lovecraft’s comments. http://onanunderwood5.blogspot.com/2018/01/fan-mail-prohibition-in-souk-by-bobby.html