Arabs & Arabian Records Aggregator. Chronicler. Milestones of the 25 Countries of the Arabic Speaking World (official / co-official). AGCC. MENA. Global. Ist's to Top 10's. Records. Read & Enjoy./ www.arabianrecords.org
Dubai – Dubai is the also the most record-breaking city not just within the country but also across the Mena region.
The UAE is far ahead in achieving the Guinness World Records regionally as the country boasts 425 GWRs with 34 of them were achieved in 2020 alone.
Dubai is the also the most record-breaking city not just within the country but also across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region.
“The UAE is currently home to 425 Guinness World Records titles, making it the biggest record-breaking country in the Mena region… Dubai has the lion share of titles in the country with around 60 per cent of the overall number,” said Danny Hickson, senior events production manager at Guinness World Records Ltd in Dubai.
Global Village, a multicultural family entertainment destination, achieved two records in November alone. The first record was set by having the most LED lights ever on a car. The vehicle had 36,676 LED lights. The feat began two weeks ago as the park achieved the record for the most videos in a music medley video following the Rockin’1000 Season 25 opening concert.
Global Village aims to break 25 records this season as part of its Silver Jubilee anniversary celebrations.
Emirati shipbuilder Obaid Jumaa bin Majid Al Falasi also made it into the history by building the world’s largest dhow, a wooden Arabic boat, measuring 91.47-metre long and 20.41-metre wide. That is equal to the length and almost half the width of a standard American football field floating over the Indian Ocean.
Dubai’s Nakheel Mall, too, recently broke the record for the world’s largest fountain, measuring a whole 7,327 m2. The record breaking fountain named The Palm Fountain was designed a with tricks including colour and brightness controls.
The emirate is also home to the world’s tallest hotel – 75-storey Gevora Hotel, measuring 356.33 metres tall from the group level to the top.
Danny Hickson said Saudi Arabia comes second with 96 Guinness World Records titles, while Egypt is not far in the third place with 93 titles.
On September 23, Saudi Arabia achieved the Guinness World Record for the largest fireworks display in multiple cities as the display consisted of 962,168 fireworks.
“What’s brilliant about breaking world records with brands in the UAE is that there is almost a chance to do something different with the heritage. Brands and individuals think it is impossible to be break world records, but we believe everyone is amazing in his own way, and we are here to make their achievement Officially Amazing!,” said Hickson.
“We have seen the tallest house of cards build in 12 hours, sat on top of a washing machine, to demonstrate its reduced vibrations and noise levels; and an iconic car brand celebrated its 80th anniversary by breaking the record for the largest loop the loop in a car! Would we find amazing talents among Khaleej Times readers?,” concluded Hickson.
Lebanese designer represents Moroccan culture and feminine beauty at Maroc Fashion Week.
Maroc Fashion Week ran from March 8 to 11 in the city of Marrakech. The purpose of the event was to represent the Moroccan caftan and to further celebrate International Women’s Day.
Morocco World News spoke with Lebanese fashion consultant and designer Bernard Jabbour about his newly presented collection, Poisonous Beauty.
The esteemed designer has 28 years of experience in the fashion industry, some of Jabbour’s extensive experience includes his work as a consultant for Lebanese fashion designer Elie Saab and Project Runway Middle East. The designer is mostly known for his work at his Lebanon-based fashion studio, in which he specializes in haute couture – high-end, custom, and handmade fashion – including evening and wedding gowns.
Jabbour has visited Morocco twice before, but the most recent visit marks more of an official trip at one of the “biggest events,” hosted at what the designer described as a “beautiful country.” Poisonous Beauty is also the first-ever collection that he has debuted at Maroc Fashion Week.
“They say I’m classic yet with a twist. I try every time to put something new in my designs, but you can always see the touch of Bernard Jabbour. My DNA is always present in my designs,” Jabbour explained.
Enticing and dangerous inspiration
His primary inspiration for all of his collections is the presence of the woman; each collection simply approaches the woman figure a little differently to create a unique design for every season. Poisonous Beauty is one of his more ambitious and “tricky” projects.
The thought process behind the idea relays his thinking that women are a “beautiful poison that … we want to have … Her soul, her look and everything is poisoning us, but we also ask for it.” The designer sees a woman’s figure and aura as something both enticing and dangerous, a familiarity that when studied and analyzed through an artistic lens, appears unique and foreign.
Furthermore, Jabbour explains that he has experimented with “unconventional material” for this very collection as well, with new volumes and calmer color palettes.
Jabbour’s most prized dress in the Poisonous Beauty collection is one that is inspired by Moroccan architecture. It was never intended to be a part of this collection, but Jabbour says that “because I’m here in Morocco Fashion Week, I said no. I have to do one dress dedicated to Morocco.”
In regards to Maroc Fashion Week, Jabbour applauds the beauty and representation of the caftan: “I have … few Moroccan designer friends … [but] I like how they make the caftan. The handwork they put in the caftan, it’s like really magic.”
The designer felt amazed by the multiculturalism that he and other designers were exposed to at Maroc Fashion Week. Jabbour mentioned that the event unites people from across the globe he said, including countries such as “Kazakhstan, Italy, Lebanon, and Palestine.”
Jabbour is one of many international designers who helped in paying tribute to women’s presence and cultural recognition in the ever-developing world of the international fashion industry.
Paying tribute to Her Highness the Honourable Lady Assayida Ahd Abdullah Hamed Al Busaidi, Spouse of the Sultan of Oman, the Infrastructure, Technology, Industrial and Consumer Solutions cluster of Mohsin Haider Darwish LLC (MHD-ITICS), sponsored an event to set a new Guinness World Record for ‘A Word Written with the Largest Number of Flowers’.
The event was hosted by Lujaina Mohsin Darwish, Chairperson, MHD-ITICS. The mammoth task of assembling 12,000 roses, which spelt out the First Lady’s name, ‘Ahad’, began with fabrication work on 25 October and was successfully completed on 26 October.
It was then displayed at a grand event organised near the Snow Zone area, located on level two of the Mall of Oman. Official adjudicators from Guinness World Records were present to supervise, analyse and follow every step of the process. Adhering to all the stringent criteria, the masterpiece, once finished, stood 8.2 metres wide and 3 metres tall and proved to be a true work of art.
Ideated and conceptualised by Ms Naseem Abdullah Al Fadhli, MD, Integrated Benefits Projects and supported by Ms Haifa Balfaqih, Investment Programme Director – Nazdaher and GM, Strategic Planning and Technology, be’ah, the historic event witnessed the presence of some of the highly-esteemed guests including her excellencies, leading businesswomen and attendees from all over the country.
Receiving an overwhelming response from the audience, the new Guinness World Record further cements Oman’s position on the map as a country filled with unique initiatives and also as a nation raising an empowered generation of women.
Lujaina Mohsin Darwish said, “With the key message behind this initiative being especially close to our hearts, we are indeed delighted to set this new world record. It not only celebrates Omani women but is a tribute to Her Highness the Honourable Lady Assayida Ahad Abdullah Hamed Al Busaidi.
Her unwavering faith in the capabilities of the Omani women of today and continuous appreciation of their achievements have served as a constant motivation for all. It has ignited a zeal in every woman to break the glass ceiling and push the frontiers of women leadership.”
“Drawing inspiration from our leaders, MHD-ITICS will continue to act as a catalyst of change, encouraging women’s contribution to the Omani economy as well as participating and leading in their respective areas of influence and expertise. The strong Omani women have displayed courage, creativity, vision and accomplishment and will continue to play an instrumental role in driving transformation,” she added.
A keynote speech was delivered by Lujaina Mohsin Darwish, which was then followed by the much-awaited showcasing of the largest flower word. Another key highlight of the event was the large LED display wall with snippets and pictures of the First Lady of Oman. All attendees were gifted a branded scarf and were entertained with live music, a food and beverage counter and photo opportunities.
MHD-ITICS, under the guidance of Honourable Lujaina Mohsin Darwish, has achieved commendable growth in recent years. Moreover, the Company has been at the forefront of setting new benchmarks in the industry and supporting its women employees to assume various critical roles in the organisation.
In our continuing series of inspiring life stories from across continents, we hear why the Palestinian filmmaker redirected his creative efforts.
The first time that Omar Al Qattan filmed in the Palestinian territories, he was a 22-year-old on set with his mentor, the director Michel Khleifi.
Happy weeks were spent scouting locations in the West Bank region in search of the perfect settings for the scenes depicted in the script in only his second visit to the birthplace of his parents. He soaked up the breathtaking scenery and filmed in a restored Ottoman fortress village surrounded by olive groves.
The result was 1987’s Wedding in Galilee, the first studio feature film shot in Palestine, depicting life under curfew following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It would go on to win a clutch of awards, including the prestigious International Critics Prize at Cannes, and propel Khleifi on the path to directorial eminence.
“It was wonderful,” Al Qattan recalls. “When you work in film you get to do a lot of scouting so you really know a place, especially a small place like Palestine.”
In the years since, Al Qattan has worked in and for Palestine many times, but he stresses that this has never been simply because of his own heritage. “It is a matter of a right to be able to identify with whatever you like,” he tells The National. “But the issues for me are political. I think really you need to transcend these affiliations, these loyalties.
“I’m not really sure that cultural identity is actually that powerful a bond, or as powerful a bond as the sense of injustice that inhabits us to be the sons or grandsons of refugees, regardless of how successful or comfortable they turned out to be in life.
“Through this sense of outrage, anyone can identify with you, anyone can support you on that basis, whereas if you come from a sort of clannish or sectarian perspective then it becomes like a sort of closed canal.”
Al Qattan’s reference to a comfortable life is an important one. His father Abdel Mohsin went on to become a successful businessman and his son is now chairman of the foundation set up in his name.
He is not one to be pigeonholed but, when asked, provides a label with a hint of embarrassment: “I guess ‘diaspora philanthropist’ is about right.”
The answer is rooted in the journey of his parents as refugees from Palestine – his father after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and his mother, Leila, after her family was exiled during the British Mandate over her father’s refusal to salute the Union flag. They met and married in their country of refuge, Kuwait, while working as teachers. There, they had three children before moving to Lebanon for their education where their fourth child, Omar, was born.
Al Qattan points out that, in fact, he belongs to many diasporas – those of Palestine, Kuwait and Lebanon. “It might seem confusing to some that I have these multiple identities but it’s not an invention of mine; it’s the reality of my life,” he says. “I find that it’s incredibly enriching. I don’t think it’s an issue.
“It was a problem when I was younger, for sure. When I became an adolescent, it did seem sometimes like it would be so nice just to be an English boy without these complications. But now I think how impoverishing that would have been if I had sort of ignored the rest and how isolating as well.”
When the young Omar was sent to board at Millfield Preparatory School in Somerset at the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon in 1975, he arrived in what felt like an alien culture. Unable to speak English, he ate “terrible food” and was awash with homesickness.
“I think it hardened me in a way,” Al Qattan, now 56, says over Zoom. “It made me maybe try to resist any temptations for sentimentality or nostalgia, especially after a couple of years when it was really clear that there was no going back.”
Then, though, he pined for the childhood he had left behind by the warm Mediterranean Sea and the school that more or less nestled inside a forest. It was a idyllic – until it wasn’t.
“It sort of started to dawn on me as an 11-year-old that this is not an adventure; it was very serious.”
The trauma of the rupture and the loneliness was compounded by the racism he encountered at school. Lacking the means to answer back with language, Al Qattan admits that he sometimes resorted to his fists until he developed some defence mechanisms.
He credits an “eccentric, extraordinary, generous kind of spirit” exhibited by teaching staff for helping him find his feet.
Despite failing all his secondary entrance exams except French, the teenage Omar went on to study at Westminster School, one of the country’s most prestigious. “When I asked my eventual housemaster why they’d taken me, he said: ‘Well, we’ve never had an Arab boy before, and we thought it would be interesting.’ Which wasn’t technically true – there had been a couple of others.
“So I was in that atmosphere of, on the one hand, a lot of stereotyping and unpleasant, racist comments and, on the other hand, we were still in an era in certain sectors of British society where there was this international outlook and curiosity.”
Al Qattan found solace in books. Reading, he says, was the only way he could catch up on English. When he discovered how much he loved books, he went on to read English literature at Oxford University.
Having dabbled in theatre at school and university, Al Qattan then decided to pursue his interest across the Channel, studying film and directing at the Institut national superieur des arts du spectacle in Brussels, where he created short documentaries and dramas under the tutelage of Khleifi.
After Wedding in Galilee, Al Qattan quickly flourished in his own right. His first film, Dreams & Silence, an early exploration of political Islam, won the 1991 Joris Ivens Award and was broadcast in Europe and Australia. In 1994, under the Sindibad Films production company he co-founded, he produced Khleifi’s Tale of the Three Jewels, the first feature film shot entirely in the occupied Gaza Strip. It premiered at Cannes and picked up a host of international awards.
Despite his illustrious film career, Al Qattan found himself slowly being drawn into the philanthropic arm of the “family business”. His father had made his fortune through a contracting business in Kuwait and wanted to channel his riches towards educational outreach programmes focused on the arts in Palestine.
Yasser Arafat once told Abdel Mohsin that he wished him to become the Palestinian Rothschild. “For that to happen, we need a Palestinian Ben-Gurion,” the retort came.
The famous quip by Al Qattan’s father was often repeated in public, much to the irritation of the now-late leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and symbolises the family’s at times delicate footing within the political arena.
In 1993, the A.M. Qattan Foundation was born and the youngest of the Al Qattan siblings redirected his creative efforts towards empowering others. Almost three decades on, the foundation employs more than 100 people across the West Bank and Gaza.
A $24 million dark grey cube on a hillside in Ramallah was the patriarch’s dying wish. Opening a year after his death in 2017, the cultural beacon that is the A.M. Qattan Foundation Cultural Centre is the first of its kind in the Occupied Territories, housing a gallery, library, theatre, artists’ residencies and public plaza.
Al Qattan also opened The Mosaic Rooms as a cultural space in 2008 in London, not far from where he now lives.
He has intermittently chaired the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit since 2012 and the Shubbak Festival of Contemporary Arab Culture in 2013 and 2015. He produced Khleifi’s last film Zindeeq, which received the 2009 Muhr Award for Best Arab Feature at the Dubai Film Festival.
As well as following in his father’s footsteps in philanthropy, he also rejuvenated the waning Al-Hani Construction and Trading Company in Kuwait as a means of financing the A.M. Qattan Foundation. There, he has undertaken large-scale public projects such as the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre and Kuwait National Library.
Prior to the pandemic, Al Qattan returned to Palestine often, saddened by the dramatic decline he has witnessed over the decades. “The landscape has been completely brutalised,” he laments. “It’s not just the apartheid rule but the awful settlement building, which is going on everywhere.”
But the disenchantment and cynicism among the population was the most painful to observe. “It’s based on a sort of hopelessness and very dark outlook,” he says. “I find that harder to accept even than the chaos of the uprising.”
He hopes that the AM Qattan Foundation’s work can help remedy this, particularly by encouraging the involvement of youth.
Al Qattan has been actively steering the Foundation in a different direction to make it less of a family enterprise and more of an independent, public institution. But the input of the younger generation, whether his own offspring or those of others, is crucial to these plans. He says that it is far easier to shape the future with the young, who are still open to new ideas, than it is with older generations.
“If we want to build something for the long term, we have to focus on young people, especially children,” Al Qattan says.
Even at arm’s length, the guiding hand of the prodigious creator is making a difference.
The UAE’s Sheikha Fatima bint Hazza was honored on Tuesday with the Arab Woman Award at a ceremony in London in recognition of her contributions to female empowerment in the region and her philanthropic efforts in various countries, Vogue Arabia reported.
Sheikha Fatima has been a strong supporter of cultural initiatives, particularly those involving the arts and sports.
She has endorsed several programs aimed at boosting the cultural scene in the UAE and the region through her role as chairwoman of the board of directors of the Fatima bint Mubarak Ladies Sports Academy and the Fatima bint Hazza Cultural Foundation.
Her other accomplishments include increasing access to education in Bangladesh, building schools in Kenya, and forming the Fatima bint Hazza Fund for Emirati women to pursue higher education abroad, Vogue Arabia reported.
She is “committed to enhancing the role of women in various ways, as she is a supporter of sports and arts, and we are honored to bestow her with the Achievement Award in Cultural Development,” the Arab London Foundation said.
The philanthropist has also helped broaden young people’s interest in fields such as art, literature, sustainability and community interaction, Vogue Arabia reported.
The Fatima bint Hazza Cultural Foundation recently launched a series of short stories for young people focusing on culture, local identity and sustainability
Upon accepting her award, Sheikha Fatima praised Emirati leaders and their efforts to encourage women to pursue their dreams.
“Effective participation and making progress and positive change are the core values that we have been raised on,” she said.
“I am proud to represent my country, the UAE, where women have not had to struggle to obtain their rights but have always been at the forefront since the establishment of the state.”
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
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Sheikha Fatima bint Hazza was honored at the eighth edition of the Arab Women Awards in London. (WAM)
Elsayed’s family spent a year curating her works, as well as that of her husband El Dessouki Fahmi, from between 1960 and 1970.
When art becomes a family affair, each member with their own medium and distinct style, keeping legacies alive becomes a personal and collective mission, in which each of them pays tribute to loved ones while reviving a piece of modern art history. ‘Press Illustrations and Other Works’ is an exhibition in Zamalek’s Picasso Art Gallery that has been curated by graphic designer and filmmaker Alia Ibrahim and her father Ibrahim El Dessouki, who sought to honour the works of his late mother and father, painter and illustrator Attayat Elsayed and El Dessouki Fahmi.
Elsayed and Fahmi were both professional illustrators at the prominent Egyptian newspaper El Masa in the 1960s and 1970s, with Elsayed also contributing to Al Joumhouria newspaper. The family spent a year curating the exhibition, navigating the late painter’s extensive archive with a focus on her press illustrations.
“Our main objective was to exhibit the press illustrations, and then we added a selection of their paintings as well,” Alia Ibrahim tells CairoScene. “The process of finding the sketches for the illustrations, and copies of the newspapers they were published in was extremely difficult, and there are still countless sketches to be found and documented.”
Upon entering the gallery, visitors are met with two halls, one dedicated to Elsayed’s work and the other to Fahmi’s (which includes a portrait of Elsayed herself). Elsayed’s pieces reflect a progressive focus on the mundane, capturing movement through her intricate brush strokes. With the ‘Swing Machine’ and ‘Fan’ pieces – her granddaughter’s favourites – Elsayed spotlights the overlooked items and their constant flow in everyday life.
As an artist herself, Alia credits her late grandmother’s presence and talent to her ability to look at the world from a different perspective, with her abstract paintings becoming an inspiration and lens through which she views her own artistic endeavours. The exhibition is currently running at Zamalek’s Picasso Art Gallery until February 27th.
The fonts, celebrating the Kingdom’s culture, will be available free of charge.
The Ministry of Culture on Monday launched an initiative creating three new Saudi fonts.
The fonts, celebrating the Kingdom’s culture, will be available free of charge to individuals and organizations wishing to use them in design, artistic, and creative works, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
The Masmak font has been named after the historic Masmak Fortress, characterized by its durability and strong structure. The font has been described as clear and easy to read and was developed without reference to traditional calligraphy methods, the SPA said.
The second new font, Al-Naseeb, resembles handwritten notes, and has been recommended for use in headlines, texts, literary works, poetry, and children’s stories.
Watad, the third font, was inspired by the tent peg with its letters having curved corners. Its suggested use was for text relating to festivals and sporting events.
The Ministry of Culture launched the initiative in celebration of the Arabic language. In a statement, it said: “It is introducing a unique touch that gives a Saudi identity to Arabic fonts and celebrates Saudi heritage and cultural symbols.”
Saadi Yacef, the Algerian revolutionary leader who fought for his country’s liberation from French colonial rule, died on 10 September 2021. Yacef is perhaps one of the better known of Algeria’s resistance fighters because of the role he played in the creation of the film The Battle of Algiers , directed by the renowned Italian film maker Gillo Pontecorvo.
The Battle of Algiers was filmed in 1965 as a co-production between an Italian creative team and the new Algerian FLN (Front de Libération Nationale) government, whose representative Yacef produced the film and stars as the character of Jaffar.
One of the most extraordinary films ever made, The Battle of Algiers is an emotionally devastating account of the anticolonial struggle of the Algerian people and a brutally candid exposé of the French colonial mindset. Many French people were unhappy with the representation of their army and country in the film. It was not officially censored in France , but the general public and all cinemas boycotted it. It was seen as anti-French propaganda.
In later years, the film was screened to groups classed as revolutionaries and terrorists, apparently becoming a “documentary guidebook” in the Palestinian struggle, and for organisations such as the Irish Republican Army and the Black Panthers, who examined its detailed representation of guerrilla tactics.
It was also shown in the Pentagon in 2003, in the middle of the Iraq War. US Counterterrorism experts Richard Clarke and Mike Sheehan suggest that the film showed how a country can win militarily, but still lose the battle for “hearts and minds”.
What relevance does The Battle of Algiers hold today, 55 years after it was first released?
The message of the film is ultimately one of hope: the oppressed multitude will eventually triumph because their cause is just. The images of revolutionary crowds in the film recall the jerky, grainy footage that has emerged from a wave of recent protests in the last decade, from the Black Lives Matter movement to Extinction Rebellion . Pontecorvo thrillingly captures the power and possibility of large gatherings of citizens, who come together to demand rights, putting their bodies at risk to create social and political change.
Additionally, the film refuses to condemn any of the agents in this conflict. As Pontecorvo has stated
in a war, even if from a historical standpoint, one side is proven right, and the other wrong, both do horrendous things when they are in battle.
A film of contrasts
Shot in black and white, the film is difficult to classify in terms of style. Its military action sequences and tactical montages remind us of films like Zero Dark Thirty and The Eye in the Sky; indeed, it is almost impossible to film a scene of politically-motivated torture without having The Battle of Algiers as an implicit or explicit point of reference.
The collective aspect of the film’s creation, and the socialist ideals that inspired it, link it to what’s called Third Cinema. This was a kind of revolutionary cinema, a cinema of the “Third World”, that was designed to overthrow the systems of colonialism and capitalism.
The Battle of Algiers is also an example of Italian neorealism, a major film movement coming out of mid-twentieth century Italy. The neorealists made films that opposed Mussolini’s fascist regime, and they focused on the hardships of the working class in Italy. Neorealism was a moral and aesthetic system: it brought art and politics together to expose the ills of society and bring about social change.
The Battle of Algiers was shot entirely on location in Algiers, and Colonel Mathieu was the only professional on set. Pontocorvo selected the other actors from the local population based on their faces and expressions.
Other elements of the neorealist style was the use of techniques that create a documentary aesthetic such as the hand-held camera. Pontecorvo also uses extracts from real-life FLN and police communiqués, letters, and title cards. And he used newsreel stock, which was cheaper, but also added to the sense of verisimilitude in the film.
Although he believed the Algerians cause to be just, Pontecorvo wanted to create a nuanced and fair account of the war. Therefore, he sets up a series of contrasts to reflect this opposition between French and Algerian. This is present in the original musical score by Ennio Morricone: while groups of French soldiers rampage through the Casbah to the sound of jaunty military drums and horns, a haunting flute theme accompanies sequences which feature Algerian civilians.
Contrast is also evident in the use of light and shadow: there are strong chiaroscuro effects, perhaps reflecting the themes of right and wrong in the film. Pontecorvo also uses shadow to highlight the covert operations of the Algerians: Ali La Pointe’s face is filmed with deep shadows, and the face of Colonel Mathieu is always brightly lit.
Space provides another important contrast in the film. Frantz Fanon, a famous theorist of the Algerian revolution, describes the colonial world as a world “cut in two” because of the stark divide between the coloniser and the colonised. In The Battle of Algiers, the wide boulevards of the European quarter are juxtaposed to the narrow, winding, labyrinthine alleyways of the Casbah. Space is also divided vertically and horizontally – the European quarter is flat, while the Casbah is steep and sloping.
This opposition of space highlights the gap between rich and poor, coloniser and colonised.
The question of bias
The biggest contrast in the film is of course between the French and Algerians. The embodiment of French and European values in the film is Colonel Mathieu. He is a suave figure, confident and controlled in army fatigues, stylish sunglasses and slick speech – he has more dialogue than other characters in the film. A number of critics have argued that Mathieu is far ‘too cool’, given that he is a practitioner and a proponent of torture.
Yet Colonel Mathieu is not depicted as an ogre: above all, he embodies reason. We see this in his statements about the use of torture, when he uses solid rhetorical devices to justify it. He says:
…do you think France should stay in Algeria? If you do, you have to accept the necessary consequences.
This is persuasive as a logical argument – if you want French Algeria, you have to accept the actions that result in this outcome – torture.
If Mathieu and the French have reason, what do the Algerians have?
Firstly, they have raw, visceral emotion and the power of the group. The victory at the end of the film is a victory of the masses, embodied in two figures – the martyr Ali La Pointe, the illiterate everyman who becomes a hero for the revolution, and the gyrating, anonymous Algerian women, whose gaze outwards to the future closes the film.
This takes me to the final point about what the Algerians have on their side – the power of historical right. We see this through Pontecorvo’s use of chronology – the narrative proceeds as a flashback, until we leap forward in time to the euphoria and mania of the end of the war and the triumph of the revolutionaries. Pontecorvo here glosses over the fact that the real Battle of Algiers was lost by the Algerians, and jumps into a future of eventual victory in the war.
This is how he views the process of history – the masses, with moral right on their side, will eventually win.
Yacef Saadi (R), military leader of the FLN National Liberation Front networks of the autonomous zone of Algiers, poses after being captured at the end of the “Battle of Algiers”. Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images
Within the alienated and antagonist cultures inside Israel’s borders, Arabic and Hebrew—related, but mutually unintelligible languages—cross-fertilize each other.
“Translation” originally meant moving a body. Dead saints and live bishops, for instance, were translated from one place to another. Today, we mostly only use “translation” to mean words transported into other languages, where, unlike bodies, they often change completely.
When Anton Shammas’s Arabesques was first published in 1986, it crossed a notable translational fault line. It wasn’t the first Hebrew-language book written by a Palestinian in Israel, but it became the most famous. The best-seller’s English translation made it to the New York Times’s seven best novels of the year in 1988, but it’s the Hebrew original that drew the attention of scholars Adel Shakour and Abdallah Tarabeih.
“Almost all Israeli Arabs have at least some Hebrew proficiency, and the language is taught in Arab schools,” they explain. “For Israel’s Arab citizens, Hebrew is the key to the dominant Jewish majority and most of its social, financial, and educational resources; it is therefore essential in the minority’s daily life.”
Modern Hebrew is the official language of Israel. The minority Palestinians have a complicated relationship to the majority’s language. Living in Israel means Hebrew is a necessity, but Palestinian identity is intimately connected to Arabic. The language of “Islamic liturgy and the Quran” has a high status among Israeli Palestinians, the majority of whom are Muslim.
“Israeli Jewish society appears to perceive Arab culture as inferior, less modern, and less sophisticated,” write Shakour and Tarabeih, an attitude that includes Arabic. Hebrew, meanwhile, is intimately connected to the identity of Israeli Jews, who in the larger Middle East are a language, religious, and ethnocultural minority.
The fraught relationship between a Jewish state and the non-Jews within it as well as surrounding it, language-wise, meant “Hebrew attained prominence in the non-Jewish literary sphere only in the 1980s, with the works of Anton Shammas, a Christian, and Naim Araidi, a Druze.” (The first Hebrew novel by an Arab, Atallah Mansur’s 1966 In A New Light, proved to be “a fleeting phenomenon.”)
In the press of linguistic intimacies in Israel, the two Semitic—related, but mutually unintelligible—languages cross-fertilize each other, even in the “mutually alienated cultures” found within the state’s borders.
Shakour and Trabeih note that Palestinian “Arabic has borrowed many Hebrew words and even sentences.” Meanwhile, Hebrew, which was revived and modernized in the nineteeth and twentieth centruries, has adopted words from Arabic, as well as a host of other languages including Aramaic, Yiddish, Ladino, Polish, Russian, English, and so on.
Shammas, a noted translator of Arabic into Hebrew (especially of Emile Habibi), is a conscious language bridge-builder between the two languages. Part of this language-bridging means he invents neologisms, new words, in Hebrew.
As Shakour and Tarbeih detail, “Shammas creates new verbal forms in Hebrew by deriving them from nouns along the lines of such derivation in Arabic.” Their first example adds another language to the mix: “the Arabic verb šaksbaranī derived from the noun Shakespeare leads him to use the same derivation in Hebrew.”
Such neologisms can make texts “more obscure” to native readers of a language who have never encountered the word before. Shammas does it to “give the work a highly authentic flavor” to the Arabic culture he wants to introduce to the Jewish Israeli audience.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, some partisans of both Arabic and Hebrew have criticized Shammas’s translations for daring to speak across antagonistic borders. Some Israeli Jews think only Jews can create Hebrew literature. For them, Hebrew is part of the Jewish national character, part of the Zionist project. Some Palestinians think he’s using the enemy’s language, putting a spin on the Italian saying “Traduttore, traditore.”
The saying, meaning “the translator is a traitor,” is usually meant to signify the compromises necessarily made to help language slip across borders into other words. Of course, both languages here, like most languages, are already infiltrated by each other, something language’s border guards never seem to accept.
An Emirati, a Moroccan, a South Korean, two Brits and three Americans were honored with the King Faisal Prize 2023.
They served people and enriched humanity with their pioneering work so deserve to be honored and recognized for their distinguished efforts, the King Faisal Foundation said when honoring the winners of the King Faisal Prize 2023.
A glittering award ceremony was held in Riyadh on Monday under the patronage of King Salman, and on his behalf, Prince Faisal bin Bandar, governor of Riyadh Region, attended the ceremony for handing over the King Faisal Prize to the winners this year.
The annual awards are the most prestigious in the Muslim world and recognize outstanding achievement in services to Islam, Islamic studies, Arabic language and literature, medicine and science.
This year an Emirati, a Moroccan, a South Korean, two Brits and three Americans won the prestigious prize, which in its 45th session recognized COVID-19 vaccine developers, nanotechnology scientists and eminent figures in Arabic language and literature, Islamic studies, and service to Islam.
The prize for service to Islam was awarded jointly to Shaikh Nasser bin Abdullah of the UAE and Professor Choi Young Kil-Hamed from South Korea.
The prize for Islamic studies was awarded to Professor Robert Hillenbrand from the UK.
The prize for Arabic language and literature was awarded to Professor Abdelfattah Kilito of Morocco.
The prize for medicine was awarded jointly to Professor Dan Hung Barouch from the US and Professor Sarah Catherine Gilbert from the UK.
In his acceptance speech, Barouch said, “The Ad26 vaccine for COVID-19 demonstrated robust efficacy in humans, even after a single shot, and showed continued protection against virus variants that emerged. This vaccine has been rolled out across the world by the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson, and over 200 million people have received this vaccine, particularly in the developing world.”
Gilbert said that she was “humbled to join the other 2023 laureates, and to follow-in the footsteps of the men and women whose work has been recognized by the foundation for more than four decades. This award is in recognition of my work to co-create a vaccine for COVID-19. A low-cost, accessible, efficacious vaccine that has now been used in more than 180 countries and is estimated to have saved more than six million lives by the start of 2022.”
The prize for science was awarded jointly to Professor Jackie Yi-Ru Ying and Professor Chad Alexander Mirkin, both from the US.
Ying’s research focuses on synthesis of advanced nano materials and systems, and their application in biomedicine, energy conversion and catalysis.
Her inventions have been used to solve challenges in different fields of medicine, chemistry and energy. Her development of stimuli-responsive polymeric nanoparticles led to a technology that can autoregulate the release of insulin, depending on the blood glucose levels in diabetic patients, without the need for external blood glucose monitoring.
“I am deeply honored to be receiving the King Faisal prize in science, especially as the first female recipient of this award,” she said in her acceptance speech.
This year two women scientists have been honored as winners of the King Faisal Prize for medicine and science categories.
The woman behind the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, Professor Sarah Gilbert, the Saïd chair of vaccinology in the Nuffield department of Medicine at Oxford University, was honored with the medicine award.
The other woman scientist honored with the King Faisal Prize in science is Professor Jackie Yi-Ru Ying; the A-star senior fellow and director at NanoBio Lab, Agency for Science, Technology and Research. She is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was chosen for her work on the synthesis of advanced nanomaterials and systems, and their applications in catalysis, energy conversion and biomedicine.
The King Faisal Prize was established in 1977. The prize was granted for the first time in 1979 in three categories: Service to Islam, Islamic studies and Arabic language and literature. Two additional categories were introduced in 1981: Medicine and science. The first medicine prize was awarded in 1982, and in science two years later.
Since 1979, the King Faisal Prize in its different categories has awarded 290 laureates who have made distinguished contributions to different sciences and causes.
Each prize laureate is given $200,000 (SR750,000); a 24-carat gold medal weighing 200 grams, a certificate inscribed with the laureate’s name and a summary of their work that qualified them for the prize, and the certificate signed by chairman of the prize board, Prince Khalid Al-Faisal.
