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
Youssef Mirza, the national cycling team player, expressed his happiness at achieving two gold medals in the “team time trial” race after an absence of years, as well as the “individual time trial” race within the Arab Cycling Championship competitions held in Sharjah with the participation of 17 Arab countries.
Mirza, who previously won the Asian gold medal, won the gold medal during the race in which 16 players participated, including Saif Mayouf, the national team player, as well as the gold medal in the “team against the clock” with the elite riders of the UAE team.
Mirza said – in statements to the Emirates News Agency, WAM – that the competition for the individual and team time trial title was not easy, with the presence of elite riders from the participating Arab teams, indicating that the great support and backing of colleagues was one of the reasons that led to this achievement. Achievement, especially the medal of the teams that have been absent from the national team for years.
He added: The gold medal in the individual race against the clock, as well as the teams, gave me a great incentive to complete the journey in the Arab Championship for mountain competitions, which is the most difficult and powerful, as it requires more training, effort and high morale in order to reach the desired goal.
On preparing for the 2024 Paris Olympics, Mirza said: “The preparations will begin with the beginning of the new year, through a special program in several countries, with the support of the National Olympic Committee, in order to realize the dream of qualifying for the Olympics, where the preparation will be with the participation of a group of my teammates, especially since Qualification for the Paris Olympics remains a top priority, indicating that there is a specific calendar that will be adhered to in order to continue collecting points, to ensure qualification and participation in the Paris Olympics.
Youssef Mirza thanked his teammates for their great support during the race, as well as the UAE Cycling Federation, which provides him and his colleagues with all means of support and care.
Arabic is spoken by more than 400 million people across the Middle East and in diaspora communities across the world.
Spoken by around 400 million people across the globe, the Arabic language in its classical form is also the liturgical language of Islam, the world’s second largest religion with at least 1.6 billion adherents.
Marked every year since 2012, the date was chosen based on when the UN General Assembly recognised Arabic as one of the organisation’s official languages in 1973.
In a statement released ahead of the occasion, Audrey Azoulay, Unesco’s director-general, said: “Throughout the centuries, Arabic has been at the heart of exchanges between continents and across cultures.”
She added the language was “used by so many great poets, thinkers, scientists and scholars”.
To mark the occasion, here are some facts about the language, which you may not have known:
1. There’s no agreement on how old the language is
Depending on who you ask, the earliest records of Arabic appear as far back as the second millenium BCE, around the eighth-century BCE or as late as the fourth-century BCE.
The reason for the debate is establishing what constitutes the Arabic language as we know it today.
Languages spoken today are evolved versions of languages that were spoken thousands of years ago, but determining at what point a language becomes so distinct from its ancestor that it can no longer be considered the same is up for debate.
Languages spoken today are evolved versions of languages that were spoken thousands of years ago, but determining at what point a language becomes so distinct from its ancestor that it can no longer be considered the same is up for debate.
2. The oldest Arabic inscription dates to 470 CE
A 2014 discovery by a French-Saudi-led team unearthed the world’s oldest known inscription written in the Arabic script – “Thawban Ibn Malik” were the three words etched into stone, alongside what is thought to be a Christian cross.
The stone slab was discovered in Najran in Saudi Arabia and is said to date from around 470 CE.
The text is thought to be written in an early version of the Arabic script known as Nabataean-Arabic, which evolved from historic Nabataean and Aramaic scripts.
The Nabataean kingdom lasted from around the 4th-century BCE to 106 CE and is famed for the structures Nabataeans carved out of rock formations, such as the one found at Petra in Jordan.
3. Arabic is related to Hebrew and Amharic
Arabic is a member of the Semitic language family, which itself is a member of the Afro-Asiatic family.
The Semitic family includes languages still spoken today, such as Hebrew in Israel and Amharic in Ethiopia, as well as extinct languages that were once widely spoken, such as Akkadian and Phoenician.
Belonging to a language family means that at some point the languages evolved out of a common dialect.
While there are no records of the original language, there are enough similarities between languages such as Arabic and Hebrew to make it clear that their origin is the same.
One of the most notable features of the Semitic languages is the triliteral root system, in which words are formed out of a combination of three consonants.
4. There are dozens of Arabic dialects
Modern Standard Arabic remains a unifying dialect across the Arab world and is used in formal broadcasts, religious sermons and literature, but in day-to-day life Arabs speak a diverse array of dialects.
Sometimes differences between dialects can be so big that two native Arabic speakers cannot communicate without resorting to formal Arabic or a more commonly understood dialect, such as Egyptian or Levantine Arabic.
There are at least 30 Arabic dialects and the differences between any two are generally more stark the more geographically separated they are.
The biggest split is between the Maghrebi or western dialects found in North Africa and the Mashreq or eastern dialects found in the Levant.
There are many reasons for such dramatic differences in dialects.
As Muslim conquerors took over vast tracts of land between Morocco and Iraq, they encountered people who spoke other languages. As those people interacted with their new rulers, they had an effect on the language the new arrivals spoke.
There are also other factors, such as the influence of subsequent conquests by Turkic and European rulers and the independent evolution of languages separated by geography over long periods of time.
In that sense, the Arabic dialects are similar to the Romance languages, such as French, Spanish and Italian, which developed out of spoken Latin.
5. There’s an EU language closely related to Arabic
Maltese, the national language of Malta, was given official language status when the island joined the European Union in 2004, and is the only Semitic language to have that designation.
The country’s 450,000 natives speak a language that has its roots in Arabic, as it was spoken when the nearby island of Sicily was ruled by North African Muslims.
Although it grew out of North African dialects of Arabic, the Maltese language has taken on a lot of vocabulary from Romance languages, such as Italian, and is considerably distinct from Arabic as it is spoken today.
Nevertheless, the similarities will be obvious to an Arabic speaker. Greetings, such as merhba (welcome)and questions, such as x’jismek? (shi-yismek/what is your name?), will be instantly recognisable to an Arab.
6. Arabic was once spoken as far east as Central Asia
After the founding of Islam, successive Arab empires established control over a territory that spanned from Morocco in the west to the borders of what is now China.
This led to mass movements of people from the interior of the Middle East to areas on the periphery of the Islamic world to work as soldiers, administrators, religious leaders and merchants.
These new migrants brought their language with them and even in areas that did not become fully Arabised, their descendants continued to speak Arabic until very recently.
One such example is in Central Asia, where a variety of Arabic was spoken among some communities until the late 19th-century.
While thought to have numbered in the tens of thousands of speakers in the early Islamic era, today these populations have been assimilated into neighbouring Persian and Turkic-speaking populations.
Many descendants of these Arabic-speaking communities are still aware of their roots despite having forgotten their original language.
7. Arabic loanwords are found in many languages
Alcohol, arsenal, algebra, coffee, gauze, mascarade and safari are just a selection of words used in everyday English that have their roots in Arabic.
Safari for example comes from the Arabic for “journey” or safar, while Arsenal comes from the Arabic dar al-sina’ or “house of production”.
Some languages owe more of their vocabulary to Arabic than others. Turkish and Persian were heavily influenced by Arabic due to geographic proximity and conquest by Arab rulers, as well as the movement of Arabic speakers to areas where those languages are spoken.
Those additions are not always welcomed by nationalists in those countries and efforts have been made at various points to remove Arabic influence.
One of the most intense efforts in that regard was by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who began a process of Turkification to replace Arabic words in the Turkish language with Turkic equivalents.
Nevertheless thousands of Arabic-origin words remain in modern Turkish.
Rashid Diab was the first in a stream of brilliant Sudanese artists who came flooding into Kenya in the early 1990s.
He has been a way-shower ever since. Experimenting with technical skills that he’s acquired and mastered over the years, his awesome etchings have come to Nairobi’s Red Hill Gallery in an exhibition entitled A Trajectory of Etchings – 1980-2000.
A trip up to Hellmuth and Erica Rossler-Musch’s ever-green gallery is well worth the trek, if for no other reason than to meet two of the most hospitable art lovers around.
But then, to see the Gallery’s pearly white walls covered in a rich array of Rashid’s colourful etchings is all the more reason to come and see.
They are mainly abstract works, but one can see so many influences surfacing through his swirls of colours, two-dimensional lines, and calligraphic curves that disclose his Sufi upbringing.
There are more than 50 etchings, all of which are beautifully framed and displayed in geometric clusters of both miniature gems of genius dressed in sepia and ochre ink as well as larger works suggesting symbolic forms such as are found in northern Sudan, in the ancient murals of Meroetic and Kush civilisations.
The venerable Sudanese artist flew in from Khartoum, especially for his exhibition opening last Sunday, November 20, having been preceded by his son Yafil, who prepared the way for Nairobi to see facets of his father’s art other than the style of painting that he is currently passionate about and which we have seen in recent exhibitions of his work in places like Tribal Gallery, One Off, and Gravitart.
“We met Yafil more than a year ago when he came and suggested that we have an exhibition of his father’s etchings,” Hellmuth told BDLife shortly before the exhibition opened.
“We were impressed with the etchings, especially as they cover a span of 20 years, but we couldn’t hold the exhibition until now.”
There had been many steps involved in bringing Yalif’s idea to fruition, especially as he had to return to Khartoum and the process of curating the show had to proceed online.
The fact that none of the etchings had ever been seen before in Kenya made the preparation process all the more exciting for Hellmuth who relished the challenge.
But once he’d selected his favourites from the hundreds that Yalif had shared, Hellmuth insisted on framing all but ten of them to show them in their best light.
“My father was impressed to see the exhibition as he had never seen so many of the works shown so well in one space,” Yalif said.
Rashid himself hadn’t discovered his passion for printmaking, specifically for etching until he was introduced to the technique in Spain, at the Complutense University of Madrid where he had been awarded a fellowship to attend.
That discovery led to his getting advanced degrees in painting and etchings, including a PhD.
But after years of working as a scholar and professor of fine art, he felt compelled to return to his homeland where he has been sharing his knowledge, skills, wisdom and experience with his fellow Sudanese ever since.
In 2000 when he returned to Khartoum, he established the Dara Art Gallery. And several years after that, the Rashid Diab Art Centre was born.
“As we don’t have a national art gallery in Sudan, the Centre has played an important role,” Yalif said. It has also given Rashid the visibility required for the world to recognise his talent and leadership role in the arts of Sudan.
For instance, he won the King Juan Carlos of Spain award for Excellence in Service. He has also won ambassadorial status from the Japanese and British governments for his concern for peace and the environment.
He’s also exhibited his art all over the Middle East and Europe.
So, while he hasn’t lost his passion for printmaking, he had to put it on hold while shifting artistically as well as socially and culturally from his Spanish to his Sudanese circumstance.
“I’m concerned about the role of women in our society, which is why they appear so frequently in my art,” Rashid told BDLife at the opening of his first solo exhibition at Red Hill.
But it is thanks to his son, who discovered hundreds of his etchings while archiving his father’s art that we have the opportunity to see this treasure trove of an earlier phase of Rashid’s artistic ‘trajectory.’
New Shubbak chairwoman Shadia El Dardiry on the privilege of supporting those from all walks of life, whether beleaguered artists or stranded migrants.
Shadia El Dardiry has been on a journey of discovery in London since arriving nearly seven years ago but one scene from her impromptu walking tours stands out from the rest.
The unexpected sight and sound of two boys speaking Arabic in a Syrian dialect as they passed by halted El Dardiry in her tracks as she tried to figure out why she recognised them.
Oblivious to her stopping and staring, they walked on without a glance but it dawned on her that she had helped the younger of the siblings when he was an unaccompanied minor stuck in Calais, after fleeing the war in Syria.
“I remember feeling so uplifted, knowing that the younger brother finally had a home and that they had been reunited,” El Dardiry tells The National, “and just seeing them live something akin to a normal life in London on a Saturday afternoon.
“It was all thanks to the work of a group of amazing lawyers and people who took these cases on at a time when the UK was pretty much refusing to comply with its legal obligations … it filled me with hope to see the fruit of all that hard work before my eyes.”
El Dardiry had signed up as a volunteer while studying to be a lawyer but she is modest about her part “on the margins” of the reunification. All she did, she says, was use her Arabic and English to interview refugees and their family members.
She also practises as a solicitor specialising in employment law. “There’s no hierarchy of problems,” El Dardiry says. “Unfortunately, it would be great if you didn’t need employment lawyers or immigration lawyers or any lawyers really. That would be, I think, everyone’s utopia,” she says, with a self-deprecating smile.
El Dardiry believes that her heritage and nomadic upbringing – “being a bit from everywhere” – make her particularly attuned to migration issues. As an adult, she has lived in Paris, Brussels, Geneva and Copenhagen but she ascribes what she calls her “mixed identities” to being raised in Guinea, Canada and Egypt.
Born in Montreal to an Egyptian father and an Italian mother, El Dardiry moved as a young child with her older sister to West Africa with their parents, an accountant and a doctor, who met while working in Guinea in the 1970s.
She conjures up vivid memories of a tranquil time in the port city of Kamsar, punctuated by daily family lunches and weekends of camping and trips to the beach or local waterfalls.
With just a local fresh goods market and one shop, the simplicity of life created a strong sense of community. But even the young El Dardiry was conscious that the family, as expatriates in one of the world’s most impoverished countries, were “living here but we’re not from here, and we’re very privileged”.
After moving back to Canada for a few years at the age of 7, El Dardiry relocated to Egypt with her father where she completed her schooling. An adolescence spent in one of the most populous and multi-ethnic Arab countries solidified her sense of compassion, as well as how she saw herself.
“I loved it,” she says. “Cairo is great. It’s hectic, it’s chaotic, it’s inconvenient in many ways, but it has a charm to it. I think it definitely shaped me. That’s where I developed my Arab identity and why I started saying, ‘I’m Arab’ and ‘I’m Egyptian’. Before, I used to say I was Canadian. So I think that there was a real shift there.”
It also gave her the opportunity to improve her command of Arabic. El Dardiry concedes, however, that she can never quite pass for a native on her regular trips back to the city that each time is “a little bit different, a bit bigger”.
“I have an accent and people make fun of me,” she says, laughing. “The taxi drivers love it. But I do tell them: ‘Don’t rip me off! I still know the prices.’”
Coming of age in a land that housed the likes of the Nobel-prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz and the public intellectual Edward Said, it is no surprise that El Dardiry grew fond of Arabic literature. The seeds had been sown early by her father who regaled her about the region’s authors and introduced her to the Tales of Goha.
“He’s very much a fixture of Arabic storytelling,” El Dardiry says of the titular satirical folk character whose sidekick is a long-suffering but faithful donkey. “Though I’m pretty sure my Dad eventually also started improvising his own Goha stories for me.”
After a graduate degree in political science at McGill University in Montreal, she studied as an exchange student for two years in Paris for her master’s. While writing her thesis on identity and integration of second-generation North African migrants, she recalls being struck by the extent of discrimination against those communities in the French capital.
“We all know it exists,” El Dardiry says, “but I think I was sheltered in Canada from that. And that’s what really drew me in. I think that was kind of a stepping stone where I thought ‘this is actually a sector that I’m really, really passionate about’, both in terms of refugees and asylum seekers but also populations that settle in countries and how their identities change over time.”
In a natural progression, she entered the world of non-governmental groups in various cities across Europe. She spent four years in Denmark with a human rights organisation working on asylum issues that kept her Middle East roots close and made use of her language skills.
She concedes that there may have been one downside to so enthusiastically soaking up the culture in Copenhagen and learning the local lexicon. “My Arabic suffered as I picked up some Danish, but it was great,” she says.
Her years as a human rights advocate were starting to take their toll, however. She reflects on the difficulties and taxing nature of working on immigration and asylum issues day in, day out.
It gave rise, she says, to a feeling of helplessness, particularly when the Middle East was haemorrhaging people fleeing the conflicts that followed the Arab uprisings.
“You had really strong political opposition to that in Europe, and you still have that,” El Dardiry says. “I think it just felt like a really difficult fight that we were never going to win. It was not getting better and it is only getting worse.”
She decided to qualify as a lawyer in London, and was drawn to Bates Wells. The city law firm is renowned for combining a strong commercial and charity practice with a general emphasis on public interest work.
El Dardiry’s chosen field of employment law allows a bit more distance than is afforded to those whose full-time focus is on migrants. “The lawyers who do are really impressive and have a lot of strength because it’s definitely something I’ve struggled with,” she says.
Among Bates Wells’ large charity clientele are many within the arts, and it wasn’t long before a colleague put her forward as a trustee for Shubbak in 2018.
“This offers me a chance to be more involved in art and culture coming from the Arab world,” she says. “At the same time, I’m realistic that I’m not an artist and I don’t work in that every day. So it just gave me an opportunity to contribute.”
As chairwoman, her role is to provide strategic direction to Shubbak and to assist in the long-term vision of supporting and celebrating the diversity of Arab artists’ creativity and innovation in the UK and the Mena region.
“It is very much there to act as a bridge between those two geographical locations,” she says.
Shubbak, which means window in Arabic, has evolved in the decade since its launch from a festival to bring people together every two years to what El Dardiry explains is a permanent presence with ongoing projects taking place between the biennial programmes.
To the delight of deprived art lovers, this year’s event will go ahead after the last of England’s Covid-19 restrictions lift in June. It’s a welcome hurrah for a sector that has been “hugely shaken” by the pandemic, but El Dardiry is keen to acknowledge the resilience of artists and their ability to create work out of any situation. “It’s really amazing,” she says.
While the festival will be physically held in London, the organisers have adopted a hybrid approach. Some works will be presented digitally which, for the first time ever, will make them available to a global audience. It could well be a pilot for things to come.
“I think there’s going to be even more creative ways of linking the two together,” she says. “It’s another way of presenting and working which will just enrich the organisation.”
As she waits for international travel to open up so that she can see her family in Canada and Egypt again, El Dardiry will revel in Shubbak’s role in the reinvigoration of London.
She is a flaneuse, being a “bit more of a walker” than most, and has both revelled in and been saddened by the unusually deserted streets of London for which she has developed such a deep affection on her regular roams.
When asked if all those pre-Covid hours spent pounding the pavements meant that she had been ready for lockdown restrictions, El Dardiry laughs in agreement that she had been “good to go”.
“If anything, I think the pandemic has made me tired of walking,” she says, half lamenting that everyone’s doing it now.
It is perhaps one of the lesser-known side effects of the coronavirus, but seems unlikely to impede El Dardiry from making great strides one way or another in the future.
The month-long Pearls of Wisdom exhibition launched this month at Qasr Al-Watan, Abu Dhabi’s Presidential Palace, on the sidelines of the third edition of the Abu Dhabi Manuscripts Conference.
Running until Jan. 6, 2023, it will showcase valuable manuscripts in the fields of literature, heritage, religion, music, philosophy and science.
Split into seven zones, the exhibition will take visitors on a historical journey that deliberates on the influence of Arab culture in generating religious dialogue and contributing to knowledge that paved the way for the European Renaissance.
At the heart of the House of Knowledge, visitors will find themselves in an immersive gallery panel covering the Golden Age of Islamic civilization and two regions that are at the heart of medieval Europe: Al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily in southern Italy.
Before visitors conclude their visit, they can head to the palace’s library to explore a collection of more than 50,000 books about the UAE’s history and politics along with topics including history, architecture, biology and ethnography.
Organized by the Department of Culture and Tourism – Abu Dhabi, the conference is being held under the theme “Arabic Manuscripts from East to West: Spain and Italy as a Model,” and in coordination with the National Marciana Library of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, the University Library of Bologna in Italy, the National Library of Spain, and Royal Library of San Lorenzo de El Escorial.
source/content: arabnews.com (headline edited)
_____________
The exhibition will showcase valuable manuscripts in the fields of literature, heritage, religion, music, philosophy and science. (Supplied)
Following up a highly eventful year, the diverse artist delivers an electrifying track for the official soundtrack of the 2022 World Cup which he will perform at the final match.
Ahead of his performance at the FIFA 2022 World Cup finals taking place in Qatar on Sunday the 18th of December, Wegz releases ‘Ezz El Arab’ as part of the tournament’s official soundtrack.
Internationally acclaimed Egyptian artist Wegz has been continuously growing throughout his career. In only a few years, the Alexandrian rapper and singer has managed to permeate the cultural zeitgeist, becoming an ever-present figure in contemporary Arabic music.
This year, Wegz has achieved major accomplishments, such as his track ‘Al Bakht’ amassing over 150 million views on YouTube and topping the charts on Spotify’s most played artist in the MENA region.
If there is one thing that Wegz has demonstrated throughout his career, it’s that he is always moving forward, continuously trying to evolve his sound and expand his reach.
In pursuit of these ventures, the beloved Egyptian rap icon has just released an official track for the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, looking to afro-beats, electronic music, and his signature singing style to deliver an energising track that explores themes of unity and pride.
The music video for the track was directed by Ali El Arabi, who also directed Wegz’s, ‘B3oda Ya Belady’ from the highly acclaimed documentary ‘Captains of Zaatari’. The video features Wegz in a variety of shots around Qatar, DJing to an adoring crowd of football fans, and performing to camera in a cinematic portrayal of the tournament’s festivities.
This year’s World Cup has been more than just a sporting event for people of the MENA region. The tournament has always been a time for gathering and community, even if many Arab national teams have not reached their full potential in previous iterations of the World Cup. But this year’s tournament, hosted in Qatar, has seen incredible performances from teams such as Saudi Arabia, and of course, the Moroccan national team, who have instilled a sense of pride in Arab fans around the region and beyond. Watch the full music video here
His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa today patronised, in the presence of His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, the ceremony held at the Al-Sakhir Palace on the occasion of the kingdom’s National Days, in commemoration of the establishment of the modern Bahraini State as an Arab and Muslim state, founded by Ahmed Al Fateh in 1783, the anniversary of its full membership in the United Nations, and the anniversary of His Majesty the King’s Accession to the Throne.
On arrival at the Al-Sakhir Palace, the artillery fired 21 rounds to salute HM the King, who was accompanied by a constellation of cavalry.
The National Anthem was played, and some holy Quran verses were recited.
After that, HM King Hamad delivered the following keynote speech:
“In the name of God, the most Merciful, the most Compassionate,
Praise be to Allah, and prayers and peace be upon Prophet Mohammed and his family and companions,
Your Highnesses, Excellencies, Distinguished Guests,
May the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you,
This year’s glorious National Day arrives with its atmosphere full of joy on the return of our lives to their former state, thanks to God. Here, we meet you on this blessed day of our dear homeland, in the essence of its commemoration, which returns to us with good and affection, in the expansive glory of the Kingdom of Bahrain, whose civilisational achievements have, for over two centuries, continued to transcend among nations, through the giving of its people at all times and periods.
In fact, with every new commemoration of this day with its experiences and achievements, the more confidence we feel in our progress in building towards the goal of the advancement and prosperity of our honourable citizens, a matter to which our esteemed Government is committed, and for which it strives with determination and diligence.
In this regard, we must first commend the national endeavours being undertaken to achieve our ultimate goal to achieve good and prosperity for every citizen, and we refer, in this context, to the results of the Economic Recovery Plan, whose positive impact extends to all sectors of development. We are proud of the active role of financial and economic support programmes, particularly in facing the economic and health difficulties, and we direct raising their efficiency and enhancing equitable access to them, by considering their effectiveness and great benefit to living standards.
Here, we express our satisfaction with what has been achieved in meeting the housing needs of the Bahraini family, commending the record government achievement, and emphasising in this regard the need to continue development plans for the housing sector with their innovative solutions and vast investments, in partnership with the private sector, to ensure decent and suitable housing for citizens.
In the context of its priorities, our country continues to preserve and protect human rights under the auspices of its independent legal institutions, and among the results of those efforts is the comprehensive programme of alternative sanctions and measures, which we are keen to realise given its noble objectives of giving its beneficiaries new hope for the stability of their families, and for a promising future of giving and contributing to the building of their society.
Brothers and sisters, on such a special occasion that brings us together with you today, it gives us pleasure to celebrate the pioneers of national action, from the sons and daughters of our dear nation, in honour of their efforts, and in recognition of their outstanding services, which we greatly appreciate, and we will not find a more remarkable day in the life of the country to express to them pride in their leadership and excellence, and to thank them for giving this day its most beautiful meaning.
May God grant you all success, and may the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you.”
Then, HM the King conferred medals on national work pioneers.
After that, Kefaya Habib Al-Anzoor, delivered a statement on behalf of the honourees in which she expressed deepest pride in HM the King’s patronage of the auspicious National Days, and honouring of national work pioneers.
She asserted that the annual honouring of the distinguished national work pioneers is an impetus for them to be more dedicated in serving the nation and raising its flags at all international gatherings so that Bahrain always remains at the top across various fields.
She lauded the historic wide-ranging achievements attained by the kingdom during HM King Hamad’s prosperous era, noting that the precious royal honouring is a source of pride, and that it motivates everyone to do their utmost to be more dedicated to serving the homeland.
She affirmed that the kingdom’HM the King’s patronage of the honouring of military and civilian national work pioneers will optimise the kingdom’s accomplishments, noting that thanks to the constant royal support and forward-looking vision, Bahrainis have brought about unprecedented achievements in the scientific, cultural and youth fields, locally and abroad.
She extended deepest thanks, appreciation and gratitude to HM the King for honouring national work pioneers on this cherished national occasion.
She also extended sincere congratulations to HM King Hamad on the glorious National Days, wishing HM the King abundant health, happiness and long life.
The honouree list included:
– Shaikh Mohammed bin Khalifa bin Ahmed Al Khalifa
– Faeqa bint Saeed Al-Saleh
– Ali bin Mohammed Al-Romaihi
– Ayman bin Tawfiq Al-Moayyed
– Shaikh Hesham bin Abdulrahman bin Mohammed Al Khalifa
– Eman Ahmed Al-Dossari
– Osama Saleh Al-Alawi
– Major-General Mohammad Abdulla Al-Noaimi
– Brigadier-General Fahd Mohammed Al-Humaidan Al-Najdi
– Brigadier-General Dr. Hassan Mohammad Noor
– Brigadier-General Mohammed bin Mohammed bin Dinah
– Colonel Tariq Ahmed Ali Al-Buflasa
– Warrant Officer Ahmed Mohammad Ali Mohammad
– Abdulla Jehad Abdulla Al-Zain
– Faisal Mohammed Hassan Al-Mahroos
– Ghassan Ali Muhanna Mohammed Al-Muhanna
– Mark Joseph Thomas
– Mazen Mohammed Ahmad Mattar
– Ahmed Yousif Talib Abdulghani
– Abdulla Ali Al-Binkhalil
– Mustafa Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa
– Nawaf Abdulla Hamza
– Shaikha Mariam bint Abdulwahhab Al Khalifa
– Chancellor Rashid Mohammed Bu Najma
– Abdulla Khalid Ahmed Al-Nassar Al-Dossari
– Mohammed Khalid Al-Fadhala
– Hamad Ali Al-Mannai
– Ambassador Ali Jassim Al-Aradi
– Nada Ahmed Mustafa
– Adnan Abdulwahhab Eshaq
– Kefaya Habib Al-Anzoor
– Akbar Jassim Ashour
– Ziyad Adel Darwish
– Fatima Abdulghani Ismail
– Amna Ali Al-Arrayad
– Huda Mirza Abbas Al-Salman
– Mohammad Yusif Al-Binfalah
– Ramzi Raisan Al-Badran
– Najlaa Mohammed Qassim Al-Shirawi
– Dr. Haitham Ali Jahrami
– Dr. Abdulla Mohammed Al-Khan
– Badriya Jassim Al-Kuwaiti
– Marwan Fuad Salman Kamal
– Alia Ali Al-Aali
– Mustafa Aqeel Al-Shaikh
– Lama Abbas Saeed Al Mahrous
– Abdulhussain Ibrahim Isa
– Beshara Abdo Beshara
– Hanan Ibrahim Al Emadi
– Mohammed Salman Makki Habib
– Ahmed Abdulghani Isa Ahmed Madan
– Nabeel Abdulrahman Ajur
– Hussain Jassim Mohammed Ali Al-Sakran
– Khalifa Yacub Yousif Al-Amer
– Mohammed Jassim Al-Amer.
WHQ
source/content: bna.bh (headline edited)
_____________
HM King patronises Bahrain’s celebrations of its National Days
‘I feel like I hold a lot of hope’ says first Emirati rider in Women’s WorldTour.
As the first Emirati rider in the Women’s WorldTour and the sole national representative on UAE Team ADQ, Safiya Al Sayegh is feeling both the pressures and the privileges of her position going into 2022.
20-year-old Al Sayegh is the UAE national road race and time trial champion, and was approached by the team last November after UAE Team Emirates took over Alé BTC Ljubljana’s WorldTeam licence.
This is Al Sayegh’s first professional contract and a significant adjustment from racing for the Dubai Police Cycling Team, but her first experience with the UAE Team ADQhas been positive.
“When I was going to Spain [for training camp] and before I left, it was quite overwhelming to think of how it was going to be and how it’s going to go,” she wondered.
“Will I adjust with the team and how will I get on? But I’m very happy to say that everything went really well. I really enjoyed it, it was a really good start.”
Al Sayegh is the first female rider from the UAE to join a WorldTeam and only the second of any gender, after UAE Team Emirates’ Yousif Mirza, and she acknowledged the pressures that come with being in that position.
“It’s a big honour, and it’s actually a big responsibility on my shoulders,” she said. “I feel like I hold a lot of hope, especially from my country, because lots of people have helped me. And it really makes me want to push harder and strive even higher, with all the support and hope I have from the country – and from the Arab world, actually. It really pushes me to want more, to achieve more and to progress.
The men’s UAE Team Emirates squad, Al Sayegh said, has helped raise the profile of the sport in the UAE among both men and women, and she is looking forward to ‘representing all the local girls’.
Though an experienced racer in the UAE and Asia, Al Sayegh has only raced in Europe once before, the Rás na mBan stage race in Ireland in 2017, and she is conscious of the challenges ahead of her this year.
“Keeping up with the level is one concern I have,” she said.
“But hopefully with hard work, I will try to progress to the level of Europe. And one of my concerns is that pretty much every day in the peloton, crashes are happening. So I just hope to stay safe while racing.”
In the UAE much of Al Sayegh’s riding is done on wide highways or flat, protected bike paths, meaning even the change in terrain is a source of apprehension.
“In Europe, I know some races can be on quite dangerous roads or have quite steep downhills and stuff. So I do look forward to racing but I am quite worried about all the crashes and the dangers.”
Al Sayegh will continue to compete primarily in the UAE for the opening months of the season as she completes her university studies in Dubai, and will join the team in Europe from May.
“I really look forward to all the races my team is going to race, and I’ll be cheering here from the UAE.”
With a Lebanese name and a Cairo birthplace in the background, Gabriel Makhlouf is steering Ireland’s financial recovery.
As governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Gabriel Makhlouf is much preoccupied by the issue of resilience in a small, open economy challenged by a year of pandemic.
Mr Makhlouf’s own peripatetic life has shown him how precious an asset the quality of adaptability is at a time of change, be it in a person or for a national economic system.
Upheaval and the Makhloufs on the move could be a theme stretching back to when his father’s side of the family travelled across the Mediterranean from their Lebanese homeland to Cyprus.
When the island was part of the Empire, the family became British subjects and Makhlouf Snr ended up working at the embassy in Cairo after the Second World War.
It was in that palatial building near the Nile that he fell for a Greek-Armenian woman whose forebears had fled the historical turmoil of Izmir in 1922. Her family moved to Athens where she has come full circle to live today.
Mr Makhlouf was talking to The National at a time when Ireland’s strict national Level 5 lockdown is both defining his job and providing a perspective on the decades of movement and upheaval that have brought him to where he is now.
At a conference last week, the governor spoke of how the outlook had deteriorated in 2021 with the renewed lockdown. The short-term need to bolster the economy coincided with structural changes from technological innovation and climate policies. Ireland suffered a 7.1 per cent slump in domestic demand last year but is expected to see a 2.9 per cent increase in 2021.
Unemployment is predicted to reach 9.3 per cent this year and for an economy with a high level of property-focused debt, ensuring that households are supported is a priority. Mr Makhlouf points out that growth is not the same as having the capacity to recover quickly.
“We cannot anticipate every type of shock but we can build resilience,” he said in his keynote address. “Resilience is what has prevented the financial system repeating its previous failure. Resilience is what has protected households, businesses and communities against the worst of the damage from the shock of the pandemic.
“Economic resilience is what helps communities to manage the disruption caused by change and to manage the economic transitions we are living in right now.”
In providing leadership during financial strife, it is perhaps a boon to have some sense of dislocation. He describes his mother’s family as refugees. His parents met in a milieu that was the product of worlds with roots as far back as the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. And yet the people of Mr Makhlouf’s parents’ generation made their choices and moved to build new lives.
“My mother, who was born in Athens, had spent most of her life outside of Greece, but when my dad retired she came back,” he recalls. “My dad moved on and lived all over the world and settled in Greece at the end, before he passed away.”
Mr Makhlouf was born in Egypt but left at the age of three when his father joined the United Nations and moved to the Congo. Makhlouf pere’s time as an international diplomat exposed the young Gabriel to many cultures.
“My first language was French, because my parents’ mutual tongue was French,” he says. “So I learned English when I was about seven when we went to Bangladesh, and when we got to the Pacific we lived in Samoa.
“I went to school in Samoa. My parents then decided they ought to send me to boarding school if I was going to get a proper education and not one that changed every few years.”
Travelling during the school holidays from the school in England was a regular odyssey in itself. “The trip to get to Samoa and back to England involved stopping in Los Angeles, Honolulu and Pago Pago, an American territory pronounced ‘Pango Pango’,” he recalls.
“But then they moved to the Philippines, they moved to Fiji, they were in Ethiopia and they were in Thailand. So, you know, my brother and I got used to this life.”
It is a puzzle, then, to establish the appeal to the young Mr Makhlouf of embarking on a career as a Whitehall civil servant. He explains it as following his father’s footsteps in to the bureaucracy. Certainly, the career path was more about determination and making opportunities than wanderlust.
“I don’t think I joined the civil service for stability, to be honest, but maybe somewhere deep inside me there might have been that,” he says. “I joined the civil service really for interest. I joined as a tax inspector at the beginning. And it was an interesting career option – it involved law, it involved accountancy and it gave early opportunity to manage.”
Fate intervened to resume the family’s roving tradition when Mr Makhlouf was headhunted in 2010 to run New Zealand’s finance ministry, the Treasury. There, he was responsible for developing a measure of well-being as a replacement for the traditional gross domestic product yardstick.
In one memorable allusion in a speech he compared the role of an economist to that of an artisan, challenged with weaving together different strands of evidence into a structured framework.
Before upping sticks to the southern hemisphere, Mr Makhlouf at one point worked directly with then-UK chancellor Gordon Brown, who became prime minister at the time of the global financial crisis in 2008.
Asked about his former boss and a recent warning that the world now faces another lost decade or perhaps even worse than after that crash, Mr Makhlouf acknowledges how bad it was last time around but disagreed on the dangers now.
“I think that there is one massive difference between the crisis in 2008 and today’s crisis,” he says. “Which is that the crisis in 2008 was a crisis of the financial system, the financial system basically collapsed.
“Today, the financial system is still standing, and it’s the financial system that’s playing a very important role in supporting businesses and households through the pandemic and hopefully into a recovery and out the other end.”
World leaders are proving to be different kinds of players, having recognised that this is an economic crisis caused by a health crisis. “Governments throughout the world have chosen to close down economies for the sake of people’s health. In some respects that is been planned. In comparison to what happened in 2008 where actually events completely overwhelmed us.”
So Mr Brown’s fears are too pessimistic? “A lot of the changes and challenges that are ahead of us, I think if we manage them, then I think they can be managed well,” he says.
Mr Makhlouf takes heart from the rapid adjustment of businesses to home-working and new patterns of demand. “Economies across the world and certainly in the industrialised world have adapted to the restrictions,” he says. “More businesses are set up for that and more consumers were ready and knew how to proceed.”
The scale of “technological adaptation” since he accepted the Irish job in 2019 is something he could well have guessed was just around the corner.
The governor has not been immune to the extraordinary pressures imposed by lockdowns. Even at the outset of the pandemic, the family’s far-flung ways isolated him in Athens just as the 2,000-strong staff of the central bank in Dublin were forced to work from home.
With his mother ill in hospital, Mr Makhlouf was on hand to help her recover. “Effectively, I carried on working like everyone else via laptops and iPads. It’s quite an extraordinary thing that we all seem to have got used to.”
History means that a British citizen running the Irish central bank will always be a talking point. The moment that the UK left the EU put Mr Makhlouf in an invidious spot.
First, there is migration of businesses and banking activity from the City of London to Dublin so that firms remain within the EU umbrella. Is this an opportunity?
“Overall, I think the impact of Brexit is negative. It’s negative for Ireland and for the UK and for the EU,” he says. “We’re most exposed as a country in the agricultural sector, in particular. The fact that there was, at the end of the day, a deal albeit a very slim deal was better than there being no deal.
“On financial services, we have seen post-referendum a move of business from London to Dublin,” he agrees. “I’m not sure I would necessarily call it an opportunity at all. I think from my perspective as a regulator this increases the need for us to manage and ensure the financial system works properly.”
With his son, brother and wife’s relatives living in London, the governor observes that the pandemic has played a greater role than Brexit in cutting off families and friends. But things are different.
“I feel sorry for someone like my son — his opportunities to work in 27 other countries have now been limited. So his generation has lost out,” he says. “Ireland and Irish people have got many connections in the UK, we recognise Brexit has happened but those connections haven’t disappeared, they haven’t been lost.”
As two movie-perfect countries on the periphery of continents with roughly similar populations, one wonders what the biggest change is for Mr Makhlouf in switching from New Zealand to Ireland.
There is the remoteness of the former compared with the latter’s position within the wealthy European market. But the answer, he feels, is the perspective on China. In New Zealand, much time was spent thinking about and visiting that part of east Asia. He himself went at least nine times.
“The role that Asia has been playing and will play in the 21st century usually dominated a lot of thinking. And what’s interesting coming back to Europe, and perhaps now it’s not surprising at one level, but it was noticeable how little of our time was spent thinking about Asia.”
For the well-travelled, there is the unchanging truth that proximity is often the most powerful force in geography.
The lockdown both defines Gabriel Makhlouf’s job as Governor of the Irish central bank and provides a perspective on the decades of movement and upheaval that have brought him where he is today. Courtesy Central Bank of Ireland
