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Qatar’s Nasser Saleh Al Attiyah won Qatar International Rally to record a 16th victory at his home event and achieve a stunning milestone of 80 wins in the FIA Middle East Rally Championship (MERC) since 2003.
The success was a 28th for co-driver Mathieu Baumel in the MERC and his fifth in Qatar, while Al Attiyahs 80th success as a driver equaled the number of wins achieved last month by French legend Sébastien Loeb in the FIA World Rally Championship.
Oman’s Abdullah Al Rawahi was patient and stayed clear of trouble as chaos ensued around him. He and Jordanian co-driver Ata Al Hmoud were rewarded with a stunning second place in their Oman Rally Team-run Skoda Fabia R2 evo and a useful haul of championship points.
Andorra-based Ulsterman Kris Meeke and co-driver Chris Patterson led after two stages on Friday before rolling out of contention for the win in stage four. Meeke climbed from fifth to third during the final day and then overcame a damper issue on the final loop of three stages to regain third overall and the final place on the podium.
Merryhan Al-Baz’ has been taking apart cars and indulging her curiosity in the world of vehicles since she was 13 years old.
This passion for motors and engines, inherited from her father, lead the now 30-year-old to participate in the Diriyah E-Prix 2022 as a recovery marshal last month, becoming the world’s first female crane driver in race competitions.
“No one ever thought a woman could enter this field — the world of mechanics is a male dominated career. Fortunately, in my household, my mother and father always support any talents, ideas, or anything you desire to do,” Al-Baz told Arab News.
Al-Baz explained that there are four types of marshals at the E-Prix; fire, recovery, flag, and trackside. On the ground, authorities saw her capabilities and assigned her to join the recovery marshal team.
Recovery marshals must clean up the circuit immediately after an accident happens in order for a race to continue its course.
Al-Baz is a self-taught mechanic, with her educational background completely different from her career path. “I actually studied psychology and media in Lebanon, but I see myself in the world of cars,” she said. Al-Baz registered at an institute in Jeddah to receive a certificate to pursue her career in a more official manner. Her autodidactic reputation earned her a position as an instructor too, and she hopes that she will be able to open her own automobile repair shop in the near future.
source/content: arabnews.com
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Merryhan Al-Baz, 30-year-old Saudi woman with passion for motors and engines, becomes the world’s first female crane driver in race competitions. (Supplied)
Saudi Arabia has declared Feb. 10 as “Arabian Leopard Day” in a bid to raise awareness of the endangered big cat.
The move, which was announced by the Council of Ministers last month, is part of the Kingdom’s efforts to protect the species, which is now classed as critically endangered, from extinction.
The Arabian leopard is the chief predator in Saudi Arabia and plays a major role in the Kingdom’s culture. But overhunting and a lack of natural prey means there are now fewer than 200 left in the wild.
In December 2020, Prince Badr Bin Farhan, the minister of culture and governor of the Royal Commission for AlUla, established the Global Fund to Protect the Arabian Leopard from Extinction in the Sharaan Nature Reserve. Its aim is to sustain the leopard population and its prey, and protect its natural habitat.
Images of the Arabian Leopard were projected onto buildings and monuments across Saudi Arabia and the UAE on Feb.10.
In recent years, the commission and the National Center for Wildlife have been working on a number of initiatives to protect the big cat. Among these is expanding a breeding program within the Sharaan reserve.
Also, last year, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, launched the nonprofit foundation Catmosphere to raise awareness of the many endangered cat species around the world, including the Arabian leopard.
The Kingdom also works closely with Panthera, which is devoted to the conservation of the world’s wild cat species.
The Arabian leopard lives in high mountains and is native to Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and the UAE. Anyone found hunting the animal in the Kingdom faces a fine of SAR400,000 ($106,000) — rising to SAR30 million for repeat offenders — and up to 10 years in prison.
source/content: arabnews.com
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The Arabian leopard is the chief predator in Saudi Arabia and plays a major role in the Kingdom’s culture. (SPA)
In summer 2020, Arab News reported that the National Library of Israel, founded in Jerusalem in 1892, was planning to digitize its large collection of rare Islamic books and manuscripts, as part of a cross-cultural drive to open its digital doors to Arabic speakers in Israel and across the region.
Back in August 2020, Dr. Raquel Ukeles, then curator of the Islam and Middle East Collection at the NLI, said that the library was determined to play a part in eradicating what she saw as the “tremendous amount of ignorance about Islam, about Palestinian culture and Arab culture generally that has real repercussions on the political level.”
It was, she said, “very natural for us to be focusing on and investing in this material, to create space for Muslim culture in Israel and in the broader intellectual life, whether it’s in the Middle East or in the world, to enable greater understanding.”
The response has been truly impressive.
“The truth is that I’m thrilled to see the massive increase in the use of our Arabic digital resources,” Dr. Ukeles, who is now head of collections at the library, told Arab News a year and a half later.
“It’s so heartening to see that people are willing to cross boundaries in order to gain knowledge.”
In 2021, more than 650,000 visitors from across the Arab world found their way to the NLI’s Arabic-language website — an increase of 40 percent compared with 2020. There has been a dramatic increase in interest from Saudi Arabia in particular.
Most of the visitors, seeking out not only rare Islamic documents but also other archival treasures including a large collection of historic Arabic-language newspapers, came chiefly from the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Algeria.
Worldwide, there was a 125 percent increase to 1.5 million visitors to the Arabic site. Within Israel itself, the number of visitors to the site jumped by 250 percent to a total of 620,000 users, while the library’s trilingual Hebrew-Arabic-English site as a whole registered 10 million visits in 2021.
There has been a dramatic increase in interest from Saudi Arabia in particular. In 2021, there was a 30 percent growth in traffic from the Kingdom to the NLI site, with more than 121,000 sessions by nearly 94,000 individual users. About a third of the visitors were women, and 60 percent of the total were aged between 25 and 44.
“When we launched our first digital archive of early Arabic newspapers from Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine in September 2016, we had an annual rate of about 5,000 users for the first few years,” Dr. Ukeles said.
“That number has now increased by about tenfold and, thanks to our talented Arabic digital team, this past year we had 1.5 million total users of our Arabic websites.”
It was, she said, the aim of the National Library of Israel “to allow people to gain access to their own culture and history,” but also “to stimulate curiosity and engender respect about other cultures.”
This seems to be working.
“Users from the Arab world are searching our collections of Arabic newspapers and Islamic manuscripts, but they are also interested in our historical maps and digitized materials about Jewish history and Israel.”
Thanks to technology, the priceless documents at the library are even more accessible online, where they can be seen in exquisite, close-up detail — far better than they would be if viewed in person behind the glass of a display case.
“Technology allows culture and the written word to cross boundaries and reach new places previously inaccessible,” said Yaron Deutscher, head of digital at NLI.
“The fact that so many people from across the Arab world are expressing such a high level of interest in the cultural treasures freely available via the website shows just how relevant these things are, even for the younger generation living in our region.”
Those treasures include some extraordinary documents, including an exquisite copy of Muhammad Al-Busayri’s famous 13th-century poem “Qasidat Al-Burda,” or Ode of the Mantle, written in praise of the Prophet.
Also online are maps, illustrations and photographs, and hundreds of thousands of pages of historic Arabic newspapers from Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine — invaluable “rough first drafts of history” published between 1908 and 1948.
Newspapers and journals from the past “constitute one of the more clear-sighted vantage points for acquainting ourselves with bygone eras,” said a spokesperson for the library.
“Periodicals are an important resource for scholars as well as a portal for anyone wishing to access history through the words of contemporaries.”
Among the most regularly viewed items are 73 issues of the weekly newspaper Al-Arab, published in Mandatory Palestine between August 1932 and April 1934. Its writers included prominent authors and intellectuals of the day, such as Muhammad ‘Izzat Darwaza, the Palestinian politician and historian whose contributions included the important article, “The Modern Awakening of Arab Nationalism,” and who was interned by the British in 1936.
The 167 issues of the bi-weekly newspaper Al-Jazira, published in Palestine between 1925 and 1927, is another invaluable insight into the politics of the day, while a fascinating snapshot of contemporary art and culture can be found in the rare three issues of the magazine Al-Fajr. Its purpose, as declared in its first edition, published on June 21, 1935, was “to represent all intellectual currents in literature, society, art, and science.”
It was, says the NLI, “a veritable storehouse of knowledge and included diverse writings (and) represented an important stage in the development of Palestinian culture.”
Al-Fajr lasted only two years. Along with many newspapers and magazines, it ceased publishing during the Arab revolt in Palestine between 1936 and 1939, and never returned to print.
One of the oldest periodicals in the digital collection is the daily newspaper Al-Quds. First published in Jerusalem in 1908, the 107 issues in the collection cover the period from then until the end of 1913, offering fascinating insights into the prevailing social and political concerns on the eve of the First World War and the final death throes of the Ottoman Empire.
Social history aside, the most visually breathtaking treasures belong to the more distant past. Many of the documents and books contain unrivaled examples of Arabic and Persian calligraphy and illustrations.
The library attributes the rise in interest in its collections in part to the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreement signed between Bahrain, Israel and the UAE on Sept. 15, 2020, which saw the first Israeli embassy open in Abu Dhabi, and the first embassy of the UAE in Tel Aviv.
In May last year, the NLI signed a historic memorandum of understanding with the National Archives of the UAE in Abu Dhabi, committing the two organizations “to work together in support of mutual and separate goals and for the benefit of the international cultural and documentary heritage sector.”
The NLI said that the collaboration came “amid increased interest in regional collaboration in the wake of the Abraham Accords” and, in a joint communique, the new partners hailed the agreement as “a significant step forward.”
Both organizations, said the NLI, “serve as the central institutions of national memory for their respective countries and broader publics, and in recent years both have launched expansive and diverse efforts to serve scholars and wider audiences domestically and internationally.”
For Dr. Ukeles, the collaboration advanced “our shared goals of preserving and opening access to cultural heritage for the benefit of users of all ages and backgrounds in Israel, the UAE and across the region and the world.”
Dr. Abdulla M. Alraisi, director-general of the UAE’s national archives, said that the collaboration reflects its determination to “spread its wings around the world to reach the most advanced global archives and libraries, to obtain the documents that come at the heart of its interest as it documents the memory of the homeland for generations.”
source/content: arabnews.com
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Ottoman Hajj manual. (Supplied/ National Library of Israel)
The video chain features 265 people of different nationalities speaking various languages while passing the “Expo 2020 Dubai” pin in the Al Forsan Park at Expo 2020 Dubai.
The Dubai Police General Command and Expo 2020 Dubai received an official Guinness certificate in the presence of Reem bint Ibrahim Al Hashemy, Minister of State for International Cooperation and Director-General of the Expo 2020 Dubai Office; Major General Ahmed Mohammed Rafea, Assistant Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police for Administrative Affairs; Brigadier Saleh Murad, Director of the General Department of Human Resources; and many officers and officials representing the various pavilions at the global event.
The event witnessed the participation of 265 people, 146 females and 119 males, from 193 nationalities of participating pavilions at Expo 2020 Dubai.
The first Egyptian aviator set out to fly from Berlin to Cairo on 25 January 1930 and arrived one day later on 26 January, now celebrated as Egypt’s National Civil Aviation Day.
Mohamed Sedki the Egyptian pilot who took off from Berlin, and went from one place to Europe with another plane until he arrived in Cairo on January 26, 1930 / pix: egyptian-gazette.com
One of the most intriguing chapters in Egyptian history records early attempts by the country’s aviators to fly solo from Mohamed Sedki the Egyptian pilot who took off from Berlin, and went from one place to Europe with another plane until he arrived in Cairo on January 26, 1930Europe to Egypt, with 26 January, Egypt’s National Civil Aviation Day, marking the first successful flight of Egyptian pilot Mohamed Sedki from Berlin to Cairo in 1930.
Sedki’s success and earlier attempts earned the support of former king Fouad, always interested in supporting exploration and discoveries whether in the air or on land. But how much do we know today about these attempts and of the Egyptian pioneers who courageously flew these planes, sometimes risking their lives?
The successful attempt by Sedki in January 1930 to fly from Europe to Egypt was preceded by other unforgettable attempts.
There were those by Ahmed Hassanein Pasha, a legendary figure in the history of aviation. Better known for his exploration of the Western Desert, he was one of the most powerful men in various governments under king Fouad and king Farouk and an adventurer at heart, attempting to fly from Europe to Egypt several times before 1930.
His wish was to fly from Egypt to London in a small plane across the Mediterranean. On his first attempt, he succeeded in flying over the Mediterranean, but a few hours later his plane crashed in southern France and was destroyed. However, Hassanein survived to continue to pursue his obsession, and he bought another small plane to fly again.
This time, the plane fell in Switzerland, but Hassanein once again escaped death and decided to buy a third plane and try again. On his third attempt, the plane fell in Italy, and Hassanein was so seriously injured that the Italian doctors that rescued him considered he had died. But according to the story told in celebrated journalist Mustafa Amin’s book Unforgotten Figures, Hassanein recalled the words of Egyptian poet laureate Ahmed Shawki and described himself as a layth or lion.
He started repeating the words “courage lion” to himself at the hospital in an attempt to defeat death. The words seemed to work magic, and he surprised his doctors with a speedy recovery despite his condition.
Whether true or not, the story speaks of Hassanein’s unrelenting spirit. Rather than give up on further attempts at flying after his near death, Hassanein made a fourth endeavour to fly to Europe. A few days after leaving the hospital, he bought a fourth plane. But half an hour before flying, one of the technicians boarded the plane to do a final check, and five minutes later the plane turned into a ball of fire, with Hassanein watching in disbelief.
This was the fourth and last attempt that sealed Hassanein’s flying adventures and put an end to his aspirations.
The Egyptian Eagle
Hassanein’s plane was named Faiza after one of king Fouad’s daughters, also the name of the first plane that successfully crossed the Mediterranean to land in Egypt in 1930 piloted by “Egyptian Eagle” Mohamed Sedki.
The plane Sedki flew was a small one-seater that weighed 250 kg and had a 40 horsepower engine. Sedki used it to fly from Berlin to Alexandria, where he landed at the Abu Kir airport on 25 January. He had started his epic flight across Europe on 12 January, passing through the former Czechoslovakia, the former Yugoslavia, and Italy all the way to Egypt in unfavourable weather. Governor of Alexandria Hassan Sabry Pasha welcomed him at the Airport, before he flew again to Heliopolis Airport in Cairo, arriving on 26 January.
Sedki’s successful flight caused a sensation at the time, as thousands of people cheered him on at Heliopolis Airport, where a model plane made of flowers awaited him. Captain Goldsmith, in charge of the Abu Kir Airport at the time, exclaimed that Sedki’s was the smallest airplane he had ever set his eyes on. In Cairo, Sedki’s feat was celebrated at a formal ceremony that included representatives of king Fouad, such as Yehia Pasha, as well as prince Abbas Halim, prime minister Mustafa Al-Nahhas Pasha, minister of transport Mahmoud Al-Nokrashi, and the delegated German minister.
Kamal Elwi, another Egyptian pilot who had learned to fly before Sedki and whose private plane was the first registered plane in Egypt, was also present during the ceremony. It was graced by the presence of poet laureate Ahmed Shawki, the same poet who had earlier called Hassanein the lion. Sedki, Shawki said, was like a young Egyptian leader coming back from battle crowned with victory, adding that he saw in Sedki’s face the lines of a true ancient Egyptian, with this being the secret behind his courage.
His words chimed with the rising sense of Egyptian nationalism and pride in Egypt’s roots at a time of British colonisation, a pride that manifested itself in the literary sphere with works dedicated to Egypt’s past like Shawki’s own magnificent play The Death of Cleopatra.
The royal reception Sedki received was complemented by king Fouad’s awarding him the Gold Medal of Excellence and a gift of LE1,000 for his services to the nation. His successful flight also resulted in the establishment of the first club for Egyptian aviation in Cairo, which held another celebration for Sedki as Egypt’s first international pilot on 29 January 1930. Sedki was awarded a share in the club to the value of LE50.
Together with Kamal Elwy, and Talaat Harb, founder of the first Egyptian bank, Sedki called for the establishment of EgyptAir, Egypt’s first airline company. His success was considered a national feat at a time when the British were reluctant to allow Egypt to enter the field of aviation, since Britain had its own airline company operating in Egypt and did not want the competition.
One obstacle that Sedki encountered when trying to realise his dream was obtaining the approval of the British to fly to Egypt from abroad, an approval that he only obtained after long weeks of anticipation. Harb said during the celebration that before Sedki’s success, Egypt had been deprived of having its own pilots and its own national airports, but now that Sedki had debunked British claims that the Egyptians were unable to act as pilots, there was hope that they could be equal to other nations in the field of aviation.
A series of domestic flights followed Sedki’s international flight as he flew to Upper Egypt, first to Luxor and then to Aswan before flying back to Luxor. From there, he flew to Minya and Assiut on 27 March. Yet, for all this, Sedki did not stay in the limelight for long, and on 27 June that same year he flew back to Germany, claiming that the government in Egypt had not given him the proper appreciation, offering him a minor post with a meagre salary and barely enough to look after his plane.
He rejected the job offer and left Egypt from Heliopolis Airport, the same one where he had received a hearty welcome on his successful arrival earlier the same year.
Graduate Number 34
Al-Nadi /pix: english.ahram.org.eg
Between Sedki’s solo flight in 1930 and 1933, 33 male pilots graduated from Egypt’s School of Aviation. But graduate number 34 was certainly different, as this time the graduate was Lotfia Al-Nadi, the first Egyptian and African woman aviator to earn a pilot’s licence after US pilot Amelia Earhart with whom she exchanged letters.
In a later interview explaining her decision to train as a pilot, Al-Nady said that “I was young, eager to learn things and to accomplish something, but there were few directions that I could pursue. I read about a programme for flying that was being established,” and this was invitation enough for her to join. She was 26 when she flew her first plane from Alexandria to Cairo after training for just 67 days.
However, Al-Nadi’s career as a pilot was not an easy one. She had a reluctant mother and an initially unsupportive father, and she had to find a way to afford her flying lessons and to take them secretly. Kamal Elwy, the then director of EgyptAir, offered her a job as a telephone operator and secretary with the company, and Al-Nadi used her salary to pay for flying classes. Her secret was later revealed when her father saw a picture of her in the international press.
She was finally able to appease her father and earn his support when she took him as her first passenger on a ride above Cairo and around the Pyramids. “I took my father for a flight,” she later said. “At first, he sat stiffly, but then I noticed that his head was swiveling to the right and left. I asked him about it after we landed, and he told me he had been frightened, but then he had decided that he was in the hands of his daughter. He knew that if we crashed, we would crash together, so he relaxed and began to enjoy the flight.”
Al-Nadi’s singular career was undertaken at a moment that overlapped with the fight for women’s rights in Egypt and for women’s rights to education. Not surprisingly, Hoda Shaarawi, the famous Egyptian feminist leader of the time, honoured Al-Nadi and held a fundraising drive for her so that she could buy a plane of her own.
Among her adventures, Al-Nadi recalls how on one occasion her engine failed and she had to land in the desert where she was helped by Bedouin and given a bony mule to ride on her way back to Cairo. “I often laughed that the mule was more dependable than my Moth airplane,” she said.
Sadly, Al-Nadi’s remarkable aviation career ended abruptly in the early 1950s when she had a tragic accident while landing that left her with a broken spine. She left Egypt for Switzerland for a long period of treatment, remaining in the country for many years. Eventually, she was awarded Swiss nationality.
In 1989, Al-Nady was given the Order of Merit, the highest distinction of the Egyptian Aerospace Education Organisation. She returned to Egypt permanently, dying in the country in 2002 at the age of 95. Today, she is considered to have opened the way for other women pilots, among them Linda Masoud, the first female pilot coach, and Aziza Moharram, the first female director of the Aviation Academy, not to mention other pilots like Dina Al-Sawy, Hasnaa Taymour, and Heba Darwish.
Less well known than Al-Nadi, yet equally important to the history of Egyptian aviation is Esmat Ahmed Fouad, another woman who learnt to fly but did not obtain a pilot’s license.
Esmat’s story remains inspiring because she joined the School of Aviation and was flying at the age of just 14. Her two sisters, Kadreya and Aisha, followed suit and also learnt to fly. But the three sisters could not obtain pilot’s licenses as they were under the age of 17. They did not pursue flying careers, which is why in his book Civil Aviation in Egypt author Abdel-Latif Al-Sabbagh considers Al-Nadi to be the real pioneer of Egypt’s women aviators.
EgyptAir
The stories of individual endeavours to fly solo internationally interweave with the story of commercial flights in Egypt and the attempt to establish the national airline Egypt Air.
In 1924, the Ministry of Transportation formed a committee to launch commercial flights in Egypt, and this suggested the establishment of the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority (ECAA), whose mission would be to oversee air navigation and the country’s newly established airports. The project was highly acclaimed at the time, as it was needed to organise the arrival and departure of international planes. It was planned to establish the ECAA within five years.
In the same year, a group of Egyptian businessmen headed by Hassan Anis Pasha started to establish a company for commercial flights in Egypt. After much searching for the right types of plane, they recommended one made entirely of metal with three engines and the capacity to carry 12 passengers and two tons of merchandise. This project signalled the establishment of EgyptAir, Egypt’s national airline. In 1927, the government established the ECAA, and between 1927 and 1929 it sent three missions to train abroad.
EgyptAir was not formally established until 1931, when, thanks to the Egyptian young people who had received their training abroad, the idea of civil aviation eventually saw a revival after years of stagnation. Almaza Airport, the country’s first, was established in the same year — the earlier Heliopolis Airport mainly served the British air force, and other flights were not allowed to use it.
The history of civil aviation in Egypt is an inspiring one, a story of persistence, hope, and freedom for a whole country to have the right to fly. Stories of Egypt’s early aviators cannot fail to make future flights with EgyptAir more meaningful, and they deserve to be commemorated in a national museum dedicated to civil aviation, something which at present does not exist.
It is perhaps high time we thought of establishing such a museum in order to remind ourselves of the meaning of National Civil Aviation Day and to keep the day alive.
*A version of this article appears in print in the 3 February, 2022 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
Jonathan Broxton, a veteran music critic with Movie Music UK, has included the Pharaoh’s Golden Parade music by Hisham Nazih in his choices for best works of 2021.
Broxton is a Los Angeles-based British film music reviewer who for over the past two decades has written reviews published on Movie Music UK, an internationally renowned online platform dedicated to monitoring and writing about new developments in film music.
Each year, Broxton, who is also a member of the International Film Music Critics Association, sums up the year and picks his favourite works from the film industry from all around the globe.
In his latest entry titled Movie Music UK Awards 2021, Broxton highlighted the Pharaoh’s Golden Parade with music by Egyptian composer Hesham Nazih.
In April 2021, 22 royal mummies of ancient Egyptian kings and queens were transferred from the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir to their final destination at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation in Fustat, in a large ceremony that was broadcast live internationally.
As Broxton explains in his review, “the whole thing was a grand, spectacular celebration of Egyptian culture, featuring light and laser displays, and parades of men and women in traditional dress accompanying these ancient rulers to their new resting places.”
Speaking about the United Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Egyptian conductor Nader Abbasi, Broxton calls Nazih’s music a “spectacular orchestral and choral glory, bold, dramatic, intense, thematically rich, and mesmerizing when combined with the visuals of these long-dead kings and queens making their journey through contemporary Cairo. There are layered vocals with men and women intoning in superb call-and-response fashion, vivid cello ostinato, swirling string figures, bold explosions of brass.
Born in 1972, Nazih is an Egyptian film and television series score composer. His career has involved composing music for a number of successful films, including Hysteria, Sleepless Nights (2003), Tito (2004), Ibrahim Labyad (2009), Elfeel El-Azraq (The Blue Elephant, 2014), The Treasure (2017), The Treasure 2 (2019), Sons of Rizk (2019), among others.
Nazih also wrote the music for Born a King, a 2019 historical coming-of-age drama film directed by Agustí Villaronga. The film was a coproduction between the UK and five Arab countries.
His scores for the television series include Sharbat Louz (Almond Nectar, 2012), Niran Sadiqa (Friendly Fire, 2013), and Al-Aahd (The Covenant, 2015).
Over the years, he collaborated with a number of well-known directors including Sherif Arafa and Marwan Hamed, with whom he worked on several occasions.
Nazih’s work for El-Asliyyin (2017) brought him the Best Music award at the Cairo National Festival for Egyptian Cinema (2018). For his contribution to the film music scene, he was also awarded the Faten Hamama Excellence Award at the 40th Cairo International Film Festival (2018).
The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque’s main prayer hall housed the world’s largest carpet, a unique masterpiece with dazzling beauty and design. The carpet was hand-knotted by a group of the world’s most skilled artists and weavers.
The wool and cotton carpet was hand-crafted by around 1,200 artisans. It is 5,400 square metres, with 40 knots per 6.5 centimetres and 2.5 billion knots for the entire carpet, weighing 35 tons after completion.
Despite its enormous size, the carpet was designed as a single piece, which qualified it for the Guinness Book of Records in 2017 as the largest carpet in the world. Its knotting took approximately 12 months.
With unique harmony and integration of aesthetic elements, the carpet covers the floor of the main prayer hall and magnifies its splendour. The hand-woven carpet has an astonishing design, looking like a reflection of the above chandelier. Its background features a variety of 25 natural colours from traditional herbs, including local madar roots, pomegranate peels, leaf veins, and others.
The carpet is predominately green, bringing a sense of calm and comfort to the place. To maintain the beauty of the design, a shaving technique was used to define the rows of worshipers on the carpet.
The carpet weaving took place in three large workshops on a built-up area of 5,000 square metres. The carpet’s high-quality materials, colours, and creative design make it one of Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque’s finest elements. It is carefully supervised by Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque Centre, with its maintenance work taking more than 12 days according to thoughtful plans by specialized teams.
Monastery has three churches, most important of which is underground Church of St Paul.
The Monastery of St Paul the Anchorite, also known as the Monastery of the Tigers, is a Coptic Orthodox monastery dating back to the 4th Century CE located in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, near the Red Sea Mountains.
Located about 155 km south east of Cairo, the monastery gained the moniker the Monastery of the Tigers due to its isolated location out in the wilderness of Egypt’s desert moonscape. It covers an area of about five acres of land, and is a rectangular shape of 200 metres long by 100 metres wide.
By the 5th Century CE, the monastery was built over the cave where St Paul the Anchorite lived for more than 80 years.
St Paul, also known as St Paul of Thebes, or Anba Bola in Arabic, was a Coptic Orthodox saint born in Alexandria in 228 CE. Following his father’s death, the teenage Paul decided to become a hermit and live a simple life.
At the age of 16, he converted to Christianity and escaped Alexandria to avoid Roman persecution. According to one story, God sent Paul an angel who guided him to Egypt’s arid Western Desert, where he could live alone as a hermit.
The same story relates how God sent Paul a crow every day carrying half a loaf of bread to feed him. One day St Anthony joined Paul, and when the crow came, it had a full loaf of bread. St Paul then realised that it was God who had sent St Anthony, after 80 years of his worshipping in solitude.
As legend tells it, when St Paul died St Anthony saw two lions standing by the door of the cave in which the former had made his home. The lions approached the corpse, and used their claws dug in the ground, for St Anthony put St Paul’s body into the hole for burial.
It is for this reason that St Paul’s icon in any Coptic museum in Egypt shows him flanked by two lions with a crown above his head.
The first travel narrative associated with the monastery belongs to an anonymous pilgrim from the Italian city of Piacenza who visited the tomb of St Paul the Anchorite between the years 560 CE and 570 CE. The pilgrim is not to be confused with Antoninus Martyr.
The first monks to occupy the monastery were some of the disciples of Anthony the Great, after they learned the story of St Paul the Anchorite. It may have been occupied by Melkites for a short period, although they were followed by Egyptian and Syrian monks.
The Syrians may have had a sustained existence at the monastery, for it appears that they also occupied the monastery during the first half of the 15th Century, after which their presence disappeared. According to an isolated Ethiopian reference, the 70th Coptic Orthodox Pope, Gabriel II (1131–45 CE), was banished to the monastery of St Paul the Anchorite for three years.
Throughout its history, the monastery has suffered from several Bedouin raids, the worst of which occurred in 1484. This particularly painful attack saw all the monks murdered and the monastery plundered, following which the Bedouins occupied the building for 80 years.
The monastery was rebuilt under the patronage of Pope Gabriel VII of Alexandria (1526-69 CE), then attacked and destroyed again towards the end of the century. The monastery was deserted for 119 years, then extensively reconstructed and repopulated by monks from St Anthony’s Monastery, under the patronage of Pope John XVI of Alexandria (1676-1718 CE).
The monastery has three churches, the most important of which is the underground Church of St Paul that contains the hermit’s cave and burial place. Its walls are painted with well-preserved frescoes, and the ceiling is hung with ostrich eggs, symbols of the resurrection. The larger Church of St Michael has a gilded icon of John the Baptist’s severed head.
There is no public transportation to St Paul’s Monastery and, as the original hermit intended, it is a long journey from civilisation to get there. Visitors can take the bus from Cairo to Hurghada and get off at the turn-off for St Paul’s Monastery, following which there is a 13 km uphill trek to the monastery itself. This may sound daunting at first, but the road is well-paved and has plenty of traffic.
The Monastery of St Paul is an incredibly important site in Egypt’s long and varied history, and is the second ancient Coptic Christian monastery tucked away in the Eastern Desert.
Visitors may also view some of the manuscripts in the monastery’s possession, which includes a Coptic language version of the “Divine Liturgy”. A tour of the site may include a trip up the tower, and a glimpse of the “Pool of Mary” where Mary, the sister of Moses, washed her feet during the Exodus.
Along with the nearby Monastery of St Anthony, the Monastery of St Paul is quite possibly the most impressive structure in the desert. It is for this reason that it is included in several Egyptian desert tours.
Bader Al-Mutawa (aka) Bader Ahmed al-Mutawa. Professional Footballer. Athlete.
• Bader Al Mutawa has become the most-capped player of all time
• Striker passed the mark of former Egyptian defender Ahmed Hassan
• Kuwaiti has now played 185 times for his country
Kuwait’s FIFA Arab Cup™ qualifier against Bahrain is a hugely significant fixture, and not just because the winners will go to the tournament in Qatar. It was also the game that finally allowed Kuwaiti forward Bader Al Mutawa to become the most-capped player in the history of men’s football.
Earlier this month, during Kuwait’s unsuccessful attempt to reach the third round of AFC qualifying for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, Al Mutawa won his 184th cap to tie the record of Egyptian legend Ahmed Hassan, set on 22 May 2012 against Togo.
FIFA.com looks back at the impressive career of Al Mutawa, who has finally surpassed his Egyptian rival and set a new appearances’ record for international men’s football.
Singapore start
On 4 September 2003, newly-appointed coach Paulo Cesar Carpegiani handed Al Mutawa his debut in a 2004 Asian Cup qualifier away to Singapore. It was certainly a bold move, partly because it was the Brazilian’s first game in charge, and partly because the player being entrusted with attacking duties was only 18-years-old.
But Al Mutawa, who began his football career as a goalkeeper with Al-Qadsia before moving up front, quickly repaid Carpegiani’s trust, scoring on his debut in a 3-1 win.
Five World Cup qualifying campaigns
Al Mutawa then helped Al-Azraq (The Blue) to the final phase of the 2004 Asian Cup. He would go on to feature at that tournament in China PR, as well as the 2011 and 2015 editions, but could not prevent Kuwait exiting at the group stage on each occasion.
Six months after his international debut, the 1.75 m forward played his first FIFA World Cup™ qualifier, against Malaysia in the Germany 2006 preliminaries. Once again he rose to the occasion, opening the scoring and helping his side to victory.
Al Mutawa was a fixture in his side for the South Africa 2010, Brazil 2014 and Russia 2018 World Cup qualifiers. He also featured in Kuwait’s unsuccessful bid to reach Qatar 2022.
Breaking new ground
When the AFC qualifiers for Qatar 2022 resumed earlier this month, Al Mutawa was still three games away from Ahmed Hassan’s record. He came off the bench for the Australia and Jordan games before starting their final fixture against Chinese Taipei, where he equalled the mark set nine years previously by Hassan.
That achievement was overshadowed by Kuwait’s Qatar 2022 elimination, which saw the veteran break down in tears in the knowledge that he would not be able to end his long career with an appearance on the world stage.
However, there was some consolation for Al Mutawa, with the president of the Kuwaiti Football Federation, Sheikh Ahmed Al Yousef, paying tribute to him before the team travelled to Qatar to face Bahrain. The 36-year-old then duly made history by taking sole possession of the record for most international appearances in men’s football.
source/content: fifa.com
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Kuwait’s forward and captain Bader al-Mutawa runs after the ball during the 2021 FIFA Arab Cup qualifier match between Bahrain and Kuwait at Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, on June 25, 2021. (Photo by KARIM JAAFAR / AFP) / pix; the-afc.com / fifa.com
