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Saudi Culture Ministry, King Salman Academy Organize Learning Arabic Language Hackathon

The Saudi Ministry of Culture logo
The Saudi Ministry of Culture logo
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Saudi Culture Ministry, King Salman Academy Organize Learning Arabic Language Hackathon

The Saudi Ministry of Culture logo
The Saudi Ministry of Culture logo

The Saudi Ministry of Culture, in collaboration with the King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language (KSGAAL), is organizing the "Learning and Embracing the Arabic Language" hackathon on September 18-19 at the Diriyah Biennale.

The event will bring together innovators and creators in various teams to develop products that promote Arabic language learning through innovative methods that blend culture and creativity, contributing to the preservation of the Saudi cultural identity.

The hackathon comes as part of the Ministry’s dedicated efforts, reaffirming its commitment to developing creative ideas that promote innovation in the cultural field.

It reflects the Ministry’s endeavors to reinforce the fundamental role of the Arabic language in Saudi culture and to encourage all segments of society to invest in the Arabic language as an investment in a promising future that contributes to building a diverse and thriving cultural community.

It also expresses the Kingdom’s rich heritage and elevates the status of Arabic among global languages, aligning with one of the goals of Saudi Vision 2030, which focuses on fostering the Arabic language.

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Culture

Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”