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Tanweer Festival in UAE to Showcase Diverse Cultural Expressions

Held in the Mleiha Desert, Sharjah, this event will feature three days of artistic and cultural activities. WAM
Held in the Mleiha Desert, Sharjah, this event will feature three days of artistic and cultural activities. WAM
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Tanweer Festival in UAE to Showcase Diverse Cultural Expressions

Held in the Mleiha Desert, Sharjah, this event will feature three days of artistic and cultural activities. WAM
Held in the Mleiha Desert, Sharjah, this event will feature three days of artistic and cultural activities. WAM

The three-day Tanweer Festival 2024, themed "Timeless Echoes of Love and Light," will bring an immersive cultural gathering to the UAE on November 22, Emirates News Agency (WAM) reported.

Inspired by the legacy of Jalal al-Din Al Rumi, the festival invites global audiences to engage in shared expressions of music, art, poetry, and cultural exchange, WAM said.

Held in the Mleiha Desert, Sharjah, this event will feature three days of artistic and cultural activities, with over 100 musicians from more than 15 nations, performing across four uniquely designed stages, along with ten workshops and immersive art installations.

The festival’s program integrates performances by renowned artists such as Sami Yusuf, Dhafer Youssef, Kamal Musallam, and Constantinople with Ghalia Benali, each contributing to a diverse artistic atmosphere.

The event will include ten workshops aimed at enhancing creative skills and understanding cultural traditions, from Sufi whirling to calligraphy lighting, led by experienced practitioners.

Visitors can also explore art installations by visionary artists such as Karim + Elias, Ahmad Kattan, and Omar Al Gurg, which will provide reflective and inspirational experiences.

Tanweer’s “Nourish” culinary area will feature 12 vendors offering local and international dishes, reflecting the festival’s ethos of cross-cultural connection through food.

The marketplace will host 14 local and international artisans, showcasing handcrafted items and sustainable goods that celebrate diverse artistic traditions.

 

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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)
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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.”