عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Milan to Host International Festival of Arabic Language and Culture

People pass by the Duomo Cathedral, in Milan, Italy, April 13, 2021. REUTERS/Flavio Lo Scalzo/File Photo
People pass by the Duomo Cathedral, in Milan, Italy, April 13, 2021. REUTERS/Flavio Lo Scalzo/File Photo
TT
TT

Milan to Host International Festival of Arabic Language and Culture

People pass by the Duomo Cathedral, in Milan, Italy, April 13, 2021. REUTERS/Flavio Lo Scalzo/File Photo
People pass by the Duomo Cathedral, in Milan, Italy, April 13, 2021. REUTERS/Flavio Lo Scalzo/File Photo

The 5th edition of the International Festival of Arabic Language and Culture is set to kick off on March 17, in Milan. The festival is organized by the Catholic University of Milan’s Arabic Language Research Institute (CARA) and the Language Service Center (SeLdA), as well as the Sharjah Book Authority.

The three-day festival features several lectures discussing the ‘Historic Dictionary of the Arabic Language’.

Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, ruler of Sharjah, who is set to address the festival’s opening lecture, announced the completion of the first volumes of this historic dictionary during the Sharjah Book Fair two years ago. It is the first-of-its-kind reference that dates Arabic terms and their different uses over the past 17 centuries.

Attempts to form this dictionary started in 1932 under the rule of King Farouk of Egypt, who issued a decree to establish the Complex of Arabic Language in Cairo. However, the project was halted because of the grandness of the Arabic heritage, the high cost, and the size of the project (it covers the pre-Islamic era, heritage and poetry from the age of ignorance, and the successive Islamic periods including the modern Islamic era), in addition to other contemporary obstacles including the war of 1948, scarcity of resources, and the lack of will to proceed such a huge project.

The opening day will include keynotes by Head of the Catholic University of Milan Franco Anelli, Dean of the faculty of linguistic sciences and foreign literatures Giovanni Gobber, and Chairman of the Sharjah Book Authority (SBA) Ahmed bin Rakkad Al Ameri.

The second day of the festival includes three lectures: ‘The Historic Dictionary: Intersection of Languages and Cultures,’ will be moderated by Dr. Isabella Camera d'Afflitto from La Sapienza University in Rome.
Participants are Dr. Giovanni Gobber from The Catholic University of Milan, Head of Cairo’s Arab Language Complex Salah Fadl, Bernard Cerquiglini from the Francophone University Agency (AUF), and Dr. Mohamed Safi Al Mosteghanemi, secretary-general of Arabic Language Academy (ALA) in Sharjah.

The second lecture ‘The Historic Dictionary: Samples and Curricula,” will be moderated by Dr. Maria Cristina Gatti, head of CARA at the Catholic University of Milan. Participants are Dr. Elton Prifti from the University of Munich and Accademia della Crusca, Head of Al Khartoum International Institute of Arabic Language Bakri Mohammed al-Haj, Maamoun al-Wajih from Fayoum University and scientific director of the Historic Dictionary of Arabic Language, and Martino Diaz from the department of literature and foreign languages at the Catholic University of Milan.

The third lecture ‘The Origins of Words and Terminology Studies” will be moderated by Dr. Maria Teresa Zanola, head of the European Language Council (CEL/ELC) and professor at the department of literature and foreign languages at the Catholic University of Milan. Participants are Manuel Célio Conceição (University of the Algarve), Abdul Fatah al-Hamjari from the Hassan II University of Casablanca, and Head of Mauritania’s Arabic Tongue Council Dr. Khalil Al-Nahawi.

The third day features a fourth lecture entitled ‘Literature and History of Language’ that will be moderated by Dr. Wael Farouq from the department of literature and foreign languages at the Catholic University. Participants are Sobhi Hadidi, literary critic and translator (Syria/France); historian, writer, and journalist Dr. Fawwaz Traboulsi from the American University of Beirut (AUB); Dr. Saad al-Bazei, professor of comparative literature at King Saud University; and Dr. Paolo D'Achille from Roma Tre University and Accademia della Crusca.

A fifth lecture dubbed ‘Dictionary of Existence between Language and Poetry’ will be moderated by Dr. Francesca Corao from the LUISS Guido Carli University Rome. Participants are Abdullah Thabet, Saudi writer and poet; Ahmed Abdul Hussein, Iraqi poet and journalist; Rami Younes, Syrian poet and translator; and Kased Mohammed, Iraqi poet and translator.

The festival will also host an Arabic Book Fair in collaboration with Dar Al Mutawassit – Milan, an exhibition of Arabic calligraphy, and a screening of the movie Hepta by director Hadi al-Bagouri with Italian subtitles.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

Jimmy Carter's Woodworking, Painting and Poetry Reveal an Introspective Renaissance Man

(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
TT
TT

Jimmy Carter's Woodworking, Painting and Poetry Reveal an Introspective Renaissance Man

(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)
(FILES) Former President Jimmy Carter waves to the crowd at the Democratic National Convention 2008 at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, on August 25, 2008. (Photo by Robyn BECK / AFP)

The world knew Jimmy Carter as a president and humanitarian, but he also was a woodworker, painter and poet, creating a body of artistic work that reflects deeply personal views of the global community — and himself.
His portfolio illuminates his closest relationships, his spartan sensibilities and his place in the evolution of American race relations. And it continues to improve the finances of The Carter Center, his enduring legacy, The Associated Press said.
Creating art provided “the rare opportunity for privacy” in his otherwise public life, Carter said. “These times of solitude are like being in another very pleasant world.”
‘One of the best gifts of my life' Mourners at Carter’s hometown funeral will see the altar cross he carved in maple and collection plates he turned on his lathe. Great-grandchildren in the front pews at Maranatha Baptist Church slept as infants in cradles he fashioned.
The former president measured himself a “fairly proficient” craftsman. Chris Bagby, an Atlanta woodworker whose shop Carter frequented, elevated that assessment to “rather accomplished.”
Carter gleaned the basics on his father’s farm, where the Great Depression meant being a jack-of-all-trades. He learned more in shop class and with Future Farmers of America. “I made a miniature of the White House,” he recalled, insisting it was not about his ambitions.
During his Navy years, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter chose unfurnished military housing to stretch his $300 monthly wage, and he built their furniture himself in a shop on base.
As president, Carter nurtured woodworking rather than his golf game, spending hours in a wood shop at Camp David to make small presents for family and friends. And when he left the White House, West Wing aides and Cabinet members pooled money for a shopping spree at Sears, Roebuck & Co. so he could finally assemble a full-scale home woodshop.
“One of the best gifts of my life,” Carter said.
Working in their converted garage, he previewed decades of Habitat for Humanity work by refurbishing their one-story house in Plains. He also improved his fine woodworking skills, joining wood without nails or screws. He also bought Japanese carving tools, and fashioned a chess set later owned by a Saudi prince.
Not just any customer Carter frequented Atlanta’s Highland Woodworking, a shop replete with a library of how-to books and hard-to-find tools, and recruited the world’s preeminent handmade furniture maker, Tage Frid, as an instructor, Bagby said.
Still hanging near the store entrance is a picture of Frid, who died in 2004, teaching students including a smiling former president at the front of the class.
“He was like a regular customer,” Bagby said, other than the “Secret Service agents who came with him.”
Carter built four ladder-back chairs out of hickory in 1983, and Sotheby’s auctioned them for $21,000 each at the time, the first of many sales of Carter paintings and furniture that raised millions to benefit The Carter Center.
It was rarely about the money, though. Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend who would have the Carters over to her home in Plains, recalled seeing the former president carrying out one of her chairs.
“I said, ‘What are you doing?’” she recalled. “He said, ‘It’s broken. I’m going to take it home and fix it.’”
He was at her back door at 7:30 the next morning, holding her repaired chair.
Carter compared woodworking to the results of his labor as a Navy engineer, or as a boy on the farm: “I like to see what I have done, what I have made.”
‘No special talent,' but his paintings drive auctions Carter employed a folk-art style as a late-in-life amateur painter and claimed “no special talent,” but a 2020 Carter Center auction drew $340,000 for his painting titled “Cardinals," and his oil-on-canvas of an eagle sold for $225,000 in 2023, months after he entered hospice care.
Carter’s work hangs throughout the center’s campus. A room where he met with dignitaries is encircled with birds he painted after he and Rosalynn took on bird watching as a hobby.
Near the executive offices are a self-portrait and a painting of Rosalynn in their early post-presidential years, hanging across from a trio of Andy Warhol prints showing Carter in office.
Carter’s earliest years predominate, with boyhood farm scenes and portraits of influential figures like his father James Earl Carter Sr., whose death in 1953 led him to abandon a Navy career and eventually enter politics in Georgia.
Some of his subjects, including both of his parents, are looking away. Carter's likeness of his mother shows “Miss Lillian” as a 70-year-old Peace Corps volunteer in India. Jason Carter said the piece was particularly meaningful to his grandfather, who lost reelection at a relatively youthful 56.
“When he got out of the White House, she was standing there saying, ’Well, I turned 70 in the Peace Corps. What are you going to do?” Jason Carter said.
One Carter subject who meets his gaze is a young Rosalynn — they married when she was 18 and he was 21. He described her as “remarkably beautiful, almost painfully shy, obviously intelligent, and yet unrestrained in our discussions.”
Another who doesn’t look away is Rachel Clark, a Black sharecropper who had hosted the future president after they worked in the fields. “Except for my parents, Rachel Clark was the person closest to me,” Carter wrote of his childhood.
'Just a word of praise' Carter wrote more than 30 books — even a novel — but was most introspective in poetry.
On his first real recognition of Jim Crow segregation: “A silent line was drawn between friend and friend, race and race.”
On his Cold War submarine’s delicate dance with enemies: “We wanted them to understand ... to share our love of solitude ... the peace we yearned to keep.”
Rosalynn’s smile, he gushed, silenced the birds, “or may be I failed to hear their song.”
Perhaps Carter’s most revealing poem, “I Wanted to Share My Father’s World,” concerns the man who never got to see his namesake son’s achievements. He wrote that he despised Earl’s discipline, and swallowed hunger for “just a word of praise.”
Only when he brought his own sons to visit his dying father did he “put aside the past resentments of the boy” and see “the father who will never cease to be alive in me.”