THE “Memory of the Arab World” is a major project initiated with the target to document the Arabic Cultural Heritage. It started two years ago under the umbrella of the Arab League and the coordination of Egypt’s Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) and is now entering the imple¬mentation phase.
Four regional meetings have been held in four different coun¬tries up until now; one in Sharjah, a second in Damascus, a third in Cairo and a fourth held last month in Fez, Morocco.
The project is documenting four main aspects of the Arab world heritage; manuscripts, architectural heritage, oral heritage and historic timelines. Within every aspect, contents from different countries are linked together in one big regional data container.
During the last meeting of July, databases covering those aspects were demonstrated, workshops were organized to discuss details of the contents and innovative means to improve the usability of the system, and a website containing the different heritage tracks as well as other information was presented.
We were glad to be informed that the website will extend to include web based-database facilities so that every participating country would get to locally manage the data entry of different heritage tracks. This will also couple up with a data security system as well as appropriate levels of admission.
The meeting also witnessed the publishing of three documents; A catalogue on different organizations working in the field of cultural heritage in the different Arab countries, and two bibliographic publications. One publication is related to architectural heritage track and the other for the manuscripts. As the meeting proceeded, two new tracks were initiated as well- the Arab music and the photographic heritage.
At the closing stage, it was decided that the next meeting will take place six months from now in Bllbrain upon the invitation of Sheikha Mai bin Khalifa, the minister of culture of the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Bahrain is one of the few countries in the Gulf area that has a history dating back to the third millennium BC. This civilization was known as the Delmon. It existed at the same time as the Sumerian and both civilizations were in contact to the extent that the Delmon was mentioned in the legendary Sumerian Episode of Gilgamesh.
They are· building now a center in Bahrain called the Issa Cultural Center that will display the history of the country parallel to the history of other civilizations in the area. It is, thus, expected that the visit to Bahrain will be very informative and stimulating and that the next meeting of the Memory of the Arab World project will be as productive as this ancient land can be inspiring.
