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Ruler and defender of Morocco’s coastal city-state of Tétouan, Sayyida al-Hurra was a woman of many identities. Her name—really a title—loosely translates “an independent noble lady,” but to her detractors she was a “pirate queen.” Hasna Lebbady, author of Feminist Traditions in Andalusi-Moroccan Oral Narratives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), counts her among the Andalusi-Moroccan heroines who populate the nation’s history and folklore.

The sixth and final story in a series published in AramcoWorld takes place in the early 16th century, when Morocco offered haven to Muslim and Jewish émigrés in the wake of the fall of Al-Andalus to Christian Spain.  Read on...

Calligraphy Meets Music (Short Version) from Triptych Films on Vimeo.  Click to play video.

Morocco is the fourth most active publishing country in the Arab World after Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon. The Arab world territory includes the 22 countries of the Arab League: Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, KSA, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, UAE, Yemen. The yearly Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair) consolidated and shared some fact and figures about the Arab and the Moroccan book publishing market. THE ARAB BOOK MARKET THE MOROCCAN BOOK MARKET (in German) Ketabook is strategically located in the capital of Moroccan book publishing and has been serving academics and libraries worldwide since 2001. Ketabook also has a...

Published in AramcoWorld in Dec.2015 Written by Jesús Cano and Louis WernerArt by Belén Esturla The story, according to Córdoba-born historian Ibn Hayyan, is that when the amir of Al-Andalus, ‘Abd al-Rahman ii, assigned his court poet and trusted ambassador to a mission to the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, the poet tried his best to refuse.     Independent, insubordinate, even impudent: Such moments were almost trademarks of Yahya ibn Hakam al-Ghazal, whose surname meant “the gazelle,” a name given for his extraordinary good looks and fleet wit. He was known for satirical verse and sharp epigrams that not infrequently...

Using a single light suspend-ed from the ceiling to shine through a laser-cut sculpture in wood that is painted black, Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha transforms the Rice Art Gallery in Houston into an allusion to Islamic sacred spaces where geometric ornamentation and patterns themselves allude to the infinity of creation. The artwork was inspired, Agha says, by her visit to the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, where the Nasrid palace’s all-encompassing beauty of interlacing designs prompted re-flection upon her own childhood in Lahore, Pakistan, where culture barred her and other women from the creativity and community of the mosque—an experience she says...