Nos Actualités أخبارنا

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...

A ninth century library in Morocco, widely believed to be the oldest in the world, is going digital to make its ancient treasures available to a wider audience. The al-Qarawiyyin library in the former Moroccan capital, Fez, is home to some of the rarest and most unique manuscripts in the world, with access limited to just the curator in some special cases. However, the library installed a new laboratory this year to oversee the protection and digitalizing of the 4,000 manuscripts on site in conjunction with the Institute of Computational Linguistics in Italy. "The main aim is to provide means...

Adria Lawrence speaks about about the recent elections in Morocco on this week’s Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) podcast with Marc Lynch, “The outcome isn’t really surprising, though very few people expected a big surprise. The PJD [Party of Justice and Development, a moderate Islamist-oriented party]  took more seats than its rival.” Adria Lawrence is Associate Professor of Political Science and a research fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Her research reflects her expertise in the politics of the Middle East and North Africa. Listen to the full conversation above.