Al-Ahram Weekly | Culture

		Al-Ahram Weekly Online 25 - 31 October 2001 Issue No.557
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

Seaside biennale
UNDER the auspices of the Fine Arts Sector, an affiliate of the Ministry of Culture, the 21st round of the Alexandria International Biennale for Mediterranean countries is to be inaugurated today at the Museum of Fine Arts, Mansha Palace in Alexandria, reports Reham El-Adawi.
The 45-day event will include 70 artists from Spain, Albania, Bosnia, Morocco, Greece, Tunisia, Syria, France, Palestine, Cyprus, Croatia, Lebanon, Libya, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Greece and Italy and will showcase the work of four honourees, the late Salah Abdel-Karim, Gamal El-Segini and Mahmoud Moussa from Egypt and Giovanni Soccol from Italy.
Mexican artist Enrique Carbagal will head the jury.

Digitalising hadith
YESTERDAY, the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation launched its Hadith Encyclopaedia at a press conference at the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel. The fruit of 15 years of research by a group of hadith scholars and computer scientists, this database could herald a revolution in Islamic studies. It comprises a complete edition of the seven major hadith collections. For the first time the Sahih of Al-Bukhari, the Sahih of Muslim, the Sunan of Abu Dawoud, the Jami' of Al-Tirmidhi, the Sunan of Al- Nisa'i, the Sunan of Ibn Maja, the Muwatta' of Imam Malik, the Musnad of Ibn Hanbal, the Sunan of Al-Darimi and the Sunan of Daraqutni are printed together in a single edition of 15 volumes, cross- referenced and including scholarly indices.
A special Arabic typeface was developed for the project, a digitalised version of the character-set used for the 1932 King Foad edition of the Qur'an, regarded as one of the highest achievement of Arabic typography. The database is also available on CD-Rom.
The Web site for the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation, based in Liechtenstein is www.thesaurus-islamicus.li

Booker goes to Carey
AUSTRALIAN novelist Peter Carey became the second author to win the Booker prize twice when, in a ceremony held last Wednesday he was awarded the 2001 Booker for the True History of the Kelly Gang.
A fictionalised memoir of one of Australia's most famous outlaws, the novel takes the form of an account of Ned Kelly's life written for his daughter and is divided up into a number of "parcels", sheets of paper bound together and each describing the events of a year or so of Kelly's life.
Kelly is Australia's Robin Hood; an orphan and a champion of the poor he was also a thief and was hanged for murder in 1880 at the age of 25. He became one of Australia's most celebrated folk heroes.
Carey manages to create a distinctive voice for Kelly throughout the novel, an uneducated unpunctuated one that he frees from grammatical straight jackets, a voice inspired by the style of the outlaw's one surviving letter.
Carey won his first Booker in 1988 for the epic Victorian love story Oscar and Lucinda. The only other author to win two Bookers is J M Coetzee. This year, Ian McEwan's Atonement was tipped as favourite and did indeed receive honourable mention at the ceremony.
The Booker prize was inaugurated in 1968.

Sharon in cartoon
SYRIAN television has produced a short animated picture entitled Save Childhood in which an image of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is reconstructed. The message and symbolism of the film seem easy enough to decipher. Sharon's face is drawn in simple caricaturish lines with a head that turns around like a radar. Gradually, budding flowers appear on the screen but the Sharon figure crushes them, not giving them a chance to bloom. Yet more and more flowers start growing, crowding the screen and besieging Sharon. As the flowers bloom, the faces of Palestinian children who died in the Intifada, such as Mohamed Al-Dorra and Iman Hijjo, replace the flowers.
Written and directed by Firas Dahni, based on an idea by Ghassan Shehab, this politically oriented cartoon is a first for Syrian television.

Developing Bab Al-Azab
THE MINISTRY of Culture has revised its controversial plans to develop the Bab Al- Azab neighbourhood of Cairo. According to Gaballa Ali Gaballa, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, the new development project will take place over three years and will include establishing a specialised institute for restoration, an Islamic museum, a centre for traditional arts and crafts as well as a meeting hall. The project will also restore surviving monuments in the area, including the Azab gate itself, the mosque of Ahmed Katkhuda Al-Azab and other Ottoman sites. Buildings used as garrisons for both the Ottoman and British armies, which have since fallen into disrepair and been taken over by car mechanics' shops, will be removed in the process.
The earlier plan, which has now been shelved, controversially included a five-star hotel in the midst of the historical neighbourhood. It was subsequently overruled by the courts on the grounds that it would damage surviving monuments.

Egypt in Paris
AS PART of an Egyptian call for peace, the Egyptian media bureau in Paris and the Arab World Institute are hosting a celebration on 5 November. The event will include the screening of Days of Sadat followed by a symposium on Egypt's peace role. The speakers will include Ali Maher, Egypt's ambassador to France, Nasser El- Ansari, director of the Arab World Institute, Ali El-Qadi the press attaché, and Sherief El-Shobashi, Al-Ahram's Paris bureau chief.
Ahmed Zaki and Mona Zaki, stars of Days of Sadat, as well as its director, Mohamed Khan, are scheduled to attend. Among the French artists invited are Alain Delon, Isabelle Adjani, Enrico Massis and Michel Piccoli.
Compiled by Amina Elbendary

Recommend this page

© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved

Send a letter to the Editor

ARCHIVES
Letter from the Editor
Editorial Board
Subscription
Advertise!

WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly
Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time
weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg

Al-Ahram Organisation