Contents

The Role of Libraries

in Dialogue among Civilizations:

the Example of Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Dr. Khalid Azab(*)

Along history, Alexandria has been a very renowned world city. Alexander the Great, founder of Alexandria, made of the city a cornerstone of a comprehensive and pluralistic culture. The modern city, founded at the era of Mohamed Ali Basha and his predecessors, recreated this culture based on cultural and ethnical complementarity. Through recreating Bibliotheca Alexandrina, spirit has been evoked to the city for the third time. Before being officially inaugurated, the library was concerned with calling for and spreading the culture of dialogue at local, regional and international levels. The library’s Dialogue Forum organizes a bi-monthly meeting to discuss various topics that promote dialogue between Egyptians of different creeds and backgrounds. The Forum also promotes dialogue between the Arabs, the West and the rest of the world through a set of events, programs and activities that include international conferences, music concerts, plays and other activities, which contribute to the objective of the library to be Egypt’s window on the world and the world’s window on Egypt. The library’s joint programs are meant to promote cooperation and exchange of ideas and expertise between Egypt’s researchers and their foreign peers.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina provides boarding for foreign artists and intellectuals to facilitate their work in Alexandria for a couple of weeks and months with their Egyptian peers. This kind of cooperation and exchange of expertise, ideas and way of life between laymen (rather than politicians and policymakers) is the perfect and most influencing way to promote dialogue and spread understanding and tolerance between people. Indeed, this kind of cooperation has started, as the Arts Center and the Alexandria Center for Mediterranean Studies at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, in conjunction with the French Cultural Center in Alexandria, hosted a Belgian painter to work with an Alexandrian peer. The four-month experience gave birth to a joint-exposition of the two artists’ paintings under the theme of Alexandria.

Thus, Bibliotheca Alexandrina aspires to be an arena of dialogue between various civilizations and cultures. This dialogue may raise the similarities and differences between these cultures and civilizations. For this reason, the library opened several centers in order to consolidate its role in this respect. The centers include:

1- The Center for Mediterranean Studies:

The center aims to recreate the historical role of Alexandria and its civilization in the region through rediscovering the city’s spirit of plurality, tolerance and cooperation in order to regain once again its special place among Mediterranean countries. To achieve this objective, the center focuses on four points:

Research:

The center conducts specialized researches on Alexandria and the Mediterranean basin countries, in addition to the works that aim to digitalize and preserve the city’s patrimony. The center is currently collecting information and establishing a data bank of primary and secondary resources related to Alexandria’s history, literature and arts. The permanent researches include a digital model of Alexandria’s lighthouse building, which will be published in a special handbook and on CDs, and researches on Alexandria’s patrimony during the Ottoman period.

In line with the vision of Bibliotheca Alexandrina to be a special institute, the Center is collecting documentation on three Egyptian cinema pioneers, who lived, started their career and were influenced by Alexandria. They are Youssef Chahin, Toujou Mezrahi and Mohamed Bayoumi.

Publishing and expansion:

The Center organized its first international conference under the theme “Evoking the Spirit, Recreating the City: Alexandrianism in the 21st century” in April 2004 to promote studies and spreading knowledge about Alexandria’s past, present and future. Several renowned personalities from different fields took part in this conference whose proceedings will be published in the beginning of 2005.

The Center publishes a series of handbooks on renowned personalities and specialized topics related to Alexandria. The following series will be published in the fall of 2004: Zogheib Life History, Tousson: Prince of Alexandria and Alexandrite of Desmond O’Grady.

To provide further information on Alexandria, the Center is preparing a cultural map of the city and a book entitled “Alexandria Bulletin: Facts and Figures of the Contemporary City”. The Center is also preparing a book about Alexandria’s natural spots.

Dialogue and partnership

The center is committed to recreate the spirit of dialogue of the ancient Alexandria through various activities, which include the project “the Mediterranean cities: inter-civilization dialogue”. The project, which will bring together 10 Mediterranean countries, aims to adopt and spread dialogue throughout these cities. The project will also include an exposition, a forum of public policies, a set of publications and a special event about Alexandria. This event will take place at Bibliotheca Alexandrina in November 2004.

“Voices through the Mediterranean: the Oral History and the Cultural Practices through the Mediterranean,” which is a second Mediterranean patrimonial project, includes a web page and special publications that aim to preserve all the oral evidences proving the cultural diversity in the Mediterranean cities.

The Center sponsors the various activities that adopt cultural dialogue. These activities included organizing, in cooperation with the French Cultural Center in Alexandria and the Arts Center at Bibliotheca Alexandrina, a music concert of George Moustaki in April 2004. Cultural dialogue is promoted through inviting artists from various countries to come to Alexandria and work with local artists. This experience started with a Belgian painter, who is currently in Alexandria. This painter will organize, in conjunction with an Egyptian peer, an exposition in October 2004.

A great part of dialogue promotion depends on establishing partnerships. Last year, the Center contributed to supporting the Egyptian-Swedish bid to host the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures and to have the foundation’s headquarters at Bibliotheca Alexandrina as the Egyptian connecting link between the dialogue of civilizations networks. Alexandria Center of Mediterranean Studies (Alex-Med) is a member of the Network of European Research Centres For The Euro-Mediterranean (REMSH), the Institute of Researches and Studies on the Arab and Islamic World (IREMAM) and Med-Culture, which are concerned with research in Euro-Mediterranean studies.

Dialogue forum:

The third objective of Bibliotheca Alexandrina is to become a meeting point of dialogue and cultures. Dialogue between Egyptians of different interests and cultural backgrounds and the Arab dialogue is of the same importance as the Euro-Mediterranean dialogue or dialogue between the East and the West and the North and the South. To achieve this objective, the dialogue forum at Bibliotheca Alexandrina provides an arena to freely express one’s point of view and an environment that contributes to establishing a creative critical dialogue between the most renowned Arab intellectuals and thinkers.

The Forum’s symposia, which are organized every two weeks, handle various topics. Every symposium is followed by an open time period for questions, discussion and exchange of ideas in order to adopt the tolerance spirit and spread the concept of understanding through the Forum’s topics.

Exchanging points of view has a very important impact on promoting the right to difference, pluralism and tolerance, protecting the right of everybody to be in opposition and criticize, and collecting complex and modern concepts from a complementary human point of view. The initiative of the Forum promotes rejection of all aspects of ethnic discrimination and cultural and religious extremism.

The Dialogue Forum organized 21 symposia, which tackled various topics, such as Human Development in the Arab World, the Future of Scientific Research in Egypt, Understanding the Other, the Role of Mass media and Women in the Society Development.

Arab Reform Conference:

The Arab Reform Conference brings together the most renowned Arab personalities to discuss the political, economic, social and cultural reform issues in the Arab World. The conference of “Arab Reform: Vision and Implementation” was held at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina on 12-14 March under the auspices of President Hosni Mubarak, and in cooperation with the Arab Academy for Science and Technology, the Arab Business Council, the Arab Women’s Organization, the Economic Research Forum, and the Arab Organization for Human Rights. The speech of President Hosni Mubarak at the opening ceremony affirmed the idea of partnership between civil society and governments, highlighting the importance of the values of pluralism and mutual respect in dialogue for the interest of the nation. The conference included two sessions dedicated to discussing the topics of youth employment and the role of women in reform.

Alexandria Document:

Participants in the conference -163 participants- set up the Alexandria document that elaborated an inherent Arab vision of Arab reform issues and its priorities. The document includes four panels on the economic, political, cultural and social reforms. All attendees of the Conference participated in elaborating the document and suggested proposals to set up a follow-up and implementation mechanism in order to stress a genuine practice of democracy. Immediately after the wrapping up of the conference proceedings, the Arab Reform Forum website was launched to spread the vision of the comprehensive Arab reform elaborated by the conference and consolidate it with further studies and discussions. The website is also meant to establish a network between the concerned with the issues of reform in the Arab world, to facilitate communication between them through setting up a discussion forum on the website, to promote the activities of the Arab civil society and consolidate its contributions to usher the desired change through a genuine partnership between the civil society and Arab governments.

The forum website is: www.arabreformforum.com

3- Calligraphy Center:

It is one of the research centers of Bibliotheca Alexandrina. This untypical center studies the world inscriptions, calligraphies and writings from the pre-historical to the contemporary period.

The Center has several objectives:

- To study the emergence of calligraphy in all cultures;

- To search for the origin of writing in the pre-dynastic period and the development of writings up to the digital era;

- To probe the appearance and disappearance of some alphabets;

- To tackle the aesthetics of calligraphy as a means of expression in the fine art;

- To carry out comparative studies in calligraphy;

- To establish the relationship between modern techniques and calligraphy.

These objectives emanate from the library’s comprehensive vision and mission. Since the 19th century, the world has witnessed many archaeological discoveries, which led to find out the aspects of unknown civilizations such as the ancient Egyptian civilization. After being subject to historians’ myths, the ancient Egyptian civilization has become worldly known thanks to these discoveries that deciphered its signs. Thus, calligraphies and writings are among the important means to know about Man and civilizations development.

The Center is one of the library’s means of dialogue of civilizations and fills the existing gap in this field, as the whole studies related to calligraphies are carried out at an individual and specialized level. Linguists work independently from both specialists in development of calligraphies and writings and from anthropologists. The Center will endeavor to be a connecting point between these various specialities to create a common scientific background between them.

The Center agenda:

The International Forum of Calligraphy, Writing and Inscriptions:

The forum, which is held every other year, was held for the first time on 24-26 April 2003. The second forum, which will take place on 24-26 April 2005, aims to bring together specialists in all fields of calligraphy studies from all over the world. It is the starting point to create specialized dialogues amongst them and to present the new discoveries and researches in calligraphy.

Abgadiyat:

Alphabets is a yearly scientific journal specialized in calligraphy with a scientific editorial board and a scientific council in charge of refereeing research papers. The first issue will be published in July 2004.

Studies in scripts: It is a scientific refereed series that publishes specialized calligraphy books. The first published book in this series was entitled “Scripts”, written by the Norwegian Researcher Olaf Berggren.

The following titles will also be published in this series:

- Translation of the book entitled “The History of Writing”. Flammarion Publishing House, Paris, France, originally published this book.

- "Ancient Egyptian Language” written in English by Dr. Abd EL Halim Nur Eldin.

- The Catalogue of “The Writings on the Walls of the Al-Hambra Palaces”, as it is considered to be the first scientific work, which gathered and analyzed these writings. These “Writings” include poems of Ibn Zoumrak, Lesan El-Din Bin El-Khateeb, Ibn El-Gayab describing these Palaces, which are considered to be a divan of architecture and Arabic calligraphy.

Exhibitions:

The Calligraphy Center hosts exhibitions in a bid to serve the idea of establishing dialogue amongst nations. Such exhibitions tell stories about writings in different cultures. The first exhibition hosted by the Center was on the Chinese script. This exhibition was held in the Library from 8-7-2003 to 31-7-2003.

In addition, the Center is preparing for another exhibition entitled “ The Journey of Writing in Egypt”. The exhibition will present writing in Egypt since the pre-historical era till the invention of hieroglyphics and its development into Demotic then Hieratic as well as the emergence of the Greek and Coptic writings. It will also present the masterpieces of Arabic calligraphy in Egypt from the 7th century till the present day.

The cultural season:

The festival aims to host archaeologists and the most renowned calligraphers from Egypt and around the world. The festival is held in cooperation with specialized institutions in Cairo and Alexandria and several other institutions and centers from around the world.

The pilot project for documentation of writings and inscriptions in Alexandria:

This project aims at recording as well as studying the writings on the monuments in Alexandria, especially the Greco-Roman and Islamic monuments in a digital format. These writings will be published in their original language besides English and Arabic. This pilot project is considered to be a prelude to a bigger project for documenting writings found on the monuments of Egypt. It will then expand in the future to other countries. It is expected that this project will be implemented in co-operation with a number of local, regional and international institutions.

The digital production:

The center aims to produce digital publications on handwritings and calligraphies from all over the world. In cooperation with Zayed Center for Heritage, the center produced its first CD that contains the best Arabic calligraphies.

Mohamed and kamel Ibrahim Exhibition:

The School for improving Arabic Calligraphy in Alexandria was famous for its pioneers in Arabic Calligraphy. The most famous of these pioneers were Mohamed Ibrahim who was born on 2 September 1909 and died on 13 May 1970, and his brother Kamel Ibrahim who was born on 2 April 1925 and died on 12 January 2002. They have both donated some of their works to the Library of Alexandria. To honor their great contributions to Arabic calligraphy, the Library established a permanent exhibition for their works and prepared a catalog of these works.

The Aesthetic of Arabic Calligraphy:

This was the first Unit that was established in the Center. It is specialized in studying the aesthetic of Arabic calligraphy from the artistic point of view, organizing exhibitions for contemporary calligraphers and establishing a database for them.

One of the goals of this Unit is to disseminate interest in the studying of Arabic calligraphy in both schools and universities, and to improve the handwriting of the young. The Unit prepared and held many workshops for teaching and improving Arabic calligraphy for children and it also held training sessions for adults.

4- Development gateway:

The Development Gateway of the World Bank is an interactive portal for information and knowledge sharing on sustainable development and poverty reduction in developing countries. The Gateway offers users access to the most comprehensive database of development projects, an international procurement marketplace and knowledge sharing on key development topics.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina has agreed with the World Bank to collaborate on this project in two phases. At the first stage, the library will take ownership of the main Gateway site in Arabic and will be in charge of the Arabic translation, similar to the current functionality of the Gateway Spanish and French versions. At the second stage, it will design, develop and host the Egypt Country Gateway in Arabic similar to the China Country Gateway.

5- Universal Networking Language (UNL):

The UNL project idea of this project was initiated within the United Nations and devised by the Universal Networking Digital Language (UNDL) Foundation. The project enables all people to generate information and have access to cultural knowledge in their native languages. The project is based on the principle of exchange of artificial languages “interlingua” (an artificial language developed between 1924 and 1951, it is based on Romance languages and was used as a universal means of communication between scientists), then elaborating an electronic translation of all languages. The library plays a primordial role in designing and implementing the Arabic part of the program. It will also be an active, efficient and responsible center of Arabic language translation.

6- The Alexandria Library Scholars Cooperative (ALSC):

The Alexandria Library Scholars Cooperative project is a joint venture between the Art Science Research Laboratory (ASRL), New York and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. The project aims at disseminating human knowledge worldwide and facilitating communication between scholars through cyberBook + Systems software.

7- Multilingual publications:

This project translates rare manuscripts and publishes facsimiles in the English, French and German languages. The project has already published two issues and the third one will see the light in January 2005.

(*) Deputy Director of Bibliotheca Alexandria, Egypt.

Publications of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

-ISESCO- 1428H/2007 A.D