Poet Nouri Al-Jarrah will give his speech on the presence of Egypt and its civilizational geography in Arab travel literature on September 15
Cairo Correspondent
Al-Balad Library hosts the Syrian poet Nouri Al-Jarrah, Director General of the Arab Center for Geographical Literature and Director General of the Ibn Battuta Award for Travel Literature, in a literary event entitled “Egypt and its Civilizational Geography as a Starting Point, Passageway and Home for the Journey”, at 7 pm on Sunday, September 15. The event celebrates the 25th anniversary of launching the Ibn Battuta Award for Travel Literature, sponsored by Al-Suwaidi Foundation.
The poet Nouri Al-Jarrah will give his speech on the presence of Egypt and its civilizational geography in Arab travel literature through the prominent contribution of iconic figures who have enriched the travel literature treasury with their achievements, in the presence and participation of a number of professors who have won the award during its successive years.
Nouri Al-Jarrah will also review a selection of works completed within the framework of the award, in the presence and participation of a distinguished elite of traveling writers and researchers in the field of travel literature who won the Ibn Battuta Award, including: Ibrahim Abdel Majeed, Mansoura Ezz El-Din, Ashraf Aboul-Yazid, Ahmed Haridi, Saad El-Qarsh, Dr. Noha Abdel Razek El-Hafnawi, Dr. Ahmed Gomaa, Mamdouh Farag El-Nabi, Dr. Yahya Zakaria, Mukhtar Saad Shehata, Amir El-Omari, Tasneem Mohamed Harb. In addition to an elite group of writers, poets and media professionals.
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Al-Jarrah said that this creative meeting is intended to draw attention to the growing interest in travel literature, in terms of investigation and study, in accordance with a growing awareness of the danger of this literature, and its importance in exploring the Arab’s view of himself in his relationship with his own culture, and of the other in his cultural difference, and thus demonstrating the development of awareness of difference through studying the phenomena resulting from travel and communication with the other. In the texts of contemporary travel and diaries produced by the talents of writers in Egypt and the Arab world, we notice a development in the language of contemporary writing, as the diaries of travelers have increasingly tended towards recording the personal journey in two directions: the geography of the other, and the self-interior and its existential questions.
Al-Jarrah pointed out that the classical texts that have been investigated and published so far within the framework of the award include amazing discoveries and an exploration of a stock that has remained hidden from view for centuries, but they are now present on the shelves of Arab libraries thanks to the efforts of an elite group of competent researchers from the East and West who investigated and studied these works so that, thanks to their efforts, they have become essential references for students of societies and their conditions throughout the ages.
Al-Jarrah concluded by pointing out the great importance of the texts of Arab travels to Europe, especially those undertaken by the Arab renaissance and enlightenment elites in the nineteenth century, especially starting from Cairo, Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Fez and Tunis, and forming with travelers of of Tahtawi, Al-Shidyaq, Ahmed Al-Hajri, Al-Maknasi, Al-Ghasani Al-Andalusi, Muhammad Al-Saffar, Ahmed Zaki Pasha, Hassan Tawfiq Al-Adl, Muhammad Labib Al-Batnouni, Francis Al-Marrash, Mustafa Abdel Razek, Ahmed Hassanein Pasha, Zaki Mubarak, all the way to Taha Hussein, Zaki Najib Mahmoud and dozens of others who toured the world of the European other in order to explore the other and read the self in the mirrors of the other.
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