Saudi academy organizes events to celebrate World Arabic Language Day

For a second consecutive year, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Global Academy for Arabic Language has organized a special program of events, in cooperation with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, as part of the ongoing celebrations for World Arabic Language Day.

The events will take place on Jan. 14 under the patronage of Minister of Culture Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan, who is also chair of the academy’s board of trustees. They will be staged at the offices of the OIC’s general secretariat in Jeddah, and there will also be an international celebration at the UN headquarters in New York, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The celebrations will be officially opened by Hissein Brahim Taha, the OIC’s secretary-general. Other VIP guests will include Abdullah Al-Washami, the academy’s secretary-general; Saleh Al-Suhaibani, Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the OIC; Shaheen Abdullayev, the ambassador of Azerbaijan to the Kingdom; and other ambassadors and permanent delegates from OIC member states.

The program is part of the wider celebrations for World Arabic Language Day, which was established by the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2010 and has been celebrated on Dec. 18 each year since 2012. That date was chosen in honor of the day in 1973 when the UN adopted Arabic as the organization’s sixth official language. The theme of the 2023 event was “Arabic: The Language of Poetry and Arts.”

The events organized by the academy include two main discussion sessions, the first on the influence and impact of Arabic poetry, and the second on the role of the Arabic language in the arts. Participants will include representatives of the OIC, the academy, the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and the Research Center For Islamic History, Art and Culture.

There will also be a session during which excerpts from Islamic poems will be read by poets Mohammed Ibrahim Mohammed Yaqoub from Saudi Arabia, Bahar Al-Din Abdullah from Sudan, and Abdullah Mohammed Ubaid from Yemen, followed by discussions of the works.

In addition, an Arabic poetry exhibition will display selected verses from the “Ten Mu’allaqat,” a group of seven long poems, and there will be a presentation of selected poetry from the early Islamic era and beyond. There will also be opportunities to learn about the work of the academy, its activities, programs and other initiatives.