Arabic Calligraphy Listed in UNESCO for Intangible Heritage

UNESCO on Thursday added Arabic calligraphy to the representative list of tangible cultural heritage.

This came during the 16th meeting of Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), which was held on the Internet from Dec 13 to 18.

Adam Almulla, the Ambassador Permanent Delegate of Kuwait stated to Kuwait News Agency (KUNA); “Arabic calligraphy is a mutual historical file among 16 Arab counties. The file is distinct as it is presented from a large number of countries at the same time.

He added; “The file was presented in March 2020 after working on it for a long time by coordinators,” indicating that the Arab countries chose Saudi Arabia as general coordinator for the file under the supervision of UNESCO.

The file was presented by Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Emirates, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, Lebanon, and Algeria.

Saudi Culture Minister Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan Al-Saud said registering Arabic calligraphy in the UNESCO list “comes in line with the Ministry of Culture directed to serve this art through many initiatives, adding that this step “contributes to enhance the intangible heritage effectively, especially the calligraphy art in local societies.

Ines Abdel-Dayem, Egypt's Minister of Culture said this step “is an achievement in the field of identity preservation, as the calligraphy is one of the most important Arab civilization vocabularies and one of the effective means in introducing it. This step also contributes to the dialogue between world cultures and supports shedding lights to its history.

The representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity includes 500 elements.

Contributed by Israa Farhan