How the world’s oldest masks tell a story of Palestinian dispossession
MIDDLE EAST EYE (18.5.2021) When a British missionary rode through al-Ram in 1881 asking for antiquities, residents of the Palestinian village tried to stop him from taking the local treasures. Armed with guns, a group of men confronted him and refused to let him take the village’s ancient stone mask. At least, this is how […]
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The Portuguese rediscovering their country’s Muslim past
AL JAZEERA (10/6/2020) When 33-year-old Mustafa Abdulsattar arrived in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon, four years ago, something struck him as familiar: many Portuguese words sounded like Arabic. After fleeing war in his native Iraq, Abdulsattar had risked his life on a perilous boat trip from Turkey to Greece. Once in Greece, he was offered resettlement in […]
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‘Muslims were not foreigners’: Why don’t Portugal’s restitution laws include everyone?
THE NATIONAL (31/3/2020) Mouraria, a trendy neighbourhood in Lisbon’s city centre, still bears the name of its former inhabitants, the Moors – Muslims who lived in the Iberian Peninsula in modern Spain and Portugal, and once walked its maze of narrow and winding streets and tightly packed alleys. Next to Mouraria stands Alfama – from […]
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Os muçulmanos que Portugal expulsou e esqueceu
EXPRESSO (1/2/2020) Brafame Gordo e o seu irmão Galebo partiram do Alentejo tão contrariados que chegaram mesmo a pedir autorização ao rei para os deixar regressar. Numa petição dirigida à coroa portuguesa (hoje guardada na Torre do Tombo) dão o nome de três cristãos seus vizinhos em Elvas, que poderiam fornecer recomendações, e pedem para […]
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A link across borders
THE NATIONAL (10/1/2020) The dusty chairs at the Amman train station are empty. There are no departures today. Vintage carriages line up on the tracks waiting for passengers, but the last train to Syria departed a decade ago. “When I travelled to Syria by train, I was just a child – I was this tall,” […]
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Reviving the Hejaz railway with a park
AL-MONITOR (4/12/2019) The century-old Hijaz Railway crosses Amman from north to south. Children play close by, jumping over the track that once connected Jordan’s capital to Syria, Palestine and Saudi Arabia. It’s been almost a decade since the last train to Syria departed from Amman’s train station. With the railway largely abandoned, families stroll along the line built […]
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AL ARABY (13/6/2019) Last year, Lisbon’s Islamic Community celebrated its 50th anniversary. The community was established by migrants in the 1960s, but Islam has much more ancient roots in Portugal. “Islam is in Portugal’s soul,” said the Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa while standing at the entrance of the Central Mosque of Lisbon for the […]
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Where Christians pray facing Mecca
QANTARA (27/5/2019) Archaeologists in Mertola have spent the last 40 years looking for traces of Portugalʹs Islamic past. What they found shows that Islam is not alien to Europe and has in fact deeply influenced Portuguese history and culture. When archaeologist Claudio Torres first visited Mertola, a small town in the south of Portugal, he […]
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Echoes of al-Andalus: The Portuguese town celebrating its forgotten Islamic past
MIDDLE EAST EYE (23/5/2018) An imposing building with cylindrical towers stands out on the steep hill of Mertola, a southern Portuguese town on the banks of the Guadiana river, not far from the Spanish border. Is it a church with a mihrab? Or a mosque with a cross? The whitewashed building with horseshoe arches is […]
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A língua do outro
CERCHI NELL’ACQUA (DEZ 2018) Em Março de 2016, Hasan Aldewachi, um cientista iraquiano, foi expulso de um voo Easyjet porque a mensagem que estava a escrever no telemóvel em árabe foi vista como suspeita por outros passageiros e denunciada à polícia. Em Outubro do mesmo ano, Khairuldeen Makhzoomi foi obrigado a sair de um avião […]
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