24 September 2019
Lecture by The Director of The Institute of Oriental Studies in Pristina, Kosovo, At Al Khalifiyah Library : Coffee from Yemen to Bosnia: Culture & Identity
Al Khalifiyah Library, in Muharraq, hosts on 25 Septembers 2019 at 8:00 pm a lecture on “Coffee from Yemen to Bosnia: Culture & Identity”, which will be presented by Dr. Mohamed Mofako, The Director of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Pristina, Kosovo.
The lecture is part of the cultural cooperation program between Bahrain Culture Authority and the Institute, which will include a series of lectures, the translation of a selection of publications and poems by Bahraini writers and poets.
Dr. Mofako will shed lights on the history of Coffee and how it arrived from Ethiopia to Yemen during the 15th century, appearing nearly at the same time as tea and tobacco. It continued its route across Egypt and Syria to Europe from the16th to the 17th century, having its own impact on the economy, society and culture. In this context, coffee represented cultural identity and, as time passed, became as what occurred in the Balkans, a symbol of ethnic conflict or political tension between societies. Ever since then, coffee has become a vital part of a number of cultural identities while enriching the cultural, political and social mobility of societies. It was the subject of scholars, poets, and later turned into cafes and coffee shops, offering spaces for artistic performances and political and social debates. Indeed, coffee also entered the daily life of communities, becoming a symbol of hospitality in the Gulf, while serving as a symbol of affection and reconciliation in other countries, in addition to reflecting on the political tensions that have occurred in some regions of the world such as Greece, Turkey and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Prof. Dr. Mohamed Mofako as the new director of the Institute for Oriental Studies. Prof. Dr. Mohamed Mofako was born in Damascus 1952, where he graduated from the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the University of Damascus in 1974. At the University of Pristina he finished his Master’s in History in 1977 and received his PhD in Philology in 1981 and PhD in History in 1986. Prof. Mofako worked in the Department of Oriental Languages at the University of Pristina between 1974-1987, and at many Jordanian universities during 1989-2018 as Professor of History and Comparative Literature. During that time he was elected as a Correspondent Member of the Arab Academy in Damascus in 2005 and b ecame a member of Academy of Sciences and Arts in Kosovo in 2010, and was honored by receiving the Medal of the Republic for Merits in Kosovo in 2012, and in 20.12.2018 he was elected as a member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Editor-in-Chief of “ Oriental Studies” magazine. He has published more than 50 books and around 250 scientific researches presented in international conferences and translated into many languages.
