02 December 2015
Kalila wa Dimna Exhibition Ends After Seven Months
After seven months of continuous cultural interactions and amazing visiting programs, Bahrain National Museum announced on 30 November the end of Kalila wa Dimna: Fables Across Time. Using stories from the famous collection of fables known as Kalila wa Dimna, this interactive exhibit brings the characters, their relationships and lessons to life. The museum is planning to host many other exciting shows and exhibitions.
Kalila wa Dimna: Fables Across Time, which was created in a partnership between the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and the Bahrain National Museum, is a startling combination of text, multi-media, and a live musical score. The exhibition was accompanied by an educational program and it showcased digitally reproduced manuscripts from collections around the world enriched by original illustrations and a digital guide to these stories and were carefully selected by Dr. Sabiha Al Khemir.
Kalila wa Dimna: Fables Across Time provided a very imaginative workshop, such as Bahraini Fesjira (storytelling), which was mostly appreciated by the little ones. Children enjoyed painting and drawing famous animal characters found in the fables with bright colors on their faces during a face painting workshop. The public toured the different interactive activities and received a beautiful special souvenir; an International Children Day’s stamp. The storybook app examined the folk tales of Kalila and Dimna, which have been passed down for over 2000 years, across many languages and countries. This app presented three featured stories in dynamic and interactive ways for families to explore, in both English and Arabic languages. Kalila wa Dimna: Fables Across Time was organized to spread cultural and historical values and celebrated World Literacy Day with children and their families enjoying a full day of fun with reading activities.
Kalila and Dimna, Fables Across Time exhibition offered a special reading corner from 11am-6pm from ages 6 to 14 years- old. In addition, children and their parents enjoyed a walk through our entire Kalila and Dimna exhibition and learned about animal-myths and their histories.
On the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Kalila wa Dimna, Fables Across Time, Dr. Sabiha Al Khemir gave a lecture on “Heritage and Modernity” (al-turath wa al-hadatha).The talk offered insights into the role played by creativity in the perpetuation of heritage, bringing to the fore the significance of this kind of project at this moment in time.
Bahrain National Museum also hosted a lecture on Full Circle: “Illustrations of Kalila and Dimna Fables from India to the Middle East and Back Again” by Dr. Bernard O’Kane, professor in the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations, the American University in Cairo. The talk traced the stories from their Indian origins to the Arab, Persian and Mughal manuscripts which were illustrated with some of the most sumptuous paintings in the history of Islamic art.
Kalila wa Dimna (The Fables of Bidpai) is one of the gems of world culture, having been translated through the centuries from China to Spain. It is a collection of didactic animal fables with the jackals, Kalila and Demna, as two of the principal characters. The fables address the moral education of the two princes and a host of animal protagonists, but they are more than just a mirror for princes as they illustrate universal human strengths and weaknesses, as well as aspirations for justice and truth. Later it was also translated into Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavic, German and other languages. The Arabic manuscripts of Ibn al-Mukaffa' version was translated into Ethiopic, Syriac, Persian, Turkish, Malay, Javanese, Laotian and Siamese.
