400 years of Arabic in the Netherlands!

In 2013, the Netherlands and the Arab world commemorated the four hundredth anniversary of establishing official university relations in language and culture. This made the Netherlands one of the first European countries to establish academic relations with the Arab world.

Atlasbridges/Go Arabic, in collaboration with its partners (including Leiden University Libraries, the Academic Historical Museum, the National Museum of Antiquities and the municipality of Leiden) has taken this as a guideline for their activities during the 2013/2014 school year.

That year, in commemoration of 400 years of mutual ties, the Atlasbridges/Go Arabic activity programme focused on various aspects of the language, culture and history between the Netherlands and the Arab world.

Naturally, we reflected on the developments in language and culture over the past four hundred years. However, we felt it was more important to keep our eyes on the future; after all, there were already 500,000 people of Arab descent living in the Netherlands at the time. What can Arabs and Dutch learn from each other in terms of language, culture, social and economics? The activities were intended to ensure that these two communities gained a new perspective on each other, their mutual relationship and their shared history.

The development of bilateral relations between the Arab World and the Netherlands offers both parties the opportunity to share each other's language and cultural wealth and is also a condition for continuing this history on a new basis and finding a way to achieve a harmonious multicultural society. In order for this project, which will promote exchanges between these two communities, to be successful, it is of crucial importance to establish, develop and maintain contacts with organisations and universities in both regions.

The aim of '400 Years of Arabic in the Netherlands' was on the one hand to show how this meeting took place and to recall the most important events, and on the other hand it wanted to commemorate and honour our shared history by organising various events in a number of major cities in the Netherlands and the Arab world.

Since 2013/2014, Atlasbridges/Go Arabic has initiated many projects in the field of language, culture, economy, education and tourism together with its partners. These projects have given a great boost to the relationship between the Mena region and the Netherlands. The official launch of the Institute of the Arab and Islamic World (IAIW) was the main act of all festivities around this theme.

For more information about the celebration of 400 years of Arabic in the Netherlands, visit www.goarabic.org