To map Egypt, the British began to map what was not Egypt. Here, villages were divided, and imaginaries were created. But how did Rafah come into play as the final point – and when did we begin to treat this division as reality? Two soldiers stand under an olive tree

A report that dates back to July 2024 claims that over 10,000 women have been killed in Gaza since October 2023. UN Women gives it a slogan, calls it a “war on women”.  The gendered nature of state-sponsored violence is not new. Wars, and in this case genocide, have been

Modern nation-states are often thought of in terms of what one might call the “Sleeping Beauty metaphor”,  the belief that the nation had always existed, simply awaiting its historical awakening. This metaphor, which gained popularity following the events of the Glorious and French Revolutions, was projected onto colonized states, where

In the 19th century, European powers divided Africa among themselves. Spain claimed the Western Sahara in 1884 and named it “the Spanish Sahara”. Located in the northwest of Africa, the territory is bordered by Morocco, Mauritania, and Algeria, and is home to the Sahrawi people.  Often referred to as Africa’s

وأنا صغير، كان عندي هواية غريبه نوعاً ما وهي إني دايمًا أتابع شريط توقعات درجات الحرارة اللي بيظهر على التلفزيون، واللي كان بيستعرض أحوال الطقس في مختلف مناطق مصر. وسط كل الأسماء اللي كانت بتعدّي، كان في منطقتين دايمًا بيلفتوا انتباهي وبيثيروا فضولي جدًا. وإحنا أطفال، كنا دايمًا فاكرين إن

In early 2025, a rapid escalation of fighting occurred in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The M23 (“Mouvement du 23 Mars”), having occupied large areas in North and South Kivu for years. In January 2025, they captured the city of Goma, a key regional hub on the

“Bayt al-Hikmah”, “House of Wisdom”, is a central institution in Islamic intellectual history. Some think that it represents the mental transformation that took place in the Islamic world. Bayt al-Hikmah flourished within the Abbasid caliphate between the 8th and 10th centuries. This center played an important role in the intellectual

Civilizations of every kind have made manifest the nature of their belief in an afterlife in the way they have treated their dead. Eugène Viollet le Duc