Mentoring local medicos in Africa

We, the Ladies Who Coffee, debated the best ever tv programme. I chose The Surgery Ship, an Australian series filmed when Mercy Ships visited West Africa in 2016 & 17. Thankyou to the helpful Surgery Ship for their data.

Staff waiting to board a Mercyship

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Each human deserves access to surgical and health care solutions. But in some parts of the world, people go without. Since 1978, Mercy Ships began a mission to provide hope and healing to those in need. Each year hospital ships are filled with volunteers who provide life-changing surgeries to children and adults who’d otherwise go without. The staff confront ethical decisions as they decide who can be helped and who cannot not. This is a complex journey for the volunteer medics as they deal with serious cases, and balance the patients’ fates in their hands.

Globally, 5 billion people lack access to safe surgery. Due to this lack of access to surgical care, up to 18.6 mill people die each year. Every day, children and adults in some of the poorest communities die from causes that can easily be treated in hospitals in many nations. 1 in 8 children die before they have the chance to go to school.

With international volunteers, ship staff can deploy state-of-the-art hospital ships to treat more people. As part of the commitment, the staff also train local health-care workers so this important work can continue. c70% of the world’s population lives near the coast, and the hospital ships provide unique platforms for workers to direct medical care to these villages. A customised 3-year partnership model goes to many African countries requesting support.

Grace, 17, from the Democratic Republic of Congo

before and after tumour was removed

express.co

 

A team of volunteer staff are aboard, going to the poorest nations on earth and facing the most severe issues anywhere. The challenge is enormous but the ship makes a huge difference by supporting the silent poor and by providing life-changing surgeries to those in great need.

The staff provides free corrective surgeries for hernias and goitres that plague unemployed adults, and children who miss school because of no accessible medical care. Doing critical eye surgeries gives patients with renewed sight and quality of life. Huge tumours left to grow unchecked, massive deformities and more; some had a 4 k tumour on the face for years, living a life of ridicule and shame.

anaesthetist prepares pre-operation

New Statesman

Many children live in pain and isolation by not having access to medical care for surgeries eg clef lip, cataracts and plastic reconstructive, and dental health care. Cleft lip surgeries are treated early in life in the West, but for many Africans, it can be years before surgery happens. This results in malnutrition and exclusion from the community. 

A child’s life can be severely impacted with poor eye health, so Mercy Ships provide corrective eye surgery and optical care for kids. Good dental health from an early stage means children are not susceptible to a myriad of other health conditions. Children and their families learn the basics of dental health and are provided with vital surgeries. Good dental hygiene prevents gum disease, cavities and teaches basic oral health education. 80% of the world’s fractures and the majority of club-feet occur in developing nations. Without quality orthopaedic surgeries, those who have these types of defects experience a life of pain and shame.

Infection control is a major issue in hospitals in both wealthy and developing nations. Mercy Ships teaches local medical staff to put safe-surgery protocols into practice but often the local environment makes it very difficult to keep even operating theatres clean and sterile. That’s where Mercy Ships projects like hospital refurbishment emerge, changing facilities that are uncleanable into areas where local staff can clean and sterilise, reducing secondary infections.

When the ship departs a country, the staff want to leave an improved healthcare system for the community. Before, during and after field services, Mercy Ships implements health care training projects that teach the medical knowledge, skills and attitude needed to heal patients long after. Infrastructure projects include renovating or expanding hospitals, helping these facilities become more available and to improve the quality of medical services. Previously, local staff struggled to care for their patients in very poor working conditions.

Dr Glenn Strauss performed the very first surgery aboard the Africa Mercy,

while mentoring local doctors

mercyships.co.za

 
The ship’s Medical Capacity Building Projects strengthen the standards of surgical care inside the local communities of the countries served. The legacy is a lasting impact that extends for years.

A child’s life can be dark because of a simple cataract. For most people in the West, a quick trip to the ophthalmologist resolves this issue, but for those who have no access to quality health care, their world dims. For 40 years, Mercy Ships has been dedicated to providing healing to those in need, via the dedicated ship volunteers.

Now to honour Dr Glenn Strauss who joined Mercy Ships in 1997 as an ophthalmologist with the Caribbean Mercy. He and his wife Kim continued to volunteer their skills for short-term missions, helping many to get care for the first time. Eventually the couple closed their practice at home and committed themselves to work fulltime on Mercy Ships from 2005. The couple developed Mercy Vision, a training programme for surgeons and paramedics from sub-Saharan Africa. Later he built a training programme in ophthalmology for regular surgeons.

Mercy Ships continues to provide essential surgery for the world’s most vulnerable people. And they also work to strengthen and support African health care systems via education, training, mentoring, equipment and supplies. Over 30 years, the staff trained 43,300+ local doctors and nurses who then trained others. The long-term impact of this medical training provides quality health care in the countries, long after the ship sails.

What is your favourite tv programme?

1956 - what a year!

 Budapest Oct-Nov 1956

BBC History Magazine asked historians to select history’s most dramatic year. I expected them to select 476 AD, 1215, 1492, 1914 and 1933, but in my opinion 1956 was by far the most dramatic. Historian George Goodwin also selected 1956 and specified the events that changed the world.

1956 marked  a watershed year, one when we began to see the post-war world that was under challenge. It was a time when austerity and cult­ural deference were being replaced by the triumph of American-style mass consumer culture. The 1956 Suez Crisis, when Britain along with France and Israel invaded Egypt to recover control of the Suez Canal, was arguably one of the most significant episodes in post-WW2 British history. It led to periodic changes of national direction! France, in contrast, was already beginning the process of European consolidation: the negotiations to create the European Community of 1957’s Treaty of Rome were effectively decided in 1956.

Further to the east, the Soviet grip on its European conquests seriously faltered for the first time, as it violently suppressed the Hungarian uprising. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators swarmed through the streets, tearing down statues of Stalin, ripping the Communist emblem from Hungarian flags and dodging the gunfire of the secret police. This bloody revolt against the rulers of the Hungarian People's Republic and its imposed policies led to Soviet tanks entering Budapest. The crisis lasted for 12 days, after which the Soviet leadership agreed to a ceasefire and a reformist government under Imre Nagy took over in Budapest. 2,500 Hungarians had died and 250,000 fled as refugees, mainly through Austria (including my sister in law in Melbourne).

The USA's supreme court’s ruling against bus seg­reg­ation was Rev Martin Luther King’s first great civil rights victory. See a famous photo where Martin Luther King was welcomed by his wife Coretta after leaving court in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. King was found guilty of conspiracy to boycott city buses in a drive to desegregate the bus system, but a judge suspended his fine (pending appeal).

Rev and Mrs Martin Luther King Jr
outside the courthouse in Montgomery, Alabama 1956

The Anglo-American focus on individual expression and liberation, which dominated the following decades, was highlighted by John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. And the re-election of the conservative US President Eisenhower could not mask the growth of the free spending, rebellious teenagers with a James Dean poster on the wall and rock and roll on the jukebox – a phenomenon echoed across the English speaking world.

Elvis Presley entered the US music charts for the first time, with Heartbreak Hotel. Rock Around the Clock was a 1956 mus­ical film featuring Bill Haley and His Comets in cinemas every­where. It was one of the major box office successes of that year. The Platters hits throughout 1956 included The Great Pretender, My Prayer, You've Got the Magic Touch, One In A Million and You'll Never Know, changing the life of every teenager in the world. 1956 was a good time to be a university student.

Elvis Presley was changing teenagers' lives
Love Me Tender 1956

But George Goodwin omitted one critical 1956 event. The Olympic Games moved to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time ever! Colonial Britain, France and Spain had long understood that the days of empire were over; the dead soldiers from WW2 had been buried and memorial­is­ed, rationing had ended, and economies could start to develop once again. The huge number of baby boomers, who had been born (1946-55) after their fathers were demobilised, filled the primary schools. Millions of migrants, largely from Europe, were shipped to the southern hemisphere where new suburbs were developed with detached houses on large blocks. The eternal cultural cringe was ending.

State budgets were not open ended of course, but neither were the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne full of community conflict, as they had been in other cities. Everyone in Australia wanted the most modern swimming pools, the best athletic tracks and the biggest Olympic Village for the athletes. To this day, people still say the 1956 Games were the crowning achievement of the Melbourne School of Architecture in the post-war period; they were an inspiration to Rome, Tokyo, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro and every other city competing for later Games.

The 1956 Summer Olympics Games, Melbourne

attendance of 1.153 million people over the 15 days.

Until 1956 British and Egyptian governments administered Nth and Sth Sudan as separate colonies. When both areas merged into a single administrative region after political pressure from the north, British colonial administration granted the North most political independence in 1956. In post colonial reconstruction, national political and economic issues ravaged Sudan internally. Northern violence against the southern minorities in the first Sudanese Civil War killed 400,000 civilians & 100,000 soldiers. 

Child soldiers, Sudanese Civil War

blackpast

Polio was a highly infectious disease affecting young children that attacks the nervous system, leading to spinal and respiratory paralysis, and even death. In the 1950s Dr Jonas Salk invented the polio vaccine which showed the medical profession that tackling polio epidemics was feasible. In 1956 virologist Dr Albert Sabin developed oral polio medication using live, weakened poliovirus, a key step towards global polio eradication. Salk’s vaccine stimulated immunity without causing illness but only Sabin’s oral polio treatment accelerated global immunisation efforts, making polio eradication a medical revolution for millions of children.

 

Visit architecture in gorgeous Fez.

Fez Carpet market

Bob Cromwell

Let me examine some of the connections between Morocco and Europe I was familiar with. Visitors to the Paros Gallery in Greece should see the Sèvres Imperial Hunting tea service 1812, commissioned by Napoleon as a gift his second wife Empress Marie-Louise. The porcelain and silver gilt cups, saucers and pots each have an individual hunting scene, painted by French artist Jean Francois Robert. Each object slotted into a Morocco leather box, so servants could carry the porcelain wherever the courtiers wanted. The exhibition Napoleon: Revolution to Empire even came to Australia.

                                                  

In 1882 Englishman William Quilliam went to Southern France to recover from stress. Then he decided to cross the Mediterranean to North Africa, to visit Morocco and Algeria. He had ?nurtured a quiet interest in Islam before, but it was in North Africa that his lure to Islam became public. He converted formerly, calling himself Abdullah. Quilliam then accused Prime Minister William Gladstone of wilfully ignoring Christian crimes against Muslims. Fortunately Quilliam received support from his Islamic leaders abroad. He was made the Sheikh of Britain/leader of British Muslims by the last Ottoman emperor and was honoured by the Sultan Shah of Persia. But aggravation of Liverpool’s Muslim community eventually forced Liverpool’s mosque to close.

Claude Monet already admired those French artists who'd trav­elled to create Orientalist subject matter. Especially Eugène Dela­croix, the artist whose colours were influenced by visiting Morocco in 1832. Monet hoped a posting to Algeria would enable him to study the special light, subject matter and colour  that could never be found in France.

                                                          

Riad Fes, once a beautiful palatial home, was restored as a stunning hotel

Holiday Architects

What caught Viennese artist Rudolf Ernest’s interest was Orientalist art de­pict­ing the imagined repr­es­entation of the East by European artists, not by locals. Ernst’s Orientalist era began in 1885 when he travelled to Spain, Morocco and Tunisia. There he was able to sketch and ph­oto­graph the lo­cals’ daily life so these im­ages would later become colourful canv­as­es and int­er­iors. This was a major turning point for Ernest who loved colourful, exotic Orient­alism, espec­ially Islamic mosques and harem scenes.

In 1912, Australian artist Hilde Rix left to study in London & Paris, and enjoyed spending long periods in Tangier Morocco. There the colour and light, different from Northern France, reminded her of Australia. She championed the diverse culture of Morocco, carefully recording the public life of the market place, especially the role of women in it. Staying at Tangier's famous Hotel Villa de France at the same time as Henri Matisse, she depicted some of his sites and models.

Rix's drawings and paintings of Morocco added to her fame! A large painting was shown at Salon des Artistes Francais 1911 and many works were included in exhibitions conducted by Paris’ Societe des Peintres Orientalistes. In 1912 the French government bought her work Grand Marche Tangier, for the Luxembourg Gallery. Art articles about Rix appeared in The Studio, London and Notre Gazette Paris.

I’ve often referred to Orientalist art in this blog i.e by late C19th French, British, German and Russian artists who spent time in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and Israel. See their paintings of  crafts, male guards and life in the harem. But in my blog there were few references to Orientalist architecture. So I asked my late son, a travel agent in Israel, where in Morocco his clients loved most.

Bab Bou Jeloud, ornate city gate in Fes el Bali, the old city of Fez

visitsights

The historic city of Fez, Morocco’s cultural gem, is a city that weaves the nation’s past and present, providing a fascinating look into the country’s traditions. Wander through the winding streets of Fes el-Bali and admire the architectural splendours of its madrasas; let eyes absorb the vibrant atmosphere, indulge in the sights, sounds and flavours of this special city, and let Fez fill their memories.

In North Morocco, Fez witnessed the nation’s rich heritage and vibrant culture. With winding streets, great architecture and old traditions, Fez invites travellers to immerse themselves in the 1000-year history. This city served as the capital of Morocco for several dynasties and remains a centre of learning, craftsmanship and religious devotion. 

Fez Medina

Tripadvisor

The historic Fez el-Bali Medina is a UNESCO World Heritage site which hasn’t changed much. Explore the derbs/narrow winding streets and examine the architecture of the ancient buildings. Discover traditional Moroccan riads/guest houses, bustling markets and hidden wonderful Chouara Tanneries, where leather has long been dyed using traditional methods.

 

Chouara Tanneries
Tripadvisor

Visit the prestigious Al-Qarawiyyin University, founded in the C9th by Fatima al-Fihri. Recognised as the oldest continuously operating university in the world, this educational institution played a vital role in the community’s intellectual development. Non-Muslims stay out of the prayer area, but can admire the architectural grandeur of the university’s courtyards and library.

Bou Inania Madrasa is great Moroccan architecture. This C14th religious school displays intricate stucco carvings, mosaic tiles and a tranquil courtyard adorned with marble columns. See the detailed craftsmanship and appreciate the peace of this spiritual haven.

Experience the opulent C14th Attarine Medersa/theological college. Admire the intricately carved cedarwood doors, elegant zellij tilework and delicate plasterwork on the walls. The medersa shows the special craftsmanship of Moroccan artisans, taking visitors to an early era of artistic excellence.

See Nejjarine Museum of Wood Arts & Crafts. Housed in a well restored caravanserai/inn, it used to be for travelling merchants who stored and sold their goods below, and lodged on the floors above. Now the museum shows great examples of woodwork: intricately carved doors, ceilings and furniture with a beautiful, tiled fountain outside the entrance. The techniques and history here have shaped the city’s architectural landscape. Centred on a courtyard, the rooms display traditional artefacts eg craftsmen’s tools, prayer beads, chests and musical instruments. The rooftop cafe has great views over the medina.

Dar al-Makhzen is the royal palace of the King of Morocco

visitsights

Shakshuka for luscious Sunday brunch

Shakshuka probably came from Africa’s Maghreb, the regions of North Africa along the Mediterranean Sea. Plus note that the word meaning shaken comes from the Tunisian dialect. An alternative history is that shakshuka came from Yemen or Ottoman Emp­ire in the C16th when Hernan Cortés brought tomatoes to the area as part of the Columbian exchange. This makes sense since the use of tomatoes and peppers didn’t happen there until the mid-C16th. 

Shakshuka placed on the table 

Tala Soubra

Shakshuka has long been a staple of Tunisian, Libyan, Alg­er­ian and Moroccan cuisines, later adopted by Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria as national dishes. The dish incorporates a wide variety of spices, beyond what is mentioned below, due to whichever spices the various Mediterranean nations favoured.

Can shakshuka be recorded as an ultimate brunch item? Indeed.. it is colourful, healthy, quite cheap and takes only 30 mins to prepare and cook. Here is the delicious recipe from Tala’s Website, but I've made it slightly more savoury.

INGREDIENTS

4 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic
1 red capsicum, diced
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 large tomatoes, cut into 8 each
4 large very red tomatoes, chopped
4 eggs
feta cheese
chopped parsley
1 teaspoon paprika
salt
black pepper, grated

METHOD See the photos 
Step 1: Place a cast iron skillet on the medium stove and add the olive oil. Then add the onions, salt and black pepper and cook until lightly translucent (c3 minutes). Add the capsicum and pap­rika, and cook for 1 minute. Add the chopped tomat­oes and 1 tablespoon of tomato paste and stir for 1 minute.

Step 2: Add 2 tablespoons of tomato paste to the grated tomatoes and mix. Add the tomato mixture to the base and reduce the heat to low. Simmer for 20 minutes while stirring occasionally. Taste check to see if you would like to add more salt and pepper.

Step 3: After 20 mins, make a small well with a spatula in the tom­ato sauce. Crack the eggs into the well, cover the sk­illet and cook eggs cook to your desired consistency. Sprinkle plenty of feta cheese on top and chopped parsley. Finally serve the sh­akshuka out of the skillet with challah bread (or French baguette, sourdough bread, bagels) to mop up the sauce, last important component. 

Give everyone warm challah slices,

with luscious interiors and melted butter (if requested)

The shakshuka in Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty uses a ton of peppers, cut into big, chunky strips. The finished dish almost resembles an Italian peperonata, with a sweetness to match. Michael Solomonov's version, from his book Zahav, uses half as many bell peppers. David Lebovitz  takes a different tack: no bell peppers at all, only hot chiles to spice the tomatoes (see Serious Eats).

I prefer shakshuka late on a Sunday morning brunch with the family, but don’t let your grandmother watch you eat with messy fingers and dripping bread. In Melbourne try the following restaurants: Cumulus Inc in the City, Buba Local Shuk, St Kilda or Nogga Café, Balaclava. In Sydney try Shuk in Bondi North, Grandma’s At McEvoy at Alexandria or Kepos Street Kitchen in Redfern

Sultan Süleyman 1520-66, military genius, patron of the arts and filicide

Süleyman (1494–1566)’s political career began in his teens as a provincial governor and a key participant in his father Selim I’s (r1512-20) rebellion securing dad the throne. But Suleyman was exposed to brutal violence whenever Selim decided to slaughter his own father, two brothers and multiple nephews. Meantime Selim captured lands in Egypt, Syria and Arabian Peninsula, and then he  pushed on to capture Mecca and Medina.

Süleyman, by Titian c.1530 

Wikimedia

 

Selim left his son an emerging empire with a stake in regional and global commerce and a sophisticated cultural identity. And when Süleyman became Sultan in Sept 1520, his kingdom already cov­er­ed the territories of the Balkans, Anatolia, Levant and Egypt. In the first 6 years, Süleyman expanded his empire to take Belgrade & Rhodes. In 1526, he also enjoyed a clear victory against the Hungarian Kingdom and allies at the Battle of Mohács, sparking border disputes among Habsburg Austria, Ottomans, Croatia and Hungary.

Süleyman's empire was multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-confessional. The Ottoman state had little interest in radically changing the practices of local groups, if they were peaceful, so its offic­ials had to have a knowledge of local practices and norms.

In his long reign, Süleyman played a pivotal role in Eur­opean affairs. He pledged assistance to Protestant causes in order to undermine the Habsburgs etc. And he did not hinder Protestantism taking root in Hungary or Transylvania. He formed an alliance with the French against the Habsburgs and transformed much of the Med­it­erranean Sea into an Ottoman lake for decades to come.

The Ottoman world was one in which Islam was privileged and Süley­man’s reign marked an ongoing interest in Islamic religious matters. From then, all Sultans saw themsel­ves as Caliph and head of all Sunni Musl­ims. Süley­man waged 3 major wars against Persia. The first (1534–5) was in Iraq. The second (1548–9) brought the Lake Van area under Ottoman rule. And the third (1554–55) warned the Ot­tomans of the dif­ficulty defeating Persia’s Ṣafavid state. So a formal peace bet­ween the Ottomans and Ṣafavids was signed!

Süleyman's reign continued affecting Europe eg campaigns led to the em­erg­ence of 3 dis­tinct Hung­arys: Habsburg Hungary in north & west; Ottoman Hungary along the middle Danube centred on Buda; and the vassal state, Transylvania.   

Ottoman-Hungarian Wars, Battle 1526

fineartamerica

Beyond military conquest, Süleyman also standardised and cent­ralised legal system for the Ottoman state. He collected and edited the various law books of his forbearers, added statutes to create a more universally applic­ab­le text and specified the punishments for off­en­ces.

For all the cultural splendour and military success of Süley­man's rule, it was also brutal like his father’s. Marriage to his second consort Hurr­em Sultan (c1502–58) caused endless controversy because he was the first Sultan since the early years of the Empire to marry. He was deeply devoted to his wife and she amassed great power in her own right. But this mar­riage caused gos­sip that she was a witch who was behind the Sultan’s intrigues. And political intrigue followed him. He was forced to kill his dear friend, long serving grand vizier Ibrah­im (d1536) because he took too many roy­al rights for him­self. Worse still, he ordered his politically popul­ar son Must­afa (d1556) then son Beyzid (d1561) execut­ed.

Süleyman’s rule was a turning point in Ottoman history and across its empire. Histor­ians argued that Sül­eyman repr­es­ented the apogee of Ottoman pow­er and statecraft, and his death st­arted a long decline. Under Süleyman the Ottomans largely reached the limitat­ions of their supply lines and infrastructure, leading to a focus on int­ernal affairs, not territ­orial expans­ion. Although lat­­er Sul­tans did conq­uer more territory, they often found that wars gained little.

The sys­­tem of cent­ral­ised rule finalised under Süleyman was quickly ad­apt to the rap­idly changing world and the crises that later rock­ed Eur­ope. The empire began a control­led decent­ral­is­at­ion in response to the need for tax and chan­ges in war­fare in Eur­ope eg gunpowder.

Süleyman recognised the need for flexib­il­ity and it was this adaptab­ility during crises that made the difference. Where other empires and kingdoms collaps­ed, the Ottoman Empire lasted into the C20th!

Süleymaniye Mosque, built 1550–7

Taghribnews

He was a major patron of the arts whose cultural legacy remains. He often reflected in his poetry on the passing nature of rule, life and power. The NGA book Age of Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent (1987) accompanied the first major Turkish art exhibition dev­ot­ed to the Sultan's reign. The sophisticat­ed patron­age of Süleyman and his court nurtured the high standards that typified C16th Ottoman art. See 200+ works of art: manuscripts, jew­elled vess­els, silks and ceramics, created in the Sultan’s imperial studios. And architecture - along with other beautiful buildings in Is­t­anbul, the mosque was already built by the Chief of the Corps of Royal Architects, Mimar Sinan in 1550–7.

Süleyman’s reign lasted 46 years,  the longest in Ottoman history. The elderly Süleyman died in his command tent while leading a military campaign ag­ainst Szigetvár Hungary in 1566.  

Conclusion
He rose to be one of the most powerful, influential mon­ar­chs in European history, the foremost military power, even during the time of powerful rulers: Francis 1 (1494-1547); Henry VIII (1491-1547); Charles V (1500-58); and Ivan IV (1530-84). Suleyman con­quered new lands, exp­anded the Empire, built up Constant­inople as the Empire’s capital and introduced coffee houses. 

Expansion of the Ottoman Empire,

with conquests by Süleyman indicated in green.  Wiki, 

Press to expand

wonderful Austrian-French-Orientalist artist: Rudolf Ernst

Vienna was in turmoil in the mid C19th, starting with the Octob­er Re­v­olution in 1848 when Austrian Empire troops battled in the street with work­ers fighting for democracy. By late Oct, the imperial armies had bombarded Vienna and executed many. Thus Austria suffered an ugly period that lasted until WWI

At the entrance to the palace garden

Rudolph Ernst (1854-1932) was born to arch­itect Leo­pold Ernst, a man who enc­ou­r­aged his son’s interest in the arts. In 1869 dad sent Rudolf to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he himself had studied architecture in the 1820s. Rudolf’s dr­awing teacher was August Eisenmenger (1830-1907), a portraitist & mural painter famous for the Wiener Musik­verein ceiling panels.

In 1869, Ernst joined the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna at 16! In 1873, Ernst also began studying under Anselm Feuerbach (1829-80) at the Academy, an artist who had trav­el­led extensively and stud­ied at the Düsseldorf Academy. Plus he studied Gustav Wappers’ romantic style at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Wap­pers was influential on many of the next gener­at­ion of painters, espec­ial­ly Lawrence Alma-Taddema and Ford Maddox Brown. 

Ernst went to Rome to study classical and romantic land­sc­apes. Ernst left the Academy in 1874 to study Old Masters in Rome, and two years later, he moved to Paris. Both of Ernst’s parents had died during his years at the Ac­ademy, which must have made his decision to leave Austria easier.

 
1876 was a great year for a young art­ist to arrive in a city that was now the centre of avant-garde art. In Paris Ernst Frenchified his name, Rodolphe, and settled in Montparn­asse as both his home and studio. From 1877, he exhibited at the Salon of Fr­ench Art­ists every year, then opted for French nat­ionality, per­haps because of the increasing polit­ical tensions be­tween France and the Austrian Empire. [This was lucky; as a Fr­ench cit­izen, Ernst could remain in France during WWI while oth­ers had to leave]. In those early years in France, Ernst was exp­osed to Impress­ionism to academic art, from Barbizon painters to Realists.

Ludwig Deutsch (1855-1935) was another Viennese artist who arrived in Paris in 1878 to study with Carl Muller, genre painter special­is­ing in peasant scenes from Hungary, Italy and North Africa. Deu­t­­sch and Ernst met in Paris and remained close friends forever.

What caught Ernest’s attention was Orientalist art, peaking in the C19th and de­pict­ing the imagined repr­es­entation of the East by European artists. This movement blur­red the line bet­ween fantasy and reality, largely because the scenes were­n’t painted by locals. Ernst’s Orientalist era began in 1885 when he travelled to Spain, Morocco, Tunis and Turkey. There he was able to sketch and ph­oto­graph the lo­cals’ daily life so that these im­ages could later tr­ansformed into colourful canv­as­es and int­er­iors. The trip mark­ed a sig­nificant turning point for the artist; he was del­ight­ed to focus on colourful, exotic Orient­alism, espec­ially Islamic scenes eg the interiors of mosques and harem scenes.

After the Prayer

 

Back at home Ernst used gen­uine Orientalist artefacts that he had gath­ered, to create out­standing fantasy eg tiles, lamps, pottery, silks, satins and kaftans. His C17th Persian blue-white pot app­eared in Per­fume Makers. The C19th Sy­r­ian bronze lamp near the Chieftain app­eared in After the Pr­ayer and The Wedding Day. The red-gold emb­roid­ered silk Dam­ask curt­ain was used in Smoking the Hookah, and the Moorish octagonal blue-green tiles were used in Reading the Koran. The C19th Syrian in­laid table near the Chief­tain was seen in The Refreshment. And the Alhambra-style back­gr­ound was a favourite set­ting that Ernst reprised: Wedding Day, Moorish Harem Guard and Alhambra.

In the Alhambra

 

Ernst successfully submitted Orientalist paintings to the Salon beginning in 1887, and in 1889, he received a bronze medal at the Exposition Un­iverselle. Winning a medal meant that his pro­­s­pects for a successful career increased, so he con­t­inued to exhibit at the Salon for another three decades. And like many artists, Ernst also op­ened his atelier to students, probably in the 1890s.

In 1890, Ernst and Deutsch travelled to Constant­inople and Cairo, recording what they saw with photos and through buying photographs from local stud­ios. Ernst also collected quite a num­ber of objects that he sent back to Paris; these later became the props and back­grounds of his art and were often rep­eated in different canvases. See Deutsch's handsome Nubian Guard, painted in 1895 .

By 1900, Ernst added yet another medium to his oeuvre: ceramics. Incl­uded in his faience pieces were the expect­ed Orient­al­ist imag­es and eventually he branched out into the pro­duction and sale of Orientalist tiles, inspired by the Isl­amic tiles he had seen. Ern­st moved just outside Paris to a vill­age c1900 and decor­ated his new home in the exotic Ottoman style.

The war years were grim and the art sales collapsed. It imp­r­oved after the Treaty of Versailles was finalised in 1919, and Ernst again showed his work at the Salon in 1920. His friend Deutsch had returned to France by then, and had also become a French citizen.

Ernst worked at his various forms of art in the 1920s, occas­ion­ally visiting his old Montparnasse haunts. As one of the first ar­t­ists to see the advantages of living in the left bank neighbour­hood, he enjoyed the young artists, musicians and writers moving into the area. Rodolphe Ernst died in Paris in 1932 at 78.

The Flower Seller

Thank you to Wikioog.org for the images

neo-Moorish architecture Algeria, during French colonisation.

Chief postal office, Algiers

Opened 1910

Renewed 2018

Throughout its history Algeria changed many times, each time absorbing the different civilisations that governed it. In the Mid­d­le Ages the dark people of the Maghreb who conquered Spain were called Moorish.

Of all the architecture in Algerian cities the NEO-Moorish style, devel­oped during French colonisation, stood out. Buildings in this style dec­orated Algerian cities, giving them di­v­ers­ity and art­istic rich­­ness. With his new policy, Emp­er­or Napoleon III (r1852-70) invited civilians and locals to share power with the military, as part of his Arab Kingdom Policy.

The emerg­ence of a neo-Moorish style in Algeria thrived in mix­ed con­d­itions: political, social, economic. In reality the King­dom Policy was to win the Arabs’ sympathy by positive benef­its and to attract new settlers with real prosp­erity. This whole colon­is­at­ion enter­pr­ise was presented as a civilising mission of Algerians. The decision to main­tain the French presence in Alg­er­ia, and its trans­ition to a set­tle­ment plan­ned for total territorial occupation, req­uired civil buildings.

Neo-Moorish style was pop­ul­arised in Algiers in 1903 when Frenchman Charles Jonnart became Gov General. New serv­ic­es quickly emerged: train stat­ion, post office, town hall etc. The Kor­an­ic School in Algeria’s Lower Cas­bah was built in the neo-Moorish st­y­le. Intended for the higher education of young locals, this Madrassa was in­augurated in Oct 1904 by Minister of Public Instruction & Fine Arts.

No service was more important than the French Postal Service! This French neo-Moorish style was important for Jonnart; the suc­cess of French colon­isation depended on a cultural and re­ligious com­p­romise with the loc­als. In order to win them over, Jonnart requested a new style that re-created an Arab tradition and a new rel­ationship bet­w­een modern services and tradit­ional architect­ure.

The style showed its debt to Arab-Andalusian architecture: soph­­ist­ic­ated neo-Moorish ar­ch­es, domes, chis­elled stuc­co, massive carved doors, ornate mosaics and Kor­anic insc­rip­t­ions. Call­ig­raphy used the texts of inscriptions wh­ose ornam­ent­al let­t­ers intertw­ined with the ar­ab­esques! The entrance to the building was not on one level but at the top of a wide amber-coloured marble staircase giving access to the fore-court which overlooked 3 monumental doors carved in precious wood.

Algerian Henri Klein (1864-1939) was the founder of the Committee of Old Algiers in 1905, an association that worked for the protection of the archit­ect­ural and urban heritage via historical research. The timing was right for these historians, archaeologists and artists.

The new Ang­lic­an church in Upper Mustapha, completed in 1909, made it pos­s­ib­le to dem­ol­ish the old small Anglican church with its Anglo-Saxon style and stained glass windows. Instead, a large 5-storey build­ing was built for Algiers Central Post Office, located on the Ras Taff­oura in­l­et. Dedicated to post, teleg­r­aph and telephone, the building was de­s­ign­ed by French archit­ects Jules Voinot and Marius Toud­oire, and fin­ish­ed by 1910. It was Algeria's largest post office building, used by an average of 9,000 users/day.

Architects Voinot & Tondoire designed the main facade with 3 loops, and the upper gall­ery with twinned col­umns, surm­oun­ted by a cre­n­ellated parapet. Note the perfect sym­m­et­ry of the main facade and the sym­m­etrical or­ganisation of the internal spaces, just like clas­s­ical Eu­r­o­p­ean ar­chit­ecture. Atop the Grande Poste, a met­al bal­us­t­­r­ade ad­orn­ed with geometric patt­erns and underlined its en­tire length by bands of green earthen­ware presenting in Arabic the names of the main cities of Algeria. An Andal­us­ian cornice made up of green, round and glazed tiles was placed on wooden corbels.

Construction ended 3 years later after builders and architects co­ord­in­ated on the building’s courtyards, columns and ceilings, decorating them with Arab and Andalusian decor­ation. The 3 forms of dec­or­at­ion of Arab-Muslim architecture were geometry, script and veget­at­ion.

Inside the Grand Post Office in Algiers

Outside the dome was divided at regular intervals by protruding ribs, a form that was common in the Byzantine era. The dome covered the central room, de­signed on an oc­tagonal plan. The radiating geometric interlac­ing dec­or­at­ion was a very refined Andalusian ornament­ation a la Alhambra.

To access the Central Post Office, the vis­itor climbed up the stone st­air­case to the building, taking in the high ceiling. The glass and wood­en windows were mast­erful. Inside the buil­d­ing, the im­p­ression came from the charm of the decor, and from its sheer scale. The ceil­ing of the main room was an arch­it­ect­ur­al  charm.

**

After WW2, colonialism was no longer acceptable. But France refused to give up Algeria. The French forces waged the bloody and brutal Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) hoping to hold on to Algeria. And despite terrorist acts by French Algerians opposed to independence and an attempted coup in France by elements of the French army, the Algerian Independence Agreement was signed in 1962.

When the original building was in a dreadful state, it no longer housed the postal services; parts had been damaged by water, rats were ev­ery­wh­ere and the postal employees had moved to other premises. In 2014, they announced the building was to be­come the Mu­seum for the History of Post & Telecommunic­at­­ions by the Repub­l­ic’s President; the Director of Alg­ér­ie Poste recorded the vast in­vest­ment in 2015; and the building was closed in June 2017.

The gov­ern­ment turned Grande Poste into a Museum that open­ed in 2018, a unique ar­chitec­tural treasure. Visitors discovered the history of the post and tele­commun­icat­ions in a building that syn­thesised Moorish and neo-classical styles. 60 years after independence, the Museum has rem­ained the most imp­ort­ant postal facility of Algeria. La Grande-Poste represented to Algiers what the Leaning Tower was to Pisa!

The ceil­ing of the main room was an arch­it­ect­ur­al charm

 Ornam­ent­al let­t­ers intertw­ined with the ar­ab­esques as wall decoration

wooden decorations that are set in the glass windows

above a monumental door

Who invented and adapted bourekas?

For centuries, börek had been the food of nomads. Cooked over camp­fires, it had been carried in kits from Modena to the Maghreb or Barcelona. Though it got onto royal tables, it was a culinary witness to centuries of mig­rat­ion, conquest & displacement. Thank you Alexander Lee.  

Istanbul börek
with minced meat

Few written documents survive from before the mid C12th but there are plenty of theories, especially that börek derived from the Byz­antine plak­ous/flat cake i.e two sheets of pastry, stuffed with honey, cheese and chopped nuts. Others suggest that börek was probably invented by the nomadic Turks of Central Asia, reflecting the herdsmen's harsh life. Cooked on a flat-iron griddle, it needed only those lim­ited foodstuffs which were avail­able on the steppe: the butter and cheese they made from their own sheep and goats; wild pars­ley; and the grains bartered in markets.

Though Turkic peoples have always been very proud of their itiner­ant culture, they envied the comforts of the city, especial­ly the thick oven-baked bread they encountered at market-time. With­out ov­ens, they emulated its fluffy texture by layering their dough over and over, before stuffing it with a savoury filling and frying it.

  

Various Turkic peoples began migrating westwards across Central Asia. The Seljuks introduced it to Pers­ia and to East­ern Anatolia, formerly occupied by the Byzantine Empire. No longer confined to the steppe, fillings were adapted to the new consumers' tastes and to the availability of produce. When the Turkic migrations were brought to a halt, the nomadic Mongols overrun Per­sia and pushed towards Anatolia. Most of the peninsula was overrun.

Fortunately the Mongols were adept at assimilating the culture of those they subjugated, including food. Taking börek and Turkic pas­try cooks back to Cen­tral Asia, they also adapted it. The savoury past­ries were made from delicate filo dough and filled with feta cheese, parsley, chicken and a few vegetables.

Within a few decades, börek had become a staple of court cuisine in Mongol-ruled China. The Dietary Principles, written c1300 by the court dietician, was an attempt to apply Chinese and Islamic cul­in­ary theory to the Mongols’ favourite foods and included at least three different recipes for Chinese, not Turkic börek.

But börek had not been forgotten in its old homeland. Permitted to live according to their own customs, Turkics cont­in­ued to enjoy it throughout the Mongol occupation. When the last re­l­ics of the western khanates eventually disintegrated in the mid C14th, it retained great popularity, especially in Persia and the Cauc­asus. At the Timurid court in Samarkand it succeeded well.

As Mongol authority crumbled, the peninsula had fallen to many dif­f­erent Turkic groups. By the late 1350s, the Otto­mans were pred­om­in­ating. They pushed into East­ern Thrace and on to the Bal­kans, cap­t­uring Adrian­ople in 1362 and forcing the Serbs into submission in 1386. Under Murad II they controlled Eastern Anatolia and North­ern Greece and in 1453 con­qu­ered the prize, Constantinople!

To consolidate their diverse realms, the Ot­to­man sultans copied the Mongols: eagerly adopting and modifying the cultures of those they had conquered. The acquisition of new lands and the expansion of the imperial bureaucracy also disseminated the Ottomans’ own cus­­toms. In early C16th Istanbul, there were 4 börek shops per bakery.

The richness of Greek cuisine reflected the influence of the long Otto­man occupation (C15th on), borrowing the tastes and styles of the Middle-East and Mediterranean regions. Greek Spanakopita was usually pres­ent­ed in the triangular shape: filo dough, spinach and Greek feta cheese.

Greek spanakopita bourekas

with spinach and feta

busyinbrooklyn  

In the Ottoman reign of Sultan Mehmet IV (r1648-87), the Imperial Council met in a domed chamber of the Topkapi Palace. When the Grand Vizier and his minis­ters finished affairs of state, they had a lus­c­ious lunch. There were 6 sumptuous courses, the centrepiece of the meal being börek. Delicate and tasty, it was loved as the culinary epitome of Ottoman culture and courtly elegance. Despite the centralis­ation which occurred after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after WW1, each region of Turkey has retained its own sense of cultural identity. 

**

Alexander Lee reported Jewish boureka history after the expul­s­ion from Spain in 1492, but presented it as a side trip in the complex his­tory of bourekas. Now here is the real history, accord­ing to my grand­mother. Grandma's view was that far from being an Islamic Turkic, Mongol or Ottoman invention, bourekas was a Sephardi Spanish patent. 

The Jewish people were expelled from Spain by the Catholic royals Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492. Some of those who fled took refuge in It­aly, others in Egypt, Israel or Syria. Many had heard of the rel­igious tolerance of the Ottoman Empire, and travelled to Anat­ol­ia for better lives. But they had not forgotten the long years of Sp­anish Jewry, bringing their customs and traditions with them.

  Israeli cheese bourekas

At first, the Spanish-speaking Jews ignored Ottoman börek, prefer­r­ing to stick to the heavy, crescent-shaped empanadas (pastry dough cheese turn­overs) they’d loved at home. But soon, by combin­ing em­panadas with börek, they created a hybrid dish, bourek­as. Made with thick dough and shaped like a half-moon, several fill­ings were used. And to en­sure that kosher dietary laws were maintained, dis­t­in­ctive toppings distinguished between cheese and meat pastries.

Things only changed in 18th & C19th when the Ottomans’ famed tolerance failed in a rising tide of anti-Semitism; many Sephardi Jews (originally from Spain, North Africa, Ottoman Empire and Middle East) fled. Recognising the strong comm­ercial ties with Venice, many Jews settled in Ferrara and Modena where there were already large Jewish populations, tak­ing bourek­as with them.

In the pre-State decades, Sephardi Jews emig­rated in large numbers. After the foundation of the State of Israel in 1948, a massive in­flux of Jews from all over the world created a melting pot of int­ernational cultures. My grandmother lived in Jaf­fa where Sephardi bourekas, crammed with fish or cheese, represented edible per­fection.

Apollo Art Awards 2020: Exhibition of Year

The Annunciation, Jan van Eyck, c1425. 

National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Apollo is proud to announce the winners of its annual awards. Dating back to 1992, the Apollo Awards celebrate major achievements in the art and museum worlds.

Short list of best galleries

1.Aberdeen Art Gallery Reopened November 2019

A renovation & expansion costing £34.6m almost doubled the number of permanent galleries and allowed 3 times as many objects to go on display. The history & wealth of Aberdeen’s civic collections, from founding collector Alexander Macdonald’s Victorian portrait gal­lery to recent acquisitions of Scottish silver, are now hand­some­ly presented.

2.The Box, Plymouth Opened September 2020

One of few capital projects to have rolled its way through the pandemic this year (cost £40m), the Box draws together the old civic art museum and library, their renovated buildings linked by a large extension that includes on-site collection storage in the box that caps off the structure.

3.British Galleries, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Reopened March 2020

The renovation of these galleries, the Met’s flagship project in its 150th year, has involved a reconsideration of the global contexts of six centuries of British decorative arts. Around a quarter of the objects here were acquired with the new display in mind.

4.Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden Reopened Feb 2020

This €50m project has done much to improve facilities, but has also reintegrated sculpture and painting in the galleries and increased the sense of spectacle in the display of these great collections. Extensive conservation has been carried out on some 200 paintings and 300 frames.

5.KBR Museum, Brussels Opened September 2020

This new Royal Library of Belgium Museum displays manu­scripts from the collection of the dukes of Burgundy. c100 of them are shown and interpreted across 2 floors, with armour, prints, sculpture & paintings.

6.Yemisi Shyllon Museum of Art, Ibeju-Lekki Opened Oct 2019

The first dedicated university art museum in Nigeria is named after Prince Yemisi Shyllon who has donated c1,000 works it – a founding collection that ranges from pre-colonial objects to modern and contemporary works by Ben Enwonwu, Nike Davies-Okundaye etc. Shyl­lon has also committed to funding the museum for at least 15 years.

Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent

Winning Exhibition 

by Thomas Marks, editor of Apollo

Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent

Ambition and intimacy are not the most natural of bedfellows. But the achievement of Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution was that its curators realised the grandest imaginable exhibition on its subject, in scope and scale, while allowing visitors a beguiling proximity to so many paintings by Jan van Eyck. Of 22 works ascribed to him, 13 were on display here; anchoring portraits and devotional works on loan from European and American collections were the eight restored outer panels of the Ghent Altarpiece, as well as the Adam and Eve from the upper register of its interior (the versos of the central outer panels).

Through 13 galleries, the exhibition provided what Apollo’s reviewer described as near perfect conditions for close looking. In splitting up the panels from St Bavo’s Cathedral, and displaying them at eye level, it gave visitors the chance to scrutinise Van Eyck’s sur­fac­es, his feeling for light and his mastery of de­tail, and to revel in the honest humanity of his vision. While the dis­play con­textualised Van Eyck with contemporaneous objects and Italian paint­ings, it mis­sed no trick in creating moments of intense drama in the juxtaposit­ion of his works: the two versions of St Francis Receiving the Stig­mata shown side by side; The Annunciat­ion from Washington, with its jazzy archangel, in the same room as the cor­responding pan­els from the Ghent Altarpiece; and, in the penultimate gallery, five of Van Eyck’s portraits with the panels depicting the altarpiece’s donors.

Beyond that drama was a sense of integrity, of an exhibition in the right place at the right time. Since 2012, the MSK Ghent has hosted the restoration of the Ghent Altarpiece. In parallel with that proj­ect, the Closer to Van Eyck website has gathered and made publicly available high-resolution images, including those using scientific imaging techniques, of most of the artist’s works. In this context, Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution felt like the dividend of local and international collaboration: several loaned paintings had been newly conserved for the exhibition; its robust catalogue contains 19 essays by leading Van Eyck scholars.

130,000 people could visit the exhibition before it closed due to the pandemic, halfway through its scheduled run in mid March. For many of them, the memory of it will have provided much consol­at­ion in the months that followed.

Alexandria, Egypt - handsome old synagogue, now renovated

Eliyahu Hanavi/Elijah the Prophet Synagogue was originally built in Nabi Daniel St in Alexandria in the C14th. But I am surprised that the historians not know where it was, at least until restoration work revealed the remains of an older synagogue beneath the C19th structure?

With the inevitable destruction that came with the passage of time, war damage from Napoleonic arm­ies and local riots, the building had to be re-built in 1850. This C19th version of the syn­agogue was monumental, exactly as we would expect from an 1850s It­al­ian architect working for Baron Yacoub Levi de Men­ashe and with contrib­utions from the Muh­ammad Ali Dynasty. Origin­al­ly located in what were the outskirts of the city, the synagogue now stands in the heart of beau­tiful Alexandria, in el-Mansheya Square.

Under British influence (1882-1922-1956), and under King Fuad I (reigned 1922-36), Egypt was friendly towards its Jewish populat­ion. Jews played important roles in the mercantile economy, and their populat­ion climbed to c90,000, in respon­se to increasing persecution in Europe. Half of the 90,000 Jews lived in Alexandria.

Pass through fancy wrought iron gates, walk through the formal garden 

and approach the front entrance to the synagoguge.

In Oct 1956, after the conflict with Britain, France and Israel in the Suez Crisis, President Gamal Abdel Nasser expressed a surge of nationalism. He introduced sweeping regulations, abolishing civil liberties and all­owing the state to strip away Egyptian citizenship from any group. When the Jews were forced to leave Egypt in 1956-7, they moved to Israel and other countries, leaving behind heaps of synagogues and hist­or­ical artefacts. The expelled citizens were all­owed to take only one suit­case and a small sum of cash, and were forced to don­at­e their property before emigrating.

My daughter-in-law’s entire family had lived a cosmopolitan life in Alex­andria, with nice houses, plenty of synagogues and successful trad­ing between Egypt, Greece and Italy. They would never have left Alexandria volunt­arily, but they were nonetheless grateful to Aus­tralia for giving them a safe home in 1957.

Eliyahu Hanavi was one of two extant syn­agogues in Alex­andria, where there had once been 12 thriving communities. This building could seat 700 worshipers and was the last functioning synagogue in Egypt, until it had to be closed on sec­ur­ity grounds in 2012. It might have been one of the largest Jewish buildings in the Middle East, but after some of its roof collapsed, the synagogue remained exposed to the elements; rainwater seeped into the walls and floors. Only immed­iate repairs prevented it from becoming a danger, particularly for the women who sat upstairs.

Peaceful relations between Egypt and Israel have occurred since 1977, when President Anwar Sadat visited Israel. But Egypt’s Antiquities Min­ister Khaled al-Anani didn’t get to tour a number of arch­aeol­og­ical sites in Alex­and­ria until 2017. In a press release, the Minister noted that the Egyptian government was interested in pres­er­v­ing all of the country's monuments and heritage, be they Islamic, Phar­aonic, Jewish or Coptic. He ordered structural and architectural rein­force­ment to the synagogue, res­toration of the main façades, ornate walls, wood and copper elements, and light­ing. The marble columns, which are still beautiful, marked out the seating space and the brass name plates are still affixed to the pews of the regular male worshippers.

The restoration of Eliyahu Hanavi was a clear sign of the local aut­h­or­ities’ growing interest in the preservation of minority groups’ heritage, a symbol of Egypt’s historical pluralism. It reflected a time when div­erse communities lived together in a spirit of relig­ious freedom.

The central aisle is defined by marble pillars on both sides.

The ark, holding all the holy scrolls, 
is surrounded by menorah lamps

Men's pews, still with the brass name plates 

 Under the supervision of the Antiquities Ministry, the Egyptians paid for emergency repairs and then for the complete restoration of Eliyahu Han­avi. The government’s renovat­ion initiative brought attention to the import­ance of the synagogue to the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based non-profit organis­at­ion dedicated to the preservation of historic architecture and cul­tural heritage sites, which allocated millions of dol­lars to rest­ore eight Jewish sites in Egypt. Appropriately this syn­agogue went straight onto the World Monuments Fund's 2018 list of monuments-at-risk.

Because the entire Jewish population of Egypt in 2017 could sit together in a small Fiat 500 car, it is unclear how much pressure the local Jewish comm­un­ity provided on the Egyptian government. But there certainly were requ­ests from organisations of Jews who had emigrated from Egypt in 1956-7, and their children. Generations of Jews had loved Egypt, spoke French at home and Arabic at work, and were integral parts of the merchant econ­omy. Those communities absolutely had to be commemorated, and their property and synagogues respected.

This entire process was a great sign of growing interest by the Egyptian authorities in the preservation of minority groups’ herit­age, a symbol of Egypt’s historical plural­ity and religious freedom. But who will pray, marry or be bar mitzva’d in the now beautiful Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue – just overseas tourists and consular staff? The organisations of ex-pat Egyptians have proposed to the Egyptian gov­ernment a new Museum, to protect and display the comm­un­ity’s legacy in Egypt. Perhaps Eliyahu Hanavi Synagogue will also become the home of the Jewish Museum.

This weekend marked the largest Jewish prayer gathering in Egypt for decades. 180 Jews of Egyptian origin flew to the land of their fathers for a Sabbath dedicated to the newly restored synagogue. The highlight of the day was when 12 of the synagogue’s original Torah scrolls were taken out and emotionally paraded throughout the hall. The 12 Torah scrolls were in honour of the 12 tribes of Israel.