The Cervantes Institute in Alexandria (the Spanish Cultural Centre) held on Tuesday a seminar entitled ‘The School of Alexandria, an Intellectual Movement on Andalusia,’ which reviews the activities of the School of Andalusian Studies in Alexandria and the importance of its contributions to the studies of Morocco and Andalusia.

Andalusian Studies combines the Islamic and Spanish cultural heritage.

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In the presence of Spanish Ambassador to Egypt Ramón Gil Casares and Director of Cervantes Institutes Javier Ruiz Sierra, a plethora of distinguished scholars of Andalusian studies participated in the seminar in Alexandria.

These included Professor of Arabic Literature Zakaria Anani, Professor of History and Islamic Civilisation Sahar Abdel-Aziz Salem, Professor of Arabic Literature and head of the Arabic language Department at Alexandria University Mourad Abbass, Professor of History at the Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University Hossam Alaabadi, as well as head of the Islamic Studies Centre at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina and Professor of History at Alexandria University Mohamed El-Gamal.

The school was established around half a century ago at Alexandria University by the first dean of the Faculty of Literature, Professor Abdel-Hamid Alaabadi, and it was opened to the outside world with the establishment of the Egyptian Institute for Islamic Studies in Madrid when a group of professors went to Spain to study.

These included professors Ahmed Mukhtar Alaabadi, Abdel-Aziz Salem, Alsayed Ghazi, and Mahmoud Ali Makki, who obtained their doctorate under the supervision of Spanish Arabist, literary historian and critic Emilio García Gómez, who supervised their research in Madrid.