The UNESCO Chair for Dialogue, in cooperation with the French Institute in Baghdad and the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, held a series of seminars on Islamic studies.

The first workshop was titled (Arba’een Pilgrimage: from the Viewpoint of Social Sciences) and conducted on Thursday 3/11/2021. The French researcher Sabrina Mervan presented an anthropological study on the Arba’een Pilgrimage with a graphic presentation of the Pilgrimage and its spiritual and social dimensions from the point of view of anthropological sciences. The workshop was attended by the President of the University Kufa, Prof. Dr. Yasir Lafta Hassoun, the French Ambassador in Baghdad, Mr. Bruno Hubert, and the French Cultural Attaché, Mrs. Salwa Nakouzi.

Dr. Alaa Shatnan, Director of the UNESCO Chair for Dialogue, stated that the Pilgrimage, with all that it implies, embodies the characteristics of the Iraqi people being distinguished by hospitality, generosity, altruism, acceptance of others and coexistence, and with all the symbols and local and international religious and social connotations it contains, which we found in a scientific anthropological study presented by the French researcher and anthropologist Sabrina Mervin.