After the 2022 World Cup, I met a large number of friends from different countries and from various intellectual trends, and they all agree that what they lived during the World Cup is a kind of dream, which cannot be believed had it not been for them following the course of this historical event that the State of Qatar succeeded in organizing ably and recognisably. worldwide.
As much as I was pleased with this general impression that translates into continuous astonishment and endless admiration, I was worried about linking this realistic event to the aura of what is imaginary of the greatness and loftiness of the World Cup details, because this image that remained in the minds should not settle only on the side Miraculous from memory, but it should settle in the mind, and be covered by documentation so that it does not turn with time into a dreamy tale or a legend passed down by generations only.
Qatar organized an exceptional edition of the World Cup (Reuters)
What happened in the World Cup is a great matter, as the small Arab Muslim country succeeded in winning the global challenge, and to this day we are still fascinated by this miracle, and despite the sweetness of remembering and restoring all the wonderful moments, views, matches and events of the human dialogue that transcends sports to broad value dimensions that respect prevails. And the exchange of cultures. What we need today, and in order to invest all these gains, is to document all the events of the World Cup in its sporting, social, economic and cultural aspects, so that the "World Cup Code" will be a source of consideration for generations and a national, Arab and global experience that can be used in the future of international relations.
Moroccan player Sofiane Boufal celebrates with his mother after Morocco qualified for the semi-finals (Reuters)
Documentation is a tool for dealing in the present and ensuring communication in the future, so Western historians paid attention to its importance in the Middle Ages, and as much as they relied on oral documents and what is frequent on the tongues, they thought of a tool documenting all that they write and exchange information, so John’s invention of the printing press was an important event in human history
Nations think about their memory
Nations cannot preserve their memory without thinking about their history, and this history is not made without the various documentation processes.
Indeed, human groups before the beginning of history thought about documenting their lives, so humanity would not have known anything about the life of primitive peoples had the primitive man not paid attention to the necessity of documenting his religious and social practices.
Verses from Surat "Al-Falaq" from the Holy Qur'an inscribed on one of the walls of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain (Al-Jazeera)
Inscriptions of the phrase "There is no victor but God" on the walls of the Alhambra Palace in the Spanish city of Granada (Al-Jazeera)
What if cavemen did not draw those wonderful cave drawings of prehistoric life aspects?
We see in the "Lascaux" cave located in the Dordogne province the oldest drawings and inscriptions in the world, drawings in the "Big Hall of Bulls", engravings of animals and a map of the "night sky" that translates prehistoric man's interest in astronomy, planets and stars.
Lascaux Cave is one of the oldest caves in the world (French press)
After their discovery of papyrus, the ancient Egyptians were able to exchange documents with each other and with other nations, and the discovery of cuneiform writing among the Sumerians allowed the initiation of history and the facilitation of documentation.
Drawings of the ancient Egyptians on the walls (agencies)
Humanity began to cut through a new phase of its life when embarking on written documentation after it took a long time in visual documentation through murals and drawings in caves, temples and palaces. He drew his information from what he gathered from the tongues, as he spent his life traveling through Asia Minor and the regions of the Levant, Palestine and Egypt, meeting people, collecting news and stories from their mouths, looking at ruins and ruins, and drawing some conclusions from his observations.
And in his narration of the facts that occurred centuries before him, there is evidence that he picked up the news from what the people transmitted from his contemporaries, so the facts intertwined with nonsense in what he narrated, and the Greek and Roman historians after him were able to reduce the power of word of mouth and record the events they lived through, from that what the historian Theodore did when documenting it The Peloponnesian War, so he covered its events over a period of twenty-seven years, and he was moving from one village to another to collect information about the war and fight it in order to verify it in his writing.
A model of Herodotus in the Louvre Palace in Paris (the island)
The Europeans were aware of the importance of the document, and the word Document was derived from the Latin origin Docere, meaning "know", and it remained in its narrow meaning the official state papers, including laws, legislation, treaties with states, and transactions between official circles.
And if the Arabic term denotes the meaning of firmness and confirmation of the matter, then it identifies with the Western convention in saying that documentation is a recording of information and facts, and a nation cannot pass its symbolic wealth to generations without using it.
Documentation is a tool for dealing in the present and ensuring communication in the future, so Western historians paid attention to its importance in the Middle Ages, and as much as they relied on oral documents and what is frequent on the tongues, they thought of a more sophisticated tool that documents all the information they write and exchange, so it was the invention of John Gutenberg The printing press in the fifteenth century AD had an important event in the history of mankind, to help the printing press in the work of documentation.
John Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century AD was an important event in human history (communication sites)
Greco-Roman thought was not the only one that was guided to the importance of documentation. Since ancient times, the Arabs knew that search for documenting their livelihood. For a long period of time, Arab life was dominated by oral documentation through transmission, so reliance was on memorization, and poetry before Islam was memorized through narrators, so it was recorded. The Arabs spent their days in the collection of their poems, and they transmitted their news through word of mouth, so the Arabs knew retribution, and they were a group that undertook to narrate the news of the tribes, their conquests, their social exploits, and their beliefs.
Following the advent of Islam, care for documentation increased, including the oral and written documentation of the Holy Qur’an, so the “Book of Revelation” appeared, and after the decrease in the number of memorizers of the Holy Qur’an, there was an urgent need for the collection process. Sciences related to documenting the documentation of the Prophet’s Sunnah, including the science of narrators, the science of chains of transmission, and the sciences of the terminology of hadith. The era of Arabic blogging ushered in a new stage in Arab culture. Documentation, as documentation is not just a recording of the movement of thought, it is a transition to a new stage in Arab creativity.
Following the emergence of Islam, care increased in oral and written documentation (networking sites)
Our Arab-Islamic heritage was full of the initiatives of writers who realized with their intellectual sense the value of documentation, and whenever I went back to the book “Al-Fihrist” by Ibn Al-Nadim, I felt that documentary awareness that was necessary for its author. He has great credit for Arab culture through what he documented in his book of literary treasures, most of which were not spared from the expenses of time, and because of the information it contained about the emergence of science by presenting the biographies of scholars of every art. The book was a scientific encyclopedia that no researcher in Arab heritage can ignore.
Ibn al-Nadim, the historian, collector of indexes, and author of the book "Al-Fihrist" (communication sites)
Arab writers worked to document the results of their research in various sciences, so the manuscripts industry flourished for centuries, and without it, the West would not have been able to emerge from the darkness of its Middle Ages, as the Arabic manuscripts that were translated into Western languages formed the basis for a large-scale scientific and intellectual renaissance in Europe.
In our Arab history, there are many evidences of the impact of the documentary works that the ancient Arab intellectuals were keen to do, especially in the periods of the islands of Arab culture and the attempt to obliterate its treasures and the effects of its symbols. Copying it before burning it when we got something from Ibn Rushd's knowledge and when the West benefited from his philosophical ideas. Awareness of documentation saved the Arab heritage on more than one occasion from fading and preserved the memory of Arab civilization in more than one field.
Documentary awareness in the World Cup epic
There is no doubt that documentation is not limited to the work of institutions, as it begins with the work of individuals and their keenness to document and document the moments, periods and events that they live in their private lives or witness in the life of their society, and it takes various means, including written and visual ones, and digital media has helped in understanding all aspects of life. Humanity, so that every individual has a cell phone as a document.
We have seen many individual documentation processes whose owners have been recording events during the 2022 Qatar World Cup, which is useful, but it requires the efforts of institutions to make the documentation more comprehensive and lasting.
What caught my attention and I was pleased with it were the smart steps taken by some Qatari institutions in the context of preparing for the Qatar World Cup with the aim of documenting this great event. Also, the value of types of documents that circulate quickly among people, including coins and postage stamps.
Therefore, the Central Bank of Qatar, in coordination with the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy and the International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA), issued commemorative coins on the occasion of Qatar's hosting of the 2022 World Cup, including a commemorative banknote of guaranteed value, in which the "polymer" material was used to preserve it for hundreds of years.
Qatar Central Bank issued currencies documenting Doha's hosting of the World Cup in football (Qatari press)
The bank also issued coins that include pictures of the most important World Cup stadiums, including Al-Bayt Stadium, Lusail Stadium, Al-Thumama Stadium and Khalifa International Stadium. These commemorative coins contributed to documenting and immortalizing the historical event, not only in Qatar, but also in the Arab world.
What these currencies provide of historical material for future generations is very important, since currencies have represented valuable historical material in the East and the Maghreb since ancient times. If it were not for the Greek currency, we would not know much about the history of the political entities in that era. In Islamic history, it reflected the cross-pollination of Muslims with the cultures of other nations, and it is mentioned that the first Islamic criticism was struck during the reign of Caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him, in the year 18 AH, and if the inscription of the Kasrawiyyah was taken from the dirhams, the Muslims added to it the words “Praise be to God.” In some of them, “Muhammad is the Messenger of God,” and in others, “There is no god but God.”
King Ufa's coin bears Arabic inscriptions inspired by the Abbasid dinar (communication sites)
And if the coins were minted by non-Arabs before the Muslims, then the Muslims benefited from them and documented the beginnings of their civilization on those coins. Community technical skills.
Inevitably, what the coins reflect is saturated with the official history of societies, but the information it contains is indispensable for building a clear understanding of the turning points of Islamic history. Where he is exposed to what Arab Muslim writers and historians wrote about money, but I was always looking to deepen these researches by studying the cultural aspects of money more than just showing and putting together indexes that include the names and terminology of money.
The book "Arab and Islamic Numismatics and Numismatics" by Anastas Al-Karmali (communication sites)
Money was able to be a means to facilitate economic transactions, and to carry symbols of sovereignty in all periods of history, and to announce the inauguration of an era and the end of another, and the demise of civilization and the rise of another, and this indicates that coins are among the documents that a researcher in history cannot dispense with studying them, and if they are The Central Bank of the State of Qatar hastened to allocate coins for the World Cup event, due to its deep knowledge of the great service it provides to researchers in the future, and as much as people rejoice in obtaining these commemorative coins that individuals as well as institutions collect, the documentary awareness of the value of recording the event on coins makes us immortalize the heroic achievements of the World Cup generation .
This documentary awareness of Qatari institutions did not stop at this point, but rather spread to many of them. Perhaps what Qatar Post did is another example of translating this awareness. In the context of the 2022 World Cup, issues of postage stamps were launched, including a stamp that highlighted The legacy of the State of Qatar in the field of football, and the launch of the official postage stamp of the tournament, which came in the form of a map of the State of Qatar and bears the official logo of the tournament, in addition to stamps identifying the World Cup stadiums, and the collection of official mascot stamps for the World Cup, and not only philatelists were pleased with these publications Rather, every researcher who understands the importance of documenting such major events was pleased with it. Whenever these stamps are circulated, the “document” expressing the continued eternity of the event spreads throughout the world despite its passing. Therefore, the advantage of this type of documentation is the widening of the time span for digging into human memory, which Avoid erasure over time.
A series of stamps issued by Qatar Post on the occasion of the World Cup (Qatari press)
Next article: Documentation from the Arab perspective.