Harvest of the Years

This book, which His Highness promised the cultural public at the end of the 2010 Sharjah Expo, would provide an account of thirty years of the Ruler of Sharjah's initiative to establish infrastructure and strategies for cultural work that has significantly impacted local, Arab, and international spheres. The book "Harvest of the Years" traces the important milestones in Sharjah's cultural journey, which began with the establishment of the Department of Culture and Information in 1981, when His Highness the Ruler of Sharjah launched his strategic slogan, "Enough of the concrete revolution, let us turn to building culture." In His Highness's journey, cultural building means providing essential infrastructure, services, projects, and human development that achieve intellectual advancement, tranquility, social psychological comfort, and an avenue for dialogue with other cultures based on equality, interaction, give-and-take, and dialogue despite differences, not disputes. His Highness enabled the cultural field to engage in dialogue with others through qualitative activities and cultural days in various parts of Europe, Asia, and the Arab world, which earned Sharjah a prominent presence and attention, leading to its selection as the Cultural Capital of the Arab World in 1998 and the Capital of Islamic Culture in 2014. The book provides statistics analyzed with speeches and words of His Highness the Ruler of Sharjah on numerous and diverse literary, artistic, cultural, and intellectual occasions over three decades, through which His Highness's keenness on the cultural choice and its importance in the question of identity, dialogue with others, the image of Arabs and Muslims in the world, the value of books, knowledge, and sciences in the new millennium, and other concepts and ideas that promise a better life and a better world where the Arab individual knows how to make "globalization" an opportunity for tolerance, coexistence, and cultural pluralism.