Qantara is a Euro-Med Heritage project launched by the European Union in partnership with the Institute of the Arab World (IMA) in Paris. The project involves cooperation between the departments of Heritage and Antiquities in seven Euro Med countries: Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Spain, France, Jordan, and Lebanon along with Egypt and Syria.
“Qantara — Mediterranean Heritage: Crossings between Orient and Occident” has developed a database, which is an inventory of the heritage and the artistic collections from both shores of the Mediterranean, highlighting the elements they have in common with a goal of bringing the peoples of these areas closer together. The database is made up of 1,000 elements of Mediterranean heritage including objects, sites and monuments. It covers a period spanning from late antiquity to the modern era.
Guided by a scientific committee made up of representatives of the eight national partners, everyone worked together on the technical and scientific aspects to develop an IT platform for the purpose of promoting the study, preservation and showcasing of the physical heritage shared by this part of the world, as well as to make it known both to the local populations and internationally.
That database forms the heart of a website — www.qantara-med.org, which while live, is still an evolving effort. The website, which is being developed in four languages: Arabic, French, Spanish and English, offers text, still and animated images — both real and computer-generated, audio documents, films and historical maps. Eventually, visitors will be able to read more than 100 articles, written by over 200 authors and specialists in areas such as history, materials and technology and culture.
Once the historical artifacts have been brought together it is clear that Eastern and Western cultures are intertwined. The golden ceramics of Valencia and Manises, revived in fifteenth century Spain the processes developed 600 years before by the potters of the Abbasid Orient. We see how Muslim silk came to lend its patterns to the sculptors of Romanesque France, or how Murano glass in Venice came to be designed and manufactured for Egypt. It is important to note that the classic antagonism between the Muslim and Christian worlds did not did not limit artistic expression, the circulation of objects and the spreading of ideas and knowledge.
The database and website were created so that audiences may access history in illustrated form, as the artifacts convey as much of a message as the words of the experts. The website is organized to facilitate usage by the general public and experts alike. Hence, the importance of the various visual support media available, especially the educational videos.
In the real world, the nations participating in the project have launched exhibitions featuring many of the items that make up the Qantara database. For example one such exhibition is in progress in the Raqqada Museum of Islamic Arts in Kairouan, Tunisia. Kairouan has been designated by ISESCO as the Islamic cultural capital for 2009.
