Mazayen Al-Ibl: A festival of history, culture and camel beauty

April 14, 2017

Riyadh, Apr 14: They have long legs, big beguiling eyes, and enjoy long walks — although some are said to be rather bad tempered.

We are talking about camels, of course — specifically the winners of a four-legged beauty contest held Thursday at the close of a traditional Saudi festival.

camelfest

Big beasts deserve big prizes — and the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, as it is formally known, did not disappoint.

The fairest of the entrants to the festival’s beauty contest, which is dubbed “Miss Camel” globally, trekked into the sunset with more than SR114 million ($30 million) in prizes.

King Salman was the chief guest at closing of the month-long festival held in Rumah, 120 km northeast of Riyadh, which aims to celebrate Saudi culture and traditions.

The beauty pageant attracted some 1,400 camel owners from different Gulf countries, bringing many thousands of camels with them.

A total of 270 prizes were given for the four-legged supermodels, who were judged in five different categories.

The contest — called “Mazayen Al-Ibl,” or “the beautiful camels,” in Arabic — was overseen by a jury of Bedouins, who are considered experts in camel-rearing.

The judges ranked the camels according to their beauty and whether they meet the required specifications. The beasts, knowns as the “ships of the desert,” were divided by color — including white, yellow, golden, black and red-brown — and judged on various attributes including their long eyelashes.

The competition was founded in 1999 by a group of local Bedouin people, and went on to receive support from the Saudi royal family.

Due to its rising popularity it turned into a heritage festival, attracting people from across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to travel to showcase their finest camels.

Celebrating the culture and way of life of Saudi Arabia and Bedouin traditions, the festival now includes a literature prize and other awards include a photography contest in collaboration with National Geographic. The evening program on the closing of the festival included a recital by renowned poets who portrayed the rich culture and heritage of the Kingdom. The Saudi Ardah, a type of folkloric dance, was also performed.

“The month-long camel festival witnessed something distinct this year, and it offered a world-class entertainment for heritage enthusiasts,” said Talal bin Khalid Al-Tarify, official spokesman of the festival, on Sunday.

Mohammed Al-Shaple, a member of the festival’s media panel, said the program included lessons on how to ride camels. “The camels were beautifully decked and formed a colorful spectacle that was interesting sight to watch,” said Al-Shaple.

On the invitation of the King Salman, a galaxy of officials from GCC countries — including the King of Bahrain — attended the closing of the festival in Rumah.

Members of the Saudi royal family, ministers and senior government officials were also present at the historical event.

King Salman used the occasion to launch the “Saudi Village for Camels.”

The new village, 140 kilometers from Riyadh, will be an integrated development specializing in everything dromedary-related, including camel breeding, auctions and research.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
July 20,2020

Riyadh, Jul 20: Saudi Arabia's King Salman has been admitted to a hospital in the capital, Riyadh, for medical tests due to inflammation of the gallbladder, the kingdom's Royal Court said Monday in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The statement said the 84-year-old monarch is being tested at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital. The brief statement did not provide further details.

King Salman has been in power since January 2015. He is considered the last Saudi monarch of his generation of brothers who have held power since the death of their father and founder of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz.

King Salman has empowered his 34-year-old son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as his successor. The crown prince's assertive and bold style of leadership, as well as his consolidation of power and sidelining of potential rivals, has been controversial.

With the support of his father, Prince Mohammed has transformed the kingdom in recent years, opening it up to tourists and eroding decades of ultraconservative restrictions on entertainment and women's rights as he tries to diversify the Saudi economy away from reliance on oil exports.

The prince has also detained dozens of activists and critics, overseen a devastating war in Yemen, and rounded up top members of the royal family in his quest for power.

The Saudi king has not been seen in public in recent months due to social distancing guidelines and concerns over the spread of the coronavirus inside the kingdom, which has one of the largest outbreaks in the Middle East.

He has been shown, however, in state-run media images attending virtual meetings with his Cabinet and held calls with world leaders.

King Salman, who oversees Islam's holiest sites in Makkah and Medinah, was a crown prince under King Abdullah and served as defense minister. For more than 50 years prior to that, he was governor of Riyadh, overseeing its evolution from a barren city to a teeming capital.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
News Network
February 24,2020

Dubai, Feb 24: Kuwait and Bahrain confirmed on Monday their first novel coronavirus cases, the countries' health ministries announced, adding all had come from Iran.

Kuwait reported three infections and Bahrain one in citizens who had returned home from the Islamic republic.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.
Agencies
January 4,2020

Dubai, Jan 4: Three UAE airlines have made it to lists of the safest carriers in 2020, reinforcing the value these companies provide passengers in the increasingly competitive aviation scene.

Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways and Dubai's Emirates are in the list of the top 20 safest airlines, while Sharjah-based Air Arabia is in the list of the top 10 low-cost carriers, safety and product rating website AirlineRatings.com reported on Thursday.

It named Qantas as the safest airline for 2020 out of the 405 carriers it monitors.

The top 20, in order, are Qantas, Air New Zealand, EVA Air, Etihad Airways, Singapore Airlines, Emirates, Alaska Airlines, Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, Virgin Australia, Hawaiian Airlines, Virgin Atlantic Airlines, TAP Portugal, SAS, Royal Jordanian, Swiss, Finnair, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus and KLM.

"These airlines are clear standouts in the airline industry and are at the forefront of safety," said AirlineRatings.com editor-in-chief Geoffrey Thomas.

"For instance, Australia's Qantas has been recognised by the British Advertising Standards Association in a test case in 2008 as the world's most experienced airline."

"Qantas has been the lead airline in virtually every major operational safety advancement over the past 60 years and has not had a fatality in the pure-jet era," said Thomas.

AirlineRatings.com editors also identified their top 10 safest low-cost airlines; they are, in alphabetical order, Air Arabia, Flybe, Frontier, HK Express, IndiGo, Jetblue, Volaris, Vueling, Westjet and Wizz.

Saj Ahmad, chief analyst at StrategicAero Research in London, says that it isn't a surprise that UAE carriers are on those lists.

"UAE airlines almost always feature in the top rankings for safety because they value the equipment that they fly their passengers on each and every day," he told Khaleej Times on Thursday.

"All airlines do; but for the UAE, where airlines have expanded rapidly in the last couple of decades, it's an amazing feat that they rank so highly while inducting so many new aeroplanes."

There's little benefit to adding luxurious cabins if maintenance, security and safety protocols as well as routine engineering schedules are not adhered to, he stressed.

"And with the UAE itself sporting MRO activities as well as through companies like Strata, which supply components to Airbus and Boeing directly, airlines here have harnessed that tech-change to ensure that their fleets have the highest redundancy and safety checks at every possible chance," Ahmad added. "That translates into passenger confidence - and we can see the brand and loyalty strength across Emirates, flydubai, Air Arabia and Etihad; it's no surprise that each year, they all fly more and more passengers across their network."

In making its selections, AirlineRatings.com editors and its industry advisors take into account numerous critical factors that include: Audits from aviation's governing bodies and lead associations, government audits, airline's crash and serious incident record, fleet age, financial position and pilot training and culture.

"All airlines have incidents every day and many are aircraft or engine manufacture issues instead of airline operational problems. And it is the way the flight crew handles incidents that determines a good airline from an unsafe one. So just lumping all incidents together is very misleading," said Thomas.

Comments

Add new comment

  • Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
  • Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
  • Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
  • Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.