Daftar: Beginnings
Overview
(Coming soon)
Afikra Publishes Its First Book: Daftar: Beginnings
Celebrating 11 years of fostering global curiosity and understanding about the Arab world, afikra has sent its first book, Daftar: Beginnings, to print. Co-published with Kaph Books, the book is the inaugural print edition of Daftar, which began as a journal and developed into a quarterly online platform featuring essays and interviews on the region's histories and cultures.
This physical publication mirrors afikra's mission: to cultivate curiosity and build community through shared learning. Named after the Arabic word for notebook, "daftar," the book is intended as a space for reflection, ideas, and marginalia—a humble but essential artifact to spark discourse.
Titled "Beginnings," the edition marks a starting point and a return, symbolizing the act of reclaiming authorship over the Arab narrative—a history often scattered, erased, or narrated by others. The issue features diverse voices exploring what "beginnings" mean across various disciplines and contexts, including art, architecture, heritage, design, and poetry.
Contributors like Alia Yunis, Idriss Jebari, and Khalid Albaih examine foundations and memory. Leading thinkers such as Alia Al-Senussi, Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès, and Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi challenge assumptions about cultural continuity. We’ve invited experts to cover cinema (Brahim "Snoopy" Ahmed), poetry (Rabab Chamseldine), urban art (Mahmoud Talaat, Farida Youssef), architectural reimagining (Ali Karimi), history through photography (Teymur Faris), culinary heritage (Jade George and Rafram Chaddad), and urban history (Nadi Abusaada and Ziad Jamaleddine).
About the Authors
Jade George
Jade George is the Director of Media at afikra and founder of The Carton magazine. Born in Beirut and currently living in Athens, her writings and projects for the last 20 years have focused on food culture along the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond, particularly in the SWANA region.
Mikey Muhanna
Mikey Muhanna is the founder and managing editor of afikra. He works at the intersection of culture, education, and innovation, helping institutions and audiences across the Arab world communicate more meaningfully, and build programs, content, and communities that matter.
Daša Mamula
Daša Mamula is the head graphic designer at afikra and an expert associate at the Arts Academy in Split. Her work focuses on brand identity, print, and web design, leading workshops and exhibitions with attention to environmental, social, and usability concerns.
Rabab Chamseddine
Rabab Chamseddine is a Lebanese poet and photographer based between Beirut and Tyre, recipient of the 2025 AFAC’s ADPP grant. Her work explores belonging to the land and the intertwining of loss and love under colonial threat in South Lebanon.
Mazen Kerbaj
Mazen Kerbaj is a celebrated comics author and visual artist and musician from Beirut, living in Berlin. He is also one of the initiators and key players of the Lebanese experimental music scene where he co founded Irtijal festival and Al Maslakh label.
Ali Ismail Karimi
Ali Ismail Karimi is an architect whose work explores public space, ecology, and the extractive landscapes of the Middle East. He worked in Belgium with OFFICE KGDVS, and in Chile with Alejandaro Aravena/Elemental, and taught at the University of Bahrain as an adjunct professor. His writings have been published in various media outlets including San Rocco, the Architectural Review, and e-flux. Karimi earned his MArch from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and was recently a visiting critic at Rice University’s School of Architecture.
Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès
Huda Smitshuijzen AbiFarès is the founding director of the Khatt Foundation and Khatt Books publishers, in Amsterdam. She works as an independent design curator, researcher, writer, designer, and publisher. She holds degrees in graphic design and design history from Leiden University (PhD, 2017), Yale University (MFA, 1990), and Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, 1987). Smitshuijzen AbiFarès specializes in typographic design research and Arab design history. She is the author of several seminal books on the topic. She is editor-in-chief of Khatt Books’ Arabic Design Library series and authored two books in this series.
Mahmoud Talaat
Mahmoud Talaat is an Egyptian visual artist whose practice explores identity, roots, memory, and the fabric of the city, blending painting and photography, and intertwining the conceptual, ambiguous, and explicit.
Farida Youssef
Farida Youssef is a curator based in Cairo and a research fellow at the British Museum. Her research sought the inclusion of a local perspective on the Modern Egypt collection. She is interested in the value of spatial theory for artistic inquiries.
Ziad Jamaleddine
Ziad Jamaleddine is a co-founder of L.E.FT Architects (New York/Beirut) and an assistant professor at Columbia University, GSAPP. He is the recipient of the Emerging Voices Award from the Architectural League of New York (2010), and was selected as one of the Nine Arab American Architects You Should Know by the AIA (2024). Jamaleddine is a practitioner and scholar with a research focus on mosque architecture. His writings have been published in Places Journal (2020), Journal of Material Cultures in the Muslim World (Brill, 2024), and International Journal of Islamic Architecture (Intellect, 2025). His research and design work has been exhibited at Oslo Architecture Triennale (2016), Milan Architecture Triennale (2018), Sharjah Architecture Triennale (2019), and most recently Jeddah Islamic Art Biennale (2023). L.E.FT was selected in 2025 to the AD100, The Best Designers in the Middle East and North Africa. L.E.FT’s work includes Shakib Arslan Mosque, Lebanon (2017), winner of the Interfaith Design (AIA) & Partners of Sacred Places Award (2018), and the Al Fozan Award for Mosque Architecture (2020), and the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life and Contemplative Practices, Vassar College (2023), winner of the Interfaith Design (AIA) & Partners of Sacred Places Award: Adaptive Re-Use (2024).
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi
Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi is an Emirati columnist and researcher on social, political, and cultural affairs in the Arab Gulf States. He is also the founder of Barjeel Art Foundation, an independent initiative established in 2010 to contribute to the intellectual development of the art scene in the Arab region by building a prominent and publicly accessible art collection in the United Arab Emirates. He has taught “Politics of Modern Middle Eastern Art” at New York University, Yale University, Georgetown University, Boston College, and SciencesPo, France. Al Qassemi is co-editor with Todd Reisz of Building Sharjah (2021), a book that documents the modern architecture of the city of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.
Brahim Ahmed
Brahim Ahmed (aka “Snoopy”) is a film director and producer born in Beirut and hailing from Khartoum, who is behind In Deep Visions Productions. His documentary work has garnered numerous awards and accolades and he has contributed to award winning films.
Alia Yunis
Alia Yunis is a screenwriter, script analyst and filmmaker whose work and writing focus on memory and heritage, gaining recognition internationally, including her feature documentary, The Golden Harvest (2019), and novel, The Night Counter (Random House 2010).
Idriss Jebari
Idriss Jebari has held a postdoctoral fellowship at AUB to study the dynamics of intellectual and cultural exchanges between the Maghrib and the Mashriq in contemporary Arab thought, and has published on the theory and practice of Arab intellectual engagements in public affairs.
Nadi Abusaada
Nadi Abusaada is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut. His work focuses on the material histories and visual cultures of the modern Arab world. Nadi holds a PhD in architecture from the University of Cambridge. He has also held various academic fellowships including the ETH Zürich Postdoctoral Fellowship at ETH Zürich and the Aga Khan Postdoctoral Fellowship in Islamic Architecture at MIT. Besides his writings, Nadi has also been involved in research-based curatorial work. He has curated and participated in a number of exhibitions around the world including in Ramallah, Amman, Zurich, Venice, Dubai, and Montreal.
Alia Al Senussi
Alia Al Senussi is a cultural strategist, writer, public speaker, academic and patron of the arts in the region. Her work is focused on social change and the role of the arts in creating a shift, and has advanced various models of arts patronage in disparate areas and political systems
Khalid AlBaih
Khalid AlBaih is one of the most prolific political cartoonists in the world, publishing one artwork a day for the last 20 years. A confluence of journalism and art, his work comments on subjects such as immigration, race, power, conflict, and identity.
Teymur Faris
Teymur Faris is a writer and film director born in Barcelona. He is the son of legendary photographer, artist and intellect, the late Waddah Faris, whose archive Teymur has been working to digitally archive along with his brother.
Nour Daher
Nour Daher is an artist, fashion educator, and cultural practitioner from South Lebanon. Her work spans printmaking, textiles, and poetry, exploring how memory and spirituality inhabit the material world, tracing the politics of land, and the rituals of loss and resistance.
Technical Details
- Publication Date:
- Monday, December 15, 2025
- Language:
- English
- Format:
- Softcover
- Dimensions:
- 23 x 16 cm
- Weight:
- 1 kg
- ISBN:
- 978-614-8065-08-8
- Number of Pages:
- 168
- Publisher:
- Afikra and Kaph Books