36 Responses to “Jordanian Bloggers: A Cultural Project?”  

1. 1 Tololy on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   I was thinking the same thing when I finally managed to get to typing my observations down about Jordanian culture. I agree with you that sources for specific, and real, information about Jordan’s culture are lacking on the internet. I am all for your new project, count me in.

   Excellent idea!

2. 2 Roba on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   Nasim, I’d love to help!

3. 3 Nas on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   Roba & Tololy on board…so far so good!

4. 4 Lina on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   How could I not be in? Jordan has so much rich culture, heritage, and traditions to write about and share with the world. Thanks for the initiative Naseem

   So what’s our first step? Should we email you the links?

5. 5 Nas on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   Lina, thanks! feel free to post the links here in the comments and ill add them to the post. and give me/us whatever ideas you would like to see happen.

6. 6 Lina on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   Cool I’ll keep them coming as they pop up in my mind..

   Ahmad’s Jabal Amman: The Birth of a Ammani Street Market

   Home Tradition of Ka3ek and Ma3moul

   Olives Olives

   Ahmad’s Amman’s Urban Development and a Touch of Ideology

   I think we should categorize the stuff we dig up and put together, anyways I have to get back to work now but I’ll keep checking back in

7. 7 kinzi on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   Nas, excellent idea. The ones you mentioned are my favs - plus you and Haitham (well, and Khalaf and…too many favorites I guess!) If you want my foreigner/non-blogger input or encouragement, I’m here. I will be happy to disseminate your findings within my sphere of foreigner influence as well.

8. 8 Nas on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   Lina, good stuff! yes the sorting is another story. we’ll think of ways to categorise them later: by subject, by author, by etc.

   kinzi, all inputs are welcome, and even more so from people such as yourself. Because you have the perspective that is part of the intention here.

9. 9 Lina on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

   A thought off the top of my head.. how about we articulate and contribute such material to the Wikipedia? Both Arabic and English?? Let’s just keep it in mind while brainstorming

10. 10 Firas on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

    Blogging for a cause! That’s what I’m talking about…
    Okay I’ll skip the whole “This is a great idea dude, count me in..etc “, lets get down to buisness.

    I think categorizing the artciles according to their content make sense. I am thinking of a website (a database like) where users submit their article to that website according to the subject, of course it has first to be reviewed by someone. Now, anyone could access this database and do search inquiries and stuff, we need a comptuer Whiz (Oracle Database, html).

    Jordanian bloggers have different backgrounds and perspectives.
    Articles should be translated to Arabic, as I think it is more important to reach out to Jordanians first. Some are not aware of Jordan’s diverse culture and “rich” history, like those who think Amman was made up.

    I think a starting point for now, after we are done compiling the old articles is to put a list of possible categories.

    So for the moment I think our agenda will be (of course this is only my suggestion):

    1. Compiling articles (and adding some comments about the content so it would be easier when they are categorized later
    2. Writing up a list of all possible categorizes
    3. Come up with a system for posting articles and sorting them out (comptuer Geeks)

    In the distant future:
    1. Find sponsors (newspapers,magazines,cultural organizations,others)
    2. Get media attention

    Good Stuff!

11. 11 Nas on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

    Lina, yup, that idea occurred to me. we should keep it on the shortlist of possibilities inshallah.

    Firas, excellent ideas my friend. when it comes to categorization, I wanted to focus on compiling first and then when we have the data we can see what we’ll do with it. I thought of a site that can have several bloggers running it and posting articles, promoting Jordan. We can have English and Arabic I have no problem although I believe, despite any intentions, it will inevitably become a project that will promote Jordanian culture to those who are unaware of it. Maybe tourists, or information seekers on the WWW. I say this because while many Jordanians don’t know as much about their culture as you and I would like them to, the Internet as you know is not the way to communicate with our masses

    thanks guys, keep it up!

    (i love the brainstorming phase)

12. 12 ohoud on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

    Great Idea Nas, and all of the guys also!

    Thumbs up, Dudes and Duttes:p

13. 13 rebecca on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

    I’m in! I agree with Firas, that we need an organized web site. I’d be glad to help out with it.
    My posts are observations through the eyes of a foreigner, and may not always be accurate, but I’d be glad to contribute them. I have a lot on places to visit in Jordan. I’ll send you a list of links as soon as I can. (I’m busy packing for my move right now!)

14. 14 Shaden on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

    Great idea Nas

    I think I can do the translation to Arabic when needed.

15. 15 Nas on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

    ohoud, thanks!

    Rebecca, looking forward to your contributions!

    Shaden, a volunteer lol! alright, very cool.

16. 16 samra on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

    Can i help in creating our heritage bank? Do i have to be a Jordan Planet blogger ? or a blogger? i started a blog back in december but never really blogged ..poor abandoned blog of mine maybe this cultural thing would give it purpose to grow

    i have always wanted to collect jordanian taraweed and ahazeej i have some down already

17. 17 Rebecca on Apr 4th, 2006 said:

    Here’s my list. Feel free to use what you want.

    Food
    Bomali http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2006/01/22/
    Goat http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/14/
    Habeebeh http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/11/
    Bread http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/10/
    Sage http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/03/05/

    Travel
    Wadi Rum http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/05/21/
    Madaba and Mt Nebo http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/05/07/
    Maqamat and Pella http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/30/
    Abdali Souq http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/22/
    Desert Castles http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/18/
    Petra http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/02/
    http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/12/
    http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/04/
    Om Qais http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/03/27/
    Dead Sea http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/03/25/
    Jerash and Ajloun http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/03/12/
    Amman http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/02/28/

    Daily Life
    Money http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/05/12/
    Traffic Lights http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/05/09/
    â??Scientific Mythsâ? http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/18/â??
    The weekend http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/03/11/

    Bedouin http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/09/

    Transportation
    Busses http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/07/
    http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/03/18/
    http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/03/10/
    Dyna Trucks http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/03/30/

    Holidays
    Easter http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/05/01/

    History
    Mesha, King of Moab http://rebecca-jordan.livejournal.com/2005/04/08/

18. 18 ohoud on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    I was thinking that it would be usefull to concentrate on also showing off the more traditional parts of Jordan. Wherever I go to look through pictures of Jordan, its always those polished places, and moslty only of Amman. It would be great to promote the other wonderful cities of Jordan.

    Anyhow, I have loads of picture of Downtown Irbid and Salt, Umm qais also, if you like the Idea:)

19. 19 salam on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    naseem can I help?I think we can make things easier or more organized by creating categories,maybe like sights,smells,tastes of jordan,where we talk about places ,food,etc..and then everyone can sned thier links accordingly?

    I started documenting stories from our child hood,I have only two posts but I ‘m working on that:

    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2006/03/fairy-tales-from-arabs-childhood.html
    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2006/03/fairy-tales-from-arabs-childhood-2.html

    I also started writing about going out toparts of amman and other municipalities and want to make it a point to do as much siaha dakhilieh as possible:

    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2005/12/jabal-lwaibdeh-comes-to-life.html
    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2006/03/our-first-time-in-
    tafileh.html
    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2006/02/heading-south.html

    I have a few posts about daily life jordanian issues:

    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2005/10/bandora-or-banadoora.html
    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2005/12/only-in-jordan.html
    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2005/12/blog-post_17.html
    http://reflections-allmine.blogspot.com/2006/01/you-know-youre-in-jordan.html
    If you find any of this stuff interesting,please let me know and I would love to help even if these posts don’t apply.

20. 20 ohoud on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    And on another note, I have some good stuff on the traditional architecture also of Jordan. Especially Bayt al sha3ar!

21. 21 Khalidah on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    Nas, brilliant idea … super super excellent … I am way in of course

    I hope the following links help:

    (The Oldest/Biggest Tree in Jordan) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/1/10070.html
    (How About “Kabseh” for a Change?) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/1/9799.html
    (Mom Made “Mansaf” and the Blogger in me took Pictures!!!) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/1/9092.html
    (Nice Scenery from Jordan) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2005/11/1443.html
    (How I Spent My Friday) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/1/16214.html
    (The Adha ritual we can never go without - BBQ - YAY!!!) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/1/11220.html
    (My turn for a short trip downtown) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2005/12/4523.html
    (Vote for Petra as one of the New 7 Wonders!!) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/1/14242.html
    (To date, or not to date??) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/3/33600.html
    (Memoirs of a Jordanian Spinster!!) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/2/26488.html
    (Last time I was in Aqaba :)) http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2005/12/4312.html

    Please feel free to remove any of the above posts if they don’t fit the project

    Let me know if there is anything else I can do; I would love to help out
    I will read the comments again and try to come up with new ideas and put them here

22. 22 Nas on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    Samra, sure thing, you can help us dig for now…and in the meanwhile…get blogging!

    Rebecca,good list, i’ve updated

    Salam,sure thing man, I’ll add the links. We’ll come up, or agree upon categories soon inshallah.

    Ohoud,great stuff, yes I know what you’re saying. I think Sabri Hakim’s whole blog has that covered. The architecture thing is also a good idea, I believe that is your specialty

    Khalidah, thanks for the links…I started to dig in your blog when I wrote the post and I just got lazy because there were too many good posts, so I decided to leave it until you got involved eventually

23. 23 Salam on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    Naseem,man,my name is driving me crazy ,I am a woman and a wife and a mother and people call me man !Well basee6a just had to say it !

24. 24 Nidal on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    Nasim,
    I concur with the rest that itâ??s a great idea. However I donâ??t think itâ??s necessary or advisable to create a totally new site.

    You guys have a very good thing going with Jordan Planet and thatâ??s because it works as a single point from which you can access the various interesting topics, so what you really need is a way to maximize and expand this forum to allow for your new initiative, otherwise you will be in danger of having all sorts of data in different places.

    There are of course multiple ways you can approach this, of the top of my head I would suggest you expand the definition of a post to include a category, add a section to Jordan planet for topics and of course have a Jordan culture topic, you might want to have different profiles for various bloggers and use this to only load post from a pre defined group to start with, you might even create an editor role where someone can choose if certain posts will be allowed to be filed under the given category and so on.

    I guess what I am trying to say is you should consider the user interaction part of this before the back end stuff.

25. 25 Nas on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    Salam, lol, oops, my bad. I guess it’s a common mistake.

    Nidal, thanks for the idea, appreciate it. As you can see we’re still floating things around, but what you said makes sense.

26. 26 Peter S. on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    A noble project–and timely. Now is a good time to begin explore forms of collaborative blogging.

    If your Jordanian blogging project should need a foreign correspondent (I’m American), I would be glad to assist.

    My credentials include work as a professional editor, published writer, and professor of composition. (Is my age showing?)

27. 27 Ziad on Apr 5th, 2006 said:

    Here are a few from my blog:

    http://1st-home.blogspot.com/2005/08/teen-culture.html

    http://1st-home.blogspot.com/2005/08/blog-post_06.html

    http://1st-home.blogspot.com/2005/10/jordanianism.html

28. 28 Roba on Apr 7th, 2006 said:

    Here are mine:

    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/10/anita.html

    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/10/abu-il-abed-just-got-make-over.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2004/10/jordanianpalestinian-culture-item.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2004/10/msa7arati.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2004/11/dead-sea-pictures.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2004/10/msa7arati_24.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2004/11/jordan-wild.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2004/12/jordan-is.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2004/12/jordan-beautiful.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/01/amman-yesterday.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/01/lavazza.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/01/hajj-goodie-bags.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/01/amman-today.html

    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/01/old-amman_06.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/03/falafel-jabal-il-hussein.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/03/sharing-my-love-for-dara.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/03/hills-are-alive.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/03/spring-rubas.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/04/housing-and-hay-il-rashid.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/04/watermelon-tent.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/04/second-circle.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/05/church-and-mosque.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/05/nine-reasons-to-love-jordan.html

    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/05/revisiting-national-gallery.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/05/cafe-amman.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/05/pigeons-over-sunset.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/06/o-nezel-3al-dabkeh-il-lawee7-il-shater.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/07/uhhh-no-parle-pas-francais-or.html

    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/07/death-to-gardens-street.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/07/on-weddings-fashionistic-riyadhites.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/07/49-awesome-things-to-do-in-jordan-this.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/07/amman-amman.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/08/kan-ya-makan.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/08/very-ammanish-flea-market.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/08/day-at-dead-sea.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/09/why-amman-can-never-be-gpsed.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/09/another-term.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/11/celebrating-dokaneh.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/12/ruby-slippers.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/12/amusements-of-desert-bred.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2006/01/knafeh-ya-knafeh.html
    http://andfaraway.blogspot.com/2005/06/road-trip.html

29. 29 Khalidah on Apr 12th, 2006 said:

    Here is a new one for you

    Some of Jordan’s Wild Flowers!
    http://anolita.jeeran.com/mind/archive/2006/4/37793.html

    Hope you like them

30. 30 Nas on Apr 12th, 2006 said:

    zaid, roba, khalidah, thanks for the link, great job and great posts!

    peter, no not your age, just your experience. thanks for the offer, i’ll keep it in mind

31. 31 Sean on Jun 26th, 2006 said:

    Hello,

    While living at a college dorm, I once observed a Jordanian friend interact with an American friend. Their procedure was rather odd, and almost suspicious. The American girl was outside studying for her exam as the Jordanian man approached her. They talked and the Jordanian man went into the girl’s bedroom. The Jordanian man then walked past where I was seated, and as I stared at him, he looked at me in seemingly paranoid manner. He went to a computer lab where he sat at a computer, and printed some material. Then, he went into his room. A while later, he came out, and talked to the girl, and, once again, went into the girl’s room. The girl then walked past where I was seated and into the computer lab, where she sat at the same computer the man had used. Then, she went into the man’s room. They have weblogs on the internet where they can state their status, and on it, I read something about the man teaching the girl a word or two in Arabic. I highly doubt that was the case, considering the elaborate procedure. Another time, the man was telling the girl to do odd things that he himself could have done effortlessly, like to close his bedroom door. I could not help to think that this activity has to do with some aspect of Jordanian culture. Do you think you could explain this elaborate act of exchange? Thank you.

32. 32 Nas on Jun 26th, 2006 said:

    Sean I didn’t exactly get what happened but I’m assuming there are sexual undertones to the story? What specifically made you wonder if this was some aspect of Jordanian culture…the hush-hush manner of their sexual escapades?

33. 33 7aki Fadi on Apr 11th, 2007 said:

    Is this project dead now?
    I have some links.

34. 34 Nas on Apr 11th, 2007 said:

    7aki Fadi: it’s going to come to life in another shape and form fairly soon inshallah. email me the links though if you like

1. 1 Cultural Project Thus Far at The Black Iris of Jordan
2. 2 The Black Iris: A Work In Progress at The Black Iris of Jordan

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