Reflections on People

As AramcoWorld celebrates its 75th year in 2024, the magazine is publishing a six-part series reflecting on the connections and impact it has generated over the decades. AramcoWorld’s approach to intercultural bridge-building has always been integral to its mission.

In the fifth part of our series, we look back on the human element—the people across eras and empires whose achievements bind us all. In an often divisive world, AramcoWorld’s profiles of both famous and lesser-known figures have inspired fresh perspectives, again underscoring a mission to highlight commonalities and our shared humanity.

—AramcoWorld editorial team

In her most intense globetrotting years, Raha Moharrak’s loved ones gave her a moniker that anyone in the Arab world would understand.

“My family nickname was Battuta,” she says.

It referenced the 14th-century traveler and writer Ibn Battuta, who made his name by recording cross-cultural encounters while traversing 75,000 miles of empires and transcontinental trade routes, starting with the Hajj.

Similarly, Moharrak, a defiant and accomplished mountaineer, could be found atop peaks dotting the globe, which meant her mother, father and the older siblings whose teasing she credits for her thick skin were frequently in the dark about her whereabouts.

“I’ve calmed down significantly now, but I had a streak of no one having any idea where on earth I was.”

When Moharrak’s exploits as the first Saudi-born woman to reach the so-called Seven Summits—the highest peaks in the world—were profiled in a 2017 AramcoWorld story, she joined the pages that began enlightening readers about her tongue-in-cheek namesake since 1961.

For 75 years, AramcoWorld has brought characters from the ancient and modern worlds alive with profiles that demystify notable people and celebrate their influence and achievements. Since its beginnings as an intracompany newsletter bridging cultures between New York and Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, an emphasis on positive portrayals has been paramount.

The same ethos has driven writer Tom Verde’s engagement with the magazine over many decades. A prolific book reviewer and feature writer, Verde has relished the opportunity to reexamine historical figures and draw out connections that show cultures in collaboration rather than conflict. 

“I really enjoy tracing the history of ideas as they move from one part of the world to the next,” Verde says.

That includes telling the story of the first Muslim landowner in the colonial outpost of New Amsterdam in “The New York of Anthony Jansen van Salee” and the history of pasta, which may have emerged from Italy’s engagement with the Middle East. He also uncovered the story behind “Egyptology’s Pioneering Giant,” Giovanni Battista Belzoni.

These “still lifes,” as Verde’s wife has called them, are not news-driven but instead are a “look under the hood, a different angle” on subjects that can span centuries.

One landmark series sticks out as a testament to AramcoWorld’s ambitious appetite for unexpected profiles. While Verde was reviewing a book, he came across the story of Shajarat al-Durr, a 13th-century ruler who became the first woman to claim an Egyptian throne since Cleopatra. While researching and discussing the prospect of a story with former editor Richard Doughty, Verde learned about other impactful female rulers whom he felt had never gotten their historical due. 

“It wasn’t long before I realized that there was no way we were going to do justice to one, let alone six, in a 3,000- to 4,000-word story,” Verde says.

The Malika (”queen”) series, a yearlong exploration of these prominent women and their historical contexts (one each across the magazine’s six bimonthly issues) was born, starting with the stories of Khayzuran, a slave turned queen in Baghdad who birthed two caliphs, and her niece and daughter-in-law, Zubayda, who grew up in luxury but carried on a tradition of spreading the empire’s wealth through public works projects that earned her centuries of acclaim. The series culminated in a look at Sayyida al-Hurra, the ruler of the Moroccan city-state of Tétouan, who provided a haven for Muslim and Jewish émigrés in the wake of the fall of al-Andalus to Christian Spain.

“When I was writing them, I kind of fell in love with each one of them because they were all so interesting,” Verde says of the Malikas. “They all shared a sense of self, a confidence and intelligence that enabled them to rise above their situations.”

Now, eight years later, Verde is expanding and transforming the series into a book that is set to be published perhaps next year, a further ripple effect from AramcoWorld’s decision to take a chance on an unproven concept.

Current editor Johnny Hanson says such pieces are evidence of continuity with AramcoWorld’s historical focus on upending stereotypes by showcasing cultural contributions.

The magazine, he says, has always been a necessary complement to the broader media landscape, which often neglects stories of great achievement because of ignorance, at best and, at worst, willful neglect and cultural caricaturing.

Especially in its visual depictions, AramcoWorld’s “spin” is to highlight the humanity of people often shown only in a context of conflict.

A photojournalist himself, Hanson sees real value in sitting with subjects to truly understand them as people—a luxury AramcoWorld affords its contributors.

“From a photographer’s perspective, you have a choice at how you’re going to represent someone,” says Hanson. “Do you choose the frame where someone is smiling or not? Do you show a father talking to their child or embracing them? It’s about reflecting people in an honest and truthful way.”

Hanson appreciates when this lens, extended to the written word, resonates with readers, as he has seen with stories about Enheduanna, considered the first known poet; El Seed, the prominent French Tunisian graffiti artist; or other selfless servants who haven’t received recognition matching the magnitude of their achievements.

“What I love is hearing back from friends and family who have picked up the magazine and said, ‘I was just reading about Edna Adan, and I had no idea that this woman in Somaliland had this much of an impact, not only on maternal care but also on the global practice of nursing,’” Hanson says, recalling the 2018 profile of Adan as “Somaliland’s Midwife.”

Literary luminaries have also featured prominently in the pages of AramcoWorld, in part thanks to longtime contributor Larry Luxner.

A few years after his first story on Morocco’s new pavilion at Disney World’s Epcot Center in 1985, Luxner was tasked with covering the groundbreaking for a garden on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., where 30 cedars were planted in honor of Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese American writer who rose to prominence in the early 20th century with the publication of The Prophet, his bestselling novel.

Published in 1990, Luxner’s story added to the canon of Gibran-focused pieces in a magazine that first mentioned the author in 1969 and dedicated a cover story to his memory on the centennial of his birth in 1983.

For Luxner, the piece on a million-dollar fundraising effort helmed by dignitaries such as former President Jimmy Carter became something of a personal touchpoint after he took the job as news editor for The Washington Diplomat.

“The garden actually came to fruition,” he said, noting that a drive down Massachusetts Avenue occasionally turned into a trip down memory lane. “It’s a place to sit and reflect, and it would remind me of that story.”

Luxner similarly recalled other stories in which AramcoWorld gave him space to explore other writers with Middle Eastern origins who shared Gibran’s focus on universal values and the human condition.

A cover story in 1989 allowed Luxner to interview Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, who had just won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his monumental portrayals of Egyptian life and explorations of Cairo cafe culture. In 2005, Luxner went to Brazil for a tête-à-tête with Brazilian author Milton Hatoum, whose novel Dois Irmãos brings to life the history of Arab immigration in the Amazonian city of Manaus.

“I like to think that I’ve brought to the reader an understanding of Arab and Muslim culture in places where they might not have thought about it,” Luxner says.

For Mulholland, that has certainly been the case since he first encountered the magazine during a 22-year stint in Saudi Arabia that started with a job there for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1968. He has read AramcoWorld faithfully for more than four decades.

“The width and breadth of the articles—from Curaçao to Singapore to California—you travel the world with it,” Mulholland says. “Inevitably, when I turn people on to it, they’re mesmerized.”

For Moharrak, being featured in AramcoWorld’s pages proved a surreal seal of approval from a magazine with roots in her country of origin.

“Can you imagine being mentioned in the same pages as my idols? It’s insane, it’s so special,” she says. “You know you’ve arrived when you’re mentioned in the same breath as these people, and you’re the go-to for travel and adventure in the region.”