Sultan Qaboos University, represented by the Department of Arabic Language & Literature at the College of Arts and Social Sciences, celebrated World Arabic Language Day on Tuesday, 18 December 2018. World Arabic Language Day is celebrated every year on 18 December since 2012. The date coincides with the day in 1973 that the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Arabic as the sixth official language of the Organization.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr.Mohammed bin Salem Al Mashani, Head of the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, said that SQU celebrates World Arabic Language Day as an official event, taking cue from a number of Arabic World Universities and some world's universities that recognize Arabic as a language of science and civilization.

Hatem bin Rashid Al Husseini, a master’s student in the Arabic Language and Literature Department, presented a poetry poem entitled "Journey to the Throne of the Language" in which he praised the Arabic language and reviewed its virtues and advantages.

Prof. Mohammed Al Hadi Al Tarbelsi presented a lecture on the development of Arabic Language in Modern age.  He mentioned that the future of the Arabic language depends on the future of the creative thought of the nations that speak the Arabic language. If that thought is existing, the future of the Arabic language will be great as it was in the past, and if that does not exist, the future will be similar to what Syriac and Hebrew languages experienced.

As a part of the World Arabic Language Day, the Arabic Society at SQU organized an exhibition titled ‘Tibyan’ that featured three sections. The first section demonstrated the link between Arabic language with English, Turkish, Persian and Spanish languages. The other two sections disseminated information on national literature and women’s issues respectively.