UNESCO to Consider Listing Morocco’s 'Tbourida' as Intangible Cultural Heritage

Rabat – Morocco’s “Tbourida” (equestrian performance)is one the list of the 55 applications UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee will examine between December 13-18.

All the 55 applications are seeking inclusion on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, UNESCO said in a statement on Wednesday.

Alongside 15 other Arab countries, Morocco is also part of a joint regional application to register “Arabic calligraphy: knowledge, skills and practices” on the UNESCO list.

The North African country is also co-sponsoring, with 24 other countries from different continents, a bid to include “falconry a living human heritage” on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list, Moroccan state media reported yesterday. “Morocco officially submitted its “Tbourida” application in 2019, the report noted.

The application was jointly prepared and filed by the Ministry of Culture and Communication and the Société Royale de l’Encouragement du Cheval and the Royal Moroccan Federation of Equestrian Sports.

Deriving from the word Baroud which means “gunpowder,” Tbourida is “an equestrian representation that simulates a succession of military parades, reconstructed according to ancestral Arab-Amazigh conventions and rituals,” according to the website Discover Morocco.

“It is associated with festivities: moussems, agricultural festivals and many national and family celebrations,” and is considered as an essential component of Moroccan culture. y inseparable from