The first Awarding Ceremony of “ Peace Award: Intercultural Cooperation for Peace”

Ibn Sina Peace Prize

Avicenna Peace Award titled Intercultural Cooperation for Peace is the first peace award in initiated by the Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS). The aim of Avicenna Peace Award is to honor distinguished individual(s) and institution(s) whose efforts have significantly contributed to resolving complex conflicts, intercultural dialogue and non-violent approaches. The award is named after Ibn Sina, a renowned scholar of our shared civilizational sphere who was among the pioneers of intercultural dialogue and cooperation, particularly through science and philosophy. An important part of the award ceremony is presentation of lecture by the Avicenna Award Laureate.

Ibn Sina

Ibn Sina, also known by his Latinized name in the West as Avicenna, was a Persian philosopher and polymath, born in c. 980 in Afshana, a village near (in present-day ), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara and his father, Abdullāh, was a respected scholar from , an important town of the , in what is today , Afghanistan. He passed away 1037 in Hamadan a western Iranian city where he was buried. Ibn Sina’ life and works is a good symbol of cross cultural interaction. His life and work transcend any given ethnic, linguistic, religious boundaries.

2018 Avicenna Peace Award Laureate

Dr Michael A. Barry

Born in New York City in 1948 and raised in France to American parents based in Paris, Dr Michael Barry is an internationally recognized scholar in and civilization. After teaching for sixteen years at his alma mater Princeton in the United States, Dr Barry has now been serving since autumn 2017 as the Distinguished University Professor at the American University of Afghanistan. Award Motivation

Michael Barry received the award for his humanitarian works during the Soviets War in Afghanistan and his endeavor for promoting intercultural harmony through his research on the School of Art.

Works Beginning his parallel humanitarian career with his USAID work in famine relief in the then drought- stricken provinces of Bâdghîs and Ghôr in 1970-1972, he went on to research war conditions in the Afghan field between 1979 and 1985. He also testify on Soviet war crimes before the International Federation for Human Rights and the Bertrand Russell Tribunal in Paris. From 1985 to 1989, Barry was further asked to coordinate the relief missions inside Afghanistan of the French medical organization Doctors of the World. In his profound concern to promote Afghanistan's cultural heritage and the country's both national and international dignity, Dr Barry notably organized the exhibitions of Afghanistan's magnificent medieval paintings now scattered throughout world collections - but here superbly reproduced upon state-of-the-art metal panels - in Herât Castle in 2017, and in Bâbur's Gardens in in early 2018. In addition to the works now on permanent display in Herât Castle, this unique collection will also be reproduced and housed for the permanent education and delight of the Afghan public in Kabul's national Dâr-ul-Amân Palace, now under restoration, for inaugural day coinciding with celebrations of the centenary of Afghan national independence, on 17 August 2019. Barry's research has traced every surviving painting of Bihzâd in Near Eastern, European or North American collections for reproduction in Herât and Kabul. Written in four languages - Persian/Darî and Pashtô, English and French - the current wall captions, and the forthcoming comprehensive catalogue, recount how Bihzâd finally became the leading artist of the School of Herât. Barry has thus been able to uncover precise visual proofs of the close relation of friendship between the artist, and the most eminent Sufi thinker and poet then living in Herât (and who was also spiritual adviser to the sultan), Mawlânâ Jâmî.