Dar Al Sharq, Qatar’s leading printing and publishing house, organised an Arabic cartoons competition recently in which 154 artists from all over the world participated.
A judging panel, comprising leading cartoonists from the Arab world, including Nidal Hashem from Jordan, Khalid Al Cherradi from Morocco and Abdul Aziz Sadeq from Qatar, selected the winners.
Cash awards worth QR100,000 were distributed among the winners - the largest prize money for Arabic cartoons offered in the Arab world.
The first prize consisted of a cash reward of QR50,000, while the second and third place winners received QR30,000 and QR20,000, respectively.
“The contest was open for everybody, even non-professionals,” Sadeq, one of the jury members, said.
“We judged the works based on the idea and the technique. The subject of the cartoon also had to be relevant,” Abdul Aziz Sadeq added.
Syrian cartoonist Mowafaq Abdullah Gatt won the first prize.
Sharif Arafa bagged the second prize and Yasir Al Ahmed the third from 154 participants, who submitted some 870 entries.
“There was no limit on subjects. Some cartoons were about philosophy, and others about social and political issues,” Khalid Al Cherradi, another jury member, said. Khalid Al Sayed, the Editor-in-Chief of the Peninsula, supervised the contest.
Women’s participation in the contest, which was organized as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of Al Sharq newspaper, was very encouraging as they represented 10 percent of the total.
Some of the entries in the competition were displayed at the Media Expo 2012 at the Doha Exhibition Centre.
The majority of participants were from Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Jordan, but there was participation from countries like Iran and Pakistan. The age of the participants ranged from 20 to 60.
Meanwhile, the Arab Spring dominated the subjects of most of works submitted for the competition.The Peninsula
