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This month’s anniversaries

1 Feb 1920 death of Rudolf Dvořák, founder of Czech Oriental studies
1 Feb 1972 birth of Leymah Roberta Gbowee, Liberian peace activist, recipient of Nobel Peace Prize 2011
2 Feb 1659 In South Africa, wine was made for the first time from local (Cape) grapes
2 Feb 1946 birth of Isaias Afwerki, first president of Eritrea (since 1993)
4 Feb 1998 establishment of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States
6 Feb 1926 birth of Karel Petráček, Czech Arabist and Semitist
7 Feb 1979 birth of Tawakkul Karman, Yemeni journalist, politician and human rights activist, recipient of Nobel Peace Prize 2011; the first Arab woman to become Nobel Peace Prize laureate
9 Feb 1902 birth of Gabriel Léon M’ba, first prime minister (1959–1961) and president (1961–1967) of Gabon
9 Feb 1940 birth of John Maxwell Coetzee, South African writer, recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature 2003
9 Feb 1963 death of Abdulkarim Qasim, first prime minister of Republic of Iraq (1958–1963)
11 Feb 1892 death of James Augustus Grant, Scottish explorer of eastern equatorial Africa
13 Feb 1960 death of František Lexa, founder of Czech Egyptology
14 Feb 1906 (or 1898) birth of Hastings Kamuzu Banda, first president of Malawi (1966–1994)
14 Feb 1919 birth of Miroslav Zikmund, Czech explorer, inter alia in Africa
15 Feb 2003 death of Jiří Hanzelka, Czech explorer, inter alia in Africa
16 Feb 1931 birth of Svetozár Pantůček, Czech Arabist
17 Feb 1903 birth of Sadeq Hedayat, Iranian writer and translator
17 Feb 1970 death of Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Israeli writer, recipient of Nobel Prize in Literature 1966
17 Feb 1989 establishment of the Arab Maghreb Union
18 Feb 1965 independence of the Gambia (from the United Kingdom)
21 Feb 1902 death of Emil Holub, Czech physician and ethnographer, explorer of southern Africa
21 Feb 1924 birth of Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe (1987–2017)
23 Feb 1868 birth of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, American Pan-Africanist, sociologist, historian and civil rights activist
23 Feb 1924 birth of Allan MacLeod Cormack, South African American physicist and mathematician, recipient of Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1979
23 Feb 1939 birth of Luboš Kropáček, Czech Arabist, Africanist and Islamologist
25 Feb 1304 birth of Ibn Battuta (Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Battuta). Muslim traveller and cartographer
26 Feb 1943 birth of Ahmed Hassan Zewail, Egyptian chemist living in United States, recipient of Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1999
26 Feb 1961 death of of Mohammed V (Sidi Mohammed ben Youssef), king of Morocco (1957–1961)
28 Feb 1922 independence of Egypt (from the United Kingdom)
February 1882 birth of Abdullah I ibn al-Hussein, first king of Jordan (1946–1951); exact date is not known