Lebanese diaspora :
154-789: Europe Overseas Middle East Lebanese Shiite Muslims ( Arabic : المسلمون الشيعة اللبنانيون ), communally and historically known as matāwila ( Arabic : متاولة , plural of متوال mutawālin ; pronounced as متوالي metouali or matawali in Lebanese Arabic ), are Lebanese people who are adherents of Shia Islam in Lebanon , which plays a major role alongside Lebanon's main Sunni , Maronite and Druze sects. The vast majority of Shiite Muslims in Lebanon adhere to Twelver Shi'ism . Today, Shiite Muslims constitute around 27% of
308-504: A Nabataean perspective, Dhushara was probably associated with the heavens. However, one theory which connects Dushara with the forest gives a different idea of the god. The eagle was one of the symbols of Dushara. It was widely used in Hegra as a source of protection for the tombs against thievery. Nabataean inscriptions from Hegra suggest that Dushara was linked either with the sun, or with Mercury , with which Ruda , another Arabian god,
462-450: A bribe of 300 talents to lift the siege of Petra, partly because of the difficult terrain and the fact that he had run out of supplies. Hyrcanus II , who was a friend of Aretas, was despatched by Scaurus to the King to buy peace. In so obtaining peace, King Aretas retained all his possessions, including Damascus, and became a Roman vassal. In 32 BC, during King Malichus I 's reign, Herod
616-586: A bright red produced from madder . Blue textiles were also found. When it comes to the types of clothing and what can be surmised from these finds are that Nabatean men wore a tunic and a mantle both made of wool.The tunic in a Roman style (sleeveless) and with the mantle cut in a Greek style. This, as stated before, reflects a popular style rather than an ethnic style exclusive to the Nabateans. Nabataean women wore long tunics along with scarves and mantles. These scarves were loosely woven and sported fringes at
770-575: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
924-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
1078-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
1232-487: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
1386-569: A letter to Antigonus in Syriac letters, and Aramaic continued as the language of their coins and inscriptions when the tribe grew into a kingdom and profited by the decay of the Seleucids to extend its borders northward over the more fertile country east of the Jordan River . They occupied Hauran , and in about 85 BC their king Aretas III became lord of Damascus and Coele-Syria . Petra
1540-581: A loosely controlled trading network that brought considerable wealth and influence across the ancient world. Described as fiercely independent by contemporary Greco-Roman accounts, the Nabataeans were annexed into the Roman Empire by Emperor Trajan in 106 AD. Nabataeans' individual culture, easily identified by their characteristic finely potted painted ceramics, was adopted into the larger Greco-Roman culture . They converted to Christianity during
1694-690: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
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#17327811503931848-710: A positive and inviting dialectical relationship between the theological construct of Imamism and its social milieu gave precedence to the Shiite possibility. Per al-Muhajir, the beginning of the process can be traced right after the Hasan–Muawiya treaty in 661. Per Harris, the 842 revolt in Jabal Amel gave rare exposure to a Shia-minded population on the fringes of Mount Lebanon . In the Keserwan hills east of Beirut , it's possible that Shia tribespeople were present in
2002-532: A probable candidate. However, John F. Healey states that: "The Nabataean origin of the Arabic script is now almost universally accepted". In surviving Nabataean documents, Aramaic legal terms are followed by their equivalents in Arabic. That could suggest that the Nabataeans used Arabic in their legal proceedings but recorded them in Aramaic. The name may be derived from the same root as Akkadian nabatu , to shine brightly. Although not as dry as at present,
2156-464: A prolix edict in 1533. Tahmasp reportedly told him: "You are the real king and I am just one of your agents". This brought new political and court power to the Islamic clerics and their networks, intersecting Tabriz , Qazvin , Isfahan , Rasht , Astarabad , and Amol . Another prominent cleric was Baha'uddin al-Amili , who authored mathematical and astronomical treatises, including the possibility of
2310-560: A recipe for fermented Nabatean water bread ( khubz al-ma al-nabati ). The yeast-leavened bread is made with a high quality wheat flour called samidh that is finely milled and free of bran and is baked in a tandoor . Based on coins, inscriptions and non-Nabatean contemporary sources, Nabataean women seem to have had many legal rights. Inscriptions on tombs demonstrate the equality of property rights between man and woman and women's rights in matters of inheritance and also their ability to make decisions about their own property. That set
2464-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
2618-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
2772-470: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
2926-536: A stream of scholars shifted to Jabal Amel from Aleppo due to Mamluk takeover as the area provided refuge from Sunni rigor. The towns of Jezzine and Karak Nuh replaced the former urban centers of Shiite learning in the Levant, and Shiite scholars enjoyed protection under Shia chiefs starting from Husam ad-Din Bishara in 1187 until the crisis of 1781 . One particular scholar from Jezzine, Muhammad ibn Makki , became
3080-554: A third campaign. In July 1305, according to al-Maqrizi , al-Ayni and Druze chronicler Salih ibn Yahya, 50,000 Mamluk troops marched from Damascus to meet up with another army under the na'ib of Tripoli coming from the south, also summoning their Druze Buhturid allies. The Mamluk pincer movement converged on the Kisrawan rebels, resulting in fierce battles that eventually crushed the defenders. The Mamluks then devastated villages and cultivation through August 1305 and expelled much of
3234-507: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
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#17327811503933388-507: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
3542-578: A vast section of the Syrian coastal highlands. According to Abdelnour, the Shiite population in 1765 probably stood around 40,000. The Harfushes of Baalbek received the iltizam concession for the Bekaa as well as a rank in the provincial military hierarchy. In the province of Tripoli , the Hamada family were charged with multiple tax collection assignments in the hinterland of Mount Lebanon . Further south,
3696-612: A widely known Shi'i faqīh who advocated developing religious law through debate with Sunni scholars, whose fame as a legal expert spread as far as Khorasan , where the reigning Sarbadar invited him to instruct his court in Twelver Shiism. On 30 June 1384, Ibn Makki was charged with heresy and subsequently executed in Citadel of Damascus : Between 1292 and 1305, the Mamluks carried out a series of punitive expeditions against
3850-476: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
4004-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
4158-568: Is a branch of Shia Islam which emerged in 765 from a disagreement over the succession to Muhammad . Isma'ilis hold that Isma'il ibn Jafar was the true seventh imam, and not Musa al-Kadhim as the Twelvers believe. Isma'ili Shi'ism also differs doctrinally from Imami Shi'ism, having beliefs and practices that are more esoteric and maintaining seven pillars of faith rather than five pillars and ten ancillary precepts . Though perhaps somewhat better established in neighbouring Syria, where
4312-590: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
4466-559: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
4620-478: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
4774-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
Lebanese Shia Muslims - Misplaced Pages Continue
4928-472: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
5082-482: Is important to note that most villages and towns in Lebanon today have Aramaic names, reflecting this heritage. However, Beirut became the only fully Latin -speaking city in the whole East. On the coast, Tyre prospered under the Romans and was allowed to keep much of its independence as a " civitas foederata ". On the other hand, Jabal Amel was inhabited by Banu Amilah , its namesake, who have particular importance for
5236-574: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
5390-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
5544-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
5698-590: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
5852-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
6006-524: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
6160-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
6314-464: The rafida , a pejorative term denoting Shiites. Tripoli was ruled by Banu Ammar from 1079, who invested large sums in turning the city into a famous center for learning, founding a "House of Knowledge" that attracted scholars as well as a notable library of 100,000 volumes. By the early 14th century, Jabal Amel was becoming the Twelver Shia center of the entire Levant . During this period,
Lebanese Shia Muslims - Misplaced Pages Continue
6468-710: The British Mandate of Palestine in a 1924 border-redrawing agreement were forcibly depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and repopulated by Jews . The seven villages are Qadas , Nabi Yusha , al-Malikiyya , Hunin , Tarbikha , Abil al-Qamh , and Saliha . The inhabitants in turn fled to Lebanon. In addition, the Shia Twelvers in Lebanon have close links to the Syrian Shia Twelvers . There are approximately 100,000 to 120,000 Alawites in Lebanon , where they have lived since at least
6622-512: The Druze , who in belief, practice, and history have long since become distinct from Isma'ilis proper. Druze constitute 5.2% of the modern population of Lebanon and still have a strong demographic presence in their traditional regions within the country to this day. Due to official persecution by the Sunni Zengid dynasty that stoked escalating sectarian clashes with Sunnis, many Isma'ilis in
6776-648: The Great Syrian Revolt broke out in 1925, the calm remained in Jabal Amel. Nevertheless, many Shiites joined the rebels in Syria , and played a central role in the battles of the Qalamoun Mountains and Akroum , where Shiites reportedly took a booty of more than 400 rifles and fifty horses from French forces. Many Christians who fled their villages during the revolt were accommodated by Shia notables from Nabatieh and Bint Jbeil , an act that
6930-664: The Ja'fari school , which also continued after Fatimid demise. Shiites also had a strong presence in certain areas in northern Palestine and Transjordan as confirmed by al-Maqdisi (c. 966-985), mainly in Tiberias , Amman and Qadas . Traveling through Tyre and Tripoli c. 1047, Nasir Khusraw noted in his Safarnama that most of the inhabitants of the two cities were Shiite. Ibn Asakir (1106–1175), during his ten-year residence in Tyre, noted strong opposition to his views from some of
7084-871: The Kingdom of Syria , emphasizing their Arab identity, while simultaneously defending Shiite particularism. Following the official declaration of the Arab Kingdom of Syria in March 1920, anti-French riots and clashed broke out in the predominantly Shia areas of Jabal Amel and the Beqaa Valley . Rebels attacked French military bases and garrisons in their areas, and sectarian clashes also took place, notably in Ain Ebel , due to French arming and their perceived acceptance of French mandatory rule. The French sent an expedition of 4,000–6,000 soldiers led by Colonel Niger to
7238-552: The King–Crane Commission visit. This angered the French, who encouraged an unsuccessful assassination attempt against him. Sharafeddine strongly denounced sectarian hostility as it only gave purpose for the French military presence. During the famous the conference of Wadi al-Hujayr on 24 April 1920, he called for the protection of Christians. The Christians (Nasara) are your brethren in the country and in destiny. Show to them
7392-489: The Later Roman Era . They have been described as one of the most gifted peoples of the ancient world and one of the "most unjustly forgotten". The Nabataeans were an Arab tribe who had come under significant Babylonian - Aramaean influence. The first mention of the Nabataeans dates from 312/311 BC, when they were attacked at Sela or perhaps at Petra without success by Antigonus I 's officer Athenaeus in
7546-476: The League of Nations . Sayyid Abdul-Husayn Sharafeddine believed that the only way to ward off foreign political influence was to establish modern schools while maintaining Islamic teachings. In 1938, he built two schools, one for girls and another for boys, at his own expense. However, the girls' school did not last long due to financial difficulties and traditional views, prompting Sayyid Sharafeddine to transfer
7700-554: The Qasr al Bint i temple was dedicated to Dushara then the other major temple must have been al-Uzzas. This is just a theory however, based on conjecture, and it can only be said that the temple is likely dedicated to the supreme goddess figure of the Nabateans, but the exact identity of this goddess is uncertain. Excavated from The Temple of the Winged Lions was the "Eye Baetyl " or "Eye-Idol". Numerous Nabatean bas-relief busts of
7854-681: The Ruwafa inscriptions . They are ascribed to an auxiliary military unit drawn from the Roman-allied Thamud tribe and were built to describe the temple they were inscribed in and to recognize the authority of the emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus . By the 3rd century AD, the Nabataeans had stopped writing in Aramaic and begun writing in Greek instead. By the 5th century AD, they had converted to Christianity. The new Arab invaders, who soon pressed forward into their seats , found
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#17327811503938008-714: The Seleucids , marrying a female member of the Nabatean royal family reinforced a ruler's position or one whose claim to the throne was not as strong as his wife's. The Nabatean royal house like the Ptolemaic and Seleucids later adopted sibling marriage. Not much is known for certain about the fashions of ancient Nabateans and before the Hellenization and Romanization of the region but based on extant clothes and textiles found in graves and tombs on Nabatean territory,
8162-568: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
8316-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
8470-612: The southern Levant . Their settlements—most prominently the assumed capital city of Raqmu (present-day Petra , Jordan ) —gave the name Nabatene ( Ancient Greek : Ναβατηνή , romanized : Nabatēnḗ ) to the Arabian borderland that stretched from the Euphrates to the Red Sea . The Nabateans emerged as a distinct civilization and political entity between the 4th and 2nd centuries BC, with their kingdom centered around
8624-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
8778-925: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Nabataeans The Nabataeans or Nabateans ( / ˌ n æ b ə ˈ t iː ən z / ; Nabataean Aramaic : 𐢕𐢃𐢋𐢈 , NBṬW , vocalized as Nabāṭū ) were an ancient Arab people who inhabited northern Arabia and
8932-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
9086-863: The 16th century. They are recognized as one of the 18 official Lebanese sects, and due to the efforts of an Alawite leader Ali Eid , the Taif Agreement of 1989 gave them two reserved seats in the Parliament. Lebanese Alawites live mostly in the Jabal Mohsen neighbourhood of Tripoli , and in 10 villages in the Akkar region , and are mainly represented by the Arab Democratic Party . Bab al-Tabbaneh, Jabal Mohsen clashes between pro-Syrian Alawites and anti-Syrian Sunnis have haunted Tripoli for decades. Isma'ilism , or " Sevener Shi'ism",
9240-421: The 1st century. Its power extended far into Arabia along the Red Sea to Yemen, and Petra was a cosmopolitan marketplace, though its commerce was diminished by the rise of the Eastern trade-route from Myos Hormos to Coptos on the Nile . Under the Pax Romana , the Nabataeans lost their warlike and nomadic habits and became a sober, acquisitive, orderly people, wholly intent on trade and agriculture. The kingdom
9394-417: The 3rd century, states that in Dūmah , a boy was sacrificed annually and was buried underneath an altar. Some scholars have extrapolated this practice to the rest of the Nabataeans, but this view is contested due to the lack of evidence. The Nabataeans used to represent their gods as featureless pillars or blocks . Their most common monuments to the gods, commonly known as "god blocks", involved cutting away
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#17327811503939548-462: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
9702-603: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
9856-577: The Earth's movement prior to the spread of the Copernican theory , and is responsible for many architectural feats in the city of Isfahan . With the Ottoman withdrawal in 1918, the French entered Nabatieh and barred the local populace from carrying out political activity. Local chiefs rejected the demand, and instead hoisted the Arab flag in several villages. Shiites participated in the Syrian nationalist movement and Syrian National Congress in 1919, and prominent Shiites such as Ahmad Rida often stated their support for Syrian unity and independence within
10010-429: The French authorities in Lebanon, specifically regarding the hierarchical distribution of social capital along religious communal lines. During these negotiations, petitions were often used by different sects to demand support for reforms. For example, the middle-class of predominantly urban Sunni areas expressed their demands for educational reforms through petitions directed towards the French High Commissioner and
10164-499: The Great , with the support of Cleopatra , started a war against Nabataea. The war began with Herod plundering Nabataea with a large cavalry force, and occupying Dium . After this defeat, the Nabataean forces regrouped near Canatha in Syria, but were attacked and routed. Cleopatra's general, Athenion , sent Canathans to the aid of the Nabataeans, and this force crushed Herod's army, which then fled to Ormiza. One year later, Herod's army overran Nabataea. After an earthquake in Judaea,
10318-584: The Isma'ili population has largely vanished over time. It has been suggested that Ottoman-era persecution might have spurred them to leave for elsewhere in the region, though there is no record or evidence of any kind of large exodus. Isma'ilis were originally included as one of five officially-defined Muslim sects in a 1936 edict issued by the French Mandate governing religious affairs in the territory of Greater Lebanon , alongside Sunnis , Twelver Shiites, Alawites, and Druzes . However, Muslims collectively rejected being classified as divided, and so were left out of
10472-429: The Ja'fari shar'ia courts in practice, the Shia community was deliberately encouraged to "practice sectarianism" on a daily basis. Shia Twelvers in Lebanon refers to the Shia Muslim Twelver community with a significant presence throughout Lebanon. The jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire was merely nominal in the Lebanon. Baalbek in the 18th century was really under the control of the Metawali, which also refers to
10626-427: The Lebanese Shia for adopting and nurturing Shi'ism in the southern population. The Banu Amilah were part of the Nabataean Arab foederati of the Roman Empire , and they were connected to other pre-Islamic Arabs such as Judham and Balqayn , whose presence in the region likely dates back to Biblical times according to Irfan Shahîd . As the Muslim conquest of the Levant reached Lebanon, these Arab tribes received
10780-415: The Lebanese population. Under the terms of an unwritten agreement known as the National Pact between the various political and religious leaders of Lebanon, Shiites are the only sect eligible for the post of Speaker of Parliament . The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Lebanese people is a blend of both indigenous elements and the foreign cultures that have come to rule the land and its people over
10934-428: The Levant, the Qarmatians were ordered to be stamped out by the ruling Fatimid , themselves Isma'ilis and from whom the lineage of the modern Nizari Aga Khan is claimed to descend. The Qarmatian movement in the Levant was largely extinguished by the turn of the millennium. The semi-divine personality of the Fatimid caliph in Isma'ilism was elevated further in the doctrines of a secretive group which began to venerate
11088-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
11242-533: The Nabataean Arabs , and was the official god of the Nabataean Kingdom who enjoyed special royal patronage. His official position is reflected in multiple inscriptions that render him as "The god of our lord" (The King). The name Dushara is from the Arabic "Dhu ash-Shara": which simply means "the one of Shara", a mountain range south-east of Petra also known as Mount Seir . Therefore, from
11396-468: The Nabataeans had already some trace of Aramaic culture when they first appear in history. Some of the authors of Safaitic inscriptions identified themselves as Nabataeans. The extent of Nabataean trade resulted in cross-cultural influences that reached as far as the Red Sea coast of southern Arabia. The major gods worshiped at Petra were notably Dushara and Al-‘Uzzá . Dushara was the supreme deity of
11550-405: The Nabataeans' trade routes and the origins of their goods were regarded as trade secrets, and disguised in tales that should have strained outsiders' credulity. Diodorus Siculus (book II) described them as a strong tribe of some 10,000 warriors, preeminent among the nomads of Arabia, eschewing agriculture, fixed houses, and the use of wine, but adding to pastoral pursuits a profitable trade with
11704-527: The Nabateans apart from the attitudes on a woman's role in society by their neighbours in the region. Women also participated in religious activities, and had a right to visit the temples and make sacrifices. Archeological evidence strongly suggest that the Nabataean women had a role in the social and political life by the first century AD, which is shown by the fact that Nabatean queens were depicted on coins, both independentely and together with their spouse
11858-464: The Nabateans rebelled and invaded Judea, but Herod at once crossed the Jordan river to Philadelphia (modern Amman ) and both sides set up camp. The Nabataeans under Elthemus refused to give battle, so Herod forced the issue when he attacked their camp . A confused mass of Nabataeans gave battle but were defeated. Once they had retreated to their defences, Herod laid siege to the camp and over time some of
12012-534: The Northern Syrian goddess Atargatis were identified by Nelson Glueck at Khirbet et-Tannû . Atargatis was amalgamated into the worship of Al-‘Uzzá. However, when the Romans annexed the Nabataean Kingdom, Dushara still had an important role despite losing his former royal privilege. The greatest testimony to the status of the god after the fall of the Nabataean Kingdom was during the 1000th anniversary of
12166-690: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
12320-576: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
12474-432: The Shia Twelvers specifically from the landmass that is modern Lebanon. Metawali, Metouali, or Mutawili, is an archaic term used to specifically refer to Lebanese Twelver Shiites in the past. The term was a way to distinguish the uniqueness and unity of the community. The term 'mutawili' is also the name of a trustee in Islamic waqf -system. Seven Shia (Mutawili) villages that were reassigned from French Greater Lebanon to
12628-638: The Shia population of Kisrawan region in Mount Lebanon east of Beirut , headed by Aqqush al-Afram . According to Mamluk chronicler Badr al-Din al-Ayni , in 1292, the Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil compelled Baydara to take three thousand cavalry up the coast from Egypt , entering Kisrawan from the south. According to al-Ayni, the defenders, whom he called kafarat rawafid , mobilized 10,000 defenders who lured Mamluk contingents into ambushes . The campaign
12782-474: The Shiite Ja'fari jurisprudence or madhhab was legally recognized as an official madhhab , and held judicial and political power on multiple levels. The institutionalization of Shia Islam during this period provoked discussions between Shiite scholars and clergy about how Shiite orthodoxy should be defined. For example, discussions about the mourning of the martyrdom of Imam Husain during Ashura , which
12936-568: The Shiites of Jabal Amel retained their tax farms well into the mid-18th century, greatly benefiting from the foreign demand for dyed cotton and good commercial contacts with the French, and by the 1750s the area provided more tax revenues than Mount Lebanon. In the late 18th century, traditional Shiite feudatories and mukataa-based familial system had largely become redundant and weak, and Shia influence diminished in favor of an increasingly powerful Maronite-Druze alliance which reached heights under
13090-572: The Sunni (and later Maronite) Shihab dynasty . Decline amplified in 1781 following the death of Nasif al-Nassar in battle against Jazzar Pasha who brought Jabal Amel under his suzerainty, concurrent with the earlier fall of Shiite multezims in Kisrawan and North Lebanon . According to Comte de Volney , no more than 500 Shiite families survived Jazzar's rampage at the time of his visit in 1785. According to Tamara Chalabi, these events would persist in
13244-554: The area in the Umayyad period or after the 759 Munaytra uprising, and were well-established in the area by the 940s–960s. Muahjir contrasts this view, contending that the Shia community in the highlands likely formed following the Fall of Tripoli in 1109 after the city's depopulation of its former Shia inhabitants. In Syria, Aleppo , which figures in the scholastic heritage of Jabal Amel, had become fertile ground for Twelver Shi'ism under
13398-422: The area occupied by the Nabataeans was still a desert and required special techniques for agriculture. One was to contour an area of land into a shallow funnel and to plant a single fruit tree in the middle. Before the ' rainy season ', which could easily consist of only one or two rain events, the area around the tree was broken up. When the rain came, all the water that collected in the funnel would flow down toward
13552-469: The area of Nabataean culture, which extended as far north as the north end of the Dead Sea , and testify to widespread literacy; but except for a few letters no Nabataean literature has survived, nor was any noted in antiquity. Onomastic analysis has suggested that Nabataean culture may have had multiple influences. Classical references to the Nabataeans begin with Diodorus Siculus . They suggest that
13706-490: The bottom. The upper class of Nabataean society, what can be seen on coins, show an even stronger Greek and Roman influence. The kings are depicted clean-shaven with long curled hair while queens are depicted wearing headcoverings with curled hair and long tunics and highnecked garments. Purple cloth seems to have been associated with the king based on Strabo's account of Nabatean men going outside "without tunics girdles about their loins, and with slippers on their feet – even
13860-502: The caliph Hakim as the embodiment of divine unity . Unsuccessful in the imperial capital of Cairo , they began discreetly proselytising around the year 1017 among certain Arab tribes in the Levant. The Isma'ilis of Wadi al-Taym and Jabal Shuf were among those who converted before the movement was permanently closed off a few decades later to guard against outside prying by mainstream Sunni and Shia Muslims, who often viewed their doctrines as heresy. This deeply esoteric group became known as
14014-400: The clothing worn by the Nabateans during the first and second century were not unlike their neighbour Judaeans. Its hard to say with any certainty what the Nabateans wore in more ancient times since their art before this period was non-figurative. That is based on finds of similar clothing and textiles being found in both places. Among the most common colors were yellow made from saffron and
14168-536: The collective memory of the Shia of Jabal Amel well into the early 20th century. During this time period, Shiites built particularly close ties with the Safavids of Iran , contributing significantly to the empire's conversion into Shia Islam. Tahmasp I (1524–1576) appointed Muhaqqiq al-Karaki from Karak Nuh as the deputy of the Hidden Imam , and granted him extensive power over the sadrs (Grand viziers) in
14322-574: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
14476-618: The country. While the French and Russians mainly encouraged Maronite and Orthodox active learning respectively, along with American Protestant missions in Beirut, the British established educational institutions in Druze areas, and Sunnis mainly benefitted from Ottoman state institutions. However, Shiites were the only ones who did not benefit from such activities. This neglectance continued into
14630-518: The course of the Third War of the Diadochi ; at that time Hieronymus of Cardia , a Seleucid officer, mentioned the Nabataeans in a battle report. About 50 BC, the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus cited Hieronymus in his report, and added the following: "Just as the Seleucids had tried to subdue them, so the Romans made several attempts to get their hands on that lucrative trade." They wrote
14784-492: The course of thousands of years. In a 2013 interview the lead investigator, Pierre Zalloua , pointed out that genetic variation preceded religious variation and divisions: "Lebanon already had well-differentiated communities with their own genetic peculiarities, but not significant differences, and religions came as layers of paint on top. There is no distinct pattern that shows that one community carries significantly more Phoenician than another." Lebanon throughout its history
14938-473: The defenders surrendered. The remaining Nabataean forces offered 500 talents for peace, but this was rejected. Lacking water, the Nabataeans were forced out of their camp and battled but were defeated. Aretas, IV king of Nabatea, defeated Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, in a battle after he intended to divorce his daughter Phasaelis An ally of the Roman Empire, the Nabataean kingdom flourished throughout
15092-445: The early days of the French mandate. During the 1920s and 1930s, educational institutions became places for different religious communities to construct nationalist and sectarian modes of identification. Shia leaders and religious clergy supported educational reforms in order to improve the social and political marginalization of the Shia community and increase their involvement in the newly born nation-state of Lebanon. This led to
15246-587: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
15400-441: The enigmatic phenomenon of "Tuleilat el-Anab". Evenari showed that the runoff rainwater collection systems concentrate water from an area that is five times larger than the area in which the water actually drains. Another study was conducted by Y. Kedar in 1957, which also focused on the mechanism of the agriculture systems, but he studied soil management , and claimed that the ancient agriculture systems were intended to increase
15554-649: The establishment of several private Shia schools in Lebanon, among them The Charitable Islamic ʿĀmili Society ( al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Islāmiyya al- ʿ Āmiliyya ) in Beirut and The Charitable Jaʿfari Society ( al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Jaʿfariyya ) in Tyre . While several Shia educational institutions were established before and at the beginning of the mandate period, they often ran out of support and funding which resulted in their abolishment. The primary outlet for discussions concerning educational reforms among Shia scholars
15708-601: The establishment of the Ja'fari court further strengthened communal ties and validated a sense of particularism otherwise denied under the Ottomans. Consequently, the establishment of Ja'fari shari'a courts during the French Mandate period in Lebanon complicated the understanding of citizenship by intertwining it with sectarian identification, while also reinforcing sectarian divisions within the legal and political framework of
15862-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
16016-607: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
16170-542: The faith founded one of its first da'wah outposts in the city of Salamiyah (the supposed resting place of the Imam Isma'il) in the 8th century, it has been present in what is now Lebanon for centuries. Early Lebanese Isma'ilism showed perhaps an unusual propensity to foster radical movements within it, particularly in the areas of Wadi al-Taym , adjoining the Beqaa valley at the foot of Mount Hermon , and Jabal Shuf , in
16324-549: The founding of Rome where Dushara was celebrated in Bostra by striking coins in his name, Actia Dusaria (linking the god with Augustus victory at Actium ). He was venerated in his Arabian name with a Greek fashion in the reign of an Arabian emperor, Philip . Other gods worshipped in Nabatea during this period were Isis , Balshamin and Obodat Sacrifices of animals were common, and Porphyry 's De Abstenentia , written in
16478-510: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
16632-462: The fruit tree and sink into the ground. The ground, which was largely loess , would seal up when it got wet and retain the water. In the mid-1950s, a research team headed by Michael Evenari set up a research station near Avdat (Evenari, Shenan and Tadmor 1971). He focused on the relevance of runoff rainwater management in explaining the mechanism of the ancient agricultural features, such as terraced wadis, channels for collecting runoff rainwater, and
16786-496: The girls and teach them in his own home. The boys' school was known as al-Ja'fariyya , and was able to continue despite financial difficulties. In January 1926, the French High Commissioner officially recognized the Shia community as an "independent religious community," which was permitted to judge matters of personal status "according to the principles of the rite known by the name of Ja'fari." This meant that
16940-654: The highlands of Mount Lebanon . The syncretic beliefs of the Qarmatians , typically classed as an Isma'ili splinter sect with Zoroastrian influences, spread into the area of the Beqaa valley and possibly also Jabal Shuf starting in the 9th century. The group soon became widely vilified in the Islamic world for its armed campaigns across throughout the following decades, which included slaughtering Muslim pilgrims and sacking Mecca and Medina—and Salamiyah. Other Muslim rulers soon acted to crush this powerful heretical movement. In
17094-521: The hills above Tyre in Southern Lebanon , historically known as Jabal Amel , since at least the times of Alexander the Great , who fought them after they blocked his army's access to wood supply. During Roman rule , Aramaic became the lingua franca of the entire Levant , including what is nowadays known as Lebanon, replacing spoken Phoenician on the coast. Meanwhile Greek was used as language of administration, education and trading. It
17248-597: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
17402-453: The king. The assumption to be made from this were that they ruled together and that the Nabatean queens and other female members were given or already had political importance and status. One can surmise other Nabatean women also benefited from this by extension. Though admittedly Nabatean culture seems to have favored male succession rather than female or equal succession, it seems plausible that like their neighbouring Ptolemaic dynasty and
17556-580: The kings, though in their case the colour is purple." Historians such as Irfan Shahîd , Warwick Ball , Robert G. Hoyland , Michael C. A. Macdonald , and others believe Nabataeans spoke Arabic as their native language. John F. Healy states that "Nabataeans normally spoke a form of Arabic, while, like the Persians etc., they used Aramaic for formal purposes and especially for inscriptions." Proper names on their inscriptions suggest that they were ethnically Arabs who had come under Aramaic influence, and
17710-613: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
17864-604: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
18018-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
18172-482: The law in the end. Ignored in a post-independence law passed in 1951 that defined only Judaism and Christian sects as official, Muslims continued under traditional Ottoman law, within the confines of which small communities like Isma'ilis and Alawites found it difficult to establish their own institutions. The Aga Khan IV made a brief stop in Beirut on 4 August 1957 while on a global tour of Nizari Isma'ili centres, drawing an estimated 600 Syrian and Lebanese followers of
18326-420: The love you show to yourselves. Protect their lives and possessions as you do to your own. Only by this can you face the conspiracy and put an end to the civil strife. This period of unrest ended in 1921 with a political amnesty offered by the French mandate authorities for all Shiite rebels who had taken part in the fighting, with the intention to bind the Shia community in Lebanon to the new Mandate state. When
18480-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
18634-424: The most power which encouraged the non-Arabic-speaking population to adopt Arabic as the main language. The spread of Shia Islam in Lebanon was a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon over a few centuries. By the time of the Islamic conquest, Jabal Amel was an ethno-linguistic hybrid which included the tribes of Amilah and Judham as well as Hamdan émigrés, and non-Arab communities. According to Irfan Shahîd ,
18788-520: The nation-state. Instead of armed rebellion and uprisings, protests and civil strikes in Shia areas became the medium to protest French policies and tobacco prices. Shiites were later active in providing ammunition, manpower and assistance to Palestinian rebels during the 1936–1939 revolt in Palestine , which was co-administered from Bint Jbeil . In the 19th century, Lebanon saw dramatic changes when missionaries started establishing schools throughout
18942-782: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
19096-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
19250-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
19404-586: The perpetual inconveniences this produces. War in the region has also caused pressures on Lebanese Isma'ilis. In the 2006 Lebanon War , Israeli warplanes bombed the factory of the Maliban Glass company in the Beqaa valley on 19 July. The factory was bought in the late 1960s by the Madhvani Group under the direction of Isma'ili entrepreneur Abdel-Hamid al-Fil after the Aga Khan personally brought
19558-521: The population, most of whom settled in Southern Lebanon and the Beqaa valley . After the Ottoman conquest circa 1516, leading Shiite families in Jabal Amil , Beqaa Valley and Mount Lebanon , which had been ensconced prior to Ottoman arrival, were co-opted into the Ottoman provincial administration as mukataacıs or as governors of secondary sanjaks with fiscal and police responsibilities over
19712-657: The pre-Islamic tribes of Amilah and Judham were part of the Nabataean foederati of the Romans , whose presence in the region dates back to Biblical times. Banu Amilah, according to tenth century historian al-Tabari , were also affiliates of the Ghassanids who supplied troops to the Byzantines . During the early Islamic period, Jabal Amel and the adjacent areas likely hosted several disgruntled groups or communities that were susceptible to Twelver Shia doctrine, and
19866-742: The reconstruction timeframe indefinite due to instability and government hesitation. Lebanese Shiite Muslims are concentrated in south Beirut and its southern suburbs, northern and western area of the Beqaa Valley, as well as Southern Lebanon. Note that the following percentages are estimates only. However, in a country that had last census in 1932, it is difficult to have correct population estimates. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
20020-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
20174-544: The region's lingua franca . Therefore, Aramaic was used for commercial and official purposes across the Nabataean political sphere. The Nabataean alphabet itself also developed out of the Aramaic alphabet , but it used a distinctive cursive script from which the Arabic alphabet emerged. There are different opinions concerning the development of the Arabic script. J. Starcky considers the Lakhmids ' Syriac form script as
20328-592: The regions of Damascus and Aleppo are said to have fled west during the 12th century. Some settled in the mountains of Lebanon, while others settled further north along the coastal ridges in Syria , where the Alawites had earlier taken refuge—and where their brethren in the Assassins were cultivating a fearsome reputation as they staved off armies of Crusaders and Sunnis alike for many years. Once far more numerous and widespread in many areas now part of Lebanon,
20482-565: The reign of the Hamdanids (944–991), and cultural and material interactions between Aleppo and Jabal Amel may have reinforced nascent local development of Twelver Shi'ism in the area prior to Isma'ili Fatimid ascent in Egypt (969–1174). Before Fatimid Ismaili da'wa took hold in Syria, cultural exchange between scholars in Jabal Amel and Iraq contributed to a mutual systematic observation of
20636-546: The religion to the Beirut Airport in order to welcome him. In the mid-1980s, several hundred Isma'ilis were thought to still live in a few communities scattered across several parts of Lebanon. Though they are nominally counted among the 18 officially-recognised sects under modern Lebanese law, they currently have no representation in state functions and continue to lack personal status laws for their sect, which has led to increased conversions to established sects to avoid
20790-747: The remnants of the Nabataeans transformed into peasants . Their lands were divided between the new Qahtanite Arab tribal kingdoms of the Byzantine vassals, the Ghassanid Arabs, and the Himyarite vassals, the Kingdom of Kinda in North Arabia. The city of Petra was brought to the attention of Westerners by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1812. Many examples of graffiti and inscriptions—largely of names and greetings—document
20944-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
21098-484: The seaports in frankincense , myrrh and spices from Arabia Felix (today's Yemen), as well as a trade with Egypt in bitumen from the Dead Sea. Their arid country was their best safeguard, for the bottle-shaped cisterns for rain-water which they excavated in the rocky or clay-rich soil were carefully concealed from invaders. Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq 's Kitab al-Tabikh , the earliest known Arabic cookbook , contains
21252-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
21406-454: The south in an effort to pacify the Shiite rebels, devastating their villages and crushing Shiite rebels by June 1920. The defeat dispersed thousands of peasants who feared harsh reprisals, and the high fines imposed on the villagers contributed to financial hardship in the region. The armed effort was paralleled by the nonviolent resistance movement led by Abdul Husayn Sharafeddine since 1919, who demanded US support for Syrian unity during
21560-563: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
21714-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
21868-429: The two into contact. It had expanded over the next few decades from an ailing relic to the largest glass manufacturer in the Levant, with 300 locally hired workers producing around 220,000 tons of glass per day. Al-Fil closed the plant down on 15 July just after the war broke out to safeguard against the deaths of workers in the event of such an attack, but the damage was estimated at a steep 55 million US dollars, with
22022-476: The whole top of a hill or cliff face so as to leave only a block behind. However, over time the Nabataeans were influenced by Greece and Rome and their Gods became anthropomorphic and were represented with human features. The Nabataeans spoke an Arabic dialect but, for their inscriptions, used a form of Aramaic that was heavily influenced by Arabic forms and words. When communicating with other Middle Eastern peoples, they, like their neighbors, used Aramaic,
22176-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
22330-519: Was a bulwark between Rome and the wild hordes of the desert except in the time of Trajan, who reduced Petra and converted the Nabataean client state into the Roman province of Arabia Petraea . There was a Nabataean community in Puteoli , in southern Italy, that reached its end around the establishment of the province. Five Greek-Nabataean bilingual inscriptions are known dating to AD 165–169, known as
22484-416: Was a clandestine affair before the 1920s and 1930s, led to its transformation into a public ceremony. On the other hand, the official recognition of legal and religious Shiite institutions by the French authorities strengthened a sectarian awareness within the Shia community. Historian Max Weiss underlines how "sectarian claims were increasingly bound up with the institutionalization of Shi'i difference." With
22638-516: Was a failure, and Baydara was only able to extricate his troops after offering gifts and releasing prisoners. In 1299, Kisrawan mountaineers attacked the fleeing Mamluk army, which brought Kisrawan back to Mamluk priority, prompting a swift retribution in 1300. Punishment did not suffice, and following the death of the Ilkhan Ghazan in 1304, the Mamluks assembled the main Mamluk field army for
22792-573: Was appreciated by the local Christian clergy. What the Shi'ites did for the Christians in the south will be cherished in our hearts for as long as Lebanon and the Christians remain. What happened should be written in gold. Long live Lebanon, Long live Lebanese unity and long live the Shiites. The region experienced a decade of stability following the revolt. Shiites had become largely accepting of Greater Lebanon for sectarian and non-sectarian reasons, and
22946-565: Was home of many historic peoples who inhabited the region. The Lebanese coast was mainly inhabited by Phoenician Canaanites throughout the Bronze and Iron ages, who built the cities of Tyre , Sidon , Byblos and Tripoli , which was founded as a center of a confederation between Aradians , Sidonians, and Tyrians. Further east, the Bekaa valley was known as Amqu in the Bronze Age, and
23100-411: Was identified. "His throne" was frequently mentioned in inscriptions; certain interpretations of the text consider it as a reference for Dushara's wife, goddess Harisha. She was probably a solar deity. Dushara's consort at Petra is considered to have been al-Uzza and the goddess has been associated with Temple of Winged Lions on the basis that if the divine couple of Petra was Dushara and al-Uzza and
23254-531: Was part of Amorite kingdom of Qatna and later Amurru kingdom , and had local city-states such as Enišasi . During the Iron Age, the Bekaa was dominated by the Aramaeans , who formed kingdoms nearby in Damascus and Hamath , and established the kingdom of Aram-Zobah where Hazael might have been born, and was later also settled by Itureans , who were likely Arabs themselves. These Itureans inhabited
23408-475: Was rapidly built in the 1st century BC, and developed a population estimated at 20,000. The Nabataeans were allies of the first Hasmoneans in their struggles against the Seleucid monarchs. They then became rivals of the Judaean dynasty, and a chief element in the disorders that invited Pompey 's intervention in Judea . According to popular historian Paul Johnson , many Nabataeans were forcefully converted to Judaism by Hasmonean king Alexander Jannaeus . It
23562-533: Was the monthly Shiite journal a l-'Irfan , founded in 1909. In order to bring their demands ( muṭālabiyya ) to the attention of the French authorities, petitions were signed and presented to the French High Commissioner and the Service de l'Instruction Publique. This institution – since 1920 headquartered in Beirut- oversaw every educational policy regarding public and private school in the mandate territories. According to historian Elizabeth Thompson, private schools were part of "constant negotiations" between citizen and
23716-433: Was this king who, after putting down a local rebellion, invaded and occupied the Nabataean towns of Moab and Gilead and imposed a tribute of an unknown amount. Obodas I knew that Alexander would attack, so was able to ambush Alexander's forces near Gaulane destroying the Judean army (90 BC). The Roman military was not very successful in their campaigns against the Nabataeans. In 62 BC, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus accepted
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