Decentralised (2015–present):
133-502: The National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change ( NCC ), or National Coordination Body for Democratic Change ( NCB ) ( Arabic : هيئة التنسيق الوطنية لقوى التغيير الديمقراطي ), is a Syrian bloc chaired by Hassan Abdel Azim consisting of 13 left-wing political parties and "independent political and youth activists". It has been defined by Reuters as the internal opposition's main umbrella group. The NCC initially had several Kurdish political parties as members, but all except for
266-676: A human rights activist and spokesperson for the Arab Commission for Human Rights (ACHR), which he helped create. At an 18 March 2012 demonstration during the Syrian civil war, a protest organised by the NCC in Damascus was smaller than countryside demonstrations. The demonstration had been announced publicly beforehand. Participants chanted, "The people want the fall of the regime". Several were beaten by security forces, and eleven members of
399-416: A military strategy of guerrilla tactics in the countryside and cities, with a tactical focus on armed action in the capital of Damascus . The campaign was not meant to hold territory, but rather to spread government forces and their logistical chains thin in battles for urban centers, cause attrition in the security forces, degrade morale , and destabilize the government. The FSA considered itself to be
532-626: A checkpoint in Hama province, according to activists. On 16 November, in a coordinated attack , an air force intelligence complex in the Damascus suburb of Harasta was attacked. According to the Free Syrian Army, they did so with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, leading to the death of at least six soldiers with twenty others wounded. A western diplomat said the assault was "hugely symbolic and tactically new". The attack on
665-575: 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
798-676: A convoy in Idlib, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. This attack was allegedly done to avenge the deaths of 11 civilians previously killed. A Syrian officer was also killed in a revenge attack. Loyalist soldiers reportedly fired upon a civilian car near Homs on 14 December, killing five people, in response, the Free Syrian Army staged an ambush against a loyalist convoy consisting of four jeeps, killing eight soldiers. The same day, three anti-government military defectors were wounded in clashes with Syrian security forces in
931-435: 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
1064-623: A leftist profile, while some are also strongly Arab Nationalist or Kurdish Nationalist. Damascus-based lawyer Hassan Abdul Azim, the chairman, is also the spokesperson of the National Democratic Rally (Syria) and the chairman of the Democratic Arab Socialist Union , a banned Nasserist opposition party. The Coordination Committee's spokesperson abroad is Haytham Manna , a Paris -based author and human rights activist, who spent three decades as
1197-487: 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
1330-690: 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
1463-721: A new coalition of Syrian rebel groups, including many that were in the FSA; the core of this new coalition was the Hawar Kilis Operations Room . Initially referred to as the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), this force would adopt the name Syrian National Army (SNA) in 2017. A majority of the FSA militias are currently under the command of the Syrian Interim Government ; while the rest have either allied with
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#17327808938401596-709: A result (if they were soldiers, defectors or civilians was not stated). At least fifty tanks and other armoured vehicle opened fire with 50 cal. machine guns and anti-aircraft weapons on positions held by the Free Syrian Army on Rastan's outskirts. Deaths were also reported in Daraa and Homs On 24 November 11 defectors were killed and four wounded during clashes on the western outskirts of Homs. In an attack on an airbase in Homs province on 25 November, six elite pilots, one technical officer and three other personnel were killed. The Syrian government vowed to "cut every evil hand" of
1729-462: 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",
1862-566: A separate incident, 10 security agents and a deserter were killed in a bus ambush near the Turkish border , opposition activists reported. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported that the bus was transporting security agents between the villages of Al-Habit and Kafrnabuda in Idlib province when it was ambushed "by armed men, probably deserters". In November 2011, the FSA operated throughout Syria, both in urban areas and countryside, in
1995-470: 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
2128-406: A spokesman for the FSA, said that Brigadier-General Salman al-Awaja was given instructions to fire on residents of al-Quseir in Homs. When he refused, Nueimi said, he was killed. The FSA says that a large number of defections took place after the killing, as clashes broke out between al-Awaja's supporters in the army and the other soldiers who killed him. The Observatory said two people were killed in
2261-672: A state of despotism to democracy". Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) 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
2394-534: A strategy of quickly eliminating the regime's top leadership; successfully assassinating intelligence chief Assef Shawkat and Defence Minister Dawoud Rajiha in July 2012. In early 2012, Iran's IRGC launched a co-ordinated military campaign by sending tens of thousands of Khomeinist militants to prevent the collapse of the Syrian Arab Army; polarising the conflict along sectarian lines . After 2013,
2527-655: A third checkpoint killing and wounding several loyalists. More than a dozen people, including 11 soldiers, were killed in clashes between defectors and loyalists in Basr al-Harir , a town in southern Daraa Governorate , according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Shelling and gunfire were also reported in Deir ez-Zor by the LCC. On 14 January, the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights said there
2660-507: 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
2793-507: 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
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#17327808938402926-506: A video on the Internet where Riad al-Asaad spoke alongside several other defectors. Paying homage to the victims killed by the "criminal gangs" of regime's apparatus, Riad Al-Asaad declared the formation of Free Syrian Army: "Proceeding from our nationalistic sense, our loyalty to this people , our sense of the current need for conclusive decisions to stop this regime's massacres that cannot be tolerated any longer, and proceeding from
3059-476: 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
3192-546: Is a big-tent coalition of decentralized Syrian opposition rebel groups in the Syrian civil war founded on 29 July 2011 by Colonel Riad al-Asaad and six officers who defected from the Syrian Armed Forces . The officers announced that the immediate priority of the Free Syrian Army was to safeguard the lives of protestors and civilians from the deadly crackdown by Bashar al-Assad 's security apparatus; with
3325-590: 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
3458-559: 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
3591-478: 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
3724-408: 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
3857-472: 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
3990-478: 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 is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of
4123-521: Is just the other face of the same coin". The NCC differs from the SNC on two main points of strategy: The Coordination Committee is largely based inside Syria, and was formed in 2011 at a congress in Damascus . It gathers all of the political parties of the National Democratic Rally , formerly Syria's main secular opposition coalition, and few other organizations. It has a generally secular membership, although not exclusively so. Most member organizations have
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4256-574: 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
4389-906: 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
4522-777: 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 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
4655-590: 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
4788-413: 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
4921-524: 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
5054-445: 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
5187-471: The Damascus countryside while one of the armed individuals died, additionally that day, two explosive devices were dismantled. More army defections were reported in Damascus on 10 November, three out of at least nine defectors were shot dead by loyalist gunmen after abandoning their posts. The same day, clashes reportedly resulted in the death of a fifteen-year-old boy in Khan Sheikhoun , when he
5320-718: The Democratic Union Party left in October 2011 to join the Kurdish National Council . Some opposition activists have accused the NCC of being a front organization for Bashar al-Assad 's government and some of its members of being ex-government insiders. Relations with other Syrian political opposition groups are generally poor. The Syrian Revolution General Commission , the Local Coordination Committees of Syria or
5453-713: The Lebanese border , according to Reuters. According to Reuters, two rocket propelled grenades hit a Baath party building in Damascus on 20 December, which if confirmed would indicate the FSA had a greater reach than previously believed. However, an AFP reporter went to the area and saw no signs of the claimed attack while residents said that there had been no explosions. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, on 24 November soldiers and Shabiha with armoured vehicles started operations in farmland west of Rastan in Homs province to track down defectors. 24 people died as
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5586-700: The Supreme Council of the Syrian Revolution oppose the NCC calls to dialogue with the Syrian government. In September 2012, the Syrian National Council (SNC) reaffirmed that despite broadening its membership, it would not join with "currents close to [the] NCC". Despite recognizing the Free Syrian Army on 23 September 2012, the FSA has dismissed the NCC as an extension of the government, stating that "this opposition
5719-570: The Syrian National Council (SNC) in November 2011, agreed to not attack Syrian army units that are staying in their barracks, and concentrate on protecting and defending civilians. In November 2011, "The Free Syrian Army boasts it has as many 25,000 fighters in its ranks, a number challenged by its critics who say the true figure is closer to 1,000". early December, the US International Business Times stated that
5852-696: The Syrian Salvation Government , the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria , or are in the Al-Tanf Deconfliction Zone . The first defections from the Syrian Army during the Syrian uprising may have occurred at the end of April 2011 when the army was sent into Daraa to quell ongoing protests . There were reports that some units refused to fire on protesters and had split from
5985-467: The Syrian uprising (or civil war) running since March 2011, a group of defected Syrian Army officers established the ' Free Syrian Army' to bring down the Assad government. On 29 July 2011, Colonel Riad al-Asaad and a group of uniformed officers announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army or 'Syrian Free Army', with the goals of protecting unarmed protesters and helping to "bring down this regime", in
6118-568: 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
6251-494: 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
6384-419: 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
6517-978: 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. Free Syrian Army [REDACTED] AANES Factions : Non-state allies Non-state opponents Syrian-affiliated groups Shi'ite groups YPG and Allies The Free Syrian Army ( FSA ; Arabic : الجيش السوري الحر , romanized : al-jaysh as-Sūrī al-ḥur )
6650-454: 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
6783-571: 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
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#17327808938406916-834: 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
7049-440: The FSA became affected by decreasing discipline, absence of a centralised political leadership, lack of substantial Western support, deteriorating supply of weapons, and diminishing funds; while rival Islamist militias emerged dominant in the armed opposition. Russian military intervention in 2015 ensured Assad's survival and halted the expansion of the FSA. A series of Russian and Iranian-backed counter-offensives launched by
7182-504: The FSA counted 15,000 ex-Syrian soldiers. On 5 November, at least nine people died in clashes between soldiers, protesters and defectors, and four Shabeeha were killed in Idlib reportedly by army deserters. On the same day, the state-news agency SANA reported the deaths of 13 soldiers and policemen as a result of clashes with armed groups. According to SANA, four policemen were also wounded in clashes with an armed group in Kanakir in
7315-507: The FSA was killed by the Syrian army on 17 December according to Local Committee, and opposition source. On 19 December, the FSA suffered its largest loss of life when new defectors tried to abandon their positions and bases between the villages of Kensafra and Kefer Quaid in Idlib province . Activist groups, specifically the Syrian Observatory for Human rights, reported that 72 defectors were killed as they were gunned down during their attempted escape. The Syrian Army lost three soldiers during
7448-461: The FSA would start to receive military support from Turkey , who allowed the rebel army to operate its command and headquarters from the country's southern Hatay province close to the Syrian border, and its field command from inside Syria . The FSA would often launch attacks into Syria's northern towns and cities, while using the Turkish side of the border as a safe zone and supply route. By
7581-490: The Free Syrian Army was documented in videos. On 23 September 2011, the Free Syrian Army merged with the Free Officers Movement ( Arabic : حركة الضباط الأحرار , Ḥarakat aḑ-Ḑubbāṭ al-Aḥrār ); The Wall Street Journal considered the FSA since then the main military defectors group. From 27 September to 1 October, Syrian government forces, backed by tanks and helicopters, led a major offensive on
7714-536: The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Clashes were also reported in the city of Binnish in Idlib province with a total of 14 fatalities for both affected towns, including rebels, loyalists and civilians. A few days later on 17 October, five government troops were killed in the town of Qusayr in the central province of Homs , near the border with Lebanon , and 17 people were reported wounded in skirmishes with defectors in
7847-412: 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
7980-458: The NCC members who had been at the China meeting along with another NCC member who had come to collect them were detained by the Syrian government, with all contact being lost with them since 5:30 on 20 September. The NCC spokesman Khalaf Dahowd described this detainment as kidnapping, with the NCC executive further elaborating that they believed the three members to have been "forcibly disappeared" by
8113-509: The NCC were briefly detained. The NCC has been hosted by Russia for talks with the Syrian government. During these talks in April 2012 SANA , the official news agency, claimed that the NCC and the government were in widespread agreement. In September 2012 the NCC met with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi , and called for a four-point plan which included political transition. Upon returning to Syria via Damascus International Airport , two of
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#17327808938408246-690: 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
8379-576: 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
8512-414: The Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate . The Syrian government on the other hand claimed that the NCC members were captured by "terrorist groups", despite having detained five other NCC members for the first time on Monday that week. On 23 September 2012, the NCC held a rare meeting in Damascus, and for the first time recognized the Free Syrian Army , and for what The Washington Post described as
8645-428: The Syrian border. Turkey would allow the FSA to begin operating in nearby towns and encouraged foreign intervention in the Syrian Civil War. In August 2012, the National Unity Brigades was formed. Known for its non-sectarianism . The group included rebels from minority groups such as Christians , Druze , Ismailis , and Alawites . On 6 January 2012, General Mustafa al-Sheikh of the Syrian Army defected from
8778-403: The Syrian people's opposition to the regime", through armed operations and the encouragement of army defections. In 2012, military commanders and civilian leadership of the FSA issued a joint communique pledging to transition Syria towards a pluralistic, democratic republic , after forcing Assad out of power. As the Syrian Army is highly organized and well-armed, the Free Syrian Army adopted
8911-449: The Syrian territories without exception"; "you will find us everywhere at all times, and you will see that which you do not expect, until we re-establish the rights and freedom of our people." Riad al-Assad urged all factions of the Syrian opposition to unite and put an end to internal disputes; until liberation from the dictatorship and formation of a “free, national, democratic” civilian government in Syria. Desertion of soldiers to
9044-444: 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 a result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary,
9177-421: The air force intelligence complex was a continuation of clashes in Damascus . The next day, the Free Syrian Army launched an assault against the Baath party youth headquarters in Idlib province with RPGs and small arms. The state news agency SANA reported the deaths of three Syrian troops as a result of a bomb blast, with an officer also critically wounded and two law-enforcement agents injured. Three members of
9310-413: The ambush. The FSA grew in size, to about 20,000 by December 2011. In the early days of their existence, 90% of the FSA consisted of Sunni Muslims and a small minority were ( Shia ) Alawites , Druze , Christians, Kurds and Palestinians. Western sources in December 2011 again gave estimates of 10,000 Syrian deserters, indicated that half the Syrian army conscripts had not reported to army duty in
9443-449: The armed wing of the Syrian revolution and was able to mobilise the popular anger toward Bashar al-Assad into a successful insurgency. By waging guerilla warfare across the country, it enjoyed a string of successes against far better-equipped government forces. Assad's policy of ignoring protesters' demands alongside the regime's intensifying violence on civilians and protestors led to a full-blown civil war by 2012. The FSA initially pursued
9576-539: The army and we have defected because the government is killing civilian protesters. The Syrian army attacked Hama with heavy weapons, air raids and heavy fire from tanks . … We ask the Arab League observers to come visit areas affected by air raids and attacks so you can see the damage with your own eyes, and we ask you to send someone to uncover the three cemeteries in Hama filled with more than 460 corpses." Syrian forces clashed with army deserters in an area near
9709-520: The army in a year to a year-and-a-half, even if they are armed only with rocket-propelled grenades and light weapons". On 7 January 2012, Colonel Afeef Mahmoud Suleima of the Syrian Air Force logistics division defected from Bashar Al Assad 's regime along with at least fifty of his men. He announced his group's defection on live television and ordered his men to protect protesters in the city of Hama . Colonel Suleiman declared: "We are from
9842-425: The army's responsibility to protect this unarmed free people, we announce the formation of the Free Syrian Army to work hand in hand with the people to achieve freedom and dignity to bring this regime down, protect the revolution and the country's resources, and stand in the face of the irresponsible military machine that protects the regime.” He called on the officers and men of the Syrian army to "defect from
9975-490: The army, stop pointing their rifles at their people's chests, join the free army, and form a national army that can protect the revolution and all sections of the Syrian people with all their sects." He said that those soldiers and officers who didn't defect from the Syrian army "[represents] gangs that protect the regime", and declared that "as of now, the security forces that kill civilians and besiege cities will be treated as legitimate targets. We will target them in all parts of
10108-412: The army. Defections, according to unverified reports, continued throughout the spring as the government used lethal force to clamp down on protesters and lay siege to protesting cities across the country, such as Baniyas , Hama , Talkalakh , and Deir ez-Zor , and there were reports of soldiers who refused to fire on civilians being summarily executed by the army. At the end of July 2011, with
10241-468: The attack. Syrian human rights activists claimed that the Free Syrian Army had killed three loyalist soldiers and captured two others on 29 November, although they did not specify where. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, seven soldiers were killed on 30 November in fighting in the town of Deal in Daraa province after security forces moved on the town in force. The fighting went on from
10374-593: The attackers as a result. On that same day, at least 10 troops and security service agents were killed in clashes with mutinous soldiers in the east of Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the deaths occurred in Deir Ezzor , while early the next day a civilian was also killed in the eastern city. Several defectors were also killed or wounded. Sustained clashes in Idlib province began on 26 November between loyalist and opposition fighters. At least 8 soldiers were killed and 40 more wounded that day when
10507-481: The beginning of October, clashes between loyalist and defected army units were being reported fairly regularly. During the first week of the month, sustained clashes were reported in Jabal al-Zawiya in the mountainous regions of Idlib province . On 13 October, clashes were reported in the town of Haara in Daraa province in the south of Syria that resulted in the death of two rebel and six loyalist soldiers, according to
10640-510: The capital Damascus, opposition activists said. The town of Reef Damascus saw fighting on 1 January as the government forces were hunting for suspected defectors, according to the activists. There were no immediate reports of casualties. According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights, despite a self-declared ceasefire, Free Syrian Army soldiers in Idlib, on 2 January, overran two checkpoints belonging to security forces and captured dozens of loyalist troops, and launched an attack on
10773-565: The city of Rastan in Homs province , which had been under opposition control for a couple weeks. There were reports of large numbers of defections in the city, and the Free Syrian Army reported it had destroyed 17 armoured vehicles during clashes in Rastan , using RPGs and booby traps . A defected officer in the Syrian opposition claimed that over a hundred officers had defected as well as thousands of conscripts, although many had gone into hiding or home to their families, rather than fighting
10906-426: The city. In November, there were conflicting reports of the number of Syrian soldiers injured and killed. On 11 November, Reuters reported that 26 soldiers were killed, while Syrian state media reported the lower figure of 20 soldiers killed at this time. For the month up until 13 November, the Local Coordination Committees reported the death of about 20 soldiers, the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights reported
11039-537: The clash with defectors in Kfar Takharim and two armoured vehicles were destroyed. On 12 December, three civilians and two defectors were killed during clashes in Idlib province. Fighting in Ebita, in the northwestern province of Idlib, continued throughout the night and into the early hours on 12 December. At least one fighter was killed and another injured in the assault. The FSA killed ten troops in an ambush on
11172-434: The clashes. The next day, S.O.H.R. stated that in all 100 defectors were killed or wounded. The clashes continued into the next day, and another report, by Lebanese human rights activist Wissam Tarif, put the death toll even higher with 163 defectors, 97 government troops and nine civilians killed on the second day alone as the military tracked down the soldiers and civilian that managed to initially escape. On 21 December, it
11305-513: The conflict so far. At least five soldiers, including a military officer, are reported to have been killed the same day in an unspecified location. In one of Sunday's clashes, which took place before dawn in the northwestern town of Kfar Takharim, two of the military's armored vehicles were set ablaze, said the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights . Three other vehicles were burned in another clash near
11438-574: 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
11571-422: The death of more than 100 soldiers, and the Syrian state media SANA reported the death of 71 soldiers. Increased Clashes in Daraa province began on 14 November when 34 soldiers and 12 defectors were killed in an ambush by the free army. The death toll as a result of the fighting also included 23 civilians. One day later on 15 November, eight soldiers and security forces troops were killed by an assault on
11704-469: The dismantlement of the Syrian government or the removal of Bashar al-Assad as president, apart from their 18 March 2012 demonstration in Damascus when some of them chanted, "The people want the fall of the regime". The Coordination Committee, unlike the Syrian National Council , believed that the solution was to keep the current Syrian government, and hoped to resolve the current crisis through dialogue, in order to achieve "a safe and peaceful transition from
11837-467: The early morning to the late afternoon. "Two security force vehicles were blown up. Seven (troops) were killed," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the observatory. An activist from the town, in the province of Daraa, said some 30 busloads of security men stormed Deal and two of the buses were blown up in fighting "between security forces and defectors," the Observatory reported. One of the destroyed buses
11970-431: The edge of the town. The defectors launched an assault on the government held roadblock in retaliation for a raid on their positions the previous night. The next day on 26 October, the opposition reported that nine soldiers were killed by a rocket-propelled grenade when it hit their bus in the village of Hamrat, near the city of Hama . The gunmen who attacked the bus were believed to be defected soldiers. On 29 October,
12103-587: 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
12236-728: 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
12369-607: 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
12502-519: The first time that the NCC formally called for the "overthrowing [of] the regime with all its symbols". The Preparatory Committee issued an eight-point statement which called for: After the pro-Assad Syrian Social Nationalist Party had withdrawn from the Popular Front for Change and Liberation , the NCC on 10 August 2014 signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the remaining Popular Front, calling for ″comprehensive grassroots change, which means
12635-510: 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
12768-537: The free army attacked them in Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported. "A group of deserters attacked a squad of soldiers and security agents in a convoy of seven vehicles, including three all-terrain vehicles, on the road from Ghadka to Maarat al-Numaan ", the Britain-based watchdog said. "Eight were killed and at least 40 more were wounded. The deserters were able to withdraw without suffering any casualties," it added. The FSA claimed to be behind
12901-742: 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
13034-401: The government forces to join the FSA. General Mustafa al-Sheikh told Reuters that up to 20,000 soldiers in total had deserted the army since the beginning of the conflict, and that the FSA had taken control of large swathes of land. He said in an interview on 12 January 2012: "If we get 25,000 to 30,000 deserters mounting guerrilla warfare in small groups of six or seven it is enough to exhaust
13167-593: The houses at the edges of Saraqeb and arrested three activists at dawn, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Between 1 and 7 December, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported the deaths of 48 members of the state security forces. A military tank was destroyed in Homs on 9 December. Four defected soldiers also apparently died in fighting on 9 December. On 10 December, activists say clashes between Syrian troops and army defectors killed at least two people. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says two army armoured carriers were burned in
13300-538: 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
13433-613: 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
13566-543: The last three call-ups, and that lower-level officers were deserting in large numbers; in some cases, whole units had deserted en masse . An anonymously speaking U.S. official however estimated in December 2011 1,000 to 3,500 defectors in total. In 2011, The Turkish government provided free passage to defecting Syrian Army fighters and allowed the FSA to operate from a special refugee camp in Southern Turkey near
13699-604: 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)
13832-420: 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
13965-458: The loyalist forces. The Battle of Rastan between the government forces and the Free Syrian Army was the longest and most intense action up until that time. After a week of fighting, the FSA was forced to retreat from Rastan. To avoid government forces, the leader of the FSA, Col. Riad Asaad, retreated to the Turkish side of Syrian-Turkish border. By October 2011, the leadership of the FSA consisting of 60–70 people including commander Riad al-Assad
14098-883: 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
14231-727: 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
14364-657: The northwest of Syria ( Idlib and Aleppo Governorates ), the central region ( Homs and Hama Governorates , Al-Rastan District ), the coast around Latakia , the south ( Daraa Governorate and the Houran plateau ), the east ( Deir ez-Zor Governorate , Abu Kamal District ), and the Damascus Governorate . FSA was then armed with rifles, light and heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and explosive devices. Their largest concentrations were in Homs, Hama and surrounding areas. The FSA, after consultation with
14497-424: 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
14630-429: The opposition reported that 17 pro-Assad soldiers were killed in the city of Homs during fighting with suspected army deserters, including a defected senior official who was aiding the rebel soldiers. Two armoured personnel carriers were disabled in the fighting. Later the number of casualties was revised to 20 killed and 53 wounded soldiers in clashes with presumed army deserters, according to Agence France Presse . In
14763-468: The opposition reported that clashes occurred between loyalists and defectors in Burhaniya , near the town of Qusayr in the central province of Homs , leading to the death of several soldiers and the destruction of two military vehicles. A week later on 25 October, clashes occurred in the northwestern town of Maarat al-Numaan in Idlib province between loyalists and defected soldiers at a roadblock on
14896-549: 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
15029-580: The pre-dawn clash in the northwestern town of Kfar Takharim. On 11 December, it was reported that a battle was fought between defectors and the Syrian army in Busra al-Harir and Lujah . Troops, mainly from the 12th Armoured Brigade, based in Isra, 40 km from the border with Jordan, stormed the nearby town of Busra al-Harir, the Reuters news agency reported. It was apparently the largest battle to take place in
15162-409: The regime in 2016 eroded the significant territorial gains made by the FSA and severely weakened its command structure. After the Turkish military intervention in Syria in 2016, and as other countries began to scale back their involvement, many FSA militias became more dependent on Turkey , which became a sanctuary and source of supplies. From late August 2016, the Turkish government assembled
15295-410: 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
15428-458: 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
15561-461: The security forces were reportedly killed on between 18 and 19 November by the Free Syrian Army. Multiple attacks on 19 December by armed groups were also reported by the state news agency SANA. State news also reported that ten wanted armed individuals were captured in Maarat al-Numan . On 23 November, five defected soldiers were killed; four in a farm near Daraa where they were hiding and one near
15694-476: The security forces, including an officer, at the southern city of Deal in Daraa province on 5 December. On 7 December, there were clashes between the Syrian regular army and groups of army defectors near the radio broadcasting centre in the town of Saraqeb , in Idib district . An armoured personnel carrier (APC) of the regular army was destroyed during the clashes. Meanwhile, joint security and military forces raided
15827-458: 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
15960-494: The southern village of Busra al-Harir , the group said. Similar battles took place in several other parts of the south, said the Observatory and another activist group called the Local Coordination Committees. Syrian army defectors, who operate under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, say that a senior army officer was killed on 11 December after refusing to fire on civilians in Homs. Maher al-Nueimi,
16093-563: 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
16226-463: The town of Hass in Idlib province near the mountain range of Jabal al-Zawiya , although it was unclear if the wounded included civilians. According to the London-based organization, an estimated 11 government soldiers were killed that day, four of which were killed in a bombing. It was not clear if the defectors linked to these incidents were connected to the Free Syrian Army. On 20 October,
16359-501: 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
16492-531: The transition from the current authoritarian regime to a democratic pluralistic system within a democratic civil State based on the principle of equal citizenship to all Syrians regardless of their ethnic, religious and sectarian identities.″ On 25 March 2019, the NCC condemned the United States' recognition of the disputed Golan Heights region as part of the State of Israel , calling on "the governments of
16625-474: The ultimate goal of accomplishing the objectives of the Syrian revolution , namely, the end to the decades-long reign of the ruling al-Assad family . In late 2011, the FSA was the main Syrian military defectors group. Initially a formal military organization at its founding, its original command structure dissipated by 2016, and the FSA identity has since been used by various Syrian opposition groups. The Free Syrian Army aims to be "the military wing of
16758-451: The village of Hirak in Daraa province. The FSA engaged loyalist army units and security service agents south of Damascus on 15 December, leading to 27 loyalist deaths and an unknown number of FSA casualties. The clashes broke out at three separate checkpoints in Daraa province around dawn Between 8 and 15 December, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported the deaths of 68 members of the state security forces. A lieutenant colonel of
16891-891: The world and its peace-loving people" to oppose the US position. In June 2023, reports of cooperation between the NCC and the Syrian Democratic Council , the political organization of the Rojava Kurdish controlled areas in Northern Syria, emerged. In March 2012, the Coordination Committee was described by The New York Times as "one of Syria’s most moderate opposition groups" in the context of their demonstration where "officers in plain clothes beat them with sticks and began making arrests." Prior to September 2012, its members did not call for
17024-451: 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
17157-679: Was allegedly empty. On 1 December, FSA troops launched a raid on an intelligence building in Idlib , leading to a three-hour firefight in which eight loyalists were killed. This came the same day the United Nations announced it considered Syria to be in a state of civil war. On 3 December, clashes in the city of Idlib in the north of Syria the next day resulted in the death of seven Assad loyalist soldiers, five defectors and three civilians. On 4 December, heavy fighting raged in Homs during which at least five FSA insurgents were killed and one wounded. Defected soldiers killed four members of
17290-665: Was caught in crossfire between Assad loyalists and the free army. Also on 10 November "at least four soldiers in the regular army were killed at dawn in an attack, headed by armed men – probably deserters – on a military checkpoint in Has region, near Maaret al-Numan town" according to the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights . However, the number has also been put at five soldiers. A checkpoint in Maarat al-Numaan three kilometers south of Homs also came under attack by defectors, resulting in an increase in tank deployment by Syrian security forces in
17423-511: Was fighting between deserters and loyalist troops in Hula, Homs province, after the defectors destroyed a barricade and a number of security forces were killed or wounded. In mid-January, the FSA managed to take control over the border town of Zabadani , just 14 miles away from the capital, Damascus . Regular army forces tried to assault the town several times but as of 16 January all attacks were repelled. On 16 January General Mouaffac Hamzeh in
17556-503: Was harbored in an 'officers' camp' in Turkey guarded by the Turkish military. In early November 2011, two FSA units in the Damascus area confronted regime forces. In mid-November, in an effort to weaken the pro-Assad forces, the FSA released a statement which announced that a temporary military council had been formed. In October 2011, an American official said the Syrian military might have lost perhaps 10,000 to defections. By October,
17689-532: Was reported that the FSA had taken control over large swathes of Idlib province including some towns and villages. It was also reported on 24 December that the FSA stronghold in the Bab Amr neighbourhood of Homs was under attack by security forces, with two FSA soldiers killed. A week later, a minute long fire fight erupted between FSA forces and government security forces, on a road near the village of Dael in Daraa province . Four government soldiers were killed in
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