Saudi Arabian opposition groups
107-635: The Peninsula Shield Force (or Peninsula Shield ; Arabic : دِرْعُ الجَزيرَة , romanized : Dirʿ al-Jazīra ) is the military arm of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It is intended to deter, and respond to military aggression against any of the GCC member countries: Bahrain , Kuwait , Oman , Saudi Arabia , Qatar , and the United Arab Emirates . In 1984, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) decided to create
214-569: A Mabahith facility in Dammam , and forbidden family visits. In mid-March 2011, Reuters chief correspondent in Saudi Arabia, Ulf Laessing, who had reported from Riyadh since 2009, had his journalistic accreditation withdrawn because of his reporting on the early 2011 Saudi Arabian protests, effectively forcing him to leave Saudi Arabia. One of the subsequent responses of the Saudi government
321-524: A women's right-to-drive campaign , with the main action to take place on 17 June. Al-Sharif drove a car in May and was detained on 22 May and from 23‒30 May. Other women also drove cars, including actress Wajnat Rahbini, who was arrested after driving in Jeddah on 4 June and released a day later. From 17 June to late June, about seventy cases of women driving were documented. In late September, Shaima Jastania
428-575: 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
535-435: 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
642-644: A joint military force of 10,000 soldiers divided into two brigades , called the Peninsula Shield Force, based in Saudi Arabia near the Kuwaiti and Iraqi borders. The PSF is composed of infantry, armor, artillery, and combat support elements from each of the GCC countries. In 1992, the Peninsula Shield Force was headed by a Saudi Arabian, based near King Khalid Military City at Hafar al Batin , and had one infantry brigade of 5,000 men from all
749-487: 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
856-690: 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
963-514: A million copies of the fatwa to be printed and distributed. On 22–23 March 2011, officials of the Ministry of Municipal and Rural affairs announced that men-only municipal elections to elect half the members of local councils would be held in September 2011 . Associated Press described the election announcement as having "coincided with rumblings of dissent in Saudi Arabia stemming from
1070-859: A non- Sharia court, because of the rejection of their driving licence applications. As of the end of June 2012, 100 Saudi women had started driving regularly since the June 2011 campaign launch. Women university students protested in King Khalid University in Abha in March and were attacked by security forces, leading to one death. Other university protests followed in Taibah University in Medina and Tabuk University in March and April. In July 2012, Amnesty International protested in
1177-464: A protest immediately following the arrest, with several funerals and protests following, including calls for the downfall of the House of Saud . While detained, al-Nimr was tortured and started a hunger strike , he was later executed in the 2016 mass execution . Protest organisers insisted on the use of nonviolent resistance and called for all Shia and Sunni detainees to be freed. A protester and
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#17327692706431284-462: 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",
1391-479: A series of benefits for citizens amounting to $ 10.7 billion. These include funding to offset high inflation and to aid young unemployed people and Saudi citizens studying abroad, as well as writing off some loans. State employees' incomes were increased by 15 percent and new housing loans subsidies were introduced. No political reforms were announced as part of the package, though the 86-year-old monarch did pardon some prisoners indicted in financial crimes. On 6 March,
1498-452: A seven-month low on stability concerns. During the week of 27 February, global stock prices fell as oil prices increased and silver reached a 30-year high price on stability concerns in the region. Regional stock market indices also fell on concern for Saudi stability. In August 2017, ten Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Desmond Tutu and Lech Wałęsa , urged Saudi Arabia to stop the executions of 14 young people for participating in
1605-470: 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
1712-926: A soldier were fatally shot in Qatif during a 3–4 August protest, leading to more protests. Protests and sit-ins calling for political prisoners to be released spread beyond the Eastern Province to protests at the Ministry of Interior in Riyadh on 20 March and in Riyadh and Buraidah in December 2011, and in July and August 2012 near al-Ha'ir Prison . Women organised a Facebook women's suffrage campaign called "Baladi", stating that Saudi Arabian law gives women electoral rights. In April 2011, women in Jeddah , Riyadh and Dammam tried to register as electors for
1819-507: 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
1926-507: 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
2033-476: 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
2140-590: 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
2247-559: 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
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#17327692706432354-478: 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
2461-408: 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
2568-472: 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
2675-478: 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
2782-574: 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
2889-906: 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
2996-777: 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
3103-590: 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
3210-413: 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
3317-524: 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
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3424-445: 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
3531-505: The 29 September municipal elections despite officials stating that women could not participate. In May and June, Manal al-Sharif and other women organised a women's right-to-drive campaign , with the main action to take place on 17 June. In late September, Shaima Jastania was sentenced to 10 lashes for driving in Jeddah, shortly after King Abdullah announced women's participation in the 2015 municipal elections and eligibility as Consultative Assembly members; King Abdullah overturned
3638-748: The Arab Spring that started with the 2011 Tunisian revolution . Protests started with a self-immolation in Samtah and Jeddah street protests in late January 2011. Protests against anti-Shia discrimination followed in February and early March in Qatif , Hofuf , al-Awamiyah , and Riyadh . A Facebook organiser of a planned 11 March "Day of Rage", Faisal Ahmed Abdul-Ahad, was allegedly killed by Saudi security forces on 2 March, with several hundred people protesting in Qatif, Hofuf and al-Amawiyah on
3745-543: The Eastern Province such as al-Awamiyah , and Hofuf . The protesters called for the release of prisoners, for the Peninsula Shield Force to be withdrawn from Bahrain, for equal representation in key offices and for reforms in political positions, as they feel marginalised. In response to the 22–23 March announcement of men-only municipal elections in late September 2011 to elect half
3852-430: The Eastern Province , and extended to calls for the Peninsula Shield Force to be withdrawn from Bahrain and for the Eastern Province to have a constitution and a legislature. Four protesters were shot dead by Saudi authorities in late November in Qatif region protests and funerals, two on 2012 January 13 and two on 9 and 10 February 2012. In the early 2012 demonstrations, protesters chanted slogans against
3959-407: The House of Saud and Minister of Interior , Nayef , calling Nayef a "terrorist", "criminal" and "butcher" and throwing an effigy of Nayef at tanks. Police described two of the fatal shootings as responses to unidentified gunmen who had shot first. Eastern Province protests intensified after Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was wounded in the leg and arrested by police on 8 July. Four men were killed in
4066-669: The Iraq War to protect Kuwait from potential Iraqi attacks. It did not participate in operations against Iraq. On 14 March 2011, the Bahraini government requested Peninsula Shield Forces enter Bahrain via the causeway from Saudi Arabia. Forces were from Saudi Arabia and the UAE entered Bahrain while Kuwait and Oman refrained from sending troops. The Bahraini uprising was the first GCC deployment in relation to an internal threat. In late March, Peninsula Shield Force commander al-Azima stated that
4173-492: The Qatif region intensified after Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr was wounded in the leg and arrested by police on 8 July. Three men were killed in a protest on the evening of the arrest. Funerals and protests took place on 10 July, including chants calling for the downfall of the House of Saud . While detained, al-Nimr was tortured, had bruises on his face and broken teeth, and started a hunger strike . Protest organisers in al-Awamiyah stated their support for al-Nimr and insisted on
4280-474: The Saudi Arabian Council of Senior Scholars , headed by Grand Mufti Abd al-'Aziz al-Ashaikh , issued a fatwā (religious opinion) opposing petitions and demonstrations, declaring, "Therefore the council hereby reaffirms that only the reform and [counsel] that has its legitimacy is that which may bring welfare and avert the evil, whereas it is illegal to issue statements and take signatures for
4387-551: The Specialized Criminal Court in September 2015, and as of 23 September 2015 , awaited ratification of his sentence by King Salman of Saudi Arabia , to be carried out by beheading and crucifixion (in that order). Manal al-Sharif and Samar Badawi , active in the women to drive movement , announced that they had filed lawsuits against Saudi authorities in the Grievances Board ,
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4494-528: The Umma Islamic Party – considered to be the first political party in Saudi Arabia since the 1990s – to demand the end of absolute monarchy in the country. On 18 February however, all ten members of the party were arrested and ordered to withdraw demands for political reform in exchange for their release. On 23 February, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, after returning to the country following three months spent abroad for health treatment, announced
4601-713: The United Nations Human Rights Council against legal persecution of Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) leaders. Ten female activists were detained in a Buraidah 14 July protest calling for political prisoners to be freed. Similar protests calling for prisoners to be freed and protesting against the Saudi government occurred in Buraidah on 23 July and in front of the Ministry of Interior near al-Ha'ir Prison and in Dammam in August. In July and August 2012, protests in
4708-568: 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
4815-494: 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
4922-419: 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
5029-1241: 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. 2011%E2%80%9312 Saudi Arabian protests support by: [REDACTED] United States [REDACTED] Saudi Arabian government [REDACTED] Human Rights Defenders [REDACTED] Independent Opposition leaders [REDACTED] King Abdullah King of Saudi Arabia [REDACTED] Prince Salman Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia [REDACTED] Prince Nayef Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia (until June 2012) [REDACTED] Prince Muhammad Interior Minister The protests in Saudi Arabia were part of
5136-454: 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
5243-463: The 23, was arrested by Mabahith on 2 January 2012. Hussain Ali Abdullah al-Baraki, Mosa Ja'far Mohammad al-Mabyouq, and two others among the 23 were also arrested on 2 January. The Ministry of Interior claimed that al-Shokan, al-Baraki and al-Mabyouq had turned themselves in voluntarily. On 10 January, Aqeel al-Yaseen was wounded in al-Awamiyah by security forces, arrested and transferred to
5350-571: 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
5457-420: The 70,000 strong funeral for Abdallah on 16 January in al-Awamiyah and the daily Qatif region protests that followed, protesters chanted slogans against the House of Saud and Minister of Interior , Nayef, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia . In mid-February, two medical personnel were arrested for having clandestinely treated injured protesters. In a 10 February protest and a 13 February funeral, an effigy of Nayef
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#17327692706435564-834: 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
5671-596: The Bangladeshi man was driving when his car was hit by bullets fired at two security patrol cars. However, an activist in Al-Awamiyah gave a different account of the incident, saying the man had been killed by gunfire when security forces stormed a house while trying to arrest one of the 23 wanted activist for organising protest in Qatif. On 10 February 2011, a Reuters report claimed that 10 intellectuals, human rights activists and lawyers came together to create
5778-614: The GCC member states. As of late 2006, the Peninsula Shield Force had 7,000 personnel and functioned as a joint intervention force to defend the joint border of Saudi Arabia , Kuwait , and Iraq . In November 2006, the GCC Joint Defense Council considered a Saudi proposal to expand the capabilities of the Shield and to establish a joint command and control system. In December 2007, Kuwait's National Security Council chief Shaikh Ahmed Fahad Al Ahmed Al Sabah announced that
5885-663: The GCC plans to create a replacement for the Peninsula Shield Force. He stated that "the GCC options would always be unified just as they were when leaders declared the establishment of a common market at the Doha Summit." As of March 2011, the Peninsula Shield Force was commanded by Saudi Major General Mutlaq bin Salem Al-Azima and has about 40,000 troops and continues to have its permanent base at King Khalid Military City near Hafar al Batin . According to Peninsula Shield Force commander Al-Azima, any intervention by
5992-412: 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
6099-536: The Peninsula Shield Force's presence in Bahrain. Chuck Hagel called for greater defense cooperation in the GCC, including bloc sales of American arms to the organization. On 11 December 2013, the GCC announced the formation of a joint military command. In 2016, Saudi Arabia held a military drill named " North Thunder " with a consortium of 20 countries to display its military cooperation with Arab countries. Pakistan, Djibouti, and other nations also contributed to
6206-400: The Peninsula Shield Force. Every military unit present in Bahrain included soldiers from all six GCC member states. While some have argued that this was a Saudi attempt to block democratic processes taking hold, Bahraini officials argued that the Peninsula Shield Force was there to protect government facilities, rather than to intrude in the internal affairs of the country itself. In October 2011
6313-602: The Peninsula Shield announced its intention to sue "a number of satellite TV channels for propagating lies and allegations about the Peninsula Shield forces that entered Bahrain". This followed persistent claims by these channels about the Gulf forces strafing demonstrators with warplanes and destroying mosques. Frequent Saudi Arabian street protests in and near Qatif in mid to late March, originally calling for political prisoners to be released, extended to opposition to
6420-489: The Qatif region continued during 2017–19 , with deaths of protestors and security forces. On 21 January 2011, an unidentified 65-year-old man died after setting himself on fire in the town of Samtah , Jizan . This was apparently the kingdom's first known case of self-immolation . On 10 September 2012, a Bangladeshi man was shot dead in the Al-Awamiyah district of eastern Saudi Arabia. Saudi police said that
6527-687: The Qatif region in successive protests and funerals. Hundreds of people protested in Riyadh and Buraidah in December, calling for the release or trial of prisoners. A protest for labour rights took place in Riyadh on 14 January and a sit-in calling for the Syrian Ambassador to be expelled occurred on 5 February in Jeddah . Protests in the Qatif region continued from January to May, with security forces arresting medical personnel. Security forces shot dead Issam Mohamed Abu Abdallah in al-Awamiyah on 12 or 13 January, and Munir al-Midani and Zuhair al-Said on 9 and 10 February. In
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#17327692706436634-690: 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
6741-576: 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
6848-532: The Saudi organisation Human Rights First Society called for ACPRA co-founder Mohammed Saleh Albejadi to be released following his arbitrary arrest in Buraidah on 21 March by Mabahith , the internal security agency. In April, several small protests over labour rights took place in front of government ministry buildings in Riyadh, Ta'if and Tabuk . Protests, made up mainly of Shia protesters, continued in late March and April in Qatif and smaller cities in
6955-444: 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,
7062-426: The body would not be handed over to the family. In March 2017, after a long campaign of harassment, the Saudi security forces killed two members of Nimr family during a raid on a farm in eastern Saudi Arabia. Miqdad and Mohammad Al-Nimr were killed at a farm in Awamiyah, the Nimr family hometown. al-Nimr was very critical of the Saudi Arabian government , and called for free elections in Saudi Arabia . Protests in
7169-509: 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
7276-614: The day itself. Khaled al-Johani demonstrated alone in Riyadh, was interviewed by BBC Arabic Television , was detained in ʽUlaysha Prison , and became known online as "the only brave man in Saudi Arabia". Many protests over human rights took place in April 2011 in front of government ministry buildings in Riyadh , Ta'if and Tabuk and in January 2012 in Riyadh. In 2011, Nimr al-Nimr encouraged his supporters in nonviolent resistance . Anti-government protests demanding release of prisoners held without charge or trial continued in April and May 2011 in Qatif, al-Awamiyah and Hofuf in
7383-538: The drill. 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
7490-515: The eastern part of Saudi Arabia, the Ministry of the Interior warned that the "ban [on] all sorts of demonstrations, marches, sit-ins" imposed by Saudi law would be enforced. On 9 March, Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal stated that the government would not tolerate any street protests against it, while also saying that the "best way to achieve demands is through national dialogue". On 21 March, Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) co-founder Mohammed Saleh Albejadi (also Al-Bjady )
7597-412: 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
7704-728: 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
7811-607: 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
7918-498: The force must include participation from all GCC member states. The Peninsula Shield Force was not sufficiently developed to be deployed in defence of Kuwait ahead of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990. A force of about 3,000 men from the Peninsula Shield Force, in addition to forces of its member states, took part in the liberation of Kuwait in March 1991. 10,000 troops and two ships of Peninsula Shield Force were deployed to Kuwait in February 2003 ahead of
8025-510: 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
8132-742: 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
8239-597: 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
8346-613: 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
8453-604: 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)
8560-420: 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
8667-470: The main administrators of one of the Facebook groups calling for a "Day of Rage" on 11 March, Faisal Ahmed Abdul-Ahad (or Abdul-Ahadwas ), was killed by Saudi security forces , who removed his body to "hide evidence of the crime". On 5 March, thousands of security forces were sent to the north-east, causing delays on the road to Dammam . On the same day, following about two weeks of small protests in
8774-682: The main organisers, Faisal Ahmed Abdul-Ahad (or Abdul-Ahadwas ), was alleged to have been killed by Saudi security forces on 2 March, by which time one of the Facebook groups discussing the plans had over 26,000 members. On 11 March, several hundred people protested in Qatif, Hofuf and al-Amawiyah. Khaled al-Johani demonstrated in Riyadh despite a massive police presence, was interviewed by BBC Arabic Television , and has since then been detained in 'Ulaysha Prison . Al-Johani became known online as "the only brave man in Saudi Arabia". The Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA) and
8881-883: 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
8988-446: The members of local councils, women organised a Facebook women's suffrage campaign called "Baladi", stating that Saudi Arabian law gives women electoral rights. In April, women in Jeddah , Riyadh and Dammam tried to register as electors for the 22 September municipal elections despite officials stating that women could not participate. In May and June, motivated by the Arab Spring , Manal al-Sharif and other women organised
9095-782: 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
9202-424: 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
9309-549: 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
9416-623: The preceding two weeks", up to about 160 protesters and critics being held without charge. In early January 2012, Saudi authorities published the names of a list of 23 people who were allegedly involved in the October 2011 Awamiyah/Qatif protests, calling for their arrests. Ministry of Interior spokesman Mansour al-Turki alleged that the protesters "were working according to a foreign agenda" and were "sponsored financially or supplied with weapons and were working as part of an organization". Shah Ali al-Shokan (or Shaukan ) from Tarout Island, one of
9523-648: The purposes of intimidation and inciting the strife. ... reform should not be by demonstrations and other means and methods that give rise to unrest and divide the community. ... The Council affirms prohibition of the demonstrations in this country and [that] the legal method which realizes the welfare without causing destruction rests on the mutual advice." The fatwa included a "severe threat against internal dissent", stating, "[The Prophet] again said: 'He who wanted separate affairs of this nation who are unified, you should kill him with sword whoever he is' (narrated by Muslim )." In late March, Abd al-'Aziz al-Ashaikh called for
9630-410: 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
9737-482: The role of the force in Bahrain was to "secure Bahrain's vital and strategically important military infrastructure from any foreign interference" and to protect Bahraini borders while Bahrain security forces are "preoccupied with [Bahraini] internal security". He denied that the force caused any Bahraini citizen to "suffer so much as a scratch", and said that the force entered Bahrain "to bring goodness, peace, and love". The 2011 Bahraini intervention, involved about 10% of
9844-458: 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
9951-542: The security forces continued, with Qatif being "a militarised zone, surrounded by checkpoints and armoured vehicles". A Saudi journalist who had been documenting the protests for two years for the BBC left Saudi Arabia as she judged the situation "too risky for [her] to continue investigating". Nimr al-Nimr was sentenced to death by the Specialized Criminal Court on 15 October 2014 for "seeking 'foreign meddling' in [Saudi Arabia], 'disobeying' its rulers and taking up arms against
10058-410: The security forces". His brother, Mohammad al-Nimr, was arrested on the same day for tweeting information about the death sentence. Al-Nimr was executed on or shortly before 2 January 2016, along with 46 others in a mass execution . His execution was condemned by Iran and Shiites throughout the Middle East, as well as by Western figures and Sunnis opposed to sectarianism . The Saudi government said
10165-496: The sentence. Al-Sharif and Samar Badawi filed lawsuits against Saudi authorities in the Grievances Board , a non- Sharia court, because of the rejection of their driving licence applications. Women university students protested in King Khalid University (KKU) in Abha in March 2012 and were attacked by security forces, leading to one death. Other university protests followed in Taibah University in Medina and Tabuk University in March and April. KKU students called for
10272-458: 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
10379-563: 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
10486-501: 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
10593-432: The university president to be dismissed. He was replaced on 1 July 2012. Protests started with a 65-year-old man's self-immolation in Samtah , Jizan on 21 January and protests of a few hundred people in late January in Jeddah , triggered by flooding, and several times throughout February and early March in the cities of Qatif , al-Awamiyah , Riyadh , and Hofuf . A "Day of Rage" was planned for 11 March. One of
10700-425: The use of nonviolent resistance . Protester Mohamed al-Shakhouri was shot in the back and neck and arrested in a 26–27 July protest calling for al-Nimr's release. Further protests called for all Shia and Sunni detainees to be freed. A protester and a soldier were fatally shot in Qatif during a 3–4 August evening human rights protest, leading to several more protests. In early 2014, conflict between protesters and
10807-402: The wave of political unrest in the Arab world". About 30 to 50 people were arrested following 29 January Jeddah demonstration. On 18 February, the ten founding members of the Umma Islamic Party were arrested and ordered to withdraw demands for political reform in exchange for their release. According to a Deutsche Presse-Agentur report on 2 March, Saudi activists have alleged that one of
10914-451: 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
11021-564: Was arrested in Buraidah by Mabahith , the internal security agency. ACPRA stated that the arrest was arbitrary , in violation of the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia and the Law of Criminal Procedures . Both the ACPRA and Human Rights First Society called for his immediate, unconditional release. On 27 March 2011, Human Rights Watch estimated that the "scale of arrests [rose] dramatically during
11128-544: Was questioned by Saudi police and asked to be an informant and report details about his fellow protesters. After he refused, Saudi security forces arrested him from the Dammam Central Hospital, where he was undergoing treatment for an eye injury sustained in a traffic accident. Saudi forces surrounded the hospital and arrested him as he prepared for surgery. He was arrested on 22 May 2012, and have been tortured and forced to "confess". Then sentenced to death by
11235-726: Was sentenced to 10 lashes for driving in Jeddah, shortly after King Abdullah announced women's participation in the 2015 municipal elections and eligibility as Consultative Assembly members. King Abdullah cancelled the sentence. From 17 June to late June, more than seventy cases of women driving were documented. In October protests, police shot live ammunition at protesters. The protesters called for Eastern Province to have its own constitution and legislative assembly, and for their association Society for Development and Change to be legally registered. In late November, Nasser al-Mheishi, Ali al-Felfel, Munib al-Sayyed al-'Adnan and Ali Abdullah al-Qarairis were shot dead by security forces in
11342-551: Was the arrest, conviction and subsequent execution of Nimr al-Nimr on 2 January 2016. Journalist Robert Fisk said that the protests were known as the "Hunayn Revolution," after the Battle of Hunayn fought between Muhammad and the Hawazin . On 21 February 2011, oil prices rose in response to the 2011 Libyan civil war and speculation regarding 11 March Saudi Arabian Day of Rage. The Saudi Tadawul stock market index fell to
11449-427: Was thrown at tanks and participants described Nayef as a "terrorist", "criminal" and "butcher". Police described two of the fatal shootings as responses to unidentified gunmen who had shot first. Dawoud al-Marhoon and Abdullah Hasan al-Zaher were arrested on 22 May and 3 March 2012, when they were aged 17 and 16 respectively, for participated in the 2011–12 Saudi Arabian protests. Originally, in March 2012, Al Marhoon
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