117-583: The Tunisian revolution ( Arabic : الثورة التونسية ), also called the Jasmine Revolution and Tunisian Revolution of Dignity , was an intensive 28-day campaign of civil resistance . It included a series of street demonstrations which took place in Tunisia , and led to the ousting of longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January 2011. It eventually led to a thorough democratization of
234-423: A state of emergency . The official reason given was to protect Tunisians and their property. People were barred from gathering in groups of more than three, and could be arrested or shot if they tried to run away. Ben Ali called for an election within six months to defuse demonstrations aimed at forcing him out. France24 reported that the military took control of the airport and closed the country's airspace . On
351-639: A bid to calm protests, and Ghannouchi stated that all members of the national unity government had "clean hands". On 20 January, Zouhair M'Dhaffer, a close confidant of Ben Ali, resigned from the government. All other RCD ministers resigned from the party and the central committee of the RCD disbanded itself. The new government announced in its first sitting that all political prisoners would be freed and all banned parties would be legalised. The next day, Ghannouchi committed to resigning after holding transparent and free elections within six months. Police began to join
468-494: A bus and burning two cars in the Tunis working-class suburb of Ettadhamen-Mnihla . The protesters were said to have chanted "We are not afraid, we are not afraid, we are afraid only of God". Military personnel were also deployed in many cities around the country. On 12 January, a reporter from Italian broadcaster RAI stated that he and his cameraman were beaten with batons by police during a riot in Tunis's central district and that
585-478: A city employee who had been tasked that morning with confiscating produce from vendors without licenses. When she tried to do so with Bouazizi, a scuffle ensued. She said in a subsequent interview that she never slapped him. A humiliated Bouazizi then went to the provincial headquarters in an attempt to complain to local municipality officials and to have his produce returned. He was refused an audience. Without alerting his family, at 11:30 am and within an hour of
702-575: 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
819-408: A condition for accepting him. Following Ben Ali's departure from the country, a state of emergency was declared. Army Commander Rachid Ammar pledged to "protect the revolution". Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi then briefly took over as acting president. On the morning of 15 January, Tunisian state TV announced that Ben Ali had officially resigned his position and Ghannouchi had handed over
936-435: 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
1053-1081: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
1170-487: 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
1287-478: A major cause of the revolution which forced Ben Ali to resign and flee into exile. In response to the RCD's attempt to suppress the protests, the Socialist International expelled the RCD on 17 January 2011—three days after Ben Ali fled the country. In order to placate protesters and designated coalition participants, the incumbent president and prime minister resigned from their memberships in
SECTION 10
#17327652782601404-690: 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
1521-647: A part of Ben Ali's security infrastructure. Mebazaa promised a national dialogue to address protester demands. Sidi Bouzid and El Kef saw violence in early February with protesters killed and a police car set on fire. A local police chief was arrested. On 7 February, the defense ministry called up soldiers discharged in the previous five years to help control unrest. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
1638-602: A political party in Tunisia . If including its predecessors Neo Destour and the Socialist Destourian Party , it was the ruling party of the country from independence in 1956 until it was overthrown and dissolved in the Tunisian revolution in 2011. In 1920, Tunisian nationalists formed the Destour (Constitutional) Party in opposition to French rule . As the party developed, a schism occurred within
1755-658: A rally near the government's palace in Tunis. Protests continued again on 29 December . On 30 December, police peacefully dispersed a protest in Monastir , while using force to disrupt further demonstrations in Sbikha and Chebba . Momentum appeared to continue with the protests on 31 December and the Tunisian National Lawyers Order organised further demonstrations and public gatherings by lawyers in Tunis and other cities. Mokhtar Trifi, president of
1872-594: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
1989-462: 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",
2106-470: 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
2223-507: 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
2340-507: 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
2457-476: 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
SECTION 20
#17327652782602574-737: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
2691-590: 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
2808-559: 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
2925-478: 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
3042-408: 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
3159-472: 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
3276-655: Is not in widespread use in Tunisia itself. The debate surrounding the name and the poetic influences behind the Tunisian revolution was a popular question among Tunisian intellectuals. The name adopted in Tunisia was the Dignity Revolution , which is a translation of the Tunisian Arabic name for the revolution, ثورة الكرامة ( Thawrat al-Karāmah ). Within Tunisia, Ben Ali's rise to power in 1987
3393-574: 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
3510-855: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
3627-572: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
Tunisian revolution - Misplaced Pages Continue
3744-590: 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
3861-413: 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
3978-524: 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
4095-445: 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
4212-542: The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for "its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Tunisian Revolution of 2011". The protests inspired similar actions throughout the Arab world, in a chain reaction which became known as the Arab Spring movement. Clashes during the revolution resulted in 338 deaths and 2,174 injuries. In Tunisia, and the wider Arab world,
4329-668: The Ettajdid Movement , and Ahmed Najib Chebbi of the PDP), three representatives from the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT), and representatives of civil society (including prominent blogger Slim Amamou ). Three notable movements not included in the national unity government were the banned Ennahda Movement , the Tunisian Workers' Communist Party and the secular reformist Congress for
4446-482: The European Pressphoto Agency , was hit in the forehead by a tear gas canister allegedly fired by the police at short range; he died two days later. During a national television broadcast on 28 December , President Ben Ali criticised protesters as "extremist mercenaries" and warned of "firm" punishment. He also accused "certain foreign television channels" of spreading falsehoods and deforming
4563-568: 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
4680-494: 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
4797-419: 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
Tunisian revolution - Misplaced Pages Continue
4914-1115: 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. Democratic Constitutional Rally The Democratic Constitutional Rally or Democratic Constitutional Assembly ( Arabic : التجمع الدستوري الديمقراطي et-Tajammu‘ ed-Dustūrī ed-Dīmuqrāṭī , French : Rassemblement Constitutionnel Démocratique , sometimes also called Constitutional Democratic Rally in English), also referred to by its French initials RCD ,
5031-470: The 10-dinars fine (a day's wages, equivalent to US$ 3). It was initially reported that in response, the policewoman insulted his deceased father and slapped him. Although many of the details were incorrect, the story was "disseminated and used to mobilize as much as possible against the Ben Ali regime," according to sociologist Habib Ayeb. The officer, Fedia Hamdi, stated that she was not even a policewoman, but
5148-454: 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
5265-571: 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
5382-834: 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
5499-772: The Islamic Tendency Movement, the Tunisian Communist Party , the Movement for Popular Unity and student groups. Although its influence was slightly weakened, the PSD continued to sweep all elections to the legislature. On 7 November 1987, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali , who had been named Prime Minister only a month earlier, became president after Bourguiba was declared medically unfit for office. The following year, President Ben Ali instituted economic reforms increasing economic privatization and renamed
5616-412: 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
5733-690: 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
5850-407: The RCD on 18 January and all remaining RCD-aligned ministers resigned their party memberships on 20 January, the effect of which left the RCD with only a parliamentary majority. On 27 January, Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi carried out a major reshuffle, removing all former RCD members other than himself from the government. The interior ministry suspended the party's operations on 6 February,
5967-641: The Republic . The following day, the three members of the UGTT and Ben Jafaar resigned, saying that they had "no confidence" in a government featuring members of the RCD. There were daily protests that members of Ben Ali's RCD party were in the new government. Thousands of anti-RCD protesters rallied in a protests with relatively little violence. On 18 January, demonstrations were held in Tunis, Sfax , Gabes , Bizerta , Sousse and Monastir . Ghannouchi and interim president Mebazaa resigned their RCD memberships in
SECTION 50
#17327652782606084-576: 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
6201-615: The Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH), said that lawyers across Tunisia had been "savagely beaten". There were also unconfirmed reports of another man attempting to commit suicide in El Hamma . On 3 January 2011, protests in Thala over unemployment and a high cost of living turned violent. At a demonstration of 250 people, mostly students, police fired tear gas; one canister landed in a local mosque. In response,
6318-558: The Tunisian regime. It is widely believed that the information in the WikiLeaks documents contributed to the protests, which began a few weeks later. There were reports of police obstructing demonstrators and using tear gas on hundreds of young protesters in Sidi Bouzid in mid-December. The protesters had gathered outside regional government headquarters to demonstrate against the treatment of Mohamed Bouazizi . Coverage of events
6435-469: The bloggers were later released. Reporters Without Borders said the arrest of at least six bloggers and activists, who had either been arrested or had disappeared across Tunisia, was brought to their attention and that there were "probably" others. Tunisian Pirate Party activists Slah Eddine Kchouk, Slim Amamou (later appointed Secretary of State for Sport and Youth by the incoming government) and Azyz Amamy were arrested but later released. Hamma Hammami ,
6552-706: The capital's main train station was torched. The national army was reported to be extensively deployed in Tunisia, including elements loyal to Ben Ali. A prison director in Mahdia freed about 1,000 inmates following a prison rebellion that left 5 people dead. Many other prisons also had jailbreaks or raids from external groups to force prisoner releases, some suspected to be aided by prison guards. Residents who were running out of necessary food supplies had armed themselves and barricaded their homes, and in some cases had formed armed neighborhood watches. Al Jazeera's correspondent said there were apparently three different armed groups:
6669-562: The capital, Tunis , on 27 December where a thousand citizens expressed solidarity with residents of Sidi Bouzid and called for jobs. The rally, organised by independent trade union activists, was stopped by security forces. Protests also spread to Sousse , Sfax and Meknassy . The following day, the Tunisian Federation of Labour Unions held another rally in Gafsa which was also blocked by security forces. About 300 lawyers held
6786-443: The chairman of the national bar association . He said, "The strike carries a clear message that we do not accept unjustified attacks on lawyers. We want to strongly protest against the beating of lawyers in the past few days." It was reported on the following day that teachers had also joined the strike. In response to 11 January protests, police used riot gear to disperse protesters ransacking buildings, burning tyres, setting fire to
6903-574: 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
7020-662: The cost of smallholders' debt, dispossession, and proletarianization." Tunisian geographer-cinematographer Habib Ayeb, founder of the Tunisian Observatory for Food Sovereignty and the Environment (OSAE), has questioned the model of development that was introduced in Sidi Bouzid: [The region] received the most investment between 1990 and 2011. The leading region. It is a region that had an extensive semi-pastoral farming system, and it became in less than 30 years
7137-495: The country and to free and democratic elections, which had led to people believing it was the only successful movement in the Arab Spring . The demonstrations were caused by high unemployment , food inflation , corruption , a lack of political freedoms (such as freedom of speech ), and poor living conditions . The protests constituted the most dramatic wave of social and political unrest in Tunisia in three decades and resulted in scores of deaths and injuries, most of which were
SECTION 60
#17327652782607254-566: The country is generally considered to be wealthy and stable as compared to other countries in the region. Protests had been repressed and kept silent by the regime, and protesters would be jailed for such actions, as with hundreds of unemployed demonstrators in Redeyef in 2008. As noted by Mohamed Bacha in his book, The Revolutionary Chants of Club Africain Ultras , Tunisian youth had found an outlet to express their anger and dissatisfaction, through
7371-587: 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
7488-728: 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
7605-607: 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
7722-458: The fan chants of sports association Club Africain Ultras, such as: The capital is very angry , We are solidary when we make war to the sons of — Who oppress us , and Hey Regime, The Revolution is Imminent . At the time of the revolution, Al Jazeera English reported that Tunisian activists are among the most outspoken in its part of the world, with various messages of support being posted on Twitter and Facebook for Bouazizi. An op-ed article in
7839-423: The former regime. The Tunisian army was reportedly struggling to assert control. Gunfire continued in Tunis and Carthage as security services struggled to maintain law and order. The most immediate result of the protests was seen in increased Internet freedoms . While commentators were divided about the extent to which the Internet contributed to the ousting of Ben Ali, Facebook remained accessible to roughly 20% of
7956-403: 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
8073-420: 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
8190-489: The initial confrontation, Bouazizi returned to the headquarters, doused himself with a flammable liquid and set himself on fire. Public outrage quickly grew over the incident, leading to protests. This immolation, and the heavy-handed response by the police to peaceful marchers, provoked riots the next day in Sidi Bouzid . The riots went largely unnoticed, though social media sites disseminated images of police dispersing youths who attacked shop windows and damaged cars. Bouazizi
8307-558: 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
8424-415: The last held before the revolution, the RCD won 161 of 214 seats with the remaining 53 seats going to minority parties. Ben Ali was elected to a fifth full term with 89.6 percent of the vote, the only time he claimed to win by less than 90 percent of the vote. These elections, like virtually all others in the country since independence, were widely seen as fraudulent. The outcry over the elections proved to be
8541-604: 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)
8658-420: 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
8775-506: The leader of the banned Tunisian Workers' Communist Party and a prominent critic of Ben Ali, was arrested on 12 January, and released two days later. On 10 January, the government announced the indefinite closure of all schools and universities in order to quell the unrest. Days before departing office, Ben Ali announced that he would not change the present constitution , which would require him to step down in 2014 due to his age. On 14 January, Ben Ali dissolved his government and declared
8892-536: The link with the story of Mohamed Bouazizi. On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers (Spain's El País , France's Le Monde , Germany's Der Spiegel , the United Kingdom's The Guardian , and the United States' The New York Times ) simultaneously published the first 220 of 251,287 leaked documents labeled confidential. These included descriptions of corruption and repression by
9009-883: 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
9126-493: The middle class or the northern urban centers, but by marginalised social groups." Twenty-six-year-old Mohamed Bouazizi had been the sole income earner in his extended family of eight. He operated a vegetable or apple cart (the contents of the cart are disputed) for seven years in Sidi Bouzid , 300 kilometres (190 miles) south of Tunis. On 17 December 2010, a female officer confiscated his cart and produce. Bouazizi, who had such an event happen to him before, tried to pay
9243-431: The ministers of industry and international cooperation (who had not been RCD members) remained from Ben Ali's old government. This was seen as meeting one of the protesters' demands, and the UGTT stated its support for the reorganised cabinet. New ministers included state attorney Farhat Rajhi as interior minister, retired career diplomat Ahmed Ounaies as foreign minister, and economist Elyes Jouini as minister delegate to
9360-782: 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
9477-415: The officers then confiscated their camera. A curfew was ordered in Tunis after protests and clashes with police. Hizb ut-Tahrir organised protests after Friday prayer on 14 January to call for re-establishing the Islamic caliphate . A day later, it also organised other protests that marched to the 9 April Prison to free political prisoners. Also on 14 January, Lucas Dolega , a photojournalist for
9594-424: 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
9711-549: 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
9828-505: The party the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD). Ben Ali did not face an opponent for reelection until 1999, in part because of a longstanding requirement that potential presidential candidates receive the endorsement of 30 political figures. Given the RCD's near-absolute dominance of the political scene, prospective opposition candidates discovered they could not get their nomination papers signed. Even after
9945-623: The party, leading to the founding of the Neo Destour Party in 1934 by Habib Bourguiba and several younger members of the old Destour. Under his leadership, the Neo Destour Party successfully garnered independence from France in 1956. As it was, for all intents and purposes, the only well-organized party in the country, it swept the Constituent Assembly elections held later that year. A year later, Tunisia
10062-546: The police (numbering 250,000), security forces from the Interior Ministry, and irregular militias supportive of Ben Ali who were vying for control. Ali Seriati, head of presidential security, was arrested and accused of threatening state security by fomenting violence. Following this, gun battles took place near the Presidential Palace between the Tunisian army and elements of security organs loyal to
10179-412: The police fired [at] the youths who were at these [...] processions." He then criticised Ben Ali's comments as the protesters were "claiming their civil rights, and there is no terrorist act...no religious slogans". He further accused Ben Ali of "looking for scapegoats" and dismissed the creation of jobs as empty promises. Several webloggers and rapper El Général were arrested, but the rapper and some of
10296-583: The population throughout the crisis whilst its passwords were hacked by a country-wide man-in-the-middle attack . YouTube and DailyMotion became available after Ben Ali's ouster, and the Tor anonymity network reported a surge of traffic from Tunisia. In France, where a large Tunisian diaspora resides, displays of support were organized in several cities, including Paris Toulouse , Lyon , Nantes , Marseille , Nice , Bordeaux , and Strasbourg . The Ghannouchi administration (15 January – 27 February 2011)
10413-541: The premier agricultural region of the country. At the same time Sidi Bouzid had been a "moderately poor" region, in a sense, and I put that in quotation marks, and it is now the fourth-poorest region in the country. This is the development which people desire... The problem is that the local population does not benefit. These are people from Sfax and the Sahel who get rich in Sidi Bouzid, not the people of Sidi Bouzid. Hence
10530-434: The presidency to parliamentary speaker Fouad Mebazaa , with Ghannouchi returning to his previous position as prime minister. This was done after the head of Tunisia's Constitutional Council, Fethi Abdennadher, declared that Ghannouchi did not have right to power, and confirmed Fouad Mebazaa as acting president under Article 57 of the constitution. Mebazaa was given 60 days to organise new elections . Mebazaa said it
10647-452: The prime minister in charge of administrative and economic reform. Ounaies later resigned after praising a foreign politician with ties to Ben Ali. Mouldi Kefi became the new foreign minister on 21 February. By 3 February, all 24 regional governors had been replaced. Days later, the government reached an agreement with the UGTT on the nomination of new governors. The Interior Ministry replaced 34 top-level security officials who were
10764-426: The protesters were reported to have set fire to tires and attacked the RCD offices. Some of the more general protests sought changes in the government's online censorship; Tunisian authorities allegedly carried out phishing operations to take control of user passwords and check online criticism. Both state and non-state websites had been hacked. On 6 January, 95% of Tunisia's 8,000 lawyers went on strike, according to
10881-546: The protests and change in government are called the revolution or sometimes called the Sidi Bouzid revolt , the name being derived from Sidi Bouzid , the city where the initial protests began. In the Western media, these events have been dubbed the Jasmine Revolution or Jasmine Spring , after Tunisia's national flower and in keeping with the geopolitical nomenclature of " color revolutions ". The name "Jasmine Revolution" originated from American journalist Andy Carvin , but it
10998-564: The protests as "the work of masked gangs" attacking public property and citizens in their homes, and "a terrorist act that cannot be overlooked". Ahmed Najib Chebbi , the leader of the Progressive Democratic Party (PDP), responded that despite official claims of police firing in self-defense "the demonstrations were non-violent and the youths were claiming their rights to jobs" and that "the funeral processions [for those killed on 9 January] turned into demonstrations, and
11115-411: The protests in Tunis on 23 January over salaries, and to deflect blame over political deaths attributed to them during Ben Ali's rule. Army chief Rachid Ammar declares that the armed forces are also on the side of the protesters and would "defend the revolution". On 27 January, Ghannounchi reshuffled his cabinet, with six former-RCD members departing the interim government. Only Ghannouchi and
11232-420: The provision was repealed in 1999, Ben Ali was reelected by implausibly high margins. While opposition parties finally managed to enter the legislature for the first time in 1994, they never won more than 24 percent of the seats, and there was little meaningful opposition to presidential decisions. For all intents and purposes, the RCD continued to rule Tunisia as a one-party state. In the 2009 general election ,
11349-410: 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
11466-421: The repression of political opposition. Foreign media and NGOs criticised his government, which was supported by the United States and France. As a result, the initial reactions to Ben Ali's abuses by the U.S. and France were muted, and most instances of socio-political protest in the country, when they occurred at all, rarely made major news headlines. Riots in Tunisia were rare and noteworthy, especially since
11583-400: The result of action by police and security forces. The protests were sparked by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi on 17 December 2010. They led to the ousting of Ben Ali on 14 January 2011, when he officially resigned after fleeing to Saudi Arabia , ending his 23 years in power. Labor unions were an integral part of the protests. The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet was awarded
11700-403: The richer towns and suburbs. It also cited the "marginalisation of the agrarian and arid central, northern west and southern areas [that] continue[s] unabated." The protests were also called an "uprising" because of "a lethal combination of poverty, unemployment, and political repression: three characteristics of most Arab societies." It was a revolution, notes a Tunisian geographer, "started not by
11817-475: The same day, Ben Ali fled the country for Malta under Libyan protection. His aircraft landed in Jeddah , Saudi Arabia, after France rejected a request to land on its territory. Saudi Arabia cited "exceptional circumstances" for their heavily criticised decision to give him asylum, saying it was also "in support of the security and stability of their country". Saudi Arabia demanded Ben Ali remain "out of politics" as
11934-479: The same network said of the action that it was "suicidal protests of despair by Tunisia's youth." It pointed out that the state-controlled National Solidarity Fund and the National Employment Fund had traditionally subsidized many goods and services in the country but had started to shift the "burden of providence from state to society" to be funded by the bidonvilles , or shanty towns , around
12051-458: 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
12168-458: 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
12285-563: 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
12402-495: The success of the Tunisian revolution, and Facebook was its main 'catalyst.'" President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali had ruled Tunisia since 1987, mostly as a one-party state with the Democratic Constitutional Rally (RCD), following the overthrowing of his predecessor Habib Bourguiba . His government was characterised by the development of Tunisia's private sector in favor of foreign investment, and
12519-501: 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
12636-545: The truth, and called them "hostile to Tunisia". His remarks were ignored and the protests continued. On 29 December, Ben Ali shuffled his cabinet to remove communications minister Oussama Romdhani , while also announcing changes to the trade and handicrafts, religious affairs, communication and youth portfolios. The next day he also announced the dismissal of the governors of Sidi Bouzid, Jendouba and Zaghouan . In January 2011, Ben Ali said 300,000 new jobs would be created, though he did not clarify what that meant. He described
12753-451: 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
12870-509: Was a caretaker government with the primary goal of maintaining the state and providing a legal framework for new elections. Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi announced his cabinet on 17 January 2011, three days after Ben Ali's departure. The cabinet included twelve members of the ruling RCD, the leaders of three opposition parties ( Mustapha Ben Jafar from the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties [FTDL], Ahmed Brahim of
12987-740: Was also known as the Jasmine Revolution. Because Tunisia's anti-government protests were in part fueled by WikiLeaks revelations, the uprising has been called the first WikiLeaks revolution . The increased reliance on social media as an organizing tool also introduced the label, the Facebook revolution . Le Monde reported how it was common for Tunisian youth to use that term. In a 2012 article in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking , Tunisian and French academics stated that "communication of information has been vital to
13104-573: Was declared a republic with Bourguiba as first president. In 1963, the Neo Destour was formally declared the only legally permitted party in Tunisia, though for all intents and purposes, party and state had been one since independence. In 1964, the Neo Destour Party became the Destourian Socialist Party (PSD). Opposition parties were legalized once again in 1981. From then on, the PSD faced opposition from Hizb ut-Tahrir ,
13221-545: Was fatally shot in the chest by police in Bouziane. Other protesters were also injured, including Chawki Belhoussine El Hadri, who died later on 30 December . Police claimed they shot the demonstrators in "self-defence". A "quasi-curfew" was then imposed on the city by police. Rapper El Général , whose songs had been adopted by protesters, was arrested on 24 December but released several days later after "an enormous public reaction". Violence increased, and protests reached
13338-520: Was in the country's best interest to form a national unity government . INTERPOL confirmed that its National Central Bureau (NCB) in Tunis had issued a global alert to find and arrest Ben Ali and six of his relatives. A commission to reform the constitution and law in general was set up under Yadh Ben Achour . There were also calls by the opposition to delay the elections, holding them in six or seven months with international supervision. Following Ben Ali's departure, violence and looting continued and
13455-426: Was limited by Tunisian media. On 19 December , extra police were present on the city's streets. On 22 December, protester Lahseen Naji, responding to "hunger and joblessness", electrocuted himself after climbing an electricity pylon . Ramzi Al-Abboudi also killed himself because of financial difficulties arising from a business debt by the country's micro-credit solidarity programme. On 24 December , Mohamed Ammari
13572-541: Was not widely adopted in Tunisia itself. The protests and resultant political crises have generally been called the Jasmine revolution only in the foreign media. Tunisian philosopher Youssef Seddik deemed the term inappropriate because the violence that accompanied the event was "perhaps as deep as Bastille Day ", and although the term was coined by the Tunisian journalist Zied El Hani, who first used it on his blog on 13 January and initially spread via social media, it
13689-405: Was subsequently transferred to a hospital near Tunis. In an attempt to quell the unrest, President Ben Ali visited Bouazizi in the hospital on 28 December. Bouazizi died on 4 January 2011. Sociologist Asef Bayat , who visited Tunisia after the uprising and carried out field research, wrote about the mechanisation of large-scale capitalist farms in towns like Sidi Bouzid that have come "at
#259740