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37-591: The Yuʿfirids from Shibam Kawkaban began to expand their power base in the Yemeni highland as the direct rule of the Abbasids over Yemen declined. They are descended from D̲h̲ū Ḥiwāl tribe, which is a tribe from Shibam Kawkaban (in modern-day Al Mahwit Governorate , northwest of Sanaa). The first attack on San'a in 841 failed miserably and the Abbasid governor received troops from Iraq for assistance. Nevertheless,

74-545: A fortified citadel about 2,931 m (9,616 ft) above sea level. It is built upon a precipitous hilltop, walled from the north and fortified naturally from the other directions. It was the capital of the Yuʿfirid dynasty (847-997), and was also home to a Jewish community until its demise in the mid-20th century. The city affords good views of the surrounding countryside. The city features several old mosques: al Madrasa , al Mansoor , al Sharefa and Harabat . The old market

111-709: A great following. The two leaders are usually referred to as Qarmatians although they were actually appointed as da'is (leaders) by the Fatimid ruler. They were able to conquer San'a in 905 and limit the kingdom of the Yuʿfirids to Shibam Kawkaban. For long periods the Yufirid ruler Abū Ḥassān Asʿad bin Ibrāhīm had to stay in the Jawf region further to the north. San'a shifted hands with great frequency in this period; from 901 to 913

148-517: A now completely deserted town that still 40 years ago counted 30,000 inhabitants, but now hardly holds a few hundred; [it] also has its Jewish quarter, where still some families live." The renowned Jewish poet, Zechariah Dhahiri , was a resident of the city. As of the 1975 census, Shibam Kawkaban was home to about 2,000 people. In February 2016 as part of the Yemeni Civil War , fighter jets from U.S. -backed, Saudi-led coalition struck

185-487: A reader is not familiar with Arabic pronunciation. Examples in Literary Arabic : There have been many instances of national movements to convert Arabic script into Latin script or to romanize the language. A Beirut newspaper, La Syrie , pushed for the change from Arabic script to Latin script in 1922. The major head of this movement was Louis Massignon , a French Orientalist, who brought his concern before

222-504: A way to reclaim and reemphasize Egyptian culture. As a result, some Egyptians pushed for an Egyptianization of the Arabic language in which the formal Arabic and the colloquial Arabic would be combined into one language and the Latin alphabet would be used. There was also the idea of finding a way to use hieroglyphics instead of the Latin alphabet. A scholar, Salama Musa , agreed with

259-499: Is a direct result of its exposed location (it is not shielded by any natural barriers) on top of a mountain and its rugged terrain; both factors leading to occasional orographic lifts rising from nearby slopes. This article about a location in Yemen is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Romanization of Arabic The romanization of Arabic is the systematic rendering of written and spoken Arabic in

296-536: Is a double town in Shibam Kawkaban District , Al Mahwit Governorate , Yemen , located 38 km west-northwest of Sanaa , the national capital. It consists of two distinct adjoining towns, Shibam ( Arabic : شبام , romanized :  Shibām ) and Kawkaban ( Arabic : كَوْكَبَان , romanized :  Kawkabān ). Shibam is sometimes also called "Shibam Kawkaban" in order to distinguish it from other towns called Shibam. Shibam

333-608: Is a market town at the edge of a large agricultural plain; above it is the fortress-town of Kawkaban, at the summit of the cliffs to the southwest. Kawkaban, which means "two planets" in Arabic, is a sizeable town in its own right, and is known for its lavish tower-houses. Because of the fertile surrounding farmland, the defensive strength of the Kawkaban fortress, and the city's closeness to Sanaa, Shibam Kawkaban has been strategically important throughout Yemen's history. It contains

370-452: Is a useful tool for anyone who is familiar with the sounds of Arabic but not fully conversant in the language. One criticism is that a fully accurate system would require special learning that most do not have to actually pronounce names correctly, and that with a lack of a universal romanization system they will not be pronounced correctly by non-native speakers anyway. The precision will be lost if special characters are not replicated and if

407-494: Is in the middle of the city. Old rainwater reservoirs can also be seen in the fortified town, named Meseda , Alasdad , and Sedalhamam . According to the 10th-century writer Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani , there were four towns in Yemen named Shibam. To distinguish this Shibam from the others, it is sometimes suffixed as Shibam Kawkaban . Other historically used epithets include Shibam Aqyan , Shibam Ḥimyar , Shibam Yaḥbus , and Shibam Yuʿfir . According to al-Hamdani,

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444-420: Is not technically correct. Transliteration is the direct representation of foreign letters using Latin symbols, while most systems for romanizing Arabic are actually transcription systems, which represent the sound of the language, since short vowels and geminate consonants, for example, do not usually appear in Arabic writing. As an example, the above rendering munāẓaratu l-ḥurūfi l-ʻarabīyah of

481-821: Is that written Arabic is normally unvocalized ; i.e., many of the vowels are not written out, and must be supplied by a reader familiar with the language. Hence unvocalized Arabic writing does not give a reader unfamiliar with the language sufficient information for accurate pronunciation. As a result, a pure transliteration , e.g., rendering قطر as qṭr , is meaningless to an untrained reader. For this reason, transcriptions are generally used that add vowels, e.g. qaṭar . However, unvocalized systems match exactly to written Arabic, unlike vocalized systems such as Arabic chat, which some claim detracts from one's ability to spell. Most uses of romanization call for transcription rather than transliteration : Instead of transliterating each written letter, they try to reproduce

518-456: The Arabic : مناظرة الحروف العربية is a transcription, indicating the pronunciation; an example transliteration would be mnaẓrḧ alḥrwf alʻrbyḧ . Early Romanization of the Arabic language was standardized in the various bilingual Arabic-European dictionaries of the 16–19th centuries: Any romanization system has to make a number of decisions which are dependent on its intended field of application. One basic problem

555-556: The Dathina region, there are words shabama (meaning "to be high") and shibām (meaning "height"). The places named Shibam are all located by peaks or cliffs, so the name is an appropriate one. As for Kawkaban, al-Hamdani says it is named after a man named Kawkaban b. Dhi Sabal b. Aqyan, of the tribe of Himyar , but Robert T.O. Wilson says this eponym is "probably contrived". Wilson notes that al-Hamdani did mention another place called Kawkaban, which he said got its name "because it

592-485: The Latin script . Romanized Arabic is used for various purposes, among them transcription of names and titles, cataloging Arabic language works, language education when used instead of or alongside the Arabic script, and representation of the language in scientific publications by linguists . These formal systems, which often make use of diacritics and non-standard Latin characters and are used in academic settings or for

629-709: The Arabic Language Academy in Damascus in 1928. Massignon's attempt at romanization failed as the Academy and the population viewed the proposal as an attempt from the Western world to take over their country. Sa'id Afghani, a member of the Academy, asserted that the movement to romanize the script was a Zionist plan to dominate Lebanon. After the period of colonialism in Egypt, Egyptians were looking for

666-559: The Yuʿfirids were able to successfully repel the counterattacks against their stronghold in Shibam. In 847 they conquered the area between Sa'dah and Ta'izz . San'a fell to their arms when the governor Himyar ibn al-Harith fled from Yemen, and for a while it became the headquarters of the new dynasty. After a stable reign of 25 years, the founder of the dynasty, Yu'fir bin ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān al-Ḥiwālī al-Ḥimyārī, left affairs of state to his son Muhammad in 872. Muhammad preferred to use Shibam as

703-688: The Ziyadids in 989, investing and plundering Zabid. He then stopped mentioning the Abbasids in the khutba and instead adhered to the Egyptian Fatimid caliph. Abdallah died in 997 and was succeeded by his son As'ad (II). However, the authority of the Yuʿfirids in San'a had vanished and they had no significance anymore. The clan is occasionally mentioned in chronicles until as late as 1280. Shibam Kawkaban Shibam Kawkaban ( Arabic : شبام كَوْكَبَان , romanized :  Shibām Kawkabān )

740-543: The benefit of non-speakers, contrast with informal means of written communication used by speakers such as the Latin-based Arabic chat alphabet . Different systems and strategies have been developed to address the inherent problems of rendering various Arabic varieties in the Latin script. Examples of such problems are the symbols for Arabic phonemes that do not exist in English or other European languages;

777-592: The capital of his kingdom, rather than San'a. In 873 he received a diploma of confirmation from the Abbasid caliph. Muhammad ruled over Sa'na, Janad and Hadramawt but paid formal deference to the Ziyadid dynasty in the Tihama lowland. A flood that inundated San'a in 876 served as the motive for Muhammad to undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca and henceforth devote his time to religion. The reins of government were given to his son Ibrahim, who murdered his father and uncle in

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814-455: The city is said to have been conquered 20 times, surrendered through negotiation three times, and been unsuccessfully besieged five times. Eventually the dynasty managed to defeat the followers of the Fatimids and win back San'a in 916. Abū Ḥassān Asʿad died in 944 and was, as it turned out, the last grand Yufirid leader. In the middle of the tenth century the decline of the dynasty set in, as

851-484: The following reasons: A fully accurate transcription may not be necessary for native Arabic speakers, as they would be able to pronounce names and sentences correctly anyway, but it can be very useful for those not fully familiar with spoken Arabic and who are familiar with the Roman alphabet. An accurate transliteration serves as a valuable stepping stone for learning, pronouncing correctly, and distinguishing phonemes. It

888-583: The idea of applying a Latin alphabet to Egyptian Arabic, as he believed that would allow Egypt to have a closer relationship with the West. He also believed that Latin script was key to the success of Egypt as it would allow for more advances in science and technology. This change in script, he believed, would solve the problems inherent with Arabic, such as a lack of written vowels and difficulties writing foreign words. Ahmad Lutfi As Sayid and Muhammad Azmi , two Egyptian intellectuals, agreed with Musa and supported

925-400: The language as spoken, typically rendering names, for example, by the people of Baghdad ( Baghdad Arabic ), or the official standard ( Literary Arabic ) as spoken by a preacher in the mosque or a TV newsreader. A transcription is free to add phonological (such as vowels) or morphological (such as word boundaries) information. Transcriptions will also vary depending on the writing conventions of

962-408: The means of representing the Arabic definite article , which is always spelled the same way in written Arabic but has numerous pronunciations in the spoken language depending on context; and the representation of short vowels (usually i u or e o , accounting for variations such as Muslim /Moslem or Mohammed /Muhammad/Mohamed ). Romanization is often termed "transliteration", but this

999-546: The members of the family feuded with each other. The Zaydi imam al-Mukhtar al-Qasim managed to acquire San'a in 956 but was murdered in the same year by a Hamdan chief called Ibn al-Dahhak, who dominated politics until 963 and acknowledged the Ziyadids in Zabid . Next, a chief from Khawlan called al-Asmar Yusuf installed the prince Abdallah bin Qahtan on the throne. Abdallah had a long and turbulent reign and successfully attacked

1036-403: The mosque of Shibam in 892 (or 882) to ensure that there would be no pretensions of power from them. The instigator of the murders was none but his own grandfather, the ex-ruler Yu'fir. Now, however, a series of revolts led to the expulsion of the Yuʿfirids from San'a. An Abbasid governor took charge of the city for a while, but after 895 conditions turned increasingly chaotic. At the beginning of

1073-537: The push for romanization. The idea that romanization was necessary for modernization and growth in Egypt continued with Abd Al Aziz Fahmi in 1944. He was the chairman for the Writing and Grammar Committee for the Arabic Language Academy of Cairo. He believed and desired to implement romanization in a way that allowed words and spellings to remain somewhat familiar to the Egyptian people. However, this effort failed as

1110-537: The same sound in the Arabic script, e.g. alif ا vs. alif maqṣūrah ى for the sound /aː/ ā , and the six different ways ( ء إ أ آ ؤ ئ ) of writing the glottal stop ( hamza , usually transcribed ʼ  ). This sort of detail is needlessly confusing, except in a very few situations (e.g., typesetting text in the Arabic script). Most issues related to the romanization of Arabic are about transliterating vs. transcribing; others, about what should be romanized: A transcription may reflect

1147-432: The sound of the words according to the orthography rules of the target language: Qaṭar . This applies equally to scientific and popular applications. A pure transliteration would need to omit vowels (e.g. qṭr ), making the result difficult to interpret except for a subset of trained readers fluent in Arabic. Even if vowels are added, a transliteration system would still need to distinguish between multiple ways of spelling

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1184-412: The target language; compare English Omar Khayyam with German Omar Chajjam , both for عمر خيام /ʕumar xajjaːm/ , [ˈʕomɑr xæjˈjæːm] (unvocalized ʿmr ḫyām , vocalized ʻUmar Khayyām ). A transliteration is ideally fully reversible: a machine should be able to transliterate it back into Arabic. A transliteration can be considered as flawed for any one of

1221-520: The tenth century there were struggles between the followers of the Zaydiyyah branch of Islam and other polities of the Yemeni highlands. The first Zaydi imam al-Hadi ila'l-Haqq Yahya temporarily took over San'a in 901 but was later forced to leave the city. In the same period Ibn Haushab and Ali bin al-Fadl al-Jayshani disseminated the creed of the Fatimids among the highland tribes and acquired

1258-473: The town citadel, killing seven residents and destroying the historic gateway as well as the 700-year-old houses. Kawkaban has a distinct moderate semi-arid climate under the Köppen climate classification ( BSh ). Due to its outstanding elevation that nears 3,000 m (9,800 ft), the town receives larger diurnal ranges and more precipitation compared to the nearby capital, Sanaa . The plentiful rainfall

1295-570: The town had originally been called Yuḥbis , and had taken the name "Shibam" after a man of the Banu Hamdan tribe who had settled there. As for the name "Aqyan", it comes from the name of the Banu Dhu Kabir Aqyan dynasty which ruled the surrounding area in pre-Islamic times. The name Shibām , which is somewhat common in Yemen, appears to refer to a peak or other elevated place. Landberg's Glossaire datînois records that in

1332-571: Was adorned with silver bands." The earliest mentions of Shibam Kawkaban are in 3rd-century inscriptions which identify it as the center of the Dhu Hagaran Shibam tribe. The town is known as Shibam Kawkaban because it is on a mountain called Kawkaban. It was also known as Shibam Yaḥbis, Shibam Ḥimyar and Shibam Aqyan. The Yuʿfirids Muslim dynasty (847-997) that emerged in the Yemen is originally from Shibam Kawkaban. Shibam Kawkaban became their capital. According to al-Hamdani, Shibam

1369-646: Was the center of the historical mikhlaf of 'Aqyan . He wrote that the town had 30 mosques in his day and was inhabited by members of the Banu Fahd branch of the tribe of Himyar . Beginning in the 1500s, Shibam Kawkaban was a stronghold of the Alid Sharaf al-Din dynasty , which produced two Zaydi Imams of Yemen . In the early 20th century, the mountain village was visited by German explorer and photographer Hermann Burchardt , who wrote in May 1902: "Kawkaban,

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