1.
Arabic language
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, 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
2.
Damascus
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Damascus is the capital and likely the largest city of Syria, following the decline in population of Aleppo due to the ongoing battle for the city. It is commonly known in Syria as ash-Sham and nicknamed as the City of Jasmine, in addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major cultural and religious centre of the Levant. The city has an population of 1,711,000 as of 2009. Located in south-western Syria, Damascus is the centre of a metropolitan area of 2.6 million people. The Barada River flows through Damascus, first settled in the second millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. After the victory of the Abbasid dynasty, the seat of Islamic power was moved to Baghdad, Damascus saw a political decline throughout the Abbasid era, only to regain significant importance in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Today, it is the seat of the government and all of the government ministries. The name of Damascus first appeared in the geographical list of Thutmose III as T-m-ś-q in the 15th century BC, the etymology of the ancient name T-m-ś-q is uncertain, but it is suspected to be pre-Semitic. It is attested as Dimašqa in Akkadian, T-ms-ḳw in Egyptian, Dammaśq in Old Aramaic, the Akkadian spelling is found in the Amarna letters, from the 14th century BC. Later Aramaic spellings of the name include a intrusive resh, perhaps influenced by the root dr. Thus, the English and Latin name of the city is Damascus which was imported from originated from the Qumranic Darmeśeq, and Darmsûq in Syriac, meaning a well-watered land. In Arabic, the city is called Dimašqu š-Šāmi, although this is shortened to either Dimašq or aš-Šām by the citizens of Damascus, of Syria and other Arab neighbours. Aš-Šām is an Arabic term for Levant and for Syria, the latter, the Anti-Lebanon mountains mark the border between Syria and Lebanon. The range has peaks of over 10,000 ft. and blocks precipitation from the Mediterranean sea, however, in ancient times this was mitigated by the Barada River, which originates from mountain streams fed by melting snow. Damascus is surrounded by the Ghouta, irrigated farmland where many vegetables, cereals, maps of Roman Syria indicate that the Barada river emptied into a lake of some size east of Damascus. Today it is called Bahira Atayba, the hesitant lake, because in years of severe drought it does not even exist, the modern city has an area of 105 km2, out of which 77 km2 is urban, while Jabal Qasioun occupies the rest. The old city of Damascus, enclosed by the city walls, to the south-east, north and north-east it is surrounded by suburban areas whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages, Midan in the south-west, Sarouja and Imara in the north and north-west. These neighbourhoods originally arose on roads leading out of the city and these new neighbourhoods were initially settled by Kurdish soldiery and Muslim refugees from the European regions of the Ottoman Empire which had fallen under Christian rule
3.
Syria
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Syrias capital and largest city is Damascus. Religious groups include Sunnis, Christians, Alawites, Druze, Mandeans, Shiites, Salafis, Sunni Arabs make up the largest religious group in Syria. Its capital Damascus and largest city Aleppo are among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, in the Islamic era, Damascus was the seat of the Umayyad Caliphate and a provincial capital of the Mamluk Sultanate in Egypt. The post-independence period was tumultuous, and a number of military coups. In 1958, Syria entered a union with Egypt called the United Arab Republic. Syria was under Emergency Law from 1963 to 2011, effectively suspending most constitutional protections for citizens, Bashar al-Assad has been president since 2000 and was preceded by his father Hafez al-Assad, who was in office from 1970 to 2000. Mainstream modern academic opinion strongly favours the argument that the Greek word is related to the cognate Ἀσσυρία, Assyria, in the past, others believed that it was derived from Siryon, the name that the Sidonians gave to Mount Hermon. However, the discovery of the inscription in 2000 seems to support the theory that the term Syria derives from Assyria. The area designated by the word has changed over time, since approximately 10,000 BC, Syria was one of centers of Neolithic culture where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period is represented by houses of Mureybet culture. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gyps, finds of obsidian tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations. Cities of Hamoukar and Emar played an important role during the late Neolithic, archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the most ancient on earth, perhaps preceded by only those of Mesopotamia. The earliest recorded indigenous civilisation in the region was the Kingdom of Ebla near present-day Idlib, gifts from Pharaohs, found during excavations, confirm Eblas contact with Egypt. One of the earliest written texts from Syria is an agreement between Vizier Ibrium of Ebla and an ambiguous kingdom called Abarsal c.2300 BC. The Northwest Semitic language of the Amorites is the earliest attested of the Canaanite languages, Mari reemerged during this period, and saw renewed prosperity until conquered by Hammurabi of Babylon. Ugarit also arose during this time, circa 1800 BC, close to modern Latakia, Ugaritic was a Semitic language loosely related to the Canaanite languages, and developed the Ugaritic alphabet. The Ugarites kingdom survived until its destruction at the hands of the marauding Indo-European Sea Peoples in the 12th century BC, Yamhad was described in the tablets of Mari as the mightiest state in the near east and as having more vassals than Hammurabi of Babylon. Yamhad imposed its authority over Alalakh, Qatna, the Hurrians states, the army of Yamhad campaigned as far away as Dēr on the border of Elam
4.
Semitic languages
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The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family originating in the Middle East. The terminology was first used in the 1780s by members of the Göttingen School of History, the most widely spoken Semitic languages today are Arabic, Amharic, Tigrinya, Hebrew, Aramaic and Maltese. Among them are the Ugaritic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Maltese is the only Semitic language written in the Latin script and the only Semitic language to be an official language of the European Union. The Semitic languages are notable for their nonconcatenative morphology and that is, word roots are not themselves syllables or words, but instead are isolated sets of consonants. Words are composed out of not so much by adding prefixes or suffixes. For example, in Arabic, the root meaning write has the form k-t-b, the similarity of the Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic languages was accepted by Jewish and Islamic scholars since medieval times. Almost two centuries later, Hiob Ludolf described the similarities between these three languages and the Ethiopian Semitic languages, however, neither scholar named this grouping as Semitic. Viewed from this too, with respect to the alphabet used. Previously these languages had been known as the Oriental languages in European literature. In the 19th century, Semitic became the name, however. There are several locations proposed as sites for prehistoric origins of Semitic-speaking peoples, Mesopotamia, The Levant, Mediterranean, the Arabian Peninsula. Both the Near East and North Africa saw an influx of Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula, followed later by non-Semitic Muslim Iranian and Turkic peoples. The Arabs spread their Central Semitic language to North Africa where it gradually replaced Coptic and many Berber languages, with the patronage of the caliphs and the prestige of its liturgical status, Arabic rapidly became one of the worlds main literary languages. Its spread among the masses took much longer, however, as many of the populations outside the Arabian Peninsula only gradually abandoned their languages in favour of Arabic. As Bedouin tribes settled in conquered areas, it became the language of not only central Arabia, but also Yemen, the Fertile Crescent. Most of the Maghreb followed, particularly in the wake of the Banu Hilals incursion in the 11th century, and Arabic became the native language of many inhabitants of al-Andalus. After the collapse of the Nubian kingdom of Dongola in the 14th century, Arabic began to spread south of Egypt into modern Sudan, soon after, the Beni Ḥassān brought Arabization to Mauritania. Meanwhile, Semitic languages were diversifying in Ethiopia and Eritrea, where, under heavy Cushitic influence, they split into a number of languages, including Amharic, Arabic languages and dialects are currently the native languages of majorities from Mauritania to Oman, and from Iraq to the Sudan
5.
Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
6.
Anti-Lebanon Mountains
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The Anti-Lebanon Mountains are a southwest-northeast-trending mountain range that forms the majority of the border between Syria and Lebanon. The border is defined along the crest of the range. Most of the lies in Syria. Its Western name Anti-Lebanon comes from the Greek and Latin Antilibanus, derived from its position opposite, to the west of the Anti-Lebanon lie valleys that separate it from Mount Lebanon in central Lebanon, Baalbeks Beqaa Valley in the north and the Hasbani River valley in the south. To the east, in Syria, lies the Eastern Plateau, the Anti-Lebanon range is approximately 150 kilometres in length. To the north, it extends to almost the latitude of the Syrian city of Homs. To the south, the range coalesces with the Golan Heights plateau but includes the highest peaks of Mount Hermon, at 2,814 metres and these peaks are snow-covered for much of the year and are located on the Lebanese-Syrian border. There are various endemic flora found and named after the region, including, Euphorbia antilibanotica, Teucrium antilibanoticum, Valerianella antilibanotica, and Iris antilibanotica
7.
Karst spring
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A karst spring is a spring that is part of a karst system. That includes the drainage of a much larger area, which means that karst springs often have a very large discharge. Because of their conical or bowl shape, such water sources are also known in German-speaking lands as a Topf which is reflected in names such as Aachtopf or Blautopf. Karst springs are usually the end of a system at the place where a river cave reaches the Earths surface. Thus, it is possible to enter the caves at a karst spring. An estavelle or inversac is a ground orifice which, depending on conditions and season. It is a type of sinkhole, a Vauclusian spring is a spring that originates from a shaft or a cave system, with the water surging upwards under relatively high pressure. It is named after the Fontaine de Vaucluse in southern France, submarine karst springs, also known as vruljas, occur worldwide, and are most numerous in shallow waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The main feature of karst springs results from the fact that water is transported by underground caverns. This means that there is minimal filtering of the water and little separation of different sediments, groundwater emerges at the spring within a few days. Storms, snowmelt, and general changes in rainfall have a very noticeable. Many karst springs dry up during the driest part of the year and are known as intermittent springs. Still others are dry most of the round and only flow after heavy rain. Sources that only flow during wet years are known in German as Hungerbrunnen. It is however more of a culturally related superstition, scientific studies on various Hungerbrunnen have not confirmed such a relationship. An example is the Hungerbrunnen in the parish of Heuchlingen near Gerstetten, the properties of karst springs make them unsuitable for the supply of drinking water. Their uneven flow rate does not support steady rates of consumption, especially in summer there is lower discharge. In addition, poor filtering and high hardness mean that the quality is poor
8.
Zabadani
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Al-Zabadani or Az-Zabadani is a city and popular hill station in southwestern Syria in the Rif Dimashq Governorate, close to the border with Lebanon. It is located in the center of a valley surrounded by high mountains at an elevation of around 1,100 m. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics, Al-Zabadani had a population of 26,285 in the 2004 census, a more elevated region than Al-Zabadani is its neighbour Bloudan, also a resort for thousands of tourists. Bloudan is about 1,500 metres above sea level, Al-Zabadani is predominantly Sunni, with a substantial percentage of Christians, who have their own church and monastery. Al-Zabadani is rapidly growing and is connected to Damascus. The Scouts of Syria have a training center at Al-Zabadani. On January 18,2012, Al-Zabadani became the first city to fall under the control of the Free Syrian Army, on February 11, the Syrian Army regained control of the city. By late July, the town had become a base of operations for Hezbollah, in August local fighters in Zabadani retook 70% of the town with only a few isolated army checkpoints remaining. On February 28,2014, a truce was reached between government and rebel forces, later it was reported that the truce broke down and that rebels attacked government checkpoints, with the government besieging and shelling the town. On 26 April 2014, rebels surrendered after intense fighting with government troops, losing their last stronghold along Lebanons border, neunkirchen, Saarland, Germany Battle of Zabadani Lebanese people in Syria More information from MiddleEast Information Network بوابة المجتمع المحلي في الزبداني
9.
Canyon
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A canyon or gorge is a deep cleft between escarpments or cliffs resulting from the erosive activity of a river over geologic timescales. A canyon may also refer to a rift between two peaks, such as those in ranges including the Rocky Mountains, the Alps. Usually a river or stream and erosion carve out such splits between mountains, examples of mountain-type canyons are Provo Canyon in Utah or Yosemite National Park in Californias Sierra Nevada. Canyons within mountains, or gorges that have an opening on one side are called box canyons. Slot canyons are very narrow canyons, often with smooth walls, steep-sided valleys in the seabed of the continental slope underwater are referred to as submarine canyons. Unlike canyons on land, submarine canyons are thought to be formed by turbidity currents, the word canyon is Spanish in origin, with the same meaning. The word canyon is used in North America while the words gorge and ravine are used in Europe and Oceania, though gorge. In the United States, place names generally use canyon in the southwest and gorge in the northeast, in Canada, a gorge is usually narrow while a ravine is more open and often wooded. The military-derived word defile is occasionally used in the United Kingdom, most canyons were formed by a process of long-time erosion from a plateau or table-land level. The cliffs form because harder rock strata that are resistant to erosion, Canyons are much more common in arid than in wet areas because physical weathering has a more localized effect in arid zones. The wind and water from the combine to erode and cut away less resistant materials such as shales. The freezing and expansion of water also serves to help form canyons, water seeps into cracks between the rocks and freezes, pushing the rocks apart and eventually causing large chunks to break off the canyon walls, in a process known as frost wedging. Canyon walls are formed of resistant sandstones or granite. Sometimes large rivers run through canyons as the result of geological uplift. These are called entrenched rivers, because they are unable to alter their course. In the United States, the Colorado River in the Southwest, Canyons often form in areas of limestone rock. As limestone is soluble to an extent, cave systems form in the rock. When these collapse, a canyon is left, as in the Mendip Hills in Somerset and Yorkshire Dales in Yorkshire, England
10.
Ghouta
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Ghouta originally described the oasis formed by the Barada river around the site where Damascus, Syria, was founded. Starting in ancient times, canals dug by the inhabitants of Damascus irrigated land on either side of the Barada, increasing the size of the Ghouta to the south and east of the city. Separating the city from the dry grasslands bordering the Syrian Desert, eventually the irrigated agricultural area in the Damascus countryside reached a size of 370 square kilometers. In the 1980s, urban growth from Damascus started replacing agricultural use with housing and industry, prior to the Syrian Civil War, the area was home to about two million people. Satellite image of region showing 2013 green areas
11.
Qere and Ketiv
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The word קרי is often pointed קְרִי and pronounced kri or keri, reflecting the opinion that it is a passive participle rather than an imperative. This is reflected in the Ashkenazi pronuncication keri uchesiv mentioned above, Torah scrolls for use in public reading in synagogues contain only the Hebrew language consonantal text, handed down by tradition. Though the basic consonantal text written in the Hebrew alphabet was never altered, the Masoretic scribes used qere/ketiv to show, without changing the received consonantal text, that in their tradition a different reading of the text is to be used. That Masoretic reading or pronunciation is known as the Qere, while the pre-Masoretic consonantal spelling is known as the Ketiv, in the margins there would be a ק sign, followed by the consonants of the qere reading. In this way, the points were removed from the qere. Despite this, the vowels and consonantal letters of the qere were still meant to be read together, in an ordinary qere, there is only a difference in certain closely related letters, or letters that can be silent. For example, the similarly shaped letters י ו ן are often exchanged, as are כ ב, very often, one of the letters א ה ו י are inserted or removed from a word. Other times, letters are reordered within the word, because the difference between the qere and ketiv is relatively large, a note is made in footnotes, sidenotes or brackets to indicate it. Sometimes, although the letters are unchanged, the vowel points differ between the qere and ketiv of the word, the ketiv is typically omitted with no indication, leaving only the vowelization for the qere. Often the ketiv left in a spelling, but other times. This type of qere is different from qere perpetuum, because here, in a qere perpetuum, the consonants actually do change. Occasionally, a word is not read at all, in case the word is marked ketiv velo qere, meaning written. Occasionally, a word is read but not written at all, in case the word is marked qere velo ketiv, meaning read. In rarer cases, the word is replaced entirely for reasons of tohorat halashon and this type of qere is noted in a printed Hebrew Bible. In such a case, a qere is one word while the ketiv is multiple words or vice versa and this is known as a Qere perpetuum. For example, in the Pentateuch, the singular feminine pronoun היא hī is usually spelled the same as the third-person singular masculine pronoun הוא hū. The Masoretes indicated this situation by adding a written symbol for the vowel to the pre-Masoretic consonantal spelling h-w- הוא. Another example of an important qere perpetuum in the text of the Bible is the name of the God of Israel – יהוה, often it is marked with the vowels יְהוָֹה, indicating that it is to be pronounced as אֲדֹנָי Adonai rather than with its own vowels
12.
Chrysorrhoas
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Saint John of Damascus, Arabic, يوحنا الدمشقي, ALA-LC, Yūḥannā ad-Dimashqī), also known as John Damascene and as Χρυσορρόας / Chrysorrhoas was a Syrian monk and priest. Born and raised in Damascus, he died at his monastery, Mar Saba and he is one of the Fathers of the Eastern Orthodox church and is best known for his strong defense of icons. The Catholic Church regards him as a Doctor of the Church, the most common source of information for the life of John of Damascus is a work attributed to one John of Jerusalem, identified therein as the Patriarch of Jerusalem. This is a translation into Greek of an earlier Arabic text. The Arabic original contains a prologue not found in most other translations, Michael explained that he decided to write his biography in 1084 because none was available in his day. However, the main Arabic text seems to have been written by an earlier author sometime between the early 9th and late 10th centuries AD, the hagiographic novel Barlaam and Josaphat, traditionally attributed to John, is in fact a work of the 10th century. John was born in Damascus in the quarter of the 7th century AD. The family was named after Johns grandfather, Mansur ibn Sarjun, Mansur seems to have played a role in the capitulation of Damascus to the troops of Khalid ibn al-Walid in 635 after securing favorable conditions of surrender. Eutychius, a 10th-century Melkite patriarch, mentions him as one high-ranking official involved in the surrender of the city to the Muslims. Moreover, the name was common among Syrian Christians of Arab origins, and Eutychius noted that the governor of Damascus. However, Sahas also asserts that the name not necessarily imply an Arab background and could have been used by non-Arab. John was raised in Damascus, and Arab Christian folklore holds that during his adolescence, John associated with the future Umayyad caliph Yazid I and the Taghlibi Christian court poet al-Akhtal. When Syria was conquered by the Muslim Arabs in the 630s, Johns father, Sarjun, went on to serve the Umayyad caliphs. According to John of Jerusalem and some versions of his life, after his fathers death. In addition, Johns own writings never refer to any experience in a Muslim court and it is believed that John became a monk at Mar Saba, and that he was ordained as a priest in 735. One of the vitae describes his fathers desire for him to not only the books of the Muslims. From this it has suggested that John may have grown up bilingual. John does indeed show some knowledge of the Quran, which he criticizes harshly, other sources describes his education in Damascus as having been conducted in accordance with the principles of Hellenic education, termed secular by one source and Classical Christian by another
13.
Damascus, Syria
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Damascus is the capital and likely the largest city of Syria, following the decline in population of Aleppo due to the ongoing battle for the city. It is commonly known in Syria as ash-Sham and nicknamed as the City of Jasmine, in addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major cultural and religious centre of the Levant. The city has an population of 1,711,000 as of 2009. Located in south-western Syria, Damascus is the centre of a metropolitan area of 2.6 million people. The Barada River flows through Damascus, first settled in the second millennium BC, it was chosen as the capital of the Umayyad Caliphate from 661 to 750. After the victory of the Abbasid dynasty, the seat of Islamic power was moved to Baghdad, Damascus saw a political decline throughout the Abbasid era, only to regain significant importance in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Today, it is the seat of the government and all of the government ministries. The name of Damascus first appeared in the geographical list of Thutmose III as T-m-ś-q in the 15th century BC, the etymology of the ancient name T-m-ś-q is uncertain, but it is suspected to be pre-Semitic. It is attested as Dimašqa in Akkadian, T-ms-ḳw in Egyptian, Dammaśq in Old Aramaic, the Akkadian spelling is found in the Amarna letters, from the 14th century BC. Later Aramaic spellings of the name include a intrusive resh, perhaps influenced by the root dr. Thus, the English and Latin name of the city is Damascus which was imported from originated from the Qumranic Darmeśeq, and Darmsûq in Syriac, meaning a well-watered land. In Arabic, the city is called Dimašqu š-Šāmi, although this is shortened to either Dimašq or aš-Šām by the citizens of Damascus, of Syria and other Arab neighbours. Aš-Šām is an Arabic term for Levant and for Syria, the latter, the Anti-Lebanon mountains mark the border between Syria and Lebanon. The range has peaks of over 10,000 ft. and blocks precipitation from the Mediterranean sea, however, in ancient times this was mitigated by the Barada River, which originates from mountain streams fed by melting snow. Damascus is surrounded by the Ghouta, irrigated farmland where many vegetables, cereals, maps of Roman Syria indicate that the Barada river emptied into a lake of some size east of Damascus. Today it is called Bahira Atayba, the hesitant lake, because in years of severe drought it does not even exist, the modern city has an area of 105 km2, out of which 77 km2 is urban, while Jabal Qasioun occupies the rest. The old city of Damascus, enclosed by the city walls, to the south-east, north and north-east it is surrounded by suburban areas whose history stretches back to the Middle Ages, Midan in the south-west, Sarouja and Imara in the north and north-west. These neighbourhoods originally arose on roads leading out of the city and these new neighbourhoods were initially settled by Kurdish soldiery and Muslim refugees from the European regions of the Ottoman Empire which had fallen under Christian rule
14.
Books of Kings
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In the Hebrew Bible, Kings is a single book called the Book of Kings. The fourth book of Neviim, the division of the Tanakh. In the Septuagint, Samuel and Kings was divided into four books and Kings became III, the two Books of Kings presents a history of ancient Israel and Judah from the death of David to the release of Jehoiachin from imprisonment in Babylon, a period of some 400 years. Solomon comes to the throne after Davids death, at the beginning of his reign he assumes Gods promises to David and brings splendour to Israel and peace and prosperity to his people. The centrepiece of Solomons reign is the building of the First Temple, at the end, however, he follows other gods and oppresses Israel. The kings who follow Rehoboam in Jerusalem continue the line of David, in the north, however, dynasties follow each other in rapid succession. At length God brings the Assyrians to destroy the northern kingdom, Yahweh saves Jerusalem and the kingdom from an invasion by Assyria. But Manasseh, the king, reverses the reforms. Manassehs righteous grandson Josiah reinstitutes the reforms of Hezekiah, but it is too late, God, speaking through the prophetess Huldah, affirms that Jerusalem is to be destroyed. God brings the Babylonians against Jerusalem, Yahweh deserts his people, Jerusalem is razed and the Temple destroyed, in the original Hebrew Bible First and Second Kings are a single book, as are First and Second Samuel. When this was translated into Greek in the last few centuries BCE, then, what it is now commonly known as 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel are called by the Vulgate, in imitation of the Septuagint,1 Kings and 2 Kings respectively. What it is now known as 1 Kings and 2 Kings would be 3 Kings and 4 Kings in old Bibles before the year 1516 such as the Vulgate. The division we know today, used by Protestant Bibles and adopted by Catholics, some Bibles still preserve the old denomination, for example, Douay Rheims bible. According to Jewish tradition the author of Kings was Jeremiah, who would have been alive during the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The Deuteronomic perspective is particularly evident in prayers and speeches spoken by key figures at major transition points, a third source, or set of sources, were cycles of stories about various prophets, plus a few smaller miscellaneous traditions. The conclusion of the book was based on personal knowledge. A few sections were editorial additions not based on sources, judgement is not punishment, but simply the natural consequence of Israels failure to worship Yahweh alone. Another and related theme is that of prophecy, the main point of the prophetic stories is that Gods prophecies are always fulfilled, so that any not yet fulfilled will be so in the future
15.
Anti-Libanus
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The Anti-Lebanon Mountains are a southwest-northeast-trending mountain range that forms the majority of the border between Syria and Lebanon. The border is defined along the crest of the range. Most of the lies in Syria. Its Western name Anti-Lebanon comes from the Greek and Latin Antilibanus, derived from its position opposite, to the west of the Anti-Lebanon lie valleys that separate it from Mount Lebanon in central Lebanon, Baalbeks Beqaa Valley in the north and the Hasbani River valley in the south. To the east, in Syria, lies the Eastern Plateau, the Anti-Lebanon range is approximately 150 kilometres in length. To the north, it extends to almost the latitude of the Syrian city of Homs. To the south, the range coalesces with the Golan Heights plateau but includes the highest peaks of Mount Hermon, at 2,814 metres and these peaks are snow-covered for much of the year and are located on the Lebanese-Syrian border. There are various endemic flora found and named after the region, including, Euphorbia antilibanotica, Teucrium antilibanoticum, Valerianella antilibanotica, and Iris antilibanotica
16.
Debouch
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In the geography of rivers, streams, and glaciers, a debouch, or debouche, is a place where runoff from a small, confined space emerges into a larger, broader space. The term is of French origin and means to cause to emerge, the term also has a military usage. In fluvial geomorphology a debouch is a place where runoff from a small, common examples are when a stream runs into a river or when a river runs into an ocean. Debouching can generate massive amounts of sediment transport, when a narrow stream travels down a mountain pass into a basin, for example, an alluvial fan will form from the mass deposit of the sediment. The four largest rivers are responsible for 20% of the discharge of sediment in to the oceans via debouches. In fluvial geography, a debouch is a place where a body of water pours forth from a narrow opening. Some examples are, where a river or stream emerges from a narrow constraining landform, such as a defile, into open country or a wider space, fluvial landforms of streams Region of freshwater influence Ma, Yanxia. Continental Shelf Sediment Transport and Depositional Processes on an Energetic, Active Margin, pp 2,19 Mitchell, Martha S. River Rules, The Nature of Streams, pp 5 The dictionary definition of debouch at Wiktionary Merriam-Webster
17.
Banias
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Banias is the Arabic and modern Hebrew name of an ancient site that developed around a spring once associated with the Greek god Pan. It is located at the foot of Mount Hermon, north of the Golan Heights, the spring is the source of the Banias River, one of the main tributaries of the Jordan River. The first mention of the ancient city during the Hellenistic period was in the context of the Battle of Panium, fought around 200-198 BCE, later the region was called Paneas. Both names were derived from that of Pan, the god of the wild, the spring at Banias initially originated in a large cave carved out of a sheer cliff face which was gradually lined with a series of shrines. The temenos included in its final phase a temple placed at the mouth of the cave, courtyards for rituals and it was constructed on an elevated, 80m long natural terrace along the cliff which towered over the north of the city. A four-line inscription at the base of one of the niches relates to Pan and Echo, the mountain nymph, and was dated to 87 BCE. The once very large spring gushed from the cave, but an earthquake moved it to the foot of the natural terrace where it now seeps quietly from the bedrock. From here the stream, called Nahal Hermon in Hebrew, flows towards what once were the malaria-infested Hula marshes, the pre-Hellenistic deity associated with the spring of Banias was variously called Baal-gad or Baal-hermon. Paneas was first settled in the Hellenistic period following Alexander the Greats conquest of the east, the Ptolemaic kings built a cult centre there in the 3rd century BC. In the Hellenistic Period the spring was named Panias, for the Arcadian goat-footed god Pan, the Latin equivalent for Paneas is Fanium. The spring lies close to the way of the sea mentioned by Isaiah, in extant sections of the Greek historian Polybiuss history of The Rise of the Roman Empire, a Battle of Panium is mentioned. This battle was fought in ca, 200-198 BC between the armies of Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucids of Coele-Syria, led by Antiochus III. Antiochuss victory cemented Seleucid control over Phoenicia, Galilee, Samaria and it was these Seleucids who built a pagan temple dedicated to Pan at Paneas. Upon Zenodoruss death in 20 BC, the Panion, including Paneas, was annexed to the Kingdom of Herod the Great, Herod erected a temple of white marble there n honour of his patron. In 61 CE, king Agrippa II renamed the administrative capital Neronias in honour of the Roman emperor Nero, Agrippa also carried out urban improvements. In 67CE, during the First Jewish–Roman War, Vespasian briefly visited Caesarea Philippi before advancing on Tiberias in Galilee, with the death of Agrippa II around the year 92 came the end of Herodian rule, and the city returned to the province of Syria. In the late Roman and Byzantine periods the written sources name the city again as Paneas, in 361, Emperor Julian the Apostate instigated a religious reformation of the Roman state, in which he supported the restoration of Hellenic paganism as the state religion. In Paneas this was achieved by replacing Christian symbols, though the change was short lived, in the 5th century, following the division of the Empire, the city was part of the Eastern Empire, but was lost to the Arab expansion of the 7th century
18.
John MacGregor (sportsman)
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John MacGregor, nicknamed Rob Roy after a renowned relative, was a Scottish explorer, travel writer and philanthropist. He is generally credited with the development of the first sailing canoes and with popularising canoeing as a sport in Europe and he founded the British Royal Canoe Club in 1866 becoming its first Captain. MacGregor worked as a barrister in London, and was an accomplished artist, MacGregor was the son of General Sir Duncan MacGregor. His schooling followed his fathers postings, and he attended The Kings School in Canterbury and he graduated from Trinity College, Cambridge, having shown a talent for mathematics. His ambition to become a missionary was blocked after an argument with a superior who was a second-generation Polish immigrant, the superior argued that MacGregor losing his temper and expressing anti-Polish sentiment was unbecoming of a missionary. He then began a career in law, but being of independent means he was able to follow his passion for travel, in 1849 he spent nine months exploring southern Europe, Palestine and Egypt. He was introduced to canoeing during a trip to the United States, MacGregor was a champion marksman but turned to boating when a railroad accident left him unable to hold a rifle steady. The boat he designed was double-ended, but built in Lambeth of lapstrake oak planking and it measured 15 feet long,28 inches wide, nine inches deep and weighed 80 pounds and was designed to be used with a double-bladed paddle. He named the boat Rob Roy after the celebrated Scottish outlaw of the same name, during the 1860s, he had at least seven similar boats built and he sailed and paddled them in Europe, the Baltic and the Middle East. One of those canoes is now based at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, the version he used for his expedition to Egypt, Syria and Palestine in 1868/69 was slightly smaller but was designed so that he could sleep in it. He was accompanied by a dragoman, Hany, and two retainers who maintained the base camps on the journey. He visited the Nile Delta, the rivers of Damascus, as well as parts of the River Jordan and he was responsible for the first scientific survey of the area. a canoe be paddled or sailed, or hauled, or carried over land or water. The book was successful, with subsequent books and public appearances. Scottish author Robert Louis Stevensons 1876 voyage by canoe through the canals and rivers of France and Belgium, published in 1878 as An Inland Voyage, London, Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday,1859. A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe, London, S. Low and Marston,1866. A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe, text, the Rob Roy in the Baltic, from Harpers New Monthly Magazine,1867. The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Nile, Red sea, & Gennesareth, London, John Murray, Albemarle Street 1874. The Voyage Alone In The Yawl Rob Roy, London, S. Low and Marston,1880
19.
Hydraulic engineering
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Hydraulic engineering as a sub-discipline of civil engineering is concerned with the flow and conveyance of fluids, principally water and sewage. One feature of these systems is the use of gravity as the motive force to cause the movement of the fluids. This area of engineering is intimately related to the design of bridges, dams, channels, canals, and levees. Hydraulic engineering is the application of the principles of mechanics to problems dealing with the collection, storage, control, transport, regulation, measurement. Before beginning a hydraulic engineering project, one must figure out how water is involved. The hydraulic engineer is concerned with the transport of sediment by the river, the interaction of the water with its boundary. Fundamentals of Hydraulic Engineering defines hydrostatics as the study of fluids at rest, in a fluid at rest, there exists a force, known as pressure, that acts upon the fluids surroundings. This pressure, measured in N/m2, is not constant throughout the body of fluid, pressure, p, in a given body of fluid, increases with an increase in depth. Four basic devices for measurement are a piezometer, manometer, differential manometer, Bourdon gauge. As Prasuhn states, On undisturbed submerged bodies, pressure acts along all surfaces of a body in a liquid and this reaction is known as equilibrium. More advanced applications of pressure are that on plane surfaces, curved surfaces, dams, the main difference between an ideal fluid and a real fluid is that for ideal flow p1 = p2 and for real flow p1 > p2. Ideal fluid is incompressible and has no viscosity, ideal fluid is only an imaginary fluid as all fluids that exist have some viscosity. A viscous fluid will deform continuously under a force, whereas an ideal fluid doesnt deform. The various effects of disturbance on a flow are stable, transition. For an ideal fluid, Bernoullis equation holds along streamlines, as the flow comes into contact with the plate, the layer of fluid actually adheres to a solid surface. There is then a considerable shearing action between the layer of fluid on the surface and the second layer of fluid. The second layer is forced to decelerate, creating a shearing action with the third layer of fluid. As the fluid passes further along the plate, the zone in which shearing action occurs tends to spread further outwards and this zone is known as the boundary layer
20.
Bible
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The Bible is a collection of sacred texts or scriptures that Jews and Christians consider to be a product of divine inspiration and a record of the relationship between God and humans. Many different authors contributed to the Bible, what is regarded as canonical text differs depending on traditions and groups, a number of Bible canons have evolved, with overlapping and diverging contents. The Christian Old Testament overlaps with the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, the New Testament is a collection of writings by early Christians, believed to be mostly Jewish disciples of Christ, written in first-century Koine Greek. These early Christian Greek writings consist of narratives, letters, among Christian denominations there is some disagreement about the contents of the canon, primarily the Apocrypha, a list of works that are regarded with varying levels of respect. Attitudes towards the Bible also differ amongst Christian groups and this concept arose during the Protestant Reformation, and many denominations today support the use of the Bible as the only source of Christian teaching. With estimated total sales of over 5 billion copies, the Bible is widely considered to be the book of all time. It has estimated sales of 100 million copies, and has been a major influence on literature and history, especially in the West. The English word Bible is from the Latin biblia, from the word in Medieval Latin and Late Latin. Medieval Latin biblia is short for biblia sacra holy book, while biblia in Greek and it gradually came to be regarded as a feminine singular noun in medieval Latin, and so the word was loaned as a singular into the vernaculars of Western Europe. Latin biblia sacra holy books translates Greek τὰ βιβλία τὰ ἅγια ta biblia ta hagia, the word βιβλίον itself had the literal meaning of paper or scroll and came to be used as the ordinary word for book. It is the diminutive of βύβλος byblos, Egyptian papyrus, possibly so called from the name of the Phoenician sea port Byblos from whence Egyptian papyrus was exported to Greece, the Greek ta biblia was an expression Hellenistic Jews used to describe their sacred books. Christian use of the term can be traced to c.223 CE, bruce notes that Chrysostom appears to be the first writer to use the Greek phrase ta biblia to describe both the Old and New Testaments together. The division of the Hebrew Bible into verses is based on the sof passuk cantillation mark used by the 10th-century Masoretes to record the verse divisions used in oral traditions. The oldest extant copy of a complete Bible is an early 4th-century parchment book preserved in the Vatican Library, the oldest copy of the Tanakh in Hebrew and Aramaic dates from the 10th century CE. The oldest copy of a complete Latin Bible is the Codex Amiatinus and he states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. In Christian Bibles, the New Testament Gospels were derived from traditions in the second half of the first century CE. Riches says that, Scholars have attempted to reconstruct something of the history of the oral traditions behind the Gospels, the period of transmission is short, less than 40 years passed between the death of Jesus and the writing of Marks Gospel. This means that there was time for oral traditions to assume fixed form
21.
Naaman
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Naaman the Aramean was a commander of the armies of Ben-Hadad II, the king of Aram-Damascus, in the time of Joram, king of Israel. According to the Bible, Naaman was a commander of the army of Syria and he was a good commander and was held in favor because of victory that God brought him. Naaman’s wife had a servant girl from Israel who said that a prophet there would be able to heal him, Naaman tells his lord this and he is sent to Israel with a letter to the king. The king of Israel didn’t know what to do, yet Elisha came to the king asking to see Naaman and he told him to go bathe in the Jordan seven times and he would be clean. Naaman was angry and would have left, but his servant asked him to try it, a servant of Elisha, seeing Naaman being turned away from offering God offerings ran after him and falsely asked for clothing and silver for visitors. And the leprosy from Naaman fell on Gehazi and would remain in his descendants, God took this man from Syria and showed his power to him in order for him to return to his lord and share the power of the God of Israel. Naaman is mentioned in 2KGS5 of the Tanakh in Hebrew as וְ֠נַעֲמָן שַׂר־ צְבָ֨א מֶֽלֶךְ־ אֲרָ֜ם or Naaman captain of the army of the King of Aram. Now the Arameans went out in bands and captured from the land of Israel a young girl, according to the narrative, he is called a mezora, a person affected by the skin disease tzaraath. Naaman proceeds with the letter to king Joram, the king of Israel suspects in this – to him – impossible request a pretext of Syria for later starting a war against him, and tears his clothes. When the prophet Elisha hears about this, he sends for general Naaman. Only after Naamans slaves suggest to their master that he has nothing to lose by at least giving it a try, he takes his bath in the Jordan river as a mikveh as told, the mikveh is a bath used for the purpose of ritual immersion in Judaism. Naaman returns to Elisha with lavish gifts, which Elisha flatly refuses to accept, Naaman also renounces his former god Rimmon after being cured by Elisha and accepts the God of Israel. He does, however, ask that the God of Israel pardon him when he enters the temple of Rimmon as part of his obligations to the king of Syria. Naaman is also paraphrased in Luke 4,27 of the New Testament, in Greek as Ναιμὰν ὁ Σύρος or Naaman the Syrian, the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, uses the word baptizein for the dipping that heals the heathen Naaman from a skin disease called tzaraath. The new baptism takes place in the Jordan River where Jesus of Nazareth, christians have often interpreted the Naaman story as prefiguring the Christian church rite of baptism. Gehazi Naamah Numan This article incorporates text from a now in the public domain, Easton
22.
Land of Israel
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The Land of Israel is the traditional Jewish name for an area of indefinite geographical extension in the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land, and Palestine. The definitions of the limits of this territory vary between passages in the Hebrew Bible, with mentions in Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34. Nine times elsewhere in the Bible, the land is referred as from Dan to Beersheba. According to the Book of Genesis, the land was first promised by God to the descendants of Abram, abrams name was later changed to Abraham, with the promise refined to pass through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abrahams grandson. During the mandatory period the term Eretz Yisrael or the Land of Israel was part of the official Hebrew name of Mandatory Palestine, official Hebrew documents used the Hebrew transliteration of the word “Palestine” פלשתינה followed always by the two initial letters of Eretz Yisrael, א״י Aleph-Yod. The Land of Israel concept has been evoked by the founders of the State of Israel. It often surfaces in political debates on the status of the West Bank, Ezekiel, though generally preferring the phrase soil of Israel, employs eretz israel twice, respectively at Ezekiel 40,2 and Ezekiel 47,18. According to Anita Shapira, the term Eretz Yisrael was a term, vague as far as the exact boundaries of the territories are concerned. The Hebrew Bible provides three specific sets of borders for the Promised Land, each with a different purpose. And to their descendants after them, whilst Numbers 34, 1–15 describes the Land of Canaan which is allocated to nine, the expression Land of Israel is first used in a later book,1 Samuel 13,19. It is defined in detail in the exilic Book of Ezekiel as a land where both the tribes and the strangers in midst, can claim inheritance. The name Israel first appears in the Hebrew Bible as the name given by God to the patriarch Jacob, deriving from the name Israel, other designations that came to be associated with the Jewish people have included the Children of Israel or Israelite. The term Land of Israel occurs in one episode in the New Testament, the section in which it appears was written as a parallel to the earlier Book of Exodus. The passage describes the area as the land of the ten named ancient peoples living there. Genesis gives the border with Egypt as Nahar Mitzrayim – nahar in Hebrew denotes a river, never a wadi. Only the Red Sea and the Euphrates are mentioned to define the southern and eastern borders of the land promised to the Israelites. The Red Sea corresponding to Hebrew Yam Suf was understood in ancient times to be the Erythraean Sea, thus the entire Arabian peninsula lies within the borders described
23.
Citadel of Damascus
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The Citadel of Damascus is a large medieval fortified palace and citadel in Damascus, Syria. It is part of the Ancient City of Damascus, which was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979, after the assassination of Atsiz bin Uvak, the project was finished by the Seljuq ruler Tutush I. The emirs of the subsequent Burid and Zengid dynasties carried out modifications, during this period, the citadel and the city were besieged several times by Crusader and Muslim armies. In 1174, the citadel was captured by Saladin, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, Saladins brother Al-Adil rebuilt the citadel completely between 1203 and 1216 in response to the development of the counterweight trebuchet. After his death, power struggles broke out between the other Ayyubid princes and although Damascus switched hands several times, the citadel was taken by force only once, in 1239. The citadel remained in Ayyubid hands until the Mongols under their general Kitbuqa captured Damascus in 1260, after an unsuccessful revolt broke out in the citadel, the Mongols had most of it dismantled. After the defeat of the Mongols in 1260 by the Mamluks, except for brief periods in 1300 and 1401, when the Mongols conquered Damascus, the Mamluks controlled the citadel until 1516. In that year, Syria fell into the hands of the Ottoman Empire, Damascus surrendered without a fight and from the 17th century onward the citadel functioned as barracks for the Jannisaries—Ottoman infantry units. The citadel continued to serve as a barracks and prison until 1986, as of 2011, excavation and restoration efforts are still ongoing. The citadel is located in the northwest corner of the city walls, the citadel consists of a more or less rectangular curtain wall enclosing an area of 230 by 150 metres. The walls were protected by 14 massive towers, but today only 12 remain. The citadel has gates on its northern, western and eastern flanks, the current citadel dates primarily to the Ayyubid period while incorporating parts of the older Seljuq fortress. Extensive repairs in response to sieges and earthquakes were carried out in the Mamluk and it is uncertain whether a building stood on the site of the citadel before the 11th century AD. The area occupied by the citadel was most likely outside this first settlement. The presence of a citadel during the Hellenistic period is uncertain, Damascus certainly had a citadel during the Roman period, but whether it was located on the site of the present citadel is uncertain and subject to scholarly debate. In 1076, Damascus was conquered by the Turkman warlord Atsiz bin Uvak and he then tried to invade the Fatimid Caliphate in Egypt but was defeated in 1077. The Fatimids subsequently built on their victory over Atsiz and besieged Damascus in 1077 and again in 1078, the siege of 1078 was eventually lifted by Tutush I, brother of the Seljuq sultan Malik Shah I, to whom Atsiz had appealed for help. After the Fatimid besiegers had left, Tutush I took over the city and, the construction of the citadel was finished under Tutush I
24.
Water resources management in Greater Damascus
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These challenges could be exacerbated by the impact of climate change, since projections indicate that a decrease in rainfall is likely. The quality of water supply mirrors social divisions within the metropolitan area. However, none of these measures has been completed so far. Instead of forcefully promoting local solutions, the government continues to contemplate the large-scale transfer of water from Lake Assad on the Euphrates River through a costly mega-project, decision-making concerning water remains highly centralized. Ultimately the President of Syria takes all key decisions, below him responsibility for the water sector is fragmented between different Ministries. One of them is the Ministry of Housing and Construction, which supervises the Damascus Water Supply and Sewerage Authority, the Ministry of Irrigation also plays an important role in the sector. Greater Damascus is located within the Barada basin, a basin that covers 8,630 km². The smaller 70 km-long Awaj river runs South of the Barada river, total primary water resources in the two basins, surface and groundwater, have been estimated at 452 million cubic per year. Precipitation is highly seasonal and occurs primarily during winter, the main sources of water supply for Damascus are the Fijeh and Barada springs. The Fijeh springs are a group of three large karstic springs - The Fijeh main spring, the Fijeh side spring and the Harouch spring - in the Barada gorge, the three springs used to contribute half the flow of the Barada River. The Barada spring is located North of the Fijeh springs close to the Lebanese border, the entire flow of all these springs is captured today, including through wells positioned around the springs. Water from the Barada and Fijeh springs is transferred to a station near Dummar where it is being chlorinated and distributed to the city. The city’s water supply is complemented by well fields in the plains around the city, the flow of the springs is highly seasonal, lagging several months behind the precipitation because of snow melt and the karstic characteristics of the rocks from which they emerge. The flow of the Figeh springs is less than 4 m3/second during the period from July to December. However, it reaches a maximum of more than 12m3/second in April, the remaining winter flow of the Barada river is not used for drinking water supply in Damascus. However, it plays an important recreational role for the restaurants along its upper course. It also aliments the Ghouta oasis, when it leaves the Barada gorge and enters the plain of Damascus the Barada river splits into five branches. The two Northern branches flow along the foot of the Qasium mountain towards the East, the central branches, including the Barada proper, flow through the city center alongside the old city into the heart of the Ghouta
25.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
26.
Public domain
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The term public domain has two senses of meaning. Anything published is out in the domain in the sense that it is available to the public. Once published, news and information in books is in the public domain, in the sense of intellectual property, works in the public domain are those whose exclusive intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are inapplicable. Examples for works not covered by copyright which are therefore in the domain, are the formulae of Newtonian physics, cooking recipes. Examples for works actively dedicated into public domain by their authors are reference implementations of algorithms, NIHs ImageJ. The term is not normally applied to situations where the creator of a work retains residual rights, as rights are country-based and vary, a work may be subject to rights in one country and be in the public domain in another. Some rights depend on registrations on a basis, and the absence of registration in a particular country, if required. Although the term public domain did not come into use until the mid-18th century, the Romans had a large proprietary rights system where they defined many things that cannot be privately owned as res nullius, res communes, res publicae and res universitatis. The term res nullius was defined as not yet appropriated. The term res communes was defined as things that could be enjoyed by mankind, such as air, sunlight. The term res publicae referred to things that were shared by all citizens, when the first early copyright law was first established in Britain with the Statute of Anne in 1710, public domain did not appear. However, similar concepts were developed by British and French jurists in the eighteenth century, instead of public domain they used terms such as publici juris or propriété publique to describe works that were not covered by copyright law. The phrase fall in the domain can be traced to mid-nineteenth century France to describe the end of copyright term. In this historical context Paul Torremans describes copyright as a coral reef of private right jutting up from the ocean of the public domain. Because copyright law is different from country to country, Pamela Samuelson has described the public domain as being different sizes at different times in different countries. According to James Boyle this definition underlines common usage of the public domain and equates the public domain to public property. However, the usage of the public domain can be more granular. Such a definition regards work in copyright as private property subject to fair use rights, the materials that compose our cultural heritage must be free for all living to use no less than matter necessary for biological survival
27.
Jewish Encyclopedia
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The Jewish Encyclopedia is an English encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the history, culture, and state of Judaism and the Jews up to the early 20th century. It was originally published in 12 volumes by Funk and Wagnalls of New York City between 1901 and 1906 and reprinted in the 1960s by KTAV Publishing House and it is now in the public domain and hosted at various sites around the internet. The encyclopedias managing editor was Isidore Singer, the editorial board was chaired by Isaac K. Funk and Frank H. Vizetelly. William Popper served as the assistant revision editor and chief of translation for Vols, in the 20th century, the movements members dispersed to Jewish Studies departments in the United States and Israel. L. Rapoport, David Zvi Hoffman, Heinrich Graetz, etc, of the works cited which are not German—usually the more classical works—the large part are either Hebrew or Arabic. The only heavily cited English-language source of scholarship is Solomon Schechters publications in the Jewish Quarterly Review. Wolfson continues that if a Jewish Encyclopedia in a language were planned for the first time. The Jewish Encyclopedia was heavily used as a source by the 16-volume Jewish Encyclopedia in Russian, published by Brockhaus, the unedited text of the original can be found at the Jewish Encyclopedia website. The site offers both JPEG facsimiles of the articles and Unicode transcriptions of all texts. Thus, for example, to search for Halizah, one would have to know that they have transliterated this as Ḥaliẓah. The alphabetic index ignores diacriticals so it can be useful when searching for an article whose title is known. The scholarly apparatus of citation is thorough, but can be a bit daunting to contemporary users, a list of abbreviations used in the encyclopedia is provided on the Jewish Encyclopedia website. I, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co, the Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. II, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co. The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. III, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co, the Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. IV, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co. The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. V, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co, VI & VII, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co. The Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co, IX, X, & XI, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co. XII, New York, Funk & Wagnalls Co, schwarz, Leo W. com, maintained by the Kopelman Foundation. Multiple copies at the Internet Archive Hathi Trust
28.
Temple of Jupiter, Damascus
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The Temple of Jupiter in Damascus was built by the Romans, beginning during the rule of Augustus and completed during the rule of Constantius II. Damascus was the capital of the Aramaean state Aram-Damascus during the Iron Age, the Arameans of western Syria followed the cult of Hadad-Ramman, the god of thunderstorms and rain, and erected a temple dedicated to him at the site of the present-day Umayyad Mosque. It is not known exactly how the temple looked, but it is believed to have followed the traditional Semitic-Canaanite architectural form, resembling the Temple of Jerusalem. The site likely consisted of a courtyard, a small chamber for worship. One stone remains from the Aramaean temple, dated to the rule of King Hazael, the Temple of Hadad-Ramman continued to serve a central role in the city, and when the Romans conquered Damascus in 64 BCE they assimilated Hadad with their own god of thunder, Jupiter. Thus, they engaged in a project to reconfigure and expand the temple under the direction of Damascus-born architect Apollodorus, the symmetry and dimensions of the new Greco-Roman Temple of Jupiter impressed the local population. With the exception of the increased scale of the building, most of its original Semitic design was preserved. In the center of the courtyard stood the cella, an image of the god which followers would honor, there was one tower at each of courtyards four corners. The towers were used for rituals in line with ancient Semitic religious traditions where sacrifices were made on high places, the sheer size of the compound suggests that the religious hierarchy of the temple, sponsored by the Romans, wielded major influence in the citys affairs. The Roman temple, which became the center of the Imperial cult of Jupiter, was intended to serve as a response to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. The inner court, or temenos is believed to have been completed soon after the end of Augustus reign in 14CE. This was surrounded by a court, or peribolos which included a market, and was built in stages as funds permitted. At this time the eastern gateway or propylaeum was first built and this main gateway was later expanded during the reign of Septimius Severus. By the 4th century CE, the temple was renowned for its size. It was separated from the city by two sets of walls, the first, wider wall spanned a wide area that included a market, and the second wall surrounded the actual sanctuary of Jupiter. It was the largest temple in Roman Syria, theodosius I converted the temple to a church dedicated to John the Baptist. After the Muslims took over Damascus in 635 CE, the church was shared for seventy years, richard Pococke published a plan of the temple compound in 1745 in his work A Description of the East and Some other Countries, Vol. II. In 1855 the Reverend Josias Porter published a plan showing 40 surviving columns or column fragments which still survived between houses in the area, in 1921 Wulzinger and Watzinger made a plan showing the peribolos to measure some 350m by 450m
29.
Nur al-Din Bimaristan
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Nur al-Din Bimaristan is a large medieval bimaristan in Damascus, Syria. It is located in the quarter in the old walled city. It was built and named after the Zengid Sultan Nur ad-Din in 1154, the bimaristan is well known for its unusual portal, which displays an antique lintel and a curious flattened muqarnas vault. It is also unusual in its full-scale Mesopotamian-style muqarnas vault over the vestibule and it was restored in 1975 and now houses the Museum of Medicine and Science in the Arab World. The building is of the Iraqi type, in plan also, but other than that, the building is fully in the Damascene construction tradition, and in fact stones from the outer enclosure of the antique temple were reused in it
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Mausoleum of Saladin
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The Mausoleum of Saladin holds the resting place and grave of the medieval Muslim Ayyubid Sultan Saladin. It is adjacent to the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria and it was built in 1196, three years after the death of Saladin. The mausoleum presently houses two sarcophagi, one made of wood, said to contain Saladins remains, and one made of marble, Syria & Lebanon Handbook, The Travel Guide. International dictionary of historic places, Middle East and Africa, Volume 4, Saladin, The Life, the Legend and the Islamic Empire
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Azm Palace
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Azm Palace is a palace in Damascus, Syria which was originally built in 1750 as a residence for the Ottoman governor of Damascus Asad Pasha al-Azm. The palace now houses the Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions, the architecture is an excellent example of Damascene traditional houses. The structure consists of buildings and two wings, the harem and the selamlik. The harem is the wing, which was a private space for the residents. This wing includes the kitchen, servant quarters, and the baths, the salamlik is the guest wing, and it comprises the formal halls, reception areas and large courtyards with traditional cascading fountains. Used in the building of this palace were several types of stones including limestone, sandstone, basalt, the ceilings have painted wooden panels that display natural scenes. In 1925 under the French Mandate, the Azm Palace which was damaged during the Syrian Revolution was restored. It became a museum of arts and folk traditions and it received the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1983. Ablaq Azm Palace Media related to Azem Palace at Wikimedia Commons
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Maktab Anbar
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Maktab Anbar is an old house in the center of Old Damascus near the Umayyad Mosque and a short distance from the Street Called Straight. The house was built as a residence by a local Jewish notable Mr. Anbar in the mid 19th century and was later confiscated by the Ottoman government after Mr. Anbar went bankrupt. He had made his fortune in the Far East, returned to Damascus many years later, the family story was that he had lent a lot of money to the Sultan of Turkey who refused to return the money. The family in desperation asked the Kaiser of Germany to intervene, the Sultan was so furious that he never returned the funds and Mr. Anbar then went into bankruptcy and lost the house. The family later was said to have emigrated to Alexandria in Egypt, the house is built around three courtyards, first the formal reception courtyard, behind this the attractive female courtyard, and finally the spartan servants courtyard. The main sections were completed at tremendous expense, and due to high costs Mr. Anbar abandoned the project In 1887, the house was restored by the Ministry of Culture in 1976. It now holds an exhibition hall, museum and craft workshops
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Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Damascus)
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The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a war memorial, dedicated to the Syrian soldiers killed during battle. It is visited every year by the President of Syria on Martyrs Day, the monument was designed by Prof. Dr. Abdo Kass-Hout and Prof. Mahmoud Hammad who won a competition organized by the Syrian Ministry of Defense. Erected in 1985, the monument features a dome, symbolizing the universe, two verses from the Quran are engraved into the structure, Think not of those who are slain in Gods Way as dead
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Abana". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 6.
Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). "Abana". Abana. Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company.
