Algiers
Algiers is the capital and largest city of Algeria. In 2011, the city's population was estimated to be around 3,500,000. An estimate puts the population of the larger metropolitan city to be around 5,000,000. Algiers is located in the north-central portion of Algeria. Algiers is situated on the west side of a bay of the Mediterranean Sea; the modern part of the city is built on the level ground by the seashore. The casbah and the two quays form a triangle; the city's name is derived via French and Catalan Alger from the Arabic name Al-Jazā’ir, "The Islands". This name refers to the four former islands which lay off the city's coast before becoming part of the mainland in 1525. Al-Jazā’ir is itself a truncated form of the city's older name Jaza'ir Bani Mazghana, "The Islands of the Sons of Mazghana", used by early medieval geographers such as al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi. In antiquity, the Greeks knew the town as Ikosion, Latinized as Icosium under Roman rule; the Greeks explained the name as coming from their word for "twenty" because it had been founded by 20 companions of Hercules when he visited the Atlas Mountains during his labors.
In fact, the name transcribed the Punic name ʿWYKSM, "Seagull Island", again named after the site's former islands. Algiers is known as El-Behdja or "Algiers the White" for its whitewashed buildings, seen rising from the sea. A small Phoenician colony on Algiers's former islands was established and taken over by the Carthaginians sometime before the 3rd century BC. After the Punic Wars, the Romans took over administration of the town, which they called Icosium, its ruins now form part of the modern city's marine quarter, with the Rue de la Marine following a former Roman road. Roman cemeteries existed near Bab Azoun; the city was given Latin rights by the emperor Vespasian. The bishops of Icosium are mentioned as late as the 5th century, but the ancient town fell into obscurity during the Muslim conquest of North Africa; the present city was founded in 944 by Bologhine ibn Ziri, the founder of the Berber Zirid–Sanhaja dynasty. He had earlier built a Sanhaja center at Ashir, just south of Algiers.
Although his Zirid dynasty was overthrown by Roger II of Sicily in 1148, the Zirids had lost control of Algiers to their cousins the Hammadids in 1014. The city was wrested from the Hammadids by the Almohads in 1159, in the 13th century came under the dominion of the Ziyanid sultans of Tlemcen. Nominally part of the sultanate of Tlemcen, Algiers had a large measure of independence under amirs of its own due to Oran being the chief seaport of the Ziyanids; the Peñón of Algiers, an islet in front of Algiers harbour had been occupied by the Spaniards as early as 1302. Thereafter, a considerable amount of trade began to flow between Spain. However, Algiers continued to be of comparatively little importance until after the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, many of whom sought asylum in the city. In 1510, following their occupation of Oran and other towns on the coast of Africa, the Spaniards fortified the islet of Peñon and imposed a levy intended to suppress corsair activity. In 1516, the amir of Algiers, Selim b.
Teumi, invited the corsair brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa to expel the Spaniards. Aruj came to Algiers, ordered the assassination of Selim, seized the town and ousted the Spanish in the Capture of Algiers. Hayreddin, succeeding Aruj after the latter was killed in battle against the Spaniards in the Fall of Tlemcen, was the founder of the pashaluk, which subsequently became the beylik, of Algeria. Barbarossa lost Algiers in 1524 but regained it with the Capture of Algiers, formally invited the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to accept sovereignty over the territory and to annex Algiers to the Ottoman Empire. Algiers from this time became the chief seat of the Barbary pirates. In October 1541 in the Algiers expedition, the King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sought to capture the city, but a storm destroyed a great number of his ships, his army of some 30,000, chiefly made up of Spaniards, was defeated by the Algerians under their Pasha, Hassan. Formally part of the Ottoman Empire but free from Ottoman control, starting in the 16th century Algiers turned to piracy and ransoming.
Due to its location on the periphery of both the Ottoman and European economic spheres, depending for its existence on a Mediterranean, controlled by European shipping, backed by European navies, piracy became the primary economic activity. Repeated attempts were made by various nations to subdue the pirates that disturbed shipping in the western Mediterranean and engaged in slave raids as far north as Iceland; the United States fought two wars over Algiers' attacks on shipping. Among the notable people held for ransom was the future Spanish novelist Miguel de Cervantes, captive in Algiers five years, who wrote two plays set in Algiers of the period; the primary source for knowledge of Algiers of this period, since there are no contemporary local sources, is the Topografía e historia general de Argel, published by Diego de Haedo, but whose authorship is disputed. This work describes in detail the city, the behavior of its inhabitants, its military defenses, with the unsuccessful hope of facilitating an attack by Spain so as to end the piracy.
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Pallenis spinosa
Pallenis spinosa, common names: Spiny Starwort or Spiny Golden Star, is an annual herbaceous plant belonging to the genus Pallenis of the Asteraceae family. The Latin name of the genus is derived from palea, referring to the chaffy receptacle, while the species name spinosa, meaning spiny, refers to the spiny bracts surrounding the flowers. Pallenis spinosa reaches on average 60 centimetres of height. Leaves are lanceolate or elliptical; the basal ones have short petioles, while the cauline ones are semiamplexicaul. A solitary inflorescence grows at the top of the branches; the large convex receptacle shows numerous, yellowish orange, hermaphrodite disc florets and two whorls of yellow ray florets. The long, involucral bracts end in an apical sharp-pointed spine; the flowering period extends from May through July. Fruits are achenes of about 2-2,5 millimeters of length; this plant occurs in desert and coastal habitats of Southern Europe, North Africa, the Canary Islands and the Middle East. These plants can survive in dry environments and can be found on uncultivated sunny lands and on the roadsides at 0–1,400 metres above sea level.
Judd, W. S. Campbell, C. S. Kellog, E. A. & Donoghue, M. J.: Plant Systematics: a phylogenetic approach, Sunderland, Mass. Pignatti S. - Flora d'Italia - Edagricole – 1982. Vol. III Biolib Pallenis Oil of P. spinosa
Sicily
Sicily is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 20 regions of Italy. It is one of the five Italian autonomous regions, in Southern Italy along with surrounding minor islands referred to as Regione Siciliana. Sicily is located in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula, from which it is separated by the narrow Strait of Messina, its most prominent landmark is Mount Etna, the tallest active volcano in Europe, one of the most active in the world 3,329 m high. The island has a typical Mediterranean climate; the earliest archaeological evidence of human activity on the island dates from as early as 12,000 BC. By around 750 BC, Sicily had three Phoenician and a dozen Greek colonies and, for the next 600 years, it was the site of the Sicilian Wars and the Punic Wars. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD, Sicily was ruled during the Early Middle Ages by the Vandals, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantine Empire, the Emirate of Sicily; the Norman conquest of southern Italy led to the creation of the Kingdom of Sicily, subsequently ruled by the Hohenstaufen, the Capetian House of Anjou and the House of Habsburg.
It was unified under the House of Bourbon with the Kingdom of Naples as the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. It became part of Italy in 1860 following the Expedition of the Thousand, a revolt led by Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Italian unification, a plebiscite. Sicily was given special status as an autonomous region on 15th May 1946, 18 days before the Italian constitutional referendum of 1946. Albeit, much of the autonomy still remains unapplied financial autonomy, because the autonomy-activating laws have been deferred to be approved by the parithetic committee, since 1946. Sicily has a rich and unique culture with regard to the arts, literature and architecture, it is home to important archaeological and ancient sites, such as the Necropolis of Pantalica, the Valley of the Temples and Selinunte. Sicily has a triangular shape, earning it the name Trinacria. To the east, it is separated from the Italian mainland by the Strait of Messina, about 3 km wide in the north, about 16 km wide in the southern part.
The northern and southern coasts are each about 280 km long measured as a straight line, while the eastern coast measures around 180 km. The total area of the island is 25,711 km2, while the Autonomous Region of Sicily has an area of 27,708 km2; the terrain of inland Sicily is hilly and is intensively cultivated wherever possible. Along the northern coast, the mountain ranges of Madonie, 2,000 m, Nebrodi, 1,800 m, Peloritani, 1,300 m, are an extension of the mainland Apennines; the cone of Mount Etna dominates the eastern coast. In the southeast lie the lower Hyblaean Mountains, 1,000 m; the mines of the Enna and Caltanissetta districts were part of a leading sulphur-producing area throughout the 19th century, but have declined since the 1950s. Sicily and its surrounding small islands have some active volcanoes. Mount Etna is the largest active volcano in Europe and still casts black ash over the island with its ever-present eruptions, it stands 3,329 metres high, though this varies with summit eruptions.
It is the highest mountain in Italy south of the Alps. Etna covers an area of 1,190 km2 with a basal circumference of 140 km; this makes it by far the largest of the three active volcanoes in Italy, being about two and a half times the height of the next largest, Mount Vesuvius. In Greek mythology, the deadly monster Typhon was trapped under the mountain by Zeus, the god of the sky. Mount Etna is regarded as a cultural symbol and icon of Sicily; the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea, to the northeast of mainland Sicily form a volcanic complex, include Stromboli. The three volcanoes of Vulcano and Lipari are currently active, although the latter is dormant. Off the southern coast of Sicily, the underwater volcano of Ferdinandea, part of the larger Empedocles volcano, last erupted in 1831, it is located between the island of Pantelleria. The autonomous region includes several neighbouring islands: the Aegadian Islands, the Aeolian Islands and Lampedusa; the island is drained by several rivers, most of which flow through the central area and enter the sea at the south of the island.
The Salso flows through parts of Enna and Caltanissetta before entering the Mediterranean Sea at the port of Licata. To the east, the Alcantara flows through the province of Messina and enters the sea at Giardini Naxos, the Simeto, which flows into the Ionian Sea south of Catania. Other important rivers on the island are the Platani in the southwest. Sicily has a typical Mediterranean climate with mild and wet winters and hot, dry summers with changeable intermediate seasons. On the coasts the south-western, the climate is affected by the African currents and summers can be scorching. Sicily is seen as an island of warm winters but above all along the Tyrrhenian coast and in the inland areas, winters can be cold, with typical continental climate. Snow falls in abundance above 900–1000 metres, but stronger cold waves can carry it in the hills and in coastal cities on the northern coast of the island; the interi
Aleppo
Aleppo is a city in Syria, serving as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Syrian governorate. With an official population of 4.6 million in 2010, Aleppo was the largest Syrian city before the Syrian Civil War. Aleppo is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Excavations at Tell as-Sawda and Tell al-Ansari, just south of the old city of Aleppo, show that the area was occupied by Amorites since at least the latter part of the 3rd millennium BC; this is when Aleppo is first mentioned in cuneiform tablets unearthed in Ebla and Mesopotamia, in which it is a part of the Amorite state of Yamhad, is noted for its commercial and military proficiency. Such a long history is attributed to its strategic location as a trading center midway between the Mediterranean Sea and Mesopotamia. For centuries, Aleppo was the largest city in the Syrian region, the Ottoman Empire's third-largest after Constantinople and Cairo; the city's significance in history has been its location at one end of the Silk Road, which passed through central Asia and Mesopotamia.
When the Suez Canal was inaugurated in 1869, trade was diverted to sea and Aleppo began its slow decline. At the fall of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, Aleppo ceded its northern hinterland to modern Turkey, as well as the important railway connecting it to Mosul. In the 1940s, it lost its main access to the sea, Antakya and İskenderun to Turkey; the isolation of Syria in the past few decades further exacerbated the situation. This decline may have helped to preserve the old city of Aleppo, its medieval architecture and traditional heritage, it won the title of the "Islamic Capital of Culture 2006", has had a wave of successful restorations of its historic landmarks. The Battle of Aleppo occurred in the city during the Syrian Civil War, many parts of the city suffered massive destruction. Affected parts of the city are undergoing reconstruction. Modern-day English-speakers refer to the city as Aleppo, it was known in antiquity as Khalpe, to the Greeks and Romans as Beroea. During the Crusades, again during the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon of 1923–1946, the name Alep was used.
Aleppo represents the Italianised version of this. The original ancient name, has survived as the current Arabic name of the city, it is of obscure origin. However, the term Ḥalab might be derived from related to a folktale of Abraham, who milked his sheep to feed the poor. Others have proposed that Ḥalab means "iron" or "copper" in Amorite languages, since the area served as a major source of these metals in antiquity. Another possibility is that Ḥalab means'white', as this is the word for'white' in Aramaic, the local language which preceded regional Arabization; this may explain how Ḥalab became the Hebrew word for milk or vice versa, as well as offers a possible explanation for the modern-day Arabic nickname of the city, ash-Shahbaa, which means "the white-colored mixed with black" and derives from the famous white marble of Aleppo. Abraham is said to have camped on the acropolis which, long before his time, served as the foundation of a fortress where the Aleppo citadel is standing now, he milked his grey cow there, hence Aleppo's name "Halab Al-Shahba".
From the 11th century it was common rabbinic usage to apply the term "Aram-Zobah" to the area of Aleppo, many Syrian Jews continue to do so. Aleppo has scarcely been touched by archaeologists; the site has been occupied from around 5000 BC. Aleppo appears in historical records as an important city much earlier than Damascus; the first record of Aleppo comes from the third millennium BC, in the Ebla tablets when Aleppo was referred to as Ha-lam. Some historians, such as Wayne Horowitz, identify Aleppo with the capital of an independent kingdom related to Ebla, known as Armi, although this identification is contested; the main temple of the storm god Hadad was located on the citadel hill in the center of the city, when the city was known as the city of Hadad. Naram-Sin of Akkad mention his destruction of Ebla and Armani/Armanum, in the 23rd century BC. but the identification of Armani in the inscription of Naram-Sim as Armi in the Eblaite tablets is debated, as there was no Akkadian annexation of Ebla or northern Syria.
In the Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian Empire period, Aleppo's name appears in its original form as Ḥalab for the first time. Aleppo was the capital of the important Amorite dynasty of Yamḥad; the kingdom of Yamḥad, alternatively known as the'land of Ḥalab,' was one of the most powerful in the Near East during the reign of Yarim-Lim I, who formed an alliance with Hammurabi of Babylonia against Shamshi-Adad I of Assyria. Yamḥad was devastated by the Hittites under Mursilis I in the 16th century BC. However, it soon resumed its leading role in the Levant when the Hittite power in the region waned due to internal strife. Taking advantage of the power vacuum in the region, king of the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni instigated a rebellion that ended the life of Yamhad last king Ilim-Ilimma I in c. 1525 BC, Parshatatar conquered Aleppo and the city found itself on the frontline in the struggle between the Mitanni, the Hittites and Egypt. Niqmepa of Alalakh who descends from the old Yamhadite kings controlled the city as a vassal to Mitanni and was attacked by Tudhaliya I of the Hittites as a retaliation for his alliance to
Algeria
Algeria the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. The capital and most populous city is Algiers, located in the far north of the country on the Mediterranean coast. With an area of 2,381,741 square kilometres, Algeria is the tenth-largest country in the world, the world's largest Arab country, the largest in Africa. Algeria is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia, to the east by Libya, to the west by Morocco, to the southwest by the Western Saharan territory and Mali, to the southeast by Niger, to the north by the Mediterranean Sea; the country is a semi-presidential republic consisting of 1,541 communes. It has the highest human development index of all non-island African countries. Ancient Algeria has known many empires and dynasties, including ancient Numidians, Carthaginians, Vandals, Umayyads, Idrisid, Rustamid, Zirid, Almoravids, Spaniards and the French colonial empire. Berbers are the indigenous inhabitants of Algeria. Algeria is a middle power.
It supplies large amounts of natural gas to Europe, energy exports are the backbone of the economy. According to OPEC Algeria has the 16th largest oil reserves in the world and the second largest in Africa, while it has the 9th largest reserves of natural gas. Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa. Algeria has one of the largest defence budget on the continent. Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, OPEC, the United Nations and is a founding member of the Arab Maghreb Union. On 2 April 2019, president Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigned after nearly 20 years in power, following pressure from the country’s army after mass protests against Bouteflika's campaign for a fifth term; the country's name derives from the city of Algiers. The city's name in turn derives from the Arabic al-Jazā'ir, a truncated form of the older Jazā'ir Banī Mazghanna, employed by medieval geographers such as al-Idrisi. In the region of Ain Hanech, early remnants of hominid occupation in North Africa were found.
Neanderthal tool makers produced hand axes in the Levalloisian and Mousterian styles similar to those in the Levant. Algeria was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic Flake tool techniques. Tools of this era, starting about 30,000 BC, are called Aterian; the earliest blade industries in North Africa are called Iberomaurusian. This industry appears to have spread throughout the coastal regions of the Maghreb between 15,000 and 10,000 BC. Neolithic civilization developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghreb as early as 11,000 BC or as late as between 6000 and 2000 BC; this life, richly depicted in the Tassili n'Ajjer paintings, predominated in Algeria until the classical period. The mixture of peoples of North Africa coalesced into a distinct native population that came to be called Berbers, who are the indigenous peoples of northern Africa. From their principal center of power at Carthage, the Carthaginians expanded and established small settlements along the North African coast.
These settlements served as market towns as well as anchorages. As Carthaginian power grew, its impact on the indigenous population increased dramatically. Berber civilization was at a stage in which agriculture, manufacturing and political organization supported several states. Trade links between Carthage and the Berbers in the interior grew, but territorial expansion resulted in the enslavement or military recruitment of some Berbers and in the extraction of tribute from others. By the early 4th century BC, Berbers formed the single largest element of the Carthaginian army. In the Revolt of the Mercenaries, Berber soldiers rebelled from 241 to 238 BC after being unpaid following the defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War, they succeeded in obtaining control of much of Carthage's North African territory, they minted coins bearing the name Libyan, used in Greek to describe natives of North Africa. The Carthaginian state declined because of successive defeats by the Romans in the Punic Wars.
In 146 BC the city of Carthage was destroyed. As Carthaginian power waned, the influence of Berber leaders in the hinterland grew. By the 2nd century BC, several large but loosely administered Berber kingdoms had emerged. Two of them were established behind the coastal areas controlled by Carthage. West of Numidia lay Mauretania, which extended across the Moulouya River in modern-day Morocco to the Atlantic Ocean; the high point of Berber civilization, unequaled until the coming of the Almohads and Almoravids more than a millennium was reached during the reign of Masinissa in the 2nd century BC. After Masinissa's death in 148 BC, the Berber kingdoms were reunited several times. Masinissa's line survived until 24 AD, when the remaining Berber territory was annexed to the Roman Empire. For several centuries Algeria was ruled by the Romans. Like the rest of No
Geography
Geography is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features and phenomena of the Earth and planets. The first person to use the word γεωγραφία was Eratosthenes. Geography is an all-encompassing discipline that seeks an understanding of Earth and its human and natural complexities—not where objects are, but how they have changed and come to be. Geography is defined in terms of two branches: human geography and physical geography. Human geography deals with the study of people and their communities, cultures and interactions with the environment by studying their relations with and across space and place. Physical geography deals with the study of processes and patterns in the natural environment like the atmosphere, hydrosphere and geosphere; the four historical traditions in geographical research are: spatial analyses of natural and the human phenomena, area studies of places and regions, studies of human-land relationships, the Earth sciences. Geography has been called "the world discipline" and "the bridge between the human and the physical sciences".
Geography is a systematic study of its features. Traditionally, geography has been associated with place names. Although many geographers are trained in toponymy and cartology, this is not their main preoccupation. Geographers study the space and the temporal database distribution of phenomena and features as well as the interaction of humans and their environment; because space and place affect a variety of topics, such as economics, climate and animals, geography is interdisciplinary. The interdisciplinary nature of the geographical approach depends on an attentiveness to the relationship between physical and human phenomena and its spatial patterns. Names of places...are not geography...know by heart a whole gazetteer full of them would not, in itself, constitute anyone a geographer. Geography has higher aims than this: it seeks to classify phenomena, to compare, to generalize, to ascend from effects to causes, and, in doing so, to trace out the laws of nature and to mark their influences upon man.
This is ` a description of the world' --. In a word Geography is a Science—a thing not of mere names but of argument and reason, of cause and effect. Just as all phenomena exist in time and thus have a history, they exist in space and have a geography. Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main subsidiary fields: human geography and physical geography; the former focuses on the built environment and how humans create, view and influence space. The latter examines the natural environment, how organisms, soil and landforms produce and interact; the difference between these approaches led to a third field, environmental geography, which combines physical and human geography and concerns the interactions between the environment and humans. Physical geography focuses on geography as an Earth science, it aims to understand the physical problems and the issues of lithosphere, atmosphere and global flora and fauna patterns. Physical geography can be divided into many broad categories, including: Human geography is a branch of geography that focuses on the study of patterns and processes that shape the human society.
It encompasses the human, cultural and economic aspects. Human geography can be divided into many broad categories, such as: Various approaches to the study of human geography have arisen through time and include: Behavioral geography Feminist geography Culture theory Geosophy Environmental geography is concerned with the description of the spatial interactions between humans and the natural world, it requires an understanding of the traditional aspects of physical and human geography, as well as the ways that human societies conceptualize the environment. Environmental geography has emerged as a bridge between the human and the physical geography, as a result of the increasing specialisation of the two sub-fields. Furthermore, as human relationship with the environment has changed as a result of globalization and technological change, a new approach was needed to understand the changing and dynamic relationship. Examples of areas of research in the environmental geography include: emergency management, environmental management and political ecology.
Geomatics is concerned with the application of computers to the traditional spatial techniques used in cartography and topography. Geomatics emerged from the quantitative revolution in geography in the mid-1950s. Today, geomatics methods include spatial analysis, geographic information systems, remote sensing, global positioning systems. Geomatics has led to a revitalization of some geography departments in Northern America where the subject had a declining status during the 1950s. Regional geography is concerned with the description of the unique characteristics of a particular region such as its natural or human elements; the main aim is to understand, or define the uniqueness, or character of a particular region that consists of natural as well as human elements. Attention is paid to regionalization, which covers the proper techniques of space delimitation into regions. Urban planning, regional planning, spatial planning: Use the science of geography to assist in determining how to develop the land to meet particular criteria, such as safety, economic opportunities, the preservation of the built or natural heritage, so on.
The planning of towns, c
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