1.
Gulf of Aqaba
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The Gulf of Aqaba or Gulf of Eilat is a large gulf at the northern tip of the Red Sea, east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian mainland. Its coastline is divided between four countries, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, the gulf is east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian Peninsula. With the Gulf of Suez to the west, it extends from the portion of the Red Sea. It reaches a depth of 1,850 m in its central area. The gulf measures 24 kilometres at its widest point and stretches some 160 kilometres north from the Straits of Tiran to where Israel meets Egypt, like the coastal waters of the Red Sea, the gulf is one of the worlds premier sites for diving. At this northern end of the gulf are three important cities, Taba in Egypt, Eilat in Israel, and Aqaba in Jordan and they are strategically important commercial ports and popular resorts for tourists seeking to enjoy the warm climate. Further south, Haql is the largest Saudi Arabian city on the gulf, on Sinai, Sharm el-Sheikh and Dahab are the major centers. The largest population center is Aqaba, with a population of 108,000, followed by Eilat with a population of 48,000. The gulf is one of two created by the Sinai Peninsulas bifurcation of the northern Red Sea, the Gulf of Suez lying to the west of the peninsula. Geologically, the forms the southern end of the Dead Sea Transform. It contains three small pull-apart basins, the Elat Deep, Aragonese Deep and Dakar Deep, formed between four left lateral strike-slip fault segments, movement on one of these faults caused the 1995 Gulf of Aqaba earthquake. Trade across the Red Sea between Thebes port of Elim and Elat at the head of the gulf is documented as early as the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt, egyptian settlements near Timna at the head of the gulf date to the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. At the northern edge, the ancient city of Ayla was a hub for the Nabateans. The Romans built the Via Traiana Nova, which joined the Kings Highway at Aqaba and connected Africa to Asia, Aqaba was a major Ottoman port, connected to Damascus and Medina by the Hejaz railway. During World War I, the Battle of Aqaba was the key battle that ended a 500-year Ottoman rule over Greater Syria, the gulf is one of the most popular diving destinations in the world. About 250,000 dives are performed annually in Eilats 11 km coastline, the Landscape of Wadi Rum to the east of the northern edge of the gulf is a popular destination. Other destinations are the ruins of the civilization of Ayla in the city of Aqaba. Whales, orcas, dolphins, dugongs, and whale sharks live in the gulf as well
2.
Red Sea
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The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait, to the north lie the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez. The Red Sea is a Global 200 ecoregion, the sea is underlain by the Red Sea Rift which is part of the Great Rift Valley. The Red Sea has an area of roughly 438,000 km2, is about 2250 km long and. It has a depth of 2211 m in the central median trench. However, there are also extensive shallow shelves, noted for their marine life, the sea is the habitat of over 1,000 invertebrate species, and 200 soft and hard corals. It is the worlds northernmost tropical sea, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Red Sea as follows, On the North. The Southern limits of the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, a line joining Husn Murad and Ras Siyyan. Red Sea is a translation of the Greek Erythra Thalassa, Latin Mare Rubrum, Arabic, البحر الأحمر. Al-Baḥr Al-Aḥmar, Somali Badda Cas and Tigrinya Qeyyiḥ bāḥrī, the name of the sea may signify the seasonal blooms of the red-coloured Trichodesmium erythraeum near the waters surface. A theory favored by modern scholars is that the name red is referring to the direction south. The basis of this theory is that some Asiatic languages used color words to refer to the cardinal directions, herodotus on one occasion uses Red Sea and Southern Sea interchangeably. Historically, it was known to western geographers as Mare Mecca. Some ancient geographers called the Red Sea the Arabian Gulf or Gulf of Arabia. C, in that version, the Yam Suph is translated as Erythra Thalassa. The Red Sea is one of four seas named in English after common color terms — the others being the Black Sea, the White Sea and the Yellow Sea. The direct rendition of the Greek Erythra thalassa in Latin as Mare Erythraeum refers to the part of the Indian Ocean. The earliest known exploration of the Red Sea was conducted by ancient Egyptians, one such expedition took place around 2500 BC, and another around 1500 BC. Both involved long voyages down the Red Sea, historically, scholars argued whether these trips were possible
3.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
4.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
5.
Suez
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Suez is a seaport city in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez, near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boundaries as Suez governorate. It has three harbors, Adabya, Ain Sukhna and Port Tawfiq, and extensive port facilities, together they form a metropolitan area. Railway lines and highways connect the city with Cairo, Port Said, Suez has a petrochemical plant, and its oil refineries have pipelines carrying the finished product to Cairo. In the 7th century AD a town named Kolzum stood just north of the site of present-day Suez and served as terminus of a canal built by Amr ibn al-As linking the Nile River. Kolzums trade fell following the closure of the canal in 770 by the second Abbasid caliph al-Mansur to prevent his enemies in Arabia from accessing supplies from Egypt, nonetheless, the town benefited from the trade that remained between Egypt and Arabia. By 780 al-Mansurs successor al-Mahdi restored part of the canal, the Qarmatians led by Hasan ibn Ahmad defeated a Fatimid army headed by Gawhar al-Siqilli at Kolzum in 971 and thereby captured the town. Following his defeat in Cairo by al-Siqilli at the end of year, Hasan. Suez was situated nearby and served as a source of drinking water for Kolzum according to Arab traveler al-Muqaddasi who visited in 986, the Ayyubid sultan of Egypt, Saladin, fortified both Kolzum and Suez in to defend Egypts eastern frontier from Crusader raids by Raynald of Chatillon. Between 1183-84, Raynald had ships stationed in the Red Sea to prevent the Ayyubid garrison at Kolzum from accessing water, in response, Saladins brother al-Adil had Husam ad-Din Lulu build a naval fleet which sailed to the southern port of Aidab to end Raynalds venture. By the 13th century it was recorded that Kolzum was in ruins as was Suez which had replaced the former as a population center. According to Muslim historians al-Maqrizi and al-Idrisi, Kolzum had once been a prosperous town, Arab geographer al-Dimashqi noted that Kolzum belonged to the Mamluk province of al-Karak at the time. Following the Ottomans conquest of Egypt at the beginning of the 16th century, the Ottoman fleets at Suez were instrumental in disputing control with the Portuguese over Indian Ocean trade. However, by 1798, during Napoleonic invasion, Suez had devolved into an unimportant town, fighting between the French and the British in 1800 left most of the town in ruins. Its importance as a port increased after the Suez Canal opened in 1869, the city was virtually destroyed during battles in the late 1960s and early 1970s between Egyptian and Israeli forces occupying the Sinai Peninsula. The town was deserted following the Six Day War in 1967, reconstruction of Suez began soon after Egypt reopened the Suez Canal, following the October War with Israel. Suez was the first city to major protests against the government of Hosni Mubarak during the 2011 Egyptian revolution and was the scene of the first fatality of that uprising. On account of this, it has called the Sidi Bouzid of Egypt. The city is divided into five districts, It is most populous district of the city
6.
Arabic
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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
7.
Sinai Peninsula
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The Sinai Peninsula or simply Sinai is a peninsula in Egypt, situated between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, serving as a land bridge between Asia and Africa. It is the part of Egyptian territory located in Asia. Sinai has an area of about 60,000 km2. The bulk of the peninsula is divided administratively into two of Egypts 27 governorates, the Sinai Peninsula has been a part of Egypt from the First Dynasty of ancient Egypt. In periods of occupation, the Sinai was, like the rest of Egypt, also occupied and controlled by foreign empires, in more recent history the Ottoman Empire. Israel invaded and occupied Sinai during the Suez Crisis of 1956, on 6 October 1973, Egypt launched the Yom Kippur War to retake the peninsula, which was the site of fierce fighting between Egyptian and Israeli forces. Today, Sinai has become a tourist destination due to its setting, rich coral reefs. Mount Sinai is one of the most religiously significant places in Abrahamic faiths, in addition to its formal name, Egyptians also refer to it as Arḍ ul-Fairūz. The ancient Egyptians called it Ta Mefkat, or land of turquoise, Sinai is triangular in shape, with northern shore lying on the southern Mediterranean Sea, and southwest and southeast shores on Gulf of Suez and Gulf of Aqaba of the Red Sea. It is linked to the African continent by the Isthmus of Suez,125 kilometres wide strip of land, the eastern isthmus, linking it to the Asian mainland, is around 200 kilometres wide. The peninsulas eastern shore separates the Arabian plate from the African plate, the southernmost tip is the Ras Muhammad National Park. Most of the Sinai Peninsula is divided among the two governorates of Egypt, South Sinai and North Sinai, together, they comprise around 60,000 square kilometres and have a population of 597,000. Three more governates span the Suez Canal, crossing into African Egypt, Suez is on the end of the Suez Canal, Ismailia in the centre. The largest city of Sinai is Arish, capital of the North Sinai, other larger settlements include Sharm el-Sheikh and El-Tor, on the southern coast. Inland Sinai is arid, mountainous and sparsely populated, the largest settlements being Saint Catherine, Sinai is one of the coldest provinces in Egypt because of its high altitudes and mountainous topographies. Winter temperatures in some of Sinais cities and towns reach −16 °C, the mines were worked intermittently and on a seasonal basis for thousands of years. Modern attempts to exploit the deposits have been unprofitable and these may be the first historically attested mines. According to the Hebrew Bible, the peninsula was crossed by the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt and this included numerous halts over a 40-year period of travel sometime towards the end of the Bronze Age
8.
Gulf of Suez Rift
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The Gulf of Suez Rift is a continental rift zone that was active between the Late Oligocene and the end of the Miocene. During its brief history, the deepest part of the remnant rift topography has been filled by the sea. North of the Gulf of Suez the rift becomes indistinct and its exact geometry uncertain, the formation of the Red Sea – Gulf of Suez rift system was caused by the anticlockwise rotation of the Arabian Plate with respect to the African Plate. This model is consistent with near orthogonal rifting along the length of the rift system. Alternative models that suggest initiation by strike-slip faulting and pull-apart basin development along the axis of the rift have not been supported by detailed studies of the rift geometry, the basement consists of Precambrian rocks of the Arabian-Nubian Shield. Gneisses, volcanics and metasediments are intruded by granites, granodiorites and these rocks contain shear zones, such as the Rehba Shear Zone of western Sinai, that are interpreted to have partly controlled the orientation and location of rift structures. Cambrian rocks of Araba and Naqus Formations occur throughout the region above a planar unconformity and these red and white sandstone units have a combined thickness of about 500 m. They were deposited in a continental environment except in the part of the gulf where they become marine. The Umm Bogma Formation is dolomitic, while the stratigraphically equivalent Abur Durba Formation consists of shales and mudstones. These sequences then pass up into the sandstones of the Abu Thora Formation, in the northern Gulf, at Wadi Araba, the early Carboniferous is overlain by upper Carboniferous of the Rod e Hamal, Abu Darag and Ahmeir Formations. In the southern Gulf the Carboniferous strata are capped by Permian volcanics, the Qiseib Formation is found throughout the Gulf varying in thickness between 8 m and 300 m. It is thought to be mainly Triassic in age, although it is considered to include Permian strata near its base near Wadi Araba, the Qiseib Formation consists of sandstones, conglomeratic at the base with an overall fining upward trend. The Qiseib Formation is overlain by the sandstones of the Malha Formation of upper Jurassic to lower Cretaceous age and these sandstones are up to 400 m in thickness, form an important reservoir in the Gulf of Suez and are known informally as the Nubian sandstone. The upper Cretaceous sequence consists of marine deposits that generally thicken northwards. The Cenomanian Raha Formation, a sequence of interbedded shales limestones and this is overlain by sandstones and shales of the Coniacian-Santonian age Matullah Formation. The central and northern parts of the gulf were locally affected by a phase of inversion at the end of the Santonian, structures such as Wadi Araba became uplifted at this time giving rise to folding and local erosion of pre-Campanian strata. These pass up into Sudr Formation chalks of Maastrichtian age, on the southern margin of the uplifted Wadi Araba, a carbonate ramp sequence was formed during the Campanian/Maastrichtian, continuing into the Paleogene. Rocks of Paleocene age are represented by the Esna Shale Formation which overlies the Sudr Formation and this is succeeded by Eocene age limestones of either the Thebes or Waseiyit Formations
