1.
The New Church (Swedenborgian)
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Swedenborg claimed to have received a new revelation from Jesus Christ through continuous heavenly visions which he experienced over a period of at least twenty-five years. In his writings, he predicted that God would replace the traditional Christian Church, establishing a New Church, the New Church doctrine is that each person must actively cooperate in repentance, reformation, and regeneration of ones life. The movement was founded on the belief that God explained the meaning of the Scriptures to Swedenborg as a means of revealing the truth of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Swedenborg claimed divine inspiration for his writings and followers believe that Swedenborg witnessed the Last Judgment in the spiritual world, therefore, it is thought that any Christian holding these beliefs is part of this New Church movement. Other names for the movement include Swedenborgian, New Christians, Neo-Christians, Church of the New Jerusalem, Swedenborg spoke of a New Church that would be founded on the theology in his works, but he himself never tried to establish an organization. In 1768, a trial was initiated in Sweden against Swedenborgs writings. It essentially concerned whether Swedenborgs theological writings were consistent with the Christian doctrines, a royal ordinance in 1770 declared that Swedenborgs writings were clearly mistaken and should not be taught even though his system of theological thought was never examined. Swedenborg then begged the King for grace and protection in a letter from Amsterdam, a new investigation against Swedenborg stalled and was eventually dropped in 1778. At the time of Swedenborgs death, few efforts had made to establish an organized church, but on May 7,1787,15 years after Swedenborgs death. It was a country Swedenborg had often visited and where he died, by 1789 a number of Churches had sprung up around England, and in April of that year the first General Conference of the New Church was held in Great Eastcheap, London. New Church ideas were carried to United States by missionaries, one famous missionary was John Chapman, also known as Johnny Appleseed. Early missionaries also traveled to parts of Africa, at the time these concepts of African enlightenment were judged highly liberal, Swedenborgians accepted freed African converts to their homes as early as 1790. Several of them were involved in abolitionism. In the 19th century, occultism became increasingly popular especially in France, some followers blended Swedenborgs writings with theosophy, alchemy and divination. What fascinated these followers most was Swedenborgs mystical side and they concentrated on his work Heaven and Hell which tells of Swedenborgs visit to Heaven and Hell to experience and report the conditions there. In structure, it was related to Dantes The Divine Comedy, some continue to combine the theology of the New Church with ideas from other systems, including Jungian psychology and Spiritualism. In the U. S. the church was organized in 1817 with the founding of the General Convention of the New Church now also known as the Swedenborgian Church of North America, the movement in the United States grew stronger until the late 19th century. There was a New-Church Theology School in Cambridge, a controversy about doctrinal issues and the authority of Swedenborgs writings caused a faction to split off to form the Academy of the New Church
2.
Spanish language
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Spanish —also called Castilian —is a Romance language that originated in the Castile region of Spain, with hundreds of millions of native speakers around the world. It is usually considered the worlds second-most spoken native language after Mandarin Chinese and it is one of the few languages to use inverted question and exclamation marks. Spanish is a part of the Ibero-Romance group of languages, which evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in Iberia after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century. Beginning in the early 16th century, Spanish was taken to the colonies of the Spanish Empire, most notably to the Americas, as well as territories in Africa, Oceania, around 75% of modern Spanish is derived from Latin. Greek has also contributed substantially to Spanish vocabulary, especially through Latin, Spanish vocabulary has been in contact from an early date with Arabic, having developed during the Al-Andalus era in the Iberian Peninsula. With around 8% of its vocabulary being Arabic in origin, this language is the second most important influence after Latin and it has also been influenced by Basque as well as by neighboring Ibero-Romance languages. It also adopted words from languages such as Gothic language from the Visigoths in which many Spanish names and surnames have a Visigothic origin. Spanish is one of the six languages of the United Nations. It is the language in the world by the number of people who speak it as a mother tongue, after Mandarin Chinese. It is estimated more than 437 million people speak Spanish as a native language. Spanish is the official or national language in Spain, Equatorial Guinea, speakers in the Americas total some 418 million. In the European Union, Spanish is the tongue of 8% of the population. Spanish is the most popular second language learned in the United States, in 2011 it was estimated by the American Community Survey that of the 55 million Hispanic United States residents who are five years of age and over,38 million speak Spanish at home. The Spanish Constitution of 1978 uses the term castellano to define the language of the whole Spanish State in contrast to las demás lenguas españolas. Article III reads as follows, El castellano es la lengua española oficial del Estado, las demás lenguas españolas serán también oficiales en las respectivas Comunidades Autónomas. Castilian is the official Spanish language of the State, the other Spanish languages as well shall be official in their respective Autonomous Communities. The Spanish Royal Academy, on the hand, currently uses the term español in its publications. Two etymologies for español have been suggested, the Spanish Royal Academy Dictionary derives the term from the Provençal word espaignol, and that in turn from the Medieval Latin word Hispaniolus, from—or pertaining to—Hispania
3.
Portuguese language
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Portuguese is a Romance language and the sole official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Angola, and São Tomé and Príncipe. It also has co-official language status in East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Portuguese is part of the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, and has kept some Celtic phonology. Portuguese is also termed the language of Camões, after Luís Vaz de Camões, one of the greatest literary figures in the Portuguese language and author of the Portuguese epic poem, the museum is the first of its kind in the world. In 2015 the museum was destroyed in a fire, but there are plans to reconstruct it, when the Romans arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in 216 BCE, they brought the Latin language with them, from which all Romance languages descend. Between 409 CE and 711 CE, as the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe, Portuguese evolved from the medieval language, known today by linguists as Galician-Portuguese, Old Portuguese or Old Galician, of the northwestern medieval Kingdom of Galicia. It is in Latin administrative documents of the 9th century that written Galician-Portuguese words and this phase is known as Proto-Portuguese, which lasted from the 9th century until the 12th-century independence of the County of Portugal from the Kingdom of León, by then reigning over Galicia. In the first part of the Galician-Portuguese period, the language was used for documents. For some time, it was the language of preference for poetry in Christian Hispania. Portugal became an independent kingdom in 1139, under King Afonso I of Portugal, in the second period of Old Portuguese, in the 15th and 16th centuries, with the Portuguese discoveries, the language was taken to many regions of Africa, Asia and the Americas. The language continued to be popular in parts of Asia until the 19th century, some Portuguese-speaking Christian communities in India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Indonesia preserved their language even after they were isolated from Portugal. The end of the Old Portuguese period was marked by the publication of the Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende, Most literate Portuguese speakers were also literate in Latin, and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Portuguese. Portuguese is the language of the majority of people in Brazil and Portugal, perhaps 75% of the population of Angola speaks Portuguese natively, and 85% are fluent. Just over 40% of the population of Mozambique are native speakers of Portuguese, Portuguese is also spoken natively by 30% of the population in Guinea-Bissau, and a Portuguese-based creole is understood by all. No data is available for Cape Verde, but almost all the population is bilingual, there are also significant Portuguese speaking immigrant communities in many countries including Andorra, Bermuda, Canada, France, Japan, Jersey, Namibia, Paraguay, Macau, Switzerland, Venezuela. In some parts of former Portuguese India, namely Goa and Daman and Diu, in 2014, an estimated 1,500 students were learning Portuguese in Goa. Equatorial Guinea made an application for full membership to the CPLP in June 2010. In 2011, Portuguese became its official language and, in July 2014. Portuguese is a subject in The school curriculum in Uruguay
4.
Catalan language
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Catalan is a Romance language derived from Vulgar Latin and named after the medieval Principality of Catalonia, in northeastern modern Spain and adjoining parts of France. It is the national and only language of Andorra, and a co-official language of the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands. It also has status in the commune of Alghero, situated on the northwestern coast of the island of Sardinia. All these territories are often called Catalan Countries. 4% with Catalan and 47. 5% only Spanish, in order to integrate newcomers, the Generalitat de Catalunya spends part of its annual budget on the promotion of the use of Catalan in Catalonia and in other territories. Catalan evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees, during the Low Middle Ages it saw a golden age as the literary and dominant language of the Crown of Aragon, and was widely used all over the Mediterranean. The union of Aragon with the territories of Spain in 1479 marked the start of the decline of the language. In 1659 Spain ceded Northern Catalonia to France, and Catalan was banned in both states in the early 18th century, 19th-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, which culminated in the 1913 orthographic standardization, and the official status of the language during the Second Spanish Republic. However, the Francoist dictatorship banned the use of Catalan in schools and in the public administration, there is no parallel in Europe for such a large, bilingual, non-state speech community. Catalan dialects are relatively uniform, and are mutually intelligible and they are divided into two blocks, Eastern and Western, differing mostly in pronunciation. The terms Catalan and Valencian are two varieties of the same language, there are two institutions regulating the two standard varieties, the Institute of Catalan Studies in Catalonia and the Valencian Academy of the Language in the Valencian Community. Catalan shares many traits with its neighboring Romance languages, thus, the similarities are naturally most notable with eastern Occitan. Nouns have two genders, and two numbers, pronouns additionally can have a neuter gender, and some are also inflected for case and politeness, and can be combined in very complex ways. Verbs are split in several paradigms and are inflected for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, in terms of pronunciation, Catalan has many words ending in a wide variety of consonants and some consonant clusters, in contrast with many other Romance languages. The word Catalan derives from the territory of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology, in English, the term referring to a person first appears in the mid 14th century as Catelaner, followed in the 15th century as Catellain. It is attested a language name since at least 1652, Catalan can be pronounced as /ˈkætəlæn/, /kætəˈlæn/ or /ˈkætələn/. The endonym is pronounced /kə. təˈɫa/ in the Eastern Catalan dialects, in the Valencian Community, the term valencià is frequently used instead. The names Catalan and Valencian are two names for the same language, see also status of Valencian below. By the 9th century, Catalan had evolved from Vulgar Latin on both sides of the end of the Pyrenees, as well as the territories of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis to the south
5.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
6.
Portugal
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Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is the westernmost country of mainland Europe, to the west and south it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east and north by Spain. The Portugal–Spain border is 1,214 kilometres long and considered the longest uninterrupted border within the European Union, the republic also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, both autonomous regions with their own regional governments. The territory of modern Portugal has been settled, invaded. The Pre-Celts, Celts, Carthaginians and the Romans were followed by the invasions of the Visigothic, in 711 the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by the Moors, making Portugal part of Muslim Al Andalus. Portugal was born as result of the Christian Reconquista, and in 1139, Afonso Henriques was proclaimed King of Portugal, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal established the first global empire, becoming one of the worlds major economic, political and military powers. Portugal monopolized the trade during this time, and the Portuguese Empire expanded with military campaigns led in Asia. After the 1910 revolution deposed the monarchy, the democratic but unstable Portuguese First Republic was established, democracy was restored after the Portuguese Colonial War and the Carnation Revolution in 1974. Shortly after, independence was granted to almost all its overseas territories, Portugal has left a profound cultural and architectural influence across the globe and a legacy of over 250 million Portuguese speakers today. Portugal is a country with a high-income advanced economy and a high living standard. It is the 5th most peaceful country in the world, maintaining a unitary semi-presidential republican form of government and it has the 18th highest Social Progress in the world, putting it ahead of other Western European countries like France, Spain and Italy. Portugal is a pioneer when it comes to drug decriminalization, as the nation decriminalized the possession of all drugs for use in 2001. The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian Peninsula located in South Western Europe, the name of Portugal derives from the joined Romano-Celtic name Portus Cale. Other influences include some 5th-century vestiges of Alan settlements, which were found in Alenquer, Coimbra, the region of present-day Portugal was inhabited by Neanderthals and then by Homo sapiens, who roamed the border-less region of the northern Iberian peninsula. These were subsistence societies that, although they did not establish prosperous settlements, neolithic Portugal experimented with domestication of herding animals, the raising of some cereal crops and fluvial or marine fishing. Chief among these tribes were the Calaicians or Gallaeci of Northern Portugal, the Lusitanians of central Portugal, the Celtici of Alentejo, a few small, semi-permanent, commercial coastal settlements were also founded in the Algarve region by Phoenicians-Carthaginians. Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC, during the last days of Julius Caesar, almost the entire peninsula had been annexed to the Roman Republic. The Carthaginians, Romes adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies and it suffered a severe setback in 150 BC, when a rebellion began in the north
7.
New World
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The New World is one of the names used for the Earths Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas. The term was coined by Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci, the Americas were also referred to as the fourth part of the world. New World are meaningful in historical context and for the purpose of distinguishing the worlds major ecozones, and to classify plant and animal species that originated therein. One can speak of the New World in a context, e. g. when discussing the voyages of Christopher Columbus. For lack of alternatives, the term is still useful to those discussing issues that concern the Americas. The term New World is used in a context, when one speaks of Old World. Biological taxonomists often attach the New World label to groups of species that are exclusively in the Americas, to distinguish them from their counterparts in the Old World. New World monkeys, New World vultures, New World warblers, the label is also often used in agriculture. Common Old World crops, and domesticated animals did not exist in the Americas until they were introduced by contact in the 1490s. Other famous New World crops include the cashew, cocoa, rubber, sunflower, tobacco, and vanilla, there are rare instances of overlap, e. g. In wine terminology, New World has a different definition, Vespucci was finally convinced when he proceeded on his mapping expedition through 1501-02, covering the huge stretch of coast of eastern Brazil. But this opinion is false, and entirely opposed to the truth, Vespuccis letter was a publishing sensation in Europe, immediately reprinted in several other countries. The Venetian explorer Alvise Cadamosto had used the term un altro mundo to refer to sub-Saharan Africa, however, this was merely a literary flourish, not a suggestion of a new fourth part of the world. Cadamosto was quite aware sub-Saharan Africa was firmly part of the African continent, the Italian-born Spanish chronicler Peter Martyr dAnghiera often shares credit with Vespucci for designating the Americas as a new world. Peter Martyr used the term Orbe Novo in the title of his history of the discovery of the Americas as a whole, a year later, Peter Martyr again refers to the marvels of the New Globe and the Western hemisphere. Christopher Columbus touched the continent of South America in his 1498 third voyage, in another letter, Columbus refers to having reached a new heavens and world and that he had placed another world under the dominion of the Kings of Spain. The Vespucci passage above applied the New World label to merely the continental landmass of South America, although the proceedings of the Toro-Burgos conferences are missing, it is almost certain that Vespucci articulated his recent New World thesis to his fellow navigators there. In English usage the term New World was problematic and only accepted relatively late, while it became generally accepted after Vespucci that Columbuss discoveries were not Asia but a New World, the geographic relationship between the two continents was still unclear
8.
Sephardi Jews
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They established communities throughout Spain and Portugal, where they traditionally resided, evolving what would become their distinctive characteristics and diasporic identity. Spoken by Sephardim in the Eastern Mediterranean, Haketia, an Arabic influenced Judaeo-Spanish variety also derived from Old Spanish, with numerous Hebrew and Aramaic terms. Taken with them in the 15th century after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, Early Modern Spanish and Early Modern Portuguese, including in a mixture of the two. Traditionally spoken or used liturgically by the ex-converso Western Sephardim, taken with them during their later migration out of Iberia in the 16th to 18th centuries as conversos, after which they reverted to Judaism. In most cases these varieties have incorporated loanwords from the languages of the Americas introduced following the Spanish conquest. This article deals with Sephardim within the narrower ethnic definition, the name Sephardi means Spanish or Hispanic, derived from Sepharad, a Biblical location. The location of the biblical Sepharad is disputed, but Sepharad was identified by later Jews as Hispania, that is, Sepharad still means Spain in modern Hebrew. In its most basic form, this broad definition of a Sephardi refers to any Jew, of any ethnic background. The term Sephardi in the sense, thus describes the nusach used by Sephardi Jews in their Siddur. A nusach is defined by a liturgical traditions choice of prayers, order of prayers, text of prayers, Sephardim traditionally pray using Minhag Sefarad. Additionally, Ethiopian Jews, whose branch of practiced Judaism is known as Haymanot, have come under the umbrella of Israels already broad Sephardic Chief Rabbinate. The divisions among Sephardim and their descendants today is largely a result of the consequences of the Royal edicts of expulsion. In the case of the Alhambra Decree of 1492, the purpose was to eliminate their influence on Spains large converso population. Indeed, a number of those Jews who had not yet joined the converso community finally chose to convert. While the stipulations were similar in the Portuguese decree, King Manuel then largely prevented Portugals Jews from leaving, by blocking Portugals ports of exit. This failure to leave Portugal was then reasoned by the king to signify a default acceptance of Catholicism by the Jews, actual physical forced conversions, however, were also experienced throughout Portugal. Sephardi Jews, therefore, encompass Jews descended from those Jews who left the Iberian Peninsula as Jews by the expiration of the respective decreed deadlines. This group is divided between those who fled south to North Africa, as opposed to those who fled eastwards to the Balkans, West Asia
9.
Muslim
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A Muslim is someone who follows or practices Islam, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion. Muslims consider the Quran, their book, to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to the Islamic prophet. They also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad as recorded in traditional accounts, Muslim is an Arabic word meaning one who submits. Most Muslims will accept anyone who has publicly pronounced Shahadah as a Muslim, the shahadah states, There is no god but the God and Muhammad is the last messenger of the God. The testimony authorized by God in the Quran that can found in Surah 3,18 states, There is no god except God, which in Arabic, is the exact testimony which God Himself utters, as well as the angels and those who possess knowledge utter. The word muslim is the active participle of the verb of which islām is a verbal noun, based on the triliteral S-L-M to be whole. A female adherent is a muslima, the plural form in Arabic is muslimūn or muslimīn, and its feminine equivalent is muslimāt. The Arabic form muslimun is the stem IV participle of the triliteral S-L-M, the ordinary word in English is Muslim. It is sometimes transliterated as Moslem, which is an older spelling, the word Mosalman is a common equivalent for Muslim used in Central Asia. Until at least the mid-1960s, many English-language writers used the term Mohammedans or Mahometans, although such terms were not necessarily intended to be pejorative, Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that Muslims worship Muhammad rather than God. Other obsolete terms include Muslimite and Muslimist, musulmán/Mosalmán is a synonym for Muslim and is modified from Arabic. In English it was sometimes spelled Mussulman and has become archaic in usage, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Arabi said, A Muslim is a person who has dedicated his worship exclusively to God. Islam means making ones religion and faith Gods alone. The Quran states that men were Muslims because they submitted to God, preached His message and upheld His values. Thus, in Surah 3,52 of the Quran, Jesus disciples tell him, We believe in God, and you be our witness that we are Muslims. In Muslim belief, before the Quran, God had given the Tawrat to Moses, the Zabur to David and the Injil to Jesus, who are all considered important Muslim prophets. The most populous Muslim-majority country is Indonesia, home to 12. 7% of the worlds Muslims, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt. About 20% of the worlds Muslims lives in the Middle East and North Africa, Sizable minorities are found in India, China, Russia, Ethiopia. The country with the highest proportion of self-described Muslims as a proportion of its population is Morocco
10.
Moors
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Moors are not a distinct or self-defined people, and mainstream scholars observed in 1911 that The term Moors has no real ethnological value. Medieval and early modern Europeans variously applied the name to Arabs, Berber North Africans and Muslim Europeans. The term has also used in Europe in a broader, somewhat derogatory sense to refer to Muslims in general, especially those of Arab or Berber descent. During the colonial era, the Portuguese introduced the names Ceylon Moors and Indian Moors in Sri Lanka, in 711, troops mostly formed by Moors from North Africa led the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The Iberian peninsula then came to be known in classical Arabic as Al-Andalus, in 827, the Moors occupied Mazara on Sicily, developing it as a port. They eventually consolidated the rest of the island and some of southern Italy, in 1224 the Muslims were expelled from Sicily to the settlement of Lucera, which was destroyed by European Christians in 1300. The fall of Granada in 1492 marked the end of Muslim rule in Iberia, the Berber tribes of the region were noted in Classical literature as Mauri, which was subsequently rendered as Moors in English and in related variations in other European languages. Mauri is recorded as the name by Strabo in the early 1st century. This appellation was also adopted into Latin, whereas the Greek name for the tribe was Maurusii, in medieval Romance languages, variations of the Latin word for the Moors developed different applications and connotations. During the context of the Crusades and the Reconquista, the term Moors included the suggestion of infidels. Apart from these associations and context, Moor and Moorish designate a specific ethnic group speaking Hassaniya Arabic. They inhabit Mauritania and parts of Algeria, Western Sahara, Tunisia, Morocco, Niger, in Niger and Mali, these peoples are also known as the Azawagh Arabs, after the Azawagh region of the Sahara. Some authors have pointed out that in modern colloquial Spanish use of the term moro is derogatory for Moroccans in particular, however, this designation has gained more acceptance in the south. In the Philippines, a former Spanish colony, many modern Filipinos call the large, local Muslim minority concentrated in Mindanao, the word is a catch-all term, as Moro may come from several distinct ethno-linguistic groups such as the Maranao people. The term was introduced by Spanish colonisers, and has since been appropriated by Filipino Muslims as an endonym, moreno can mean dark-skinned in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, and the Philippines. Also in Spanish, morapio is a name for wine, especially that which has not been baptized or mixed with water. Among Spanish speakers, moro came to have a broader meaning, Moro refers to all things dark, as in Moor, moreno, etc. It was also used as a nickname, for instance, the Milanese Duke Ludovico Sforza was called Il Moro because of his dark complexion, in Portugal, mouro may refer to supernatural beings known as enchanted moura, where moor implies alien and non-Christian
11.
Reconquista
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The Reconquista ended just before the European discovery of the Americas—the New World—which ushered in the era of the Portuguese and Spanish colonial empires. The concept of a Christian reconquest of the peninsula first emerged, in tenuous form, a landmark was set by the Christian Chronica Prophetica, a document stressing the Christian and Muslim cultural and religious divide in Iberia and the necessity to drive the Muslims out. Nevertheless, the difference between Christian and Muslim kingdoms in early medieval Spain was not seen at the time as anything like the clear-cut opposition that later emerged, both Christian and Muslim rulers fought amongst themselves. Alliances between Muslims and Christians were not uncommon, blurring distinctions even further were the mercenaries from both sides who simply fought for whoever paid the most. The period is looked back upon today as one of religious tolerance. In fact previous documents from the 10th and 11th centuries are mute on any idea of reconquest and their rebellious pursuit was thus a Crusade for the restoration of Churchs unity, where Franco stood for both Pelagius of Asturias and El Cid. Many recent historians dispute the concept of Reconquista as a concept created a posteriori in the service of later political goals. A number of historians have called it a myth, One of the first Spanish intellectuals to question the idea of a reconquest that lasted for eight centuries was José Ortega y Gasset, writing in the first half of the 20th century. However, the term is widely in use. In 711, Muslim Moors, mainly North African Berber soldiers with some Arabs, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar, from their stronghold of Narbonne, they launched raids into the Duchy of Aquitaine. At no point did the invading Islamic armies exceed 60,000 men and these armies established an Islamic rule that would last 300 years in much of the Iberian Peninsula and 770 years in Granada. After the establishment of a local Emirate, Caliph Al-Walid I, ruler of the Umayyad caliphate, tariq ibn Ziyad, the first governor of the newly conquered province of Al-Andalus, was recalled to Damascus and replaced with Musa bin Nusair, who had been his former superior. Musas son, Abd al-Aziz ibn Musa, apparently married Egilona, Roderics widow and he was suspected of being under the influence of his wife, accused of wanting to convert to Christianity, and of planning a secessionist rebellion. Apparently a concerned Al-Walid I ordered Abd al-Azizs assassination, Caliph Al-Walid I died in 715 and was succeeded by his brother Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik. Sulayman seems to have punished the surviving Musa bin Nusair, who soon died during a pilgrimage in 716. In the end Abd al-Aziz ibn Musas cousin, Ayyub ibn Habib al-Lakhmi became the emir of Al-Andalus, the conquering generals were necessarily acting very independently, due to the methods of communication available. Old rivalries and perhaps even full-fledged conspiracies between rival generals may have had influence over this development, in the end, the old successful generals were replaced by a younger generation considered more loyal by the government in Damascus. A serious weakness amongst the Muslim conquerors was the tension between Berbers and Arabs
12.
Iberian Peninsula
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The Iberian Peninsula /aɪˈbɪəriən pəˈnɪnsjᵿlə/, also known as Iberia /aɪˈbɪəriə/, is located in the southwest corner of Europe. The peninsula is divided between Portugal and Spain, comprising most of their territory. With an area of approximately 582,000 km2, it is the second largest European peninsula, at that time, the name did not describe a single political entity or a distinct population of people. Strabos Iberia was delineated from Keltikē by the Pyrenees and included the land mass southwest of there. The ancient Greeks reached the Iberian Peninsula, of which they had heard from the Phoenicians, hecataeus of Miletus was the first known to use the term Iberia, which he wrote about circa 500 BC. Herodotus of Halicarnassus says of the Phocaeans that it was they who made the Greeks acquainted with. According to Strabo, prior historians used Iberia to mean the country side of the Ἶβηρος as far north as the river Rhône in France. Polybius respects that limit, but identifies Iberia as the Mediterranean side as far south as Gibraltar, elsewhere he says that Saguntum is on the seaward foot of the range of hills connecting Iberia and Celtiberia. Strabo refers to the Carretanians as people of the Iberian stock living in the Pyrenees, according to Charles Ebel, the ancient sources in both Latin and Greek use Hispania and Hiberia as synonyms. The confusion of the words was because of an overlapping in political, the Latin word Hiberia, similar to the Greek Iberia, literally translates to land of the Hiberians. This word was derived from the river Ebro, which the Romans called Hiberus, hiber was thus used as a term for peoples living near the river Ebro. The first mention in Roman literature was by the annalist poet Ennius in 200 BC. Virgil refers to the Ipacatos Hiberos in his Georgics, the Roman geographers and other prose writers from the time of the late Roman Republic called the entire peninsula Hispania. As they became interested in the former Carthaginian territories, the Romans began to use the names Hispania Citerior. At the time Hispania was made up of three Roman provinces, Hispania Baetica, Hispania Tarraconensis, and Lusitania, Strabo says that the Romans use Hispania and Iberia synonymously, distinguishing between the near northern and the far southern provinces. Whatever language may generally have been spoken on the peninsula soon gave way to Latin, except for that of the Vascones, the Iberian Peninsula has always been associated with the Ebro, Ibēros in ancient Greek and Ibērus or Hibērus in Latin. The association was so known it was hardly necessary to state, for example. Pliny goes so far as to assert that the Greeks had called the whole of Spain Hiberia because of the Hiberus River, the river appears in the Ebro Treaty of 226 BC between Rome and Carthage, setting the limit of Carthaginian interest at the Ebro. The fullest description of the treaty, stated in Appian, uses Ibērus, with reference to this border, Polybius states that the native name is Ibēr, apparently the original word, stripped of its Greek or Latin -os or -us termination
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Catholic Monarchs
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The Catholic Monarchs is the joint title used in history for Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon. They married on October 19,1469, in the city of Valladolid, Isabella was eighteen years old and it is generally accepted by most scholars that the unification of Spain can essentially be traced back to the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella. The court of Ferdinand and Isabella was constantly on the move, the title of Catholic King and Queen was bestowed on Ferdinand and Isabella by Pope Alexander VI in 1494, in recognition of their defence of the Catholic faith within their realms. Catholic monarchs or kings can also be used in a generic sense, Isabella was named heir to the throne of Castile by her half brother Henry IV of Castile in the Treaty of the Bulls of Guisando. She became Queen of Castile in 1474 and her niece, Joanna of Castile, attempted to gain the throne by bringing in the foreign help of Afonso V of Portugal, leading to the War of Castilian Succession. More recently, some speculate that Joanna was the legitimate successor, Isabellas supporters came out ahead in good part due to Aragons support through Ferdinand, and she officially won in 1479 via the Treaty of Alcáçovas. Ferdinand became the King of Aragon in 1479, the Catholic Monarchs set out to restore royal authority in Spain. To accomplish their goal, they first created a group named the Holy Brotherhood and these men were used as a judicial police force for Castile, as well as to attempt to keep Castilian nobles in check. To establish a more uniform system, the Catholic Monarchs created the Royal Council. This establishment of authority is known as the Pacification of Castile. Even after his death and the union of the crowns under one monarch, the Aragonese, Catalan, further, the monarchs continued ruling through a form of medieval contractualism, which made their rule pre-modern in a few ways. One of those is that they traveled from town to town throughout the kingdom in order to promote loyalty, another is that each community and region was connected to them via loyalty to the crown, rather than bureaucratic ties. Ferdinand and Isabella were noted for being the monarchs of the newly united Spain at the dawn of the modern era and they had a goal of conquering the Muslim kingdom of Granada and completing the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. The beginnings of a series of known as the Granada War began with the attack on Alhama de Granada. The attack was led by two Andalusian nobles, Rodrigo Ponce de León and Diego de Merlo, the city fell to Andalusian forces in 1482. The Granada War was aided by Pope Sixtus IV by granting a tithe, after 10 years of fighting the Granada War ended in 1492 when Emir Boabdil surrendered the keys of the Alhambra Palace in Granada to the Castilian soldiers. After a number of revolts, Ferdinand and Isabella ordered the expulsion from Spain of all Jews, the Inquisition had been created in the twelfth century by Pope Lucius III to fight heresy in the south of what is now France and was constituted in a number of European kingdoms. The Catholic Monarchs decided to introduce the Inquisition to Castile, the bull gave the monarchs exclusive authority to name the inquisitors
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Baptism
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Baptism is a Christian sacrament of admission and adoption, almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally. The canonical Gospels report that Jesus was baptized—a historical event to which a degree of certainty can be assigned. Baptism has been called a sacrament and an ordinance of Jesus Christ. In some denominations, baptism is also called christening, but for others the word christening is reserved for the baptism of infants, Baptism has also given its name to the Baptist churches and denominations. The usual form of baptism among the earliest Christians was for the candidate to be immersed, in v.16, Matthew will speak of Jesus coming up out of the water. The traditional depiction in Christian art of John the Baptist pouring water over Jesus head may therefore be based on later Christian practice, other common forms of baptism now in use include pouring water three times on the forehead, a method called affusion. Martyrdom was identified early in Church history as baptism by blood, later, the Catholic Church identified a baptism of desire, by which those preparing for baptism who die before actually receiving the sacrament are considered saved. Today, some Christians, particularly Christian Scientists, Quakers, The Salvation Army, and Unitarians, do not see baptism as necessary, among those that do, differences can be found in the manner and mode of baptizing and in the understanding of the significance of the rite. Most Christians baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, much more than half of all Christians baptize infants, many others hold that only believers baptism is true baptism. Some insist on submersion or at least partial immersion of the person who is baptized, others consider that any form of washing by water, as long as the water flows on the head, is sufficient. The term baptism has also used to refer to any ceremony, trial, or experience by which a person is initiated, purified. The Greek verb baptō, dip, from which the verb baptizo is derived, is in turn hypothetically traced to a reconstructed Indo-European root *gʷabh-, the Greek words are used in a great variety of meanings. John the Baptist, who is considered a forerunner to Christianity, the apostle Paul distinguished between the baptism of John, and baptism in the name of Jesus, and it is questionable whether Christian baptism was in some way linked with that of John. Christians consider Jesus to have instituted the sacrament of baptism, though whether Jesus intended to institute a continuing, the earliest Christian baptisms were probably normally by immersion, complete or partial. Though other modes may have also been used, at the hour in which the cock crows, they shall first pray over the water. When they come to the water, the water shall be pure and flowing, that is, then they shall take off all their clothes. The children shall be baptized first, all of the children who can answer for themselves, let them answer. If there are any children who cannot answer for themselves, let their parents answer for them, after this, the men will be baptized
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Philip II of Spain
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Philip II of Spain, called the Prudent, was King of Spain, King of Portugal, King of Naples and Sicily, and jure uxoris King of England and Ireland. He was also Duke of Milan, from 1555, he was lord of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands. Known in Spain as Felipe el Prudente, his empire included territories on every continent then known to Europeans, during his reign, Spain reached the height of its influence and power. This is sometimes called the Golden Age, the expression, the empire on which the sun never sets, was coined during Philips time to reflect the extent of his dominion. During Philips reign there were separate state bankruptcies in 1557,1560,1569,1575 and this was partly the cause of the declaration of independence that created the Dutch Republic in 1581. The Ambassador went on to say He dresses very tastefully, the culture and courtly life of Spain were an important influence in his early life. He was tutored by Juan Martínez Siliceo, the future Archbishop of Toledo, Philip displayed reasonable aptitude in arms and letters alike. Later he would study with more illustrious tutors, including the humanist Juan Cristóbal Calvete de Estrella, though Philip had good command over Latin, Spanish, and Portuguese, he never managed to equal his father, Charles V, as a polyglot. While Philip was also a German archduke of the House of Habsburg, Philip felt himself to be culturally Spanish, he had been born in Spain and raised in the Castilian court, his native tongue was Spanish, and he preferred to live in Spain. This would ultimately impede his succession to the imperial throne, in April 1528, when Philip was eleven months old, he received the oath of allegiance as heir to the crown from the Cortes of Castile. Philip was also close to his two sisters, María and Juana, and to his two pages, the Portuguese nobleman Rui Gomes da Silva and Luis de Requesens, the son of his governor Juan de Zúñiga. These men would serve Philip throughout their lives, as would Antonio Pérez, Philips martial training was undertaken by his governor, Juan de Zúñiga, a Castilian nobleman who served as the commendador mayor of Castile. The practical lessons in warfare were overseen by the Duke of Alba during the Italian Wars, Philip was present at the Siege of Perpignan in 1542 but did not see action as the Spanish army under Alba decisively defeated the besieging French forces under the Dauphin of France. On his way back to Castile, Philip received the oath of allegiance of the Aragonese Cortes at Monzón. The king-emperors interactions with his son during his stay in Spain convinced him of Philips precocity in statesmanship, Philip, who had previously been made the Duke of Milan in 1540, began governing the most extensive empire in the world at the young age of sixteen. Charles left Philip with experienced advisors—notably the secretary Francisco de los Cobos, Philip was also left with extensive written instructions that emphasised piety, patience, modesty, and distrust. These principles of Charles were gradually assimilated by his son, who would grow up to become grave, self-possessed, personally, Philip spoke softly and had an icy self-mastery, in the words of one of his ministers, he had a smile that cut like a sword. After living in the Netherlands in the years of his reign
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Christian theology
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Christian theology is the study of Christian belief and practice. Such study concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament, Christian theologians use biblical exegesis, rational analysis and argument. Systematic theology as a discipline of Christian theology formulates an orderly, rational and coherent account of the Christian faith, inherent to a system of theological thought is that a method is developed, one which can be applied both broadly and particularly. Christian theology has permeated much of Western culture, especially in pre-modern Europe, Revelation is the revealing or disclosing, or making something obvious through active or passive communication with God, and can originate directly from God, or through an agent, such as an angel. One who has experienced such contact is called a prophet. Christianity considers the Bible as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired, such revelation does not always require the presence of God or an angel. For instance, in the concept called of interior locution by Roman Catholics, thomas Aquinas first described in two types of revelation in Christianity as general revelation and special revelation. General revelation occurs through observation of the created order, such observations can logically lead to important conclusions, such as the existence of God and some of Gods attributes. General revelation is also an element of Christian apologetics, certain specifics, such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, are revealed in the teachings in the Scriptures and can not otherwise be deduced except by special revelation. Christianity regards varied collections of books known as the Bible as authoritative, Biblical inspiration is the doctrine in Christian theology concerned with the divine origin of the Bible and what the Bible teaches about itself. Different groups understand the meaning and details of inspiration in different ways, in many passages of the Bible it claims divine inspiration of itself. In the New Testament, Jesus treats the Old Testament as authoritative and says it cannot be broken in John 10,2 Peter 2 Pet 1, 20–21 says that no prophecy of Scripture. Christians who receive the Bible as authoritative generally think that the Bible is breathed out by God, in English,2 Timothy 3. 16–17 reads, All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correction and training in righteousness. Some argue that Biblical inspiration can be corroborated by examining the weight of the Bibles moral teaching and its prophecies about the future, corroboration of this sort is a form of Christian apologetics. Others maintain that the authority of the Church and its counsels should carry more or less weight in formulating the doctrine of inspiration, Christianity regards the collections of books known as the Bible as authoritative and written by human authors under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Some Christians believe that the Bible is inerrant or infallible, in addition, for some Christians, it may be inferred that the Bible cannot both refer to itself as being divinely inspired and also be errant or fallible. For if the Bible were divinely inspired, then the source of inspiration being divine, for them, the doctrines of the divine inspiration, infallibility, and inerrancy, are inseparably tied together. Historians note, or claim, that the doctrine of the Bibles infallibility was adopted hundreds of years after those books were written, the Protestant Old Testament is synonymous with the Hebrew Scriptures included in the Jewish canon, but not the Catholic Old Testament, which contains additional texts
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Racial antisemitism
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Racial antisemitism is antisemitism -- generally considered as prejudice against Jews, however, the adjective semitic refers to all people who speak a semitic language or are of a semitic heritage. The largest semitic group today is in fact Arabs, nonetheless, the term anti-semitism has, historically in Europe and the US and through present day globally been used to indicate racism against Jewish people. The abhorrence may be expressed in the form of stereotypes or caricatures, Racial antisemitism may present Jews, as a group, as being a threat in some way to the values or safety of society. Racial antisemitism could be seen as worse than religious antisemitism because for religious conversion was an option. With racial antisemitism a Jew could not get rid of their Jewishness, according to William Nichols, religious antisemitism may be distinguished from modern antisemitism based on racial or ethnic grounds. The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion, a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism. However, with racial antisemitism, Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, from the Enlightenment onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews. In the context of the Industrial Revolution, following the emancipation of the Jews, scientific racism, the ideology that biology played a role in group behavior and characteristics, was highly respected and accepted as fact between the years of 1870 and 1940. It was not only antisemites that believed in science but highly educated Jews, among others. This acceptance of science made it possible for antisemites to clothe their hatred of Jews in scientific theory. When added to its views on the Jewish racial traits which the Nazi pseudoscience devised, led to the Holocaust as a way of eradicating conjured up Jewish traits from the world, a first appearance of racial antisemitism can be found in the Middle Ages alongside religious antisemitism. Racial antisemitism has existed alongside religious antisemitism since the Middle Ages, in Spain even before the Edict of Expulsion of 1492, Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism, and their descendants, were called New Christians. They were frequently accused of lapsing to their religious practices. To isolate conversos, the Spanish nobility developed an ideology of cleanliness of blood, the conversos were called New Christians to indicate their inferior status in society. That ideology was a form of racism, as in the past there were no grades of Christianity, cleanliness of blood was an issue of ancestry, not of personal religion. The first statute of purity of blood appeared in Toledo in 1449, initially these statutes were condemned by the monarchy and the Church. In Portugal, the distinction between New and Old Christians continued until the issue of a legal decree by the Marquis of Pombal in 1772. Racial antisemitism was preceded, especially in Germany, by arising from Romantic nationalism
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Judaism
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Judaism encompasses the religion, philosophy, culture and way of life of the Jewish people. Judaism is an ancient monotheistic Abrahamic religion, with the Torah as its text, and supplemental oral tradition represented by later texts such as the Midrash. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of the relationship that God established with the Children of Israel. With between 14.5 and 17.4 million adherents worldwide, Judaism is the tenth-largest religion in the world, Judaism includes a wide corpus of texts, practices, theological positions, and forms of organization. Modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may be nontheistic, today, the largest Jewish religious movements are Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference between groups are their approaches to Jewish law, the authority of the Rabbinic tradition. Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and Jewish law are divine in origin, eternal and unalterable, Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more traditional interpretation of Judaisms requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical Reform position is that Jewish law should be viewed as a set of guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts enforced Jewish law, today, these still exist. Authority on theological and legal matters is not vested in any one person or organization, the history of Judaism spans more than 3,000 years. Judaism has its roots as a religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Judaism is considered one of the oldest monotheistic religions, the Hebrews and Israelites were already referred to as Jews in later books of the Tanakh such as the Book of Esther, with the term Jews replacing the title Children of Israel. Judaisms texts, traditions and values strongly influenced later Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam, many aspects of Judaism have also directly or indirectly influenced secular Western ethics and civil law. Jews are a group and include those born Jewish and converts to Judaism. In 2015, the world Jewish population was estimated at about 14.3 million, Judaism thus begins with ethical monotheism, the belief that God is one and is concerned with the actions of humankind. According to the Tanakh, God promised Abraham to make of his offspring a great nation, many generations later, he commanded the nation of Israel to love and worship only one God, that is, the Jewish nation is to reciprocate Gods concern for the world. He also commanded the Jewish people to one another, that is. These commandments are but two of a corpus of commandments and laws that constitute this covenant, which is the substance of Judaism
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Anti-Arabism
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Anti-Arabism, Anti-Arab sentiment or Arabophobia is opposition to, or dislike, fear, hatred, and advocacy of genocide of Arab people. In the current era, racial prejudice against Arabs is apparent in countries including Iran, Poland, France, Australia, Israel. Arabs are people whose language is Arabic. People of Arabic origin, in particular native English and French speakers of Arab ancestry in Europe, due to widespread practice of Islam among Arab populations, Anti-Arabism is commonly confused with Islamophobia. There are prominent Arab non-Muslim minorities in the Arab world and these minorities include the Arab Christians in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Kuwait, among other Arab countries. There are also minorities of Arab Jews, Druze. Exceptions are Mauritanian, Sudanese, Eritrean, Somali, and Comoran Arabs, Anti-Arab prejudice is suggested by many events in history. In the Iberian Peninsula, when the reconquest by the indigenous Christians from the Moorish colonists was completed with the fall of Granada, in 1492, Arab converts to Christianity, called Moriscos, were expelled from Spain to North Africa after being condemned by the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish word moro, meaning moor, today carries a negative meaning, after the annexation of the Muslim-ruled state of Hyderabad by India in 1948, about 7,000 Arabs were interned and deported. The Zanzibar Revolution of January 12,1964, ended the local Arab dynasty, as many as 17,000 Arabs were exterminated by black African revolutionaries, according to reports, and thousands of others fled the country. The economic boom in Iran which lasted until 1979 led to an increase of Iranian nationalism sparking thousands of anti-Arab movements. In al-Fikaykis view, the objectives of anti-Arabism are to attack Arab nationalism, pervert history, emphasize Arab regression, deny Arab culture, and generally be hostile to all things Arab. He concludes that, In all its various roles, anti-Arabism has adopted a policy of intellectual conquest as a means of penetrating Arab society, in early 20th and late 19th century when Palestinians and Syrians migrated to Latin America Arabophobia was common in these countries. Anti-Arabism is an element of movements known as Berberism that are widespread mainly amongst Algerians of Kabyle. Regardless, the Kabyles and other Berbers have managed to preserve their culture and achieve higher standards of living, furthermore, many Berbers speak their language and French, are non religious, secular, or Evangelical Christian, and openly identify with the Western World. Many Berber Nationalists view Arabs as a hostile people intent on eradicating their own culture, Berber social norms restrict marriage to someone of Arab ethnicity, although it is permitted to marry someone from other ethnic groups. According to Lawrence Rosen, ethnic background is not a factor in marriage between members of each group in North Africa, when compared to social and economic backgrounds. There are regular Hate incidents between Arabs and Berbers and Anti-Arabism has been accentuated by the Algerian governments anti-Berber policies, the Anti-Arab sentiments among Algerian Berbers were always related to the reassertion of Kabyle identity
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Marrano
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Marranos is a term used for those Jews living in Iberia who converted or were forced to convert to Christianity yet continued to practice Judaism in secret. Converts from both Judaism or Islam were referred to by the broader term New Christians. The term marrano came into use in 1492 with the Castilian Alhambra Decree. By then, the majority of Jews in Spain had converted to Catholicism. They remained under the eye of the Spanish Inquisition subject to suspicions of secret practice of Judaism by formal Catholics. The origin of the term marrano as applied to Crypto-Jews is debatable, one derives from Arabic مُحَرّمٌ muḥarram, meaning forbidden, anathematized. Marrano in this context means swine or pig, from the prohibition against eating pork. The numbers who converted and the effects of various migrations in and this percentage was suggested as representing the proportion of Sephardi in the population at the time of mass conversions in the 14th and 15th centuries. However, the authors concede that other historical population movements from the Near East such as Syrians and Phoenicians may also account for these results, some Portuguese conversos or cristãos-novos continued to practice as crypto-Jews. In the early 20th century, historian Samuel Schwartz wrote about crypto-Jewish communities discovered in northeastern Portugal and he claimed that members had managed to survive more than four centuries without being fully assimilated into the Old Christian population. The last remaining community in Belmonte officially returned to Judaism in the 1970s. In 2003, the American Sephardi Federation founded the Belmonte Project to raise funds to acquire Judaic educational material and services for the Belmonte community, two documentary films are known to have been made in north-eastern Portugal where present day descendants of Marranos were interviewed about their lives. In 1974 for The Marranos of Portugal, the Israel Broadcasting Authority sent reporter Ron Ben-Yishai to carry out interviews with families about their religious practice, the film was commended at the 1976 Jerusalem Jewish Film and TV Festival. Another documentary, The Last Marranos, was made by the New York Jewish Media Fund in 1997, after the expulsion of Jews and Muslims from Spain and Portugal, conversos continued to be suspect in times of social strain. In Lisbon in 1506, a plague caused people to look for scapegoats. Some became suspicious that conversos might be practicing Judaism and therefore be at fault, officials seized several, but released them after a few days. A New Christian who tried to explain the miracle as due to natural causes was dragged from the church, a Dominican roused the populace still more. Friar João Mocho and the Aragonese friar Bernardo, crucifix in hand, were said to have gone through the streets of the city, crying Heresy. and calling upon the people to destroy the conversos
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Morisco
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The Moriscos were subject to systematic expulsions from Spains various kingdoms between 1609 and 1614, the most severe of which occurred in the eastern Kingdom of Valencia. The exact number of Moriscos present in Spain prior to expulsion is unknown, furthermore, the overall success of the expulsion is subject to academic debate with estimates on the proportion of those who avoided expulsion or returned to Spain ranging from 5% to 60%. The large majority of those permanently expelled settled on the fringe of the Ottoman Empire. The last mass prosecution against Moriscos for crypto-Islamic practices occurred in Granada in 1727, from then on, the practice of Islam by Spains indigenous population was considered to have been effectively extinguished in Spain. The label morisco for Muslims who were converted to Christianity began to appear in texts from the first half of the sixteenth century and it became widespread in Christian sources during the second half of the century, but it was unclear whether the Moriscos themselves adopted the term. In their texts, it was common for them to speak of themselves as simply muslimes. In modern times, the label is in use in Spanish literature and adopted to other languages. The word morisco itself began to be used in twelfth century Castilian text as an adjective for the noun moro and these two words are comparable to the English adjective Moorish and noun Moor. These terms were used by the Castilians in two general sense, North African or Muslim, the terms moro and morisco in this older meaning continued to be used in Spanish, even after the more specific meaning of morisco became widespread. In the early years after the forced conversions, the Christians used the terms New Christians, New converts, or the longer New Christians, converted from being Moors to refer to this group. In the racial classification of colonial Spanish America, morisco was used as a term for the child of a mulatto and Spaniard, there is no universally agreed figure of Morisco population. Estimates vary because of the lack of census, and the Moriscos tendencies to avoid registration and authorities. Also, the figure might have fluctuated depending on the period, due to factors such as birth rates, conquests, forced conversions and/or relocations. There is an agreement among historians that, based on expulsion records. Historian L. P. However, Christiane Stallaert put the number at one million Moriscos in the beginning of the 16th century. Recent studies by Trevor Dadson on the expulsion of the Moriscos propose the figure of 500,000 just before the expulsion, the Emirate of Granada was the last Muslim Kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, which surrendered in 1492 to the Catholic forces after a decade-long campaign. Granada was annexed to Castile as the Kingdom of Granada, and had a majority Muslim population of between 250,000 and 300,000. Initially, the Treaty of Granada guaranteed their rights to be Muslim, the rebellions were suppressed, and afterwards the Muslims in Granada were given the choice to remain and accept baptism, reject baptism and be enslaved or killed, or to be exiled
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Al-Andalus
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Al-Andalus, also known as Muslim Spain or Islamic Iberia, was a medieval Muslim territory and cultural domain occupying at its peak most of what are today Spain and Portugal. At its greatest geographical extent in the century, southern France—Septimania—was briefly under its control. Rule under these kingdoms led to a rise in cultural exchange, a number of achievements that advanced Islamic and Western science came from al-Andalus including major advances in trigonometry, astronomy, surgery, pharmacology, and other fields. Al-Andalus became an educational center for Europe and the lands around the Mediterranean Sea as well as a conduit for culture. For much of its history, al-Andalus existed in conflict with Christian kingdoms to the north, after the fall of the Umayyad caliphate, al-Andalus was fragmented into a number of minor states and principalities. Attacks from the Christians intensified, led by the Castilians under Alfonso VI, the Almoravid empire intervened and repelled the Christian attacks on the region, deposing the weak Andalusi Muslim princes and included al-Andalus under direct Berber rule. In the next century and a half, al-Andalus became a province of the Berber Muslim empires of the Almoravids and Almohads, ultimately, the Christian kingdoms in the north of the Iberian Peninsula overpowered the Muslim states to the south. In 1085, Alfonso VI captured Toledo, starting a gradual decline of Muslim power, with the fall of Córdoba in 1236, most of the south quickly fell under Christian rule and the Emirate of Granada became a tributary state of the Kingdom of Castile two years later. In 1249, the Portuguese Reconquista culminated with the conquest of the Algarve by Afonso III, finally, on January 2,1492, Emir Muhammad XII surrendered the Emirate of Granada to Queen Isabella I of Castile, completing the Christian Reconquista of the peninsula. The toponym al-Andalus is first attested to by inscriptions on coins minted by the new Muslim government in Iberia, the etymology of the name has traditionally been derived from the name of the Vandals. A number of proposals since the 1980s have contested this, Vallvé proposed a corruption of the name Atlantis, halm derives the name from a Gothic term *landahlauts. Bossong suggests derivation from a pre-Roman substrate and they crossed the Pyrenees and occupied Visigothic Septimania in southern France. Most of the Iberian peninsula became part of the expanding Umayyad Empire and it was organized as a province subordinate to Ifriqiya, so, for the first few decades, the governors of al-Andalus were appointed by the emir of Kairouan, rather than the Caliph in Damascus. Visigothic lords who agreed to recognize Muslim suzerainty were allowed to retain their fiefs, resistant Visigoths took refuge in the Cantabrian highlands, where they carved out a rump state, the Kingdom of Asturias. In the 720s, the al-Andalus governors launched several raids into Aquitaine. At the Battle of Poitiers in 732, the al-Andalus raiding army was defeated by Charles Martel, in 734, the Andalusi launched raids to the east, capturing Avignon and Arles and overran much of Provence. In 737, they climbed up the Rhône valley, reached as far as Burgundy, Charles Martel of the Franks, with the assistance of Liutprand of the Lombards, invaded Burgundy and Provence and expelled the raiders by 739. Relations between Arabs and Berbers in al-Andalus had been tense in the years after the conquest
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Ostracism
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Ostracism was a procedure under the Athenian democracy in which any citizen could be expelled from the city-state of Athens for ten years. While some instances clearly expressed popular anger at the citizen, ostracism was often used preemptively and it was used as a way of neutralizing someone thought to be a threat to the state or potential tyrant. It has been called an honourable exile by scholar P. J. Rhodes, the word ostracism continues to be used for various cases of social shunning. The name is derived from the ostraka, referring to the shards that were used as voting tokens. Broken pottery, abundant and virtually free, served as a kind of scrap paper, each year the Athenians were asked in the assembly whether they wished to hold an ostracism. The question was put in the sixth of the ten months used for business under the democracy. If they voted yes, then an ostracism would be two months later. The presiding officials counted the ostraka submitted and sorted the names into separate piles, according to a fragment of Philochorus, the winner of the ostracism must have obtained at least 6,000 votes. The person nominated had ten days to leave the city, if he attempted to return, the penalty was death. Notably, the property of the man banished was not confiscated, after the ten years, he was allowed to return without stigma. Similarly, Cimon, ostracised in 461 BC, was recalled during an emergency, Ostracism was crucially different from Athenian law at the time, there was no charge, and no defence could be mounted by the person expelled. The two stages of the procedure ran in the order from that used under almost any trial system — here it is as if a jury are first asked Do you want to find someone guilty. And subsequently asked Whom do you wish to accuse, equally out of place in a judicial framework is perhaps the institutions most peculiar feature, that it can take place at most once a year, and only for one person. In this it resembles the Greek pharmakos or scapegoat — though in contrast, by contrast, an Athenian trial needed the initiative of a particular citizen-prosecutor. While prosecution often led to a counterattack, no response was possible in the case of ostracism as responsibility lay with the polity as a whole. In contrast to a trial, ostracism generally reduced political tension rather than increased it, however, ten years of exile usually resolved whatever had prompted the expulsion. Ostracism was simply a measure, the concept of serving out the full sentence did not apply as it was a preventative measure. One curious window on the practicalities of ostracism comes from the cache of 190 ostraka discovered dumped in a next to the acropolis
24.
Civil and political rights
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Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure ones ability to participate in the civil and political life of the society, Civil and political rights form the original and main part of international human rights. They comprise the first portion of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the phrase civil rights is a translation of Latin ius civis. Roman citizens could be either free or servile, but they all had rights in law. After the Edict of Milan in 313, these included the freedom of religion. Roman legal doctrine was lost during the Middle Ages, but claims of rights could still be made based on religious doctrine. According to the leaders of Ketts Rebellion, all men may be made free. In the 17th century, English common law judge Sir Edward Coke revived the idea of rights based on citizenship by arguing that Englishmen had historically enjoyed such rights, the Parliament of England adopted the English Bill of Rights in 1689. The Virginia Declaration of Rights, by George Mason and James Madison, was adopted in 1776, the Virginia declaration is the direct ancestor and model for the U. S. Bill of Rights. The removal by legislation of a civil right constitutes a civil disability, in early 19th century Britain, the phrase civil rights most commonly referred to the issue of such legal discrimination against Catholics. In the House of Commons support for civil rights was divided, the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 restored their civil rights. In the 1860s, Americans adapted this usage to newly freed blacks, congress enacted civil rights acts in 1866,1871,1875,1957,1960,1964,1968, and 1991. Marshall notes that civil rights were among the first to be recognized and codified, followed later by political rights, in many countries, they are constitutional rights and are included in a bill of rights or similar document. They are also defined in human rights instruments, such as the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Civil and political rights need not be codified to be protected, although most democracies worldwide do have formal written guarantees of civil, Civil rights are considered to be natural rights. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his A Summary View of the Rights of British America that a free people their rights as derived from the laws of nature, the question of to whom civil and political rights apply is a subject of controversy. According to political scientist Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr. Custom also plays a role, the United States Declaration of Independence states that people have unalienable rights including Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It is considered by some that the purpose of government is the protection of life. Ideas of self-ownership and cognitive liberty affirm rights to choose the food one eats, the one takes
25.
Hispanic America
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Hispanic America, more generally called Spanish America, is the region comprising the Spanish-speaking nations in the Americas. These countries have significant commonalities with other and with Spain. In all of these countries, Spanish is the language, sometimes sharing official status with one or more indigenous languages. Catholic Christianity is the predominant religion, Hispanic America is sometimes grouped together with Brazil under the term Ibero-America, meaning those countries in the Americas with cultural roots in the Iberian Peninsula. Hispanic America also contrasts with Latin America, which not only Hispanic America. Hispanic America became the part of the vast Spanish Empire. Napoleons takeover of Spain in 1808 and the consequent chaos initiated the dismemberment of the Spanish Empire, by 1830, the only remaining Spanish American and Asian territories were Philippine archipelago and the islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, until the 1898 Spanish–American War. While relatively unknown, there is a flag representing the countries of Spanish America, its people, history and it was created in October 1933 by Ángel Camblor, captain of the Uruguayan army. It was adopted by all the states of Spanish America during the Pan-American Conference of the year in Montevideo. The deep lilac color of the crosses evokes the color of the lion on the coat of arms of the medieval Crown of Castile
26.
Persecution
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Persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or group by another individual or group. The most common forms are religious persecution, ethnic persecution and political persecution, the inflicting of suffering, harassment, imprisonment, internment, fear, or pain are all factors that may establish persecution, but not all suffering will necessarily establish persecution. The suffering experienced by the victim must be sufficiently severe, the threshold level of severity has been a source of much debate. As part of the Nuremberg Principles, crimes against humanity are part of international law, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which is binding on 111 states, defines crimes against humanity in Article 7.1. The article criminalises certain acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population and these include, Religious persecution is systematic mistreatment of an individual or group due to their religious affiliation. Not only theorists of secularization would willingly assume that religious persecution is a thing of the past, however, with the rise of fundamentalism and religiously related terrorism, this assumption has become even more controversial. Indeed, in countries of the world today, religious persecution is a Human Rights problem. Atheists have experienced persecution throughout history, Persecution may refer to unwarranted arrest, imprisonment, beating, torture, or execution. It also may refer to the confiscation or destruction of property, the persecution of Baháís refers to the religious persecution of Baháís in various countries, especially in Iran, which has one of the largest Baháí populations in the world. The Baháí Faith originated in Iran, and represents the largest religious minority in that country, the persecution of Christians is religious persecution that Christians may undergo as a consequence of professing their faith, both historically and in the current era. Early in the century, the religion was legalized by the Edict of Milan. Christian missionaries, as well as the people that they converted to Christianity, have been the target of persecution, in the 20th century, Christians have been persecuted by various groups, and by atheistic states such as the USSR and North Korea. During the Second World War members of many Christian churches were persecuted in Germany for resisting the Nazi ideology, in more recent times the Christian missionary organization Open Doors estimates 100 million Christians face persecution, particularly in Muslim-dominated countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. According to the International Society for Human Rights, up to 80% of acts of persecution are directed at people of the Christian faith, with the Missouri extermination order Mormons became the only religious group to have a state of the United States legalize the extermination of their religion. This was after a given by Sideny Rigdon called the July 4th Oration which while meant to state that Mormons would defend their lives. Their forcible expulsion from the state caused the death of over a hundred due to exposure, starvation, a government militia slaughtered Mormons in what is now known as the Hauns Mill massacre. Falun Gong was introduced to the public by Li Hongzhi in Changchun, China. For the next few years, Falun Gong was the fastest growing qigong practice in Chinese history and, by 1999, in late 1999, legislation was created to outlaw heterodox religions and retroactively applied to Falun Gong
27.
Prosecutor
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The prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution in countries with either the common law adversarial system, or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal trial against an individual accused of breaking the law. Prosecutors are typically lawyers who possess a law degree, and are recognized as legal professionals by the court in which they intend to represent society and they usually only become involved in a criminal case once a suspect has been identified and charges need to be filed. They are typically employed by an office of the government, with safeguards in place to such an office can successfully pursue the prosecution of government officials. Often, multiple offices exist in a country, especially those countries with federal governments where sovereignty has been bifurcated or devolved in some way. Since prosecutors are backed by the power of the state, they are subject to special professional responsibility rules in addition to those binding all lawyers. For example, in the United States, Rule 3.8 of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct requires prosecutors to make timely disclosure to the defense of all evidence or information and that tends to negate the guilt of the accused or mitigates the offense. Not all U. S. states adopt the rules, however, U. S. Supreme Court cases. Typical sources of requirements imposed on prosecutors come from appellate court opinions, state or federal court rules. A DPP may be subject to varying degrees of control by the Attorney General, in Australia, the Offices of the Director of Public Prosecutions institute prosecutions for indictable offences on behalf of the Crown. More recent constitutions, such as South Africas, tend to guarantee the independence, in Canada, public prosecutors in most provinces are called Crown Attorney or Crown Counsel. They are generally appointed by the provincial Attorney-General, though Scots law is a mixed system, its civil law jurisdiction indicates its civil law heritage. Here, all prosecutions are carried out by Procurators Fiscal and Advocates Depute on behalf of the Lord Advocate, in very serious cases, a Procurator Fiscal, Advocate Depute or even the Lord Advocate, may take charge of a police investigation. Other remedies are open to a prosecutor in Scotland, including fines and non-court based interventions, such as rehabilitation. All prosecutions are handled within the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, Procurators fiscal will usually refer cases involving minors to Childrens Hearings, which are not courts of law, but a panel of lay members empowered to act in the interests of the child. In the United States, the director of an office may be known by any of several names depending on the jurisdiction. Prosecutors are most often chosen through local elections, and typically hire other attorneys as deputies or assistants to conduct most of the work of the office. United States Attorneys, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, represent the government in federal court
28.
Capital punishment
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Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is a government sanctioned practice whereby a person is put to death by the state as a punishment for a crime. The sentence that someone be punished in such a manner is referred to as a death sentence, etymologically, the term capital in this context alluded to execution by beheading. Fifty-six countries retain capital punishment,103 countries have abolished it de jure for all crimes, six have abolished it for ordinary crimes. Capital punishment is a matter of controversy in various countries and states. In the European Union, Article 2 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union prohibits the use of capital punishment, also, the Council of Europe, which has 47 member states, prohibits the use of the death penalty by its members. The United Nations General Assembly has adopted, in 2007,2008,2010,2012 and 2014, non-binding resolutions calling for a moratorium on executions. Although most nations have abolished capital punishment, over 60% of the population live in countries where executions take place, such as China, India. Execution of criminals and political opponents has been used by nearly all societies—both to punish crime, in most countries that practise capital punishment it is reserved for murder, terrorism, war crimes, espionage, treason, defection or as part of military justice. In many countries use the death penalty, drug trafficking is also a capital offence. In China, human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are punished by the death penalty, in militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offences such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny. The use of formal execution extends to the beginning of recorded history, most historical records and various primitive tribal practices indicate that the death penalty was a part of their justice system. Communal punishment for wrongdoing generally included compensation by the wrongdoer, corporal punishment, shunning, banishment, usually, compensation and shunning were enough as a form of justice. The response to crime committed by neighbouring tribes or communities included a formal apology, a blood feud or vendetta occurs when arbitration between families or tribes fails or an arbitration system is non-existent. This form of justice was common before the emergence of a system based on state or organized religion. It may result from crime, land disputes or a code of honour, acts of retaliation underscore the ability of the social collective to defend itself and demonstrate to enemies that injury to property, rights, or the person will not go unpunished. However, in practice, it is difficult to distinguish between a war of vendetta and one of conquest. Elaborations of tribal arbitration of feuds included peace settlements often done in a religious context, compensation was based on the principle of substitution which might include material compensation, exchange of brides or grooms, or payment of the blood debt. Settlement rules could allow for animal blood to replace human blood, the person offered for execution did not have to be an original perpetrator of the crime because the system was based on tribes, not individuals
29.
Alhambra Decree
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The primary purpose was to eliminate their influence on Spains large converso population and ensure they did not revert to Judaism. Over half of Spains Jews had converted as a result of the persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391. A further number of those chose to avoid expulsion as a result of the edict. In 2014, the government of Spain passed a law allowing dual citizenship to Jewish descendants who apply, beginning in the 8th century, Muslims had conquered and settled most of the Iberian Peninsula. Jews, who had lived in these regions since Roman times, were considered People of the Book and given special status, the tolerance of the Muslim Moorish rulers of al-Andalus attracted Jewish immigration, and Jewish enclaves in Muslim Iberian cities flourished as places of learning and commerce. By the 14th century, most of the Iberian Peninsula had been conquered by the Christian kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, León, Galicia, Navarre, overt hostility against Jews became more pronounced, finding expression in brutal episodes of violence and oppression. Thousands of Jews sought to escape attacks by converting to Christianity, they were commonly called conversos, New Christians. At first these conversions seemed a solution to the cultural conflict. But eventually their success made these new Catholics unpopular with some of the clergy of the Church and these suspicions on the part of Christians were only heightened by the fact that some of the coerced conversions were undoubtedly insincere. These secret practitioners are referred to as crypto-Jews or marranos. The existence of crypto-Jews was a provocation for secular and ecclesiastical leaders who were hostile toward Spains Jewry. The uncertainty over the sincerity of Jewish converts added fuel to the fire of antisemitism in 15th century Spain, from the 13th to the 16th centuries European countries expelled the Jews from their territory on at least 15 occasions. Spain was preceded by England, France and some German states, among many others, in 1478, Ferdinand and Isabella made formal application to Rome for a tribunal of the Inquisition in Castile to investigate these and other suspicions. In 1487, King Ferdinand promoted the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition Tribunals in Castille, in Aragon, the independent Islamic Emirate of Granada had been a tributary state to Castile since 1238. In 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Catholic Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula from Islamic al-Andalus by victory in the Battle of Granada, the king and queen issued the Alhambra Decree less than three months after the surrender of Granada. This was primarily a decision of Isabella, not her husband Fernando and that her confessor had just changed from the tolerant Hernando de Talavera to the very intolerant Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros suggests that Cisneros may well have had a role in Isabels decision. In it, Jews were accused of trying to subvert their holy Catholic faith and these measures were not new in Europe. Some Jews were only four months and ordered to convert to Christianity or leave the country
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Crypto-Judaism
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Crypto-Judaism is the secret adherence to Judaism while publicly professing to be of another faith, practitioners are referred to as crypto-Jews. The term crypto-Jew is also used to describe descendants of Jews who maintain some Jewish traditions of their ancestors while publicly adhering to other faiths, the term is especially applied historically to European Jews who—outwardly or forcedly—professed Catholicism, who were also known as Anusim or Marrano. The phenomenon is associated with renaissance Spain, following the June 6,1391, Anti-Jewish pogroms. Later under its Blood Purity Laws, Spain restricted explorers and settlers in the New World to Old Christians of three generations or more, officially, Jews who converted in Spain in the 14th and 15th centuries were known as Cristianos Nuevos, but were commonly called conversos. Spain and Portugal passed legislation restricting their rights in the countries and colonies. Despite the dangers of the Inquisition, many continued to secretly and discreetly practice Jewish rituals. They are among the most widely known and documented crypto-Jews, in Greece, Romaniote Jews have been present for a little more than two thousand years. Greek Jews played an important role in the development of Christianity. During World War II, their community suffered devastation in the Holocaust after Greece was conquered and occupied by the Axis powers, in the aftermath of the war, a large percentage of the surviving community emigrated to Israel or the United States. Greek Jews today largely live side by side in harmony with Christian Greeks and they continue to work with other Greeks, and Jews worldwide, to combat the anti-Semitism in Greece. Crypto-Judaism existed also in earlier periods, whenever Jews were forced or pressured to convert to the majority religion by the rulers of places where they resided, some of the Jewish followers of Sabbatai Zevi formally converted to Islam. Later followers of Jacob Frank formally converted to Christianity, but maintained aspects of practice of their versions of Messianic Judaism, Crypto-Jews persisted in Russia and Eastern European countries influenced by the Soviet Union after the rise of Communism with the Russian Revolution of 1917. The government, which included secular Communist Jews, did not force Jews to convert to the Russian Orthodox Church, some faiths were allowed to continue under strict supervision by the regime. Since the end of Communism, many people in former Soviet states, the Belmonte Jews of Portugal, dating from the 12th century, maintained strong secret traditions for centuries. A whole community survived in secrecy by maintaining a tradition of endogamous marriage and they and their practices were discovered only in the 20th century. Their rich Sephardic tradition of Crypto-Judaism is unique, some now profess Orthodox Judaism, although many still retain their centuries-old traditions. He also excoriated one writer who advocated martyrdom for long-winded foolish babbling and nonsense, how much greater then, he argues, will be the reward of the Jews who despite the exigencies of forced conversion perform commandments secretly. Maimonides championed rationalism over the practice of martyrdom when facing religious adversity
31.
Spanish and Portuguese Jews
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Over half of Spains Jewish origin population had converted to Catholicism as a result of the religious anti-Jewish persecution and pogroms which occurred in 1391. Between 40,000 and 80,000 did not convert, many of Spains Jews who left Spain as Jews also initially moved to Portugal, where they were subsequently forcibly converted to the Catholic Church. It is the collective of these communities, and their descendants, which are known as Western Sephardim, the main Western Sephardic Jewish communities developed in Western Europe, Italy, and the non-Iberian regions of the Americas. The term Western Sephardim is frequently used in research literature to refer to Spanish and Portuguese Jews. Similar considerations may have played a role for ethnic Sephardic Jews in the French regions of Bayonne and Bordeaux, as the term Sephardim necessarily connotes a link with Spain, the distinguishing feature of Portuguese Jews or Jews of the Portuguese Nation was the added link with Portugal. Thus, as a subset of the Sephardim, Portuguese and Spanish, finally, almost all organised communities in this group traditionally employed Portuguese rather than Spanish as their official or working language. In Italy, the term Spanish Jews is frequently used, but it includes descendants of Jews expelled as Jews from the Kingdom of Naples, as well as Spanish and Portuguese Jews proper. In Venice, Spanish and Portuguese Jews were often described as Ponentine, occasionally Italian Jews distinguish between the Portuguese Jews of Pisa and Livorno and the Spanish Jews of Venice, Modena and elsewhere. The scholar Joseph Dan distinguishes medieval Sephardim from Renaissance Sephardim, in reference to the times of each groupings formative contacts with Spanish language. The term Sephardi means Spanish or Hispanic, and is derived from Sepharad, the location of the biblical Sepharad is disputed, but Sepharad was identified by later Jews as Hispania, that is, the Iberian Peninsula. Sepharad still means Spain in modern Hebrew, during their period as New Christians, many conversos continued to practise their Jewish faith in secrecy as best they could. Those New Christian conversos of Jeiwsh origin who maintained crypto-Jewish practices in secret were termed marranos by Old Christian Spaniards, for Spanish and Portuguese Jews, their historical period as conversos has shaped their identity, culture, and practices. For centuries, the Sephardic Jewish communities under Ottoman rule provided spiritual leadership to the dispersed Sephardim through their contributions to the Responsa literature, the common feature shared by Western Sephardim to Sephardic Bnei Anusim and Neo-Western Sephardim is that all three are descended from conversos. The Oporto communitys return to Judaism was led by the returnee to Judaism Captain Artur Carlos de Barros Basto, as mentioned, these communities of modern-day returnees to Judaism are among the first in the emergence of the nascent Neo-Western Sephardim. Neo-Western Sephardim are the returnees to Judaism throughout Iberia and Ibero-America emerging from among the population of Sephardic Bnei Anusim. Even more recent examples of such Neo-Western Sephardim communities include the Belmonte Jews in Portugal, and the Xuetes of Spain. In the last five to ten years, organized groups of Benei Anusim have been established in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, some members of these communities have formally reverted to Judaism. Spanish and Portuguese Jews were originally descended from New Christian conversos whose descendants later left the Iberian peninsula, the main wave of conversions, often forced, followed the massacre of 1391 in Spain
32.
Emigration
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Emigration is the act of leaving ones resident country with the intent to settle elsewhere. Conversely, immigration describes the movement of persons into one country from another, both are acts of migration across national boundaries. Demographers examine push and pull factors for people to be pushed out of one place, there can be a desire to escape negative circumstances such as shortages of land or jobs, or unfair treatment. People can be pulled to the opportunities available elsewhere, fleeing from oppressive conditions, being a refugee and seeking asylum to get refugee status in a foreign country, may lead to permanent emigration. Involuntary migration refers to groups that are forced to abandon their native country, patterns of emigration have been shaped by numerous economic, social, and political changes throughout the world in the last few hundred years. For instance, millions of individuals fled poverty, violence, and political turmoil in Europe to settle in the Americas and Oceania during the 18th, 19th, demographers distinguish factors at the origin that push people out, versus those at the destination that pull them in. Motives to migrate can be either incentives attracting people away, known as pull factors, after 1668, the Qing Emperor banned Han Chinese migration to Manchuria. In 1681, the emperor ordered construction of the Willow Palisade, the Soviet Socialist Republics of the later Soviet Union began such restrictions in 1918, with laws and borders tightening until even illegal emigration was nearly impossible by 1928. Before 1950, over 15 million people emigrated from the Soviet-occupied eastern European countries, by the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Restrictions implemented in the Eastern Bloc stopped most East-West migration, with only 13.3 million migrations westward between 1950 and 1990, in 1961, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall, effectively closing the loophole. In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, followed by German reunification, by the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling international movement was also emulated by China, Mongolia, and North Korea. North Korea still tightly restricts emigration, and maintains one of the strictest emigration bans in the world, events that changed Germany, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0-313-32814-5 Tsourapas, Gerasimos, Why Do States Develop Multi-tier Emigrant Policies
33.
Affidavit
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An affidavit is a written sworn statement of fact voluntarily made by an affiant or deponent under an oath or affirmation administered by a person authorized to do so by law. Such statement is witnessed as to the authenticity of the signature by a taker of oaths. The name is Medieval Latin for he/she has declared upon oath and it is done with the help of court, with a stamp paper. Affidavits may be written in the first or third person, depending on who drafted the document, in some cases, an introductory clause, called a preamble, is added attesting that the affiant personally appeared before the authenticating authority. On 2 March 2016, the High Court of Australia held that the ACT Uniform Evidence Legislation is neutral in the way sworn evidence and unsworn evidence is treated as being of equal weight. In Indian law, although an affidavit may be taken as proof of the facts stated therein, affidavit is treated as evidence within the meaning of Section 3 of the Evidence Act. Therefore, an affidavit cannot ordinarily be used as evidence in absence of an order of the Court. Affidavits are made in a way as to England and Wales. A declaration may be substituted for an affidavit in most cases for those opposed to swearing oaths, the person making the affidavit is known as the deponent but does not sign the affidavit. In American jurisprudence, under the rules for hearsay, admission of an affidavit as evidence is unusual with regard to material facts which may be dispositive of the matter at bar. Affidavits from persons who are dead or otherwise incapacitated, or who cannot be located or made to appear, may be accepted by the court, but usually only in the presence of corroborating evidence. An affidavit which reflected a better grasp of the close in time to the actual events may be used to refresh a witnesss recollection. Materials used to refresh recollection are admissible as evidence, affidavits are typically included in the response to interrogatories. Requests for admissions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 36, however, are not required to be sworn, some types of motions will not be accepted by the court unless accompanied by an independent sworn statement or other evidence, in support of the need for the motion. The lawyer is an officer of the court and knows that a false swearing by him, if found out, could be grounds for severe penalty up to and including disbarment. The lawyer if called upon would be able to present independent, the acceptance of an affidavit by one society does not confirm its acceptance as a legal document in other jurisdictions. Equally, the acceptance that a lawyer is an officer of the court is not a given, thus most affidavits now require to be apostilled if used for cross border issues
34.
Latin America
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Latin America is a group of countries and dependencies in the Americas where Romance languages are predominant. It is therefore broader than the terms Ibero-America or Hispanic America—though it usually excludes French Canada and it has an area of approximately 19,197,000 km2, almost 13% of the Earths land surface area. As of 2015, its population was estimated at more than 626 million and in 2014, Latin America had a combined nominal GDP of 5,573,397 million USD and a GDP PPP of 7,531,585 million USD. The term Latin America was first used in 1861 in La revue des races Latines, a further investigation of the concept of Latin America is by Michel Gobat in the American Historical Review. The term was first used in Paris in an 1856 conference by the Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao and this term was also used in 1861 by French scholars in La revue des races Latines, a magazine dedicated to the Pan-Latinism movement. Latin America is, therefore, defined as all parts of the Americas that were once part of the Spanish. By this definition, Latin America is coterminous with Ibero-America and this definition emphasizes a similar socioeconomic history of the region, which was characterized by formal or informal colonialism, rather than cultural aspects. As such, some sources avoid this oversimplification by using the phrase Latin America, the distinction between Latin America and Anglo-America is a convention based on the predominant languages in the Americas by which Romance-language and English-speaking cultures are distinguished. Latin America can be subdivided into several subregions based on geography, politics, demographics and it may be subdivided on linguistic grounds into Hispanic America, Portuguese America and French America. *, Not a sovereign state The concept of Latin America has been criticized by a number of intellectuals, the earliest known settlement was identified at Monte Verde, near Puerto Montt in Southern Chile. Its occupation dates to some 14,000 years ago and there is disputed evidence of even earlier occupation. Over the course of millennia, people spread to all parts of the continents, by the first millennium CE, South Americas vast rainforests, mountains, plains and coasts were the home of tens of millions of people. Some groups formed more permanent settlements such as the Chibcha and the Tairona groups and these groups are in the circum Caribbean region. The Chibchas of Colombia, the Quechuas and Aymaras of Bolivia, the region was home to many indigenous peoples and advanced civilizations, including the Aztecs, Toltecs, Maya, and Inca. The Aztec empire was ultimately the most powerful civilization known throughout the Americas, with the arrival of the Europeans following Christopher Columbus voyages, the indigenous elites, such as the Incas and Aztecs, lost power to the heavy European invasion. Hernándo Cortés seized the Aztec elites power with the help of local groups who had favored the Aztec elite, epidemics of diseases brought by the Europeans, such as smallpox and measles, wiped out a large portion of the indigenous population. Historians cannot determine the number of natives who died due to European diseases, due to the lack of written records, specific numbers are hard to verify. Many of the survivors were forced to work in European plantations, intermixing between the indigenous peoples and the European colonists was very common, and, by the end of the colonial period, people of mixed ancestry formed majorities in several colonies
35.
Amsterdam
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Amsterdam is the capital and most populous municipality of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its status as the capital is mandated by the Constitution of the Netherlands, although it is not the seat of the government, which is The Hague. Amsterdam has a population of 851,373 within the city proper,1,351,587 in the urban area, the city is located in the province of North Holland in the west of the country. The metropolitan area comprises much of the part of the Randstad, one of the larger conurbations in Europe. Amsterdams name derives from Amstelredamme, indicative of the citys origin around a dam in the river Amstel, during that time, the city was the leading centre for finance and diamonds. In the 19th and 20th centuries the city expanded, and many new neighborhoods and suburbs were planned, the 17th-century canals of Amsterdam and the 19–20th century Defence Line of Amsterdam are on the UNESCO World Heritage List. As the commercial capital of the Netherlands and one of the top financial centres in Europe, Amsterdam is considered a world city by the Globalization. The city is also the capital of the Netherlands. Many large Dutch institutions have their headquarters there, and seven of the worlds 500 largest companies, including Philips and ING, are based in the city. In 2012, Amsterdam was ranked the second best city to live in by the Economist Intelligence Unit and 12th globally on quality of living for environment, the city was ranked 3rd in innovation by Australian innovation agency 2thinknow in their Innovation Cities Index 2009. The Amsterdam seaport to this day remains the second in the country, famous Amsterdam residents include the diarist Anne Frank, artists Rembrandt van Rijn and Vincent van Gogh, and philosopher Baruch Spinoza. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the oldest stock exchange in the world, is located in the city center. After the floods of 1170 and 1173, locals near the river Amstel built a bridge over the river, the earliest recorded use of that name is in a document dated October 27,1275, which exempted inhabitants of the village from paying bridge tolls to Count Floris V. This allowed the inhabitants of the village of Aemstelredamme to travel freely through the County of Holland, paying no tolls at bridges, locks, the certificate describes the inhabitants as homines manentes apud Amestelledamme. By 1327, the name had developed into Aemsterdam, Amsterdam is much younger than Dutch cities such as Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. In October 2008, historical geographer Chris de Bont suggested that the land around Amsterdam was being reclaimed as early as the late 10th century. This does not necessarily mean there was already a settlement then, since reclamation of land may not have been for farming—it may have been for peat. Amsterdam was granted city rights in either 1300 or 1306, from the 14th century on, Amsterdam flourished, largely from trade with the Hanseatic League
36.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
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Hispanophone
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Hispanophone or Hispanosphere denotes Spanish language speakers and the Spanish-speaking world. The term derives from the Latin political name of the Iberian Peninsula, the present map has colored the Hispanosphere, composed of the currently Hispanophone geographic areas. Hispanophones are estimated at between 500 and 550 million globally, making Spanish the second most spoken language in terms of native speakers, around 360 million live in Hispanic America and 50 million in Spain or 70 million in Europe. There are a number of Spanish speakers in the United States. In a cultural, rather than merely linguistic sense, the notion of Hispanophone goes further than the above definition, in a cultural sense, the whole of Hispanophones are sometimes called the Hispanidad. During the Spanish period between 1492 and 1898, many people from Spain migrated to the new lands they had conquered and their influences are found in the following continents and countries that were originally colonized by the Spaniards. Note The modern-day people that live in the region of ancient Hispania are the Portuguese, Spanish, Andorra, historically, the modern country of Spain was formed by the accretion of several independent Iberian kingdoms through dynastic inheritance, conquest and the will of the local elites. These kingdoms had their own nationalistic loyalties and political borders, today, there is no single Castilian-Spanish identity for the whole country. Many Spanish citizens feel no conflict in recognising their several Spanish identities at the same time, Spain is a culturally heterogeneous country, home to a wide range of subcultures, each one with its own customs and traditions. Some such subcultures have their own language, Spains various subcultures coexist in Spains provinces, and each one has its own traditions and idiosyncrasies. Some even have their own language, all of them along the continuum of Romance languages. The existence of distinct cultures in Spain allows an analogy to be drawn to the United Kingdom. Using the term Spanish for someone of Spanish descent would then be expected to be equivalent to using Briton to describe someone descending from some part of the United Kingdom. In contrast with Spain, because of centuries of gradual and mutual consolidation across the Iberian peninsula and it is a subtle, yet important, distinction. In Spain, as in the United Kingdom, the economically dominant territories spread their language for mutual communication, however, the political dominance in the United Kingdom tends to be sharper compared to Spain, where the medieval territories dont exist anymore. Spanish is the language in a great part of the Americas. Hispanic Americans are citizens of the United States whose ancestry or national origin is of any of the nations composing the Hispanosphere, a Hispanic persons status is independent from whether or not he or she speaks the Spanish language, for not all Hispanic Americans speak Spanish. A Hispanic person may be of any race, as of 2013 Hispanics accounted for 17. 1% of the population, around 53.2 million people
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Granada War
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It ended with the defeat of Granada and its annexation by Castile, ending all Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula. The ten-year war was not an effort, but a series of seasonal campaigns launched in spring. The Granadans were crippled by internal conflict and civil war, while the Christians were generally unified, the war also saw the effective use of artillery by the Christians to rapidly conquer towns that would otherwise have required a long siege. On January 2,1492 Muhammad XII of Granada surrendered the Emirate of Granada, the city of Granada, the war was a joint project between Isabellas Crown of Castile and Ferdinands Crown of Aragon. The bulk of the troops and funds for the war came from Castile, the Crown of Aragon was less important, apart from the presence of King Ferdinand himself, Aragon provided naval collaboration, guns, and some financial loans. Aristocrats were offered the allure of new lands, while Ferdinand, New Christians came to be accused of crypto-Islam and crypto-Judaism. Spain would go on to model its national aspirations as the guardian of Christianity, the fall of the Alhambra is still celebrated every year by the City Council of Granada, and the Granada War is considered in traditional Spanish historiography as the final war of the Reconquista. At the same time, and uniquely in the Reconquista, the Granada War itself is never called the reconquest of Granada, Granada had never been Christian before the reconquista. The Emirate of Granada had been the last Muslim state in Iberia for more than two centuries by the time of the Granada War, the other remnant al-Andalus states of the once powerful Caliphate of Córdoba had long been conquered by the Christians. Still, Granada was wealthy and powerful, and the Christian kingdoms were divided, Granadas problems began to worsen after Emir Yusuf IIIs death in 1417. Succession struggles ensured that Granada was in an almost constant low-level civil war, clan loyalties were stronger than allegiance to the Emir, making consolidation of power difficult. Often, the territory the Emir really controlled was the city of Granada itself. At times, the emir did not even all the city, but rather one rival emir would control the Alhambra, and another the Albayzín. This internal fighting greatly weakened the state, the economy declined, with Granadas once world-famous porcelain manufacture now disrupted and challenged by the Christian town of Manises near Valencia, in Aragon. Despite the weakening economy, taxes were imposed at their earlier high rates to support Granadas extensive defenses. Ordinary Granadans paid triple the taxes of Castilians, the heavy taxes that Emir Abu-l-Hasan Ali imposed contributed greatly to his unpopularity. These taxes did at least support an army, Hasan was successful in putting down Christian revolts in his lands. The frontier between Granada and the Castilian lands of Andalusia was in a constant state of flux, neither in peace nor in war, raids across the border were common, as were intermixing alliances between local nobles on both sides of the frontier
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North Africa
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North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of Africa. The United Nationss definition of Northern Africa is, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, the countries of Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Libya are often collectively referred to as the Maghreb, which is the Arabic word for sunset. Egypt lies to the northeast and encompasses part of West Asia, while Sudan is situated on the edge of the Sahel, Egypt is a transcontinental country because of the Sinai Peninsula, which geographically lies in Western Asia. North Africa also includes a number of Spanish possessions, the Canary Islands and Madeira in the North Atlantic Ocean northwest of the African mainland are included in considerations of the region. From 3500 BC, following the abrupt desertification of the Sahara due to changes in the Earths orbit. The Islamic influence in the area is significant, and North Africa is a major part of the Muslim world. Some researchers have postulated that North Africa rather than East Africa served as the point for the modern humans who first trekked out of the continent in the Out of Africa migration. The Atlas Mountains extend across much of Morocco, northern Algeria and Tunisia, are part of the mountain system that also runs through much of Southern Europe. They recede to the south and east, becoming a steppe landscape before meeting the Sahara desert, the sediments of the Sahara overlie an ancient plateau of crystalline rock, some of which is more than four billion years old. Sheltered valleys in the Atlas Mountains, the Nile Valley and Delta, a wide variety of valuable crops including cereals, rice and cotton, and woods such as cedar and cork, are grown. Typical Mediterranean crops, such as olives, figs, dates and citrus fruits, the Nile Valley is particularly fertile, and most of the population in Egypt and Sudan live close to the river. Elsewhere, irrigation is essential to improve yields on the desert margins. The inhabitants of Saharan Africa are generally divided in a manner corresponding to the principal geographic regions of North Africa, the Maghreb, the Nile valley. The edge of the Sahel, to the south of Egypt has mainly been inhabited by Nubians, Ancient Egyptians record extensive contact in their Western desert with people that appear to have been Berber or proto-Berber, as well as Nubians from the south. They have contributed to the Arabized Berber populations, the official language or one of the official languages in all of the countries in North Africa is Arabic. The people of the Maghreb and the Sahara regions speak Berber languages and several varieties of Arabic, the Arabic and Berber languages are distantly related, both being members of the Afroasiatic language family. The Tuareg Berber languages are more conservative than those of the coastal cities. Over the years, Berbers have been influenced by contact with cultures, Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Europeans
