Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is a country in Western Asia constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of 2,150,000 km2, Saudi Arabia is geographically the largest sovereign state in the Middle East, the second-largest in the Arab world, the fifth-largest in Asia, the 12th-largest in the world. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south, it is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast, most of its terrain consists of arid desert and mountains. As of October 2018, the Saudi economy was the largest in the Middle East and the 18th largest in the world. Saudi Arabia enjoys one of the world's youngest populations; the territory that now constitutes Saudi Arabia was the site of several ancient cultures and civilizations. The prehistory of Saudi Arabia shows some of the earliest traces of human activity in the world.
The world's second-largest religion, emerged in modern-day Saudi Arabia. In the early 7th century, the Islamic prophet Muhammad united the population of Arabia and created a single Islamic religious polity. Following his death in 632, his followers expanded the territory under Muslim rule beyond Arabia, conquering huge and unprecedented swathes of territory in a matter of decades. Arab dynasties originating from modern-day Saudi Arabia founded the Rashidun, Umayyad and Fatimid caliphates as well as numerous other dynasties in Asia and Europe; the area of modern-day Saudi Arabia consisted of four distinct regions: Hejaz and parts of Eastern Arabia and Southern Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud, he united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia has since been a totalitarian absolute monarchy a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamist lines.
The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called "the predominant feature of Saudi culture", with its global spread financed by the oil and gas trade. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "the Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the two holiest places in Islam; the state's official language is Arabic. Petroleum was discovered on 3 March 1938 and followed up by several other finds in the Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia has since become the world's second largest oil producer and the world's largest largest oil exporter, controlling the world's second largest oil reserves and the sixth largest gas reserves; the kingdom is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy with a high Human Development Index and is the only Arab country to be part of the G-20 major economies. The state has attracted criticism for a multitude of reasons including but not limited to: its archaic treatment of women, its excessive and extrajudicial use of capital punishment, state-sponsored discrimination against religious minorities and atheists, its role in the Yemeni Civil War, sponsorship of Islamic terrorists, its strict interpretation of Sharia Law.
An autocratic monarchy, the kingdom has the world's third-highest military expenditure and, according to SIPRI, was the world's second largest arms importer from 2010 to 2014. Saudi Arabia is considered a middle power. In addition to the GCC, it is an active member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OPEC. Following the unification of the Hejaz and Nejd kingdoms, the new state was named al-Mamlakah al-ʻArabīyah as-Suʻūdīyah by royal decree on 23 September 1932 by its founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud. Although this is translated as "the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia" in English, it means "the Saudi Arab kingdom", or "the Arab Saudi Kingdom"; the word "Saudi" is derived from the element as-Suʻūdīyah in the Arabic name of the country, a type of adjective known as a nisba, formed from the dynastic name of the Saudi royal family, the Al Saud. Its inclusion expresses the view. Al Saud is an Arabic name formed by adding the word Al, meaning "family of" or "House of", to the personal name of an ancestor.
In the case of the Al Saud, this is the father of the dynasty's 18th-century founder, Muhammad bin Saud. There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 125,000 years ago, it is now believed that the first modern humans to spread east across Asia left Africa about 75,000 years ago across the Bab-el-Mandeb connecting the Horn of Africa and Arabia. The Arabian peninsula is regarded as a central figure in our understanding of hominin evolution and dispersals. Arabia underwent an extreme environmental fluctuation in the Quaternary that led to profound evolutionary and demographic changes. Arabia has a rich Lower Paleolithic record, the quantity of Oldwan-like sites in the region indicate a significant role that Arabia had played in the early hominin colonization of Eurasia. In the Neolithic period, prominent cultures such as al-Magar whose epicenter lay in mod
Gustave Boulanger
Gustave Clarence Rodolphe Boulanger was a French figure painter known for his classical and Orientalist subjects. Boulanger was born at Paris in 1824, he was orphaned at age 14, his uncle and guardian subsequently sent him to the studio of Pierre-Jules Jollivet and to Delaroche in 1840. In 1849 took the Prix de Rome with his painting, Ulysses, a work which combined a classical approach with Orientalist overtones. In 1845, he first visited Algeria and this gave him an interest in Orientalist themes, taken up by his friend Jean-Léon Gérome. Boulanger's knowledge of Pompeii, which he visited while studying at the École de Rome gave him ideas for many future pictures, his paintings are prime examples of academic art of the time history painting. Boulanger had visited Italy and North Africa, his paintings reflect his attention to culturally correct details and skill in rendering the female form, his works include a Moorish Cafe, Cæsar at the Rubicon, the Promenade in the Street of Tombs and The Slave Market.
The recipient of many medals, he became a member of the Institut de France in 1882. He began teaching at the Institut de France in 1882 and was an influential teacher, noted for his dislike of the Impressionism. Boulanger taught at Académie Julian, among his students were: List of Orientalist artists Orientalism This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Gilman, D. C.. "article name needed". New International Encyclopedia. New York: Dodd, Mead
Turkic peoples
The Turkic peoples are a collection of ethno-linguistic groups of Central, Eastern and Western Asia as well as parts of Europe and North Africa. They speak related languages belonging to the Turkic language family, they share, to certain cultural traits, common ancestry and historical backgrounds. In time, different Turkic groups came in contact with other ethnicities, absorbing them, leaving some Turkic groups more diverse than the others. Many vastly differing ethnic groups have throughout history become part of the Turkic peoples through language shift, intermixing and religious conversion. In their genetic compositions, most Turkic groups differ in origins from one group to the next. Despite this, many do share, to varying degrees, non-linguistic characteristics, including certain cultural traits, some ancestry from a common gene pool, historical experiences; the most notable modern Turkic-speaking ethnic groups include Turkish people, Uzbeks, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz people. The first known mention of the term Turk applied to a Turkic group was in reference to the Göktürks in the 6th century.
A letter by Ishbara Qaghan to Emperor Wen of Sui in 585 described him as "the Great Turk Khan." The Orhun inscriptions use the terms Turuk. Previous use of similar terms are of unknown significance, although some feel that they are evidence of the historical continuity of the term and the people as a linguistic unit since early times; this includes Chinese records Spring and Autumn Annals referring to a neighbouring people as Beidi. During the first century CE, Pomponius Mela refers to the "Turcae" in the forests north of the Sea of Azov, Pliny the Elder lists the "Tyrcae" among the people of the same area. There are references to certain groups in antiquity whose names could be the original form of "Türk/Türük" such as Togarma, Turukha/Turuška, Turukku and so on, but the information gap is so substantial that we cannot connect these ancient people to the modern Turks. Turkologist András Róna-Tas posits that the term Turk could be rooted in the East Iranian Saka language or in Turkic. However, it is accepted that the term "Türk" is derived from the Old-Turkic migration-term Türük/Törük, which means "created", "born", or "strong", from the Old Turkic word root *türi-/töri- and conjugated with Old Turkic suffix from Proto-Turkic *türi-k, from the Proto-Turkic word root *töŕ from a Proto-Altaic source *t`ŏ̀ŕe.
This etymological concept is related to Old Turkic word stems'tür','türi-','törü' and'töz'. The earliest Turkic-speaking peoples identifiable in Chinese sources are the Dingling and Xinli, located in South Siberia; the Chinese Book of Zhou presents an etymology of the name Turk as derived from "helmet", explaining that this name comes from the shape of a mountain where they worked in the Altai Mountains. According to Persian tradition, as reported by 11th-century ethnographer Mahmud of Kashgar and various other traditional Islamic scholars and historians, the name "Turk" stems from Tur, one of the sons of Japheth. During the Middle Ages, various Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe were subsumed under the identity of the "Scythians". Between 400 CE and the 16th century, Byzantine sources use the name Σκύθαι in reference to twelve different Turkic peoples. In the modern Turkish language as used in the Republic of Turkey, a distinction is made between "Turks" and the "Turkic peoples" in loosely speaking: the term Türk corresponds to the "Turkish-speaking" people, while the term Türki refers to the people of modern "Turkic Republics".
However, the proper usage of the term is based on the linguistic classification in order to avoid any political sense. In short, the term Türki can be used for vice versa, it is agreed that the first Turkic people lived in a region extending from eastern Central Asia to Siberia, with the majority of them living in today China. A ethnolinguistic study claims that the Turkic people originated somewhere in modern Manchuria and adopted a nomadic lifestyle and started a migration to the west. Another research, based on genetic data of ancient Turkic samples and origin and homeland somewhere in Northeastern China, it is estimated that the ancient Turkic peoples belonged predominantly to the yDNA Haplogroup C-M217 with a medium distribution of Haplogroup Q-M242 and Haplogroup N-M231. They were established after the 6th century BCE; the earliest separate Turkic peoples appeared on the peripheries of the late Xiongnu confederation about 200 BCE. Turkic people may be related to the Xiongnu and Tiele people.
According to the Book of Wei, the Tiele people were the remnants of the Chidi, the red Di people competing with the Jin in the Spring and Autumn period. Turkic tribes such as the Khazars and Pechenegs lived as nomads for many years before establishing the Turkic Khaganate or Göktürk Empire in the 6th century; these were herdsmen and nobles. The first mention of
Pulwar
The pulwar or pulouar is a single-handed curved sword originating in Afghanistan. It is the traditional sword of the Pashtun people; the pulwar originated alongside other scimitar-type weapons such as the Arab saif, the Persian shamshir, the Turkish kilij, the Indian talwar, all of them based on earlier Central Asian swords. The Khyber knife served as the weapon of the common people while upper-classes could afford to import swords from neighbouring Persia and India. Over time, the Afghans combined characteristics of the imported swords and adapted it to create the pulwar. Most existing pulwars date back to the early 19th century. Borrowing features from the swords of neighboring lands, the pulwar may be described as an Afghan version of the Indian talwar. Pulwar blades tend to be more elaborately fullered than those of the talwar; some pulwar hilts were fitted to Persian blades which are slimmer and more curved and tapered towards the tip than the more robust pulwar blades. The hilt is characterized by two quillons which are short and turned to point in the direction of the blade in the manner of some shamshir and saif, a feature typical of swords produced in Qajar period Iran.
Like the tulwar, the hilt is made of iron, is attached to the tang of the blade by a strong adhesive resin. Unlike the flat disc surrounding the pommel of the tulwar, the pommel of pulwar exhibits a cup-shape. Both hilt and blade can be ornately engraved with inscriptions and images. Khanjar Kilij Sabre Scimitar Shamshir Talwar Zulfikar Evangelista, N. and Gaugler, W. M.. The encyclopedia of the sword. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0-313-27896-2
Sabre
A sabre or saber is a type of backsword with a curved blade associated with the light cavalry of the early modern and Napoleonic periods. Associated with Central-Eastern European cavalry such as the hussars, the sabre became widespread in Western Europe in the Thirty Years' War. Lighter sabres became popular with infantry of the late 17th century. In the 19th century, models with less curving blades became common and were used by heavy cavalry; the last sabre issued to US cavalry was the Patton saber of 1913. Szabla wz. 34 was the last sabre issued to the Polish cavalry, in 1934. The military sabre was used as a duelling weapon in academic fencing in the 19th century, giving rise to a discipline of modern sabre fencing loosely based on the characteristics of the historical weapon in that it allows for cuts as well as thrusts. English sabre is recorded from the 1670s, as a direct loan from French, where the sabre is an alteration of sable, in turn loaned from German Säbel, Sabel in the 1630s; the German word is on record from the 15th century, loaned from Polish szabla, itself adopted from Hungarian szabla.
The spread of the Hungarian word to neighboring European languages took place in the context of the Ottoman wars in Europe of the 15th to 17th centuries. The spelling saber became common in American English in the second half of the 19th century; the origin of the Hungarian word is unclear. It may itself be a loan from South Slavic, from a Common Slavic *sablja, which would derives from a Turkic source. In a more recent suggestion, the Hungarian word may derive from a Tungusic source, via Kipchak Turkic selebe, with metathesis and apocope changed to *seble, which would have changed its vocalisation in Hungarian to the recorded sabla (perhaps under the influence of the Hungarian word szab- "to crop. Though single-edged cutting swords existed in Ancient and early Medieval Europe, such as the Greek makhaira and the Germanic seax, the direct predecessor of the sabre appears in the context of the Eurasian steppes in the medieval period, connected to the Magyars and the Turkic expansion; these oldest sabres had a slight curve, down-turned quillons, the grip facing the opposite direction to the blade and a sharp point with the top third of the reverse edge sharpened.
The introduction of the sabre proper in Western Europe, along with the term sabre itself, dates to the 17th century, via the influence of the Eastern European szabla type derived from these medieval backswords. The adoption of the term is connected to the employment of Hungarian hussar cavalry by Western armies at the time. Hungarian hussars were employed as light cavalry, with the role of harassing enemy skirmishers, overrunning artillery positions, pursuing fleeing troops. In the late 17th and 18th centuries, many Hungarian hussars fled to other Central and Western European countries and became the core of light cavalry formations created there; the Hungarian term szablya is traced to the northwestern Turkic selebe, with contamination from the Hungarian verb szab "to cut". The original type of sabre, or Polish szabla, was used as a cavalry weapon inspired by Hungarian or wider Turco-Mongol warfare; the karabela was a type of szabla popular in the late 17th century, worn by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth nobility class, the szlachta.
While designed as a cavalry weapon, it came to replace various types of straight-bladed swords used by infantry. The Swiss sabre originated as a regular sword with a single-edged blade in the early 16th century, but by the 17th century began to exhibit specialized hilt types. In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth a specific type of sabre-like melee weapon, the szabla, was used. Richly decorated sabres were popular among the Polish nobility, who considered it to be one of the most important pieces of men's traditional attire. With time, the design of the sabre evolved in the commonwealth and gave birth to a variety of sabre-like weapons, intended for many tasks. In the following centuries, the ideology of Sarmatism as well as the Polish fascination with Eastern cultures, customs and warfare resulted in the szabla becoming an indispensable part of traditional Polish culture; the sabre saw extensive military use in the early 19th century in the Napoleonic Wars, during which Napoleon used heavy cavalry charges to great effect against his enemies.
Shorter versions of the sabre were used as sidearms by dismounted units, although these were replaced by fascine knives and sword bayonets as the century went on. Although there was extensive debate over the effectiveness of weapons such as the sabre and lance, the sabre remained the standard weapon of cavalry for mounted action in most armies until World War I. Thereafter it was relegated to the status of a ceremonial weapon, most horse cavalry was replaced by armoured cavalry from 1930 on. Where horse mounted cavalry survived into World War II it was as mounted infantry without sabres; however the sabre was still carried by German cavalry until after the Polish campaign of 1939, after which this historic weapon was put into store. Romanian cavalry continued to carry their straight "thrusting" sabres on active service until at least 1941. Sabres were used by the British in the Napoleonic era for light cavalry and infantry officers, as well as others; the elegant but effective 1803 pattern sword that the British Government authorized for use by infantry officers during the wars against Napoleon featured a curved sabre blade, blued and engraved by the
Shotel
A shotel is a curved sword originating in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian swordsmen who were trained in using this weapon were known as meshenitai; the curve on the meshenitai blade varies from the Persian shamshir, adopting an semicircular shape. The blade is double-edged with a diamond cross-section; the blade is about 40 inches in total length and the hilt is a simple wooden piece with no guard. The shotel was carried in a close fitting leather scabbard. Evidence for the shotel dates from the earliest Damotians and Axumites, used by both mounted and dismounted warriors. After the Solomonic restoration of Atse Yikuno Amlak I, the resurgent Emperors began to re-establish the Axumite armies; this culminated in the reign of Amda Seyon I. Ethiopian forces were armed with long swords such as the Seif and Gorade; the Shotel swordsmen known as Shotelai and organized in the Axurarat Shotelai comprised one of the elite forces of Amda Seyon's Imperial host. Along with the Hareb Gonda and Korem cavalry, Keste Nihb archers and Axuarat Axuarai lancers were said to be the forces that "flew through the air like the eagle and spun on the ground like the avalanche", by a contemporaneous historian.
Shotel techniques among others included hooking attacks both against mounted and dismounted opponents that had devastating effect against mounted cavalry. The shotel could rip the warrior off the horse. Classically the Shotel was employed in a dismounted state to hook the opponent by reaching around a shield or any other defensive implement or weapon, its shape is similar to a big sickle and can be used to reach around an opponent's shield and stab them in vital areas, such as the kidneys or lungs. It is resembled by the Afar Gile; the Gile has two cutting edges, while the shotel's upper edge is unsharpened and sometimes used braced against the swordsman's shield for strength. The Shotel and other Ethiopian swords are referred collectively in Geez as Han'e. However, the mid-18th century European visitor to Ethiopia, Remedius Prutky used the word shotel to describe a carving knife. Sickle sword, a similar weapon used by the Bronze Age Canaanites and Ancient Egyptians Falx, a curved weapon used by the ancient Thracians.
"Shotel Sword from Ethiopia". Oriental-Arms. Archived from the original on 2012-02-06. Retrieved 2012-05-20
Kilij
A kilij is a type of one-handed, single-edged and moderately curved saber used by the Uyghur Khaganate, Seljuk Empire, Timurid Empire, Mamluk Empire, Ottoman Empire, the Turkic Khanates of Central Asia and Eurasian steppes. These blades evolved from Turko-Mongol sabers, used over all the lands invaded or influenced by the Turkic peoples; the Turkish root verb "kır-" means "to kill" with the suffix "-inç" makes "kır-ınç" becomes kılınç kılıç. The kilij became the symbol of kingdom. For example, Seljuk rulers carried the name Kilij Arslan means "sword-lion"; the Central Asian Turks and their offshoots began using curved cavalry swords beginning from the late Xiongnu period. The earliest examples of curved, single edged Turkish swords can be found associated with the late Xiongnu and Kök Turk empires; these swords were made of pattern welded high carbon crucible steel with long curved blades with one sharp edge. A sharp back edge on the distal third of the blade known as "yalman" or "yelman" was introduced during this period.
In the Early Middle Ages, the Turkic people of Central Asia came into contact with Middle Eastern civilizations through their shared Islamic faith. Turkic Ghilman slave-soldiers serving under the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates introduced "kilij" type sabers to all of the other Middle Eastern cultures. Arabs and Persians used straight-bladed swords such as the earlier types of the Arab saif and kaskara. During Islamizaton of the Turks, the kilij became more popular in the İslamic armies; when the Seljuk Empire invaded Persia and became the first Turkic Muslim political power in Western Asia, kilij became the dominant sword form. The Iranian shamshir was created during the Turkic Seljuk Empire period of Iran/Persia. After the invasion of Anatolia this sword type was carried by Turkomen tribes to the future seat of the Ottoman Empire. During the Crusades, Turks of Anatolia were the first target to be attacked by the European armies, their curved swords were misperceived by Europeans as the imaginative "scimitar of the Saracens", the generic sword type for all "Orientals".
The Kilij, as a specific type of sabre associated with the Ottoman Turks and the Mamluks of Egypt, was recognisable by the late 15th century. The oldest surviving examples sport a long blade curving from the hilt and more in the distal half; the width of the blade stays narrow up until the last 30% of its length, at which point it flares out and becomes wider. This distinctive flaring tip is called a "yalman" and it adds to the cutting power of the sword. Ottoman sabres of the next couple of centuries were of the Selchuk variety, though the native kilij form was found; these hilts had longer quillons to the guard, of brass or silver, sported a rounded termination to the grips made of horn, unlike that seen on Iranian swords. The finest mechanical damascus and wootz steel were used in making of these swords. In the classical period of the Ottoman Empire, Bursa and the Derbent regions became the most famous swordsmithing centers of the empire. Turkish blades became a major export item to Asia. In the late 18th century, though shamshirs continued to be used, the kilij underwent an evolution: the blade was shortened, became much more acutely curved, was wider with an deeper yalman.
In addition to the flared tip, these blades have a distinct "T-shaped" cross section to the back of the blade. This allowed greater blade stiffness without an increase in weight; because of the shape of the tip of the blade and the nature of its curvature the kilij could be used to perform the thrust, in this it had an advantage over the shamshir whose extreme curvature did not allow the thrust. Some of these shorter kilij are referred to as pala, but there does not seem to be a clear-cut distinction in nomenclature. After the Auspicious Incident, the Turkish army was modernized in the European fashion and kilijs were abandoned for western-type cavalry sabers and smallswords; this change, the introduction of industrialized European steels to Ottoman market, created a great decline in traditional swordsmithing. Civilians in the provinces and county militia, continued to carry hand-made kilijs as a part of their traditional dress. İn the late 19th century, Sultan Abdulhamid II's palace guards, the Ertuğrul Brigade, carried traditional kilijs as a romantic-nationalistic revival of the earlier Ottoman Turkoman cavalry raiders.
This sentiment continued after dethronement of the sultan by the nationalist Young Turks. High-ranking officer dress saber of early 20th century was a modern composite of traditional kilij, "mameluke" and European cavalry saber. Following the Ottoman invasion of Balkans, European armies were introduced to the kilij, though Greeks, Ukrainians, other Slavs and Hungarians were not strangers to this sword type from their earlier encounters with Turkic nomads such as Bulgars, Pechenegs and Tatars; the Kilij first became popular with the Balkan nations and the Hungarian hussar cavalry after 15th century, the sabre taking the name of szabla. Around 1670, the karabela was evolved, based on Janissary kilij sabres.
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