Metropolitan area
A metropolitan area, sometimes referred to as a metro area or commuter belt, is a region consisting of a densely populated urban core and its less-populated surrounding territories, sharing industry and housing. A metro area comprises multiple jurisdictions and municipalities: neighborhoods, boroughs, towns, suburbs, districts and nations like the eurodistricts; as social and political institutions have changed, metropolitan areas have become key economic and political regions. Metropolitan areas include one or more urban areas, as well as satellite cities and intervening rural areas that are socioeconomically tied to the urban core measured by commuting patterns. In the United States, the concept of the metropolitan statistical area has gained prominence. Metropolitan areas may themselves be part of larger megalopolises. For urban centres outside metropolitan areas, that generate a similar attraction at smaller scale for their region, the concept of the regiopolis and regiopolitan area or regio was introduced by German professors in 2006.
In the United States, the term micropolitan statistical area is used. A metropolitan area combines an urban agglomeration with zones not urban in character, but bound to the center by employment or other commerce; these outlying zones are sometimes known as a commuter belt, may extend well beyond the urban zone, to other political entities. For example, New York on Long Island is considered part of the New York metropolitan area. In practice, the parameters of metropolitan areas, in both official and unofficial usage, are not consistent. Sometimes they are little different from an urban area, in other cases they cover broad regions that have little relation to a single urban settlement. Population figures given for one metro area can vary by millions. There has been no significant change in the basic concept of metropolitan areas since its adoption in 1950, although significant changes in geographic distributions have occurred since and more are expected; because of the fluidity of the term "metropolitan statistical area," the term used colloquially is more "metro service area," "metro area," or "MSA" taken to include not only a city, but surrounding suburban and sometimes rural areas, all which it is presumed to influence.
A polycentric metropolitan area contains multiple urban agglomerations not connected by continuous development. In defining a metropolitan area, it is sufficient that a city or cities form a nucleus with which other areas have a high degree of integration. See the many lists of metropolitan areas itemized at § Lists of metropolitan areas; the Australian Bureau of Statistics defines Greater Capital City Statistical Areas as the areas of functional extent of the seven state capitals and the Australian Capital Territory. GCCSAs replaced "Statistical Divisions" used until 2011. In Brazil, metropolitan areas are called "metropolitan regions"; each State defines its own legislation for the creation and organization of a metropolitan region. The creation of a metropolitan region is not intended for any statistical purpose, although the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics uses them in its reports, their main purpose is to allow for a better management of public policies of common interest to all cities involved.
They don't have political, electoral or jurisdictional power whatsoever, so citizens living in a metropolitan region do not elect representatives for them. Statistics Canada defines a census metropolitan area as an area consisting of one or more adjacent municipalities situated around a major urban core. To form a CMA, the metropolitan area must have a population of at least 100,000, at least half within the urban core. To be included in the CMA, adjacent municipalities must have a high degree of integration with the core, as measured by commuter flows derived from census data. In Chinese, there used to be no clear distinction between "megalopolis" and "metropolitan area" until National Development and Reform Commission issued Guidelines on the Cultivation and Development of Modern Metropolitan Areas on Feb 19, 2019, in which a metropolitan area was defined as "an urbanized spatial form in a megalopolis dominated by supercity or megacity, or a large metropolis playing a leading part, within the basic range of 1-hour commute area."
The European Union's statistical agency, has created a concept named Larger Urban Zone. The LUZ represents an attempt at a harmonised definition of the metropolitan area, the goal was to have an area from a significant share of the resident commute into the city, a concept known as the "functional urban region". France's national statistics institute, the INSEE, names an urban core and its surrounding area of commuter influence an aire urbaine; this statistical method applies to agglomerations of all sizes, but the INSEE sometimes uses the term aire métropolitaine to refer to France's largest aires urbaines. In German definition, metropolian areas are eleven most densely populated areas in the Federal Republic of Germany, they comprise the major German cities and their surrounding catchment areas and form the political and cultural centres of the country. For urban centres outside metropolitan areas, that generate a similar attraction at smaller scale for their region, the concept of the Regiopolis and regiopolitan area or regio was introduced by German professors in 2006.
In India, a metropolitan city is defin
Latin Church
The Latin Church is the largest particular church of the Catholic Church, employing the Latin liturgical rites. It is one of 24 sui iuris churches, the 23 other forming the Eastern Catholic Churches, it is headed by the Bishop of Rome - the pope, traditionally called the Patriarch of the West - with headquarters in the Vatican City, enclaved within Rome, Italy. The Latin Church traces its history to the earliest days of Christianity, according to Catholic tradition, through its direct leadership under the Holy See. Substantial distinguishing theological emphases, liturgical traditions and identity can be traced back to the Latin church fathers, most the Latin Doctors of the Church, active during the first centuries A. D. including in the Early African church. After the East-West schism in 1054, in the Middle Ages its members became known as Latins in contrast with Eastern Christians. Following the Islamic conquests, the Crusades were launched in order to defend Christians in the Holy Land against persecution.
The Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem was established for their care. Other Latin dioceses were vanquished and transformed into titular sees when Christians were forced to convert, flee, or die, going on until today around the Islamic world; the Latin Church was in full communion with the Eastern Orthodox Church until the East-West schism. It was spread to Latin America in the early modern period; the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century resulted in Protestantism breaking away. Since 19th century smaller groups of Independent Catholic denominations broke away. With 1.255 billion members, it remains by far the largest particular church not only in the Catholic Church or Western Christianity, but in all Christianity. The leadership of the Latin Church has been viewed as one of the five patriarchates of the Pentarchy of early Christianity, along with the patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria and Jerusalem. Due to geographic and cultural considerations, the latter patriarchates developed into churches with distinct Eastern Christian traditions.
The majority of Eastern Christian churches broke full communion with the bishop of Rome and the Latin Church, following various theological and leadership disputes in the centuries following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. These included notably the Nestorian Schism, Chalcedonian Schism, the East-West Schism; the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century saw an analogous schism. Until 2005, the Pope claimed the title "Patriarch of the West"; the Latin Church is notable within Western Christianity for its sacred tradition and seven sacraments. In the Catholic Church, in addition to the Latin Church directly headed by the Pope as Latin patriarch, there are 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, self-governing particular churches sui iuris with their own hierarchies; these churches trace their origins to the other four patriarchates of the ancient pentarchy, but either never broke full communion or returned to it with the Papacy at some time. These differ from each other in liturgical rite, devotional traditions, canon law, clergy, but all maintain the same faith, all see full communion with the Pope, as Bishop of Rome, as essential to being Catholic as well as part of the one true church as defined by the Four Marks of the Church in Catholic ecclesiology.
The 16 million Eastern Catholics represent a minority of Christians in communion with the Pope, compared to more than 1 billion Latin Catholics. Additionally, there are 250 million Eastern Orthodox and 86 million Oriental Orthodox around the world. Unlike the Latin Church, the Pope does not exercise a direct patriarchal role over the Eastern Catholic churches and their faithful, instead encouraging their internal hierarchies separate from that of the Latin Church, analogous to the traditions shared with the corresponding Eastern Christian churches in Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy; the church is called the Latin Church in most available sources. In an historical context, the church is sometimes referred to as the Western Church. However, the term of "Roman Catholic Church" is sometimes used to refer to the Latin Church, for instance when used by Eastern Catholics, but can be used for the Catholic Church as a whole in some context, such as non-Catholic contexts. Yet, in the strict sense, the term Roman Catholic refers to followers of the Roman rite, the predominant of the Latin liturgical rites employed in the Latin Church, contrasting with the liturgical rites of the Eastern Catholic Churches.
The 1990 Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches defines the use within that code of the words "church" and "rite". In accordance with these definitions of usage within the code that governs the Eastern Catholic churches, the Latin Church is one such group of Christian faithful united by a hierarchy and recognized by the supreme authority of the Catholic Church as a sui iuris particular church; the Latin rite is the whole of the patrimony of that distinct particular church, by which it manifests its own manner of living the faith, including its own liturgy, its theology, its spiritual practices and traditions and its canon law. A person belongs to a particular church. A person inherits, or "is of", a particular patrimony or rite. Since the rite has liturgical, theological and disciplinary elements, a person is to worship, to be catechized, to
Phoenicia
Phoenicia was a thalassocratic, ancient Semitic-speaking Mediterranean civilization that originated in the Levant Lebanon, in the west of the Fertile Crescent. Scholars agree that it was centered on the coastal areas of Lebanon and included northern Israel, southern Syria reaching as far north as Arwad, but there is some dispute as to how far south it went, the furthest suggested area being Ashkelon, its colonies reached the Western Mediterranean, such as Cádiz in Spain and most notably Carthage in North Africa, the Atlantic Ocean. The civilization spread across the Mediterranean between 1500 BC and 300 BC. Phoenicia is an ancient Greek term used to refer to the major export of the region, cloth dyed Tyrian purple from the Murex mollusc, referred to the major Canaanite port towns, their civilization was organized in city-states, similar to those of ancient Greece, centered in modern Lebanon, of which the most notable cities were Tyre, Arwad, Berytus and Carthage. Each city-state was a politically independent unit, it is uncertain to what extent the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single nationality.
In terms of archaeology, language and religion there was little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other residents of the Levant, such as their close relatives and neighbors, the Israelites. Around 1050 BC, a Phoenician alphabet was used for the writing of Phoenician, it became one of the most used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures, including the Roman alphabet used by Western civilization today. The name Phoenicians, like Latin Poenī, comes from Greek Φοίνικες; the word φοῖνιξ phoînix meant variably "Phoenician person", "Tyrian purple, crimson" or "date palm" and is attested with all three meanings in Homer. The word may be derived from φοινός phoinós "blood-red", itself related to φόνος phónos "murder", it is difficult to ascertain which meaning came first, but it is understandable how Greeks may have associated the crimson or purple color of dates and dye with the merchants who traded both products.
Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a pre-Greek origin of the ethnonym; the oldest attested form of the word in Greek may be the Mycenaean po-ni-ki-jo, po-ni-ki borrowed from Ancient Egyptian: fnḫw, although this derivation is disputed. The folk etymological association of Φοινίκη with φοῖνιξ mirrors that in Akkadian, which tied kinaḫni, kinaḫḫi "Canaan" to kinaḫḫu "red-dyed wool"; the land was natively known as its people as the knʿny. In the Amarna letters of the 14th century BC, people from the region called themselves Kenaani or Kinaani, in modern English understood as/equivalent to Canaanite. Much in the sixth century BC, Hecataeus of Miletus writes that Phoenicia was called χνα khna, a name that Philo of Byblos adopted into his mythology as his eponym for the Phoenicians: "Khna, afterwards called Phoinix"; the ethnonym survived in North Africa until the fourth century AD. Herodotus's account refers to the myths of Europa. According to the Persians best informed in history, the Phoenicians began the quarrel.
These people, who had dwelt on the shores of the Erythraean Sea, having migrated to the Mediterranean and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the wares of Egypt and Assyria... The Greek historian Strabo believed. Herodotus believed that the homeland of the Phoenicians was Bahrain; this theory was accepted by the 19th-century German classicist Arnold Heeren who said that: "In the Greek geographers, for instance, we read of two islands, named Tyrus or Tylos, Aradus, which boasted that they were the mother country of the Phoenicians, exhibited relics of Phoenician temples." The people of Tyre in South Lebanon in particular have long maintained Persian Gulf origins, the similarity in the words "Tylos" and "Tyre" has been commented upon. The Dilmun civilization thrived in Bahrain during the period 2200–1600 BC, as shown by excavations of settlements and Dilmun burial mounds. However, some claim there is little evidence of occupation at all in Bahrain during the time when such migration had taken place.
Canaanite culture developed in situ from the earlier Ghassulian chalcolithic culture. Ghassulian itself developed from the Circum-Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex, which in turn developed from a fusion of their ancestral Natufian and Harifian cultures with Pre-Pottery Neolithic B farming cultures, practicing the domestication of animals, during the 6200 BC climatic crisis which led to the Neolithic Revolution in the Levant. Byblos is attested as an archaeological site from the Early Bronze Age; the Late Bronze Age state of Ugarit is considered quintessentially Canaanite archaeologically though the Ugaritic language does not belong to the Canaanite languages proper. The Canaanite-Phoenician alphabet consists of all consonants. Starting around 1050 BC, this script was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, it is believed to be one of the ancestors of modern alphabets. B
Leo I the Thracian
Leo I was Eastern Roman Emperor from 457 to 474. A native of Dacia Aureliana near historic Thrace, he was known as Leo the Thracian. Ruling the Eastern Empire for nearly 20 years, Leo proved to be a capable ruler, he oversaw many ambitious political and military plans, aimed at aiding the faltering Western Roman Empire and recovering its former territories. He is notable for being the first Eastern Emperor to legislate in Greek rather than Latin, he is commemorated as a Saint in the Orthodox Church, with his feast day on January 20. He was born Leo Marcellus in Thracia or in Dacia Aureliana province in the year 401 to a Thraco-Roman family, his Dacian origin is mentioned by Candidus Isaurus, while John Malalas believes that he was of Bessian stock. He served in the Roman army. Leo was the last of a series of emperors placed on the throne by Aspar, the Alan serving as commander-in-chief of the army, who thought Leo would be an easy puppet ruler. Instead, Leo became more and more independent from Aspar, causing tension that would culminate in the assassination of the latter.
Leo's coronation as emperor on 7 February 457, was the first known to involve the Patriarch of Constantinople. Leo I was thus able to eliminate Aspar; the price of the alliance was the marriage of Leo's daughter to Tarasicodissa, leader of the Isaurians, who, as Zeno, became emperor in 474. In 469, Aspar attempted to assassinate Zeno and nearly succeeded. In 471, Aspar's son Ardabur was implicated in a plot against Leo and Ardabur was killed by palace eunuchs acting on Leo's orders. Leo overestimated his capacities and he made some errors that menaced the internal order of the Empire; the Balkans were ravaged by the Ostrogoths, after a disagreement between the Emperor and the young chief Theodoric the Great, raised at Leo's court in Constantinople, where he was steeped in Roman government and military tactics. There were some raids by the Huns. However, these attackers were unable to take Constantinople thanks to the walls, rebuilt and reinforced in the reign of Theodosius II and against which they possessed no suitable siege engines.
Leo's reign was noteworthy for his influence in the Western Roman Empire, marked by his appointment of Anthemius as Western Roman Emperor in 467. He attempted to build on this political achievement with an expedition against the Vandals in 468, defeated due to the arrogance of Leo's brother-in-law Basiliscus; this disaster drained the Empire of men and money. Procopius estimated the costs of the expedition to be 130,000 pounds of gold; the expedition consisted of 1,113 ships carrying 100,000 men. After this defeat, the Vandals raided Greek coasts until a costly peace agreement was signed between Leo and Genseric. Leo became unpopular in his last days as Emperor for abolishing any non-religious celebration or event on Sundays. Leo died of dysentery at the age of 73 on 18 January 474. Leo and Verina had three children, their eldest daughter Ariadne was born prior to the death of Marcian. Ariadne had Leontia. Leontia was first betrothed to Patricius, a son of Aspar, but their engagement was annulled when Aspar and another of his sons, were assassinated in 471.
Leontia married Marcian, a son of Emperor Anthemius and Marcia Euphemia. The couple led a failed revolt against Zeno in 478–479, they were exiled to Isauria following their defeat. An unknown son was born in 463, he died five months following his birth. The only sources about him are a hagiography of Daniel the Stylite; the Georgian Chronicle, a 13th-century compilation drawing from earlier sources, reports a marriage of Vakhtang I of Iberia to Princess Helena of Byzantium, identifying her as a daughter of the predecessor of Zeno. This predecessor was Leo I, the tale attributing a third daughter to Leo. Cyril Toumanoff identified two children of this marriage: Mithridates of Iberia; this younger Leo was father of Guaram I of Iberia. The accuracy of the descent is unknown. Church of St. Mary of the Spring Life-giving Spring List of Byzantine emperors Ostrogorsky, George. History of the Byzantine State. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Bury, John Bagnell. History of the Later Roman Empire: from the death of Theodosius I to the death of Justinian.
Dover books. 1. Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-20398-0. Friell, Gerard; the Rome That Did Not Fall: The Survival of the East in the Fifth Century. Ancient history. London: Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-15403-1. Meyendorff, John. Imperial unity and Christian divisions: The Church 450-680 A. D; the Church in history. 2. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. ISBN 978-0-88-141056-3. Thomas F. Madden. Empire of Gold: A History of the Byzantine Empire. Prince Frederick: Recorded Books. ISBN 978-1-4281-3267-2. Profile of Leo in The Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell, The Rome that Did Not Fall The Survival of the East in the Fifth Century, Routledge Press, 1999, ISBN 0-415-15403-0 Media related to Flavius Valerius Leo at Wikimedia Commons Leo I Timeline
Governorates of Syria
Syria is a unitary state, but for administrative purposes, it is divided into fourteen governorates called provinces in English. The governorates are divided into sixty districts; the nawāḥī contain villages. Each governorate is headed by a governor, appointed by the president, subject to cabinet approval; the governor is responsible for administration, social services, tourism, public works, domestic trade, industry, civil defense, maintenance of law and order in the governorate. The minister of local administration works with each governor to coordinate and supervise local development projects; the governor is assisted by a provincial council, all of whose members are popularly elected for four-year terms. In addition, each council elects from among its member an executive bureau which administers the day to day issues between provincial council sessions; each executive officer is charged with specific functions. Districts and subdistricts are administered by officials appointed by the governor.
These officials work on local matters with elected district councils and serve as intermediaries between the central government and traditional local leaders, such as village chiefs, clan leaders, councils of elders. Capital Districts of Syria ISO 3166-2:SY List of cities in Syria List of towns and villages in Syria
Limestone
Limestone is a carbonate sedimentary rock, composed of the skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral and molluscs. Its major materials are the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate. A related rock is dolostone, which contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite, CaMg2. In fact, in old USGS publications, dolostone was referred to as magnesian limestone, a term now reserved for magnesium-deficient dolostones or magnesium-rich limestones. About 10% of sedimentary rocks are limestones; the solubility of limestone in water and weak acid solutions leads to karst landscapes, in which water erodes the limestone over thousands to millions of years. Most cave systems are through limestone bedrock. Limestone has numerous uses: as a building material, an essential component of concrete, as aggregate for the base of roads, as white pigment or filler in products such as toothpaste or paints, as a chemical feedstock for the production of lime, as a soil conditioner, or as a popular decorative addition to rock gardens.
Like most other sedimentary rocks, most limestone is composed of grains. Most grains in limestone are skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as foraminifera; these organisms secrete shells made of aragonite or calcite, leave these shells behind when they die. Other carbonate grains composing limestones are ooids, peloids and extraclasts. Limestone contains variable amounts of silica in the form of chert or siliceous skeletal fragment, varying amounts of clay and sand carried in by rivers; some limestones do not consist of grains, are formed by the chemical precipitation of calcite or aragonite, i.e. travertine. Secondary calcite may be deposited by supersaturated meteoric waters; this produces speleothems, such as stalactites. Another form taken by calcite is oolitic limestone, which can be recognized by its granular appearance; the primary source of the calcite in limestone is most marine organisms. Some of these organisms can construct mounds of rock building upon past generations. Below about 3,000 meters, water pressure and temperature conditions cause the dissolution of calcite to increase nonlinearly, so limestone does not form in deeper waters.
Limestones may form in lacustrine and evaporite depositional environments. Calcite can be dissolved or precipitated by groundwater, depending on several factors, including the water temperature, pH, dissolved ion concentrations. Calcite exhibits an unusual characteristic called retrograde solubility, in which it becomes less soluble in water as the temperature increases. Impurities will cause limestones to exhibit different colors with weathered surfaces. Limestone may be crystalline, granular, or massive, depending on the method of formation. Crystals of calcite, dolomite or barite may line small cavities in the rock; when conditions are right for precipitation, calcite forms mineral coatings that cement the existing rock grains together, or it can fill fractures. Travertine is a banded, compact variety of limestone formed along streams where there are waterfalls and around hot or cold springs. Calcium carbonate is deposited where evaporation of the water leaves a solution supersaturated with the chemical constituents of calcite.
Tufa, a porous or cellular variety of travertine, is found near waterfalls. Coquina is a poorly consolidated limestone composed of pieces of coral or shells. During regional metamorphism that occurs during the mountain building process, limestone recrystallizes into marble. Limestone is a parent material of Mollisol soil group. Two major classification schemes, the Folk and the Dunham, are used for identifying the types of carbonate rocks collectively known as limestone. Robert L. Folk developed a classification system that places primary emphasis on the detailed composition of grains and interstitial material in carbonate rocks. Based on composition, there are three main components: allochems and cement; the Folk system uses two-part names. It is helpful to have a petrographic microscope when using the Folk scheme, because it is easier to determine the components present in each sample; the Dunham scheme focuses on depositional textures. Each name is based upon the texture of the grains. Robert J. Dunham published his system for limestone in 1962.
Dunham divides the rocks into four main groups based on relative proportions of coarser clastic particles. Dunham names are for rock families, his efforts deal with the question of whether or not the grains were in mutual contact, therefore self-supporting, or whether the rock is characterized by the presence of frame builders and algal mats. Unlike the Folk scheme, Dunham deals with the original porosity of the rock; the Dunham scheme is more useful for hand samples because it is based on texture, not the grains in the sample. A revised classification was proposed by Wright, it adds some diagenetic patterns and can be summarized as follows: See: Carbonate platform About 10% of all sedimentary rocks are limestones. Limestone is soluble in acid, therefore forms many erosional landforms; these include limestone pavements, pot holes, cenotes and gorges. Such erosion landscapes are known
Cathedral of Our Lady of Tortosa
Cathedral of Our Lady of Tortosa was a Catholic cathedral in the city of Tartus, erected during the 12th century. It has been described by historians as "the best-preserved religious structure of the crusades". According to a legend, the place corresponds to. After capture by the Mamluks, the cathedral was turned into a mosque. Today, the building serves as the National Museum of Tartus; the cathedral was erected on the place for previous Byzantine pilgrimages. It was built in Romanesque style and gothic style during the 12th century. From 1152 under mid-13th century, the Knights Templars governed the area. Since the town was threatened by the Mamluks, the church building was fortified. Tartus was the last holdings of the Knights Templars in the Near East. After capture, the cathedral was turned into a mosque. During the Ottoman period, the building was used as a stable. Since 1956, the prior church building has housed the National Museum of Tartus, which exhibits some archaeological objects. Paul Deschamps: Romanik im Heiligen Land, Würzburg 1992, S. 269–278
Syria
