1.
Specials (Unicode block)
–
Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
2.
Tuareg languages
–
Tuareg dialects belong to the South Berber group, and are commonly regarded as a single language. They are distinguished mainly by a few sound shifts, the Tuareg languages are traditionally written in the indigenous Tifinagh alphabet. However, the Arabic script is used in some areas, while the Latin script is official in Mali. In Morocco, of the three languages, Central Atlas Tamazight is the second Berber language. Northern Tamahaq – Language of the Kel Ahaggar, and Kel Ajjer spoken in Algeria, southern Tamasheq – Language of the Kel Adrar, spoken in Mali by approximately 270,000 people. Tayart Tamajaq language – Language of the Kel Ayer, spoken in Niger by approximately 250,000 people, Tawallammat Tamajaq – Language of the Iwellemmeden, spoken in Mali and Niger by approximately 870,000 people. The term Iwellemmeden is sometimes used to denote the language, the Tuareg languages may be written in the Latin script, the Arabic script, or Tifinagh. There is also variation in Tifinagh and in the Arabic script. The Arabic script is mostly in use by tribes more involved in Islamic learning, Tifinagh usage is restricted mainly to writing magical formulae, writing on palms when silence is required, and recently letter-writing. The DNAFLA system is a somewhat morphophonemic orthography, not indicating initial vowel shortening, always writing the directional particle as < dd⟩, in Burkina Faso the emphatics are denoted by hooked letters, as in Fula, e. g. ⟨ɗ ƭ⟩. The vowel system includes 5 long vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/, emphatic versions of /e, o/, Karl Prasse argued that /e/ goes back to Proto-Berber, while /o/ is derived from /u/. Comparative evidence shows that /ə/ derives from a merger of Proto-Berber */ĭ/ and */ŭ/. Sudlow classes the semivowels /w, j/ with the vowels, and notes the following diphthongs, /əw/, /ăw/, /aw/, /ew/, /iw/, /ow/, /uw/. Before emphatics, vowels lower, turning /ə/ into, /e, i/ into emphatic, /ŋ/ is rare, /ʒ/ is rare in Tadraq, and /ħ, ʕ/ are only used in Arabic words in the Tanəsləmt dialect. Phrase-final /a/ is also followed by a glottal stop. Normally /ɣɣ/ becomes, /ww/ becomes, and /dˤdˤ/ becomes, /q/ and /tˤ/ are predominantly geminate. In addition, in Tadraq /ɡ/ is usually geminate, but in Tudalt singleton /ɡ/ may occur, voicing assimilation occurs, with the first consonant taking the voicing of the second. Cluster reduction turns word/morpheme-final /-ɣt, -ɣk/ into and /-kt, -ɟt, syllable structure is CV, including glottal stops
3.
Abjad
–
An abjad is a type of writing system where each symbol stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel. The name abjad is derived from pronouncing the first letters of the Arabic alphabet in order, the ordering of Arabic letters used to match that of the older Hebrew, Phoenician and Semitic alphabets, ʾ b g d. According to the formulations of Daniels, abjads differ from alphabets in that only consonants, abugidas mark the vowels with a diacritic, a minor attachment to the letter, or a standalone glyph. Some abugidas use a symbol to suppress the inherent vowel so that the consonant alone can be properly represented. In a syllabary, a grapheme denotes a syllable, that is. This caused fatal effects on terminology in general and especially in Semitic philology, the first abjad to gain widespread usage was the Phoenician abjad. Unlike other contemporary scripts, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs and this made the script easy to learn, and seafaring Phoenician merchants took the script wherever they went. Phoenician gave rise to a number of new writing systems, including the Greek alphabet and Aramaic, the Greek alphabet evolved into the modern western alphabets, such as Latin and Cyrillic, while Aramaic became the ancestor of many modern abjads and abugidas of Asia. Impure abjads have characters for vowels, optional vowel diacritics. The term pure abjad refers to scripts entirely lacking in vowel indicators and this practice was at first rare and limited in scope, but it became increasingly common and more developed in later times. In the 9th century BC, the Greeks adapted the Phoenician script for use in their own language, the phonetic structure of the Greek language created too many ambiguities when the vowels went unrepresented, so the script was modified. They did not need letters for the sounds represented by aleph, he, heth or ayin. The letters waw and yod were also adapted into vowel signs, along with he, the major innovation of Greek was to dedicate these symbols exclusively and unambiguously to vowel sounds that could be combined arbitrarily with consonants. Abugidas developed along a different route. The basic consonantal symbol was considered to have an inherent a vowel sound, hooks or short lines attached to various parts of the basic letter modify the vowel. In this way, the South Arabian alphabet evolved into the Geez alphabet between the 5th century BC and the 5th century AD, similarly, around the 3rd century BC, the Brāhmī script developed. The other major family of abugidas, Canadian Aboriginal syllabics, was developed in the 1840s by missionary and linguist James Evans for the Cree. Evans used features of Devanagari script and Pitman shorthand to create his initial abugida, later in the 19th century, other missionaries adapted Evans system to other Canadian aboriginal languages
4.
Berber languages
–
Berber or the Berber languages or the Amazigh language are a family of similar and closely related languages and dialects indigenous to North Africa. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities, numbering today about 4 million, have been living in Western Europe, about half of this population was born in Europe. Berber constitutes a branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and has been attested since ancient times, the number of Berbers is much higher than the number of Berber speakers. The bulk of the populations of the Maghreb countries are considered to have Berber ancestors, in Algeria, for example, a majority of the population consists of Arabized Berbers. There is a cultural and political movement among speakers of the closely related varieties of Northern Berber to promote and unify them under a standard language, called. The name Tamaziɣt is the current native name of the Berber language in the Moroccan Middle-Atlas region, the Rif regions, in other Berber-speaking area this name was lost. There is historical evidence, from medieval Berber manusctipts, that all native North Africans from Libya to Morocco have called their language, Tamaziɣt. The name Tamaziɣt is currently being used by educated Berbers to refer to the written Berber language. Around 90 percent of the Berber-speaking population speak one of six major varieties of Berber and they are, in the order of demographic weight, Tashelhit, Kabyle, Atlas Tamazight, Riffian, Shawi and Tuareg. The Berber languages and dialects have had a tradition, on and off, for about 2,500 years, although the tradition has been frequently disrupted by cultural shifts. They were first written in the Libyco-Berber and Tifinagh abjad, still used by the Tuareg, the oldest dated inscription is from about 200 BCE. The Berber Latin alphabet was used by most European and Berber linguists during the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 19th and 20th century European and native Berber linguists, a modernized form of the Tifinagh alphabet, called Neo-Tifinagh, was adopted in Morocco in 2003 for writing Berber, but many Moroccan Berber publications still use the Berber Latin alphabet. Algerians mostly use the Berber Latin alphabet in Berber language education at public schools, Mali and Niger recognize a Tuareg-Berber Latin alphabet customized to the Tuareg phonological system. However, traditional Tifinagh is still used in those countries, the term Berber has been used in Europe since at least the 17th century, and is still used today. It was borrowed from Latin Barbari, the Latin word is also found in the Arabic designation for these populations, البربر, al-Barbar, see names of the Berber people. Etymologically, the Berber root Mazigh means free man, noble man, the feminine Tamazight traditionally referred specifically to the Riffian and Central Atlas Tamazight languages. European languages distinguish between the words Berber and barbaric, while Arabic has the same word al-barbari for both meanings, some other Berber writers, especially in Morocco, prefer to refer to Berber with Amazigh when writing about it in French or English
5.
Alphabet
–
An alphabet is a standard set of letters that is used to write one or more languages based upon the general principle that the letters represent phonemes of the spoken language. This is in contrast to other types of writing systems, such as syllabaries and logographies, the Proto-Canaanite script, later known as the Phoenician alphabet, is the first fully phonemic script. Thus the Phoenician alphabet is considered to be the first alphabet, the Phoenician alphabet is the ancestor of most modern alphabets, including Arabic, Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Hebrew, and possibly Brahmic. Under a terminological distinction promoted by Peter T. Daniels, an alphabet is a script that represents both vowels and consonants as letters equally. In this narrow sense of the word the first true alphabet was the Greek alphabet, in other alphabetic scripts such as the original Phoenician, Hebrew or Arabic, letters predominantly or exclusively represent consonants, such a script is also called an abjad. A third type, called abugida or alphasyllabary, is one where vowels are shown by diacritics or modifications of consonantal letters, as in Devanagari. The Khmer alphabet is the longest, with 74 letters, there are dozens of alphabets in use today, the most popular being the Latin alphabet. Many languages use modified forms of the Latin alphabet, with additional letters formed using diacritical marks, while most alphabets have letters composed of lines, there are also exceptions such as the alphabets used in Braille. Alphabets are usually associated with an ordering of letters. This makes them useful for purposes of collation, specifically by allowing words to be sorted in alphabetical order and it also means that their letters can be used as an alternative method of numbering ordered items, in such contexts as numbered lists and number placements. The English word alphabet came into Middle English from the Late Latin word alphabetum, the Greek word was made from the first two letters, alpha and beta. The names for the Greek letters came from the first two letters of the Phoenician alphabet, aleph, which also meant ox, and bet, in the alphabet song in English, the term ABCs is used instead of the word alphabet. Knowing ones ABCs, in general, can be used as a metaphor for knowing the basics about anything, the history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt. These glyphs were used as guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections. Based on letter appearances and names, it is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs and this script had no characters representing vowels, although originally it probably was a syllabary, but unneeded symbols were discarded. An alphabetic cuneiform script with 30 signs including three that indicate the vowel was invented in Ugarit before the 15th century BC. This script was not used after the destruction of Ugarit, the Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called Proto-Canaanite before ca.1050 BC. The oldest text in Phoenician script is an inscription on the sarcophagus of King Ahiram and this script is the parent script of all western alphabets
6.
Morocco
–
Morocco, officially known as the Kingdom of Morocco, is a sovereign country located in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Geographically, Morocco is characterized by a mountainous interior, large tracts of desert. Morocco has a population of over 33.8 million and an area of 446,550 km2 and its capital is Rabat, and the largest city is Casablanca. Other major cities include Marrakesh, Tangier, Tetouan, Salé, Fes, Agadir, Meknes, Oujda, Kenitra, a historically prominent regional power, Morocco has a history of independence not shared by its neighbours. Marinid and Saadi dynasties continued the struggle against foreign domination, the Alaouite dynasty, the current ruling dynasty, seized power in 1666. In 1912 Morocco was divided into French and Spanish protectorates, with a zone in Tangier. Moroccan culture is a blend of Arab, indigenous Berber, Sub-Saharan African, Morocco claims the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara as its Southern Provinces. Morocco annexed the territory in 1975, leading to a war with indigenous forces until a cease-fire in 1991. Peace processes have thus far failed to break the political deadlock, Morocco is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. The King of Morocco holds vast executive and legislative powers, especially over the military, foreign policy, the king can issue decrees called dahirs which have the force of law. He can also dissolve the parliament after consulting the Prime Minister, Moroccos predominant religion is Islam, and the official languages are Arabic and Tamazight. The Moroccan dialect, referred to as Darija, and French are also widely spoken, Morocco is a member of the Arab League, the Union for the Mediterranean, and the African Union. It has the fifth largest economy of Africa, the full Arabic name al-Mamlakah al-Maghribiyyah translates to Kingdom of the West, although the West in Arabic is الغرب Al-Gharb. The basis of Moroccos English name is Marrakesh, its capital under the Almoravid dynasty, the origin of the name Marrakesh is disputed, but is most likely from the Berber words amur akush or Land of God. The modern Berber name for Marrakesh is Mṛṛakc, in Turkish, Morocco is known as Fas, a name derived from its ancient capital of Fes. The English name Morocco is an anglicisation of the Spanish Marruecos, the area of present-day Morocco has been inhabited since Paleolithic times, sometime between 190,000 and 90,000 BC. During the Upper Paleolithic, the Maghreb was more fertile than it is today, twenty-two thousand years ago, the Aterian was succeeded by the Iberomaurusian culture, which shared similarities with Iberian cultures. Skeletal similarities have been suggested between the Iberomaurusian Mechta-Afalou burials and European Cro-Magnon remains, the Iberomaurusian was succeeded by the Beaker culture in Morocco
7.
Punics
–
The Punics, also known as Carthaginians, were a people from Ancient Carthage in modern-day Tunisia, North Africa, who traced their origins to the Berbers and Phoenicians. Punic is the English adjective derived from the Latin adjective punicus to describe anything Carthaginian and their language, Punic, was a dialect of Phoenician. Unlike their Phoenician ancestors, Carthaginians had an aristocracy who established a rule of the hinterland in Northern Africa. In later times one of these clans established a Hellenistic-inspired empire in Iberia, like other Phoenician people, their urbanized culture and economy were strongly linked to the sea. In the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Corsica and Sicily they had strong economic and their naval presence and trade extended throughout the Mediterranean and beyond to the British Isles, the Canaries, and West Africa. Technical achievements of the Punic people of Carthage include the development of uncolored glass, after the Punic Wars, Romans used the term Punic as an adjective meaning treacherous. Phoenicians also settled in Northwest Africa and other areas under Carthaginian rule and their culture, Remains of the Punic culture can be found in settlements from the Iberian Peninsula in the West to Cyprus in the East. Punic culture became a melting pot, since Carthage was a big trading port, the Carthaginians carried out significant sea explorations around Africa and elsewhere from their base in Carthage. Carthaginians pushed westerly into the Atlantic and established important settlements in Lixus, Volubilis, Chellah and Mogador, being trade rivals with Magna Graecia, the Carthaginians had several clashes with the Greeks over the island of Sicily in the Sicilian Wars from 600-265 BC. They eventually fought Rome in the Sicilian Wars of 265-146 BC and this enabled a Roman settlement of Africa and eventual domination of the Mediterranean Sea. They were eventually incorporated into the Roman Republic in 146 BC with the destruction of Carthage but Cato never got to see his victory, the destruction of Carthage was not the end of the Carthaginians. After the wars, the city of Carthage was completely razed, there were, however, other Punic cities in North Africa, and Carthage itself was rebuilt and regained some importance, if a shadow of its ancient influence. Although the area was partially romanized and some of the population adopted the Roman religion, the language, people of Punic origin prospered again as traders, merchants and even politicians of the Roman Empire. Septimius Severus, emperor of Rome and a proud Punic, was said to speak Latin with a Punic accent, under his reign Carthaginians rose to the elites and their deities entered their imperial cult. Carthage was rebuilt about 46 BC by Julius Caesar, places in the area were granted for settlement as benefits to soldiers who had served in Roman armies. Carthage again prospered and even became the two trading city in the Roman Empire, until Constantinople took over that position. As Christianity spread in the Roman Empire, it was successful in North Africa. Saint Augustine, born in Thagaste, considered himself Punic, one of his more well known passages reads, It is an excellent thing that the Punic Christians call Baptism itself nothing else but salvation, and the Sacrament of Christs Body nothing else but life
8.
Egyptian hieroglyphs
–
Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt. It combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with a total of some 1,000 distinct characters, cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts are derived from hieroglyphic writing, the writing system continued to be used throughout the Late Period, as well as the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period, with the closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, and the script remained undeciphered throughout the medieval and early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphs would only be solved in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός, a compound of ἱερός and γλύφω, supposedly a calque of an Egyptian phrase mdw·w-nṯr gods words. The glyphs themselves were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ γράμματα the sacred engraved letters, the word hieroglyph has become a noun in English, standing for an individual hieroglyphic character. As used in the sentence, the word hieroglyphic is an adjective. Hieroglyphs emerged from the artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from c.4000 BC have been argued to resemble hieroglyphic writing, proto-hieroglyphic symbol systems develop in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, such as the clay labels of a Predynastic ruler called Scorpion I recovered at Abydos in 1998. The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qaab. There are around 800 hieroglyphs dating back to the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, by the Greco-Roman period, there are more than 5,000. However, given the lack of evidence, no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. Since the 1990s, and discoveries such as the Abydos glyphs, as writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic and demotic scripts. These variants were more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental, the Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule, and after Alexander the Greats conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It appears that the quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part. Some believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish true Egyptians from some of the foreign conquerors, another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally
9.
Proto-Sinaitic script
–
It is also referred to as Sinaitic, Proto-Canaanite, Old Canaanite, and Canaanite. The earliest Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions are dated to between the mid-19th and the mid-16th century BC. The principal debate is between an early date, around 1850 BC, and a date, around 1550 BC. The choice of one or the other date decides whether it is proto-Sinaitic or proto-Canaanite, the so-called Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions were discovered in the winter of 1904–1905 in Sinai by Hilda and Flinders Petrie. The Wadi el-Hol inscriptions strongly suggest a date of development of Proto-Sinaitic writing from the mid-19th to 18th centuries BC, the Sinai inscriptions are best known from carved graffiti and votive texts from a mountain in the Sinai called Serabit el-Khadim and its temple to the Egyptian goddess Hathor. The mountain contained turquoise mines which were visited by repeated expeditions over 800 years, many of the workers and officials were from the Nile Delta, and included large numbers of Canaanites who had been allowed to settle the eastern Delta. The date of the inscriptions is placed in the 17th or 16th century BC. Four inscriptions have been found in the temple, on two small statues and on either side of a small stone sphinx. They are crudely done, suggesting that the workers who made them were illiterate apart from this script and they are all very short, most consisting of only a couple of letters, and may have been written by Canaanite caravaners or soldiers from Egypt. They sometimes go by the name Proto-Canaanite, although the term Proto-Canaanite is also applied to early Phoenician or Hebrew inscriptions, the Wadi el-Hol inscriptions were carved on the stone sides of an ancient high-desert military and trade road linking Thebes and Abydos, in the heart of literate Egypt. They are in a wadi in the Qena bend of the Nile, 25°57′N 32°25′E, among dozens of hieratic and hieroglyphic inscriptions. If the latter, h1 and h2 may be graphic variants rather than different consonants, some scholars think that the רב rb at the beginning of Inscription 1 is likely rebbe, and that the אל ʾl at the end of Inscription 2 is likely ʾel god. Brian Colless has published a translation of the text, in some of the signs are treated as logograms or rebuses Excellent banquet of the celebration of ʿAnat. ʾEl will provide plenty of wine and victuals for the celebration and we will sacrifice to her an ox and a prime fatling. This interpretation fits into the pattern in some of the surrounding Egyptian inscriptions, according to the alphabet hypothesis, the shapes of the letters would have evolved from Proto-Sinaitic forms into Phoenician forms, but most of the names of the letters would have remained the same. Below is a table showing selected Proto-Sinaitic signs and the correspondences with Phoenician letters. Also shown are the values, names, and descendants of the Phoenician letters. The Other section shows the corresponding Archaic Greek, Modern Greek, Etruscan, abjad Byblos syllabary Ugaritic script Albright, Wm. F
10.
Phoenician alphabet
–
The Phoenician alphabet, called by convention the Proto-Canaanite alphabet for inscriptions older than around 1050 BC, is the oldest verified alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad consisting of 22 letters, all consonants and it was used for the writing of Phoenician, a Northern Semitic language, used by the civilization of Phoenicia. The Phoenician alphabet is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs and it became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures. The Paleo-Hebrew alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Another derivative script is the Aramaic alphabet, which was the ancestor of the modern Arabic script, the Modern Hebrew script is a stylistic variant of the Aramaic script. The Greek alphabet was derived from Phoenician. Phoenician was usually written from right to left, although there are texts written in boustrophedon. The earliest known inscriptions are the so-called Proto-Sinaitic script sporadically attested in the Sinai and in Canaan in the late Middle. The script was not widely used until the rise of new Semitic kingdoms in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, the Phoenician alphabet is a direct continuation of the Proto-Canaanite script of the Bronze Age collapse period. Beginning in the 9th century BC, adaptations of the Phoenician alphabet -- such as Greek, Old Italic, Anatolian, and the Paleohispanic scripts -- were very successful. This simple system contrasted with the scripts in use at the time, such as cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs. Another reason for its success was the trading culture of Phoenician merchants. Phoenician inscriptions have been found in sites at a number of former Phoenician cities and colonies around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos. Later finds indicate earlier use in Egypt, Phoenician had long-term effects on the social structures of the civilizations that came in contact with it. As mentioned above, the script was the first widespread phonetic script and its simplicity not only allowed it to be used in multiple languages, but it also allowed the common people to learn how to write. The Phoenician alphabet was first uncovered in the 17th century, and it was at first believed that the script was a direct variation of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This idea was popular due to the recent decipherment of hieroglyphs. However, scholars could not find any link between the two writing systems, nor to hieratic or cuneiform, the theories of independent creation ranged from the idea of a single man conceiving it, to the Hyksos people forming it from corrupt Egyptian
11.
Canary Islands
–
The Canary Islands, also known as the Canaries, are an archipelago and autonomous community of Spain located on the Atlantic Ocean,100 kilometres west of Morocco. The Canaries are among the outermost regions of the European Union proper and it is also one of the eight regions with special consideration of historical nationality recognized as such by the Spanish Government. The main islands are Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, the archipelago also includes a number of islands and islets, La Graciosa, Alegranza, Isla de Lobos, Montaña Clara, Roque del Oeste and Roque del Este. In ancient times, the chain was often referred to as the Fortunate Isles. The Canary Islands is the most southerly region of Spain and the largest and most populated archipelago of the Macaronesia region, the islands have a subtropical climate, with long hot summers and moderately warm winters. The precipitation levels and the level of maritime moderation varies depending on location and elevation, green areas as well as desert exist on the archipelago. Due to their location above the inversion layer, the high mountains of these islands are ideal for astronomical observation. For this reason, two professional observatories, Teide Observatory on the island of Tenerife and Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on the island of La Palma, have built on the islands. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has been the largest city in the Canaries since 1768, between the 1833 territorial division of Spain and 1927 Santa Cruz de Tenerife was the sole capital of the Canary Islands. In 1927 a decree ordered that the capital of the Canary Islands be shared, the third largest city of the Canary Islands is San Cristóbal de La Laguna on Tenerife. This city is home to the Consejo Consultivo de Canarias. During the time of the Spanish Empire, the Canaries were the main stopover for Spanish galleons on their way to the Americas, who came south to catch the prevailing northeasterly trade winds. The name Islas Canarias is likely derived from the Latin name Canariae Insulae, meaning Islands of the Dogs, according to the historian Pliny the Elder, the Mauretanian king Juba II named the island Canaria because it contained vast multitudes of dogs of very large size. Another speculation is that the dogs were actually a species of monk seal, critically endangered. The dense population of seals may have been the characteristic that most struck the few ancient Romans who established contact with these islands by sea. Alternatively, it is said that the inhabitants of the island, Guanches, used to worship dogs, mummified them. The ancient Greeks also knew about a people, living far to the west, who are the dog-headed ones, who worshipped dogs on an island. Some hypothesize that the Canary Islands dog-worship and the ancient Egyptian cult of the god, Anubis are closely connected
12.
Constantine (Algeria)
–
Constantine is the capital of Constantine Province in north-eastern Algeria. During Roman times it was called Cirta and was renamed Constantina in honour of emperor Constantine the Great and it was the capital of the same-named French département until 1962. Slightly inland, it is about 80 kilometres from the Mediterranean coast, regarded as the capital of eastern Algeria and the centre of its region, Constantine has a population of 448,374, making it the third largest city in the country after Algiers and Oran. There are museums and important historical sites around the city and it is often referred to as the City of Bridges due to the numerous picturesque bridges connecting the mountains the city is built on. The city was created by the Phoenicians, who called it Sewa. Later it was renamed Cirta, by the Numidian king Syphax, the city was taken over by Numidia, the country of the Berber people, after the Phoenicians were defeated by Rome in the Third Punic War. In 112 BC the city was occupied by Jugurtha who defeated his half-brother Adherbal, the city later served as the base for Roman generals Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus and Gaius Marius in their war against Jugurtha. Later, with the removal of King Juba I and the supporters of Pompey in Africa, Julius Caesar gave special rights to the citizens of Cirta. In 311, during the war between emperor Maxentius and usurper Domitius Alexander, the city was destroyed. Rebuilt in 313, it was named after emperor Constantine the Great. Captured by the Vandals in 432, Constantine returned to the Byzantine Exarchate of Africa from 534 to 697 and it was conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century, receiving the name of Qusantina. The city recovered in the 12th century and under Almohad and Hafsid rule it was again a market, with links to Pisa, Genoa. Since 1529 it was part of Ottoman Empire, ruled by a Turkish bey subordinate to the dey of Algiers. Salah Bey, who ruled the city in 1770–1792, greatly embellished it, in 1826 the last bey, Ahmed Bey ben Mohamed Chérif, became the new head of state. He led a resistance against French forces, which invaded Algeria four years later. By 13 October 1837, the territory was captured by France, under the French rule, there were Muslim anti-Jewish riots in Constantine in 1934 when 34 Jews were killed. In World War II, during the campaign in North Africa, Constantine, for this, he received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. This was the first time that protozoa were shown to be a cause of disease and his work helped inspire researchers and veterinarians today to try to find a cure for malaria in animals
13.
Aures, Algeria
–
Aurès is an Amazigh language-speaking natural region located in the mountainous area of the Aurès range in eastern Algeria. The region includes the Algerian provinces of Batna, Tebessa, Khenchela, Oum El Bouaghi, Souk Ahras, the Aures region is characterized both by its mountain terrain and by the Chaoui ethnic group that historically has inhabited the area. The rugged terrain of the Aurès made that the region one of the less developed areas in the Maghreb. Traditionally the women of the region wore tattoos and it was in the Aures region that the Algerian War of Independence was started by Berber freedom fighters such as Mostefa Ben Boulaïd who were operating from the area. A district of Algeria that existed during and after the War of Independence, Aurès Mountains Chakhchoukha Algeria - Ethnic Groups and Languages Les Aurès - Algérie
14.
Tunisia
–
Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia is the northernmost country in Africa, covering 165,000 square kilometres. Its northernmost point, Cape Angela, is the northernmost point on the African continent and it is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisias population was estimated to be just under 11 million in 2014, Tunisias name is derived from its capital city, Tunis, which is located on Tunisias northeast coast. Geographically, Tunisia contains the end of the Atlas Mountains. Much of the rest of the land is fertile soil. Tunisia is a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic and it is considered to be the only full democracy in the Arab World. It has a human development index. In addition, Tunisia is also a state of the United Nations. Close relations with Europe – in particular with France and with Italy – have been forged through economic cooperation, privatisation, in ancient times, Tunisia was primarily inhabited by Berbers. Phoenician immigration began in the 12th century BC, these immigrants founded Carthage, a major mercantile power and a military rival of the Roman Republic, Carthage was defeated by the Romans in 146 BC. The Romans, who would occupy Tunisia for most of the eight hundred years, introduced Christianity. After several attempts starting in 647, the Arabs conquered the whole of Tunisia by 697, the Ottomans held sway for over three hundred years. The French colonization of Tunisia occurred in 1881, Tunisia gained independence with Habib Bourguiba and declared the Tunisian Republic in 1957. In 2011, the Tunisian Revolution resulted in the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the country voted for parliament again on 26 October 2014, and for President on 23 November 2014. The word Tunisia is derived from Tunis, an urban hub. The present form of the name, with its Latinate suffix -ia, the French derivative Tunisie was adopted in some European languages with slight modifications, introducing a distinctive name to designate the country. Other languages remained untouched, such as the Russian Туни́с and Spanish Túnez, in this case, the same name is used for both country and city, as with the Arabic تونس, and only by context can one tell the difference. The name Tunis can be attributed to different origins and it is generally associated with the Berber root ⵜⵏⵙ, transcribed tns, which means to lay down or encampment
15.
Dougga
–
Dougga or Thugga is an ancient Roman city in northern Tunisia, included in a 65 hectare archaeological site. UNESCO qualified Dougga as a World Heritage Site in 1997, believing that it represents “the best-preserved Roman small town in North Africa”, thugga’s size, its well-preserved monuments and its rich Numidian-Berber, Punic, ancient Roman and Byzantine history make it exceptional. Amongst the most famous monuments at the site are a Libyco-Punic Mausoleum, the capitol, the theatre, and the temples of Saturn and of Juno Caelestis. The archaeological site is located 4.6 kilometres SSW of the town of Téboursouk. The slope on which Dougga is built rises to the north and is bordered in the east by the known as Kef Dougga. The site offers a degree of natural protection, which helps to explain its early occupation. These monuments are an indication of the sites importance before the arrival of the Romans, according to Gabriel Camps, the Numidian name for the city is TBGG, which derives from the Libyan word TBG. This toponym evidently derives from the location atop an easily defensible plateau. The city appears to have founded in the 6th century BC. Dougga was in any case an early and important human settlement, even though our knowledge of the city before the Roman conquest remains very limited, recent archaeological finds have revolutionised the image that we had of this period. The temple, which was erected in the year of Micipsas reign,139 BC, is 14 metres long and 6.3 metres wide. It proves that the area around the forum was built upon before the arrival of the Roman colonists. A building dating to the 2nd century BC has also discovered nearby. Similarly, Douggas mausoleum is not isolated but stands within an urban necropolis, recent finds have disproved earlier theories about the so-called Numidian walls. The walls around Dougga are in fact not Numidian, they are part of the fortifications erected in Late Antiquity. The discovery of Libyan and Punic inscriptions at the site provoked a debate on the administration of the city at the time of the Kingdom of Numidia. The debate - about the interpretation of epigraphic sources - focussed on the question of whether the city was still under Punic influence or whether it was increasingly Berber, the Romans granted Dougga the status of an indigenous city following their conquest of the region. The creation of the colony of Carthage during the reign of Augustus complicated Douggas institutional status, the city was included in the territory of the Roman colony, but around this time, a pagus of Roman colonists also arose alongside the existing settlement
16.
Kabylie
–
Kabylia, or Kabylie, is a natural and historical region in the north of Algeria. It is part of the Tell Atlas mountains and is located at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea. Kabylia covers several provinces of Algeria, the whole of Tizi Ouzou and Bejaia, most of Bouira and parts of the wilayas of Boumerdes, Setif, Bordj Bou Arreridj, gouraya National Park and Djurdjura National Park are also located in Kabylia. Kabylia was a part of the Kingdom of Numidia and it was later taken over by the Roman Empire, and became split between the provinces of Africa and Mauretania Caesariensis. The Kabyle country remained as unconquerable as it was inaccessible to the Ottoman deys and they generally established a few coastal military settlements and some in valleys, where they imposed the rule of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. The mountainous core land, however, remained independent, Islam was gradually adopted through peaceful means, namely the Marabout movement. Some scholars argue that this is the reason of the Kabyles indifference towards Islam, the Ottoman threat disappeared with the arrival of the European and American navies to conquer North Africa. During the Regency of Algiers, most of Kabylia was independent, Kabylia was split into two main kingdoms, the Kingdom of Kuku in modern Tizi Ouzou, and the Kingdom of Ait Abbas in modern Béjaïa. Much land was confiscated in this period from the more recalcitrant tribes, Algerian migrant workers in France organized the first party promoting independence in the 1920s. Several historic leaders of the FLN came from this region, including Hocine Aït Ahmed, Abane Ramdane and it was also in Kabylia that the Soummam conference took place in 1956, the first of the FLN. These resulted in the extra-judicial imprisonement of thousands of Kabylie intellectuals, along with other clashes in Tizi-Ouzou, nevertheless, Tamazight was recognised in 2002 as a national language of Algeria, and as of 7th February 2016, an official language of the State alongside Arabic. The Movement for the Autonomy of Kabylie, founded in June 2001, has called for self-government for the region since 2011, lesser Kabylia, comprising Kabylia of Bibans and Kabylia of Babors. The largest town of Great Kabylia, Tizi Ouzou, lies in that mountain range, at Iraten, which numbered 28,000 inhabitants in 2001, is the highest urban centre of the area. The regions size is similar to that of Denmark, there are a number of flora and fauna associated with this region. The area is populated by the Kabyle, a Berber ethnic group, since the Berber Spring in 1980, Kabyles have been at the forefront of the fight for recognition of the Berber language as an official one in Algeria and for secularism in the country. The traditional economy of the area is based on arboriculture and on the craft industry, the mountain and hill farming is gradually giving way to local industry. Today Kabylia is one of the most industrialised parts of Algeria, Kabylia produces less than 15% of Algerian GDP. Bgayet Bejaias port is the second biggest in Algeria after Algiers, Portal, Berbers Portal, Algeria Cg. gov. dz Elwatan. com Tiziouzou-dz. com Wilaya-boumerdes. dz Wilayasetif. dz jijel-dz. org
17.
Kidal
–
Kidal is a town and commune in the desert region of northern Mali. The town lies 285 km northeast of Gao and is the capital of the Kidal Cercle, the commune has an area of about 9,910 km2 and includes the town of Kidal and 31 other settlements. On 30 March 2012, Kidal and its base were captured by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad as part of the Tuareg rebellion for the independence of Azawad. A spokesman for the Malian military junta said To preserve the life of the people of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu were captured within the next 48 hours, and on 6 April, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad declared the independence of Azawad from Mali. In the course of the conflict the MNLA lost their control to Islamist militias, on 30 January 2013 French and Malian forces moved into the town to bring it back under government control. On 14 December 2013, a car bombing in Kidal killed two United Nations peacekeepers, on 21 May 2014, MNLA forced government troops in Kidal to retreat after heavy fighting, capturing the military base. Köppen-Geiger climate classification system classifies it climate as hot desert, with hot weather most of the year. Plan de Sécurité Alimentaire Commune Urbaine de Kidal 2007-2011, Commissariat à la Sécurité Alimentaire, République du Mali, USAID-Mali,2007
18.
Latin script
–
Latin script is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as in many languages in other parts of the world. Latin script is the basis for the largest number of alphabets of any writing system and is the most widely adopted writing system in the world, Latin script is also the basis of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The 26 most widespread letters are the contained in the ISO basic Latin alphabet. The script is either called Roman script or Latin script, in reference to its origin in ancient Rome, in the context of transliteration, the term romanization or romanisation is often found. Unicode uses the term Latin as does the International Organization for Standardization, the numeral system is called the Roman numeral system, and the collection of the elements, Roman numerals. The numbers 1,2,3. are Latin/Roman script numbers for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, the Latin alphabet spread, along with Latin, from the Italian Peninsula to the lands surrounding the Mediterranean Sea with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The Latin script also came into use for writing the West Slavic languages and several South Slavic languages, the speakers of East Slavic languages generally adopted Cyrillic along with Orthodox Christianity. The Serbian language uses both scripts, with Cyrillic predominating in official communication and Latin elsewhere, as determined by the Law on Official Use of the Language and Alphabet. As late as 1500, the Latin script was limited primarily to the languages spoken in Western, Northern, the Orthodox Christian Slavs of Eastern and Southeastern Europe mostly used Cyrillic, and the Greek alphabet was in use by Greek-speakers around the eastern Mediterranean. The Arabic script was widespread within Islam, both among Arabs and non-Arab nations like the Iranians, Indonesians, Malays, and Turkic peoples, most of the rest of Asia used a variety of Brahmic alphabets or the Chinese script. It is used for many Austronesian languages, including the languages of the Philippines, Latin letters served as the basis for the forms of the Cherokee syllabary developed by Sequoyah, however, the sound values are completely different. In the late 19th century, the Romanians returned to the Latin alphabet, under French rule and Portuguese missionary influence, a Latin alphabet was devised for the Vietnamese language, which had previously used Chinese characters. In 1928, as part of Mustafa Kemal Atatürks reforms, the new Republic of Turkey adopted a Latin alphabet for the Turkish language, kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iranian-speaking Tajikistan, and the breakaway region of Transnistria kept the Cyrillic alphabet, chiefly due to their close ties with Russia. In the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of Kurds replaced the Arabic script with two Latin alphabets, although the only official Kurdish government uses an Arabic alphabet for public documents, the Latin Kurdish alphabet remains widely used throughout the region by the majority of Kurdish-speakers. In 2015, the Kazakh government announced that the Latin alphabet would replace Cyrillic as the system for the Kazakh language by 2025. In the course of its use, the Latin alphabet was adapted for use in new languages, sometimes representing phonemes not found in languages that were written with the Roman characters. These new forms are given a place in the alphabet by defining an alphabetical order or collation sequence, a digraph is a pair of letters used to write one sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters in sequence. Examples are ⟨ch⟩, ⟨ng⟩, ⟨rh⟩, ⟨sh⟩ in English, a trigraph is made up of three letters, like the German ⟨sch⟩, the Breton ⟨c’h⟩ or the Milanese ⟨oeu⟩
19.
Afroasiatic languages
–
Afroasiatic, also known as Afrasian and traditionally as Hamito-Semitic, is a large language family of several hundred related languages and dialects. It comprises about 300 or so living languages and dialects, according to the 2009 Ethnologue estimate and it includes languages spoken predominantly in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and parts of the Sahel. Afroasiatic languages have 350+ million native speakers, the fourth largest number of any language family, the phylum has six branches, Berber, Chadic, Cushitic, Egyptian, Omotic and Semitic. By far the most widely spoken Afroasiatic language is Arabic, including literary Arabic and it has around 200 to 230 million native speakers concentrated primarily in West Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and Malta. Modern Aramaic, spoken by about 550,000 people worldwide and this is not just one language — It includes a number of subdivisions, with Assyrian Neo-Aramaic being the most spoken variety. In addition to languages spoken today, Afroasiatic includes several important ancient languages, such as Ancient Egyptian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew and it is uncertain when or where the original homeland of the Afroasiatic family existed. Proposed locations include North Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Eastern Sahara, the terms Hamitic and Semitic were etymologically derived from the Book of Genesis, which describes various Biblical tribes descended from Ham and Shem, two sons of Noah. By the 1860s, the constituent elements within the broader Afroasiatic family had been worked out. The scholar Friedrich Müller introduced the name Hamito-Semitic for the family in his Grundriss der Sprachwissenschaft. Maurice Delafosse later coined the term Afroasiatic, however, it did not come into general use until Joseph Greenberg formally proposed its adoption. In doing so, Greenberg sought to emphasize the fact that Afroasiatic spanned the continents of both Africa and Asia, individual scholars have also called the family Erythraean and Lisramic. The term Hamito-Semitic remains in use in the traditions of some European countries. Greenberg and others considered it a subgroup of Cushitic, whereas others have raised doubts about it being part of Afroasiatic at all, Harold Fleming proposes that Ongota constitutes a separate branch of Afroasiatic. Bonny Sands believes the most convincing proposal is by Savà and Tosco, Beja is sometimes listed as a separate branch of Afroasiatic but is more often included in the Cushitic branch, which has a high degree of internal diversity. Whether the various branches of Cushitic actually form a family is sometimes questioned. There is no consensus on the interrelationships of the five branches of Afroasiatic. This situation is not unusual, even among long-established language families, there are also many disagreements concerning the classification of the Indo-European languages. Meroitic has been proposed as an unclassified Afroasiatic language, because it shares the characteristic of the family
20.
Rock art
–
In archaeology, rock art is human-made markings placed on natural stone, it is largely synonymous with parietal art. A global phenomenon, rock art is found in many diverse regions of the world. It has been produced in many contexts throughout history, although the majority of rock art that has been ethnographically recorded has been produced as a part of ritual. Such artworks are often divided into three forms, petroglyphs, which are carved into the surface, pictographs, which are painted onto the surface. The oldest known rock art dates from the Upper Palaeolithic period, having found in Europe, Australia, Asia. Archaeologists studying these artworks believe that they likely had magico-religious significance, Rock art continues to be of importance to indigenous peoples in various parts of the world, who view them as both sacred items and significant components of their cultural patrimony. Such archaeological sites are significant sources of cultural tourism, and have been utilised in popular culture for their aesthetic qualities. Normally found in cultures, a rock relief or rock-cut relief is a relief sculpture carved on solid or living rock such as a cliff. They are a category of art, and sometimes found in conjunction with rock-cut architecture. However, they tend to be omitted in most works on rock art, a few such works exploit the natural contours of the rock and use them to define an image, but they do not amount to man-made reliefs. Rock reliefs have been made in many cultures, and were important in the art of the Ancient Near East. Rock reliefs are generally large, as they need to be to make an impact in the open air. Most have figures that are over life-size, and in many the figures are multiples of life-size, the vertical relief is most common, but reliefs on essentially horizontal surfaces are also found. The term typically excludes relief carvings inside caves, whether natural or themselves man-made, natural rock formations made into statues or other sculpture in the round, most famously at the Great Sphinx of Giza, are also usually excluded. Reliefs on large boulders left in their location, like the Hittite İmamkullu relief, are likely to be included. The term rock art appears in the literature as early as the 1940s. It has also described as rock carvings, rock drawings, rock engravings, rock inscriptions, rock paintings, rock pictures. The defining characteristic of rock art is that it is placed on natural rock surfaces, as such, rock art is a form of landscape art, and includes designs that have been placed on boulder and cliff faces, cave walls and ceilings, and on the ground surface
21.
Tomb
–
A tomb is a repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber and its central feature is a single, prominent pillar or column, often made of stone. Sarcophagus – a stone container for a body or coffin, often decorated and perhaps part of a monument, sepulchre – a cavernous rock-cut space for interment, generally in the Jewish or Christian faiths. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, Hügelgräber or kurgans, a cairn, might also be originally a tumulus. A long barrow is a tumulus, usually for numbers of burials. As indicated, tombs are located in or under religious buildings, such as churches. However, they may also be found in catacombs, on land or, in the case of early or pre-historic tombs. The tomb of Emperor Nintoku is the largest in the world by area, however, the Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt is the largest by volume
22.
Tin Hinan
–
Tin Hinan is the name given by the Tuareg to a 4th-century queen and warrior woman of prestige whose monumental tomb is located in the Sahara at Abalessa in the Hoggar region of Algeria. Tin Hinan is sometimes referred to as Queen of the Hoggar, the name means literally she of the tents, but may be metaphorically translated as mother of the tribe or even queen of the camp. Not far from the oasis of Abalessa, Algeria about 1,000 miles south of Algiers, the tomb of Tin Hinan is on the summit. The ruin is pear-shaped on plan with an axis of about 88 ft. It contains 11 room or courts, the tomb of Tin Hinan was opened by Byron Khun de Prorok with support from the French army in 1925, and archaeologists made a more thorough investigation in 1933. It was found to contain the skeleton of a woman on a wooden litter and she was accompanied by heavy gold and silver jewellery, some of it adorned with pearls. On her right forearm she wore 7 silver bracelets, and on her left,7 gold bracelets, another silver bracelet and a gold ring were placed with the body. Remains of a complex piecework necklace of gold and pearls were also present, a number of funerary objects were also found. A 4th to 5th century date is consistent with dating of the wooden bed and also with the style of pottery, a pottery lamp of third-century Roman type. Tifinagh inscriptions are inscribed on the wall stones, the tomb itself is constructed in a style that is widespread in the Sahara. The body is now in the Bardo Museum in Algiers, the Tuareg were well aware that the tomb contained a woman of prestige and a number of legends about her had long been in circulation before the tomb was opened. The 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun recorded a legend about a queen named Tiski who was ancestral mother of the Ahaggar tribes. In this legend, Tin Hinan had a daughter, whose name is Kella and these children are said to be the ancestors of the Tuareg of the Ahaggar. Another version is that Tin Hinan had three daughters who were the tribal ancestors and her Muslim religion is anachronistic, as is the statement that Kella was her daughter or granddaughter, because the historical figure and real tribal matriarch Kella lived during the 17th century. Gabriel Camps, Lâge du tombeau de Tin Hinan, ancêtre des Touareg du Hoggar, brett, Michael, Elizabeth Fentress The Berbers WileyBlackwell 1997 ISBN 978-0-631-20767-2 p.208 Wheeler, Sir Mortimer, Rome Beyond the Imperial Frontier, Penguin Books,1955, pp. 133-137
23.
Typographic ligature
–
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined as a single glyph. An example is the character æ as used in English, in which the letters a and e are joined, the common ampersand developed from a ligature in which the handwritten Latin letters e and t were combined. The origin of typographical ligatures comes from the invention of writing with a stylus on fibrous material or clay, the earliest known script, Sumerian cuneiform, includes many cases of character combinations that, over time, gradually evolve from ligatures into separately recognizable characters. Ligatures figure prominently in many manuscripts, notably the Brahmic abugidas. Medieval scribes who wrote in Latin increased their speed by combining characters. Others conjoined letters for aesthetic purposes, for example, in blackletter, letters with right-facing bowls and those with left-facing bowls were written with the facing edges of the bowls superimposed. In many script forms, characters such as h, m, scribes also used notational abbreviations to avoid having to write a whole character in one stroke. Manuscripts in the century employed hundreds of such abbreviations. In hand writing, a ligature is made by joining two or more characters in atypical fashion by merging their parts or by writing one above or inside the other. While in printing, a ligature is a group of characters that is typeset as a unit, for example, in some cases the fi ligature prints the letters f and i with a greater separation than when they are typeset as separate letters. When printing with movable type was invented around 1450, typefaces included many ligatures and additional letters, Ligatures began to fall out of use due to their complexity in the 20th century. Sans serif typefaces, increasingly used for text, generally avoid ligatures, though notable exceptions include Gill Sans. Inexpensive phototypesetting machines in the 1970s also generally avoid them, the trend was further strengthened by the desktop publishing revolution starting around 1977 with the production of the Apple II. Early computer software in particular had no way to allow for ligature substitution, as most of the early PC development was designed for the English language dependence on ligatures did not carry over to digital. Ligature use fell as the number of traditional hand compositors and hot metal typesetting machine operators dropped since the mass of the IBM Selectric brand of electric typewriter in 1961. A designer active in the period commented, some of the world’s greatest typefaces were quickly becoming some of the world’s worst fonts, Ligatures have grown in popularity over the last 20 years due to an increasing interest in creating typesetting systems that evoke arcane designs and classical scripts. One of the first computer typesetting programs to take advantage of computer-driven typesetting was Donald Knuths TeX program, now the standard method of mathematical typesetting, its default fonts are explicitly based on nineteenth-century styles. Many new fonts feature extensive ligature sets, these include FF Scala, Seria and others by Martin Majoor, mrs Eaves by Zuzana Licko contains a particularly large set to allow designers to create dramatic display text with a feel of antiquity
24.
Universal Character Set characters
–
The Unicode Consortium and the International Organisation for Standardisation collaborate on the Universal Character Set. The UCS is a standard to map characters used in natural language, mathematics, music. By creating this mapping, the UCS enables computer software vendors to interoperate, because it is a universal map, it can be used to represent multiple languages at the same time. UCS has a capacity to encode over 1 million characters. Each UCS character is represented by a code point, which is an integer between 0 and 1,114,111, used to represent each character within the internal logic of text processing software. The number of encoded characters is made up as follows,128,019 graphical characters 218 special purpose characters for control, ISO maintains the basic mapping of characters from character name to code point. Often the terms character and code point will get used interchangeably, however, when a distinction is made, a code point refers to the integer of the character, what one might think of as its address. Input methods can be through keyboard or a character palette. The UCS can be divided in various ways, such as by plane, block, character category, the x must be lowercase in XML documents. The nnnn or hhhh may be any number of digits and may include leading zeros, the hhhh may mix uppercase and lowercase, though uppercase is the usual style. In contrast, an entity reference refers to a character by the name of an entity which has the desired character as its replacement text. The entity must either be predefined or explicitly declared in a Document Type Definition, the format is the same as for any entity reference, &name, where name is the case-sensitive name of the entity. Unicode and ISO divide the set of points into 17 planes. As of 2016 ISO and the Unicode Consortium has only allocated characters, the others remain empty and reserved for future use. Most characters are assigned to the first plane, the Basic Multilingual Plane. This is to ease the transition for legacy software since the Basic Multilingual Plane is addressable with just two octets. The characters outside the first plane usually have very specialized or rare use. Each plane corresponds with the value of the one or two hexadecimal digits preceding the four ones, hence U+24321 is in Plane 2, U+4321 is in Plane 0
25.
International Phonetic Alphabet
–
The International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association as a representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by lexicographers, foreign students and teachers, linguists, speech-language pathologists, singers, actors, constructed language creators. The IPA is designed to represent only those qualities of speech that are part of language, phones, phonemes, intonation. IPA symbols are composed of one or more elements of two types, letters and diacritics. For example, the sound of the English letter ⟨t⟩ may be transcribed in IPA with a letter, or with a letter plus diacritics. Often, slashes are used to signal broad or phonemic transcription, thus, /t/ is less specific than, occasionally letters or diacritics are added, removed, or modified by the International Phonetic Association. As of the most recent change in 2005, there are 107 letters,52 diacritics and these are shown in the current IPA chart, posted below in this article and at the website of the IPA. In 1886, a group of French and British language teachers, led by the French linguist Paul Passy, for example, the sound was originally represented with the letter ⟨c⟩ in English, but with the digraph ⟨ch⟩ in French. However, in 1888, the alphabet was revised so as to be uniform across languages, the idea of making the IPA was first suggested by Otto Jespersen in a letter to Paul Passy. It was developed by Alexander John Ellis, Henry Sweet, Daniel Jones, since its creation, the IPA has undergone a number of revisions. After major revisions and expansions in 1900 and 1932, the IPA remained unchanged until the International Phonetic Association Kiel Convention in 1989, a minor revision took place in 1993 with the addition of four letters for mid central vowels and the removal of letters for voiceless implosives. The alphabet was last revised in May 2005 with the addition of a letter for a labiodental flap, apart from the addition and removal of symbols, changes to the IPA have consisted largely in renaming symbols and categories and in modifying typefaces. Extensions to the International Phonetic Alphabet for speech pathology were created in 1990, the general principle of the IPA is to provide one letter for each distinctive sound, although this practice is not followed if the sound itself is complex. There are no letters that have context-dependent sound values, as do hard, finally, the IPA does not usually have separate letters for two sounds if no known language makes a distinction between them, a property known as selectiveness. These are organized into a chart, the chart displayed here is the chart as posted at the website of the IPA. The letters chosen for the IPA are meant to harmonize with the Latin alphabet, for this reason, most letters are either Latin or Greek, or modifications thereof. Some letters are neither, for example, the letter denoting the glottal stop, ⟨ʔ⟩, has the form of a question mark
26.
Unicode
–
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the worlds writing systems. As of June 2016, the most recent version is Unicode 9.0, the standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium. Unicodes success at unifying character sets has led to its widespread, the standard has been implemented in many recent technologies, including modern operating systems, XML, Java, and the. NET Framework. Unicode can be implemented by different character encodings, the most commonly used encodings are UTF-8, UTF-16 and the now-obsolete UCS-2. UTF-8 uses one byte for any ASCII character, all of which have the same values in both UTF-8 and ASCII encoding, and up to four bytes for other characters. UCS-2 uses a 16-bit code unit for each character but cannot encode every character in the current Unicode standard, UTF-16 extends UCS-2, using one 16-bit unit for the characters that were representable in UCS-2 and two 16-bit units to handle each of the additional characters. Many traditional character encodings share a common problem in that they allow bilingual computer processing, Unicode, in intent, encodes the underlying characters—graphemes and grapheme-like units—rather than the variant glyphs for such characters. In the case of Chinese characters, this leads to controversies over distinguishing the underlying character from its variant glyphs. In text processing, Unicode takes the role of providing a unique code point—a number, in other words, Unicode represents a character in an abstract way and leaves the visual rendering to other software, such as a web browser or word processor. This simple aim becomes complicated, however, because of concessions made by Unicodes designers in the hope of encouraging a more rapid adoption of Unicode, the first 256 code points were made identical to the content of ISO-8859-1 so as to make it trivial to convert existing western text. For other examples, see duplicate characters in Unicode and he explained that he name Unicode is intended to suggest a unique, unified, universal encoding. In this document, entitled Unicode 88, Becker outlined a 16-bit character model, Unicode could be roughly described as wide-body ASCII that has been stretched to 16 bits to encompass the characters of all the worlds living languages. In a properly engineered design,16 bits per character are more than sufficient for this purpose, Unicode aims in the first instance at the characters published in modern text, whose number is undoubtedly far below 214 =16,384. By the end of 1990, most of the work on mapping existing character encoding standards had been completed, the Unicode Consortium was incorporated in California on January 3,1991, and in October 1991, the first volume of the Unicode standard was published. The second volume, covering Han ideographs, was published in June 1992, in 1996, a surrogate character mechanism was implemented in Unicode 2.0, so that Unicode was no longer restricted to 16 bits. The Microsoft TrueType specification version 1.0 from 1992 used the name Apple Unicode instead of Unicode for the Platform ID in the naming table, Unicode defines a codespace of 1,114,112 code points in the range 0hex to 10FFFFhex. Normally a Unicode code point is referred to by writing U+ followed by its hexadecimal number, for code points in the Basic Multilingual Plane, four digits are used, for code points outside the BMP, five or six digits are used, as required. Code points in Planes 1 through 16 are accessed as surrogate pairs in UTF-16, within each plane, characters are allocated within named blocks of related characters
27.
Arabic script
–
The Arabic script is a writing system used for writing several languages of Asia and Africa, such as Arabic, dialects of Mandinka, Central Kurdish, Luri, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, and others. Until the 16th century, it was used to write some texts in Spanish. It is the second-most widely used writing system in the world by the number of countries using it, the Arabic script is written from right to left in a cursive style. In most cases the letters transcribe consonants, or consonants and a few vowels, the script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Qurʼān, the holy book of Islam. It is also the basis for the tradition of Arabic calligraphy, the Arabic script has been adopted for use in a wide variety of languages besides Arabic, including Persian, Malay and Urdu which are not Semitic. Such adaptations may feature altered or new characters to represent phonemes that do not appear in Arabic phonology, the modified version of the Arabic script originally devised for use with Persian is known as the Perso-Arabic script by scholars. In the cases of Bosnian, Kurdish, Kashmiri, and Uyghur writing systems, the Arabic script can therefore be used in both abugida and abjad, although it is often strongly, erroneously connected to the latter. Use of the Arabic script in West African languages, especially in the Sahel, to a certain degree the style and usage tends to follow those of the Maghreb. Additional diacritics have come into use to facilitate writing of sounds not represented in the Arabic language, the term ʻAjamī, which comes from the Arabic root for foreign, has been applied to Arabic-based orthographies of African languages. There is evidence that writing Arabic in this set of letters influenced the style of modern Arabic script. After this initial period, Garshuni writing has continued to the present day among some Syriac Christian communities in the Arabic-speaking regions of the Levant, Kazakh in China Kurdish in Northern Iraq and Northwest Iran. It is mainly used in Sri Lanka and the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu for religious purposes, arwi language is the language of Tamil Nadu Muslims. Malayalam language represented by Arabic script variant is known as Arabi Malayalam, the script has particular letters to represent the peculiar sounds of Malayalam. This script is used in madrasas of the South Indian state of Kerala. It is similar to Chittagonian language in neighboring Bangladesh and sometimes using the Roman script. Malay in the Arabic script known as Jawi, in some cases it can be seen in the signboards of shops or market stalls. In addition, some television programming uses Jawi, such as announcements, advertisements, news, social programs, Berber languages have often been written in an adaptation of the Arabic alphabet. The use of the Arabic alphabet, as well as the competing Latin, West Africa Zarma language of the Songhay family
28.
Muammar Gaddafi
–
Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi, commonly known as Colonel Gaddafi, was a Libyan revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He governed Libya as Revolutionary Chairman of the Libyan Arab Republic from 1969 to 1977 and he was initially ideologically committed to Arab nationalism and Arab socialism, but he came to rule according to his own Third International Theory. Gaddafi was born near Sirte to an impoverished Bedouin family and he became an Arab nationalist while at school in Sabha, later enrolling in the Royal Military Academy, Benghazi. Within the military he founded a cell which, in a 1969 coup. Now in power, Gaddafi converted Libya into a republic governed by his Revolutionary Command Council, an Islamic modernist, he introduced sharia as the basis for the legal system and promoted Islamic socialism. In 1973, he initiated a Popular Revolution with the formation of General Peoples Committees, purported to be a system of direct democracy and he outlined his Third International Theory that year, publishing these ideas in The Green Book. In 1977, Gaddafi transformed Libya into a new socialist state called the Jamahiriya, officially he adopted a symbolic role in governance but remained head of both the military and the Revolutionary Committees responsible for policing and suppressing dissent. A particularly hostile relationship developed with the United States, United Kingdom, from 1999, Gaddafi rejected Arab socialism and encouraged economic privatisation, rapprochement with Western nations, and Pan-Africanism, he was Chairperson of the African Union from 2009–10. Amid the 2011 Arab Spring, protests against widespread corruption and unemployment broke out in eastern Libya, the situation descended into civil war, in which NATO intervened militarily on the side of the anti-Gaddafist National Transitional Council. The government was overthrown and Gaddafi, who had retreated to Sirte, was captured and killed by NTC militants, a highly divisive figure, Gaddafi dominated Libyas politics for four decades and was the subject of a pervasive cult of personality. Muammar Mohammed Abu Minyar Gaddafi was born in a tent near Qasr Abu Hadi and his family came from a small, relatively un-influential tribal group called the Qadhadhfa, who were Arabized Berber in heritage. His mother was named Aisha, and his father, Mohammad Abdul Salam bin Hamed bin Mohammad, was known as Abu Meniar, nomadic Bedouins, they were illiterate and kept no birth records. His parents only surviving son, he had three older sisters, Gaddafis upbringing in Bedouin culture influenced his personal tastes for the rest of his life, he preferred the desert over the city and would retreat there to meditate. According to later claims, Gaddafis paternal grandfather, Abdessalam Bouminyar, was killed by the Italian Army during the Italian invasion of 1911, at World War IIs end in 1945, Libya was occupied by British and French forces. Although Britain and France intended on dividing the nation between their empires, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared that the country be granted political independence. In 1951, the UN created the United Kingdom of Libya, a state under the leadership of a pro-Western monarch, Idris. Gaddafis earliest education was of a nature, imparted by a local Islamic teacher. Subsequently moving to nearby Sirte to attend school, he progressed through six grades in four years
29.
Libyan Civil War (2011)
–
The protests escalated into a rebellion that spread across the country, with the forces opposing Gaddafi establishing an interim governing body, the National Transitional Council. In early March, Gaddafis forces rallied, pushed eastwards and re-took several coastal cities before reaching Benghazi, a further UN resolution authorised member states to establish and enforce a no-fly zone over Libya, and to use all necessary measures to prevent attacks on civilians. The Gaddafi government then announced a ceasefire, but fighting continued, throughout the conflict, rebels rejected government offers of a ceasefire and efforts by the African Union to end the fighting because the plans set forth did not include the removal of Gaddafi. On 16 September 2011, the National Transitional Council was recognised by the United Nations as the representative of Libya. Muammar Gaddafi remained at large until 20 October 2011, when he was captured and killed in Sirte, the National Transitional Council declared the liberation of Libya and the official end of the war on 23 October 2011. In the aftermath of the war, a low-level insurgency by former Gaddafi loyalists continued. A much greater issue has been the role of militias which fought in the civil war and these unresolved issues led directly to a second civil war in Libya. Muammar Gaddafi was the head of the Free Officers, a group of Arab nationalists that deposed King Idris I in 1969 in a bloodless coup and he abolished the Libyan Constitution of 1951, considering it a neocolonial document. From 1969 until 1975 standards of living, life expectancy and literacy grew rapidly, in 1975 he published his manifesto The Green Book. He officially stepped down from power in 1977, and subsequently claimed to be merely a figurehead until 2011. Under Gaddafi, Libya was theoretically a decentralized, direct democracy state run according to the philosophy of Gaddafis The Green Book, according to Freedom House, however, these structures were often manipulated to ensure the dominance of Gaddafi, who reportedly continued to dominate all aspects of government. WikiLeaks disclosure of confidential US diplomatic cables revealed US diplomats there speaking of Gaddafis mastery of tactical maneuvering and this extended even to his own sons, as he repeatedly changed affections to avoid the rise of a clear successor and rival. Both Gaddafi and the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, however, officially denied that he held any power, while he was popularly seen as a demagogue in the West, Gaddafi always portrayed himself as a statesman-philosopher. According to several Western media sources, Gaddafi feared a coup against his government. The Libyan Army consisted of about 50,000 personnel and its most powerful units were four crack brigades of highly equipped and trained soldiers, composed of members of Gaddafis tribe or members of other tribes loyal to him. One, the Khamis Brigade, was led by his son Khamis, local militias and Revolutionary Committees across the country were also kept well-armed. By contrast, regular units were poorly armed and trained. By the end of Gaddafis 42 years rule, Libyas population had a per capita income of $14,000, a broadly secular society was imposed
30.
National Transitional Council
–
The formation of the NTC was announced in the city of Benghazi on 27 February 2011 with the purpose to act as the political face of the revolution. On 5 March 2011, the council issued a statement in which it declared itself to be the legitimate body representing the people of Libya. An executive board, chaired by Mahmoud Jibril, was formed by the council on 23 March 2011 after being de facto assembled as a team since 5 March 2011. The NTC issued a Constitutional Declaration in August 2011 in which it set up a road-map for the transition of the country to a democracy with an elected government. The council gained international recognition as the governing authority in Libya. In referring to the Libyan state, the council used simply Libya, the UN formally recognized the country as Libya in September 2011, based on a request from the Permanent Mission of Libya citing the Libyan interim Constitutional Declaration of 3 August 2011. In November 2011, the ISO 3166-1 was altered to reflect the new country name Libya in English, after popular movements overturned the rulers of Tunisia and Egypt, Libyas immediate neighbours to the west and east, Libya experienced a full-scale uprising beginning in February 2011. By 20 February, the unrest had spread to Tripoli, much of Libya had slipped out of Gaddafis control, falling to anti-Gaddafi forces. Eastern Libya, centered around the second largest city and vital port of Benghazi, was firmly under the control of the opposition, the opposition began to organise themselves into a functioning government. Anti-Gaddafi forces marched on Sirte on 28 September 2011, Gaddafi loyalists delayed the attack with the use of their snipers. The fight for Sirte ended on 20 October with the capture of the town, on 24 February 2011, politicians, former military officers, tribal leaders, academics and businessmen held a meeting in the eastern city of Bayda. The meeting was chaired by former justice minister Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the delegates discussed proposals for interim administration with many delegates asking for UN intervention in Libya. The podium at the meeting displayed the pre-Jamahiriya flag, on 25 February, Al Jazeera TV reported that talks were taking place between personalities from eastern and western Libya to form an interim government for the post-Gaddafi era. The following day, former justice minister Mustafa Abdul Jalil was announced to be leading the process of forming an interim body, to be based in Benghazi. Jalil stated that Gaddafi alone bore responsibility for the crimes that have occurred in Libya, he insisted on the unity of Libya. The efforts to form an alternative government have been supported by the Libyan ambassador in the United States, the Libyan deputy ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Omar Al Dabashi, stated that he supported a new alternative government in principle. A National Transitional Council was formed on 27 February to act as the face of the revolution. He later clarified that an airstrike mandated by the United Nations would not be considered a foreign intervention, an Al Jazeera journalist in Benghazi reported that a fully fledged interim government would not be formed until Tripoli was under opposition control
31.
Qatar
–
Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a sovereign country located in Western Asia, occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula. Its sole land border is with Saudi Arabia to the south, with the rest of its surrounded by the Persian Gulf. A strait in the Persian Gulf separates Qatar from the island country of Bahrain, as well as sharing maritime borders with the United Arab Emirates. Following Ottoman rule, Qatar became a British protectorate in the early 20th century until gaining independence in 1971, Qatar has been ruled by the House of Thani since the early 19th century. Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani was the founder of the State of Qatar, Qatar is a hereditary monarchy and its head of state is Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Whether it should be regarded as a constitutional or a monarchy is a matter of opinion. In 2003, the constitution was approved in a referendum. In early 2017, Qatars total population was 2.3 million,313,000 Qatari citizens and 2.6 million expatriates, Qatar is a high income economy and is a developed country, backed by the worlds third largest natural gas reserves and oil reserves. The country has the highest per capita income in the world, Qatar is classified by the UN as a country of very high human development and is the most advanced Arab state for human development. Qatar is a significant power in the Arab world, supporting several rebel groups during the Arab Spring both financially and through its globally expanding media group, Al Jazeera Media Network. For its size, Qatar wields disproportionate influence in the world, Qatar will host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, becoming the first Arab country to do so. A century later, Ptolemy produced the first known map to depict the peninsula, the map also referenced a town named Cadara to the east of the peninsula. The term Catara was exclusively used until the 18th century, after which Katara emerged as the most commonly recognised spelling, eventually, the modern derivative Qatar was adopted as the countrys name. In Standard Arabic, the name is pronounced, while in the local dialect it is, Human habitation of Qatar dates back to 50,000 years ago. Settlements and tools dating back to the Stone Age have been unearthed in the peninsula, Mesopotamian artefacts originating from the Ubaid period have been discovered in abandoned coastal settlements. Al Daasa, a settlement located on the western coast of Qatar, is the most important Ubaid site in the country and is believed to have accommodated a small seasonal encampment. Kassite Babylonian material dating back to the second millennium BC found in Al Khor Islands attests to trade relations between the inhabitants of Qatar and the Kassites in modern-day Bahrain, among the findings were 3,000,000 crushed snail shells and Kassite potsherds. It has been suggested that Qatar is the earliest known site of shellfish dye production, in 224 AD, the Sasanian Empire gained control over the territories surrounding the Persian Gulf
32.
Latin alphabet
–
The Latin alphabet is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. It is the script of the English language and is often referred to simply as the alphabet in English. It is an alphabet which originated in the 7th century BC in Italy and has changed continually over the last 2500 years. It has roots in the Semitic alphabet and its offshoot alphabets, the Phoenician, Greek, the phonetic values of some letters changed, some letters were lost and gained, and several writing styles developed. Two such styles, the minuscule and majuscule hands, were combined into one script with alternate forms for the lower and upper case letters, due to classicism, modern uppercase letters differ only slightly from their classical counterparts. The Latin alphabet started out as uppercase serifed letters known as roman square capitals, the lowercase letters evolved through cursive styles that developed to adapt the formerly inscribed alphabet to being written with a pen. Throughout the ages, many stylistic variations of each letter have evolved that are still identified as being the same letter. From the Cumae alphabet, the Etruscan alphabet was derived, the Latins ultimately adopted 21 of the original 26 Etruscan letters. Gaius Julius Hyginus, who recorded much Roman mythology, mentions in Fab, the Parcae, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos invented seven Greek letters — A B H T I Y. Others say that Mercury invented them from the flight of cranes, which, palamedes, too, son of Nauplius, invented eleven letters, Simonides, too, invented four letters — Ó E Z PH, Epicharmus of Sicily, two — P and PS. The Greek letters Mercury is said to have brought to Egypt, Cadmus in exile from Arcadia, took them to Italy, and his mother Carmenta changed them to Latin to the number of 15. Apollo on the added the rest. The original Latin alphabet was, The oldest Latin inscriptions do not distinguish between /ɡ/ and /k/, representing both by C, K and Q according to position, K was used before A, Q was used before O or V, C was used elsewhere. This is explained by the fact that the Etruscan language did not make this distinction, C originated as a turned form of Greek Gamma and Q from Greek Koppa. In later Latin, K survived only in a few such as Kalendae, Q survived only before V. G was later invented to distinguish between /ɡ/ and /k/, it was simply a C with an additional diacritic. C stood for /ɡ/ I stood for both /i/ and /j/, V stood for both /u/ and /w/. K was marginalized in favour of C, which stood for both /ɡ/ and /k/
33.
Arabic alphabet
–
The Arabic alphabet or Arabic abjadiyah is the Arabic script as it is codified for writing the Arabic language. It is written right to left, in a cursive style. Originally, the alphabet was an abjad consisting only of consonants, as with other abjads, such as the Hebrew alphabet, scribes later devised means of indicating vowel sounds by separate vowel points. The basic Arabic alphabet contains 28 letters, there are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. Many letters look similar but are distinguished from one another by dots above or below their central part and these dots are an integral part of a letter, since they distinguish between letters that represent different sounds. For example, the Arabic letters transliterated as b and t have the basic shape, but b has one dot below, ب. Both printed and written Arabic are cursive, with most of the letters within a word connected to the adjacent letters. There are two main collating sequences for the Arabic alphabet, abjad and hija, in this order, letters are also used as numbers, Abjad numerals, and possess the same alphanumeric code/cipher as Hebrew gematria and Greek isopsephy. The hijā’ī or alifbā’ī order, used where lists of names and words are sorted, as in phonebooks, classroom lists, and dictionaries, groups letters by similarity of shape. Loss of sameḵ was compensated for by the split of shin ש into two independent Arabic letters, ش and ﺱ which moved up to take the place of sameḵ, the six other letters that do not correspond to any north Semitic letter are placed at the end. This is commonly vocalized as follows, abjad hawwaz ḥuṭṭī kalaman sa‘faṣ qarashat thakhadh ḍaẓagh, the hijā’ī order is never used as numerals. Another kind of order was used widely in the Maghreb until recently when it was replaced by the Mashriqi order. The Arabic alphabet is always cursive and letters vary in shape depending on their position within a word, letters can exhibit up to four distinct forms corresponding to an initial, medial, final, or isolated position. While some letters show considerable variations, others remain almost identical across all four positions, generally, letters in the same word are linked together on both sides by short horizontal lines, but six letters can only be linked to their preceding letter. For example, أرارات has only isolated forms because each letter cannot be connected to its following one, in addition, some letter combinations are written as ligatures, notably lām-alif. Notes See the article Romanization of Arabic for details on various schemes, however. Also names are transcribed as pronounced locally, not as pronounced in Literary Arabic. Regarding pronunciation, the values given are those of Modern Standard Arabic
