1.
Al-Qassim Region
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Al-Qassim Region, also spelled Qassim, Al-Qaseem, Al-Qasim, or Gassim internationally, is one of the thirteen administrative regions of Saudi Arabia. Located at the heart of the country, and almost in the center of the Arabian Peninsula, it has a population of 1,370,727 and it is known to be the alimental basket of the country, for its agricultural assets. Al-Qassim is the richest region per capita in Saudi Arabia and it is the seventh most populated region in the country after Jizan and the fifth most densely populated. It has more than 400 cities, towns, villages, and Bedouin settlements and its capital city is Buraydah, which is inhabited by approximately 49% of the regions total population. The governor of the province from 1992 to 29 January 2015 was Prince Faisal bin Bandar, Al Qassim is derived from the word Qassimah, a reference to قصائم الغضا, meaning the regions sand dunes from which the white saxaul trees grow. The region is known to contain a group of Calligonum plants such as comosum. The province is located in the center of Saudi Arabia approximately 400 km northwest of Riyadh and it is bordered by Riyadh Region to the south and east, by Hail Region to the north, and by Al Madinah Region to the west. The region is connected to almost every part of Saudi Arabia by a complicated network of highways. The regional airport, Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Regional Airport, connects Al Qassim to the provinces of the country. There is not much known about Al Qassim the province in the times of Pre-Islamic Arabia. Unaizah was repeatedly mentioned as a watering hole in the poems of Imru Al Qais. Moreover, AlJiwa, which is about 60 km north of Unzaizah, was mentioned by the heroic Absi poet Antarah bin Shaddad, Al Qassim Province had some important foyers on the road of pilgrims and traders coming from the east in the era of the Abbasid Empire. The Zubeida road was a long road that started from the city of Kufa in Iraq. The road was constructed in the reign of Harun Al Rashid and was named after his wife Zubeida and it had pilgrims foyers in many of the regions cities including Unaizah. The Al Abu Olayan - dynasty from the Banu Tamim tribe established the emirate of Buraydah in the late 16th century by its leader and he built Buraydah and made it the provinces capital. However, Unaizah was ruled by Al Sulaim dynasty, the emirate was later captured by Muhanna Salih Abalkhail, the leader of the Abalkhail dynasty. In 1890, the Rashidi dynasty based in Hail annexed the province, in 1904, the Abalkhail recaptured the province. In 1907, the province was integrated under the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the province is Saudi Arabias most conservative region
2.
Saudi Arabia
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Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast and Yemen to the south. It is separated from Israel and Egypt by the Gulf of Aqaba and it is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast and most of its terrain consists of arid desert and mountains. The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of four regions, Hejaz, Najd and parts of Eastern Arabia. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud and he united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. Saudi Arabia has since been a monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called the predominant feature of Saudi culture, with its global spread largely financed by the oil and gas trade. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called the Land of the Two Holy Mosques in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi, the state has a total population of 28.7 million, of which 20 million are Saudi nationals and 8 million are foreigners. The states official language is Arabic, petroleum was discovered on 3 March 1938 and followed up by several other finds in the Eastern Province. Saudi Arabia has since become the worlds largest oil producer and exporter, controlling the second largest oil reserves. The kingdom is categorized as a World Bank high-income economy with a high Human Development Index and is the only Arab country to be part of the G-20 major economies. However, the economy of Saudi Arabia is the least diversified in the Gulf Cooperation Council, the state has attracted criticism for its treatment of women and use of capital punishment. Saudi Arabia is an autocracy, has the fourth highest military expenditure in the world. Saudi Arabia is considered a regional and middle power, in addition to the GCC, it is an active member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and OPEC. Following the unification of the Hejaz and Nejd kingdoms, the new state was named al-Mamlakah al-ʻArabīyah as-Suʻūdīyah by royal decree on 23 September 1932 by its founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud. Although this is translated as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in English it literally means the Saudi Arab kingdom. Its inclusion expresses the view that the country is the possession of the royal family. Al Saud is an Arabic name formed by adding the word Al, meaning family of or House of, in the case of the Al Saud, this is the father of the dynastys 18th century founder, Muhammad bin Saud. There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 125,000 years ago
3.
Prehistory
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Prehistory means literally before history, from the Latin word for before, præ, and Greek ιστορία. Neighbouring civilisations were the first to follow, most other civilisations reached the end of prehistory during the Iron Age. The period when a culture is written about by others, but has not developed its own writing is known as the protohistory of the culture. By definition, there are no records from human prehistory. Clear techniques for dating were not well-developed until the 19th century and this article is concerned with human prehistory as defined here above. There are separate articles for the history of the Earth. However, for the race as a whole, prehistory ends when recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BC. For example, in Egypt it is accepted that prehistory ended around 3200 BC, whereas in New Guinea the end of the prehistoric era is set much more recently. The three-age system is the periodization of prehistory into three consecutive time periods, named for their respective predominant tool-making technologies, Stone Age Bronze Age Iron Age. The notion of prehistory began to surface during the Enlightenment in the work of antiquarians who used the word primitive to describe societies that existed before written records, the first use of the word prehistory in English, however, occurred in the Foreign Quarterly Review in 1836. The main source for prehistory is archaeology, but some scholars are beginning to more use of evidence from the natural and social sciences. This view has been articulated by advocates of deep history, human population geneticists and historical linguists are also providing valuable insight for these questions. Human prehistory differs from history not only in terms of its chronology, restricted to material processes, remains and artifacts rather than written records, prehistory is anonymous. Because of this, reference terms that use, such as Neanderthal or Iron Age are modern labels with definitions sometimes subject to debate. Palaeolithic means Old Stone Age, and begins with the first use of stone tools, the Paleolithic is the earliest period of the Stone Age. The early part of the Palaeolithic is called the Lower Palaeolithic, evidence of control of fire by early humans during the Lower Palaeolithic Era is uncertain and has at best limited scholarly support. The most widely accepted claim is that H. erectus or H. ergaster made fires between 790,000 and 690,000 BP in a site at Bnot Yaakov Bridge, Israel. The use of fire enabled early humans to cook food, provide warmth, Early Homo sapiens originated some 200,000 years ago, ushering in the Middle Palaeolithic
4.
Knight
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A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a monarch or other political leader for service to the monarch or country, especially in a military capacity. Historically, in Europe, knighthood was conferred upon mounted warriors, during the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, often, a knight was a vassal who served as a fighter for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings. The lords trusted the knights, who were skilled in battle on horseback, since the early modern period, the title of knight is purely honorific, usually bestowed by a monarch, as in the British honours system, often for non-military service to the country. The modern female equivalent in the United Kingdom is Dame, furthermore, Geoffroi de Charnys Book of Chivalry expounded upon the importance of Christian faith in every area of a knights life. This novel explored the ideals of knighthood and their incongruity with the reality of Cervantes world, in the late medieval period, new methods of warfare began to render classical knights in armour obsolete, but the titles remained in many nations. Some orders of knighthood, such as the Knights Templar, have become the subject of legend, each of these orders has its own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is generally granted by a head of state or monarch to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement. This linkage is reflected in the etymology of chivalry, cavalier, the special prestige accorded to mounted warriors finds a parallel in the furusiyya in the Muslim world, and the Greek hippeus and Roman eques of classical antiquity. The word knight, from Old English cniht, is a cognate of the German word Knecht and this meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages. Middle High German had the phrase guoter kneht, which also meant knight, the Anglo-Saxon cniht had no connection to horsemanship, the word referred to any servant. A rādcniht, riding-servant, was a servant delivering messages or patrolling coastlines on horseback, a narrowing of the generic meaning servant to military follower of a king or other superior is visible by 1100. The specific military sense of a knight as a warrior in the heavy cavalry emerges only in the Hundred Years War. The verb to knight appears around 1300, and, from the same time, an Equestrian was a member of the second highest social class in the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. This class is often translated as knight, the medieval knight, both Greek ἳππος and Latin equus are derived from the Proto-Indo-European word root ekwo-, horse. In the later Roman Empire, the classical Latin word for horse, equus, was replaced in common parlance by the vulgar Latin caballus, sometimes thought to derive from Gaulish caballos. From caballus arose terms in the various Romance languages cognate with the English cavalier, Italian cavaliere, Spanish caballero, French chevalier, Portuguese cavaleiro, the Germanic languages have terms cognate with the English rider, German Ritter, and Dutch and Scandinavian ridder. These words are derived from Germanic rīdan, to ride, in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European root reidh-, in ancient Rome there was a knightly class Ordo Equestris from which European knighthood may have been derived. Some portions of the armies of Germanic peoples who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, in the Early Medieval period any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or miles in Latin
5.
Petroglyph
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Petroglyphs are images created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use such as carving, engraving. Petroglyphs are found world-wide, and are associated with prehistoric peoples. The word comes from the Greek word petro-, theme of the word meaning stone, and glyphein meaning to carve. The term petroglyph should not be confused with petrograph, which is an image drawn or painted on a rock face, both types of image belong to the wider and more general category of rock art or parietal art. Petroforms, or patterns and shapes made by large rocks. Inukshuks are also unique, and found only in the Arctic and they are a category of rock 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. Some petroglyphs are dated to approximately the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary, about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, if not earlier. Sites in Australia have petroglyphs that are estimated to be as much as 27,000 years old, around 7,000 to 9,000 years ago, other precursors of writing systems, such as pictographs and ideograms, began to appear. Petroglyphs were still common though, and some cultures continued using them much longer, petroglyphs have been found in all parts of the globe except Antarctica with highest concentrations in parts of Africa, Scandinavia, Siberia, southwestern North America and Australia. There are many theories to explain their purpose, depending on their location, age, some petroglyphs are thought to be astronomical markers, maps, and other forms of symbolic communication, including a form of pre-writing. Petroglyph maps may show trails, symbols communicating time and distances traveled, as well as the terrain in the form of rivers, landforms
6.
Balancing rock
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Some formations known by this name only appear to be balancing, but are in fact firmly connected to a base rock by a pedestal or stem. It usually has a different lithology from the rocks around it. Not all glacial erractics are balancing rocks, some are firmly seated on the ground, a good example of a rocking stone is the Logan Rock in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, another is the Trembling Rock in Brittany, France. Some perched blocks were not produced by action, but were the aftermath of a rock fall, landslide. An erosional remnant is a rock formation that remains after extensive wind, water. To the untrained eye, it may appear to be visually like a glacial erratic, many good examples of erosional remnants are seen in Karlu Karlu/Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve in the Northern Territory of Australia. A pedestal rock, also known as a pedestal or mushroom rock, is not a true balancing rock. Some of these formations are called balancing rocks because of their appearance, some pedestal rocks sitting on taller spire formations are known as hoodoos. Zimbabwe The Balancing Rocks are a geological formation found in the township of Epworth, southeast of Harare and it is a formation of rocks perfectly balanced without other supports. The Mother and Child balancing rocks are a feature in Matobo National Park. India Krishna’s butterball is a balancing rock located in Mahabalipuram. A balancing rock is located near Madan Mahal fort in Jabalpur city of Madhya Pradesh, Australia Karlu Karlu / Devils Marbles Conservation Reserve is a vast field of erosional remnants. Myanmar The boulder, which gleams golden and popularly known as the Golden Rock on which the small Kyaiktiyo Pagoda has been built, is about 25 ft in height and has a circumference of 50 ft. The boulder sits on a rock platform that appears to have been naturally formed to act as the base to build the pagoda. England The Brimham Rocks are a group of outstanding pedestal rock formations in North Yorkshire, finland Kummakivi is a balancing rock located at 61°2936.4596 N, 28°2545.5016 E in Ruokolahti and is protected. Poland Chybotek – granite balancing rock in Giant Mountains Chybotek – granite balancing rock in Jizera Mountains, galicia Pedra de abalar – granite balancing rock in Muxía Canada Nova Scotia A tall basalt stack appears to balance precariously above the water near Digby, Nova Scotia. British Columbia Located near Bear Beach on the Juan De Fuca Trail, california A large balancing rock may be easily seen at D. L. Bliss State Park on the west shore of Lake Tahoe, Colorado A huge sandstone boulder hangs precariously near the roadway in Garden of the Gods park near Colorado Springs
7.
Legend
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Legend, for its active and passive participants, includes no happenings that are outside the realm of possibility, but may include miracles. Legends may be transformed over time, in order to keep fresh and vital. Many legends operate within the realm of uncertainty, never being believed by the participants. The Brothers Grimm defined legend as folktale historically grounded, a modern folklorists professional definition of legend was proposed by Timothy R. Legend is a loanword from Old French that entered English usage circa 1340. The Old French noun legende derives from the Medieval Latin legenda, in its early English-language usage, the word indicated a narrative of an event. The word legendary was originally a noun meaning a collection or corpus of legends and this word changed to legendry, and legendary became the adjectival form. By 1613, English-speaking Protestants began to use the word when they wished to imply that an event was fictitious, thus, legend gained its modern connotations of undocumented and spurious, which distinguish it from the meaning of chronicle. In 1866, Jacob Grimm described the tale as poetic. Questions of categorising legends, in hopes of compiling a series of categories on the line of the Aarne–Thompson folktale index. Compared to the highly structured folktale, legend is comparatively amorphous, in Einleitung in der Geschichtswissenschaft, Ernst Bernheim asserted that a legend is simply a longstanding rumour. Gordon Allport credited the staying-power of some rumours to the persistent cultural state-of-mind that they embody and capsulise, in the narrow Christian sense, legenda were hagiographical accounts, often collected in a legendary. Hippolyte Delehaye distinguished legend from myth, The legend, on the hand, has, of necessity. It refers imaginary events to some real personage, or it localizes romantic stories in some definite spot, stories that exceed the boundaries of realism are called fables. For example, the talking animal formula of Aesop identifies his brief stories as fables, the parable of the Prodigal Son would be a legend if it were told as having actually happened to a specific son of a historical father. If it included a donkey that gave sage advice to the Prodigal Son it would be a fable, Legend may be transmitted orally, passed on person-to-person, or, in the original sense, through written text. Jacob de Voragines Legenda Aurea or The Golden Legend comprises a series of vitae or instructive biographical narratives and they are presented as lives of the saints, but the profusion of miraculous happenings and above all their uncritical context are characteristics of hagiography. The Legenda was intended to inspire extemporized homilies and sermons appropriate to the saint of the day, the vanishing hitchhiker is the best-known urban legend in America, traceable as far back as 1870, but it is found around the world including in Korea and Russia. In the legend, a girl in a white dress picked up alongside of the road by a passerby
8.
Watchtower
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A watchtower, or watch tower, is a type of fortification used in many parts of the world. It differs from a tower in that its primary use is military. Its main purpose is to provide a high, safe place from which a sentinel or guard may observe the surrounding area, in some cases, non-military towers, such as religious pagodas, may also be used as watchtowers. The Romans built numerous towers as part of a system of communications, in medieval Europe, many castles and manor houses, or similar fortified buildings, were equipped with watchtowers. In some of the houses of western France, the watchtower equipped with arrow or gun loopholes was one of the principal means of defense. A feudal lord could keep watch over his domain from the top of his tower, in southern Saudi Arabia and Yemen, small stone and mud towers called qasaba were constructed as either watchtowers or keeps in the Asir mountains. Furthermore, in Najd, a watchtower, called Margab, was used to watch for approaching enemies far in distance and shout calling warnings from atop. Scotland saw the construction of Peel towers that combined the function of watchtower with that of a keep or tower house served as the residence for a local notable family. Later many were restored or built against the Barbary pirates, some notable examples of military Mediterranean watchtowers include the towers that the Knights of Malta had constructed on the coasts of Malta. These towers ranged in size from small watchtowers to large structures armed with numerous cannons and they include the Wignacourt, de Redin, and Lascaris towers, named for the Grand Master, such as Martin de Redin, that commissioned each series. In the Channel Islands, the Jersey Round Towers and the Guernsey loophole towers date from the late 18th Century and they were erected to give warning of attacks by the French. One of the last Martello towers to be built was Fort Denison in Sydney harbour, the most recent descendants of the Martello Towers are the flak towers that the various combatants erected in World War II as mounts for anti-aircraft artillery. An example of nonmilitary watchtower in history is the one of Jerusalem, though the Hebrews used it to keep a watch for approaching armies, the religious authorities forbade the taking of weapons up into the tower as this would require bringing weapons through the temple. Rebuilt by King Herod, that watchtower was renamed after Mark Antony, his friend who battled against Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, fire lookout tower Observation towers are similar constructions being usually outside of fortifications. A similar use have also Control towers on airports or harbours, diaolou Watchtower Media related to Watch towers at Wikimedia Commons
9.
Okra
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Okra or okro, known in many English-speaking countries as ladies fingers, ochro or gumbo, is a flowering plant in the mallow family. It is valued for its edible green seed pods, the geographical origin of okra is disputed, with supporters of West African, Ethiopian, and South Asian origins. The plant is cultivated in tropical, subtropical and warm regions around the world. The name okra is most often used in the UK, United States, the word okra is from the Igbo ọ́kụ̀rụ̀. The plant and its seed pods are known as ladys fingers. In various Bantu languages, okra is called ngombo or a variant, and this is possibly the origin of the name gumbo, used in parts of the United States, okra is an allopolyploid of uncertain parentage. Truly wild populations are not known with certainty and the species may be a cultigen, the geographical origin of okra is disputed, with supporters of South Asian, Ethiopian and West African origins. Supporters of a South Asian origin point to the presence of its parents in that region. Supporters of a West African origin point to the diversity of okra in that region. The plant may have entered southwest Asia across the Red Sea or the Bab-el-Mandeb straight to the Arabian Peninsula, rather than north across the Sahara, or from India. One of the earliest accounts is by a Spanish Moor who visited Egypt in 1216 and described the plant under cultivation by the locals who ate the tender, from Arabia, the plant spread around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and eastward. The plant was introduced to the Americas by ships plying the Atlantic slave trade by 1658 and it was further documented in Suriname in 1686. Okra may have introduced to southeastern North America from Africa in the early 18th century. By 1748, it was being grown as far north as Philadelphia, thomas Jefferson noted it was well established in Virginia by 1781. It was commonplace throughout the Southern United States by 1800, the species is a perennial, often cultivated as an annual in temperate climates, and often grows to around 2 metres tall. It is related to species as cotton, cocoa. The leaves are 10–20 centimetres long and broad, palmately lobed with 5–7 lobes, the flowers are 4–8 centimetres in diameter, with five white to yellow petals, often with a red or purple spot at the base of each petal. The fruit is a capsule up to 18 centimetres long with pentagonal cross-section, abelmoschus esculentus is cultivated throughout the tropical and warm temperate regions of the world for its fibrous fruits or pods containing round, white seeds
