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Arab League ► Arabic philosophy I 93
try until 2000. See also Yasir ‘Arafat; Hafiz al-Assad; Menachem Begin; David Ben-Gurion; Camp David Accords; Moshe Dayan; Hezbollah; Gamal Abdel Nasser; Yitzhak Rabin; Sabra and Shatila massacres; Anwar el-Sadat.
Arab League or League of Arab States Regional organization formed in 1945 and based in Cairo. It initially comprised Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan (now Jordan), Saudi Arabia, and Yemen; join¬ ing later were Libya, Sudan, Tunisia, Morocco, Kuwait, Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Mauritania, Somalia, the Pales¬ tine Liberation Organization, Djibouti, and Comoros. The league’s original aims were to strengthen and coordinate political, cultural, economic, and social programs and to mediate disputes; a later aim was to coordinate military defense. Members have often split on political issues; Egypt was suspended for 10 years (1979-89) following its peace with Israel, and the Persian Gulf War (1990-91) also caused deep rifts. See also Pan-Arabism.
arabesque Style of decoration characterized by interlacing plant forms and abstract curvilinear motifs. It is typical of Islamic ornamentation from c. 1000. The word was first used in the 15th or 16th century when Europeans became interested in the Islamic arts, but the motif itself was derived from Hellenistic crafts¬ men in Asia Minor. Arabesques were also applied to the decoration of illu¬ minated manuscripts, walls, furni¬ ture, metalwork, pottery, stonework, majolica, and tapestry from the Renaissance to the 19th century.
Arabia See Arabian Peninsula
Arabian Desert Desert region,
Arabian Peninsula. It covers about 900,000 sq mi (2,330,000 sq km), occupying nearly the entire penin¬ sula. It lies largely within Saudi Ara¬ bia but large portions extend into Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Yemen. Its relief is broken by a num¬ ber of mountain ranges, with eleva¬ tions reaching as high as 12,000 ft (3,700 m), and it is bounded on three sides by high escarpments. At least one-third of the desert is covered by sand, including the Rub' al-Khali, considered to have one of the most inhospitable climates on Earth. There are no perennial bodies of water, though the Tigris-Euphrates river system lies to the northeast and the Wadi Hajr is located to the south, in Yemen. Humans have inhabited the area since Pleistocene times.
Arabian horse Earliest improved breed of horse, valued for its speed, stamina, beauty, intelligence, and gentleness. Its long history has been obscured by legend, but it was developed in Arabia by the 7th century ad. It has contributed its qualities to most modern breeds of light horses. It is compact and relatively small, with a small head, protruding eyes, wide nostrils, marked withers, and a short back. Its average height is about 15 hands (60 in. [152 cm]), its average weight 800-1,000 lbs (360-450 kg). Though many colours are possible, gray is the most common.
Arabian Nights' Entertainment See The Thousand and One Nights
Arabian Peninsula or Arabia Peninsular region, southwest Asia. With its offshore islands, it covers about 1 million sq mi (2.6 million sq km). Constituent countries are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and, the largest, Saudi Arabia. It is generally arid and is covered almost entirely by the Arabian Desert. The modem economy is dominated by the production of petroleum and natural gas. The world’s largest proven reserves of those minerals are in the Arabian Peninsula. Its political consolidation was begun by the Prophet Muhammad, and it was the centre of the orthodox caliphate until 661, when that office passed to the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus. After 1517 much of the region was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, though the peninsula’s people, who had remained largely tribal and nomadic, revolted repeatedly until the World War I (1914-18), when the Ottoman Empire dissolved. Thereafter, indi¬ vidual nation-states followed their own histories, though many maintained close ties with European powers such as the United Kingdom.
Arabian religions, ancient Polytheistic religions of Arabia prior to the rise of Islam. Most of the deities of the Arab tribes were sky gods, associated with heavenly bodies such as the Sun and Moon, and they had the power to ensure fecundity, protection, or revenge. At the head of the southern Arabian pantheon was 'Athtar, a god of thunderstorms and rain. Each kingdom also had a national deity, of whom the nation called itself the progeny. Sanctuaries were carved in rock on high places and held a baetyl (“raised stone”) or statue of the god in an open-air enclosure, accessible only to ritually clean persons. In northern Arabia they included a walled enclosure with a covered or enclosed altar, similar to the Mus¬ lim Ka'bah. Libations, animal sacrifices, and other offerings were made to the gods, and priests interpreted oracles and performed divination. Wor¬ shipers made yearly pilgrimages to important shrines, participating in rites that included purification, the wearing of ritual clothing, sexual absti¬ nence, abstention from shedding blood, and circuits performed around the sacred object.
Arabian Sea Northwestern part of the Indian Ocean, lying between India and the Arabian Peninsula. It has an area of about 1,491,000 sq miles (3,862,000 sq km) and an average depth of 8,970 feet (2,734 m). The Gulf of Oman connects it with the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz, while the Gulf of Aden connects it with the Red Sea via the Strait of Mandeb. The Indus is the principal river draining into the Arabian Sea. Socotra, Lakshadweep, and other islands lie within it. Chief ports are Mumbai (Bom¬ bay), India; Karachi, Pak.; and Aden, Yemen. The sea has been part of the principal trade route between Europe and India for centuries.
Arabic alphabet Script used to write Arabic and a number of other languages whose speakers have been influenced by Arab and Islamic cul¬ ture. The 28-character Arabic alphabet developed from a script used to write Nabataean Aramaic. Because Arabic had different consonants than Aramaic, diacritical dots came to be used to eliminate ambiguous read¬ ings of some letters, and these remain a feature of the script. Arabic is written from right to left. The letters denote only consonants, though the symbols for w, y, and (historically) the glottal stop do double duty as vowel letters for long u, i, and a. Additional diacritics, representing short vowels (or the lack thereof), case endings, and geminate (duplicate) con¬ sonants, are normally employed only for the text of the Qur’an, for prim¬ ers, or in instances where the reading might otherwise be ambiguous. Because Arabic script is fundamentally cursive, most letters have slightly different forms depending on whether they occur in the beginning, middle, or end of a word. Non-Semitic languages for which some version of the Arabic alphabet has been or is used include Persian, Kurdish, Pashto, Urdu, some Turkic languages, Malay, Swahili, and Hausa. The Maltese language is the only form of Arabic to be written in the Latin alphabet.