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Egypt
The Arab Republic of Egypt, commonly known as Egypt, (in Arabic: مصر, romanized Misr), is a republic in North Africa. While it is geographically located in Africa, it is sometimes associated with the Middle East for political reasons.
Covering an area of about 1,020,000 km², Egypt shares land borders with Libya to the west, Sudan to the south, and Israel and the Gaza Strip to the northeast and has coasts on the north and east by the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, respectively.
Egypt is the second most populous country in Africa, second only to Nigeria, and the vast majority of its 77 million population (2005) live near the banks of the Nile River (about 40,000 km²), where the only arable agricultural land is found. Large areas of land are part of the Sahara Desert and are sparsely inhabited. The majority of Egyptians today are urban, living in the great Arab population centers of greater Cairo, the largest city in Africa, and Alexandria.
Egypt is famous for its ancient civilization and some of the world's most stunning ancient monuments, including the Giza Pyramids, the Karnak Temple and the Valley of the Kings; the southern city of Luxor contains a particularly large number of ancient artifacts. Today, Egypt is widely regarded as the main political and cultural centre of the Arab and Middle Eastern regions.
Origin and history of the name
Misr, the Arabic and official name for modern Egypt, is of Semitic origin directly cognate with the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם Misráyim meaning "the two straits", and possibly means "a country" or "a state." The ancient name for the country, kemet, or "black land," is derived from the fertile black soils deposited by the Nile floods, distinct from the 'red land' (deshret) of the desert. This name became keme in a later stage of Coptic. The English name "Egypt" came via the Latin word Aegyptus derived from the ancient Greek word Αίγυπτος Aiguptos (see also List of traditional Greek place names), which in turn is derived from the ancient Egyptian phrase ḥwt-k3-ptḥ ("Hwt ka Ptah") meaning "home of the Ka (part of the soul) of Ptah," the name of a temple of the god Ptah at Memphis. For details see the article Copt.
History
Main article: History of Egypt
The regularity and richness of the annual Nile River flood, coupled with semi-isolation provided by deserts to the east and west, allowed for the development of one of the world's great civilizations. A unified kingdom was founded circa 3200 BC by King Menes, and a series of dynasties ruled in Egypt for the next three millennia. The last native dynasty, known as the Thirtieth Dynasty, fell to the Persians in 341 BC who dug the predecessor of the Suez canal and connected the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. Later, Egypt fell to the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines and Persians again.
It was the Muslim Arabs who introduced Islam and the Arabic language in the seventh century changing Egypt into a linguistically and mostly ethnically "Arab" nation. Muslim rulers nominated by the Islamic Caliphate remained in control of Egypt for the next six centuries. A local military caste, the Mamluks took control about 1250 and continued to govern even after the conquest of Egypt by the Ottoman Turks in 1517.
Following the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt became an important world transportation hub; however, the country also fell heavily into debt. Ostensibly to protect its investments, Britain seized control of Egypt's government in 1882, but nominal allegiance to the Ottoman Empire continued until 1914.
Partially independent from the UK in 1922, Egypt acquired full sovereignty following World War II. Between 1924-1936 there existed a short-lived attempt to model Egypt's constitutional government after the European style of government; known as Egypt's Liberal Experiment. In 1952 a popularly-supported military coup d'état forced King Farouk I, a constitutional monarch, to abdicate in support of his son King Ahmed Fouad II. Finally the Egyptian Republic was declared on 18 June 1953 with General Muhammad Naguib as the first President of the Republic. After Naguib resigned in 1954, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the real architect of the 1952 Revolution, assumed power as President and nationalized the Suez Canal leading to the 1956 Suez Crisis. Nasser came out of the war an Arab hero, and Nasserism won widespread influence in the region. Between 1958 and 1961 Egypt and Syria formed a union known as the United Arab Republic. Three years after the 1967 Six Day War, in which Egypt lost the Sinai to Israel, Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat, who presented his takeover in terms of a Corrective Revolution. Sadat switched Egypt's Cold War allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States, expelling Soviet advisors in 1972, and launched the Infitah economic reform, while violently clamping down on religious and secular opposition alike.
In 1973, Egypt, along with Syria, launched a surprise attack on Israel in the October War,which despite not being a complete military success was by most accounts a political victory. Both the United States and the USSR intervened and a cease-fire was reached between Egypt and Israel. In 1979, Sadat made peace with Israel in exchange for the Sinai, a move which sparked enormous controversy in the Arab world and led to Egypt's expulsion from the Arab League (it was readmitted in 1989). Sadat was murdered by a religious fundamentalist in 1981, and succeeded by Hosni Mubarak.
Hosni Mubarak
Politics
Main article: Politics of Egypt
Egypt has been a republic since 18 June 1953. President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has been the President of the Republic since October 14 1981, following the assassination of former President Anwar Sadat on October 6 1981. Mubarak is currently serving his fifth term in office. He is the leader of the ruling National Democratic Party. Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif was sworn in as Prime Minister on 9 July 2004, following the resignation of Dr. Atef Ebeid from his office.
The permanent headquarters for the League of Arab States is located in Cairo. Egypt was the first Arab state to establish peace with the State of Israel after the signing of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty after the Camp David Accords. Egypt also has a major influence on the other Arab states. Historically, Egypt has played the role of a mediator in resolving disputes of various Arab nations. Most Arab nations still use Egypt in that role.
Egypt supposedly operates under a multi-party semi-presidential system where the executive power is divided between the President and the Prime Minister. Egypt holds regular single-candidate presidential and multi-party parliamentary elections. The last presidential election was held in September 2005, in which Mubarak won again. However, after the September elections there has been expressed concern from international human rights observers concerning freedom of speech, government interference in local elections and vote-rigging. I had been, as previous elections, just a pantomime. There had been many cases of misrespect for the oposition candidates and their followers' human right.
In late February 2005, Mubarak announced on a surprise television broadcast that he has ordered the reform of the country's presidential election law, paving the way for multi-candidate polls in the coming election. For the first time in Egypt's history, the people will have a chance to elect their leader in a closely watched election. The President said his initiative came "out of my full conviction of the need to consolidate efforts for more freedom and democracy." However, the new law places draconian restrictions on the filing of presidential candidacies designed to pave the road for Mubarak's easy re-election. As a result most Egyptians are sceptical about the process of democratisation and the role of elections. As expected, Mubarak was re-elected. Newspapers however have exhibited an increasing freedom in criticizing the president, and the results of the parlimentary elections genuinely indicate that a democratic transition is underway, as evidenced by the strong showing of rival political parties.
Military
Main article: Military of Egypt
The Egyptian Armed Forces (Arabic: القوات المسلحة المصرية) consists of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Air Defense. The Coast Guard and Border Guard operate as subordinates to the Navy and Army Command respectively.
The Egyptian military is the strongest military power on the African continent, and the second largest in the Middle East, after Israel - (Source: Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies' annual Middle East Strategic Balance). The Egyptian Armed Forces also ranks among the most battle-trained armed forces in the region. Its inventory includes F-16s, Mirage 2000 aircraft, Apache helicopters, M1 Abrams Tanks and medium-long range missiles. The Egyptian Armed forces, has a combined troop strength of 450,000 active personel.
The Commander-in-Chief is Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi.
The Chief of Staff is Lt. Gen. Sami Hafez Enan.
Conscription is compulsory for egyptian men of 18 years of age. Full-time students may defer their service until the age of 28. The length of the service depend on the level of education achieved by the conscripted.
Military relations between Egypt and the US are strong. Military cooperation between the two countries covers a number of strategic areas, including cooperation in the ongoing process of modernising Egyptian armaments and training the Egyptian armed forces.
While military cooperation between the US and Egypt is close and diversified this does not constitute a form of military alliance. Nothing could furnish clearer proof of this than the high degree of transparency surrounding all aspects of Egyptian-US military cooperation. Bilateral exercises, mutual training are carried out regularly and according to one US source, reflect the great esteem in which the US holds the high levels of professionalism and commitment and the growing excellence of the fighting men and women in the various branches of the Egyptian armed forces.
Egypt take part regularely in military exercises with the US and other European and Arab allies, including the manoeuvres that take place in Egypt every two years.
Egypt continues to contribute regularly to United Nations peacekeeping missions, most recently in East Timor, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
Governorates
Liberia
Main article: Governorates of Egypt
Egypt is divided into 26 governorates (Muhafazat; singular – Muhafazah):
Foreign relations
al-Wadi al-Jadid
al-Wadi al-Jadidal-Wadi al-Jadid
al-Wadi al-Jadid and the Middle East]]Middle Easts]]Middle East]]Middle East
Geography, population, history, military strength, and diplomatic expertise give Egypt extensive political influence in the Middle East. Cairo has been a crossroads of Arab commerce and culture for millennia, and its intellectual and Islamic institutions are at the center of the region's social and cultural development.
The League of Arab States headquarters is in Cairo. The Secretary General of the League has traditionally been an Egyptian. Former Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa is the present Secretary General of the Arab League.
Egyptian Deputy Prime Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali served as Secretary General of the United Nations from 1991 to 1996.
Egypt is on good terms with all of its neighbours, and was the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel. It has a territorial dispute with Sudan over the Hala'ib Triangle.
Economy
Main article: Economy of Egypt
Egypt's economy depends mainly on agriculture, media, petroleum exports, and tourism; there are also more than 5 million Egyptians working abroad, mainly in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf area like UAE, and Europe. The United States as well has a large population of Egyptian immigrants.
The completion of the Aswan High Dam in 1971 and the resultant Lake Nasser have altered the time-honored place of the Nile River in the agriculture and ecology of Egypt. A rapidly growing population (the largest in the Arab world), limited arable land, and dependence on the Nile all continue to overtax resources and stress society.
The government has struggled to ready the economy for the new millennium through economic reform and massive investment in communications and physical infrastructure, much financed from U.S. foreign aid (since 1979, an average of 2.2 billion dollars per year). Egypt is the third largest recipient of such funds from the United States following the Iraq war. Economic conditions are starting to improve considerably after a period of stagnation due to the adoption of more liberal economic policies by the government, as well as increased revenues from tourism and a booming stock market. In its annual report, the IMF has rated Egypt as one of the top countries in the world undertaking economic reforms.
Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Egypt
Egypt is the most populous country in the Arab world, at about 77,500,000 people. Nearly all the population is concentrated along the River Nile, notably Alexandria and Cairo, and along the Nile Delta and near the Suez Canal. Approximately 90% of the population adheres to Islam and most of the remainder to Christianity (primarily the Coptic denomination).
The Egyptians are a fairly homogeneous people. In the northern part of the country, North African and Mediterranean elements are more predominant, and the south is home to populations more closely related to Ethiopians and Somalis from the Horn of Africa. The bulk of the modern Egyptian people still maintain a homogenous genetic tie to ancient Egyptian society, which has always been regarded as rural and most populous compared to the neighboring demographics. The Egyptian people have spoken only languages from the Afro-Asiatic family (previously known as Hamito-Semitic) throughout their history starting with Old Egyptian, to modern Egyptian-Arabic.
Ethnic minorities include a small number of Bedouin Arab nomads in the Sinai and eastern and western deserts, as well as a Nubian minority clustered along the Nile in Upper (southern) Egypt who are estimated for about 0.8% of the population. The once-vibrant Jewish community in Egypt has disappeared, but several important archeological and historical sites remain.
Geography
Main articles: Geography of Egypt
Geography of Egypt
Towns and cities include Alexandria, Aswan, Asyut, Cairo, El-Mahalla El-Kubra, Giza, Hurghada, Luxor, Kom Ombo, Port Safaga, Port Said, Sharm el Sheikh, Shubra-El-Khema, Suez, Zagazig,Al-Minya.
Deserts: Egypt includes parts of the Sahara Desert and of the Libyan Desert
Oases include: Bahariya Oasis, Dakhleh Oasis, Farafra Oasis, Kharga Oasis, Siwa Oasis.
Egypt borders on Libya on the west, on Sudan on the south and on Israel on the northeast. It controls the Suez Canal between the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
Egypt's important role in geopolitics stems from its strategic position: as a land bridge between Africa and Asia, and as a passage between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal.
Culture
Main article: Culture of Egypt
Egypt's capital city, Cairo, is Africa's largest city and has been renowned for centuries as a center of learning, culture and commerce. The Egyptian Academy of the Arabic Language is responsible for regulating the Arabic Language throughout the world.
Egypt also hosts two major religious institutions. Al-Azhar University, the oldest Islamic institution for higher studies (founded around 970 CE) with its corresponding mosque Al-Azhar. The head of Al-Azhar is traditionally regarded as the supreme leader of Sunni Muslims all over the world. Egypt also has a strong Christian heritage as evidenced by the existence of the Coptic Orthodox Church headed by the Patriarch of Alexandria, which has a following of approximately 50 million Christians worldwide (one of the famous Coptic Orthodox Churches is Saint Takla Haimanot Church in Alexandria http://www.St-Takla.org).
Though considered a low-income country, Egypt has a thriving media and arts industry, with more than 30 satellite channels and more than 100 motion pictures produced each year. To bolster its media industry, especially with the keen competition from the Persian Gulf states and Lebanon, it has built a large media city that it has promoted as the "Hollywood of the East". Egypt is the only Arab country with an opera house.
Some famous Egyptians include:
- Gamal Abdel Nasser (former president)
- Boutros Boutros-Ghali (former Secretary General of the United Nations)
- Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize-winning novelist)
- Umm Kulthum (singer)
- Omar Sharif (actor)
- Ahmed Zewail (Nobel Prize-winning chemist)
- Mohamed ElBaradei (Head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and Winner of the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize)
- Anwar Sadat (former president and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize)
See also
- Communications in Egypt
- Coptic Christianity
- Egyptian mythology
- Egyptian pyramids
- History of the Jews in Egypt
- History of Armenians in Egypt
- List of Egypt-related topics
- List of Egyptian companies
- List of famous Egyptian people
- List of writers from Egypt
- Military of Egypt
- Music of Egypt
- Transportation in Egypt
- Corruption in Egypt
References
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External links
Government
- [http://www.egypt.gov.eg/ Official Egyptian Government Portal]
- [http://www.investment.gov.eg/ Egyptian Investment Portal] official government site
- [http://www.sis.gov.eg/ Egypt State Information Service] official government site
- [http://www.presidency.gov.eg/ The Egyptian Presidency]
- [http://www.parliament.gov.eg/EPA/en/Index.jsp The People Assembly of Egypt]
- [http://www.shoura.gov.eg/ Egyptian Shoura Council]
News
- [http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/ Al-Ahram Weekly]
- [http://allafrica.com/egypt/ AllAfrica – Egypt] news
- [http://www.egypttoday.com/ Egypt Today] magazine
- [http://www.businesstodayegypt.com/ Business Today Egypt] magazine
- [http://story.news.yahoo.com/fc?cid=34&tmpl=fc&in=World&cat=Egypt Yahoo! News Full Coverage – Egypt] headline links
Overviews
- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_east/country_profiles/737642.stm BBC News Country Profile - Egypt]
- [http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/eg.html CIA World Factbook - Egypt]
- [http://www.state.gov/p/nea/ci/c3729.htm US State Department - Egypt] includes Background Notes, Country Study and major reports
- [http://dmoz.org/Regional/Africa/Egypt Open Directory Project - Egypt] directory category
- [http://www.joinafrica.com/countries1/Egypt/people.htm Joinafrica.com - Egypt]
Education
See: List of Egyptian universities
- [http://www.worldwide.edu/ci/egypt/index.html Study Destinations in Egypt]
- [http://www.scu.eun.eg/eng/scu-eng.htm/ Supreme Council of Universities] U suck
Tourism
See: List of museums in Egypt
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- [http://www.touregypt.net/ Tour Egypt] (Association of Egyptian Travel Businesses)
- [http://www.egypt-travelguide.com/ Egypt Hotel & Travel Guide]
- [http://www.eternalegypt.org/ Journey through Eternal Egypt]
- [http://ancient-egypt.blogspot.com/ History of Ancient Egypt]
Other
- [http://www.fonsvitae.com/archit.html CAIRO - 1001 Years of Islamic Art and Architecture (Video series in four parts)]
- [http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/egypt.html Egypt Maps - Perry-Castañeda Map Collection]
- [http://ianandwendy.com/OtherTrips/Egypt Egypt Photo Galleries] Pictures from a visit in December 2004
- [http://st-takla.org/Egypt-1.html Egypt through the ages..]
- [http://www.egyptianculture.net Egyptian Mythology]
- Khnumhotep & Niankhkhnum
- [http://en.jurispedia.org/index.php/Egypt Egyptian law] from Jurispedia
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Arabic language
The Arabic language (; , less formally, ) is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. It is spoken throughout the Arab world and is widely studied and known throughout the Islamic world. Arabic has been a literary language since at least the 6th century and is the liturgical language of Islam.
Literary and Modern Standard Arabic
The term "Arabic" may refer either to literary Arabic, which no Arab speaks as a mother tongue, or Modern Standard Arabic or to the many spoken varieties of Arabic commonly called "colloquial Arabic." Arabs consider literary Arabic as the standard language and tend to view everything else as mere dialects. Literary Arabic, (Literally: "the most eloquent Arabic language" — ) refers both to the language of present-day media across North Africa and the Middle East and to the more archaic language of the Qur'an. (The expression media here includes most television and radio, and all written matter, including all books, newspapers, magazines, documents of every kind, and reading primers for small children.) "Colloquial" or "dialectal" Arabic refers to the many national or regional dialects/languages derived from Classical Arabic, spoken daily across North Africa and the Middle East, which constitute the everyday spoken language. These sometimes differ enough to be mutually incomprehensible. These dialects are not typically written, although a certain amount of literature (particularly plays and poetry) exists in many of them. They are often used to varying degrees in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows.
Literary Arabic or classical Arabic, is the official language of all Arab countries and is the only form of Arabic taught in schools at all stages.
The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of Diglossia -the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of whatever nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught literary Arabic (to an equal or lesser degree). This diglossic situation facilitates code switching in which a speaker switches back and forth unaware between the two varieties of the language, sometimes even within the same sentence. In instances in which Arabs of different nationalities engage in conversation only to find their dialects mutually unintelligible (e.g. a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), both should be able to code switch into Literary Arabic for the sake of communication.
Since the written Arabic of today differs from the written Arabic of the Qur'anic era, it has become customary in western scholarship and among non-Arab scholars of Arabic to refer to the language of the Qur'an as Classical Arabic and the modern language of the media and of formal speeches as Modern Standard Arabic. Arabs, on the other hand, often use the term to refer to both forms, thus placing greater emphasis on the similarities between the two. The difference between Arabic of the Qur'anic era and today's Classical Arabic is only in the degree of eloquance. The vocabulary, the syntatic and grammatical rules are the same.
Quite a few English words are ultimately derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish, among them every-day vocabulary like sugar (sukkar), cotton (qutn) or magazine (). More recognizable are words like algorithm, algebra, alchemy, alcohol, azimuth, nadir, and zenith (see List of English words of Arabic origin). The Maltese language spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta is the only surviving European language to derive primarily from Arabic (a North African dialect), though it contains a large number of Italian and English borrowings.
Arabic and Islam
It is sometimes difficult to translate Islamic concepts, and concepts specific to Arab culture, without using the original Arabic terminology. The Qur'an is expressed in Arabic and traditionally Muslims deem it impossible to translate in a way that would adequately reflect its exact meaning—indeed, until recently, some schools of thought maintained that it should not be translated at all. A list of Islamic terms in Arabic covers those terms which are too specific to translate in one phrase. While Arabic is strongly associated with Islam (and is the language of salah), it is also spoken by Arab Christians, Oriental (Sephardic) Jews, and smaller sects such as Iraqi Mandaeans. Even so, a majority of the world's Muslims do not actually speak Arabic, but only know some fixed phrases of Arabic, such as those used in Islamic prayer. However, to counteract this, there is great encouragement for non-Arabic-speaking Muslims to learn the language.
Dialects
See Varieties of Arabic for a fuller overview.
"Colloquial Arabic" is a collective term for the spoken languages or dialects of people throughout the Arab world, which, as mentioned, differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the Maghreb dialects and those of the Middle East, followed by that between sedentary dialects and the much more conservative Bedouin dialects. Maltese, though descended from Arabic, is considered a separate language. Speakers of some of these dialects are unable to converse with speakers of another dialect of Arabic; in particular, while Middle Easterners can generally understand one another, they often have trouble understanding Maghrebis (although the converse is not true, due to the popularity of Middle Eastern—especially Egyptian—films and other media).
One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi aku, Levantine fiih, and North African kayen all mean "there is", and all come from Arabic (yakuun, fiihi, kaa'in respectively), but now sound very different.
The major groups are:
- Egyptian Arabic (Egypt) Considered the most widely understood and used "second dialect"
- Maghreb Arabic (Algerian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic and western Libyan)
- Levantine Arabic (Western Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and western Jordanian, Cypriot Maronite Arabic)
- Iraqi Arabic or Gulf Arabic (Iraqi, Eastern Syrian, Kuwaiti, Saudi Arabian, Persian Gulf coast from Iraq to Oman including much of Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, and minorities on the other side)
Other varieties include:
- (in Mauritania and Western Sahara)
- Andalusi Arabic (extinct, but important role in literary history)
- Maltese
- Sudanese Arabic (with a dialect continuum into Chad)
- Hijazi Arabic (West Cost of Saudi Arabia, Northern Saudi Arabia, eastern Jordan, Western Iraq)
- Najdi Arabic (Najd region of central Saudi Arabia)
- Yemeni Arabic (Yemen to southern Saudi Arabia)
Phonology
The consonant phonemes below reflect the pronunciation of Standard Arabic, which has only three vowels, in short and long variants, namely and . Naturally, considerable allophony occurs.
Consonants
Standard Arabic has 28 consonants:
See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.
# is pronounced as by some speakers. This is especially characteristic of the Egyptian and southern Yemeni dialects. In many parts of North Africa and in the Levant, it is pronounced as .
# is pronounced only in , the name of God, i.e. Allah.
# is usually a phonetic approximant.
# In many varieties (if not most), are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works).
Emphatic Consonants
The consonants traditionally known as "emphatic" are either velarised or pharyngealised . In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter e.g. is written ‹D›; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it e.g. ‹ḍ›.
Long Consonants
Vowels and consonants can be (phonologically) short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark shaddah, which marks lengthened consonants. Such consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: e.g. qabala "he received" and qabbala "he kissed".
Syllable Shape
Arabic has two kinds of syllable: open syllables (CV) and (CVV) - and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC) and (CVCC). Every syllable begins with a consonant - or else a consonant is borrowed from a previous word through elision – especially in the case of the definite article THE, al (used when starting an utterance) or _l (when following a word), e.g. baytu –l mudiir “house (of) the director”, which becomes bay-tul-mu-diir when divided syllabically. By itself, definite mudiir would be pronounced .
Word Stress
Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length and syllable shape, and correct word stress aids intelligibility. In general, "heavy" syllables attract stress (i.e. syllables of longer duration - a closed syllable or a syllable with a long vowel). In a word with a syllable with one long vowel, the long vowel attracts the stress (e.g. ki-'taab and ‘kaa-tib). In a word with two long vowels, the second long vowel attracts stress (e.g.ma-kaa-'tiib). In a word with a "heavy" syllable where two consonants occur together or the same consonant is doubled, the (last) heavy syllable attracts stress (e.g. ya-ma-’niyy, ka-'tabt, ka-‘tab-na, ma-‘jal-lah, ‘mad-ra-sah, yur-‘sil-na). This last rule trumps the first two: ja-zaa-i-‘riyy. Otherwise, word stress typically falls on the first syllable: ‘ya-man, ‘ka-ta-bat, etc. The Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect, however, has some idiosyncrasies in that a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, so that mad-‘ra-sah carries the stress on the second-to-last syllable, as does qaa-‘hi-rah.
Dialectical Phonologies
In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghreb dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian) distinguish between and . Interdental fricatives ( and ) are rendered as stops and in some dialects (principally Levantine and Egyptian) and as and in "learned" words from the Standard language. Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coallesced into a single phoneme, becoming one or the other. Predictably, dialects without interdental fricatives use exclusively, while those with such fricatives use . Again, in "learned" words from the Standard language, is rendered as in dialects without interdental fricatives. Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render Standard (a voiceless uvular stop): it retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen and Morocco (and among the Druze), while it is rendered in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan) and as a glottal stop in many prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. Thus, Arabs instantly give away their geographical (and class) origin by their pronunciation of a word such as qamar "moon": , or .
Grammar
See Arabic grammar
Alphabet
Arabic alphabet
Main article: Arabic alphabet
The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic script (which variety - Nabataean or Syriac - is a matter of scholarly dispute), to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (Maghrebi) and Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the fa and qaf had a dot underneath and a single dot above respectively in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals). However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like other Semitic languages, is written from right to left.
Calligraphy
See Arabic calligraphy for a fuller overview.
After the definitive fixing of the Arabic script around 786, by Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.
Kufic font
Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin alphabet, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. Two of the current masters of the genre are Hassan Massoudy and [http://arabworld.nitle.org/gallery.php?module_id=7 Khaled Al Saa’i].
Arabic using the Latin alphabet
See Arabic transliteration and Arabic Chat Alphabet for more information.
There are a number of different standards of Arabic transliteration: methods of accurately and efficently representing Arabic with the Latin alphabet. The more scientific standards allow the reader to recreate the exact word using the Arabic alphabet. However, these systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks, which may be difficult to pronounce at first sight. Other, less scientific, systems often use digraphs (like sh and kh), which are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems.
During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin alphabet only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic alphabet as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script.
To handle those Arabic letters that do not have an approximate equivalent in the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. E.g., the Latin numeral "3" is used to represent the Arabic letter "ع" ("ayn"). There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet.
See also
- Learn Standard Arabic WikiBook
- Arabist
- Arabic alphabet
- Arabic calligraphy
- Semitic languages
- Arabic literature
- The Maltese language is closely related to Arabic
- altahmam -- One of the ten non-English words that were voted hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company
- Common phrases in various languages
- Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic
External links
- [http://arabic-media.com/ Arabic-Media] on-line access to Arabic newspapers, radio, and television
- [http://st-takla.org/Learn_Languages/01_Learn_Arabic-ta3leem-3araby/Learn-Arabic_00-index_El-Fehres.html Learn Arabic language online with audio pronunciation] from [http://St-Takla.org St. Takla Egyptian Church]
- [http://www.nicoweb.com/sirpus/learn%20arabic%20course%20mp3.htm Arabic Writing and Reading with MP3]. Arabic Writing and Reading Course Online with MP3 audio.
- [http://pince31.free.fr/lang/arabic/liens.htm Links to learn Arabic language with online course]
- [http://www.madinaharabic.com Arabic language learning course with audio]
- [http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=4&article_id=6173 "Antonyms in Arabic are a strange phenomenon" by Tamim al-Barghouti]
- [http://arabworld.nitle.org/texts.php?module_id=1&reading_id=17 "The Development of Classical Arabic" by Kees Versteegh]
- [http://arabworld.nitle.org/audiovisual.php?module_id=1&selected_feed=118 Wellesley College Professor of Arabic on the forms and dialects of the language]
- [http://www.uga.edu/islam/arabic_windows.html Multilingual Computing in Arabic with Windows, major word processors, web browsers, Arabic keyboards, and Arabic transliteration fonts]
- [http://www.gomideast.com/arabic/index.htm gomideast - Learning to Speak Arabic phrases]
- [http://language-directory.50webs.com/languages/arabic.htm List of online Arabic-related resources]
Web references and examples:
- [http://transliteration.org/quran/Pronunciation/Letters/TashP.htm Arabic language pronunciation applet] with audio samples
- [http://www.sunna.info/teaching/ Learn Arabic]
- [http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1289272 E2 article]
- [http://www.sprachprofi.de.vu/english/ar.htm Sprachprofi]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Arabic-english/ Arabic - English Dictionary]: from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition.
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=arb SIL's Ethnologue]
- [http://www.nitle.org/arabworld/texts.php?module_id=1&reading_id=113 Dialects of Arabic]
- [http://www.muftah-alhuruf.com Muftah-Alhuruf.com]: Write and send Arabic emails without having an Arabic keyboard or operating system.
Arabic languages samples:
- [http://www.language-museum.com/a/arabic.php Arabic]
- [http://www.language-museum.com/a/arabic-chadian-spoken.php Arabic Chadian Spoken]
- [http://www.language-museum.com/a/arabic-judeo-iraqi.php Arabic Judeo Iraqi]
- [http://www.language-museum.com/a/arabic-north-levantine-spoken.php Arabic North Levantine Spoken]
- [http://arabworld.nitle.org/texts.php?module_id=1&reading_id=17 "The Development of Classical Arabic" by Kees Versteegh]
-
Category:Arab
ko:아랍어
ms:Bahasa Arab
ja:アラビア語
simple:Arabic language
th:ภาษาอาหรับ
Republic:This article concentrates on the several forms of government of real states and countries that have been termed republic, for all other uses see: republic (disambiguation)
In a broad definition, a republic is a state whose political organization rests on the principle that the citizens or electorate constitute the ultimate root of legitimacy and sovereignty. Several definitions, including that of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, stress the importance of autonomy and the 'rule of law' as part of the requirements for a Republic.
The detailed organization of republics' governments can vary widely in practice. The first section of this article gives an overview of the distinctions that characterise different types of non-fictional republics. In addition, many forms of national governments that call themselves "republics" are actually some other form of government, such as oligarchies, hereditary monarchies or socialist states or simple dictatorships.
The second section of the article gives short profiles of some of the most influential republics, by way of illustration. A more comprehensive List of republics appears in a separate article.
The third section is about how republics are approached as state organisations in political science: in political theory and political science, the term "republic" is generally applied to a state where the government's political power depends solely on the consent, however nominal, of the people governed, along with some form of written constitution, limitations against absolute power by a single individual or a combination of individuals, and other characteristic mechanisms of freedom, such as economic freedom, or a "commonwealth".
Characteristics of republics
Heads of state
In most modern republics the head of state is termed president. Other titles that have been used are consul, doge, knyazs, archon, and many others. In republics that are also democracies the head of state is appointed as the result of an election. This election can be indirect: a council of some sort is elected by the people, and this council then elects the head of state. In these kinds of republics the usual term for a president is in the range of four to six years. In some countries the constitution limits the number of terms the same person can be elected as president.
If the head of state of a republic is at the same time the head of government, this is called a presidential system (example: United States). In Semi-presidential systems the head of state is not the same person as the head of government, in that case he is usually termed prime minister or premier. Depending on whether the president has any specific tasks (for example, advisory role in the formation of a government after an election) this can leave the president with little more than a ceremonial function. The Prime Minister is responsible for managing the policies and the central government. Depending on the rules for appointing the president and the leader of the government, it is possible for some of these countries to have a situation where the president and the prime minister have opposing political convictions: in France, when the members of the ruling cabinet and the president come from opposing political factions, this situation is called cohabitation. In countries such as Germany and India, however, the president needs to be strictly non-partisan.
In some countries, like Switzerland and San Marino, the head of state is not a single person but a committee (council) of several persons holding that office. The Roman Republic had two consuls, appointed for a year by the senate. During the year of their consulship each consul would in turn be head of state for a month at a time, thus alternating the office of consul maior (the consul in power) and of consul suffectus (not-ruling consul, however with some supervision on the work of the consul maior) for their joint term.
Republics can be led by a head of state that has many of the characteristics of a monarch: not only do some republics install a president for life, and invest such president with powers beyond what is usual in a representative democracy, examples such as the post-1970 Syrian Arab Republic show that such a presidency can apparently be made hereditary. Historians disagree when the Roman Republic turned into Imperial Rome: the reason is that the first Emperors were given their head of state powers gradually in a government system that in appearance did not originally much differ from the Roman Republic.
Similarly, if taking the broad definition of republic above ("In a broad definition a republic is a state or country that is led by people that don't base their political power on any principle beyond the control of the people living in that state or country."), countries usually qualified as monarchies can have many traits of a republic in terms of form of government. The political power of monarchs can be non-existent, limited to a purely ceremonial function or the "control of the people" can be exerted to the extent that they appear to have the power to have their monarch replaced by another one.
The often assumed "mutual exclusiveness" of monarchies and republics as forms of government is thus not to be taken too literally, and largely depends on circumstances:
- Autocrats might try to give themselves a democratic tenure by calling themselves president (or princeps or princeps senatus in the case of Ancient Rome), and the form of government of their country "republic", instead of using a monarchic based terminology.
- For full-fledged representative democracies ultimately it generally does not make all that much difference whether the head of state is a monarch or a president, nor, in fact, whether these countries call themselves a monarchy or a republic. Other factors, for instance, religious matters (see next section) can often make a greater distinguishing mark when comparing the forms of government of actual countries.
For this reason, in political science the several definitions of "republic", which in such a context invariably indicate an "ideal" form of government, do not always exclude monarchy: the evolution of such definitions of "republic" in a context of political philosophy is treated in republicanism. However, such theoretical approaches appear to have had no real influence on the everyday use (that is: apart from a scholar or "insider" context) of the terminology regarding republics and monarchies.
The least that can be said is that Anti-Monarchism, the opposition to monarchy as such, did not always play a critical role in the creation and/or management of republics. For some republics, not choosing a monarch as head of state, could as well be a practical rather than an ideological consideration. For example where there was no monarchial candidate readily available. However, for the states created during or shortly after the Enlightenment the choice was always deliberate: republics created in that period inevitably had anti-monarchial characteristics. For the United States the opposition to the British Monarchy played an important role, as did the overthrow of the French Monarchy in the creation of the first French Republic. By the time of the creation of the Fifth Republic in that country "anti-monarchist" tendencies were barely felt. The relations of that country to other countries made no distinctions whether these other countries were "monarchies" or not.
Role of religion
Before several Reformation movements established themselves in Europe, changes in the religious landscape rarely had any relation to the form of government adopted by a country. For instance the transition from polytheism to Christianity in Ancient Rome maybe had brought new rulers, but no change in the idea that monarchy was the obvious way to rule a country. Similarly, late Middle Age republics, like Venice, emerged without questioning the religious standards set by the Roman Catholic church.
This would change, for instance, by the cuius regio, eius religio from the Treaty of Augsburg (1555): this treaty, applicable in the Holy Roman Empire and affecting the numerous (city-)states of Germany, ordained citizens to follow the religion of their ruler, whatever Christian religion that ruler chose - apart from Calvinism (which remained forbidden by the same treaty). In France the king abolished the relative tolerance towards non-Catholic religions resulting from the Edict of Nantes (1598), by the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685). In the United Kingdom and in Spain the respective monarchs had each established their favourite brand of Christianity, so that by the time of the Enlightenment in Europe (including the depending colonies) there was not a single absolute monarchy that tolerated another religion than the official one of the state.
Republics reducing state religion impact
An important reason why people could choose their society to be organised as a republic is the prospect of staying free of state religion: in this approach living under a monarch is seen as more easily inducing a uniform religion. All great monarchies had their state religion, in the case of pharaohs and some emperors this could even lead to a religion where the monarch (or his dynasty) were endowed with a god-like status (see for example imperial cult). On a different scale kingdoms can be entangled in a specific flavour of religion: Catholicism in Belgium, Church of England in the United Kingdom, Orthodoxy in Tsaristic Russia and many more examples.
In absence of a monarchy, there can be no monarch pushing towards a single religion. As this had been the general perception by the time of the Enlightenment, it is not so surprising that republics were at that time seen as the preferable form of state organisation, if one wanted to avoid the downsides of living under a too influential state religion:
- United States: the Founding Fathers, seeing that no single religion would do for all Americans, adopted the principle that the federal government would not support any established religion. At first the states were free to establish religion, but they disestablished it instead, and apparently lost the right to set up state religions as a result of 20th century Supreme Court decisions.
- Besides being anti-monarchial, the French Revolution, leading to the first French Republic, was at least as much anti-religious, and led to the confiscation, pillage and/or destruction of many abbeys, beguinages, churches and other religious buildings and/or communities. Up to the Fifth Republic, laïcité can be seen to have a much more profound meaning in republican France than in its neighbouring countries ruled as a monarchy.
Several states that called themselves republics have been fiercely anti-religious. This is particularly true for communist republics like the (former) Soviet Republics, North Vietnam, North Korea, and China.
Republics highlighting state religion impact
Some countries or states prefer or preferred to organise themselves as a republic, precisely because it allows them to inscribe a more or less obligatory state religion in their constitution: Islamic republics generally take this approach, but the same is also true (in varying degrees) for example in the Jewish state of Israel, in the Protestant republic that originated in the Netherlands during the Renaissance, and in the Catholic Irish Republic, among others. In this case the advantage that is sought is that no broad-thinking monarch could push his citizens towards a less strict application of religious prescriptions (like for instance the Millet system had done in the Ottoman Empire) or change to another religion altogether (like the swapping of religions under the Henry VIII/Edward VI/Mary I/Elizabeth I succession of monarchs in England). Such approach of an ideal republic based on a consolidated religious foundation played an important role for example in the overthrow of the regime of the Shah in Iran, to be replaced by a republic with influential ayatollahs (which is the term for religious leaders in that country), the most influential of which is called "supreme leader".
Concepts of democracy
Republics are often associated with democracy, which seems natural if one acknowledges the meaning of the expression from which the word "republic" derives (see: res publica). This association between "republic" and "democracy" is however far from a general understanding, even if acknowledging that there are several forms of democracy. This section tries to give an outline of which concepts of democracy are associated with which types of republics.
As a preliminary remark it should be noted that the concept of "one equal vote per adult" did not become a genererally-accepted principle in democracies until around the middle of the 20th century: before that in all democracies the valour of ones vote (or the right to vote) depended on financial situation, sex, race, or a combination of these and other factors. Many forms of government in previous times termed "democracy", including for instance the Athenian democracy, would, when transplanted to the early 21st century be classified as plutocracy or a broad oligarchy, because of the rules on how votes were counted.
In a Western approach, warned by the possible dangers and impracticality of direct democracy described since antiquity, there was a convergence towards representative democracy, for republics as well as monarchies, from the Enlightenment on. A direct democracy instrument like referendums is still basically mistrusted in many of the countries that adopted representative democracy. Nonetheless, some republics like Switzerland have a great deal of direct democracy in their state organisation, with usually several issues put before the people by referendum every year.
Marxism inspired state organisations that, at the height of the Cold War, had barely more than a few external appearances in common with Western types of democracies. That is, notwithstanding that on an ideological level Marxism and communism sought to empower proletarians. A Communist republic like Fidel Castro's Cuba has many "popular committees" to allow participation from citizens on a very basic level, without much of a far-reaching political power resulting from that. This approach to democracy is sometimes termed Basic democracy, but the term is contentious: the intended result is often something in between direct democracy and grassroots democracy, but connotations may vary.
Some of the hardline totalitarianism lived on in the East, even after the Iron Curtain fell. Sometimes the full name of such republics can be deceptive: having "people's" or "democratic" in the name of a country can, in some cases bear no relation with the concepts of democracy (neither "representative" nor "direct") that grew in the West. It also should be clear that many of these "Eastern" type of republics fall outside a definition of a republic that supposes control over who is in power by the people at large – unless it is accepted that the preference the people displays for their leader is in all cases authentic.
Influence of republicanism
Like Anti-monarchism and religious differences, republicanism played no equal role in the emergence of the many actual republics. Up to the republics that originated in the late middle ages, even if, from what we know about them, they also can be qualified "republics" in a modern understanding of the word, establishing the kind and amount of "republicanism" that led to their emergence is often limited to educated guesswork, based on sources that are generally recognised to be partly fictitious reconstruction.
Republicanism was the founding ideology of the United States of America and remains the core of American political values. See Republicanism in the U.S.
Over time there were various mixtures of republicanism along with democratic theories of the rights of individuals, which (for instance in the Age of Enlightenment) would find expression in the formation of "liberal" and "socialist" parties. What both liberalism and socialism shared was the belief in the self-determination of peoples, and in individual human dignity. But they disagreed and continue to disagree on whether this required a republic, what is the "exact" use of the term republic, and to what degree economic liberties should be regulated. This conflict is often described in terms of capitalism versus socialism, and the compromise between democracy and having an herditary head of state would be called constitutional monarchy.
In antiquity
A number of cities of the Levant achieved collective rule. Arwad has been cited as the first known example of a republic, in which the people, rather than a monarch, are described as sovereign.
The important politico-philosophical writings of Antiquity that survived the middle ages rarely had any influence on the emergence or strengthening of republics in the time they were written. When Plato wrote the dialogue that later, in English speaking countries, became know as The Republic (a faulty translation from several points of view), Athenian democracy had already been established, and was not influenced by the treatise (if it had, it would have become less republican in a modern understanding). Plato's own experiment with his political principles in Syracuse were a failure. Cicero's De re publica, far from being able to redirect the Roman state to reinforce its republican form of governement, rather reads as a prelude to the Imperial form of government that indeed emerged soon after Cicero's death.
In the renaissance
The emergence of the Renaissance, on the other hand, was marked by the adoption of many of these writings from Antiquity, which led to a more or less coherent view, retroactively termed "classical republicanism". Differences however remained regarding which kind of "mix" in a mixed government type of ideal state would be the most inherently republican. For those republics that emerged after the publication of the Renaissance philosophies regarding republics, like the United Provinces in the Netherlands, it is not always all that clear what role exactly was played by republicanism - among a host of other reasons - that led to the choice for "republic" as form of state ("other reasons" indicated elsewhere in this article: e.g., not finding a suitable candidate as monarch; anti-Catholicism; a middle class striving for political influence).
Enlightenment republicanism
The Enlightenment had brought a new generation of political thinkers, showing that, among other things, political philosophy was in the process of refocussing to political science. This time the influence of the political thinkers, like Locke, on the emergence of republics in America and France soon thereafter was unmistakable: Separation of powers, Separation of church and state, etc were introduced with a certain degree of success in the new republics, along the lines of the major political thinkers of the day.
In fact, the Enlightenment had set the standard for republics, as well as in many cases for monarchies, in the next century. The most important principles established by the close of the Enlightenment were the rule of law, the requirement that governments reflect the self-interest of the people that were subject to that law, that governments act in the national interest, in ways which are understandable to the public at large, and that there be some means of self-determination.
Proletarian republicanism
The next major branch in political thinking was pushed forward by Karl Marx, who argued that classes, rather than nationalities, had interests. He argued that governments represented the interests of the dominant class, and that, eventually, the states of his era would be overthrown by those dominated by the rising class of the proletariat.
Here again the formation of republics along the line of the new political philosophies followed quickly after the emergence of the philosophies: from the early 20th century on communist type of republics were set up (communist monarchies were at least by name excluded), many of them standing for about a century - but in increasing tension with the states that were more direct heirs of the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Islamic republicanism?
Following decolonialization in the second half of 20th century, the political dimension of the Islam knew a new impulse, leading to several Islamic republics. As far as "Enlightenment" and "communist" principles were sometimes up to a limited level incorporated in these republics, such principles were always subject to principles laid down in the Qur'an. While, however, there is no apparent reason why sharia and related concepts of islamic political thought should emerge in a republican form of government, the strife for islamic republics is generally not qualified as a form of "republicanism".
Economical factors
The ancient concept of res publica, when applied to politics, had always implied that citizens on one level or another took part in governing the state: at least citizens were not indifferent to decisions taken by those in charge, and could engage in political debate. A line of thought followed often by historians is that citizens, under normal circumstances, would only become politically active if they had spare time above and beyond the daily effort for mere survival. In other words, enough of a wealthy middle class (that did not get its political influence from a monarch as nobility did) is often seen as one of the preconditions to establish a republican form of government. In this reasoning neither the cities of the Hanseatic League, nor late 19th century Catalonia, nor the Netherlands during their Golden Age emerging in the form of a republic comes as a surprise, all of them at the top of their wealth through commerce and societies with an influential and rich middle class.
Here also the different nature of republics inspired by Marxism becomes apparent: Karl Marx theorised that the government of a state should be based on the proletarians, that is on those whose political opinions never had been asked before, even less had been considered to really matter when designing a state organisation. There was a problem Marxist/Communist types of republics had to solve: most proletarians were lacking interest and/or experience in designing a state organisation, even if acquainted with Das Kapital or Engels' writings. While the practical political involvement of proletarians on the level of an entire country hardly ever materialised, these communist republics were more often than not organised in a very top-down structure.
Aggregations of states
When a country or state is organised on several levels (that is: several states that are "associated" in a "superstructure", or a country is split in sub-states with a relative form of independency) several models exist:
- Both over-arching structure and sub-states take the form of a republic (Example: United States)
- The over-arching structure is a republic, while the sub-states are not necessarily (Example: European Union);
- The over-arching structure is not a republic, while the sub-states can be (Example: Holy Roman Empire, after the emergence of republics, like those of the Hanseatic League, within its realm)
Sub-national republics
In general being a republic also implies sovereignty as for the state to be ruled by the people it cannot be controlled by a foreign power. There are important exceptions to this, for example, Republics in the Soviet Union were member states which had to meet three criteria to be named republics,
:1) Be on the periphery of the Soviet Union so as to be able to take advantage of their theoretical right to secede,
:2) Be economically strong enough to be self sufficient upon secession, And
:3) Be named after at least one million people of the ethnic group which should make up the majority population of said republic.
Republics were originally created by Stalin and continue to be created even today in Russia. Russia itself is not a republic but a federation.
States of the United States are required, like the federal government, to be republican in form, with final authority resting with the people. This was required because the states were intended to create and enforce most domestic laws, with the exception of areas delegated to the federal government and prohibited to the states. The founding fathers of the country intended most domestic laws to be handled by the states, although, over time, the federal government has gained more and more influence over domestic law. Requiring the states to be a republic in form was also seen as protecting the citizens' rights and preventing a state from becoming a dictatorship or monarchy.
Supra-national republics
Sovereign countries can decide to hand in a limited part of their sovereignty to a supra-national organisation. The most famous example of this, since the second half of the 20th century, is the emergence of the European Union, which models its organisation as a republic. That it would be a republic in a strict sense can be debated while the European Union is not a "country" in a strict sense. Being a republic is not part of the admission criteria for the member states. Although the largest political family of EU parlementaries has a Christian denomination, the European constitution establishes its form of government as secular.
Examples of republics
In the early 21st century the states that are not hereditary monarchies, but still don't label themselves as republics are the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, the State of Vatican City, the State of Israel, the Union of Myanmar and the Russian Federation. Israel and Russia, and even Myanmar and Libya, would meet many definitions of the term republic, however.
Republics by additional qualifier:
- Without other qualifier than the term Republic - for example France.
- Federal republic - India, USA, Austria, Germany, Brazil are republics governed by representative democracy, in which the states play a crucial role.
- Confederation - Switzerland is a confederal republic governed by a combination of representative democracy and direct democracy. Please note the confederation page says Switzerland is now a federation in its confederation vs. federation section. A better example should be found.
- Islamic Republic - Countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran are republics governed in accordance with Islamic law.
- Arab Republic - for example, Syria its name reflecting its theoretically pan-Arab Ba'athist government.
- People's Republic - Countries like China, North Korea are meant to be governed for and by the people but generally without direct elections. This name is generally used by communist states.
- Democratic Republic - Also often used by communists is similar in meaning to People's Republic.
- Other modifiers are rooted in tradition and history and usually have no real political meaning. San Marino, for instance, is the "Most Serene Republic" while Uruguay is the "Eastern Republic".
Republics in political theory
In political theory and political science, the term "republic" is generally applied to a state where the government's political power depends solely on the consent, however nominal, of the people governed. This usage leads to two sets of problematic classification. The first are states which are oligarchical in nature, but are not nominally hereditary, such as many dictatorships, the second are states where all, or almost all, real political power is held by democratic institutions, but which have a monarch as nominal head of state, generally known as constitutional monarchies. The first case causes many outside the state to deny that the state should, in fact, be seen as a Republic. In many states of the second kind there are active "republican" movements that promote the ending of even the nominal monarchy, and the semantic problem is often resolved by calling the state a Democracy.
Generally, political scientists try to analyse underlying realities, not the names by which they go: whether a political leader calls himself "king" or "president", and the state he governs a "monarchy" or a "republic" is not the essential characteristic, whether he exercises power as an autocrat or not is. In this sense political analysts may say that the First World War was, in many respects, the death knell for monarchy, and the establishment of republicanism, whether de facto and/or de jure, as being essential for a modern state. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire were both abolished by the terms of the peace treaty after the war, the Russian Empire overthrown by the Russian Revolution of 1917. Even within the victorious states, monarchs were gradually being stripped of their powers and prerogatives, and more and more the government was in the hands of elected bodies whose majority party headed the executive. Nonetheless post-WWI Germany, a de jure republic, would develop into a de facto autocracy by the mid 1930s: the new peace treaty, after the Second World War, took more precaution in making the terms thus that also de facto (the Western part of) Germany would remain a republic.
References and notes
# Shorter definitions of Republic, like for instance Webster's "a state where the head of state is not a monarch, and in modern times is usually a president", don't acknowledge that the distinction between monarchy and republic was not always made as it is in modern times (see for instance Machiavelli footnote below); that oligarchies are traditionally considered neither monarchy nor republic, and that such definition depends very much on the monarch concept, which has various definitions, not making clear which of these is used for defining republic.
# Tacitus, Ann. I,1-15.
# Example: Leopold III of Belgium replaced by Baudouin in 1951 under popular pressure.
# See for example the opening chapter of Machiavelli's The Prince. Note however that even Machiavelli could not always keep to this mutual exclusiveness of "republics" and "monarchies", not even in The Prince: for example, when he tries to characterise the form of government of the Papal States in the 11th chapter of that book, he points out that usual methods and distinctions are not applicable for analysing such type of state.
# For instance Mobutu Sese Seko is generally considered such "autocrat" that tried to give an appearance of "republican democracy" to his style of government, for instance by allowing something that was generally regarded a sockpuppet opposition.
# References where in everyday language countries with a king or emperor as head of state are termed republic have not been encountered.
# For instance the United Provinces: after the Oath of Abjuration (1581) the Duke of Anjou and later the Earl of Leicester were asked to rule the Netherlands. After these candidates had declined the office, the Republic was only established in 1588.
# This section draws from, among others, Geschiedenis der nieuwe tijden by J. Warichez and L. Brounts, 1946, Standaard Boekhandel (Antwerp/Brussels/Ghent/Louvain) and Cultuurgetijden (history books for secondary school in 6 volumes), Dr. J. A. Van Houtte et. al., several editions and reprints in 1960ies through 1970ies, Van In (Lier).
# Note however that individual states of the US could have a state religion.
# see also Republicanism and religion
# Example: French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools - a similar law was tentatively debated in Belgium, but deemed incompatible with the less profoundly secularized Belgian state.
# After the Duke of Anjou and the Earl of Leicester had declined the offer to become ruler of the Seven Provinces (see note above), William I of Orange had been the obvious choice for king: the volume Nieuwe tijden from the Cultuurgetijden series as mentioned in a previous note, elaborates on p. 63-65 (supported by a quote of the contemporary Pontus Payen) that William of Orange was perceived as too lenient towards Catholicism to be acceptable as king for the protestants.
# Although in Turkey the ensuing republic would become relatively tolerant towards other religions, the straight multicultural approach of the Millet system, that had allowed Christians and Jews to form state-in-state like communities, would remain unparallelled.
# See for example Federalist No. 10 by James Madison - An original framer of the U.S. Constitution advocates a republic over a democracy. See Republicanism in the United States for the connotations of the terms "democracy" and "republic" in the 1787 context when this article was written. Further clarification of this "democracy" vs "republic" idea in the US can be found in Republicanism in the United States#A typical definition of democracy vs republic
# Some of the earliest warnings in this sense came from Socrates' pupils Plato and Xenophon around 400 BC: indeed their friend Socrates had been condemned to death in an entirely "democratic" system at Athens, hence they preferred the less democratic Spartan system of government. See also Trial of Socrates - Laws (dialogue).
# For instance in Pakistan the expression "basic democracy" is tied to the epoch of the military dictature.
# For example, what is known about the origins of the Roman Republic is based on works by Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, and others, all of which wrote at least some centuries after the emergence of that Republic — without exception all these authors have historical exactitude issues, including relative uncertainty over the year when the Roman Republic would have emerged.
# Martin Bernal, Black Athena Writes Back (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 359.
# See for instance Marxism, Paris Commune.
# That Islam would have a more intrinsic political dimension than most other religions is argued, among others, by Afshin Ellian ([http://www.onderzoekinformatie.nl/en/oi/nod/onderzoeker/PRS1270113/]) in his book Brieven van een Pers (Meulenhoff - ISBN 9029075228)
# For instance, Historia series of history books, chief editor prof. dr. M. Dierickx sj, published by De Nederlandse Boekhandel (Antwerpen/Amsterdam) in several editions from 1955 to the late 1970ies studies these links between the presence of a wealthy middle class and the republics that emerged throughout history.
# see for example [http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/part13_en.htm#a73 Title IX] and [http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/part2_en.htm#a3 Title I] in the text for [http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/lsart1_en.htm a constitution for Europe]
# After some fierce debate it was decided that the 2005 version of the Constitution proposal would not make any reference to the "Christian" roots (among other communal values) of Europe, see [http://europa.eu.int/constitution/en/part2_en.htm#a5 Art. I,2 of the European Constitution proposal].
Further reading
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, ou Principes de Droit Politique (1762)
- William Everdell, The End of Kings: A History of Republics and Republicans, 1983, 2nd ed., Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 2000
- Martin van Gelderen & Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, v1, Republicanism and Constitutionalism in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002
- Martin van Gelderen & Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, v2, The Values of Republicanism in Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2002
- Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government, NY: Oxford U.P., 1997, ISBN: 0198290837; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.
Category:Forms of government
ko:공화제
ja:共和制
simple:Republic
th:สาธารณรัฐ
Middle East
The Middle East is a political and cultural subregion of Asia, or of Africa-Eurasia. The core of the region comprises the lands between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf along with the Anatolian, Arabian and Sinai peninsulas. Sometimes, it is used in a broader sense which can include areas stretching from North Africa in the west to Pakistan in the east and the Caucasus and/or Central Asia in the north. The media and various international organizations (such as the United Nations) usually considers the Middle East to be Southwest Asia (including Cyprus and Iran) plus all of Egypt.
The area encompasses several cultural and ethnic groups, including the Iranians, Arabs, Greeks, Jews, Berbers, Assyrians, Kurds and Turks. The main language groups include: the Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, Assyrian, Kurdish and Turkish. The corresponding adjective is Middle-Eastern and the derived noun is Middle-Easterner.
Most Western definitions of the "Middle East" -- in both established reference books and common usage -- define the region as 'nations in Southwest Asia, from Iran (Persia) to Egypt'. Consequently, Egypt, with its Sinai Peninsula in Asia, is usually considered part of the 'Middle East', although most of the country lies geographically in North Africa. North African nations without Asian links, such as Libya, Tunisia and Morocco, are increasingly being called North African -- as opposed to Middle Eastern (Iran to Egypt - Asia) -- by international media outlets.
History
North African
Main article: History of the Middle East
Starting in the middle of the 20th century, the Middle East has been at the center of world affairs, and has been an extremely strategically, economically, politically, culturally, and religiously sensitive area. It possesses huge stocks of crude oil and is the birthplace and spiritual centre of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Borders
The term Middle East defines a cultural area, so it does not have precise borders. The most common and highly arbitrary definition includes: Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Turkey, Iran (Persia), Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Iran is often the eastern border, but Afghanistan and western Pakistan are often included due to their close relationship (ethnically and religiously) to the larger group of Iranian peoples as well as historical connections to the Middle East including being part of the various empires that have spanned the region such as those of the Persians and Arabs among others. Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and western Pakistan (Baluchistan and North West Frontier Province) share close cultural, linguistic, and historical ties with Iran and are also part of the Iranian plateau, whereas Iran's relationship with Arab states is based more upon religion and geographic proximity. Also the Kurds, another group of Iranic linguistic extraction, are the largest ethnic group in the Middle East without their own state.
North Africa or the Maghrib, although often placed outside the Middle East proper, does have strong cultural and linguistic links to the region, and historically has shared many of the events that have shaped the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions including those prompted by Phoenician-colonized Carthage and Greco-Roman civilization as well as Muslim Arab-Berber and Ottoman empires. The Maghrib is sometimes included, sometimes excluded from the Middle East by the media and in informal usage, while most academics continue to identify North Africa as geographically a part of Africa, but being closely related to southwestern Asia in terms of politics, culture, religion, language, history, and genetics. This can be compared with other similar instances in which, for example, Tasmania and Newfoundland, geographically non-European, share many such traits with northwestern western Europe while Madagascar is in some of these respects more like southeast Asia than southeast Africa.
The Caucasus region, Cyprus, and Turkey, although often grouped into Southwest Asia based upon geographic proximity and continuity, are generally considered culturally and politically European due to their various historic and recent political ties to that region. For example, Armenia and Cyprus, although both exist in close geographic proximity to the Middle East, possess two important criteria that links them more to Europe than to the Middle East: their national identity that combines an | | |
