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Beit Lahia
Beit Lahia or Beit Lahiya () is a city in the Gaza Strip, north of Jabalia, in the North Gaza Governorate of the State of Palestine. It sits next to Beit Hanoun and close to the border with Israel. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, the city had a population of 89,838 in 2017. Geography Beit Lahia is surrounded by dunes, some of which rise to above sea level. The area is renowned for its many large sycamore fig trees. The city is known for its fresh, sweet water, berries and citrus trees. According to Edward Henry Palmer, "Lahia" was from "Lahi", a personal name. History Roman period Beit Lahia has an ancient hill and nearby lay abandoned village ruins. The town has been identified as the ''Bethelia'' and had originally a pagan temple. According to the 5th century historian Sozomen, whose family had lived in the town for several generations, the townspeople started converting to Christianity due to the hermit Hilarion who is attributed to have hea ...
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Arabic Script
The Arabic script is the writing system used for Arabic (Arabic alphabet) and several other languages of Asia and Africa. It is the second-most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world (after the Latin script), the second-most widely used List of writing systems by adoption, writing system in the world by number of countries using it, and the third-most by number of users (after the Latin and Chinese characters, Chinese scripts). The script was first used to write texts in Arabic, most notably the Quran, the holy book of Islam. With Spread of Islam, the religion's spread, it came to be used as the primary script for many language families, leading to the addition of new letters and other symbols. Such languages still using it are Arabic language, Arabic, Persian language, Persian (Western Persian, Farsi and Dari), Urdu, Uyghur language, Uyghur, Kurdish languages, Kurdish, Pashto, Punjabi language, Punjabi (Shahmukhi), Sindhi language, Sindhi, South Azerbaijani, Azerb ...
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Sozomen
Salamanes Hermias Sozomenos (; ; c. 400 – c. 450 AD), also known as Sozomen, was a Roman lawyer and historian of the Christian Church. Family and home Sozoman was born around 400 in Bethelia, a small town near Gaza, into a wealthy Christian family of Palestine. He told the history of Southern Palestine derived from oral tradition. He appeared to be familiar with the region around Gaza, and mentioned having seen Bishop Zeno of Majuma, at the seaport of Gaza. Sozomen wrote that his grandfather lived at Bethelia, near Gaza, and became a Christian together with his household, probably under Constantius II. A neighbor named Alaphrion was miraculously healed by Saint Hilarion, who cast out a demon from Alaphrion, and, as eyewitnesses to the miracle, his family converted, along with Alaphrion's. The conversion marked a turning-point in the Christianization of southern Palestine, according to his account. The grandfather became within his own circle a highly esteemed interpret ...
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Maqam (shrine)
A maqām () is a Muslims, Muslim shrine constructed at a site linked to a religious figure or Wali, saint, commonly found in the Levant (or ''al-Shām),'' which comprises the present-day countries of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Israel. It is usually a funeral construction, commonly cubic-shaped and topped with a dome. The cult for holy sites in Islamic Syria heightened during the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly under Zengid dynasty, Zangid and Ayyubid dynasty, Ayyubid rule. Historians attribute this surge to the political climate, notably the Crusades and the Muslim reconquest of the region. Funded by rulers and the elite, these shrines functioned as points of piety, attracting individuals from different levels of society, generating employment opportunities, and contributing to economic growth. During this period, as demand increased, more sanctuaries emerged, some repurposed from Jewish and Christian holy sites, others built upon newly discovered tombs and relics, and ...
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Gaza City
Gaza City, also called Gaza, is a city in the Gaza Strip, Palestine, and the capital of the Gaza Governorate. Located on the Mediterranean coast, southwest of Jerusalem, it was home to Port of Gaza, Palestine's only port. With a population of 590,481 people as of 2017, Gaza City was the most populous city in Palestine until the Gaza war caused most of the population to be displaced. Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC, Gaza City has been dominated by different peoples and empires throughout its history. The Philistines made it a part of their Philistia, pentapolis after the ancient Egyptians had ruled it for nearly 350 years. Under the Roman Empire, Gaza City experienced relative peace and its Port of Gaza, Mediterranean port flourished. In 635 AD, it became the first city in the Palestine (region), Palestine region to be conquered by the Rashidun army and quickly developed into a centre of Fiqh, Islamic law. However, by the time the Crusader states were established in ...
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Yaqut Al-Hamawi
Yāqūt Shihāb al-Dīn ibn-ʿAbdullāh al-Rūmī al-Ḥamawī (1179–1229) () was a Muslim scholar of Byzantine ancestry active during the late Abbasid period (12th–13th centuries). He is known for his , an influential work on geography containing valuable information pertaining to biography, history and literature as well as geography. Life ''Yāqūt'' (''ruby'' or '' hyacinth'') was the '' kunya'' of Ibn Abdullāh ("son of Abdullāh"). He was born in Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, called in Arabic al-Rūm, whence his '' nisba'' "al-Rūmi". Captured in war and enslaved, Yāqūt became " mawali" to ‘Askar ibn Abī Naṣr al-Ḥamawī, a trader of Baghdad, Iraq, the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate, from whom he received the '' laqab'' "al-Hamawī". As ‘Askar's apprentice, he learned about accounting and commerce, becoming his envoy on trade missions and travelling twice or three times to Kish in the Persian Gulf. In 1194, ‘Askar stopped his salar ...
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Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe, between the early 16th and early 18th centuries. The empire emerged from a Anatolian beyliks, ''beylik'', or principality, founded in northwestern Anatolia in by the Turkoman (ethnonym), Turkoman tribal leader Osman I. His successors Ottoman wars in Europe, conquered much of Anatolia and expanded into the Balkans by the mid-14th century, transforming their petty kingdom into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the Fall of Constantinople, conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by Mehmed II. With its capital at History of Istanbul#Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) and control over a significant portion of the Mediterranean Basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interacti ...
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Gaza Sanjak
Gaza Sanjak (), known in Arabic as Bilād Ghazza (the Land of Gaza), was a sanjak of the Damascus Eyalet of the Ottoman Empire centered in Gaza, and spread northwards up to the Yarkon River. In the 16th century it was divided into ''nawahi'' (singular: ''nahiya''; third-level subdivisions): Gaza in the south and Ramla in the north along the Nahr Rūbīn/Wādī al-Ṣarār. Gaza Sanjak "formed a passageway connecting Egypt and the Levant, precipitating bi-directional trade, conquest and population movements". Situated in the southern part of the Levantine coastal plain, Gaza Sanjak received less precipitation and was more prone to drought and nomadic incursion than more northerly regions. Marom and Taxel have shown that during the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries, nomadic economic and security pressures led to settlement abandonment around Majdal ‘Asqalān, and the southern coastal plain in general. The population of abandoned villages moved to surviving settlements, ...
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Saladin
Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub ( – 4 March 1193), commonly known as Saladin, was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from a Kurdish family, he was the first sultan of both Egypt and Syria. An important figure of the Third Crusade, he spearheaded the Muslim military effort against the Crusader states in the Levant. At the height of his power, the Ayyubid realm spanned Egypt, Syria, Upper Mesopotamia, the Hejaz, Yemen, and Nubia. Alongside his uncle Shirkuh, a Kurdish mercenary commander in service of the Zengid dynasty, Saladin was sent to Fatimid Egypt in 1164, on the orders of the Zengid ruler Nur ad-Din. With their original purpose being to help restore Shawar as the vizier to the teenage Fatimid caliph al-Adid, a power struggle ensued between Shirkuh and Shawar after the latter was reinstated. Saladin, meanwhile, climbed the ranks of the Fatimid government by virtue of his military successes against Crusader assaults and his personal closeness to al-Adid. A ...
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Ayyubid Dynasty
The Ayyubid dynasty (), also known as the Ayyubid Sultanate, was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultan of Egypt, Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. A Sunni Muslim of Kurds, Kurdish origin, Saladin had originally served the Zengid dynasty, Zengid ruler Nur al-Din Zengi, Nur al-Din, leading the latter's army against the Crusader invasions of Egypt, Crusaders in Fatimid Egypt, where he was made vizier (Fatimid Caliphate), vizier. Following Nur al-Din's death, Saladin was proclaimed as the first Sultan of Egypt by the Abbasid Caliphate, and rapidly expanded the new sultanate beyond Lower Egypt, Egypt to encompass most of Syria (region), Syria, in addition to Hijaz, Southern Arabia, Yemen, northern Nubia, Tripolitania and Upper Mesopotamia. Saladin's military campaigns set the general borders and sphere of influence of the sultanate of Egypt for the almost 350 years of its existence. Mos ...
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Fatimid Caliphate
The Fatimid Caliphate (; ), also known as the Fatimid Empire, was a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries CE under the rule of the Fatimids, an Isma'ili Shi'a dynasty. Spanning a large area of North Africa and West Asia, it ranged from the western Mediterranean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids traced their ancestry to the Islamic prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima and her husband Ali, the first Shi'a imam. The Fatimids were acknowledged as the rightful imams by different Isma'ili communities as well as by denominations in many other Muslim lands and adjacent regions. Originating during the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimids initially conquered Ifriqiya (roughly present-day Tunisia and north-eastern Algeria). They extended their rule across the Mediterranean coast and ultimately made Egypt the center of the caliphate. At its height, the caliphate included—in addition to Egypt—varying areas of the Maghreb, Sicily, the Levant, and the Hej ...
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Salah
''Salah'' (, also spelled ''salat'') is the practice of formal worship in Islam, consisting of a series of ritual prayers performed at prescribed times daily. These prayers, which consist of units known as ''rak'ah'', include a specific set of physical postures, recitation from the Quran, and prayers from the Sunnah, and are performed while facing the direction towards the Kaaba in Mecca ('' qibla''). The number of ''rak'ah'' varies depending on the specific prayer. Variations in practice are observed among adherents of different '' madhahib'' (schools of Islamic jurisprudence). The term ''salah'' may denote worship in general or specifically refer to the obligatory prayers performed by Muslims five times daily, or, in some traditions, three times daily.Jafarli, Durdana. "The historical conditions for the emergence of the Quranist movement in Egypt in the 19th-20th centuries." МОВА І КУЛЬТУРА (2017): 91. The obligatory prayers play an integral role in the I ...
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Mihrab
''Mihrab'' (, ', pl. ') is a niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the ''qibla'', the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims should face when praying. The wall in which a ''mihrab'' appears is thus the "''qibla'' wall". The '' minbar'', which is the raised platform from which an imam (leader of prayer) addresses the congregation, is located to the right of the ''mihrab''. Etymology The origin of the word ''miḥrāb'' is complicated, and multiple explanations have been proposed by different sources and scholars. It may come from Old South Arabian (possibly Sabaic) ''mḥrb'' meaning a certain part of a palace, as well as "part of a temple where ''tḥrb'' (a certain type of visions) is obtained," from the root word ''ḥrb'' "to perform a certain religious ritual (which is compared to combat or fighting and described as an overnight retreat) in the ''mḥrb'' of the temple." It may also possibly be related to Ethiopic ''məkʷrab'' "temple, sanctua ...
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