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116-576: Palestine Railways ( Arabic : سكة حديد فلسطين; Palestine Railways; Contemporary Hebrew : מסילות ברזל פלשתינה (א"י) “Palestine Railways” or רכבות ארץ-ישראל ; Present-day Hebrew: הרכבת המנדטורית “Mandate Railways”) was a government-owned railway company that ran all public railways in the League of Nations mandate territory of Palestine from 1920 until 1948. Its main line linked El Kantara in Egypt with Haifa . Branches served Jaffa , Jerusalem , Acre and

232-983: A civil engineering project in Egypt (probably the Assiut Barrage ), four 0-6-0ST's that had been built in 1917 for the Inland Waterways and Docks Department in Britain and one German 0-6-0WT that was part of the cargo of a merchant ship that the Royal Navy captured in 1914. The German locomotive had been built by Hanomag in Hanover in 1913 and all the saddle tanks had been built by Manning Wardle in Leeds , England. The EEF captured Beersheba in October 1917 and Gaza in November. EEF engineers extended

348-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

464-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

580-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

696-536: A downpour derailed an El Kantara – Haifa train, killing seven people and injuring 40. Most ROD and S200 locomotives were withdrawn from Palestine before the end of the Second World War and the remaining few soon followed, but PR took 24 LMS 8F's and the two S100s into its locomotive fleet. In 1945 Zionist paramilitary organisations formed an alliance, the Jewish Resistance Movement , which launched

812-488: A drainage system that collected water from its roof to somewhere beyond the excavation limits. The region is abundant with water and thus the hill serves as a good place for settlement. Elie Haddad who headed the excavation suggested that this abundance of water is hinted in the name of the village, "the fig tree", as it requires a large supply of water to grow. The identity of the Byzantine inhabitants remains unknown and based on

928-535: A fixed tax-rate of 25% on agricultural products, including wheat, barley, summer crops, sesame, fruit trees, goats and beehives, in addition to occasional revenues; a total of 4,350 akçe . In 1838, it was noted as a Muslim village, el Letineh , in the Gaza District. In 1851–52, van de Velde noted many old stone laying about the village. In 1863 Victor Guérin found a population is four hundred souls. He further noted some antique stones which were scattered in

1044-486: A further decline in passenger numbers. In 1938 sabotage derailed 44 trains, damaged 33 rail-mounted armoured cars, destroyed 27 stations and other buildings, damaged 21 bridges and culverts and destroyed telephone and signalling equipment and water supplies. A member of the Survey of Palestine recalled that "nearly all the stations on the railway had been burnt" . For more than one period night running became so dangerous that it

1160-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

1276-668: A line was built northwards to Hadera and southwards to Lydda where it joined the J&;J and later became known as the Eastern Railway . It used the widened J&J track (see above) as far as Wadi Surar where it branched southwards towards the Ottoman front line. By October 1915 the line was operational as far south as Beersheba . A branch was also built from Et Tine just south of Wadi Surar to Deir Seneid , where it branched again to Beit Hanoun and Huj near Gaza . The Ottomans also extended

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1392-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

1508-534: A mixed-traffic diameter by British standards but larger than those of the H series and therefore more suitable for higher speed traffic. PR suffered frequent locomotive failures. In 1934 its locomotives averaged 7,860 miles (12,650 km) between failures, whereas the figure for locomotives in Great Britain for the same year was 88,229 miles (141,991 km). Staff error caused 17% of failures but far more were caused by poor water, which PR's General Manager reported

1624-723: A northerly one to Magdiel on the Haifa main line to create a direct Haifa – Tel Aviv – Jaffa route and a southerly one through Rishon LeZion and over the El Kantara main line at Rehoboth to a junction with the Jerusalem line at Niana . In July 1935 in the UK House of Commons the Liberal MP Barnett Janner asked Malcolm MacDonald , Secretary of State for the Colonies : "whether he

1740-401: A particular target for sabotage. The British built blockhouses to protect bridges and regular military patrols of railway lines. Patrols were initially on foot, then in armoured freight vans propelled by locomotives with armoured cabs, and finally with dozens of rail-mounted armoured cars built at Qishon works. After one was blown up by a mine, killing a soldier, the front of each armoured car

1856-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

1972-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

2088-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

2204-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

2320-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

2436-1179: A war against British administration in which members of the Palmach , Irgun and Lehi organisations sabotaged the PR network at 153 places throughout Palestine. Terrorists robbed a train delivering wages to railway staff. In 1946 a terrorist bomb demolished the main part of the Haifa East station building. In the Night of the Bridges of 16–17 June that year, Palmach saboteurs destroyed 11 road and rail links with neighbouring countries including PR's 1,435 mm ( 4 ft  8 + 1 ⁄ 2  in ) standard gauge links with Egypt and Lebanon and its 1,050 mm ( 3 ft  5 + 11 ⁄ 32  in ) gauge link with Syria. Arabic Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

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2552-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

2668-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

2784-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

2900-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

3016-459: Is aware of the discontent with the present services provided by the Palestine railways; and whether he can now give an assurance that, as a consequence of the recent official inquiry into this matter, remedial action will be set on foot during the current year?" MacDonald replied: "Until a few years ago the financial position of Palestine restricted expenditure on the maintenance and improvement of

3132-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

3248-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

3364-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

3480-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

3596-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

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3712-493: Is planted on the northern and western edges of the site. A highway that runs east-west passes to the south, and a railway line passes by about 100 meters to the east." In July–August 2016 a trial excavation took place in the eastern side of the hill. It was the first archaeological excavation in the site and was headed by Elie Haddad on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority . The excavation took place ahead of

3828-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

3944-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

4060-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

4176-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

4292-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

4408-578: The British Mandate authorities , Tineh had a population of 396, all Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 530, still all Muslims, in a total of 131 houses. 'Abd al-Fattah Humud (1933-1968), one of the founding members of Fatah , was born in the village. In the 1945 statistics the village had a population of 750 Muslims, with 7,001 dunams of land. Of this, 141 dunams were used for citrus and bananas, 5,639 for cereals, while 24 dunams were classified as built-up areas. An elementary school

4524-707: The Great Central Railway Class 8K and that the UK's War Department (WD) had adopted as a standard design to be mass-produced for military traffic in the First World War. The other was the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Stanier 8F that had been designed in 1935 and that the WD now adopted as a standard design to be mass-produced for military use in the Second World War. As Allied forces concentrated on defending Egypt and

4640-472: The Jezreel Valley . The Jaffa–Jerusalem railway, funded by Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa à Jérusalem et Prolongements , was the first railway to be built in Palestine. Construction started on 31 March 1890 and the line opened on 26 September 1892. It was built to 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) with many tight curves and a ruling gradient of 2% (1 in 50). The eastern part of

4756-564: The United Kingdom to administer Palestine: a decision endorsed by a League of Nations mandate in 1922. In October 1920 railway administration was duly transferred from the military PMR to a new company, Palestine Railways (PR), owned by the British Mandate government. Throughout the military operations of the Ottoman and British Empires the Jaffa – Jerusalem railway had remained the property of

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4872-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

4988-450: The cemetery or have been placed around the opening of the well . An Ottoman village list from about 1870 showed that tine had 96 houses and a population of 277, though the population count included men, only. In 1882, the PEF 's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described it as an ordinary adobe village, with a well to the south. In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by

5104-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

5220-843: The railway to Beersheba into Sinai as far as Kusseima . The Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) of British and British Empire units was formed in March 1916. It began building the standard gauge Sinai Military Railway from El Kantara on the Suez Canal across Sinai, reaching Romani by May 1916, El Arish in January 1917 and Rafah in March 1917. The SMR borrowed rolling stock and 70 locomotives from Egyptian State Railways including 20 Robert Stephenson & Co. 0-6-0s , 20 Baldwin 2-6-0s and 15 Baldwin 4-4-0s . The SMR also acquired seven small shunting locomotives: two 0-6-0ST saddle tanks built in 1900 and 1902 that J. Aird & Co. had been using on

5336-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

5452-708: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Al-Tina Based on

5568-554: The 1050 mm gauge Hejaz Railway main line and 60 miles (97 km) of branch lines including the 1050 mm line between Afula on the Jezreel Valley railway, Nablus , and Tulkarm on the main line between Haifa and Lydda. The Afula – Mas'udiya service ended in 1932, and the Tulkarm – Mas'udiya – Nablus service in 1938, except for a 5 km dual gauge section between Tulkarm and the ballast quarries at Nur Shams . By August 1942,

5684-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

5800-630: The 1920s and '30s. The competition from increasing numbers of private cars reduced first-class and then second-class passenger traffic, such that by 1934, 95% of remaining passengers were third-class. The onset of the Great Depression in 1929 badly affected tourist traffic, from which the PR never recovered. As PR's finances deteriorated, in 1934 the United Kingdom government appointed a committee of investigation led by Sir Felix Pole , former chairman of Britain's Great Western Railway . Pole also had

5916-562: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

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6032-812: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

6148-599: The Allies and France surrendered to Germany and Italy, leaving the Mediterranean extremely dangerous for British merchant shipping. Early in 1942 PR belatedly began to convert its locomotives to burn oil, but it did not complete the conversion programme until 1943. In 1941 Britain started to supply two types of 2-8-0 Consolidation freight locomotive to its Middle East Command. One was the ROD 2-8-0 class that had been designed in 1911 as

6264-985: The British Government requisitioned many London and North Western Railway "Coal Engine" 0-6-0s and 50 London and South Western Railway 395 Class 0-6-0s. The British Government sent 42 LNWR and 36 LSWR locomotives to the PMR In 1918 the PMR ordered 50 new locomotives. British factories were fully occupied so the order was placed with Baldwin in the USA. They were 4-6-0s of a simple wartime design, widely used elsewhere including on railways in Belgium . The first ten were delivered to Palestine in April 1919. They had 5 ft 2 in (1,570 mm) driving wheels suitable for mixed traffic use. The PMR suffered at least one serious accident. In about 1918

6380-515: The French Société du Chemin de Fer Ottoman de Jaffa à Jérusalem et Prolongements . The French sought £1.5 million from the British for the J&J but after arbitration accepted £565,000 paid in instalments. The Lydda – Jaffa section was converted from 600mm gauge to standard gauge and reopened in September 1920. As PR's north-south main line had laid speedily for military purposes and its Jaffa – Jerusalem and Jezreel Valley lines were steeply graded, its trains were not very fast. Its highest speed limit

6496-614: The HBT between Haifa and Az-Zeeb just south of the Lebanese border and the British military Middle East Command operated the HBT between Az-Zeeb and Tripoli. Completion of the Ferdan bridge and HBT hugely enhanced PR's strategic role. PR's annual freight traffic grew from 858,995 tons in 1940-41 to 2,194,848 tons in 1943-44. The huge growth in the number of trains increased the potential for accidents. There were three head-on collisions and in 1942 six H class 4-6-0s were written off in accidents. The war effort both increased wear on equipment and reduced resources for maintenance. In November 1944

6612-399: The Haifa – Beirut section for through running of traffic carrying railway construction materials. The South Africans were transferred to other duties and the Haifa – Beirut section was completed by the New Zealand Railway Group. The New Zealand Railway Group also operated the 1050 mm gauge Jezreel Valley railway between Haifa and Daraa on the Syrian border, the Daraa – Damascus section of

6728-429: The Haifa – Beirut section was complete, the track was converted to standard gauge, and the stretch between Haifa and Acre, which was shared with the Jezreel Valley railway, to dual gauge . The new railway line started carrying through military traffic between Egypt, Palestine and Lebanon. By then Australian Royal Engineers were already building the Beirut – Tripoli section, which they completed in December 1942. PR operated

6844-399: The Hanomag well tank and the former Aird 1902 Manning Wardle for scrap in 1928. The Baldwin 4-6-0 locomotives were successful on most of Palestine's standard gauge network but could not haul adequate loads on the steep gradients from Jaffa via Lydda to Jerusalem. In 1922 PR obtained six engines from Kitson and Company in Leeds , England , specifically designed to be powerful enough for

6960-448: The Hejaz main line. Construction began at Haifa in 1902 and was completed at Daraa in 1905. The Jezreel Valley line, like the Hejaz main line, was built to 1,050 mm ( 3 ft  5 + 11 ⁄ 32  in ). Construction of a branch from Afula on the Jezreel Valley line to Jerusalem had begun in 1908 and reached Nablus by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Ottoman Empire needed to supply its forces holding

7076-426: The J&J trackbed from which the Ottoman army had removed the 1,000 mm ( 3 ft  3 + 3 ⁄ 8  in ) metre gauge track in 1915. The PMR borrowed several 3 ft 6 in ( 1,067 mm ) locomotives to work the 1,050 mm ( 3 ft  5 + 11 ⁄ 32  in ) narrow gauge tracks, which were a very tight fit. In April 1920 the San Remo conference mandated

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7192-460: The Jerusalem service. They were 2-8-4 T tank locomotives designated class K. They had 4 ft 0 in (1,220 mm) driving wheels, a diameter suitable for low-speed freight work and also for mountain gradients. The track gauge on the tight curves on the Jerusalem branch was widened from 1,435 mm ( 4 ft  8 + 1 ⁄ 2  in ) to as much as 4 ft 9.75 in (1,467 mm) but unfortunately even with this adjustment

7308-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

7424-429: The Middle East or to the part of Italy now under Allied control. In the second half of 1942 the USA started to supply locomotives to the British Middle East Command. By December 1942, 27 USATC S200 Class 2-8-2 Mikados were working the PR and HBT main lines and two USATC S100 Class 0-6-0T switchers were supplementing PR's shunting fleet. By June 1943 12 Whitcomb 65-DE-14 650 HP diesel-electric locomotives from

7540-410: The Qishon works converted five class H 4-6-0s to 4-6-4 T tank locomotives, designated class H3. In 1928 PR bought one vertical-boilered 0-4-0 T shunting locomotive and two vertical-boilered steam-powered railcars for local services from Sentinel-Cammell in Shrewsbury , England. Each railcar unit had two coach bodies articulated over three bogies. The shunter was capable of only light duties and by

7656-474: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

7772-413: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

7888-444: The SMR to Deir Seneid by the end of November 1917 and a branch to Beersheba by May 1918. From Deir Seneid, EEF engineers worked northwards converting the Ottoman tracks to standard gauge, reaching Lydda by February 1918, converting the branch to Jerusalem by June and continuing as far as Tulkarm on the Eastern Railway. From there they built the standard gauge line on a new route northwest to the coast and then northwards, reaching Haifa by

8004-515: The Suez Canal from Italian and German attack the first shipments of 2-8-0s were delivered to Egypt, but in March 1942 both types started to arrive in Palestine and by June 1942 24 ROD locomotives were working on PR and the Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli (HBT) line. In 1944-45 the ROD locomotives were transferred out of Palestine and replaced by LMS locomotives that had been in service on the Trans-Iranian Railway . Other LMS locomotives were overhauled in Palestine in 1944 before being deployed either elsewhere in

8120-522: The USA were working on the HBT and by 12 December more were working on the PR. The latter were an effective replacement for PR's Baldwins on the steeply-graded Jerusalem line but within a few months all had been transferred to double the diesel fleet on the HBT. Whitcomb diesels were the HBT's principal motive power until the middle of 1944 when they were replaced with ROD 2-8-0s and transferred to Italy. In 1936–39 Palestinian Arabs opposed to Jewish mass immigration revolted against British rule . Railways were

8236-413: The archaeological excavation in the eastern foot of the hill on which the village used to stand, a settlement was established in the site as early as the Byzantine era . Pottery, glassware and coins allowed the researchers to date this settlement to a short period between roughly 375 to 425 CE. The excavation has revealed remains of what may be a storehouse, with many broken wine jars. The structure included

8352-478: The border of Palestine against British and Empire forces in Egypt . The planned railway from Nablus through hilly country to Jerusalem could not be completed in time, so from 1915 the German railway engineer Heinrich August Meißner oversaw the building of a 1,050 mm ( 3 ft  5 + 11 ⁄ 32  in ) line westwards from El Mas'udiya to Tulkarm . From Tulkarm the terrain became much easier and

8468-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

8584-506: The coup in the brief Anglo-Iraqi War of May 1941. Then in June and July 1941 PR served as a supply route for the British Empire invasion of Vichy Syria and Lebanon . PR suffered relatively few enemy air attacks. In 1941 Haifa suffered several air raids, one of which left an unexploded bomb within a few yards of the line. The last significant air attack on the railway was late in 1942, damaging

8700-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

8816-549: The end of 1918. As the EEF advanced into Palestine it formed a new organisation, the Palestine Military Railway, to operate the various railways of various gauges that came under its control. Royal Engineers units restored Palestine's railways to working condition. The PMR laid a number of temporary 600 mm ( 1 ft  11 + 5 ⁄ 8  in ) narrow gauge lines, including one between Lydda and Jaffa on

8932-704: The end of the Second World War PR had stored it out of use. PR found the railcar format inflexible, as if passenger numbers exceeded the capacity of a railcar it was not practical to couple up an extra coach. In 1945 PR removed the Sentinel engines and converted the railcars to ordinary coaching stock. After 1928 PR retained a few 395 class 0-6-0s for shunting, but they were approaching 50 years old so in 1934 PR obtained three purpose-built 0-6-0T shunting locomotives from Nasmyth, Wilson to start replacing them. These were designated class N and PR took delivery of seven more in

9048-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

9164-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

9280-501: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

9396-599: The heavy eight-coupled class K was unsuitable and suffered a number of derailments. PR designated the Baldwin 4-6-0s class H . In 1926 six were shipped to Armstrong Whitworth and Company in Newcastle upon Tyne , England who rebuilt them as 4-6-2 T tank locomotives, designated class H2. In 1933 PR opened its own railway workshops in Haifa. In 1937, with the help of some parts supplied by Nasmyth, Wilson and Company in Salford , England,

9512-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

9628-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

9744-470: The last nine as shunting locomotives until 1936. The four Manning Wardle saddle tanks from the Inland Waterways and Docks Department were identical so PR designated them class M. These were satisfactory as shunting locomotives and PR kept them in service for many years. The J. Aird & Co. Manning Wardles were dissimilar and the PMR had already lost the older one in 1918 in a collision on the Jerusalem branch with an LSWR 395 class (see above). PR disposed of

9860-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

9976-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

10092-492: The line beside the canal continued until July 1942 when it reached El Shatt . ESR then took over operation of the completed route. South African Army engineers built the first section of a new Haifa – Beirut – Tripoli (HBT) railway, branching off the 1050 mm gauge Haifa – Acre line and running along the rocky coast and through two tunnels to Beirut. For its construction the HBT initially used 1050 mm gauge track throughout

10208-745: The line, in the Judean hills between Dayr Aban and Jerusalem, is particularly steep and winding. The "J&J"'s first locomotives were a fleet of five 2-6-0 Mogul tender locomotives from Baldwin in the USA, delivered in 1890 and 1892. On a number of occasions the Baldwins' six-coupled driving wheels either spread the rails or became derailed on tight curves. As traffic increased the J&J obtained four 0-4-4-0 Mallet articulated locomotives from Borsig in Germany , delivered between 1904 and 1914. The Mallets were intended to deliver greater tractive effort without spreading

10324-574: The line. Pinhas Rutenberg , the electricity concessionaire of Palestine, had been backed by High Commissioner Samuel in suggesting that the electrification of the line would not only be profitable but also crucial for the successful electrification of the country as a whole. However the Colonial Office backed off, fearing the heavy costs of this project This was a branch of the Hejaz Railway between Haifa and Daraa in southern Syria where it joined

10440-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

10556-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

10672-651: The older of the Manning Wardle saddle tanks that the PMR had acquired from J. Aird & Co. was shunting at Jerusalem when the weight of its train became too much for it to hold on the gradient. The train ran away downhill towards Bittir and collided with an LSWR 395 Class that was climbing towards Jerusalem. The resulting collision "practically demolished" the saddle tank. The LNWR 0-6-0s were old, worn out and performed very badly in Palestine, so PR retired all of them for scrap by 1922. The LSWR 0-6-0s performed better, so PR kept most of them in service until 1928 and retained

10788-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

10904-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

11020-571: The period 1935–38. H class 4-6-0s hauled the Haifa – El Kantara service until 1935, when the North British Locomotive Company in Glasgow , Scotland supplied six more powerful 4-6-0s that PR designated class P . These had a tractive effort of 28,470 lbf (126.6 kN): 16% more than the 24,479 lbf (108.9 kN) of classes H, H2 and H3. Class P also had 5 ft 6 + 3 ⁄ 4  in (1,695 mm) driving wheels:

11136-451: The rail link to Haifa port. The attacks killed one railway worker and wounded ten more. In June 1941 Australian Army Engineers started building a line alongside the Suez Canal southwards from PR's terminus at El Kantara. In July 1941 they connected the new line with Egyptian State Railways (ESR) by a swing bridge at El Ferdan across the canal. In August 1941 PR started operating a through service between Haifa and Cairo . Construction of

11252-494: The rails, but they too suffered a number of derailments. In 1915, during World War I , the Ottoman Army widened the track gauge between Lydda and Jerusalem to 1,050 mm ( 3 ft  5 + 11 ⁄ 32  in ) to allow through running with the Hejaz Railway and removed the track between Lydda and Jaffa for military use elsewhere. In 1921, the British Government of Palestine seriously considered electrifying

11368-475: The railways, but additional revenue is now available and considerable sums have already been spent and are about to be spent for this purpose. Any further action which may be found to be necessary arising out of recent expert enquiries will be taken as soon as possible." Despite MacDonald's promise PR never received the necessary capital and neither of Pole's proposed lines was ever built by Palestine Railways. The only extension that Pole recommended and PR did build

11484-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

11600-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

11716-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

11832-503: The specific task of advising to improve stations and the railway route to improve links between Jaffa, Tel-Aviv and Haifa. The other members of Pole's committee were C. M. Jenkin-Jones of Britain's London and North Eastern Railway and the accountant Sir Laurence Halsey, who was a partner in Price Waterhouse . Jenkin-Jones' specific task was to advise how to develop traffic facilities, traffic organisation and what rates to charge. Halsey

11948-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

12064-468: The study, the site remained unsettled until the Ottoman period. Al-Tina was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 with all of Palestine , and in 1596 it appeared in the tax registers under the name of Safiriyya , as being in the nahiya ("subdistrict") of Gaza, which was part of Gaza Sanjak . It had a population of 10 households; an estimated 55 persons, who were all Muslims . They paid

12180-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

12296-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

12412-419: Was "the most pressing of all the railway problems" . PR sought to alleviate this by building water softening plants at the main watering points on its network, frequently chemically testing the water and eventually fitting all locomotives with blowing down apparatus with which the driver could purge sludge from the boiler. PR had fuelled its locomotives with Welsh coal but in June 1940 Italy declared war on

12528-406: Was 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) and even its best trains achieved less than 30 miles per hour (48 km/h) overall between termini. From 1920 PR developed a daily Haifa – El Kantara mixed traffic service. Wagons-Lits provided restaurant and sleeping cars three days per week until 1923, when this luxury service was increased to daily. Palestine lacked a deep-water seaport until 1933 when one

12644-428: Was a short extension for freight from Jaffa station to the harbour. Jaffa harbour was so constrained by hazardous rocks that only small vessels dared to enter it; ocean-going cargo ships would lie off-shore and transfer their freight to or from the docks by lighters . Pole's recommendation to rebuild the harbour was not implemented, so as a result PR's new freight line received little use. For standard gauge use overseas

12760-727: Was a supply route for the North African Campaign that lasted from the Italian attack on Egypt in 1940 until the German surrender in Tunisia in May 1943. In April – May 1941 the Italian air force and German Luftwaffe used Vichy French air bases in the mandated territories of Syria and Lebanon as staging posts to support Rashid Ali 's coup d'état against Iraq's pro-British government . British and Empire forces landed in southern Iraq and overthrew

12876-635: Was built at Haifa. Until then, cargo that Palestinian ports could not handle would pass through Port Said in Egypt. Egyptian State Railways carried the freight between Port Said and El Kantara and PR carried it between El Kantara East and Palestine. No bridge was built across the Suez Canal until 1941, so freight was ferried across the canal between the ESR and PR stations on opposite banks at El Kantara. This would have included deliveries of locomotives and rolling stock to PR. PR passenger traffic declined significantly in

12992-424: Was fitted with a long bar propelling a pony truck intended to detonate any mine safely without injuring any of the armoured car's occupants. British soldiers made Arab hostages ride on the pony truck so that any mine would be likely to kill them. Security measures failed to stop attacks on the railway. One attack damaged a Sentinel railcar. In October 1937 a more serious attack damaged a passenger train and prompted

13108-467: Was founded in 1946 and it had an initial enrollment of 67 students. Al-Tina was depopulated during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War on July 8, 1948, by the Givati Brigade under Operation An-Far . In 1992 the village site was described: "The village has been completely effaced. Next to the site is a wide area, overgrown with bushes and thorns, that is fenced in on the southern side. An orange grove

13224-480: Was operated around the key central junction at Lydda. It identified serious under-investment, reporting that Jaffa and Tel Aviv stations were "inadequate and unsuitable" and "traffic congestion [was] considerable" around Lydda. Passengers between Haifa and Tel Aviv or Jaffa had to change at Lydda, which was both inadequate for passengers and a source of congestion at Lydda station . Pole therefore recommended building two new link lines from Tel Aviv to by-pass Lydda:

13340-506: Was suspended. In September 1938 first the Jerusalem line and then El Kantara line were closed by extensive sabotage. After the latter was reopened in October, Haifa – El Kantara trains were run only three days per week compared with the previous daily service. The worst year was 1938, in which 13 railway workers were killed and 123 injured. During the Second World War traffic on PR increased dramatically from 1940 to 1945. The PR main line

13456-404: Was to advise on the accounting system and the establishment of an adequate renewals fund. In the 1934–35 financial year Palestine Railways suffered a net deficit of £87,940. Later in 1935 Pole's committee published its report, which really was three related reports from the three committee members. Each member's recommendations called for considerable investment. Pole criticised the way the railway

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