153-707: The Simele massacre ( Arabic : مذبحة سميل , romanized : maḏbaḥat Simīl ), also known as the Assyrian affair , was committed by the Kingdom of Iraq , led by Bakr Sidqi , during a campaign systematically targeting the Assyrians in and around Simele in August 1933. The number of deaths was estimated by British officials at 600. Some Assyrian estimates are higher, positing that as many as 6,000 were killed and over 100 Assyrian villages were destroyed and looted. The majority of
306-526: A jihad against a small Christian minority. In the long term, however, the British backed Iraq and rejected an international inquiry into the killings, fearing that this may provoke further massacres against Christians. They also did not insist on punishing the offenders, who were now seen as heroes by Iraqis. The official British stance was to defend the Iraqi government for its perseverance and patience in dealing with
459-651: A Christian administration is demanded in Turkish Armenia, as in Lebanon. Today a version of religion-based legal pluralism resembling the millet system still persists in varying forms in some post-Ottoman countries like Iraq , Syria , Jordan , Lebanon , Israel , the Palestinian Authority , Egypt , and Greece (for religious minorities), which observe the principle of separate personal courts and/or laws for every recognized religious community and reserved seats in
612-543: A Muslim fell under their sharia -based law. Later, the perception of the millet concept was altered in the 19th century by the rise of nationalism within the Ottoman Empire. Although the Ottoman administration of non-Muslim subjects was not uniform until the 19th century and varied according to region and group, it is possible to identify some common patterns for earlier epochs. Christian and Jewish communities were granted
765-562: 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
918-430: A consequence of the separation by Church affiliation, as was required by 19th century Ottoman law. Syriac Catholics The Syriac Catholic community was recognized as its own millet in 1829. Chaldeans The Chaldean Catholic community was recognized as its own millet in 1844. Syriac Orthodox The Syriac Orthodox community in the Ottoman Empire was for long not recognized as its own millet , but part of
1071-756: A constitutional committee which, taken together, make up the Basic Laws of the Greek Orthodox Millet . Until the 19th century, there was a single Armenian millet which served all ethnic Armenians irrespective of whether they belonged to the Armenian Apostolic Church , the Armenian Catholic Church , or the Armenian Protestant Church (which was formed in the 19th century). Besides a religious role, this millet also played
1224-435: 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
1377-1077: 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
1530-708: A junior officer in the army. On 13 August, Bakr Sidqi moved his troops to Alqosh , where he planned to inflict a further massacre on the Assyrians who found refuge there. The main campaign lasted until 16 August 1933, but violent raids on Assyrians were being reported up to the end of the month. The campaign resulted in one third of the Assyrian population of Iraq fleeing to Syria. On 18 August 1933, Iraqi troops entered Mosul, where they were given an enthusiastic reception by its Muslim inhabitants. Triumphant arches were erected and decorated with melons pierced with daggers, symbolising
1683-526: A large degree of autonomy. Tax collection, education, legal and religious affairs of these communities were administered by their own leaders. This enabled the Ottomans to rule over diverse peoples with "a minimum of resistance". The Jewish community, in particular, prospered under Ottoman rule, and its ranks were swelled with the arrival of Jews who were expelled from Spain. At the same time, non-Muslims were subject to several forms of discrimination and excluded from
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#17328554762841836-483: 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
1989-613: A massacre had been committed in Simele. Faisal left Iraq again on 2 September 1933, seeking a cooler climate in London. He died five days later in Bern, Switzerland. Mar Shimun, who had been detained since June 1933, was forced into exile along with his extended family, despite initial British reluctance. He was flown on an RAF plane to Cyprus on 18 August 1933, and to the United States in 1949, forcing
2142-677: 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
2295-592: A person's private business in which the state should not interfere. However, all such proposals have been defeated. Greece recognizes only a Muslim minority, and no ethnic or national minorities, such as Turks , Pomaks , or Bulgarians . This is the result of several international treaties as the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations of 1923 and of the Treaty of Lausanne of 1924, when
2448-616: A political and cultural role. Namely, it bundled together all Armenian and some other groups, showcasing a shift from religious identity towards national identity. As a result of this, a type of hegemony emerged in which all groups that were under this millet had to conform to the norms imposed by the leader of the millet , who was appointed by the Sultan. This had a cultural, political, linguistic, and religious effect on all of these groups. Only later did separate Catholic millets emerge. Non-Armenians from churches which were theologically linked to
2601-760: A protector at the Porte in the person of the French ambassador. In this way the Roman Catholic millet was established at the start of the Tanzimat reforms. In a 1910 book William Ainger Wigram used the term melet in application to the Persian Sasanian Empire , arguing that the situation there was similar to the Ottoman millet system and no other term was readily available to describe it. Some other authors have also adopted this usage. The early Christians there formed
2754-576: 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
2907-462: 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",
3060-457: A senior ethnic Kurdish general who was stationed in Mosul, be transferred to another region due to his open animosity towards the Assyrians. Later, they had to intervene to dissuade Faysal from personally leading a tribal force to punish the Assyrians. The general Iraqi public opinion, promoted by newspapers, that the Assyrians were proxies used by the British to undermine the newly established kingdom,
3213-465: 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
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#17328554762843366-550: A system based on the Ottoman millet , in which personal status is based on a person's belonging to a religious community. The state of Israel – on the basis of laws inherited from Ottoman times and retained both under British rule and by independent Israel – reserves the right to recognise some communities but not others. Thus, Orthodox Judaism is officially recognised in Israel, while Reform Rabbis and Conservative Rabbis are not recognised and cannot perform marriages. Israel recognised
3519-503: 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
3672-499: 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
3825-470: 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
3978-727: 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
4131-585: 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
4284-542: 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
4437-621: Is attested in Ottoman administrative documents into the 19th century. Benjamin Braude has argued that before the Tanzimat reforms, the word millet in the sense of religious community denoted the Muslim religious community or the Christians outside of the Ottoman Empire. This view is supported by Donald Quataert . In contrast, Michael Ursinus writes that the word was used to refer to non-Muslim subjects of
4590-469: 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
4743-577: Is closely linked to Islamic rules on the treatment of non−Muslim minorities living under Islamic dominion ( dhimmi ). The Ottoman term specifically refers to the separate legal courts pertaining to personal law under which minorities were allowed to rule themselves (in cases not involving any Muslim) with fairly little interference from the Ottoman government . People were bound to their millets by their religious affiliations (or their confessional communities ), rather than their ethnic origins, according to
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4896-408: 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
5049-468: 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
5202-566: 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
5355-836: 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
5508-559: 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
5661-532: Is the army," requesting compulsory military service. Rashid Ali al-Gaylani presented the bill to the parliament. His government fell, however, before conscription was enacted; Jamil al-Midfai 's government did so in February 1934. The massacres and looting had a deep psychological impact on the Assyrians. Stafford reported their low morale upon arrival in Alqosh: When I visited Alqosh myself on August 21st I found
5814-584: 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
5967-413: 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
6120-516: 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
6273-445: 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
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6426-643: The Archbishopric of Ohrid , autonomous Orthodox Churches under the tutelage of the Ecumenical Patriarch, were taken over by the Greek Phanariots during the 18th century, in 1766 and 1767 respectively. By the 19th century the Orthodox Christian millet was dominated by Greeks, which were worried of Bulgarian and Romanian autocephalism. Over the course of 1860–1862, a series of laws were produced by
6579-729: The Armenian millet under the Armenian Patriarch. This meant that the Syriac Orthodox were subject to the hegemony of the Armenians linguistically, culturally, politically, and religiously. During the Tanzimat reforms (1839–78), the Syriac Orthodox were granted independent status with the recognition of their own millet in 1873. Under the millet system the Jews were organized as a community on
6732-634: The British Foreign Secretary , Lord Salisbury on 13 April 1878. It is no longer possible for the Armenians and the Turks to live together. Only a Christian administration can provide the equality, justice and the freedom of conscience. A Christian administration should replace the Muslim administration. Armenia (Eastern Anatolia) and Kilikya, are the regions where the Christian administration should be founded... The Turkish Armenians want this... That is,
6885-892: The Church of the East (later known as the Nestorian Church after the Nestorian schism ). The Church of the East's leader, the Catholicos or Patriarch of the East , was responsible to the Persian king for the Christians within the Empire. This system of maintaining the Christians as a protected religious community continued after the Islamic conquest of the Sassanids, and the community of Nestorian Christians flourished and
7038-471: The Druze and Baháʼí as separate communities, which the Ottomans and British had not – due mainly to political considerations. Also, the state of Israel reserves the right to determine to which community a person belongs, and officially register him or her accordingly – even when the person concerned objects to being part of a religious community (e.g., staunch atheists of Jewish origin are registered as members of
7191-541: The Foreign Ministry , as if they represented foreign nations, but after 1878 it was through the Justice Ministry . Historian Johann Strauss wrote that the term "seems to be so essential for the understanding of the Ottoman system and especially the status of non-Muslims". Other authors interpret the millet system as one form of non-territorial autonomy and consider it as such a potentially universal solution to
7344-514: The French Revolution had extended to the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. Each millet became increasingly independent with the establishment of its own schools, churches, hospitals and other facilities. These activities effectively moved the Christian population outside the framework of the Ottoman political system. The Ottoman millet system (citizenship) began to degrade with increasing identification of religious creed with ethnic nationality. The interaction of ideas of French revolution with
7497-424: The League of Nations in 1932. His followers planned to resign from the Assyrian Levies and to re-group as a militia and concentrate in the north, creating a de facto Assyrian enclave. In spring 1933, Malik Yaqo , a former Levies officer, was engaged in a propaganda campaign on behalf of Assyrian Patriarch Shimun XXI Eshai (or Mar Shimun), trying to persuade Assyrians not to apply for Iraqi nationality or accept
7650-400: The Ottoman Empire , a millet ( Turkish: [millet] ; Ottoman Turkish : ملت ) was an independent court of law pertaining to "personal law" under which a confessional community (a group abiding by the laws of Muslim sharia , Christian canon law , or Jewish halakha ) was allowed to rule itself under its own laws. Despite frequently being referred to as a " system ", before
7803-467: 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
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#17328554762847956-422: The millet concept (excepting the Armenian case, until the modern era). The millets had a great deal of power – they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. All that was required was loyalty to the Empire. When a member of one millet committed a crime against a member of another, the law of the injured party applied, but the ruling Islamic majority being paramount, any dispute involving
8109-406: The millet system created a strain of thought (a new form of personal identification) which made nationality synonymous with religion under the Ottoman flag. It was impossible to hold the system or prevent Clash of Civilizations when the Armenian national liberation movement expressed itself within the Armenian church. Patriarch Nerses Varjabedyan expressed his position on Ottoman Armenians to
8262-494: 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
8415-454: The " Regulation of the Armenian Nation " (Turkish: Nizâmnâme−i Millet−i Ermeniyân ): a constitution for the Armenian Orthodox Gregorian nation ( millet ) of that time. This document was drawn up by Armenian intelligentsia, which sought to curb the powers of the Armenian Patriarch and nobility. It created an Armenian National Assembly. These two reforms, which were theoretically perfect examples of social change by law, caused serious stress on
8568-419: 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
8721-718: 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. Millet (Ottoman Empire) In
8874-454: 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
9027-427: The 1856 Imperial Reform edict, the Armenian Protestant Millet was the first millet to have a constitution sanctioned by the government, which was based on the principle of representative and lay control. Debate for a constitution among the Gregorian Armenians would be influenced by the Protestant Armenians'. The Armenian Gregorian Millet received a constitution on March 29, 1863, after several years of tensions within
9180-443: The 1915 Assyrian genocide , at the hands of the Ottoman Turks , while the rest endured two winter marches to Urmia in 1915 and to Hamadan in 1918. Many of them were relocated by the British to refugee camps in Baquba and later to Habbaniyah , and in 1921 some were enlisted in the Assyrian Levies , a military force under British command, which participated in the Kirkuk Massacre of 1924 of Kurds , Arabs, and Turkomen during
9333-454: The 19th century, the millets had a great deal of power – they set their own laws and collected and distributed their own taxes. The Tanzimat reforms aimed to encourage Ottomanism among the subject nations and stop the rise of secessionist nationalist movements. within the Ottoman Empire. The reforms tried to integrate non-Muslims and non-Turks more thoroughly into the Ottoman society with new laws and regulations, but failed. In 1856, during
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#17328554762849486-462: 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
9639-603: 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
9792-409: The Armenian Church (by virtue of being non-Chalcedonians ) were under the authority of the Armenian Patriarchate, although they maintained a separate hierarchy with their own Patriarchs; these groups included the Syriac Orthodox and the Copts . Armenian Catholics and Armenian Protestants in 1850 (with British backing) separated from the Armenian Gregorian Millet to become their own millets. After
9945-455: The Armenian community between Loussavorial and Khavarials and with the Porte . Assyrian or Eastern Syriacs Assyrians are referred to as 'Asuri' in the Turkish vernacular. Assyrians split by Christian sect were thus treated as separate ethnic groups for the Ottoman government. The Church of the East largely identifies as Assyrian, but the liturgical language is called Syriac, hence multiple 'millets' for Syriac speaking Assyrians arose as
10098-411: The Armenians; the Eastern Orthodox perceived American Protestants, who had over 100 missionaries established in Anatolia by World War I , as weakening their own teaching. These religious activities, subsidized by the governments of western nations, were not devoid of political goals, such in the case of candlestick wars of 1847, which eventually led in 1854 to the Crimean War . Tension began among
10251-466: The Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians), and Bulgarians (Bulgar). The Ecumenical Patriarch was recognized as the highest religious and political leader ( millet-bashi , or ethnarch ) of all Eastern Orthodox subjects of the Sultan, though in certain periods some major powers, such as Russia (under the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca ), or Britain claimed the rights of protection over the Ottoman Empire's Orthodox subjects. The Serbian Patriarchate of Peć and
10404-406: The Assyrians affected by the massacres were adherents of the Church of the East (often dubbed Nestorian ), who originally inhabited the mountainous Hakkari and Barwari regions covering parts of the modern provinces of Hakkâri , Şırnak and Van in Turkey and the Dohuk Governorate in Iraq , with a population ranging between 75,000 and 150,000. Most of these Assyrians were massacred during
10557-470: The Assyrians, like the Assyrians elsewhere, utterly panic-stricken. Not only were they disturbed, but their spirit was completely broken. It was difficult to recognize in their cowed demeanour the proud mountaineers whom everyone had known so well and admired so much for the past dozen years. Because of the massacre, around 6,200 Assyrians left the Nineveh Plains immediately for the neighbouring French Mandate of Syria , and were later joined by 15,000 refugees
10710-406: The Balkans, overrunning the Catholic populations of Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, and Hungary. The Melkite Catholics gained their autonomy as a religious community in 1848 by Sultan Abdulmecid . Bruce Masters claims that Melkite Catholics insisted that they had a millet of their own, that would grant them "sense of distinctiveness". In the Orient, the 16th century saw the Maronites of Lebanon,
10863-413: The Bilu, a group of young Russian Jews who were pioneers in the Zionist movement, proposed negotiating with the Sultan to allow a millet like settlement which would allow them greater independence in Palestine. After the Fall of Constantinople , the only Latin Catholic group in the Sultan's domain were the Genoese who lived in the Byzantine capital. Over the next decades, Turkish armies pushed into
11016-676: The British retained military bases , local militia in the form of Assyrian Levies , and transit rights for their forces. From Iraqi nationalists' point of view, the Assyrian Levies were British proxies to be used by their 'masters' to destroy the new Iraqi state, whose independence the British had consistently opposed. Under British protection, the Assyrian Levies had not become Iraqi citizens until 1924. The British allowed their Assyrian auxiliary troops to retain their arms after independence and granted them special duty and privileges, guarding military air installations and receiving higher pay than
11169-601: The Catholic and Orthodox monks in Palestine with France channeling resources to increase its influence in the region from 1840. Repairs to shrines were important for the sects as they were linked to the possession of keys to the shrines. Notes were given by the protectorates, including the French, to the Ottoman capital about the governor; he was condemned as he had to defend the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by placing soldiers inside
11322-826: The Christians were planning to blow up bridges up and poison drinking water in major Iraqi cities. The Iraqi Army, led by Bakr Sidqi , an experienced brigadier general and Iraqi nationalist , moved north in order to crush the Assyrian revolt. The Iraqi forces started executing every Assyrian male found in the mountainous Bekher region between Zakho and Duhok starting from 8 August 1933. Assyrian civilians were transported in military trucks from Zakho and Dohuk to uninhabited places, in batches of eight or ten, where they were shot with machine guns and run over by heavy armoured cars to make sure no one survived. While these killings were taking place, nearby Kurdish , Arab and Yazidi tribes were encouraged to loot Assyrian villages. Kurdish tribes of Gulli, Sindi and Selivani were encouraged by
11475-683: The Iraqi Arab recruits. The nationalists believed the British were hoping for the Assyrians to destroy Iraq's internal cohesion by becoming independent and by inciting others such as the Kurds to follow their example. In addition, elements of the Royal Iraqi Army resented the British and the Assyrians for having recently caused them to lose face very badly. This was because the British Army and Assyrian Levies had succeeded in defeating Kurdish revolts after
11628-611: The Iraqi Army. While crossing the Tigris in the Assyrian village of Dirabun , a clash erupted between the Assyrians and an Iraqi Army brigade. Despite the advantage of heavy artillery, the Iraqis were driven back to their military base in Dirabun. The Assyrians, convinced that the army had targeted them deliberately, attacked an army barracks with little success. They were driven back to Syria upon
11781-418: The Iraqi flag flying over the police post was pulled down. Without warning or obvious provocation, the troops began to fire indiscriminately into the defenseless Assyrians. Ismael Abbawi Tohalla , the commanding officer, then ordered his troops not to target women. Stafford described the ensuing massacre: A cold blooded and methodical massacre of all the men in the village then followed, a massacre which for
11934-457: The Jewish religious community, a practice derived ultimately from the fact that the millet ultimately designated a person's ethnicity more than a person's beliefs). Israeli secularists such as Shulamit Aloni and Uri Avnery often protested and called for abolition of this Ottoman remnant, and its replacement by a system modeled on that of the United States where religious affiliation is considered
12087-704: The Kurdish disturbances in the north, a conspiracy by British colonialists to divide and rule Iraq by agitating its various minorities against the central government. With Iraqi independence, the new Assyrian spiritual-temporal leader, Shimun XXI Eshai ( Catholicos Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East), demanded an autonomous Assyrian homeland within Iraq, seeking support from the United Kingdom and pressing his case before
12240-677: The Latins of Palestine, and most of the Greek islands, which once held Latin Catholic communities, come under Turkish rule. Papal response to the loss of these communities was initially a call to the crusade, but the response from the European Catholic monarchs was weak: French interest, moreover, lay in an alliance with the Turks against the Habsburgs . Furthermore, the Catholics of the Ottoman world received
12393-412: 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
12546-659: The Ottoman Empire do not define the Muslims as being in a millet . The Ottoman Turkish version of the Ottoman Constitution of 1876 uses the word " millet ", as do the Arabic and Persian versions; despite this, at the time the usage of the Arabic word " milla " was declining in favour of the word " ummah ". The Armenian, Greek, and Jewish residents did not use the word " millet " and instead described themselves as "nations" ( French : nation , Armenian: ազգ (azg), Greek: Έθνος (ethnos), and Ladino: nasyon ). The lack of use of
12699-499: The Ottoman Empire even before that time. The term was used inconsistently prior to the 19th century. The systematic use of millet as designation for non-Muslim Ottoman communities dates from the reign of Sultan Mahmud II ( r. 1808–1839 ) in the early 19th century, when official documentation came to reiterate that non-Muslim subjects were organized into three officially sanctioned millets : Greek Orthodox , Armenian , and Jewish . The bureaucrats of this era asserted that
12852-614: The Ottoman Empire, despite being Muslim, mainly kept to themselves and maintained their separate identity, even having their own courts, in which they would tolerate no outside influence. The Orthodox Christians were included in the Rum Millet ( millet-i Rûm ) or the " Roman nation ", and enjoyed a certain autonomy. It was named after Roman ("Byzantine") subjects of the Ottoman Empire, but Orthodox Greeks , Bulgarians , Albanians , Georgians , Arabs , Aromanians , Megleno-Romanians , Romanians , and Serbs were all considered part of
13005-421: The Ottoman Empire. Norman Stillman explains that the prosperity of medieval Jews was closely tied to that of their Muslim governors. Stillman notes that during the time between the 9th and 13th centuries when Jewish culture blossomed, "medieval Islamic civilization was at its apogee". Given their rampant persecution in medieval Europe, many Jews looked favorably upon millet . In the late 19th century such groups as
13158-545: The Ottoman political and administrative structure. The Ottoman System lost important domestic powers under the Capitulations of the Ottoman Empire . Many foreigners resident in the Empire were not subject to its laws, but rather those of their homelands. In addition, European powers became formal Protectors of certain groups in the empire: Russia of Eastern Orthodox groups, France of Roman Catholics, and Great Britain of Jews and other groups. Russia and Britain competed for
13311-452: The Ottoman ruling elite. Armenians formed three millets under the Ottoman rule. A wide array of other groups such as Catholics , Karaites , and Samaritans was also represented. The large number of Circassians in the Ottoman Empire was mainly due to the Crimean War . During the war and following years, many Circassians fled the conquest of their homeland by Russia . Circassians in
13464-672: 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
13617-561: 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
13770-632: The Royal Iraqi Army had tried and failed. The end of the British Mandate of Iraq caused considerable unease among the Assyrians, who felt betrayed by the British Empire. For them, any treaty with the Iraqis had to take into consideration their desire for an autonomous position similar to the Ottoman Millet system . The Iraqis, on the other hand felt that the Assyrians' demands were, alongside
13923-429: The Sultan. During the 19th century rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire , as a result of the Tanzimat reforms (1839–76), the term was used for legally protected ethno-linguistic minority groups , similar to the way other countries use the word nation . During this era, the status of these groups, their relation to the central government, and their self-governance, were codified into constitutions , elevating
14076-509: The Tanzimat era, Sultan Abdulmejid I enacted the Hatt-ı Hümayun (modern Turkish Islahat Fermânı ; "Firman of the Reforms"), which proclaimed freedom of religion and civil equality of all religious communities. It further granted the authorities in each millet greater privileges and self-governing powers, but also required oaths of allegiance to the Sultan. In March 1863, the Sultan enacted
14229-399: The air and pierced on to the points of bayonets. Holy books were used for the burning of the massacred. The official Iraqi account—that the Assyrian casualties were sustained during a short battle with Kurdish and Arab tribes—has been discredited by all historians. Khaldun Husry claims that the mass killing was not premeditated and that the responsibility lies on the shoulders of Ismael Abbawi,
14382-417: The arrival of Iraqi aeroplanes. The Iraqi Army lost 33 soldiers during the fighting while the Assyrian irregulars took fewer casualties. Historians do not agree on who started the clashes at the border. The British Administrative Inspector for Mosul , Lieutenant Colonel R. R. Stafford, wrote that the Assyrians had no intention of clashing with the Iraqis, while the Iraqi historian Khaldun Husry claims that it
14535-487: The author of the whole campaign and the ensuing massacres. For him, the events were part of a history of Iraq prior to the true nationalist revolution. Iraqi–British relations entered a short cooling-down period during and after the crisis. The Iraqis were previously encouraged by the British to detain Patriarch Shimun in order to defuse tensions. The British were also wary of Iraqi military leaders and recommended Sidqi,
14688-534: The basis of religion, alongside the other millets ( e.g. Eastern Orthodox millet , Armenian millet , etc.). They were the most geographically spread group within the empire. Ottoman Jews enjoyed privileges similar to Christians in the Ottoman Empire. In the framework of the millet they had a considerable amount of administrative autonomy and were represented by the Hakham Bashi ( Turkish : Hahambaşı حاخامباشی), who held broad powers to enact, judge, and enforce
14841-511: The black treachery in which it was conceived and the callousness with which it was carried out, was as foul a crime as any in the blood stained annals of the Middle East. The Assyrians had no fight left in them, partly because of the state of mind to which the events of the past week had reduced them, largely because they were disarmed. Had they been armed it seems certain that Ismail Abawi Tohalla and his bravos would have hesitated to take them on in fair fight. Having disarmed them, they proceeded with
14994-402: The central government and to keep their power in check. Many clerics in the millet system pushed back against these reforms as they believed it was meant to weaken the millets and the power these clerics had built for themselves. These millets , refusing to give up any autonomy, slowed down the attempted reforms and their impact on the equality of religious communities. Before the turn of
15147-567: 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
15300-508: The crisis and absolved Sidqi from ordering the mass killing in Simele. He hinted that Faysal was the authority who might have issued orders to exterminate Assyrian males. Kanan Makiya , a leftist Iraqi historian, presents the actions taken by the military as a manifestation of the nationalist anti-imperialist paranoia which was to culminate with the Ba'athists ascending to power in the 1960s. Fadhil al-Barrak, an Iraqi Ba'athist historian, credits Sidqi as
15453-463: The crisis and to attribute the massacres to rogue army units. A report on the battle of Dirabun blames the Assyrians, defends the actions of the Iraqi Army, and commends Sidqi as a good officer. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
15606-492: The crowded rooms, fired among them until not a man was left standing in the shambles. In some other instance the blood lust of the troops took a slightly more active form, and men were dragged out and shot or bludgeoned to death and their bodies thrown on a pile of dead. In his depiction of the massacre, Mar Shimun states: Girls were raped and made to march naked before Iraqi commanders. Children were run over by military cars. Pregnant women were bayonetted. Children were flung in
15759-470: The eighteenth century. Subsequently, the millet system was justified through numerous foundation myths linking it back to the time of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1451–81), although it is now understood that no such system existed in the fifteenth century. Heads of millets, or milletbaşı ( Ethnarch ), usually had absolute secular and ecclesiastical power over their communities, being answerable only to
15912-577: 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
16065-728: 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
16218-593: 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
16371-597: The following years. They concentrated in the Jazira region and built a number of villages on the banks of the Khabur River . King Faisal, who had recently returned to Iraq from a medical vacation, was under great physical stress during the crisis. His health deteriorated even more during the hot summer days in Baghdad; the British chargé d'affaires described meeting him in his pajamas as he sat in his bed on 15 August, denying that
16524-501: 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
16677-425: The freshly cut wheat and barley. During the night of 10–11 August, the Arab inhabitants of Simele joined the looting. The Assyrian villagers could only watch as their Arab neighbours drove their flocks before them. On 11 August the villagers were ordered to leave the police post and return to their homes, which they began to do with some reluctance. As they were heading back Iraqi soldiers in armoured cars arrived, and
16830-484: The government of Mosul demanded that the central government 'ruthlessly' stamp out the rebellion, eliminate all foreign influence in Iraqi affairs, and take immediate steps to enact a law for compulsory military service. The next week, 49 Kurdish tribal chieftains joined in a pro-conscription telegram to the government, expressing thanks for punishing the 'Assyrian insurgents', stating that a "nation can be proud of itself only through its power, and since evidence of this power
16983-488: The head of the Assyrian Church of the East to relocate to Chicago, where it remained until 2015. In 1948, Shimun met with the representatives of Iraq, Syria and Iran in Washington , subsequently calling upon his followers to "live as loyal citizens wherever they resided in the Middle East" and relinquishing his role as a temporal leader and the nationalistic role of the church. This left a power vacuum in Assyrian politics that
17136-425: The heads of murdered Assyrians. The crown prince Ghazi himself came to the city to award 'victorious' colours to those military and tribal leaders who participated in the massacres and the looting. Anti-Christian feeling was at its height in Mosul, and the Christians of the city were largely confined to their homes during the whole month in fear of further action by the frenzied mob. The Iraqi Army later paraded in
17289-579: 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
17442-608: 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
17595-417: The last refuge for Assyrians fleeing from the looted villages. The mayor of Zakho arrived with a military force on 8 and 9 August to disarm the city. During that time thousands of refugees flocked around the police post in the town, where they were told by officials that they would be safe under the Iraqi flag. 10 August saw the arrival of Kurdish and Arab looters who, undeterred by the local police, took away
17748-599: 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)
17901-420: 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
18054-491: The laws among the Jews in the Ottoman Empire and often sat on the Sultan's divan . The Jewish millet received a constitution in 1865. The Jews, like the other millet communities of the Ottoman Empire, were still considered "People of the book" and protected by the Sharia Law of Islam. However, while the Jews were not viewed in the eyes of the law as equals of Muslims, they were still treated relatively well at points during
18207-414: The loss of a large part of their own livestock to drought in the previous years. More than 60 Assyrian villages were looted. While women and children were mostly allowed to take refuge in neighbouring villages, men were sometimes rounded up and handed over to the army, by whom they were shot. Some villages were completely burned down and most of them were later inhabited by Kurds. The town of Simele became
18360-883: 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
18513-401: The massacre according to plan. This took some time. Not that there was any hurry, for the troops had the whole day ahead of them. Their opponents were helpless and there was no chance of any interference from any quarter whatsoever. Machine gunners set up their guns outside the windows of the houses in which the Assyrians had taken refuge, and having trained them on the terror stricken wretches in
18666-520: The mayor of Zakho to loot villages to the northeast of Simele, while Yazidis and Kurds also raided Assyrian villages in Shekhan and Amadiya . Most women and children from those villages took refuge in Simele and Dohuk . On 9 August, the Arab tribes of Shammar and Jubur started crossing to the east bank of the Tigris and raiding Assyrian villages on the plains to the south of Dohuk. They were mostly driven by
18819-507: The millet system was a tradition dating back to the reign of Sultan Mehmed I ( r. 1413–1421 ). Many historians have accepted this claim and assumed that a millet system of this form existed since early Ottoman times. Recent scholarship has cast doubt on this idea, showing that it was rather a later political innovation, which was introduced in the rhetorical garb of an ancient tradition. The Ottoman state used religion rather than ethnicity to define each millet , and people who study
18972-526: The modern issues of ethnic and religious diversity. According to Taner Akçam , the Ottoman state was "... based on the principle of heterogeneity and difference rather than homogeneity and sameness, [which] functioned in an opposite way to modern nation-states." The term millet , which originates from the Arabic milla , had three basic meanings in Ottoman Turkish: religion, religious community and nation. The first sense derives from Quranic usage and
19125-768: 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
19278-419: The nineteenth century the organization of what are now retrospectively called millets in the Ottoman Empire was not at all systematic. Rather, non-Muslims were simply given a significant degree of autonomy within their own community, without an overarching structure for the millet as a whole. The notion of distinct millets corresponding to different religious communities within the empire would not emerge until
19431-632: The old millet categories were used for the exchange between Greece and Turkey of the Greek Orthodox population in Turkey and Moslems in Greece. The categories were also used to establish the protection of the two remaining recognized minorities, the "Muslims of Western Thrace" (Turks, Pomaks, and Roms) and the "Greek Orthodox of Istanbul". In 1924, upon the League of Nations ' demand, a bilateral Bulgarian-Greek agreement
19584-424: 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
19737-463: The ongoing revolts in the British Mandate of Mesopotamia . Most Hakkari Assyrians were resettled after 1925 in a cluster of villages in northern Iraq. Some of the villages where the Assyrians settled were leased directly by the government, while others belonged to Kurdish landlords who had the right to evict them at any time. During the Ottoman Empire until its partition in the 20th century, Iraq
19890-549: 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
20043-514: The parliament. Some legal systems which developed outside the Ottoman Empire, such as those in India , Iran , Pakistan , and Bangladesh , display similar characteristics. In Egypt for instance, the application of family law – including marriage, divorce, alimony , child custody, inheritance, and burial – is based on an individual's religious beliefs. In the practice of family law, the State recognizes only
20196-440: The power of the laity at the expense of clergy. The word millet comes from the Arabic word millah (ملة) and literally means "nation". Abdulaziz Sachedina regards the millet system as an example of pre-modern religious pluralism , as the state recognized multiple different religious groups in exchange for some control over religious identification and the enforcement of orthodoxy. Notably, Ethnarchs principally conversed with
20349-410: 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
20502-527: The same millet despite their differences in ethnicity and language and despite the fact that the religious hierarchy was dominated by the Greeks. Nevertheless, ethnonyms never disappeared and some form of ethnic identity was preserved as evident from a Sultan's Firman from 1680, that lists the ethnic groups in the Balkans as follows: Greeks ( Rum ), Albanians ( Arnaut ), Serbs ( Sirf ), "Vlachs" ( Eflak , referring to
20655-458: 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
20808-508: The settlement offered to them by the central government. Yaqo was accompanied by 200 armed men, which was seen as an act of defiance by the Iraqi authorities, while causing distress among the Kurds. The Iraqi government started sending troops to the Dohuk region in order to intimidate Yaqu and dissuade Assyrians from joining his cause. In June 1933, Shimun XXI Eshai was invited to Baghdad for negotiations with Rashid Ali al-Gaylani 's government but
20961-458: 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
21114-556: 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
21267-399: The streets of Baghdad in celebration of its victories. Bakr Sidqi was promoted; he later led Iraq's first military coup and became prime minister. Immediately after the massacre and the repression of the alleged Assyrian uprising, the Iraqi government demanded a conscription bill. Non-Assyrian Iraqi tribesmen offered to serve in the Iraqi army in order to counter the Assyrians. In late August,
21420-506: The temple because of the "candlestick wars", eliminating the change of keys. Successive Ottoman governments had issued edicts granting primacy of access to different Christian groups which vied for control of Jerusalem's holy sites. Under the original design, the multi-faced structure of the millet system was unified under the House of Osman . The rise of nationalism in Europe under the influence of
21573-530: The three " heavenly religions ": Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Muslim families are subject to the Personal Status Law , which draws on Sharia . Christian families are subject to canon law , and Jewish families are subject to Jewish law . In cases of family law disputes involving a marriage between a Christian woman and a Muslim man, the courts apply the Personal Status Law. Israel, too, keeps
21726-423: The total number of all Assyrians killed during August 1933 at around 600, while Assyrian sources put the figure at 3,000. Historians disagree as to who was responsible for ordering the mass killings. Stafford blames Arab nationalists, most prominently Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and Bakr Sidqi. According to him, Iraqi Army officers despised the Assyrians, and Sidqi in particular was vocal in his hatred for them. This view
21879-501: 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
22032-758: The word " millet " among the Christian and Jewish minorities reflected in versions of the Ottoman Constitution in their respective languages: The French version of the Ottoman Constitution used the word " communauté " in the place of " millet ", and so the others used words modeled after or based on the French: հասարակութիւն ( hasarakut'iwn ) in Armenian, общност/община ( obstina ) in Bulgarian, κοινότης ( koinotēs ) in Greek, and komunita in Judaeo-Spanish. The millet system
22185-451: 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
22338-479: Was Yaqo's men who provoked the army at Dirabun. Husry supported the propaganda rumours, which circulated in the Iraqi nationalist newspapers, of the Assyrians mutilating the bodies of the killed Iraqi soldiers, further enraging the Iraqi public against the Assyrians. Even though all military activities ceased by 6 August 1933, exaggerated stories of atrocities committed by the Assyrians at Dirabun and anti-Christian propaganda gained currency while rumours circulated that
22491-452: Was able to send missionaries far past the Empire's borders, reaching as far as China and India . In 1839 and 1856, reforms were attempted with the goal of creating equality between the religious communities of the Ottoman Empire. In the course of these reforms, new millets emerged, notably for Eastern Catholic and Protestant Christian communities. The heads of each millet and clerics in them were also to have their internal rule reviewed by
22644-404: Was also shared by British officials who recommended to Faysal not to send Sidqi to the north during the crisis. According to some historians, the agitation against the Assyrians was also encouraged by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani 's Arab nationalist government, which saw it as a distraction from the continuous Shiite revolt in the southern part of the country. Husry blamed the Assyrians for starting
22797-562: Was also shared by some leading officials, including the prime minister. British and European protests following the massacre only confirmed to them that the "Assyrian rebellion" was the work of European imperialism. Both King George V of the United Kingdom and Cosmo Gordon Lang , the Archbishop of Canterbury , took a personal interest in the Assyrian affair. British representatives at home demanded from Faysal that Sidqi and other culprits be tried and punished. The massacres were seen in Europe as
22950-485: Was detained there after refusing to relinquish temporal authority. He would eventually be exiled to Cyprus . On 21 July 1933, more than 600 Assyrians, led by Yaqo, crossed the border into Syria in hope of receiving asylum from the French Mandate of Syria . They were, however, disarmed and refused asylum, and were subsequently given light arms and sent back to Iraq on 4 August. They then decided to surrender themselves to
23103-519: Was filled by the Assyrian Universal Alliance in 1968. The seat of the Assyrian Church of the East remained in the United States even during the times of Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV . Only with the newly consecrated Patriarch Mar Gewargis III in 2015 did the patriarchal seat of the Assyrian Church of the East return to Iraq relocating in Ankawa in north Iraq. Official British sources estimate
23256-490: Was made up of three provinces: Mosul Vilayet , Baghdad Vilayet , and Basra Vilayet . These three provinces were joined into one Kingdom under the nominal rule of King Faisal by the British after the region became a League of Nations mandate , administered under British control, with the name " State of Iraq ". Britain granted independence to the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq in 1932, on the urging of King Faisal, though
23409-547: Was signed, known as the Politis–Kalfov Protocol , recognizing the " Greek Slavophones " as Bulgarians and guaranteeing their protection. On 2 February 1925, the Greek parliament, claiming pressure from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , which threatened to renounce the Greek–Serbian Alliance of 1913 , refused to ratify the agreement; the refusal lasted until 10 June 1925. Under the 1927 Mollov-Kafantaris Agreement ,
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