115-485: The al-Tawhid Brigade ( Arabic : لواء التوحيد , romanized : Liwa al-Tawhid , lit. 'Brigade of monotheism'), named after Tawhid , the "oneness of God," was an armed Islamist insurgent group involved in the Syrian Civil War . The al-Tawhid Brigade was formed in 2012. Reportedly backed by Qatar , al-Tawhid was considered one of the biggest groups in northern Syria, dominating most of
230-420: A " foreign terrorist organization ". In April 2013, Al-Nusra Front was publicly confirmed as the official Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda , after Emir Ayman al-Zawahiri rejected the forced merger attempted by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and ordered the dissolution of newly-formed Islamic State of Iraq and Levant . In March 2015, the militia joined other Syrian Islamist groups to form a joint command center called
345-488: A Syrian observer considered such a split unlikely, and in March 2015, al-Nusra's leadership denied a break-up or that talks with Qatar had occurred. Other Syrian observers considered such a split conceivable or imminent. With members of al-Qaeda still enmeshed throughout the group's leadership, it can be considered that al-Qaeda was not "external" to the group. After the announcement, numerous senior al-Qaeda members still within
460-476: A Turkish hospital. Following the death of Saleh, the Tawhid Brigade reportedly suffered serious internal divisions and lost considerable members in defections to other rebel factions. They also experienced a sharp reduction in military assistance from Gulf states, due to US pressure to support more moderate rebel groups. On 10 September 2014, the Tawhid Brigade's eastern branch became a founding member group of
575-736: A call for a four-day ceasefire in Syria during Eid al-Adha feast. In November 2012, they were considered by The Huffington Post to be the best trained and most experienced fighters among the Syrian rebels. According to spokesmen of a moderate wing of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Nusra had in November 2012 between 6,000 and 10,000 fighters, accounting for 7–9% of the FSA's total fighters. Commentator David Ignatius for The Washington Post described Nusra then as
690-562: 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
805-435: 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
920-1077: 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
1035-559: A firm shield and a striking hand to repel the attacks of this criminal Al Assad army with all the might we can muster. We promise to protect the lives of civilians and their possessions from security and the Shabiha [pro-government] militia. We are a people who will either gain victory or die." The March 2012 Damascus bombings were claimed by Nusra. The 10 May 2012 Damascus bombings were allegedly claimed by al-Nusra Front in an Internet video; however, on 15 May 2012, someone claiming to be
1150-432: A greater long-term advantage. In early 2015, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri instructed al-Nusra Front leader Julani to pursue the following five goals: Both al-Qaeda and al-Nusra tried to take advantage of ISIL's rise by presenting themselves as "moderate" in comparison. While they had the same aim of establishing sharia and a caliphate, they intended to implement it in a more gradual manner. Al-Nusra criticized
1265-483: 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
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#17328764192281380-527: A loose coalition of Islamist groups known as the " Islamic Front ". Around June 2013, the militia was reorganised into nearly 30 sub-factions. By June, the rebel group had 38 "regiments" and about 11,000 fighters as well as 10,000 "administrators". In September 2013, the Supreme Military Council 's head Salim Idris brokered a merger between the Conquest Brigade and the al-Tawhid Brigade, with
1495-677: 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
1610-679: A new Sunni Islamist militant group. Tahrir al-Sham denies any links to the al-Qaeda network and said in a statement that the group is "an independent entity and not an extension of previous organizations or factions". Mutual hostilities eventually deteriorated into one of violent confrontations, with Al-Nusra commander Sami al-Oraydi accusing HTS of adopting nationalist doctrines. Sami al-Oraydi, alongside other Al-Qaeda loyalists like Abu Humam al-Shami , Abu Julaybib and others, mobilised Al-Qaeda personnel in northwestern Syria to establish an anti-HTS front in north-western Syria, eventually forming Hurras al-Din on 27 February 2018. From 2012 to 2013,
1725-576: 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
1840-462: 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",
1955-465: 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
2070-455: A spokesman for the group denied that the organisation was responsible for the attack, saying that it would only release information through jihadist forums. On 29 May 2012, a mass execution was discovered near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor . The unidentified corpses of 13 men had been discovered shot to death execution-style. On 5 June 2012, al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the killings, stating that they had captured and interrogated
2185-507: A strict interpretation of Shari'a and imposed punishments amounting to torture or other ill-treatment for perceived infractions." Members of the group were accused of attacking the religious beliefs of non-Sunnis in Syria, such as the Alawites . The New York Times journalist C. J. Chivers cites "some analysts and diplomats" as noting that al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and
2300-414: A ten-day religious training course, followed by a 15–20-day military training program. Al-Nusra contained a hierarchy of religious bodies, with a small Majlis-ash-Shura (Consultative Council) at the top, making national decisions on behalf of the group. Religious personnel also played an important role in the regional JN leadership, with each region having a commander and a sheikh. The sheikh supervised
2415-503: 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
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#17328764192282530-499: 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
2645-470: 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
2760-585: 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
2875-542: 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
2990-469: 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
3105-408: 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
3220-468: 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
3335-666: Is from the Golan Heights ( al-Jawlan , in Arabic). Prior to the formation of Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohammad al-Julani was a senior member of Islamic State of Iraq, heading operations in Nineveh Governorate . On 18 December 2013, he gave his first television interview, to Tayseer Allouni , a journalist originally from Syria, for Al Jazeera, and spoke classical Arabic with a Syrian accent. Founder and Emir of al-Nusra Front Deputy leader and senior religious official in al-Nusra Left
3450-566: 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
3565-836: 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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3680-559: 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
3795-584: 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
3910-413: 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
4025-516: 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
4140-445: 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
4255-595: The 2003 American invasion in Iraq ; Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari agreed to that in 2012. The British The Daily Telegraph stated in December 2012 that many foreign al-Nusra fighters were hardened veterans from conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the second half of 2012, Jabhat al-Nusra stood out among the array of armed groups emerging in Syria as a disciplined and effective fighting force. Nusra in October 2012 refused
4370-692: 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
4485-767: The Army of Conquest . In July 2016, al-Nusra formally re-designated itself from Jabhat al-Nusra to Jabhat Fatah al-Sham ("Front for the Conquest of the Levant") and officially announced that it was breaking ties with Al-Qaeda. The announcement caused defections of senior Al-Nusra commanders and criticism from al-Qaeda ranks, provoking a harsh rebuke from Ayman al-Zawahiri , who denounced it as an "act of disobedience". On 28 January 2017, following violent clashes with Ahrar al-Sham and other rebel groups, Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS) merged with four other groups to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS),
4600-547: The Dawn of Freedom Brigades . The al-Tawhid Brigade reportedly enjoyed "strong Qatari backing." The al-Tawhid Brigade was formed in 2012 in order to coordinate the Battle of Aleppo , with the stated mission to found a "civil state in Syria with Islam being the main source of legislation." Researcher Charles R. Lister described the initial al-Tawhid Brigade as "a coalition of local Aleppo-based Islamist units", following an ideology similar to
4715-570: The Euphrates Volcano operations room based in Kobanî . By October 2014, al-Tawhid had seen many of its eastern Aleppo province affiliates becoming defunct but re-emerging as break-off groups, and its northern branch Free North Brigade being "superseded" by the Northern Sun Battalion (Shams al-Shamal) . Other rebel forces continued to use the name Free North Brigade and eventually joined
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4830-449: The Islamist 'religious prison' Nusra might be wanting to turn Syria into. The 6 January 2012 al-Midan bombing was claimed by al-Nusra, in a video seen by AFP on 29 February 2012. It was allegedly carried out by Abu al-Baraa al-Shami. Footage of the destruction caused by the blast was released on a jihadist forum. An al-Nusra-affiliated group announced the formation of the " Free Ones of
4945-596: The November 2015 Paris attacks , saying that even though they view ISIL as "dogs of hellfire", they applaud when "infidels" get attacked by ISIL. In an Amnesty International report in July 2016, the al-Nusra Front was accused of torture , child abduction , and summary execution . In December 2014, al-Nusra Front fighters shot dead a woman execution-style on accusations of adultery . They have also stoned to death women accused of extramarital relations. Overall, they have "applied
5060-756: The Sham Legion . Some remnants of the Tawhid Brigade near Azaz allied itself with the YPG and received equipment and training from the CIA in late 2014. Most ex-fighters of the al-Tawhid Brigade became a core part of the Levant Front . However, in October 2016, 4 "battalions" of rebels in Aleppo using the flag of the al-Tawhid Brigade left the Levant Front and joined the Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement . In 2022, some al-Tawhid Brigade remnants left
5175-637: The Syrian Revolution such as the Free Syrian Army were focused on ending the decades-long reign of the Assad family , al-Nusra Front also sought the unification of Islamist forces in a post-Assad Syria, anticipating a new stage of the civil war. It denounced the international assistance in support of the Syrian opposition as " imperialism "; viewing it as a long-term threat to its Islamist goals in Syria. In December 2012, US Department of State designated it as
5290-561: 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
5405-490: The hell cannon , a mortar-like improvised firearm designed and built by the insurgent group Free North Brigade, was first noted in the press. In June 2013, the al-Tawhid Brigade sent over 300 fighters under the command of Saleh and the Aleppo Military Council's Obaidi to the Battle of al-Qusayr . In August 2013, the al-Tawhid Brigade alongside various Islamist rebel groups captured the town of Khanasir , severing
5520-494: 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
5635-419: 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
5750-543: The "near enemy" of the Syrian regime rather than on global jihad. Syrian members of the group claimed that they are fighting only the Assad regime and would not attack Western states; while the official policy of the group was to regard the United States and Israel as enemies of Islam, and to warn against Western intervention in Syria, al-Nusra Front leader Julani stated that "We are only here to accomplish one mission, to fight
5865-921: 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-Nusra Front Non-state allies Non-state opponents Syrian-affiliated groups Syrian Democratic Forces Shi'ite groups Islamic State and Islamic State affiliates Al-Nusra Front , also known as Front for
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#17328764192285980-454: 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
6095-514: 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
6210-812: 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
6325-576: The American ambassador to Syria, R. Ford, had said: "Extremist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra are a problem, an obstacle to finding the political solution that Syria's going to need". In August 2012, there were signs of Nusra co-operating with other rebels. The group took part in military operations with the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Abu Haidar, a Syrian FSA co-ordinator in Aleppo 's Saif al-Dawla district said that al-Nusra Front "have experienced fighters who are like
6440-502: The Conquest of the Levant , was a Salafi jihadist organization fighting against Syrian government forces in the Syrian Civil War . Its aim was to overthrow president Bashar al-Assad and establish an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law in Syria . Formed in 2012, in November of that year The Washington Post described al-Nusra as "the most aggressive and successful" of the rebel forces. While secular and pro-democratic rebel groups of
6555-651: The Druze to renounce their religion, destroyed their shrines and now considers them Sunni. Emile Hokayem, senior fellow at the IISS , asserted that the Al-Jazeera news network was actively involved in the "mainstreaming" of the Al-Nusra Front in Syria. The leader of al-Nusra, a self-proclaimed emir , goes by the name of Abu Mohammad al-Julani ( also transliterated as Mohammed and al-Jawlani , or al-Golani), which implies that he
6670-410: The Levant "can appear less focused on toppling" the Assad government than on "establishing a zone of influence spanning Iraq's Anbar Province and the desert eastern areas of Syria, and eventually establishing an Islamic territory under their administration". On 10 June 2015, al-Nusra fighters shot dead at least 20 Druze civilians in a village after one of them, a supporter of the Assad regime, opposed
6785-599: The Levant Battalions ", in a YouTube video statement that was released on 23 January 2012. In the statement, the group claimed that it attacked the headquarters of security in Idlib province. "To all the free people of Syria, we announce the formation of the Free Ones of the Levant Battalions," the statement said, according to a translation obtained by The Long War Journal. "We promise Allah, and then we promise you, that we will be
6900-528: The Levant Front (then part of the Syrian National Army ) and created a new group called "Ahrar al-Tawhid". Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] ) is a Central Semitic language of
7015-412: 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
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#17328764192287130-672: 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
7245-561: 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
7360-436: The Syrian National Coalition. In December 2012, the al-Tawhid Brigade spearheaded the capture of Aleppo's Army College. In January 2013, the Tawhid Brigade announced on its website that it had become a member of the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front . In the next month, the al-Tawhid Brigade, Ahrar al-Sham, and the al-Nusra Front launched an offensive which ended in the conquest of the Aleppo suburb of Sheikh Saeed. In May 2013,
7475-456: The Tawhid Brigade announced their support for the Syrian National Coalition but called for greater representation in the coalition. The brigade's leadership called for "a civil state where the basis of legislation is the Islamic faith, with consideration for all the [minority] groups of Syria". They thereby implicitly rejected an earlier statement they had made, with other local factions, which had called for an Islamic state in Syria and denouncing
7590-433: The YPG under the name of the Euphrates Islamic Liberation Front . In March 2014, ISIL captured Sarrin and several other towns and villages from the YPG and the EILF. Clashes continued through May 2014. On 22 September 2013, the Tawhid Brigade joined the Islamic Front coalition. The group was formed largely from the Syrian Islamic Front and the Syrian Islamic Liberation Front , both of which were officially dissolved in
7705-573: The al-Nusra Front's full name was the " Victory Front for the People of the Levant by the Mujahideen of the Levant on the Fields of Jihad " ( Arabic : جبهة النصرة لأهل الشام من مجاهدي الشام في ساحات الجهاد , romanized : Jabhat an-Nuṣrah li-ahli ash-Shām min Mujahideen ash-Shām fi Sahat al-Jihad ). The al-Nusra Front is estimated to be primarily made up of Syrian jihadists. Its goals were to overthrow Bashar al-Assad 's government in Syria and to create an Islamic emirate under sharia law, with an emphasis from an early stage on focusing on
7820-434: The al-Tawhid Brigade even operated as "armed wing of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood " due to close connections between leaders of the rebel group and Brotherhood figures. However, other sources argued that the al-Tawhid Brigade simply accepted support from anyone who was somewhat ideologically similar to itself, including Salafists . In late 2013, the rebel group co-signed a joint statement calling for Sharia law and rejecting
7935-457: The announcement. Despite the group re-branding and announcing no external affiliations, the United States Central Command continued to consider it to be a branch of al-Qaeda and "an organization to be concerned about". Al-Jazeera journalist Sharif Nashashibi noted that immediately after the rebranding, both the US and Russia called it "cosmetic" and promised that air strikes would continue" against al-Nusra. Journalist Robin Wright described
8050-400: The authority of the Syrian National Coalition . Originally, al-Tawhid was composed of four subunits, the Mountain Knights Brigade , the Darat Izza Brigade , the Free North Brigade , and the Aleppo Shahba Battalions . The Mountain Knights Brigade operated in the southwest of Aleppo Governorate near the border with the Idlib Governorate and the city of Atarib . The Darat Izza Brigade
8165-626: The border from Iraq into Syria , and reached out to Islamists released from Syria's Sednaya military prison in May–June 2011 who were already active in fighting against Assad's security forces. The six men who founded Nusra alongside Julani were Saleh al-Hamawi (Syrian), Abu Maria Al-Qahtani (Iraqi), Mustafa Abd al-Latif al-Saleh (kunya:Abu Anas al-Sahaba) (Jordanian/Palestinian), Iyad Tubasi (kunya: Abu Julaybib) (Jordanian/Palestinian), Abu Omar al-Filistini (Palestinian) and Anas Hassan Khattab (Syria). A number of meetings were held between October 2011 and January 2012 in Rif Dimashq and Homs , where
8280-793: The commander from a religious perspective and is known as dabet al-shar'i (religious commissioner). A number of Americans have attempted to join the fighting in Syria, specifically with al-Nusra. Sinh Vinh Ngo Nguyen , also known as Hasan Abu Omar Ghannoum , was arrested in California on 11 October 2013, on charges of attempting to travel to join al-Qaeda, after reportedly having fought in Syria. As of November 2013, there had also been five additional publicly disclosed cases of Americans fighting in Syria, three of which were linked to al-Nusra. In February 2015, charges of conspiracy to support terrorism were laid against six Bosnian-Americans who were alleged to have financially supported another Bosnian-American,
8395-567: 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
8510-577: 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
8625-728: 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
8740-560: The existence of this alleged "Khorasan group" in an interview with Al-Jazeera on 28 May 2015. Upon the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, Islamic State of Iraq's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and al-Qaeda's central command authorized the Syrian Abu Mohammad al-Golani to set up a Syrian offshoot of al Qaeda in August 2011, to bring down the Assad government and establish an Islamic state there. Golani and six colleagues crossed
8855-413: The expropriation of his house by a Nusra commander. Al-Nusra's leadership issued an apology and claimed that the killings had been carried out against the group's guidelines. In an official statement issued a few days later, the organization expressed "deep regret" regarding the incident, acknowledging that the killings were carried out by certain members without orders from the leadership and in violation of
8970-593: 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
9085-416: The focus on fighting the government. The tactics of al-Nusra Front differed markedly from those of rival jihadist group ISIL ; whereas ISIL has alienated local populations by demanding their allegiance and carrying out beheadings, al-Nusra Front cooperated with other militant groups and declined to impose sharia law where there has been opposition. Analysts have noted this could have given the al-Nusra Front
9200-501: 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
9315-536: The group after the formation of Tahrir al-Sham . Held the position of general religious authority and Emir of the Eastern area until 30 July 2014 The structure of the group varied across Syria. In Damascus , the organisation operated in an underground clandestine cell system , while in Aleppo , the group was organised along semi-conventional military lines, with units divided into brigades , regiments , and platoons . All potential recruits were required to undertake
9430-484: The group were targeted by the US in airstrikes . The group's leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani , in his first recorded video message, stated its new name would be Jabhat Fatah al-Sham ("Front for the Conquest of the Levant"). During the renaming announcement in July 2016, al-Julani thanked al-Qaeda leaders Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abu Khayr al-Masri . Ahmad Salama Mabruk , an associate of al-Zawahiri, sat alongside al-Julani during
9545-579: 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
9660-536: The insurgency around Aleppo. Its leader Abdul Qader Saleh was killed in November 2013 in a Syrian Air Force airstrike. The al-Tawhid Brigade was initially founded by Islamist groups, and followed an ideology similar to the one of the Muslim Brotherhood . Agence France-Presse and Al-Monitor journalists described the unit as being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood. According to As-Safir ,
9775-608: 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
9890-485: The late Abdullah Ramo Pazara , who they alleged died fighting with al-Nusra in 2014. In September 2015 Nusra absorbed Katibat Imam al Bukhari , an Uzbek group which is a part of al-Qaeda. Child soldiers were used by Katibat Imam al-Bukhari. al-Fu'ah and Kafriya were attacked by the group in September 2015. They also participated in the 2015 Jisr al-Shughur offensive . It was estimated that al-Nusra's fighting force
10005-599: 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)
10120-420: 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
10235-571: The long term. The main criticism of defectors from ISIL is that the group is killing and fighting other Sunni Muslims, and that they are unhappy that other Sunnis like Jabhat al-Nusra are being attacked by ISIL. A video called The Heirs of Glory was issued by al-Nusra in 2015, which included old audio by Osama bin Laden (such as his 1998 announcement that "So we seek to incite the Islamic Nation so it may rise to liberate its lands and perform Jihad in
10350-883: 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
10465-488: The most aggressive and successful arm of the FSA. The United States Department of State stated likewise: "From the reports we get from the doctors, most of the injured and dead FSA are Jabhat al-Nusra, due to their courage and [the fact they are] always at the front line". On 10 December 2012, the U.S. designated Nusra a foreign terrorist organization and an alias of Al Qaeda in Iraq . That decision made it illegal for Americans to deal financially with Nusra. Days earlier,
10580-579: The move was effective with many conservative Sunnis in the region, and that hundreds of them joined its ranks since the rebranding, believing the group to be "less extreme" than the rival Islamic State . Khorasan, also known as the Khorasan Group, is an alleged group of senior al-Qaeda members who operate in Syria. The group has been reported to consist of a small number of fighters who are all on terrorist watchlists, and to co-ordinate with al-Nusra Front. Al-Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani denied
10695-768: 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
10810-569: The objectives of the group were determined. Golani's group formally announced itself under the name "Jabhat al-Nusra l'Ahl as-Sham" (Support Front for the People of the Sham) on 23 January 2012. Iraq's deputy interior minister said in early February 2012 that weapons and Islamist militants were entering Syria from Iraq. The Quilliam Foundation reported that many of Nusra's members were Syrians who were part of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi 's Islamist network fighting
10925-404: The one of the Muslim Brotherhood . The rebel group's foundation was possibly inspired or even ordered by one of the rebels' main allies, Turkey, to facilitate a greater cooperation among insurgent forces. From its inception, the brigade cooperated with hardline jihadist forces including the al-Nusra Front ; for instance, the group ruled Jarablus alongside the al-Nusra Front. In November 2012,
11040-424: 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
11155-486: The organization's policies. Al-Nusra Front also sent a delegation to the Druze community in the village and assured that the perpetrators of the massacre would be brought to trial in a Sharia court . Analysts at the American magazine Foreign Affairs asserted that Al-Jazeera was engaged in whitewashing Al-Nusra and that there was absolutely no reference to the Druze in Al-Nusra's "apology", claiming that Al-Nusrah forced
11270-549: 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
11385-529: The path of Allah, and to establish the law of Allah, so the Word of Allah may be supreme"). The video glorified the 11 September attacks and the Islamists Sayyid Qutb and Abdullah Azzam . Its magazine, Al Risalah , was first issued in July 2015. In 2015 Al-Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri urged ISIL fighters to unite with all other jihadists against their enemies and stop the infighting. The Nusra Front praised
11500-581: The process. On 24 September 2013, the Tawhid Brigade co-signed a statement with 11 other rebel groups which called for Sharia law and, allying with al-Qaeda , rejected the authority of the Syrian National Coalition . On 14 November 2013, a Syrian Air Force airstrike bombarded an army base held by the al-Tawhid brigade in Aleppo killing a commander by the name of Youssef al-Abbas also injuring two others including al-Tawhid's head commander Abdul Qader Saleh . Saleh subsequently died of his wounds in
11615-422: The rebranding as a "jihadi shell game" and "expedient fiction"—a tactic known as "marbling" by jihadi groups—and that as of December 2016 Al-Qaeda had embedded "two dozen senior personnel" in the group. Writing shortly after the rebranding, Nashashibi argued that it might help generate more "regional support", which the group needed in the face of Syrian government and Russian military success. Wright wrote that
11730-457: The regime and its agents on the ground, including Hezbollah and others". In early 2014, Sami al-Oraydi , a top sharia official in the group, acknowledged that it is influenced by the teachings of al-Qaeda member Abu Musab al-Suri . The strategies derived from Abu Musab's guidelines included providing services to people, avoiding being seen as extremists, maintaining strong relationships with local communities and other fighting groups, and putting
11845-410: 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
11960-445: The revolution's elite commando troops." In October–December 2012 Nusra received words of praise and appreciation for their efforts in the "revolution" against Assad from non-specified 'rebels', an FSA spokesman in the Aleppo region, a group of 29 civilian and military groups, and the leader of the Syrian National Coalition . At the same time, two anonymous FSA leaders, and a secular rebel in north Syria, expressed disapproval of
12075-458: 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
12190-471: The soldiers in Deir ez-Zor and "justly" punished them with death, after they confessed to crimes. On 17 June 2012, Walid Ahmad al-Ayesh, described by Syrian authorities as the "right hand" of al-Nusra Front, was killed when Syrian authorities discovered his hiding place. He was reportedly responsible for the making of car bombs that were used to attack Damascus in the previous months. The Syrian authorities reported
12305-458: 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
12420-556: 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
12535-611: The supply routes of the remaining Syrian government loyalists north of Aleppo. In the same month, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the al-Nusra Front , Ahrar al-Sham , the Suqour al-Sham Brigade , and the al-Tawhid Brigade announced that they would besiege the YPG -held city of Kobanî . However, infighting between the groups erupted in January 2014 and some of them began to align with
12650-501: 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
12765-683: The two units holding a ceremony to facilitate their unification. They claimed to have a united strength of 13,000 fighters across all of Syria. In November 2013, the Elite Islamic Battalion left the Tawhid Brigade. On 2 March 2014, the Northern Storm Brigade announced that they would join the Islamic Front under the leadership of the al-Tawhid Brigade. Also in 2014, the Euphrates Jarabulus Battalions left to join
12880-475: The way ISIL alienated people by precipitously instituting sharia, preferring the more gradual approach favored by al-Qaeda of preparing society through indoctrination and education before implementing the hudud (scripturally-mandated punishment) aspects of sharia. They particularly criticised ISIL's enthusiasm for punishments such as executing gay people, chopping limbs off, and public stoning . However, Al-Qaeda agrees that hudud punishments should be implemented in
12995-451: 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
13110-521: Was approximately 30% foreign fighters and 70% local Islamists in July 2016. All statements and videos by al-Nusra Front have been released by its media outlet, al-Manarah al-Bayda ( Arabic : المنارة البيضاء ) (The White Minaret), via the leading jihadist webforum Shamoukh al-Islam ( Arabic : شموخ الإسلام ). In early 2015, there were reports that Qatar and other Gulf states were trying to get al-Nusra to split away from al-Qaeda, after which they would support al-Nusra with money. Western observers and
13225-508: Was named after the town of Darat Izza and operated in the western part of the city of Aleppo . The Free North Brigade was the largest subunit of the Tawhid Brigade and present in the Kilis Corridor. It took over the leadership of several subunits in al-Bab to the east of Aleppo. By March 2013, the al-Tawhid Brigade had become active in northeastern and eastern Syria as well, where one of its representatives, Sheikh Saif, tried to set up
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