Thursday, October 25, 2007

الحياة الفلسطينية

من ارضنا تنبع الحياة***حياة الشعب المناضل
فلسطين ارض الورود***ورود الفصول الغادة
فمن هم شعب فلسطين؟***هم العظماء القاهرين
قاهرين الغزاة المحتلين***قاهرين الجدار المحاصر
الجدار المحاصر كالأسوار***يحيط باناس الأبرياء
فما الحياة الفلسطينية؟***هي حياة الجنود و الأمجاد و الأجداد





Mr.Wihaidi

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Thursday, September 6, 2007

Sunday, September 2, 2007

"The Original Arab, The Bedouin"

Although we are concerned in this book with all Arabic-speaking peoples-not only in Arabia but in many lands, including Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Persia, Egypt, North Africa and medieval Sicily and Spain-it is necessary to throw the spotlight first upon the original Arab, the Bedouin.
The Bedouin is no gypsy roaming aimlessly for the sake of roaming. He represents the best adaptation of human life to desert conditions. Wherever grass grows, there he goes seeking pasture. Nomadism is as much a scientific mode of living in the Nufud as industrialism is in Detroit or Manchester. It is a reasonable and stoic adjustment to an unfriendly environment. For the surface of Arabia is almost completely desert with only a narrow strip of habitable land round the periphery. The Arabians called their habitat an island, and an island it is, surrounded by water on three sides and by sand on the fourth.
Despite its size-it is the largest peninsula in the world-its total population is estimated at only seven to eight millions. Geologists tell us that the land once formed the natural continuation of the Sahara (now separated from it by the rift of the Nile Valley and the great chasm of the Red Sea) and of the sandy belt which traverses Asia through central Persia and the Gobi Desert. It is one of the driest and hottest countries in the whole world. True, the area is sandwiched between seas on the east and west, but these bodies of water are too narrow to break the climatic continuity of the Africo-Asian rainless continental masses. The ocean on the south does bring rains, to be sure, but the monsoons (an Arabic word, incidentally) which seasonably lash the land leave very little moisture for the interior. It is easy to understand why the bracing and delightful east wind has always provided a favorite theme for Arabian poets.
The Bedouin still lives, as his forebears did, in tents of goats' or camels' hair ("houses of hair"), and grazes his sheep and goats on the same ancient pastures. Sheep-and-camel- raising, and to a lesser degree horse-breeding, hunting and raiding, are his regular occupations, and are to his mind the only occupations worthy of a man. It is his conviction that agriculture-as well as all varieties of trade and craft-are beneath his dignity. And indeed there is not much tillable land. There is little wheat. Bread, to the Arabian, is a luxury. There are a few trees, the date-palm, the shrub from which comes the famous coffee of South Arabia (not introduced until the fourteenth century), grape vines, and in the oases, numerous fruits as well as almonds, sugar cane and watermelons. The frankincense tree, important in the early commercial life of South Arabia, still flourishes.
It is a harsh and forbidding land, the air dry, the soil salty. There is not a single river of significance which flows perennially and reaches the sea. None of its streams is navigable. In place of a system of rivers it has a network of wadies which carry away such floods as occur. These wadies serve another purpose: they determine the routes for the caravans and the holy pilgrimage. Since the rise of Islam the pilgrimage has formed the principal link between Arabia and the outer world.

Ali's Show in My Elecronic Library 2.0 QCC