Hints and tips:
...After the Koran itself — seen as the language of God — the adoption of Arabic as the language of bureaucracy under the Umayyad caliph Abd al-Malik (reigned AD685-705), who ruled from Damascus, was vital...
...Down a deserted street in Piraeus, a drumbeat emanates from a basement mosque where Shia Muslims are celebrating the end of a period of mourning for the death of the martyr Husayn ibn Ali....
...Born in Tunis in 1332, Ibn Khaldun held numerous advisory and bureaucratic positions for the Merinid rulers in Fez, the Hafsids in Tunis, the ’Abd al-Wadids in Tlemcen and the Nasrids in Granada....
...The group is led by Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the brother of late founder Hussein al-Houthi who was killed by the government in 2004....
...It is Mediterranean as much as Arab, and was spared the twin cataclysms of medieval Islam at opposite ends of the Mediterranean: Spain’s reconquista of al-Andalus and the Mongol devastations that ended Islam...
...People are either very rich or very, very poor,” says Waddah Abd-Rabbo, head of pro-government newspaper Al Watan. “It is a real disaster.”...
...Reformation movements, such as one that began with the students of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in 18th century Arabia, cast doubt on the legitimacy of the traditional channels through which religious approval...
...Iran backs the Assad regime, which has ruled Syria for four decades and is dominated by the country’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia Islam....
...The coalition has said it would deal with such groups once the government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who was ousted by the Houthis in January, was reinstated....
...asked Hussein al-Bokhaiti, a pro-Houthi activist based in Sana’a with close ties to the movement’s leadership....
...An obligatory form of almsgiving in Islam, zakat dates back to the days of the Prophet Mohammed....
...An especially puritanical and uncompromising version of this belief can be traced back to the 18th-century revivalist Muhammad ibn Abd-al Wahhab, whose alliance with the Saud dynasty in north-eastern Arabia...
...Ben Ali in 2011....
...The Houthis have long denied that Iran was backing their revolution, whose slogan is: “Death to America; death to Israel; damnation to the Jews; victory for Islam.”...
...The impoverished country has descended into chaos since the 2011 Arab revolts led to the ousting of the longstanding president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is also a Zaydi....
...Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president and enemy of the current president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is widely thought to be acting in concert with the Houthis....
...But this does not even faintly correspond with the teachings of Muhammad Ibn Abd al Wahhab, who was a well-travelled, scholarly jurist of the 18th century....
...But Ali al-Bokhaiti, a spokesman for the Houthis, on Wednesday insisted that the group “flatly rejected” the appointment....
...Islah supporters also believe Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who replaced Mr Saleh as Yemen president, has turned against them since the early days of his leadership....
...Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s closest advisers....
...That tide has ripped through Arab lands since 2011, sweeping away the dictatorships of Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Muammer Gaddafi in Libya, and Ali Abdullah Saleh in Yemen...
...Suad Abd al-Rahim, a tall, elegant, 47-year-old Tunisian woman with dyed red curls, is no one’s idea of what an Islamist politician should look like....
...Niaz Wali picks up a pebble and sketches a memory in the dirt....
...It is here, too, that in 1744 one Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab befriended (and eventually married his daughter into) the Al-Saud family....
...A Turkmen member of the Kirkuk provincial council, Ali Mehdi, said armed demonstrators had attacked a Turkmen political office building....
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