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  • Akron (Ohio, United States)
    city, seat (1842) of Summit county, northeastern Ohio, U.S. It lies along the Cuyahoga River, about 40 miles (64 km) south-southeast of Cleveland. Akron is the centre of a metropolitan area that includes the cities of Cuyahoga Falls, Tallmadge, and Stow and several villages. At 1,081 feet (329 metres) above sea level, it was named for its “high place” (Greek: ak...
  • Akron Beacon Journal (American newspaper)
    Knight’s father moved to Akron, Ohio, to become advertising manager of the Akron Beacon Journal, a daily newspaper that he came to control some 15 years later. The younger Knight worked at the paper in summers as a youth. He was educated in Akron and at a private school in Maryland. His college education at Cornell University was interrupted by World War I. Aft...
  • Akron Indians (American football team)
    ...He was the first African American selected to a backfield position on Walter Camp’s All-America team (1916) and the first African American head coach in the National Football League (NFL), with the Akron Pros in 1921....
  • Akron Pros (American football team)
    ...He was the first African American selected to a backfield position on Walter Camp’s All-America team (1916) and the first African American head coach in the National Football League (NFL), with the Akron Pros in 1921....
  • Akron, University of (university, Akron, Ohio, United States)
    public, coeducational institution of higher learning in Akron, Ohio, U.S. While the university is known for its research in polymer engineering and science, it also offers a curriculum of liberal arts, business, and education courses, including master’s degree programs. Doctoral degrees are available in a number of fields, including sociology, urban studies, polymer scien...
  • Akropolis (play by Grotowski)
    ...not only a characterization of the wearer but also his social status. Another compelling force in 20th-century experimental theatre, Jerzy Grotowski, conceived his production of Akropolis at the Polish Laboratory Theatre in 1962 as a poetic paraphrase of an extermination camp. There is no hero—and no individuality—among the characters. The costumes were...
  • Akropolites, George (Byzantine statesman and scholar)
    Byzantine scholar and statesman, the author of Chronike Syngraphe (“Written Chronicle”), a history of the Byzantine Empire from 1203 to 1261. He also played a major diplomatic role in the attempt to reconcile the Greek and Latin churches....
  • Akrotíri (Thera, Greece)
    ...minimal. Similarly, in the Cyclades there are few signs of any gap in occupation as a result of the eruption. The settlements on Thera, however, lay buried deep in pumice. The largest of these, at Akrotíri, opened by excavations since 1967, offers a unique picture of a Bronze Age town. The walls of its houses stand in places two stories high, with paintings miraculously preserved on......
  • Akrotiri (British military enclave, Cyprus)
    British military enclave in south-central Cyprus that was retained as a “sovereign base area” by the United Kingdom under the London Agreement of 1959 granting the independence of Cyprus. Located southwest of Limassol, the enclave comprises Akrotiri Peninsula, the southernmost part of the island, and a small coastal area north of Episkopi Bay. The enclave has a hospital, a weather s...
  • Aksai Chin (plateau region, Asia)
    China and India, however, had not resolved a dispute over several areas of their border, most notably the section demarcating a barren plateau in Ladakh—most of which was called Aksai Chin, which was claimed by India as part of Jammu and Kashmir state but never properly surveyed—and the section bordered on the north by the McMahon Line, which stretched from Bhutan to Burma (Myanmar)....
  • aksak (music)
    an important pattern in the rhythmic structure of folk and vernacular traditional music of the Middle East, particularly Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, and of the Balkans. It is characterized by combinations of unequal beats, such as 2 + 3 and their extensions, particularly 2 + 2 + 2 + 3. Called Bulgarian rhythm (e.g., by the Hungarian composer and ethnomusicologist Bé...
  • Aksakov, Ivan Sergeevich (Russian journalist)
    His brother Ivan Sergeyevich Aksakov (1823–86), who also was an early Slavophile, became a controversial journalist, newspaper publisher, and proponent of Pan-Slavism in the later 19th century....
  • Aksakov, Ivan Sergeyevich (Russian journalist)
    His brother Ivan Sergeyevich Aksakov (1823–86), who also was an early Slavophile, became a controversial journalist, newspaper publisher, and proponent of Pan-Slavism in the later 19th century....
  • Aksakov, Konstantin Sergeyevich (Russian author)
    Russian writer and one of the founders and principal theorists of the Slavophile movement....
  • Aksakov, Sergey Timofeyevich (Russian author)
    novelist noted for his realistic and comic narratives and for his introduction of a new genre, a cross between memoir and novel, into Russian literature....
  • Akṣapāda (Indian philosopher)
    The logical period of Indian thought began with the Kusanas (1st–2nd centuries). Gautama (author of the Nyāya-sūtras; probably flourished at the beginning of the Christian Era) and his 5th-century commentator Vātsyāyana established the foundations of the Nyāya as a school almost exclusively preoccupied with logical and epistemological issues. The......
  • Akselrod, Pavel Borisovich (Russian political scientist)
    Marxist theorist, a prominent member of the first Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party, and one of the leaders of the reformist wing of Russian social democracy, known after 1903 as the Mensheviks....
  • Aksenov, Vasily Pavlovich (Russian writer)
    Russian novelist and short-story writer, one of the leading literary spokesmen for the generation of Soviets who reached maturity after World War II....
  • Akshak (ancient city, Mesopotamia, Asia)
    ancient city of Mesopotamia on the northern boundary of Akkad, identified by some authorities with the Babylonian city of Upi (Opis). About 2500 bc Akshak was conquered by Eannatum, king of Lagash. About a century later Akshak temporarily established its hegemony over Sumer and Akkad. The location of Akshak is uncertain, although the Mari letters (from the royal archives at Mari on ...
  • Akṣobhya (Buddha)
    in Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna (Tantric) Buddhism, one of the five “self-born” Buddhas. See Dhyāni-Buddha....
  • Aksu River (river, China)
    ...by the confluence of the Kaxgar (Kashgar) and Yarkand (Yarkant) rivers in the far west; flowing northeastward from this confluence, the river is then joined some 230 miles (370 km) downstream by the Aksu and the Hotan (Khotan) rivers. Only the Aksu River flows for the entire year. It is the Tarim’s most important tributary, supplying 70–80 percent of its water volume. The name Tar...
  • Aksum (Ethiopia)
    ancient town in northern Ethiopia. It lies at an elevation of about 7,000 feet (2,100 m), just west of Adwa....
  • Aksum (ancient kingdom, Africa)
    a powerful kingdom in northern Ethiopia during the early Christian era....
  • Aksur, El- (Egypt)
    city and principal component of Al-Uqṣur urban muḥāfaẓah (governorate), Upper Egypt. Luxor has given its name to the southern half of the ruins of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes. Area governorate, 21 square miles (55 square km). Pop. (2006) governorate, 451,318....
  • Aksyonov, Vasily Pavlovich (Russian writer)
    Russian novelist and short-story writer, one of the leading literary spokesmen for the generation of Soviets who reached maturity after World War II....
  • “Akt und Sein” (work by Bonhoeffer)
    ...Communio (1930; The Communion of Saints), in which he tried to combine a sociological and a theological understanding of the church, and in Akt und Sein (1931; Act and Being), in which he traces the influence of transcendental philosophy and ontology—as well as Kantian and post-Kantian theories of knowledge and of being—on Protes...
  • Aktí promontory (promontory, Greece)
    ...than the parent monasteries. It occupies the easternmost of the three promontories of the Chalcidice (Khalkidhikí) Peninsula, which projects from Macedonia region into the Aegean Sea. The Aktí promontory, 30 miles (50 km) long and 6.5 miles (10.5 km) wide at its broadest point, has a mountainous spine thickly wooded on the north and culminating in the marble peak of Athos......
  • Aktiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation (German company)
    Agfa, an abbreviation for Aktiengesellschaft für Anilinfabrikation (“Corporation for Aniline Manufacture”), was founded as a dye company in 1867 at Rummelsburger See near Berlin; it began producing photographic film in 1908. From 1925 to 1945 it was a part of the German cartel IG Farben; in 1951 it became a partly owned subsidiary of Bayer AG, one of the successors to IG......
  • Aktiengesellschaft für Luftverkehrsbedarf (German airline)
    German airline organized in Cologne, W.Ger., on Jan. 6, 1953, jointly by the federal government, the German National Railway, and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia; later it accepted private investors. It was the successor to Deutsche Luft Hansa, or DLH, which was founded in 1926, suspended service at war’s end in 1945, and was formally liquidated in 1951. The new airline, initially calle...
  • Aktiengesellschaft Zoologischer Garten Köln (zoo, Cologne, Germany)
    one of the major zoological gardens in Germany. Opened in 1860, the zoo occupies 20 hectares (49 acres) along the Rhine River in Cologne. About 6,000 specimens of 650 species are exhibited on its attractively kept grounds. The zoo specializes in primates and has an excellent collection of lemurs. It also has an outstanding aquarium....
  • Aktiubinsk (oblast, Kazakstan)
    ...such as Qaraghandy province, because Soviet authorities never seriously made environmental protection a high priority. In the vicinity of the Aral Sea, and especially in Qyzylorda (Kzyl-Orda) and Aqtöbe provinces, Kazakhs suffer from the pollution and salinization of the sea. Its waters are contaminated with pesticides, especially DDT, and with chemical fertilizer fed into it by various....
  • Aktshura Oghlu, Yussuf (Turkish nationalist)
    ...in language, thought and action” of all the Turkish-speaking peoples in the Russian and Ottoman empires, established the Turkish newspaper Tercüman in the Russian Crimea. In 1911 Yussuf Aktshura Oghlu founded in Constantinople (Istanbul) a similar paper, Türk Yurdu (“The Turkish Homeland”). At the same time, prominent Turkish writers such as Ziya...
  • Akt’ubinsk (oblast, Kazakstan)
    ...such as Qaraghandy province, because Soviet authorities never seriously made environmental protection a high priority. In the vicinity of the Aral Sea, and especially in Qyzylorda (Kzyl-Orda) and Aqtöbe provinces, Kazakhs suffer from the pollution and salinization of the sea. Its waters are contaminated with pesticides, especially DDT, and with chemical fertilizer fed into it by various....
  • Aktyubinsk (Kazakstan)
    city, northwestern Kazakhstan, on the Ilek River. It was founded in 1869 as Aktyube (“White Hill”), a small Russian fort; the first Russian peasant settlers arrived in 1878. In 1891 it became the capital of an uyezd (canton) and in 1932 of an oblast (province). During World War II a ferroalloys plant was built to smelt the nickel and chromium ores of the Mughalzhar (Mug...
  • Aktyubinsk (oblast, Kazakstan)
    ...such as Qaraghandy province, because Soviet authorities never seriously made environmental protection a high priority. In the vicinity of the Aral Sea, and especially in Qyzylorda (Kzyl-Orda) and Aqtöbe provinces, Kazakhs suffer from the pollution and salinization of the sea. Its waters are contaminated with pesticides, especially DDT, and with chemical fertilizer fed into it by various....
  • akua-ba (African doll)
    ...lap of the first king, Osei Tutu. The stool is believed to house the spirit of the Asante people in the same way that an individual’s stool houses his spirit after death. The Asante also carve akua-ba (dolls with disk-shaped heads embodying their concept of beauty and carried by women who want to become pregnant) as well as staffs for royal spokesmen, which, like the handles of st...
  • Akuapem language
    dialect cluster of the Nyo group within the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo language family. Its principal members are Asante (Ashanti), Fante (Fanti), Brong (Abron), and Akuapem. The Akan cluster is located primarily in southern Ghana, although many Brong speakers live in eastern Côte d’Ivoire. Altogether speakers of Akan dialects and languages number more than seven million. Written ...
  • Akuffo, Frederick W. K. (chief of state, Ghana)
    ...and public life of widespread corruption. He and his Armed Forces Revolutionary Council ruled for 112 days, during which time the former heads of state, General Ignatius Kutu Acheampong and General Fred W.K. Akuffo, were tried and executed. Rawlings then yielded power to a freely elected civilian president, Hilla Limann, who promptly retired Rawlings from the air force....
  • Akuj (religion)
    ...and much of the indigenous territorial organization was destroyed. Almost all indigenous religion has been replaced by Christianity; previously the Teso believed in an omnipotent but remote god, Akuj, and a god of calamity, Edeke....
  • akund floss (plant fibre)
    downy seed fibre obtained from Calotropis procera and C. gigantea, plants of the Apocynaceae family. The plants are native to southern Asia and Africa and were introduced to South America and the islands of the Caribbean. The yellowish material is made up of thin fibres 2 to 3 cm (0.75 to 1.12 inches) long and 12 to 42 microns (a micron is about 0.00004 inch) in diameter and is harve...
  • Akure (Nigeria)
    town, capital of Ondo state, southwestern Nigeria. It lies in the southern part of the forested Yoruba Hills and at the intersection of roads from Ondo, Ilesha, Ado-Ekiti, and Owo. Akure is an agricultural trade centre for the yams, cassava, corn (maize), bananas, rice, palm oil and kernels, okra, and pumpkins grown by the Ondo branch of the Yoruba people. Although cocoa is by f...
  • Akureyri (Iceland)
    town, northern Iceland. It lies at the southern end of Eyja Fjord. Akureyri is the chief centre of the north and is one of the island’s most populous urban centres outside the Reykjavík metropolitan area. While primarily a commercial and distributing centre, Akureyri is also a fishing port, agricultural market, and manufacturing centre for fish and dairy products. ...
  • Akuse clay
    ...coastal savanna zone has an abundance of soil types, including tropical black earths, tropical gray earths, acid vleisols, and sodium vleisols. Except for the tropical black earths, known locally as Akuse clays, most of these soils are of little importance agriculturally. The Akuse clays fill a broad zone across the coastal savanna plains; although heavy and intractable, they respond well to......
  • Akutagawa Prize (Japanese literary prize)
    Japanese literary prize awarded semiannually for the best work of fiction by a promising new Japanese writer. The prize is generally considered, along with the Naoki Prize (for the best work of popular fiction), Japan’s most prestigious and sought-after literary award. Novellas win the prize more frequently than do full-length novels....
  • Akutagawa Ryūnosuke (Japanese author)
    prolific Japanese writer known especially for his stories based on events in the Japanese past and for his stylistic virtuosity....
  • Akutagawa Ryūnosuke Shō (Japanese literary prize)
    Japanese literary prize awarded semiannually for the best work of fiction by a promising new Japanese writer. The prize is generally considered, along with the Naoki Prize (for the best work of popular fiction), Japan’s most prestigious and sought-after literary award. Novellas win the prize more frequently than do full-length novels....
  • akutō (Japanese society)
    ...provinces centered around Kyōto). Elsewhere as well, local warriors with grievances increasingly took the law into their own hands, seizing crops or otherwise disturbing local order. Termed akutō by the authorities, they included many different elements: frustrated local warriors, pirates, aggrieved peasants, and ordinary robbers. Cultivators as well took advantage of......
  • Akvarium (Russian rock group)
    ...rock musicians in Russia were content to reproduce not only the styles but the songs of British and American models; however, by the early 1980s Russian rock had found its native voice in the band Akvarium (“Aquarium”), led by charismatic songwriter and vocalist Boris Grebenshikov. The band’s “concerts,” played in living rooms and dormitories, were often broke...
  • akvavit (liquor)
    flavoured, distilled liquor, clear to pale yellow in colour, dry in flavour, and ranging in alcohol content from about 42 to 45 percent by volume. It is distilled from a fermented potato or grain mash, redistilled in the presence of flavouring agents, filtered with charcoal, and usually bottled without aging. Various aromatic flavourings are employed, usually including caraway o...
  • Akwa Ibom (state, Nigeria)
    state, southeastern Nigeria. Its area formed part of Cross River state until 1987, when Akwa Ibom state was created. Akwa Ibom is bounded by the Cross River on the east and by the Bight of Biafra of the Atlantic Ocean on the south. There are extensive saltwater mangrove swamps along the coast and tropical rain forests and oil palms farther inland....
  • Akwamu (historical state, Africa)
    Akan state (c. 1600–1730) of the Gold and Slave coasts of western Africa. At its apogee in the early 18th century, it stretched more than 250 miles (400 km) along the coast from Whydah (now Ouidah, Benin) in the east to beyond Winneba (now in Ghana) in the west....
  • Akwamuhene (African royal title)
    ...alliance with or subject to the powerful Denkyera, they expanded south and southeast toward the Ga and Fante (Fanti) towns of the coast. These they subdued between 1677 and 1681 under their king (Akwamuhene), Ansa Sasraku. They also extended their influence over the state of Ladoku in the east (1679) and, under Ansa’s successor, over the Fante state of Agona in the west (1689). In 1702 t...
  • akwanshi (African sculpture)
    ...represent hair, which, alternatively, may be carved in elaborate coils. They are used by several masking associations. In the northern Ekoi area, around Ikom, are found circles of large stones, akwanshi, from 1 to 6 feet (30 to 180 cm) high, carved in low relief to represent human figures. They are thought to be no earlier than the 16th century....
  • Akwapim-Togo Ranges (mountains, Ghana)
    narrow belt of ridges and hills in Ghana, western Africa. They extend in a southwest-northeast line for about 200 miles (320 km) from the Densu River mouth (near Accra) on the Atlantic coast to the boundary with Togo. Averaging 1,500 feet (460 m) in height, the hills continue eastward to the Niger River as the Togo Mountains in Togo and as the Atakora Mountains...
  • Akyab (Myanmar)
    town, western Myanmar (Burma). It is the chief settlement of the Arakan region. Situated on the Bay of Bengal at the mouth of the Kaladan River, Sittwe occupies the eastern side of a hilly ridge affording shelter from the southwest monsoon. After the cession of Arakan to the British in 1826, Sittwe replaced Myohaung as the region’s seat of government and rapidly grew from a small fishing vi...
  • Akyem (historical kingdom, Africa)
    ...the Ewe people of the Ho region. By this time, however, their former satellite, Asante, had grown rich and powerful and was becoming increasingly hostile to Akim. Pressured by the Asante, the Akyem peoples retreated upon Akwamu’s borders and, after a long war, succeeded in infiltrating them. The Akwamuhene was forced to flee, and by 1731 the state had ceased to exist....
  • Akzo Nobel NV (Dutch company)
    diversified Dutch manufacturer of paints, coatings, and chemicals. The company was formed from the merger of Akzo NV and the Swedish firm Nobel Industries AB in 1994. Its headquarters are in Arnhem, Neth....
  • Akzo NV (Dutch company)
    diversified Dutch manufacturer of paints, coatings, and chemicals. The company was formed from the merger of Akzo NV and the Swedish firm Nobel Industries AB in 1994. Its headquarters are in Arnhem, Neth....
  • AL (baseball)
    one of the two associations in the United States and Canada of professional baseball teams designated as major leagues. It was founded as a minor league association in 1893 and was initially called the Western League. The Western League changed its name to the American League of Professional Baseball Clubs after the 1899 season, declared itself a major league in 1901 (the year now recognized as th...
  • AL (political party, Nicaragua)
    The FSLN and the newly formed right-wing Liberal Alliance (Alianza Liberal; AL), a coalition of three liberal parties, were the main contenders in the 1996 national elections. Daniel Ortega was the FSLN’s presidential candidate, and his party campaigned for expanded social services and civil liberties, national unity, and, in contrast to its historical stance, reconciliation with the United...
  • Al (chemical element)
    chemical element, a lightweight, silvery-white metal of main Group 13 (IIIa, or boron group) of the periodic table. Aluminum is the most abundant metallic element in the Earth’s crust and the most widely used nonferrous metal. Because of its chemical activity, aluminum never occurs in the metallic form in nature, but its compounds are present to a greater or lesser extent in almost all rock...
  • Al 288-1 (fossil)
    ...“southern ape” refers to the first fossils found, which were discovered in South Africa. Perhaps the most famous specimen of Australopithecus is “Lucy,” a remarkably preserved fossilized skeleton from Ethiopia that has been dated to 3.2 mya....
  • Al Aswany, Alaa (Egyptian author)
    The appearance in 2002 of ʿImārat Yaʿqūbiyyān (The Yacoubian Building), the first novel by ʿAlāʾ al-Aswānī (Alaa Al Aswany), was in itself a novel event. The book attracted an unprecedented number of readers in Egypt and throughout the Arab world. The first edition sold out in 40 days, and nine more printings were ...
  • Āl bū Falāh (Arabian tribe)
    ...were centred on the Al-ʿAyn and Al-Liwāʾ oases of Abū Ẓaby, and their strength was land-based. Under the leadership of the Āl Nahyān (members of the Āl Bū Falāḥ tribe), the Banū Yās have been the most powerful element in the region since the mid-19th century. The principal sheikhs along the coast signed a...
  • Āl Bū Saʿīd dynasty (Omani dynasty)
    Muslim dynasty of Oman, in southeastern Arabia (c. 1749 to the present), and of Zanzibar, in East Africa (c. 1749–1964)....
  • “Al filo del agua” (work by Yáñez)
    The novel Al filo del agua (1947; “On the Verge of Rain”; Eng. trans. The Edge of the Storm), his masterpiece, presents life in a typical Mexican village just before the Mexican Revolution. Its use of stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and complex structure anticipates many traits of the Latin American new novel of the 1950s and 1960s. La......
  • Al gran sole carico d’amore (work by Nono)
    La Scala in Milan commissioned a new opera from Nono in the early 1970s. Al Gran Sole Carico d’Amore (1972–75; “In the Great Sun of Blooming Love”) took its title from a poem by Arthur Rimbaud, “Les Mains de Jeanne-Marie,” and is about the Paris Commune of 1871. Its theme was devoted to the class struggle, with no conventional plot or characters, an...
  • Āl Khalīfah (Bahraini family)
    ...of Bedouin nomads and there were only a few small fishing villages. Qatar’s modern history begins conventionally in 1766 with the migration to the peninsula of families from Kuwait, notably the Āl Khalīfah. Their settlement at the new town of Al-Zubārah grew into a small pearl-diving and trade centre. In 1783 the Āl Khalīfah led the conquest of nearby B...
  • Al márgen de los clásicos (work by Azorín)
    ...carefully and subtly reconstruct the spirit of Spanish life, directing the reader’s sensibility by the suggestive power of their prose. Azorín’s literary criticism, such as Al margen de los clásicos (1915; “Marginal Notes to the Classics”), helped to open up new avenues of literary taste and to arouse a new enthusiasm for the Spanish classics......
  • Al otro lado del rio (song by Drexler)
    ...Dante Ferretti (art direction) and Francesca Lo Schiavo (set decoration) for The AviatorOriginal Score: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek for Finding NeverlandOriginal Song: “Al otro lado del rio” from The Motorcycle Diaries; music and lyrics by Jorge DrexlerAnimated Feature Film: The Incredibles, directed by Brad......
  • Al Que Quiere! (work by Williams)
    In Al Que Quiere! (1917; “To Him Who Wants It!”) his style was distinctly his own. Characteristic poems that proffer Williams’ fresh, direct impression of the sensuous world are the frequently anthologized “Lighthearted William,” “By the Road to the Contagious Hospital,” and “Red Wheelbarrow.”...
  • ʿAl tehi kaʾ-avotekha (work by Duran)
    ...when Duran received a letter from his fellow convert indicating his desire to remain a Roman Catholic and urging Duran also to remain true to Christianity. Duran’s response, the celebrated letter ʿAl tehi ka-ʾavotekha (“Be Not Like Thy Fathers”), portrayed with subtle irony what he saw as the irrationality of Christian doctrine and summarized with feign...
  • Āl Thānī dynasty (ruling family of Qatar)
    ...Qatar as a Bahraini dependency. It then signed a separate treaty with Muḥammad ibn Thānī in 1868, setting the course both for Qatar’s future independence and for the rule of the Āl Thānī, who until the treaty were only one among several important families on the peninsula....
  • Āl Wahībah Dunes (desert, Oman)
    sandy desert, east-central Oman. It fronts the Arabian Sea on the southeast and stretches along the coast for more than 100 miles (160 km). The desert consists of honey-coloured dunes that are dark red at their base and rise to heights of 230 feet (70 m). The sands are crisscrossed with tracks and routes for vehicles. There is very little surface water, but underground water traditionally is tappe...
  • al- (Arabic language)
    Arabic definite article, meaning “the.” It often prefixes Arabic proper nouns, especially place-names; an example is Al-Jazīrah (Arabic: “The Island”), the name of an interfluvial region in The Sudan. The article is often used in lowercase form, hence al-Jazīrah. Reference works, including Encyclopædia Britannica, often alphabetize names beg...
  • Al-Anon (organization)
    ...regard AA as, at worst, an inexpensive addition to any therapeutic regimen and, at best, the relapse-prevention technique of choice. AA has spawned allied but independent organizations, including Al-Anon, for spouses and other close relatives and friends of alcoholics, and Alateen, for their adolescent children. The aim of such related groups is to help the members learn how to be helpful and.....
  • al-Anṣār (followers of al-Mahdī)
    (Arabic: “Helper”), follower of al-Mahdī (Muḥammad Ahmad ibn as-Sayyid ʿAbd Allāh) or of his successor or descendants. Ansar is an old term applied to some of the companions of the prophet Muḥammad; it was revived for the followers and descendants of al-Mahdī, the Sudanese who in the late 19th century deemed himself a new ...
  • Al-ʿArab, Shaṭṭ (river, Iraq)
    river in southeastern Iraq, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers at the town of Al-Qurnah. It flows southeastward for 120 miles (193 km) and passes the Iraqi port of Basra and the Iranian port of Abadan before emptying into the Persian Gulf. For about the last half of its course the river forms the border between Iraq and Iran; it receives a tributary, the Kā...
  • Al-ʿArabah, Wadi (region, Palestine)
    topographic depression in southern Palestine extending about 100 miles (160 km) south from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba; it is part of the East African Rift System. Largely sandy desert, it is divided between Israel and Jordan. In the Old Testament, except in Deuteronomy 2:8, the name Al-ʿArabah refers to the Jordan Valley, but eventually the name came to be applied exclusively to the ...
  • al-Aswānī, ʿAlāʾ (Egyptian author)
    The appearance in 2002 of ʿImārat Yaʿqūbiyyān (The Yacoubian Building), the first novel by ʿAlāʾ al-Aswānī (Alaa Al Aswany), was in itself a novel event. The book attracted an unprecedented number of readers in Egypt and throughout the Arab world. The first edition sold out in 40 days, and nine more printings were ...
  • al-fil (chess)
    There were also some subtle changes in thinking from the 1970s through the ’90s about conducting the late opening and early middlegame stages of a game. Among them was a depreciation of the bishop: The Hypermoderns had attacked Tarrasch’s high opinion of an unobstructed bishop and said a bishop could profitably be traded for a knight. The post-Soviet players often traded bishop for k...
  • al-Ḥalabī, Ibrāhīm (Islamic jurist)
    ...and the Christian communities in Aleppo and Lebanon brought forth scholars. Muslim Arab culture of the time produced the theologian ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī, as well as Ibrāhīm al-Ḥalabī, a systematic jurist....
  • Al-Idrīsī (Spanish Muslim geographer)
    ...in Muslim Spain were Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī (died 1094), who wrote the Kitāb al-masālik wa’l-mamālik (“Book of Highways and of Kingdoms”), and al-Idrīsī (died 1166), who was in the service of Roger II of Sicily and is the author of the leading universal geography composed by the Arabs. Somewhat later (1323) t...
  • al-Idrīsiyūn (Islamic dynasty)
    Arab Muslim dynasty that ruled in the Berber areas of Morocco from 789 until 921....
  • Al-Jabbūl (lake, Syria)
    Scattered lakes are found in Syria. The largest is Al-Jabbūl, a seasonal saline lake that permanently covers a minimum area of about 60 square miles (155 square km) southeast of Aleppo. Other major salt lakes are Jayrūd to the northeast of Damascus and Khātūniyyah to the northeast of Al-Ḥasakah. Lake Muzayrīb, a small body of fresh water, is located......
  • al-Jabha al-Shabiyah al-Dimuqratiyah li-Tahrir Filastin (Palestinian political organization)
    one of several organizations associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); it engaged in acts of terrorism in the 1970s and ’80s and originally maintained a Marxist-Leninist orientation, believing the peasants and the working classes should be educated in socialism in order to bring about a democratic state of Jews and Arabs free of Zionism...
  • al-Jabha al-Shabiyah li-Tahrir Filastin (Palestinian political organization)
    organization providing an institutional framework for militant organizations associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), notable for its Marxist-Leninist ideology and its hijacking of a number of aircraft between 1968 and 1974....
  • Al-Karnak (Egypt)
    village located in Qinā muḥāfaẓah (governorate), Upper Egypt, which has given its name to the northern half of the ruins of Thebes on the east bank of the Nile River, including the ruins of the Great Temple of Amon. Karnak and other areas of ancient Thebes...
  • al-Mahdia (Tunisia)
    town and fishing port located on Al-Sāḥil (Sahel), the coastal plain region in eastern Tunisia, about 125 miles (200 km) from Tunis. It lies on the narrow rocky peninsula of Cape Afrique (Cape Ifrīqīyā). The town owes its name to the mahdi (Arabic: mahdī...
  • Al-Manāmah (Bahrain)
    capital and largest city of the state and emirate of Bahrain. It lies at the northeast tip of Bahrain island, in the Persian Gulf. About one-fifth of the emirate’s population lives in the city. First mentioned in Islamic chronicles about ad 1345, it was taken by the Portuguese (1521) and by the Persians (1602). It has been held, with brief interruptions, by the ruling Ā...
  • Al-Mukhā (Yemen)
    town, southwestern Yemen, on the Red Sea and the Tihāmah coastal plain. Yemen’s most renowned historic port, it lies at the head of a shallow bay between two headlands, with an unprotected anchorage 1.5 miles (2.5 km) offshore. It was long famous as Arabia’s chief coffee-exporting centre; the term mocha and variations of the w...
  • “al-Muqaddimah” (work by Ibn Khaldūn)
    But the greatest Arab historian and one of the most penetrating thinkers about historiography in any time or place was undoubtedly Ibn Khaldūn. The introduction (al-Muqaddimah) to his Kitāb al-ʿibar, a universal history (begun in 1375), is, in A.J. Toynbee’s judgment (1934), “the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind....
  • Al-Quds University (university, Abū Dīs, Israel)
    ...to the medical school at ʿEn Kerem and the Faculty of Agriculture in Reḥovot. The old buildings on Mount Scopus have been renovated and supplemented by a new complex of buildings. Al-Quds University (1995), a Palestinian Arab institution with headquarters at Abū Dīs, just outside the city limits in the West Bank, operates partly in buildings in east Jerusalem.......
  • al-Thaʿalibī, ʿAbd al-Azīz (Tunisian political leader)
    ...violent riots and killings; boycotts and labour strikes were called against Italian-owned companies in Tunis. The French responded by exiling the leaders of the party, including Ali Bash Hamba and Abd al-Aziz ath-Thaalibi (1912), and driving the Young Tunisians underground. At the end of World War I they emerged again as activists in the Tunisian nationalist movement and, led by ath-Thaalibi,.....
  • al-ʿūd (musical instrument)
    stringed musical instrument prominent in medieval and modern Islāmic music. It was the parent of the European lute. The ʿūd has a deep, pear-shaped body; a fretless fingerboard; and a relatively shorter neck and somewhat less acutely bent-back pegbox than the European lute. The tuning pegs are set in the sides of the pegbox. The gut strings, plucked with a plectrum, are...
  • ALA (American educational organization)
    ...(q.v.), who established the first training program for librarians in 1887. These training programs in the United States evolved into graduate programs in library education accredited by the American Library Association (ALA; founded 1876)....
  • ala (anatomy)
    ...top of the first (uppermost) sacral vertebra articulates with the last (lowest) lumbar vertebra. The transverse processes of the first three sacral vertebrae are fused to form wide lateral wings, or alae, and articulate with the centre-back portions of the blades of the ilia to complete the pelvic girdle. The sacrum is held in place in this joint, which is called the sacroiliac, by a complex......
  • ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Abū al-ʿAlāʾ ʿAlī ibn Abī al-Ḥaram al-Qurayshī ad-Dimashqī ibn an-Nafīs (Muslim physician)
    Arab physician who first described the pulmonary circulation of the blood. In finding that the wall between the right and left ventricles of the heart is solid and without pores, he disputed Galen’s view that the blood passes directly from the right to the left side of the heart. Ibn an-Nafīs correctly stated that the blood must pass from the right ventricle to the left ventricle by ...
  • ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Kaikobad I (Seljuq ruler)
    ...lord Maurozomes and the frontier Turkmens. Under this ruler and his two sons and successors, ʿIzz ad-Dīn Kāʾūs I (1211–20) and ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Kay-Qubādh I (1220–37), the Anatolian Seljuqs achieved the zenith of their power. Ghiyās̄ ad-Dīn Kay-Khusraw I reunified the Seljuq state and began to e...
  • ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Kay-Qubādh I (Seljuq ruler)
    ...lord Maurozomes and the frontier Turkmens. Under this ruler and his two sons and successors, ʿIzz ad-Dīn Kāʾūs I (1211–20) and ʿAlāʾ ad-Dīn Kay-Qubādh I (1220–37), the Anatolian Seljuqs achieved the zenith of their power. Ghiyās̄ ad-Dīn Kay-Khusraw I reunified the Seljuq state and began to e...
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