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Averroës

(Encyclopedia)Averroës əvĕrˈōēz [key], Arabic Ibn Rushd, 1126–98, Spanish-Arab philosopher. He was far more important and influential in Jewish and Christian thought than in Islam. He was a lawyer and physi...

Adonis, Syrian poet

(Encyclopedia)Adonis or Adunis, pen name of Ali Ahmad Said Esber, 1930–, Syrian poet and essayist, generally considered the Arab world's greatest living poet. He began writing poetry in the 1950s. After being jai...

lingua franca

(Encyclopedia)lingua franca lĭngˈgwə frăngˈkə [key], an auxiliary language, generally of a hybrid and partially developed nature, that is employed over an extensive area by people speaking different and mutua...

Maghreb

(Encyclopedia)Maghreb or Magrib both: mäˈgrĭb [key] [Arab.,=the West], Arabic term for NW Africa. It is generally applied to all of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia but actually pertains only to the area of the thr...

Dravidian languages

(Encyclopedia)Dravidian languages drəvĭdˈēən [key], family of about 23 languages that appears to be unrelated to any other known language family. The Dravidian languages are spoken by more than 200 million peo...

Darwish, Mahmoud

(Encyclopedia)Darwish, Mahmoud, 1941–2008, widely considered the Palestinian national poet, b. Barwa, Palestine (now in Israel). He was born to middle-class Sunni Muslim farmers, who were displaced when soldiers ...

Tiberias

(Encyclopedia)Tiberias tībērˈēəs [key], town (1994 pop. 36,400), NE Israel, on the Sea of Galilee, 682 ft (208 m) below sea level. It is one of the four holy cities of Judaism and a trade center for agricultur...

Unicode

(Encyclopedia)Unicode yo͞oˈnĭkōdˌ [key], set of codes used to represent letters, numbers, control characters, and the like, designed for use internationally in computers. It has been expanded to include such i...

Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian

(Encyclopedia)Bell, Gertrude Margaret Lowthian lōˈᵺēən [key], 1868–1926, British traveler, author, and government official, one of the builders of the modern state of Iraq, grad. Oxford, 1887. From 1899 on ...

Valladolid

(Encyclopedia)Valladolid välyäᵺōlēᵺˈ [key], city (1990 pop. 333,680), capital of Valladolid prov. and the administrative center of Castile and León, N central Spain, at the confluence of the Pisuerga and ...