Name	Arabic
Nativename	''''
Pronunciation
Imagecaption	in written Arabic (Naskh script)
Region	Primarily in the Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa;liturgical language of Islam.
Speakers	More than 280 million native speakers
Familycolor	Afro-Asiatic
Fam2	Semitic
Fam3	Central Semitic
Stand1	Modern Standard Arabic
Dia1	Western (Maghrebi)
Dia2	Central (incl. Egyptian)
Dia3	Northern (incl. Levantine, Iraqi)
Dia4	Southern (incl. Gulf, Hejazi, Yemeni)
Script	Arabic alphabet, Syriac alphabet (Garshuni)
Nation	Official language of 26 states, the third most after English and French
Agency	: Supreme Council of the Arabic language in Algeria : Academy of the Arabic Language in Cairo : Iraqi Academy of Sciences : Jordan Academy of Arabic : Academy of the Arabic Language in Jamahiriya : Academy of the Arabic Language in Rabat : Academy of the Arabic Language in Mogadishu : Academy of the Arabic Language in Khartoum : Arab Academy of Damascus (the oldest) : Beit Al-Hikma Foundation : Academy of the Arabic Language in Israel
Iso1	ar
Iso2	ara
Lc1	ara |ld1Arabic (generic)''(see varieties of Arabic for the individual codes)''
Ll1	none
Map	Arabic Language.PNG
Mapcaption	Distribution of Arabic as an official language in the Arab World. Majority Arabic speakers (blue) and minority Arabic speakers (green).
Notice	IPA}}

Arabic ( '''' or '''' ) is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book. This includes both the literary language (Modern Standard Arabic or ''Literary Arabic'', used in most written documents as well as in formal spoken occasions, such as lectures and radio broadcasts) and the spoken Arabic varieties, spoken in a wide arc of territory stretching across the Middle East and North Africa. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and the Neo-Aramaic languages, and also related to the South Semitic languages (e.g. Amharic in Ethiopia, Tigrinya in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and Mehri in Yemen and Oman) and the extinct East Semitic languages (e.g. Akkadian, first attested nearly 5,000 years ago). The written language is distinct from and more conservative than all of the spoken varieties, and the two exist in a state known as diglossia, used side-by-side for different societal functions.

Many of the spoken varieties are mutually unintelligible, and the varieties as a whole constitute a macrolanguage. This means that on purely linguistic grounds they would likely be considered to constitute more than one language, but are commonly grouped together as a single language for political and/or ethnic reasons. If considered multiple languages, it is unclear how many languages there would be, as the spoken varieties form a dialect chain with no clear boundaries. If Arabic is considered a single language, it counts more than 200 million first language speakers (according to some estimates, as high as 280 million), more than that of any other Semitic language. If considered separate languages, the most-spoken variety would likely be Egyptian Arabic, with more than 50,000,000 native speakers — still greater than any other Semitic language.

The modern written language (Modern Standard Arabic) is derived from the language of the Quran (known as Classical Arabic or Quranic Arabic). It is widely taught in schools, universities, and used to varying degrees in workplaces, government and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as ''Literary Arabic'', which is the official language of 26 states and the liturgical language of Islam. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the grammatical standards of Quranic Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpoint in the spoken varieties, and adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, especially in modern times.

Arabic is the only surviving member of the Old North Arabian dialect group, attested in Pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions dating back to the 4th century. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet, which is an abjad script, and is written from right-to-left.

Arabic has lent many words to other languages of the Islamic world, like Malay, Turkish, Urdu, Hausa, Hindi and Persian. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a major vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As a result, many European languages have also borrowed many words from it. Arabic influence is seen in Mediterranean languages, particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian, owing to both the proximity of European and Arab civilizations and 700 years of Arab rule in some parts of the Iberian peninsula (see Al-Andalus).

Arabic has also borrowed words from many languages, including Hebrew, Greek, Persian and Syriac in early centuries, Turkish in medieval times and contemporary European languages in modern times. However, the current tendency is to coin new words using the existing lexical resources of the language, or to repurpose old words, rather than directly borrowing foreign words.

Classical, Modern Standard, and spoken Arabic

''Arabic'' usually designates one of three main variants: Classical Arabic; Modern Standard Arabic; ''colloquial'' or ''dialectal'' Arabic.

Classical Arabic is the language found in the Qur'an and used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate. Theoretically, Classical Arabic is considered normative, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh), and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as the ). In practice, however, modern authors almost never write in pure Classical Arabic, instead using a literary language with its own grammatical norms and vocabulary, commonly known as Modern Standard Arabic. This 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" ( '''') 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:

Certain grammatical constructions of CA that have no counterpoint in any modern dialect (e.g. the energetic mood) are almost never used in MSA.

No modern spoken variety of Arabic has case distinctions. As a result, MSA is generally composed without case distinctions in mind, and the proper cases added after the fact, when necessary. (Because most case endings are noted using final short vowels, which are normally left unwritten in the Arabic script, it is unnecessary to determine the proper case of most words.) The practical result of this is that MSA is written in a strongly determined word order, and alternative orders that were used in CA for emphasis are rare. In addition, because of the lack of case marking in the spoken varieties, most speakers are not able to consistently use the correct endings in extemporaneous speech. As a result, spoken MSA tends to drop or regularize the endings except when reading from a prepared text.

In CA, the verb normally precedes the subject (VSO order); when the subject is fronted (SVO order), it is usually accompanied by the focusing particle ''''. MSA, following the spoken varieties, tends towards SVO order, and rarely uses ''''.

The numeral system in CA is extremely complex (rivaling that of the Russian language) and heavily tied in with the case system. This system is never used in MSA, even in the most formal of circumstances; instead, a significantly simplified system is used, approximating the system of the conservative spoken varieties.

MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g. '''' "to go") that is not present in the spoken varieties. However, when multiple Classical synonyms are available, MSA tends to prefer words with cognates in the spoken varieties over words without cognates. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined a large number of terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times (and in fact continues to evolve). Some words have been borrowed from other languages, notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling not real pronunciation (e.g. '''' "film" or '''' "democracy"). However, the current preference is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g. '''' "branch", also used for the branch of a company or organization; '''' "wing", also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.) or to coin new words using existing lexical resources (e.g. '''' "corporation", '''' "socialism", both ultimately based on the verb '''' "to share, partner with"; '''' "university", based on '''' "to gather, unite"; '''' "republic", based on '''' "multitude"). An earlier tendency was to re-purpose older words that had fallen into disuse (e.g. '''' "telephone" < "invisible caller (in Sufism)"; '''' "newspaper" < "palm-leaf stalk").

''Colloquial'' or ''dialectal'' Arabic refers to the many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many different regional variants; these sometimes differ enough to be mutually unintelligible and some linguists consider them distinct languages. 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. The only variety of modern Arabic to have acquired official language status is Maltese, spoken in (predominately Roman Catholic) Malta and written with the Latin script. It is descended from Classical Arabic through Siculo-Arabic and is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Arabic. Most linguists list it as a separate language rather than as a dialect of Arabic. Historically, Algerian Arabic was taught in French Algeria under the name ''darija''.

Note that even during Muhammad's lifetime, there were dialects of spoken Arabic. Muhammad spoke in the dialect of Mecca, in the western Arabian peninsula, and it was in this dialect that the Quran was written down. However, the dialects of the eastern Arabian peninsula were considered the most prestigious at the time, and so the language of the Quran was ultimately converted to follow the eastern phonology. It is this phonology that underlies the modern pronunciation of Classical Arabic. The phonological differences between these two dialects account for some of the complexities of Arabic writing, most notably the writing of the glottal stop or ''hamza'' (which was preserved in the eastern dialects but lost in western speech) and the use of '''' (representing a sound preserved in the western dialects but merged with '''' in eastern speech).

Language and dialect

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. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their local dialect and their school-taught Standard Arabic. 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 the same sentence. Arabic speakers often improve their familiarity with other dialects via music or film.

The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, similar to the issue with Chinese, Hindi and Urdu, Serbian and Croatian, etc. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a significant complicating factor: A single written form, significantly different from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites a number of sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak a single language, despite significant issues of 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 the Romance languages. Also, a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to all non-Moroccans other than Algerians and Tunisians, much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers. However, there is some mutual comprehensibility between conservative varieties of Arabic even across significant geographical distances. This suggests that the spoken varieties, at least, should linguistically be considered separate languages.

On the other hand, a significant difference between Arabic and the Romance languages is that the latter also correspond to a number of different standard written varieties, each of which separately informs the related spoken varieties, while all spoken Arabic varieties share a single written language. Indeed, a similar situation exists with the Romance languages in the case of Italian. As spoken varieties, Milanese, Neapolitan and Sicilian (among others) are different enough to be largely mutually incomprehensible, yet since they share a single written form (Standard Italian), they are often said by Italians to be dialects of the same language. As in many similar cases, the extent to which the Italian varieties are locally considered dialects or separate languages depends to a large extent on political factors, which can change over time. Linguists are divided over whether and to what extent to incorporate such considerations when judging issues of language and dialect.

Influence of Arabic on other languages

The influence of Arabic has been most important in Islamic countries. Arabic is an important source of vocabulary for languages such as Baluchi, Bengali, Berber, Catalan, English, French, German, Gujarati, Hindustani, Italian, Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Malayali, Maltese, Pashto, Persian, Portuguese, Punjabi, Rohingya, Saraiki, Sindhi, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Turkish and Urdu as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken. For example, the Arabic word for ''book'' ( '''') has been borrowed in all the languages listed, with the exception of French, Spanish, Italian, Catalan and Portuguese which use the Latin-derived words "livre", "libro", "llibre" and "livro", respectively, German and English which use the Germanic "Buch" and "Book", Tagalog which uses "aklat", Hebrew which uses "sefer", Gujarati which uses "chopdi", Marathi which uses "pustak" and Bengali which uses "boi".

In addition, English has many Arabic loan words, some directly but most through the medium of other Mediterranean languages. Examples of such words include admiral, adobe, alchemy, alcohol, algebra, algorithm, alkaline, almanac, amber, arsenal, assassin, banana, candy, carat, cipher, coffee, cotton, hazard, jar, jasmine, lemon, loofah, magazine, mattress, sherbet, sofa, sugar, sumac, tariff and many other words. Other languages such as Maltese and Kinubi derive from Arabic, rather than merely borrowing vocabulary or grammar rules.

The terms borrowed range from religious terminology (like Berber "prayer" < salat) ( ''''), academic terms (like Uyghur ''mentiq'' "logic"), economic items (like English ''sugar'') to placeholders (like Spanish ''fulano'' "so-and-so") and everyday conjunctions (like Hindustani ''lekin'' "but", or Spanish ''hasta'' "until"). Most Berber varieties (such as Kabyle), along with Swahili, borrow some numbers from Arabic. Most Islamic religious terms are direct borrowings from Arabic, such as ''salat'' 'prayer' and ''imam'' 'prayer leader.' In languages not directly in contact with the Arab world, Arabic loanwords are often transferred indirectly via other languages rather than being transferred directly from Arabic.

For example, most Arabic loanwords in Hindustani entered through Persian, and many older Arabic loanwords in Hausa were borrowed from Kanuri. Some words in English and other European languages are derived from Arabic, often through other European languages, especially Spanish and Italian. Among them are commonly used words like "sugar" (''sukkar''), "cotton" ('''') and "magazine" (''''). English words more recognizably of Arabic origin include "algebra", "alcohol", "alchemy", "alkali", "zenith" and "nadir". Some words in common use, such as "intention" and "information", were originally calques of Arabic philosophical terms.

Arabic words also made their way into several West African languages as Islam spread across the Sahara. Variants of Arabic words such as ''kitaab'' (book) have spread to the languages of African groups who had no direct contact with Arab traders.

Arabic was influenced by other languages as well. The most important sources of borrowings into (pre-Islamic) Arabic are from the related (Semitic) languages Aramaic, which used to be the principal, international language of communication throughout the ancient Near and Middle East, Ethiopic, and to a lesser degree Hebrew (mainly religious concepts). In addition, a substantial number of cultural, religious and political terms that have entered Arabic was borrowed from Iranian, notably Middle Persian or Parthian, and to a lesser extent, (Classical) Persian.

As Arabic occupied a position similar to Latin (in Europe) throughout the Islamic world many of the Arabic concepts in the field of science, philosophy, commerce etc., were often coined by non-native Arabic speakers, notably by Aramaic and Persian translators. This process of using Arabic roots, notably in Turkish and Persian, to translate foreign concepts continued right until the 18th and 19th century, when large swaths of Arab-inhabited lands were under Ottoman rule.

Arabic and Islam

Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. Arabic is closely associated with the religion of Islam because the Quran is written in the language, but it is nevertheless also spoken by Arab Christians, Mizrahi Jews and Iraqi Mandaeans. Most of the world's Muslims do not speak Arabic as their native language but many can read the Quranic script and recite the Qur'an. Among Non-Arab Muslims, translations of the Qur'an are most often accompanied by the original text.

Some Muslims present a monogenesis of languages and claim that the Arabic language was the language revealed by God for the benefit of mankind and the original language as a prototype symbolic system of communication, based upon its system of triconsonantal roots, spoken by man from which all other languages were derived, having first been corrupted. Statements spread in later centuries regarding the Arabic language being the language of Paradise are not considered authentic according to the scholars of Hadith and are widely discredited.

History

The earliest surviving texts in Proto-Arabic, or Ancient North Arabian, are the Hasaean inscriptions of eastern Saudi Arabia, from the 8th century BC, written not in the modern Arabic alphabet, nor in its Nabataean ancestor, but in variants of the epigraphic South Arabian ''musnad''. These are followed by 6th-century BC Lihyanite texts from southeastern Saudi Arabia and the Thamudic texts found throughout Arabia and the Sinai, and not actually connected with Thamud. Later come the Safaitic inscriptions beginning in the 1st century BC, and the many Arabic personal names attested in Nabataean inscriptions (which are, however, written in Aramaic). From about the 2nd century BC, a few inscriptions from Qaryat al-Fāw (near Sulayyil) reveal a dialect which is no longer considered "Proto-Arabic", but Pre-Classical Arabic. By the fourth century AD, the Arab kingdoms of the Lakhmids in southern Iraq, the Ghassanids in southern Syria the Kindite Kingdom emerged in Central Arabia. Their courts were responsible for some notable examples of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, and for some of the few surviving pre-Islamic Arabic inscriptions in the Arabic script.

Dialects and descendants

''Colloquial Arabic'' is a collective term for the spoken varieties of Arabic used throughout the Arab world, which differ radically from the literary language. The main dialectal division is between the varieties within and outside of the Arabian peninsula, followed by that between sedentary varieties and the much more conservative Bedouin varieties. All of the varieties outside of the Arabian peninsula (which include the large majority of speakers) have a large number of features in common with each other that are not found in Classical Arabic. This has led researchers to postulate the existence of a prestige koine dialect in the one or two centuries immediately following the Arab conquest, whose features eventually spread to all of the newly conquered areas. (These features are present to varying degrees inside the Arabian peninsula. Generally, the Arabian peninsula varieties have much more diversity than the non-peninsula varieties, but have been understudied.)

Within the non-peninsula varieties, the largest difference is between the non-Egyptian North African dialects (especially Moroccan Arabic) and the others. Moroccan Arabic in particular is nearly incomprehensible to Arabic speakers east of Algeria (although the converse is not true, in part due to the popularity of Egyptian films and other media).

One factor in the differentiation of the dialects is influence from the languages previously spoken in the areas, which have typically provided a significant number of new words, and have sometimes also influenced pronunciation or word order; however, a much more significant factor for most dialects is, as among Romance languages, retention (or change of meaning) of different classical forms. Thus Iraqi ''aku'', Levantine ''fīh'', and North African ''kayən'' all mean "there is", and all come from Classical Arabic forms (''yakūn'', ''fīhi'', ''kā'in'' respectively), but now sound very different.

Examples

{| class=wikitable ! Variety ! I love reading a lot ! When I went to the library ! I only found this old book ! I wanted to read a book about the history of women in France. |- ! Classical Arabic (liturgical or poetic only) | '''' | '''' | '''' | '''' |- ! Modern Standard Arabic | '''' | '''' | '''' | '''' |- ! Moroccan | | | | |- ! Tunisian | | | | |- ! Egyptian | | | | |- ! Lebanese | | | | |- ! Iraqi | | | | |- ! Saudi | | | | |- ! Kuwaiti | | | | |}

Koine

According to Charles Ferguson, the following are some of the characteristic features of the koine that underlies all of the modern dialects outside the Arabian peninsula. Although many other features are common to most or all of these varieties (see varieties of Arabic), Ferguson believes that these features in particular are unlikely to have evolved independently more than once or twice, and together suggest the existence of the koine:

Loss of the dual (grammatical number) except on nouns, with consistent plural agreement (cf. feminine singular agreement in plural inanimates).

Change of ''a'' to ''i'' in many affixes (e.g. non-past-tense prefixes ''ti- yi- ni-''; ''wi-'' "and"; ''il-'' "the"; feminine ''-it'' in the construct state).

Loss of third-weak verbs ending in ''w'' (which merge with verbs ending in ''y'').

Reformation of geminate verbs, e.g. ''ḥalaltu'' "I untied" → ''ḥalēt(u)''.

Conversion of separate words ''lī'' "to me", ''laka'' "to you", etc. into indirect-object clitic suffixes.

Certain changes in the cardinal number system, e.g. ''ḫamsat ʾayyām'' →''ḫams tiyyām'', where certain words have a special plural with prefixed ''t''. Also, unexpected emphatic ''ṭ'' in the numbers 13-19 (e.g. ''ḫamṣṭaʿšar'' "fifteen" < ''ḫamsat ʿašar'').

Loss of the feminine elative (comparative).

Adjective plurals of the form ''kibār'' "big" → ''kubār''.

Change of nisba suffix ''-iyy'' → ''i''.

Certain lexical items, e.g. ''ǧāb'' "bring" < ''ǧāʾ bi-'' "come with"; ''šāf'' "see"; ''ʾēš'' "what" (or similar); ''illi'' "(relative pronoun)".

Merger of and .

Dialect groups

The major dialect groups are:

Egyptian Arabic

Egyptian Arabic, spoken by around 80 million in Egypt. It is one of the most understood varieties of Arabic, due in large part to the widespread distribution of Egyptian films and television shows throughout the Arabic speaking world. Closely related varieties are also spoken in Sudan.

Maghrebi Arabic

Maghrebi Arabic includes Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic, Saharan Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, and Libyan Arabic, and is spoken by around 75 million North Africans in Morocco, ''Western Sahara'', Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Niger, and western Egypt; it is often difficult for speakers of Middle Eastern Arabic varieties to understand. The Berber influence in these dialects varies in degree.

Mesopotamian Arabic

Iraqi Arabic, spoken by about 29 million people in Iraq, eastern Syria and western Iran (Khuzestan).

North Mesopotamian Arabic, spoken by around 7 million people in northern Iraq, northern Syria, northwestern Iran and southern Turkey.

Levantine Arabic

Levantine Arabic includes North Levantine Arabic, South Levantine Arabic, and Cypriot Arabic. It is spoken by almost 35 million people in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Israel, Cyprus, and Turkey.

Gulf Arabic

Gulf Arabic, spoken by around 4 million people predominantly in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Bahrain. Also spoken in Iran's Bushehr and Hormozgan provinces.

Other

Other varieties include:

Yemeni Arabic, spoken in Yemen, southern Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, and Somalia.

Sudanese Arabic (19 million speakers), spoken in Sudan

Najdi Arabic (9.9 million speakers), spoken in Nejd, central Saudi Arabia

Hejazi Arabic (7 million speakers), spoken in Hejaz, western Saudi Arabia.

Hassaniya Arabic (2.8 million speakers), spoken in Mauritania, some parts of Mali and ''Western Sahara''

Bahrani Arabic (310,000 speakers), spoken by Bahrani Shia in Bahrain, where it exhibits some differences from Bahraini Arabic. It is also spoken to a lesser extent in Oman.

Judeo-Arabic dialects

Central Asian Arabic, spoken in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, is highly endangered

Maltese, spoken on the Mediterranean island of Malta, is the only one to have established itself as a fully separate language, with independent literary norms. In the course of its history the language has adopted numerous loanwords, phonetic and phonological features, and even some grammatical patterns, from Italian, Sicilian, and English. It is also the only Semitic tongue written in the Latin script.

Andalusi Arabic, spoken in Spain until 15th century, now extinct.

Siculo Arabic, spoken on Sicily, South Italy until 14th century, developed into Maltese language.

The Muslim Hui people in China had knowledge of archaic forms of Arabic. The Hui of Yunnan (Burmaese called them Panthays) were reported to be fluent in Arabic. During the Panthay Rebellion, Arabic replaced Chinese as official language of the rebel kingdom. In 1844 "The Chinese repository, Volume 13" was published, including an account of an Englishman who stayed in Ningbo in China. There he visited the local mosque, the Hui running the mosque was from Shandong, and he was a descendant of Muslims from the city of Medina. He spoke both Arabic and Chinese, and could read Arabic as well. In Tianjin, Hui could speak an old, archaic form of Arabic, when they met Arab Muslims in recent times, it was found out that Old Arabic and Modern Arabic were very different, so Modern Arabic is now being taught to Hui.

Sounds

It is important to distinguish between the pronunciation of the "formal" Literary Arabic (usually specifically Modern Standard Arabic) and the "colloquial" spoken varieties of Arabic. The two types of Arabic, but significantly different. The "colloquial" varieties are learned at home and constitute the native languages of Arabic speakers. The literary variety is learned at school; although many speakers have a native-like command of the language, it is technically not the native language of any speakers. Both varieties can be both written and spoken, although the colloquial varieties are rarely written down, and the formal variety is spoken mostly in formal circumstances, e.g. in radio broadcasts, formal lectures, parliamentary discussions, and to some extent between speakers of different colloquial varieties. Even when the literary language is spoken, however, it is normal only spoken in its pure form when reading a prepared text out loud. When speaking extemporaneously (i.e. making up the language on the spot, as in a normal discussion among people), speakers tend to deviate somewhat from the strict literary language in the direction of the colloquial varieties. In fact, there is a continuous range of "in-between" spoken varieties: from nearly pure Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), to a form that still uses MSA grammar and vocabulary but with significant colloquial influence, to a form of the colloquial language that imports a number of words and grammatical constructions in MSA, to a form that is close to pure colloquial but with the "rough edges" (the most noticeably "vulgar" or non-Classical aspects) smoothed out, to pure colloquial. The particular variant (or ''register'') used depends on the social class and education level of the speakers involved, and the level of formality of the speech situation. Often it will vary within a single encounter, e.g. moving from nearly pure MSA to a more mixed language in the process of a radio interview, as the interviewee becomes more comfortable with the interviewer. This type of variation is characteristic of the diglossia that exists throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

Literary Arabic

Although Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is a unitary language, its pronunciation varies somewhat from country to country and from region to region within a country. The variation in individual "accents" of MSA speakers tend to mirror corresponding variations in the colloquial speech of the speakers in question, but with the distinguishing characteristics moderated somewhat. Note that it is important in descriptions of "Arabic" phonology to distinguish between pronunciation of a given colloquial (spoken) dialect and the pronunciation of MSA by these same speakers. Although they are related, they are not the same. For example, the phoneme that derives from Proto-Semitic /g/ has many different pronunciations in the modern spoken varieties, e.g. . Speakers whose native variety has either or will use the same pronunciation when speaking MSA, even speakers from Cairo, whose native Egyptian Arabic has , normally use when speaking MSA. of Persian Gulf is the only pronunciation which isn't pronounced in MSA, but instead .

Another example: Many colloquial varieties are known for a type of vowel harmony in which the presence of an "emphatic consonant" triggers backed allophones of nearby vowels (especially of the low vowels , which are backed to in these circumstances, and very often fronted to in all other circumstances). In many spoken varieties, the backed or "emphatic" vowel allophones spread a fair distance in both directions from the triggering consonant; in some varieties (most notably Egyptian Arabic), the "emphatic" allophones spread throughout the entire word, usually including prefixes and suffixes, even at a remove of several syllables from the triggering consonant. Speakers of colloquial varieties with this vowel harmony tend to introduce it into their MSA pronunciation as well, but usually with a lesser degree of spreading than in the colloquial varieties. (For example, speakers of colloquial varieties with extremely long-distance harmony may allow a moderate, but not extreme, amount of spreading of the harmonic allophones in their MSA speech, while speakers of colloquial varieties with moderate-distance harmony may only harmonize immediately adjacent vowels in MSA.)

Vowels

Modern Standard Arabic has six pure vowels, with short and corresponding long vowels . There are also two diphthongs: and .

As mentioned above, the pronunciation of the vowels differs from speaker to speaker, in way that tend to echo the pronunciation of the corresponding colloquial variety. Nonetheless, there are some common trends. Most noticeable is the differing pronunciation of and , which tend towards fronted , or in most situations, but a back in the neighborhood of emphatic consonants. (Some accents and dialects, such as those of Hijaz, have central in all situations.) The vowels and are often affected somewhat in emphatic neighborhoods as well, with generally more back and/or centralized allophones, but the differences are less great than for the low vowels. The pronunciation of short and tends towards and in many dialects.

The definition of both "emphatic" and "neighborhood" vary in ways that echo (to some extent) corresponding variations in the spoken dialects. Generally, the consonants triggering "emphatic" allophones are the pharyngealized consonants ; ; and , if not followed immediately by . Frequently, the fricatives also trigger emphatic allophones; occasionally also the pharyngeal consonants (the former more than the latter). Many dialects have multiple emphatic allophones of each vowel, depending on the particular nearby consonants. In most MSA accents, emphatic coloring of vowels is limited to vowels immediately adjacent to a triggering consonant, although in some it spreads a bit farther: e.g. '''' "time"; '''' "homeland"; '''' "downtown" (sometimes or similar).

In a non-emphatic environment, the vowel /a/ in the diphthong tends to be fronted even more than elsewhere, often pronounced or : hence '''' "sword" but '''' "summer"). However, in accents with no emphatic allophones of /a/ (e.g. in the Hijaz), the pronunciation occurs in all situations.

Consonants

+ Standardized Arabic consonant phonemes

! rowspan="2"

! colspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! plain

emphatic">Dental consonant

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! rowspan="2"

! plain

emphatic

emphatic consonant>emphatic

! plain

! colspan=2

! rowspan=2

! voiceless

voice (phonetics)>voiced

3

! rowspan=2

! voiceless

4

voice (phonetics)>voiced

! colspan=2

2

! colspan=2

NOTE: The underlined variants in the above table indicate the pronunciations considered "standard" according to descriptions in linguistic sources; the same pronunciations are normally taught to foreigners learning Literary Arabic. (The sources disagree about whether the sounds indicated above as ~ and ~ are more standardly or , or are unclear.)

See Arabic alphabet for explanations on the IPA phonetic symbols found in this chart.

# This phoneme is represented by the Arabic letter '''' () and has many standard pronunciations. is characteristic of Iraq and most of the Arabian peninsula; occurs in the Levant and North Africa; and is used in Egypt and some regions in Yemen and Oman. Generally this corresponds with the pronunciation in the colloquial dialects. In some regions in Sudan and Yemen, as well as in some Sudanese and Yemeni dialects, it may be either or , representing the original pronunciation of Classical Arabic. Foreign words containing may be transcribed with , , , , , or , mainly depending on the regional spoken variety of Arabic. Note also that in northern Egypt, where the Arabic letter '''' () is normally pronounced , a separate phoneme occurs in a small number of European loanwords, e.g. "jacket". # is pronounced in , the name of God, q.e. Allah, when the word follows ''a'', ''ā'', ''u'' or ''ū'' (after ''i'' or ''ī'' it is unvelarized: ''bismi l–lāh'' ). Some speakers velarize other occurrences of /l/ in MSA, in imitation of their spoken dialects. # The emphatic consonant was actually pronounced , or possibly — either way, a highly unusual sound. The medieval Arabs actually termed their language '''' "the language of the Ḍād" (the name of the letter used for this sound), since they thought the sound was unique to their language. (In fact, it also exists in a few other minority Semitic languages, e.g. Mehri.) # In many varieties, () are actually epiglottal (despite what is reported in many earlier works). # and () are often post-velar, though velar and uvular pronunciations are also possible. # () can be pronounced as or even . In some places of Maghreb it can be also pronounced as .

Arabic has consonants traditionally termed "emphatic" (), which exhibit simultaneous pharyngealization as well as varying degrees of velarization , so they may be written with the "Velarized or pharyngealized" diacritic () as: . This simultaneous articulation is described as "Retracted Tongue Root" by phonologists. In some transcription systems, emphasis is shown by capitalizing the letter, for example, is written ‹D›; in others the letter is underlined or has a dot below it, for example, ‹›.

Vowels and consonants can be phonologically short or long. Long (geminate) consonants are normally written doubled in Latin transcription (i.e. bb, dd, etc.), reflecting the presence of the Arabic diacritic mark '''', which indicates doubled consonants. In actual pronunciation, doubled consonants are held twice as long as short consonants. This consonant lengthening is phonemically contrastive: '''' "he accepted" vs. '''' "he kissed."

Syllable structure

Arabic has two kinds of syllables: open syllables (CV) and (CVV)—and closed syllables (CVC), (CVVC), and (CVCC). The syllable types with three morae (units of time), i.e. CVC and CVV, are termed ''heavy syllables'', while those with four morae, i.e. CVVC and CVCC, are ''superheavy syllables''. Superheavy syllables in Classical Arabic occur in only two places: at the end of the sentence (due to pausal pronunciation), and in words such as '''' "hot", '''' "stuff, substance", '''' "they disputed with each other", where a long '''' occurs before two identical consonants (a former short vowel between the consonants has been lost). (In less formal pronunciations of Modern Standard Arabic, superheavy syllables are common at the end of words or before clitic suffixes such as '''' "us, our", due to the deletion of final short vowels.)

In surface pronunciation, every vowel must be preceded by a consonant (which may include the glottal stop ). There are no cases of hiatus within a word (where two vowels occur next to each other, without an intervening consonant). Some words do underlyingly begin with a vowel, such as the definite article ''al-'' or words such as '''' "he bought", '''' "meeting". When actually pronounced, one of three things happens: If the word occurs after another word ending in a consonant, there is a smooth transition from final consonant to initial vowel, e.g. '''' "meeting" . If the word occurs after another word ending in a vowel, the initial vowel of the word is elided, e.g. '''' "house of the director" . If the word occurs at the beginning of an utterance, a glottal stop is added onto the beginning, e.g. '''' "The house is ..." .

Stress

Word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic. It bears a strong relationship to vowel length. The basic rules for Modern Standard Arabic are:

A final vowel, long or short, may not be stressed.

Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.

Given this restriction, the last heavy syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.

If there is no such syllable, the first possible syllable (i.e. third from end) is stressed.

As a special exception, in Form VII and VIII verb forms stress may not be on the first syllable, despite the above rules: Hence '''' "he subscribed" (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), '''' "he subscribes" (whether or not the final short vowel is pronounced), '''' "he should subscribe (juss.)". Likewise Form VIII '''' "he bought", '''' "he buys".

Examples:'''' "book", '''' "writer", '''' "desk", '''' "desks", '''' "library" (but '''' "library" in short pronunciation), '''' (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote" = '''' (dialect), '''' (Modern Standard Arabic) "they wrote it" = '''' (dialect), '''' (Modern Standard Arabic) "they (dual, fem) wrote", '''' (Modern Standard Arabic) "I wrote" = '''' (short form or dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: '''' "magazine", '''' "place".

These rules may result in differently-stressed syllables when final case endings are pronounced, vs. the normal situation where they are not pronounced, as in the above example of '''' "library" in full pronunciation, but '''' "library" in short pronunciation.

The restriction on final long vowels does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen from loss of original final ''-hu/hi''.

Some dialects have different stress rules. In the Cairo (Egyptian Arabic) dialect a heavy syllable may not carry stress more than two syllables from the end of a word, hence '''' "school", '''' "Cairo". This also affects the way that Modern Standard Arabic is pronounced in Egypt. In the Arabic of Sana, stress is often retracted: '''' "two houses", '''' "their table", '''' "desks", '''' "sometimes", '''' "their school". (In this dialect, only syllables with long vowels or diphthongs are considered heavy; in a two-syllable word, the final syllable can be stressed only if the preceding syllable is light; and in longer words, the final syllable cannot be stressed.)

Levels of pronunciation

The final short vowels (e.g. the case endings ''-a -i -u'' and mood endings ''-u -a'') are often not pronounced, despite forming part of the formal paradigm of nouns and verbs. The following levels of pronunciation exist:

Full pronunciation

In full pronunciation, all endings are pronounced as written. This normally is used only in grammatical descriptions of the language.

Full pronunciation with pausa

This is the most formal level actually used in speech. All endings are pronounced as written, except at the end of an utterance, where the following changes occur:

Final short vowels are not pronounced. (But possibly an exception is made for feminine plural ''-na'', and shortened vowels in the jussive/imperative of defective verbs, e.g. ''irmi!'' "throw!".)

The entire indefinite noun endings ''-in -un'' (with nunation) are left off. The ending ''-an'' is left off of nouns preceded by a ''tāʾ marbūṭah'' ة (i.e. the ''-t'' in the ending ''-at-'' that typically marks feminine nouns), but pronounced as ''-ā'' in other nouns (hence its writing in this fashion in the Arabic script).

The ''tāʾ marbūṭah'' itself (typically of feminine nouns) is pronounced as ''h''. (At least, this is the case in extremely formal pronunciation, e.g. some Quranic recitations. In practice, this ''h'' is usually omitted.)

Formal short pronunciation

This is a formal level of pronunciation sometimes seen. It is somewhat like pronouncing all words as if they were in pausal position (with influence from the colloquial varieties). The following changes occur:

Most final short vowels are not pronounced. However, the following short vowels ''are'' pronounced:

*feminine plural ''-na''

*shortened vowels in the jussive/imperative of defective verbs, e.g. ''irmi!'' "throw!"

*second-person singular feminine past-tense ''-ti'', and likewise ''ʾanti'' "you (fem. sg.)"

*sometimes, first-person singular past-tense ''-tu''

*sometimes, second-person masculine past-tense ''-ta'', and likewise ''ʾanta'' "you (masc. sg.)"

*final ''-a'' in certain short words, e.g. ''laysa'' "is not", ''sawfa'' "(future-tense marker)"

The nunation endings ''-an -in -un'' are not pronounced. However, they ''are'' pronounced in adverbial accusative formations, e.g. '''' تقريباً "almost, approximately", '''' عادةً "usually". The ''tāʾ marbūṭah'' ending ة is unpronounced, ''except'' in construct state nouns, where it sounds as ''t'' (and in adverbial accusative constructions, e.g. '''' عادةً "usually", where the entire ''-tan'' is pronounced). The masculine singular nisba ending '''' is actually pronounced '''', and is unstressed (but plural and feminine singular forms, i.e. when followed by a suffix, still sound as ''''). ''Full endings'' (including case endings) occur when a clitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g. '''' "us/our").

Informal short pronunciation

This is the pronunciation used by speakers of Modern Standard Arabic in extemporaneous speech, i.e. when producing new sentences rather than simply reading a prepared text. It is similar to formal short pronunciation except that the rules for dropping final vowels apply ''even'' when a clitic suffix is added. Basically, short-vowel case and mood endings are never pronounced, and certain other changes occur that echo the corresponding colloquial pronunciations. Specifically:

All the rules for formal short pronunciation apply, except as follows.

The past tense singular endings written formally as ''-tu -ta -ti'' are pronounced ''-t -t -ti''. But masculine '''' is pronounced in full. Unlike in formal short pronunciation, the rules for dropping or modifying final endings are also applied when a clitic object or possessive suffix is added (e.g. '''' "us/our"). If this produces a sequence of three consonants, then one of the following happens, depending on the speaker's native colloquial variety:

*A short vowel (e.g. ''-i-'' or ''-ǝ-'') is consistently added, either between the second and third or the first and second consonants.

*Or, a short vowel is added only if an otherwise unpronounceable sequence occurs, typically due to a violation of the sonority hierarchy (e.g. ''-rtn-'' is pronounced as a three-consonant cluster, but ''-trn-'' needs to be broken up).

*Or, a short vowel is never added, but consonants like ''r l m n'' occurring between two other consonants will be pronounced as a syllabic consonant (as in the English words "butter bottle bottom button").

*When a doubled consonant occurs before another consonant (or finally), it is often shortened to a single consonant rather than a vowel added. (But note that Moroccan Arabic never shortens doubled consonants or inserts short vowels to break up clusters, instead tolerating arbitrary-length series of arbitrary consonants, and hence Moroccan Arabic speakers are likely to follow the same rules in their pronunciation of Modern Standard Arabic.)

The clitic suffixes themselves tend also to be changed, in a way that avoids many possible occurrences of three-consonant clusters. In particular, ''-ka -ki -hu'' generally sound as ''-ak -ik -uh''.

Final long vowels are often shortened, merging with any short vowels that remain.

Depending on the level of formality, the speaker's education level, etc., various grammatical changes may occur in ways that echo the colloquial variants:

Any remaining case endings (e.g. masculine plural nominative ''-ūn'' vs. oblique ''-īn'') will be leveled, with the oblique form used everywhere. (However, in words like '''' "father" and '''' "brother" with special long-vowel case endings in the construct state, the nominative is used everywhere, hence '''' "father of", '''' "brother of".)

*Feminine plural endings in verbs and clitic suffixes will often drop out, with the masculine plural endings used instead. If the speaker's native variety has feminine plural endings, they may be preserved, but will often be modified in the direction of the forms used in the speaker's native variety, e.g. ''-an'' instead of ''-na''.

*Dual endings will often drop out except on nouns, and then used only for emphasis (similar to their use in the colloquial varieties); elsewhere, the plural endings are used (or feminine singular, if appropriate).

Colloquial varieties

: ''The section below only refers to pronunciation''

Vowels

As mentioned above, many spoken dialects have a process of ''emphasis spreading'', where the "emphasis" (pharyngealization) of emphatic consonants spreads forward and back through adjacent syllables, pharyngealizing all nearby consonants and triggering the back allophone in all nearby low vowels. The extent of emphasis spreading varies. For example, in Moroccan Arabic, it spreads as far as the first full vowel (i.e. sound derived from a long vowel or diphthong) on either side; in many Levantine dialects, it spreads indefinitely, but is blocked by any or ; while in Egyptian Arabic, it usually spreads throughout the entire word, including prefixes and suffixes. In Moroccan Arabic, also have emphatic allophones .

Unstressed short vowels, especially , are deleted in many contexts. Many sporadic examples of short vowel change have occurred (especially /a/→/i/, and interchange /i/↔/u/). Most Levantine dialects merge short /i u/ into /ǝ/ in most contexts (all except directly before a single final consonant). In Moroccan Arabic, on the other hand, short /u/ triggers labialization of nearby consonants (especially velar consonants and uvular consonants), and then short /a i u/ all merge into /ǝ/, which is deleted in many contexts. (The labialization plus /ǝ/ is sometimes interpreted as an underlying phoneme .) This essentially causes the wholesale loss of the short-long vowel distinction, with the original long vowels remaining as half-long , phonemically , which are used to represent ''both'' short and long vowels in borrowings from Literary Arabic.

Most spoken dialects have monophthongized original to (in all circumstances, including adjacent to emphatic consonants). In Moroccan Arabic, these have subsequently merged into original .

Consonants

In some dialects, there may be more or fewer phonemes than those listed in the chart above. For example, non-Arabic is used in the Maghrebi dialects as well in the written language mostly for foreign names. Semitic became extremely early on in Arabic before it was written down; a few modern Arabic dialects, such as Iraqi (influenced by Persian and Turkish) distinguish between and . The Iraqi Arabic uses also sounds , and uses Persian adding letters, e.g.: '''' – ''a plum''; '' – ''a truffle'' and so on.

Early in the expansion of Arabic, the separate emphatic phonemes and coalesced into a single phoneme . Many dialects (such as Egyptian, Levantine, and much of the Maghreb) subsequently lost fricatives, converting into . Most dialects borrow "learned" words from the Standard language using the same pronunciation as for inherited words, but some dialects without interdental fricatives (particularly in Egypt and the Levant) render original in borrowed words as .

Another key distinguishing mark of Arabic dialects is how they render the original velar and uvular stops , (Proto-Semitic ), and : retains its original pronunciation in widely scattered regions such as Yemen, Morocco, and urban areas of the Maghreb. It is pronounced as a glottal stop in several prestige dialects, such as those spoken in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus. But it is rendered as a voiced velar stop in Gulf Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Upper Egypt, much of the Maghreb, and less urban parts of the Levant (e.g. Jordan). Some traditionally Christian villages in rural areas of the Levant render the sound as , as do Shia Bahrainis. In some Gulf dialects, it is palatalized to or . It is pronounced as a voiced uvular constrictive in Sudanese Arabic. Many dialects with a modified pronunciation for maintain the pronunciation in certain words (often with religious or educational overtones) borrowed from the Classical language. is pronounced as an affricate in Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula, but is pronounced in most of North Egypt and parts of Yemen and Oman, in Morocco, Tunisia and the Levant, and , in most words in much of Gulf Arabic. usually retains its original pronunciation, but is palatalized to in many words in Israel & the Palestinian Territories, Iraq and much of the Arabian Peninsula. Often a distinction is made between the suffixes (you, masc.) and (you, fem.), which become and , respectively. In Sana'a, Omani, and Bahrani is pronounced .

Pharyngealization of the emphatic consonants tends to weaken in many of the spoken varieties, and to spread from emphatic consonants to nearby sounds. In addition, the "emphatic" allophone automatically triggers pharyngealization of adjacent sounds in many dialects. As a result, it may difficult or impossible to determine whether a given coronal consonant is phonemically emphatic or not, especially in dialects with long-distance emphasis spreading. (A notable exception is the sounds vs. in Moroccan Arabic, because the former is pronounced as an affricate but the latter is not.)

Grammar

Literary Arabic

As in other Semitic languages, Arabic has a complex and unusual morphology (i.e. method of constructing words from a basic root). Arabic has a nonconcatenative "root-and-pattern" morphology: A root consists of a set of bare consonants (usually three), which are fitted into a discontinuous pattern in order to form words. For example, the word for "I wrote" is constructed by combining the root "write" with the pattern "I X'd" to form '''' "I wrote". Other verbs meaning "I X'd" will typically have the same pattern but with different consonants, e.g. '''' "I read", '''' "I ate", '''' "I went", although other patterns are possible (e.g. '''' "I drank", '''' "I said", '''' "I spoke", where the subpattern used to signal the past tense may change but the suffix '''' is always used).

From a single root , numerous words can be formed by applying different patterns: '''' "I wrote" '''' "I had (something) written" '''' "I corresponded (with someone)" '''' "I dictated" '''' "I subscribed" '''' "we corresponded with each other" '''' "I write" '''' "I have (something) written" '''' "I correspond (with someone)" '''' "I dictate" '''' "I subscribe" '''' "We correspond each other" '''' "it was written" '''' "it was dictated" '''' "written" '''' "dictated" '''' "book" '''' "books" '''' "writer" '''' "writers" '''' "desk, office" '''' "library"

etc.

Nouns and adjectives

Nouns in Literary Arabic have three grammatical cases (nominative, accusative, and genitive [also used when the noun is governed by a preposition]); three numbers (singular, dual and plural); two genders (masculine and feminine); and three "states" (indefinite, definite, and construct). The cases of singular nouns (other than those that end in long ā) are indicated by suffixed short vowels (/-u/ for nominative, /-a/ for accusative, /-i/ for genitive).

The feminine singular is often marked by /-at/, which is reduced to /-ah/ or /-a/ before a pause. Plural is indicated either through endings (the sound plural) or internal modification (the broken plural). Definite nouns include all proper nouns, all nouns in "construct state" and all nouns which are prefixed by the definite article /al-/. Indefinite singular nouns (other than those that end in long ā) add a final /-n/ to the case-marking vowels, giving /-un/, /-an/ or /-in/ (which is also referred to as nunation or tanwīn).

Adjectives in Literary Arabic are marked for case, number, gender and state, as for nouns. However, the plural of all non-human nouns is always combined with a singular feminine adjective, which takes the /-ah/ or /-at/ suffix.

Pronouns in Literary Arabic are marked for person, number and gender. There are two varieties, independent pronouns and enclitics. Enclitic pronouns are attached to the end of a verb, noun or preposition and indicate verbal and prepositional objects or possession of nouns. The first-person singular pronoun has a different enclitic form used for verbs (/-ni/) and for nouns or prepositions (/-ī/ after consonants, /-ya/ after vowels).

Nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives agree with each other in all respects. However, non-human plural nouns are grammatically considered to be feminine singular. Furthermore, a verb in a verb-initial sentence is marked as singular regardless of its semantic number when the subject of the verb is explicitly mentioned as a noun. Numerals between three and ten show "chiasmic" agreement, in that grammatically masculine numerals have feminine marking and vice versa.

Verbs

Verbs in Literary Arabic are marked for person (first, second, or third), gender, and number. They are conjugated in two major paradigms (past and non-past); two voices (active and passive); and five moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, jussive and energetic). There are also two participles (active and passive) and a verbal noun, but no infinitive.

The past and non-past paradigms are sometimes also termed perfective and imperfective, respectively, indicating the fact that they actually represent a combination of tense and aspect. The moods other than the indicative occur only in the non-past, and the future tense is signaled by prefixing '''' or '''' onto the non-past. The past and non-past differ in the form of the stem (e.g. past '''' vs. non-past ''''), and also use completely different sets of affixes for indicating person, number and gender: In the past, the person, number and gender are fused into a single suffixal morpheme, while in the non-past, a combination of prefixes (primarily encoding person) and suffixes (primarily encoding gender and number) are used. The passive voice uses the same person/number/gender affixes but changes the vowels of the stem.

The following shows a paradigm of a regular Arabic verb, '''' "to write". Note that in Modern Standard Arabic, many final short vowels are dropped (indicated in parentheses below), and the energetic mood (in either long or short form, which have the same meaning) is almost never used.

+ Paradigm of a regular Form I Arabic verb, '''' "to write"
			Past	PresentIndicative	FutureIndicative	Subjunctive	! align="center"	! align="center"	! align="center"	! align="center"
Active	Singular
	1st
	2nd	masculine
		feminine
	3rd	masculine
		feminine
	Dual
	2nd	masculine & feminine
	3rd	masculine
		feminine
	Plural
	1st
	2nd	masculine
		feminine
	3rd	masculine
		feminine
Passive	Singular
	1st
	2nd	masculine
		feminine
	etc.
Nominal	Active Participle				Passive Participle			Verbal Noun

Derivation

Unlike in most languages, Arabic has virtually no means of deriving words by adding prefixes or suffixes to words. Instead, they are formed according to a limited (but fairly large) number of templates applied to roots.

For verbs, a given root can construct up to fifteen different verbs, each with one or more characteristic meanings and each with its own templates for the past and non-past stems, active and passive participles, and verbal noun. These are referred to by Western scholars as "Form I", "Form II", and so on through "Form XV" (although Forms XI to XV are rare). These forms encode concepts such as the causative, intensive and reflexive. These forms can be viewed as analogous to verb conjugations in languages such as Spanish in terms of the additional complexity of verb formation that they induce. (Note, however, that their usage in constructing vocabulary is somewhat different, since the same root can be conjugated in multiple forms, with different shades of meaning.)

Examples of the different verbs formed from the root '''' "write" (using '''' "red" for Form IX, which is limited to colors and physical defects): {|class="wikitable" ! Form !! Past !! Meaning !! Non-past !! Meaning |- | I || '''' || "he wrote" || '''' || "he writes" |- | II || '''' || "he made (someone) write" || '''' || "he makes (someone) write" |- | III || '''' || "he corresponded with, wrote to (someone)" || '''' || "he corresponds with, writes to (someone)" |- | IV || '''' || "he dictated" || '''' || "he dictates" |- | V || '''' || ''nonexistent'' || '''' || ''nonexistent'' |- | VI || '''' || "he corresponded (with someone, esp. mutually)" || '''' || "he corresponds (with someone, esp. mutually)" |- | VII || '''' || "he subscribed" || '''' || "he subscribes" |- | VIII || '''' || "he copied" || '''' || "he copies" |- | IX || '''' || "he turned red" || '''' || "he turns red" |- | X || '''' || "he asked (someone) to write" || '''' || "he asks (someone) to write" |- |}

Form II is sometimes used to create transitive denominative verbs (verbs built from nouns); Form V is the equivalent used for intransitive denominatives.

The associated participles and verbal nouns of a verb are the primary means of forming new lexical nouns in Arabic. This is similar to the process by which, for example, the English gerund "meeting" (similar to a verbal noun) has turned into a noun referring to a particular type of social, often work-related event where people gather together to have a "discussion" (another lexicalized verbal noun). Another fairly common means of forming nouns is through one of a limited number of patterns that can be applied directly to roots, such as the "nouns of location" in ''ma-'' (e.g. '''' "desk, office" < ''k-t-b'' "write", '''' "kitchen" < ''ṭ-b-x'' "cook").

The only three genuine suffixes are as follows: The feminine suffix ''-ah''; variously derives terms from women from related terms for men, or more generally terms along the same lines as the corresponding masculine, e.g. '''' "library" (also a writing-related place, but different than '''', as above).

The nisba suffix ''-iyy-''. This suffix is extremely productive, and forms adjectives meaning "related to X". It corresponds to English adjectives in ''-ic, -al, -an, -y, -ist'', etc.

The feminine nisba suffix ''-iyyah''. This is formed by adding the feminine suffix ''-ah'' onto nisba adjectives to form abstract nouns. For example, from the basic root '''' "share" can be derived the Form VIII verb '''' "to cooperate, participate", and in turn its verbal noun '''' "cooperation, participation" can be formed. This in turn can be made into a nisba adjective '''' "socialist", from which an abstract noun '''' "socialism" can be derived. Other recent formations are '''' "republic" (lit. "public-ness" < '''' "multitude, general public"), and the Qaddafi-specific variation '''' "people's republic" (lit. "masses-ness" < '''' "the masses", pl. of '''', as above).

Colloquial varieties

The spoken dialects have lost the case distinctions and make only limited use of the dual (it occurs only on nouns and its use is no longer required in all circumstances). They have lost the mood distinctions other than imperative, but many have since gained new moods through the use of prefixes (most often /bi-/ for indicative vs. unmarked subjunctive). They have also mostly lost the indefinite "nunation" and the internal passive.

The following is an example of a regular verb paradigm in Egyptian Arabic.

+Example of a regular Form I verb in Egyptian Arabic, ''kátab/yíktib'' "write"	Tense/Mood		! Past	! Present Subjunctive	! Present Indicative	! Future	! Imperative
Singular
1st		''katáb-t''	''á-ktib''	''bá-ktib''	''ḥá-ktib''
2nd	!masculine	''katáb-t''	''tí-ktib''	''bi-tí-ktib''	''ḥa-tí-ktib''	''í-ktib''
	!feminine	''katáb-ti''	''ti-ktíb-i''	''bi-ti-ktíb-i''	''ḥa-ti-ktíb-i''	''i-ktíb-i''
3rd	!masculine	''kátab''	''yí-ktib''	''bi-yí-ktib''	''ḥa-yí-ktib''
	!feminine	''kátab-it''	''tí-ktib''	''bi-tí-ktib''	''ḥa-tí-ktib''
Plural
1st		''katáb-na''	''ní-ktib''	''bi-ní-ktib''	''ḥá-ní-ktib''
2nd		''katáb-tu''	''ti-ktíb-u''	''bi-ti-ktíb-u''	''ḥa-ti-ktíb-u''	''i-ktíb-u''
3rd		''kátab-u''	''yi-ktíb-u''	''bi-yi-ktíb-u''	''ḥa-yi-ktíb-u''

See varieties of Arabic for more information on grammar differences in the spoken varieties.

Writing system

The Arabic alphabet derives from the Aramaic through Nabatean, to which it bears a loose resemblance like that of Coptic or Cyrillic script to Greek script. Traditionally, there were several differences between the Western (North African) and Middle Eastern version of the alphabet—in particular, the ''fa'' had a dot underneath and ''qaf'' a single dot above in the Maghreb, and the order of the letters was slightly different (at least when they were used as numerals).

However, the old Maghrebi variant has been abandoned except for calligraphic purposes in the Maghreb itself, and remains in use mainly in the Quranic schools (zaouias) of West Africa. Arabic, like all other Semitic languages (except for the Latin-written Maltese, and the languages with the Ge'ez script), is written from right to left. There are several styles of script, notably Naskh which is used in print and by computers, and Ruq'ah which is commonly used in handwriting.

Calligraphy

After Khalil ibn Ahmad al Farahidi finally fixed the Arabic script around 786, many styles were developed, both for the writing down of the Qur'an and other books, and for inscriptions on monuments as decoration.

Arabic calligraphy has not fallen out of use as calligraphy has in the Western world, and is still considered by Arabs as a major art form; calligraphers are held in great esteem. Being cursive by nature, unlike the Latin script, Arabic script is used to write down a verse of the Qur'an, a Hadith, or simply a proverb, in a spectacular composition. The composition is often abstract, but sometimes the writing is shaped into an actual form such as that of an animal. One of the current masters of the genre is Hassan Massoudy.

Romanization

! ISO 233-2

+ Examples of different transliteration/transcription schemes	Letter	! Name	International Phonetic Alphabet>IPA	United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names>UNGEGN	Library of Congress>ALA-LC	! DIN 31635	SAS
BATR	! ArabTeX	Arabic chat alphabet>chat
!					,		'	e	'	2
						aa	aa / A	a	a/e/é
!		,	y		y; e	y; ii	y	y; i/ee; ei/ai
!					ç		c	_t	s/th
!		~~				j	j	^g	j/g/dj
!					H	.h	7
!		~				j	x	K	_h	kh/7'/5
!					đ	z'	_d	z/dh/th
!					x	^s	sh/ch
!					S	.s	s/9
!					D	.d	d/9'
!					T	.t	t/6
!		~			đ̣	Z	.z	z/dh/6'
!					ř	E	`	3
!		~			g	ğ	g	.g	gh/3'

There are a number of different standards for the romanization of Arabic, i.e. methods of accurately and efficiently representing Arabic with the Latin script. There are various conflicting motivations involved, which leads to multiple systems. Some are interested in transliteration, i.e. representing the ''spelling'' of Arabic, while others focus on transcription, i.e. representing the ''pronunciation'' of Arabic. (They differ in that, for example, the same letter is used to represent both a consonant, as in "you" or "yet", and a vowel, as in "me" or "eat".) Some systems, e.g. for scholarly use, are intended to accurately and unambiguously represent the phonemes of Arabic, generally making the phonetics more explicit than the original word in the Arabic script. These systems are heavily reliant on diacritical marks such as "š" for the sound equivalently written ''sh'' in English. Other systems (e.g. the Bahá'í orthography) are intended to help readers who are neither Arabic speakers nor linguists to intuitively pronounce Arabic names and phrases. These less "scientific" tend to avoid diacritics and use digraphs (like ''sh'' and ''kh''). These are usually more simple to read, but sacrifice the definiteness of the scientific systems, and may lead to ambiguities, e.g. whether to interpret ''sh'' as a single sound, as in ''gash'', or a combination of two sounds, as in ''gashouse''.

During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become prevalent in the Arab world, such as personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, Bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Most of these technologies originally had the ability to communicate using the Latin script only, and some of them still do not have the Arabic script as an optional feature. As a result, Arabic speaking users communicated in these technologies by transliterating the Arabic text using the Latin script, sometimes known as IM Arabic.

To handle those Arabic letters that cannot be accurately represented using the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated. For example, the numeral "3" may be used to represent the Arabic letter "ع". There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, but some have named it Arabic Chat Alphabet. Other systems of transliteration exist, such as using dots or capitalization to represent the "emphatic" counterparts of certain consonants. For instance, using capitalization, the letter "د", may be represented by d. Its emphatic counterpart, "ض", may be written as D.

Numerals

In most of present-day North Africa, the Western Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) are used. However in Egypt and Arabic-speaking countries to the east of it, the Eastern Arabic numerals ( – – – – – – – – – ) are in use. When representing a number in Arabic, the lowest-valued position is placed on the right, so the order of positions is the same as in left-to-right scripts. Sequences of digits such as telephone numbers are read from left to right, but numbers are spoken in the traditional Arabic fashion, with units and tens reversed from the modern English usage. For example, 24 is said "four and twenty" just like in the German language (''vierundzwanzig'') and Classical Hebrew, and 1975 is said "one thousand (and) nine hundred (and) five and seventy."

Language-standards regulators

Academy of the Arabic Language is the name of a number of language-regulation bodies formed in Arab League. The most active are in Damascus and Cairo. They review language development, monitor new words and approve inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts.

Studying Arabic

Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study the language. Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around 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 in learning Arabic outside of the academic world. Many Arabic language schools are located in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Software and books with tapes are also 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.

Examples

or

English	! Arabic	Arabic diacritics>Arabic (vowelled)	Romanization of Arabic>Romanization (DIN 31635)	! IPA
English	or	|	(varies)	(varies)
Yes	|
No	|
Hello	|
Peace(Usually Islamic)	|		}} (varies)	}} (varies)
How are you	|	}}	}}
Welcome	|
Goodbye	|
Please	|
Thanks	|
Excuse me	|
I'm sorry	|
What's your name?	|
How much?	|
I don't understand.	|
I don't speak Arabic.	|
I don't know.	|
I'm hungry.	|
Orange	|
Black	|
One	|
Two	|
Three	|
Four	|
Five	|
Six	|
Seven	|
Eight	|
Nine	|
Ten	|
Eleven	|

See also

Modern Standard Arabic

Arabic diglossia

Varieties of Arabic

Arabic–English Lexicon

Arabic influence on the Spanish language

Arabic literature

Arabist

Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

Glossary of Islam

List of arabophones

List of French words of Arabic origin

List of Portuguese words of Arabic origin

List of replaced loanwords in Turkish

Arabic grammar

(إﻋﺮﺍﺏ)

Macrolanguage

Notes

}} is the Literary Arabic name of the language(s) and is pronounced in Egypt: ; Libya: ; east central Arabia: ; Levant: ; Hijaz: ; Tunisia: ; Morocco: . Other variations in other geographic regions are also possible. }} is the Literary Arabic name as well as the colloquial and is pronounced in Egypt and Libya: ; east central Arabia: ; Lebanon: ; rest of Levant, ; Hijaz: ; Tunisia and Morocco: . Other variations in other geographic regions are also possible. In general, in pronunciation of Literary Arabic the last vowel is long .

References

External links

Documents

* Arabic phrasebook at Wikitravel

* Arabic grammar online

* A Review of Arabic Language Books and Methods

* Learn Arabic Language تعلم اللغة العربية 'biggest Arabic Learning resource"

* Arabic natural language processing publications

* Arabic: a Category III language Languages which are very difficult for native English speakers

* Arabic Vocabulary with pictures

*Dr. Habash's Introduction to Arabic Natural Language Processing

*Dr. Shaalan's talk about Rule-based approach in Arabic NLP: Tools, Systems and Resources

* ethnologue.com Encyclopedic reference work cataloging all the world’s 6,909 known living languages including Arabic

Tools

*Lane's Arabic–English Lexicon – An 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary in PDF format.

* Google Ta3reeb – Google Transliteration

* Transliteration Arabic language pronunciation applet

* Realtime Arabic transliteration

* Arabic Keyboard that you can use when your keyboard does not support Arabic. – It can feed the terms to google.

* Find Arabic Text on the internet

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name	Hussein
native name	حسين بن طلال
succession	King of Jordan
reign	11 August 1952 – 7 February 1999 ()
predecessor	Talal
successor	Abdullah II
spouse	Sharifa Dina bint 'Abdu'l-HamidAntoinette Avril GardinerAlia Baha ed din ToukanLisa Halaby
issue	Princess AliaAbdullah II of JordanPrince FaisalPrincess AishaPrincess ZeinPrincess HayaPrince AliPrince HamzahPrince HashimPrincess ImanPrincess Raiyah
issue-link	#Personal life
issue-pipe	Details and adopted children
house	Hashemite
religion	Islam
father	Talal of Jordan
mother	Zein al Sharaf Talal
birth date	November 14, 1935
birth place	Amman, Emirate of Transjordan
death date	February 07, 1999
death place	Amman, Jordan
place of burial	Raghadan Palace
awards	}}

Hussein bin Talal (, ''''; 14 November 1935 – 7 February 1999) was the third King of Jordan from the abdication of his father, King Talal, in 1952, until his death. Hussein's rule extended through the Cold War and four decades of Arab-Israeli conflict. He recognized Israel in 1994, becoming the second Arab head of state to do so.

Hussein's family claims to descent from the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his clan.

Early life and accession

Hussein was born in Amman on 14 November 1935 to Talal bin Abdullah and Princess Zein al-Sharaf bint Jamil. After completing his elementary education in Amman, he was educated at Victoria College in Alexandria. He proceeded to Harrow School in England, where he befriended his cousin Faisal II of Iraq. He pursued further study at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

On 20 July 1951, Prince Hussein traveled to Jerusalem to perform Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque with his grandfather, King Abdullah I, where an assassin opened fire on Abdullah and his grandson. Abdullah was killed, but the 15-year-old Hussein survived the assassination attempt, and according to the Jordanian government, pursued the gunman. The Jordanian government claims that the gunman turned his weapon on the young prince, who was saved when the bullet was deflected by a medal on his uniform which had been given to him by his grandfather.

Abdullah was appointed Crown Prince of Jordan on 9 September 1951. Abdullah's eldest son, King Talal, became King of Jordan, but within a year was forced to abdicate owing to his mental state (European and Arab doctors diagnosed schizophrenia). King Talal's son, Crown Prince Hussein, was proclaimed King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on 11 August 1952, succeeding at the age of 16; because this was under the legal age, he was enthroned a year later, on 2 May 1953.

Personal life

King Hussein was married four times (never simultaneously):

Sharifa Dina bint 'Abdu'l-Hamid (born 1929), on 18 April 1955. She was an Egyptian-born third cousin of King Hussein's father, King Talal. A graduate of Cambridge University and a former lecturer in English literature at Cairo University. They separated in 1956 and were divorced in 1957, at which time Queen Dina became known as Her Royal Highness Princess Dina Abdul-Hamid of Jordan. She became an Egyptian citizen in 1963, and in October 1970, Princess Dina of Jordan married Lieut-Colonel Asad Sulayman Abd al-Qadir, alias Salah Taamari, a Palestinian guerrilla commando who became a high-ranking official in the Palestine Liberation Organization.

* Daughter: H.R.H.Princess Alia bint Al Hussein (born 1956). Married first to Sayyid Nasser Mirza, they have one child together, a son Hussein. They divorced in 1987. She remarried in 1988 to Sayyid Mohammed Al-Saleh; they have two sons, Talal and Abdulhamid.

Antoinette Avril Gardiner ('Toni Gardiner'), (born 1941), on 25 May 1961, styled HRH Princess Muna al-Hussein from marriage. An award-winning field hockey player, former typist, and daughter of a British army officer turned innkeeper, Lieutenant-Colonel Walter Percy Gardiner, she was given the title Her Royal Highness Princess Muna al-Hussein and retained this title after they divorced on 21 December 1971.

* Children:

** His Majesty Abdullah II, King of The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (born 1962). The current King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Married to Rania Al-Yassin. They have four children: Prince Hussein, Princess Iman, Princess Salma and Prince Hashem.

** His Royal Highness Prince Faisal bin Al Hussein of Jordan (born 1963). Lieutenant-General, former Commander of Royal Jordanian Air Force. Married to Alia Tabbaa (now known as Her Royal Highness Princess Alia Tabbaa). They have four children: Princess Ayah, Prince Omar, and twins Princess Sara and Princess Aisha.

** Her Royal Highness Princess Aisha bint Hussein (born 1968). Brigadier-General of Jordan's Royal Jordanian Land Force. Married to Sayyid Zeid Juma, they have two children, a son Aoun and a daughter Muna.

** Her Royal Highness Princess Zein bint Hussein (born 1968, Aisha's twin). Married to Sayyid Majdi Al-Saleh, they have two children: a son Jaafar and a daughter Jumana, and an adopted daughter called Tahani Al Shawan.

Alia Baha el-Din Toukan H.M. Queen Alia al-Hussein (1948–1977), on 24 December 1972, after whom Jordan's international airport (Queen Alia International Airport) is named. She died in a helicopter crash in Amman, Jordan in 1977.

* Children:

** Her Royal Highness Princess Haya bint Hussein (born 1974). Married to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and has a daughter HH Sheikha Al Jalila.

** His Royal Highness Prince Ali bin Al Hussein of Jordan (born 1975). Married to Rym Brahimi now known as Her Royal Highness Princess Rym al-Ali. They have two children, Princess Jalilah and Prince Abdullah.

** Adopted daughter: Abir Muhaisen, (born 1972, adopted 1976). She attended Oldfields Prep School in Glencoe, Maryland, U.S.(boarding school).

Elizabeth Najeeb Halaby (born 1951), (renamed Queen Noor al Hussein on her conversion to Islam), married in Amman on 15 June 1978

* Children:

** His Royal Highness Prince Hamzah bin al Hussein of Jordan (born 1980). Married to Her Royal Highness Princess Noor bint Asem of Jordan, third daughter of His Royal Highness Prince Asem Abu Bakar of Jordan, by his first wife, Princess Firouzeh Vokhshouri. Princess Noor became Her Royal Highness Princess Noor Hamzah of Jordan upon her marriage. They have a daughter, Princess Hayah

** His Royal Highness Prince Hashim bin Al Hussein of Jordan (born 1981). Married to Her Royal Highness Princess Fahdah. They have two daughters: Princess Halaah and Princess Rayet Al Noor.

** Her Royal Highness Princess Iman bint Hussein (born 1983).

** Her Royal Highness Princess Raiyah bint Hussein (born 1986).

Hussein was an avid amateur radio operator and an Honorary Member of the Radio Society of Harrow (callsign JY1). A trained aircraft pilot, he was also known for flying airplanes (propeller and jet), as well as helicopters as a hobby.

King Hussein was succeeded as king by his eldest son Abdullah II of Jordan.

Reign

In March 1956 Hussein was appointed the King of Jordan, and burnished his own nationalist credentials by dismissing Glubb “Pasha” as the commander of the Jordanian Army, and replacing all the British officers with Jordanians. This now mainly Bedouin army was fiercely loyal to him, due to tribal connections.

Hussein's rule was marred with secret collaboration with Israel and the United States, which often adversely affected the surrounding Arab States and peoples, including the Palestinians. Secret meetings between King Hussein and Israeli foreign ministers Abba Eban and Golda Meir began on or before 1963. At first the meetings took place in London at the home of Dr. Emanuel Herbert, King Hussein's physician. Dr. Herbert, a Jew who desired to help Hussein and the Israeli government became the confidential go-between for contact between Israel and Jordan. Jordan, sharing the longest contiguous border with Israel was very interested in maintaining a peaceful posture towards Israel. As Avi Shlaim states Hussein's "...purpose throughout the 1960s was to see if there was any way to resolve the dispute with Israel peacefully."

King Hussein sought to understand Israel's position and preferred dialogue to the futility of war with its many dangers. Much of this desire grows out of the threat from other Arab states, specifically the Ba'athist regimes in Iraq and Syria and Nasser's ideology of Arab nationalism which had heavily influenced the Army. The first secret meeting took place on September 24, 1963 between King Hussein and Yaacov Herzog, a diplomat with wide experience and special emissary of prime minister Levi Eshkol. Among other things such as discussions regarding water rights, the purpose of the meetings were to plan and support Israeli and Jordanian initiatives in combating Fatah guerrillas. Hussein accepted minor raids into Jordanian territory by the Israeli Defence Forces. He would later state "I told them I could not absorb a serious retaliatory raid, and they accepted the logic of this and promised there would never be one".

On Nov 13, 1966, Israeli military conducted a major incursion into Jordanian territory, violating their secret agreement with King Hussein, in what became known as the Samu Incident. Two days later, in response to the incident, in a memo to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, his Special Assistant Walt Rostow wrote: "retaliation is not the point in this case. This 3000-man raid with tanks and planes was out of all proportion to the provocation and was aimed at the wrong target," and went on to describe the damage done to US and Israeli interests:

They've wrecked a good system of tacit cooperation between Hussein and the Israelis... They've undercut Hussein. We've spent $500 million to shore him up as a stabilizing factor on Israel's longest border and vis-à-vis Syria and Iraq. Israel's attack increases the pressure on him to counterattack not only from the more radical Arab governments and from the Palestinians in Jordan but also from the Army, which is his main source of support and may now press for a chance to recoup its Sunday losses... They've set back progress toward a long term accommodation with the Arabs... They may have persuaded the Syrians that Israel didn't dare attack Soviet-protected Syria but could attack US-backed Jordan with impunity.

Perception of King Hussein's secret collaboration with Israel led to great dissatisfaction of his rule both at home and throughout the Arab World. President Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt often referred to Hussein as "an "imperialist lackey". Army Commander-in-Chief General Sharif Zaid Ben Shaker warned in a press conference that "If Jordan does not join the war a civil war will erupt in Jordan". In order to maintain credibility in the Arab world and maintain stability at home, on May 30, 1967, King Hussein signed a mutual defense treaty with Egypt, and handed over command of the Jordanian military to Egyptian generals.

Six-Day War

In June 1967, as a result of what later became known as the Six-Day War Jordan lost control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem and saw its military shattered. In addition the country was, for a second time, over-run with many Palestinian refugees, fleeing the Israeli assault. Much like after the 1948 war, Israel did not allow the fleeing refugees to return to the territories it had captured during the war. As a result, Palestinian refugees who fled the 1948 and 1967 wars, outnumbered Jordan's natural citizens. Most refugees were provided citizenship by the Hussein regime. Due to their sheer numbers, Palestinian factions in Jordan were able to exercise considerable authority essentially governing some areas of Jordan, leading to many considering them a state within a state, eroding Hussein's central authority.

Black September

In September, 1970, in accordance with secret agreements with Israel and the US, Hussein ordered the forcible expulsion of the Palestine Liberation Organization by the Jordanian military. The attacks on Palestinian fighters and civilians further deteriorated King Hussein's image in the Arab and Muslim world.

1973 Arab-Israeli War

After the death of Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser, his successor, Anwar Sadat, made several offers of peace and recognition, in return for the Egyptian lands captured by Israel during the six day war. The Israeli government rejected all offers, in line with US secretary of state Henry Kissinger's stalemate policy. . Sadat warned that Egypt would attempt to recapture the territories through war, but the Israeli government, perhaps due to the perception of the Israeli military invincibility after the six day war, dismissed Sadat's threat as empty posturing.

Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Syrian president Hafez al-Assad met King Hussein in 1973 to discuss the possibility of war. Hussein, fearing another loss of territory to Israel, declined. Furthermore, Hussein was suspicious of Sadat's promise to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to hand over the West Bank to the Palestinians in the event of a victory, as he considered the West Bank to be Jordanian territory. On the night of September 25, Hussein secretly flew to Tel Aviv to warn Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir of an impending Syrian attack. "Are (the Syrians) going to war without the Egyptians, asked Mrs. Meir. The king said he didn't think so. 'I think they [Egypt] would cooperate'".

On Oct 6, 1973, Syria and Egypt attacked Israel without the aid of Jordan. The war led to Israel taking Sadat seriously and engaging in negotiations which resulted in the return of captured Egyptian territories and the recognition of Israel by Egypt.

The Gulf War

Jordan remained neutral during the Gulf War primarily due to the country's severe economic reliance of Iraqi oil.

Peace with Israel

In 1994, Hussein concluded negotiations to end the official state of war with Israel resulting in the Israel–Jordan Treaty of Peace which he had begun negotiating in secret with the Israelis in the 1960s. Between 1963—1994 he had held at least 55 secret meetings with leading Israelis including at least seven prime and foreign ministers.

Due to the close relationship forged with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during the negotiations of the treaty, Hussein was invited to give a speech during Rabin's funeral.

:''Full text: wikisource:Hussein of Jordan's Speech at Rabin's Funeral''

Summit of the Peacemakers

On 13 March 1996 the “Summit of the Peacemakers” was held at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt hosted by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In addition to King Hussein, Turkish President Suleiman Demirel, Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, US President Bill Clinton, and Russian President Boris Yeltsin were present at the summit. The summit was convened with the expressed aim of putting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process back on track after a period of increased tension and hostility.

Hebron Agreement

Hussein was often involved in negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. His 11th-hour intervention in January 1997 is said to have brought Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to an agreement on the long-awaited withdrawal of Israeli troops from most of the West Bank town of Hebron.

The Wye accords

In 1997 U.S. President Bill Clinton invited Hussein, who was in the US undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer, to attend the Wye Plantation talks. Hussein received a standing ovation at the ceremony and praise from Clinton

Illness

At the end of July 1998 it was made public that Hussein was diagnosed lymphatic cancer by doctors at the Mayo Clinic. Hussein's lymphoma was of a type that responded to chemotherapy, which the King had already begun and his physicians were optimistic he could be cured. Speaking on Jordanian television via satellite, Hussein reassured the Jordanian people that the cancer was curable. Nevertheless, he looked fragile and pale. It was the 62-year-old monarch's second bout with cancer; he lost a kidney to the disease in 1992.

On his way back to Jordan in January 1999, Hussein stopped in London. Doctors advised him to rest and stay in England for a few weeks, as he was still too fragile to travel. According to Jordanian government sources, Hussein stated that:

::“I need very much to feel the warmth of my people around me, there is work to be done and I will get the strength from my people to finish the business.“

Upon returning to Jordan Hussein was greeted by family members, ministers, parliament members, foreign dignitaries and a crowd of Jordanian citizens, estimated by Jordanian government officials of 2 million.

Death

Just before his death, Hussein made a change to his will, disinheriting the heir-apparent of several decades, his brother Hassan, in favor of his eldest son Abdullah. He abruptly returned to the U.S. clinic on 25 January 1999 for further treatment undergoing a failed bone marrow transplant after which he returned to Jordan.

On 7 February 1999 King Hussein died of complications related to non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was, at the time of his death, one of the longest-serving leaders in international politics. He had been the King of Jordan for over 46 years and during which he was an important actor in various Middle East conflicts. Just prior to his death, during an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour Hussein expressed his opinion that a peaceful resolution would eventually be reached in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

King Hussein's funeral was held on February 8, 1999 in the presence of all five of his sons, foreign dignitaries and statesmen, and an estimated 800,000 Jordanians. The UN General Assembly held an Emergency Special Session in "Tribute to the Memory of His Majesty the King of Jordan" on the same day.

Honours

King Faisal II Coronation Medal – 1953 Collar of the Grand Order of the Hashemites – 1953 Grand Cordon of the Order of the Two Rivers – 1953 Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) – 1953

Bailiff Grand Cross of the Venerable Order of Saint John of Jerusalem (GCStJ) – 1955

Grand Collar of the Order of the Nile – 1955 Collar of the Order of Military Merit – 1955 Grand Cordon of the Order of Omayyad of Syria – 1955 Grand Cordon of the Order of Independence of Tunisia – 1956 Collar special class of the Order of the Propitious Clouds – 1959 Collar of the Order of Pahlavi – 1959 Collar of the Order of Muhammadiya of Morocco – 1960 Collar of the Order of Solomon of the Ethiopian Empire – 1960 Collar of the Order of Idris I – 1960 Collar special class of the Order of Merit – 1960 Grand Collar of the King Abdul Aziz Decoration of – 1960 Collar of the Order of the Badr Chain – 1960 Collar of the Order of National Merit of Guinea – 1960 Collar of the Order of the Redeemer – 1960 Collar of the Order of Leopold – 1964 Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion – 1964 Collar of the Order of St Olav – 1964 Collar of the Order of the Tower and Sword (GCollTE) – 1964 Knight of the Order of the Golden Spur of the Vatican – 1964 Grand Cordon of the Order of the State Crown of Malaysia (DMN) – 1965 Royal Victorian Chain – 1966 Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour – 1967 Grand Cross special class of the Bundesverdienstkreuz of West Germany – 1967 Collar of the Order of Mubarak the Great – 1974 Collar of the Order of the Chrysanthemum – 1976 Collar of the Order of al-Khalifa of – 1976 Collar of the Order of Independence of Qatar – 1978 Grand Cordon of the Yugoslavian Grand Star – 1979 Collar of the Order of Merit of the Republic – 1983 Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB) – 1984

Bibliography

''Uneasy Lies the Head'' London: William Heinemann Ltd. (1962)

''My "War" with Israel'' London: Peter Owen. (1969) ISBN 0-7206-0310-2

''Mon Métier de Roi.'' Paris: R. Laffont (1975)

See also

Hashemite

Jordan

Jordanian military ranks

King Abdullah II

References

http://www.g3efx.org.uk/ Radio Society Of Harrow Special Thanks.

External links

King Hussein Bin Talal of Jordan \ A Photo Tribute.

Ancestry of Antoinette Avril Gardiner (b. 1941)

Obituary, NY Times, February 8, 1999 ''Death of a King; Cautious King Took Risks In Straddling Two Worlds''

A Living Tribute to the Legacy of King Hussein I – official Royal Jordanian memorial website

Slide Show – Personal Tribute Page

King Hussein Bin Talal coins 1955–1977

King Hussein Bin Talal coins 1978–1999

King Hussein interviewed by Peter Krogh On ''American Interests'', 1985

Category:Kings of Jordan Category:House of Hashim Category:Field Marshals Category:Field marshals of Egypt Category:Marshals of the air force Category:Royal Air Force air marshals Category:Royal Air Force officers holding honorary commissions Category:Attempted assassination survivors Category:Syrian aviators Category:Jordanian aviators Category:Amateur radio people Category:Knights of the Golden Fleece Category:Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath Category:Honorary Knights Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order Category:Recipients of the Royal Victorian Chain Category:Bailiffs Grand Cross of the Order of St John Category:Deaths from lymphoma Category:People from Amman Category:Old Harrovians Category:1935 births Category:1999 deaths Category:Cancer deaths in Jordan

ar:الحسين بن طلال bs:Husein, kralj Jordana bg:Хусейн I (Йордания) ca:Hussein I de Jordània cs:Husajn I. da:Hussein af Jordan de:Hussein I. (Jordanien) et:Ḩusayn (Jordaania) es:Hussein I de Jordania fa:ملک حسین fr:Hussein de Jordanie ko:후세인 1세 hr:Hussein I., kralj Jordana id:Hussein dari Yordania it:Husayn di Giordania he:חוסיין, מלך ירדן jv:Hussein saking Yordania ms:Hussein dari Jordan nl:Hoessein van Jordanië ja:フセイン1世 no:Hussein av Jordan oc:Hussein de Jordania pl:Husajn ibn Talal pt:Hussein da Jordânia ro:Hussein al Iordaniei qu:Hussein I ru:Хусейн бен Талал sco:Hussein o Jordan sk:Husajn bin Talál sr:Хусеин од Јордана sh:Hussein I., kralj Jordana fi:Hussein (Jordania) sv:Hussein av Jordanien tr:Hüseyin (Ürdün) uk:Хусейн бен Талал yi:כוסיין קעניג פון יארדאניע zh:侯赛因·本·塔拉勒

name	Yasser Arafat () Kunya: (; )
nationality	Palestinian
order	1st President of the Palestinian National Authority
term start	20 January 1996
term end	11 November 2004
primeminister	Mahmoud AbbasAhmed Qurei
successor	Rawhi Fattuh (interim) Mahmoud Abbas
birth date	August 24, 1929
birth place	disputed, see article
death date	November 11, 2004
death place	Clamart, Paris, France
spouse	Suha Arafat (m. 1990–2004)
children	Zahwa Arafat (b. 1995)
party	Fatah
religion	Islam
profession	Civil engineer
signature	Yasser Arafat signature.svg }}

Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (‎; 24 August 192911 November 2004), popularly known as Yasser Arafat () or by his kunya Abu Ammar (, ), was a Palestinian leader and a Laureate of the Nobel Prize. He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and leader of the Fatah political party, which he founded in 1959. Arafat spent much of his life fighting against Israel in the name of Palestinian self-determination. Originally opposed to Israel's existence, he modified his position in 1988 when he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242. Arafat and his movement operated from several Arab countries. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fatah faced off with Jordan in a brief civil war. Forced out of Jordan and into Lebanon, Arafat and Fatah were major targets of Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions of that country.

Arafat remains a highly controversial figure whose legacy has been widely disputed. He was "revered by many Arabs," and the majority of the Palestinian people, regardless of political ideology or faction, viewed him as a freedom fighter who symbolized their national aspirations. However he was "reviled by many Israelis" who viewed him as a terrorist. Israel has also accused him of mass corruption, secretly amassing a personal wealth estimated to be USD $1.3 billion in 2002 despite the degrading economic conditions of the Palestinians.

Later in his career, Arafat engaged in a series of negotiations with the government of Israel to end the decades-long conflict between it and the PLO. These included the Madrid Conference of 1991, the 1993 Oslo Accords and the 2000 Camp David Summit. His political rivals, including Islamists and several PLO leftists, often denounced him for being corrupt or too submissive in his concessions to the Israeli government. In 1994, Arafat received the Nobel Peace Prize, together with Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, for the negotiations at Oslo. During this time, Hamas and other militant organizations rose to power and shook the foundations of the authority that Fatah under Arafat had established in the Palestinian territories.

In late 2004, after effectively being confined within his Ramallah compound for over two years by the Israeli army, Arafat became ill, fell into a coma and died on 11 November 2004 at the age of 75. While the exact cause of his death remains unknown and no autopsy was performed, his doctors spoke of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and cirrhosis.

Early life

Birth and childhood

Arafat was born in Cairo to Palestinian parents. His father, Abdel Raouf al-Qudwa al-Husseini, was a Palestinian from Gaza, whose mother, Yasser's paternal grandmother, was Egyptian. Arafat's father worked as a textile merchant in Cairo's religiously mixed Sakakini District. Arafat was the second-youngest of seven children and was, along with his younger brother Fathi, the only offspring born in Cairo. His mother, Zahwa Abul Saud, was from a Jerusalem family. She died from a kidney ailment in 1933, when Arafat was four years of age.

Arafat's first visit to Jerusalem came when his father, unable to raise seven children alone, sent him and his brother Fathi to their mother's family in the Moroccan Quarter of the Old City. They lived there with their uncle Salim Abul Saud for four years. In 1937, their father recalled them to be taken care of by their older sister, Inam. Arafat had a deteriorating relationship with his father; when he died in 1952, Arafat did not attend the funeral, nor did he visit his father's grave upon his return to Gaza. Arafat's sister Inam stated in an interview with Arafat's biographer, British historian Alan Hart, that Arafat was heavily beaten by his father for going to the Jewish quarter in Cairo and attending religious services. When she asked Arafat why he would not stop going, he responded by saying that he wanted to study the Jewish mentality.

Education and 1948 Arab–Israeli War

In 1944, Arafat enrolled in the University of King Fuad I and graduated in 1950. He later claimed to have sought a better understanding of Judaism and Zionism by engaging in discussions with Jews and reading publications by Theodor Herzl and other prominent Zionists. At the same time, he became an Arab nationalist and began procuring weapons to be smuggled into the former British Mandate of Palestine, for use by irregulars in the Arab Higher Committee and the Army of the Holy War militias.

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Arafat left the University and, along with other Arabs, sought to enter Palestine to join Arab forces fighting against Israeli troops. However, instead of joining the ranks of the Palestinian fedayeen, Arafat fought alongside the Muslim Brotherhood, although he did not join the organization. He took part in combat in the Gaza area (which was the main battleground of Egyptian forces during the conflict). In early 1949, the war was winding down in Israel's favor, and Arafat returned to Cairo from a lack of logistical support.

After returning to the University, Arafat studied civil engineering and served as president of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) from 1952 to 1956. During his first year as president of the union, the University was renamed Cairo University after a coup was carried out by the Free Officers Movement overthrowing King Farouk I. By that time, Arafat had graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and was called to duty to fight with Egyptian forces during the Suez Crisis; however, he never actually fought on the battlefield. Later that year, at a conference in Prague, he donned a solid white keffiyeh–different from the checkered one he adopted later in Kuwait, which was to become his emblem.

Name

Arafat's original full name was Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini. Mohammed Abdel Rahman was his first name; Abdel Raouf was his father's name and Arafat his grandfather's. Al-Qudwa was the name of his tribe and al-Husseini was that of the clan to which the al-Qudwas belonged. Arafat's clan, al-Husseini was based in Gaza and should not be confused with the well-known, but unrelated, al-Husayni clan of Jerusalem.

Since Arafat was raised in Cairo, the tradition of dropping the Mohammed or Ahmad portion of one's first name was common; notable Egyptians such as Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak did so. However, Arafat dropped also the Abdel Rahman and Abdel Raouf parts of his name as well. During the early 1950s, Arafat adopted the name Yasser, and in the early years of Arafat's guerrilla career, he assumed the ''nom de guerre'' of Abu Ammar. Both names are related to Ammar ibn Yasir, one of Muhammad's early companions. Although he dropped most of his inherited names, he retained Arafat due to its significance in Islam.

Rise of Fatah

Founding of Fatah

Following the Suez Crisis in 1956, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, a leader of the Free Officers Movement, agreed to allow the United Nations Emergency Force to establish itself in the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip, causing the expulsion of all guerrilla or "fedayeen" forces there—including Arafat. Arafat originally struggled to obtain a visa to Canada and later Saudi Arabia, but was unsuccessful in both attempts. In 1957, he applied for a visa to Kuwait (at the time a British protectorate) and was approved, based on his work in civil engineering. There he encountered two Palestinian friends: Salah Khalaf (''Abu Iyad'') and Khalil al-Wazir (''Abu Jihad''), both official members of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Arafat had met Abu Iyad while attending Cairo University and Abu Jihad in Gaza. Both became Arafat's right-hand men in future politics. Abu Iyad traveled with Arafat to Kuwait in late in 1960; Abu Jihad, working as also a teacher, had been living there since 1959. After settling in Kuwait, Abu Iyad helped Arafat obtain a temporary job as a schoolteacher.

As Arafat began to develop friendships with Palestinian refugees (some of whom he knew also from his Cairo days), he and the others gradually founded the group that became known as Fatah. The exact date for the establishment of Fatah is unknown. However, in 1959, the group's existence was attested in the pages of a Palestinian nationalist magazine, ''Filastununa Nida al-Hayat'' (Our Palestine, The Call of Life), which was written and edited by Abu Jihad. FaTaH is a reverse acronym of the Arabic name ''Harakat al-Tahrir al-Watani al-Filastini'' which translates into "The Palestinian National Liberation Movement". Fatah is also a word that was used in early Islamic times to refer to 'conquest'.

Fatah dedicated itself to the liberation of Palestine by an armed struggle carried out by Palestinians themselves. This differed from other Palestinian political and guerrilla organizations, most of which firmly believed in a united Arab response. Arafat's organization never embraced the ideologies of major Arab national governments of the time, in contrast to other Palestinian factions, which often became satellites of nations such as Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria and others.

In accordance with his ideology, Arafat generally refused to accept donations to his organization from major Arab governments, in order to act independently of them. However, he did not want to alienate them, and sought their undivided support by avoiding alliances with groups loyal to other ideologies. He worked hard in Kuwait, however, to establish the groundwork for Fatah's future financial support by enlisting contributions from the many wealthy Palestinians working there and other Gulf States, such as Qatar (where he met Mahmoud Abbas in 1961). These businessmen and oil workers contributed generously to the Fatah organization. Arafat continued this process in other Arab countries such as Libya and Syria.

In 1962, Arafat and his closest companions migrated to Syria—a country sharing a border with Israel—which had recently seceded from its ephemeral union with Nasser's Egypt. Fatah had approximately three hundred members by this time, but none were fighters. In Syria, however, he managed to recruit members by offering them higher incomes to enable his armed attacks against Israel. Fatah's manpower was incremented further after Arafat decided to offer much higher salaries to members of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA), the regular military force of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which was created by the Arab League in the summer of 1964. On December 31 of that same year, a squad from al-Assifa, the armed branch of Fatah at the time, attempted to infiltrate Israel, but they were intercepted and detained by Lebanese security forces. Several other raids with Fatah's poorly trained and badly equipped fighters followed this incident. Some were successful, others failed in their missions. Arafat often led these incursions personally.

Arafat and his top aide Abu Jihad were detained in Syria when a pro-Syrian Palestinian leader, Yusuf Orabi was murdered. Hours before he was killed, Arafat was discussing with him ways to unite their factions and to request Orabi's support for Arafat against his rivals within the Fatah leadership. Shortly after Arafat left the meeting, Orabi was thrown out of the window of a three-story building and Syrian police loyal to Hafez al-Assad (Assad and Orabi were "close friends"), suspected Arafat was involved in the incident. Assad appointed a panel, which found Arafat and Abu Jihad guilty of the murder. Nonetheless, both were pardoned by Syrian President Salah Jadid. The incident, however, brought Assad and Arafat on unpleasant terms, which would show later when Assad became President of Syria.

Leader of the Palestinians

On November 13, 1966, Israel launched a major raid against the Jordanian-administered West Bank town of as-Samu, in response to a Fatah-implemented roadside bomb attack, which had killed three members of the Israeli security forces near the southern Green Line border. In the resulting skirmish, scores of Jordanian security forces were killed and 125 homes razed. This raid was one of several factors that led to the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Six-Day war began when Israel launched a preemptive air strike against Egypt's air force on June 5, 1967. The war ended in an Arab defeat and Israel's occupation of several Arab territories, including the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although Nasser and his Arab allies had been defeated, Arafat and Fatah could claim a victory, in that the majority of Palestinians, who had up to that time tended to align and sympathize with individual Arab governments, now began to agree that a 'Palestinian' solution of their dilemma was indispensable. Many primarily Palestinian political parties, including George Habash's Arab Nationalist Movement, Hajj Amin al-Husseini's Arab Higher Committee, the Islamic Liberation Front and several Syrian-backed groups, virtually crumbled after their sponsor governments' defeat. Barely a week after the defeat, Arafat crossed the Jordan River in disguise and entered the West Bank, where he set up recruitment centers in Hebron, the Jerusalem area and Nablus, and began attracting both fighters and financiers for his cause.

At the same time, Nasser contacted Arafat through Mohammed Heikal (one of Nasser's advisers) and Arafat was declared by Nasser to be the 'leader of the Palestinians'. In December, Ahmad Shukeiri resigned his post as PLO Chairman. Yahya Hammuda took his place and invited Arafat to join the organization. Fatah was allocated 33 of 105 seats of the PLO Executive Committee while 57 seats were left for several other guerrilla factions.

Battle of Karameh

Throughout 1968, Fatah and other Palestinian armed groups were the target of a major Israeli army operation in the Jordanian village of Karameh, where the Fatah headquarters—as well as a mid-sized Palestinian refugee camp—were located. The town's name is the Arabic word for 'dignity', which elevated its symbolic power in the eyes of the Arab people, especially after the Arab defeat in 1967. The operation was in response to attacks, including rockets strikes from Fatah and other Palestinian militias, within the occupied West Bank. According to Said Aburish, the government of Jordan and a number of Fatah commandos informed Arafat that large-scale Israeli military preparations for an attack on the town were underway, prompting fedayeen groups, such as George Habash's newly formed group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Nayef Hawatmeh's breakaway organization the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), to withdraw their forces from the town. Though advised by a pro-Fatah Jordanian divisional commander to withdraw his men and headquarters to nearby hills, Arafat refused, stating, "We want to convince the world that there are those in the Arab world who will not withdraw or flee". Aburish writes that it was on Arafat's orders that Fatah remained, and that the Jordanian Army agreed to back them if heavy fighting ensued.

On the night of 21 March, the IDF attacked Karameh with heavy weaponry, armored vehicles and fighter jets. Fatah held its ground, surprising the Israeli military. As Israel's forces intensified their campaign, the Jordanian Army became involved, causing the Israelis to redeploy in order to avoid widening the conflict. By the end of the battle, nearly 150 Fatah gunmen had been killed and a similar number captured. At least eighty-four Jordanian soldiers and twenty-eight Israelis were also killed. Despite the higher Arab death toll and the fact that the battle was decided in Israel's favor, Fatah considered themselves victorious because of the Israeli army's withdrawal. Some have alleged that Arafat himself was on the battlefield, but the details of his involvement are unclear. However, his allies–as well as Israeli intelligence–confirm that he urged his men throughout the battle to hold their ground and continue fighting.

The battle was covered in detail by ''Time'', and Arafat's face appeared on the cover of the 13 December 1968 issue, bringing his image to the world for the first time. Amid the post-war environment, the profiles of Arafat and Fatah were raised by this important turning point, and he came to be regarded as a national hero who dared to confront Israel. With mass applause from the Arab World, financial donations increased significantly, and Fatah's weaponry and equipment improved. The group's numbers swelled as many young Arabs, including thousands of non-Palestinians, joined the ranks of Fatah.

At the Palestinian National Council in Cairo on February 3, 1969, Yahya Hammuda stepped down from his chairmanship of the PLO, and Arafat took over. He became Commander-in-Chief of the Palestinian Revolutionary Forces two years later, and in 1973, became the head of the PLO's political department.

Jordan

In the late 1960s, tensions between Palestinians and the Jordanian government increased greatly; heavily armed Arab resistance elements had created a virtual ''"state within a state"'' in Jordan, eventually controlling several strategic positions in that country. After their victory in the Battle of Karameh, Fatah and other Palestinian militias began taking control of civil life in Jordan. They set up roadblocks, publicly humiliated Jordanian police forces, molested women and levied illegal taxes—all of which Arafat either condoned or ignored. King Hussein considered this a growing threat to his kingdom's sovereignty and security, and attempted to disarm the militias. However, in order to avoid a military confrontation with opposition forces, Hussein dismissed several of his anti-PLO cabinet officials, including some of his own family members, and invited Arafat to become Prime Minister of Jordan. Arafat refused, citing his belief in the need for a Palestinian state with Palestinian leadership.

Despite Hussein's intervention, militant actions in Jordan continued. On 15 September 1970, the PFLP hijacked five planes and landed three of them at Dawson's Field, located east of Amman. After the passengers were moved to other locations, three of the planes were blown up. This tarnished Arafat's image in many western nations, including the United States, who held him responsible for controlling Palestinian factions that belonged to the PLO. Arafat, bowing to pressure from Arab governments, publicly condemned the hijackings and suspended the PFLP from any guerrilla actions for a few weeks. (He had taken the same action after the PFLP attacked Athens Airport.) The Jordanian government moved to regain control over its territory, and the next day, King Hussein declared martial law. On the same day, Arafat became supreme commander of the PLA.

As the conflict raged, other Arab governments attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution. As part of this effort, Gamal Abdel Nasser led the first ever emergency Arab League summit in Cairo on 21 September. Arafat's speech drew sympathy from attending Arab leaders. Other heads of state took sides against Hussein, among them Muammar al-Gaddafi, who mocked him and his schizophrenic father King Talal. The attempt to establish a peace agreement between the two sides failed. Nasser died of a massive heart attack hours after the summit.

By 25 September, the Jordanian army achieved dominance, and two days later Arafat and Hussein agreed to a ceasefire in Amman. The Jordanian army inflicted heavy casualties on the Palestinians—including civilians—who suffered approximately 3,500 fatalities. After repeated violations of the ceasefire from both the PLO and the Jordanian Army, Arafat called for King Hussein to be toppled. Responding to the threat, in June 1971, Hussein ordered his forces to oust all remaining Palestinian fighters in northern Jordan—which they accomplished. Arafat and a number of his forces, including two high-ranking commanders, Abu Iyad and Abu Jihad, were forced into the northern corner of Jordan. They relocated near the town of Jerash, near the border with Syria. With the help of Munib Masri, a pro-Palestinian Jordanian cabinet member, and Fahd al-Khomeimi, the Saudi ambassador to Jordan, Arafat managed to enter Syria with nearly two thousand of his fighters. However, due to the hostility of relations between Arafat and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad (who had previously ousted President Salah Jadid), the Palestinian fighters crossed the border into Lebanon to join PLO forces in that country, where they set up their new headquarters.

Lebanon

Official recognition

Because of Lebanon's weak central government, the PLO was able to operate virtually as an independent state. During this time in the 1970s, numerous leftist PLO groups took up arms against Israel, carrying out attacks against civilians as well as military targets within Israel and outside of it.

Two major incidents occurred in 1972. The Fatah subgroup Black September hijacked a Sabena flight on route to Vienna and forced it to land at the Ben Gurion International Airport in Lod, Israel. The PFLP and the Japanese Red Army carried out a shooting rampage at the same airport, killing twenty-four civilians. Israel later claimed that the assassination of PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani was a response to the PFLP's involvement in masterminding the latter attack. Two days later, various PLO factions retaliated by bombing a bus station, killing eleven civilians.

At the Munich Olympic Games, Black September kidnapped and killed eleven Israeli athletes. A number of sources, including Mohammed Oudeh (''Abu Daoud''), one of the masterminds of the Munich massacre, and Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli historian, have stated that Black September was an armed branch of Fatah used for paramilitary operations. According to Abu Daoud's 1999 book, "Arafat was briefed on plans for the Munich hostage-taking." The killings were internationally condemned. In 1973–74, Arafat closed Black September down, ordering the PLO to withdraw from acts of violence outside Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In 1974, the PNC approved the Ten Point Program (drawn up by Arafat and his advisers), and proposed a compromise with the Israelis. It called for a Palestinian national authority over every part of "liberated Palestinian territory", which refers to areas captured by Arab forces in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War (present-day West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip). This caused discontent among several of the PLO factions; the PFLP, DFLP and other parties formed a breakaway organization, the Rejectionist Front.

Israel and the US have alleged also that Arafat was involved in the 1973 Khartoum diplomatic assassinations, in which five diplomats and five others were killed. A 1973 United States Department of State document, declassified in 2006, concluded "The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat." Arafat denied any involvement in the operation and insisted it was carried out independently by the Black September group. Israel claimed that Arafat was in ultimate control over these organizations and therefore had not abandoned terrorism.

Also in 1974, the PLO was declared the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" and admitted to full membership of the Arab League at the Rabat Summit. Arafat became the first representative of a non-governmental organization to address a plenary session of the UN General Assembly. Arafat was also the first leader to address the UN while wearing a holster, although it did not contain a gun. In his United Nations address, Arafat condemned Zionism, but said, "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." His speech increased international sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

Following recognition, Arafat established relationships with a variety of world leaders, including Saddam Hussein and Idi Amin. Arafat was Amin's best man at his wedding in Uganda in 1975.

Fatah involvement in Lebanese Civil War

Although hesitant at first to take sides in the conflict, Arafat and Fatah played an important role in the Lebanese Civil War. Succumbing to pressure from PLO sub-groups such as the PFLP, DFLP and the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), Arafat aligned the PLO with the Communist and Nasserist Lebanese National Movement (LNM). The LNM was led by Kamal Jumblatt, who had a friendly relationship with Arafat and other PLO leaders. Although originally aligned with Fatah, Syrian President Hafez al-Assad feared a loss of influence in Lebanon and switched sides. He sent his army, along with the Syrian-backed Palestinian factions of as-Sa'iqa and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) led by Ahmad Jibril to fight alongside the radical right-wing Christian forces against the PLO and the LNM. The primary components of the Christian front were the Maronite Phalangists loyal to Bachir Gemayel and the Tigers Militia—which was led by Dany Chamoun, a son of former President Camille Chamoun.

In February 1975, the Tigers shot an important pro-Palestinian Lebanese MP, Ma'arouf Sa'ad, founder of the Popular Nasserite Organization. His death, from his wounds, the following month, and the murder in April of that year of twenty-seven Palestinians and Lebanese travelling on bus from Sabra and Shatila to the Tel al-Zaatar refugee camp by Phalangist forces, precipitated the Lebanese Civil War. Arafat was reluctant to respond with force, but many other Fatah and PLO members felt otherwise. For example, the DFLP carried out several attacks against the Lebanese Army. In 1976, an alliance of Christian militias with the backing of the Lebanese and Syrian Army besieged Tel al-Zaatar camp in east Beirut. The PLO and LNM retaliated by attacking the town of Damour, a Phalangist stronghold. Over 330 people were killed and many more wounded. The Tel al-Zaatar camp fell to the Christians after a six-month siege, and a massacre followed in which thousands of Palestinians were killed. Arafat and Abu Jihad blamed themselves for not successfully organizing a rescue effort.

PLO cross-border raids against Israel grew during the late 1970s. One of the most severe—known as the Coastal Road massacre—occurred on 11 March 1978. A force of nearly a dozen Fatah fighters landed their boats near a major coastal road connecting the city of Haifa with Tel Aviv-Yafo. There they hijacked a bus and sprayed gunfire inside and at passing vehicles, killing thirty-seven civilians. In response, the IDF launched Operation Litani three days later, with the goal of taking control of Southern Lebanon up to the Litani River. The IDF achieved this goal, and Arafat withdrew PLO forces north into Beirut.

After Israel withdrew from Lebanon, cross-border hostilities between PLO forces and Israel continued, though from August 1981 to May 1982, the PLO adopted a unilateral policy of refraining from responding to provocations. Beirut was soon besieged and bombarded by the IDF; Arafat declared the city to be the "Hanoi and Stalingrad of the Israeli army." The Civil War's first phase ended and Arafat—who was commanding Fatah forces at Tel al-Zaatar—narrowly escaped with assistance from Saudi and Kuwaiti diplomats. Towards the end the siege, the US and European governments brokered an agreement guaranteeing safe passage for Arafat and the PLO—guarded by a multinational force of eight hundred US Marines supported by the US Navy—to exile in Tunis.

Arafat returned to Lebanon a year after his eviction from Beirut, this time establishing himself in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli. This time Arafat was expelled by a fellow Palestinian working under Hafez al-Assad. Arafat did not return to Lebanon after his second expulsion, though many Fatah fighters did.

Tunisia

Arafat and Fatah's center for operations was based in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, until 1993. In 1985 he narrowly survived an Israeli assassination attempt when Israeli Air Force F-15s bombed his headquarters there as part of Operation Wooden Leg, leaving 73 people dead. Arafat had gone out jogging that morning.

First Intifada

During the 1980s, Arafat received financial assistance from Libya, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which allowed him to reconstruct the badly battered PLO. This was particularly useful during the First Intifada in December 1987, which began as an uprising of Palestinians against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The word Intifada in Arabic is literally translated as "tremor", however, it is generally defined as an uprising or revolt.

The first stage of the Intifada began following an incident at the Erez checkpoint where four Palestinian residents of the Jabalya refugee camp were killed in a traffic accident involving an Israeli driver. Rumors spread that the deaths were a deliberate act of revenge for an Israeli shopper that was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in Gaza four days earlier. Mass rioting broke-out and within weeks and partly upon consistent requests by Abu Jihad, Arafat attempted to direct the uprising, which lasted until 1992–93. Abu Jihad had previously been assigned the responsibility of the Palestinian territories within the PLO command and according to biographer Said Aburish, had "impressive knowledge of local conditions" in the Israeli-occupied territories. On April 16, 1988, as the Intifada was raging, Abu Jihad was assassinated in his Tunis household, allegedly by an Israeli hit squad. Arafat considered Abu Jihad a PLO counterweight to local Palestinian leadership, and led a funeral procession for him in Damascus.

The most common tactic used by Palestinians during the Intifada was throwing stones, molotov cocktails, and burning tires. The local leadership in some West Bank towns commenced non-violent protests against Israeli occupation by engaging in tax resistance and other boycotts. Israel responded by confiscating large sums of money in house-to-house raids. As the Intifada came to a close, new armed Palestinian groups—in particular Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)—began targeting Israeli civilians with the new tactic of suicide bombing and internal fighting amongst the Palestinians increased dramatically.

Change in direction

It is now evident that Arafat was considering some kind of territorial compromise with the State of Israel at least since 1974. Recently declassified documents show that in early 1976, at a meeting with US Senator Adlai Stevenson III, Arafat suggested a "few kilometers" of Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip while transferring responsibility to the UN, and this, he claimed "would give him something to show his people before he could acknowledge Israel's right to exist".

On 15 November 1988, the PLO proclaimed the independent State of Palestine. Though he had frequently been accused of and associated with terrorism, in speeches on 13 and 14 December Arafat accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242, Israel's right "to exist in peace and security" and repudiated 'terrorism in all its forms, including state terrorism'. Arafat's statements were greeted with approval by the US administration, which had long insisted on these statements as a necessary starting point for official discussions between the US and the PLO. These remarks from Arafat indicated a shift away from one of the PLO's primary aims—the destruction of Israel (as entailed in the Palestinian National Covenant)–and toward the establishment of two separate entities: an Israeli state within the 1949 armistice lines, and an Arab state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On 2 April 1989, Arafat was elected by the Central Council of the Palestine National Council, the governing body of the PLO, to be the president of the proclaimed State of Palestine.

Prior to the Gulf War in 1990–91, when the Intifada's intensity began to wear down, Arafat supported Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait and opposed the US-led coalition attack on Iraq. He made this decision without the consent of other leading members of Fatah and the PLO. Arafat's top aide Abu Iyad vouched to stay neutral and opposed an alliance with Saddam; On 17 January 1991, Abu Iyad was assassinated by the pro-Iraqi Abu Nidal Organization. Arafat's decision also severed relations with Egypt and many of the oil-producing Arab states that supported the US-led coalition. Many in the US also used Arafat's position as a reason to disregard his claims to being a partner for peace. After the end of hostilities, many Arab states that backed the coalition cut off funds to the PLO and began providing financial support for the organization's rival Hamas as well as other Islamist groups.

In 1990, Arafat married Suha Tawil, a Palestinian Christian when he was 61 and Suha, 27. Before their marriage, she was working as a secretary for Arafat in Tunis after her mother introduced her to him in France. Prior to Arafat's marriage, he adopted fifty Palestinian war orphans. Arafat narrowly escaped death again on 7 April 1992, when an Air Bissau aircraft he was a passenger on crash-landed in the Libyan Desert during a sandstorm. Two pilots and an engineer were killed; Arafat was bruised and shaken.

Palestinian Authority and peace negotiations

Oslo Accords

In the early 1990s, Arafat and leading Fatah officials engaged the Israeli government in a series of secret talks and negotiations that led to the 1993 Oslo Accords. The agreement called for the implementation of Palestinian self-rule in portions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip over a five year period, along with an immediate halt to and gradual removal of Israeli settlements in those areas. The accords called for a Palestinian police force to be formed from local recruits and Palestinians abroad, to patrol areas of self-rule. Authority over the various fields of rule, including education and culture, social welfare, direct taxation and tourism, would be transferred to the Palestinian interim government. Both parties agreed also on forming a committee that would establish cooperation and coordination dealing with specific economic sectors, including utilities, industry, trade and communication.

Prior to signing the accords, Arafat—as Chairman of the PLO and its official representative—signed two letters renouncing violence and officially recognizing Israel. In return, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, on behalf of Israel, officially recognized the PLO.

The following year, Arafat and Rabin were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Shimon Peres. The Palestinian reaction was mixed. The Rejectionist Front of the PLO allied itself with Islamists in a common opposition against the agreements. It was rejected also by Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan as well as by many Palestinian intellectuals and the local leadership of the Palestinian territories. However, the inhabitants of the territories generally accepted the agreements and Arafat's promise for peace and economic well-being.

Establishing authority in the territories

In accordance with the terms of the Oslo agreement, Arafat was required to implement PLO authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He insisted that financial support was imperative to establishing this authority and needed it to secure the acceptance of the agreements by the Palestinians living in those areas. However, the Gulf Arab States—Arafat's usual source for financial backing—still refused to provide him and the PLO with any major donations because of his sympathy for Iraq during the Gulf War, in 1991. Ahmed Qurei—a key Fatah negotiator during the negotiations in Oslo—openly announced that the PLO was bankrupt.

In 1994, Arafat moved to Gaza City, one of the territories controlled by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA)—the provisional entity created by the Oslo Accords. Arafat became the President and Prime Minister of the PNA, the Commander of the PLA and the Speaker of the PLC. In July, after the PNA was declared the official government of the Palestinians, the Basic Laws of the Palestinian National Authority was published, in three different versions by the PLO. Arafat proceeded with creating a structure for the PNA. He established an executive committee or cabinet composed of twenty members. Arafat also took the liberty to replace and assign mayors and city councils for major cities such as Gaza and Nablus. He began subordinating non-governmental organizations that dealt in education, health, and social affairs under his authority by replacing their elected leaders and directors with PNA officials loyal to him. He then appointed himself chairman of the Palestinian financial organization that was created by the World Bank to control most aid money towards helping the new Palestinian entity.

Arafat established a Palestinian police force, named the Preventive Security Service (PSS), that became active on May 13. It was mainly composed of PLA soldiers and foreign Palestinian volunteers. Arafat assigned Mohammed Dahlan and Jibril Rajoub to head the organization. Amnesty International accused Arafat and the PNA leadership for failing to adequately investigate abuses by the PSS (including torture and unlawful killings) of political opponents and dissidents as well as the arrests of human rights activists.

On July 24, 1995, Arafat's wife Suha gave birth to a daughter in Sorbonne, France. She was named Zahwa after Arafat's deceased mother.

Throughout November–December 1995, Arafat toured dozens of Palestinian cities and towns that were evacuated by Israeli forces including Jenin, Ramallah, al-Bireh, Nablus, Qalqilyah and Tulkarm, declaring them "liberated". The PNA also gained control of the West Bank's postal service during this period. On 20 January 1996, Arafat was elected president of the PNA, with an overwhelming 88.2% majority (the only other candidate was charity organizer Samiha Khalil). However, because Hamas, the DFLP and other popular opposition movements chose to boycott the presidential elections, the choices were limited. Arafat's landslide victory guaranteed Fatah 51 of the 88 seats in the PLC. After Arafat was elected to the post of President of the PNA, he was often referred to as the ''Ra'is'', (literally president in Arabic), although he spoke of himself as "the general". In 1997, the PLC accused the executive branch of the PNA of financial mismanagement causing the resignation of four members of Arafat's cabinet. Arafat refused to resign his post.

Other peace agreements

In mid-1996, Benjamin Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister of Israel by a margin of just one percent. Palestinian-Israeli relations grew even more hostile as a result of continued conflict. Despite the Israel-PLO accord, Netanyahu opposed the idea of Palestinian statehood. In 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton persuaded the two leaders to meet. The resulting Wye River Memorandum detailed the steps to be taken by the Israeli government and PNA to complete the peace process.

Arafat continued negotiations with Netanyahu's successor, Ehud Barak, at the Camp David Summit in July 2000. Due partly to his own politics (Barak was from the leftist Labor Party, whereas Netanyahu was from the rightist Likud Party) and partly due to insistence for compromise by President Clinton, Barak made what many Israelis called a "generous offer". Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in 73% of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian percentage of sovereignty would extend to 91% (94% excluding Jerusalem) over a ten to twenty-five year period. Israel would annex the border settlement blocs (encompassing most Israeli settlements), and would cede the equivalent area in the Israeli Negev desert to the Palestinians. To ensure contiguity, an elevated roadway and railway would pass over the Negev from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. All remaining Israeli settlements would be removed, with the exception of Kiryat Arba, which was to remain an Israeli enclave linked by a bypass road. An Israeli road from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea would also cut through the West Bank, but Palestinians would have free passage. Israel would take sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods, sites holy to Judaism, and some Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, while the Palestinians would take sovereignty over some Palestinian neighborhoods, three Quarters of the Old City, and the remaining Palestinian neighborhoods would come under Palestinian autonomy. Palestinians would also have "custodianship" over the Temple Mount, and sovereignty on all Islamic and Christian holy sites. Palestine would have no military, and would rely on the PA's well-armed paramilitary security forces, and an international force in the Jordan Valley. Other demands were temporary Israeli observation of border crossings, sharing of water resources, Israeli right to build radar stations in Palestine and deploy troops in case of an emergency, no alliances without Israeli approval, the dismantling of all militant groups, and no foreign forces east of the Jordan River. Also included in the offer was the return of 100,000 refugees, $30 billion to resettle the remaining refugees, and compensation for those not allowed to return. Arafat rejected Barak's offer and refused to make an immediate counter-offer. He stated to President Clinton that, "the Arab leader who would surrender Jerusalem is not born yet". Arafat also made it clear that he would never relinquish the Palestinian right of return. The move was criticized by a member of his own negotiating team and cabinet, Nabil Amr.

After the September 2000 outbreak of the Second Intifada, negotiations continued at the Taba summit in January 2001; this time, Ehud Barak pulled out of the talks to campaign in the Israeli elections. In October and December 2001, suicide bombings by Palestinian militant groups increased and Israeli counter strikes intensified. Following the election of Ariel Sharon in February, the peace process took a steep downfall. Palestinian elections scheduled for January 2002 were postponed—the stated reason was an inability to campaign due to the emergency conditions imposed by the Intifada, as well as IDF incursions and restrictions on freedom of movement in the Palestinian territories. In the same month, Sharon ordered Arafat to be confined to his Mukata'a headquarters in Ramallah, following an attack in the Israeli city of Hadera; US President George W. Bush supported Sharon's action, claiming that Arafat was "an obstacle to the peace."

Political survival

Arafat's long personal and political survival was taken by most Western commentators as a sign of his mastery of asymmetric warfare and his skill as a tactician, given the extremely dangerous nature of politics of the Middle East and the frequency of assassinations. Some commentators believe his survival was largely due to Israel's fear that he could become a martyr for the Palestinian cause if he were assassinated or even arrested by Israel. Others believe that Israel refrained from taking action against Arafat because it feared Arafat less than Hamas and the other Islamist movements gaining support over Fatah. The complex and fragile web of relations between the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab states contributed also to Arafat's longevity as the leader of the Palestinians.

Israel attempted to assassinate Arafat on a number of occasions, but has never used its own agents, preferring instead to "turn" Palestinians close to the intended target, usually using blackmail. According to Alan Hart, the Mossad's specialty is poison. According to Abu Iyad, two attempts were made on Arafat's life by the Israeli Mosaad and the Military Directorate in 1970. In 1976, Abu Sa'ed, a Palestinian traitor-agent who had been working for the Mossad for four years, was enlisted in a plot to put poison pellets that looked like grains of rice in Arafat's food. Abu Iyad explains that Abu Sa'ed confessed after he received the order to go ahead, explaining that he was unable to go through with the plot because, "He was first of all a Palestinian and his conscience wouldn't let him do it." Arafat claimed in a 1988 interview with ''Time'' that because of his fear of assassination by the Israelis, he never slept in the same place two nights in a row.

Relations with Hamas and other militant groups

Arafat's ability to adapt to new tactical and political situations was perhaps tested by the rise of the Hamas and PIJ organizations, Islamist groups espousing rejectionist policies with Israel. These groups often bombed non-military targets, such as malls and movie theaters, to increase the psychological damage and civilian casualties. In the 1990s, these groups seemed to threaten Arafat's capacity to hold together a unified nationalist organization with a goal of statehood. They appeared to be out of Arafat's influence and control, and were actively fighting with Fatah. Some allege that activities of these groups were tolerated by Arafat as a means of applying pressure on Israel.

An attack carried out by Hamas militants killed twenty-nine Israeli civilians celebrating Passover including many senior citizens. In response, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, a major military offensive into major West Bank cities. Mahmoud Zahar, Hamas leader in Gaza, stated in September 2010 that Arafat had instructed Hamas to launch what he termed "military operations" against Israel in 2000 when Arafat felt that negotiations with Israel would not succeed.

Some Israeli government officials opined in 2002 that the armed Fatah sub-group al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades commenced attacks towards Israel in order to compete with Hamas. On May 6, the Israeli government released a report, based in part on documents captured during the Israeli occupation of Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, which included copies of papers signed by Arafat authorizing funding for al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades' activities.

Attempts to marginalize

Persistent attempts by the Israeli government to identify another Palestinian leader to represent the Palestinian people failed. Arafat was enjoying the support of groups that, given his own history, would normally have been quite wary of dealing with or supporting him. Marwan Barghouti (a leader of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades) emerged as a possible replacement during the Second Intifada, but Israel had him arrested for being involved in the killing of twenty-six civilians, and he was sentenced to five life terms.

Arafat was finally allowed to leave his compound on 2 May after intense negotiations led to a settlement: six PFLP militants—including the organization's secretary-general Ahmad Sa'adat—wanted by Israel, who had been holed up with Arafat in his compound, would not be turned over to Israel, but neither would they be held in custody by the PNA. Rather, a combination of British and American security personnel would ensure that the wanted men remained imprisoned in Jericho. (The men were later captured by Israel in an overnight raid on the prison in 2006.) With that, and a promise that he would issue a call to the Palestinians to halt attacks on Israelis, Arafat was released. He issued such a call on May 8, but as with previous attempts, it was largely ignored. In 2003, Arafat ceded his post as Prime Minister to Mahmoud Abbas amid pressures by the US.

In 2004, President Bush dismissed Arafat as a negotiating partner, saying he had "failed as a leader" and accused him of undercutting Abbas when he was prime minister (Abbas resigned the same year he was given the position). Arafat had a mixed relationship at best with the leaders of other Arab nations. His support from Arab leaders tended to increase whenever he was pressured by Israel; for example, when Israel declared in 2003 it had made the decision, in principle, to remove him from the Israeli-controlled West Bank. In an interview with the Arabic news network ''Al-Jazeera'', Arafat responded to Ariel Sharon's suggestion that he be exiled from the Palestinian territories permanently, by stating, "Is it his [Sharon's] homeland or ours? We were planted here before the Prophet Abraham came, but it looks like they [Israelis] don't understand history or geography."

Financial dealings

In August 2002, the Israeli Military Intelligence Chief alleged that Arafat's personal wealth was in the range of USD $1.3 billion. In 2003 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted an audit of the PNA and stated that Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account controlled by Arafat and the PNA Chief Economic Financial adviser. However, the IMF did not claim that there were any improprieties, and it specifically stated that most of the funds had been used to invest in Palestinian assets, both internally and abroad.

However in 2003, a team of American accountants–hired by Arafat's own finance ministry–began examining Arafat's finances; this team reached a different conclusion. The team claimed that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion, with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the US and the Cayman Islands. The head of the investigation stated that "although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public."

An investigation conducted by the General Accounting Office reported that Arafat and the PLO held over $10 billion in assets even at the time when he was publicly claiming bankruptcy.

Although Arafat lived a modest lifestyle, Dennis Ross, former Middle East negotiator for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, stated that Arafat's "walking-around money" financed a vast patronage system known as neopatrimonialism. According to Salam Fayyad—a former World Bank official whom Arafat appointed Finance Minister of the PNA in 2002—Arafat's commodity monopolies could accurately be seen as gouging his own people, "especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral." Fayyad claims that Arafat used $20 million from public funds to pay the leadership of the PNA security forces (the Preventive Security Service) alone.

Fuad Shubaki, former financial aide to Arafat, told the Israeli security service Shin Bet that Arafat used several million dollars of aid money to buy weapons and support militant groups. During Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, the Israel army recovered counterfeit money and documents from Arafat's Ramallah headquarters. The documents showed that, in 2001, Arafat personally approved payments to Tanzim terrorists. The Palestinians claimed that the counterfeit money was confiscated from criminal elements.

Illness and death

First reports of Arafat's treatment by his doctors for what his spokesman said was the "flu" came on 25 October 2004, after he vomited during a meeting. His condition deteriorated in the following days. Following visits by other doctors, including teams from Tunisia, Jordan, and Egypt—and agreement by Israel not to block his return—Arafat was taken to France on a French government jet, and was admitted to the Percy military hospital in Clamart, a suburb of Paris. The official statement announcing his death failed to determine a cause of death, saying only that he had a "mystery blood disorder". On 3 November, he had lapsed into a gradually deepening coma. In the ensuing days, Arafat's health was the subject of some speculation, with suspicion that he was suffering from poisoning or AIDS. Various sources speculated that Arafat was comatose, in a "vegetative state" or dead, however, Palestinian authorities and Arafat's Jordanian doctor denied reports that Arafat was brain dead and had been kept on life support.

A controversy erupted between officials of the PNA and Suha Arafat when officials from the PNA traveled to France to see Yasser Arafat. Suha stated "They are trying to bury Abu Ammar [Arafat] alive". French law forbids physicians from discussing the condition of their patients with anybody with the exception, in case of grave prognosis, of close relatives. Accordingly, all communications concerning Arafat's health had to be authorized by his wife. Palestinian officials expressed regret that the news about Yasser Arafat was "filtered" by her.

The next day, chief surgeon Christian Estripeau of Percy reported that Arafat's condition had worsened, and that he had fallen into a deeper coma. Sheikh Taissir Tamimi, the head of the Islamic court of the Palestinian territories—who held a vigil at Arafat's bedside—visited Arafat and declared that it was out of the question to disconnect him from life support since, according to him, such an action is prohibited in Islam.

Arafat was pronounced dead at 3:30 am UTC on 11 November at the age of 75. The exact cause of his illness is unknown. Tamimi described it as "a very painful scene." When Arafat's death was announced, the Palestinian people went into a state of mourning, with Qur'anic mourning prayers emitted from mosque loudspeakers, and tires were burned in the streets. One obituary at Socialist World said: "Many Palestinians will view the death of Yasser Arafat with a mixture of sadness and a wish that the Palestinian Authority he led, had done much more to end the poverty and oppression that blights their lives".

The ''Canard Enchaîné'' newspaper reported alleged leaks of information by unnamed medical sources at Percy hospital that had access to Arafat and his medical file. According to the newspaper, the doctors at Percy hospital suspected, from Arafat's arrival, grave lesions of the liver responsible for an alteration of the composition of the blood; Arafat was therefore placed in a hematology service. Leukemia was "soundly ruled out". According to the same source, the reason why this diagnosis of cirrhosis could not be made available was that, in the mind of the general public, cirrhosis is generally associated with the consequences of alcohol abuse. Even though the diagnosis was not of alcoholic cirrhosis and Arafat was not known for consuming any alcohol, there was a likelihood of rumors. The source explained that Arafat's living conditions did little to improve the situation. Thus, according to the source, the probable causes of the disease were multiple; Arafat's coma was a consequence of the worsened cirrhosis. The French newspaper ''Le Monde'' quoted doctors as saying that he suffered from "an unusual blood disease and a liver problem".

After Arafat's death, the French Ministry of Defense said that Arafat's medical file would be transmitted to only his next of kin. It was determined that Arafat's nephew and PNA envoy to the UN, Nasser al-Qudwa, was a close enough relative, thus working around Suha Arafat's silence on her husband's illness. Nasser al-Qudwa was given a copy of Arafat's 558-page medical file by the French Ministry of Defense.

Rumors about cause of death

Bassam Abu Sharif, Arafat's former advisor, claimed that the Mossad poisoned Arafat through his medications by a lethal dose of thallium. Another "senior Israeli physician" claimed in the article in ''Haaretz'' that it was "a classic case of food poisoning", probably caused by a meal eaten four hours before he fell ill that may have contained a toxin such as ricin, rather than a standard bacterial poisoning. However, in the same week as the report in ''Haaretz'', ''The New York Times'' published a separate report, also based on access to Arafat's medical records, which claimed that it was highly unlikely that Arafat had food poisoning. Both publications further speculated that the cause of death may have been an infection of an unknown nature or origin. However, rumors of Arafat's poisoning have remained popular around the world, and especially among the Arab populace. Al-Kurdi lamented the fact that Arafat's widow Suha had refused an autopsy, which would have answered many questions regarding cause of death. In 2005, al-Kurdi called for the creation of an independent commission to carry out investigations concerning Arafat's suspicious death, stating, "any doctor would tell you that these are the symptoms of a poisoning".

John Loftus reported on ABC radio that Arafat had died of AIDS. According to Loftus, the CIA had knowledge of his condition, and convinced Israel not to assassinate him and wait for his inevitable death of the disease, since the subsequent widespread connotations of the disease with homosexuality would discredit him. David Frum, a former speechwriter for U.S. President George W. Bush, speculated that Arafat had contracted AIDS as a result of homosexual affairs with his bodyguards, based on Ion Mihai Pacepa's book ''Red Horizons'' in which Pacepa reported that he had a conversation with a Romanian intelligence officer in which this officer claimed to have video recordings of Arafat engaging in homosexual activities.

In September 2005, the Israeli newspaper ''Haaretz'' reported that French experts could not determine the cause of Arafat's death. The paper quoted an Israeli AIDS expert who claimed that Arafat bore all the symptoms of AIDS, a hypothesis later rejected in ''The New York Times''. On the issue of AIDS; a statement rejecting this suggestion was made in an article printed in numerous American news publications by an anonymous Israeli infectious disease expert; "An Israeli infectious disease specialist said he would have performed the test, if only to be thorough and to refute the rumors that surrounded the case. He said news accounts during Arafat's illness made him strongly suspect that Arafat had AIDS. But after studying the records, he said that was improbable, given the sudden onset of the intestinal troubles." This same article notes that it is also highly unlikely that Yasser Arafat died from poisoning. The article further states that Yasser Arafat died from a stroke linked to an unknown infection which could have possibly been standard food poisoning, which could kill an elderly man already in a general sick condition, which had been caused from living under Israeli siege for years in his Ramallah compound.

According to Israel Radio, "A former Palestinian intelligence officer, attorney Fahmi Shabana, says that Yasser Arafat's political rivals were responsible for his death, and that he was poisoned with polonium. Shabana, who took part in the investigation into Arafat's death in a French hospital in 2004, said that several months after his death, the same cell murdered the head of military intelligence in Gaza, General Musa Arafat, a relative of the PLO leader, in order to prevent a blood feud. The lawyer called on Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas to reopen the investigation into Arafat's death."

Aftermath

Funeral

On 11 November, a French Army Honor Guard held a brief ceremony for Arafat, with his coffin draped in a Palestinian flag. A military band played the French and Palestinian national anthems, and a Chopin funeral march. French President Jacques Chirac stood alone beside Arafat's coffin for about ten minutes in a last show of respect for Arafat, whom he hailed as "a man of courage". The next day, Arafat's body was flown from Paris aboard a French Air Force transport plane to Cairo, Egypt for a brief military funeral there, before his burial in Ramallah, later that day. The funeral was attended by several heads of states, prime ministers and foreign ministers. Egypt's top Muslim cleric Sayed Tantawi led mourning prayers preceding the funeral procession.

Israel refused Arafat's wish to be buried near the Al-Aqsa Mosque or anywhere in Jerusalem, citing widespread security concerns. Israel also feared that his burial would strengthen Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem. Israeli Cabinet member Tommy Lapid stated that "Jerusalem is the burial place of Jewish kings, not of Arab terrorists". Following his Cairo procession, Arafat was "temporarily" laid to rest within the Mukataa in Ramallah; tens of thousands of Palestinians attended the ceremony. Also attending were at least one Jewish peace advocate (Uri Avnery, head of Gush Shalom) and a Christian minister. Arafat was buried in a stone, rather than wooden coffin, and Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat said that Arafat would be reburied in Jerusalem once East Jerusalem was handed over to a Palestinian state. Israel, which annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, was adamant that it would never allow his burial there. After Sheikh Taissir Tamimi discovered that Arafat was buried improperly and in a coffin—which is not in accordance with Islamic law—Arafat was reburied on the morning of November 13, at around 3:00 am. On November 10, 2007, prior to the third anniversary of Arafat's death, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas unveiled a mausoleum for Arafat near his temporary tomb in commemoration of him.

Successor

Upon Arafat's death, PLC Speaker Rawhi Fattouh succeeded Arafat as interim President of the PNA. PLO Secretary-General Mahmoud Abbas was selected Chairman of the PLO, and Farouk Kaddoumi became head of Fatah. The PNA and the leadership of Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon declared forty days of mourning for Arafat. Abbas won the January 2005 presidential election by a comfortable margin, solidifying himself as the successor to Arafat as leader of the Palestinians.

See also

List of Fatah members

List of Palestinians

Nobel Prize controversies

Person of the Year

Yasser Arafat International Airport

Notes and references

Further reading

Sela, Avraham. "Arafat, Yasser." ''The Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East''. Ed. Sela. New York: Continuum, 2002. pp. 166–171.

External links

Yasser Arafat ''official website''

Biography of Yasser Arafat at Nobelprize.org

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) at PASSIA

A Life in Retrospect: Yasser Arafat, ''Time''

Life and times of Yassir Arafat, Profile: Yassir Arafat, ''The Times''

Category:1929 births Category:2004 deaths Category:Cairo University alumni Category:Civil engineers Category:Fatah members Category:Arab Nobel laureates Category:Nobel Peace Prize laureates Category:Palestinian Nobel laureates Category:Palestine Liberation Organization Category:Palestinian militants Category:Presidents of the Palestinian National Authority Category:Survivors of aviation accidents or incidents Category:Palestinian Muslims Category:Recipients of the Order of the White Lion

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