Alef Bet →
Phoenician	Hebrew	Aramaic	Syriac	Arabic
	א		ܐ	ا
Alphabetic derivatives		Greek	Latin	Cyrillic
		Α	A	А
Phonemic representation:				ʔ
Position in alphabet:				1
Numerical (Gematria/Abjad) value:				1

ʾĀlep is the reconstructed name of the first letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician Aleph , Syriac 'Ālaph ܐ, Hebrew Aleph א, and Arabic ʾAlif ا.

The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Alpha (Α), being re-interpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А.

The aleph is in Unicode at U+05D0 א hebrew letter alef (HTML: א).

In phonetics, aleph (English pronunciation: /ˈɑːlɪf/) originally represented the glottal stop ([ʔ]), usually transliterated as U+02BE ʾ modifier letter right half ring (HTML: ʾ), based on the Greek spiritus lenis ʼ. For example, in the transliteration of the letter name itself, ʾāleph.

Origin[link]

The name aleph is derived from the West Semitic word for "ox", and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on a hieroglyph

which depicts an ox's head.

In Modern Standard Arabic, there is a word أليف /ʔaliːf/ which literally means "tamed" or "coy", derived from the root |ʔ-l-f| from which the past tense verb آلَفَ /ʔaːlafa/ means to "to coy". This has sometimes been connected with the name of alif in folk etymology.^{[citation needed]} In modern Hebrew, the same root t |ʔ-l-f| (alef-lamed-pe) gives "me'ulaf", the passive participle of the verb "le'alef", and means trained (when referring to pets) or tamed (when referring to wild animals); the IDF rank of Aluf, taken from an Edomite title of nobility, is also cognate.^{[clarification needed]}

Arabic[link]

Written as ا, spelled as ألف and transcribed as ʾalif is the first letter in Arabic. Together with Hebrew Aleph, Greek Alpha and Latin A, it is descended from Phoenician ʾāleph, from a reconstructed Proto-Canaanite ʾalp "ox".

Alif is written in one of the following ways depending on its position in the word:

Arabic variants[link]

Historically, the Arabic letter was used to render either a long /aː/, or a glottal stop /ʔ/. This led to orthographical confusion, and to introduction of the additional letter hamzat qatʿ ﺀ. Hamzah is not considered a full letter in Arabic orthography: in most cases it appears on a carrier, either a wāw (ؤ), a dotless yāʾ (ئ, or an alif. The choice of carrier depends on complicated orthographic rules. Alif إ أ is generally the carrier where the only adjacent vowel is fatḥah. It is the only possible carrier where hamzah is the first phoneme of a word. Where alif acts as a carrier for hamzah, hamzah is added above the alif, or, for initial alif kasrah, below it, indicating that the letter so modified does indeed signify a glottal stop, and not a long vowel.

A second type of hamza, hamzat waṣl (همزة وصل, occurs only as the initial phoneme of the definite article and in some related cases. It differs from hamzat qatʿ in that it is elided after a preceding vowel. Again, alif is always the carrier.

The ʾalif maddah is, as it were, a double alif, expressing both a glottal stop and a long vowel: آ (final ـآ) ʾā /ʔaː/, for example in آخر ʾāḫir /ʔaːxir/ "last".

The ʾalif maqṣūrah (ألف مقصورة, "limited/restricted alif"), commonly known in Egypt as ʾalif layyinah (ألف لينة, "flexible alif"), looks like a dotless yāʾ ى (final ـى) and may only appear at the end of a word. Although it looks different from a regular alif, it represents the same sound /aː/, often realized as [a]. When written, ʾalif maqṣūrah is indistinguishable from final Persian ye or Arabic yāʾ as it is written in Egypt, Sudan and sometimes other places. ʾAlif maqsurah is transliterated as ā in DIN 31635, á in ALA-LC, à in ISO 233-2 and ỳ in ISO 233.

Hebrew[link]

Written as א, spelled as אָלֶף and transcribed as Aleph.

In Modern Israeli Hebrew, the letter either represents a glottal stop ([ʔ]) or indicates a hiatus (the separation of two adjacent vowels into distinct syllables with no intervening consonant), as well as sometimes being silent (as word-final always, as word-medial sometimes, e.g. הוּא [hu] "he", רָאשִׁי [ʁaˈʃi] "main", רֹאשׁ [ʁoʃ] "head", רִאשׁוֹן [ʁiˈʃon] "first"). The pronunciation varies among Jewish ethnic groups.

In gematria, aleph represents the number 1, and when used at the beginning of Hebrew years, it means 1000 (i.e. א'תשנ"ד in numbers would be the date 1754).

Aleph, along with Ayin, Resh, He, and Heth, cannot receive a dagesh. (However, there are few very rare examples where the Masoretes added a dagesh to an Aleph or Resh.)

In Modern Hebrew the frequency of the usage of alef, out of all the letters, is 4.94%.

Aleph is sometimes used as a mater lectionis to denote a vowel, usually /a/. Such use is more common in words of Aramaic and Arabic origin, in foreign names and some other borrowed words.

Orthographic variants
Various Print Fonts			Cursive Hebrew	Rashi Script
Serif	Sans-serif	Monospaced
א	א	א

Rabbinic Judaism[link]

'Aleph is the subject of a midrash which praises its humility in not demanding to start the Bible. (In Hebrew the Bible begins with the second letter of the alphabet, Bet.) In this folktale, 'Aleph is rewarded by being allowed to start the Ten Commandments. (In Hebrew, the first word is אָנֹכִי, which starts with an aleph.)

In the Sefer Yetzirah, the letter 'Aleph is King over Breath, Formed Air in the universe, Temperate in the Year, and the Chest in the soul.

'Aleph is also the first letter of the Hebrew word emet, which means truth. In Jewish mythology it was the letter aleph that was carved into the head of the golem which ultimately gave it life.

Aleph also begins the three words that make up God's mystical name in Exodus, I Am who I Am (in Hebrew, 'Ehyeh 'Asher 'Ehyeh אהיה אשר אהיה), and 'aleph is an important part of mystical amulets and formulas.

Aleph in Jewish mysticism represents the oneness of God. The letter can been seen as being composed of an upper yud, a lower yud, and a vav leaning on a diagonal. The upper yud represents the hidden and ineffible aspects of God while the lower yud represents God's revelation and presence in the world. The vav ("hook") connects the two realms.

Jewish mysticism relates Aleph to the element of air, The Fool (Key 0, value 1) of the major arcana of the tarot deck,^[1] and the Scintillating Intelligence (#11) of the path between Kether and Chokmah in the Tree of the Sephiroth.

Hebrew sayings with aleph[link]

From Aleph to Tav describes something from beginning to end; the Hebrew equivalent of the English From A to Z.

One who doesn't know how to make an Aleph is someone who is illiterate.

No...with a big Aleph! (lo b'aleph rabati - לא באלף רבתי) means Absolutely not!.

Syriac Alaph/Olaf[link]

Alaph
Madnḫaya Alaph
Serṭo Alaph
Esṭrangela Alaph

In the Syriac alphabet, the first letter is ܐ — Syriac: ܐܵܠܲܦ — Alaph (in eastern dialects) or Olaf (in western dialects). It is used in word-initial position to mark a word beginning with a vowel — although some words beginning with i or u do not need its help, and sometimes an initial Alaph/Olaf is elided. For example, when the Syriac first-person singular pronoun ܐܵܢܵܐ is in enclitic positions, it is pronounced no/na (again west/east) rather than the full form eno/ana. The letter occurs very regularly at the end of words, where it represents the long final vowels o/a or e. In the middle of the word, the letter represents either a glottal stop between vowels (but West Syriac pronunciation often makes this a palatal approximant), a long i/e (less commonly o/a) or is silent.

Numeral[link]

As a numeral it Alaph/Olaf stands for the number one. With a dot below, it is the number 1,000, with a line above it, Alaph/Olaf will represent 1,000,000. with a line below it is 10,000 and with two dots below it is 10,000,000.

Ancient Egyptian[link]

"aleph" in hieroglyphs

The Egyptian "vulture" hieroglyph (Gardiner G1), by convention pronounced [a]) is also referred to as alef, on grounds that it has traditionally been taken to represent a glottal stop, although some recent suggestions^[2] tend towards an [ɹ] sound instead.

The phoneme is commonly transliterated by a symbol composed of two half-rings, in Unicode (as of version 5.1, in the Latin Extended D range) encoded at U+A722 Ꜣ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF and U+A723 ꜣ LATIN SMALL LETTER EGYPTOLOGICAL ALEF. A fallback representation is the numeral 3, or the Middle English character ȝ Yogh; neither are to be preferred to the genuine Egyptological characters.

Other uses[link]

Mathematics[link]

In set theory, the Hebrew aleph glyph is used as the symbol to denote the aleph numbers, which represent the cardinality of infinite sets. This notation was introduced by mathematician Georg Cantor.

See also[link]

• ʾ
• Al-
• Arabic yāʼ
• Hamza
• Aleph number

References[link]

v t e Arabic عربي Overviews Language Alphabet History Romanization Numerology Influence on other languages Alphabet Arabic numerals Eastern numerals Arabic braille Diacritics Hamza Tāʾ marbūṭah Letters ʾAlif Bāʾ Tāʾ Ṯāʾ Ǧīm Ḥāʾ Ḫāʾ Dāl Ḏāl Rāʾ Zayn Sīn Šīn Ṣād Ḍād Ṭāʾ Ẓāʾ ʿAyn Ġayn Fāʾ Qāf Kāf Lām Mīm Nūn Hāʾ Wāw Yāʾ Eras Ancient North Arabian Classical Modern Notable varieties Standardized Modern Standard Arabic Regional Egyptian Iraqi Levantine Maghrebi Sudanese Arabian Yemeni Ethnic/Religious Judeo-Arabic Academic Literature Names Linguistics Phonology Sun and moon letters ʾIʿrāb (inflection) Grammar Triliteral root Mater lectionis IPA Quranic Arabic Corpus

Paulo Coelho
Born	(1947-08-24) August 24, 1947 (age 64) Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Occupation	Novelist, Lyricist
Nationality	Brazilian
Genres	Drama, Psychological
Influences Jorge Luis Borges, William Blake, Jorge Amado, Henry Miller

Paulo Coelho (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈpawlu koˈeʎu]; born August 24, 1947) is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist. He has become one of the most widely read authors in the world today. The recipient of numerous prestigious international awards, amongst them the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum and France's Legion d'Honneur.

Biography[link]

Paulo Coelho was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.^[1] He attended a Jesuit school. As a teenager, Coelho wanted to become a writer. Upon telling his mother this, she responded with "My dear, your father is an engineer. He's a logical, reasonable man with a very clear vision of the world. Do you actually know what it means to be a writer?"^[1] After researching, Coelho concluded that a writer "always wears glasses and never combs his hair" and has a "duty and an obligation never to be understood by his own generation," amongst other things.^[1] At 16, Coelho's introversion and opposition to following a traditional path led to his parents committing him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20.^[2][3] Coelho later remarked that "It wasn't that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn't know what to do... They did not do that to destroy me, they did that to save me."^[4]

At his parents' wishes, Coelho enrolled in law school and abandoned his dream of becoming a writer. One year later, he dropped out and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico, and Europe and started drugs in the 1960s.^[5][6] Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a songwriter, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Brazilian icon Raul Seixas. Composing with Raul led to Paulo being associated with satanism and occultism, due to the content of some songs.^[7] In 1974, Coelho was arrested for "subversive" activities by the ruling military government, who had taken power ten years earlier and viewed his lyrics as left-wing and dangerous.^[4] Coelho also worked as an actor, journalist, and theatre director before pursuing his writing career.^[7]

In 1986, Coelho walked the 500-plus mile Road of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, a turning point in his life.^[5][8] On the path, Coelho had a spiritual awakening, which he described autobiographically in The Pilgrimage.^[9] In an interview, Coelho stated "[In 1986], I was very happy in the things I was doing. I was doing something that gave me food and water – to use the metaphor in "The Alchemist", I was working, I had a person whom I loved, I had money, but I was not fulfilling my dream. My dream was, and still is, to be a writer."^[10] Coelho would leave his lucrative career as a songwriter and pursue writing full-time.

Writing career[link]

In 1982 Coelho published his first book, Hell Archives, which failed to make any significant impact.^[7] In 1986 he contributed to the Practical Manual of Vampirism, although he later tried to take it off the shelves since he considered it “of bad quality."^[7] After making the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in 1986, Coelho wrote The Pilgrimage. The following year, Coelho wrote The Alchemist and published it through a small Brazilian publishing house who made an initial print run of 900 copies and decided not to reprint.^[11] He subsequently found a bigger publishing house, and with the publication of his next book Brida, The Alchemist became a Brazilian bestseller.^[11] The Alchemist has gone on to sell more than 65 million copies, becoming one of the best-selling books in history, and has been translated into more than 70 languages, the 71st being Maltese, winning the Guinness World Record for most translated book by a living author.^[7][12]

"The Alchemist," easily known as his most successful story, is a story about a young shepherd who follows his spiritual journey to the Egyptian pyramids in search of a treasure.

Since the publication of The Alchemist, Coelho has generally written one novel every two years including By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept, The Fifth Mountain, Veronika Decides to Die, The Devil and Miss Prym, Eleven Minutes, Like the Flowing River, The Valkyries and The Witch of Portobello. This dates back to The Pilgrimage: While trying to overcome his procrastination of launching his writing career, Coelho said, "If I see a white feather today, that is a sign that God is giving me that I have to write a new book." Coelho found a white feather in the window of a shop, and began writing that day.^[9]

In total, Coelho has published 30 books. Three of them – The Pilgrimage,The Valkyries and "Aleph" – are autobiographical, while the majority of the rest are fictional, although rooted in his life experiences.^[5] Others, like Maktub and The Manual of the Warrior of Light, are collections of essays, newspaper columns, or selected teachings. In total, Coelho has sold more than 100 million books in over 150 countries worldwide, and his works have been translated into 71 languages.^[6][7] He is the all-time bestselling Portuguese language author.

Coelho also writes up to three blog posts a week at his blog.^[13]

Adaptations[link]

Several of Coelho's books have been adapted into other media.

• 1998 TV Manchete made a 52-episode miniseries based on Brida. This adaptation was written by Jayme Camargo, Sônia Mota and Agélica Lopes, and directed by Walter Avancini. The Brazilian actress Carolina Kasting played Brida. It was the last novel filmed by TV Manchete. It was an audience failure and this adaptation was even reproved by Paulo Coelho himself. Due to the lack of sponsors, it had a premature ending: the last scenes were not recorded, being replaced by screenshots with narrations.
• 2004 Warner Bros. bought the rights to the film adaptation of The Alchemist. The project stalled and never materialized and the film rights were sold to Harvey Weinstein who will serve as the film's producer.
• 2007 In June Paulo Coelho announced The Experimental Witch Project, a collaborative project based on The Witch of Portobello.^[14]
• 2009 Veronika Decides to Die was made into a film released in 2009.
• 2011 In July Coelho ran Aleph, The Video Contest to collaborate and increase interaction with his more than 5,000,000 friends on Facebook. The winner was Turkish artist Raif Kurt.^[15]

File sharing[link]

Paulo Coelho is a strong advocate of spreading his books through peer-to-peer file sharing networks. A fan posted a Russian translation of one of his novels online. Sales of his book jumped from 3,000 to one million in three years, with no additional promotion or publicity from his publishers.^[16][17] Coelho took to pirating his own books on The Pirate Bay. Coelho provides free translations of many of his books.^[18] He was caught by the head of HarperCollins, Jane Friedman, who noticed that one of the unauthorized versions Coelho linked to had notes from his own manuscript.^[19] The two reached a compromise: each month a new novel can be read for free on the publisher's website.^[19][20] Due to the openness regarding his content, author Jeff Jarvis named Coelho 'the Googliest author' in his book What Would Google Do.^[19]

Personal life[link]

Coelho and violinist Yehudi Menuhin at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, in 1999

Coelho and his wife Christina Oiticica divide their time between Europe and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.^[21] In 1996, Coelho founded the Paulo Coelho Institute, which provides aid to children and elderly people with financial problems.^[22][23] In September 2007, Coelho was named a Messenger of Peace to the UN.^[24]

• Member of the Board of the Shimon Peres Center for Peace
• Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (France)
• UNESCO special counsellor for “Intercultural Dialogues and Spiritual Convergences”
• Board Member of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship
• Member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
• Member of INI International Advisory Council – HARVARD INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATION INITIATIVE
• Member of the Board, Doha Center of Media Freedom

On May 9, 2006, in Sofia, Bulgaria, Paulo Coelho was awarded by the President of Bulgaria Georgi Parvanov the "The Honorable Award of the President of the Republic".^[25]

Bibliography[link]

Note: Although the biography section of Coelho's website states that his first book was published in 1982,^[7][26] the Official Fan Club Paulo Coelho website lists two additional books published in 1974: The Manifest of Krig-há and Theater For Education.^[27]

References[link]

External links[link]

This article's use of external links may not follow Wikipedia's policies or guidelines. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links, and converting useful links where appropriate into footnote references. (January 2012)

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Paulo Coelho

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Paulo Coelho

• [1] Paulo Coelho and Ruthie DiTucci interview on SyndicatedNews.NET November 10, 2010.
• Glauco Ortolano Interview, World Literature Today
• Works by or about Paulo Coelho in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Paulo Coelho at the Internet Movie Database
• Support the Paulo Coelho Institute
• Paulo's official blog : Read his thoughts and discuss with Paulo
• Paulo's official Quotes Page : Find Paulo's Quotes in english and other languages, comment on them
• Warrior of the Light Online
• Paulo Coelho in Swedish
• What's it like to be the alchemist? Interview with Forward Magazine, April 2009
• Appearance on Desert Island Discs, BBC-Radio July 4, 3 2005
• Articles on openDemocracy
• A 1988 video interview
• Paulo Coelho's Interview with The Himalayan Times, Nepal
• Coelho Paulo
• Paulo Coelho on Goodreads
• Paulo Coelho on Konyv-konyvek
• Paulo Coelho Fanclub Switzerland
• Stephen Capen Interview on Worldguide, Futurist Radio Hour – October 14, 1995
• Interview given to the podcast 'Jovem Nerd' – October 15, 2010

Howard Marks
Howard Marks in Germany in 2000
Born	Dennis Howard Marks (1945-08-13) 13 August 1945 (age 66) Kenfig Hill, Bridgend, Wales
Alias(es)	Mr. Nice
Conviction(s)	Racketeering (drug trafficking)
Penalty	Imprisoned for 7 years
Status	On parole
Occupation	Writer
Spouse	Ilze Kadegis (1967–??) Judy Marks (1980–2005)
Children	Amber Marks; Francesca; Patrick; Myfanwy.

Howard Marks (born Dennis Howard Marks on 13 August 1945) is a Welsh author and former drug smuggler who achieved notoriety as an international cannabis smuggler through high-profile court cases. At his peak he was supposedly smuggling consignments of the drug as large as 30 tons, and was connected with groups as diverse as the CIA, the IRA, MI6, and the Mafia. He was eventually convicted by the American Drug Enforcement Administration and handed a 25-year sentence to be served at Terre Haute, though he was released in April 1995 after serving just seven years. Though he had up to 43 different aliases, he became known as Mr. Nice, after he bought a passport from convicted murderer Donald Nice.^[1]

Early life and education[link]

Marks was born in Kenfig Hill, near Bridgend, Wales, the son of Dennis Mark, a captain in the Merchant Navy, and Edna, a teacher.^[2] He has stated that his earliest memory is of throwing his father's ship's cat into the Indian Ocean; he also stated that that memory haunted him for the rest of his life, and that he was so young at the time that he had expected the cat to catch fish and then swim back to the ship.^[2] Brought up as a Baptist, he later turned to Buddhism, though he did not become a devout follower.^[3] He attended the Garw Grammar school in Pontycymer (he is a fluent Welsh speaker).^[4]

He gained a place at Balliol College, Oxford after he impressed Russell Meiggs in his interview,^[5] and read physics there from 1964 to 1967. There he was first introduced to cannabis by Denys Irving.^[6] After the death of his friend Joshua Macmillan (son of Maurice Macmillan; grandson of Harold Macmillan), Marks swore off ever getting involved with hard drugs.^[7] Among his other friends at Balliol were the epidemiologist Julian Peto and the journalist Lynn Barber.^[7] Through a mixture of cheating and last minute cramming, he passed his finals; this was despite months of taking drugs rather than attending classes and a serious infection he developed a few weeks before the exams.^[8]

In 1967 he began teacher-training, and married Ilze Kadegis, a Latvian who was also training to become a teacher.^[9] He gave up teacher-training to continue his education at the University of London (1967–68; Grad. Inst P.), then back to Balliol, Oxford (1968–69; Dip. H.Ph. Sc.), and then on to the University of Sussex (1969–70) to study philosophy of science.^[10]

Drug empire[link]

Though involved with drugs at university, he had only sold cannabis to his friends or acquaintances until in 1970, when he was persuaded to assist Graham Plinston, who had been arrested in Germany on drug trafficking charges.^[11] Through Plinston he met Mohammed Durrani, a hashish exporter who was a descendant of the Durranis who had run Afghanistan in the 19th century.^[12] With Plinston behind bars, Durrani offered Marks the opportunity to sell the drug on a large scale in London, and he agreed to the proposition.^[13] He formed a four-way partnership with Charlie Radcliffe, Charlie Weatherly and a dealer named Jarvis. However Durrani never contacted them, and so the group acquired smaller quantities of hashish from various sources and began selling the drug on to takers at Oxford, Brighton and London.^[14] After six months he returned to Germany to help bail Plinston out of jail, Marks being a useful means of transferring money as he did not have a criminal record.^[15]

Now a free man, Plinston gave Marks a job transporting hashish in Frankfurt; Marks in turn hired a New Zealand smuggler named Lang as his driver.^[16] After paying Marks £5,000 for his work in Frankfurt, Plinston then sold hashish on to Marks and his three friends (Radcliffe, Weatherly and Jarvis) in London; in selling on 650 kilos within the space of a week the four men made a profit of £20,000.^[17] Durrani then arranged for hashish to be smuggled in the furniture of Pakistani diplomats who were moving to London; Marks would then intercept the furniture to find the drugs – this arrangement netted him a profit of £7,500.^[18] Marks expanded his enterprise, employing two friends from Wales, Mike Bell and David Thomas, to stash the drugs and help with transportation.^[19] The gang became unsatisfied with the way the profits were being split (80% of the money they made on the street went to Durrani) and contacted James McCann, a gunrunner for the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).^[20] Marks and Plinston persuaded McCann to smuggle hashish into Ireland from Kabul, which the pair would then ferry over to Wales and into England;^[21] McCann would get the drugs into Ireland through the freeport at Shannon Airport using his IRA connections.^[22] Marks avoided the attention of HM Revenue and Customs by creating a paper trail that indicated he made his money from selling stamps and dresses.^[23]