Princess Nora of Liechtenstein

Princess Norberta "Nora", Dowager Marquesa de Mariño (Norberta Elisabeth Maria Assunta Josefine Georgine et omnes sancti; 31 October 1950), is the daughter of Franz Joseph II, Prince of Liechtenstein (1906–1989) and his wife Countess Gina of Wilczek (1921–1989), and thus younger sister of Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein.

Education and career

Princess Nora studied at the University of Geneva and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, also in Geneva. She has worked for the World Bank and the International Institute for Environment and Development, among others. She speaks French, English, German and Spanish.

She has been a member of the International Olympic Committee since 1984. She was president of Liechtenstein's National Olympic Committee from 1982 to 1992 and she has been president of Special Olympics Liechtenstein since 2002.

She was Chief Scouting Guide (German: Korpsführerin) of Liechtensteinische Pfadfinderinnenkorps Santa Maria from 1973 to 1989. Today she is Honorary member of the Scout association.

Abd al-Rahman

Abd al-Rahman or Abd ar-Rahman (Arabic: عبد الرحمن‎ or occasionally عبد الرحمان; DMG ʿAbd ar-Raḥman) is a male Muslim given name, and in modern usage, surname. It is built from the Arabic words Abd, al- and Rahman. The name means "servant of the most merciful", ar-Rahman being one of the names of God in the Qur'an, which give rise to the Muslim theophoric names.

The letter A of the al- is unstressed, and can be transliterated by almost any vowel, often by u. Because the letter R is a sun letter, the letter l of the al- is assimilated to it. Thus although the name is written in Arabic with letters corresponding to Abd al-Rahman, the usual pronunciation corresponds to Abd ar-Rahman. Alternative transliterations include ‘Abd ar-Rahman, Abdul Rahman, Abdur Rahman, Abdur Rehman, Abdul Rehman, Abidur Rahman, and others, all subject to variant spacing and hyphenation. Certain transliterations tend to be associated with certain areas, for example, Abdirahman in Somalia, and Abderrahmane in French-speaking North Africa.

Princess Nora bint Abdul Rahman University

Princess Nourah Bint Abdul Rahman University (PNU; Arabic: جامعة الأميرة نورة بنت عبد الرحمن‎) is a public women’s university located in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. It is the largest university for women in the world.

The university offers diplomas, bachelor and postgraduate degrees. It has over 60,000 students in 15 colleges, a preparatory year program for all first year undergraduate students, an Arabic Language Institute (for non-speakers of Arabic), a Deanship of Community Service and Continuous Education, and a Community College.

History and Name

The university first existed in 1970 as the first College of Education for women in the Kingdom. Within the following 25 years, there were 102 similar colleges in 72 cities around the country, accommodating 60,000 students. There were 6 colleges in the city of Riyadh alone in the fields of education, social service, science, arts, and home economics.

In 2004, the birth of the first all-women university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was announced: Riyadh University for Women and unified all 6 of the original colleges in the city of Riyadh. Other colleges around the Kingdom were unified and expanded in their respected regions into independent universities.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia (ⁱ/ˌsɔːdiː əˈreɪbiə/, ⁱ/ˌsaʊ-/), officially known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is an Arab state in Western Asia constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula. With a land area of approximately 2,150,000 km² (830,000 sq mi), Saudi Arabia is geographically the second-largest state in the Arab world after Algeria. Saudi Arabia is bordered by Jordan and Iraq to the north, Kuwait to the northeast, Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to the east, Oman to the southeast, and Yemen to the south. It is the only nation with both a Red Sea coast and a Persian Gulf coast, and most of its terrain consists of arid inhospitable desert or barren landforms.

The area of modern-day Saudi Arabia formerly consisted of four distinct regions: Hejaz, Najd, and parts of Eastern Arabia (Al-Ahsa) and Southern Arabia ('Asir). The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 by Ibn Saud. He united the four regions into a single state through a series of conquests beginning in 1902 with the capture of Riyadh, the ancestral home of his family, the House of Saud. The country has since been an absolute monarchy, effectively a hereditary dictatorship governed along Islamic lines. The ultra-conservative Wahhabism religious movement within Sunni Islam has been called "the predominant feature of Saudi culture", with its global spreading largely financed by the oil and gas trade. Saudi Arabia is sometimes called "the Land of the Two Holy Mosques" in reference to Al-Masjid al-Haram (in Mecca), and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (in Medina), the two holiest places in Islam. The Kingdom has a total population of 28.7 million, of which 20 million are Saudi nationals and 8 million are foreigners.

University

A university (Latin: universitas, "a whole") is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which grants academic degrees in various subjects and typically provides undergraduate education and postgraduate education. The word "university" is derived from the Latin universitas magistrorum et scholarium, which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars."

History

Definition

The original Latin word "universitas" refers in general to "a number of persons associated into one body, a society, company, community, guild, corporation, etc." At the time of the emergence of urban town life and medieval guilds, specialised "associations of students and teachers with collective legal rights usually guaranteed by charters issued by princes, prelates, or the towns in which they were located" came to be denominated by this general term. Like other guilds, they were self-regulating and determined the qualifications of their members.

In modern usage the word has come to mean "An institution of higher education offering tuition in mainly non-vocational subjects and typically having the power to confer degrees," with the earlier emphasis on its corporate organization considered as applying historically to Medieval universities.