Shaanxi

Shaanxi (Chinese: 陕西; pinyin:  Shǎnxī; postal: Shensi) is a province of the People's Republic of China, officially part of the Northwest China region. It includes portions of the Loess Plateau on the middle reaches of the Yellow River in addition to the Qin Mountains (Qinling) across the southern part of this province.

Name

The name Shaanxi means "Land west of Shan". Shǎn was the ancient name for the narrow mountain pass where the Yellow River flows from the Loess Plateau down to the North China Plain. It is now the Shanzhou District of Sanmenxia city in Henan Province.

The Chinese pronunciation of 陕西 (Shǎnxī) and its eastern neighbor 山西 (Shānxī) differ only in tone. As tone marks are often omitted, this would leave the two provinces indistinguishable and, to prevent this ambiguity, the Chinese government adopted the special spelling Shaanxi as an official romanization. The first syllable is derived from the Gwoyeu Romatzyh system of romanization, whereby tone is reflected by change in spelling. The second syllable, 西, would be rendered "shi" in Gwoyeu Romatzyh, but the Chinese government opts to transcribe it as the pinyin-derived "xi," meaning that the official spelling reflects the application of two separate romanization systems. When tone marks are noted, however, it is always rendered as the simple Shǎnxī and not Shǎanxī or Shaǎnxī.

China

China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a sovereign state in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population of over 1.35 billion. The PRC is a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, with its seat of government in the capital city of Beijing. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces; five autonomous regions; four direct-controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing); two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau); and claims sovereignty over Taiwan.

Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometers, China is the world's second-largest country by land area, and either the third or fourth-largest by total area, depending on the method of measurement. China's landscape is vast and diverse, ranging from forest steppes and the Gobi and Taklamakan deserts in the arid north to subtropical forests in the wetter south. The Himalaya, Karakoram, Pamir and Tian Shan mountain ranges separate China from South and Central Asia. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, the third- and sixth-longest in the world, run from the Tibetan Plateau to the densely populated eastern seaboard. China's coastline along the Pacific Ocean is 14,500 kilometres (9,000 mi) long, and is bounded by the Bohai, Yellow, East and South China Seas.

Great Mosque of Kufa

The Great Mosque of Kufa, or Masjid al-Kūfa (Arabic: مسجد الكوفة المعظم‎), or Masjid-al-Azam located in Kūfa, Iraq, is one of the earliest mosques in the world. The mosque, built in the 7th century, contains the remains of Muslim ibn ‘Aqīl - first cousin of Husayn ibn ‘Alī, his companion Hānī ibn ‘Urwa, and the revolutionary Mukhtār al-Thaqafī.

Dimensions

Today the area of the building measures approximately 11,000 m².

The mosque contains nine sanctuaries and four traditional locations. It has four minarets and is served by five gates.

Renovation

The 52nd Da'i al-Mutlaq of Dawoodi Bohra Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin undertook the renovation of the mosque, which was then completed in early 2010. It has many special features:

Northwest China

Northwestern China (西北, Xīběi) includes the autonomous regions of Xinjiang and Ningxia and the provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai.

Administrative divisions

Outer Northwest China

Outer Northwest China (Chinese: 外西北; pinyin: Wài Xīběi) is the territories that were ceded from Qing China to the Russian Empire in the Convention of Peking, Sino-Russian North West Frontier Treaty, Treaty of Saint Petersburg (1881) and other Unequal Treaties. The territories are former parts of far western Xinjiang and northern Outer Mongolia. Historically, Outer Northwest China was part of Dzungaria but was obtained by the Manchus after their defeat of the Dzungars in the 18th century.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the territories were separated and are now governed by four successors of the Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Russia.

See also

References

Coordinates: 36°48′00″N 95°48′00″E / 36.8000°N 95.8000°E / 36.8000; 95.8000

Ming dynasty

The Ming dynasty (Chinese: 明朝; pinyin: Míng Cháo), or the Great Ming (Chinese: 大明; pinyin: Dà Míng), also called the Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China for 276 years (1368–1644) following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming, described by some as "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history," was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic Han Chinese. Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Li Zicheng (who established the Shun dynasty, soon replaced by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty), regimes loyal to the Ming throne – collectively called the Southern Ming – survived until 1662.

The Hongwu Emperor (ruled 1368–98) attempted to create a society of self-sufficient rural communities ordered in a rigid, immobile system that would guarantee and support a permanent class of soldiers for his dynasty: the empire's standing army exceeded one million troops and the navy's dockyards in Nanjing were the largest in the world. He also took great care breaking the power of the court eunuchs and unrelated magnates, enfeoffing his many sons throughout China and attempting to guide these princes through the Huang Ming Zu Xun, a set of published dynastic instructions. This failed spectacularly when his teenage successor, the Jianwen Emperor, attempted to curtail his uncles' power, prompting the Jingnan Campaign, an uprising that placed the Prince of Yan upon the throne as the Yongle Emperor in 1402. The Yongle Emperor established Yan as a secondary capital and renamed it Beijing, constructed the Forbidden City, and restored the Grand Canal and the primacy of the imperial examinations in official appointments. He rewarded his eunuch supporters and employed them as a counterweight against the Confucian scholar-bureaucrats. One, Zheng He, led seven enormous voyages of exploration into the Indian Ocean as far as Arabia and the eastern coasts of Africa.