Word: arabic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...City from him, and he returned to Europe. The city, always Islam's third holiest site, became even more central to the faithful. Saladin's family ruled less than 60 years longer, but his style of administration and his humane application of justice to both war and governance influenced Arab rulers for centuries. His tolerance was exemplary. He allowed Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem after its fall. The great Jewish sage Maimonides was his physician. Woven into chivalric legend as the worthy foeman, Saladin, scimitar flashing or compassionately sheathed, galloped from Dante into romances by Sir Walter Scott and eventually into...
...Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal organized a naval academy of engineers, mapmakers and ship's pilots. Borrowing from Arab vessels, they designed the first caravels. Propelled by lateen rigging, the three-masted ships were fast and tacked into the wind...
...steering oar was slowly replaced by the rudder, a maritime invention from East Asia that had made its way to Europe via Arab mariners...
...repeat of the October 1973 war, when Israel suffered critical losses after being taken by surprise by a Syrian buildup. Israel will therefore insist on demilitarization and extensive monitoring as a precodition for withdrawal. Despite security fears, peace with Syria would mean that all of Israel's immediate Arab neighbors recognize the 51-year-old Jewish state as a permanent reality, and that remains an enticing prospect for Barak - to be pursued with urgency before the ailing Assad leaves the scene, potentially complicating any peace moves. Right now, Israeli opposition to ceding the Golan actually suits Barak's negotiating strategy...
...Syria, but as a demilitarized zone monitored by the U.S. or some other international authority. A deal that treats any movement of Syrian military hardware into that zone as an act of war may be acceptable to Israel's generals. Of course, many Israelis are loath to trust their Arab neighbors, and would just as soon hang on to all the real estate they can. But Barak holds a trump card: Israel continues to pay a heavy price in human life for its occupation of southern Lebanon, and the call for Israeli withdrawal is overwhelmingly popular across party lines...