Word: ibn
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...verge of collapse. Thus when the Arabs looked across the Mediterranean, they saw a vast territory spotted with squabbling factions -- Christians, Jews, Visigoths -- separated from Africa by a small strait and ripe for conquest. In 711 a mixed force of Arabs and Berbers under the command of Musa ibn Nusayr crossed the sea and smashed through the patchy Visigothic resistance; within 50 years most of Spain, except for the pockets of Castile and Catalonia in the north, had become al-Andalus, the farthest western expansion of a vast Muslim empire run by the Abbasid dynasty from Baghdad...
...ancient Arabia, the most fabled land was the city of Ubar. As legend had it, one Shaddad ibn Ad created a jewel-encrusted oasis town in the southern deserts to stand as an "imitation of Paradise." Islam's holy Koran, which called the site Iram, evoked the grandeur of "lofty pillars, the like of which were not produced in ((all)) the land." This was also Islam's Sodom, however, a place that God destroyed because of its wickedness. Ever since, warns an Arabian saying, "anybody who finds Ubar will go crazy." And according to an Arabian Nights tale, "Allah blotted...
...curb the excesses of the fanatics, the King appointed a religious moderate, Abdul Rahman al-Said, to head the mutawain, officially known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. Al-Said, a former dean of Islamic studies at Imam Mohammed Ibn Saud Islamic University, received an $18 million budget increase and instructions to rid the mutawain of zealous volunteers. But harassment of Saudis and foreigners by the mutawain continues, underscoring how difficult it will be for al-Said to gain control of the organization and its durable network of faculty and student supporters...
...Saudi Arabia, the only country named after a family, its leaders show little inclination to share power. On my trip in January, I met with His Highness Prince Fahd bin Salman, a thirtysomething, U.S.-educated grandson of the founding King, Abdul Aziz, known as Ibn Saud. Fahd is vice governor of the Eastern province. I asked him whether he thought there would still be an absolute monarchy in the 21st century...
...demise of the Pan-Arab dream evident in these surveys is hardly a recent phenomenon. According to Professor Fouad Ajami, the victory of the more "local" Ibn Saud over the "pan-Arab" Shariff Hussein half a century ago may be regarded as the first victory of the state over transnationalism. Dr. Ajami and other experts on the region have interpreted the chronic instability of Lebanon as yet another manifestation of the erosion of Pan-Arabism...