title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: Counting a number of years based on an annual fixed calendar date yields a different result from a rolling year count based on dates such as birthdays which have the possibility of being at any time of the year and change depending on the individual. Using this method has led some chronologists to add or subtract a 0.5 year margin to/from the birth year of each patriarch to account for unknown birth dates.


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: The first mention in Genesis of the use of a fixed method to reckon years is made in Genesis 1 referring to the "lights in the firmament". A fixed calendar system is usually determined by an annual epoch such as New Year's Day (1 January) which is fixed by the alignment of astronomical objects; the reckoning of the year occurs on its epoch. Years represented in Anno Mundi dates could be interpreted to be in alignment with Rosh Hashanah and are counted according to its annual occurrence.


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: There are several different interpretations as to the exact birth year of Shem and his son Arphaxad. Based on Noah being at least 500 years old when he began to beget children and Noah's sons each having an age difference, it is not uncommon to encounter chronologies that list Shem as being 98 years old when the flood began. Shem begat Arphaxad two years after the flood when he was 100 years old.


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: In the Masoretic, Vulgate and the Samaritan Pentateuch the method of starting from the birth of Noah and adding exactly 500 years until Shem, and adding another 100 years until the birth of Arphaxad would be the same year as the death of Methuselah following the above chart. Since Methuselah was not mentioned in Genesis among those who were aboard the ark, it is possible that his death came in the same year of the flood.


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: Based on the Masoretic Text, counting 1656 years on the above chart will result in being the 600th year of Noah's life, the year of the death of Methuselah and year that the flood began. The two-year discrepancy is commonly resolved by rendering the birth year of Shem in the same year that Noah was 502 years old, and rendering Arphaxad as having been born two years after the death of Methuselah and the flood.


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: A comparison of the Genesis 5 numbers (Adam through Noah) in the above table shows that the ages when the sons were born plus the remainders equal the totals given in each version, but each version uses different numbers to arrive at these totals. The three versions agree on some of the total ages at death, but many of the other numbers differ by exactly 100 years. The Septuagint ages of the fathers at the birth of their sons are in many instances 100 years greater than the corresponding ages in the other two versions; in Genesis 11 some of the Samaritan Pentateuch ages agree with the Septuagint ages and are also 100 years beyond that of the Masoretic and Vulgate versions.


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: The Samaritan chronology has Jared, Methuselah, and Lamech dying in Noah's 600th year, the year of the flood. The Masoretic chronology also has Methuselah dying in Noah's 600th year, but the Masoretic version uses a different chronology than the Samaritan version, with about 350 extra years between creation and flood. The Lucianic text of the Septuagint has Methuselah surviving the flood and therefore the 100 year differences were not an attempt by the Septuagint editors to have Jared, Methuselah, or Lamech die during or prior to the flood. Some scholars argue that the differences between the Masoretic and Septuagint chronologies in Genesis 5 can be explained as alterations designed to rationalize a primary Masoretic system of chronology to a later Septuagint system. According to another scholar, to assume that the Masoretic Text is primary "is a mere convention for the scholarly world" and "it should not be postulated in advance that MT reflects the original text of the biblical books better than the other texts." The present-day Greek Orthodox Septuagint text still offers the Lucianic numbers for Methuselah, which undoubtedly are the numbers as found in the original Septuagint text, most likely based on the Hebrew original that was used for the translation. This opens the possibility that these were the original numbers in the Hebrew tradition also, that only later, after discovering the chronological discrepancy, have been changed by adapting the Methuselah numbers to 167+782=969 (in some Septuagint manuscripts) or to 187+782=969 (in some other Septuagint manuscripts as well as in the present-day Masoretic text). The scholarly Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Pentateuch into Greek at Alexandria, Egypt, in about 280 BC worked from a Hebrew text that was edited in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. This would be centuries older than the proto–Masoretic Text selected as the official text by the Masoretes.


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: The Genesis 5 ages were presumably intended to be read at face value, as years and not months. Attempts to rationalize the ages by translating "years" as "months" results in some of the Genesis 5 people fathering children when they were five years old (if the Masoretic chronology is assumed to be primary).


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: There is one discrepancy between the antediluvian chronologies of different texts of the Septuagint - the age at which Methuselah gave birth to Lamech: 167 or 187 years. Because of this, the date of the Flood is shifted by 20 years. This difference is probably due to the different lists of the Septuagint from which the translation was made. For example, according to Lucianic version of the Septuagint (end of the 3rd century), the Flood was in 2242, and according to the Code of Alexandria of the Septuagint the Flood was in 2262 from cm. (as in the printed editions of the Septuagint, for example, the Frankfurt Bible or the reconstruction of G. B. Sweet; as well as in the Church Slavonic translation of the Elizabethan Bible).


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: The Priestly source illustrates history in Genesis by compiling the genealogy beginning with the "generations of the heavens and the earth" and continuing through Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac to the descendants of Jacob and Esau. Jacob's descendants are listed in Genesis 46:8-27, beginning with the phrase "these are the names."


title: Genealogies of Genesis

text: The genealogies of Genesis have been likened to the Sumerian King List. Some versions of the latter (not including the oldest known version, where no flood is mentioned) consist of a list of implausibly long-lived figures, followed by a flood, followed by a list of figures with long but gradually shortening lifespans that move into normal historical lengths. Attempts at finding a correlation between the ages presented in the two lists have been made.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI) is a term often used as a synonym for pneumonia but can also be applied to other types of infection including lung abscess and acute bronchitis. Symptoms include shortness of breath, weakness, fever, coughing and fatigue. A routine chest X-ray is not always necessary for people who have symptoms of a lower respiratory tract infection.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Antibiotics are the first line treatment for pneumonia; however, they are neither effective nor indicated for parasitic or viral infections. Acute bronchitis typically resolves on its own with time.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: In 2015 there were about 291 million cases. These resulted in 2.74 million deaths down from 3.4 million deaths in 1990. This was 4.8% of all deaths in 2013.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Bronchitis describes the swelling or inflammation of the bronchial tubes. Additionally, bronchitis is described as either acute or chronic depending on its presentation and is also further described by the causative agent. Acute bronchitis can be defined as acute bacterial or viral infection of the larger airways in healthy patients with no history of recurrent disease. It affects over 40 adults per 1000 each year and consists of transient inflammation of the major bronchi and trachea. Most often it is caused by viral infection and hence antibiotic therapy is not indicated in immunocompetent individuals. Viral bronchitis can sometimes be treated using antiviral medications depending on the virus causing the infection, and medications such as anti-inflammatory drugs and expectorants can help mitigate the symptoms. Treatment of acute bronchitis with antibiotics is common but controversial as their use has only moderate benefit weighted against potential side effects (nausea and vomiting), increased resistance, and cost of treatment in a self-limiting condition. Beta2 agonists are sometimes used to relieve the cough associated with acute bronchitis. In a recent systematic review it was found there was no evidence to support their use.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis (AECB) are frequently due to non-infective causes along with viral ones. 50% of patients are colonised with "Haemophilus influenzae", "Streptococcus pneumoniae", or "Moraxella catarrhalis". Antibiotics have only been shown to be effective if all three of the following symptoms are present: increased dyspnea, increased sputum volume, and purulence. In these cases, 500 mg of amoxicillin orally, every 8 hours for 5 days or 100 mg doxycycline orally for 5 days should be used.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Pneumonia occurs in a variety of situations and treatment must vary according to the situation. It is classified as either community or hospital acquired depending on where the patient contracted the infection. It is life-threatening in the elderly or those who are immunocompromised. The most common treatment is antibiotics and these vary in their adverse effects and their effectiveness. Pneumonia is also the leading cause of death in children less than five years of age in low income countries. The most common cause of pneumonia is pneumococcal bacteria, "Streptococcus pneumoniae" accounts for 2/3 of bacteremic pneumonias. This is a dangerous type of lung infection with a mortality rate of around 25%.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: For optimal management of a pneumonia patient, the following must be assessed: pneumonia severity (including treatment location, e.g., home, hospital or intensive care), identification of causative organism, analgesia of chest pain, the need for supplemental oxygen, physiotherapy, hydration, bronchodilators and possible complications of emphysema or lung abscess.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Vaccination helps prevent bronchopneumonia, mostly against influenza viruses, adenoviruses, measles, rubella, streptococcus pneumoniae, haemophilus influenzae, diphtheria, bacillus anthracis, chickenpox, and bordetella pertussis. Specifically for the children with low serum retinol or who are suffering from malnutrition, vitamin A supplements are recommended as a preventive measure against acute LRTI.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Antibiotics do not help the many lower respiratory infections which are caused by parasites or viruses. While acute bronchitis often does not require antibiotic therapy, antibiotics can be given to patients with acute exacerbations of chronic bronchitis. The indications for treatment are increased dyspnoea, and an increase in the volume or purulence of the sputum. The treatment of bacterial pneumonia is selected by considering the age of the patient, the severity of the illness and the presence of underlying disease. A systematic review of 32 randomised controlled trials with 6,078 participants with acute respiratory infections compared procalcitonin (a blood marker for bacterial infections) to guide the initiation and duration of antibiotic treatment, against no use of procalcitonin. Among 3,336 people receiving procalcitonin-guided antibiotic therapy, there were 236 deaths, compared to 336 deaths out 3,372 participants who did not. Procalcitonin-guided antibiotic therapy also reduced the antibiotic use duration by 2.4 days, and there were fewer antibiotic side effects. This means that procalcitonin is useful for guiding whether to use antibiotics for acute respiratory infections and the duration of the antibiotic. Amoxicillin and doxycycline are suitable for many of the lower respiratory tract infections seen in general practice. Another cochrane review suggests that new studies are needed to confirm that azithromycin may lead to less treatment failure and lower side effects than amoxycillin. In the other hand, there is no sufficient evidence to consider the antibiotics as a prophylaxis for the high risk children under 12 years.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Oxygen supplementation is often recommended for people with severe lower respiratory tract infections. Oxygen can be provided in a non-invasive manner using nasal prongs, face masks, a head box or hood, a nasal catheter, or a nasopharyngeal catheter. For children younger than 15 years old, nasopharyngel catheters or nasal prongs are recommended over a face mask or head box. A Cochrane review in 2014 presented a summary to identify children complaining of severe LRTI, however; further research is required to determine the effectiveness of supplemental oxygen and the best delivery method.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Lower respiratory infectious disease is the fifth-leading cause of death and the combined leading infectious cause of death, being responsible for 2.74 million deaths worldwide. This is generally similar to estimates in the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: This total only accounts for "Streptococcus pneumoniae" and "Haemophilus Influenzae" infections and does not account for atypical or nosocomial causes of lower respiratory disease, therefore underestimating total disease burden.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Lower respiratory tract infections place a considerable strain on the health budget and are generally more serious than upper respiratory infections.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Workplace burdens arise from the acquisition of a lower respiratory tract infection, with factors such as total per person expenditures and total medical service utilisation demonstrated as greater among individuals experiencing a lower respiratory tract infection.


title: Lower respiratory tract infection

text: Pan-national data collection indicates that childhood nutrition plays a significant role in determining the acquisition of a lower respiratory tract infection, with the promotion of the implementation of nutrition program, and policy guidelines in affected countries.


title: Arabization

text: Arabization or Arabisation (, "") describes both the process of growing Arab influence on non-Arab populations, causing a language shift by the latter's gradual adoption of the Arabic language and incorporation of Arab culture, after the Muslim conquest of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the Arab nationalist policies of some governments in modern Arab states toward non-Arabic speaking minorities, including Algeria, Iraq, Kuwait, and Sudan.


title: Arabization

text: Historically, aspects of the culture of the Arabian Peninsula were combined in various forms with the cultures of conquered regions and ultimately denominated "Arab". After the rise of Islam in the Hejaz, Arab culture and language were spread outside the Arabian Peninsula through conquest, trade and intermarriages between members of the non-Arab local population and the peninsular Arabs. Even within the Arabian Peninsula itself, Arabization occurred to non-Arab populations such as the Hutaym in the northwestern Arabia and the Solluba in the Syrian Desert and the region of Mosul. The Arabic language began to serve as a lingua franca in these areas and various dialects were formed. Yemen is traditionally held to be the homeland of the Qahtanite Arabs who, according to Arab tradition, are pure Arabs; however, most of the Yemeni population did not in fact speak Old Arabic prior to the spread of Islam, and spoke the extinct Old South Arabian languages instead.


title: Arabization

text: The influence of Arabic has been profound in many other countries whose cultures have been influenced by Islam. Arabic was a major source of vocabulary for various languages. This process reached its zenith between the 10th and 14th centuries, widely considered to be the high point of Arab culture.


title: Arabization

text: After Alexander the Great, the Nabataean kingdom emerged and ruled a region extending from north of Arabia to the south of Syria. The Nabataeans originated from the Arabian peninsula, who came under the influence of the earlier Aramaic culture, the neighbouring Hebrew culture of the Hasmonean kingdom, as well as the Hellenistic cultures in the region (especially with the Christianization of Nabateans in the 3rd and 4th centuries). The pre-modern Arabic language was created by Nabateans, who developed the Nabataean alphabet which became the basis of modern Arabic script. The Nabataean language, under heavy Arab influence, amalgamated into the Arabic language.


title: Arabization

text: The Arab Ghassanids were the last major non-Islamic Semitic migration northward out of Yemen in late classic era. They were Greek Orthodox Christian, and clients of the Byzantine Empire. They arrived in Byzantine Syria which had a largely Aramean population. They initially settled in the Hauran region, eventually spreading to the entire Levant (modern Lebanon, Israel, Palestine and Jordan), briefly securing governorship of parts of Syria and Transjordan away from the Nabataeans.


title: Arabization

text: The Arab Lakhmid Kingdom was founded by the Lakhum tribe that emigrated from Yemen in the 2nd century and ruled by the Banu Lakhm, hence the name given it. They adopted the religion of the Church of the East, founded in Assyria/Asōristān, opposed to the Ghassanids Greek Orthodox Christianity, and were clients of the Sasanian Empire.


title: Arabization

text: The Byzantines and Sasanians used the Ghassanids and Lakhmids to fight proxy wars in Arabia against each other.


title: Arabization

text: The earliest and most significant instance of "Arabization" was the early Muslim conquests of Muhammad and the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates. They built a Muslim Empire that grew well beyond the Arabian Peninsula, eventually reaching as far as Iberia in the West and Central Asia to the East, covering , making it one of the largest empires in history.


title: Arabization

text: South Arabia is a historical region that consists of the southern region of the Arabian Peninsula, mainly centered in what is now the Republic of Yemen, yet it also included Najran, Jizan, and 'Asir, which are presently in Saudi Arabia, and the Dhofar of present-day Oman.


title: Arabization

text: Old South Arabian was driven to extinction by the Islamic expansion, being replaced by Classical Arabic which is written with the Arabic script. The South Arabian alphabet which was used to write it also fell out of use. A separate branch of South Semitic, the Modern South Arabian languages still survive today as spoken languages in southern of present-day Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Dhofar in present-day Oman.


title: Arabization

text: Although Yemen is traditionally held to be the homeland of Arabs, most of the sedentary Yemeni population did not speak Arabic (but instead Old South Arabian languages) prior to the spread of Islam.


title: Arabization

text: Before the 7th century CE, the population of Eastern Arabia consisted of Christian Arabs, Zoroastrian Arabs, Jews, and Aramaic-speaking agriculturalists. Some sedentary dialects of Eastern Arabia exhibit Akkadian, Aramaic and Syriac features. The sedentary people of ancient Bahrain were Aramaic speakers and to some degree Persian speakers, while Syriac functioned as a liturgical language.


title: Arabization

text: On the eve of the Rashidun Caliphate conquest of the Levant, 634 AD, Syria's population mainly spoke Aramaic; Greek was the official language of administration. Arabization and Islamization of Syria began in the 7th century, and it took several centuries for Islam, the Arab identity, and language to spread; the Arabs of the caliphate did not attempt to spread their language or religion in the early periods of the conquest, and formed an isolated aristocracy. The Arabs of the caliphate accommodated many new tribes in isolated areas to avoid conflict with the locals; caliph Uthman ordered his governor, Muawiyah I, to settle the new tribes away from the original population. Syrians who belonged to Monophysitic denominations welcomed the peninsular Arabs as liberators.


title: Arabization

text: The Abbasids in the eighth and ninth century sought to integrate the peoples under their authority, and the Arabization of the administration was one of the tools. Arabization gained momentum with the increasing numbers of Muslim converts; the ascendancy of Arabic as the formal language of the state prompted the cultural and linguistic assimilation of Syrian converts. Those who remained Christian also became Arabized; it was probably during the Abbasid period in the ninth century that Christians adopted Arabic as their first language; the first translation of the gospels into Arabic took place in this century. Many historians, such as Claude Cahen and Bernard Hamilton, proposed that the Arabization of Christians was completed before the First Crusade. By the thirteenth century, Arabic language achieved dominance in the region and its speakers became Arabs.


title: Arabization

text: Prior to the Islamic conquests, Arabs had been inhabiting the Sinai Peninsula, the Eastern desert and eastern Delta for centuries. These regions of Egypt collectively were known as "Arabia" to the contemporary historians and writers documenting them. Several pre-Islamic Arab kingdoms, such as the Qedarite Kingdom, extended into these regions. Inscriptions and other archeological remains, such as bowls bearing inscriptions identifying Qedarite kings and Nabatean Arabic inscriptions, affirm the Arab presence in the region. Egypt was conquered from the Romans by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century CE. The Coptic language, which was written using the Coptic variation of the Greek alphabet, was spoken in most of Egypt prior to the Islamic conquest. Arabic, however, was already being spoken in the eastern fringes of Egypt for centuries prior to the arrival of Islam. By the Mameluke era, the Arabization of the Egyptian populace alongside a shift in the majority religion going from Christianity to Islam, had taken place.


title: Arabization

text: Neither North Africa nor the Iberian Peninsula were strangers to Semitic culture: the Phoenicians and later the Carthaginians dominated parts of the North African and Iberian shores for more than eight centuries until they were suppressed by the Romans and by the following Vandal and Visigothic invasions, and the Berber incursions. After the Arab invasion of North Africa, The Berber tribes allied themselves with the Umayyad Arab Muslim armies in invading the Iberian Peninsula. Later, in 743 AD, the Berbers defeated the Arab Umayyad armies and expelled them from most of West North Africa (al-Maghreb al-Aqsa) during the Berber Revolt, but not the territory of Ifriqiya which stayed Arab (East Algeria, Tunisia, and West-Libya). Centuries later some migrating Arab tribes settled in some plains while the Berbers remained the dominant group mainly in desert areas including mountains. The Inland North Africa remained exclusively Berber until the 11th century; the Iberian Peninsula, on the other hand, remained Arabized, particularly in the south, until the 16th century.


title: Arabization

text: After finishing the establishment of the Arab city of Al Mahdiya in Tunisia and spreading the Islamic Shiite faith, some of the many Arab Fatimids left Tunisia and parts of eastern Algeria to the local Zirids (972–1148). The invasion of Ifriqiya by the Banu Hilal, a warlike Arab Bedouin tribe encouraged by the Fatimids of Egypt to seize North Africa, sent the region's urban and economic life into further decline. The Arab historian Ibn Khaldun wrote that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.


title: Arabization

text: After the Umayyad conquest of Hispania, under the Arab Muslim rule Iberia ("al-Andalus") incorporated elements of Arabic language and culture. The Mozarabs were Iberian Christians who lived under Arab Islamic rule in Al-Andalus. Their descendants remained unconverted to Islam, but did however adopt elements of Arabic language and culture and dress. They were mostly Roman Catholics of the Visigothic or Mozarabic Rite. Most of the Mozarabs were descendants of Hispano–Gothic Christians and were primarily speakers of the Mozarabic language under Islamic rule. Many were also what the Arabist Mikel de Epalza calls ""Neo-Mozarabs"", that is Northern Europeans who had come to the Iberian Peninsula and picked up Arabic, thereby entering the Mozarabic community.


title: Arabization

text: Besides Mozarabs, another group of people in Iberia eventually came to surpass the Mozarabs both in terms of population and Arabization. These were the Muladi or Muwalladun, most of whom were descendants of local Hispano-Basques and Visigoths who converted to Islam and adopted Arabic culture, dress, and language. By the 11th century, most of the population of al-Andalus was Muladi, with large minorities of other Muslims, Mozarabs, and Sephardic Jews. It was the Muladi, together with the Berber, Arab, and other (Saqaliba and Zanj) Muslims who became collectively termed in Christian Europe as "Moors".


title: Arabization

text: A similar process of Arabization and Islamization occurred in the Emirate of Sicily ("as-Siqilliyyah"), Emirate of Crete ("al-Iqritish"), and Malta ("al-Malta"), during this period some segments of the populations of these islands converted to Islam and began to adopt elements of Arabic culture, traditions, and customs. The Arabization process also resulted in the development of the now extinct Siculo-Arabic language, from which the modern Maltese language derives. By contrast, the present-day Sicilian language, which is an Italo-Dalmatian Romance language, retains very little Siculo-Arabic, with its influence being limited to some 300 words.


title: Arabization

text: Contacts between Nubians and Arabs long predated the coming of Islam, but the Arabization of the Nile Valley was a gradual process that occurred over a period of nearly one thousand years. Arab nomads continually wandered into the region in search of fresh pasturage, and Arab seafarers and merchants traded at Red Sea ports for spices and slaves. Intermarriage and assimilation also facilitated Arabization. Traditional genealogies trace the ancestry of the Nile valley's area of Sudan mixed population to Arab tribes that migrated into the region during this period. Even many non-Arabic-speaking groups claim descent from Arab forebears. The two most important Arabic-speaking groups to emerge in Nubia were the Ja'alin and the Juhaynah.


title: Arabization

text: In the 12th century, the Arab Ja'alin tribe migrated into Nubia and Sudan and gradually occupied the regions on both banks of the Nile from Khartoum to Abu Hamad. They trace their lineage to Abbas, uncle of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. They are of Arab origin, but now of mixed blood mostly with Northern Sudanese and Nubians. In the 16th and 17th centuries, new Islamic kingdoms were established – the Funj Sultanate and the Sultanate of Darfur, starting a long period of gradual Islamization and Arabization in Sudan. These sultanates and their societies existed until the Sudan was conquered by the Ottoman Egyptian invasion in 1820, and in the case of Darfur, even until 1916.


title: Arabization

text: In 1846, Arab Rashaida, who speak Hejazi Arabic, migrated from the Hejaz in present-day Saudi Arabia into what is now Eritrea and north-east Sudan, after tribal warfare had broken out in their homeland. The Rashaida of Sudan live in close proximity with the Beja people, who speak Bedawiye dialects in eastern Sudan.


title: Arabization

text: In Medieval times, the Baggara Arabs, a grouping of Arab ethnic groups who speak Shuwa Arabic (which is one of the regional varieties of Arabic in Africa), migrated into Africa, mainly between Lake Chad and southern Kordofan.


title: Arabization

text: Currently, they live in a belt stretching across Sudan, Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon, Central African Republic and South Sudan and numbering over six million people. Like other Arabic speaking tribes in the Sahara and the Sahel, Baggara tribes have origin ancestry from the Juhaynah Arab tribes who migrated directly from the Arabian peninsula or from other parts of north Africa.


title: Arabization

text: Arabic is an official language of Chad and Sudan as well as a national language in Niger, Mali, Senegal and South Sudan. In addition, Arabic dialects are spoken of minorities in Nigeria, Cameroon and Central African Republic.


title: Arabization

text: Arabization is the process of developing and promoting Arabic into a nation's education system, government, and media in order to replace a former language that was enforced into a nation due to colonization. Algeria had been conquered by France and even made to be part of its metropolitan core for 132 years, a significantly longer timespan compared to Morocco and Tunisia, and it was also more influenced by Europe due to the contiguity with French settlers in Algeria: both Algerian and French nationals used to live in the same towns, resulting in the cohabitation of the two populations. Based on these facts, one might be induced to believe that Algeria's Arabization process would have been the hardest to achieve, but on the contrary it was the smoothest in the Maghreb region. While trying to build an independent and unified nation-state after the Evian Accords, the Algerian government under Ahmed Ben Bella’s rule began a policy of “Arabization”. Indeed, due to the lasting and deep colonization, French was the major administrative and academic language in Algeria, even more so than in neighboring countries. The unification and pursuit of a single Algerian identity was to be found in the Arab language and religion, as stated in the 1963 constitution: "La langue arabe est la langue nationale et officielle de l’État" ("Arabic is the national and official state language") and " L'islam est la religion de l'État [...]" ("Islam is the state religion") and confirmed in 1969, 1976, 1989, 1996 and 2018. According to Abdelhamid Mehri, the decision of Arabic as an official language was the natural choice for Algerians, even though Algeria is a plurilingual nation with a minority, albeit substantial, number of Berbers within the nation, and the local variety of Arabic used in every-day life was distinct from MSA Arabic. However, the process of Arabization was meant not only to promote Islam, but to fix the gap and decrease any conflicts between the different Algerian ethnic groups and promote equality through monolingualism. In 1964 the first practical measure was the Arabization of primary education and the introduction of religious education, the state relying on Egyptian teachers – belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood and therefore particularly religious – due to its lack of literary Arabic-speakers. In 1968, during the Houari Boumediene regime, Arabization was extended, and a law tried to enforce the use of Arabic for civil servants, but again, the major role played by French was only diminished. Many laws followed, trying to ban French, Algerian Arabic and Berber from schools, administrative acts and street signs, but this revived Berber opposition to the state and created a distinction between those educated in Arabic and those in French, the latter still being favored by elites.


title: Arabization

text: The whole policy was ultimately not as effective as anticipated: French has kept its importance and Berber opposition kept growing, contributing to the 1988 October Riots. Some Berber groups, like the Kabyles, felt that their ancestral culture and language were threatened and the Arab identity was given more focus at the expense of their own. After the Algerian Civil War, the government tried to enforce even more the use of Arabic, but the relative effect of this policy after 1998 (the limit fixed for complete Arabization) forced the heads of state to make concessions towards Berber, recognizing it in 2002 as another national language that will be promoted. However, because of literary Arabic's symbolic advantage, as well as being a single language as opposed to the fragmented Berber languages, Arabization is still a goal for the state, for example with laws on civil and administrative procedures.


title: Arabization

text: After the Algerian school system completed its transition to Arabic in 1989, James Coffman made a study of the difference between Arabized and non-Arabized students at the Université des Sciences et de la Technologie Houari Boumediene (USTHB) and at the University of Algiers. Interviewing students he found Arabized students show decidedly greater support for the Islamist movement and greater mistrust of the West. Arabized students tend to repeat the same ... stories and rumors that abound in the Arabic-language press, particularly Al-Munqidh, the newspaper of the Islamic Salvation Front. They tell about sightings of the word "Allah" written in the afternoon sky, the infiltration into Algeria of Israeli women spies infected with AIDS, the "disproving" of Christianity on a local religious program, and the mass conversion to Islam by millions of Americans. ... When asked if the new, Arabized students differed from the other students, many students and faculty answered an emphatic yes.


title: Arabization

text: Despite being a nation of the Arabian peninsula, Oman had been home to several native languages other than Arabic, of which Kumzari which is the only native Indo-European language in the Arabian peninsula has been classified as highly endangered by the UNESCO and at risk of dying out in 50 years. Before the takeover of Qaboos as sultan, Arabic was only ever spoken by the inhabitants outside the village of Kumzar, in mosques or with strangers, however since the introduction of Arabic-only schools in 1984, Arabic is hence now spoken at both school and village with it being mandatory in school and as tv and radio are also in Arabic meaning virtually all media the people of Kumzar are exposed to is in Arabic.


title: Arabization

text: The Modern South Arabian languages have also come under threat in Oman. Hobyot is considered a critically endangered language. The actual number of speakers is unknown, but it is estimated to be only a few hundred. Most of those who maintain the language are elderly, which adds to the likelihood that language extinction is near.


title: Arabization

text: Ethnologue categorizes it as a moribund language (EGIDS 8a). The only fluent speakers that are left are older than the child-bearing age, which ultimately makes integration of the language into subsequent generations highly improbable. Mechanisms of transmission would have to be created from outside the community in order to preserve it.


title: Arabization

text: The Harsusi language is also critically endangered, as most Harsusi children now attend Arabic-language schools and are literate in Arabic, Harsusi is spoken less in the home, meaning that it is not being passed down to future generations. With the discovery of oil in the area and the reintroduction of the Arabian Oryx in the area which has provided job opportunities for Harsusi men, this has led to them using primarily Arabic or Mehri when communicating with their co-workers. These factors have also caused many Harasis to speak Arabic and Mehri in addition to or in place of Harsusi. These pressures led one researcher to conclude in 1981 that "within a few generations Harsusi will be replaced by Arabic, more specifically by the Omani Arabic standard dialect" though this has not yet materialized. UNESCO has categorised Harsusi as a language that is "definitely endangered".


title: Arabization

text: The Shehri language has also come under threat in recent years, prior to the Arabization of Oman, Shehri was once spoken from Yemen's Hadhramaut region to Ras Al Hadd in Eastern Oman. Until around as little as forty years ago, Shehri was spoken by all of the inhabitants of Dhofar as the common language, including by the native Arabic speakers in Salalah who spoke it fluently. The remainder of Dhofar’s inhabitants all spoke Shehri as their mother tongue. Today however Arabic has taken over as the form of mutual communication in Dhofar and is now exclusively spoken by those to whom it is their native tongue. A number of the older generation of Shehri language speakers, particularly those who live in the mountains, don’t even speak Arabic and it was only around fifty years ago that most of Dhofar’s Shehri speaking population began to learn it. The fact that Arabic has a written form unlike Shehri has also greatly contributed to its decline.


title: Arabization

text: Another language, Bathari is the most at risk of dying out with its numbers (as of 2019) at currently anywhere from 12 to 17 fluent elderly speakers whereas there are some middle aged speakers but they mix their ancestral tongue with Arabic instead. The tribe seems to be dying out with the language also under threat from modern education solely in Arabic. The Bathari language is nearly extinct. Estimates are that the number of remaining speakers are under 100.


title: Arabization

text: Following 44 years of colonization by France, Morocco began promoting the use of Arabic (MSA Arabic) to create a united Moroccan national identity, and increase literacy throughout the nation away from any predominant language within the administration and educational system. Unlike Algeria, Morocco did not encounter with the French as strongly due to the fact that the Moroccan population was scattered throughout the nation and major cities, which resulted in a decrease of French influence compared to the neighboring nations. According to these facts, one could consider that Morocco would lay an easier path to Arabization and attain it at a faster rate than its neighboring country Algeria, although the results were on the contrary. First and foremost, educational policy was the main focus within the process, debates surfaced between officials who preferred a "modern and westernized" education with enforcement of bilingualism while others fought for a traditional route with a focus of "Arabo-Islamic culture". Once the "Istiqal Party" took power, the party focused on placing a language policy siding with the traditional ideas of supporting and focusing on Arabic and Islam. The "Istiqal Party" implemented the policy rapidly and by the second year after gaining independence, the first year of primary education was completely Arabized, and a bilingual policy was placed for the remaining primary education decreasing the hours of French being taught in a staggered manner. Arabization in schools had been more time-consuming and difficult than expected due to the fact that the first 20 years following independence, politicians (most of which were educated in France or French private school in Morocco) were indecisive as to if Arabization was best for the country and its political and economic ties with European nations. Regardless, complete Arabization can only be achieved if Morocco becomes completely independent from France in all aspects; politically, economically, and socially. Around 1960, Hajj Omar Abdeljalil the education minister at the time reversed all the effort made to Arabize the public school and reverted to pre-independent policies, favoring French and westernized learning. Another factor that reflected the support of reversing the Arabization process in Morocco, was the effort made by King Hassan II, who supported the Arabization process but on the contrary increased political and economic dependence on France. Due to the fact that Morocco remained dependent on France and wanted to keep strong ties with the Western world, French was supported by the elites more than Arabic for the development of Morocco.


title: Arabization

text: The Arabization process in Tunisia theoretically should have been the easiest within the North African region because it has less than 1% of Berber speaking population, and practically 100% of the nation is a native Tunisian Darija speaker. However, it was the least successful due to its dependence on European nations and belief in Westernizing the nation for the future development of the people and the country. Much like Morocco, Tunisian leaders' debate consisted of traditionalists and modernists, traditionalists claiming that Arabic (specifically Classical Arabic) and Islam are the core of Tunisia and its national identity, while modernists believed that Westernized development distant from "Pan-Arabist ideas" are crucial for Tunisia's progress. Modernists had the upper hand, considering elites supported their ideals, and after the first wave of graduates that had passed their high school examinations in Arabic were not able to find jobs nor attend a university because they did not qualify due to French preference in any upper-level university or career other than Arabic and Religious Studies Department. There were legitimate efforts made to Arabize the nation from the 1970s up until 1982, though the efforts came to an end and the process of reversing all the progress of Arabization began and French implementation in schooling took effect. The Arabization process was criticized and linked with Islamic extremists, resulting in the process of "Francophonie" or promoting French ideals, values, and language throughout the nation and placing its importance above Arabic. Although Tunisia gained its independence, nevertheless the elites supported French values above Arabic, the answer to developing an educated and modern nation, all came from Westernization. The constitution stated that Arabic was the official language of Tunisia but nowhere did it claim that Arabic must be utilized within the administrations or every-day life, which resulted in an increase of French usage not only in science and technology courses. Further, major media channels were in French, and government administrations were divided—some were in Arabic while others were in French.


title: Arabization

text: Sudan is an ethnically mixed country that is economically and politically dominated by the society of central northern Sudan, where many strongly identify as Arabs and Muslims. The population in South Sudan consists mostly of Christian and Animist Nilotic people, who have been regarded for centuries as non-Arab, African people. Apart from Modern Standard Arabic, taught in schools and higher education, and the spoken forms of Sudanese Arabic colloquial, several other languages are spoken by diverse ethnic groups.


title: Arabization

text: Since independence in 1956, Sudan has been a multilingual country, with Sudanese Arabic as the major first or second language. In the 2005 constitution of the Republic of Sudan and following the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, the official languages of Sudan were declared Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and English. Before the independence of South Sudan in 2011, people in the southern parts of the country, who mainly speak Nilo-Saharan languages or Juba Arabic, were subjected to the official policy of Arabization by the central government. The constitution declared, however, that “all indigenous languages of the Sudan are national languages and shall be respected, developed, and promoted,” and it allowed any legislative body below the national level to adopt any other national language(s) as additional official working language(s) within that body's jurisdiction.


title: Arabization

text: MSA is also the language used in Sudan's central government, the press, as well as in official programmes of Sudan television and Radio Omdurman. Several lingua francas have emerged, and many people have become genuinely multilingual, fluent in a native language spoken at home, a lingua franca, and perhaps other languages.


title: Arabization

text: Mauritania is an ethnically-mixed country that is economically and politically dominated by those who identify as Arabs and/or Arabic-speaking Berbers. About 30% of the population is considered "Black African", and the other 40% are Arabized Blacks, both groups suffering high levels of discrimination. Recent Black Mauritanian protesters have complained of "comprehensive Arabization" of the country.


title: Arabization

text: Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party had aggressive Arabization policies involving driving out many pre-Arab and non-Arab races – mainly Kurds, Assyrians, Yezidis, Shabaks, Armenians, Turcomans, Kawliya, Circassians and Mandeans – replacing them with Arab families.


title: Arabization

text: In the 1970s, Saddam Hussein exiled between 350,000 to 650,000 Shia Iraqis of Iranian ancestry (Ajam). Most of them went to Iran. Those who could prove an Iranian/Persian ancestry in Iran's court received Iranian citizenship (400,000) and some of them returned to Iraq after Saddam.


title: Arabization

text: During the Iran-Iraq War, the Anfal campaign destroyed many Kurdish, Assyrian and other ethnic minority villages and enclaves in North Iraq, and their inhabitants were often forcibly relocated to large cities in the hope that they would be Arabized.


title: Arabization

text: This policy drove out 500,000 people in the years 1991–2003. The Baathists also pressured many of these ethnic groups to identify as Arabs, and restrictions were imposed upon their languages, cultural expression and right to self-identification.


title: Arabization

text: Since the independence of Syria in 1946, the ethnically diverse Rojava region in northern Syria suffered grave human rights violations, because all governments pursued a most brutal policy of Arabization. While all non-Arab ethnic groups within Syria, such as Assyrians, Armenians, Turcomans and Mhallami have faced pressure from Arab Nationalist policies to identify as "Arabs", the most archaic of it was directed against the Kurds. In his report for the 12th session of the UN Human Rights Council titled "Persecution and Discrimination against Kurdish Citizens in Syria", the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights held: "Successive Syrian governments continued to adopt a policy of ethnic discrimination and national persecution against Kurds, completely depriving them of their national, democratic and human rights — an integral part of human existence. The government imposed ethnically-based programs, regulations and exclusionary measures on various aspects of Kurds’ lives — political, economic, social and cultural."


title: Arabization

text: The Kurdish language was not officially recognized, it had no place in public schools. A decree from 1989 prohibited the use of Kurdish at the workplace as well as in marriages and other celebrations. In September 1992 came another government decree that children not be registered with Kurdish names. Also businesses could not be given Kurdish names. Books, music, videos and other material could not be published in Kurdish language. Expressions of Kurdish identity like songs and folk dances were outlawed and frequently prosecuted under a purpose-built criminal law against "weakening national sentiment". Celebrating the Nowruz holiday was often constrained.


title: Arabization

text: In 1973 the Syrian authorities confiscated 750 square kilometers of fertile agricultural land in Al-Hasakah Governorate, which were owned and cultivated by tens of thousands of Kurdish citizens, and gave it to Arab families brought in from other provinces. In 2007 in another such scheme in Al-Hasakah governate, 6,000 square kilometers around Al-Malikiyah were granted to Arab families, while tens of thousands of Kurdish inhabitants of the villages concerned were evicted. These and other expropriations of ethnic Kurdish citizens followed a deliberate masterplan, called "Arab Belt initiative", attempting to depopulate the resource-rich Jazeera of its ethnic Kurdish inhabitants and settle ethnic Arabs there.


title: Arabization

text: After the Turkish-led forces had captured Afrin District in early 2018, they began to implement a resettlement policy by moving Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army fighters and Sunni Arab refugees from southern Syria into the empty homes that belonged to displaced locals. The previous owners, most of them Kurds or Yazidis, were often prevented from returning to Afrin. Refugees from Eastern Ghouta, Damascus, said that they were part of "an organised demographic change" which was supposed to replace the Kurdish population of Afrin with an Arab majority.


title: Arabization

text: While formally committed to Islamism and polyethnicity, the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) has frequently targeted non-Arab groups such as Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Turcomans, Shabaks and Yezidis. It has often been claimed that these (ISIL) campaigns were a part of an organized Arabization plan. A Kurdish official in Iraqi Kurdistan claimed that in particular the ISIL campaign in Sinjar was a textbook case of Arabization.


title: Arabization

text: It has been suggested in academia that modern Islamism in general and the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) in particular would be motivated and driven by a desire to reinforce Arab cultural dominion over the religion of Islam.


title: Arabization

text: The invaders besieged Medina (modern Mdina), the main settlement on the island, but the inhabitants managed to negotiate peace terms. The Muslims freed Christian captives, swore an oath of loyalty to Roger and paid him an annual tribute. Roger's army then sacked Gozo and returned to Sicily with the freed captives.


title: Arabization

text: The attack did not bring about any major political change, but it paved the way for the re-Christianization of Malta, which began in 1127. Over the centuries, the invasion of 1091 was romanticized as the liberation of Christian Malta from oppressive Muslim rule, and a number of traditions and legends arose from it, such as the unlikely claim that Count Roger gave his colours red and white to the Maltese as their national colours.


title: Arabization

text: The Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula is the most notable example of a historic reversion of Arabization. The process of Arabization and Islamization was reversed as the mostly Christian kingdoms in the north of the peninsula conquered Toledo in 1212 and Cordoba in 1236. As Granada was conquered in January 1492 also the last remaining Emirate on the Peninsula was conquered. The re-conquered territories later were Romanized and Christianized, although the culture, languages and religious traditions imposed differed from those of the previous Visigothic kingdom.


title: Arabization

text: In modern times, there have been various political developments to reverse the process of Arabization. Notable among these are:


title: Orban

text: Orban, also known as Urban (; died 1453), was an iron founder and engineer from Brassó, Transylvania, in the Kingdom of Hungary (today Brașov, Romania), who cast large-calibre artillery for the Ottoman siege of Constantinople in 1453.


title: Orban

text: Orban was Hungarian, according to most modern authors, while some scholars also mention his potential German ancestry. Alternative theories suggest he had Wallachian roots. Laonikos Chalkokondyles used the term "Dacian" to describe him.


title: Orban

text: He had offered his services to the Byzantines in 1452, a year before the Ottomans attacked the city, but the Byzantine emperor Constantine XI could not afford Orban's high salary nor did the Byzantines possess the materials necessary for constructing such a large siege cannon. Orban then left Constantinople and approached the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II, who was preparing to besiege the city. Claiming that his weapon could blast 'the walls of Babylon itself', Orban was given abundant funds and materials by the sultan. Orban managed to build the giant gun within three months at Adrianople, whence sixty oxen dragged it to Constantinople. Orban also produced other, smaller cannons used by the Turkish siege forces.


title: Orban

text: Bombarding technology similar to Orban's had first been developed for the Hungarian Army. It rose in popularity during the early 1400s all over western Europe, transforming siege warfare. Examples of pieces similar to Orban's productions like the Faule Mette, Dulle Griet, Mons Meg and the Pumhart von Steyr are still extant from the period. Orban, along with an entire crew, was probably killed during the siege when one of his cannons exploded, which was not an unusual occurrence during that time.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Revolutionary Catalonia (21 July 1936 – 10 February 1939) was the part of Catalonia (autonomous region in northeast Spain) controlled by various anarchist, communist, and socialist trade unions, parties, and militias of the Spanish Civil War period. Although the Generalitat of Catalonia was nominally in power, the trade unions were "de facto" in command of most of the economy and military forces, which includes the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT, National Confederation of Labor) which was the dominant labor union at the time and the closely associated Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI, Iberian Anarchist Federation). The Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT, General Worker's Union), the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) and the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC, which included the Communist Party of Catalonia) were also prominent.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Socialist rule of the region began with the Spanish Revolution of 1936, resulting in workers' control of businesses and factories, collective farming in the countryside, and attacks against Spanish nationalists and the Catholic clergy. The growing influence of the Communist Party of Spain's (PCE) Popular Front government and their desire to nationalize revolutionary committees and militias brought it into conflict with the CNT and POUM, resulting in the May Days and the eventual replacement of the CNT by the PSUC as the major political force in Catalonia until their defeat to the Nationalist forces in 1939.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: The governance of Catalonia was deeply rooted in the ideas of anarcho-syndicalism and anarcho-communism, making Catalonia the largest territory in history to have been so governed. Both of these ideologies draw heavily on the ideas of Peter Kropotkin and his book "The Conquest of Bread", which lays out a future where the workers form trade unions and take over the management of industry so that companies and businesses are directly controlled by the workers.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In the early 20th century, the popularity of socialism and anarchism grew throughout Spain. There was widespread discontent in Catalonia, which was heavily industrialized and was a stronghold of the anarcho-syndicalist trade unions. A series of strikes due to wage cuts and in response to military conscription for the Second Rif War in Morocco culminated in the Tragic Week (25 July – 2 August 1909) in which workers rose up in revolt and were suppressed by the army. The anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) was formed in October 1910 and immediately called for a general strike, which was suppressed by the military. Further strikes followed in 1917 and 1919 amidst growing violence between the police and trade unions. With the CNT outlawed, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) was formed in 1927 as a clandestine alliance of affinity groups during the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera. Its radical members, who were also part of the CNT, exerted considerable influence on the other members of the trade union. During the Second Spanish Republic, anarchists continued to lead uprisings such as the Casas Viejas revolt in 1933 and the Asturian miners' strike of 1934 which was brutally put down by Francisco Franco with the aid of Moorish troops.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: During the Spanish coup of July 1936, anarchist and socialist militias, along with Republican forces including the Assault and Civil Guards, defeated the forces controlled by Nationalist army officers in Catalonia and parts of eastern Aragon. The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo-Federación Anarquista Ibérica now came to the forefront as the most powerful organization in Barcelona, seizing many arms and strategic buildings such as the telephone exchange and post offices. Through the various factory and transport committees, they dominated the economy of Catalonia. In spite of their militant anti-statism, they decided not to overthrow the Catalan government. The president of the Generalitat of Catalonia and head of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Lluís Companys, was generally accommodating with the CNT but was wary of their appropriation of the means of production. The CNT and Companys worked together to set up the Central Committee of Antifascist Militias, which became the main governing body in the region.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In spite of the fact that anarchist philosophy was against centralized government of any form and that the CNT-FAI had always shunned parliamentary politics while attacking the Socialists for collaborating with the state, by September 1936 they had decided to join the Generalitat of Catalonia. The CNT feared that arms would be withheld and that they would be isolated if the Generalitat under Lluís Companys formed a government with the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC). CNT members filled the Ministries of Health, Supplies and Economy and the Central Anti-Fascist Militia Committee was dissolved.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Soon after, the CNT also joined the national government. On 18 October, a CNT plenary session of the regional federations granted the national committee secretary full powers to conduct negotiations with prime minister Francisco Largo Caballero. CNT representatives Juan García Oliver, Joan Peiró, Federica Montseny and Juan López filled seats in Caballero's cabinet. They took control of the national ministry of justice, industry, health and commerce, respectively. The CNT saw this "maximum concession compatible with its antiauthoritarian spirit" as crucial to winning the war. There was widespread friction and debate between the "collaborationist" and "abstentionist" anarchists in the CNT. Many anarchists outside of Spain (such as Alexander Schapiro) criticized CNT-FAI for entering into the government. There was also concern among anarchists with the growing power of Marxist communists within the government. Anarchist Minister of Health Federica Montseny later explained: "At that time we only saw the reality of the situation created for us: the communists in the government and ourselves outside, the manifold possibilities, and all our achievements endangered."


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Some anarchists outside of Spain viewed their concessions as necessary considering the possibility of the Nationalists winning the war. Emma Goldman said, "With Franco at the gate of Madrid, I could hardly blame the CNT-FAI for choosing a lesser evil: participation in government rather than dictatorship, the most deadly evil."


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Throughout Catalonia many sectors of the economy fell under the control of the anarchist CNT and the socialist UGT trade unions, where workers' self-management was implemented. These included railways, streetcars, buses, taxicabs, shipping, electric light and power companies, gasworks and waterworks, engineering and automobile assembly plants, mines, mills, factories, food-processing plants, theaters, newspapers, bars, hotels, restaurants, department stores, and thousands of dwellings previously owned by the upper classes. While the CNT was the leading organization in Catalonia, it often shared power with the UGT. For example, control of the Spanish National telephone company, was put under a joint CNT-UGT committee.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Trade union control also spread to small businesses of the middle class handicraft men and tradesmen. In Barcelona, the CNT collectivized the sale of fish and eggs, slaughterhouses, milk processing and the fruit and vegetable markets, suppressing all dealers and sellers that were not part of the collective. Many retailers joined the collectives but others refused, wanting higher wages than the workers. Throughout the region, the CNT committees replaced the middle class distributors and traders in many businesses including retailers and wholesalers, hotel, café, and bar owners, opticians and doctors, barbers and bakers. Though the CNT tried to persuade the members of the middle class and small bourgeoisie to join the revolution, they were generally unwelcoming to the revolutionary changes wanting more than just expropriation of their businesses under force or threat of force and a worker's wage.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Initially, the newly collectivized factories encountered various problems. CNT member Albert Pérez-Baró describes the initial economic confusion:


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In response to these problems, the Generalitat of Catalonia, backed by the CNT approved a decree on "Collectivization and Workers' Control" on 24 October 1936. Under this decree all firms with more than 100 workers were to be collectivized and those with 100 or less could be collectivized if a majority of workers agreed. All collectivized enterprises were to join general industrial councils, which would be represented in a decentralized planning agency, the Economic Council of Catalonia. Representatives of the Generalitat would be appointed by the CNT to these regional councils. The goal of this new form of organization would be to allow economic planning for civilian and military needs and stop the selfishness of more prosperous industries by using their profits to help others. However these plans for libertarian socialism based on trade unions were opposed by the socialists and communists who wanted a nationalized industry, as well as by unions which did not want to give up their profits to other businesses. Another problem faced by the CNT was that while many collectivized firms were bankrupt, they refused to use the banks because the financial institutions were under the control of the socialist UGT. As a result of this, many were forced to seek government aid, appealing to Juan Peiró, the CNT minister of industry. Socialists and Communists in the government however, prevented Peiró from making any move which promoted collectivization.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: After the initial disruption, the unions soon began an overall reorganization of all trades, closing down hundreds of smaller plants and focusing on those few better equipped ones, improving working conditions. In the region of Catalonia, more than seventy foundries were closed down, and production concentrated around twenty four larger foundries. The CNT argued that the smaller plants were less efficient and secure. In Barcelona, 905 smaller beauty shops and barbershops were closed down, their equipment and workers being focused on 212 larger shops.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Although there were early issues with production in certain instances, however, Emma Goldman attested that industrial productivity doubled almost everywhere across the country, with agricultural yields increased "30-50%".


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Anarchic communes often produced more than before the collectivization. The newly liberated zones worked on entirely libertarian principles; decisions were made through councils of ordinary citizens without any sort of bureaucracy. The CNT-FAI leadership was at this time not nearly as radical as the rank and file members responsible for these sweeping changes.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Another aspect of the revolution was the rise of an anarcha-feminist women's movement, the Mujeres Libres. The organization, with 30,000 members at its disposal, set up schools to educate women and worked to persuade prostitutes to give up their way of life. The anarcha-feminists argued that overthrow of patriarchal society was just as necessary for personal freedom, as the creation of a classless society. To demonstrate this new sexual equality, some women even fought at the front (no more than one thousand) and several more joined women's battalions in the rear. However, Michael Seidman argues that sexism was still present - in some collectives women were still paid less than men and could be denied voting rights, while single women could be expelled from a collective (as they lacked a more productive husband for farm labor). Some sexist male leaders deemed women to simply be lacking in commitment to revolutionary principles. However, Seidman also argues that women could still benefit from the collectives; young women enjoyed the relative freedom from religious domination, particularly when it came to sexuality and education, that collectivisation brought to certain villages.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Just as in the cities, peasant revolutionaries seized land in the countryside and organized collective farms. According to professor Edward E. Malefakis, between half and two-thirds of all cultivated land in Republican Spain was seized. The targets were mainly small and medium landholders, since most of the large landholdings had fallen to the nationalists. However, historian Michael Seidman argues that while collectivisation was prominent, it was still a minority practice. Seidman argues that most peasants opted for individual farming and collectives tended to exist within a sea of small- and medium-property holders and that even within the region of Aragon, which was considered more revolutionary than Catalonia and a CNT stronghold, only about 40% of land was collectivised.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Collectivization in the countryside generally began with the establishment of CNT-FAI committees. These committees collectivized the soil of the rich and in some cases the soil of the poor as well. Farm buildings, machinery, transport and livestock were also collectivized. Food reserves and other amenities were stored in a communal depot under committee control. In many localities, the local committee issued its own inconvertible paper money; wages were paid with this money, the size of which was determined by the size of the family. Locally produced goods were free if abundant, or bought at the communal storage. State issued convertible money was only used in trade with regions that had not adopted this system, and trade with other anarchist regions was done by barter. Since the committee controlled all the money supply, travel to another region required getting permission and convertible money from the committee.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: For the CNT, collectivization was a key component of the revolution, they feared that the small holders and tenant farmers would form the core of a new landholding class and act as an obstacle to the revolution. The Anarchists also believed that private ownership of land created a bourgeois mentality and led to exploitation. While the official policy of the CNT was that of peaceful voluntary collectivization and many small farmers and peasant proprietors voluntarily joined the collectives, a larger proportion of them opposed collectivization or joined only after extreme duress. The presence of armed CNT militiamen also had the effect of imposing fear on those who opposed collectivization. Those smallholders who refused collectivization were prevented from hiring any laborers and usually were forced to sell their crops directly to the committees, on their terms. They were also often denied the services of the collectivized businesses such as the barbershops and bakeries, use of communal transport, farm equipment and food supplies from communal warehouses. All of these economic pressures combined caused many tenant farmers and smallholders to give up their land and join the collectives.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: While some joined voluntarily, others, especially in the beginning of the revolution, were forced to join the collectives by anarchist militias. The anarcho-syndicalist periodical "Solidaridad Obrera" reported that: "Certain abuses have been committed that we consider counterproductive. We know that certain irresponsible elements have frightened the small peasants and that up to now a certain apathy has been noted in their daily labors."


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: The voluntary nature of the rural collectivization varied from region to region. According to Ralph Bates: "While there were plenty of abuses, forced collectivization, etc., there were plenty of good collectives, i.e., voluntary ones." The anarchist Emma Goldman noted how workers in collectives saw it as their duty convince their fellow workers that common labor was superior, writing:


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: A number of scholars and writers on the subject of the Spanish Civil War counter that the presence of a "coercive climate" was an unavoidable aspect of the war that the anarchists cannot be fairly blamed for, and that the presence of deliberate coercion or direct force was minimal, as evidenced by a generally peaceful mixture of collectivists and individualist dissenters who had opted not to participate in collective organization. The latter sentiment is expressed by historian Antony Beevor in his "Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939".


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Historian Graham Kelsey also maintains that the anarchist collectives were primarily maintained through libertarian principles of voluntary association and organization, and that the decision to join and participate was generally based on a rational and balanced choice made after the destabilization and effective absence of capitalism as a powerful factor in the region, saying:


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: There is also focus placed by pro-anarchist analysts on the many decades of organization and shorter period of CNT-FAI agitation that was to serve as a foundation for high membership levels throughout anarchist Spain, which is often referred to as a basis for the popularity of the anarchist collectives, rather than any presence of force or coercion that allegedly compelled unwilling persons to involuntarily participate.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Michael Seidman observes that in contrast to the Soviet experience, many collectives were voluntary and bottom-up. However, there was also an element of coercion - the terror and upheaval encouraged reluctant individuals to obey radical authorities. In addition, it was not uncommon for collectives to effectively boycott non-members, compelling them to join unless they wished to face a great deal of struggle otherwise. Property holders resented the seizure of their land and the prohibition on employing wage labor. However, Seidman notes while there was coercion, many rural Spaniards also joined willingly out of a belief that they would enjoy the good-life that was promised by various forms of socialism and communism.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Seidman also observes that peasants were not always as revolutionary or ideological as the anarchists would like; families might join a collective not because they agreed with its principles but rather to receive better rations. More individualistic sharecroppers would abandon collectives. Anarchists expressed frustration that peasants were more interested in what they could gain from the collective than commitment to revolutionary ideals. On a larger scale, Seidman argues that while collectives may have encouraged solidarity internally, on a local scale they contributed towards organised selfishness. Collectives encouraged autarky and self-sufficiency, refusing to share with other collectives. CNT officials lamented the "egotism" of the collectives, finding that the collectives were resistant to control (driven by fears that CNT officials would exploit them, which Seidman argues was not always an unreasonable fear). Due to wartime inflation and economic problems, the Republican government struggled to incentivise the collectives to follow their policies.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: The disillusioned middle classes soon found allies in the Communist party which was quite moderate in comparison to the CNT, was generally against the mass collectivization of the revolution and called for the property of smallholders and tradesmen to be respected. They defended the right of the small proprietor to hire laborers and to control the sale of his crops without interference from the local committees. This moderate Communist appeal to the middle classes was in line with the Comintern strategy for a popular front alliance with the liberal and republican center parties. However, in some cases efforts by Communists to undermine collectives may actually have been a case of Communist soldiers simply looting the collectives for supplies, as wartime disrupted logistics and soldiers resented what they regarded as extortionate peasant prices.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: The collectives also suffered internal difficulties, particularly as the war dragged on. Unproductive members were an increasing concern and collectives implemented rules about who could join the collective in response. The status of the elderly, orphans, the disabled and widows were particularly divisive issues due to the reduced productivity of these members. Family size became a problem, as families were paid a wage according to the number of children they had and large families would take advantage of the collective's services, which proved to be a financial burden that smaller families resented having to support. Some social groups were also disliked and distrusted by the collectives - Roma were seen as a burden and lacking in revolutionary participation. Refugees to a collective were also a problem, as existing members sometimes regarded themselves as more in tune with the collectivist spirit and felt that the refugees were a burden, at times reacting with hostility to independent efforts by newer members, while the refugees thought they were victims of discrimination. Tensions could also erupt between workers and those in charge of managing output, as well as disputes over how much work members were required to put towards the collective.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: According to historian Stanley Payne, the social effects of the revolution were less drastic than the economic ones; while there were some social changes in larger urban areas (Barcelona emphasised a "proletarian style" and Catalonia set up inexpensive abortion facilities), the attitudes of the lower classes remained fairly conservative and there was comparatively little emulation of Russian-style "revolutionary morality".


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: After the military rebellion, the Republic was left with a decimated officer corps and a severely weakened army in the regions it still controlled. Since the army was unable to resist the rebellion, the fighting mainly fell to the militia units organized by the various labor unions. While army officers joined these columns, they were under the control of whichever organization had formed them. The militias suffered from a wide variety of problems. They were inexperienced and lacked discipline and unity of action. Rivalry between the various organizations exacerbated the lack of any centralized command and general staff. The appointed professional officers were not always respected. They also lacked heavy weapons. Militiamen would often leave the front whenever they wished. Republican officer Major Aberri said of the militiamen he encountered at the Aragon front: "It was the most natural thing in the world for them to leave the front when it was quiet. They knew nothing of discipline, and it was clear that nobody had bothered to instruct them on the subject. After a forty-hour week at the front they got bored and left it".


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In the initial months the ministry of war had little authority over transport and was forced to rely on the National Committee of Road Transport controlled by the CNT and UGT. The committees, unions and parties widely disregarded demands from the ministry of war and retained equipment and vehicles for themselves and their own militia forces. In the CNT militias especially, there was no hierarchy, no saluting, no titles, uniforms or distinction in pay and quartering. They were organized into centuries with democratically elected leaders that had no permanent authority.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: The column began with 3,000 troops but at its peak, was made up of about 8,000 people. They had a difficult time getting arms from a suspicious Republican government, so Durruti and his men compensated by seizing unused arms from government stockpiles. Durruti's death on 20 November 1936, weakened the Column in spirit and tactical ability; they were eventually incorporated, by decree, into the regular army. Over a quarter of the population of Barcelona attended Durruti's funeral. It is still uncertain how Durruti died. Modern historians tend to agree that it was an accident, perhaps a malfunction with his own gun. Widespread rumors at the time claimed treachery by his men. Anarchists tended to claim that he died heroically and was shot by a fascist sniper.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Because of the need to create a centralized military, the Communist party was in favor of establishing a regular army and integrating the militias into this new force. They were the first party to dissolve their militia forces, including the fifth regiment, one of the most effective units in the war, and create mixed brigades, forming the core of the new Popular Army. These units were firmly under the oversight of Communist party commissars and under the command of experienced army officers. The Communist party eventually came to dominate the leadership of the new army through their commissars, who used any means at their disposal, including violence and death threats, to increase party membership. Soviet army advisers and NKVD agents also exercised considerable influence within the new armed forces.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: The CNT, POUM and other socialist militias initially resisted the integration. The CNT saw the militias as representing the will of the people while a centralized army was against its anti-authoritarian principles. They also feared the army as an organ of the Communist party, and these fears were backed up by the historical suppression of Russian anarchists by the Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution. However, the CNT were eventually forced to yield to militarization, since the government refused to supply and arm its militias unless they joined the regular army. The experiences of CNT leaders in the front with the badly organized militias and the examples of better structured units such as the International Brigades also made them change their minds and support the creation of a regular army. The CNT conducted its own militarization. Helmut Ruediger of the International Workers' Association (AIT) reported in May 1937: "There is now in the central zone a CNT army of thirty-three thousand men perfectly armed, well-organized, and with membership cards of the CNT from the first to the last man, under the control of officers also belonging to the CNT." Militarization was still resisted by the most radical Anarchists within the CNT-FAI who were extremely passionate about their libertarian ideals. More than any other unit, the famous and notorious Iron Column fiercely resisted militarization. Composed of anarchists from Valencia and freed convicts, the Iron Column was critical of the CNT-FAI for joining the national government and defended the militia system in their periodical Linea de Fuego. The CNT refused to supply them with arms and in March 1937 they were incorporated into the regular army.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: After the fall of the government of Francisco Largo Caballero and the rise of the Communist party to dominance in the armed forces, the integration of the militias was accelerated and most units were coerced into joining the regular army.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: During the Civil War, the Spanish Communist Party gained considerable influence due to the Republican force's reliance on weapons, supplies and military advisers from the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the Communist party (now working as the dominant force within the PSUC) constantly proclaimed that it was promoting "bourgeois democracy" and was fighting in defense of the Republic, not for proletarian revolution. Opposition to collectivization and the camouflaging of the true nature of the Spanish revolution by the Communist party was mainly due to the fear that the establishment of a revolutionary socialist state would antagonize Western democracies. The PSUC had also become the major defender of the Catalan middle classes against collectivization, organizing 18,000 tradesmen and artisans into the Catalan Federation of Small Businessmen and Manufacturers (GEPCI).


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: The party's attacks on the revolution, particularly the replacement of revolutionary committees with regular organs of state power brought it into conflict with the CNT-FAI, a major supporter of the revolutionary committees and the most powerful working class organization in Catalonia. The revolutionary Boletín de Información declared that: "The thousands of proletarian combatants at the battle fronts are not fighting for the 'democratic Republic.' They are proletarian revolutionaries, who have taken up arms in order to make the Revolution. To postpone the triumph of the latter until after we win the war would weaken considerably the fighting spirit of the working class... The Revolution and the war are inseparable. Everything that is said to the contrary is reformist counterrevolution." In spite of this, CNT ministers in the government also acquiesced to decrees which dissolved revolutionary committees, largely because they believed this would lead to closer ties with Britain and France.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In the Catalan Generalitat, power was divided between the CNT, PSUC and Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC). Another influential party in Barcelona was the POUM (Workers' Party of Marxist Unification) which espoused an anti-Stalinist far left ideology, and was thus denounced by the PSUC as Trotskyist and Fascist. In turn, the POUM newspaper La Batalla accused the Communists of being counterrevolutionary. In December 1936 the CNT and PSUC agreed to remove the POUM from the Catalan government. This was possibly influenced by Soviet consul Vladimir A. Antonov-Ovseenko who threatened to withdraw arm shipments. The PSUC now sought to weaken the CNT committees through an alliance with the urban middle classes and the rural tenant farmers in the Unió de Rabassaires. They passed a decree banning the committees, but could not effectively enforce it. This was because police power in Barcelona was divided between the CNT controlled patrols under the Junta de seguridad and the Assault and National Republican guards, under police commissioner Rodríguez Salas, a PSUC member. The PSUC and ERC then passed a set of decrees to dissolve the patrols and create a single unified security corps. CNT representatives in the Generalitat did not object, but there was widespread discontent among Anarchists and the POUM. Further decrees by the Generalitat which called up conscripts, dissolved military committees and provided for the integration of the militias into a regular army caused a crisis in which CNT ministers walked out of the government in protest. The POUM also opposed the decrees. Tensions were only exacerbated following the well publicized murders of PSUC secretary Roldán Cortada and Anarchist committee president Antonio Martín. Armed raids and attempts by the Republican guards to disarm the Anarchists and the seizure of towns along the French border from revolutionary committees led the CNT to mobilize and arm its workers.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In what became known as the Barcelona May Days of 1937, fighting broke out after civil guards attempted to take over a CNT-run telephone building in Barcelona's Plaça de Catalunya. The Civil guards took the ground floor of the telephone building, but were prevented from taking the upper levels. Soon, trucks carrying armed anarchists arrived. CNT councilors demanded the removal of police commissioner Rodríguez Salas, but Lluís Companys refused. The POUM stood by the CNT and advised them to take control of the city, but the CNT appealed to the workers to cease fighting. With the situation deteriorating, a meeting of CNT delegates from Valencia and the Generalitat under Companys agreed on a ceasefire and a new provisional government, but despite this, the fighting continued. Dissenting anarchists such as the "Friends of Durruti" and radical members of the POUM along with Bolshevik Leninists spread propaganda to continue to the fighting. On Wednesday, 5 May, prime minister Largo Caballero, under constant pressure from the PSUC to take control of public order in Catalonia, appointed Colonel Antonio Escobar of the Republican Guard as delegate of public order, but on his arrival in Barcelona, Escobar was shot and seriously wounded. After constant appeals by the CNT, POUM and UGT for a ceasefire, the fighting abated on the morning of 6 May. In the evening, news reached Barcelona that 1,500 assault guards were approaching the city. The CNT agreed on a truce after negotiations with the minister of interior back in Valencia. They agreed that the assault guards would not be attacked as long as they refrained from violence and that the CNT would order its members to abandon the barricades and go back to work. On 7 May, the assault guards entered Barcelona unopposed, and soon there were twelve thousand government troops in the city.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In the days following the fighting in Barcelona, various Communist newspapers engaged in a massive propaganda campaign against the anarchists and the POUM. "Pravda" and the American communist "Daily Worker" claimed that Trotskyists and Fascists were behind the uprising. The Spanish Communist party newspapers also viciously attacked the POUM, denouncing members as traitors and fascists. The Communists, supported by the centrist faction of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) under Indalecio Prieto now called for the POUM to be dissolved, but PM Largo Caballero resisted this move, and the Communists, along with their allies in the PSOE, then left the government in protest. The following crisis led to the removal of Largo Caballero by President Manuel Azaña. Azaña then appointed Juan Negrín (a centrist socialist and ally of the Communists and the Kremlin) as the new premier. The new cabinet was dominated by the Communists, center socialists and republicans, the CNT and left wing of the PSOE were not represented. The Communist Party of Spain (PCE) had now come to the fore as the most influential force in the Republican government.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In Catalonia, now controlled by troops under the Command of Communist General Sebastián Pozas and newly appointed Barcelona chief of Police Ricardo Burillo, the CNT independent police patrols were dissolved and disarmed. Furthermore, the CNT were completely removed from their positions at the Franco-Spanish border posts. Another major blow to the CNT was the dissolution of countless revolutionary committees throughout Catalonia by the army and assault guards. When a new cabinet was formed by President Companys, the CNT decided not to participate. In the months that followed, the Communists carried out a campaign of arrests, tortures and assassinations against the CNT. The imprisonment of many Anarchists caused a wave of dissent in working class quarters. Meanwhile, the Communists working with Soviet agents seized most of the POUM leadership along with many of its members. The POUM secretary Andrés Nin was also arrested, sent to a secret prison in Alcalá de Henares and eventually murdered. Nin's disappearance, and the repression of the POUM, caused an international outcry from various left wing organizations and further deepened the divisions within the Republic.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: By the end of May 1937, the Communists were conducting a campaign to destroy the rural collectives. The PCE used the Popular army and the National Guard to dissolve CNT committees and aid tenant farmers and sharecroppers recover land lost in the revolution. On 11 August, the Eleventh popular army division dissolved the CNT dominated Regional Defense Council of Aragon by force. With the aid of the army and the assault guards, the tenant farmers and small owners who had lost their land in the beginning of the revolution now divided up the land confiscated from the collectives. Even those collectives that had been created voluntarily were raided. This caused widespread discontent amongst the peasants, the situation became so dire that the Communist party agrarian commission admitted that "agricultural work was paralyzed" and was forced to restore some of the collectives.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: In spite of the continued attacks by the PCE, the CNT eventually agreed to sign a pact of cooperation with the now Communist dominated UGT (the PCE had infiltrated the UGT and ousted Largo Caballero from his position in its executive). The pact was supposed to guarantee the legality of the remaining collectives and of worker's control, while at the same time recognizing the authority of the state on matters such as nationalization of industry and the armed forces. In reality, the collectives were never granted legal status, while the agreement served the further divide the anarchist movement between the anti-statist and collaborationist camps.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: On 7 March 1938, the Nationalist forces launched a massive offensive in Aragon. They succeeded in smashing the Republican defenses so thoroughly that their forces had reached the Mediterranean coast by 15 April, splitting the Republican territory in two. Catalonia was now cut off from the rest of the Republican territory.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: By 1938, the Communist party was also in control of the newly created Military Investigation Service. The SIM was virtually dominated by Communist party members, allies and Soviet agents such as Aleksandr Mikhailovich Orlov and used as a tool of political repression. According to Basque nationalist Manuel de Irujo, "hundreds and thousands of citizens" were prosecuted by SIM tribunals and tortured in the SIM's secret prisons. Repression by the SIM as well as decrees which eroded Catalan autonomy by nationalizing the Catalan war industry, ports and courts caused widespread discontent in Catalonia amongst all social classes. Relations worsened between the Generalitat and the central government of Negrín, now based in Barcelona with the resignation of Jaime Aiguadé, representative of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) party in the government and Manuel de Irujo, the Basque Nationalist minister. There was now widespread hostility amongst Republicans, Catalans, Basques and Socialists towards the Negrin government. As the Communists were forced to rely more and more on their dominance of the military and police, morale declined at the front as countless dissenting anarchists, republicans and socialists were arrested or shot by commissars and SIM agents.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Meanwhile, there was now a growing schism within the CNT and the FAI. Leading figures such as Horacio Prieto and minister of education Segundo Blanco argued for collaboration with the national government. Dissenting anarchists such as Jacinto Toryho, the director of Solidaridad Obrera and FAI delegate Pedro Herrera were harshly critical of this policy. Toryho was removed from his position by the CNT national committee on 7 May 1938. Two months before the fall of Catalonia, a national plenum of the libertarian socialists was held in Barcelona between 16 and 30 October 1938. Emma Goldman was in attendance and she defended the FAI in "opposition to the growing encroachment of the Negrín government on the libertarian achievements". According to José Peirats, Horacio Prieto argued for an "undisguised reformism bordering on Marxism," and that "truly effective action" was only possible through "organs of power." He also criticized the naivete of the anarchists and its "lack of concrete plans."


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Between July and November 1938 the Republican forces launched their largest offensive yet which was designed to reconnect their divided territory with Catalonia. Lacking in air support, armor and heavy artillery, the Popular army was soundly defeated in the disastrous Battle of the Ebro. According to Beevor, losses were as high as 30,000 on the Republican side. The Popular army was practically destroyed. It was the last action of the International Brigades and the Republican air force. On 23 December, Nationalist forces launched their assault on Catalonia. By now, most Catalans were demoralized and tired of the fighting. Alienated by the Negrin government and the Communist party's nationalization of industry, the CNT was filled with defeatism and internal division. Pi Sunyer, mayor of Barcelona and a leader of the ERC, told President Azaña that "the Catalans no longer knew why they were fighting, because of Negrín's anti-Catalan policy." Catalonia was swiftly conquered by Nationalist troops. After 4 days of aerial bombardment (between 21 and 25 January), Barcelona fell on 26 January. Afterwards there followed five days of looting and extrajudicial killings by the Nationalist troops. Between 400,000 and 500,000 refugees including the defeated Army of Catalonia crossed the border into France. With the Nationalists now in control, Catalan autonomy was abolished, removing the co-official status of the Catalan language and banning Catalan Christian names, and the Sardana was forbidden. All the Catalan newspapers were requisitioned and the forbidden books retired and burned.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Austrian author Franz Borkenau was sharply critical of the anarchists in Catalonia. In a book which was also very critical of the Soviet Union-backed Communists, he described the terror which they had inflicted on Barcelona residents and their environment.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: During the first weeks of the war, courts of law were replaced by revolutionary tribunals and extrajudicial killings by militants and vigilantes soon followed:


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: During the initial fighting several thousand individuals were executed by anarchist and socialist militants based on their assumed political allegiance and social class:


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Because of its role as a leading supporter of the Nationalist cause, the Catholic Church came under attack throughout the region. Church buildings were burned or taken over by the CNT or by supporters of the Republican government and turned into warehouses or put to other secular uses. Thousands of members of the Catholic clergy were tortured and killed and many more fled the country or sought refuge in foreign embassies.


title: Revolutionary Catalonia

text: Antony Beevor estimates the total number of people killed in Catalonia in the summer and autumn of 1936 at 8,352 (out of a total of 38,000 victims of the Red Terror in all of Spain).


title: Ekin Cheng

text: Ekin Cheng is a Hong Kong actor and singer. Early in his career, he used the name Dior as a first name (because that was what it sounded like when his younger sister tried to call him 二哥 in Cantonese). He has also been referred to as Noodle Cheng, () after a popular noodle dish with a similar name and his wavy long hair. Currently Ekin is the name used.


title: Ekin Cheng

text: Cheng began acting in commercials when he was in high school, the most well-known being for Hi-C Lemon Tea. After high school, he enrolled in TVB's Martial Arts school, but did not like it and switched to their acting school. After that he began to get a number of TV roles. The latest TVB series he participated in was "Always Ready", working with Charmaine Sheh, Bowie Lam and Linda Chung.


title: Ekin Cheng

text: His first film was "Girls Without Tomorrow 1992" (1992) and at the time he was still called by the name Dior Cheng. He changed his name to "Ekin" before his break-out role in the "Young and Dangerous" series as Chan Ho-nam. The film was first meant to glorify the triad life, but after about the third film, the story focused more on the characters and explored the truth about the Hong Kong triads. It became so popular that it launched Cheng and co-star Jordan Chan to superstar status. And because of its incredible success, it is said to have made many youngsters at that time fond of the triad life, thus making teens throughout Asia join the triads. It also started a trend for triad films around that time and is considered to be a classic. The film led to six sequels, all starring Cheng, and a lucrative working partnership with director Andrew Lau. Together they went on to make "The Storm Riders", which was the highest-grossing Hong Kong movie at the time and the first film to use a truly large number of special effects. They also worked together on "The Legend of Speed", a film about a street racer who would follow his father's footsteps of becoming a racing god, "A Man Called Hero" a movie adaption of the famous comic, about a martial arts master in America "The Duel" starring Cheng, Andy Lau, and a few other famous stars, and the comedy "Women From Mars". In 2000, he acted in a movie titled "Born to Be King". This is the last instalment of a triad movie series "Young & Dangerous".