Arab Towns Research Articles

REVIEW OF DRINKING PATTERNS OF RURAL ARAB AND JEWISH YOUTH IN THE NORTH OF ISRAEL*

This article reviews four studies addressing alcohol drinking patterns among rural Arab and Jewish youth. Three religions, Moslem, Druze, and Christianity, were represented among the Arab population studied. The Arab adolescents come from villages, Arab towns, and mixed Arab–Jewish towns, while the Jewish youth come from kibbutzim and developing towns in the northern district of Israel. The first epidemiological study among rural adolescents was implemented in 1990. This study focused on frequency of drinking during the previous month, and amounts of alcohol consumed on a drinking occasion. The 1992 study focused on preferred sources of support after acquiring a drinking problem, reasons for drinking, and the social context of drinking in the previous year. The 1994 study focused on reasons for not drinking, preferred places of drinking, and ways of obtaining alcoholic beverages. The 1996 study dealt with frequency of drinking in the last year, and amounts of alcohol consumed on a drinking occasion. This review also includes urban–rural comparisons. Urban adolescents were drawn from Haifa, the largest city northern Israel. [Translations are provided in the International s Section of this issue.]

Close Association of HLA-B52 and HLA-B44 Antigens in Israeli Arab Adolescents With Recurrent Aphthous Stomatitis

To investigate the incidence and clinical features of recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) among Israeli Arab adolescents and to determine the HLA typing profile in affected subjects. Cross-sectional study. Junior high school in the largest Arab town in Israel. Four hundred seventy-seven Israeli Arab junior high school students filled out a questionnaire. Students who reported more than 4 episodes of RAS during the previous year were interviewed by telephone. Those whose responses were confirmed were invited to the clinic. Of these, 22 were chosen at random for HLA typing. Findings were compared with those in 117 healthy Israeli Arabs who were candidate donors of bone marrow to patients at the Institute of Hematology-Oncology, Schneider Children's Medical Center of Israel, Petah Tiqva. Recurrent aphthous stomatitis was confirmed in 80 subjects (16.7%). Of the 22 patients who underwent HLA typing, 7 (31.4%) had HLA-B52 antigens and 8 (36.4%) had HLA-B44 antigens; corresponding figures for the control group were 10 subjects (8.5%) (P = .007) and 9 subjects (7.7%) (P = .001), respectively. There is a close association of HLA-B52 and HLA-B44 in Israeli Arab youths with RAS. Long-term follow-up is needed to determine the relationship between RAS and Behçet disease.

Outcome evaluation of an advocacy program to promote early childhood education for Israeli Arabs.

This article reports the results of an evaluation of the SHATIL early childhood education (ECE) project, a coalition-based advocacy initiative that aimed to achieve three main outcomes in Arab towns throughout Israel: growth in preschool enrollment rates, growth in number of preschool classes administered by local councils, and growth in number of certified preschool teachers working in the Arab sector. The study employed a quasi-experimental, repeated measures design. Outcomes were assessed via collection of archival data pertaining to each of the past 10 years in 45 Arab towns. This allowed for comparison of trends over time in the 5 years before project commencement with those in the 5 years since the project was launched. Findings indicated that the project was successful in recruiting its target population (the most needy towns) and that the desired changes in fact did occur, particularly in the target towns. Moreover, the authors were able to conclude, with a relatively high degree of confidence, that the project played a causal role in achieving these outcomes.

Commitment Among Arab Adolescents in Israel

Arab adolescents' commitments to their own self-development, their family, their extended family, the Arab people, and their village were explored. The sample consisted of 662 Arab adolescents in 12th grade in 7 high schools in Arab villages, Arab towns, and mixed towns (Jews and Arabs) in Israel. The findings reflect the unique situation of Arab adolescents living in Israel. The polarity found between individualistic and collectivistic ideas, in terms of commitment, illustrates the cultural transformation that Arab society in Israel is currently undergoing.

Self‐perception of minority group adolescents: the experience of Arabs living in Israel

This article describes the self‐perception of Arab adolescents living in Israel. The experience of Arab adolescents in Israel is that of a minority group which is currently undergoing cultural, social and political changes. The Arabs in Israel are a non‐assimilating minority, a status that is not the result of their free choice, but of the 1948 Arab‐Israeli war. The continuing state of conflict after this war between Israel and the Arab world has placed the Arabs in Israel in the permanent status of a hostile “minority”, while the Jewish nationalist approach of the state of Israel has placed them outside the national consensus.The sample consists of 692 twelfth‐grade Arab adolescents from seven high schools located in Arab villages, Arab towns and mixed Jewish‐Arab towns all over the country. Questionnaires were distributed among the students and were answered anonymously, each taking about 45 minutes to complete. The questionnaire is a version of the Offer Self‐Image Questionnaire. It was translated from Hebrew into Arabic and modified to fit the unique situation of Arab adolescents in Israel. Demographic information included variables such as gender, religion and level of religiosity, number of years of parents education, and form of residence.Findings show differences in various aspects of adolescents' self‐perception according to gender, family level of religiosity and form of residence. The significance of the findings is discussed within two frameworks: environmental stability as related to self‐concept, and the changes taking place in ethnic minority communities.

Spatial Integration of Arab Migrants in a Jewish New Town

This paper examines the residential migration of Arabs from Nazareth, Israel, to the nearby Jewish new town of Nazerat Illit. Nazareth is an Arab town with a mixed Moslem and Christian population, while Nazerat Illit is predominantly Jewish. In many towns in Israel with a mixed Jewish and Arab population, the Arabs are concentrated in “ghetto enclaves.” However, in Nazerat Illit Arabs are dispersed throughout the town and are spatially integrated with the Jewish populatio. Possible explanations for the different pattern include the spatial proximity of the origin and destination settlements, the socio-economic similarity of the absorbing and absorbed population, and the dependence of the majority population on the minority for improvement in the former's apartment standards.

Alcohol drinking among Moslem and Druze adolescents in Israel in 1990

This article describes the Moslem and Druze parts of a survey conducted in the north of Israel during spring 1990 in order to investigate alcohol drinking habits of Moslem, Druze and Jewish high school students and to draw implications for prevention efforts. Of a general sample of 2763 students, 932 Moslem and 215 Druze adolescents were drawn from junior and senior high schools in a Druze village, several Moslem villages, an Arab town, and a mixed Arab-Jewish town. This is the first epidemiological study among students from those sectors in Israel. Involvement with alcohol was greatest among Druze males, lower by Moslem males from an Arab town and Moslem villages, and lowest by Moslem students in a mixed Arab-Jewish town. Druze students reported a higher rate of father's drinking than Moslem students did. Prevention efforts among these populations are discussed.

Planning Arabic Towns

Planning Arabic Towns

If Peace Comes ... Future Expectations of Israeli Children and Youth

This article explores the development of attitudes among Israeli Jewish and Arab children and youth, and their possible relevance to peace. The article is based on free compositions written in schools by 9-18 year olds in Jewish and Arab towns and villages in central Israel before, as well as shortly after, President Sadat's Peace Offer in Jerusalem in 1977. The 1224 essays were subjected to content analysis as well as to a more impressionistic study. Many similarities between Jews and Arabs were found. Be fore Sadat, younger children saw peace as natural. The older ones (17-18 years) generally argued that peace is a well-defined but unrealistic ideal of doubtful desirability, especially for Jews. Neither ethnic group was aware of its own part in the conflict, seeing themselves as helpless victims of each other. The effect of Sadat's visit was influenced primarily by the social role of each age. The age groups 9-10, 13-14 realized that peace has a price, and became sceptical. The 17-18 year olds, who expect to encounter adult society and army induction (for Jews), focused on the hope for peace with enthusiastic creative imagination. All groups saw peace primarily as active rather than passive. Its realization was seen as something beyond one's own influence or control.

The Population Of Aleppo In The Sixteenth And Seventeenth Centuries According To Ottoman Census Documents

1.1. Among the most obscure aspects of the past of Arab towns, that of the number of their population at different periods of their history must be mentioned. A better knowledge of their demography would no doubt bring more accurate answers to the main problems of urban evolution (expansion or decline, prosperity or decadence) as, through lack of well-founded figures, they have often been resolved by authors from general impressions or even from a priori attitudes. The first really serious statistics go no earlier than the end of the eighteenth century (Description de l'Egypte) for Cairo. For earlier periods, the only available sources for a long time were the evaluations provided by chronicles or travel accounts which proposed more or less fanciful and often divergent figures, the more reasonable evaluations often being a question of chance, or being considered so only because they confirmed the users' prejudices.

In an Arab Town: West Bank, 1977

In an Arab Town: West Bank, 1977

The Garamantes of Fezzan - an Interim Report of Research, 1965-1973

The Garamantes were the inhabitants of Southern Libya. Their capital Garama (‘clarissimum … caput Garamantum’) lies partly under the now deserted mud-brick Arab town of Germa in the Wadi el Agial some hundred miles west of Sebha. The oldest pottery so far recovered from the site dates to the late fifth and fourth centuries B.C., but earlier occupation, stretching back to the ninth century B.C., has been found on the nearby fortified spur-site of Zinchecra. The surrounding escarpment slopes, which form the southern side of the wadi, are dotted with literally thousands of graves, which vary from simple crouch-burials in shallow cists, sometimes covered by a stone cairn, to elaborate stepped ‘chouchet’-type monuments of stone or mud brick, square or circular in shape, mud-brick pyramids 10–15 feet high and even ashlar-built mausolea of which the so-called ‘Germa mausoleum’ is the most complete surviving example. The sedentary agricultural practice of the people is attested by the many hundreds of foggaras (underground water channels with down-shafts, akin to the Qanats of Persia) which tap the aqueous strata against the escarpment side and carry their water into the wadi centre. The foggaras and burials, taken together, show that approximately eighty miles in length of the Wadi el Agial were intensely cultivated and inhabited, and recent work has shown that sites similar to Zinchecra and Garama existed at various points along this eighty-mile length, the Garamanticae Fauces, or Valley of the Garamantes.Work in the Wadi Bergiug, Murzuch-Zuila area of oases to the south has shown that similar remains exist there, while it can reasonably be argued that the third great band of oases, the Wadi Chatti on the north of the el Agial, almost certainly contained similar occupation.

THE FORM and FUNCTION OF MISRATAH'S COMMERCIAL CENTRE

With the advent of impressive oil revenues since 1961 the Government of Libya has wisely embarked upon physical planning at national and regional levels. Among the many plans being prepared by everseas consultants at the present time are master plans for the coastal oasis towns of Tripolitania, including El Khums, Zliten and Misratah. (1) Of these Misratah constitutes a challenge of particular interest to the town planner as a result of its early evolution as an oasis market town through to the grandiose expansion of the Italian period. In its ground-plan Misratah illustrates many features of the larger cities of the Arab world which are so often the heirs of different cultures, with a European-style town grafted awkwardly on to a traditional type of Arab town (Figure 1). This arrangement poses many problems for the rationalisation of traffic flows and land use, and in the installation of piped water, electricity and sewerage. The research upon which this paper is based was carried out in 1966 at a time when it was already clear that Misratah was on the verge of great changes. The aim was to examine traditional town country relationships before they become totally obscured, and these functional relationships are clearly reflected in the form of the town's commercial heart. At first sight the layout of Misratah has little to commend it. The street-pattern has clearly developed piecemeal, and on the fringes of the town there is much wasted land. Social facilities such as schools, post office and hospital are scattered inconveniently throughout the new town, but worst of all, there appears to be little to bind the old and the new towns together. It is hoped however that this paper will show that close examination of the central area of Misratah reveals much that is functionally sound, and a focus of interest in the shops and markets which give the town a sense of coherence and unity. When it is remembered that this central area has grown organically with no conscious planning it is remarkable how well it has been adapted to the needs of an oasis market..

Historical Archaeology in Kenya 1948–56

In 1948 the ruined Arab town, sixty-five miles north of Mombasa, known as Gedi was declared a National Park, and an archaeologist was appointed as Warden of the Royal Gedi National Park and the Coastal Historical Sites of Kenya. In the ensuing eight years dangerous trees were cut down, crumbling walls were consolidated, and the fallen rubble round the principal buildings was removed. Gedi is now presented to the world as a place of interest and public resort. Excavations were carried out to discover when it was built, and by whom, and the way of life of its inhabitants. Excavations were also undertaken at a number of other sites to recover the history of the coast of Kenya (pl. XII). From these excavations it has been proved that from the thirteenth century there were extensive Arab or Arab-African settlements all down the coast of Kenya. The extent to which the East African coastal culture of the later middle ages can be regarded as truly ‘Arab’ is still undecided. I am beginning to think that there is a tendency to overstress, or to assume, a state of ‘arabism’ in provincial towns, such as Gedi and Ungwana, which never existed. These towns from their foundation would have comprised a mixed population which had come from the older settlements in Somalia. This mixed population would have contributed Hamitic, Bantu, Persian, Indian, and perhaps Indonesian elements to the predominantly Arab culture of East Africa.

The Sarcophagus of Naro, Sicily

Among the places which Count Roger I conquered during his campaign in Southern Sicily in 1086, Gaufredus Malaterra mentions the Arab town of Narû, the present Naro, in the province of Agrigento. Naro, like nearly all towns in inner Sicily, is dominated by a castle and a church which stand some hundred yards distant from one another on two rocky heights at the top of the mountain on which the town is situated. The church stands, as is shown by recent excavations, on the site of a pagan temple and an Arab mosque. Here Roger I had erected the first Christian church after the Norman conquest. A century later this building was renovated and extended. The Englishman Walter of the Mill, from 1169 archbishop of Palermo and before that dean of Agrigento, whose diocese also included Naro, is said to have been the builder. The new building was started in 1174, when Bartholomew of the Mill, Walter's brother, was bishop of Agrigento, and it was consecrated in May 1263 by Rudolf, cardinal bishop of Albano, attended by two archbishops and four bishops. Since 1867 the church has not been used and has become a sad ruin. The ceiling has fallen in, weeds grow on the floor, all its interior ornaments have been destroyed and have disappeared. There is, however, one exception: on the west wall of the north transept, opposite the apse, still stands one large sarcophagus. This sarcophagus is made of yellowish-white marble. Its lower part rests on four seated lions, and is shaped like a bath, round the top of which run two mouldings. In vertical section the lid is pentagonal, the upper point forming the ridge of the saddle-roof. This ridge is not strictly horizontal, but is raised a little towards the middle. From both the side-mouldings one member is left out, having perhaps been reserved for an inscribed ribbon, probably inlaid in metal. On each of the slopes are three round medallions worked in relief. The outer ones contain the symbols of the four Evangelists, the inner ones the half-length figures of Christ, with sceptre and orb, and the Holy Virgin.

Geographical Notes

THE latest news from Dr. Oscar Lenz is of much interest. Three letters have been received from him, the latest dated June last from Kasonge, a large Arab town, three days south-east from Nyangwe, on the Upper Congo. Dr. Lenz, it will be remembered, went out for the purpose of reaching Dr. Junker and Emin Bey. The latest rumours state that he has been compelled to abandon this object, and may therefore be soon heard of at Zanzibar. Dr. Lenz, in canoes furnished by the famous Tippoo Tip, journeyed up the Congo from Stanley Falls, taking fifty days by the way. This, however, included frequent stoppages. He found great changes had taken place since Mr. Stanley made his memorable voyage down the river ten years ago. Then there were few Arabs to be seen beyond Nyangwe, and the river over a great part of its length was peopled by natives, between whose villages the expedition had to run the gauntlet. Now Dr. Lenz finds the whole country practically in the hands of Arab and Zanzibari slavers and traders. The natives in many places have retired into the recesses of the forest, and large Arab settlements have taken their place at several points along the river. There is a constant traffic up and down the river between Nyangwe, or rather Kasonge, and Stanley Falls. Immense rice-fields occupy the swampy and unhealthy areas round these Arab settlements, and all round Nyangwe and Kasonge the country is covered with rice, and plantations of bananas and other fruits. Nyangwe is no longer the important centre it was in the days of Livingstone. It is an irregular collection of Arab settlements, covering a considerable area. Kasonge, three days' journey off further up the river, is, on the other hand, a large town, with broad streets and many well-built houses. This is the head-quarters of Tippoo Tip and other Arab traders, who have their agents for their ivory in Muscat and India. It is evident that we have here a great and increasing intrusion of a foreign element among the native population. In some cases the natives are on friendly terms with the Arabs, and in other cases hostile. At any rate the result will in the end be a very serious modification of the population over a great area of Central Africa, and a marked change in the face of the country by the introduction of rice and other exotic cultures.