Population Redistribution and Language Spread in the Medieval Muslim World

Between the seventh and eighth centuries, a remarkable linguistic phenomenon took place: the Arabic language, which had been mainly the tongue of a few isolated tribes in Western Arabia, became the spoken and written language of a vast region that spanned from the Oxus River in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Virtually overnight, speakers of other languages had to become conversant and literate in Arabic in order to maintain their positions throughout the Arabic-speaking Muslim Empire. This article explores one factor that enabled the spread of Arabic in such an unprecedented manner: the mass population movement of Arabic speakers and others that occurred as a result of the expansion of the Muslim Empire. The article traces and analyses three categories of movement: initial settlement by the conquest armies; later voluntary movement due to scholarship, alliance building and intermarriage; and ruler-instigated population movement.     

Egypt’s Many Public Administration Transitions: Reform Vision and Implementation Challenges

ABSTRACT

This article discusses Egypt’s many transitions toward public administration reform. It argues that some of these transitions have collided with an existing large and complex bureaucracy and a legacy of state-led development, such as the protracted and contentious process related to the civil service regulation reforms. Similarly, despite decades of decentralization efforts, state budgeting praxis remains centralized and concentrated. While attracting private investment for job creation and economic growth is a key priority to Egypt, state centrism overshadows the experience. Other transitions, however, have thrived at a much faster pace, such as the adoption of e-government.     

Diversity of 17-locus Y-STR haplotypes in Upper (Southern) Egyptians

Seventeen Y-STR loci included in the AmpF?STR^® Yfiler™ PCR Amplification kit were typed in a population sample of 208 males from Upper (South) Egypt. Of 204 observed haplotypes, 200 were unique (96.6%) and 4 were found twice each. The 17 loci gave a discriminating power of 0.9998. DYS458 showed the highest diversity as a single-locus marker (h = 0.868) along with a high frequency of microvariants and new alleles (22% of the sample). Other loci revealed duplicated and null alleles. Comparative analysis with Y-STR datasets of relevant populations and submission of the haplotypes to the Y-STR Haplotype Reference Database (YHRD) were undertaken.