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This paper explores the history of the Chinese porcelain trade in Oman with the aim of gauging the impact of these wares on Oman's religious architecture. The large quantities of porcelain surface finds from the interior and the comparatively unusual reliance on them for the decoration of prayer niches, in the presence of equally valuable wares from Persia and elsewhere, suggest an elevated status for these objects, which is not necessarily a product of their immediate monetary value. Chemical and stylistic analyses were carried out to determine the dates and provenance of the ceramics studied, with the aim of gaining a better understanding of their introduction into the Omani market and their relation to religious design schemes.

While most West European nations were formed around pre-existing entities that could be called “countries” before the modern age, this was not the case in the Middle East. Some entities, like Egypt, did have a clear political and cultural identity before colonialism, others, like Algeria, did not. This chapter discusses the four states of the Maghreb: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya, through the perspective of “country creation” going into and coming out of colonial rule. We can see here two “models” of fairly similar types of historical development, one showing a gradual process through a protectorate period to relatively stable modern nations, another through violent conquest and direct colonization ending in violent liberation and military and wealthy but fragile states. The article asks whether these models for the history of country creation and the presence or absence of pre-colonial identities can help explain the modern history and nature of these states in the Arab Spring and the years thereafter. Then, a more tentative attempt is made to apply these models to two countries of the Arab east, Syria and Iraq. While local variations ensure that no model can be transferred directly, it can show the importance of studying the historical factors that go into the transition from geographical region to a country with people that can form the basis of a nation.

Major and trace element data of Jabal Nafusah phonolites are compared with those of other phonolitic provinces: Rhoen, Hegau and Kaiserstuhl (West Germany); Massif Central and Velay (France); and - with data from the literature - Kenyites and other phonolites of Kenya. In this geochemical comparison the character of the Jabal Nafusah phonolites can be specified exactly. Additional new analytical data are given for the elements Nb, U, Th, F, S and Cl. Between Zr, Nb, U and Th there are positive correlations. Plots of Rb versus Nb, and particularly Nb versus Zr reveal "fans", illustrating the individual differentiation trends of the distinct phonolite provinces. A plot on hyperbolic axes brings the data of the diverging fan to a common curve. Each province occupies its own field on this diagram; the Jabal Nafusah phonolites are situated in an extreme position. On triangular plots it can be shown that the Jabal Nafusah phonolites are enriched (relative to other elements) in Al, Na, Fe, Ca, K, Ti, Zr, F, Cl and Th as compared with other phonolitic provinces; but depleted in Mg, S, Nb and P.

Major and trace element data of Jabal Nafusah phonolites are compared with those of other phonolitic provinces: Rhoen, Hegau and Kaiserstuhl (West Germany); Massif Central and Velay (France); and - with data from the literature - Kenyites and other phonolites of Kenya. In this geochemical comparison the character of the Jabal Nafusah phonolites can be specified exactly. Additional new analytical data are given for the elements Nb, U, Th, F, S and Cl. Between Zr, Nb, U and Th there are positive correlations. Plots of Rb versus Nb, and particularly Nb versus Zr reveal "fans", illustrating the individual differentiation trends of the distinct phonolite provinces. A plot on hyperbolic axes brings the data of the diverging fan to a common curve. Each province occupies its own field on this diagram; the Jabal Nafusah phonolites are situated in an extreme position. On triangular plots it can be shown that the Jabal Nafusah phonolites are enriched (relative to other elements) in Al, Na, Fe, Ca, K, Ti, Zr, F, Cl and Th as compared with other phonolitic provinces; but depleted in Mg, S, Nb and P.

Depuis les années 1960, l’historiographie mozabite a affirmé avec insistance la participation des populations berbérophones et ibadites du Mzab au « mouvement national algérien ». Un contexte très marqué par la lutte anticoloniale explique ce positionnement, rendu aussi nécessaire par la situation de minorité linguistique et confessionnelle des Mozabites. Ce récit nationaliste est toutefois problématique. Focalisé sur le militantisme partisan, il minore d’autres formes d’engagements. Plaquant a posteriori les catégories du nationalisme sur les actions et les discours, il unifie et appauvrit les trajectoires des acteurs. Enfin, il oublie que l’ancrage des Mozabites était souvent plus régional ou transnational qu’algérien. Les oulémas-journalistes auxquels est consacré cet article, Abū Ishāq Attfayyish (1886-1965) et Abū al-Yaqzān (1888-1973), sont des figures connues de l’historiographie mozabite, qui met en exergue leur combat pour établir une presse arabophone libre de l’entre-deux-guerres, dans un contexte colonial très répressif. Plutôt qu’une lecture de cette presse comme uniquement « arabe et algérienne », je propose ici d’envisager la façon dont les journalistes mozabites ont contribué à la naissance d’un espace public algérien, autonome par rapport à la sphère du pouvoir colonial, et qui permette la publicisation des opinions privées et le débat public. En l’abordant par ses marges ibadites, je souhaite aussi interroger et éclairer la structuration et les contours de l’espace public algérien…

L'étude de l'état environnemental de la lagune de Boughrara a été réalisée deux ans après la mise en service du nouveau pont El Kantara. Les paramètres étudiés dans l'eau (nitrites, nitrates, ammonium, azote, phosphore total, chlorophylle a) et le sédiment (matière organique, faciès sédimentaire) ont été analysés dans trois zones de la lagune appartenants à divers contextes géographiques et environnementaux. Les résultats obtenus ont montré d'évidents signes d'amélioration des conditions générales de cet écosystème. Les distributions spatiotemporelles et saisonnières des paramètres étudiés indiquent que les teneurs trouvées atteignent le seuil d'eutrophisation pas mal de fois mais restent toujours inférieurs à ceux mentionnés par la DGPA en 2000 avant les travaux d'aménagement. L'analyse granulométrique des sédiments superficiels reflète un fond à sables moyens à fins à des proportions différentes en matière organique selon les zones. ABSTRACT Environmental state of the Boughrara lagoon and his surroundings two years after alteration work and of extension of the bridge of el kantara : The present study aims to characterize water quality and sediment in Boughrara lagoon and its surrounding two years after the construction of new bridge. Abiotic parameters (water and sediment) are calculated in three areas with different geographical and environmental contexts. The results have shown clear signs of improvement in terms of the ecosystem. The spatiotemporal distributions of physicochemical parameters of water indicate that the levels found below the threshold of eutrophication quite a few times but are still lower than those reported by DGPA (2000). The size analysis of surface sediments shows that the bottom of the three underwater zones explored is covered mainly by medium to fine sand rich in organic matter.

Oman and its conflict management model are the focus of this paper. This model has crystalized out of the three stand‐alone but complementary systems of conflict resolution which evolved in an ad hoc fashion: the institute of tribal leaders; the reconciliation committees; and the formal judicial system. These systems offer a foundation for the current efforts of the local people to sustain a peaceful co‐existence among the vibrant and ethnically diverse Omani communities known for their turbulent past. The analyzed data obtained from interviews with Omani tribal leaders, reconciliation committee members, and lawyers shed light on both the strengths of the conflict management model and the modern challenges which the model faces. The findings confirm that this model represents a coherent entity run by an integrated constitutional‐tribal order. They also suggest that the model serves as a state mechanism for balancing power between the country's major players—the government and the institute of tribal leaders. The novel contribution of this paper lies in linking the origin and philosophy of each system with the “mediation identity” of Oman's foreign policy.

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) has achieved strong performance in high-resource languages; however, Dialectal Arabic remains significantly under-resourced. This gap is particularly evident in Oman, where Arabic exhibits substantial sociolinguistic variation shaped by settlement patterns between sedentary (Hadari) and nomadic (Badu) communities, which are often overlooked by urbancentric or generalized Gulf Arabic datasets. We introduce OMAN-SPEECH, a sociolinguistically stratified spoken corpus for Omani Arabic comprising approximately 40 hours of spontaneous and semi-spontaneous speech from 32 speakers across 11 Wilayats (provinces). The corpus is balanced to capture regional and lifestyle variation and is annotated at the sentence level with Arabic transcription, English translation, and phonetic transcription using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) through a human-in-the-loop annotation pipeline. OMAN-SPEECH provides a foundational resource for evaluating ASR and related speech technologies on Omani and Gulf Arabic varieties and supports more granular modeling of regional dialectal variation.