When the plague visits Egypt, it is generally in the spring and the disease is most severe in the period of the khamáseen. These winds, though they seldom cause the thermometer of Fahrenheit to rise above 95° in Lower Egypt, or in Upper Egypt 105°, are dreadfully oppressive, even to the natives. It is believed to blow "at intervals for about 50 days", although it rarely occurs "more than once a week and lasts for just a few hours at a time." A 19th-century account of the khamsin in Egypt reports that In Egypt, the khamsin usually arrives in April but occasionally can occur between March and May, carrying great quantities of sand and dust from the deserts, with a speed up to 140 kilometers per hour, and a rise of temperatures as much as 20 ☌ (36 ☏) in two hours. Khamsin can be triggered by extratropical cyclones that move eastwards along the southern parts of the Mediterranean or along the North African coast from February to June. In the Book of Exodus of the Hebrew Bible, the ruah kadim (רוח קדים) or "east wind" is the cause of the parting of the Red Sea ( Exodus 14:21). In the southern Levant it takes the shape of an oppressive weather front with hot temperatures, large quantities of dust impeding visibility, and strong winds during the night. The sand storms are reported to have seriously impeded both Napoleon's military campaigns in Egypt as well as Allied-German fighting in North Africa in World War II. Even in winter, the temperatures rise above 45° C (113° F) due to the storm. When the storm passes over an area, lasting for several hours, it carries great quantities of sand and dust from the deserts, with a speed up to 140 kilometers per hour (87 mph 76 knots), and the humidity in that area drops below 5%. The term is also used in the southern Levant ( Israel, Palestine, Jordan), where the phenomenon takes a partly different form and blows both during spring and autumn. įrom the Arabic word for "fifty", these dry, sand-filled windstorms blow sporadically in Egypt over a fifty-day period in spring, hence the name. Khamsin, chamsin or hamsin ( Arabic: خمسين ḫamsīn, meaning "fifty"), more commonly known in Egypt as khamaseen ( Egyptian Arabic: خماسين ḫamāsīn, IPA: ( listen)), is a dry, hot, sandy local wind affecting Egypt and the Levant similar winds, blowing in other parts of North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the entire Mediterranean basin, have different local names, such as bad-i-sad-o-bist roz in Iran and Afghanistan, haboob in the Sudan, aajej in southern Morocco, ghibli in Tunis, harmattan in the western Maghreb, africo in Italy, sirocco (derived from the Arabic šarqiyya, "eastern") which blows in winter over much of the Middle East, and simoom.
0 kommentar(er)
