Almeida, Portugal the current name was first used, in the form of the Arabic "al-Ma'ida" ('the plateau'). The village of Almeida was captured from the Moors by the second king of Portugal, Sancho I in the 12th century because of its strategic position on the new country of Portugal's border with Spain. So important to the security of the country, Sancho had the village heavily fortified. The castle was refortified on three further occasions by King Dinis, King Manuel I and by King João VI. The present 12 pointed star fortification was constructed in 1641 to a Vaubanesque plan on which the
A land without a people for a people without a land Anita Shapira wrote that "The slogan 'A land without a people for a people without a land' was common among Zionists at the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth century." A variation apparently first used by a Christian clergyman and Christian Restorationist, Rev. Alexander Keith, D.D., appeared in 1843, when he wrote that the Jews are "a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people". In its most common wording, "A land without a people and a people without a