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 land of the Japanese and Denmark is the land of the Danes. The Arabic-speaking Muslim and Christian inhabitants of the "Holy Land" did not, in the view of European and American Christians of that era, appear to constitute a people or nation defined by their attachment to Palestine, they appeared, rather, to be part of the larger Arab, Armenian or Greek peoples. In 1901 in the "New Liberal Review", Israel Zangwill wrote that "Palestine is a country without a people; the Jews are a people without a country". In a debate at the Article Club in November of that year,