Souq scenes of markets, commerce, buildings and streetscapes. Notable artists in the Orientalist genre include: Jean-Léon Gérôme Delacroix (1824–1904), Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps (1803–1860), Frederic Leighton (1830-1896), Eugène Alexis Girardet 1853-1907 and William Holman Hunt (1827–1910) who all found inspiration in Oriental street scenes, trading and commerce. Souq A souq or souk (, "shuq", "shuka", Spanish: zoco, also spelled shuk, shooq, soq, esouk, succ, suk, sooq, suq, soek) is a marketplace or commercial quarter in Western Asian, North African and some Horn African cities () . The term "souq" goes by many alternatives in different parts of the world; in the Balkans, the
Democracy in the Middle East Democracy in the Middle East According to the Democracy Index 2016 study, Israel (#29 worldwide) is the only democracy in the Middle East, while Tunisia (#69 worldwide) is the only democracy in North Africa. The measure of the level of democracy in nations throughout the world published by Freedom House and various other freedom indices, the Middle Eastern and North African countries with the highest scores are Israel, Tunisia, Turkey, Lebanon, Morocco, and Kuwait. Countries that are occasionally classified as partly democratic are Egypt and Iraq. The remaining countries of the Middle East are categorized as authoritarian regimes, with the