Climatic features of various regions of the African continent. Climatic features of various regions of the African continent Hot suffocating wind

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How to Build a Landing Page with WordPress from Scratch

A landing page is a web page designed primarily to capture a visitor’s attention and their details – like an email address – via a lead form. They are designed to target a specific audience depending on the product you are marketing.

A landing page can also be a squeeze page used to redirect traffic to the main website. You can have as many landing pages as you want on your site. In fact, the more landing pages you have, the more leads you are likely to get.

For instance, if you are marketing a new product via an email campaign, you can redirect traffic from your targeted email campaign to a specially designed product landing page. The same applies to any promotion you do via email or other means. The key thing is to create a unique landing page for every campaign you launch.

Landing Page Basics

There are no written rules as to what a landing page must have or look like. However, after years of experimenting with a range of landing page styles, I have come to the conclusion that certain key aspects should be considered when designing landing pages. Here are the top four:

Specificity: When designing a landing page, be specific about what you offer. You should also know what's in it for you. For instance, if you offer free info when a user signs up on your landing page. How are you going to benefit?
Benefits: The best marketing lingo can get a visitor's attention. But if you don't clearly explain how they are going to benefit, your conversions may be thin. A good landing page must be clear on how the user will benefit from the offer.
Urgency: The wording on your landing page should create a sense of urgency. Explain why a page visitor should take your offer now not later.
conversion: Now you've grabbed a visitor's attention and managed to convince them about your great offer. So how do they get it? Your landing page must make lead conversion as simple as possible.

Creating Landing Pages With WordPress

WordPress offers plenty of ways to build stunning landing pages. I’ll discuss two options you can use to create your landing pages, as well as a third options we recommend only for developers or advanced WordPress users with coding knowledge.

1. How to Create a Landing Page with a WordPress Theme

There are a ton of WordPress themes specifically designed for creating landing pages. These single page themes often include great features such as local scrolling, eye catching sliders, features boxes and more to make building you own landing page easy. Here are a few of our favorites.

Zerif Pro WordPress Theme

Zerif Pro is the premium version of the super popular Zerif lite single page business WordPress theme. With easy to use options for creating a professional website like drag and drop page sections, the Site Origin page builder, customizable colors, sliders and more it’s a great option for your landing page.

Total WordPress Theme

Of course the Total WordPress Theme(which includes 40+ quick start demos) is an excellent option especially for landing pages. The theme features more than 500 live theme Customizer design options (colors, fonts, page widths, etc), front end drag & drop page builder, 100 page builder elements, custom post types (for staff, portfolio and testimonials), a customizable header and footer plus tons more. There's nothing you can't build with Total.

Freelancer WordPress Theme

freelancer is a flexible single page WordPress theme designed for freelance designers, developers, photographers and other creatives. The theme includes an easy modular layout for adding sections and displaying important info like services, previous work, contact information and more.

SimpleShift WordPress Theme

The SimpleShift one page WordPress theme is a clean and simple business style theme that you could use to build a one page website. The theme has plenty of features to showcase key point using icon boxes, callouts, testimonials, and more for you landing page.

WP Single WordPress Theme

WP Single is an intuitive one page WordPress theme with a simple page builder, custom widgets, unlimited colors, ajaxed portfolio, Google fonts and more. It's a great start for a landing page to promote your goods or services.

Once you've decided on your favorite theme - install and activate it! To add a new theme go to Appearance > Themes > Add New and then browse for an awesome free theme from WordPress.org repository, or click on the Upload link to install a premium or free theme from somewhere else.

Creating Your Homepage with a Theme

In this example we’ll be using Zerif Lite by ThemeIsle, which you can get from their website or from your WordPress dashboard. Simple install and activate the theme to get started.

Most single page WordPress themes use a “home” page template to make getting started easy. To use a template go to Pages > Add New, give your page a name and then select the page template from the Page Attributes section in the sidebar. In Zerif this is the front page template. Then publish your page.

With your Home page published you’ll need to set it as your front page in order for it to be shown when visitors come to your URL. Just got to Settings > Reading and select the page you just created under Front page displays > A static page. Then save your changes.

Now you can start customizing your landing page content. Zerif Lite uses theme options in the Customizer under the “Frontpage Sections” option (which can be accessed under Appearance > Customize). You can also click on the blue pencil icons to quick edit some of the page content as well. When you're done just save and you're landing page will be ready to go!

Not all landing page themes will use the WordPress Customizer for your front page options. Some themes use custom post types which will show up in your WordPress dashboard (typically near your posts, media, pages etc options), some include built-in drag and drop elements just for the home template and others include page builders (which we'l be talking about next). If you have any questions about how to use your theme consult the documentation, or if it’s a premium theme contact support.

2. How to Create a Landing Page with WordPress Plugins

Themes are great, but one of the easiest ways to build a landing page with WordPress is by using a plugin. There are plenty of landing page plugins out there of both the free and premium variety. They all work more or less the same way: typically, they offer a collection of landing page templates for different purposes.

After installing and activating, you can manage the customizations page using the plugin's settings page. Some plugins allow for third-party extensions where you can add further customization and functionality to your landing pages using hooks, filters, and actions. There are a few notable WordPress landing page plugins to consider:

But we also recommend considering a general page building plugin such as:

Our personal favorite is the WP Bakery Page Builder which happens to come free with our top selling Total WordPress theme.

How to Build a Landing Page with a Plugin

To use a page builder plugin you'll first need to install and activate a compatible theme. You shouldn't have any trouble with most themes, but it's always better if you can find a theme that was specifically created or tested to work with your preferred plugin. In our example we’ll be using the WP Bakery Page Builder with the Total theme, which will prompt you to install and activate the recommended plugins.

If your theme doesn't include prompts, check the documentation to see how to install any included plugins. Or if you've purchased a page builder on your own go to Plugins > Add New > Upload Plugins to install and activate.

Once your page builder plugin is active, go to Pages > Add New to start building.

Total happens to include a special option for a “Landing Page” page template. When building your page this template will remove the header and footer sections for you (which makes sense because these area are better suited for multipage websites where you’d need to navigate between pages). Just make sure to save your page if you want to select a template.

With your page ready to go it's time to start building. If using the Visual Composer you'll now have the option to use the backend editor or the live frontend editor. Total fully supports the frontend editor and we highly recommend using it since you can see each element as you’re building. Just be sure to Update or Publish your page once you've finished editing. If you want to learn more about using this specific page builder, have a look at our Visual Composer guide.

Next, you’ll need to set your front page to the page your just created (this step should sound a bit familiar since most themes require you edit this setting). So go to Settings > Reading > Front page displays > A static page and select your new homepage.

Bonus: Import a Readymade Template

Oh, and if you are using the Total WordPress theme there’s also the option to import a pre-made landing page (or a multipage site design) to get started. Total includes a ton of imports in the Theme Panel > Demo Importer.

Click to begin importing. Total will even prompt you to install and activate the plugins required for the specific demo you want to import.

From there you’ll have the option to import the XML content, images, theme customizer settings, widgets and even sliders (if applicable). Once the import finishes you can edit and customize your page(s) to your liking.

To make changes just go to your pages, locate the page you want to edit, hover and click on the “Edit with Page Builder” option. This will open the front-end editor. Simply point and click to get editing, then click the “update” button at the top of the screen to save your changes. It really doesn't get much easier!

Other Online Tools

Like plugins, there are many online tools for creating landing pages (just do a quick Google search and you can see for yourself). These basically work like WYSIWYG website builders, allowing you to select and use user interface components to whip up a landing page in no time. They have their limitations though and some are not flexible. A properly designed and hand-coded page is often much superior and infinitely more flexible.

3. How to Build a Landing Page with WordPress Page Templates (Advanced)

If you are a developer or a knowledgeable/advanced WordPress user you can edit your current WordPress theme to add custom page templates for your landing page. Many commercial WordPress themes come with a host of page templates each with a specific purpose. A theme can have one or several templates. Though high quality themes offer several pre-built landing page templates for various purposes.

That said, you can create your own landing page from a blank page template. You just need some CSS skills and an eye for design. For illustrative purposes, I'm going to build a simple landing page using a blank page template in the TwentyThirteen theme. I'm just going to put a big catchy heading along with a big button on a blank page template.

Please note that this method is ideal if you are building a landing page that’s going to have a dedicated domain – i.e. it is not going to be part of your main website. Multisite does not give you much flexibility in design but a dedicated domain gives you freedom to dismantle the theme anyway you want without worrying about other pages.

Note: We only recommend this option for developers or advanced WordPress users who are knowledgeable and experienced coders. If you're new to WordPress we strongly suggest sticking to themes and plugins when building your landing pages.

Step 1: Create a child theme folder

Since I'll be making changes to another theme it's important to start by creating a child theme. This way any changes to the theme won't be lost when the core theme is updated.

To get started you’ll first need to connect to your website via FTP and create a new folder for your child theme in your wp-content/themes directory. We recommend adding "child" to the end of the theme you're editing (e.g. twentythirteenchild or something similar you'll recognize). This is where you will add new files to make changes to your core theme.

Step 2: Create a new style.css file for your child theme

Open the child theme folder you just created and add a new file named style.css(this will be your new stylesheet). Next, in your WordPress dashboard go to Appearance > Editor. In the editor window, you will see the theme's default stylesheet open.

Using the original theme file as a guide, create the heading section for your child theme’s style.css file you just created, which might look something like this:

With your new stylesheet ready the next step is to load the parent stylesheet by enqueuing it.

Step 3: Create a functions.php file for your child theme

When you activate your child theme your website won't load any styling so you'll want to load your parent theme's stylesheet. To do this create a new blank file named functions.php in your child theme folder. Then add the following code:

This will load your edited child theme styling after your parent theme stylesheet. You now have a functioning child theme for the TwentyThirteen theme – time to make changes!

Step 4: Customize your styling

With your child theme ready to go you can start customizing your landing page. First you might want to remove the main navigation since you're creating a landing page. To do this add the following code to your child theme style.css file( Note: your navigation element name might be different from ours. To find the element name you can use your browser inspector tool or check the header.php file):

If you view your site now, the navigation is gone. Instead we’re going to insert a big CTA button that will redirect to a registration page and later to the main website.

Next we’ll simply customize the site header (h1) in the stylesheet by changing the font size. The site header is identified by the class .site-title. Again, double check your own theme to see what element name your header uses since it may be different that the one in the example. To enlarge the font size add the last line of this code to your child theme's stylesheet:

Save and refresh your page. You should see a bigger title:

Step 5: Create a blank page template and name it front-page.php

In the WordPress editor, click on Page Template (page.php) to view its code. Copy the first lines up to get_header() which should be similar to this:

Open a code editor and create a new file called front-page.php Paste the lines you copied in the previous step. Save this new file in your child theme folder.

why front-page.php? Since this is going to be a static front page, you want to ensure that it is always selected and displayed first and front-page.php has the highest priority in the WordPress template hierarchy). Also, you may or may not insert footer (using the get_footer() function) in your template file. I've omitted it.

Remove the first line in the comments section and replace it with the template name – we called ours My Landing Page.

Save the changes. If you try to view your site now, you'll be greeted by a blank page with only the modified header. That's the front-page.php template. It is blank as we've not put any content as yet.

Step 6: Insert custom content markup for the landing page

Now that we've edited the header and created a blank page template, it's time to add actual content to the landing page. All that's left is to put our big button into our new front-page template. Just paste this code into your file and save. It's just a link wrapped in a div and that's all.

When you view your site, you will see the heading we’ve just inserted into the content part of the page along with the link text for the button:

Now it's time to give the page some life with CSS styling. Go to Appearance > Editor. click on style sheet to open the style.css file for editing. Paste this code and save:

Your page should now look like this:

Congratulations! You just built a custom landing page using WordPress. While you probably won't be using it in real-life as it's very basic, but the idea was to show you how to do it using a page template. You can edit any page of any theme and create a custom landing page this way.

Conclusion

We've looked at three common ways to build WordPress landing pages. We really recommend using a theme or plugin. But if you want to go the DIY route make sure to brush up on your coding skills first.

Are you using landing pages for your marketing campaigns? Can you share your experience, successes, or challenges you’ve found along the way? I'd love to hear all about it!

local winds

Saharan winds - North African dust and sand storms (Samum, Sirocco, Khabub, Khamsin, Harmatan, etc.), as well as a wind system due to the evolution of thermal and circulation conditions in the trade winds.

Samum, samun, simun (from Arab, samma - heat, poisonous, poisoned), meris, shobe, fiery wind, breath of death - a hot, dry, suddenly starting dust storm in the deserts of Asia Minor, Arabia, Sahara, south coast the Mediterranean Sea and the northwestern coast of Africa, Morocco (in contrast to the dust storms of the sirocco type blowing from the deserts). Usually accompanied by westerly or southwesterly squalls. Lasts up to 20 min. It is a whirlwind of hot air saturated with dust and sand. Accompanied by sudden changes in atmospheric pressure.

Samum occurs in the warm sector of a cyclone that moves along the Mediterranean Sea to the east and is associated with an active atmospheric front, where showers can occur (sometimes at a distance of up to 100 km from the source of dust storms). The appearance of the simum can also be due to the development of powerful convection in thermal depression. The approach of the simum can be judged by the growing noise in the hot sand raised by the storm. The temperature at the sumum rises to 50 ° C, the relative humidity of the air drops to almost zero. All objects acquire a reddish color, the sun appears purple-red, a reddish-yellow haze hangs in the air.

Sirocco, wide (Italian scirocco - east wind) - suffocating, burning (up to 35 ° C at night), very dusty wind of the south, southeast or east (sometimes even southwest) direction, sometimes reaching storm strength. It blows from the deserts, unlike the Samum and other African storms blowing in the deserts and steppes. Typical for North Africa and the entire Mediterranean basin. In the centers of formation, on the plateaus of North Africa and on the slopes of the mountains, the sirocco has the character of a hair dryer. Sirocco is stronger in the afternoon, and weakens in the evening and at night. Usually blows for 2-3 days in a row. It has a depressing effect on people.

Sirocco brings tropical air, formed over the deserts in the warm sectors of cyclones, the centers of which pass over the northern regions of Africa. The Sirocco carries red and white dust from the Sahara to more northerly regions, where it falls as colored blood and milky rains.

Khabub (Arabic - blowing furiously) - a strong sand and dust storm in the deserts of Egypt and Arabia (in northern Sudan, in the Upper Nile basin). In the rainy season, habub precedes a strong thunderstorm, which usually begins no more than 2 hours after the start of the storm. Xabub is associated with the rapid movement (up to 60 km / h) of a cold atmospheric front, in front of which a cloud forms in the form of a wall of dust up to 1.5 km high and up to 30 km wide. Dust rises up to several kilometers. This wind is part of a vortex in powerful cumulonimbus clouds, the lower part of an arc squall, a tilted tornado. It is also called the summer storms in the plains of India.

Khamsin (Arabic hamsin - fifty days) - sweltering hot, dry, and sultry wind, mostly southerly, sometimes reaching the strength of a storm. It blows in northeast Africa (Egypt, Lebanon and neighboring countries). Most often, it lasts for fifty days (with interruptions) after the spring equinox, in March - May. Sometimes observed in winter, occasionally in autumn. Occurs ahead of a cyclone moving eastward along the Mediterranean basin in the Khamsin depression. A sign of the onset of khamsin is a decrease in atmospheric pressure, a rapid decrease relative humidity air (especially intense at night) and the appearance of high light cirrus clouds ahead of the cyclone. This is followed by an increase in the southwest wind. Following the passage of a warm atmospheric front, the air is so saturated with sand and dust that in the middle of the day it is necessary to turn on the lights in the rooms. The temperature of the dusty air rises sharply, it becomes difficult to breathe.

After passing the center of the cyclone, the wind becomes northwest or north. With a cold front comes cleaner air. Khamsin often has a northern direction on the Sinai Peninsula and over the Red Sea. Khamsin is often accompanied by such optical phenomena as mirages, fata morgana. It has a number of local names: ghibli, chebili, chili, etc.

Harmatan (Spanish harmatan from Arabic, harmata - prohibition) is a very dry and dusty, hot, withering northeast trade wind blowing from the Sahara. In the dry season (November-March) it covers the zone south of 20°N. sh., including Upper Guinea, Algeria, Morocco, as well as the Cape Verde Islands and the Gulf of Guinea. The seasonality of the Harmattan makes it possible to consider it as the African winter monsoon. It is sometimes observed for 2-3 months in a row (with slight weakening of the wind). Harmattan frequency in Atar 97%, in Bamako and Niamey 88%. The average southern boundary of the wind propagation lies approximately at the parallel of 5°N. sh. in January and 10° N. sh. in July. Rain in the harmattan wind zone falls 1-3 times per decade. The dust raised by this wind spreads to a considerable height and is carried into the ocean for hundreds and even thousands of kilometers, up to the coast of America.

Over the ocean, the harmattan spreads to the southwest in the form of an upper atmospheric current, in summer - over the opposite southwest monsoon, in winter - over a wet trade wind. When the monsoon weakens and the trade wind is not pronounced, the harmattan descends to the earth or water surface. On the humid and stuffy coast, it dries the air and pleasantly cools, and in the savannah it dries the grass, destroys or damages the vegetation and is so strong that it tears the bark from the trees. A strong harmatan causes a feeling of cold, a weak harmatan causes a feeling of oppressive heat. Sometimes it brings swarms of locusts to the coast.

Sahil (arab. sahil - coast) - a kind of sirocco or simum, a dust storm, a hot and dry squall in North Africa. In Morocco and Algeria - a southwest wind, in the south of Algeria in the Sahel - a south wind. Sahil lifts a veil of yellowish sand and covers large areas. Due to the dryness of the air brought by this wind, the main vegetation type of the Sahara savannas is thorny shrubs. This wind has a toxic effect on the human body.

The Sahara was blooming

The word "Sahara" conjures up the image of a sultry desert in the imagination of people - this huge sandy ocean. Most of us imagine boundless sands, and above them - a scorching sun. Even in the name itself, a withering wind seems to be, because its name also comes from the Arabic word "sahra" - "reddish". The world's largest desert stretches throughout northern Africa and occupies one quarter of the entire African continent. The life of a number of African countries (Mali, Libya, Niger, Chad, Morocco, Tunisia) is associated with this desert, and four-fifths of the territory of Algeria is the Sahara.

Starting on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, it stretches for thousands of kilometers to the east - all the way to the Nile. Seven thousand square kilometers is the area of almost the whole of Europe, but even now the desert is inexorably expanding its spaces.

And meanwhile, from a bird's eye view, dried-up valleys, and high-altitude plateaus, and mountain gorges open up ... In some places, Mediterranean vegetation is found: cypresses, pistachio and olive trees. Now all this is well studied, and in the footsteps of the remaining cultures, one can tell about the climate that used to be here.

Sahara is the world's largest desert

Humanity accumulated information about the Sahara and its knowledge about it very slowly. This seems strange, because around the Sahara lie countries with ancient civilizations, in which many scientists lived. Even the outstanding German naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt, back in the middle of the 19th century, believed that the Sahara is the greatest sandy sea that stretches all the way to India.

In our century, scientists for the first time started talking about the connection of works of art with paleography. This happened after the discovery of the famous polychrome frescoes in Tassili-Ajjer in the Sahara. Separate scattered finds date back to the beginning of our century, and in 1933 an officer of the French colonial troops Brenan accidentally discovered a whole rock gallery. Soon the first groups of scientists arrived here, and research began, which was carried out for several decades. The study of rock art has shed light on the history of the Sahara in the last millennia.

The very fact of the existence of drawings in the desert suggests that the natural conditions of the Sahara used to be different. The perfectly preserved images seem to indicate that the climate was dry and perfectly prevented active weathering. The characteristic layer of patina covering the drawings indicates their antiquity. In addition, these rock carvings have provided scientists with very valuable environmental data. The most ancient frescoes depict animals surrounding man, which are found only where heavy rains fall, and the earth is covered with dense vegetation. So, for example, for the life of some animals, the conditions of the savannah were required, for others - semi-deserts. The bulls, depicted in many, could only live in the meadows in the very heart of the Sahara, and for crocodiles and hippos, rivers and lakes were needed.

The rock art of the Sahara is a real treasure trove of information that gives a clear idea about the ancient population of the Sahara, about the various tribes and nomads who brought with them an alien influence for the local population. From these pictures one can trace how the climate and fauna of the Great Desert changed.

After the research of scientists, the Sahara appeared as a vast, once verdant plain that fed giraffes and buffaloes (and now they are preserved only in Egypt), elephants, ostriches and antelopes. Rhinos inhabited dense palm groves, and lions roamed there. Scientists have convincingly proven that once the Sahara had steppe flora and fauna, but lost them. And this loss occurred long before the first historical information about it appeared. Two or three thousand years ago it was less dry than it is now. But drought and increased heat forced many animals to leave for the savannah, where almost all of them live to this day.

The Arab historian of the 1st century El-Bekri described the city of Hama, located four hundred kilometers west of Timbuktu, as a flourishing agricultural region. Now this place is probably one of the most deserted in Mauritania.

The city of Luga in Senegal was considered the main center for the production of peanuts seventy years ago. Now, under the burning breath of the sands, it seems to have withered, and the center of peanut production has moved to the city of Kaolak.

The fact that these regions were really flourishing is known from many historical facts. In ancient times, almost everywhere (with the exception of some zones) the climate was more humid than it is now. A humid climate dominated for a long time throughout the arid (now!) Belt, stretching from West Africa to Rajasthan in northwestern India. Even in the dry center of what is now the Sahara, the annual rainfall was 250–400 milliliters per year (now only six milliliters). The level of Lake Chad was forty meters higher than the current one, and the lake itself reached the size of the Caspian Sea. In the place of the Sahara in the distant, distant past there was a flowering garden, and it "turned green like Normandy." It is now that the humidity in the Sahara is negligible, in addition, the wind increases evaporation, dries and burns plants, distills sand and thereby destroys plants, preventing them from developing.

So the great Sahara - now dead, endless space - was not barren at all. People lived and worked here, grew crops of fruits and cereals. During the winter (!) Moisture accumulated in the lowlands, and the peasants had time to use it to harvest their crops before the sun burned the soil. Until now, in the Algerian bazaars you can see the whole variety of desert gifts - an abundance of lemons, oranges, almonds and other fruits. And among other things, carrots are striking in their unusual size - two pieces per kilogram.

Around 1000 B.C. e. The Sahara gradually began to acquire its present appearance, from century to century the desert spread further and further. The rich and lush vegetation of Tassili-Adzhera was replaced by scrawny bushes, which the locals call talha.

The main factor in the Sahara is the climate, as it is the least controllable. With the help of irrigation and protective barriers, it can be somewhat improved, but not completely changed. However, at one time it was believed that the cause of the Sahara was precisely some climate change. True, it is now known that this region has become a desert not so much because of the changed climate, but because of human activity. And this happened when the tribes of hunters were replaced by nomadic shepherds. It would seem that cattle breeding should not have affected the face of the planet, because pastoralists do not plow the land. They do not replace one vegetation cover with another, they do not burn forests to make room for arable land. They can graze livestock in places not suitable for farming.

But it seems so only at first glance. People roamed the once flourishing Sahara with huge herds. Animals not only ate the vegetation, but also trampled it, destroyed the vegetation cover, which began to lose its strength over time. The turf became so weak that it could no longer hold the sand. And he advanced more and more, turning flowering regions into barren deserts. According to scientists, the sands annually turn forty thousand hectares into a desert.

This, of course, is only one of the reasons why the sands continue to advance. There are others. For example, on the fertile lands in Algeria for a long time there was a rapid construction of industrial enterprises, housing, roads were laid. True, here they realized in time and introduced a strict accounting of plots allocated for all types of construction.

The aridity characteristic of today's Sahara is not found in any other desert in the world. Kalahari, Arabia, Central Asian deserts, Australia - they are all more humid. Tenezruft is considered the most lifeless even in the Sahara itself - one of the hottest and driest areas on the globe. Tenezruft is called "the land of heat and thirst" by the indigenous people. In this abandoned area, where the heat reaches + 50 ° C, not a single blade of grass grows. Not even insects. All around is scorched earth, the temperature of the sand is + 70 ° C, and it is impossible to walk on it barefoot.

For a long time, the Sahara seemed to have been forgotten by God and people. Only caravans of nomads plowed its boundless expanses, transporting dates and salt on humpbacked camels. Merchants and traders equipped caravans, took with them guides who could navigate by the stars, and stocked up on food for six months. During the long journey, water supplies were replenished in rare oases, and therefore water sometimes became more expensive than gold.

As a rule, a caravan consisted of 300-400 camels and many mules, but it could also consist of a thousand camels. This depended solely on how many camels and other animals could be drunk from the wells encountered along the way. The absence of water turned into inevitable death. So, for example, in 1805 a huge caravan died between Timbuktu and Taudenny. 2,000 people and 1,800 camels remained in the deadly embrace of the desert.

Sand in the Sahara does not lie in an even veil, but forms long sandy hills that stretch in endless rows. It is very small and loose, and even at the slightest breeze it covers the traces of the traveler. A stronger wind drives the sand far ahead of it and pours it into long ridges. Such places have the appearance of the sea, covered with motionless waves, frozen in one position. But their immobility is apparent. The wind drives the grains of sand in front of it, and these hills, though slowly, but constantly move from place to place. In the sun, they sparkle now with a reddish, now with a golden light, and between them now turn blue, then turn black the depressions separating them.

But sometimes the sand seems to come to life. It begins to move, gather in one place and forms huge sand pillars. These pillars move, circling through the desert, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. When illuminated by the sun, they appear to be fiery. The strong wind that drives these pillars sometimes splits one pillar into two, and then combines several into one huge one, reaching almost to the clouds. These pillars are called whirlwinds, and woe to the caravan if such a whirlwind overtakes it.

But even if a tornado passes by, the danger for the caravan has not yet passed, because after the tornado the samum usually begins to blow - a sultry wind. He is born in a giant frying pan of the hottest desert, and here the strongest whirlwinds arise from temperature changes. The withering power of Samum is felt even in Europe. Sometimes it blows with the force of a real storm, sometimes even barely noticeable, but always burning and causing people great suffering.

Long before the sumum, the inhabitants of the Sahara guess its approach. It begins with a barely noticeable movement of air, which becomes heavy and suffocating. The sky is covered with a light grayish or reddish fog. With every passing hour, the heat intensifies. People complain and groan, because even a light touch of the breeze is very burning, causes severe headache and weakness, and generally makes a person sad. Gradually, the gusts of wind become stronger and sharper, finally merge into a continuous whirlwind, and after a few minutes a real sandstorm is already raging around. The wind whistles and roars, raises clouds of sand, the stuffiness becomes unbearable, the body sweats, but dries up almost immediately. The lips crack and begin to bleed, the tongue seems to be filled with lead. Then the skin cracks, and the burning wind inflicts fine hot sand into the wounds and further increases the suffering of a person.

Even wild animals become fearful when a sandstorm sets in, and camels become restless and stubborn, crowding together, refusing to go forward, and even lie down on the ground. But a camel for a desert dweller, like a horse for a Russian peasant, is a true friend. No wonder they came up with many affectionate names for him, glorified him in fairy tales, myths and legends. An Arabic proverb says: “Allah created man from clay. After what he did, he had two pieces of clay left. From one he created a camel ... ”The Prophet Mohammed, like his father, was a camel shepherd and caravan guide. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Quran speaks of a camel as the main wealth of a Muslim. Sometimes, however, they mention the stupid and arrogant disposition of the camel, but this favorite of Allah is not stupid, but proud. Because he knows the hundredth name of Allah, which is not known even to people. Mohammed told his adherents 99 of his names, and whispered the last into the camel's ear in gratitude for the fact that he saved him in difficult times - carried him away from his enemies.

The camel is ingeniously adapted to endure heat and dryness. His hump is a piggy bank of fat for the worst of times. If the camel's fat were evenly distributed throughout the body, this would make it difficult for him to cool down. Its stomach consists of three sections and holds 250 liters, it feeds on the rough, tough vegetation of the desert. And this animal also has unusually wide hooves, as if specially adapted for walking on the sands.

But it cannot be considered that there is nothing pleasant in the desert, because "... from another piece of clay, Allah created a date palm." The date palm for the desert dweller is everything. Its fruits serve as his main food, and with them he paid taxes to his superiors in the past. From a tall straight tree trunk he makes his buildings and utensils; from the fibers of the bark weaves ropes and ropes, from large feathery leaves - mats, brooms, brooms. Only in the desert can one appreciate all the benefits that the date palm brings.

The Arabs claim that dates are “fingers of light and honey”, “bread of the desert”. The date tree is better than other plants adapted to the conditions of the Sahara. It grows on any soil, even if its salinity exceeds twelve grams per liter of water, it is not afraid of a sharp temperature drop - from + 50 ° to -10 ° Celsius. The flowering time for most types of date palm is from mid-March to mid-April, the harvest is from July to November.

And although the date palm is quite unpretentious, it is not so easy to grow it. Strange as it may seem, the peasants always have to deal with the drainage of the soil around the date palm, because the underground water is destroying it. But the results of their work surpass all praise: about fifty varieties of date palm (out of 96 species in the world) have taken root here ...

The date palm has become a kind of fetish: “to cut down a palm tree” means “to kill”. And when the owner of a tree that has already dried up takes an ax in his hands, he is often persuaded not to do this - various arguments are given to justify the “unfruitful culprit”. This rite is called the "reasoning" of the palm tree. The owner seems to allow himself to be convinced and, after tapping several times with his butt on its dry trunk, turns to the tree with a “last warning”. Indeed, oh, how hard it is to raise a hand against an old friend!

The date palm is the sister of man, the camel is his brother. Without them, a person would hardly have survived in the desert that Allah created so that a person could rest in it and wander peacefully alone.

This text is an introductory piece.

SIMOOM

(Arabic poisonous wind, from samm - poison). A sultry, deadly wind blowing in the northwest. Africa, Syria, Arabia and northeast India.

Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. - Chudinov A.N., 1910 .

SIMOOM

Arab. samum, from samma to poison, from samm, poison. Hot, suffocating wind followed by a violent hurricane.

Explanation of 25,000 foreign words that have come into use in the Russian language, with the meaning of their roots. - Mikhelson A.D., 1865 .

SIMOOM

a destructive sultry wind blowing during the equinox in the steppes of Arabia and Africa.

Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. - Pavlenkov F., 1907 .

SIMOOM

a sultry and suffocating wind blowing from the northeast in the African and Arabian steppes at the time of the equinox.

A complete dictionary of foreign words that have come into use in the Russian language. - Popov M., 1907 .

Simoom

samuma, m. [arab. samum]. A sandy whirlwind, a sultry southwestern dry wind in the deserts of Africa and western Asia.

A large dictionary of foreign words. - Publishing house "IDDK", 2007 .

Synonyms:

See what "SAMUM" is in other dictionaries:

- (Arabic سموم‎‎ (samūm); sultry wind) dry hot local winds. Samum is observed in the deserts of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula and most often has a western and southwestern direction. It mostly happens in spring and summer. Such a wind ... ... Wikipedia

- (Arabic) the name of the dry hot wind in the deserts of the North. Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Samoom is often accompanied by sandstorms… Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

Cm … Synonym dictionary

simoom- (wrongly) ... Dictionary of pronunciation and stress difficulties in modern Russian

SAMUM, samuma, husband. (arab. samum). Sand whirlwind, sultry southwest. dry wind in the deserts of Africa and west. Asia. Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov. D.N. Ushakov. 1935 1940 ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov

SAMUM, a, husband. Dry, sultry wind of the deserts, flying in a squall and forming sand whirlwinds. | adj. the smartest, oh, oh. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov

simoom- fire-jet (Bryusov) Epithets of literary Russian speech. M: The supplier of the court of His Majesty, the partnership of the printing press A. A. Levenson. A. L. Zelenetsky. 1913 ... Dictionary of epithets

simoom- sandstorm - Topics oil and gas industry Synonyms sandstorm EN dust storm ... Technical Translator's Handbook

simoom- Dry hot and dusty wind in the Sahara, the countries of the Middle East and the deserts of Arabia ... Geography Dictionary

A; m. [arab. samum] In the deserts of Arabia and North Africa: dry, sultry wind carrying sand and dust. ◁ Samumny, oh, oh. With a storm. S. flurry. * * * Samum (Arabic), the name of a dry hot wind in the deserts of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula ... encyclopedic Dictionary

Books

Samum, Sergey Dyachenko, Marina Dyachenko. Vaughn is a modern witch-adventurer, to tell fortunes and know the reason for that trick, to prove it only in pennies. Vin is a demon who has taken possession of her...

Boris Rudenko. Photo by Evgeny Konstantinov.

The spring wind blew softly,
And the wings of Harmony chimed softly...
Ruben Dario, Nicaraguan poet

The sultry wind of the African sirocco desert reached the city buildings.

Zimnyak wind in Valdai.

Strong surge wind of a sailor.

Winds are the only natural phenomenon to which people gave names. Large peoples and small tribes, on all continents, in mountains and forests, in steppes and deserts, on the shores of seas, lakes and rivers. Probably because they saw in the wind the qualities inherent in a living being: first of all, power, deceit, ruthlessness, violence, but also affection and tenderness. And although according to the accepted rules, the names of the winds are written with a small letter (sumum, barguzin, khamsin, sirocco), nevertheless, these names, perhaps, are more correct to consider their own.

In almost all ancient mythologies, the winds were generally personified with the gods. Ancient Greek northern Boreas, western Zephyr, southern Not and eastern Apeliot; Scandinavian Njord; Slavic Dagoda, Pozvist and Pokhvist. And in every pantheon there was a god - not of the lowest rank, by the way - responsible for this weather phenomenon.

Too much in human life depended on the winds, and life itself often too. At different times of the year, winds blowing from the same direction could affect a person and his environment in completely different ways. So they got different names. The names reflected not only the direction, but also the strength, humidity, seasonality, duration of the winds, the degree of their danger, and even - in some rare cases - usefulness.

In the vicinity of Lake Seliger, people who inhabited these places have long distinguished sixteen different winds: siverok and tabashnik, zimnyak, deceased, noon, shelonik, mokrik, low-flow, autumn, krestovy, snezhnets, dolevik (blowing along the lake), married (the one that subsides by nights) and idle (not subsiding all night), wind (fair) and padorga (storm with rain or snow).

On Lake Baikal, in addition to the well-known barguzin from different directions, the siverka, angara, verkhovik, source, selenga, frolikha, shelonik, deep, kultuk, nizovik, horin, sarma, harakhaikha (translated from Buryat - "black"), rootstock and, finally, Baikal - this is the name of an instantly incident local squall.

In general, people classified the winds living on the shores of lakes especially carefully, since luck in fishing primarily depended on them. On the Russian lakes Ilmen, Pskov, Onega and many others, dozens of winds are also distinguished. And the number of winds blowing around the Italian Lake Garda, perhaps, can be considered a record. There are eighteen of them - day and night, dry and wet, strong and weak, cold and warm.

The scourge of farmers of the Caspian lowland and Central Asia - dry winds give rise to summer anticyclones. Drying up the earth on its way to cracks, destroying crops no worse than locusts and evaporating small lakes, the dry wind is known to all the peoples inhabiting these territories. In each locality, he received his name. In Azerbaijan - guraglyg, in Kyrgyzstan - kerimsel, in Georgia - horshaks, etc.

The desert wind khamsin (in Arabic - "fifty") is so named because it blows in early spring from the Arabian deserts or the Sahara continuously for fifty days. He brings with him so much sand and dust that it becomes difficult to breathe, and in the rooms you have to turn on the light during the day. But having rushed over the Red Sea, the Arabian khamsin is saturated with moisture. Now it does not carry dust, but an unbearable stuffiness and is called otherwise - asiab.

Another native of Africa, the sirocco wind brings to Southern Europe not only red and white dust from the Sahara, which falls with rains, turning them bloody or milky, but also suffocating heat. When the sirocco blows, the temperature even at night does not drop below 35 o C.

But the most formidable desert wind is considered to be simum, in Arabic this word means “poisonous”, “poisoned”. Samoom swoops down instantly, driving a huge shaft of sand and dust in front of him. The temperature rises to 50 ° C, and the humidity drops to zero. Fortunately, this cataclysm does not last long - no more than half an hour, although during this time it manages to do enough trouble.

The influence of winds - and not necessarily the strongest ones - on the well-being of living beings, not only animals, but also people, has long been noticed. Dry, gusty winds blowing from the mountains to the valleys, which are constant in the mountainous countries, cause a lot of inconvenience to people dependent on the weather. They have a headache, causeless longing, a sense of fear, a breakdown. Chronic diseases are on the rise. It has been noticed that people begin to feel a deterioration in well-being even before the start of the wind, and the reasons for this phenomenon have not yet been clarified.

However, the complete absence of wind can also be a very undesirable phenomenon, especially for multi-million megacities. When a complete calm settled over Mexico City for a long time several years ago, the concentration of harmful substances in the atmosphere of the city, located in two valleys and surrounded on all sides by mountains, increased so much that the ecological situation acquired the character of a catastrophe. People fainted on the streets from poisoning with harmful emissions and lack of oxygen. Even a complete shutdown of industrial enterprises and a ban on the use of vehicles did not help.

There are winds that have been "helping" man for thousands of years. For example, the Caspian moraine - a strong wind blowing up the Volga for two weeks at a speed of 10-15 m / s, overtakes fish at the mouth of the river and its branches. In the same way, a sea wind is called a surging "fishy" wind in the northern seas.

The south wind bles in the Ardèche department, in France, dry and mild, is considered beneficial for the crops of wheat and other cereals. And one of the constant Kamchatka air currents - the woman's wind - although it has the nature of a formidable hair dryer, since it blows from the side of the mountain ranges, it is accompanied by warm and clear weather, in which linen dries well. This is where the wind gets its name from.

Karpuz meltem - watermelon wind blowing from the northeast; Turkish farmers are looking forward to it, because it favors the ripening of fruits. This wind has several names depending on the time when it comes: meltem raisin - grape, meltem cuirass - cherry, meltem tavern - pumpkin.

The summer cool refreshing breeze in the tropics and subtropics was called "doctor" by the English settlers.

There are few examples of a grateful attitude to the winds, reflected in their names: there are only a dozen of such names for thousands of names. Even the tender for Russian perception word "ae" in the Hawaiian language is called the burning northeast trade wind of the Hawaiian archipelago. However, for the islanders, this word does not sound kind at all ...

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