As-Safira

As-Safira (Arabic: السفيرة‎ / ALA-LC: as-Safīrah; North Syrian Arabic: Sfīre) is a Syrian city administratively belonging to the Aleppo Governorate. It is the administrative center for the as-Safira District. As Safīrah has an altitude of 348 meters (1,142 ft), and a population of 106,382 as of 2007, making it the 11th largest city per geographical entity in Syria.

Name

Medieval geographer Yaqut al-Hamawi spells the name Asfīrah (أسفيرة), not as-Safira (السفيرة), which indicates that the definite article in the modern spelling is a result of hypercorrection.

As-Safira was known in pre-Islamic times as Sipri. Historians have suggested that the name Sipri may have come from the Akkadian word siparru meaning "bronze", which might indicate that copper was mined and bronze was worked there.

History

Since ancient times the city has been the distribution point for salt gathered from the nearby Sabkhat al-Jabbul.

Archeological findings

The Sfire I Treaty which may contain 8th century BCE evidence of a deity called "Most High."

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is an independent international institute in Sweden, dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament. Established on 6 May 1966, SIPRI provides data, analysis and recommendations, based on open sources, to policymakers, researchers, media and the interested public.

In the University of Pennsylvania’s 2013 Global Go To Think Tanks Report, SIPRI is ranked the fifth most influential think tank in the world, after the Brookings Institution, Chatham House, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

History

In 1964, Prime Minister of Sweden Tage Erlander put forward the idea of establishing a peace research institute to commemorate Sweden's 150 years of unbroken peace.

A Swedish Royal Commission chaired by Ambassador Alva Myrdal proposed in its 1966 report to establish an institute, later named the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI. The Institute's research should seek to contribute to 'the understanding of the preconditions for a stable peace and for peaceful solutions of international conflicts' and the Commission recommended that research be concentrated on armaments, their limitation and reduction, and arms control. The Commission also recommended that SIPRI work be of 'an applied research character directed towards practical-political questions [which] should be carried on in a constant interchange with research of a more theoretical kind'.