{"id":19530,"date":"2016-04-15T12:58:58","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T11:58:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=19530"},"modified":"2016-04-15T12:59:47","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T11:59:47","slug":"where-is-dabiq-and-why-is-it-so-special","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=19530","title":{"rendered":"Where is Dabiq and why is it so special?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Media reports suggest that Syrian Government forces are close to retaking the ISIS-occupied town of Dabiq in north-west Syria close to the Turkish border, but ISIS is putting up a strong resistance. Before the war, this was a small town which had a population of only just over 3,000, so what makes it so special?<\/p>\n<p>This is a location with a special place in history.\u00a0The town was the site of the battle of Marj Dabiq in 1516, in which the Ottoman Empire decisively defeated the Mamluk Sultanate.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"line-height: 1.5;\">It is also a place that Islamic fundamentalists believe will have a special place in the future.\u00a0 It is one of two possible locations for an epic battle between invading Christians and the defending Muslims which will result in a Muslim victory and mark the beginning of the end of the world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So Dabiq is special and indeed ISIS has\u00a0named its English-language magazine after the town.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media reports suggest that Syrian Government forces are close to retaking the ISIS-occupied town of Dabiq in north-west Syria close to the Turkish border, but ISIS is putting up a strong resistance. Before the war, this was a small town which had a population of only just over 3,000, so what makes it so special? [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19530"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19537,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19530\/revisions\/19537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}