Iftah Ya Simsim
Iftah Ya Simsim (; meaning "Open Sesame") is the first international co-production of the American children's television series "Sesame Street" created in the Arab world. It premiered in Kuwait on September 14, 1979 and was broadcast in 22 Arabic-speaking countries, running until April 6, 1990. The program continued to be well-known decades after it went off the air. In 1978, educators, mass media officers, and social planners agreed to adopt "Sesame Street" as a feasible and economical solution for the low attendance in preschools and illiteracy that plagued the region. They approached the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the producers of the American show, and purchased the rights to create an Arab version for US$2.5 million.
Simsir
Simsir was a principality in Central Eastern Chechnya in the Middle Ages, existing in the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was located roughly in Eastern Chechnya (Ichkeria, roughly where the modern districts of Gudermes and Nozhay-Yurt lie today, around the Sunzha and Terek rivers. Its name may have been derived from the Chechen town of Simsir. It was a rather small state; the southern parts of Chechnya and Ingushetia were ruled by Durdzuketia, while the northwestern parts of the Vainakh area belonged to Alania. Simsir originally also had lands in Southeast Chechnya, but over the course of its existence, it became more and more focused on the Sunzha river as the core of its statehood. Its society had a feudal hierarchical social structure, and in its later years it allied itself with the Golden Horde before it was destroyed in 1390 by Timurlane, with that conquest of Timurlane written about in the Zafarnama by Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi.