Africa is one of the hottest continents on the planet. At the same time, however, from the point of view of geography, it also has an extreme northern point, which is a small promontory in the Mediterranean Sea.
The northernmost point of Africa
The most extreme point of the African continent has the following geographic coordinates: 37 ° 20 ′ 28 ″ north latitude and 9 ° 44 ′ 48 ″ east longitude. Thus, we can state that this point is located on the territory of one of the small states in North Africa - in Tunisia.
A closer look at the characteristics of this point reveals that it is a promontory protruding far enough into the Mediterranean. The Arabic name of this world-famous point is pronounced as "Ras el-Abyad", but quite often you can find an abbreviated version of this phrase - "El-Abyad".
From a substantive point of view, both of these options are legitimate. The fact is that "races" in translation from Arabic into Russian just means "cape", so the use of the Russian analogue in this situation is quite acceptable. In turn, the word "abyad" can be translated from the original language as "white", and "el" is just an article untranslatable in this situation. Thus, the name of the extreme northern point of Africa in translation into Russian means "white cape".
Nevertheless, according to geographers, it is unlikely that this name was given to him in connection with its northern position. Most likely, this name reflects the special color of the sand on this Mediterranean coast.
Other names
At the same time, the cape, which is the extreme northern point of the African continent, has other names. So, at the time when Tunisia was a French colony, the name was quite widespread in European countries, which was a translation of the Arabic original into French: it was called "Cap Blanc", which in French also meant "white cape". However, the primary source of this name was the Arabic name of this geographical point.
Another name common in those days was the name "Ras Engela", which, by analogy with the modern name, was often abbreviated to the version of "Engel": in fact, such a name can be translated into modern Russian as "Cape Engela". Researchers suggest that this African cape could have received such a name in honor of the German traveler Franz Engel, who was quite famous in his time, who made several significant geographical discoveries at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, although his activities were more connected with South America than with Africa.
