‫ الموسوعة الحرة‬was launched on January 15, 2001.

There was only the English language

version initially, but it quickly developed similar versions in other languages, which differ in
content and in editing practices. With 5,420,336 articles, [notes 5] the English Wikipedia is
the largest of the more than 290 ‫ الموسوعة الحرة‬encyclopedias. Overall, ‫ الموسوعة الحرة‬consists
of more than 40 million articles in more than 250 different languages.

A study conducted gave a distribution of topics as well as growth (from July 2006 to January
2008) in each field:

Culture and the arts: 30% (210%)

Society and social sciences: 12% (83%)

History and events: 11% (143%)

Technology and the applied sciences: 4% (-6%)

Health: 2% (42%) 6- Mathematics and logic: 1% (146%)

‫ الموسوعة الحرة‬is a free online
encyclopedia with the aim to allow
anyone to edit articles. ‫ الموسوعة الحرة‬is
the largest and most popular general
reference work on
the Internet and is ranked among the ten
most popular websites. ‫ الموسوعة الحرة‬is
owned by the nonprofit Wikimedia
Foundation.