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16773 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite%20%28disambiguation%29 | Kite (disambiguation) | A kite is a type of aircraft.
Kite or kites may also refer to:
Biology
Kite (bird)
Music
Kite (band), a Swedish synthpop duo
"Kite" (Arashi song)
"Kite" (U2 song)
"Kite" (Kate Bush song)
Kite (Kirsty MacColl album)
Kite (Stefanie Sun album)
"Kites" (song), a song by Simon Dupree
"Kite", a song by Nick Heyward from his album From Monday to Sunday
"Kites", a song by Reks from his album The Greatest X
"Kite Song", a song by Kevin Roth from the Shining Time Station episode "Faith, Hope and Anxiety"
Film
Patang (film) (The Kite in English), a 1993 Indian film directed by Goutam Ghose
Kite (film series), an anime series
Kite (1998 film), a 1998 anime film and the first in the series
Kite Liberator, a 2008 anime film and the second installment of the Kite film series
Kite (2014 film), a 2014 film based on the anime
Saranggola, 1999 Filipino film titled "The Kite" internationally
The Kite (2003 film), a 2003 Lebanese drama
Kites (film), a 2010 Bollywood film
Ships
, the name of seven ships of the Royal Navy
, 280-ton sealer used by Robert Peary on the Peary expedition to Greenland of 1891–92
, various ships of the U.S. Navy
Other uses
Alpi Pioneer 300 Kite, an Italian light-sport aircraft design
Kite (geometry), a kite-shaped quadrilateral
Kite (sail)
Kite (surname), a surname
Kite (.hack), a fictional character
Kite (Hunter × Hunter), a fictional character
Kite, Georgia, United States
Kite aspect, a concept in astrology
Kite and dart tiling
Desert kite, a man-made pattern of boulders believed to have been used for funneling herds of wild animals for hunting
Kite, a hypothetical creature in the TV series Extraterrestrial
Kite (novel), by Melvin Burgess
Kite, an electronic trading platform from Zerodha
The Kite, a novel by W. O. Mitchell
Kite (sailboat), an American sailing dinghy design
Kite shield a type of shield used in the 10th to 12th centuries
Kite, any aircraft, in RAF slang
KITE (AM), a radio station (1410 AM) licensed to serve Victoria, Texas, United States
KNAL (FM), a radio station in Texas (93.3 FM) licensed to serve Port Lavaca, which held the call sign KITE from 2001 to 2014
KiTE, a private engineering college in Coimbatore, India
See also
Kite (surname)
Kiting (disambiguation)
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16774 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl%20D%C3%B6nitz | Karl Dönitz | Karl Dönitz (sometimes spelled Doenitz; ; 16 September 1891 24 December 1980) was a German admiral who briefly succeeded Adolf Hitler as head of state in May 1945, holding the position until the dissolution of the Flensburg Government following Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies days later. As Supreme Commander of the Navy beginning in 1943, he played a major role in the naval history of World War II. He was convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials in 1946.
He began his career in the Imperial German Navy before World War I. In 1918, he was commanding , and was taken prisoner of war by British forces. While in a POW camp, he formulated what he later called Rudeltaktik ("pack tactic", commonly called "wolfpack").
By the start of the Second World War, Dönitz was supreme commander of the Kriegsmarine's U-boat arm (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU)). In January 1943, Dönitz achieved the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral) and replaced Grand Admiral Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy. Dönitz was the main enemy of Allied naval forces in the Battle of the Atlantic. From 1939 to 1943 the U-boats fought effectively but lost the initiative from May 1943. Dönitz ordered his submarines into battle until 1945 to relieve the pressure on other branches of the Wehrmacht (armed forces). 648 U-boats were lost—429 with no survivors. Furthermore, of these, 215 were lost on their first patrol. Around 30,000 of the 40,000 men who served in U-boats perished.
On 30 April 1945, after the suicide of Adolf Hitler and in accordance with his last will and testament, Dönitz was named Hitler's successor as head of state, with the title of President of Germany and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. On 7 May 1945, he ordered Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations Staff of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), to sign the German instruments of surrender in Reims, France. Dönitz remained as head of the Flensburg Government, as it became known, until it was dissolved by the Allied powers on 23 May.
By his own admission, Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and supporter of Hitler; he held anti-Semitic beliefs and insisted that Kriegsmarine officers adhere to his political views. Following the war, Dönitz was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity; planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression; and crimes against the laws of war. He was found not guilty of committing crimes against humanity, but guilty of committing crimes against peace and war crimes against the laws of war. He was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment; after his release, he lived in a village near Hamburg until his death in 1980.
Early life and career
Dönitz was born in Grünau, near Berlin, to Anna Beyer and Emil Dönitz, an engineer, in 1891. Karl had an older brother. In 1910, Dönitz enlisted in the Kaiserliche Marine ("Imperial Navy").
On 27 September 1913, Dönitz was commissioned as a Leutnant zur See (acting sub-lieutenant). When World War I began, he served on the light cruiser in the Mediterranean Sea. In August 1914, the Breslau and the battlecruiser were sold to the Ottoman Navy; the ships were renamed the Midilli and the Yavuz Sultan Selim, respectively. They began operating out of Constantinople, under Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, engaging Russian forces in the Black Sea. On 22 March 1916, Dönitz was promoted to Oberleutnant zur See. He requested a transfer to the submarine forces, which became effective on 1 October 1916. He attended the submariner's school at Flensburg-Mürwik and passed out on 3 January 1917. He served as watch officer on , and from February 1918 onward as commander of . On 2 July 1918, he became commander of , operating in the Mediterranean. On 4 October, after suffering technical difficulties, Dönitz was forced to surface and scuttled his boat. He was captured by the British and incarcerated in the Redmires camp near Sheffield. He remained a prisoner of war until 1919 and in 1920 he returned to Germany.
On 27 May 1916, Dönitz married a nurse named Ingeborg Weber (1894–1962), the daughter of German general Erich Weber (1860–1933). They had three children whom they raised as Protestant Christians: daughter Ursula (1917–1990) and sons Klaus (1920–1944) and Peter (1922–1943). Both of Dönitz's sons were killed during the Second World War. Peter was killed on 19 May 1943 when was sunk in the North Atlantic with all hands.
Hitler had issued a policy stating that if a senior officer such as Dönitz lost a son in battle and had other sons in the military, the latter could withdraw from combat and return to civilian life.
After Peter's death Klaus was forbidden to have any combat role and was allowed to leave the military to begin studying to become a naval doctor. He returned to sea and was killed on 13 May 1944; he had persuaded his friends to let him go on the E-boat S-141 for a raid on Selsey on his 24th birthday. The boat was sunk by the French destroyer La Combattante.
Interwar period
He continued his naval career in the naval arm of the Weimar Republic's armed forces. On 10 January 1921, he became a Kapitänleutnant (lieutenant) in the new German navy (Vorläufige Reichsmarine). Dönitz commanded torpedo boats, becoming a Korvettenkapitän (lieutenant-commander) on 1 November 1928. On 1 September 1933, he became a Fregattenkapitän (commander) and, in 1934, was put in command of the cruiser Emden, the ship on which cadets and midshipmen took a year-long world cruise as training.
In 1935, the Reichsmarine was renamed Kriegsmarine. Germany was prohibited by the Treaty of Versailles from possessing a submarine fleet. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 allowed submarines and he was placed in command of the U-boat flotilla Weddigen, which comprised three boats; ; and; . On 1 September 1935, he was promoted to Kapitän zur See (naval captain).
Dönitz opposed Raeder's views that surface ships should be given priority in the Kriegsmarine during the war, but in 1935 Dönitz doubted U-boat suitability in a naval trade war on account of their slow speed. This phenomenal contrast with Dönitz's wartime policy is explained in the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement. The accord was viewed by the navy with optimism, Dönitz included. He remarked, "Britain, in the circumstances, could not possibly be included in the number of potential enemies." The statement, made after June 1935, was uttered at a time when the naval staff were sure France and the Soviet Union were likely to be Germany's only enemies. Dönitz's statement was partially correct. Britain was not foreseen as an immediate enemy, but the navy still held onto a cadre of imperial officers, which along with its Nazi-instigated intake, understood war would be certain in the distant future, perhaps not until the mid-1940s.
Dönitz came to recognise the need for more of these vessels. Only 26 were in commission or under construction that summer. In the time before his command of submarines, he perfected the group tactics that first appealed to him in 1917. At this time Dönitz first expressed his procurement policies. His preference for the submarine fleet was in the production of large numbers of small craft. In contrast to other warships, the fighting power of the U-boat, in his opinion, was not dependent on its size as the torpedo, not the gun, was the machine's main weapon. Dönitz had a tendency to be critical of larger submarines and listed a number of disadvantages in their production, operation and tactical use. Dönitz recommended the Type VII submarine as the ideal submarine. The boat was reliable and had a range of 6,200 miles. Modifications lengthened this to 8,700 miles.
Dönitz revived Hermann Bauer's idea of grouping several submarines together into a Rudeltaktik ("pack tactic", commonly called "wolfpack") to overwhelm a merchant convoy's escorts. Implementation of wolfpacks had been difficult in World War I owing to the limitations of available radios. In the interwar years, Germany had developed ultra high frequency transmitters,(ukw) while the Enigma cipher machine was believed to have made communications secure. A 1922 paper written by Kapitäinleutnant Wessner of the Wehrabteilung (Defence Ministry) pointed to the success of surface attacks at night and the need to coordinate operations with multiple boats to defeat the escorts. Dönitz knew of the paper and improved the ideas suggested by Wessner. This tactic had the added advantage that a submarine on the surface was undetectable by Asdic. Dönitz claimed after the war he would not allow his service to be intimidated by British disclosures about Asdic and the course of the war had proven him right. In reality, Dönitz harboured fears stretching back to 1937 that the new technology would render the U-boat impotent. Dönitz published his ideas on night attacks in January 1939 in a booklet called Die U-Bootwaffe which apparently went unnoticed by the British. The Royal Navy's overconfidence in Asdic encouraged the Admiralty to suppose it could deal with submarines whatever strategy they adopted—in this they were proven wrong; submarines were difficult to locate and destroy under operational conditions.
In 1939 he expressed his belief that he could win the war with 300 vessels. The Nazi leadership's rearmament priorities were fundamentally geared to land and aerial warfare. From 1933 to 1936, the navy was granted only 13 percent of total armament expenditure. The production of U-boats, despite the existing Z Plan, remained low. In 1935 shipyards produced 14 submarines, 21 in 1936, one 1937. In 1938 nine were commissioned and in 1939 18 U-boats were built. Dönitz's vision may have been misguided. The British had planned for contingency construction programmes for the summer, 1939. At least 78 small escorts and a crash construction programme of "Whale catchers" had been invoked. The British, according to one historian, had taken all the sensible steps necessary to deal with the U-boat menace as it existed in 1939 and were well placed to deal with large numbers of submarines, prior to events in 1940.
World War II
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Britain and France soon declared war on Germany, and World War II began. On Sunday 3 September, Dönitz chaired a conference at Wilhelmshaven. At 11:15 am the British Admiralty sent out a signal "Total Germany". B-Dienst intercepted the message and it was promptly reported to Dönitz. Dönitz paced around the room and his staff purportedly heard him repeatedly say, "My God! So it's war with England again!"
Dönitz abandoned the conference to return within the hour a far more composed man. He announced to his officers, "we know our enemy. We have today the weapon and a leadership that can face up to this enemy. The war will last a long time; but if each does his duty we will win." Dönitz had only 57 boats; of those, 27 were capable of reaching the Atlantic Ocean from their German bases. A small building program was already under way but the number of U-boats did not rise noticeably until the autumn of 1941.
Dönitz's first major action was the cover up of the sinking of the British passenger liner Athenia later the same day. Acutely sensitive to international opinion and relations with the United States, the death of more than a hundred civilians was damaging. Dönitz suppressed the truth that the ship was sunk by a German submarine. He accepted the commander's explanation that he genuinely believed the ship was armed. Dönitz ordered the engagement to be struck from the submarine's logbook. Dönitz did not admit the cover up until 1946.
Hitler's original orders to wage war only in accordance with the Prize Regulations, were not issued in any altruistic spirit but in the belief hostilities with the Western Allies would be brief. On 23 September 1939, Hitler, on the recommendation of Admiral Raeder, approved that all merchant ships making use of their wireless on being stopped by U-boats should be sunk or captured. This German order marked a considerable step towards unrestricted warfare. Four days later enforcement of Prize Regulations in the North Sea was withdrawn; and on 2 October complete freedom was given to attack darkened ships encountered off the British and French coasts. Two days later the Prize Regulations were cancelled in waters extending as far as 15° West, and on 17 October the German Naval Staff gave U-boats permission to attack without warning all ships identified as hostile. The zone where darkened ships could be attacked with complete freedom was extended to 20° West on 19 October. Practically the only restrictions now placed on U-boats concerned attacks on passenger liners and, on 17 November, they too were allowed to be attacked without warning if clearly identifiable as hostile.
Although the phrase was not used, by November 1939 the BdU was practicing unrestricted submarine warfare. Neutral shipping was warned by the Germans against entering the zone which, by American neutrality legislation, was forbidden to American shipping, and against steaming without lights, zigzagging or taking any defensive precautions. The complete practice of unrestricted warfare was not enforced for fear of antagonising neutral powers, particularly the Americans. Admirals Raeder and Dönitz and the German Naval Staff had always wished and intended to introduce unrestricted warfare as rapidly as Hitler could be persuaded to accept the possible consequences.
Dönitz and Raeder accepted the death of the Z Plan upon the outbreak of war. The U-boat programme would be the only portion of it to survive 1939. Both men lobbied Hitler to increase the planned production of submarines to at least 29 per month. The immediate obstacle to the proposals was Hermann Göring, head of the Four Year Plan, commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe and future successor to Hitler. Göring would not acquiesce and in March 1940 Raeder was forced to drop the figure from 29 to 25, but even that plan proved illusory. In the first half of 1940, two boats were delivered, increased to six in the final half of the year. In 1941 the deliveries increased to 13 to June, and then 20 to December. It was not until late 1941 the number of vessels began to increase quickly. From September 1939 through to March 1940, 15 U-boats were lost—nine to convoy escorts. The impressive tonnage sunk had little impact on the Allied war effort at that point.
Commander of the submarine fleet
On 1 October 1939, Dönitz became a Konteradmiral (rear admiral) and "Commander of the Submarines" (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, BdU). For the first part of the war, despite disagreements with Raeder where best to deploy his men, Dönitz was given considerable operational freedom for his junior rank.
From September–December 1939 U-boats sank 221 ships for 755,237 gross tons, at the cost of nine U-boats. Only 47 merchant ships were sunk in the North Atlantic, a tonnage of 249,195. Dönitz had difficulty in organising Wolfpack operations in 1939. A number of his submarines were lost en route to the Atlantic, through either the North Sea and heavily defended English Channel. Torpedo failures plagued commanders during convoy attacks. Along with successes against single ships, Dönitz authorised the abandonment of pack attacks in the autumn. The Norwegian Campaign amplified the defects. Dönitz wrote in May 1940, "I doubt whether men have ever had to rely on such a useless weapon." He ordered the removal of magnetic pistols in favour of contact fuses and their faulty depth control systems. In no fewer than 40 attacks on Allied warships, not a single sinking was achieved. The statistics show that from the outbreak of war to approximately the spring, 1940, faulty German torpedoes saved 50–60 ships equating to .
Dönitz was encouraged in operations against warships by the sinking of the aircraft carrier Courageous. On 28 September 1939 he said, "it is not true Britain possesses the means to eliminate the U-boat menace." The first specific operation—named "Special Operation P"—authorised by Dönitz was Günther Prien's attack on Scapa Flow, which sank the battleship Royal Oak. The attack became a propaganda success though Prien purportedly was unenthusiastic about being used that way. Stephen Roskill wrote, "It is now known that this operation was planned with great care by Admiral Dönitz, who was correctly informed of the weak state of the defences of the eastern entrances. Full credit must also be given to Lieutenant Prien for the nerve and determination with which he put Dönitz's plan into execution."
In May 1940, 101 ships were sunk—but only nine in the Atlantic—followed by 140 in June; 53 of them in the Atlantic for a total of that month. The first six months in 1940 cost Dönitz 15 U-boats. Until mid-1940 there remained a chronic problem with the reliability of the G7e torpedo. As the battles of Norway and Western Europe raged, the Luftwaffe sank more ships than the U-boats. In May 1940, German aircraft sank 48 ships (), three times that of German submarines. The Allied evacuations from western Europe and Scandinavia in June 1940 attracted Allied warships in large numbers, leaving many of the Atlantic convoys travelling through the Western Approaches unprotected. From June 1940, the German submarines began to exact a heavy toll. In the same month, the Luftwaffe sank just 22 ships () in a reversal of the previous months.
Germany's defeat of Norway gave the U-boats new bases much nearer to their main area of operations off the Western Approaches. The U-boats operated in groups or 'wolf packs' which were coordinated by radio from land. With the fall of France, Germany acquired U-boat bases at Lorient, Brest, St Nazaire, and La Pallice/La Rochelle and Bordeaux. This extended the range of Type VIIs. Regardless, the war with Britain continued. The admiral remained sceptical of Operation Sea Lion, a planned invasion and expected a long war. The destruction of seaborne trade became German strategy against Britain after the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Hitler was content with The Blitz and cutting off Britain's imports. Dönitz gained importance as the prospect of a quick victory faded. Dönitz concentrated groups of U-boats against the convoys and had them attack on the surface at night. In addition the Germans were helped by Italian submarines which in early 1941 actually surpassed the number of German U-boats. Having failed to persuade the Nazi leadership to prioritise U-boat construction, a task made more difficult by military victories in 1940 which convinced many people that Britain would give up the struggle, Dönitz welcomed the deployment of 26 Italian submarines to his force. Dönitz complimented Italian bravery and daring, but was critical of their training and submarine designs. Dönitz remarked they lacked the necessary toughness and discipline and consequently were "of no great assistance to us in the Atlantic."
The establishment of German bases on the French Atlantic coast allowed for the prospect of aerial support. Small numbers of German aircraft, such as the long-range Focke-Wulf Fw 200, sank a large number of ships in the Atlantic in the last quarter of 1940. In the long term, Göring proved an insurmountable problem in effecting cooperation between the navy and the Luftwaffe. In early 1941, while Göring was on leave, Dönitz approached Hitler and secured from him a single bomber/maritime patrol unit for the navy. Göring succeeded in overturning this decision and both Dönitz and Raeder were forced to settle for a specialist maritime air command under Luftwaffe control. Poorly supplied, Fliegerführer Atlantik achieved modest success in 1941, but thereafter failed to have an impact as British counter-measures evolved. Cooperation between the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe remained dysfunctional to the war's end. Göring and his unassailable position at the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (Air Ministry) prevented all but limited collaboration.
The U-boat fleet's successes in 1940 and early 1941 were spearheaded by a small number of highly trained and experienced pre-war commanders. Otto Kretschmer, Joachim Schepke, and Günther Prien were the most famous, but others included Hans Jenisch, Victor Oehrn, Engelbert Endrass, Herbert Schultze and Hans-Rudolf Rösing. Although skilled and with impeccable judgement, the shipping lanes they descended upon were poorly defended. The U-boat force did not escape unscathed. Within the space of several days in March 1941, Prien and Schepke were dead and Kretschmer was a prisoner. All of them fell in battle with a convoy system. The number of boats in the Atlantic remained low. Six fewer existed in May 1940 than in September 1939. In January 1941 there were just six on station in the Atlantic—the lowest during the war, while still suffering from unreliable torpedoes. Dönitz insisted that operations continue while "the smallest prospect of hits" remained.
For his part, Dönitz was involved in the daily operations of his boats and all the major operational level decisions. His assistant, Eberhard Godt, was left to manage daily operations as the war continued. Dönitz was debriefed personally by his captains which helped establish a rapport between leader and led. Dönitz neglected nothing that would make the bond firmer. Often there would be a distribution of medals or awards. As an ex-submariner, Dönitz did not like to contemplate the thought of a man who had done well heading out to sea, perhaps never to return, without being rewarded or receiving recognition. Dönitz acknowledged where decorations were concerned there was no red tape and that awards were "psychologically important."
Intelligence battle
Intelligence played an important role in the Battle of the Atlantic. In general, BdU intelligence was poor. Counter-intelligence was not much better. At the height of the battle in mid-1943 some 2,000 signals were sent from the 110 U-boats at sea. Radio traffic compromised his ciphers by giving the Allies more messages to work with. Furthermore, replies from the boats enabled the Allies to use High-frequency direction finding (HF/DF, called "Huff-Duff") to locate a U-boat using its radio, track it and attack it. The over-centralised command structure of BdU and its insistence on micro-managing every aspect of U-boat operations with endless signals provided the Allied navies with enormous intelligence. The enormous "paper chase" [cross-referencing of materials] operations pursued by Allied intelligence agencies was not thought possible by BdU. The Germans did not suspect the Allies had identified the codes broken by B-Dienst. Conversely, when Dönitz suspected the enemy had penetrated his own communications BdU's response was to suspect internal sabotage and reduce the number of the staff officers to the most reliable, exacerbating the problem of over-centralisation. In contrast to the Allies, the Wehrmacht was suspicious of civilian scientific advisors and generally distrusted outsiders. The Germans were never as open to new ideas or thinking of war in intelligence terms. According to one analyst BdU "lacked imagination and intellectual daring" in the naval war. These Allied advantages failed to avert heavy losses in the June 1940 May 1941 period, known to U-boat crews as the "First Happy Time." In June 1941, 68 ships were sunk in the North Atlantic () at a cost of four U-boats, but the German submarines would not eclipse that number for the remainder of the year. Just 10 transports were sunk in November and December 1941.
On 7 May 1941, the Royal Navy captured the German Arctic meteorological vessel München and took its Enigma machine intact, this allowed the Royal Navy to decode U-boat radio communications in June 1941. Two days later the capture of U-110 was an intelligence coup for the British. The settings for high-level "officer-only" signals, "short-signals" (Kurzsignale) and codes standardising messages to defeat HF/DF fixes by sheer speed were found. Only the Hydra settings for May were missing. The papers were the only stores destroyed by the crew. The capture on 28 June of another weather ship, Lauenburg, enabled British decryption operations to read radio traffic in July 1941. Beginning in August 1941, Bletchley Park operatives could decrypt signals between Dönitz and his U-boats at sea without any restriction. The capture of the U-110 allowed the Admiralty to identify individual boats, their commanders, operational readiness, damage reports, location, type, speed, endurance from working up in the Baltic to Atlantic patrols. On 1 February 1942, the Germans had introduced the M4 cipher machine, which secured communications until it was cracked in December 1942. Even so, the U-boats achieved their best success against the convoys in March 1943, due to an increase in U-boat numbers, and the protection of the shipping lines was in jeopardy. Due to the cracked M4 and the use of radar, the Allies began to send air and surface reinforcements to convoys under threat. The shipping lines were secured, which came as a great surprise to Dönitz. The lack of intelligence and increased numbers of U-boats contributed enormously to Allied losses that year.
Signals security aroused Dönitz's suspicions during the war. On 12 January 1942 German supply submarine U-459 arrived 800 nautical miles west of Freetown, well clear of convoy lanes. It was scheduled to rendezvous with an Italian submarine, until intercepted by a warship. The German captain's report coincided with reports of a decrease in sightings and a period of tension between Dönitz and Raeder. The number of U-boats in the Atlantic, by logic, should have increased, not lowered the number of sightings and the reasons for this made Dönitz uneasy. Despite several investigations, the conclusion of the BdU staff was that Enigma was impenetrable. His signals officer responded to the U-459 incident with answers ranging from coincidence, direction finding to Italian treachery. General Erich Fellgiebel, Chief Signal Officer of Army High Command and of Supreme Command of Armed Forces (Chef des Heeresnachrichtenwesens), apparently concurred with Dönitz. He concluded that there was "convincing evidence" that, after an "exhaustive investigation" that the Allied codebreakers had been reading high level communications. Other departments in the navy downplayed or dismissed these concerns. They vaguely implied "some components" of Enigma had been compromised, but there was "no real basis for acute anxiety as regards any compromise of operational security."
American entry
Following Hitler's declaration of war on the United States on 11 December 1941, Dönitz implemented Operation Drumbeat (Unternehmen Paukenschlag). The entry of the United States benefited German submarines in the short term. Dönitz intended to strike close to shore in American and Canadian waters and prevent the convoys—the most effective anti–U-boat system—from ever forming. Dönitz was determined to take advantage of Canadian and American unpreparedness before the situation changed.
The problem inhibiting Dönitz's plan was a lack of boats. On paper he had 259, but in January 1942, 99 were still undergoing sea trials and 59 were assigned to training flotillas, leaving only 101 on war operations. 35 of these were under repair in port, leaving 66 operational, of which 18 were low on fuel and returning to base, 23 were en route to areas where fuel and torpedoes needed to be conserved, and one was heading to the Mediterranean. Therefore, on 1 January Dönitz had a fighting strength of 16–25 in the Atlantic (six near to Iceland on "Norwegian operations"), three in the Arctic Ocean, three in the Mediterranean and three operating west of Gibraltar. Dönitz was severely limited to what he could accomplish in American waters in an initial offensive.
From 13 January 1942, Dönitz planned to begin a surprise offensive from the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to Cape Hatteras. Unknown to him, ULTRA had read his Enigma signals and knew the position, size, and intentions of his boats, down to the date the operation was scheduled to begin. The attacks, when they came, were not a surprise. Of the 12 U-boats that began the offensive from the Grand Banks southward, just two survived the war. The operation began the Battle of the St. Lawrence, a series of battles which lasted into 1944. It remained possible for a U-boat to operate in the Gulf into 1944, but countermeasures were strong. In 1942, the global ratio of ships-to-U-boats sunk in Canadian waters was 112:1. The global average was 10.3:1. The solitary kill was achieved by the RCAF. Canadian operations, as with American efforts, were a failure during this year.
Along with conventional U-boat operations Dönitz authorised clandestine activities in Canadian waters, including spying, mine-laying, and recovery of German prisoners of war (as Dönitz wished to extract information from rescued submariners concerning Allied tactics). All of these things tied down Canadian military power and imposed industrial, fiscal, and psychological costs. The impunity with which U-boats carried out these operations in Canadian waters into 1944 provided a propaganda effect. . One of these operations was the well-known Operation Kiebitz to rescue Otto Kretschmer.
Even with operational problems great success was achieved in American waters. From January to July 1942, Dönitz's submarines were able to attack unescorted ships off the United States' east coast and in the Caribbean Sea; U-boats sank more ships and tonnage than at any other time in the war. After a convoy system was introduced to protect the shipping, Dönitz shifted his U-boats back to the North Atlantic. The period, known in the U-boat Arm as the "Second Happy Time", represented one of the greatest naval disasters of all time, and largest defeat suffered by American sea power. The success was achieved with only five U-boats initially which sank 397 ships in waters protected by the United States Navy with an additional 23 sunk at the Panama Sea Frontier. Dönitz put the successes down to the American failure to initialize a blackout along the East Coast of the United States and ship captains' insistence on following peace-time safety procedures. The failure to implement a blackout stemmed from the American government's concern it would affect tourism trade. Dönitz wrote in his memoirs that the lighthouses and buoys "shone forth, though perhaps a little less brightly than usually".
By the time improved American air and naval defences had driven German submarines from American shores, 5,000 Allied sailors had been killed for negligible losses in U-boats. Dönitz ordered simultaneous operations in the Caribbean Sea. The ensuing Battle of the Caribbean resulted in immediate dividends for U-boats. In a short time, at least 100 transports had been destroyed or sunk. The sinkings damaged inter-island trade substantially. Operation Neuland was among the most damaging naval campaigns in the region. Oil refinery production in region declined while the tanker fleet suffered losses of up to ten percent within twenty-four hours. However, ultimately Dönitz could not hope to sink more ships than American industry could build, so he targeted the tanker fleet in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in the hope that depleted oil transport would paralyze shipyard output. 33 transports were sunk in July before Dönitz lost his first crew. The USN introduced effective convoy systems thereafter, ending the "carnage."
Dönitz maintained his demands for the concentration of all his crews in the Atlantic. As the military situation in North Africa and on the Eastern Front began to deteriorate Hitler diverted a number of submarines to the Battle of the Mediterranean upon the suggestions of Admiral Eberhard Weichold. Raeder and Dönitz resisted the deployment to the Mediterranean to no avail. Hitler felt compelled to act against Allied sea forces which were having an enormous impact on Axis supply lines to North Africa. The decision defied logic, for a victory in the Atlantic would end the war in the Mediterranean. The U-boat war in the Mediterranean was a costly failure, despite successes against warships. Approximately 60 crews were lost and only one crew managed to withdraw through the Strait of Gibraltar. Albrecht Brandi was one of Dönitz's highest performers but his record is a matter of controversy; post-war records prove systematic over-claiming of sinkings. He survived his boat's sinking and was smuggled to Germany through Spain. Dönitz had met his end as a submarine commander in the Mediterranean two decades earlier.
In 1942 Dönitz summed up his philosophy in one simple paragraph; "The enemy's shipping constitutes one single, great entity. It is therefore immaterial where a ship is sunk. Once it has been destroyed it has to be replaced by a new ship; and that's that." The remark was the green light to unrestricted submarine warfare and began the tonnage war proper. BdU intelligence concluded the Americans could produce 15,300,000 tons of shipping in 1942 and 1943—two million tons under actual production figures. Dönitz always calculated the worst-case scenario using the highest figures of enemy production potential. Some 700,000 tons per month needed to be sunk to win the war. The "second happy time" reached a peak in June 1942, with 325,000 tons sunk, up from 311,000 in May, 255,000 in April and the highest since the 327,000 tons sunk in March 1942. With support from the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy, the new convoy systems compelled Dönitz to withdraw his captains to the mid-Atlantic once again. Nevertheless, there was still cause for optimism. B-Dienst had cracked the convoy ciphers and by July 1942 he could call upon 311 boats, 140 operational, to conduct a renewed assault. By October 1942 he had 196 operational from 365. Dönitz's force finally reached the desired number both he and Raeder had hoped for in 1939. Unaware of it, Dönitz and his men were aided by the ULTRA blackout. The addition of a fourth rotor to the Enigma left radio detection the only way to gather intelligence on dispositions and intentions of the German naval forces. German code breakers had their own success in the capture of the code book to Cipher Code Number 3 from a merchant ship. It was a treble success for the BdU.
Dönitz was content that he now had the naval power to extend U-boat operations to other areas aside the North Atlantic. The Caribbean, Brazilian waters with the coast of West Africa designated operational theatres. Waters in the southern hemisphere to South Africa could also be attacked with the new Type IX submarine. The strategy was sound and his tactical ideas were effective. The number of boats available allowed him to form Wolfpacks to comb convoy routes from east to west attacking one when found and pursuing it across the ocean. The pack then refuelled from a U-boat tanker and worked from west to east. Raeder and the operations staff disputed the value in attacking convoys heading westward with empty cargo holds. The tactics were successful but placed great strain on crews who spent up to eight days in constant action.
November 1942 was a new high in the Atlantic. 134 ships were sunk for 807,754 tons. 119 were destroyed by submarines, 83 (508,707 tons) in the Atlantic. The same month Dönitz suffered strategic defeat. His submarines failed to prevent Operation Torch, even with 196 of them operating in the Atlantic. Dönitz considered it a major self-inflicted defeat. Allied morale radically improved after the victories of Torch, the Second Battle of El Alamein and the Battle of Stalingrad; all occurred within days of one another. The U-boat war was the only military success the Germans enjoyed at the end of the year.
Commander-in-chief and Grand Admiral
On 30 January 1943, Dönitz replaced Erich Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine) and Großadmiral (grand admiral) of the Naval High Command (Oberkommando der Marine). In a communique to the navy he announced his intentions to retain practical control of the U-boats and his desire to fight to the end for Hitler. Dönitz's inability to delegate control of the U-boat service has been construed as a weakness in the U-boat arm, contributing to the perception that Dönitz was an "impatient warrior", preoccupied with fighting battles and tactics rather than a strategist or organiser.
Dönitz's promotion earned Hitler his undying loyalty. For Dönitz, Hitler had given him a "true home-coming at last, to a country in which unemployment appeared to have been abolished, the class war no longer tore the nation apart, and the shame of defeat in 1918 was being expunged." When war came, Dönitz became more firmly wedded to his Nazi faith. Hitler recognised his patriotism, professionalism but above all, his loyalty. Dönitz remained so, long after the war was lost. In so doing, he wilfully ignored the genocidal nature of the regime and claimed ignorance of the Holocaust.
In the last quarter of 1942, 69 submarines had been commissioned taking the total number to 393, with 212 operational. Dönitz was not satisfied and immediately began a naval construction programme which in contrast to Raeder's, laid all its emphasis on torpedo boats and submarines. Dönitz's proposed expansion ran into difficulties experienced by all of his predecessors; the lack of steel. The navy had no representation in or to Albert Speer's armaments ministry for naval production was the only sphere not under his control. Dönitz understood this worked against the navy because it lacked the elasticity to cope with breakdowns of production at any point, whereas the other services could make good production by compensating one sector at the expense of another. Without any representatives the battle of priorities was left to Speer and Göring. Dönitz had the sense to place U-boat production under Speer on the provision 40 per month were completed. Dönitz persuaded Hitler not to scrap the surface fleet capital ships, though they played no role in the Atlantic during his time in command. Dönitz reasoned the destruction of the surface fleet would provide the British with a victory and heap pressure on the U-boats, for these warships were tying down British air and naval forces that would otherwise be sent into the Atlantic.
New construction procedures, dispensing with prototypes and the abandonment of modifications reduced construction times from 460,000-man hours to 260–300,000 to meet Speer's quota. In the spring 1944, the Type XXI submarine was scheduled to reach frontline units. In 1943 however, the Combined Bomber Offensive complicated the planned production. Dönitz and Speer were appalled by the destruction of Hamburg, a major construction site. The battles of 1943 and 1944 were fought with the existing VII and Type IX submarines. The type VII remained the backbone of the fleet in 1943.
At the end of 1942, Dönitz was faced with the appearance of escort carriers, and long-range aircraft working with convoy escorts. To protect his boats against the latter, he ordered his boats to restrict their operations to the Mid-Atlantic Gap, a stretch of ocean out of the range of land‐based aircraft referred to by the Germans as "the black hole." Allied air forces had few aircraft equipped with ASV radar for U-boat detection into April and May 1943, and such units would not exist in Newfoundland until June. Convoys relied on RAF Coastal Command aircraft operating from Northern Ireland and Iceland. The aircraft imposed restraints on U-boat captains, who feared them for their ability to sink a submarine or alert surface warships to their position. In 1942 Coastal Command began forming units combined with ASV and Leigh Light groups to attack U-boats in transit to the Atlantic via the Bay of Biscay, which continued into 1943. The Command was moderately successful after mid-1942.
1943 began with continued tactical success for Dönitz in battle. In January Convoy TM 1 was nearly destroyed. The loss of 100,000 tons of fuel in one convoy represented the most devastating loss percentage of the war—only two of nine tankers reached port. The British 8th Army were forced to ration their fuel for a time, earning Dönitz the gratitude of the Afrika Korps. The Casablanca Conference, held that month, identified the Atlantic as the urgent priority. It was agreed that until the defeat of Dönitz and his men, there could be no amphibious landings in continental Europe. Unknown to Dönitz, Bletchley Park had restored the flow of Enigma information and the Admiralty was able to re-route convoys around wolfpacks. During January and February 1943 information was decrypted within 24 hours proving operationally useful, although this slipped at the end of the second month contributing to German interceptions. Even so, in appalling hunter weather, the Germans sank only 44 ships during the month, even with 100 U-boats at sea, the majority stationed in the mid-Atlantic air gap.
In February 1943 the strength of Allied defences were an ominous sign for Dönitz. The battle of convoy HX 224 was ended upon the intervention of air power from Iceland. Dönitz sent 20 boats to attack SC 118 and both sides suffered heavy losses—11 merchants for three U-boats plus four damaged. It was "what both sides considered one of the hardest fought battles of the Atlantic war." Despite sending 20 crews into action, Dönitz was concerned that most captains did not press home attacks. The majority of the ships sunk were by one crew, commanded by Siegfried von Forstner—he sank seven.
In March, Convoy SC 121 was attacked by 31 U-boats in two patrol lines. It was the most successful battle of the war for Dönitz. The battle of Convoys HX 229/SC 122 was the largest convoy battle, with 40 U-boats involved. Each operation was successful, but all were fought in the mid-Atlantic. Allied losses reached a peak in March 1943. The Admiralty later issued a report on the matter; "The Germans never came so near [to] disrupting communications between the new world and the old as in the first twenty days of March 1943." Dönitz later conceded the March battles were to be the U-boats' last victories. New Allied techniques, tactics and technology began to turn the tide. By April 1943 U-boat morale was reaching a crisis point. 98 new boats were sent into the Atlantic that month, and although the training was thorough the crews were inexperienced and it showed. 15 U-boats were destroyed in March 1943 and another 15 in April. Werner Hartenstein and Johann Mohr were notable casualties over the course of these eight weeks; the former's decision to rescue survivors of a sunken ship led to Dönitz's Laconia Order, which later formed part of the criminal case against Dönitz.
Ominous for BdU was the sudden growth of Allied air power. The Allied command accepted that air cover over the mid-Atlantic was totally inadequate and had drawn attention to the fact that not one VLR (Very Long Range) aircraft was to be found at any Allied air base west of Iceland. The Americans released 255 Liberators for the North Atlantic. At the end of March 1943 20 VLR aircraft were operational rising to 41 by mid-April, all of them flown by British crews. 28 anti-submarine and 11 anti-shipping squadrons were available to RAF Coastal Command, 619 aircraft in all—a striking change since September 1939. The influx of radar equipped aircraft into mid-Atlantic was matched by air patrols over the Bay of Biscay. Dönitz detected a drop in morale among his captains, as did the British. Dönitz encouraged his commanders to show a "hunter's instinct" and "warrior spirit" in the face of the air–surface support group threat.
Along with air power, the BdU was forced to contend with a large increase in available Allied convoy escorts which replenished their tanks from tankers in the convoys allowing escort across the ocean. The escort carrier support groups, protected by destroyers, which, in the words of the official naval historian of the Second World War, proved decisive; "it was the advent of the Support Groups, the Escort Carriers and the Very Long Range Aircraft which turned the tables on the U-boats-and did so with astonishing rapidity."
108 ships were sunk in the first 20 days of March, and just 15 in the last 10. The official naval historian wrote, "The collapse of the enemy's offensive, when it came, was so sudden that it took him completely by surprise. We now know that, in fact, a downward trend in the U-boats' recent accomplishments could have forewarned him, but was concealed from him by the exaggerated claims made by their commanders." In April Dönitz lost five crews to Coastal Command's ASV Bay offensive. Encouraged by the isolated successes of anti-aircraft artillery installed on submarines, he ordered crews to stay on the surface and fight it out with the aircraft. The decision caused casualties—four boats were lost in the first week of May alone, and three more by the end.
For the month of April Allied losses fell to 56 ships of 327,943 tons. In May 1943 the battle reached a climax with the battles of Convoy ONS 5, Convoy SC 129, Convoy SC 130. Throughout the battles only two ships were sunk in convoy in the Atlantic while an air anti-submarine escort was present. Dönitz depended on the surface maneuverability of his U-boats to locate targets, assemble wolfpacks and the complicated business of positioning his forces ahead of a convoy for an attack. Allied air power determined where and when U-boats could move freely surfaced. It was the combination of convoy escorts and air power that made the Atlantic unsuitable for pack operations. The US Navy introduced the K-class blimp. They forced a commander to dive to prevent the vehicle marking his position or attacking directly. From 10 to 24 May 1943, ten convoys passed through the mid-Atlantic. Six of the 370 ships were sunk; three were stragglers. 13 U-boats were sunk; four by warships, seven by aircraft, and two shared.
By 24 May, when Dönitz conceded defeat and withdrew the surviving crews from the field of battle, they had already lost 33 U-boats. At the end of May it had risen to 41. Dönitz tried to limit the damage to morale by declaring that the withdrawal was only temporary "to avoid unnecessary losses in a period when our weapons are shown to be at a disadvantage" and that "the battle in the north Atlantic—the decisive area—will be resumed." Dönitz did make a further attempt to regain the initiative, but the battle never reached the same pitch of intensity, or hung in the balance, as during the spring of 1943. Consequently, the Allied success is described as decisive in winning the Battle of the Atlantic. On 24 May Dönitz ordered the suspension of Atlantic operations, bringing an end to Black May.
Defeat in the mid-Atlantic left Dönitz in a dilemma. The U-boats had proven unable to elude convoy escorts and attack convoys with success. He was concerned about crew morale suffering from idleness and a loss of experience with the latest Allied developments in anti-submarine warfare. Aside from problems of seaworthiness among machines and crew, there were not enough Submarine pens to store idle boats and they were a target for aircraft in port. Dönitz would not withdraw his submarines from combat operations, for he felt the ships, men and aircraft engaged in suppressing the U-boats could then be turned on Germany directly. The U-boat war was to continue.
Hunter-killer era
From mid-June 1943 the technological and industrial superiority of the Allied navies allowed the Americans, Canadians, and British to form hunter-killer groups consisting of fast anti-submarine escorts and aircraft carriers. The purpose of naval operations changed from avoiding U-boats and safeguarding convoys to seeking them out and destroying them where ever they operated. USN hunter-killer groups operated throughout the Atlantic. Argentia had been an important base for the naval taskforces until superseded by the Royal Canadian Navy in early 1943. U-boat operations were "crushed" by these task forces: 14 were sunk and only two of seven crews operating in Brazilian waters returned to Germany.
Dönitz reacted by deploying his U-boats near the Azores where land-based aircraft still had difficulty reaching them. In this region he hoped to threaten the Gibraltar–Britain convoy route. Dönitz intended to concentrate his power in a rough arc from West Africa to South America and the Caribbean. He hoped to maintain a presence in the western and central Atlantic, reduce losses and await new weapons and anti-detection devices. In this, he failed to "stem the tide of U-boat losses." A large portion of the 39 U-boats deployed on these operations were intercepted. From May 1943, one historian wrote "U-boats rash enough to close with an Atlantic convoy...were simply inviting destruction."
Dönitz's crews faced danger from the outset. The transit routes through the Bay of Biscay were heavily patrolled by aircraft. From May to December 1943, 25 U-boats were sunk by Coastal Command, more were sunk by the USAAF and Royal Navy—five and four respectively; with one shared by the navy and Coastal Command. To counter radar aircraft, Dönitz ordered his submarines to group together and merge their powerful anti-aircraft armament together while surfaced and recharging their batteries, after initially ordering the groups to remain surfaced throughout the journey and fight off aerial attackers with gunfire. The decision was to cost BdU heavy casualties. A group of U-boats were more likely to attract a radar contact, and Allied pilots soon learned to swarm their targets. Dönitz ordered his captains to traverse the Bay under the lee of the neutral Spanish coast, with a sharply rising coast which shielded U-boats from radar. After 4 August 1943, the number of destroyed U-boats fell from one every four days, to one every 27 until June 1944.
US hunter–killer groups extended their patrols to the central Atlantic in the summer. They sank 15 U-boats from June through to August 1943. A number of supply submarines were destroyed crippling the Germans' ability to conduct long range operations. At the end of the summer, practically all supply U-boats had been destroyed. In September 1943, Dönitz ordered his submarines back to the North Atlantic. U-boats were equipped with the G7es torpedo, an acoustic torpedo, which the grand admiral hoped would wrest the technological initiative back. The torpedo was the centrepiece to Dönitz's plan. Great faith was also placed in the installation of Wanze radar to detect aircraft. It was intended as a successor to the Metox radar detector. A number of his boats were later retrofitted with the submarine snorkel, permitting the submarine to stay submerged. Dönitz placed much faith in the Type XXI submarine. He accepted that the older submarines were obsolete now that Allied defences in the air were complete. He required a "true submarine", equipped with a snorkel to allow his crews to stay submerged, at least to snorkel-depth, and evade radar-equipped aircraft. Dönitz was pleased with the promised top speed of 18 knots.
That month, 21 boats fought a battle with two formations; Convoys ONS 18/ON 202. The battle was a failure. In October an attack on Convoy SC 143 failed, even with limited air support from the Luftwaffe. The battle with Convoys ONS 20/ON 206 in the same month was a comprehensive defeat. A fourth major battle, Convoy SL 138/MKS 28, developed in the last days of October and ended in another failure for Dönitz. The November battle around Convoy SL 139/MKS 30 ended in the repulse of 29 U-boats with the loss of only a single ship. Intelligence proved its worth. During the battles of convoys ONS 18/ON 202, Dönitz's admonitions to his commanders allowed the Allied intelligence services to uncover German tactical intentions. Dönitz had tried and failed to push his forces through lethal convoy defences. The hunter-killer groups were called in to hunt the remaining members of the wolfpacks, with predictable results. In mid-December 1943, Dönitz finally conceded not only the Atlantic, but the Gibraltar routes as well.
The hunter-killer and convoy escorts brought the wolfpack era to an end at the close of 1943. Dönitz resorted to sending out single submarines to the far reaches of the oceans in a bid to escape Allied naval power. In November 1943 he sent the last U-boat into the Gulf of Mexico just after the blackout restrictions were lifted. U-193 achieved one final success. The end of 1943 ended the attempt of the U-boat arm to achieve a strategic victory in the Atlantic. That left only the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union. On Christmas Eve, this became the sole preserve of the U-boats after the dispatch of Scharnhorst at the Battle of the North Cape.
Dönitz's plan for 1944 was simply to survive and await the XXI and Type XXIII submarines. New radars were on the horizon and a direction finding antenna for Naxos was scheduled for use. Dönitz established a naval operations scientific staff to focus on more powerful centimetric radars. Production of submarines was streamlined. Parts for eight major sections were fabricated across 60 plants in Europe an assembled at Hamburg, Danzig and Bremen to ease the pressure of bombing and congestion at shipyards. The first of the new generation boats were expected by April 1944. Dönitz hoped for 33 per month by September. In early 1944, Dönitz opted to concentrate west of Ireland, at 15 and 17° west, in the hope convoys would come to them. Single boats were still sent to the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. With 66 vessels at sea at any one time, and with 200 boats operational, the BdU was still a viable threat and he believed the force could achieve modest success. The U-boats were painfully slow, strategically, operationally and tactically. Crossing the Atlantic took up to a month compared to a week in 1942. Positioning west of Ireland could take several weeks submerged. In the first quarter of 1944, U-boats sank only three of the 3,360 ships that passed south of Ireland. In return 29 crews were lost.
A major concern to Dönitz was Operation Overlord, the long predicted landing in France, and what role the U-boat arm and surface forces could play in the defence. He was sensitive to a landing on the Bay of Biscay but retained boats there only for operational readiness. Dönitz ended reconnaissance operations in the region. In the BdU war diary he wrote of ending operations since "otherwise the strong enemy air activity will lead to high losses which would only be acceptable if an immediate landing on the Biscay coast were expected. As this is no longer considered an acute danger the boats will remain at readiness in the concrete shelters."
When the D-day landings took place on 6 June 1944, the U-boats were ordered into action with the awareness that the western flank of the invasion would be well protected at sea. Operational experience with the snorkel was too scant to devise instructions for its use. The narrow, shallow, waters of the English Channel provided few opportunities for charging the batteries. Dönitz feared the task was impossible. The Holzbein group based at Brest, sent 15 submarines into action against the Cherbourg peninsula landings part of a 36-strong flotilla. Only eight had snorkels. The seven non-snorkel boats were ordered to attack on the surface. The BdU war diary entry on 6 June 1944 states that "for those boats without schnorchel this means the last operation." Of the 15, only five got near to the invasion fleet. Five of the snorkel boats survived. In exchange for 10 U-boats with the survivors damaged, two frigates, four freighters, and one tank landing ship were sunk. 22 U-boats were sunk from 6–30 June 1944. On 5 July 1944, the Allied Operation Dredger permitted hunter-killer groups to roam the Western Approaches and Biscay making it a "no-go area" for U-boats. U-boat operations against Normandy landings were a fiasco. Dönitz and the high command had been ignorant of the true scale of the naval D-day effort. Dönitz claimed his men sank five escorts, 12 merchant ships and four landing craft for 20 submarines and 1,000 men, of whom 238 were rescued. Dönitz's claims underplayed German losses, which were, in fact, 41 submarines from 82 in France, a 50 percent loss rate.
The collapse of the German front in Normandy left only the bases in German-occupied Norway nearest to the Atlantic. The newer boats were not forthcoming either. 90 XXI and 31 XIII's were built by the end of 1944. 60 of the former and 23 of the latter were in service but none were operational. Dönitz was left with the old VIIs to carry the war into 1945. A large number had snorkels, which enabled them to surface only upon reaching port. Submerged, this meant no radio or Enigma communications and far fewer sightings for the Allied intelligence network to exploit. Dönitz ordered his submarines to British coastal waters with some success in November and December 1944, achieving 85,639 tons. Admiral Andrew Cunningham remarked of the strategy, "We are having a difficult time with the U-boats....the air are about 90 percent out of business and Asdic is failing us." The inshore waters impeded the use of Asdic, which became confused with wrecks, rocks, and tidal swirls. The new types could conceivably have capitalised on these developments but the war was nearly over. On 1 January 1945, Dönitz had 425 submarines; 144 operational. On 1 April 1945, it was 166 from 429. He threw into battle every available weapon as the German Reich collapsed. Dönitz supported the use of Human torpedoes; the Neger, Marder, Seehund and Biber were all used in suicide missions on his orders, perhaps inspired by the Japanese Kamikaze.
On 30 April 1945 Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Dönitz succeeded him as head of state and Führer. Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg succeeded Dönitz as commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine. On 4 May 1945 the German surrender at Lüneburg Heath took place. Dönitz issued an order to all U-boats to cease combat operations and return to port or surrender to Allied naval vessels. The order was obeyed with a handful of notable exceptions—the Actions of 5–6 May 1945, and Actions of 7–8 May 1945 occurred after the surrender. The surrendered U-boats numbered into the hundreds and were destroyed in the postwar Operation Deadlight. The U-boat war finally came to an end on 8 May 1945, the date of the German Instrument of Surrender.
President of Germany
Dönitz admired Hitler and was vocal about the qualities he perceived in Hitler's leadership. In August 1943, he praised his foresightedness and confidence; "anyone who thinks he can do better than the Führer is stupid." Dönitz's relationship with Hitler strengthened through to the end of the war, particularly after the 20 July plot, for the naval staff officers were not involved; when news of it came there was indignation in the OKM. Even after the war, Dönitz said he could never have joined the conspirators. Dönitz tried to imbue National Socialist ideas among his officers, though the indoctrination of the naval officer corps was not the brainchild of Dönitz, but rather a continuation of the Nazification of the navy begun under his predecessor Raeder. Naval officers were required to attend a five-day education course in Nazi ideology. Dönitz's loyalty to him and the cause was rewarded by Hitler, who, owing to Dönitz's leadership, never felt abandoned by the navy. In gratitude, Hitler appointed the navy's commander as his successor before he committed suicide.
Dönitz's influence on military matters was also evident. Hitler acted on Dönitz's advice in September 1944 to block the Gulf of Finland after Finland abandoned the Axis powers. Operation Tanne Ost was a poorly executed disaster. Dönitz shared Hitler's senseless strategic judgement—with the Courland Pocket on the verge of collapse, and the air and army forces requesting a withdrawal, the two men were preoccupied in planning an attack on an isolated island in the far north. Hitler's willingness to listen to the naval commander was based on his high opinion of the navy's usefulness at this time. It reinforced isolated coastal garrisons along the Baltic and evacuated thousands of German soldiers and civilians in order that they might continue to participate in the war effort into the spring of 1945.
In the final days of the war, after Hitler had taken refuge in the Führerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery garden in Berlin, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring was considered the obvious successor to Hitler, followed by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Göring, however, infuriated Hitler by radioing him in Berlin asking for permission to assume leadership of the Reich. Himmler also tried to seize power by entering into negotiations with Count Bernadotte. On 28 April 1945, the BBC reported Himmler had offered surrender to the western Allies and that the offer had been declined.
From mid-April 1945, Dönitz and elements of what remained of the Reich government moved into the buildings of the Stadtheide Barracks in Plön. In his last will and testament, dated 29 April 1945, Hitler named Dönitz his successor as Staatsoberhaupt (Head of State), with the titles of Reichspräsident (President) and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. The same document named Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels as Head of Government with the title of Reichskanzler (Chancellor). Furthermore, Hitler declared both Göring and Himmler traitors and expelled them from the party. He committed suicide on 30 April.
On 1 May, the day after Hitler's own suicide, Goebbels committed suicide. Dönitz thus became the sole representative of the collapsing German Reich. On 2 May, the new government of the Reich fled to Flensburg-Mürwik where he remained until his arrest on 23 May 1945. That night, 2 May, Dönitz made a nationwide radio address in which he announced Hitler's death and said the war would continue in the East "to save Germany from destruction by the advancing Bolshevik enemy."
Dönitz knew that Germany's position was untenable and the Wehrmacht was no longer capable of offering meaningful resistance. During his brief period in office, he devoted most of his effort to ensuring the loyalty of the German armed forces and trying to ensure German personnel would surrender to the British or Americans and not the Soviets. He feared vengeful Soviet reprisals, and hoped to strike a deal with the Western Allies. In the end, Dönitz's tactics were moderately successful, enabling about 1.8 million German soldiers to escape Soviet capture. As many as 2.2 million may have been evacuated.
Through 1944 and 1945, the Dönitz-initiated Operation Hannibal had the distinction of being the largest naval evacuation in history. The Baltic Fleet was presented with a mass of targets, the subsequent Soviet submarine Baltic Sea campaign in 1944 and Soviet naval Baltic Sea campaign in 1945 inflicted grievous losses during Hannibal. The most notable was the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff by a Soviet submarine. The liner had nearly 10,000 people on board. The evacuations continued after the surrender. From 3 to 9 May 1945, 81,000 of the 150,000 persons waiting on the Hel Peninsula were evacuated without loss. Albrecht Brandi, commander of the eastern Baltic, initiated a counter operation, the Gulf of Finland campaign, but failed to have an impact.
Flensburg government
On 4 May, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, representing Dönitz, surrendered all German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark, and northwestern Germany to Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery at Lüneburg Heath southeast of Hamburg, signaling the end of World War II in northwestern Europe.
A day later, Dönitz sent Friedeburg to US General Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Rheims, France, to negotiate a surrender to the Allies. The Chief of Staff of OKW, Generaloberst (Colonel-General) Alfred Jodl, arrived a day later. Dönitz had instructed them to draw out the negotiations for as long as possible so that German troops and refugees could surrender to the Western powers, but when Eisenhower let it be known he would not tolerate their stalling, Dönitz authorized Jodl to sign the instrument of unconditional surrender at 1:30 on the morning of 7 May. Just over an hour later, Jodl signed the documents. The surrender documents included the phrase, "All forces under German control to cease active operations at 23:01 hours Central European Time on 8 May 1945." At Stalin's insistence, on 8 May, shortly before midnight, (Generalfeldmarschall) Wilhelm Keitel repeated the signing in Berlin at Marshal Georgiy Zhukov's headquarters, with General Carl Spaatz of the USAAF present as Eisenhower's representative. At the time specified, World War II in Europe ended.
On 23 May, the Dönitz government was dissolved when Dönitz was arrested by an RAF Regiment task force. The Großadmiral's Kriegsmarine flag, which was removed from his headquarters, can be seen at the RAF Regiment Heritage Centre at RAF Honington. Generaloberst Jodl, Reichsminister Speer and other members were also handed over to troops of the King's Shropshire Light Infantry at Flensburg. His ceremonial baton, awarded to him by Hitler, can be seen in the regimental museum of the KSLI in Shrewsbury Castle.
Nazism and antisemitism
Dönitz was a dedicated Nazi and a passionate supporter of Hitler, something he attempted to obscure after the war. Raeder described him as "a picture-book Nazi and confirmed anti-Semite". Several naval officers described him as "closely tied to Hitler and Nazi ideology." On occasion, he spoke of Hitler's humanity. His fervent pro-Hitler attitude led to his being known ironically as “Hitler Youth Quex”, after the fictional hero of a Nazi novel and feature film. He refused to help Albert Speer stop the scorched earth policy dictated by Hitler and is also noted to have declared, "In comparison to Hitler we are all pipsqueaks. Anyone who believes he can do better than the Führer is stupid."
Dönitz contributed to the spread of Nazism within the Kriegsmarine. He insisted that officers share his political views and, as head of the Kriegsmarine, formally joined the Nazi Party on 1 February 1944, as member 9,664,999. He was awarded the Golden Party Badge for his loyalty to the party later that year. Dönitz's influence over naval officers contributed to none joining the attempts to kill Hitler.
From an ideological standpoint, Dönitz was anti-Marxist and antisemitic and believed that Germany needed to fight the "poison of Jewry". Several anti-Semitic statements by Dönitz are known. When Sweden closed its international waters to Germany, he blamed this action on their fear and dependence on "international Jewish capital." In August 1944, he declared, "I would rather eat dirt than see my grandchildren grow up in the filthy, poisonous atmosphere of Jewry."
His fellow officers noted he was under Hitler's influence, and closely wedded to Nazi ideology. On German Heroes' Day (12 March) of 1944, Dönitz declared that, without Adolf Hitler, Germany would be beset by "the poison of Jewry," and the country destroyed for lack of the "uncompromising ideology" of National Socialism:
At the Nuremberg trials, Dönitz claimed the statement about the "poison of Jewry" was regarding "the endurance, the power to endure, of the people, as it was composed, could be better preserved than if there were Jewish elements in the nation." Later, during the Nuremberg trials, Dönitz claimed to know nothing about the extermination of Jews and declared that nobody among "my men thought about violence against Jews." Dönitz told Leon Goldensohn, an American psychiatrist at Nuremberg, "I never had any idea of the goings-on as far as Jews were concerned. Hitler said each man should take care of his business and mine was U-boats and the Navy." After the war Dönitz tried to hide his knowledge of the Holocaust. He was present at the October 1943 Posen Conference where Himmler described the mass murder of Jews with the intent of making the audience complicit in this crime. It cannot be proven beyond doubt that he was present during Himmler's segment of the conference, which openly discussed the murder of European Jews.
Even after the Nuremberg Trials, with the crimes of the Nazi state well-known, Dönitz remained an antisemite. In April 1953, he told Speer that if it was the choice of the Americans and not the Jews, he would have been released.
Nuremberg war crimes trials
Following the war, Dönitz was held as a prisoner of war by the Allies. He was indicted as a major war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials on three counts. One: conspiracy to commit crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Two: planning, initiating, and waging wars of aggression. Three: crimes against the laws of war. Dönitz was found not guilty on count one of the indictment, but guilty on counts two and three.
During the trial, army psychologist Gustave Gilbert was allowed to examine Nazi leaders on trial for war crimes. Among other tests, a German version of the Wechsler–Bellevue IQ test was administered. Dönitz and Hermann Göring scored 138, which made them equally the third-highest among the Nazi leaders tested.
At the trial, Dönitz was charged with waging unrestricted submarine warfare against neutral shipping, permitting Hitler's Commando Order of 18 October 1942 to remain in full force when he became commander-in-chief of the Navy, and to that extent responsibility for that crime. His defence was that the order excluded men captured in naval warfare, and that the order had not been acted upon by any men under his command. Added to that was his knowledge of 12,000 involuntary foreign workers working in the shipyards, and doing nothing to stop it. Dönitz was unable to defend himself on this charge convincingly when cross-examined by prosecutor Sir David Maxwell Fyfe.
On 25 February 1945, Hitler asked Dönitz whether the Geneva Convention should be denounced. Hitler's motives were twofold. The first was that reprisals could be taken against Western Allied prisoners of war; second, it would deter German forces from surrendering to the Western Allies, as was happening on the Eastern Front where the convention was in abeyance. Instead of arguing the conventions should never be denounced, Dönitz suggested it was not expedient to do so, so the court found against him on this issue; but as the convention was not denounced by Germany, and British prisoners in camps under Dönitz's jurisdiction were treated strictly according to the Convention, the Court considered these mitigating circumstances.
Among the war-crimes charges, Dönitz was accused of waging unrestricted submarine warfare for issuing War Order No. 154 in 1939, and another similar order after the Laconia incident in 1942, not to rescue survivors from ships attacked by submarine. By issuing these two orders, he was found guilty of causing Germany to be in breach of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. However, as evidence of similar conduct by the Allies was presented at his trial, his sentence was not assessed on the grounds of this breach of international law.
On the specific war crimes charge of ordering unrestricted submarine warfare, Dönitz was found "[not] guilty for his conduct of submarine warfare against British armed merchant ships", because they were often armed and equipped with radios which they used to notify the admiralty of attack. As stated by the judges:
His sentence on unrestricted submarine warfare was not assessed because of similar actions by the Allies. In particular, the British Admiralty, on 8 May 1940, had ordered all vessels in the Skagerrak sunk on sight, and Admiral Chester Nimitz, wartime commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, stated the US Navy had waged unrestricted submarine warfare in the Pacific from the day the US officially entered the war. Thus, Dönitz was not charged of waging unrestricted submarine warfare against unarmed neutral shipping by ordering all ships in designated areas in international waters to be sunk without warning.
Dönitz was imprisoned for 10 years in Spandau Prison in what was then West Berlin. During his period in prison he was unrepentant, and maintained that he had done nothing wrong. He also rejected Speer's attempts to persuade him to end his devotion to Hitler and accept responsibility for the wrongs the German Government had committed. Over 100 senior Allied officers also sent letters to Dönitz conveying their disappointment over the unfairness and verdict of his trial.
Later years and death
Dönitz was released on 1 October 1956 and retired to the small village of Aumühle in Schleswig-Holstein in northern West Germany. There, he worked on two books. His memoirs, Zehn Jahre, Zwanzig Tage (Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days), were released in Germany in 1958 and became available in an English translation the following year. This book recounted Dönitz's experiences as U-boat commander (10 years) and President of Germany (20 days). In it, Dönitz explains the Nazi regime as a product of its time, but argues he was not a politician and thus not morally responsible for many of the regime's crimes. He likewise criticizes dictatorship as a fundamentally flawed form of government and blames it for many of the Nazi era's failings. Historian Alan P. Rems has written that Dönitz's memoirs are unconvincing and that "unimpeded by a meaningful Nuremberg verdict, Dönitz fashioned a legend that could be embraced by the most unregenerate Nazis as well as credulous Allied officers who accepted his sanitized version of history and showered Dönitz with letters of support as a wronged brother-in-arms".
Dönitz's second book, Mein wechselvolles Leben (My Ever-Changing Life) is less known, perhaps because it deals with the events of his life before 1934. This book was first published in 1968, and a new edition was released in 1998 with the revised title Mein soldatisches Leben (My Martial Life). In 1973, he appeared in the Thames Television production The World at War, in one of his few television appearances.
Dönitz was unrepentant regarding his role in World War II, saying that he had acted at all times out of duty to his nation. He lived out the rest of his life in relative obscurity in Aumühle, occasionally corresponding with collectors of German naval history, and died there of a heart attack on 24 December 1980. As the last German officer with the rank of Großadmiral (grand admiral), he was honoured by many former servicemen and foreign naval officers who came to pay their respects at his funeral on 6 January 1981. He was buried in Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Aumühle without military honours, and service members were not allowed to wear uniforms to the funeral. Also in attendance were over 100 holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
Summary of career
Promotions
Decorations and awards
This article incorporates information from the equivalent articles on the Italian Wikipedia and the German Wikipedia.
German
General Honor Decoration (Allgemeines Ehrenzeichen) (7 June 1913)
Iron Cross (1914)
2nd class (7 September 1914)
1st class (5 May 1916)
Friedrich Cross of the Duchy of Anhalt, 1st class (17 January 1916)
Knight of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords (10 June 1918)
Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 (30 January 1935)
U-boat War Badge 1918 Version
Special U-boat War Badge with diamonds (1939)
Sudetenland Medal (20 December 1939)
Clasp to the Iron Cross (1939)
2nd class (18 September 1939)
1st class (20 December 1939)
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
Knight's Cross on 21 April 1940 as Konteradmiral and Befehlshaber der U-Boote (B.d.U.)
223rd Oak Leaves on 6 April 1943 as Großadmiral and Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine and Befehlshaber der U-Boote
Golden Party Badge of the National Socialist German Workers Party (1943)
Foreign
Ottoman War Medal (7 November 1916) (Ottoman Empire)
Order of the Medjidie, 4th class (13 March 1917) (Ottoman Empire)
Order of the Medjidie, 1st class (Ottoman Empire)
Military Order of Savoy Knight Cross (20 April 1940) (Kingdom of Italy)
Military Order of Savoy Commander's Cross (7 November 1941) (Kingdom of Italy)
Order of Naval Merit in white (10 June 1940) (Spanish State)
Order of Michael the Brave, 2nd and 3rd class (7 April 1943) (Kingdom of Romania)
Order of Michael the Brave, 1st class (Kingdom of Romania)
Order of the Rising Sun, First Class (11 September 1943) (Empire of Japan)
See also
B-Dienst
Glossary of German military terms
Glossary of Nazi Germany
List of Nazi Party leaders and officials
References
Bibliography
External links
Historical Enigma message Grand Admiral Dönitz announcing his appointment as Hitler's successor.
1891 births
1980 deaths
20th-century presidents of Germany
Naval history of World War II
Articles containing video clips
Politicians from Berlin
Commanders of the Military Order of Savoy
Crosses of Naval Merit
Heads of state convicted of war crimes
Grand admirals of the Kriegsmarine
Nazi Party officials
German military personnel of World War I
Fascist rulers
People convicted by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg
Heads of government who were later imprisoned
People from the Province of Brandenburg
Presidents of Germany
Recipients of the clasp to the Iron Cross, 1st class
Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves
Recipients of the Order of Michael the Brave, 1st class
Recipients of the Order of the Medjidie, 1st class
Grand Cordons of the Order of the Rising Sun
Reichsmarine personnel
U-boat commanders (Imperial German Navy)
Imperial German Navy personnel of World War I
German people convicted of war crimes | [
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16775 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto%20Protocol | Kyoto Protocol | The Kyoto Protocol was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that (part one) global warming is occurring and (part two) that human-made CO2 emissions are driving it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There were 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012) to the Protocol in 2020.
The Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the UNFCCC to reduce the onset of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere to "a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system" (Article 2). The Kyoto Protocol applied to the seven greenhouse gases listed in Annex A: carbon dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3). Nitrogen trifluoride was added for the second compliance period during the Doha Round.
The Protocol was based on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities: it acknowledged that individual countries have different capabilities in combating climate change, owing to economic development, and therefore placed the obligation to reduce current emissions on developed countries on the basis that they are historically responsible for the current levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
The Protocol's first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. All 36 countries that fully participated in the first commitment period complied with the Protocol. However, nine countries had to resort to the flexibility mechanisms by funding emission reductions in other countries because their national emissions were slightly greater than their targets. The financial crisis of 2007–08 helped reduce the emissions. The greatest emission reductions were seen in the former Eastern Bloc countries because the dissolution of the Soviet Union reduced their emissions in the early 1990s. Even though the 36 developed countries reduced their emissions, the global emissions increased by 32% from 1990 to 2010.
A second commitment period was agreed to in 2012 to extend the agreement to 2020, known as the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol, in which 37 countries had binding targets: Australia, the European Union (and its then 28 member states, now 27), Belarus, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and Ukraine. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine stated that they may withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol or not put into legal force the Amendment with second round targets. Japan, New Zealand, and Russia had participated in Kyoto's first-round but did not take on new targets in the second commitment period. Other developed countries without second-round targets were Canada (which withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol in 2012) and the United States (which did not ratify). As of October 2020, 147 states had accepted the Doha Amendment. It entered into force on 31 December 2020, following its acceptance by the mandated minimum of at least 144 states, although the second commitment period ended on the same day. Of the 37 parties with binding commitments, 34 had ratified.
Negotiations were held in the framework of the yearly UNFCCC Climate Change Conferences on measures to be taken after the second commitment period ended in 2020. This resulted in the 2015 adoption of the Paris Agreement, which is a separate instrument under the UNFCCC rather than an amendment of the Kyoto Protocol.
Background
The view that human activities are likely responsible for most of the observed increase in global mean temperature ("global warming") since the mid-20th century is an accurate reflection of current scientific thinking. Human-induced warming of the climate is expected to continue throughout the 21st century and beyond.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) have produced a range of projections of what the future increase in global mean temperature might be. The IPCC's projections are "baseline" projections, meaning that they assume no future efforts are made to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The IPCC projections cover the time period from the beginning of the 21st century to the end of the 21st century. The "likely" range (as assessed to have a greater than 66% probability of being correct, based on the IPCC's expert judgment) is a projected increase in global mean temperature over the 21st century of between 1.1 and 6.4 °C.
The range in temperature projections partly reflects different projections of future greenhouse gas emissions. Different projections contain different assumptions of future social and economic development (economic growth, population level, energy policies), which in turn affects projections of future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The range also reflects uncertainty in the response of the climate system to past and future GHG emissions (measured by the climate sensitivity).
Chronology
1992 – The UN Conference on the Environment and Development is held in Rio de Janeiro. It results in the Framework Convention on Climate Change ("FCCC" or "UNFCCC") among other agreements.
1995 – Parties to the UNFCCC meet in Berlin (the 1st Conference of Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC) to outline specific targets on emissions.
1997 – In December the parties conclude the Kyoto Protocol in Kyoto, Japan, in which they agree to the broad outlines of emissions targets.
2004 – Russia and Canada ratify the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC bringing the treaty into effect on 16 February 2005.
2011 – Canada became the first signatory to announce its withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol.
2012 – On 31 December 2012, the first commitment period under the Protocol expired.
Article 2 of the UNFCCC
Most countries are Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Article 2 of the Convention states its ultimate objective, which is to stabilize the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human) interference with the climate system."
The natural, technical and social sciences can provide information on decisions relating to this objective including the possible magnitude and rate of future climate changes. However, the IPCC has also concluded that the decision of what constitutes "dangerous" interference requires value judgements, which will vary between different regions of the world. Factors that might affect this decision include the local consequences of climate change impacts, the ability of a particular region to adapt to climate change (adaptive capacity), and the ability of a region to reduce its GHG emissions (mitigative capacity).
Objectives
The main goal of the Kyoto Protocol was to control emissions of the main anthropogenic (human-emitted) greenhouse gases (GHGs) in ways that reflect underlying national differences in GHG emissions, wealth, and capacity to make the reductions. The treaty follows the main principles agreed in the original 1992 UN Framework Convention. According to the treaty, in 2012, Annex I Parties who have ratified the treaty must have fulfilled their obligations of greenhouse gas emissions limitations established for the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period (2008–2012). These emissions limitation commitments are listed in Annex B of the Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol's first round commitments are the first detailed step taken within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Protocol establishes a structure of rolling emission reduction commitment periods. It set a timetable starting in 2006 for negotiations to establish emission reduction commitments for a second commitment period. The first period emission reduction commitments expired on 31 December 2012.
The ultimate objective of the UNFCCC is the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would stop dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." Even if Annex I Parties succeed in meeting their first-round commitments, much greater emission reductions will be required in future to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentrations.
For each of the different anthropogenic GHGs, different levels of emissions reductions would be required to meet the objective of stabilizing atmospheric concentrations (see United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change#Stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations). Carbon dioxide () is the most important anthropogenic GHG. Stabilizing the concentration of in the atmosphere would ultimately require the effective elimination of anthropogenic emissions.
Some of the principal concepts of the Kyoto Protocol are:
Binding commitments for the Annex I Parties. The main feature of the Protocol is that it established legally binding commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases for Annex I Parties. The commitments were based on the Berlin Mandate, which was a part of UNFCCC negotiations leading up to the Protocol.
Implementation. In order to meet the objectives of the Protocol, Annex I Parties are required to prepare policies and measures for the reduction of greenhouse gases in their respective countries. In addition, they are required to increase the absorption of these gases and utilize all mechanisms available, such as joint implementation, the clean development mechanism and emissions trading, in order to be rewarded with credits that would allow more greenhouse gas emissions at home.
Minimizing Impacts on Developing Countries by establishing an adaptation fund for climate change.
Accounting, Reporting and Review in order to ensure the integrity of the Protocol.
Compliance. Establishing a Compliance Committee to enforce compliance with the commitments under the Protocol.
First commitment period: 2008–2012
Under the Kyoto Protocol, 37 industrialized countries and the European Community (the European Union-15, made up of 15 states at the time of the Kyoto negotiations) commit themselves to binding targets for GHG emissions. The targets apply to the four greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (), methane (), nitrous oxide (), sulphur hexafluoride (), and two groups of gases, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). The six GHG are translated into CO2 equivalents in determining reductions in emissions. These reduction targets are in addition to the industrial gases, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are dealt with under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.
Under the Protocol, only the Annex I Parties have committed themselves to national or joint reduction targets (formally called "quantified emission limitation and reduction objectives" (QELRO) – Article 4.1). Parties to the Kyoto Protocol not listed in Annex I of the Convention (the non-Annex I Parties) are mostly low-income developing countries, and may participate in the Kyoto Protocol through the Clean Development Mechanism (explained below).
The emissions limitations of Annex I Parties varies between different Parties. Some Parties have emissions limitations reduce below the base year level, some have limitations at the base year level (no permitted increase above the base year level), while others have limitations above the base year level.
Emission limits do not include emissions by international aviation and shipping. Although Belarus and Turkey are listed in the Convention's Annex I, they do not have emissions targets as they were not Annex I Parties when the Protocol was adopted. Kazakhstan does not have a target, but has declared that it wishes to become an Annex I Party to the Convention.
For most state parties, 1990 is the base year for the national GHG inventory and the calculation of the assigned amount. However, five state parties have an alternative base year:
Bulgaria: 1988;
Hungary: the average of the years 1985–1987;
Poland: 1988;
Romania: 1989;
Slovenia: 1986.
Annex I Parties can use a range of sophisticated "flexibility" mechanisms (see below) to meet their targets. Annex I Parties can achieve their targets by allocating reduced annual allowances to major operators within their borders, or by allowing these operators to exceed their allocations by offsetting any excess through a mechanism that is agreed by all the parties to the UNFCCC, such as by buying emission allowances from other operators which have excess emissions credits.
Flexibility mechanisms
The Protocol defines three "flexibility mechanisms" that can be used by Annex I Parties in meeting their emission limitation commitments. The flexibility mechanisms are International Emissions Trading (IET), the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), and Joint Implementation (JI). IET allows Annex I Parties to "trade" their emissions (Assigned Amount Units, AAUs, or "allowances" for short).
The economic basis for providing this flexibility is that the marginal cost of reducing (or abating) emissions differs among countries. "Marginal cost" is the cost of abating the last tonne of -eq for an Annex I/non-Annex I Party. At the time of the original Kyoto targets, studies suggested that the flexibility mechanisms could reduce the overall (aggregate) cost of meeting the targets. Studies also showed that national losses in Annex I gross domestic product (GDP) could be reduced by the use of the flexibility mechanisms.
The CDM and JI are called "project-based mechanisms", in that they generate emission reductions from projects. The difference between IET and the project-based mechanisms is that IET is based on the setting of a quantitative restriction of emissions, while the CDM and JI are based on the idea of "production" of emission reductions. The CDM is designed to encourage production of emission reductions in non-Annex I Parties, while JI encourages production of emission reductions in Annex I Parties.
The production of emission reductions generated by the CDM and JI can be used by Annex I Parties in meeting their emission limitation commitments. The emission reductions produced by the CDM and JI are both measured against a hypothetical baseline of emissions that would have occurred in the absence of a particular emission reduction project. The emission reductions produced by the CDM are called Certified Emission Reductions (CERs); reductions produced by JI are called Emission Reduction Units (ERUs). The reductions are called "credits" because they are emission reductions credited against a hypothetical baseline of emissions.
Only emission reduction projects that do not involve using nuclear energy are eligible for accreditation under the CDM, in order to prevent nuclear technology exports from becoming the default route for obtaining credits under the CDM.
Each Annex I country is required to submit an annual report of inventories of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from sources and removals from sinks under UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol. These countries nominate a person (called a "designated national authority") to create and manage its greenhouse gas inventory. Virtually all of the non-Annex I countries have also established a designated national authority to manage their Kyoto obligations, specifically the "CDM process". This determines which GHG projects they wish to propose for accreditation by the CDM Executive Board.
International emissions trading
A number of emissions trading schemes (ETS) have been, or are planned to be, implemented.
Asia
Japan: emissions trading in Tokyo started in 2010. This scheme is run by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.
Europe
European Union: the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), which started in 2005. This is run by the European Commission.
Norway: domestic emissions trading in Norway started in 2005. This was run by the Norwegian Government, which is now a participant in the EU ETS.
Switzerland: the Swiss ETS, which runs from 2008 to 2012, to coincide with the Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period.
United Kingdom:
the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, which ran from 2002–06. This was a scheme run by the UK Government, which is now a participant in the EU ETS.
the UK CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, which started in 2010, and is run by the UK Government.
North America
Canada: emissions trading in Alberta, Canada, which started in 2007. This is run by the Government of Alberta.
United States:
the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which started in 2009. This scheme caps emissions from power generation in eleven north-eastern US states (Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia).
emissions trading in California, which started in 2013.
the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), which began in 2012. This is a collective ETS agreed between 11 US states and Canadian provinces.
Oceania
Australia: the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme (NSW), which was started in 2003. This scheme was run by the Australian State of New South Wales, and joined the Alfa Climate Stabilization (ACS) but has since been closed in 2012 to avoid duplication with the Commonwealth’s carbon price.
New Zealand: the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme, which started in 2008.
Intergovernmental emissions trading
The design of the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) implicitly allows for trade of national Kyoto obligations to occur between participating countries. The Carbon Trust found that other than the trading that occurs as part of the EU ETS, no intergovernmental emissions trading had taken place.
One of the environmental problems with IET is the large surplus of allowances that are available. Russia, Ukraine, and the new EU-12 member states (the Kyoto Parties Annex I Economies-in-Transition, abbreviated "EIT": Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine) have a surplus of allowances, while many OECD countries have a deficit. Some of the EITs with a surplus regard it as potential compensation for the trauma of their economic restructuring. When the Kyoto treaty was negotiated, it was recognized that emissions targets for the EITs might lead to them having an excess number of allowances. This excess of allowances were viewed by the EITs as "headroom" to grow their economies. The surplus has, however, also been referred to by some as "hot air", a term which Russia (a country with an estimated surplus of 3.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent allowances) views as "quite offensive".
OECD countries with a deficit could meet their Kyoto commitments by buying allowances from transition countries with a surplus. Unless other commitments were made to reduce the total surplus in allowances, such trade would not actually result in emissions being reduced (see also the section below on the Green Investment Scheme).
"Green Investment Schemes"
The "Green Investment Scheme" (GIS) is a plan for achieving environmental benefits from trading surplus allowances (AAUs) under the Kyoto Protocol. The Green Investment Scheme (GIS), a mechanism in the framework of International Emissions Trading (IET), is designed to achieve greater flexibility in reaching the targets of the Kyoto Protocol while preserving environmental integrity of IET. However, using the GIS is not required under the Kyoto Protocol, and there is no official definition of the term.
Under the GIS a party to the protocol expecting that the development of its economy will not exhaust its Kyoto quota, can sell the excess of its Kyoto quota units (AAUs) to another party. The proceeds from the AAU sales should be "greened", i.e. channelled to the development and implementation of the projects either acquiring the greenhouse gases emission reductions (hard greening) or building up the necessary framework for this process (soft greening).
Trade in AAUs
Latvia was one of the front-runners of GISs. World Bank (2011) reported that Latvia has stopped offering AAU sales because of low AAU prices. In 2010, Estonia was the preferred source for AAU buyers, followed by the Czech Republic and Poland.
Japan's national policy to meet their Kyoto target includes the purchase of AAUs sold under GISs. In 2010, Japan and Japanese firms were the main buyers of AAUs. In terms of the international carbon market, trade in AAUs are a small proportion of overall market value. In 2010, 97% of trade in the international carbon market was driven by the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS). However, firms regulated under the EU ETS are unable to use AAUs in meeting their emissions caps.
Clean Development Mechanism
Between 2001, which was the first year Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects could be registered, and 2012, the end of the first Kyoto commitment period, the CDM is expected to produce some 1.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) in emission reductions. Most of these reductions are through renewable energy commercialisation, energy efficiency, and fuel switching (World Bank, 2010, p. 262). By 2012, the largest potential for production of CERs are estimated in China (52% of total CERs) and India (16%). CERs produced in Latin America and the Caribbean make up 15% of the potential total, with Brazil as the largest producer in the region (7%).
Joint Implementation
The formal crediting period for Joint Implementation (JI) was aligned with the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, and did not start until January 2008 (Carbon Trust, 2009, p. 20). In November 2008, only 22 JI projects had been officially approved and registered. The total projected emission savings from JI by 2012 are about one tenth that of the CDM. Russia accounts for about two-thirds of these savings, with the remainder divided up roughly equally between Ukraine and the EU's New Member States. Emission savings include cuts in methane, HFC, and N2O emissions.
Stabilization of GHG concentrations
As noted earlier on, the first-round Kyoto emissions limitation commitments are not sufficient to stabilize the atmospheric concentration of GHGs. Stabilization of atmospheric GHG concentrations will require further emissions reductions after the end of the first-round Kyoto commitment period in 2012.
Background
Analysts have developed scenarios of future changes in GHG emissions that lead to a stabilization in the atmospheric concentrations of GHGs. Climate models suggest that lower stabilization levels are associated with lower magnitudes of future global warming, while higher stabilization levels are associated with higher magnitudes of future global warming (see figure opposite).
To achieve stabilization, global GHG emissions must peak, then decline. The lower the desired stabilization level, the sooner this peak and decline must occur (see figure opposite). For a given stabilization level, larger emissions reductions in the near term allow for less stringent emissions reductions later. On the other hand, less stringent near term emissions reductions would, for a given stabilization level, require more stringent emissions reductions later on.
The first period Kyoto emissions limitations can be viewed as a first-step towards achieving atmospheric stabilization of GHGs. In this sense, the first period Kyoto commitments may affect what future atmospheric stabilization level can be achieved.
Relation to temperature targets
At the 16th Conference of the Parties held in 2010, Parties to the UNFCCC agreed that future global warming should be limited below 2°C relative to the pre-industrial temperature level. One of the stabilization levels discussed in relation to this temperature target is to hold atmospheric concentrations of GHGs at 450 parts per million (ppm) - eq. Stabilization at 450 ppm could be associated with a 26 to 78% risk of exceeding the 2 °C target.
Scenarios assessed by Gupta et al. (2007) suggest that Annex I emissions would need to be 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% to 95% below 1990 levels by 2050. The only Annex I Parties to have made voluntary pledges in line with this are Japan (25% below 1990 levels by 2020) and Norway (30–40% below 1990 levels by 2020).
Gupta et al. (2007) also looked at what 450 ppm scenarios projected for non-Annex I Parties. Projections indicated that by 2020, non-Annex I emissions in several regions (Latin America, the Middle East, East Asia, and centrally planned Asia) would need to be substantially reduced below "business-as-usual". "Business-as-usual" are projected non-Annex I emissions in the absence of any new policies to control emissions. Projections indicated that by 2050, emissions in all non-Annex I regions would need to be substantially reduced below "business-as-usual".
Details of the agreement
The agreement is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, which did not set any legally binding limitations on emissions or enforcement mechanisms. Only Parties to the UNFCCC can become Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted at the third session of the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan.
National emission targets specified in the Kyoto Protocol exclude international aviation and shipping. Kyoto Parties can use land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) in meeting their targets. LULUCF activities are also called "sink" activities. Changes in sinks and land use can have an effect on the climate, and indeed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Special Report on Land use, land-use change, and forestry estimates that since 1750 a third of global warming has been caused by land use change. Particular criteria apply to the definition of forestry under the Kyoto Protocol.
Forest management, cropland management, grazing land management, and revegetation are all eligible LULUCF activities under the Protocol. Annex I Parties use of forest management in meeting their targets is capped.
Negotiations
Article 4.2 of the UNFCCC commits industrialized countries to "[take] the lead" in reducing emissions. The initial aim was for industrialized countries to stabilize their emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. The failure of key industrialized countries to move in this direction was a principal reason why Kyoto moved to binding commitments.
At the first UNFCCC Conference of the Parties in Berlin, the G77 was able to push for a mandate (the "Berlin mandate") where it was recognized that:
developed nations had contributed most to the then-current concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere (see Greenhouse gas#Cumulative and historical emissions).
developing country emissions per-capita (i.e., average emissions per head of population) were still relatively low.
and that the share of global emissions from developing countries would grow to meet their development needs.
During negotiations, the G-77 represented 133 developing countries. China was not a member of the group but an associate. It has since become a member.
The Berlin mandate was recognized in the Kyoto Protocol in that developing countries were not subject to emission reduction commitments in the first Kyoto commitment period. However, the large potential for growth in developing country emissions made negotiations on this issue tense. In the final agreement, the Clean Development Mechanism was designed to limit emissions in developing countries, but in such a way that developing countries do not bear the costs for limiting emissions. The general assumption was that developing countries would face quantitative commitments in later commitment periods, and at the same time, developed countries would meet their first round commitments.
Emissions cuts
Views on the Kyoto Protocol#Commentaries on negotiations contains a list of the emissions cuts that were proposed by UNFCCC Parties during negotiations. The G77 and China were in favour of strong uniform emission cuts across the developed world. The US originally proposed for the second round of negotiations on Kyoto commitments to follow the negotiations of the first. In the end, negotiations on the second period were set to open no later than 2005. Countries over-achieving in their first period commitments can "bank" their unused allowances for use in the subsequent period.
The EU initially argued for only three GHGs to be included – , , and – with other gases such as HFCs regulated separately. The EU also wanted to have a "bubble" commitment, whereby it could make a collective commitment that allowed some EU members to increase their emissions, while others cut theirs.
The most vulnerable nations – the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) – pushed for deep uniform cuts by developed nations, with the goal of having emissions reduced to the greatest possible extent. Countries that had supported differentiation of targets had different ideas as to how it should be calculated, and many different indicators were proposed. Two examples include differentiation of targets based on gross domestic product (GDP), and differentiation based on energy intensity (energy use per unit of economic output).
The final targets negotiated in the Protocol are the result of last minute political compromises. The targets closely match those decided by Argentinian Raul Estrada, the diplomat who chaired the negotiations. The numbers given to each Party by Chairman Estrada were based on targets already pledged by Parties, information received on latest negotiating positions, and the goal of achieving the strongest possible environmental outcome. The final targets are weaker than those proposed by some Parties, e.g., the Alliance of Small Island States and the G-77 and China, but stronger than the targets proposed by others, e.g., Canada and the United States.
Financial commitments
The Protocol also reaffirms the principle that developed countries have to pay billions of dollars, and supply technology to other countries for climate-related studies and projects. The principle was originally agreed in UNFCCC. One such project is The Adaptation Fund, which has been established by the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to finance concrete adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
Implementation provisions
The protocol left several issues open to be decided later by the sixth Conference of Parties COP6 of the UNFCCC, which attempted to resolve these issues at its meeting in the Hague in late 2000, but it was unable to reach an agreement due to disputes between the European Union (who favoured a tougher implementation) and the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia (who wanted the agreement to be less demanding and more flexible).
In 2001, a continuation of the previous meeting (COP6-bis) was held in Bonn, where the required decisions were adopted. After some concessions, the supporters of the protocol (led by the European Union) managed to secure the agreement of Japan and Russia by allowing more use of carbon dioxide sinks.
COP7 was held from 29 October 2001 through 9 November 2001 in Marrakech to establish the final details of the protocol.
The first Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (MOP1) was held in Montreal from 28 November to 9 December 2005, along with the 11th conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP11). See United Nations Climate Change Conference.
During COP13 in Bali, 36 developed Contact Group countries (plus the EU as a party in the European Union) agreed to a 10% emissions increase for Iceland; but, since the EU's member states each have individual obligations, much larger increases (up to 27%) are allowed for some of the less developed EU countries (see below ). Reduction limitations expired in 2013.
Mechanism of compliance
The protocol defines a mechanism of "compliance" as a "monitoring compliance with the commitments and penalties for non-compliance." According to Grubb (2003), the explicit consequences of non-compliance of the treaty are weak compared to domestic law. Yet, the compliance section of the treaty was highly contested in the Marrakesh Accords.
Enforcement
If the enforcement branch determines that an Annex I country is not in compliance with its emissions limitation, then that country is required to make up the difference during the second commitment period plus an additional 30%. In addition, that country will be suspended from making transfers under an emissions trading program.
Ratification process
The Protocol was adopted by COP 3 of UNFCCC on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. It was opened on 16 March 1998 for signature during one year by parties to UNFCCC, when it was signed Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, the Maldives, Samoa, St. Lucia and Switzerland. At the end of the signature period, 82 countries and the European Community had signed. Ratification (which is required to become a party to the Protocol) started on 17 September with ratification by Fiji. Countries that did not sign acceded to the convention, which has the same legal effect.
Article 25 of the Protocol specifies that the Protocol enters into force "on the ninetieth day after the date on which not less than 55 Parties to the Convention, incorporating Parties included in Annex I which accounted in total for at least 55% of the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 of the Annex I countries, have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession."
The EU and its Member States ratified the Protocol in May 2002. Of the two conditions, the "55 parties" clause was reached on 23 May 2002 when Iceland ratified the Protocol. The ratification by Russia on 18 November 2004 satisfied the "55%" clause and brought the treaty into force, effective 16 February 2005, after the required lapse of 90 days.
As of May 2013, 191 countries and one regional economic organization (the EC) have ratified the agreement, representing over 61.6% of the 1990 emissions from Annex I countries. One of the 191 ratifying states—Canada—has renounced the protocol.
Non-ratification by the US
The US signed the Protocol on 12 November 1998, during the Clinton presidency. To become binding in the US, however, the treaty had to be ratified by the Senate, which had already passed the 1997 non-binding Byrd-Hagel Resolution, expressing disapproval of any international agreement that did not require developing countries to make emission reductions and "would seriously harm the economy of the United States". The resolution passed 95–0. Therefore, even though the Clinton administration signed the treaty, it was never submitted to the Senate for ratification.
At the outset of the Bush administration, Senators Chuck Hagel, Jesse Helms, Larry Craig, and Pat Roberts wrote a letter to President George W. Bush seeking to identify his position on the Kyoto Protocol and climate change policy. In a letter dated March 13, 2001, President Bush responded that his "Administration takes the issue of global climate change very seriously", but that "I oppose the Kyoto Protocol because it exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy. The Senate's vote, 95-0, shows that there is a clear consensus that the Kyoto Protocol is an unfair and ineffective means of addressing global climate change concerns."
The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research reported in 2001:This policy reversal received a massive wave of criticism that was quickly picked up by the international media. Environmental groups blasted the White House, while Europeans and Japanese alike expressed deep concern and regret. ... Almost all world leaders (e.g. China, Japan, South Africa, Pacific Islands, etc.) expressed their disappointment at Bush's decision.In response to this criticism, Bush stated: "I was responding to reality, and reality is the nation has got a real problem when it comes to energy". The Tyndall Centre called this "an overstatement used to cover up the big benefactors of this policy reversal, i.e., the US oil and coal industry, which has a powerful lobby with the administration and conservative Republican congressmen."
As of 2020, the US is the only signatory that has not ratified the Protocol. The US accounted for 36% of emissions in 1990. As such, for the treaty to go into legal effect without US ratification, it would require a coalition including the EU, Russia, Japan, and small parties. A deal, without the US Administration, was reached in the Bonn climate talks (COP-6.5), held in 2001.
Withdrawal of Canada
In 2011, Canada, Japan and Russia stated that they would not take on further Kyoto targets. The Canadian government announced its withdrawal—possible at any time three years after ratification—from the Kyoto Protocol on 12 December 2011, effective 15 December 2012. Canada was committed to cutting its greenhouse emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012, but in 2009 emissions were 17% higher than in 1990. The Harper government prioritized oil sands development in Alberta, and deprioritized the reduction of greenhouse emissions. Environment minister Peter Kent cited Canada's liability to "enormous financial penalties" under the treaty unless it withdrew. He also suggested that the recently signed Durban agreement may provide an alternative way forward. The Harper government claimed it would find a "Made in Canada" solution. Canada's decision received a generally negative response from representatives of other ratifying countries.
Other states and territories where the treaty was not applicable
Andorra, Palestine, South Sudan, the United States and, following their withdrawal on 15 December 2012, Canada are the only UNFCCC Parties that are not party to the Protocol. Furthermore, the Protocol is not applied to UNFCCC observer the Holy See. Although the Kingdom of the Netherlands approved the protocol for the whole Kingdom, it did not deposit an instrument of ratification for Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten or the Caribbean Netherlands.
Government action and emissions
Annex I countries
Total aggregate GHG emissions excluding emissions/removals from land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF, i.e., carbon storage in forests and soils) for all Annex I Parties (see list below) including the United States taken together decreased from 19.0 to 17.8 thousand teragrams (Tg, which is equal to 109 kg) equivalent, a decline of 6.0% during the 1990–2008 period. Several factors have contributed to this decline. The first is due to the economic restructuring in the Annex I Economies in Transition (the EITs – see Intergovernmental Emissions Trading for the list of EITs). Over the period 1990–1999, emissions fell by 40% in the EITs following the collapse of central planning in the former Soviet Union and east European countries. This led to a massive contraction of their heavy industry-based economies, with associated reductions in their fossil fuel consumption and emissions.
Emissions growth in Annex I Parties have also been limited due to policies and measures (PaMs). In particular, PaMs were strengthened after 2000, helping to enhance energy efficiency and develop renewable energy sources. Energy use also decreased during the economic crisis in 2007–2008.
Annex I parties with targets
Collectively the group of industrialized countries committed to a Kyoto target, i.e., the Annex I countries excluding the US, had a target of reducing their GHG emissions by 4.2% on average for the period 2008–2012 relative to the base year, which in most cases is 1990.
As noted in the preceding section, between 1990–1999, there was a large reduction in the emissions of the EITs. The reduction in the EITs is largely responsible for the total (aggregate) reduction (excluding LULUCF) in emissions of the Annex I countries, excluding the US. Emissions of the Annex II countries (Annex I minus the EIT countries) have experienced a limited increase in emissions from 1990–2006, followed by stabilization and a more marked decrease from 2007 onwards. The emissions reductions in the early nineties by the 12 EIT countries who have since joined the EU, assist the present EU-27 in meeting its collective Kyoto target.
In December 2011, Canada's environment minister, Peter Kent, formally announced that Canada would withdraw from the Kyoto accord a day after the end of the 2011 United Nations Climate Change Conference (see the section on the withdrawal of Canada).
Annex I parties without Kyoto targets
Belarus, Malta, and Turkey are Annex I Parties but did not have first-round Kyoto targets. The US had a Kyoto target of a 7% reduction relative to the 1990 level, but has not ratified the treaty. If the US had ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the average percentage reduction in total GHG emissions for the Annex I group would have been a 5.2% reduction relative to the base year.
Compliance
38 developed countries committed to limiting their greenhouse gas emissions. Because the United States did not ratify and Canada withdrew, the emission limits remained in force for 36 countries. All of them complied with the Protocol. However, nine countries (Austria, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Switzerland) had to resort to the flexibility mechanisms because their national emissions were slightly greater than their targets.
In total, the 36 countries that fully participated in the Protocol were committed to reducing their aggregate emissions by 4% from the 1990 base year. Their average annual emissions in 2008–2012 were 24.2% below the 1990 level. Hence, they surpassed their aggregate commitment by a large margin. If the United States and Canada are included, the emissions decreased by 11.8%. The large reductions were mainly thanks to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which reduced the emissions of the Eastern Bloc by tens of percents in the early 1990s. In addition, the financial crisis of 2007–08 significantly reduced emissions during the first Kyoto commitment period.
The 36 countries that were committed to emission reductions only accounted for 24% of the global greenhouse gas emissions in 2010. Even though these countries significantly reduced their emissions during the Kyoto commitment period, other countries increased their emissions so much that the global emissions increased by 32% from 1990 to 2010.
Non-Annex I
UNFCCC (2005) compiled and synthesized information reported to it by non-Annex I Parties. Most non-Annex I Parties belonged in the low-income group, with very few classified as middle-income. Most Parties included information on policies relating to sustainable development. Sustainable development priorities mentioned by non-Annex I Parties included poverty alleviation and access to basic education and health care. Many non-Annex I Parties are making efforts to amend and update their environmental legislation to include global concerns such as climate change.
A few Parties, e.g., South Africa and Iran, stated their concern over how efforts to reduce emissions by Annex I Parties could adversely affect their economies. The economies of these countries are highly dependent on income generated from the production, processing, and export of fossil fuels.
Emissions
GHG emissions, excluding land use change and forestry (LUCF), reported by 122 non-Annex I Parties for the year 1994 or the closest year reported, totalled 11.7 billion tonnes (billion = 1,000,000,000) of CO2-eq. CO2 was the largest proportion of emissions (63%), followed by methane (26%) and nitrous oxide (N2O) (11%).
The energy sector was the largest source of emissions for 70 Parties, whereas for 45 Parties the agriculture sector was the largest. Per capita emissions (in tonnes of CO2-eq, excluding LUCF) averaged 2.8 tonnes for the 122 non-Annex I Parties.
The Africa region's aggregate emissions were 1.6 billion tonnes, with per capita emissions of 2.4 tonnes.
The Asia and Pacific region's aggregate emissions were 7.9 billion tonnes, with per capita emissions of 2.6 tonnes.
The Latin America and Caribbean region's aggregate emissions were 2 billion tonnes, with per capita emissions of 4.6 tonnes.
The "other" region includes Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Malta, Moldova, and North Macedonia. Their aggregate emissions were 0.1 billion tonnes, with per capita emissions of 5.1 tonnes.
Parties reported a high level of uncertainty in LUCF emissions, but in aggregate, there appeared to only be a small difference of 1.7% with and without LUCF. With LUCF, emissions were 11.9 billion tonnes, without LUCF, total aggregate emissions were 11.7 billion tonnes.
Trends
In several large developing countries and fast growing economies (China, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Egypt, and Iran) GHG emissions have increased rapidly (PBL, 2009). For example, emissions in China have risen strongly over the 1990–2005 period, often by more than 10% year. Emissions per-capita in non-Annex I countries are still, for the most part, much lower than in industrialized countries. Non-Annex I countries do not have quantitative emission reduction commitments, but they are committed to mitigation actions. China, for example, has had a national policy programme to reduce emissions growth, which included the closure of old, less efficient coal-fired power plants.
Cost estimates
Barker et al. (2007, p. 79) assessed the literature on cost estimates for the Kyoto Protocol. Due to US non-participation in the Kyoto treaty, costs estimates were found to be much lower than those estimated in the previous IPCC Third Assessment Report. Without the US participation, and with full use of the Kyoto flexible mechanisms, costs were estimated at less than 0.05% of Annex B GDP. This compared to earlier estimates of 0.1–1.1%. Without use of the flexible mechanisms, costs without the US participation were estimated at less than 0.1%. This compared to earlier estimates of 0.2–2%. These cost estimates were viewed as being based on much evidence and high agreement in the literature.
Views on the Protocol
Gupta et al. (2007) assessed the literature on climate change policy. They found that no authoritative assessments of the UNFCCC or its Protocol asserted that these agreements had, or will, succeed in solving the climate problem. In these assessments, it was assumed that the UNFCCC or its Protocol would not be changed. The Framework Convention and its Protocol include provisions for future policy actions to be taken.
Gupta et al. (2007) described the Kyoto first-round commitments as "modest", stating that they acted as a constraint on the treaty's effectiveness. It was suggested that subsequent Kyoto commitments could be made more effective with measures aimed at achieving deeper cuts in emissions, as well as having policies applied to a larger share of global emissions. In 2008, countries with a Kyoto cap made up less than one-third of annual global carbon dioxide emissions from fuel combustion.
World Bank (2010) commented on how the Kyoto Protocol had only had a slight effect on curbing global emissions growth. The treaty was negotiated in 1997, but in 2006, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions had grown by 24%. World Bank (2010) also stated that the treaty had provided only limited financial support to developing countries to assist them in reducing their emissions and adapting to climate change.
Some of the criticism of the Protocol has been based on the idea of climate justice (Liverman, 2008, p. 14).
This has particularly centered on the balance between the low emissions and high vulnerability of the developing world to climate change, compared to high emissions in the developed world. Another criticism of the Kyoto Protocol and other international conventions, is the right of indigenous peoples right to participate. Quoted here from The Declaration of the First International Forum of Indigenous Peoples on Climate Change, it says "Despite the recognition of our role in preventing global warming, when it comes time to sign international conventions like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, once again, our right to participate in national and international discussions that directly affect our Peoples and territories is denied." Additionally, later in the declaration, it reads: We denounce the fact that neither the [United Nations] nor the Kyoto Protocol recognizes the existence or the contributions of Indigenous Peoples. Furthermore, the debates under these instruments have not considered the suggestions and proposals of the Indigenous Peoples nor have the appropriate mechanisms to guarantee our participation in all the debates that directly concern the Indigenous Peoples has been established.Some environmentalists have supported the Kyoto Protocol because it is "the only game in town", and possibly because they expect that future emission reduction commitments may demand more stringent emission reductions (Aldy et al.., 2003, p. 9). In 2001, seventeen national science academies stated that ratification of the Protocol represented a "small but essential first step towards stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases." Some environmentalists and scientists have criticized the existing commitments for being too weak (Grubb, 2000, p. 5).
The United States (under former President George W. Bush) and Australia (initially, under former Prime Minister John Howard) did not ratify the Kyoto treaty. According to Stern (2006), their decision was based on the lack of quantitative emission commitments for emerging economies (see also the 2000 onwards section). Australia, under former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has since ratified the treaty, which took effect in March 2008.
Views on the flexibility mechanisms
Another area which has been commented on is the role of the Kyoto flexibility mechanisms – emissions trading, Joint Implementation, and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The flexibility mechanisms have attracted both positive and negative comments.
As mentioned earlier, a number of Annex I Parties have implemented emissions trading schemes (ETSs) as part of efforts to meet their Kyoto commitments. General commentaries on emissions trading are contained in emissions trading and carbon emission trading. Individual articles on the ETSs contain commentaries on these schemes (see for a list of ETSs).
One of the arguments made in favour of the flexibility mechanisms is that they can reduce the costs incurred by Annex I Parties in meeting their Kyoto commitments. Criticisms of flexibility have, for example, included the ineffectiveness of emissions trading in promoting investment in non-fossil energy sources, and adverse impacts of CDM projects on local communities in developing countries.
Philosophy
As the Kyoto Protocol seeks to reduce environmental pollutants while at the same time altering the freedoms of some citizens.
As discussed by Milton Friedman, one can achieve both economic and political freedom through capitalism; nonetheless, it is never guaranteed that one is going to have equality of wealth of those on top of the "food chain" of this capitalistic world. All these alterations come to what the leaders of the citizens choose to impose in means of improving ones lifestyle. In the case of the Kyoto Protocol, it seeks to impose regulations that will reduce production of pollutants towards the environment. Furthermore, seeking to compromise the freedoms of both private and public citizens. In one side it imposes bigger regulations towards companies and reducing their profits as they need to fulfil such regulations with, which are oftentimes more expensive, alternatives for production. On the other hand, it seeks to reduce the emissions that cause the rapid environmental change called climate change.
The conditions of the Kyoto Protocol consist of mandatory targets on greenhouse gas emissions for the world's leading economies. As provided by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, "These targets range from −8 per cent to +10 per cent of the countries' individual 1990 emissions levels with a view to reducing their overall emissions of such gases by at least 5 per cent below existing 1990 levels in the commitment period 2008 to 2012."
China, India, Indonesia and Brazil were not required to reduce their CO2 emissions. The remaining signatory countries were not obliged to implement a common framework nor specific measures, but to reach an emission reduction target for which they can benefit of a secondary market for carbon credits multilaterally exchanged from each other. The Emissions-trading Scheme (ETS) allowed countries to host polluting industries and to buy from other countries the property of their environmental merits and virtuous patterns.
The Kyoto Protocol's goals are challenged, however, by climate change deniers, who condemn strong scientific evidence of the human impact on climate change. One prominent scholar opines that these climate change deniers "arguably" breach Rousseau's notion of the social contract, which is an implicit agreement among the members of a society to coordinate efforts in the name of overall social benefit. The climate change denial movement hinders efforts at coming to agreements as a collective global society on climate change.
Conference of the Parties
The official meeting of all states party to the Kyoto Protocol is the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is held every year; it serves as the formal meeting of UNFCCC. Parties to the Convention may participate in Protocol-related meetings either as parties to the Protocol or as observers.
The first conference was held in 1995 in Berlin. The first Meeting of Parties of the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) was held in 2005 in conjunction with COP 11. The 2013 conference was held in Warsaw. Later COPs were held in Lima, Peru in 2014 and in Paris, France in 2015. The 2015 event, COP 21, aimed to hold the global average rise in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. COP 22 was planned for Marrakesh, Morocco and COP 23 for Bonn, Germany.
Amendment and successor
In the non-binding "Washington Declaration" agreed on 16 February 2007, heads of governments from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa agreed in principle on the outline of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. They envisaged a global cap-and-trade system that would apply to both industrialized nations and developing countries, and initially hoped that it would be in place by 2009.
The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 was one of the annual series of UN meetings that followed the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio. In 1997 the talks led to the Kyoto Protocol, and the conference in Copenhagen was considered to be the opportunity to agree a successor to Kyoto that would bring about meaningful carbon cuts.
The 2010 Cancún agreements include voluntary pledges made by 76 developed and developing countries to control their emissions of greenhouse gases. In 2010, these 76 countries were collectively responsible for 85% of annual global emissions.
By May 2012, the US, Japan, Russia, and Canada had indicated they would not sign up to a second Kyoto commitment period. In November 2012, Australia confirmed it would participate in a second commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol and New Zealand confirmed that it would not.
New Zealand's climate minister Tim Groser said the 15-year-old Kyoto Protocol was outdated, and that New Zealand was "ahead of the curve" in looking for a replacement that would include developing nations. Non-profit environmental organisations such as the World Wildlife Fund criticised New Zealand's decision to pull out.
On 8 December 2012, at the end of the 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference, an agreement was reached to extend the Protocol to 2020 and to set a date of 2015 for the development of a successor document, to be implemented from 2020 (see lede for more information). The outcome of the Doha talks has received a mixed response, with small island states critical of the overall package. The Kyoto second commitment period applies to about 11% of annual global emissions of greenhouse gases. Other results of the conference include a timetable for a global agreement to be adopted by 2015 which includes all countries. At the Doha meeting of the parties to the UNFCCC on 8 December 2012, the European Union chief climate negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, pledged to extend the treaty, binding on the 27 European Member States, up to the year 2020 pending an internal ratification procedure.
Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations, called on world leaders to come to an agreement on halting global warming during the 69th Session of the UN General Assembly on 23 September 2014 in New York. The next climate summit was held in Paris in 2015, out of which emerged the Paris Agreement, the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
See also
Action for Climate Empowerment
Alternatives to the Kyoto Protocol and successor
Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate
Business action on climate change
Carbon emission trading
Carbon footprint
Clean Development Mechanism
Climate legislation
Copenhagen Accord
Environmental agreements
Environmental impact of aviation
Environmental law
Environmental tariff
List of climate change initiatives
List of international environmental agreements
Low-carbon economy
Montreal Protocol
Net Capacity Factor
Paris Agreement
Politics of global warming
Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation or REDD
Supplementarity
Sustainability
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change or UNFCCC
World People's Conference on Climate Change
Notes
References
. Report No 6/2012. Report website.
. Report website. Data as an Excel spreadsheet.
(pb: ).
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(pb: ).
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. Also available in Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French and Russian.
Executive summary in other languages
. Available as a PDF in the official UN languages.
Further reading
Ekardt, F./von Hövel, A.: Distributive Justice, Competitiveness, and Transnational Climate Protection. In: Carbon & Climate Law Review, Vol. 3., 2009, p. 102–114.
Katy Longden, Roshni Pabari, Munir Hassan, and Dalia Majumder-Russel, "Climate Change: Mitigation and Adaptation (A Legal Guide)". Advocates for International Development (June 2012)
Romain Morel, and Igor Shishlov, "Ex-post evaluation of the Kyoto Protocol : Four key lessons for the 2015 Paris Agreement". CDC Climat Research (May 2014)
Sebastian Oberthür, Hermann E. Ott: International Climate Policy for the 21st Century, 1999, Springer.
Economics
From this issue:
External links
Protocol text (HTML and PDF), 2007 and 2012 amendment
List of countries who have ratified, accepted, approved, or accessed the Kyoto Protocol, its first amendment (Targets for Belarus) and its second amendment (extension period 2012–2020)
Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at Law-Ref.org – fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents
The layman's guide to the Kyoto Protocol
Kyoto: On Target? – Google Docs
Introductory note by Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, procedural history note and audiovisual material on the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in the Historic Archives of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law
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16776 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaddish | Kaddish | Kaddish or Qaddish or Qadish ( "holy") is a hymn praising God that is recited during Jewish prayer services. The central theme of the Kaddish is the magnification and sanctification of God's name. In the liturgy, different versions of the Kaddish are functionally chanted or sung as separators of the different sections of the service.
The term Kaddish is often used to refer specifically to "The Mourner's Kaddish," which is chanted as part of the mourning rituals in Judaism in all prayer services, as well as at funerals (other than at the gravesite; see Kaddish acher kevurah "Qaddish after Burial") and memorials; for 11 Hebrew months after the death of a parent; and in some communities for 30 days after the death of a spouse, sibling, or child. When mention is made of "saying Kaddish", this unambiguously refers to the rituals of mourning. Mourners recite Kaddish to show that despite the loss they still praise God.
Along with the Shema Yisrael and the Amidah, the Kaddish is one of the most important and central elements in the Jewish liturgy. Kaddish is not, traditionally, recited alone. Along with some other prayers, it traditionally can only be recited with a minyan of ten Jews (a minimum quorum of ten adult males).
Variant forms
The various versions of the Kaddish are:
Ḥaṣi Qaddish (חצי קדיש 'Half Kaddish') or Qaddish Lʿela (קדיש לעלא), sometimes called the Reader's Kaddish
Qaddish Yatom (קדיש יתום) or Qaddish Yehe Shlama Rabba (קדיש יהא שלמא רבא)literally 'Orphan's Kaddish', although commonly referred to as Qaddish Avelim (קדיש אבלים), the 'Mourner's Kaddish'
Qaddish Shalem (קדיש שלם) or Qaddish Titkabbal (קדיש תתקבל)literally "Complete Kaddish" or "Whole Kaddish"
Qaddish de Rabbanan (קדיש דרבנן 'Kaddish of the Rabbis') or Qaddish ʿal Yisraʾel (קדיש על ישראל)
Qaddish aḥar Haqqvura (קדיש אחר הקבורה)literally 'Kaddish after a Burial', also called Kaddish d'Ithadata (קדיש דאתחדתא) after one of the first distinguishing words in this variant
Qaddish aḥar Hashlamat Masechet (קדיש אחר השלמת מסכת)literally, 'Kaddish after the completion of a tractate', i.e. at a siyum, also called Qaddish haGadol (קדיש הגדול 'the Great Qaddish'), as it is the longest Kaddish
All versions of the Kaddish begin with the Hatzi Kaddish (there are some extra passages in the Kaddish after a burial or a siyum). The longer versions contain additional paragraphs, and are often named after distinctive words in those paragraphs.
Historically there existed another type of Kaddish, called Qaddish Yahid ("Individual's Kaddish"). This is included in the Siddur of Amram Gaon, but is a meditation taking the place of Kaddish rather than a Kaddish in the normal sense. It is not recited in modern times.
Usage
The Half Kaddish is used to punctuate divisions within the service: for example, before Barechu, after the Amidah, and following readings from the Torah.
The Kaddish d'Rabbanan is used after any part of the service that includes extracts from the Mishnah or the Talmud, as its original purpose was to close a study session.
Kaddish Titkabbal originally marked the end of a prayer service, though in later times extra passages and hymns were added to follow it.
Text of the Kaddish
The following includes the half, complete, mourner's and rabbi's kaddish. The variant lines of the kaddish after a burial or a siyum are given below.
Text of the burial kaddish
In the burial kaddish, and that after a siyum according to Ashkenazim,i, lines 2-3 are replaced by:
Recent changes to Oseh Shalom
In some recent prayerbooks, for example, the American Reform Machzor, line 36 is replaced with:
This effort to extend the reach of Oseh Shalom to non-Jews is said to have been started by the British Liberal Jewish movement in 1967, with the introduction of v'al kol bnai Adam ("and upon all humans"); these words continue to be used by some in the UK.
Notes
Bracketed text varies according to personal or communal traditions.
(A) The congregation responds with "amen" (אָמֵן) after lines 1, 4, 7, 12, 15, 18, 27, 33, 36. In the Ashkenazi tradition, the response to line 12 is "Blessed be he" (בְּרִיךְ הוּא b'rikh hu), and in some communities the congregation says "Blessed be He" before the chazzan says it, rendering the next phrase "brikh hu le'eilah" (Blessed be He above) (see Darke Moshe OC 56:3).
(B) On line 1, some say Yitgaddeyl veyitqaddeysh rather than Yitgaddal veyitqaddash, because the roots of these two words are Hebrew and not Aramaic (the Aramaic equivalent would be Yitrabay veyitkadash), some authorities (but not others) felt that both words should be rendered in pure Hebrew pronunciation.
(C) Line 13: in the Ashkenazi tradition the repeated "le'ela" is used only during the Ten Days of Repentance, or on the High Holiday themselves in the German tradition. In the Sephardi tradition it is never used. In the Yemenite and Italian traditions it is the invariable wording. The phrase "le'ela le'ela" is the Targum's translation of the Hebrew "ma'la ma'la" (Deuteronomy 28:43).
(D) Lines 4 and 30–32 are not present in the Ashkenazi or Italian tradition. "Revaḥ vehatzala" is said aloud by the congregation.
(E) Line 26: some Sephardi Jews say malka [or maram or mareh] di-shmaya ve-ar'a (the King [or Master] of Heaven and Earth) instead of avuhon de-vi-shmaya (their Father in Heaven); De Sola Pool uses mara; the London Spanish and Portuguese Jews use the same text as the Ashkenazim.
(F) During the "complete kaddish" some include the following congregational responses, which are not regarded as part of the text:
Before line 16, "accept our prayer with mercy and favour"
Before line 28, "May the name of God be blessed, from now and forever"
Before line 34, "My help is from God, creator of heaven and earth"
(G) Line 35: "b'rahamav" is used by Sephardim in all versions of kaddish; by Ashkenazim only in "Kaddish deRabbanan".
(H) Line 36: "ammo" is used by most Sephardim, but not by some of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews or Ashkenazim.
(I) Lines 37 to 45: these lines are also recited by Yemenite Jews as part of every Kaddish DeRabbanan.
(Z) In line 22, the bracketed word is added in the Land of Israel.
In line 1, as noted in (a), the congregation responds "Amen", even though this commonly is not printed in most prayerbooks. This longstanding and widespread tradition actually introduces a break in the verse which may lead to misinterpretation as the phrase "according to His will" would then appear to apply only to "which he created" instead of to "Magnified and sanctified".
It is common that the entire congregation recites lines 8 and 9 with the leader, and it is also common that the congregation will include in its collective recitation the first word of the next line (line 10), Yitbarakh. This is commonly thought to be done to prevent any interruption before the next line (which begins with Yitbarakh) is recited by the leader. But this inclusion of Yitbarakh has not always been the case. Maimonides and the Tur did not include it in the congregation's recitation; Amram Gaon, the Vilna Gaon, and the Shulchan Aruch include it.
Analysis of the text
The opening words of the Kaddish are inspired by Ezekiel 38:23's vision of God becoming great in the eyes of all the nations.
The central line of the Kaddish is the congregation's response: (Yǝhē šmēh rabbā mǝvārakh lǝʿālam u-lʿalmē ʿālmayyā, "May His great name be blessed for ever, and to all eternity"), a public declaration of God's greatness and eternality. This response is similar to the wording of Daniel 2:20. It is also parallel to the Hebrew "" (commonly recited after the first verse of the Shema); Aramaic versions of both יה שמה רבה and ברוך שם כבוד appear in the various versions of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Genesis 49:2 and Deuteronomy 6:4.
The Mourners, Rabbis and Complete Kaddish end with a supplication for peace ("Oseh Shalom..."), which is in Hebrew, and is somewhat similar to the Tanakh Job 25:2.
Kaddish does not contain God's name. It is said that this is because Kaddish has 26 words, equalling the gematria of the Lord's name itself (יהוה), and the Kaddish text proves that from the very beginning with words "May His great name be exalted and sanctified".
Customs
Kaddish, as used in the services on certain special occasions, is sung. There are different melodies in different Jewish traditions, and within each tradition the melody can change according to the version, the day it is said and even the position in the service. Many mourners recite Kaddish slowly and contemplatively.
In Sephardi synagogues the whole congregation sits for Kaddish, except:
During the Kaddish immediately before the Amidah, where everyone stands;
During the Mourner's Kaddish, where those reciting it stand and everyone else sits.
In Ashkenazi synagogues, the custom varies. Very commonly, in both Orthodox and Reform congregations, everyone stands for the mourner's kaddish; but in some (especially many Conservative and Sephardic) synagogues, most of the congregants sit. Sometimes, a distinction is made between the different forms of Kaddish, or each congregant stands or sits according to his or her own custom. The Mourner's Kaddish is often treated differently from the other variations of Kaddish in the service, as is the Half Kaddish before the maftir.
Those standing to recite Kaddish bow, by widespread tradition, at various places. Generally: At the first word of the prayer, at each Amen, at Yitbarakh, at Brikh hu, and for the last verse (Oseh shalom). For Oseh shalom it is customary to take three steps back (if possible) then bow to one's left, then to one's right, and finally bow forward, as if taking leave of the presence of a king, in the same way as when the same words are used as the concluding line of the Amidah.
According to the original Ashkenazic custom, as well as the Yemenite custom, one mourner recites each Kaddish, and the Halachic authorities set down extensive rules to determine who has priority for each kaddish. In most (but not all) Ashkenazic communities, they have adopted the Sephardic custom to allow multiple mourners to recite Kaddish together.
Minyan requirement
Masekhet Soferim, an eighth-century compilation of Jewish laws regarding the preparation of holy books and public reading, states (Chapter 10:7) that Kaddish may be recited only in the presence of a minyan (a quorum of at least 10 men in Orthodox Judaism or 10 adults in Reform and Conservative Judaism). While the traditional view is that "If kaddish is said in private, then by definition it is not kaddish," some alternatives have been suggested, including the Kaddish L'yachid ("Kaddish for an individual"), attributed to ninth-century Gaon Amram bar Sheshna, and the use of kavanah prayer, asking heavenly beings to join with the individual "to make a minyan of both Earth and heaven". In some Reform congregations, a minyan is not required for recitation of the Kaddish, but other Reform congregations disagree and believe that the Kaddish should be said publicly.
History and background
"The Kaddish is in origin a closing doxology to an Aggadic discourse." Most of it is written in Aramaic, which, at the time of its original composition, was the lingua franca of the Jewish people. It is not composed in the vernacular Aramaic, however, but rather in a "literary, jargon Aramaic" that was used in the academies, and is identical to the dialect of the Targum.
Professor Yoel Elitzur, however, argues that the Kaddish was originally written in Hebrew, and later translated to Aramaic to be better understood by the masses. He notes that quotations from the Kaddish in the Talmud and Sifrei are in Hebrew, and that even today some of the words are Hebrew rather than Aramaic.
The oldest version of the Kaddish is found in the Siddur of Rab Amram Gaon, c. 900. "The first mention of mourners reciting Kaddish at the end of the service is in a thirteenth century halakhic writing called the Or Zarua. The Kaddish at the end of the service became designated as Kaddish Yatom or Mourner's Kaddish (literally, "Orphan's Kaddish")."
The Kaddish was not always recited by mourners and instead became a prayer for mourners sometime between the 12th and 13th centuries when it started to be associated with a medieval legend about Rabbi Akiva who meets a dead man seeking redemption in the afterlife.
Hebrew reconstruction
Elitzur made an attempt at reconstructing the theorized original Hebrew version of Kaddish:
יִתְגַּדֵּל וְיִתְקַדֵּשׁ שְׁמוֹ הַגָּדוֹל
בָּעוֹלָם שֶׁבָּרָא כִּרְצוֹנוֹ
וְתָמלוֹךְ מַלְכוּתוֹ בְּחַיֵּיכֶם וּבְיָמֵיכֶם וּבְחַיֵּיהֶם שֶׁל כֹל בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל בִּמְהֵרָה וּבִזְמָן קָרוֹב
יְהִי שְׁמוֹ הַגָּדוֹל מְבוֹרָךְ לְעוֹלָם וּלְעוֹלְמֵי עוֹלָמִים
Rabbi David Bar-Hayim also attempted a reconstruction:
יִתְגַּדַּל וְיִתְקַדַּשׁ שׁמוֹ הַגָּדוֹל שֶׁל מֶלֶךְ מַלְכֵי הַמְּלָכִים הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא
בָּעוֹלָם שֶׁבָּרָא כִּרְצוֹנוֹ
וְיֵמְלִיךְ מַלְכוּתוֹ בְּחַיֵּיכֶם וּבִימֵיכֶם וּבְחַיֵּי כֹל בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל בִּמְהֵרָה וּבִזְמָן קָרוֹב
יְהִי שְׁמוֹ הַגָּדוֹל מְבוֹרָךְ לְעוֹלָם וּלְעוֹלְמֵי עוֹלָמִים
Mourner's Kaddish
Mourner's Kaddish is said at all prayer services and certain other occasions. It is written in Aramaic. It takes the form of Kaddish Yehe Shelama Rabba, and is traditionally recited several times, most prominently at or towards the end of the service, after the Aleinu and/or closing Psalms and/or (on the Sabbath) Ani'im Zemirot. Following the death of a child, spouse, or sibling it is customary to recite the Mourner's Kaddish in the presence of a congregation daily for thirty days, or eleven months in the case of a parent, and then at every anniversary of the death (the Yahrzeit). The mourner who says the Kaddish will be any person present at a service who has the obligation to recite Kaddish in accordance with these rules.
Customs for reciting the Mourner's Kaddish vary markedly among various communities. In Sephardi synagogues, the custom is that all the mourners stand and chant the Kaddish together. In Ashkenazi synagogues before the 19th century, one mourner was chosen to lead the prayer on behalf of the rest, but gradually over the last two centuries, most (but certainly not all) communities have adopted the Sephardi custom. In many Reform synagogues, the entire congregation recites the Mourner's Kaddish together. This is sometimes said to be for those victims of the Holocaust who have no one left to recite the Mourner's Kaddish on their behalf and in support of the mourners. In some congregations (especially Reform and Conservative ones), the Rabbi reads a list of the deceased who have a Yahrzeit on that day (or who have died within the past month), and then ask the congregants to name any people they are mourning for. Some synagogues, especially Orthodox and Conservative ones, multiply the number of times that the Mourner's Kaddish is recited, for example by reciting a separate Mourner's Kaddish after both Aleinu and then each closing Psalm. Other synagogues limit themselves to one Mourner's Kaddish at the end of the service.
Notably, the Mourner's Kaddish does not mention death at all, but instead praises God. Though the Kaddish is often popularly referred to as the "Jewish Prayer for the Dead," that designation more accurately belongs to the prayer called "El Malei Rachamim", which specifically prays for the soul of the deceased. The Mourner's Kaddish can be more accurately represented as an expression of "justification for judgment" by the mourners on their loved ones' behalf. It is believed that mourners adopted this version of the Kaddish around the 13th century during harsh persecution of Jews by crusaders in Germany because of the opening messianic line about God bringing the dead back to life (though this line is not in many modern versions).
Women and the Mourner's Kaddish
Though there is evidence of some women saying the Mourner's Kaddish for their parents at the grave, during shiva, and in daily prayers since the 17th century, and though R. Bacharach concluded in "the Amsterdam case" that women could recite the Mourner's Kaddish, this is still controversial in Orthodox communities, with various rabbis restricting the ruling. Despite these restrictions, recitation of the Mourner's Kaddish by Orthodox Jewish women is becoming more common. In 2013 the Israeli Orthodox rabbinical organization Beit Hillel issued a halachic ruling that women may say the Kaddish in memory of their deceased parents. In Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Judaism, the Mourner's Kaddish is traditionally said by women who are also counted in the minyan.
Use of the Kaddish in the arts
The Kaddish has been a particularly common theme and reference point in the arts, including the following:
In literature and publications
(Alphabetical by author)
In Shai Afsai's "The Kaddish" (2010), a poignant short story that could happen in almost any town with a small Jewish community, a group of elderly men trying to form a minyan in order to recite the Kaddish confront the differences between Judaism's denominations.
In the first chapter of Sholem Aleichem's novel Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son the boy narrator, whose father just died, needs to quickly learn by heart the Kaddish - which he would have to recite - and struggling with the incomprehensible Aramaic words.
Kaddish is a poem, divided into 21 sections and of almost 700 pages length, by German poet Paulus Böhmer. The first ten sections appeared in 2002, the remaining eleven in 2007. It celebrates the world, through mourning its demise.
Kaddish in Dublin (1990) crime novel by John Brady where an Irish Jew is involved with a plot to subvert the Irish government.
Nathan Englander's third novel, Kaddish.com (2019), is about a grieving son who discovers a website that for a fee will match dead relatives with pious students who will recite the Mourner's Kaddish thrice daily on their behalf. In this manner, he outsources his obligation to recite kaddish for his father.
In Nathan Englander's novel set during the Dirty Wars in Argentina, The Ministry of Special Cases, the protagonist is an Argentinian Jew named Kaddish.
In Torch Song Trilogy (1982), written by Harvey Fierstein, the main character Arnold Beckoff says the Mourner's Kaddish for his murdered lover, Alan, much to the horror of his homophobic mother.
In Frederick Forsyth's novel The Odessa File, a Jew who commits suicide in 1960s Germany requests in his diary/suicide note that someone say Kaddish for him in Israel. At the end of the novel, a Mossad agent involved in the plot, who comes into possession of the diary, fulfils the dead man's wish.
Kaddish is one of the most celebrated poems by the beat poet Allen Ginsberg. It appeared in Kaddish and Other Poems, a collection he published in 1961. The poem was dedicated to his mother, Naomi Ginsberg (1894–1956).
Kaddish, a novel by Yehiel De-Nur, in which he explores actual, semi-fictional, and fictional stories relating to Hebrew struggles during the Holocaust.
Kaddish for an Unborn Child is a novel by the Hungarian Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész.
"Who Will Say Kaddish?: A Search for Jewish Identity in Contemporary Poland," text by Larry N Mayer with photographs by Gary Gelb (Syracuse University Press, 2002)
In the September 20, 1998 Nickolodeon's Rugrats comic strip, the character Grandpa Boris recites the Mourner's Kaddish in the synagogue. This particular strip led to controversy with the Anti-Defamation League.
The Mystery of Kaddish. Rav "DovBer Pinson". Explains and explores the Kabbalistic and deeper meaning of the Kaddish.
In Philip Roth's novel The Human Stain, the narrator states that the Mourner's Kaddish signifies that "a Jew is dead. Another Jew is dead. As though death were not a consequence of life but a consequence of having been a Jew."
“Kaddish” is the penultimate and longest piece in poet Sam Sax's chapbook STRAIGHT, in which he tells the story of the death of the speaker’s first love due to an overdose, following narratives of the speaker’s own addiction. In August 2016, Sax performed this poem at the Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam.
Zadie Smith's novel, The Autograph Man, revolves around Alex-Li Tandem, a dealer in autograph memorabilia whose father's Yahrzeit is approaching. The epilogue of the novel features a scene in which Alex-Li recites Kaddish with a minyan.
Several references to the Mourner's Kaddish are made in Night by Elie Wiesel. Though the prayer is never directly said, references to it are common, including to times when it is customarily recited, but omitted.
Leon Wieseltier's Kaddish (1998) is a book length hybrid of memoirs (of the author's year of mourning after the death of his father), history, historiography and philosophical reflection, all centered on the mourner's Kaddish.
In music
(Alphabetical by creator)
Matthew J. Armstrong quotes the final lines ('oseh shalom bimromav...) in his work "Elegy for Dachau" (2009).
Kaddish is the name of Symphony No. 3 by Leonard Bernstein, a dramatic work for orchestra, mixed chorus, boys' choir, speaker and soprano solo dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy who was assassinated on November 22, 1963, just weeks before the first performance of this symphony. The symphony is centered on the Kaddish text.
The Kaddish is spoken in Part V of the Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service) by the composer Ernest Bloch (1933).
Canadian poet/songwriter/artist Leonard Cohen uses words from the Kaddish in his 2016 final album entitled "You Want It Darker", specifically in the title song, during the chorus.
Kaddish is a work for cello and orchestra by David Diamond.
The Israeli rapper Dudu Faruk has mentioned the kaddish in the lyrics of his 2018 song, "Eliran Sabag"
Kaddish is a track by Gina X Performance.
"Kaddish" is the 34th movement in La Pasión según San Marcos by composer Osvaldo Golijov.
"Kaddish" is a song by Ofra Haza from her album Desert Wind.
Nili Isenberg put the words of kaddish to the tune of Hello (Adele song) while reciting kaddish for her father.
Kaddish is the title of a 1979 composition for solo horn by the Russian-Israeli composer Lev Kogan (1927-2007).
Kaddish is the title for a work by W. Francis McBeth for a concert band, based on the chant of the prayer. McBeth composed this work as a memorial for his teacher J. Clifton Williams.
Kaddish (ladder) canon is the final piece on the album "These are the Generations" by Larry Polansky. It is an elegy for friends recently lost.
The French composer Maurice Ravel composed a song for voice and piano using part of the Kaddish. It was commissioned in 1914 by Alvina Alvi as part of a set of two songs: "Deux mélodies hébraïques" and was first performed in June 1914 by Alvi with Ravel at the piano.
Kaddish Shalem is a musical work by Salamone Rossi (1570–c. 1628), composed for five voices in homophonic style, the very first polyphonic setting of this text, in his "Hashirim Asher L'Shomo", The Song of Solomon.
Inspired by Kaddish is a fifteen-movement musical composition by Lawrence Siegel. One of the movements is the prayer itself; the remaining fourteen are stories of the experiences of a number of Holocaust survivors Lawrence interviewed. It was debuted by the Keene State College Chamber Singers in 2008.
Mieczysław Weinberg's Symphony No. 21 is subtitled "Kaddish". The symphony, composed in 1991, is dedicated to Holocaust victims from the Warsaw Ghetto.
Concept album Kaddish (1993) created by Richard Wolfson with Andy Saunders using the band name Towering Inferno.
In visual arts
(Alphabetical by creator)
Potter Steven Branfman threw chawan (Japanese style tea bowls) every day for a year in honor of his departed son Jared. For a year, they were the only pots he made. One chawan each day, no matter where he was. He and his family said Kaddish every day for a year. His daily chawan made at his potter's wheel was his own personal Kaddish. The exhibition is also included in The Teabowl: East and West, by Bonnie Kemske.
Artist Mauricio Lasansky, familiar with Kaddish from his background, produced his Kaddish series of eight intaglio prints, ten years after his Nazi Drawings, his statement of Nazi destruction and degradation. In 1978, the Argentine-born 62 year-old Lasansky completed his answer of peace and survival, his Kaddish prints.
Artist Max Miller traveled from synagogue to synagogue throughout New York and beyond, reciting the daily prayer in memory of his father and then painting a watercolor study of the synagogue in which he recited it.
Following the deaths of both her parents within one week of one another, artist Wendy Meg Siegel created a painting with a focus on the Kaddish, as part of her canvas on canvas "text-tures" series, which explores methods of combining text and canvas in a somewhat “sculptural” manner.
Online
(Alphabetical by creator)
Mira Z. Amiras and Erin L. Vang have taken the Kaddish as a starting point for a yearlong collaboration titled, "Kaddish in Two-Part Harmony", consisting of a jointly written blog and daily podcast recording of Lev Kogan's "Kaddish" for solo horn.
David Bogomolny chronicled his yearlong recitation of kaddish in honor of his father Dr. Alexander Bogomolny, originally on The Times of Israel blogs, in a series titled, "The skeptic's kaddish for the atheist", consisting of traditional Jewish sources, religious text analysis, modern interpretations and expressions of kaddish, philosophy, theology, eschatology, creative writing, and the personal reflections; memories; and experiences of a son in mourning.
From 2016-2017 Rabbi Ariana Katz recorded a podcast called "Kaddish" focused on mourning ritual and customs, featuring first person storytelling and interviews, using Jewish tradition to contextualize and deepen themes of the show, and holding space at the intersection of life and death. "Kaddish" covered topics including mourning chosen family, reproductive loss, illness, ritual writing, suicide, queer and trans burial, tattoos and conversion status, and state violence. Featured guests shared their personal and professional expertise and story.
Onscreen, in film
(Chronological)
In the 1973 film Les aventures de Rabbi Jacob (The Mad Adventures of Rabbi Jacob), it is chanted at the end of the Bar-Mitzvah service.
In the film The Passover Plot (1976), a revived Jesus dies finally and is mourned with a Kaddish recitation by a disciple.
In the 1980 film The Jazz Singer starring Neil Diamond, character Cantor Rabinovitch (Laurence Olivier) says the Kaddish while disowning his son. The Kaddish helps bring forth the power needed to evoke the emotion of loss.
In Rocky III (1982), Rocky Balboa recites the Mourner's Kaddish for Mickey.
In the film Yentl (1983), at Yentl's father's burial, the rabbi asks who will say Kaddish (Kaddish is traditionally said by a son). Yentl replies that she will and, to the horror of those assembled, grabs the siddur and starts saying Kaddish.
Steve Brand's feature documentary Kaddish (1984), about Yossi Klein Halevi's growing up as the child of his Holocaust survivor father, was named by the New York-based Village Voice as one of the ten best films of the year. It won the Special Jury Prize at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival.
In Torch Song Trilogy (1988), Arnold (portrayed by playwright Harvey Fierstein) says the Mourner's Kaddish for his murdered lover, Alan, and Arnold's mother (portrayed by Anne Bancroft) strongly protests.
The Kaddish is recited in the film Schindler's List (1993), in the last scene at the factory.
Film Saying the Kaddish (1999) by Dan Frazer
Konstantin Fam's Kaddish (2019) centers on the testament of a former concentration camp prisoner who confronts and turns the lives of two young people from different worlds around, shedding light on the tragic history of their family.
The Kaddish as a form of religious excommunication (when recited for someone still alive) appears in the fantasy-documentary A Kaddish For Bernie Madoff (2021), created by musician/poet Alicia Jo Rabins and directed by Alicia J. Rose. The film tells the story of Madoff and the system that allowed him to function for decades through the eyes of Rabins, who watches the financial crash from her 9th floor studio in an abandoned office building on Wall Street.
Onscreen, in television
(Alphabetical by program title)
In the television series Babylon 5, Lt. Comdr. Susan Ivanova finally decides to sit Shiva and recite the Mourner's Kaddish at the end of episode "TKO" (Season 1, Ep. 14), for her father with an old friend, Rabbi Koslov, who has come to the station to urge her to mourn.
In the television series Drawn Together, Toot Braunstein recites the Mourner's Kaddish in the episode "A Very Special Drawn Together Afterschool Special", after saying that her son was (metaphorically) dead.
In the television show Everwood, Ephram Brown recites the Mourner's Kaddish at his mother's unveiling.
In the second-season finale of Homeland, The Choice, CIA agent Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin) recites the Mourner's Kaddish while standing over the corpses of victims of a terrorist attack.
"Kaddish" is the title of Homicide: Life on the Street episode 5.17, in which detective John Munch (Richard Belzer), who is Jewish, investigates the rape and murder of his childhood sweetheart.
Kaddish For Uncle Manny", episode 4.22 of Northern Exposure (first aired 5-3-93) relates to Joel's (Rob Morrow) seeking out of ten Jews in remote Alaska to join him for Kaddish in memory of his recently departed Uncle Manny in New York City. Joel eventually decides, though, that saying Kaddish for his uncle is best accomplished in the presence of his new Cicely family, who although Gentile, are most near and dear to him.
The second season of the series Quantico, FBI Special Agent Nimah Amin, herself a Muslim, recites the Mourner's Kaddish at Simon Asher's unveiling.
The fictional character Dan Turpin was killed by Darkseid in Superman: The Animated Series, and a Rabbi said Kaddish at his funeral. An onscreen, post-episode message dedicated the episode to Jack Kirby, a Jewish comic book artist, who influenced much of the comic book community.
In the series Touched by an Angel, episode 3.5 (season 3, episode 5), Henry Moskowitz, a proud archaeologist on a dig at a Navajo excavation site, receives a surprise visit from zayda (grandfather). Sam hopes to reconcile with his grandson and Jewish family faith by asking him to say kaddish.
"Kaddish" is the title of The X-Files episode 4.15 (season 4, episode 15), in which a Golem is avenging a murder.
Onstage, in dance, theater and musicals
In Tony Kushner's play Angels in America (and the subsequent TV miniseries), the characters of Louis Ironson and Ethel Rosenberg say the Kaddish over Roy Cohn's dead body. Louis, a non-practicing Jew, mistakenly identifies the Kaddish as being written in Hebrew.
Kaddish is a female dance solo choreographed by Anna Sokolow to music by Maurice Ravel.
The Mourner's Kaddish can be heard being recited by Collins and Roger during the song "La Vie Boheme" in the musical Rent.
See also
Bereavement in Judaism
References
Notes
Bibliography
Cyrus Adler, et al. "Kaddish". Jewish Encyclopedia, 1906. pp. 401–403.
Yesodot Tefillah, Rabbi Eliezer Levi, published by Abraham Zioni Publishing House, Israel 1977. P173
Kaddish is a female dance solo choreographed by Anna Sokolow to Maurice Ravel.
De Sola Pool, Kaddish (1909) The Kaddish
External links
Jewish Virtual Library - Jewish Prayers: The Mourner's Kaddish
Neirot Foundation: The Importance of Kaddish
myKaddish.com
The Kaddish Foundation: A non-profit who recite the Kaddish every day for eleven months following the death of a Jewish relative, loved-one or friend.
Birkat Hamazon: Kaddish
Aramaic words and phrases
Aramaic words and phrases in Jewish law
Aramaic words and phrases in Jewish prayers and blessings
Bereavement in Judaism
Jewish life cycle
Jewish prayer and ritual texts
Jewish theology | [
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16777 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalevala | Kalevala | The Kalevala (, ) is a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology, telling an epic story about the Creation of the Earth, describing the controversies and retaliatory voyages between the peoples of the land of Kalevala called Väinölä and the land of Pohjola and their various protagonists and antagonists, as well as the construction and robbery of the epic mythical wealth-making machine Sampo.
The Kalevala is regarded as the national epic of Karelia and Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature with J. L. Runeberg's The Tales of Ensign Stål and Aleksis Kivi's The Seven Brothers. The Kalevala was instrumental in the development of the Finnish national identity and the intensification of Finland's language strife that ultimately led to Finland's independence from Russia in 1917. The work is also well known internationally and has partly influenced, for example, J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium (i.e. Middle-earth mythology).
The first version of the Kalevala, called the Old Kalevala, was published in 1835, consisting of 12,078 verses. The version most commonly known today was first published in 1849 and consists of 22,795 verses, divided into fifty folk stories (Finnish: runot). An abridged version, containing all fifty poems but just 9732 verses, was published in 1862. In connection with the Kalevala, there is another much more lyrical collection of poems, also compiled by Lönnrot, called Kanteletar from 1840, which is mostly seen as a "sister collection" of the Kalevala.
Collection and compilation
Elias Lönnrot
Elias Lönnrot (9 April 1802 – 19 March 1884) was a physician, botanist, linguist, and poet. During the time he was compiling the Kalevala he was the district health officer based in Kajaani responsible for the whole Kainuu region in the eastern part of what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland. He was the son of Fredrik Johan Lönnrot, a tailor and Ulrika Lönnrot; he was born in the village of Sammatti, Uusimaa.
At the age of 21, he entered the Imperial Academy of Turku and obtained a master's degree in 1826. His thesis was entitled De Vainamoine priscorum fennorum numine (Väinämöinen, a Divinity of the Ancient Finns). The monograph's second volume was destroyed in the Great Fire of Turku the same year.
In the spring of 1828, he set out with the aim of collecting folk songs and poetry. Rather than continue this work, though, he decided to complete his studies and entered Imperial Alexander University in Helsinki to study medicine. He earned a master's degree in 1832. In January 1833, he started as the district health officer of Kainuu and began his work on collecting poetry and compiling the Kalevala. Throughout his career Lönnrot made a total of eleven field trips within a period of fifteen years.
Prior to the publication of the Kalevala, Elias Lönnrot compiled several related works, including the three-part Kantele (1829–1831), the Old Kalevala (1835) and the Kanteletar (1840).
Lönnrot's field trips and endeavours helped him to compile the Kalevala, and brought considerable enjoyment to the people he visited; he would spend much time retelling what he had collected as well as learning new poems.
Poetry
History
Before the 18th century the Kalevala poetry was common throughout Finland and Karelia, but in the 18th century it began to disappear in Finland, first in western Finland, because European rhymed poetry became more common in Finland. Finnish folk poetry was first written down in the 17th century and collected by hobbyists and scholars through the following centuries. Despite this, the majority of Finnish poetry remained only in the oral tradition.
Finnish born nationalist and linguist Carl Axel Gottlund (1796–1875) expressed his desire for a Finnish epic in a similar vein to the Iliad, Ossian and the Nibelungenlied compiled from the various poems and songs spread over most of Finland. He hoped that such an endeavour would incite a sense of nationality and independence in the native Finnish people. In 1820, founded the journal Turun Wiikko-Sanomat (Turku Weekly News) and published three articles entitled Väinämöisestä (Concerning Väinämöinen). These works were an inspiration for Elias Lönnrot in creating his masters thesis at Turku University.
In the 19th century, collecting became more extensive, systematic and organised. Altogether, almost half a million pages of verse have been collected and archived by the Finnish Literature Society and other collectors in what are now Estonia and the Republic of Karelia. The publication Suomen Kansan Vanhat Runot (Ancient Poems of the Finns) published 33 volumes containing 85,000 items of poetry over a period of 40 years. They have archived 65,000 items of poetry that remain unpublished. By the end of the 19th century this pastime of collecting material relating to Karelia and the developing orientation towards eastern lands had become a fashion called Karelianism, a form of national romanticism.
The chronology of this oral tradition is uncertain. The oldest themes, the origin of Earth, have been interpreted to have their roots in distant, unrecorded history and could be as old as 3,000 years.
The newest events, e.g. the arrival of Christianity, seem to be from the Iron Age, which in Finland lasted until c. 1300 CE. Finnish folklorist Kaarle Krohn proposes that 20 of the 45 poems of the Kalevala are of possible Ancient Estonian origin or at least deal with a motif of Estonian origin (of the remainder, two are Ingrian and 23 are Western Finnish).
It is understood that during the Finnish reformation in the 16th century the clergy forbade all telling and singing of pagan rites and stories. In conjunction with the arrival of European poetry and music this caused a significant reduction in the number of traditional folk songs and their singers. Thus the tradition faded somewhat but was never totally eradicated.
Lönnrot's field trips
In total, Lönnrot made eleven field trips in search of poetry. His first trip was made in 1828 after his graduation from Turku University, but it was not until 1831 and his second field trip that the real work began. By that time he had already published three articles entitled Kantele and had significant notes to build upon. This second trip was not very successful and he was called back to Helsinki to attend to victims of the Second cholera pandemic.
The third field trip was much more successful and led Elias Lönnrot to Viena in east Karelia where he visited the town of Akonlahti, which proved most successful. This trip yielded over 3,000 verses and copious notes. In 1833, Lönnrot moved to Kajaani where he was to spend the next 20 years as the district health officer for the region. His fourth field trip was undertaken in conjunction with his work as a doctor; a 10-day jaunt into Viena. This trip resulted in 49 poems and almost 3,000 new lines of verse. It was during this trip that Lönnrot formulated the idea that the poems might represent a wider continuity, when poem entities were performed to him along with comments in normal speech connecting them.
On the fifth field trip, Lönnrot met Arhippa Perttunen who provided a large portion of the verses for the Kalevala. He met a singer called Matiska in the hamlet of Lonkka on the Russian side of the border. While this singer had a somewhat poor memory, he did help to fill in many gaps in the work Lönnrot had already catalogued. This trip resulted in the discovery of almost 300 poems at just over 13,000 verses.
In autumn of 1834, Lönnrot had written the vast majority of the work needed for what was to become the Old Kalevala; all that was required was to tie up some narrative loose ends and complete the work. His sixth field trip took him into Kuhmo, a municipality in Kainuu to the south of Viena. There he collected over 4,000 verses and completed the first draft of his work. He wrote the foreword and published in February of the following year.
With the Old Kalevala well into its first publication run, Lönnrot decided to continue collecting poems to supplement his existing work and to understand the culture more completely. The seventh field trip took him on a long winding path through the southern and eastern parts of the Viena poem singing region. He was delayed significantly in Kuhmo because of bad skiing conditions. By the end of that trip, Lönnrot had collected another 100 poems consisting of over 4,000 verses. Lönnrot made his eighth field trip to the Russian border town of Lapukka where the great singer Arhippa Perttunen had learned his trade. In correspondence he notes that he has written down many new poems but is unclear on the quantity.
Elias Lönnrot departed on the first part of his ninth field trip on 16 September 1836. He was granted a 14-month leave of absence and a sum of travelling expenses from the Finnish Literary Society. His funds came with some stipulations: he must travel around the Kainuu border regions and then on to the north and finally from Kainuu to the south-east along the border. For the expedition into the north he was accompanied by . The first part of the trip took Lönnrot all the way to Inari in northern Lapland. The second, southern part of the journey was more successful than the northern part, taking Lönnrot to the Russian town of Sortavala on Lake Ladoga then back up through Savo and eventually back to Kajaani. Although these trips were long and arduous, they resulted in very little Kalevala material; only 1,000 verses were recovered from the southern half and an unknown quantity from the northern half.
The tenth field trip is a relative unknown. What is known however, is that Lönnrot intended to gather poems and songs to compile into the upcoming work Kanteletar. He was accompanied by his friend C. H. Ståhlberg for the majority of the trip. During that journey the pair met Mateli Magdalena Kuivalatar in the small border town of Ilomantsi. Kuivalatar was very important to the development of the Kanteletar. The eleventh documented field trip was another undertaken in conjunction with his medical work. During the first part of the trip, Lönnrot returned to Akonlahti in Russian Karelia, where he gathered 80 poems and a total of 800 verses. The rest of the trip suffers from poor documentation.
Methodology
Lönnrot and his contemporaries, e.g. Matthias Castrén, Anders Johan Sjögren,
and David Emmanuel Daniel Europaeus collected most of the poem variants; one poem could easily have countless variants, scattered across rural areas of Karelia and Ingria. Lönnrot was not really interested in, and rarely wrote down the name of the singer except for some of the more prolific cases. His primary purpose in the region was that of a physician and of an editor, not of a biographer or counsellor. He rarely knew anything in-depth about the singer himself and primarily only catalogued verse that could be relevant or of some use in his work.
The student David Emmanuel Daniel Europaeus is credited with discovering and cataloguing the majority of the Kullervo story.
Of the dozens of poem singers who contributed to the Kalevala, significant ones are:
Arhippa Perttunen (1769–1840)
Juhana Kainulainen
Matiska
Ontrei Malinen (1780–1855)
Vaassila Kieleväinen
Soava Trohkimainen
Form and structure
The poetry was often sung to music built on a pentachord, sometimes assisted by a kantele player. The rhythm could vary but the music was arranged in either two or four lines in metre. The poems were often performed by a duo, each person singing alternative verses or groups of verses. This method of performance is called an antiphonic performance, it is a kind of "singing match".
Metre
Despite the vast geographical distance and customary spheres separating individual singers, the folk poetry the Kalevala is based on was always sung in the same metre.
The Kalevalas metre is a form of trochaic tetrameter that is now known as the Kalevala metre. The metre is thought to have originated during the Proto-Finnic period. Its syllables fall into three types: strong, weak, and neutral. Its main rules are as follows:
A long syllable (one that contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or ends in a consonant) with a main stress is metrically strong.
In the second, third, and fourth foot of a line, a strong syllable can occur in only the rising part:
Veli / kulta, / veikko/seni (1:11)
("Dearest friend, and much-loved brother")
The first foot has a freer structure, allowing strong syllables in a falling position as well as a rising one:
Niit' en/nen i/soni / lauloi (1:37)
("These my father sang aforetime")
A short syllable with a main stress is metrically weak.
In the second, third, and fourth feet, a weak syllable can occur only in the falling part:
Miele/ni mi/nun te/kevi (1:1)
("I am driven by my longing")
Again, the first foot's structure is more free, allowing weak syllables in a rising position as well as a falling one:
vesois/ta ve/tele/miä (1:56)
("Others taken from the saplings")
All syllables without a main stress are metrically neutral. Neutral syllables can occur at any position.
There are two main types of line:
A normal tetrameter, word-stresses and foot-stresses match, and there is a caesura between the second and third feet:
Veli / kulta, // veikko/seni
A broken tetrameter (Finnish: murrelmasäe) has at least one stressed syllable in a falling position. There is usually no caesura:
Miele/ni mi/nun te/kevi
Traditional poetry in the Kalevala metre uses both types with approximately the same frequency. The alternating normal and broken tetrameters is a characteristic difference between the Kalevala metre and other forms of trochaic tetrameter.
There are four additional rules:
In the first foot, the length of syllables is free. It is also possible for the first foot to contain three or even four syllables.
A one-syllable word can not occur at the end of a line.
A word with four syllables should not stand in the middle of a line. This also applies to non-compound words.
The last syllable of a line may not include a long vowel.
Schemes
There are two main schemes featured in the Kalevala:
Alliteration
Alliteration can be broken into two forms. Weak: where only the opening consonant is the same, and strong: where both the first vowel or vowel and consonant are the same in the different words. (e.g. vaka vanha Väinämöinen "Steadfast old Väinämöinen").
Parallelism
Parallelism in The Kalevala refers to the stylistic feature of repeating the idea presented in the previous line, often by using synonyms, rather than moving the plot forward. (e.g. Näillä raukoilla rajoilla / Poloisilla pohjan mailla "In these dismal Northern regions / In the dreary land of Pohja"). Lönnrot has been criticised for overusing parallelism in The Kalevala: in the original poems, a line was usually followed by only one such parallel line.
The verses are sometimes inverted into chiasmus.
Poetry example
Verses 221 to 232 of song forty.
Lönnrot's contribution to the Kalevala
Very little is actually known about Elias Lönnrot's personal contributions to the Kalevala. Scholars to this day still argue about how much of the Kalevala is genuine folk poetry and how much is Lönnrot's own work – and the degree to which the text is 'authentic' to the oral tradition. During the compilation process it is known that he merged poem variants and characters together, left out verses that did not fit and composed lines of his own to connect certain passages into a logical plot. Similarly, individual singers would use their own words and dialect when reciting their repertoire, even going so far as to perform different versions of the same song at different times.
The Finnish historian Väinö Kaukonen suggests that 3% of the Kalevalas lines are Lönnrot's own composition, 14% are Lönnrot compositions from variants, 50% are verses which Lönnrot kept mostly unchanged except for some minor alterations, and 33% are original unedited oral poetry.
Publishing
Finnish language
The first version of Lönnrot's compilation was entitled Kalewala, taikka Wanhoja Karjalan Runoja Suomen Kansan muinoisista ajoista ("The Kalevala, or old Karelian poems about ancient times of the Finnish people"), also known as the Old Kalevala. It was published in two volumes in 1835–1836. The Old Kalevala consisted of 12,078 verses making up a total of thirty-two poems.
Even after the publication of the Old Kalevala Lönnrot continued to collect new material for several years. He later integrated this additional material, with significantly edited existing material, into a second version, the Kalevala. This New Kalevala, published in 1849, contains fifty poems, with a number of plot differences compared with the first version, and is the standard text of the Kalevala read and translated to this day.
The word Kalevala rarely appears in the original folk songs. The first appearance of the word in folk songs was recorded in April 1836. Lönnrot chose it as the title for his project sometime at the end of 1834, but his choice was not random. The name "Kalev" appears in Finnic and Baltic folklore in many locations, and the Sons of Kalev are known throughout Finnish and Estonian folklore.
Lönnrot produced Lyhennetty laitos, an abridged version of the Kalevala, in 1862. It was intended for use in schools. It retains all 50 runos from the 1849 version, but omits more than half of the verses.
Translations
Of the few complete translations into English, it is only the older translations by John Martin Crawford (1888) and William Forsell Kirby (1907) which attempt to strictly follow the original (Kalevala metre) of the poems.
Eino Friberg's 1988 translation uses it selectively but in general is more attuned to pleasing the ear than being an exact metrical translation; it also often reduces the length of songs for aesthetic reasons. In the introduction to his 1989 translation, Keith Bosley stated: "The only way I could devise of reflecting the vitality of Kalevala metre was to invent my own, based on syllables rather than feet. While translating over 17,000 lines of Finnish folk poetry before I started on the epic, I found that a line settled usually into seven syllables of English, often less, occasionally more. I eventually arrived at seven, five and nine syllables respectively, using the impair (odd number) as a formal device and letting the stresses fall where they would."
Most recently, translator Kaarina Brooks translated into English the complete runic versions of Old Kalevala 1835 (Wisteria Publications 2020) and Kalevala (Wisteria Publications 2021). These works, unlike previous versions, faithfully follow the Kalevala metre throughout and can be sung or chanted.
A notable partial translation of Franz Anton Schiefner's German translation was made by Prof. John Addison Porter in 1868 and published by Leypoldt & Holt.
Edward Taylor Fletcher, a British-born Canadian literature enthusiast, translated selections of the Kalevala in 1869. He read them before the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec on 17 March 1869.
Francis Peabody Magoun published a scholarly translation of the Kalevala in 1963 written entirely in prose. The appendices of this version contain notes on the history of the poem, comparisons between the original Old Kalevala and the current version, and a detailed glossary of terms and names used in the poem. Magoun translated the Old Kalevala, which was published six years later entitled The Old Kalevala and Certain Antecedents.
Modern translations were published in the Karelian and Urdu languages between 2009 and 2015. Thus, the Kalevala was published in its originating Karelian language only after 168 years since its first translation into Swedish.
As of 2010, the Kalevala had been translated into sixty-one languages and is Finland's most translated work of literature.
The story
Introduction
The Kalevala begins with the traditional Finnish creation myth, leading into stories of the creation of the earth, plants, creatures, and the sky. Creation, healing, combat and internal story telling are often accomplished by the character(s) involved singing of their exploits or desires. Many parts of the stories involve a character hunting or requesting lyrics (spells) to acquire some skill, such as boat-building or the mastery of iron making. As well as magical spell casting and singing, there are many stories of lust, romance, kidnapping and seduction. The protagonists of the stories often have to accomplish feats that are unreasonable or impossible which they often fail to achieve, leading to tragedy and humiliation.
The Sampo is a pivotal element of the whole work. Many actions and their consequences are caused by the Sampo itself or a character's interaction with the Sampo. It is described as a magical talisman or device that brings its possessor great fortune and prosperity, but its precise nature has been the subject of debate to the present day.
Cantos
First Väinämöinen Cycle
Cantos 1 to 2: The poem begins with an introduction by the singers. The Earth is created from the shards of the egg of a goldeneye and the first man Väinämöinen is born to the goddess Ilmatar. Väinämöinen brings trees and life to the barren world.
Cantos 3–5: Väinämöinen encounters the jealous Joukahainen and they engage in a battle of song. Joukahainen loses and pledges his sister's hand in return for his life; the sister Aino soon drowns herself in the sea.
Cantos 6–10: Väinämöinen heads to Pohjola to propose to a maiden of the north, a daughter of the mistress of the north Louhi. Joukahainen attacks Väinämöinen again, and Väinämöinen floats for days on the sea until he is carried by an eagle to Pohjola. He makes a deal with Louhi to get Ilmarinen the smith to create the Sampo. Ilmarinen refuses to go to Pohjola so Väinämöinen forces him against his will. The Sampo is forged. Ilmarinen returns without a bride.
First Lemminkäinen Cycle
Cantos 11–15: Lemminkäinen sets out in search of a bride. He and the maid Kyllikki make vows but the happiness doesn't last long and Lemminkäinen sets off to woo a maiden of the north. His mother tries to stop him, but he disregards her warnings and instead gives her his hairbrush, telling her that if it starts to bleed he has met his doom. At Pohjola Louhi assigns dangerous tasks to him in exchange for her daughter's hand. While hunting for the swan of Tuonela, Lemminkäinen is killed and falls into the river of death. The brush he left to his mother begins to bleed. Remembering her son's words, she goes in search of him. With a rake given to her by Ilmarinen, she collects the pieces of Lemminkäinen scattered in the river and pieces him back together.
Second Väinämöinen Cycle
Cantos 16–18: Väinämöinen builds a boat to travel to Pohjola once again in search of a bride. He visits Tuonela and is held prisoner, but he manages to escape and sets out to gain knowledge of the necessary spells from the giant Antero Vipunen. Väinämöinen is swallowed and has to torture Antero Vipunen for the spells and his escape. With his boat completed, Väinämöinen sets sail for Pohjola. Ilmarinen learns of this and resolves to go to Pohjola himself to woo the maiden. The maiden of the north chooses Ilmarinen.
Ilmarinen's Wedding
Cantos 19–25: Ilmarinen is assigned dangerous unreasonable tasks to win the hand of the maiden. He accomplishes these tasks with some help from the maiden herself. In preparation for the wedding, beer is brewed, a giant steer is slaughtered, and invitations are sent out. Lemminkäinen is uninvited. The wedding party begins and all are happy. Väinämöinen sings and lauds the people of Pohjola. The bride and bridegroom are prepared for their roles in matrimony. The couple arrive home and are greeted with drink and viands.
Second Lemminkäinen Cycle
Cantos 26–30: Lemminkäinen is resentful for not having been invited to the wedding and sets out immediately for Pohjola. On his arrival he is challenged to and wins a duel with Sariola, the Master of the North. Louhi is enraged and an army is conjured to enact revenge upon Lemminkäinen. He flees to his mother, who advises him to head to Saari, the Island of Refuge. On his return he finds his house burned to the ground. He goes to Pohjola with his companion Tiera to exact his revenge, but Louhi freezes the seas and Lemminkäinen has to return home. When he arrives home he is reunited with his mother and vows to build larger better houses to replace the ones burned down.
Kullervo Cycle
Cantos 31–36: Untamo kills his brother Kalervo's people, but spares his wife who later begets Kullervo. Untamo sees the boy as a threat, and after trying to have him killed several times without success, sells Kullervo as a slave to Ilmarinen. Ilmarinen's wife torments and bullies Kullervo, so he tricks her into being torn apart by a pack of wolves and bears. Kullervo escapes from Ilmarinen's homestead and learns from an old lady in the forest that his family is still alive, and is soon reunited with them. While returning home from paying taxes, he meets and seduces a young maiden, only to find out that she is his sister. Upon realizing this, she kills herself and Kullervo returns home distressed. He decides to wreak revenge upon Untamo and sets out to find him. Kullervo wages war on Untamo and his people, laying all to waste, and then returns home, where he finds his farm deserted. Filled with remorse and regret, he kills himself in the place where he seduced his sister.
Second Ilmarinen Cycle
Cantos 37–38: Grieving for his lost love, Ilmarinen forges himself a wife out of gold and silver, but finds her to be cold and discards her. He heads for Pohjola and kidnaps the youngest daughter of Louhi. The daughter insults him so badly that he instead sings a spell to turn her into a bird and returns to Kalevala without her. He tells Väinämöinen about the prosperity and wealth that has met Pohjola's people thanks to the Sampo.
Theft of the Sampo
Cantos 39–44: Väinämöinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkäinen sail to Pohjola to recover the Sampo. While on their journey they kill a monstrous pike and from its jaw bone the first kantele is made, with which Väinämöinen sings so beautifully even deities gather to listen. The heroes arrive in Pohjola and demand a share of the Sampo's wealth or they will take the whole Sampo by force. Louhi musters her army however Väinämöinen lulls everyone in Pohjola to sleep with his music. The Sampo is taken from its vault of stone and the heroes set out for home. Louhi conjures a great army, turns herself into a massive eagle and fights for the Sampo. In the battle the Sampo is lost to the sea and destroyed.
Louhi's Revenge on Kalevala
Cantos 45–49: Enraged at the loss of the Sampo, Louhi sends the people of Kalevala diseases and a great bear to kill their cattle. She hides the sun and the moon and steals fire from Kalevala. Väinämöinen heals all of the ailments and, with Ilmarinen, restores the fire. Väinämöinen forces Louhi to return the Sun and the Moon to the skies.
Marjatta cycle
Canto 50: The shy young virgin Marjatta becomes impregnated from a lingonberry she ate while tending to her flock. She begets a son. Väinämöinen orders the killing of the boy, but the boy begins to speak and reproaches Väinämöinen for ill judgement. The child is then baptised King of Karelia. Väinämöinen sails away leaving only his songs and kantele as legacy.
The poem ends and the singers sing a farewell and thank their audience.
Characters
Väinämöinen
Väinämöinen, the central character of The Kalevala, is a shamanistic hero with a magical power of song and music similar to that of Orpheus. He is born of Ilmatar and contributes to the creation of Earth as it is today. Many of his travels resemble shamanistic journeys, most notably one where he visits the belly of a ground-giant, Antero Vipunen, to find the songs of boat building. Väinämöinen's search for a wife is a central element in many stories, but he never finds one.
Väinämöinen is associated with playing a kantele, a Finnish stringed instrument that resembles and is played like a zither.
Ilmarinen
Seppo Ilmarinen is a heroic artificer (comparable to the Germanic Weyland and the Greek Daedalus). He crafted the dome of the sky, the Sampo and various other magical devices featured in The Kalevala. Ilmarinen, like Väinämöinen, also has many stories told of his search for a wife, reaching the point where he forges one of gold.
Lemminkäinen
Lemminkäinen, a handsome, arrogant and reckless ladies' man, is the son of Lempi ("lust" or "favourite"). He has a close relationship with his mother, who revives him after he has been drowned in the river of Tuonela while pursuing the object of his romantic desires.
Ukko
Ukko (English: Old man) is the god of sky and thunder, and the leading deity mentioned within The Kalevala. He corresponds to Thor and Zeus. John Martin Crawford wrote that the name may be related to the obsolete Hungarian word for an old man (agg).
Joukahainen
Joukahainen is a base young man who arrogantly challenges Väinämöinen to a singing contest, which he loses. In exchange for his life Joukahainen promises his young sister Aino to Väinämöinen. Joukahainen attempts to gain his revenge on Väinämöinen by killing him with a crossbow, but only succeeds in killing Väinämöinen's horse. Joukahainen's actions lead to Väinämöinen promising to build a Sampo in return for Louhi rescuing him.
Louhi
Louhi, the Mistress of the North, is the shamanistic matriarch of the people of Pohjola, a people rivalling those of Kalevala. She is the cause of much trouble for Kalevala and its people.
Louhi at one point saves Väinämöinen's life. She has many daughters whom the heroes of Kalevala make many attempts, some successful, to seduce. Louhi plays a major part in the battle to prevent the heroes of Kalevala from stealing back the Sampo, which as a result is ultimately destroyed. She is a powerful witch with a skill almost on a par with that of Väinämöinen.
Kullervo
Kullervo is the vengeful, mentally ill, tragic son of Kalervo. He was abused as a child and sold into slavery to Ilmarinen. He is put to work and treated badly by Ilmarinen's wife, whom he later kills. Kullervo is a misguided and troubled youth, at odds with himself and his situation. He often goes into berserk rage, and in the end commits suicide.
Marjatta
Marjatta is a young virgin of Kalevala. She becomes pregnant from eating a lingonberry. When her labour begins she is expelled from her parents' home and leaves to find a place where she can sauna and give birth. She is turned away from numerous places but finally finds a place in the forest and gives birth to a son. Marjatta's nature, impregnation and searching for a place to give birth are in allegory to the Virgin Mary and the Christianisation of Finland. Marjatta's son is later condemned to death by Väinämöinen for being born out of wedlock. The boy in turn chastises Väinämöinen and is later crowned King of Karelia. This angers Väinämöinen, who leaves Kalevala after bequeathing his songs and kantele to the people as his legacy.
Influence
The Kalevala is a major part of Finnish culture and history. It has affected the arts in Finland and in other cultures around the world.
Finnish daily life
The influence of the Kalevala in daily life and business in Finland is tangible. Names and places associated with the Kalevala have been adopted as company and brand names and even as place names.
There are several places within Finland with Kalevala-related names, for example: the district of Tapiola in the city of Espoo; the district of Pohjola in the city of Turku, the district of Metsola in the city of Vantaa, and the districts of Kaleva and Sampo in the city of Tampere; the historic provinces of Savo and Karjala and the Russian town of Hiitola are all mentioned within the songs of the Kalevala. In addition the Russian town of Ukhta was in 1963 renamed Kalevala. In the United States a small community founded in 1900 by Finnish immigrants is named Kaleva, Michigan; many of the street names are taken from the Kalevala.
The banking sector of Finland has had at least three Kalevala-related brands: Sampo Bank (name changed to Danske Bank in late 2012), OP-Pohjola Group and Tapiola Bank.
The jewellery company Kalevala Koru was founded in 1935 on the 100th anniversary of the publication of the Old Kalevala. It specialises in the production of unique and culturally important items of jewellery. It is co-owned by the Kalevala Women's League and offers artistic scholarships to a certain number of organisations and individuals every year.
The Finnish dairy company Valio has a brand of ice-cream named Aino, specialising in more exotic flavours than their normal brand.
The construction group Lemminkäinen was formed in 1910 as a roofing and asphalt company, the name was chosen specifically to emphasise that they were a wholly Finnish company. They now operate internationally.
Finnish calendar
Kalevala Day is celebrated in Finland on 28 February, to match Elias Lönnrot's first version of the Kalevala in 1835. By its other official name, the day is known as the Finnish Culture Day.
Several of the names in the Kalevala are celebrated as Finnish name days. The name days themselves and the dates they fall upon have no direct relationship with the Kalevala itself; however, the adoption of the names became commonplace after the release of the Kalevala.
Art
Several artists have been influenced by the Kalevala, most notably Akseli Gallen-Kallela who has painted many pieces relating to the Kalevala.
Iittala group's Arabia brand kilned a series of Kalevala commemorative plates, designed by Raija Uosikkinen (1923–2004). The series ran from 1976 to 1999 and are highly sought after collectables.
One of the earliest artists to depict the Kalevala is Robert Wilhelm Ekman.
In 1989, the fourth full translation of the Kalevala into English was published, illustrated by Björn Landström.
Literature
The Kalevala has been translated over one-hundred and fifty times into over sixty different languages. (See § translations.)
Re-tellings
Finnish cartoonist Kristian Huitula illustrated the comic book adaptation of the Kalevala. The Kalevala Graphic Novel contains the storyline of all the 50 chapters in original text form.
Finnish cartoonist and children's writer Mauri Kunnas wrote and illustrated Koirien Kalevala (The Canine Kalevala). The story is that of the Kalevala with the characters presented as anthropomorphised dogs, wolves and cats. The story deviates from the full Kalevala to make the story more appropriate for children.
The Kalevala inspired the American Disney cartoonist Don Rosa to draw a Donald Duck (who is himself a popular character in Finland) story based on the Kalevala, called The Quest for Kalevala. The comic was released in the year of the 150th anniversary of the Kalevalas publication.
Works inspired by
Franz Anton Schiefner's translation of the Kalevala was one inspiration for Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha, which is written in a similar trochaic tetrameter.
Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald's Estonian national epic Kalevipoeg was inspired by the Kalevala. Both Väinämöinen and Ilmarinen are mentioned in the work and the overall story of Kalevipoeg, Kalev's son, bears similarities with the Kullervo story.
J. R. R. Tolkien claimed the Kalevala as one of his sources for The Silmarillion. For example, Kullervo is the basis of Túrin Turambar in Narn i Chîn Húrin, including the sword that speaks when the anti-hero uses it to commit suicide. Echoes of the Kalevalas characters, Väinämöinen in particular, can be found in Tom Bombadil of The Lord of the Rings.
Poet and playwright Paavo Haavikko took influence from the Kalevala, including the poem Kaksikymmentä ja yksi (1974), and the TV-drama Rauta-aika (1982).
American science fiction and fantasy authors L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt used the Kalevala as source materials for their 1953 fantasy novella "The Wall of Serpents". This is the fourth story in the authors' Harold Shea series, in which the hero and his companions visit various mythic and fictional worlds. In this story, the characters visit the world of the Kalevala, where they encounter characters from the epic drawn with a skeptical eye.
Emil Petaja was an American science fiction and fantasy author of Finnish descent. His best known works, known as the Otava Series, a series of novels based on the Kalevala. The series brought Petaja readers from around the world, while his mythological approach to science fiction was discussed in scholarly papers presented at academic conferences. He has a further Kalevala based work which is not part of the series, entitled The Time Twister.
British fantasy author Michael Moorcock's sword and sorcery anti-hero, Elric of Melniboné is influenced by the character Kullervo.
British fantasy author Michael Scott Rohan's Winter of the World series feature Louhi as a major antagonist and include many narrative threads from the Kalevela.
The web comic "A Redtail's Dream", written and illustrated by Minna Sundberg, cites the Kalevala as an influence. (Physical edition 2014.)
The British science fiction writer Ian Watson's Books of Mana duology, Lucky's Harvest and The Fallen Moon, both contain references to places and names from the Kalevala.
In 2008, Vietnamese author and translator Bùi Viêt Hoa published an epic poetry The Children of Mon and Man (), which delves into Vietnamese folk poetry and mythology, based in partly on the Kalevala. The work was written mainly in Finland and the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs has also co-financed it.
Music
Music is the area which has the richest influence from the Kalevala, which is apt considering the way that the folk poetry and songs were originally performed.
Classical music
The first recorded example of a musician influenced by the Kalevala is Filip von Schantz. In 1860, he composed the Kullervo Overture. The piece premièred on the opening of a new theatre building in Helsinki on November of the same year. Von Schantz's work was followed by Robert Kajanus' Kullervo's death and the symphonic poem Aino in 1881 and 1885 respectively. Aino is credited with inspiring Jean Sibelius to investigate the richness of the Kalevala. Die Kalewainen in Pochjola, the first opera freely based upon the Kalevala, was composed by Karl Müller-Berghaus in 1890, but the work has never been performed.
Jean Sibelius is the best-known Kalevala-influenced classical composer. Twelve of Sibelius' best-known works are based upon or influenced by the Kalevala, including his Kullervo, a tone poem for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra composed in 1892. Sibelius also composed the music of Jääkärimarssi (The Jäger March) to words written by Finnish soldier and writer Heikki Nurmio. The march features the line Me nousemme kostona Kullervon ("We shall rise in vengeance like that of Kullervo's").
Other classical composers influenced by the Kalevala:
Einojuhani Rautavaara
Leevi Madetoja
Uuno Klami
Tauno Marttinen
Aulis Sallinen
Veljo Tormis
Folk metal
A number of folk metal bands have drawn on the Kalevala heavily for inspiration. In 1993 the Finnish bands Amorphis and Sentenced released two concept albums, Tales from the Thousand Lakes and North from Here respectively, which were the first of many that have been Kalevala-themed. Amorphis's 2009 album Skyforger also draws heavily on the Kalevala. The Finnish folk metal band Ensiferum have released songs, such as "Old Man" and "Little Dreamer", which are influenced by the Kalevala. The third track of their Dragonheads EP is entitled "Kalevala Melody". It is an instrumental piece following the rhythm of the Kalevala metre. Another Finnish folk metal band, Turisas, have adapted several verses from song nine of the Kalevala, "The Origin of Iron", for the lyrics of their song "Cursed Be Iron", which is the third track of the album The Varangian Way. Finnish metal band Amberian Dawn use lyrics inspired by the Kalevala in their album River of Tuoni, as well as in its successor, The Clouds of Northland Thunder. On 3 August 2012, Finnish folk metal band Korpiklaani released a new album entitled Manala. Jonne Järvelä from the band said, "Manala is the realm of the dead – the underworld in Finnish mythology. Tuonela, Tuoni, Manala and Mana are used synonymously. This place is best known for its appearance in the Finnish national epic Kalevala, on which many of our new songs are based."
Other musical genres
In the mid-1960s, the progressive rock band Kalevala was active within Finland and in 1974, the now prolific singer-songwriter Jukka Kuoppamäki released the song "Väinämöinen". These were some of the first pieces of modern music inspired by the Kalevala.
In 1998, Ruth MacKenzie recorded the album Kalevala: Dream of the Salmon Maiden, a song cycle covering the part of the story concerning Aino and her choice to refuse the hand of the sorcerer Väinämöinen and instead transform herself into a salmon. MacKenzie has continued to perform the piece live.
The Karelian Finnish folk music group Värttinä has based some of its lyrics on motifs from the Kalevala. The Vantaa Chamber Choir have songs influenced by the Kalevala. Their Kalevala-themed third album, Marian virsi (2005), combines contemporary folk with traditionally performed folk poetry.
In 2003, the Finnish progressive rock quarterly Colossus and French Musea Records commissioned 30 progressive rock groups from around the world to compose songs based on parts of the Kalevala. The publication assigned each band with a particular song from the Kalevala, which the band was free to interpret as they saw fit. The result, titled Kalevala, is a three-disc, multilingual, four-hour epic telling.
In the beginning of 2009, in celebration of the 160th anniversary of the Kalevalas first published edition, the Finnish Literature Society, the Kalevala Society, premièred ten new and original works inspired by the Kalevala. The works included poems, classical and contemporary music and artwork. A book was published by the Finnish Literature Society in conjunction with the event and a large exhibition of Kalevala-themed artwork and cultural artefacts was put on display at the Ateneum museum in Helsinki.
In 2017 a New York-based production Kalevala the Musical got started in celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Republic of Finland. The production features original pop, folk and world music score written by Johanna Telander. The concert version was performed across the United States and Finland.
Film
In 1959, a joint Finnish-Soviet production entitled Sampo, also known as The Day the Earth Froze, was released, inspired by the story of the Sampo from the Kalevala.
In 1982, the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE) produced a television mini-series called Rauta-aika (The Age of Iron), with music composed by Aulis Sallinen and book by Paavo Haavikko. The series was set "during the Kalevala times" and based upon events which take place in the Kalevala. The series' part 3/4 won Prix Italia in 1983.
The martial arts film Jadesoturi, also known as Jade Warrior, released in Finland on 13 October 2006, is based upon the Kalevala and set in Finland and China.
Interpretations
The Kalevala has attracted many scholars and enthusiasts to interpret its contents in a historical context. Many interpretations of the themes have been tabled. Some parts of the epic have been perceived as ancient conflicts between the early Finns and the Sami. In this context, the country of "Kalevala" could be understood as Southern Finland and Pohjola as Lapland.
However, the place names in Kalevala seem to transfer the Kalevala further south, which has been interpreted as reflecting the Finnic expansion from the South that came to push the Sami further to the north. Some scholars locate the lands of Kalevala in East Karelia, where most of the Kalevala stories were written down. In 1961, the small town of Uhtua in the then Soviet Republic of Karelia was renamed Kalevala, perhaps to promote that theory.
Finnish politician and linguist Eemil Nestor Setälä rejected the idea that the heroes of Kalevala are historical in nature and suggested they are personifications of natural phenomena. He interprets Pohjola as the northern heavens and the Sampo as the pillar of the world. Setälä suggests that the journey to regain the Sampo is a purely imaginary one with the heroes riding a mythological boat or magical steed to the heavens.
The practice of bear worship was once very common in Finland and there are strong echoes of this in the Kalevala.
The old Finnish word väinä (a strait of deep water with a slow current) appears to be the origin of the name Väinämöinen; one of Väinämöinen's other names is Suvantolainen, suvanto being the modern word for väinä. Consequently, it is possible that the Saari (Island) might be the island of Saaremaa in Estonia and Kalevala the Estonian mainland.
Finnish folklorists Matti Kuusi and Pertti Anttonen state that terms such as the people of Kalevala or the tribe of Kalevala were fabricated by Elias Lönnrot. Moreover, they contend that the word Kalevala is very rare in traditional poetry and that by emphasizing dualism (Kalevala vs. Pohjola) Elias Lönnrot created the required tension that made the Kalevala dramatically successful and thus fit for a national epic of the time.
There are similarities with mythology and folklore from other cultures, for example the Kullervo character and his story bearing some likeness to the Greek Oedipus. The similarity of the virginal maiden Marjatta to the Christian Virgin Mary is striking. The arrival of Marjatta's son in the final song spelling the end of Väinämöinen's reign over Kalevala is similar to the arrival of Christianity bringing about the end of Paganism in Finland and Europe at large.
See also
Finnish mythology
Mythologia Fennica
Finnish national symbols
Kalevi (mythology)
Kalevipoeg, an Estonian epic poetry inspired by the Kalevala
Kanteletar, a sister collection of the Kalevala
Notes
References
Further reading
Translations
. Text at Project Gutenberg: Volume 1, Volume 2, and Complete work.
. Text at Project Gutenberg: Volume 1 and Volume 2.
, translation of the 1835 Old Kalevala
Retellings
, near complete prose translation based on Crawford
, a retelling in a style friendly to children
, a story in tribute to the Kalevala featuring Scrooge McDuck and some characters from the Kalevala
Analysis
Siikala, Anna-Leena. "The Kalevalaic Tradition as Finnish Mythology". In: Ethnographica et Folkloristica Carpathica, 12-13 (2002). Megjelent: Mental Spaces and Ritual Traditions pp. 107-122
Tolley, Clive. "The Kalevala as a Model for our Understanding of the Composition of the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda." The Retrospective Methods Network (2014).
Encyclopedia
External links
1835 poems
1849 poems
National symbols of Finland | [
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16779 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku%20Klux%20Klan | Ku Klux Klan | The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist terrorist and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Catholics, Native Americans as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, and atheists.
The Klan has existed in three distinct eras. Each has advocated extremist reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration and – especially in later iterations – Nordicism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, Prohibition, right-wing populism, anti-communism, homophobia, Islamophobia, and anti-atheism. Historically, the first Klan used terrorism – both physical assault and murder – against politically active blacks and their allies in the Southern United States in the late 1860s. All three movements have called for the "purification" of American society and all are considered right-wing extremist organizations. In each era, membership was secret and estimates of the total were highly exaggerated by both friends and enemies.
The first Klan was established in the wake of the American Civil War and was a defining organization of the Reconstruction era. Organized in numerous chapters across the Southern United States, it was suppressed through federal law enforcement around 1871. It sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South, especially by using voter intimidation and targeted violence against African-American leaders. Each chapter was autonomous and highly secret as to membership and plans. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks and conical hats, designed to be terrifying and to hide their identities.
The second Klan started small in Georgia in 1915. It grew after 1920 and flourished nationwide in the early and mid-1920s, including urban areas of the Midwest and West. Taking inspiration from D. W. Griffith's 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, which mythologized the founding of the first Klan, it employed marketing techniques and a popular fraternal organization structure. Rooted in local Protestant communities, it sought to maintain white supremacy, often took a pro-Prohibition stance, and it opposed Catholics and Jews, while also stressing its opposition to the alleged political power of the pope and the Catholic Church. This second Klan flourished both in the south and northern states; it was funded by initiation fees and selling its members a standard white costume. The chapters did not have dues. It used K-words which were similar to those used by the first Klan, while adding cross burnings and mass parades to intimidate others. It rapidly declined in the later half of the 1920s.
The third and current manifestation of the KKK emerged after 1950, in the form of localized and isolated groups that use the KKK name. They have focused on opposition to the civil rights movement, often using violence and murder to suppress activists. This manifestation is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. , the Anti-Defamation League puts total KKK membership nationwide at around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center puts it at 6,000 members total.
The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent references to a false mythologized perception of America's "Anglo-Saxon" blood, hearkening back to 19th-century nativism. Although members of the KKK swear to uphold Christian morality, the group is widely denounced by Christian denominations.
Overview: Three Klans
First KKK
The first Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, on December 24, 1865, by six former officers of the Confederate army: Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones and James Crowe. It started as a fraternal social club inspired at least in part by the then largely defunct Sons of Malta. It borrowed parts of the initiation ceremony from that group, with the same purpose: "ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and the amusement for members were the only objects of the Klan", according to Albert Stevens in 1907. The manual of rituals was printed by Laps D. McCord of Pulaski.
According to The Cyclopædia of Fraternities (1907), "Beginning in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation. ...The members had conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it all – that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to do."
Although there was little organizational structure above the local level, similar groups rose across the South and adopted the same name and methods. Klan groups spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement promoting resistance and white supremacy during the Reconstruction Era. For example, Confederate veteran John W. Morton founded a chapter in Nashville, Tennessee. As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder. "They targeted white Northern leaders, Southern sympathizers and politically active blacks." In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Enforcement Acts, which were intended to prosecute and suppress Klan crimes.
The first Klan had mixed results in terms of achieving its objectives. It seriously weakened the black political leadership through its use of assassinations and threats of violence, and it drove some people out of politics. On the other hand, it caused a sharp backlash, with passage of federal laws that historian Eric Foner says were a success in terms of "restoring order, reinvigorating the morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling blacks to exercise their rights as citizens". Historian George C. Rable argues that the Klan was a political failure and therefore was discarded by the Democratic Party leaders of the South. He says:
After the Klan was suppressed, similar insurgent paramilitary groups arose that were explicitly directed at suppressing Republican voting and turning Republicans out of office: the White League, which started in Louisiana in 1874; and the Red Shirts, which started in Mississippi and developed chapters in the Carolinas. For instance, the Red Shirts are credited with helping elect Wade Hampton as governor in South Carolina. They were described as acting as the military arm of the Democratic Party and are attributed with helping white Democrats regain control of state legislatures throughout the South.
Second KKK
In 1915, the second Klan was founded atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, by William Joseph Simmons. While Simmons relied on documents from the original Klan and memories of some surviving elders, the revived Klan was based significantly on the wildly popular film The Birth of a Nation. The earlier Klan had not worn the white costumes and had not burned crosses; these aspects were introduced in the book on which the film was based. When the film was shown in Atlanta in December of that year, Simmons and his new klansmen paraded to the theater in robes and pointed hoods – many on robed horses – just like in the movie. These mass parades became another hallmark of the new Klan that had not existed in the original Reconstruction-era organization.
Beginning in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of using full-time, paid recruiters and it appealed to new members as a fraternal organization, of which many examples were flourishing at the time. The national headquarters made its profit through a monopoly on costume sales, while the organizers were paid through initiation fees. It grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions pitting urban versus rural America, it spread to every state and was prominent in many cities. The second KKK preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of Prohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti-Catholicism and nativism. Its appeal was directed exclusively toward white Protestants; it opposed Jews, blacks, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern and Eastern European immigrants such as Italians, Russians, and Lithuanians, many of whom were Jewish or Catholic. Some local groups threatened violence against rum runners and those they deemed "notorious sinners"; the violent episodes generally took place in the South. The Red Knights were a militant group organized in opposition to the Klan and responded violently to Klan provocations on several occasions.
The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. During the resurgence of the second Klan in the 1920s, its publicity was handled by the Southern Publicity Association. Within the first six months of the Association's national recruitment campaign, Klan membership had increased by 85,000. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men.
From 1923 there were two Ku Klux Klan organizations: the one founded by Simmons, and a splinter group founded by D. C. Stephenson.
Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders – especially Stephenson's conviction for the abduction, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer – and external opposition brought about a collapse in the membership of both groups. The main group's membership had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded away in the 1940s. Klan organizers also operated in Canada, especially in Saskatchewan in 1926–1928, where Klansmen denounced immigrants from Eastern Europe as a threat to Canada's "Anglo-Saxon" heritage.
Third KKK
The "Ku Klux Klan" name was used by numerous independent local groups opposing the civil rights movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor's offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama. Several members of Klan groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 and of children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in 1963.
The United States government still considers the Klan to be a "subversive terrorist organization". In April 1997, FBI agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and for conspiring to blow up a natural gas processing plant. In 1999, the city council of Charleston, South Carolina, passed a resolution declaring the Klan a terrorist organization. In 2004, a professor at the University of Louisville began a campaign to have the Klan declared a terrorist organization in order to ban it from campus.
The existence of modern Klan groups has been in a state of consistent decline due to a variety of factors from the American public's negative distaste of the group's image, platform, and history, infiltration and prosecution by law enforcement, civil lawsuit forfeitures, and the radical right-wing's perception of the Klan as outdated and unfashionable. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that just between 2016 and 2019 the number of Klan groups in America dropped from 130 to just 51. A 2016 report by the Anti-Defamation League claims an estimate of just over 30 active Klan groups existing in the United States. Estimates of total collective membership range from about 3,000 to 8,000. In addition to its active membership, the Klan has an "unknown number of associates and supporters".
History
Origin of the name
The name was probably formed by combining the Greek (κύκλος, which means circle) with clan. The word had previously been used for other fraternal organizations in the South such as Kuklos Adelphon.
First Klan: 1865–1871
Creation and naming
Six Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee, created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, shortly after the Civil War, during the Reconstruction of the South. The group was known for a short time as the "Kuklux Clan". The Ku Klux Klan was one of a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence, which included the Southern Cross in New Orleans (1865) and the Knights of the White Camelia (1867) in Louisiana.
Historians generally classify the KKK as part of the post-Civil War insurgent violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy. In 1866, Mississippi governor William L. Sharkey reported that disorder, lack of control, and lawlessness were widespread; in some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roamed at will. The Klan used public violence against black people and their allies as intimidation. They burned houses and attacked and killed black people, leaving their bodies on the roads. While racism was a core belief of the Klan, anti-Semitism was not. Many prominent southern Jews identified wholly with southern culture, resulting in examples of Jewish participation in the Klan.
At an 1867 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, Klan members gathered to try to create a hierarchical organization with local chapters eventually reporting to a national headquarters. Since most of the Klan's members were veterans, they were used to such military hierarchy, but the Klan never operated under this centralized structure. Local chapters and bands were highly independent.
Former Confederate brigadier general George Gordon developed the Prescript, which espoused white supremacist belief. For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of "a white man's government", "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights". The latter is a reference to the Ironclad Oath, which stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union.
Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was elected the first grand wizard, and claimed to be the Klan's national leader. In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest stated that the Klan's primary opposition was to the Loyal Leagues, Republican state governments, people such as Tennessee governor William Gannaway Brownlow, and other "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags". He argued that many Southerners believed that blacks were voting for the Republican Party because they were being hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues. One Alabama newspaper editor declared "The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan."
Despite Gordon's and Forrest's work, local Klan units never accepted the Prescript and continued to operate autonomously. There were never hierarchical levels or state headquarters. Klan members used violence to settle old personal feuds and local grudges, as they worked to restore general white dominance in the disrupted postwar society. The historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership:
Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of antiblack vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen.
Historian Eric Foner observed: "In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party's infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life. To that end they worked to curb the education, economic advancement, voting rights, and right to keep and bear arms of blacks. The Klan soon spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a reign of terror against Republican leaders both black and white. Those political leaders assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who served in constitutional conventions."
Activities
Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers by voice and mannerisms. "The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night." The KKK night riders "sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious blacks. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously."
The Klan attacked black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated Southern Republicans and Freedmen's Bureau workers. When they killed black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of blacks.
"Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were killed as whites." Masked men shot into houses and burned them, sometimes with the occupants still inside. They drove successful black farmers off their land. "Generally, it can be reported that in North and South Carolina, in 18 months ending in June 1867, there were 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault."
Klan violence worked to suppress black voting, and campaign seasons were deadly. More than 2,000 people were killed, wounded, or otherwise injured in Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although St. Landry Parish had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 200 black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact.
In the April 1868 Georgia gubernatorial election, Columbia County cast 1,222 votes for Republican Rufus Bullock. By the November presidential election, Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for Ulysses S. Grant.
Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in a county in Florida, and hundreds more in other counties. Florida Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies.
Milder encounters, including some against white teachers, also occurred. In Mississippi, according to the Congressional inquiry:
One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in Monroe County, was visited ... between one and two o'clock in the morning in March 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her "gentlemanly and quietly" but complained of the heavy school-tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county.
By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease. Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential Southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it. There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian B. H. Hill stating "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain."
Resistance
Union Army veterans in mountainous Blount County, Alabama, organized "the anti-Ku Klux". They put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning black churches and schools. Armed blacks formed their own defense in Bennettsville, South Carolina, and patrolled the streets to protect their homes.
National sentiment gathered to crack down on the Klan, even though some Democrats at the national level questioned whether the Klan really existed, or believed that it was a creation of nervous Southern Republican governors. Many southern states began to pass anti-Klan legislation.
In January 1871, Pennsylvania Republican senator John Scott convened a congressional committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan atrocities, accumulating 12 volumes. In February, former Union general and congressman Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Ku Klux Klan Act). This added to the enmity that Southern white Democrats bore toward him. While the bill was being considered, further violence in the South swung support for its passage. The governor of South Carolina appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state. A riot and massacre occurred in a Meridian, Mississippi, courthouse, from which a black state representative escaped by fleeing to the woods. The 1871 Civil Rights Act allowed the president to suspend habeas corpus.
In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler's legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act and the Enforcement Act of 1870 were used by the federal government to enforce the civil rights provisions for individuals under the constitution. The Klan refused to voluntarily dissolve after the 1871 Klan Act, so President Grant issued a suspension of habeas corpus and stationed federal troops in nine South Carolina counties by invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. The Klansmen were apprehended and prosecuted in federal court. Judges Hugh Lennox Bond and George S. Bryan presided over the trial of KKK members in Columbia, South Carolina, during December 1871. The defendants were given from three months to five years of incarceration with fines. More blacks served on juries in federal court than on local or state juries, so they had a chance to participate in the process. Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned during the crackdown.
End of the first Klan
Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men and that he could muster 40,000 Klansmen within five days' notice. However, the Klan had no membership rosters, no chapters, and no local officers, so it was difficult for observers to judge its membership. It had created a sensation by the dramatic nature of its masked forays and because of its many murders.
In 1870, a federal grand jury determined that the Klan was a "terrorist organization" and issued hundreds of indictments for crimes of violence and terrorism. Klan members were prosecuted, and many fled from areas that were under federal government jurisdiction, particularly in South Carolina. Many people not formally inducted into the Klan had used the Klan's costume to hide their identities when carrying out independent acts of violence. Forrest called for the Klan to disband in 1869, arguing that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace". Historian Stanley Horn argues that "generally speaking, the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment". A Georgia-based reporter wrote in 1870: "A true statement of the case is not that the Ku Klux are an organized band of licensed criminals, but that men who commit crimes call themselves Ku Klux".
In many states, officials were reluctant to use black militia against the Klan out of fear that racial tensions would be raised. Republican governor of North Carolina William Woods Holden called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, adding to his unpopularity. This and extensive violence and fraud at the polls caused the Republicans to lose their majority in the state legislature. Disaffection with Holden's actions contributed to white Democratic legislators impeaching him and removing him from office, but their reasons for doing so were numerous.
Klan operations ended in South Carolina and gradually withered away throughout the rest of the South. Attorney General Amos Tappan Ackerman led the prosecutions.
Foner argues that:
New groups of insurgents emerged in the mid-1870s, local paramilitary organizations such as the White League, Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs, that intimidated and murdered black political leaders. The White League and Red Shirts were distinguished by their willingness to cultivate publicity, working directly to overturn Republican officeholders and regain control of politics.
In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Harris that the Klan Act was partially unconstitutional. It ruled that Congress's power under the Fourteenth Amendment did not include the right to regulate against private conspiracies. It recommended that persons who had been victimized should seek relief in state courts, which were entirely unsympathetic to such appeals.
Klan costumes, also called "regalia", disappeared from use by the early 1870s, after Grand Wizard Forrest called for their destruction as part of disbanding the Klan. The Klan was broken as an organization by 1872. In 1915, William Joseph Simmons held a meeting to revive the Klan in Georgia; he attracted two aging former members, and all other members were new.
Second Klan: 1915–1944
Refounding in 1915
In 1915 the film The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan and its endeavors. The second Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915 by William Joseph Simmons at Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, with fifteen "charter members". Its growth was based on a new anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, Prohibitionist and anti-Semitic agenda, which reflected contemporary social tensions, particularly recent immigration. The new organization and chapters adopted regalia featured in The Birth of a Nation; membership was kept secret by wearing masks in public.
The Birth of a Nation
Director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation glorified the original Klan. The film was based on the book and play The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the book The Leopard's Spots, both by Thomas Dixon Jr. Much of the modern Klan's iconography is derived from it, including the standardized white costume and the burning cross. Its imagery was based on Dixon's romanticized concept of old England and Scotland, as portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott. The film's influence was enhanced by a false claim of endorsement by President Woodrow Wilson. Dixon was an old friend of Wilson's and, before its release, there was a private showing of the film at the White House. A publicist claimed that Wilson said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson strongly disliked the film and felt he had been tricked by Dixon. The White House issued a denial of the "lightning" quote, saying that he was entirely unaware of the nature of the film and at no time had expressed his approbation of it.
Goals
The first and third Klans were primarily Southeastern groups aimed against blacks. The second Klan, in contrast, broadened the scope of the organization to appeal to people in the Midwestern and Western states who considered Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American.
The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. According to historian Brian R. Farmer, "two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers". Much of the Klan's energy went into guarding the home, and historian Kathleen Blee says that its members wanted to protect "the interests of white womanhood". Joseph Simmons published the pamphlet ABC of the Invisible Empire in Atlanta in 1917; in it, he identified the Klan's goals as "to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism". Such moral-sounding purpose underlay its appeal as a fraternal organization, recruiting members with a promise of aid for settling into the new urban societies of rapidly growing cities such as Dallas and Detroit. During the 1930s, particularly after James A. Colescott of Indiana took over as imperial wizard, opposition to Communism became another primary aim of the Klan.
Organization
New Klan founder William J. Simmons joined 12 different fraternal organizations and recruited for the Klan with his chest covered with fraternal badges, consciously modeling the Klan after fraternal organizations. Klan organizers called "Kleagles" signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and received KKK costumes in return. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with an area, he organized a rally, often with burning crosses, and perhaps presented a Bible to a local Protestant preacher. He left town with the money collected. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations and occasionally brought in speakers.
Simmons initially met with little success in either recruiting members or in raising money, and the Klan remained a small operation in the Atlanta area until 1920. The group produced publications for national circulation from its headquarters in Atlanta: Searchlight (1919–1924), Imperial Night-Hawk (1923–1924), and The Kourier.
Perceived moral threats
The second Klan grew primarily in response to issues of declining morality typified by divorce, adultery, defiance of Prohibition, and criminal gangs in the news every day. It was also a response to the growing power of Catholics and American Jews and the accompanying proliferation of non-Protestant cultural values. The Klan had a nationwide reach by the mid-1920s, with its densest per capita membership in Indiana. It became most prominent in cities with high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, as rural Protestants flocked to jobs in Detroit and Dayton in the Midwest, and Atlanta, Dallas, Memphis, and Houston in the South. Close to half of Michigan's 80,000 Klansmen lived in Detroit.
Members of the KKK swore to uphold American values and Christian morality, and some Protestant ministers became involved at the local level. However, no Protestant denomination officially endorsed the KKK; indeed, the Klan was repeatedly denounced by the major Protestant magazines, as well as by all major secular newspapers. Historian Robert Moats Miller reports that "not a single endorsement of the Klan was found by the present writer in the Methodist press, while many of the attacks on the Klan were quite savage. ...The Southern Baptist press condoned the aims but condemned the methods of the Klan." National denominational organizations never endorsed the Klan, but they rarely condemned it by name. Many nationally and regionally prominent churchmen did condemn it by name, and none endorsed it.
The second Klan was less violent than either the first or third Klan were. However, the second Klan, especially in the Southeast, was not an entirely non-violent organization. The most violent Klan was in Dallas, Texas. In April 1921, shortly after they began gaining popularity in the area, the Klan kidnapped Alex Johnson, a black man who had been accused of having sex with a white woman. They burned the letters "KKK" into his forehead and gave him a severe beating by a riverbed. The police chief and district attorney refused to prosecute, explicitly and publicly stating they believed that Johnson deserved this treatment. Encouraged by the approval of this whipping, the Dallas KKK whipped 68 people by the riverbed in 1922 alone. Although Johnson had been black, most of the Dallas KKK's whipping victims were white men who were accused of offenses against their wives such as adultery, wife beating, abandoning their wives, refusing to pay child support or gambling. Far from trying to hide its vigilante activity, the Dallas KKK loved to publicize it. The Dallas KKK often invited local newspaper reporters to attend their whippings so they could write a story about it in the next day's newspaper.
The Alabama KKK was less chivalrous than the Dallas KKK was and whipped both white and black women who were accused of fornication or adultery. Although many people in Alabama were outraged by the whippings of white women, no Klansmen were ever convicted for the violence.
Rapid growth
In 1920 Simmons handed the day-to-day activities of the national office over to two professional publicists, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke. The new leadership invigorated the Klan and it grew rapidly. It appealed to new members based on current social tensions, and stressed responses to fears raised by defiance of Prohibition and new sexual freedoms. It emphasized anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and later anti-Communist positions. It presented itself as a fraternal, nativist and strenuously patriotic organization; and its leaders emphasized support for vigorous enforcement of Prohibition laws. It expanded membership dramatically to a 1924 peak of 1.5 million to 4 million, which was between 4–15% of the eligible population.
By the 1920s, most of its members lived in the Midwest and West. Nearly one in five of the eligible Indiana population were members. It had a national base by 1925. In the South, where the great majority of whites were Democrats, the Klansmen were Democrats. In the rest of the country, the membership comprised both Republicans and Democrats, as well as independents. Klan leaders tried to infiltrate political parties; as Cummings notes, "it was non-partisan in the sense that it pressed its nativist issues to both parties". Sociologist Rory McVeigh has explained the Klan's strategy in appealing to members of both parties:
Religion was a major selling point. Kelly J. Baker argues that Klansmen seriously embraced Protestantism as an essential component of their white supremacist, anti-Catholic, and paternalistic formulation of American democracy and national culture. Their cross was a religious symbol, and their ritual honored Bibles and local ministers. But no nationally prominent religious leader said he was a Klan member.
Economists Fryer and Levitt argue that the rapid growth of the Klan in the 1920s was partly the result of an innovative, multi-level marketing campaign. They also argue that the Klan leadership focused more intently on monetizing the organization during this period than fulfilling the political goals of the organization. Local leaders profited from expanding their membership.
Prohibition
Historians agree that the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s was aided by the national debate over Prohibition. The historian Prendergast says that the KKK's "support for Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation". The Klan opposed bootleggers, sometimes with violence. In 1922, two hundred Klan members set fire to saloons in Union County, Arkansas. Membership in the Klan and in other Prohibition groups overlapped, and they sometimes coordinated activities.
Urbanization
A significant characteristic of the second Klan was that it was an organization based in urban areas, reflecting the major shifts of population to cities in the North, West, and the South. In Michigan, for instance, 40,000 members lived in Detroit, where they made up more than half of the state's membership. Most Klansmen were lower- to middle-class whites who were trying to protect their jobs and housing from the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were mostly Catholic or Jewish; and black and white migrants from the South. As new populations poured into cities, rapidly changing neighborhoods created social tensions. Because of the rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as Detroit and Chicago, the Klan grew rapidly in the Midwest. The Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.
In the medium-size industrial city of Worcester, Massachusetts, in the 1920s, the Klan ascended to power quickly but declined as a result of opposition from the Catholic Church. There was no violence and the local newspaper ridiculed Klansmen as "night-shirt knights". Half of the members were Swedish Americans, including some first-generation immigrants. The ethnic and religious conflicts among more recent immigrants contributed to the rise of the Klan in the city. Swedish Protestants were struggling against Irish Catholics, who had been entrenched longer, for political and ideological control of the city.
In some states, historians have obtained membership rosters of some local units and matched the names against city directory and local records to create statistical profiles of the membership. Big city newspapers were often hostile and ridiculed Klansmen as ignorant farmers. Detailed analysis from Indiana showed that the rural stereotype was false for that state:
Indiana's Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society: they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen were Protestants, of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as fundamentalists. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church.
The Klan attracted people but most of them did not remain in the organization for long. Membership in the Klan turned over rapidly as people found out that it was not the group which they had wanted. Millions joined and at its peak in the 1920s the organization claimed numbers that amounted to 15% of the nation's eligible population. The lessening of social tensions contributed to the Klan's decline.
Costumes and the burning cross
The distinctive white costume permitted large-scale public activities, especially parades and cross-burning ceremonies, while keeping the membership rolls a secret. Sales of the costumes provided the main financing for the national organization, while initiation fees funded local and state organizers.
The second Klan embraced the burning Latin cross as a dramatic display of symbolism, with a tone of intimidation. No crosses had been used as a symbol by the first Klan, but it became a symbol of the Klan's quasi-Christian message. Its lighting during meetings was often accompanied by prayer, the singing of hymns, and other overtly religious symbolism. In his novel The Clansman, Thomas Dixon Jr. borrows the idea that the first Klan had used fiery crosses from 'the call to arms' of the Scottish Clans, and film director D.W. Griffith used this image in The Birth of a Nation; Simmons adopted the symbol wholesale from the movie, and the symbol and action have been associated with the Klan ever since.
Women
By the 1920s, the KKK developed a women's auxiliary, with chapters in many areas. Its activities included participation in parades, cross lightings, lectures, rallies, and boycotts of local businesses owned by Catholics and Jews. The Women's Klan was active in promoting Prohibition, stressing liquor's negative impact on wives and children. Its efforts in public schools included distributing Bibles and petitioning for the dismissal of Catholic teachers. As a result of the Women's Klan's efforts, Texas would not hire Catholic teachers to work in its public schools. As sexual and financial scandals rocked the Klan leadership late in the 1920s, the organization's popularity among both men and women dropped off sharply.
Political role
The second Klan expanded with new chapters in cities in the Midwest and West, and reached both Republicans and Democrats, as well as men without a party affiliation. The goal of Prohibition in particular helped the Klan and some Republicans to make common cause in the North.
The Klan had numerous members in every part of the United States, but was particularly strong in the South and Midwest. At its peak, claimed Klan membership exceeded four million and comprised 20% of the adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, and 40% in some areas. The Klan also moved north into Canada, especially Saskatchewan, where it opposed Catholics.
In Indiana, members were American-born, white Protestants and covered a wide range of incomes and social levels. The Indiana Klan was perhaps the most prominent Ku Klux Klan in the nation. It claimed more than 30% of white male Hoosiers as members. In 1924 it supported Republican Edward Jackson in his successful campaign for governor.
Catholic and liberal Democrats – who were strongest in northeastern cities – decided to make the Klan an issue at the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City. Their delegates proposed a resolution indirectly attacking the Klan; it was defeated by one vote out of 1,100. The leading presidential candidates were William Gibbs McAdoo, a Protestant with a base in the South and West where the Klan was strong, and New York governor Al Smith, a Catholic with a base in the large cities. After weeks of stalemate and bitter argumentation, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise candidate.
In some states, such as Alabama and California, KKK chapters had worked for political reform. In 1924, Klan members were elected to the city council in Anaheim, California. The city had been controlled by an entrenched commercial-civic elite that was mostly German American. Given their tradition of moderate social drinking, the German Americans did not strongly support Prohibition laws – the mayor had been a saloon keeper. Led by the minister of the First Christian Church, the Klan represented a rising group of politically oriented non-ethnic Germans who denounced the elite as corrupt, undemocratic and self-serving. The historian Christopher Cocoltchos says the Klansmen tried to create a model, orderly community. The Klan had about 1,200 members in Orange County, California. The economic and occupational profile of the pro- and anti-Klan groups shows the two were similar and about equally prosperous. Klan members were Protestants, as were most of their opponents, but the latter also included many Catholic Germans. Individuals who joined the Klan had earlier demonstrated a much higher rate of voting and civic activism than did their opponents. Cocoltchos suggests that many of the individuals in Orange County joined the Klan out of that sense of civic activism. The Klan representatives easily won the local election in Anaheim in April 1924. They fired city employees who were known to be Catholic, and replaced them with Klan appointees. The new city council tried to enforce Prohibition. After its victory, the Klan chapter held large rallies and initiation ceremonies over the summer. The opposition organized, bribed a Klansman for the secret membership list, and exposed the Klansmen running in the state primaries; they defeated most of the candidates. Klan opponents in 1925 took back local government, and succeeded in a special election in recalling the Klansmen who had been elected in April 1924. The Klan in Anaheim quickly collapsed, its newspaper closed after losing a libel suit, and the minister who led the local Klavern moved to Kansas.
In the South, Klan members were still Democratic, as it was essentially a one-party region for whites. Klan chapters were closely allied with Democratic police, sheriffs, and other functionaries of local government. Due to disenfranchisement of most African Americans and many poor whites around the start of the 20th century, the only political activity for whites took place within the Democratic Party.
In Alabama, Klan members advocated better public schools, effective Prohibition enforcement, expanded road construction, and other political measures to benefit lower-class white people. By 1925, the Klan was a political force in the state, as leaders such as J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo Black tried to build political power against the Black Belt wealthy planters, who had long dominated the state. In 1926, with Klan support, Bibb Graves won the Alabama governor's office. He was a former Klan chapter head. He pushed for increased education funding, better public health, new highway construction, and pro-labor legislation. Because the Alabama state legislature refused to redistrict until 1972, and then under court order, the Klan was unable to break the planters' and rural areas' hold on legislative power.
Scholars and biographers have recently examined Hugo Black's Klan role. Ball finds regarding the KKK that Black "sympathized with the group's economic, nativist, and anti-Catholic beliefs". Newman says Black "disliked the Catholic Church as an institution" and gave over 100 anti-Catholic speeches to KKK meetings across Alabama in his 1926 election campaign. Black was elected US senator in 1926 as a Democrat. In 1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Black to the Supreme Court without knowing how active in the Klan he had been in the 1920s. He was confirmed by his fellow Senators before the full KKK connection was known; Justice Black said he left the Klan when he became a senator.
Resistance and decline
Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as Reinhold Niebuhr in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan, gaining national attention. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League was formed in the early 20th century in response to attacks on Jewish Americans, including the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta, and to the Klan's campaign to prohibit private schools (which was chiefly aimed at Catholic parochial schools). Opposing groups worked to penetrate the Klan's secrecy. After one civic group in Indiana began to publish Klan membership lists, there was a rapid decline in the number of Klan members. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) launched public education campaigns in order to inform people about Klan activities and lobbied in Congress against Klan abuses. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership in most areas began to decline rapidly.
Specific events contributed to the Klan's decline as well. In Indiana, the scandal surrounding the 1925 murder trial of Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson destroyed the image of the KKK as upholders of law and order. By 1926 the Klan was "crippled and discredited". D. C. Stephenson was the grand dragon of Indiana and 22 northern states. In 1923 he had led the states under his control in order to break away from the national KKK organization. At his 1925 trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder for his part in the rape, and subsequent death, of Madge Oberholtzer. After Stephenson's conviction, the Klan declined dramatically in Indiana.
The historian Leonard Moore says that a failure in leadership caused the Klan's collapse:
Stephenson and the other salesmen and office seekers who maneuvered for control of Indiana's Invisible Empire lacked both the ability and the desire to use the political system to carry out the Klan's stated goals. They were uninterested in, or perhaps even unaware of, grass roots concerns within the movement. For them, the Klan had been nothing more than a means for gaining wealth and power. These marginal men had risen to the top of the hooded order because, until it became a political force, the Klan had never required strong, dedicated leadership. More established and experienced politicians who endorsed the Klan, or who pursued some of the interests of their Klan constituents, also accomplished little. Factionalism created one barrier, but many politicians had supported the Klan simply out of expedience. When charges of crime and corruption began to taint the movement, those concerned about their political futures had even less reason to work on the Klan's behalf.
In Alabama, KKK vigilantes launched a wave of physical terror in 1927. They targeted both blacks and whites for violations of racial norms and for perceived moral lapses. This led to a strong backlash, beginning in the media. Grover C. Hall, Sr., editor of the Montgomery Advertiser from 1926, wrote a series of editorials and articles that attacked the Klan. (Today the paper says it "waged war on the resurgent [KKK]".) Hall won a Pulitzer Prize for the crusade, the 1928 Editorial Writing Pulitzer, citing "his editorials against gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance". Other newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan, referring to the organization as violent and "un-American". Sheriffs cracked down on activities. In the 1928 presidential election, the state voters overcame their initial opposition to the Catholic candidate Al Smith, and voted the Democratic Party line as usual.
Although in decline, a measure of the Klan's influence was still evident when it staged its march along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1928. By 1930, Klan membership in Alabama dropped to less than 6,000. Small independent units continued to be active in the industrial city of Birmingham.
KKK units were active through the 1930s in parts of Georgia, with a group of "night riders" in Atlanta enforcing their moral views by flogging people who violated them, whites as well as blacks. In March 1940, they were implicated in the beating murders of a young white couple taken from their car on a lovers lane, and flogged a white barber to death for drinking, both in East Point, a suburb of Atlanta. More than 20 others were "brutally flogged". As the police began to investigate, they found the records of the KKK had disappeared from their East Point office. The cases were reported by the Chicago Tribune and the NAACP in its Crisis magazine, as well as local papers.
In 1940, three lynchings of black men by whites (no KKK affiliation is known) took place in the South: Elbert Williams was the first NAACP member known to be killed for civil rights activities: he was murdered in Brownsville, Tennessee, for working to register blacks to vote, and several other activists were run out of town; Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne, Alabama, for a minor social infraction; and 16-year-old Austin Callaway, a suspect in the assault of a white woman, was taken from jail in the middle of the night and killed by six white men in LaGrange, Georgia. In January 2017, the police chief and mayor of LaGrange apologized for their offices' failures to protect Callaway, at a reconciliation service marking his death.
Labor and anti-unionism
In major Southern cities such as Birmingham, Alabama, Klan members kept control of access to the better-paying industrial jobs and opposed unions. During the 1930s and 1940s, Klan leaders urged members to disrupt the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which advocated industrial unions and accepted African-American members, unlike earlier unions. With access to dynamite and using the skills from their jobs in mining and steel, in the late 1940s some Klan members in Birmingham used bombings to destroy houses in order to intimidate upwardly mobile blacks who moved into middle-class neighborhoods. "By mid-1949, there were so many charred house carcasses that the area [College Hills] was informally named Dynamite Hill."
Activism by these independent KKK groups in Birmingham increased as a reaction to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Independent Klan groups violently opposed the civil rights movement. KKK members were implicated in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing on a Sunday in September 1963, which killed four African-American girls and injured 22 other people. Members of the Communist Workers' Party came to North Carolina to organize textile workers and pushed back against racial discrimination there, taunting the KKK, resulting in the 1979 Greensboro massacre.
Development of Christian Identity Theology
According to Professor Jon Schamber, Rev. Philip E. J. Monson branched off from the teachings of British Israelism and began to develop Christian Identity Theology in the 1910s. During the 1920s, Monson published Satan's Seat: The Enemy of Our Race in which he adopted Russel Kelso Carter's theory that Jews and non-whites were descended from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Monson connected the work of the corrupt race to the activities of the Catholic Church and the Pope. Monson's ideas were popular among some KKK members in the 1950s.
National changes
In 1939, after experiencing several years of decline due to the Great Depression, the Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans sold the national organization to James A. Colescott, an Indiana veterinary physician, and Samuel Green, an Atlanta obstetrician. They could not revive the Klan's declining membership. In 1944, the Internal Revenue Service filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan, and Colescott dissolved the organization that year. Local Klan groups closed down over the following years.
After World War II, the folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan; he provided internal data to media and law enforcement agencies. He also provided secret code words to the writers of the Superman radio program, resulting in episodes in which Superman took on the KKK. Kennedy stripped away the Klan's mystique and trivialized its rituals and code words, which may have contributed to the decline in Klan recruiting and membership. In the 1950s Kennedy wrote a bestselling book about his experiences, which further damaged the Klan.
Historiography of the second Klan
The historiography of the second Klan of the 1920s has changed over time. Early histories were based on mainstream sources of the time, but since the late 20th century, other histories have been written drawing from records and analysis of members of the chapters in social histories.
Anti-modern interpretations
The KKK was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders, most members never identified as such and wore masks in public. Investigators in the 1920s used KKK publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled Klansmen, newspaper reports, and speculation to write stories about what the Klan was doing. Almost all the major national newspapers and magazines were hostile to its activities. The historian Thomas R. Pegram says that published accounts exaggerated the official viewpoint of the Klan leadership, and repeated the interpretations of hostile newspapers and the Klan's enemies. There was almost no evidence in that time regarding the behavior or beliefs of individual Klansmen. According to Pegram, the resulting popular and scholarly interpretation of the Klan from the 1920s into the mid-20th century emphasized its Southern roots and the violent vigilante-style actions of the Klan in its efforts to turn back the clock of modernity. Scholars compared it to fascism in Europe. Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism – chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism – yet their differences were fundamental. ...[The KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."
Pegram says this original interpretation
New social history interpretations
The "social history" revolution in historiography from the 1960s explored history from the bottom up. In terms of the Klan, it developed evidence based on the characteristics, beliefs, and behavior of the typical membership, and downplayed accounts by elite sources. Historians discovered membership lists and the minutes of local meetings from KKK chapters scattered around the country. They discovered that the original interpretation was largely mistaken about the membership and activities of the Klan; the membership was not anti-modern, rural or rustic and consisted of fairly well educated middle-class joiners and community activists. Half the members lived in the fast-growing industrial cities of the period: Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Denver, and Portland, Oregon, were Klan strongholds during the 1920s.
Studies find that in general, the KKK membership in these cities was from the stable, successful middle classes, with few members drawn from the elite or the working classes. Pegram, reviewing the studies, concludes, "the popular Klan of the 1920s, while diverse, was more of a civic exponent of white Protestant social values than a repressive hate group."
Kelly J. Baker argues that religion was critical – the KKK based its hatred on a particular brand of Protestantism that resonated with mainstream Americans: "Members embraced Protestant Christianity and a crusade to save America from domestic as well as foreign threats." Member were primarily Baptists, Methodists, and members of the Disciples of Christ, while men of "more elite or liberal" Protestant denominations such as Unitarians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists and Lutherans, were less likely to join.
Indiana and Alabama
In Indiana, traditional political historians focused on notorious leaders, especially D. C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of the Indiana Klan, whose conviction for the 1925 kidnap, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer helped destroy the Ku Klux Klan movement nationwide. In his history of 1967, Kenneth Jackson already described the Klan of the 1920s as associated with cities and urbanization, with chapters often acting as a kind of fraternal organization to aid people coming from other areas.
Social historian Leonard Moore titled his monograph Citizen Klansmen (1997) and contrasted the intolerant rhetoric of the group's leaders with the actions of most of the membership. The Klan was white Protestant, established Americans who were fearful of change represented by new immigrants and black migrants to the North. They were highly suspicious of Catholics, Jews and blacks, who they believed subverted ideal, Protestant moral standards. Violence was uncommon in most chapters. In Indiana, KKK members directed more threats and economic blacklisting primarily against fellow white Protestants for transgressions of community moral standards, such as adultery, wife-beating, gambling and heavy drinking. Up to one third of Indiana's Protestant men joined the order making it, Moore argued, "a kind of interest group for average white Protestants who believed that their values should be dominant in their community and state."
Moore says that they joined
Northern Indiana's industrial cities had attracted a large Catholic population of European immigrants and their descendants. They established the University of Notre Dame, a major Catholic college near South Bend. In May 1924, when the KKK scheduled a regional meeting in the city, Notre Dame students blocked the Klansmen and stole some KKK regalia. On the next day, the Klansmen counterattacked. Finally, the college president and the football coach Knute Rockne kept the students on campus to avert further violence.
In Alabama, some young, white, urban activists joined the KKK to fight the old guard establishment. Hugo Black was a member before becoming nationally famous; he focused on anti-Catholicism. However, in rural Alabama the Klan continued to operate to enforce Jim Crow laws; its members resorted more often to violence against blacks for infringements of the social order of white supremacy.
Racial terrorism was used in smaller towns to suppress black political activity. Elbert Williams of Brownsville, Tennessee, was lynched in 1940 for trying to organize black residents to register and vote; also that year, Jesse Thornton of Luverne, Alabama, was lynched for failing to address a police officer as "Mister".
Later Klans: 1950s–present
In 1944, the second KKK was disbanded by Imperial Wizard James A. Colescott after the IRS levied a large tax liability against the organization. In 1946, Samuel Green reestablished the KKK at a ceremony on Stone Mountain. His group primarily operated in Georgia. Green was succeeded by Samuel Roper as Imperial Wizard in 1949, and Roper was succeeded by Eldon Edwards in 1950. Based in Atlanta, Edwards worked to rebuild the organization by uniting the different factions of the KKK from other parts of the United States, but the strength of the organization was short-lived and the group fractured as it competed with other klan organizations. In 1959, Roy Davis was elected to follow Edwards as national leader. Edwards had previously appointed Davis Grand Dragon of Texas in an effort to unite their two klan organizations. Davis was already leading the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Davis held rallies Florida and other southern states during 1961 and 1962 recruiting members. Davis had been a close associate of William J. Simmons and been active in the KKK since it first reformed in 1915.
Congress launched an investigation into the KKK in the early 1964, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Davis, based in Dallas, resigned as Imperial Wizard of the Original Knights shortly after the Original Knights received a Congressional subpoena. The Original Knights became increasingly fractured in the immediate aftermath as many members were forced to testify before Congress. The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan formed in 1964 after splitting from the Original Knights. According to a FBI report published in May 1965, the KKK was divided into 14 different organizations at the time with a total membership of approximately 9,000. The FBI reported that Roy Davis's Original Knights was the largest faction and had about 1,500 members. Robert Shelton of Alabama was leading a faction of 400-600 members. Congressional investigators found that by the end of 1965 most members of Original Knights organization joined Shelton's United Klans and the Original Knights of the KKK disbanded. Shelton's United Klan continued to absorb members from the competing factions and remained the largest Klan group unto the 1970s, peaking with an estimated 30,000 members and another 250,000 non-member supporters during the late 1960s.
1950s–1960s: post-war opposition to civil rights
After the decline of the national organization, small independent groups adopted the name "Ku Klux Klan", along with variations. They had no formal relationships with each other, and most had no connection to the second KKK, except for the fact that they copied its terminology and costumes. Beginning in the 1950s, for instance, individual Klan groups in Birmingham, Alabama, began to resist social change and blacks' efforts to improve their lives by bombing houses in transitional neighborhoods. The white men worked in mining and steel industries, with access to these materials. There were so many bombings of blacks' homes in Birmingham by Klan groups in the 1950s that the city was nicknamed "Bombingham".
During the tenure of Bull Connor as police commissioner in Birmingham, Klan groups were closely allied with the police and operated with impunity. When the Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham in 1961, Connor gave Klan members fifteen minutes to attack the riders before sending in the police to quell the attack. When local and state authorities failed to protect the Freedom Riders and activists, the federal government began to establish intervention and protection. In states such as Alabama and Mississippi, Klan members forged alliances with governors' administrations. In Birmingham and elsewhere, the KKK groups bombed the houses of civil rights activists. In some cases they used physical violence, intimidation, and assassination directly against individuals. Continuing disfranchisement of blacks across the South meant that most could not serve on juries, which were all-white and demonstrably biased verdicts and sentences.
According to a report from the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of 40 black Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some of the bombing victims were social activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most were either people who refused to bow to racist convention or were innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random violence.
Among the more notorious murders by Klan members in the 1950s and 1960s:
The 1951 Christmas Eve bombing of the home of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activists Harry and Harriette Moore in Mims, Florida, resulting in their deaths.
The 1957 murder of Willie Edwards Jr., who was forced by Klansmen to jump to his death from a bridge into the Alabama River.
The 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in Mississippi. In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted.
The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in September 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four African-American girls and injured 22 people. The perpetrators were Klan members Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, convicted in 2001 and 2002. The fourth suspect, Herman Cash, died before he was indicted.
The 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, three civil rights workers, in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen was convicted of manslaughter.
The 1964 murder of two black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore in Mississippi. In August 2007, based on the confession of Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was convicted. Seale was sentenced to serve three life sentences. Seale was a former Mississippi policeman and sheriff's deputy.
The 1965 Alabama murder of Viola Liuzzo. She was a Southern-raised Detroit mother of five who was visiting the state in order to attend a civil rights march. At the time of her murder, Liuzzo was transporting Civil Rights marchers related to the Selma to Montgomery March.
The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer, Sr., 58, in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Samuel Bowers was convicted of his murder and sentenced to life. Two other Klan members were indicted with Bowers, but one died before trial and the other's indictment was dismissed.
In July 1966, in Bogalusa, Louisiana, a stronghold of Klan activity, Clarence Triggs was found murdered.
The 1967 multiple bombings in Jackson, Mississippi, of the residence of a Methodist activist, Robert Kochtitzky, the synagogue, and the residence of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum. These were carried out by Klan member Thomas Albert Tarrants III, who was convicted in 1968. Another Klan bombing was averted in Meridian the same year.
Resistance
There was considerable resistance among African Americans and white allies to the Klan. In 1953, newspaper publishers W. Horace Carter (Tabor City, North Carolina), who had campaigned for three years, and Willard Cole (Whiteville, North Carolina) shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service citing "their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger, culminating in the conviction of over one hundred Klansmen and an end to terrorism in their communities". In a 1958 incident in North Carolina, the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two Lumbee Native Americans for associating with white people, and threatened more actions. When the KKK held a nighttime rally nearby, they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbee. Gunfire was exchanged, and the Klan was routed at what became known as the Battle of Hayes Pond.
While the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had paid informants in the Klan, for instance in Birmingham in the early 1960s, its relations with local law enforcement agencies and the Klan were often ambiguous. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, appeared more concerned about Communist links to civil rights activists than about controlling Klan excesses against citizens. In 1964, the FBI's COINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt civil rights groups.
As 20th-century Supreme Court rulings extended federal enforcement of citizens' civil rights, the government revived the Enforcement Acts and the Klan Act from Reconstruction days. Federal prosecutors used these laws as the basis for investigations and indictments in the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; and the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo. They were also the basis for prosecution in 1991 in Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic.
In 1965, the House Un-American Activities Committee started an investigation on the Klan, putting in the public spotlight its front organizations, finances, methods and divisions.
1970s–present
After federal legislation was passed prohibiting legal segregation and authorizing enforcement of protection of voting rights, KKK groups began to oppose court-ordered busing to desegregate schools, affirmative action, and the more open immigration authorized in the 1960s. In 1971, KKK members used bombs to destroy 10 school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. By 1975, there were known KKK groups on most college campuses in Louisiana as well as at Vanderbilt University, the University of Georgia, the University of Mississippi, the University of Akron, and the University of Southern California.
Massacre of Communist Workers' Party protesters
On November 3, 1979, five communist protesters were killed by KKK and American Nazi Party members in Greensboro, North Carolina, in what is known as the Greensboro massacre. The Communist Workers' Party had sponsored a rally against the Klan in an effort to organize predominantly black industrial workers in the area. Klan members drove up with arms in their car trunks, and attacked marchers.
Jerry Thompson infiltration
Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the KKK in 1979, reported that the FBI's COINTELPRO efforts were highly successful. Rival KKK factions accused each other's leaders of being FBI informants. William Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI.
Thompson also related that KKK leaders showed great concern about a series of civil lawsuits filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, claiming damages amounting to millions of dollars. These were filed after KKK members shot into a group of African Americans. Klansmen curtailed their activities in order to conserve money for defense against the lawsuits. The KKK also used lawsuits as tools; they filed a libel suit in order to prevent the publication of a paperback edition of Thompson's book, but were unsuccessful.
Chattanooga, Tennessee, shooting
In 1980, three KKK members shot four elderly black women (Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, and Katherine Johnson) in Chattanooga, Tennessee, following a KKK initiation rally. A fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three KKK members, two of whom – Bill Church and Larry Payne – were acquitted by an all-white jury. The third defendant, Marshall Thrash, was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months. In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil trial.
Michael Donald lynching
After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI investigated his death. The US attorney prosecuted the case. Two local KKK members were convicted for his murder, including Henry Francis Hays who was sentenced to death. After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed by electric chair for Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997. It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.
With the support of attorneys Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and state senator Michael A. Figures, Donald's mother Beulah Mae Donald sued the KKK in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United Klans of America was tried in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald and ordered the Klan to pay US$7 million, but the KKK did not have sufficient funds to pay the fine. They had to sell off their national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa.
Neo-Nazi alliances and Stormfront
In 1995, Don Black and Chloê Hardin, the ex-wife of the KKK grand wizard David Duke, began a small bulletin board system (BBS) called Stormfront, which has become a prominent online forum for white nationalism, Neo-Nazism, hate speech, racism, and antisemitism in the early 21st century.
Duke has an account on Stormfront which he uses to post articles from his own website. He also polls forum members for opinions and questions, in particular during his internet broadcasts. Duke has worked with Don Black on numerous projects including Operation Red Dog in 1980.
Current developments
The modern KKK is not one organization; rather it is composed of small independent chapters across the United States. According to a 1999 ADL report, the KKK's estimated size then was "No more than a few thousand, organized into slightly more than 100 units". In 2017, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors extremist groups, estimated that there were "at least 29 separate, rival Klan groups currently active in the United States, and they compete with one another for members, dues, news media attention and the title of being the true heir to the Ku Klux Klan". The formation of independent chapters has made KKK groups more difficult to infiltrate, and researchers find it hard to estimate their numbers. Analysts believe that about two-thirds of KKK members are concentrated in the Southern United States, with another third situated primarily in the lower Midwest.
For some time, the Klan's numbers have been steadily dropping. This decline has been attributed to the Klan's lack of competence in the use of the Internet, their history of violence, a proliferation of competing hate groups, and a decline in the number of young racist activists who are willing to join groups at all.
A 2016 analysis by the SPLC found that hate groups in general were on the rise in the United States. The ADL published a report in 2016 that concluded: "Despite a persistent ability to attract media attention, organized Ku Klux Klan groups are actually continuing a long-term trend of decline. They remain a collection of mostly small, disjointed groups that continually change in name and leadership."
In 2015, however, the number of KKK chapters nationwide grew from 72 to 190. The SPLC released a similar report stating that "there were significant increases in Klan as well as black separatist groups".
Recent KKK membership campaigns have stimulated people's anxieties about illegal immigration, urban crime, civil unions, and same-sex marriage. In 2006, J. Keith Akins argued that "Klan literature and propaganda is rabidly homophobic and encourages violence against gays and lesbians. ...Since the late 1970s, the Klan has increasingly focused its ire on this previously ignored population." The Klan has produced Islamophobic propaganda and distributed anti-Islamic flyers.
Many KKK groups have formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as neo-Nazis. Some KKK groups have become increasingly "nazified", adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their First Amendment rights to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, as well as their right to field political candidates.
The imperial wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights, Frank Ancona, was fatally shot in Missouri in February 2017, several days after disappearing. The coroner declared his death a homicide. Ancona's wife and stepson were charged with first-degree murder in connection with the killing. The prosecutor in the case believes that the killing "happened because of a marital dispute" and was not connected to Ancona's Klan participation. Ancona's group "was not considered the largest or the most influential iteration of the Klan, but he was skilled at attracting the spotlight".
The February 14, 2019, edition of the Linden, Alabama, weekly newspaper The Democrat-Reporter carried an editorial titled "Klan needs to ride again" written by Goodloe Sutton – the newspaper's owner, publisher and editor – which urged the Klan to return to staging their night rides, because proposals were being made to raise taxes in the state. In an interview, Sutton suggested that Washington, D.C., could be "clean[ed] out" by way of lynchings. "We'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them," Sutton said. He also specified that he was only referring to hanging "socialist-communists", and compared the Klan to the NAACP. The editorial and Sutton's subsequent comments provoked calls for his resignation from Alabama politicians and the Alabama Press Association, which later censured Sutton and suspended the newspaper's membership. In addition the University of Southern Mississippi's School of Communication removed Sutton – who is an alumnus of that school – from its Mass Communication and Journalism Hall of Fame, and "strongly condemned" his remarks. Sutton was also stripped of a distinguished community journalism award he had been presented in 2009 by Auburn University's Journalism Advisory Council. Sutton expressed no regret and said that the editorial was intended to be "ironic", but that "Not many people understand irony today."
Current Klan organizations
A list is maintained by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL):
Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, prevalent in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, and other areas of the Southern U.S.
Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Imperial Klans of America
Knights of the White Camelia
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by national director and self-claimed pastor Thomas Robb, and based in Harrison, Arkansas. It claims to be the largest Klan organization in America today.
Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a North Carolina-based group headed by Will Quigg, is currently thought to be the largest KKK chapter.
White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Outside the United States
Aside from the Ku Klux Klan in Canada, there have been various attempts to organize KKK chapters outside the United States.
In Mexico, the KKK endorsed and funded the Calles government during the 1920s Cristero War with the intention of destroying Catholicism there.
In Australia in the late 1990s, former One Nation member Peter Coleman established branches throughout the country, and circa 2012 the KKK has attempted to infiltrate other political parties such as Australia First.
Recruitment activity has also been reported in the United Kingdom.
In Germany, a KKK-related group, ("Knights of the Fiery Cross"), was established in the 1920s. After the Nazis took over Germany, the group disbanded and its members joined the Nazis. Another German KKK-related group, the European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has organized and it gained notoriety in 2012 when the German media reported that two police officers who held membership in the organization would be allowed to keep their jobs. In 2019, the German authorities conducted raids against a possibly dangerous group called National Socialist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Deutschland.
A Ku Klux Klan group was established in Fiji in the early 1870s by white American settlers, although its operations were quickly put to an end by the British who, although not officially yet established as the major authority of Fiji, had played a leading role in establishing a new constitutional monarchy that was being threatened by the activities of the Fijian Klan.
In São Paulo, Brazil, the website of a group called Imperial Klans of Brazil was shut down in 2003, and the group's leader was arrested.
Titles and vocabulary
Membership in the Klan is secret. Like many fraternal organizations, the Klan has signs that members can use to recognize one another. In conversation, a member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) to surreptitiously identify himself to another potential member. The response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the greeting.
Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many words beginning with "Kl", including:
Klabee – treasurers
Klavern – local organization
Imperial Kleagle – recruiter
Klecktoken – initiation fee
Kligrapp – secretary
Klonvokation – gathering
Kloran – ritual book
Kloreroe – delegate
Imperial Kludd – chaplain
All of the above terminology was created by William Joseph Simmons, as part of his 1915 revival of the Klan. The Reconstruction-era Klan used different titles; the only titles to carry over were "Wizard" for the overall leader of the Klan and "Night Hawk" for the official in charge of security.
The imperial kludd was the chaplain of the Imperial Klonvokation and he performed "such other duties as may be required by the imperial wizard".
The imperial kaliff was the second highest position after the imperial wizard.
Symbols
The Ku Klux Klan has utilized a variety of symbols over its history.
Blood Drop Cross
The Primary symbol used by the clan for the past century has been the Mystic Insignia of a Klansman, commonly known as the Blood Drop Cross, a white cross on a red disk with what appears to be a blood drop in the middle. It was first used in the early 1900s, with the symbol in the center originally appearing as a red and white Ying Yang which in the subsequent years, lost the white part and was reinterpreted as a "blood drop".
Triangular Klan symbol
The Triangular Ku Klux Klan symbol is made of what looks like a triangle inside a triangle, similar to a Sierpiński triangle, but in fact represents three letter Ks interlocked and facing inward, referencing the name of the group. It is an old Klan symbol that has also been resurrected in the modern day hate symbol.
Burning cross
Although predating the Klan, in modern times the symbol of the burning cross has become almost solely associated with the Ku Klux Klan and has become one of the most potent hate symbols in the United States. Burning crosses didn't become associated with the clan until Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, and its film adaptation, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation inspired members of the second Klan to take up the practice. In the modern day the symbol of the burning cross is so associated with racial intimidation that it is used by many non-Klan racist elements and has spread to locations outside the United States.
See also
Anti-mask laws
Black Legion (political movement)
Camp Nordland
Ethnic violence
History of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey
Ku Klux Klan in Maine
Ku Klux Klan members in United States politics
Ku Klux Klan raid (Inglewood)
Ku Klux Klan titles and vocabulary
Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan
List of Confederate monuments and memorials
List of Ku Klux Klan organizations
List of organizations designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate groups
List of white nationalist organizations
Mass racial violence in the United States
Ocoee massacre
Racism in the United States
Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials
Rosewood massacre
Terrorism in the United States
White supremacy in the United States
References
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Reviewed by
Winner of the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for history.
Further reading
Eagles, Charles W., "Urban-Rural Conflict in the 1920s: A Historiographical Assessment". Historian (1986) 49#1 pp. 26–48.
Horowitz, David A., "The Normality of Extremism: The Ku Klux Klan Revisited". Society (1998) 35#6 pp. 71–77.
Lay, Shawn, ed., The invisible empire in the west: Toward a new historical appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s (2nd ed. University of Illinois Press, 2004)
Lewis, Michael, and Serbu, Jacqueline, "Kommemorating the Ku Klux Klan". Sociological Quarterly (1999) 40#1: 139–158. Deals with the memory of the KKK in Pulaski, Tennessee. Online
External links
Official websites
Because there are multiple Ku Klux Klan organizations, there are multiple official websites. Following are third-party lists of such organizations:
From the Southern Poverty Law Center: Ku Klux Klan
From the Anti-Defamation League:
Tattered Robes: The State of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States (2016) — not organized as a list of names but many names appear in this report
Ku Klux Klan - Active Groups (By State) (2011) — archived list
Other links
Prescript of the * * first edition of the Klans 1867 prescript
Revised and Amended Prescript of the Order of the * * * first edition of the Klans 1868 prescript
Civil Rights Greensboro
The Ku Klux Klan in Washington State, from the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project, examines the influence of the second KKK in the State during the 1920s.
Buffalo Ku Klux Klan Membership List, digitized by the Buffalo History Museum
"Ku Klux Klan", Southern Poverty Law Center
"KKK", Anti-Defamation League
Video clip of 2014 interview with hooded KKK member by biracial director and filmmaker Mo Asumang for her documentary The Aryan
"Inside Today's KKK", multimedia, Life magazine, April 13, 2009
Interview with Stanley F. Horn, author of Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871 (1939), Forest History Society, Inc., May 1978
Booknotes interview with Jack Nelson on Terror in the Night: The Klan's Campaign Against the Jews, February 7, 1993
Icons of Hate at A History of Central Florida Podcast, examines the Ku Klux Klan's role in Central Florida in the second quarter of the 20th century
FBI file on the Ku Klux Klan
1871 Congressional Testimony on the Ku Klux Klan
Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915–1940, VCU Libraries
Ku Klux Klan collection, circa 1875-1990, at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.
Quaint Customs and Methods of the Ku Klux Klan from The Literary Digest, August, 1922
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Klan No. 51 records, Mt. Rainier, Maryland at the University of Maryland Libraries
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Cylix, the genus of a pipefish, Cylix tupareomanaia
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16782 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%20Kong%20%281933%20film%29 | King Kong (1933 film) | King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code adventure fantasy horror monster film directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. The screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose was developed from an idea conceived by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. It stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot, and tells the story of a giant ape dubbed Kong who attempts to possess a beautiful young woman. It features stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and a music score by Max Steiner. It is the first entry in the King Kong franchise.
King Kong opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews, and has since been ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time and the fifty-sixth greatest film of all time. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. A sequel, titled Son of Kong, was fast-tracked and released the same year, with several more films made in the following decades, including two remakes which were made in 1976 and 2005 respectively, and a reboot in 2017.
Plot
In New York Harbor, filmmaker Carl Denham, known for wildlife films in remote and exotic locations, charters Captain Englehorn's ship, the Venture, for his new project. However, he is unable to secure an actress for a female role he has been reluctant to disclose. Searching in the streets of New York City, he finds Ann Darrow and promises her the adventure of a lifetime. The crew boards the Venture and sets off, during which the ship's first mate, Jack Driscoll, falls in love with Ann. Denham reveals to the crew that their destination is in fact Skull Island, an uncharted territory. He alludes to a mysterious entity named Kong, rumored to dwell on the island. The crew arrives and anchor offshore. They encounter a native village, separated from the rest of the island by an enormous stone wall with a large wooden gate. They witness a group of natives preparing to sacrifice a young woman termed the "bride of Kong". The intruders are spotted and the native chief stops the ceremony. When he sees Ann, he offers to trade six of his tribal women for the "golden woman". They rebuff him and return to the Venture.
That night, the natives kidnap Ann from the ship and take her through the gate and onto an altar, where she is offered to King Kong, an enormous gorilla. Kong carries a terrified Ann away as Denham, Jack and some volunteers enter the jungle in hopes of rescuing her. They encounter a living dinosaur, a charging Stegosaurus, which they manage to kill. Soon after, the crew runs into an aggressive Brontosaurus and eventually Kong himself, leaving Jack and Denham as the only survivors. After Kong slays a Tyrannosaurus rex that tried to eat Ann, Jack continues to follow them while Denham returns to the village for more men. Upon arriving in Kong's mountain lair, Ann is menaced by a snake-like Elasmosaurus, which Kong also kills. While Kong is distracted killing a Pteranodon that tried to fly away with Ann, Jack reaches her and they climb down a vine dangling from a cliff ledge. When Kong notices and starts pulling them back up, the two drop into the water below. They run through the jungle and back to the village, where Denham, Englehorn, and the surviving crewmen are waiting. Kong, following, breaks open the gate and relentlessly rampages through the village. Onshore, Denham, now determined to bring Kong back alive, knocks him unconscious with a gas bomb.
Shackled in chains, Kong is taken to New York City and presented to a Broadway theatre audience as "Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!". Ann and Jack are brought on stage to join him, surrounded by a group of press photographers. Kong, believing that the ensuing flash photography is an attack, breaks loose as the audience flees in horror. Ann is whisked away to a hotel room on a high floor, but Kong, scaling the building, soon finds her. He rampages through the city as Ann screams in his grip; wrecking a crowded elevated train and eventually climbing the Empire State Building. At its top, he is attacked by four airplanes. Kong destroys one, but finally succumbs to their gunfire. He gazes at Ann one last time before falling to his death. Jack takes an elevator to the top of the building and reunites with Ann. Denham arrives and pushes through a crowd surrounding Kong's corpse in the street. When a policeman remarks that the planes got him, Denham tells him, "No, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast".
Cast
Fay Wray as Ann Darrow: Canadian-born American actress Fay Wray played bit parts in Hollywood until cast as the lead in Erich von Stroheim's silent film, The Wedding March (1928). She met Kong co-directors Cooper and Schoedsack when cast as Ethne Eustace in The Four Feathers (1929). Cooper cast her as Eve Trowbridge in The Most Dangerous Game (1932). After the RKO board approved the Kong test, Cooper decided a blonde would provide contrast to the gorilla's dark pelt. Dorothy Jordan, Jean Harlow, and Ginger Rogers were considered, but the role finally went to Wray who wore a blonde wig in the film and was inspired more by Cooper's enthusiasm than the script to accept the role. According to her autobiography, On the Other Hand, Wray recounts that Cooper had told her he planned to star her opposite the "tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood". She assumed he meant Clark Gable until he showed her a picture of Kong climbing the Empire State Building. On the film's 50th anniversary in 1983, one New York theater held a Fay Wray scream-alike contest in its lobby, and on August 10, 2004, two days after Wray died, the lights of the Empire State Building were dimmed for 15 minutes in her memory.
Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham: Michigan native and veteran Broadway and silent film character actor Robert Armstrong played Wray's alcoholic brother in The Most Dangerous Game and, during filming, became a member of the Cooper-Schoedsack inner circle. He was a shoo-in as Denham when Kong was cast. The film's romantic angle (rather than its jungle or animal angle) was played up after animal films fared poorly at the box office in the early months of 1933. One exhibitor displayed a promotional still of Wray swooning in Armstrong's arms with the caption, "Their Hearts Stood Still...For There Stood Kong! A Love Story of Today That Spans the Ages!". Although the film's romantic subplot belongs to Cabot and Wray, established star Armstrong was chosen for the ad rather than the unknown Cabot. Months later, Armstrong again played Carl Denham in Kong sequel, Son of Kong (1933).
Bruce Cabot as John "Jack" Driscoll: New Mexico native Jacques De Bujac was signed by Selznick as a contract player, given the name Bruce Cabot, and met Cooper when auditioning for The Most Dangerous Game. He almost walked out of his Kong audition (mistakenly believing he was trying out as a stunt double for Joel McCrea, who was originally intended for Driscoll) but was convinced otherwise and received the role of Jack Driscoll, his first starring role. He was an inexperienced actor and described his participation in Kong as standing in the right place, doing what he was told, and collecting a paycheck.
Frank Reicher as Captain Englehorn
Sam Hardy as Charles Weston
Noble Johnson as the Native Chief
Steve Clemente as the Witch King
Victor Wong as Charlie
Everett Brown as the Native in Ape Costume (uncredited)
James Flavin played Second Mate Briggs, and a host of stuntmen and bit players as the ship's crew. Etta McDaniel played a native mother of a child she rescues from Kong's rampage. Sandra Shaw played the New York woman Kong drops to the street from the hotel ledge. Merian C. Cooper played an airplane pilot and Schoedsack the machine gunner in uncredited roles in the film's final scenes. James Dime played a member of the ship's crew.
Development
Background
Before King Kong entered production, a long tradition of jungle films existed, and, whether drama or documentary, such films (for example Stark Mad) generally adhered to a narrative pattern that followed an explorer or scientist into the jungle to test a theory only to discover some monstrous aberration in the undergrowth. In these films, scientific knowledge could be subverted at any time, and it was this that provided the genre with its vitality, appeal, and endurance.
In the early 20th century, few zoos had primate exhibits so there was popular demand to see primates on film. At the turn of the 20th century, the Lumière Brothers sent film documentarians to places westerners had never seen, and Georges Méliès utilized trick photography in film fantasies that prefigured that in King Kong. Jungle films were launched in the United States with Beasts in the Jungle (1913), and the film's popularity spawned similar pictures such as Tarzan of the Apes (1918). The Lost World (1925), made movie history with special effects by Willis O'Brien and a crew that later would work on King Kong. King Kong producer Ernest B. Schoedsack had earlier monkey experience directing Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927), also with Merian C. Cooper, and Rango (1931), both of which prominently featured monkeys in authentic jungle settings. Capitalizing on this trend, Congo Pictures released the hoax documentary Ingagi (1930), advertising the film as "an authentic incontestable celluloid document showing the sacrifice of a living woman to mammoth gorillas." Ingagi is now often recognized as a racial exploitation film as it implicitly depicted black women having sex with gorillas, and baby offspring that looked more ape than human. The film was an immediate hit, and by some estimates, it was one of the highest-grossing films of the 1930s at over $4 million. Although Cooper never listed Ingagi among his influences for King Kong, it has long been held that RKO greenlighted Kong because of the bottom-line example of Ingagi and the formula that "gorillas plus sexy women in peril equals enormous profits".
Concept
Merian C. Cooper's fascination with gorillas began with his boyhood reading of Paul Du Chaillu's Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa (1861) and was furthered in 1929 by studying a tribe of baboons in Africa while filming The Four Feathers. After reading W. Douglas Burden's The Dragon Lizards of Komodo, he fashioned a scenario depicting African gorillas battling Komodo dragons intercut with artificial stand-ins for joint shots. He then narrowed the dramatis personae to one ferocious, lizard-battling gorilla (rather than a group) and included a lone woman on an expedition to appease those critics who belabored him for neglecting romance in his films. A remote island would be the setting and the gorilla would be dealt a spectacular death in New York City.
Cooper took his concept to Paramount Studios in the first years of the Great Depression but executives shied away from a project that sent film crews on costly shoots to Africa and Komodo. In 1931, David O. Selznick brought Cooper to RKO as his executive assistant and promised him he could make his own films. Cooper began immediately developing The Most Dangerous Game, and hired Ernest B. Schoedsack to direct. A huge jungle stage set was built, with Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray as the stars. Once the film was under way, Cooper turned his attention to the studio's big-budget-out-of-control fantasy, Creation, a project with stop motion animator Willis O'Brien about a group of travelers shipwrecked on an island of dinosaurs.
When Cooper screened O'Brien's stop-motion Creation footage, he was unimpressed but realized he could economically make his gorilla picture by scrapping the Komodo dragons and costly location shoots for O'Brien's animated dinosaurs and the studio's existing jungle set. It was at this time Cooper probably cast his gorilla as a giant named Kong and planned to have him die at the Empire State Building. The RKO board was wary about the project but gave its approval after Cooper organized a presentation with Wray, Armstrong, and Cabot, and O'Brien's model dinosaurs. In his executive capacity, Cooper ordered the Creation production shelved, and put its crew to work on Kong.
Script
Cooper assigned a recently hired RKO screenwriter and best-selling British mystery/adventure writer Edgar Wallace the job of writing a screenplay and a novel based on his gorilla fantasy. Cooper understood the commercial appeal of Wallace's work and planned to publicize the film as being "based on the novel by Edgar Wallace". Wallace conferred with Cooper and O'Brien (who contributed, among other things, the "Ann's dress" scene) and began work on January 1, 1932. He completed a rough draft called The Beast on January 5, 1932. Cooper thought the draft needed considerable work, but Wallace died on February 10, 1932, just after beginning revisions. Despite not using any of the drafts in the final product beyond the previously agreed upon plot outline, Cooper gave screen credit to Wallace as he had promised it as a producer.
Cooper recruited James Ashmore Creelman (who was working on the script of The Most Dangerous Game at the time) and the two men worked together on several drafts under the title The Eighth Wonder. Some details from Wallace's rough draft were dropped, such as his boatload of escaped convicts. Wallace's Danby Denham character, a big game hunter, became film director Carl Denham. His Shirley became Ann Darrow, and her lover-convict John became Jack Driscoll. The "beauty and the beast" angle was first developed at this time. Kong's escape was switched from Madison Square Garden to Yankee Stadium and (finally) to a Broadway theater. Cute moments involving the gorilla in Wallace's draft were cut because Cooper wanted Kong to be hard and tough in the belief that his fall would be all the more awesome and tragic.
Time constraints forced Creelman to temporarily drop The Eighth Wonder and devote his time to the Game script. RKO staff writer Horace McCoy was also recruited to work with Cooper, and it was he who introduced the island natives, a giant wall, and the sacrificial maidens into the plot. Leon Gordon also contributed to the screenplay in a minimal capacity; both he and McCoy went uncredited in the completed film. When Creelman returned to the script full-time, he hated McCoy's "mythic elements," believing the script already had too many over-the-top concepts, but Cooper insisted on keeping them in the script. RKO
chief Selznick and his executives wanted Kong introduced earlier in the film (believing the audience would grow bored waiting for his appearance), but Cooper persuaded them that
a suspenseful build-up would make Kong's entrance all the more exciting.
Cooper felt Creelman's final draft was slow-paced, too full of flowery dialogue, weighted-down with long scenes of exposition, and written on a scale that would have been prohibitively expensive to film. Writer Ruth Rose (Schoedsack's wife) was recruited to do rewrites and, although she had never written a screenplay, undertook the task with a complete understanding of Cooper's style, streamlining the script and tightening the action. Rather than explaining how Kong would be transported to New York, for example, she simply cut from the island to the theater. She incorporated autobiographical elements into the script with Cooper mirrored in the Denham character, her husband Schoedsack in the tough but tender Driscoll character, and herself in struggling actress Ann Darrow. Rose also rewrote the dialogue and created the film's opening sequence, showing Denham meeting Ann on the streets of New York. Cooper was delighted with Rose's script, approving the newly re-titled Kong for production. Cooper and Schoedsack decided to co-direct scenes but their styles were different (Cooper was slow and meticulous, Schoedsack brisk) and they finally agreed to work separately, with Cooper overseeing O'Brien's miniature work and directing the special effects sequences, and Schoedsack directing the dialogue scenes.
Production
Models
After the RKO board approved the production of a test reel, Marcel Delgado constructed Kong (or the "Giant Terror Gorilla" as he was then known) per designs and directions from Cooper and O'Brien on a one-inch-equals-one-foot scale to simulate a gorilla 18 feet tall. Four models were built: two jointed 18-inch aluminum, foam rubber, latex, and rabbit fur models (to be rotated during filming), one jointed 24-inch model of the same materials for the New York scenes, and a small model of lead and fur for the climactic plummeting-down-the-Empire-State-Building shot. At least two armatures have survived – one believed to be the original made for the test footage – and are owned by Peter Jackson and Bob Burns. In 2009, one sold for £121,000 ($200,000) at Christie's in London.
Kong's torso was streamlined to eliminate the comical appearance of the real-world gorilla's prominent belly and buttocks. His lips, eyebrows, and nose were fashioned of rubber, his eyes of glass, and his facial expressions controlled by thin, bendable wires threaded through holes drilled in his aluminum skull. During filming, Kong's rubber skin dried out quickly under studio lights, making it necessary to replace it often and completely rebuild his facial features.
A huge bust of Kong's head, neck, and upper chest was made of wood, cloth, rubber, and bearskin by Delgado, E. B. Gibson, and Fred Reese. Inside the structure, metal levers, hinges, and an air compressor were operated by three men to control the mouth and facial expressions. Its fangs were 10 inches in length and its eyeballs 12 inches in diameter. The bust was moved from set to set on a flatcar. Its scale matched none of the models and, if fully realized, Kong would have stood thirty to forty feet tall.
Two versions of Kong's right hand and arm were constructed of steel, sponge rubber, rubber, and bearskin. The first hand was non articulated, mounted on a crane, and operated by grips for the scene in which Kong grabs at Driscoll in the cave. The other hand and arm had articulated fingers, was mounted on a lever to elevate it, and was used in the several scenes in which Kong grasps Ann. A nonarticulated leg was created of materials similar to the hands, mounted on a crane, and used to stomp on Kong's victims.
The dinosaurs were made by Delgado in the same fashion as Kong and based on Charles R. Knight's murals in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. All the armatures were manufactured in the RKO machine shop. Materials used were cotton, foam rubber, latex sheeting, and liquid latex. Football bladders were placed inside some models to simulate breathing. A scale of one-inch-equals-one-foot was employed and models ranged from 18 inches to 3 feet in length. Several of the models were originally built for Creation and sometimes two or three models were built of individual species. Prolonged exposure to studio lights wreaked havoc with the latex skin so John Cerasoli carved wooden duplicates of each model to be used as stand-ins for test shoots and lineups. He carved wooden models of Ann, Driscoll, and other human characters. Models of the Venture, railway cars, and warplanes were built.
Special effects
King Kong is well known for its groundbreaking use of special effects, such as stop-motion animation, matte painting, rear projection and miniatures, all of which were conceived decades before the digital age.
The numerous prehistoric creatures inhabiting Skull Island were brought to life through the use of stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and his assistant animator, Buzz Gibson. The stop-motion animation scenes were painstaking and difficult to achieve and complete after the special effects crew realized that they could not stop because it would make the movements of the creatures seem inconsistent and the lighting would not have the same intensity over the many days it took to fully animate a finished sequence. A device called the surface gauge was used in order to keep track of the stop-motion animation performance. The iconic fight between Kong and the Tyrannosaurus took seven weeks to be completed. O'Brien's protégé, Ray Harryhausen, who later worked with him on several films, stated that O'Brien's second wife noticed that there was so much of her husband in Kong.
The backdrop of the island seen when the Venture crew first arrive was painted on glass by matte painters Henry Hillinck, Mario Larrinaga, and Byron C. Crabbé. The scene was then composited with separate bird elements and rear-projected behind the ship and the actors. The background of the scenes in the jungle (a miniature set) was also painted on several layers of glass to convey the illusion of deep and dense jungle foliage.
The most difficult task for the special effects crew to achieve was to make live-action footage interact with separately filmed stop-motion animation – to make the interaction between the humans and the creatures of the island seem believable. The most simple of these effects were accomplished by exposing part of the frame, then running the same piece of the film through the camera again by exposing the other part of the frame with a different image. The most complex shots, where the live-action actors interacted with the stop-motion animation, were achieved via two different techniques, the Dunning process and the Williams process, in order to produce the effect of a traveling matte. The Dunning process, invented by cinematographer Carroll H. Dunning, employed the use of blue and yellow lights that were filtered and photographed into the black-and-white film. Bi-packing of the camera was used for these types of effects. With it, the special effects crew could combine two strips of different films at the same time, creating the final composite shot in the camera. It was used in the climactic scene where one of the Curtiss Helldiver planes attacking Kong crashes from the top of the Empire State Building, and in the scene where natives are running through the foreground, while Kong is fighting other natives at the wall.
On the other hand, the Williams process, invented by cinematographer Frank D. Williams, did not require a system of colored lights and could be used for wider shots. It was used in the scene where Kong is shaking the sailors off the log, as well as the scene where Kong pushes the gates open. The Williams process did not use bipacking, but rather an optical printer, the first such device that synchronized a projector with a camera, so that several strips of film could be combined into a single composited image. Through the use of the optical printer, the special effects crew could film the foreground, the stop-motion animation, the live-action footage, and the background, and combine all of those elements into one single shot, eliminating the need to create the effects in the camera.
Another technique that was used in combining live actors and stop-motion animation was rear-screen projection. The actor would have a translucent screen behind him where a projector would project footage onto the back of the translucent screen. The translucent screen was developed by Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman, who received a Special Achievement Oscar. It was used in the famous scene where Kong and the Tyrannosaurus fight while Ann watches from the branches of a nearby tree. The stop-motion animation was filmed first. Fay Wray then spent a twenty-two-hour period sitting in a fake tree acting out her observation of the battle, which was projected onto the translucent screen while the camera filmed her witnessing the projected stop-motion battle. She was sore for days after the shoot. The same process was also used for the scene where sailors from the Venture kill a Stegosaurus.
O'Brien and his special effects crew also devised a way to use rear projection in miniature sets. A tiny screen was built into the miniature onto which live-action footage would then be projected. A fan was used to prevent the footage that was projected from melting or catching fire. This miniature rear projection was used in the scene where Kong is trying to grab Driscoll, who is hiding in a cave. The scene where Kong puts Ann at the top of a tree switched from a puppet in Kong's hand to projected footage of Ann sitting.
The scene where Kong fights the Tanystropheus in his lair was likely the most significant special effects achievement of the film, due to the way in which all of the elements in the sequence work together at the same time. The scene was accomplished through the use of a miniature set, stop-motion animation for Kong, background matte paintings, real water, foreground rocks with bubbling mud, smoke, and two miniature rear screen projections of Driscoll and Ann.
Over the years, some media reports have alleged that in certain scenes Kong was played by an actor wearing a gorilla suit. However, film historians have generally agreed that all scenes involving Kong were achieved with animated models.
Live-action scenes
King Kong was filmed in several stages over an eight-month period. Some actors had so much time between their Kong periods that they were able to fully complete work on other films. Cabot completed Road House and Wray appeared in the horror films Dr. X (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). She estimated she worked for ten weeks on Kong over its eight-month production.
In May and June 1932, Cooper directed the first live-action Kong scenes on the jungle set built for The Most Dangerous Game. Some of these scenes were incorporated into the test reel later exhibited for the RKO board. The script was still in revision when the jungle scenes were shot and much of the dialogue was improvised. The jungle set was scheduled to be struck after Game was completed, so Cooper filmed all of the other jungle scenes at this time. The last scene shot was that of Driscoll and Ann racing through the jungle to safety following their escape from Kong's lair.
In July 1932, the native village was readied while Schoedsack and his crew filmed establishing shots in the harbor of New York City. Curtiss F8C-5/O2C-1 Helldiver warplanes taking off and in flight were filmed at a U.S. Naval airfield on Long Island. Views of New York City were filmed from the Empire State Building for backgrounds in the final scenes and architectural plans for the mooring mast were secured from the building's owners for a mock-up to be constructed on the Hollywood sound stage.
In August 1932, the island landing party scene and the gas bomb scene were filmed south of Los Angeles on a beach at San Pedro, California. All of the native village scenes were then filmed on the RKO-Pathé lot in Culver City with the native huts recycled from Bird of Paradise (1932). The great wall in the island scenes was a hand-me-down from DeMille's The King of Kings (1927) and dressed up with massive gates, a gong, and primitive carvings. The scene of Ann being led through the gates to the sacrificial altar was filmed at night with hundreds of extras and 350 lights for illumination. A camera was mounted on a crane to follow Ann to the altar. The Culver City Fire Department was on hand due to concerns that the set might go up in flames from the many native torches used in the scene. The wall and gate were destroyed in 1939 for Gone With the Winds burning of Atlanta sequence. Hundreds of extras were once again used for Kong's rampage through the native village, and filming was completed with individual vignettes of mayhem and native panic.
Meanwhile, the scene depicting a New York woman being dropped to her death from a hotel window was filmed on the sound stage using the articulated hand. At the same time, a scene depicting poker players surprised by Kong's face peering through a window was filmed using the 'big head', although the scene was eventually dropped. When filming was completed, a break was scheduled to finish construction of the interior sets and to allow screenwriter Ruth Rose time to finish the script.
In September–October 1932, Schoedsack returned to the sound stage after completing the native village shoots in Culver City. The decks and cabins of the Venture were constructed and all the live-action shipboard scenes were then filmed. The New York scenes were filmed, including the scene of Ann being plucked from the streets by Denham, and the diner scene. Following completion of the interior scenes, Schoedsack returned to San Pedro and spent a day on a tramp steamer to film the scene of Driscoll punching Ann and various atmospheric harbor scenes. The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles was rented for one day to film the scenes where Kong is displayed in chains and the backstage theater scenes following his escape. Principal photography wrapped at the end of October 1932 with the filming of the climax wherein Driscoll and Ann reunite at the top of the Empire State Building. Schoedsack's work was completed and he headed to Syria to film outdoor scenes for Arabia, a project that was never completed.
In December 1932 – January 1933, the actors were called back to film a number of optical effects shots which were mostly rear-screen projections. Technical problems inherent in the process made filming difficult and time-consuming. Many of the scenes featuring Wray in the articulated hand were filmed at this time. In December, Cooper re-shot the scene of the female New Yorker falling to her death. Stunt doubles were filmed for the water scenes depicting Driscoll and Ann escaping from Kong. A portion of the jungle set was reconstructed to film Denham snagging his sleeve on a branch during the pursuit scene. Originally, Denham ducked behind a bush to escape danger, but this was later considered cowardly and the scene was re-shot. The final scene was originally staged on the top of the Empire State Building, but Cooper was dissatisfied and reshot the scene with Kong lying dead in the street with the crowd gathered about him. The final negative cost of King Kong was $672,254.75, $270,000 more than the original projected budget.
Post-production
Murray Spivack provided the sound effects for the film. Kong's roar was created by mixing the recorded vocals of captive lions and tigers, subsequently played backward slowly. Spivak himself provided Kong's "love grunts" by grunting into a megaphone and playing it at a slow speed. For the huge ape's footsteps, Spivak stomped across a gravel-filled box with plungers wrapped in foam attached to his own feet, while the sounds of his chest beats were recorded by Spivak hitting his assistant (who had a microphone held to his back) on the chest with a drumstick. Spivak created the hisses and croaks of the dinosaurs with an air compressor for the former and his own vocals for the latter. The vocalizations of the Tyrannosaurus were additionally mixed in with puma screams while bird squawks were used for the Pteranodon. Spivak also provided the numerous screams of the various sailors; Fay Wray herself provided all of her character's screams in a single recording session.
For budgetary reasons, RKO decided not to have an original film score composed, instead instructing composer Max Steiner to simply reuse music from other films. Cooper thought the film deserved an original score and paid Steiner $50,000 to compose it. Steiner completed the score in six weeks and recorded it with a 46-piece orchestra. The studio later reimbursed Cooper. The score was unlike any that came before and marked a significant change in the history of film music. King Kongs score was the first feature-length musical score written for an American "talkie" film, the first major Hollywood film to have a thematic score rather than background music, the first to mark the use of a 46-piece orchestra and the first to be recorded on three separate tracks (sound effects, dialogue, and music). Steiner used a number of new film scoring techniques, such as drawing upon opera conventions for his use of leitmotifs. Over the years, Steiner's score was recorded by multiple record labels and the original motion picture soundtrack has been issued on a compact disc.
Release
Theatrical
King Kong opened at the 6,200-seat Radio City Music Hall in New York City and the 3,700-seat RKO Roxy across the street on Thursday, March 2, 1933. The film was preceded by a stage show called Jungle Rhythms. Crowds lined up around the block on opening day, tickets were priced at $.35 to $.75, and, in its first four days, every one of its ten-shows-a-day was sold out – setting an all-time attendance record for an indoor event. Over the four-day period, the film grossed $89,931.
The film had its official world premiere on March 23, 1933 at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The 'big head bust' was placed in the theater's forecourt and a seventeen-act show preceded the film with The Dance of the Sacred Ape performed by a troupe of African American dancers. The Kong cast and crew attended, though Wray thought her on-screen screams were distracting and excessive. The film opened nationwide on April 10, 1933, and worldwide on Easter Day in London, England. It was re-released in 1938, 1942, 1946, 1952 and 1956, the latter following a successful telecast on WOR-TV.
Censorship and restorations
The Production Code's stricter decency rules had been put into effect in Hollywood after its 1933 premiere and it was progressively censored further, with several scenes being either trimmed or excised altogether. These scenes were as follows: the Brontosaurus mauling crewmen in the water, chasing one up a tree and killing him; Kong undressing Ann Darrow and sniffing his fingers; Kong biting and stepping on natives when he attacks the village; Kong biting a man in New York; Kong mistaking a sleeping woman for Ann and dropping her to her death, after realizing his mistake. An additional scene portraying giant insects, spiders, a reptile-like predator and a tentacled creature devouring the crew members shaken off the log by Kong into the floor of the canyon below was deemed too gruesome by RKO even by pre-Code standards, and thus the scene was studio self-censored prior to the original release. Though searched for, the footage is now considered "lost forever" with only a few stills and pre-production drawings. After the 1956 re-release, the film was sold to television (first being broadcast March 5, 1956).
RKO did not preserve copies of the film's negative or release prints with the excised footage, and the cut scenes were considered lost for many years. In 1969, a 16mm print, including the censored footage, was found in Philadelphia. The cut scenes were added to the film, restoring it to its original theatrical running time of 100 minutes. This version was re-released to art houses by Janus Films in 1970. Over the next two decades, Universal Studios undertook further photochemical restoration of King Kong. This was based on a 1942 release print with missing censor cuts taken from a 1937 print, which "contained heavy vertical scratches from projection." An original release print located in the UK in the 1980s was found to contain the cut scenes in better quality. After a 6-year worldwide search for the best surviving materials, a further, fully digital restoration utilizing 4K resolution scanning was completed by Warner Bros. in 2005. This restoration also had a 4-minute overture added, bringing the overall running time to 104 minutes. King Kong was also, somewhat controversially, colorized in the late 1980s for television.
Home media
In 1984, King Kong was one of the first films to be released on LaserDisc by the Criterion Collection, and was the very first movie to have an audio commentary track included. Criterion's audio commentary was by film historian Ron Haver; in 1985 Image Entertainment released another LaserDisc, this time with a commentary by film historian and soundtrack producer Paul Mandell. The Haver commentary was preserved in full on the FilmStruck streaming service. King Kong had numerous VHS and LaserDisc releases of varying quality prior to receiving an official studio release on DVD. Those included a Turner 60th-anniversary edition in 1993 featuring a front cover that had the sound effect of Kong roaring when his chest was pressed. It also included a 25-minute documentary, It Was Beauty Killed the Beast (1992). The documentary is also available on two different UK King Kong DVDs, while the colorized version is available on DVD in the UK and Italy. Warner Home Video re-released the black and white version on VHS in 1998 and again in 1999 under the Warner Bros. Classics label, with this release including the 25-minute 1992 documentary.
In 2005 Warner Bros released their digital restoration of King Kong in a US 2-disc Special Edition DVD, coinciding with the theatrical release of Peter Jackson's remake. It had numerous extra features, including a new, third audio commentary by visual effects artists Ray Harryhausen and Ken Ralston, with archival excerpts from actress Fay Wray and producer/director Merian C. Cooper. Warners issued identical DVDs in 2006 in Australia and New Zealand, followed by a US digibook-packaged Blu-ray in 2010. In 2014 the Blu-ray was repackaged with three unrelated films in a 4 Film Favorites: Colossal Monster Collection. At present, Universal holds worldwide rights to Kongs home video releases outside of North America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. All Universal's releases only contain their earlier, 100 minutes, pre-2005 restoration.
Reception
Box office
The film was a box-office success, earning about $5 million in worldwide rentals on its initial release, and an opening weekend estimated at $90,000. Receipts fell by up to 50% during the second week of the film's release because of the national "bank holiday" declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt's during his first days in office. During the film's first run it made a profit of $650,000. Prior to the 1952 re-release, the film is reported to have worldwide rentals of $2,847,000 including $1,070,000 from the United States and Canada and profits of $1,310,000. After the 1952 re-release, Variety estimated the film had earned an additional $1.6 million in the United States and Canada, bringing its total to $3.9 million in cumulative domestic (United States and Canada) rentals. Profits from the 1952 re-release were estimated by the studio at $2.5 million.
Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 98% based on , with an average rating of 9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "King Kong explores the soul of a monster – making audiences scream and cry throughout the film – in large part due to Kong's breakthrough special effects." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".
Variety thought the film was a powerful adventure. The New York Times gave readers an enthusiastic account of the plot and thought the film a fascinating adventure. John Mosher of The New Yorker called it "ridiculous", but wrote that there were "many scenes in this picture that are certainly diverting". The New York World-Telegram said it was "one of the very best of all the screen thrillers, done with all the cinema's slickest camera tricks". The Chicago Tribune called it "one of the most original, thrilling and mammoth novelties to emerge from a movie studio."
On February 3, 2002, Roger Ebert included King Kong in his "Great Movies" list, writing that "In modern times the movie has aged, as critic James Berardinelli observes, and 'advances in technology and acting have dated aspects of the production.' Yes, but in the very artificiality of some of the special effects, there is a creepiness that isn't there in today's slick, flawless, computer-aided images... Even allowing for its slow start, wooden acting, and wall-to-wall screaming, there is something ageless and primeval about King Kong that still somehow works."
Racism allegation
In the 19th and early 20th century, people of African descent were commonly represented visually as ape-like, a metaphor that fit racist stereotypes further bolstered by the emergence of scientific racism. Early films frequently mirrored racial tensions. While King Kong is often compared to the story of Beauty and the Beast, many film scholars have argued that the film was a cautionary tale about interracial romance, in which the film's "carrier of blackness is not a human being, but an ape".Kuhn, Annette. (2007). 'King Kong'. In: Cook, Pam. (ed.) The Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute. P,41. and Robinson, D. (1983). 'King Kong'. In: Lloyd, A. (ed.) Movies of the Thirties. Orbis Publishing Ltd. p.58. Cooper and Schoedsack rejected any allegorical interpretations, insisting in interviews that the film's story contained no hidden meanings. In an interview, which was published posthumously, Cooper actually explained the deeper meaning of the film. The inspiration for the climactic scene came when, "as he was leaving his office in Manhattan, he heard the sound of an airplane motor. He reflexively looked up as the sun glinted off the wings of a plane flying extremely close to the tallest building in the city... he realized if he placed the giant gorilla on top of the tallest building in the world and had him shot down by the most modern of weapons, the armed airplane, he would have a story of the primitive doomed by modern civilization."
The film was initially banned in Nazi Germany, with the censors describing it as an "attack against the nerves of the German people" and a "violation of German race feeling". However, according to confidant Ernst Hanfstaengl, Adolf Hitler was "fascinated" by the film and saw it several times.
Accolades
Kong did not receive any Academy Awards nominations. Selznick wanted to nominate O'Brien and his crew for a special award in visual effects but the Academy declined. Such a category did not exist at the time and would not exist until 1938. Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman received a special achievement award for the development of the translucent acetate/cellulose rear screen – the only Kong-related award.
Legacy
The film has since received some significant honors. In 1975, Kong was named one of the 50 best American films by the American Film Institute. In 1981, a video game titled Donkey Kong, starring a character with similarities to Kong, was released. In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 1998, the AFI ranked the film #43 on its list of the 100 greatest movies of all time.
After a successful re-release in 1952, the film also paved the way for many films centered around Giant Monsters, and is one of the biggest inspirations for films such as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Godzilla.American Film Institute Lists'''
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies – #43
AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – #12
AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – #24
AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains:
Kong – Nominated Villain
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
"Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast." – #84
AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores – #13
AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – #41
AFI's 10 Top 10 – #4 Fantasy film
Sequel and franchise
The 1933 King Kong film and characters inspired imitations and installments. The Son of Kong, a direct sequel to the 1933 film was released nine months after the first film's release. In the early 1960s, RKO had licensed the King Kong character to Japanese studio Toho and produced two King Kong films, King Kong vs. Godzilla which was also the third film in Toho's long-running Godzilla series, and King Kong Escapes, both directed by Ishirō Honda. These films are mostly unrelated to the original and follow a very different style.
In 1976, Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis released his version of King Kong, a modern remake of the 1933 film, following the same basic plot, but moving the setting to the present day and changing many details. The remake was followed by a sequel in 1986 titled King Kong Lives. In 1998, the film also saw a loosely-adapted direct-to-video animated remake, The Mighty Kong, directed by Art Scott and scored by the Sherman Brothers. In 2005, Universal Pictures released another remake of King Kong, co-written and directed by Peter Jackson, which is set in 1933, as in the original film. Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. released a Kong reboot film titled Kong: Skull Island in 2017 which was directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts and is the second installment of Legendary's MonsterVerse, with a sequel Godzilla vs. Kong directed by Adam Wingard released in 2021, marking the second time Kong fights Godzilla.
See also
List of films featuring giant monsters
List of stop motion films
1933 in film
List of highest-grossing films
Skull Island
Mighty Joe Young (1949)
The Lost World (1925)
Ingagi (1930)
Stark Mad (1929)
References
Bibliography
Annette, Kuhn. (2007). 'King Kong'. In: Cook, Pam. (ed.) The Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute. P,41. and Robinson, D. (1983). 'King Kong'. In: Lloyd, A. (ed.) Movies of the Thirties. Orbis Publishing Ltd.
Eagan, Daniel (2010). America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry. The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc, New York, NY p. 22.
Grant, Elizabeth. (1996). "Here Comes the Bride." In Grant, Barry Keith (ed.), The Dread of Difference: Gender and the Horror Film. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Ollier, Claude. (May-June 1965). "Un roi à New York (A King in New York)" (Milne, Tom, trans.), in Hillier, Jim (ed.), Cahiers du Cinéma: The 1960s: New Wave, New Cinema, Reevaluating Hollywood, Harvard University Press, 1986.
External links
King Kong essay by Michael Price on the National Film Registry website
King Kong'' essay by Daniel Eagan in America's Film Legacy: The Authoritative Guide to the Landmark Movies in the National Film Registry, A&C Black, 2010 , pages 205-207
List of the 400 nominated screen characters
1933 films
1933 horror films
1930s fantasy adventure films
1930s English-language films
1930s monster movies
American films
American black-and-white films
American fantasy adventure films
American monster movies
American epic films
Adventure horror films
Censored films
Films about dinosaurs
Empire State Building in fiction
English-language films
Films scored by Max Steiner
Films directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack
Films directed by Merian C. Cooper
Films about filmmaking
Films adapted into comics
Films adapted into plays
Films produced by David O. Selznick
Films set in New York City
Films set in the Indian Ocean
Films set on fictional islands
Films using stop-motion animation
Films with live action and animation
King Kong (franchise) films
Lost world films
Pterosaurs in fiction
United States National Film Registry films
RKO Pictures films
Films with screenplays by Edgar Wallace
Articles containing video clips
Living dinosaurs in fiction
Race-related controversies in film | [
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16788 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning | Kenning | A kenning (Modern Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech in the type of circumlocution, a compound that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun. Kennings are strongly associated with Old Norse-Icelandic and Old English poetry. They continued to be a feature of Icelandic poetry (including rímur) for centuries, together with the closely related heiti.
A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a determinant. For example, the base-word of the kenning "íss rauðra randa" ('icicle of red shields' [SWORD], Einarr Skúlason: Øxarflokkr 9) is íss ('ice, icicle') and the determinant is rǫnd ('rim, shield-rim, shield'). The thing, person, place or being to which the kenning refers is known as its referent (in this case a sword). Although kennings are sometimes hyphenated in English translation, Old Norse poetry did not require kennings to be in normal word order, nor do the parts of the kenning need to be side-by-side. The lack of grammatical cases in modern English makes this aspect of kennings difficult to translate.
Etymology
The corresponding modern verb to ken survives in Scots and English dialects and in general English through the derivative existing in the standard language in the set expression beyond one's ken, "beyond the scope of one's knowledge" and in the phonologically altered forms uncanny, "surreal" or "supernatural", and canny, "shrewd", "prudent". Modern Scots retains (with slight differences between dialects) tae ken "to know", kent "knew" or "known", Afrikaans ken "be acquainted with" and "to know" and kennis "knowledge". Old Norse kenna (Modern Icelandic kenna, Swedish känna, Danish kende, Norwegian kjenne or kjenna) is cognate with Old English cennan, Old Frisian kenna, kanna, Old Saxon (ant)kennian (Middle Dutch and Dutch kennen), Old High German (ir-, in-, pi-) chennan (Middle High German and German kennen), Gothic kannjan < Proto-Germanic *kannjanan, originally causative of *kunnanan "to know (how to)", whence Modern English can 'to be able'. The word ultimately derives from *ǵneh₃, the same Proto-Indo-European root that yields Modern English know, Latin-derived terms such as cognition and ignorant, and Greek gnosis.
Structure
Old Norse kennings take the form of a genitive phrase (báru fákr "wave's horse" = "ship" (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 3)) or a compound word (gjálfr-marr "sea-steed" = "ship" (Anon.: Hervararkviða 27)). The simplest kennings consist of a base-word (Icelandic stofnorð, German Grundwort) and a determinant (Icelandic kenniorð, German Bestimmung) which qualifies, or modifies, the meaning of the base-word. The determinant may be a noun used uninflected as the first element in a compound word, with the base-word constituting the second element of the compound word. Alternatively the determinant may be a noun in the genitive case placed before or after the base-word, either directly or separated from the base-word by intervening words.
Thus the base-words in these examples are fákr "horse" and marr "steed", the determinants báru "waves" and gjálfr "sea". The unstated noun which the kenning refers to is called its referent, in this case: skip "ship".
In Old Norse poetry, either component of a kenning (base-word, determinant or both) could consist of an ordinary noun or a heiti "poetic synonym". In the above examples, fákr and marr are distinctively poetic lexemes; the normal word for "horse" in Old Norse prose is hestr.
Complex kennings
The skalds also employed complex kennings in which the determinant, or sometimes the base-word, is itself made up of a further kenning: grennir gunn-más "feeder of war-gull" = "feeder of raven" = "warrior" (Þorbjörn Hornklofi: Glymdrápa 6); eyðendr arnar hungrs "destroyers of eagle's hunger" = "feeders of eagle" = "warrior" (Þorbjörn Þakkaskáld: Erlingsdrápa 1) (referring to carrion birds scavenging after a battle). Where one kenning is embedded in another like this, the whole figure is said to be tvíkent "doubly determined, twice modified".
Frequently, where the determinant is itself a kenning, the base-word of the kenning that makes up the determinant is attached uninflected to the front of the base-word of the whole kenning to form a compound word: mög-fellandi mellu "son-slayer of giantess" = "slayer of sons of giantess" = "slayer of giants" = "the god Thor" (Steinunn Refsdóttir: Lausavísa 2).
If the figure comprises more than three elements, it is said to be rekit "extended". Kennings of up to seven elements are recorded in skaldic verse. Snorri himself characterises five-element kennings as an acceptable license but cautions against more extreme constructions: Níunda er þat at reka til hinnar fimtu kenningar, er ór ættum er ef lengra er rekit; en þótt þat finnisk í fornskálda verka, þá látum vér þat nú ónýtt. "The ninth [license] is extending a kenning to the fifth determinant, but it is out of proportion if it is extended further. Even if it can be found in the works of ancient poets, we no longer tolerate it." The longest kenning found in skaldic poetry occurs in Hafgerðingadrápa by Þórðr Sjáreksson and reads nausta blakks hlé-mána gífrs drífu gim-slöngvir "fire-brandisher of blizzard of ogress of protection-moon of steed of boat-shed", which simply means "warrior".
Word order and comprehension
Word order in Old Norse was generally much freer than in Modern English because Old Norse and Old English are synthetic languages, where added prefixes and suffixes to the root word (the core noun, verb, adjective or adverb) carry grammatical meanings, whereas Middle English and Modern English use word order to carry grammatical information, as analytic languages. This freedom is exploited to the full in skaldic verse and taken to extremes far beyond what would be natural in prose. Other words can intervene between a base-word and its genitive determinant, and occasionally between the elements of a compound word (tmesis). Kennings, and even whole clauses, can be interwoven. Ambiguity is usually less than it would be if an English text were subjected to the same contortions, thanks to the more elaborate morphology of Old Norse.
Another factor aiding comprehension is that Old Norse kennings tend to be highly conventional. Most refer to the same small set of topics, and do so using a relatively small set of traditional metaphors. Thus a leader or important man will be characterised as generous, according to one common convention, and called an "enemy of gold", "attacker of treasure", "destroyer of arm-rings", etc. and a friend of his people. Nevertheless, there are many instances of ambiguity in the corpus, some of which may be intentional, and some evidence that, rather than merely accepting it from expediency, skalds favoured contorted word order for its own sake.
Semantics
Kennings could be developed into extended, and sometimes vivid, metaphors: tröddusk törgur fyr [...] hjalta harðfótum "shields were trodden under the hard feet of the hilt (sword blades)" (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 6); svarraði sárgymir á sverða nesi "wound-sea (=blood) sprayed on headland of swords (=shield)" (Eyvindr Skáldaspillir: Hákonarmál 7). Snorri calls such examples nýgervingar and exemplifies them in verse 6 of his Háttatal. The effect here seems to depend on an interplay of more or less naturalistic imagery and jarring artifice. But the skalds weren't averse either to arbitrary, purely decorative, use of kennings: "That is, a ruler will be a distributor of gold even when he is fighting a battle and gold will be called the fire of the sea even when it is in the form of a man's arm-ring on his arm. If the man wearing a gold ring is fighting a battle on land the mention of the sea will have no relevance to his situation at all and does not contribute to the picture of the battle being described" (Faulkes (1997), pp. 8–9).
Snorri draws the line at mixed metaphor, which he terms nykrat "made monstrous" (Snorri Sturluson: Háttatal 6), and his nephew called the practice löstr "a fault" (Óláfr hvítaskáld: Third Grammatical Treatise 80). In spite of this, it seems that "many poets did not object to and some must have preferred baroque juxtapositions of unlike kennings and neutral or incongruous verbs in their verses" (Foote & Wilson (1970), p. 332). E.g. heyr jarl Kvasis dreyra "listen, earl, to Kvasir's blood (=poetry)" (Einarr skálaglamm: Vellekla 1).
Sometimes there is a kind of redundancy whereby the referent of the whole kenning, or a kenning for it, is embedded: barmi dólg-svölu "brother of hostility-swallow" = "brother of raven" = "raven" (Oddr breiðfirðingr: Illugadrápa 1); blik-meiðendr bauga láðs "gleam-harmers of the land of rings" = "harmers of gleam of arm" = "harmers of ring" = "leaders, nobles, men of social standing (conceived of as generously destroying gold, i.e. giving it away freely)" (Anon.: Líknarbraut 42).
While some Old Norse kennings are relatively transparent, many depend on a knowledge of specific myths or legends. Thus the sky might be called naturalistically él-ker "squall-vat" (Markús Skeggjason: Eiríksdrápa 3) or described in mythical terms as Ymis haus "Ymir's skull" (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 19), referring to the idea that the sky was made out of the skull of the primeval giant Ymir. Still others name mythical entities according to certain conventions without reference to a specific story: rimmu Yggr "Odin of battle" = "warrior" (Arnórr jarlaskáld: Magnúsdrápa 5).
Poets in medieval Iceland even treated Christian themes using the traditional repertoire of kennings complete with allusions to heathen myths and aristocratic epithets for saints: Þrúðr falda "goddess of headdresses" = "Saint Catherine" (Kálfr Hallsson: Kátrínardrápa 4).
Kennings of the type AB, where B routinely has the characteristic A and thus this AB is tautological, tend to mean "like B in that it has the characteristic A", e.g. "shield-Njörðr", tautological because the god Njörðr by nature has his own shield, means "like Njörðr in that he has a shield", i.e. "warrior". A modern English example is "painted Jezebel" as a disapproving expression for a woman too fond of using cosmetics.
Kennings may include proper names. A modern example of this is an ad hoc usage by a helicopter ambulance pilot: "the Heathrow of hang gliders" for the hills behind Hawes in Yorkshire in England, when he found the air over the emergency site crowded with hang-gliders.
Sometimes a name given to one well-known member of a species, is used to mean any member of that species. For example, Old Norse valr means "falcon", but Old Norse mythology mentions a horse named Valr, and thus in Old Norse poetry valr is sometimes used to mean "horse".
Ellipsis
A term may be omitted from a well-known kenning: val-teigs Hildr "hawk-ground's valkyrie/goddess" (Haraldr Harðráði: Lausavísa 19). The full expression implied here is "goddess of gleam/fire/adornment of ground/land/seat/perch of hawk" = "goddess of gleam of arm" = "goddess of gold" = "lady" (characterised according to convention as wearing golden jewellery, the arm-kenning being a reference to falconry). The poet relies on listeners' familiarity with such conventions to carry the meaning.
Definitions
Some scholars take the term kenning broadly to include any noun-substitute consisting of two or more elements, including merely descriptive epithets (such as Old Norse grand viðar "bane of wood" = "fire" (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), while others would restrict it to metaphorical instances (such as Old Norse sól húsanna "sun of the houses" = "fire" (Snorri Sturluson: Skáldskaparmál 36)), specifically those where "[t]he base-word identifies the referent with something which it is not, except in a specially conceived relation which the poet imagines between it and the sense of the limiting element'" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Some even exclude naturalistic metaphors such as Old English forstes bend "bond of frost" = "ice" or winter-ġewǣde "winter-raiment" = "snow": "A metaphor is a kenning only if it contains an incongruity between the referent and the meaning of the base-word; in the kenning the limiting word is essential to the figure because without it the incongruity would make any identification impossible" (Brodeur (1959) pp. 248–253). Descriptive epithets are a common literary device in many parts of the world, whereas kennings in this restricted sense are a distinctive feature of Old Norse and, to a lesser extent, Old English poetry.
Snorri's own usage, however, seems to fit the looser sense: "Snorri uses the term "kenning" to refer to a structural device, whereby a person or object is indicated by a periphrastic description containing two or more terms (which can be a noun with one or more dependent genitives or a compound noun or a combination of these two structures)" (Faulkes (1998 a), p. xxxiv). The term is certainly applied to non-metaphorical phrases in Skáldskaparmál: En sú kenning er áðr var ritat, at kalla Krist konung manna, þá kenning má eiga hverr konungr. "And that kenning which was written before, calling Christ the king of men, any king can have that kenning. Likewise in Háttatal: Þat er kenning at kalla fleinbrak orrostu [...] "It is a kenning to call battle 'spear-crash' [...]".
Snorri's expression kend heiti "qualified terms" appears to be synonymous with kenningar, although Brodeur applies this more specifically to those periphrastic epithets which don't come under his strict definition of kenning.
Sverdlov approaches the question from a morphological standpoint. Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing (declined) adjective. According to this view, all kennings are formally compounds, notwithstanding widespread tmesis.
Old Norse kennings in context
In the following dróttkvætt stanza, the Norwegian skald Eyvindr skáldaspillir (d. ca 990) compares the greed of King Harald Greycloak (Old Norse: Haraldr) to the generosity of his predecessor, Haakon the Good (Hákon):
Bárum, Ullr, of alla,
ímunlauks, á hauka
fjöllum Fýrisvalla
fræ Hákonar ævi;
nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða
fáglýjaðra þýja
meldr í móður holdi
mellu dolgs of folginn
—Eyvindr skáldaspillir, Lausavísa
A literal translation reveals several kennings: "Ullr of the war-leek! We carried the seed of Fýrisvellir on our hawk-mountains during all of Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden the flour of Fróði's hapless slaves in the flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess."
This could be paraphrased as "O warrior, we carried gold on our arms during all of King Haakon's life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in the earth." The kennings are:
Ullr ... ímunlauks, "warrior", from Ullr, the name of a god, and ímun-laukr, "sword" (literally "war-leek"). By convention, the name of any god can be associated with another word to produce a kenning for a certain type of man; here "Ullr of the sword" means "warrior." "War-leek" is a kenning for "sword" that likens the shape of the sword to that of a leek. The warrior referred to may be King Harald.
Hauka fjöllum, "arms", from hauka "hawk" and fjöll mountain. This is a reference to the sport of falconry, where a bird of prey is perched on the arm of the falconer. By convention, "hawk" combined with a term for a geographic feature forms a kenning for "arm."
Fýrisvalla fræ, "gold", from "Fýrisvellir", the plains of the river Fýri, and fræ, "seed." This is an allusion to a legend retold in Skáldskaparmál and Hrólfs saga kraka in which King Hrolf and his men scattered gold on the plains (vellir) of the river Fýri south of Gamla Uppsala to delay their pursuers.
Fróða fáglýjaðra þýja meldr, "flour of Fróði's hapless slaves", is another kenning for "gold." It alludes to the Grottasöngr legend.
Móður hold mellu dolgs, "flesh of the mother of the enemy of the giantess." "earth." Here the earth is personified as the goddess Jörð, mother of Thor, enemy of the Jǫtnar or "giants".
Old English and other kennings
The practice of forming kennings has traditionally been seen as a common Germanic inheritance, but this has been disputed since, among the early Germanic languages, their use is largely restricted to Old Norse and Old English poetry. A possible early kenning for "gold" (walha-kurna "Roman/Gallic grain") is attested in the Proto-Norse runic inscription on the Tjurkö (I)-C bracteate. Kennings are virtually absent from the surviving corpus of continental West Germanic verse; the Old Saxon Heliand contains only one example: lîk-hamo "body-raiment" = "body" (Heliand 3453 b), a compound which, in any case, is normal in West Germanic and North Germanic prose (Old English līchama, Old High German lîchamo, lîchinamo, Dutch lichaam, Old Icelandic líkamr, líkami, Old Swedish līkhamber, Swedish lekamen, Danish and Norwegian Bokmål legeme, Norwegian Nynorsk lekam).
Old English kennings are all of the simple type, possessing just two elements. Examples for "sea": seġl-rād "sail-road" (Beowulf 1429 b), swan-rād "swan-road" (Beowulf 200 a), bæð-weġ "bath-way" (Andreas 513 a), hron-rād "whale-road" (Beowulf 10), hwæl-weġ "whale-way" (The Seafarer 63 a). Most Old English examples take the form of compound words in which the first element is uninflected: "heofon-candel" "sky-candle" = "the sun" (Exodus 115 b). Kennings consisting of a genitive phrase occur too, but rarely: heofones ġim "heaven's gem" = "the sun" (The Phoenix 183).
Old English poets often place a series of synonyms in apposition, and these may include kennings (loosely or strictly defined) as well as the literal referent: Hrōðgar maþelode, helm Scyldinga ... "Hrothgar, helm (=protector, lord) of the Scyldings, said ..." (Beowulf 456).
Although the word "kenning" is not often used for non-Germanic languages, a similar form can be found in Biblical poetry in its use of parallelism. Some examples include Genesis 49:11, in which "blood of grapes" is used as a kenning for "wine", and Job 15:14, where "born of woman" is a parallel for "man".
Modern usage
Figures of speech similar to kennings occur in Modern English (both in literature and in regular speech), and are often found in combination with other poetic devices. For example, the Madness song "The Sun and the Rain" contains the line "standing up in the falling-down", where "the falling-down" refers to rain and is used in juxtaposition to "standing up". Some recent English writers have attempted to use approximations of kennings in their work. John Steinbeck used kenning-like figures of speech in his 1950 novella Burning Bright, which was adapted into a Broadway play that same year. According to Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini, "The experiment is well-intentioned, but it remains idiosyncratic to the point of absurdity. Steinbeck invented compound phrases (similar to the Old English use of kennings), such as 'wife-loss' and 'friend-right' and 'laughter-starving,' that simply seem eccentric."
Kennings remain somewhat common in German (Drahtesel "wire-donkey" for bicycle, Feuerstuhl "fire-chair" for motorcycle, Stubentiger "parlour-tiger" for cat, and so on). Kennings are also found in Mandarin Chinese (火鸡 "fire-chicken" for turkey, 猫头鹰 "cat-headed eagle" for owl).
The poet Seamus Heaney regularly employed kennings in his work; for example, 'bone-house' for "skeleton".
See also
Bahuvrihi
Elegant variation
Makurakotoba
Heiti
List of kennings
Metalepsis
Metonymy
Synecdoche
Notes
References
Brodeur, Arthur Gilchrist (1959), The Art of Beowulf, University of California Press
Faulkes, Anthony (1997), "Poetic Inspiration in Old Norse and Old English Poetry." Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies delivered at University College London 28 November 1997, Viking Society for Northern Research
Faulkes, Anthony (1998 a), "Edda: Skáldskaparmál: 1, Introduction, Text and Notes." Viking Society for Northern Research
Faulkes, Anthony (1998 b), "Edda: Skáldskaparmál: 2, Glossary and Index of Names." Viking Society for Northern Research
Foote, Peter & Wilson, D, M. (1970), The Viking Achievement, Book Club Associates, London
Krause, Wolfgang (1971), Die Sprache der urnordischen Runeninschriften, Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg
Kuhn, Hans (1893), 'The rímur-poet and his audience', Saga-Book 23:6
Looijenga, Jantina Helena (1997), "Runes around the North Sea and on the Continent AD150-700: Texts and Contexts." University of Groningen dissertation.
Sverdlov, Ilya V, (2006), "Kenning Morphology: Towards a Formal Definition of the Skaldic Kenning, or Kennings and Adjectives." 13th International Saga Conference: Durham and York
External links
Skaldic Project – Index of Kennings
Jörmungrund: Lexicon of Kennings – The Domain of Battle
Septentrionalia: The Medieval North (Lexica poetica)
Medieval literature
Icelandic literature
Old Norse
Old Norse poetry
Poetic devices
Rhetorical techniques
Old English poetry | [
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16789 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kult%20%28role-playing%20game%29 | Kult (role-playing game) | Kult (Swedish for "Cult", stylized as KULT) is a contemporary horror role-playing game originally created by Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén with illustrations by Nils Gulliksson, first published in Sweden by Äventyrsspel (later Target Games) in 1991. Kult is notable for its philosophical and religious depth as well as for its mature and controversial content.
The first English edition was published in 1993 by Metropolis Ltd. In 1995, translated the second Swedish edition into French.
In 2018 current licensor Helmgast released the fourth edition called Kult: Divinity Lost created by Robin Liljenberg and Petter Nallo. This edition moved the setting from the then-current 1990s to the now-current 2010s and was completely rewritten with new art, layout and a ruleset based on Powered by the Apocalypse. The new edition was well received by critics and fans and won two ennies for Best Writing and Best Cover 2019, and was also nominated for Best Interior Art.
Setting
The default backdrop of Kult is modern-day real-life larger cities; players taking the roles of contemporary multi-genre protagonists, such as private investigators and femme fatales, vigilantes and drug dealers, artists and journalists, or secret agents and mad scientists. In the game, however, all this and the entire world we see, is an "illusion" held together by a monotheistic belief which is unravelling to reveal a darker backdrop where nightmarish monsters lurk, called "reality" in the game. This illusion was created by the Demiurge to hold humanity prisoner and to prevent mankind from regaining the divinity it once had. In the absence of this Demiurge, sinister forces plot to keep us from realizing the truth, or even to plunge the world into an apocalyptic war to restore humanity's ignorance and blind faith in the divine order.
Some symbols and creatures appearing in Kult can also be seen in other Swedish games to which the Kult authors and production team also have contributed. The Mutant Chronicles' universe (created by Nils Gulliksson and Michael Stenmark) its spin-offs share creatures such as Nepharites and Razides which appear in the game.
Entities
The notion of an originally divine mankind being held captive by sinister forces is borrowed from gnosticism. The cosmological backdrop of Kult is largely based on the Tree of life, the Sephirot and the Qliphoth. It is balanced with the Demiurge and his Archons on one side and Astaroth and his Death Angels on the other. Each Archon or Death Angel represents a value, group or an action (aid organisations, child abuse, mafia, apathy, judicial systems, etc.) over which they have great influence. The Archons and Death Angels have various creatures and cults (thereby the name of the game) to do their bidding and promote their values. Many of these are our jailers who work to maintain the Illusion. Many of the adventures revolve around how these entities' conflicts affect the player characters and the world around them.
Disappearance of the Demiurge
One of the more central elements of the game is that the Demiurge has disappeared since just before the 20th century, and since then Astaroth, the Archons and the Death Angels have been struggling for power. Many entities have vanished since, and the Illusion has been weakened. The game leaves a lot to the imagination of interpretive game masters regarding reasons for the Demiurge's disappearance as well as the earlier mentioned divinity of mankind.
Realities
The game concept relies on there being several realities that may appear when the Illusion shatters: Metropolis, the original city which interconnects with all great cities; Inferno and its purgatories, where humans are held captive and tortured after death; and Gaia, which connects to nature and nature's destructive forces. The Underworld where strange people from lost worlds lives in the depth close to infinity. Limbo, the Dream World where Dream Princes create their kingdoms and dream wanderers explore tattered dreams close to Vortex (a place of chaos and creation).
Rules
The original system is a skill-based system utilizing 20-sided dice (related to Chaosium's BRP system, which had already been used by Äventyrsspel for their Drakar och Demoner rpgs), with point-based characters. In the game, a natural 1 usually is great success with added bonuses and a natural 20 means a complete failure. Normal characters usually have skill ranges of 3 to 20; to succeed in a skill roll, the player needs to roll equal or below his character's skill. The lower the player rolls below the skill number, the greater the success. Extraordinary characters and inhuman entities can have skill values far above the normal range.
The recent edition KULT: Divinity Lost uses rules that are based on the Apocalypse World rules engine. You roll two ten-sided dice, add possible modifications, and try to reach at least 10 to avoid failure or 15 to gain a complete success. KULT: Divinity Lost also has a system where the Gamemaster builds the campaign around the Player Characters and aims to reach true personal horror.
Combat
There are several different official rulesets for combat. The second and third English edition rules use a system based on Damage Effect Factors (DEF). The fourth edition, KULT: Divinity Lost, has less focus on combat than previous editions.
Magic
Kult's magic system is largely drawn on the same real-world occult belief systems as some modern magick societies. Sorcerers can cast spells from one (or rarely more) of five different Lores; Death, Dream, Madness, Passion and Time & Space. Because these spells have (very) long casting times (up to several days), highly specific and exacting verbal, material and somatic requirements, and can only be cast inside the sorcerer's consecrated temple, these spells are actually more like quasi-religious rituals.
Mental Balance
Central to the game is the aspect of Mental Balance, which is a sanity-gauge of sorts. In the game's cosmology humans can - at least in theory - regain their lost divine status through a game concept called Awakening in which characters with an extremely high (or low, the game never values positive or moral traits higher than negative or immoral ones) mental balance are no longer restrained by the rules of the Illusion. Effectively, they escape the prison and become gods.
The closer to equilibrium the character is, the more they are anchored in everyday human reality and the harder it is for the character to see through the veil of The Illusion to the true reality beneath. On the other hand, this protects them from becoming traumatized or insane. The further from this balance point (zero) the character's Mental Balance gets, the more easily they will become emotionally and mentally unbalanced by shocking events. A Kult character can have positive or negative mental balance affected by trauma, influence from creatures or places, or by advantages and disadvantages. The advantages and disadvantages are typically talents and traits that work for or against the character, such as (on the positive side) having animal friendship, artistic talent, body awareness, a code of honor, or (from the negative spectrum) being socially inept, suffering from a drug addiction, sex addiction, paranoia, mystic curse or similar.
Both an unusually high or unusually low (+25/-25) Mental Balance will affect how normal people and animals react to the character in question. The further the character strays away from the zero point, the more sociopathic, strange or eccentric he becomes, as they shed their human quirks and viewpoints and becomes more inhuman. Characters with a very high or very low Mental Balance will start to involuntarily manifest outward physical signs of their ascent or descent; they become either detached saints or Children of the Night. If Mental Balance ever reaches +500/-500, the character Awakens and regains their true potential.
In the fourth edition of Kult the Mental Balance system has been removed, the reason made by the developers is that even if it is interesting it was practically impossible to use other than as a concept. instead you transcend between different types of Archetypes: The Sleeper, The Aware, The Enlightened that moves you towards Awakening.
Publication history
Kult was originally published by the company Target Games in 1991 as a Swedish role-playing game, and has later been translated into several other languages. Kult has been published in Swedish, German, English, Italian, Spanish and French.
Metropolis Ltd. published the English-language game through three editions and new supplements, with a new US background and a revised page design and editing led by Terry K. Amthor.
The third English edition of Kult had two English books released in print form: a player's handbook named "Kult Rumours" in 2001 and the core rulebook, subtitled Beyond The Veil, printed in 2004. Both are currently out of print, though copies can be purchased through secondary and specialized markets.
The former publishers were 7ème Cercle (French) and (Italian).
The license has been the property of first Target Games, then Paradox Entertainment, and, in 2015, Cabinet Holdings.
Current publishers
Currently, Kult is licensed by Helmgast.
A 2016 Kickstarter campaign funded a new edition of the game, entitled 'Kult: Divinity Lost'. This edition uses a different rules engine than previous editions, one based on Apocalypse World and its Powered by the Apocalypse rules engine. It updates the setting to answer the question “What would Kult had been like if it was released in 2016 instead of 1991?” The game was released in 2018.
In 2017 Free League Publishing published Anders Fager's novel "För Gudinnan" (for the love of the goddess) set in the Kult universe. Fager has also written an audiolouge called "Faraday" set in the Kult adventure Tarroticum.
In 2018 and 2020 Free League Publishing published two novels written by the original creators of Kult, Gunilla Jonsson and Michael Petersén. They are both set in the Kult universe called "Döden är bara början" (Death is only the beginning, 2018) and "De levande döda" (The living dead, 2020)
Controversy
Similar to the moral panic of Dungeons & Dragons in the United States in the 1980s, Kult figured in Swedish controversies of the 1990s. At the time of the game's initial publication, role-playing games in Sweden were still sold primarily through toy stores rather than bookstores or specialized hobby shops. Kult was noted by the general press several times during the decade after its initial publication, and in 1997 the Kult core rules were quoted in a motion in the Parliament of Sweden. The motion was to stop taxpayer funding of youth groups that were active with role-playing. It refers to the , where a 15-year-old in a small town in southern Sweden called Bjuv was killed by two 16- and 17-year-old friends who (according to the legal motion) were influenced by Kult.
Writer Didi Örnstedt and painter Björn Sjöstedt wrote a book, De Övergivnas Armé (Army of the Abandoned), where they warn against the role-playing game hobby, with a particular focus on the game Kult. The title refers to children supposedly ignored by their parents and therefore susceptible to a projected radicalization of the rpg movement.
Critics of role-playing games have attempted to tie Kult to a 16-year-old Swedish boy who committed suicide by shotgun in November 1996.
The local newspaper Tønsbergs Blad in Tønsberg, Norway similarly used Kult in relation to the disappearance of a boy called Andreas Hammer on July 1, 1994. Andreas Hammer allegedly played Kult the week prior to his disappearance. He is still missing.
Reception
Jeff Koke reviewed Kult for Pyramid #3 (Sept./Oct., 1993), and stated that "All in all, Kult is a very good system and background for roleplayers who are mature enough to delve into truly dark roleplaying. Even for those players who dislike being immersed in depressing, hopeless worlds, the background has enough tidbits of bleak imagery and morsels of horrific scenery that it's worth the cover price just to browse through the Metropolis."
Reviews
RPG.net (2018)
Geeknative.com (2018)
White Wolf #39 (1994)
Shadis #25 (March, 1996)
Arcane #20 - 2nd edition
Backstab #4
Rollespilsmagasinet Fønix (Danish) (Issue 2 - May/June 1994)
Spin-offs
Kult (card game) by Bryan Winter.
In August–November 2011, Dark Horse Comics released a 4 issue mini series based on the RPG.
Notes
External links
Official home page
Cabinet Entertainment
Contemporary role-playing games
Horror role-playing games
Swedish role-playing games
Role-playing games introduced in 1991 | [
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16790 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl%20Friedrich%20Abel | Carl Friedrich Abel | Carl Friedrich Abel (22 December 1723 – 20 June 1787) was a German composer of the Classical era. He was a renowned player of the viola da gamba, and produced significant compositions for that instrument.
Life
Abel was born in Köthen, a small German city, where his father, Christian Ferdinand Abel, had worked for years as the principal viola da gamba and cello player in the court orchestra. In 1723 Abel senior became director of the orchestra, when the previous director, Johann Sebastian Bach, moved to Leipzig. The young Abel later boarded at St. Thomas School, Leipzig, where he was taught by Bach.
On Bach's recommendation in 1743 he was able to join Johann Adolph Hasse's court orchestra at Dresden, where he remained for fifteen years. In 1759 (or 1758 according to Chambers), he went to England and became chamber-musician to Queen Charlotte, in 1764. He gave a concert of his own compositions in London, performing on various instruments, one of which was a five-string cello known as a pentachord, which had been recently invented by John Joseph Merlin.
In 1762, Johann Christian Bach, the eleventh son of J.S. Bach, joined him in London, and the friendship between him and Abel led, in 1764 or 1765, to the establishment of the famous Bach-Abel concerts, England's first subscription concerts. In those concerts, many celebrated guest artists appeared, and many works of Haydn received their first English performance.
For ten years the concerts were organized by Mrs. Theresa Cornelys, a retired Venetian opera singer who owned a concert hall at Carlisle House in Soho Square, then the height of fashionable events. In 1775 the concerts became independent of her, to be continued by Abel and Bach until Bach's death in 1782. Abel still remained in great demand as a player on various instruments new and old. He traveled to Germany and France between 1782 and 1785, and upon his return to London, became a leading member of the Grand Professional Concerts at the Hanover Square Rooms in Soho. Throughout his life he had enjoyed excessive living, and his drinking probably hastened his death, which occurred in London on 20 June 1787. He was buried in the churchyard of St Pancras Old Church.
One of Abel's works became famous due to a misattribution: in the 19th century, a manuscript symphony in the hand of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was catalogued as his Symphony no. 3 in E flat, K. 18, and was published as such in the first complete edition of Mozart's works by Breitkopf & Härtel. Later, it was discovered that this symphony was actually the work of Abel, copied by the boy Mozart—evidently for study purposes—while he was visiting London in 1764. That symphony was originally published as the concluding work in Abel's Six Symphonies, Op. 7.
In 2015 new manuscripts of Abel's viola da gamba music were found in the library of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, in a collection from the Maltzahn family palace in the town of Milicz in Poland, originally brought back from London by .
Selected works by opus number
(adapted from the listing in the article on Abel at fr.wikipedia.org)
Op. 1: 6 Overtures or Sinfonias (1761)
Op. 2: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin and Cello (ad libitum) (1760)
Op. 3: 6 Trio Sonatas for 2 Violins and Basso Continuo (1762)
Op. 4: 6 Overtures or Sinfonias (1762)
Op. 5: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin and Cello (ad libitum) (1762)
Op. 6: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Flute (1763)
Op. 7: 6 Symphonies (1767)
Op. 8: 6 String Quartets (1768)
Op. 9: 6 Trio Sonatas for Violin, Cello and Basso Continuo (1771)
Op. 10: 6 Symphonies (1771)
Op. 11: 6 Concerti for Keyboard and Strings (1771)
Op. 12: 6 Flute Quartets (1774)
Op. 13: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin (1777)
Op. 14: 6 Symphonies (1778)
Op. 15: 6 String Quartets (1780)
Op. 16: 4 Trio Sonatas for 2 Flutes and Basso Continuo (1781)
Op. 16: 6 Trio Sonatas for Violin, Viola and Cello (1782)
Op. 17: 6 Symphonies (1785)
Op. 18: 6 Sonatas for Keyboard and Violin (1784)
Works list
Symphony Op. 1 No.1 in B flat major, WK 1
Symphony Op. 1 No.2 in C major, WK 2
Symphony Op. 1 No.3 in D major, WK 3
Symphony Op. 1 No.4 in E flat major, WK 4
Symphony Op. 1 No.5 in F major, WK 5
Symphony Op. 1 No.6 in G major, WK 6
Symphony Op. 4 No.1 in D major, WK 7
Symphony Op. 4 No.2 in B flat major, WK 8
Symphony Op. 4 No.3 in E flat major, WK 9
Symphony Op. 4 No.4 in C major, WK 10
Symphony Op. 4 No.5 in G major, WK 11
Symphony Op. 4 No.6 in D major, WK 12
Symphony Op. 7 No.1 in G major, WK 13
Symphony Op. 7 No.2 in B flat major, WK 14
Symphony Op. 7 No.3 in D major, WK 15
Symphony Op. 7 No.4 in F major, WK 16
Symphony Op. 7 No.5 in C major, WK 17
Symphony Op. 7 No.6 in E flat major, WK 18
Symphony Op. 10 No.1 in E major, WK 19
Symphony Op. 10 No.2 in B flat major, WK 20
Symphony Op. 10 No.3 in E flat major, WK 21
Symphony Op. 10 No.4 in C major, WK 22
Symphony Op. 10 No.5 in D major, WK 23
Symphony Op. 10 No.6 in A major, WK 24
Symphony Op. 14 No.1 in C major, WK 25
Symphony Op. 14 No.2 in E flat major, WK 26
Symphony Op. 14 No.3 in D major, WK 27
Symphony Op. 14 No.4 in B flat major, WK 28
Symphony Op. 14 No.5 in G major, WK 29
Symphony Op. 14 No.6 in E flat major, WK 30
Symphony Op. 17 No.1 in E flat major, WK 31
Symphony Op. 17 No.2 in B flat major, WK 32
Symphony Op. 17 No.3 in D major, WK 33
Symphony Op. 17 No.4 in C major, WK 34
Symphony Op. 17 No.5 in B flat major, WK 35
Symphony Op. 17 No.6 in G major, WK 36
Symphony in C major, WK 37
Symphony in B flat major, WK 38
Symphony in E flat major, WK 39
Symphony in B flat major, WK 40
Symphony in D major, WK 41
Sinfonia concertante for oboe quartet in B flat major, WK 42
Sinfonia concertante for oboe quartet in D major, WK 43
Periodical Overture in D major, WK 44
Overture to 'Love in a village' in D major, WK 45a
Overture to 'The summer's tale' in B flat major, WK 45b
Flute Concerto No.1 in C major, WK 46
Flute Concerto No.2 in E minor, WK 47
Flute Concerto No.3 in D major, WK 48
Flute Concerto No.4 in C major, WK 49
Flute Concerto No.5 in G major, WK 50
Flute Concerto No.6 in C major, WK 51
Cello Concerto in B flat major, WK 52
Keyboard Concerto Op. 11 No.1 in F major, WK 53
Keyboard Concerto Op. 11 No.2 in B flat major, WK 54
Keyboard Concerto Op. 11 No.3 in E flat major, WK 55
Keyboard Concerto Op. 11 No.4 in D major, WK 56
Keyboard Concerto Op. 11 No.5 in G major, WK 57
Keyboard Concerto Op. 11 No.6 in C major, WK 58
Flute Concerto No.7 in D major, WK 59
Cello Concerto in C major, WK 60
String Quartet Op. 8 No.1 in F major, WK 61
String Quartet Op. 8 No.2 in B flat major, WK 62
String Quartet Op. 8 No.3 in E flat major, WK 63
String Quartet Op. 8 No.4 in D major, WK 64
String Quartet Op. 8 No.5 in A major, WK 65
String Quartet Op. 8 No.6 in F major, WK 66
Flute Quartet Op. 12 No.1 in C major, WK 67
Flute Quartet Op. 12 No.2 in A major, WK 68
Flute Quartet Op. 12 No.3 in F major, WK 69
Flute Quartet Op. 12 No.4 in D major, WK 70
Flute Quartet Op. 12 No.5 in B flat major, WK 71
Flute Quartet Op. 12 No.6 in G major, WK 72
String Quartet Op. 15 No.1 in E major, WK 73
String Quartet Op. 15 No.2 in C major, WK 74
String Quartet Op. 15 No.3 in E flat major, WK 75
String Quartet Op. 15 No.4 in G major, WK 76
String Quartet Op. 15 No.5 in F major, WK 77
String Quartet Op. 15 No.6 in A major, WK 78
Raccolta for keyboard in C major, WK 79a
Raccolta for keyboard in B flat major, WK 79b
Trio Sonata Op. 3 No.1 in G major, WK 80
Trio Sonata Op. 3 No.2 in C major, WK 81
Trio Sonata Op. 3 No.3 in B flat major, WK 82
Trio Sonata Op. 3 No.4 in D major, WK 83
Trio Sonata Op. 3 No.5 in A major, WK 84
Trio Sonata Op. 3 No.6 in E flat major, WK 85
Trio Sonata Op. 9 No.1 in A major, WK 86
Trio Sonata Op. 9 No.2 in C major, WK 87
Trio Sonata Op. 9 No.3 in G major, WK 88
Trio Sonata Op. 9 No.4 in B flat major, WK 89
Trio Sonata Op. 9 No.5 in D major, WK 90
Trio Sonata Op. 9 No.6 in F major, WK 91
Trio Sonata Op. 16a No.1 in G major, WK 92
Trio Sonata Op. 16a No.2 in D major, WK 93
Trio Sonata Op. 16a No.3 in C major, WK 94
Trio Sonata Op. 16a No.4 in A major, WK 95
Trio Sonata Op. 16a No.5 in D major, WK 96
Trio Sonata Op. 16a No.6 in G major, WK 97
Trio Sonata Op. 16b No.1 in G major, WK 98
Trio Sonata Op. 16b No.2 in D major, WK 99
Trio Sonata Op. 16b No.3 in C major, WK 100
Trio Sonata Op. 16b No.4 in G major, WK 101
Trio Sonata for 2 violins & cello in A major, WK 102
Trio Sonata for 2 violins & cello in A major, WK 103
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in G major, WK 104
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in D major, WK 105
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in G major, WK 106
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in F major, WK 107
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in C minor, WK 108
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in G major, WK 109
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in G major, WK 110
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in D major, WK 110a
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in G major, WK 110b
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in C major, WK 110c
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in B flat major, WK 110d
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in C major, WK 110e
Trio Sonata for 2 flutes & cello in C major, WK 110f
Keyboard Trio Op. 2 No.1 in C major, WK 111
Keyboard Trio Op. 2 No.2 in F major, WK 112
Keyboard Trio Op. 2 No.3 in D major, WK 113
Keyboard Trio Op. 2 No.4 in B flat major, WK 114
Keyboard Trio Op. 2 No.5 in G major, WK 115
Keyboard Trio Op. 2 No.6 in E flat major, WK 116
Keyboard Trio Op. 5 No.1 in B flat major, WK 117
Keyboard Trio Op. 5 No.2 in G major, WK 118
Keyboard Trio Op. 5 No.3 in E major, WK 119
Keyboard Trio Op. 5 No.4 in C major, WK 120
Keyboard Trio Op. 5 No.5 in A major, WK 121
Keyboard Trio Op. 5 No.6 in F major, WK 122
Flute Sonata Op. 6 No.1 in C major, WK 123
Flute Sonata Op. 6 No.2 in G major, WK 124
Flute Sonata Op. 6 No.3 in G major, WK 125
Flute Sonata Op. 6 No.4 in E major, WK 126
Flute Sonata Op. 6 No.5 in F major, WK 127
Flute Sonata Op. 6 No.6 in G major, WK 128
Violin Sonata Op. 13 No.1 in G major, WK 129
Violin Sonata Op. 13 No.2 in F major, WK 130
Violin Sonata Op. 13 No.3 in A major, WK 131
Violin Sonata Op. 13 No.4 in B flat major, WK 132
Violin Sonata Op. 13 No.5 in C major, WK 133
Violin Sonata Op. 13 No.6 in E flat major, WK 134
Violin Sonata Op. 18 No.1 in G major, WK 135
Violin Sonata Op. 18 No.2 in A major, WK 136
Violin Sonata Op. 18 No.3 in C major, WK 137
Violin Sonata Op. 18 No.4 in E flat major, WK 138
Violin Sonata Op. 18 No.5 in B flat major, WK 139
Violin Sonata Op. 18 No.6 in F major, WK 140
Violin Sonata in C major, WK 140a
Keyboard Sonata in B flat major, WK 140b
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 1 in C major, WK 141
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 2 in A major, WK 142
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 3 in D major, WK 143
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 4 in G major, WK 144
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 5 in A major, WK 145
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 6 in E minor, WK 146
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 7 in G major, WK 147
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 8 in A major, WK 148
Sonata for viola da gamba No. 9 in G major, WK 149
Sonata for viola da gamba No.10 in E minor, WK 150
Sonata for viola da gamba No.11 in C major, WK 151
Sonata for viola da gamba No.12 in G major, WK 152
Sonata for viola da gamba No.13 in G major, WK 153
Sonata for viola da gamba No.14 in D major, WK 154
Sonata for viola da gamba No.15 in G major, WK 155
Sonata for viola da gamba No.16 in D major, WK 156
Sonata for viola da gamba No.17 in E minor, WK 157
Sonata for viola da gamba No.18 in D major, WK 158
Sonata for viola da gamba No.19 in G major, WK 159
Sonata for viola da gamba No.20 in D major, WK 160
Sonata for viola da gamba No.21 in D major, WK 161
Sonata for viola da gamba No.22 in C major, WK 162
Sonata for viola da gamba No.23 in A major, WK 163
Sonata for viola da gamba No.24 in A major, WK 164
Sonata for viola da gamba No.25 in D major, WK 165
Sonata for viola da gamba No.26 in D major, WK 166
Sonata for viola da gamba No.27 in G major, WK 167
Sonata for viola da gamba No.28 in D major, WK 168
Sonata for viola da gamba No.29 in D major, WK 169
Sonata for viola da gamba No.30 in C major, WK 170
Sonata for viola da gamba No.31 in G major, WK 171
Sonata for viola da gamba No.32 in D major, WK 172
Sonata for viola da gamba No.33 in A major, WK 173
Sonata for viola da gamba No.34 in G major, WK 174
Sonata for viola da gamba No.35 in A minor, WK 175
Sonata for viola da gamba No.36 in F minor, WK 176
Sonata for viola da gamba No.37 in A major, WK 177
Sonata for viola da gamba No.38 in G major, WK 178
Sonata for viola da gamba No.39 in A major, WK 179
Sonata for viola da gamba No.40 in D major, WK 180
Sonata for viola da gamba No.41 in D major, WK 181
Sonata for viola da gamba No.42 in G major, WK 182
Sonata for viola da gamba No.43 in A major, WK 183
Sonata for viola da gamba No.44 in C major, WK 184
Arpeggio for viola da gamba in D major, WK 185
Allegro for viola da gamba in D major, WK 186
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 187
Tempo fi minuetto for viola da gamba in D major, WK 188
Adagio for viola da gamba in D major, WK 189
Vivace for viola da gamba in D major, WK 190
Andante for viola da gamba in D major, WK 191
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 192
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 193
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 194
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 195
Fuga for viola da gamba in D major, WK 196
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 197
Allegro for viola da gamba in D major, WK 198
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 199
Tempo di minuetto for viola da gamba in D major, WK 200
Tempo di minuetto for viola da gamba in D major, WK 201
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 202
Piece for viola da gamba in D major, WK 203
Con variatione for viola da gamba in D major, WK 204
Piece for viola da gamba in D minor, WK 205
Piece for viola da gamba in D minor, WK 206
Allegro for viola da gamba in D minor, WK 207
Piece for viola da gamba in D minor, WK 208
Adagio for viola da gamba in D minor, WK 209
Minuetto for viola da gamba in D major, WK 210
Allegretto for viola da gamba in A major, WK 211
Allegro for viola da gamba in A major, WK 212
Minuet for keyboard in C major, WK 213
Minuet for keyboard in D major, WK 214
Minuet for keyboard in G major, WK 215
Minuet for keyboard in G major, WK 216
March in F major, WK 217
March in F major, WK 218
March in F major, WK 219
March in F major, WK 220
March in F major, WK 221
March in B flat major, WK 222
March in F major, WK 223
Andante for string quartet in E flat major, WK 224
Flute Quartet in F major, WK 225
Flute Quartet in D major, WK 226
Flute Quartet with viola da gamba in G major, WK 227
Cello Duet in D major, WK 228
Concertino for 2 clarinets in E flat major (lost), WK 229
5 adagios for string quartet, WK 230
Dolly's eyes are so bright, WK 231
4 soli for flute (lost), WK 232
Frena le belle lagrime, WK deest
Notes and references
Notes
References
Sources
S. M. Helm: Carl Friedrich Abel, Symphonist. London 1953
'Karl Friedrich Abel (1723–87)' by Andrew Pink, in Le Monde maçonnique des Lumières (Europe-Amériques) Dictionnaire prosopographique. Charles Porset and Cécile Révauger (eds) Paris: Editions Champion, 2013.
External links
newly found manuscripts in 2017
1723 births
1787 deaths
People from Köthen (Anhalt)
People from Anhalt-Köthen
German male classical composers
Classical-period composers
German viol players
18th-century classical composers
18th-century male musicians
18th-century German people
People educated at the St. Thomas School, Leipzig
Pupils of Johann Sebastian Bach
Alcohol-related deaths in the United Kingdom
Burials at St Pancras Old Church
String quartet composers
German classical composers | [
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16791 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kista | Kista | Kista () is a district in the borough of Rinkeby-Kista, Stockholm, Sweden. It has a strategic position located in between Sweden's main airport, the Stockholm-Arlanda International Airport and central Stockholm, and alongside the main national highway E4 economic artery. Kista comprises residential and commercial areas, the latter in the highly technological telecommunication and information technology industry. There are large research efforts in this entire area, which therefore is dubbed Kista Science City. It is the research park of KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Kista is the largest Information and Communications Technology (ICT) cluster in Europe, and the world's second largest cluster after Silicon Valley in California. It is the largest corporate area in Sweden, important to the national economy due to the presence of, among others, Ericsson Group, the largest corporation in Sweden.
Kista Science City is the location where a large portion of the research and development of the world's 4G LTE mobile telephony infrastructure is being developed, a European ETSI standard used worldwide and Kista Science City has been the largest such cluster in Europe for decades. A majority is done at Ericsson corporation, with 100,000 employees worldwide, but with its research and worldwide headquarters in the Kista Science City.
Kista was named after an old farm "Kista Gård", still located in the area. The construction of the modern parts were started in the 1970s. Most of the streets in Kista are named after towns and places in Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, and Faroe Islands. Before the opening of the Mall of Scandinavia, Kista Galleria was the biggest shopping center in the Stockholm region.
Because of its ICT industries, it became in the 1980s referred to as "Chipsta" and, after Sweden joined the EU in 1995, also as Europe's "Silicon Valley".
Economy
Kista is the largest corporate area in Sweden and important to the national economy.
The construction of the industrial section of Kista began in the 1970s with companies such as SRA (Svenska Radioaktiebolaget, now a part of Ericsson), RIFA AB (later Ericsson Components AB, and later still Ericsson Microelectronics AB, and now Infineon Technologies), and IBM Svenska AB (the Swedish branch of IBM). Ericsson has had its headquarters in Kista since 2003.
Research and higher learning
Kista hosts entire departments of both KTH Royal Institute of Technology, such as Wireless@KTH, and Stockholm University (formerly jointly known as "the IT University").
There are also Swedish national research institutes (pure research, no students) such as the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Swedish Defence Research Agency, FOI who has its headquarters there, just as Ericsson, Swedish IBM and Tele 2, among others has.
Also the Swedish Co-location Centre of EU innovation and entrepreneurial education organisation EIT Digital is located in Kista and offers a 2-year Master program in collaboration with KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
Gallery
See also
Kista Science Tower
Kista metro station
References
External links
Kista Science City
Kista Business Network
Districts in Västerort
Metropolitan Stockholm
High-technology business districts | [
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16792 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike%2C%20Yukon | Klondike, Yukon | The Klondike () is a region of the territory of Yukon, in northwestern Canada. It lies around the Klondike River, a small river that enters the Yukon River from the east at Dawson City.
The area is merely an informal geographic region, and has no function to the territory as any kind of administrative region.
The Klondike is famed due to the Klondike Gold Rush, which started in 1896 and lasted until 1899. Gold has been mined continuously in that area, except for a pause in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
The name "Klondike" evolved from the Hän word Tr'ondëk, which means "hammerstone water". Early gold seekers found it difficult to pronounce the First Nations word, so "Klondike" was the best approximation.
Climate
The climate is warm in the short summer, and very cold during the long winter. By late October, ice forms over the rivers. For the majority of the year, the ground is frozen to a depth of .
Politics
Klondike is a district of the Legislative Assembly of Yukon.
References
Geography of Yukon
Klondike Gold Rush
Geographic regions of Canada | [
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16793 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean%20cuisine | Korean cuisine | Korean cuisine has evolved through centuries of social and political change. Originating from ancient agricultural and nomadic traditions in Korea and southern Manchuria, Korean cuisine reflects a complex interaction of the natural environment and different cultural trends.
Korean cuisine is largely based on rice, vegetables, seafood and (at least in South Korea) meats. Dairy is largely absent from the traditional Korean diet. Traditional Korean meals are named for the number of side dishes (반찬; 飯饌; banchan) that accompany steam-cooked short-grain rice. Kimchi is served at nearly every meal. Commonly used ingredients include sesame oil, doenjang (fermented bean paste), soy sauce, salt, garlic, ginger, gochugaru (pepper flakes), gochujang (fermented red chili paste) and napa cabbage.
Ingredients and dishes vary by province. Many regional dishes have become national, and dishes that were once regional have proliferated in different variations across the country. Korean royal court cuisine once brought all of the unique regional specialties together for the royal family. Foods are regulated by Korean cultural etiquette.
History
Prehistoric
In the Jeulmun pottery period (approximately 8000 to 1500 BCE), hunter-gatherer societies engaged in fishing and hunting, and incipient agriculture in the later stages. Since the beginning of the Mumun pottery period (1500 BCE), agricultural traditions began to develop with new migrant groups from the Liao River basin of Manchuria. During the Mumun period, people grew millet, barley, wheat, legumes and rice, and continued to hunt and fish. Archaeological remains point to development of fermented beans during this period, and cultural contact with nomadic cultures to the north facilitated domestication of animals.
Three Kingdoms period
The Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE – 668 CE) was one of rapid cultural evolution. The kingdom of Goguryeo (37 BCE – 668 CE) was located in the northern part of the peninsula along much of modern-day Manchuria. The second kingdom, Baekje (18 BCE – 660 CE), was in the southwestern portion of the peninsula, and the third, Silla (57 BCE – 935 CE), was located at the southeastern portion of the peninsula. Each region had its own distinct set of cultural practices and foods. For example, Baekje was known for cold foods and fermented foods like kimchi. The spread of Buddhism and Confucianism through cultural exchanges with China during the fourth century CE began to change the distinct cultures of Korea.
Goryeo period
During the latter Goryeo period, the Mongols invaded Goryeo in the 13th century. Some traditional foods found today in Korea have their origins during this period. The dumpling dish, mandu, grilled meat dishes, noodle dishes, and the use of seasonings such as black pepper, all have their roots in this period.
Joseon period
Agricultural innovations were significant and widespread during this period, such as the invention of the rain gauge during the 15th century. During 1429, the government began publishing books on agriculture and farming techniques, which included Nongsa jikseol (literally "Straight Talk on Farming"), an agricultural book compiled under King Sejong.
A series of invasions in the earlier half of the Joseon caused a dynamic shift in the culture during the second half of the period. Groups of silhak ("practical learning") scholars began to emphasize the importance of looking outside the country for innovation and technology to help improve the agricultural systems. Crops traded by Europeans from the New World began to appear, acquired through trade with China, Japan, Europe, and the Philippines; these crops included maize, sweet potatoes, chili peppers, tomatoes, peanuts, and squash. Potatoes and sweet potatoes were particularly favored as they grew in soils and on terrains that were previously unused.
Government further developed agriculture through technology and lower taxation. Complex irrigation systems built by government allowed peasant farmers to produce larger crop volumes and produce crops not only for sustenance but also as cash crops. Reduced taxation of the peasantry also furthered the expanded commerce through increasing periodic markets, usually held every five days. One thousand such markets existed in the 19th century, and were communal centers for economic trade and entertainment.
The end of the Joseon period was marked by consistent encouragement to trade with the Western world, China and Japan. In the 1860s, trade agreements pushed by the Japanese government led the Joseon Dynasty to open its trade ports with the west, and to numerous treaties with the United States, Britain, France, and other Western countries.
The opening of Korea to the Western world brought further exchange of culture and food. Western missionaries introduced new ingredients and dishes to Korea. Joseon elites were introduced to these new foods by way of foreigners who attended the royal court as advisers or physicians. This period also saw the introduction of various seasonings imported from Japan via western traders and alcoholic drinks from China.
Colonial period to Modern period
Japan occupied the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945. Many of its agricultural systems were taken over by the Japanese to support Japan's food supply. Land changes resulting from the Japanese occupation included combining small farms into large-scale farms, which led to larger yields. Rice production increased during this period to support the Japanese Empire's war efforts. Many Koreans, in turn, increased the production of other grains for their own consumption.
Meals during the Japanese occupation were quite varied. Koreans usually ate two meals a day during the cold seasons, and three during the warm seasons. For the lower classes, satiety, rather than quality, was most important. Those in even lower economic levels were likely to enjoy only a single bowl of white rice each year, while the remainder of the year was filled with cheaper grains, such as millet and barley. For the Korean middle and upper classes during the occupation, things were quite different. Western foods began emerging in the Korean diet, such as white bread and commercially produced staples such as precooked noodles. The Japanese occupational period ended after the defeat of Japan during World War II.
The country remained in a state of turmoil through the Korean War (1950–1953) and the Cold War, which separated the country into North Korea and South Korea. Both of these periods continued the limited food provisions for Koreans, and the stew called budae jjigae, which makes use of inexpensive meats such as sausage and Spam, originated during this period.
At this point, the history of North and South Korea sharply diverged. In the 1960s under President Park Chung-hee, industrialization began to give South Korea the economic and cultural power it holds in the global economy today. Agriculture was increased through use of commercial fertilizers and modern farming equipment. In the 1970s, food shortages began to lessen. Consumption of instant and processed foods increased, as did the overall quality of foods. Livestock and dairy production was increased during the 1970s through the increase of commercial dairies and mechanized farms. The consumption of pork and beef increased vastly in the 1970s. Per-capita consumption of meat was 3.6 kg in 1961 and 11 kg by 1979. The result of this increased meat consumption brought about the rise of bulgogi restaurants, which gave the middle class of South Korea the ability to enjoy meat regularly. Meat eating continued to rise, reaching 40 kg in 1997, with fish consumption at 49.5 kg in 1998. Rice consumption continually decreased through these years, from 128 kg consumed per person in 1985 to 106 kg in 1995 and 83 kg in 2003. The decrease in rice consumption has been accompanied by an increase in the consumption of bread and noodles.
Nature’s influence on Korean cuisine
Understanding the environmental characteristics of Korea is necessary to see its influence on Korean cuisine and culture. Korea is located between the Chinese Mainland and the islands of Japan, and it therefore shares many cultural characteristics with the two countries. However, its unique climate and geography have also produced many differences.
Geography
Korea is located on the Korean Peninsula, which extends southward from the northeastern region of the Asian continental landmass. It shares its border with China and Russia to the north but is otherwise surrounded by water, resulting in a flourishing fishing industry. Forested, mountainous terrain covers 70 percent of the nation, yielding a variety of wild edible greens that are also grown in dry-field farms. Korea’s major rivers, including the Nakdong River, the Han River and the Geum River, tend to flow westward along the mountain ranges, creating well-developed plains in the peninsula’s western region. The conditions in the western and southern regions of the peninsula are therefore favorable to rice farms, while dry-field farms predominate in the northern and eastern regions. Korea’s eastern coast has a smooth coastline, but the southern and western coasts have jagged coastlines with many islands. This provides an ideal environment for exploiting a rich variety of marine products. Due to the varying geographical features and climates of the four regions of Korea, they have resulted in differing regional cuisines. Despite the development of transportation increasing contact between regions, and making local cultures less distinct, many of the unique local specialties and distinct styles of each province still remain.
Climate
The climate of Korea is characterized by four distinct seasons–spring, summer, autumn and winter–yielding a diverse array of seasonal foods. Even the same ingredients may have different tastes and nutrients in each season, which produces a variety of flavor variation within recipes. Unlike the abundant food materials available in the hot, humid summers and clear, dry springs and autumns, cold winters see Koreans eating dried vegetables and kimchi instead of fresh vegetables. Jeotgal, a salted fermented fish, was developed by the ancestors in the southern region of Korea as a way to preserve fish for a long period of time during the cold winters and hot summers. However, recent climate changes have introduced a subtropical climate to the peninsula, changing the types of seasonal food materials available.
Food
Grains
Grains have been one of the most important staples of the Korean diet. Early myths of the foundations of various kingdoms in Korea center on grains. One foundation myth relates to Jumong, who received barley seeds from two doves sent by his mother after establishing the kingdom of Goguryeo. Yet another myth speaks of the three founding deities of Jeju Island, who were to be wed to the three princesses of Tamna; the deities brought seeds of five grains which were the first seeds planted, which in turn became the first instance of farming.
During the pre-modern era, grains such as barley and millet were the main staples. They were supplemented by wheat, sorghum, and buckwheat. Rice is not an indigenous crop to Korea and millet was likely the preferred grain before rice was cultivated. Rice became the grain of choice during the Three Kingdoms period, particularly in the Silla and Baekje Kingdoms in the southern regions of the peninsula. Rice was such an important commodity in Silla that it was used to pay taxes. The Sino-Korean word for "tax" is a compound character that uses the character for the rice plant. The preference for rice escalated into the Joseon period, when new methods of cultivation and new varieties emerged that would help increase production.
As rice was prohibitively expensive when it first came to Korea, the grain was likely mixed with other grains to "stretch" the rice; this is still done in dishes such as boribap (rice with barley) and kongbap (rice with beans). White rice, which is rice with the bran removed, has been the preferred form of rice since its introduction into the cuisine. The most traditional method of cooking the rice has been to cook it in an iron pot called a sot (솥) or musoe sot (무쇠솥). This method of rice cookery dates back to at least the Goryeo period, and these pots have even been found in tombs from the Silla period. The sot is still used today, much in the same manner as it was in the past centuries.
Rice is used to make a number of items, outside of the traditional bowl of plain white rice. It is commonly ground into a flour and used to make rice cakes called tteok in over two hundred varieties. It is also cooked down into a congee (juk) or gruel (mieum) and mixed with other grains, meat, or seafood. Koreans also produce a number of rice wines, both in filtered and unfiltered versions. And for centuries, grains have also been used to make misu and misu-garu, drinks made from grain powder that are sometimes used as meal supplements.
Fruits
Encompassing a wide range of temperate climates, The Korean Peninsula supports the growth of many cultivated and wild fruit species. Asian pears of numerous varieties, apples, melons and berries and more are typical of summer and fall produce.
Legumes
Legumes have been significant crops in Korean history and cuisine, according to the earliest preserved legumes found in archaeological sites in Korea. The excavation at Okbang site, Jinju, South Gyeongsang province indicates soybeans were cultivated as a food crop circa 1000–900 BCE. They are made into dubu(tofu), while soybean sprouts are sauteed as a vegetable (kongnamul) and whole soybeans are seasoned and served as a side dish. They are also made into soy milk, which is used as the base for the noodle dish called kongguksu. A byproduct of soy milk production is biji or kong-biji, which is used to thicken stews and porridges. Soybeans may also be one of the beans in kongbap, boiled together with several types of beans and other grains, and they are also the primary ingredient in the production of fermented condiments collectively referred to as jang, such as soybean pastes, doenjang and cheonggukjang, a soy sauce called ganjang, chili pepper paste or gochujang and others.
Nokdu (Mung bean) is commonly used in Korean cuisine. Sukju namuls (Mung bean sprouts) are often served as a side dish, blanched and sautéed with sesame oil, garlic, and salt. Ground Nokdu is used to make a porridge called nokdujuk, which is eaten as a nutritional supplement and digestive aid, especially for ill patients. A popular snack, bindaetteok (mung bean pancake), is made with ground nokdu and fresh sukju namul. Starch extracted from ground nokdu is used to make transparent dangmyeon ( cellophane noodles). The dangmyeons are the main ingredients for japchae (a salad-like dish) and sundae (a blood sausage), and are a subsidiary ingredient for soups and stews. The starch can be also used to make jelly-like foods, such as nokdumuk and hwangpomuk. The muk have a bland flavor, so are served seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil and crumbled seaweed or other seasonings such as tangpyeongchae.
Cultivation of azuki beans dates back to ancient times according to an excavation from Odong-ri, Hoeryong, North Hamgyong Province, which is assumed to be that of Mumun period (approximately 1500-300 BCE). Azuki beans are generally eaten as patbap, which is a bowl of rice mixed with the beans, or as a filling and covering for tteok (rice cake) and breads. A porridge made with azuki beans, called patjuk, is commonly eaten during the winter season. On Dongjinal, a Korean traditional holiday which falls on December 22, Korean people eat donji patjuk, which contains saealsim (새알심), a ball made from glutinous rice flour. In old Korean tradition, patjuk is believed to have the power to drive evil spirits away.
Condiments and seasoning
Condiments are divided into fermented and nonfermented variants. Fermented condiments include ganjang, doenjang, gochujang and vinegars. Nonfermented condiments or spices include red pepper, black pepper, cordifolia, mustard, chinensis, garlic, onion, ginger, leek, and scallion (spring onion).
Gochujang
Gochujang can be found in many writings. Some of the writings are the Mangi Yoram, The Three States, the Nonggawolryeongga, the Gijaejapgi, and the Hyangyak-jipsongbang. The Hyangyak-jipseongbang, which dates back to around 1433 during the Chosun Dynasty, is one of the oldest writings mentioning gochujang.
Gochujang is a fermented bean paste that has red pepper powder, soybean powder and rice flour added to it to create a spicy paste. It typically can be added to most dishes. Gochujang can be used as a seasoning and sometimes as a dipping sauce.
Many variations come from jang, fermented bean paste. Some variations can include doenjang (soybean and brine), kanjang (soybeans, water, and salt), chogochujang (gochujang and vinegar), and jeotgal (mixture of other jangs and seafoods).
Vegetables such as cucumbers, carrots, and cabbage use gochujang as a dip. Gochujang is a common seasoning for foods such as Korean barbecue including pork and beef. One popular snack food that is very commonly eaten with gochujang is bibimbap. Bibimbap includes rice, spinach, radish, bean sprouts. Sometimes beef is added to bibimbap. Another popular dish including gochujang is tteokbokki.
Gochujang was used to revitalize people who were sick with colds or exhaustion during the Chosun Period. There have been some studies that show that red peppers fight obesity and diabetes. Gochujang is also added to many foods so that there can be additional nutritional value with each meal.
Meat
In antiquity, most meat in Korea was likely obtained through hunting and fishing. Ancient records indicate rearing of livestock began on a small scale during the Three Kingdoms period. Meat was consumed roasted or in soups or stews during this period. Those who lived closer to the oceans were able to complement their diet with more fish, while those who lived in the interior had a diet containing more meat.
Beef
Beef is the most prized of all, with the cattle holding an important cultural role in the Korean home. Beef is prepared in numerous ways today, including roasting, grilling (gui) or boiling in soups. Beef can also be dried into yukpo, a type of po, as with seafood, called eopo.
The cattle were valuable draught animals, often seen as equal to human servants, or in some cases, members of the family. Cattle were also given their own holiday during the first 'cow' day of the lunar New Year. The importance of cattle does not suggest Koreans ate an abundance of beef, however, as the cattle were valued as beasts of burden and slaughtering one would create dire issues in farming the land. Pork and seafood were consumed more regularly for this reason. The Buddhist ruling class of the Goryeo period forbade the consumption of beef. The Mongols dispensed with the ban of beef during the 13th century, and they promoted the production of beef cattle. This increased production continued into the Joseon period, when the government encouraged both increased quantities and quality of beef. Only in the latter part of the 20th century has beef become regular table fare.
Chicken
Chicken has played an important role as a protein in Korean history, evidenced by a number of myths. One myth tells of the birth of Kim Alji, founder of the Kim family of Gyeongju being announced by the cry of a white chicken. As the birth of a clan's founder is always announced by an animal with preternatural qualities, this myth speaks to the importance of chicken in Korean culture. Chicken is often served roasted or braised with vegetables or in soups. All parts of the chicken are used in Korean cuisine, including the gizzard, liver, and feet. Young chickens are braised with ginseng and other ingredients in medicinal soups eaten during the summer months to combat heat called samgyetang. The feet of the chicken, called dakbal (닭발), are often roasted and covered with hot and spicy gochujang-based sauce and served as an anju, or side dish, to accompany alcoholic beverages, especially soju.
Pork
Pork has also been another important land-based protein for Korea. Records indicate pork has been a part of the Korean diet back to antiquity, similar to beef.
A number of foods have been avoided while eating pork, including Chinese bellflower (doraji, 도라지) and lotus root (yeonn ppuri, 연뿌리), as the combinations have been thought to cause diarrhea. All parts of the pig are used in Korean cuisine, including the head, intestines, liver, kidney and other internal organs. Koreans utilize these parts in a variety of cooking methods including steaming, stewing, boiling and smoking. Koreans especially like to eat grilled pork belly, which is called samgyeopsal (삼겹살, 三--).
Fish and seafood
Fish and shellfish have been a major part of Korean cuisine because of the oceans bordering the peninsula. Evidence from the 12th century illustrates commoners consumed a diet mostly of fish and shellfish, such as shrimp, clams, oysters, abalone, and loach, while sheep and hogs were reserved for the upper class.
Both fresh and saltwater fish are popular, and are served raw, grilled, broiled, dried or served in soups and stews. Common grilled fish include mackerel, hairtail, croaker and Pacific herring. Smaller fish, shrimp, squid, mollusks and countless other seafood can be salted and fermented as jeotgal. Fish can also be grilled either whole or in fillets as banchan. Fish is often dried naturally to prolong storing periods and enable shipping over long distances. Fish commonly dried include yellow corvina, anchovies (myeolchi) and croaker. Dried anchovies, along with kelp, form the basis of common soup stocks.
Shellfish is widely eaten in all different types of preparation. They can be used to prepare broth, eaten raw with chogochujang, which is a mixture of gochujang and vinegar, or used as a popular ingredient in countless dishes. Raw oysters and other seafood can be used in making kimchi to improve and vary the flavor. Salted baby shrimp are used as a seasoning agent, known as saeujeot, for the preparation of some types of kimchi. Large shrimp are often grilled as daeha gui (대하구이) or dried, mixed with vegetables and served with rice. Mollusks eaten in Korean cuisine include octopus, cuttlefish, and squid.
Vegetables
Korean cuisine uses a wide variety of vegetables, which are often served uncooked, either in salads or pickles, as well as cooked in various stews, stir-fried dishes, and other hot dishes. Commonly used vegetables include Korean radish, napa cabbage, cucumber, potato, sweet potato, spinach, bean sprouts, scallions, garlic, chili peppers, seaweed, zucchini, mushrooms, lotus root. Several types of wild greens, known collectively as chwinamul (such as Aster scaber), are a popular dish, and other wild vegetables such as bracken fern shoots (gosari) or Korean bellflower root (doraji) are also harvested and eaten in season. Medicinal herbs, such as ginseng, lingzhi mushroom, wolfberry, Codonopsis pilosula, and Angelica sinensis, are often used as ingredients in cooking, as in samgyetang.
Medicinal foods
Medicinal food (boyangshik) is a wide variety of specialty foods prepared and eaten for medicinal purposes, especially during the hottest 30-day period in the lunar calendar, called sambok. Hot foods consumed are believed to restore ki, as well as sexual and physical stamina lost in the summer heat. Commonly eaten boyangshik include ginseng, chicken, black goat, abalone, eel, carp, beef bone soups, pig kidneys and dog.
Dog meat
Dog meat is less popular today in South Korea than in the past, being viewed largely as a kind of health tonic rather than as a diet staple, especially amongst the younger generations who view dogs as pets and service animals. That said, historically the consumption of dog meat can be traced back to antiquity. Dog bones were excavated in a neolithic settlement in Changnyeong, South Gyeongsang Province. A wall painting in the Goguryeo tombs complex in South Hwanghae Province, a UNESCO World Heritage site which dates from 4th century AD, depicts a slaughtered dog in a storehouse.
The Balhae people enjoyed dog meat, and the Koreans' appetite for canine cuisine seems to have come from that era.
Koreans have distinguished Chinese terms for dog ("견; 犬", which refers to pet dogs, feral dogs, and wolves) from the Chinese term ("구; 狗") which is used specifically to indicate dog meat. "Hwangu" has been considered better for consumption than "Baekgu" (White dog) and "Heukgu" (Black dog).
Around 1816, Jeong Hak-yu, the second son of Jeong Yak-yong, a prominent politician and scholar of the Joseon dynasty, wrote a poem called Nongga Wollyeongga (농가월령가). This poem, which is an important source of Korean folk history, describes what ordinary Korean farming families did in each month of the year. In the description of the month of August the poem tells of a married woman visiting her birth parents with boiled dog meat, rice cake, and rice wine, thus showing the popularity of dog meat at the time (Ahn, 2000; Seo, 2002). Dongguk Sesigi (동국세시기), a book written by Korean scholar Hong Seok-mo in 1849, contains a recipe for Bosintang including a boiled dog, green onion, and red chili pepper powder.
According to one survey conducted in 2006, dog meat was the fourth most commonly consumed meat in South Korea, but in 2019, 71.9 percent of Koreans avoid eating dog meat.
Samgyetang (삼계탕)-Ginseng chicken soup
Samgyetang is a chicken ginseng soup traditionally consumed during Boknal (복날) days: the hottest days of summer. It is a Korean custom to eat hot food in hot weather called Iyeolchiyeol (이열치열), which means “controlling heat with heat”. Consequently, Samgyetang is Koreans' favorite energizing food and it is common to have it on sambok (삼복) days — Chobok (초복), Jungbok (중복) and Malbok (말복) — which are believed to be the hottest days in Korea.
As the “Dongui Bogam” say (Kor. 동의보감, Chin. 東醫寶鑑, Exemplar of Korean Medicine, 1613), “eating the meat from a female chicken with yellow feathers helps to control excessive thirst and urination, vitalizes the five viscera, increases yang energy, and warms the small intestines…. Ginseng complements the five viscera, stabilizes the spirit and soul, and fills what is lacking and weak in our body.”↵It is served with radish kimchi, cabbage kimchi, chicken gizzard, fresh green peppers and ginseng wine (insamju -인삼주). Commonly, it uses a chicken before the age of six months before it start to lay eggs. Stew made from a young chicken served with yukgaejang (Kor. 육개장, spicy beef stew), were introduced as part of the (복날) ‘Canicular Days’ cuisine only in the early 20th century.
Originally, samgyetang was called gyesamtang then it changed because of the increasingly popularity of ginseng in Korea and overseas. That is also because as ginseng is the main ingredient of the soup Korean decided to reverse the first two syllables of the name putting ginseng first.
Dishes
Korean foods can be largely categorized into groups of "main staple foods" (주식), "subsidiary dishes" (부식), and "dessert" (후식). The main dishes are made from grains such as bap (a bowl of rice), juk (porridge), and guksu (noodles).
Many Korean banchan rely on fermentation for flavor and preservation, resulting in a tangy, salty, and spicy taste. Certain regions are especially associated with some dishes (for example, the city of Jeonju with bibimbap) either as a place of origin or for a famous regional variety. Restaurants will often use these famous names on their signs or menus (e.g. "Suwon galbi").
Soups and stews
Soups are a common part of any Korean meal. Unlike other cultures, in Korean culture, soup is served as part of the main course rather than at the beginning or the end of the meal, as an accompaniment to rice along with other banchan. Soups known as guk are often made with meats, shellfish and vegetables. Soups can be made into more formal soups known as tang, often served as the main dish of the meal. Jjigae are a thicker, heavier seasoned soups or stews.
Some popular types of soups are:
Malgeunguk (맑은국), are flavored with ganjang. Small amounts of long boiled meat may be added to the soup, or seafood both fresh and dried may be added, or vegetables may be the main component for the clear soup.
Tojangguk (토장국) are seasoned with doenjang. Common ingredients for tojang guk include seafood such as clams, dried anchovies, and shrimp. For a spicier soup, gochujang is added.
Tteok-guk is a rice cake soup commonly made with sliced rice cakes and beef broth. White rice cake was called Baekbyeong (백병-白餠) or Geomo (거모-擧摸). Tteok-guk is made with thinly sliced garae-ttoeok, are long, cylindrical shaped rice cakes made with rice flour. Tteok-guk is boiled in chicken broth, but was originally boiled in pheasant meat soup. It says, “hunting pheasant is not easy, and since they breed chickens, they use chicken instead of pheasant, and if there’s not chicken they even used beef”(꿩 대신 닭). In North Korea, there is a variation of this recipe called joraengi tteokguk where rice cakes are made in the shape of balls. it is eaten on new year’s day because Koreans believe that if you eat a bowl of tteok-guk on the first of the lunar year, you get one year older. There is the belief that rice cakes in oval shape bring fortune since they resemble old Korean coins known as yeopjeon (엽전).It is hard to say when was the first appearance of tteok-guk in literature but since doing rice farming and using 시루 and 돌확 were 4-5 centuries BC, we can assume that they made white 떡(rice cake) from this time. Nowadays they can be enjoyed easily, not only on traditional day, and you can find them in stores.
Gomguk (곰국) or gomtang (곰탕), and they are made from boiling beef bones or cartilage. Originating as a peasant dish, all parts of beef are used, including tail, leg and rib bones with or without meat attached; these are boiled in water to extract fat, marrow, and gelatin to create a rich soup. Some versions of this soup may also use the beef head and intestines. The only seasoning generally used in the soup is salt.
Naengguk (냉국), which are cold soups generally eaten during the summer months to cool the diner. A light hand is usually used in the seasoning of these soups usually using ganjang and sesame oil.
Shin-Son-Ro (or Koo-Ja Tang), the name of it came from its special cook pot with chimney for burning charcoal. The meaning is a hearth or furnace or a pot for fire or incense burning that always contains nineteen fillings. The nineteen fillings were including beef, fish, eggs, carrot, mushrooms, and onion.
Stews are referred to as jjigae, and are often a shared side dish. Jjigae is often both cooked and served in the glazed earthenware pot (ttukbaegi) in which it is cooked. The most common version of this stew is doenjang jjigae, which is a stew of soybean paste, with many variations; common ingredients include vegetables, saltwater or freshwater fish, and tofu. The stew often changes with the seasons and which ingredients are available. Other common varieties of jjigae contain kimchi (kimchi jjigae) or tofu (sundubu jjigae).
Seaweed Soup (miyeok-guk; 미역국).This soup is made of dried miyeok or seaweed according to 조선요리제법, it says it is usually made by frying 미역 with beef pouring water and making the soup. Adding mussel can make it taste better. Also in coastal areas they use fish instead of beef too. It is usually consumed on Koreans birthday, specifically on samchil day (삼칠일: a resting period after giving birth to the newborn); baek-il (백일: the 100th day after a baby is born); doljanchi (돌잔치: the baby’s first birthday).
Kimchi
Kimchi refers to often fermented vegetable dishes usually made with napa cabbage, Korean radish, or sometimes cucumber. There are 4 types of raw materials which are major ones: spices, seasonings, and other additional materials. Red and black pepper, cinnamon, garlic, ginger, onion, and mustard are the example of spices. There are endless varieties with regional variations, and it is served as a side dish or cooked into soups and rice dishes. In the late 15th century, it depicted Korean's custom that Korean ancestors buried kimchi jars in the ground for storage for the entire winter season, as fermented foods can keep for several years. These were stored in traditional Korean mud pots known as jangdokdae, although with the advent of refrigerators, special kimchi freezers and commercially produced kimchi, this practice has become less common. Kimchi is a vegetable-based food which includes low calorie, low fat, and no cholesterol. Also, it is a rich source of various vitamins and minerals. It contains vitamins such as vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C, and vitamin K and minerals which are calcium, iron, phosphorus, and selenium. South Koreans eat an average of 40 pounds of kimchi each year.
Noodles
Noodles or noodle dishes in Korean cuisine are collectively referred to as guksu in native Korean or myeon in hanja. While noodles were eaten in Korea from ancient times, productions of wheat was less than other crops, so wheat noodles did not become a daily food until 1945. Wheat noodles (milguksu) were specialty foods for birthdays, weddings or auspicious occasions because the long and continued shape were thought to be associated with the bliss for longevity and long-lasting marriage.
In Korean traditional noodle dishes are onmyeon or guksu jangguk (noodles with a hot clear broth), naengmyeon (cold buckwheat noodles), bibim guksu (cold noodle dish mixed with vegetables), kalguksu (knife-cut noodles), kongguksu (noodles with a cold soybean broth), japchae (cellophane noodles made from sweet potato with various vegetables) and others. In royal court, baekmyeon (literally "white noodles") consisting of buckwheat noodles and pheasant broth, was regarded as the top quality noodle dish. Naengmyeon with a cold soup mixed with dongchimi (watery radish kimchi) and beef brisket broth was eaten in court during summer.
Jajangmyeon, a staple Koreanized Chinese noodle dish, is extremely popular in Korea as fast, take-out food. It is made with a black bean sauce usually fried with diced pork or seafood and a variety of vegetables, including zucchini and potatoes. It is popularly ordered and delivered, like Chinese take-out food in other parts of the world.
Ramyeon refers to Korean instant noodles similar to ramen.
Japchae (잡채; 雜菜) is a dish made by inserting in boiling water roasted vegetables, mushrooms and meat, each of them roasted. This is one of the most popular dishes in Korean tradition enjoyed on special occasion like weddings, holidays and birthday. There are two types of Japchae, one that includes glass noodles and another without noodles. According to the Korean cookbook Diminbang 음식디미방 (around 1670), there’s only the recipe without glass noodles. The original recipe without glass noddles is made by boiling vegetables such as cucumbers, pine mushrooms bean, sprouts, bellflowers green onion, then they are sprinkled with ginger, pepper, sesame oil, and flour. The sauce is made by boiling minced pink meat and soybean paste that is lightly filtered with sesame oil and flour.To match the name more than 20 ingredients were used.In Gyongon Yoram [규곤요람閨壼要覽 (1896)] is also recorded japchae seasoned with mustard sauce without glass noodles. However, since the 1930’s, appears the japchae recipe with glass noodles alongside the original recipe. Also, during the Joseon dynasty [조선요리법朝鮮料理法] the recipe of japchae, with and without glass noodles, was added to the cookbook. Also, there is also a variant of japchae with meat, or one with abalone or other seafood in 1930s.It is a local food that shows the traditional recipe. In the Jinju region, Jamung-sam, Yokimun, is a local dish with soy sauce and sesame oil, and the seafood, such as octopus, skates, and mixed several vegetables stained in oil. Because it uses various ingredients, it has high calorie, protein, fat, vitamin, mineral, and sufficient nutritional. It is the first item to choose when you want a feast table.
Banchan
Banchan is a term referring collectively to side dishes in Korean cuisine. Soups and stews are not considered banchan.
Gui are grilled dishes, which most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetable ingredients. At traditional restaurants, meats are cooked at the center of the table over a charcoal grill, surrounded by various banchan and individual rice bowls. The cooked meat is then cut into small pieces and wrapped with fresh lettuce leaves, with rice, thinly sliced garlic, ssamjang (a mixture of gochujang and dwenjang), and other seasonings. The suffix gui is often omitted in the names of meat-based gui such as galbi, the name of which was originally galbi gui.
List of grilled dishes commonly found in Korean cuisine
Jjim and seon (steamed dishes) are generic terms referring to steamed or boiled dishes in Korean cuisine. However, the former is made with meat or seafood-based ingredients marinated in gochujang or ganjang while seon is made with vegetable stuffed with fillings.
List of steamed dishes commonly found in Korean cuisine
Hoe (raw dishes): although the term originally referred to any kind of raw dish, it is generally used to refer to saengseonhweh (생선회, raw fish dishes). It is dipped in gochujang, or soy sauce with wasabi, and served with lettuce or perilla leaves.
list of raw dishes commonly found in Korean cuisine
Jeon (전, 煎) (or buchimgae) is a Korean are savory pancakes made from various ingredients. Chopped kimchi or seafood is mixed into a wheat flour-based batter, and then pan fried. This dish tastes best when it is dipped in a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, and red pepper powder. It can be served as an appetizer, side dish (banchan - 반찬) and accompanied by alcohol (anju - 안주).
There are some sweet varieties called Hwajeon (화전) which means flower pancakes.
There are different types of jeon: jeon-yu [전유어(煎油魚)] and jeon-hwa [ 전유화(煎油花)], recently the first type it refers only for fish pancakes. The previous ingredients can be used in various ways, such as meat, sea field, and vegetables. The meat used is of quail, beef and pork. Seafood is mainly used by white sea fish as white flesh fish are croaker, cod, and Pollack.Vegetables used are: pumpkins, pepper,sesame leaves etc. In the summer potatoes are harvested, and the mung beans are made in the winter. According to the regional cases many buckwheat production are in Pyeongchang and Bongpyeong area, first set the small green onions or cabbage leaves and turn the thin buckwheat dough on it. There is no special taste, but the hands are still in the hand of buckwheat.
Today, there was a lot of frying oils like soy, and corn oil, but oil couldn’t be squeezed from beens in the Joseon Dynasty because the milking technique was not developed. Therefore, our traditional food has developed a grilled recipe that bends directly to the fire, and the flashing, which is supported by using sesame oil than frying food. The used oil was believed to be precious. The day when you could smell the oil inside a house was a special day like a holiday, a joy, or a stunning day.
List of jeon dishes commonly found in Korean cuisine
Namul may refer to either saengchae (생채, literally "fresh vegetables") or sukchae (숙채, literally "heated vegetables"), although the term generally indicates the latter. Saengchae is mostly seasoned with vinegar, chili pepper powder and salt to give a tangy and refreshing taste. On the other hand, sukchae (숙채) is blanched and seasoned with soy sauce, sesame oil, chopped garlic, or sometimes chili pepper powder.
List of namul dishes commonly found in Korean cuisine
Anju (side dishes accompanying alcoholic beverages)
Anju is a general term for a Korean side dish consumed with alcohol. It matches well with Korean traditional alcohol such as Soju or Makgeolli and helps people to enjoy their drinking more. Some examples of anju include steamed squid with gochujang, assorted fruit, dubu kimchi (tofu with kimchi), peanuts, odeng/ohmuk, sora (소라) (a kind of shellfish popular in street food tents), and nakji (small octopus) and Jokbal (pig's leg served with salted shrimp sauce). Samgyupsal (pork belly) is also considered as Anju with Soju. Most Korean foods can be considered as 'anju', as the food consumed alongside the alcohol depends on the diner's taste and preferences.
Holiday food
Songpyeon (송편)
Songpyeon (송편, 松䭏) is a Korean dish made of rice powder mostly eaten during Chuseok/ Korean thanksgiving (추석) to express gratitude towards ancestors. Songpyeon recordings appear from the 17th century. It is said in 『Yorok 要 錄』, "Make rice cakes with white rice flour, steam them with pine and pine needles and wash them off with water." At the beginning of Songpyeon, rice cakes were made simply with white rice powder, pine needles were steamed and then washed in water. It is said that "red beans, pine nuts, walnuts, ginger and cinnamon" were added in the "Buyin Pilji 婦人 必 知". In 『Korean Rice Cakes, Hangwa, Eumcheongryu』, “In mountainous regions such as Gangwon-do and Chungcheong-do, potato songpyeon, acorn songpyeon and songgisongpyeon have been prepared and eaten. In the coastal areas of Hamgyeong-do, Pyeongan-do and Gyeonggi-do, shellfish songpyeon as produced and eaten, and in the southern regions of Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do, songpyeon with moss leaves was produced and eaten.
Songpyeon represents the moon and hope, which is why while eating this Koreans make wishes.
There is a proverb that says, "When virgins make a nice songpyeon, they will meet a good spouse, and when a pregnant woman makes a nice songpyeon, they have beautiful daughters." Songpyeon served on the Baekilsang and the stone table is described in Yorok, "I cooked it so that the convex shaped part of songpyeon came out without adding any filling, but it looks like it is full. It has the meaning of wishing good luck.
In the Seoul region, the floral songpyeon and five-color songpyeon were made small and beautiful, and in Hwanghae-do and Gangwon-do they fingerprinted and ate them coarsely.
The method of making five-color songpyeon is achieved by adding natural ingredients such as mugwort, gardenia water, omija water and cinnamon powder to the rice flour, kneading the rice cake with the five colors and adding the filling. However, in the past, pine endodermis were used in place of cinnamon powder to make the dough brown.
Okog-bap (오곡밥)
Okog-bap means five rice dish, which consists of rice mixed with glutinous rice, cornstarch, red bean, perilla, and soybean. By consuming grains with the energy of blue, red, yellow, white, and black, we pray for good health as well as a good year for our body with the energy of the five elements, and to chase away bad luck and happiness and well-being.
In addition, there is a custom of sharing five grains of rice between neighbors because it is said that three or more families of different surnames share rice with each other.
It is consumed on the day of the first full moon of the year when people make rituals for guardian spirits against disasters and misfortune. Koreans also celebrate the upcoming spring.
Beverages
Non-alcoholic beverages
All Korean traditional nonalcoholic beverages are referred to as eumcheong or eumcheongnyu (음청류 ) which literally means "clear beverages". According to historical documents regarding Korean cuisine, 193 items of eumcheongnyu are recorded. Eumcheongnyu can be divided into the following categories: tea, hwachae (fruit punch), sikhye (sweet rice drink), sujeonggwa (persimmon punch), tang (탕, boiled water), jang (장, fermented grain juice with a sour taste), suksu (숙수, beverage made of herbs), galsu (갈수, drink made of fruit extract, and Oriental medicine), honeyed water, juice and milk by their ingredient materials and preparation methods. Among the varieties, tea, hwachae, sikhye, and sujeonggwa are still widely favored and consumed; however, the others almost disappeared by the end of the 20th century.
In Korean cuisine, tea, or cha, refers to various types of herbal tea that can be served hot or cold. Not necessarily related to the leaves, leaf buds, and internodes of the Camellia sinensis plant, they are made from diverse substances, including fruits (e.g. yuja-cha), flowers (e.g. gukhwa-cha), leaves, roots, and grains (e.g. bori-cha, hyeonmi-cha) or herbs and substances used in traditional Korean medicine, such as ginseng (e.g. insam-cha) and ginger (e.g. saenggang-cha).
Alcoholic beverages
While soju is the best known liquor, there are well over 100 different alcoholic beverages, such as beers, rice and fruit wines, and liquors produced in South Korea as well as a sweet rice drink. The top-selling domestic beers (the Korean term for beer being maekju) are lagers, which differ from Western beers in that they are brewed from rice, rather than barley. Consequently, Korean beers are lighter, sweeter and have less head than their Western counterparts. The South Korean beer market is dominated by the two major breweries: Hite and OB. Taedonggang is a North Korean beer produced at a brewery based in Pyongyang since 2002. Microbrewery beers and bars are growing in popularity after 2002.
Soju is a clear spirit which was originally made from grain, especially rice, and is now also made from sweet potatoes or barley. Soju made from grain is considered superior (as is also the case with grain vs. potato vodka). Soju is around 22% ABV, and is a favorite beverage of hard-up college students, hard-drinking businessmen, and blue-collar workers.
Yakju is a refined pure liquor fermented from rice, with the best known being cheongju. Takju is a thick unrefined liquor made with grains, with the best known being makgeolli, a white, milky rice wine traditionally drunk by farmers.
In addition to the rice wine, various fruit wines and herbal wines exist in Korean cuisine. Acacia, maesil plum, Chinese quince, cherry, pine cone, and pomegranate are most popular. Majuang wine (a blended wine of Korean grapes with French or American wines) and ginseng-based wines are also available.
Sweets
Traditional rice cakes, tteok and Korean confectionery hangwa are eaten as treats during holidays and festivals. Tteok refers to all kinds of rice cakes made from either pounded rice (메떡, metteok), pounded glutinous rice (찰떡, chaltteok), or glutinous rice left whole, without pounding. It is served either filled or covered with sweetened mung bean paste, red bean paste, mashed red beans, raisins, a sweetened filling made with sesame seeds, sweet pumpkin, beans, jujubes, pine nuts or honey). Tteok is usually served as dessert or as a snack. Among varieties, songpyeon is a chewy stuffed tteok served at Chuseok. Honey or another soft sweet material such as sweetened sesame or black beans are used as fillings. Pine needles can be used for imparting flavor during the steaming process. Yaksik is a sweet rice cake made with glutinous rice, chestnuts, pine nuts, jujubes, and other ingredients, while chapssaltteok is a tteok filled with sweet bean paste.
On the other hand, hangwa is a general term referring to all types of Korean traditional confectionery. The ingredients of hahngwa mainly consist of grain flour, honey, yeot, and sugar, or of fruit and edible roots. Hangwa is largely divided into yumilgwa (fried confectionery), suksilgwa, jeonggwa, gwapyeon, dasik (tea food) and yeot. Yumilgwa is made by stir frying or frying pieces of dough, such as maejakgwa and yakgwa. Maejakgwa is a ring-shaped confection made of wheat flour, vegetable oil, cinnamon, ginger juice, jocheong, and pine nuts, while yakgwa, literally "medicinal confectionery", is a flower-shaped biscuit made of honey, sesame oil and wheat flour.
Suksilgwa is made by boiling fruits, ginger, or nuts in water, and then forming the mix into the original fruit's shape, or other shapes. Gwapyeon is a jelly-like confection made by boiling sour fruits, starch, and sugar. Dasik, literally "eatery for tea", is made by kneading rice flour, honey, and various types of flour from nuts, herbs, sesame, or jujubes. Jeonggwa, or jeongwa, is made by boiling fruits, plant roots and seeds in honey, mullyeot (물엿, liquid candy) or sugar. It is similar to marmalade or jam/jelly. Yeot is a Korean traditional candy in liquid or solid form made from steamed rice, glutinous rice, glutinous kaoliang, corn, sweet potatoes or mixed grains. The steamed ingredients are lightly fermented and boiled in a large pot called sot (솥) for a long time.
Yugwa(유과) and Yak-gwa(약과).They are traditional desserts enjoyed during Chuseok, marriage or the sixtieth birthday (Hwangap - 환갑).
Yugwa is a generic name for 산자, 강정 and 빈사과. They are classified as: square shaped 산자, finger shaped 강정, drop shaped and square shaped 빈사과 . Furthermore, many different names have been given based on coatings, toppings and fillings. Plum blossoms obtained by frying sesame seeds and nutmeg, steamed dried and fried glutinous rice, sebann with finely chopped sesame seeds, seunggeomcho and pine nut powder are used. In addition, they are dyed pink, yellow, etc. Depending on the region, it is also called Gwajul or Sanja. First, soak some good glutinous rice in water and let it ferment so that the glutinous rice sticks. The fermentation period varies from one week to ten days depending on the season, and after having fermented until crushed by hand, knead and steam it for a long time, then beat until cherries form.
Sanja is a large square shape, gangjeong is the thickness of a finger and bell gangjeong is the size of a thumb. 빈사과 is one the size of a red bean, which is lumped together with the syrup or sugar syrup and cut into squares. Once the excess oil has been removed, honey or syrup is applied and the ginger juice is added at this time. Ginger juice has the effect of preventing rancidity of fats. It is completed by covering with various types of gluten wheat.
Yugwa, which is difficult to make, is best prepared in the winter. Honey or syrup is an important ingredient in making Yugwa, which crumbles and melts when you put it in your mouth.↵During the Joseon Dynasty, Yugwa was used during the rite of passage and in the royal family various types of Yugwa were placed high on the banquet table. In the aristocratic family, it is customary to send gangjeong to accompany the groom or to business guests returning from a wedding party to the bride's house, full of dongguri intertwined with stones or willows.↵Furthermore, Yugwa was chosen as the ancestral food par excellence for the ancestors, and is a food not to be missed during the Lunar New Year holiday.
Yakgwa (약과; 藥菓) is a dessert made of wheat flour, honey, ginger juice and rice wine. In premodern Korea they were enjoyed by upper classes as a rare dish, today is common to serve it with tea.
Yakgwa is a traditional and good quality dish with a sweet and savory taste. In korean, the Yak character is used to name foods that commonly contain honey and sesame oil. From ancient times, instead of fruit, honey and sesame oil were used to medicate and it has become a sweet. Even today the yakgwa among the bourgeois class is a dish that can never be missing. However, they are not prepared with difficulty as in ancient times and are easily found on the market. You can buy them anywhere easily and enjoy them comfortably for a snack. The Yakgwa was developed as a Buddhist banquet and was a very important ancestral food, it was food that was given as a gift for weddings.
Also this reputation spread nationwide from China, Koryeo's oil and honey pastry was generally known for festivities.
Regional and variant cuisines
Korean regional cuisines (Korean: hyangto eumsik, literally "native local foods") are characterized by local specialties and distinctive styles within Korean cuisine. The divisions reflected historical boundaries of the provinces where these food and culinary traditions were preserved until modern times.
Although Korea has been divided into two nation-states since 1948 (North Korea and South Korea), it was once divided into eight provinces (paldo) according to the administrative districts of the Joseon Dynasty. The northern region consisted of Hamgyeong Province, Pyeongan Province and Hwanghae Province. The central region comprised Gyeonggi Province, Chungcheong Province, and Gangwon Province. Gyeongsang Province and Jeolla Province made up the southern region.
Until the late 19th century, transportation networks were not well developed, and each provincial region preserved its own characteristic tastes and cooking methods. Geographic differences are also reflected by the local specialty foodstuffs depending on the climate and types of agriculture, as well as the natural foods available. With the modern development of transportation and the introduction of foreign foods, Korean regional cuisines have tended to overlap and integrate. However, many unique traditional dishes in Korean regional cuisine have been handed down through the generations.
Buddhist cuisine
Korean temple cuisine originated in Buddhist temples of Korea. Since Buddhism was introduced into Korea, Buddhist traditions have strongly influenced Korean cuisine, as well. During the Silla period (57 BCE – 935 CE), chalbap (찰밥, a bowl of cooked glutinous rice) yakgwa (a fried dessert) and yumilgwa (a fried and puffed rice snack) were served for Buddhist altars and have been developed into types of hangwa, Korean traditional confectionery. During the Goryeo Dynasty, sangchu ssam (wraps made with lettuce), yaksik, and yakgwa were developed, and since spread to China and other countries. Since the Joseon Dynasty, Buddhist cuisine has been established in Korea according to regions and temples.
On the other hand, royal court cuisine is closely related to Korean temple cuisine. In the past, when the royal court maids, sanggung, who were assigned to Suragan (hangul: 수라간; hanja: 水剌間; the name of the royal kitchen), where they prepared the king's meals, became old, they had to leave the royal palace. Therefore, many of them entered Buddhist temples to become nuns. As a result, culinary techniques and recipes of the royal cuisine were integrated into Buddhist cuisine.
Vegetarian cuisine
Vegetarian cookery in Korea may be linked to the Buddhist traditions that influenced Korean culture from the Goryeo dynasty onwards. There are hundreds of vegetarian restaurants in Korea, although historically they have been local restaurants that are unknown to tourists. Most have buffets, with cold food, and vegetarian kimchi and tofu being the main features. Bibimbap is a common vegan dish. Menus change with seasons. Wine with the alcohol removed and fine teas are also served. The Korean tea ceremony is suitable for all vegetarians and vegans, and began with Buddhist influences. All food is eaten with a combination of stainless steel oval chopsticks and a long-handled shallow spoon called together sujeo.
Ceremonial food
Food is an important part of traditions of Korean family ceremonies, which are mainly based on the Confucian culture. Gwan Hon Sang Je (관혼상제; 冠婚喪祭), the four family ceremonies (coming-of-age ceremony, wedding, funeral, and ancestral rite) have been considered especially important and elaborately developed, continuing to influence Korean life to these days. Ceremonial food in Korea has developed with variation across different regions and cultures.
For example, rituals are mainly performed on the anniversary of deceased ancestors, called jesa. Ritual food include rice, liquor, soup, vinegar and soy sauce (1st row); noodles, skewered meat, vegetable and fish dishes, and rice cake (2nd row); three types of hot soup, meat and vegetable dishes (3rd row); dried snacks, kimchi, and sweet rice drink (4th row); and variety of fruit (5th row).
Street food
In South Korea, inexpensive food may be purchased from pojangmacha, street carts during the day, where customers may eat standing beside the cart or have their food wrapped up to take home. At night, pojangmacha (포장마차) become small tents that sell food, drinks, and alcoholic beverages.
Seasonal street foods include hotteok, and bungeoppang, which are enjoyed in autumn and winter. Gimbap (김밥) and tteokbokki (떡볶이)are also very popular street food.
People also enjoy to eat Sundae (순대), Twigim (튀김), and Eomuk (오뎅/어묵) which are popular with tteokbokki. Also, Gyeran-ppang (계란빵) which is Egg Bread and Hoppang (호빵) are also enjoyed in winter. Dak-kkochi (닭꼬치) is a popular food in Korea with various sauces on the chicken. Beondegi (번데기) and dalgona/ppopgi (뽑기) are two examples of the original street foods that everyone enjoyed since the childhood.
Etiquette
Dining
Dining etiquette in Korea can be traced back to the Confucian philosophies of the Joseon period. Guidebooks, such as Sasojeol (士小節, Elementary Etiquette for Scholar Families), written in 1775 by Yi Deokmu (이덕무; 李德懋), comment on the dining etiquette for the period. Suggestions include items such as "when you see a fat cow, goat, pig, or chicken, do not immediately speak of slaughtering, cooking or eating it", "when you are having a meal with others, do not speak of smelly or dirty things, such as boils or diarrhea," "when eating a meal, neither eat so slowly as to appear to be eating against your will nor so fast as if to be taking someone else's food. Do not throw chopsticks on the table. Spoons should not touch plates, making a clashing sound", among many other recommendations which emphasized proper table etiquette.
Other than the etiquette mentioned above, blowing one's nose when having a meal is considered an inappropriate act as well.
The eldest male at the table was always served first, and was commonly served in the men's quarters by the women of the house. Women usually dined in a separate portion of the house after the men were served. The eldest men or women always ate before the younger family members. The meal was usually quiet, as conversation was discouraged during meals. In modern times, these rules have become lax, as families usually dine together now and use the time to converse. Of the remaining elements of this decorum, one is that the younger members of the table should not pick up their chopsticks or start eating before the elders of the table or guests and should not finish eating before the elders or guests finish eating.
In Korea, unlike in other East Asian cuisines such as Chinese and Japanese, the rice or soup bowl is not lifted from the table when eating from it. This is due to the fact that each diner is given a metal spoon along with the chopsticks known collectively as sujeo. The use of the spoon for eating rice and soups is expected. There are rules which reflect the decorum of sharing communal side dishes; rules include not picking through the dishes for certain items while leaving others, and the spoon used should be clean, because usually diners put their spoons in the same serving bowl on the table. Diners should also cover their mouths when using a toothpick after the meal.
The table setup is important as well, and individual place settings, moving from the diner's left should be as follows: rice bowl, spoon, then chopsticks. Hot foods are set to the right side of the table, with the cold foods to the left. Soup must remain on the right side of the diner along with stews. Vegetables remain on the left along with the rice, and kimchi is set to the back while sauces remain in the front.
Drinking
The manner of drinking alcoholic drinks while dining is significant in Korean dining etiquette. Each diner is expected to face away from the eldest male and cover his mouth when drinking alcohol.
According to Hyang Eum Ju Rye (향음주례; 鄕飮酒禮), the drinking etiquette established in Choseon Dynasty, it is impolite for a king and his vassal, a father and his son, or a teacher and his student to drink face to face. Also, a guest should not refuse the first drink offered by host, and in the most formal situations, the diner should politely twice refuse a drink offered by the eldest male or a host. When the host offers for the third time, then finally the guest can receive it. If the guest refuses three times, drink is not to be offered any more.
Royal court cuisine
Collectively known as gungjung eumsik during the pre-modern era, the foods of the royal palace were reflective of the opulent nature of the past rulers of the Korean peninsula. This nature is evidenced in examples as far back as the Silla kingdom, where a man-made lake (Anapji Lake, located in Gyeongju), was created with multiple pavilions and halls for the sole purpose of opulent banquets, and a spring fed channel, Poseokjeong, was created for the singular purpose of setting wine cups afloat while they wrote poems.
Reflecting the regionalism of the kingdoms and bordering countries of the peninsula, the cuisine borrowed portions from each of these areas to exist as a showcase. The royalty would have the finest regional specialties and delicacies sent to them at the palace. Although there are records of banquets predating the Joseon period, the majority of these records mostly reflect the vast variety of foods, but do not mention the specific foods presented. The meals cooked for the royal family did not reflect the seasons, as the commoner's meals would have. Instead, their meals varied significantly day-to-day. Each of the eight provinces was represented each month in the royal palace by ingredients presented by their governors, which gave the cooks a wide assortment of ingredients to use for royal meals.
Food was considered significant in the Joseon period. Official positions were created within the Six Ministries (Yukjo, 육조) that were charged with all matters related to procurement and consumption of food and drink for the royal court. The Board of Personnel (Ijo, 이조) contained positions specific for attaining rice for the royal family. The Board of Rights (Yejo) were responsible for foods prepared for ancestor rites, attaining wines and other beverages, and medicinal foods. There were also hundreds of slaves and women who worked in the palace that had tasks such as making tofu, liquor, tea, and tteok (rice cakes). The women were the cooks to the royal palace and were of commoner or low-born families. These women would be split into specific skill sets or "bureau" such as the bureau of special foods (Saenggwa-bang, 생과방) or the bureau of cooking foods (Soju-bang, 소주방). These female cooks may have been assisted by male cooks from outside the palace during larger banquets when necessary.
Five meals were generally served in the royal palace each day during the Joseon period, and records suggest this pattern had existed from antiquity. Three of these meals would be full meals, while the afternoon and after dinner meals would be lighter. The first meal, mieumsang (미음상), was served at sunrise and was served only on days when the king and queen were not taking herbal medicines. The meal consisted of rice porridge (juk, 죽) made with ingredients such as abalone (jeonbokjuk), white rice (huinjuk), mushrooms (beoseotjuk), pine nuts (jatjuk), and sesame (kkaejuk). The side dishes could consist of kimchi, nabak kimchi, oysters, soy sauce, and other items. The porridge was thought to give vitality to the king and queen throughout the day.
The sura (수라) were the main meals of the day. Breakfast was served at ten in the morning, and the evening meals were served between six and seven at night. The set of three tables (surasang, 수라상), were usually set with two types of rice, two types of soup, two types of stew (jjigae), one dish of jjim (meat stew), one dish of jeongol (a casserole of meat and vegetables), three types of kimchi, three types of jang (장) and twelve side dishes, called 12 cheop (12첩). The meals were set in the suragan (수라간), a room specifically used for taking meals, with the king seated to the east and the queen to the west. Each had their own set of tables and were attended by three palace servant women known as sura sanggung (수라상궁). These women would remove bowl covers and offer the foods to the king and queen after ensuring the dishes were not poisoned.
Banquets (궁중 연회 음식) were held on special occasions in the Korean Royal Palace. These included birthdays of the royal family members, marriages, and national festivals, including Daeborum, Dano, Chuseok, and Dongji. Banquet food was served on individual tables which varied according to the rank of the person. Usually banquet food consisted of ten different types of dishes. Main dishes were prepared based on the seasonal foods. Main dishes of the banquet included sinseollo, jeon, hwayang jeok, honghapcho, nengmyun and mulgimchi. A typical banquet ingredient was chogyetang (chicken broth with vinegar), which was prepared with five different chickens, five abalones, ten sea cucumbers, twenty eggs, half a bellflower root, mushrooms, two cups of black pepper, two peeled pine nuts, starch, soy sauce and vinegar. Yaksik was a favorite banquet dessert.
See also
Dae Jang Geum
Korean baked goods
List of Korean drinks
List of Korean dishes
North Korean cuisine
List of Korean desserts
Notes
Bibliography
Baek Un-hwa (백운화). Inje Food Science Forum (인제식품과학 FORUM), "Part 3 Status quo and prospect about the industrialization of Korean traditional beverages (제 3 주제 전통 음청류의 산업화 현황과 전망)" taken from on 2008-06-15. pp. 75~95.
Coultrip-Davis, Deborah, Young Sook Ramsay, and Deborah Davis (1998). Flavors of Korea: Delicious Vegetarian Cuisine. Tennessee: Book Publishing Company. .
Cost, Bruce. Asian ingredients: a guide to the foodstuffs of China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. New York: Harper Perennial, 2000.
Crawford, Gary W. (2006) East Asian Plant Domestication. In Archaeology of East Asia, edited by Miriam Stark. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006
Food in Korea, "Jontongjoo – Kinds of Traditional Liquors" taken from
Herskovitz, Jon. Reuters, "North Korean beer: great taste, low proliferation risk", Mar 9, 2008, taken from
Hopkins, Jerry. Extreme Cuisine: The Weird & Wonderful Foods that People Eat, Singapore: Tuttle Publishing, 2004.
Korea Agro-Fisheries Trade Corporation. "Introduction of Eumcheongryu" taken from on 2008-05-22.
Korea Tourism Organization. "Experience Royal Cuisine" taken from on 2008-06-13.
Koryǒsa, The History of the Koryǒ Dynasty, Seoul, 1990.
National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. "King Sejong's Humanism" taken from on 2008-06-10.
Marks, Copeland. The Korean Kitchen: Classic Recipes from the Land of the Morning Calm. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1993.
O'Brien, Betsy. Let's Eat Korean Food. Elizabeth, NJ:Hollym, 1997.
Sohn Gyeong-hee (손경희). Inje Food Science Forum (인제식품과학 FORUM), "Part 1 HIstorical overview of Korean traditional eumcheongryu (제 1 주제 한국 전통 음청류의 역사적 고찰)" taken from on 2008-06-16.
The Academy of Korean Studies. "농사직설(農事直說), Nongsa jikseol" taken from on 2008-06-10.
The Korea Economic Daily, "Brew master.. the only beer in the world" (브루 마스터 .. 세계 유일의 맥주) taken from
Yi Kyubo, Tongmyǒng-wang p'yǒn' (The lay of King Tongmyǒng) in Tongguk Yi Sangguk chip (The Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country), Seoul, 1982.
Yi Yang-Cha, and Armin E. Möller (1999). Koreanisch vegetarisch: Die kaum bekannte, fettarme, phantasievolle und küchenfreundliche Art asiatisch zu kochen (Korean Vegetarian: Almost Unknown, Low Fat, Creative and Kitchen-friendly Way of Asian Cooking). .
Yi Tǒngmu, Sasojǒl (Elementary Etiquette for Scholar Families), quaoted in Sources of Korean Tradition, Volume Two: From the Twentieth Centuries, ed. Yǒongho Ch'oe, Peter H. Lee and W. Theodore de Bary. New York, 2000.
Yu Jisang (유지상). "How about today? Pojangmacha, outing at night" (오늘 어때? 포장마차 ‘밤마실’) taken from on 2008-06-13.
External links
Official site of Korea National Tourism List of Korean Food
at the Korea Agro-Fisheries Trade Corporation
Food in Korea
List of articles about Korean cuisine at the Doosan Encyclopedia
Categories of Korean cuisine at the Empas / EncyKorea
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/( in Korean)
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/7618(in Korean)
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/7929(in Korean)
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/7858(in Korean)
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/7777(in Korean)
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/7544#(in Korean)
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/7963(in Korean)
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/4128(in Korean)
https://folkency.nfm.go.kr/kr/topic/detail/7981(in Korean)
https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/kimjang-making-and-sharing-kimchi-in-the-republic-of-korea-00881( in English) | [
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16794 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte | Kilobyte | The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information.
The International System of Units (SI) defines the prefix kilo as 1000 (103); per this definition, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. The internationally recommended unit symbol for the kilobyte is kB.
In some areas of information technology, particularly in reference to solid-state memory capacity, kilobyte instead typically refers to 1024 (210) bytes. This arises from the prevalence of sizes that are powers of two in modern digital memory architectures, coupled with the accident that 210 differs from 103 by only 2.4%. A kibibyte is defined by Clause 4 of IEC 80000-13 as 1024 bytes.
Definitions and usage
Base 10 (1000 bytes)
In the International System of Units (SI) the prefix kilo means 1000 (103); therefore, one kilobyte is 1000 bytes. The unit symbol is kB.
This is the definition recommended by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
This definition, and the related definitions of the prefixes mega (), giga (), etc., are most commonly used for data transfer rates in computer networks, internal bus, hard drive and flash media transfer speeds, and for the capacities of most storage media, particularly hard drives, flash-based storage, and DVDs. It is also consistent with the other uses of the SI prefixes in computing, such as CPU clock speeds or measures of performance.
The IEC 80000-13 standard uses the term 'byte' to mean eight bits (1 B = 8 bit). Therefore, 1 kB = 8000 bit. One thousand kilobytes (1000 kB) is equal to one megabyte (1 MB), where 1 MB is one million bytes.
Base 2 (1024 bytes)
The term 'kilobyte' has traditionally been used to refer to 1024 bytes (210 B). The usage of the metric prefix kilo for binary multiples arose as a convenience, because 1024 is approximately 1000.
The binary interpretation of metric prefixes is still prominently used by the Microsoft Windows operating system. Metric prefixes are also used for random-access memory capacity, such as main memory and CPU cache size, due to the prevalent binary addressing of memory.
The binary meaning of the kilobyte for 1024 bytes typically uses the symbol KB, with an uppercase letter K. The B is often omitted in informal use. For example, a processor with 65,536 bytes of cache memory might be said to have "64 K" of cache. In this convention, one thousand and twenty-four kilobytes (1024 KB) is equal to one megabyte (1 MB), where 1 MB is 10242 bytes.
In December 1998, the IEC addressed such multiple usages and definitions by creating prefixes such as kibi, mebi, gibi, etc., to unambiguously denote powers of 1024. Thus the kibibyte, symbol KiB, represents 210 bytes = 1024 bytes. These prefixes are now part of the IEC 80000-13 standard. The IEC further specified that the kilobyte should only be used to refer to 1000 bytes. The International System of Units restricts the use of the SI prefixes strictly to powers of 10.
Examples
The Shugart SA-400 5-inch floppy disk (1976) held 109,375 bytes unformatted, and was advertised as "110 Kbyte", using the 1000 convention. Likewise, the 8-inch DEC RX01 floppy (1975) held 256,256 bytes formatted, and was advertised as "256k". On the other hand, the Tandon 5-inch DD floppy format (1978) held 368,640 (which is 360×1024) bytes, but was advertised as "360 KB", following the 1024 convention.
On modern systems, all versions of Microsoft Windows including the newest () Windows 10 divide by 1024 and represent a 65,536-byte file as "64 KB". Conversely, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and newer represent this as 66 kB, rounding to the nearest 1000 bytes. File sizes are reported with decimal prefixes.
the binary interpretation was still used in marketing and billing by some telecommunication companies, such as Vodafone, AT&T, Orange and Telstra.
See also
History of the floppy disk
Binary prefix
Timeline of binary prefixes
References
Units of information | [
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16795 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl%20Andree | Karl Andree | Karl Andree (20 October 1808 – 10 August 1875) was a German geographer.
Biography
Andree was born in Braunschweig. He was educated at Jena, Göttingen, and Berlin. After having been implicated in a students' political agitation he became a journalist, and in 1851 founded the newspaper Bremer Handelsblatt. From 1855, however, he devoted himself entirely to geography and ethnography, working successively at Leipzig and at Dresden. During the American Civil War, he advocated the cause of the secessionists. In 1862 he founded the important geographical periodical Globus. He died at Wildungen. His son Richard Andree followed in his father's career.
Works
Nordamerika in geographischen und geschichtlichen Umrissen (Brunswick, 1854)
Buenos Ayres und die argentinische Republik (Leipzig, 1856)
Geographische Wanderungen (Dresden, 1859)
Geographie des Welthandels (Stuttgart, 1867-1872)
References
Attribution
1808 births
1875 deaths
Writers from Braunschweig
People from the Duchy of Brunswick
German geographers
University of Jena alumni
University of Göttingen alumni
Humboldt University of Berlin alumni | [
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16796 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper%20belt | Kuiper belt | The Kuiper belt () is a circumstellar disc in the outer Solar System, extending from the orbit of Neptune at 30 astronomical units (AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but is far larger—20 times as wide and 20–200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies or remnants from when the Solar System formed. While many asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia, and water. The Kuiper belt is home to most of the objects that astronomers generally accept as dwarf planets: , Pluto, Haumea, , and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, may have originated in the region.
The Kuiper belt was named after Dutch astronomer Gerard Kuiper, though he did not predict its existence. In 1992, minor planet (15760) Albion was discovered, the first Kuiper belt object (KBO) since Pluto (in 1930) and Charon (in 1978). Since its discovery, the number of known KBOs has increased to thousands, and more than 100,000 KBOs over in diameter are thought to exist. The Kuiper belt was initially thought to be the main repository for periodic comets, those with orbits lasting less than 200 years. Studies since the mid-1990s have shown that the belt is dynamically stable and that comets' true place of origin is the scattered disc, a dynamically active zone created by the outward motion of Neptune 4.5 billion years ago; scattered disc objects such as Eris have extremely eccentric orbits that take them as far as 100 AU from the Sun.
The Kuiper belt is distinct from the theoretical Oort cloud, which is a thousand times more distant and is mostly spherical. The objects within the Kuiper belt, together with the members of the scattered disc and any potential Hills cloud or Oort cloud objects, are collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs). Pluto is the largest and most massive member of the Kuiper belt and the largest and the second-most-massive known TNO, surpassed only by Eris in the scattered disc. Originally considered a planet, Pluto's status as part of the Kuiper belt caused it to be reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006. It is compositionally similar to many other objects of the Kuiper belt, and its orbital period is characteristic of a class of KBOs, known as "plutinos," that share the same 2:3 resonance with Neptune.
The Kuiper belt and Neptune may be treated as a marker of the extent of the Solar System, alternatives being the heliopause and the distance at which the Sun's gravitational influence is matched by that of other stars (estimated to be between and ).
History
After the discovery of Pluto in 1930, many speculated that it might not be alone. The region now called the Kuiper belt was hypothesized in various forms for decades. It was only in 1992 that the first direct evidence for its existence was found. The number and variety of prior speculations on the nature of the Kuiper belt have led to continued uncertainty as to who deserves credit for first proposing it.
Hypotheses
The first astronomer to suggest the existence of a trans-Neptunian population was Frederick C. Leonard. Soon after Pluto's discovery by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930, Leonard pondered whether it was "not likely that in Pluto there has come to light the first of a series of ultra-Neptunian bodies, the remaining members of which still await discovery but which are destined eventually to be detected". That same year, astronomer Armin O. Leuschner suggested that Pluto "may be one of many long-period planetary objects yet to be discovered."
In 1943, in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Kenneth Edgeworth hypothesized that, in the region beyond Neptune, the material within the primordial solar nebula was too widely spaced to condense into planets, and so rather condensed into a myriad smaller bodies. From this he concluded that "the outer region of the solar system, beyond the orbits of the planets, is occupied by a very large number of comparatively small bodies" and that, from time to time, one of their number "wanders from its own sphere and appears as an occasional visitor to the inner solar system", becoming a comet.
In 1951, in a paper in Astrophysics: A Topical Symposium, Gerard Kuiper speculated on a similar disc having formed early in the Solar System's evolution, but he did not think that such a belt still existed today. Kuiper was operating on the assumption, common in his time, that Pluto was the size of Earth and had therefore scattered these bodies out toward the Oort cloud or out of the Solar System. Were Kuiper's hypothesis correct, there would not be a Kuiper belt today.
The hypothesis took many other forms in the following decades. In 1962, physicist Al G.W. Cameron postulated the existence of "a tremendous mass of small material on the outskirts of the solar system". In 1964, Fred Whipple, who popularised the famous "dirty snowball" hypothesis for cometary structure, thought that a "comet belt" might be massive enough to cause the purported discrepancies in the orbit of Uranus that had sparked the search for Planet X, or, at the very least, massive enough to affect the orbits of known comets. Observation ruled out this hypothesis.
In 1977, Charles Kowal discovered 2060 Chiron, an icy planetoid with an orbit between Saturn and Uranus. He used a blink comparator, the same device that had allowed Clyde Tombaugh to discover Pluto nearly 50 years before. In 1992, another object, 5145 Pholus, was discovered in a similar orbit. Today, an entire population of comet-like bodies, called the centaurs, is known to exist in the region between Jupiter and Neptune. The centaurs' orbits are unstable and have dynamical lifetimes of a few million years. From the time of Chiron's discovery in 1977, astronomers have speculated that the centaurs therefore must be frequently replenished by some outer reservoir.
Further evidence for the existence of the Kuiper belt later emerged from the study of comets. That comets have finite lifespans has been known for some time. As they approach the Sun, its heat causes their volatile surfaces to sublimate into space, gradually dispersing them. In order for comets to continue to be visible over the age of the Solar System, they must be replenished frequently. A proposal for such an area of replenishment is the Oort cloud, possibly a spherical swarm of comets extending beyond 50,000 AU from the Sun first hypothesised by Dutch astronomer Jan Oort in 1950. The Oort cloud is thought to be the point of origin of long-period comets, which are those, like Hale–Bopp, with orbits lasting thousands of years.
There is another comet population, known as short-period or periodic comets, consisting of those comets that, like Halley's Comet, have orbital periods of less than 200 years. By the 1970s, the rate at which short-period comets were being discovered was becoming increasingly inconsistent with their having emerged solely from the Oort cloud. For an Oort cloud object to become a short-period comet, it would first have to be captured by the giant planets. In a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1980, Uruguayan astronomer Julio Fernández stated that for every short-period comet to be sent into the inner Solar System from the Oort cloud, 600 would have to be ejected into interstellar space. He speculated that a comet belt from between 35 and 50 AU would be required to account for the observed number of comets. Following up on Fernández's work, in 1988 the Canadian team of Martin Duncan, Tom Quinn and Scott Tremaine ran a number of computer simulations to determine if all observed comets could have arrived from the Oort cloud. They found that the Oort cloud could not account for all short-period comets, particularly as short-period comets are clustered near the plane of the Solar System, whereas Oort-cloud comets tend to arrive from any point in the sky. With a "belt", as Fernández described it, added to the formulations, the simulations matched observations. Reportedly because the words "Kuiper" and "comet belt" appeared in the opening sentence of Fernández's paper, Tremaine named this hypothetical region the "Kuiper belt".
Discovery
In 1987, astronomer David Jewitt, then at MIT, became increasingly puzzled by "the apparent emptiness of the outer Solar System". He encouraged then-graduate student Jane Luu to aid him in his endeavour to locate another object beyond Pluto's orbit, because, as he told her, "If we don't, nobody will." Using telescopes at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, Jewitt and Luu conducted their search in much the same way as Clyde Tombaugh and Charles Kowal had, with a blink comparator. Initially, examination of each pair of plates took about eight hours, but the process was sped up with the arrival of electronic charge-coupled devices or CCDs, which, though their field of view was narrower, were not only more efficient at collecting light (they retained 90% of the light that hit them, rather than the 10% achieved by photographs) but allowed the blinking process to be done virtually, on a computer screen. Today, CCDs form the basis for most astronomical detectors. In 1988, Jewitt moved to the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Luu later joined him to work at the University of Hawaii's 2.24 m telescope at Mauna Kea. Eventually, the field of view for CCDs had increased to 1024 by 1024 pixels, which allowed searches to be conducted far more rapidly. Finally, after five years of searching, Jewitt and Luu announced on 30 August 1992 the "Discovery of the candidate Kuiper belt object 1992 QB1". This object would later be named 15760 Albion. Six months later, they discovered a second object in the region, (181708) 1993 FW. By 2018, over 2000 Kuiper belts objects had been discovered.
Over one thousand bodies were found in a belt in the twenty years (1992–2012), after finding (named in 2018, 15760 Albion), showing a vast belt of bodies more than just Pluto and Albion. By the 2010s the full extent and nature of Kuiper belt bodies is largely unknown. Finally, in the late 2010s, two KBOs were closely flown past by an unmanned spacecraft, providing much closer observations of the Plutonian system and another KBO.
Studies conducted since the trans-Neptunian region was first charted have shown that the region now called the Kuiper belt is not the point of origin of short-period comets, but that they instead derive from a linked population called the scattered disc. The scattered disc was created when Neptune migrated outward into the proto-Kuiper belt, which at the time was much closer to the Sun, and left in its wake a population of dynamically stable objects that could never be affected by its orbit (the Kuiper belt proper), and a population whose perihelia are close enough that Neptune can still disturb them as it travels around the Sun (the scattered disc). Because the scattered disc is dynamically active and the Kuiper belt relatively dynamically stable, the scattered disc is now seen as the most likely point of origin for periodic comets.
Name
Astronomers sometimes use the alternative name Edgeworth–Kuiper belt to credit Edgeworth, and KBOs are occasionally referred to as EKOs. Brian G. Marsden claims that neither deserves true credit: "Neither Edgeworth nor Kuiper wrote about anything remotely like what we are now seeing, but Fred Whipple did". David Jewitt comments: "If anything ... Fernández most nearly deserves the credit for predicting the Kuiper Belt."
KBOs are sometimes called "kuiperoids", a name suggested by Clyde Tombaugh. The term "trans-Neptunian object" (TNO) is recommended for objects in the belt by several scientific groups because the term is less controversial than all others—it is not an exact synonym though, as TNOs include all objects orbiting the Sun past the orbit of Neptune, not just those in the Kuiper belt.
Structure
At its fullest extent (but excluding the scattered disc), including its outlying regions, the Kuiper belt stretches from roughly 30–55 AU. The main body of the belt is generally accepted to extend from the 2:3 mean-motion resonance (see below) at 39.5 AU to the 1:2 resonance at roughly 48 AU. The Kuiper belt is quite thick, with the main concentration extending as much as ten degrees outside the ecliptic plane and a more diffuse distribution of objects extending several times farther. Overall it more resembles a torus or doughnut than a belt. Its mean position is inclined to the ecliptic by 1.86 degrees.
The presence of Neptune has a profound effect on the Kuiper belt's structure due to orbital resonances. Over a timescale comparable to the age of the Solar System, Neptune's gravity destabilises the orbits of any objects that happen to lie in certain regions, and either sends them into the inner Solar System or out into the scattered disc or interstellar space. This causes the Kuiper belt to have pronounced gaps in its current layout, similar to the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt. In the region between 40 and 42 AU, for instance, no objects can retain a stable orbit over such times, and any observed in that region must have migrated there relatively recently.
Classical belt
Between the 2:3 and 1:2 resonances with Neptune, at approximately 42–48 AU, the gravitational interactions with Neptune occur over an extended timescale, and objects can exist with their orbits essentially unaltered. This region is known as the classical Kuiper belt, and its members comprise roughly two thirds of KBOs observed to date. Because the first modern KBO discovered (Albion, but long called (15760) 1992 QB1), is considered the prototype of this group, classical KBOs are often referred to as cubewanos ("Q-B-1-os"). The guidelines established by the IAU demand that classical KBOs be given names of mythological beings associated with creation.
The classical Kuiper belt appears to be a composite of two separate populations. The first, known as the "dynamically cold" population, has orbits much like the planets; nearly circular, with an orbital eccentricity of less than 0.1, and with relatively low inclinations up to about 10° (they lie close to the plane of the Solar System rather than at an angle). The cold population also contains a concentration of objects, referred to as the kernel, with semi-major axes at 44–44.5 AU. The second, the "dynamically hot" population, has orbits much more inclined to the ecliptic, by up to 30°. The two populations have been named this way not because of any major difference in temperature, but from analogy to particles in a gas, which increase their relative velocity as they become heated up. Not only are the two populations in different orbits, the cold population also differs in color and albedo, being redder and brighter, has a larger fraction of binary objects, has a different size distribution, and lacks very large objects. The mass of the dynamically cold population is roughly 30 times less than the mass of the hot. The difference in colors may be a reflection of different compositions, which suggests they formed in different regions. The hot population is proposed to have formed near Neptune's original orbit and to have been scattered out during the migration of the giant planets. The cold population, on the other hand, has been proposed to have formed more or less in its current position because the loose binaries would be unlikely to survive encounters with Neptune. Although the Nice model appears to be able to at least partially explain a compositional difference, it has also been suggested the color difference may reflect differences in surface evolution.
Resonances
When an object's orbital period is an exact ratio of Neptune's (a situation called a mean-motion resonance), then it can become locked in a synchronised motion with Neptune and avoid being perturbed away if their relative alignments are appropriate. If, for instance, an object orbits the Sun twice for every three Neptune orbits, and if it reaches perihelion with Neptune a quarter of an orbit away from it, then whenever it returns to perihelion, Neptune will always be in about the same relative position as it began, because it will have completed orbits in the same time. This is known as the 2:3 (or 3:2) resonance, and it corresponds to a characteristic semi-major axis of about 39.4 AU. This 2:3 resonance is populated by about 200 known objects, including Pluto together with its moons. In recognition of this, the members of this family are known as plutinos. Many plutinos, including Pluto, have orbits that cross that of Neptune, though their resonance means they can never collide. Plutinos have high orbital eccentricities, suggesting that they are not native to their current positions but were instead thrown haphazardly into their orbits by the migrating Neptune. IAU guidelines dictate that all plutinos must, like Pluto, be named for underworld deities. The 1:2 resonance (whose objects complete half an orbit for each of Neptune's) corresponds to semi-major axes of ~47.7 AU, and is sparsely populated. Its residents are sometimes referred to as twotinos. Other resonances also exist at 3:4, 3:5, 4:7, and 2:5. Neptune has a number of trojan objects, which occupy its Lagrangian points, gravitationally stable regions leading and trailing it in its orbit. Neptune trojans are in a 1:1 mean-motion resonance with Neptune and often have very stable orbits.
Additionally, there is a relative absence of objects with semi-major axes below 39 AU that cannot apparently be explained by the present resonances. The currently accepted hypothesis for the cause of this is that as Neptune migrated outward, unstable orbital resonances moved gradually through this region, and thus any objects within it were swept up, or gravitationally ejected from it.
Kuiper cliff
The 1:2 resonance at 47.8 AU appears to be an edge beyond which few objects are known. It is not clear whether it is actually the outer edge of the classical belt or just the beginning of a broad gap. Objects have been detected at the 2:5 resonance at roughly 55 AU, well outside the classical belt; predictions of a large number of bodies in classical orbits between these resonances have not been verified through observation.
Based on estimations of the primordial mass required to form Uranus and Neptune, as well as bodies as large as Pluto (see ), earlier models of the Kuiper belt had suggested that the number of large objects would increase by a factor of two beyond 50 AU, so this sudden drastic falloff, known as the Kuiper cliff, was unexpected, and to date its cause is unknown. Bernstein, Trilling, et al. (2003) found evidence that the rapid decline in objects of 100 km or more in radius beyond 50 AU is real, and not due to observational bias. Possible explanations include that material at that distance was too scarce or too scattered to accrete into large objects, or that subsequent processes removed or destroyed those that did. Patryk Lykawka of Kobe University claimed that the gravitational attraction of an unseen large planetary object, perhaps the size of Earth or Mars, might be responsible.
Origin
The precise origins of the Kuiper belt and its complex structure are still unclear, and astronomers are awaiting the completion of several wide-field survey telescopes such as Pan-STARRS and the future LSST, which should reveal many currently unknown KBOs. These surveys will provide data that will help determine answers to these questions.
The Kuiper belt is thought to consist of planetesimals, fragments from the original protoplanetary disc around the Sun that failed to fully coalesce into planets and instead formed into smaller bodies, the largest less than in diameter. Studies of the crater counts on Pluto and Charon revealed a scarcity of small craters suggesting that such objects formed directly as sizeable objects in the range of tens of kilometers in diameter rather than being accreted from much smaller, roughly kilometer scale bodies. Hypothetical mechanisms for the formation of these larger bodies include the gravitational collapse of clouds of pebbles concentrated between eddies in a turbulent protoplanetary disk or in streaming instabilities. These collapsing clouds may fragment, forming binaries.
Modern computer simulations show the Kuiper belt to have been strongly influenced by Jupiter and Neptune, and also suggest that neither Uranus nor Neptune could have formed in their present positions, because too little primordial matter existed at that range to produce objects of such high mass. Instead, these planets are estimated to have formed closer to Jupiter. Scattering of planetesimals early in the Solar System's history would have led to migration of the orbits of the giant planets: Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune drifted outwards, whereas Jupiter drifted inwards. Eventually, the orbits shifted to the point where Jupiter and Saturn reached an exact 1:2 resonance; Jupiter orbited the Sun twice for every one Saturn orbit. The gravitational repercussions of such a resonance ultimately destabilized the orbits of Uranus and Neptune, causing them to be scattered outward onto high-eccentricity orbits that crossed the primordial planetesimal disc.
While Neptune's orbit was highly eccentric, its mean-motion resonances overlapped and the orbits of the planetesimals evolved chaotically, allowing planetesimals to wander outward as far as Neptune's 1:2 resonance to form a dynamically cold belt of low-inclination objects. Later, after its eccentricity decreased, Neptune's orbit expanded outward toward its current position. Many planetesimals were captured into and remain in resonances during this migration, others evolved onto higher-inclination and lower-eccentricity orbits and escaped from the resonances onto stable orbits. Many more planetesimals were scattered inward, with small fractions being captured as Jupiter trojans, as irregular satellites orbiting the giant planets, and as outer belt asteroids. The remainder were scattered outward again by Jupiter and in most cases ejected from the Solar System reducing the primordial Kuiper belt population by 99% or more.
The original version of the currently most popular model, the "Nice model", reproduces many characteristics of the Kuiper belt such as the "cold" and "hot" populations, resonant objects, and a scattered disc, but it still fails to account for some of the characteristics of their distributions. The model predicts a higher average eccentricity in classical KBO orbits than is observed (0.10–0.13 versus 0.07) and its predicted inclination distribution contains too few high inclination objects. In addition, the frequency of binary objects in the cold belt, many of which are far apart and loosely bound, also poses a problem for the model. These are predicted to have been separated during encounters with Neptune, leading some to propose that the cold disc formed at its current location, representing the only truly local population of small bodies in the solar system.
A recent modification of the Nice model has the Solar System begin with five giant planets, including an additional ice giant, in a chain of mean-motion resonances. About 400 million years after the formation of the Solar System the resonance chain is broken. Instead of being scattered into the disc, the ice giants first migrate outward several AU. This divergent migration eventually leads to a resonance crossing, destabilizing the orbits of the planets. The extra ice giant encounters Saturn and is scattered inward onto a Jupiter-crossing orbit and after a series of encounters is ejected from the Solar System. The remaining planets then continue their migration until the planetesimal disc is nearly depleted with small fractions remaining in various locations.
As in the original Nice model, objects are captured into resonances with Neptune during its outward migration. Some remain in the resonances, others evolve onto higher-inclination, lower-eccentricity orbits, and are released onto stable orbits forming the dynamically hot classical belt. The hot belt's inclination distribution can be reproduced if Neptune migrated from 24 AU to 30 AU on a 30 Myr timescale. When Neptune migrates to 28 AU, it has a gravitational encounter with the extra ice giant. Objects captured from the cold belt into the 1:2 mean-motion resonance with Neptune are left behind as a local concentration at 44 AU when this encounter causes Neptune's semi-major axis to jump outward. The objects deposited in the cold belt include some loosely bound 'blue' binaries originating from closer than the cold belt's current location. If Neptune's eccentricity remains small during this encounter, the chaotic evolution of orbits of the original Nice model is avoided and a primordial cold belt is preserved. In the later phases of Neptune's migration, a slow sweeping of mean-motion resonances removes the higher-eccentricity objects from the cold belt, truncating its eccentricity distribution.
Composition
Being distant from the Sun and major planets, Kuiper belt objects are thought to be relatively unaffected by the processes that have shaped and altered other Solar System objects; thus, determining their composition would provide substantial information on the makeup of the earliest Solar System. Due to their small size and extreme distance from Earth, the chemical makeup of KBOs is very difficult to determine. The principal method by which astronomers determine the composition of a celestial object is spectroscopy. When an object's light is broken into its component colors, an image akin to a rainbow is formed. This image is called a spectrum. Different substances absorb light at different wavelengths, and when the spectrum for a specific object is unravelled, dark lines (called absorption lines) appear where the substances within it have absorbed that particular wavelength of light. Every element or compound has its own unique spectroscopic signature, and by reading an object's full spectral "fingerprint", astronomers can determine its composition.
Analysis indicates that Kuiper belt objects are composed of a mixture of rock and a variety of ices such as water, methane, and ammonia. The temperature of the belt is only about 50 K, so many compounds that would be gaseous closer to the Sun remain solid. The densities and rock–ice fractions are known for only a small number of objects for which the diameters and the masses have been determined. The diameter can be determined by imaging with a high-resolution telescope such as the Hubble Space Telescope, by the timing of an occultation when an object passes in front of a star or, most commonly, by using the albedo of an object calculated from its infrared emissions. The masses are determined using the semi-major axes and periods of satellites, which are therefore known only for a few binary objects. The densities range from less than 0.4 to 2.6 g/cm3. The least dense objects are thought to be largely composed of ice and have significant porosity. The densest objects are likely composed of rock with a thin crust of ice. There is a trend of low densities for small objects and high densities for the largest objects. One possible explanation for this trend is that ice was lost from the surface layers when differentiated objects collided to form the largest objects.
Initially, detailed analysis of KBOs was impossible, and so astronomers were only able to determine the most basic facts about their makeup, primarily their color. These first data showed a broad range of colors among KBOs, ranging from neutral grey to deep red. This suggested that their surfaces were composed of a wide range of compounds, from dirty ices to hydrocarbons. This diversity was startling, as astronomers had expected KBOs to be uniformly dark, having lost most of the volatile ices from their surfaces to the effects of cosmic rays. Various solutions were suggested for this discrepancy, including resurfacing by impacts or outgassing. Jewitt and Luu's spectral analysis of the known Kuiper belt objects in 2001 found that the variation in color was too extreme to be easily explained by random impacts. The radiation from the Sun is thought to have chemically altered methane on the surface of KBOs, producing products such as tholins. Makemake has been shown to possess a number of hydrocarbons derived from the radiation-processing of methane, including ethane, ethylene and acetylene.
Although to date most KBOs still appear spectrally featureless due to their faintness, there have been a number of successes in determining their composition. In 1996, Robert H. Brown et al. acquired spectroscopic data on the KBO 1993 SC, which revealed that its surface composition is markedly similar to that of Pluto, as well as Neptune's moon Triton, with large amounts of methane ice. For the smaller objects, only colors and in some cases the albedos have been determined. These objects largely fall into two classes: gray with low albedos, or very red with higher albedos. The difference in colors and albedos is hypothesized to be due to the retention or the loss of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) on the surface of these objects, with the surfaces of those that formed far enough from the Sun to retain H2S being reddened due to irradiation.
The largest KBOs, such as Pluto and Quaoar, have surfaces rich in volatile compounds such as methane, nitrogen and carbon monoxide; the presence of these molecules is likely due to their moderate vapor pressure in the 30–50 K temperature range of the Kuiper belt. This allows them to occasionally boil off their surfaces and then fall again as snow, whereas compounds with higher boiling points would remain solid. The relative abundances of these three compounds in the largest KBOs is directly related to their surface gravity and ambient temperature, which determines which they can retain. Water ice has been detected in several KBOs, including members of the Haumea family such as , mid-sized objects such as 38628 Huya and 20000 Varuna, and also on some small objects. The presence of crystalline ice on large and mid-sized objects, including 50000 Quaoar where ammonia hydrate has also been detected, may indicate past tectonic activity aided by melting point lowering due to the presence of ammonia.
Mass and size distribution
Despite its vast extent, the collective mass of the Kuiper belt is relatively low. The total mass of the dynamically hot population is estimated to be 1% the mass of the Earth. The dynamically cold population is estimated to be much smaller with only 0.03% the mass of the Earth. While the dynamically hot population is thought to the remnant of a much larger population that formed closer to the Sun and was scattered outward during the migration of the giant planets, in contrast, the dynamically cold population is thought to have formed at its current location. The most recent estimate (2018) puts the total mass of the Kuiper belt at Earth masses based on the influence that it exerts on the motion of planets.
The small total mass of the dynamically cold population presents some problems for models of the Solar System's formation because a sizable mass is required for accretion of KBOs larger than in diameter. If the cold classical Kuiper belt had always had its current low density, these large objects simply could not have formed by the collision and mergers of smaller planetesimals. Moreover, the eccentricity and inclination of current orbits make the encounters quite "violent" resulting in destruction rather than accretion. The removal of a large fraction of the mass of the dynamically cold population is thought to be unlikely. Neptune's current influence is too weak to explain such a massive "vacuuming", and the extent of mass loss by collisional grinding is limited by the presence of loosely bound binaries in the cold disk, which are likely to be disrupted in collisions. Instead of forming from the collisions of smaller planetesimals, the larger object may have formed directly from the collapse of clouds of pebbles.
The size distributions of the Kuiper belt objects follow a number of power laws. A power law describes the relationship between N(D) (the number of objects of diameter greater than D) and D, and is referred to as brightness slope. The number of objects is inversely proportional to some power of the diameter D:
which yields (assuming q is not 1) :
(The constant may be non-zero only if the power law doesn't apply at high values of D.)
Early estimates that were based on measurements of the apparent magnitude distribution found a value of q = 4 ± 0.5, which implied that there are 8 (=23) times more objects in the 100–200 km range than in the 200–400 km range.
Recent research has revealed that the size distributions of the hot classical and cold classical objects have differing slopes. The slope for the hot objects is q = 5.3 at large diameters and q = 2.0 at small diameters with the change in slope at 110 km. The slope for the cold objects is q = 8.2 at large diameters and q = 2.9 at small diameters with a change in slope at 140 km. The size distributions of the scattering objects, the plutinos, and the Neptune trojans have slopes similar to the other dynamically hot populations, but may instead have a divot, a sharp decrease in the number of objects below a specific size. This divot is hypothesized to be due to either the collisional evolution of the population, or to be due to the population having formed with no objects below this size, with the smaller objects being fragments of the original objects.
The smallest known Kuiper belt objects with radii below 1 km have only been detected by stellar occultations, as they are far too dim (magnitude 35) to be seen directly by telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope. The first reports of these occultations were from Schlichting et al. in December 2009, who announced the discovery of a small, sub-kilometre-radius Kuiper belt object in archival Hubble photometry from March 2007. With an estimated radius of or a diameter of , the object was detected by Hubble star tracking system when it briefly occulted a star for 0.3 seconds. In a subsequent study published in December 2012, Schlichting et al. performed a more thorough analysis of archival Hubble photometry and reported another occultation event by a sub-kilometre-sized Kuiper belt object, estimated to be in radius or in diameter. From the occultation events detected in 2009 and 2012, Schlichting et al. determined the Kuiper belt object size distribution slope to be q = 3.6 ± 0.2 or q = 3.8 ± 0.2, with the assumptions of a single power law and a uniform ecliptic latitude distribution. Their result implies a strong deficit of sub-kilometer-sized Kuiper belt objects compared to extrapolations from the population of larger Kuiper belt objects with diameters above 90 km.
Scattered objects
The scattered disc is a sparsely populated region, overlapping with the Kuiper belt but extending to beyond 100 AU. Scattered disc objects (SDOs) have very elliptical orbits, often also very inclined to the ecliptic. Most models of Solar System formation show both KBOs and SDOs first forming in a primordial belt, with later gravitational interactions, particularly with Neptune, sending the objects outward, some into stable orbits (the KBOs) and some into unstable orbits, the scattered disc. Due to its unstable nature, the scattered disc is suspected to be the point of origin of many of the Solar System's short-period comets. Their dynamic orbits occasionally force them into the inner Solar System, first becoming centaurs, and then short-period comets.
According to the Minor Planet Center, which officially catalogues all trans-Neptunian objects, a KBO is any object that orbits exclusively within the defined Kuiper belt region regardless of origin or composition. Objects found outside the belt are classed as scattered objects. In some scientific circles the term "Kuiper belt object" has become synonymous with any icy minor planet native to the outer Solar System assumed to have been part of that initial class, even if its orbit during the bulk of Solar System history has been beyond the Kuiper belt (e.g. in the scattered-disc region). They often describe scattered disc objects as "scattered Kuiper belt objects". Eris, which is known to be more massive than Pluto, is often referred to as a KBO, but is technically an SDO. A consensus among astronomers as to the precise definition of the Kuiper belt has yet to be reached, and this issue remains unresolved.
The centaurs, which are not normally considered part of the Kuiper belt, are also thought to be scattered objects, the only difference being that they were scattered inward, rather than outward. The Minor Planet Center groups the centaurs and the SDOs together as scattered objects.
Triton
During its period of migration, Neptune is thought to have captured a large KBO, Triton, which is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit (it orbits opposite to Neptune's rotation). This suggests that, unlike the large moons of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus, which are thought to have coalesced from rotating discs of material around their young parent planets, Triton was a fully formed body that was captured from surrounding space. Gravitational capture of an object is not easy: it requires some mechanism to slow down the object enough to be caught by the larger object's gravity. A possible explanation is that Triton was part of a binary when it encountered Neptune. (Many KBOs are members of binaries. See below.) Ejection of the other member of the binary by Neptune could then explain Triton's capture. Triton is only 14% larger than Pluto, and spectral analysis of both worlds shows that their surfaces are largely composed of similar materials, such as methane and carbon monoxide. All this points to the conclusion that Triton was once a KBO that was captured by Neptune during its outward migration.
Largest KBOs
Since 2000, a number of KBOs with diameters of between 500 and , more than half that of Pluto (diameter 2370 km), have been discovered. 50000 Quaoar, a classical KBO discovered in 2002, is over 1,200 km across. and , both announced on 29 July 2005, are larger still. Other objects, such as 28978 Ixion (discovered in 2001) and 20000 Varuna (discovered in 2000), measure roughly across.
Pluto
The discovery of these large KBOs in orbits similar to Pluto's led many to conclude that, aside from its relative size, Pluto was not particularly different from other members of the Kuiper belt. Not only are these objects similar to Pluto in size, but many also have satellites, and are of similar composition (methane and carbon monoxide have been found both on Pluto and on the largest KBOs). Thus, just as Ceres was considered a planet before the discovery of its fellow asteroids, some began to suggest that Pluto might also be reclassified.
The issue was brought to a head by the discovery of Eris, an object in the scattered disc far beyond the Kuiper belt, that is now known to be 27% more massive than Pluto. (Eris was originally thought to be larger than Pluto by volume, but the New Horizons mission found this not to be the case.) In response, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) was forced to define what a planet is for the first time, and in so doing included in their definition that a planet must have "cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit". As Pluto shares its orbit with many other sizable objects, it was deemed not to have cleared its orbit and was thus reclassified from a planet to a dwarf planet, making it a member of the Kuiper belt.
Although Pluto is currently the largest known KBO, there is at least one known larger object currently outside the Kuiper belt that probably originated in it: Neptune's moon Triton (which, as explained above, is probably a captured KBO).
It is not clear how many KBOs are large enough to be dwarf planets. Consideration of the surprisingly low densities of many dwarf-planet candidates suggests that not many are. , Pluto, Haumea, , and Makemake are accepted by most astronomers; some have proposed other bodies, such as , , , and .
Satellites
The six largest TNOs (Eris, Pluto, Gonggong, Makemake, Haumea and Quaoar) are all known to have satellites, and two of them have more than one. A higher percentage of the larger KBOs have satellites than the smaller objects in the Kuiper belt, suggesting that a different formation mechanism was responsible. There are also a high number of binaries (two objects close enough in mass to be orbiting "each other") in the Kuiper belt. The most notable example is the Pluto–Charon binary, but it is estimated that around 11% of KBOs exist in binaries.
Exploration
On 19 January 2006, the first spacecraft to explore the Kuiper belt, New Horizons, was launched, which flew by Pluto on 14 July 2015. Beyond the Pluto flyby, the mission's goal was to locate and investigate other, farther objects in the Kuiper belt.
On 15 October 2014, it was revealed that Hubble had uncovered three potential targets, provisionally designated PT1 ("potential target 1"), PT2 and PT3 by the New Horizons team. The objects' diameters were estimated to be in the 30–55 km range; too small to be seen by ground telescopes, at distances from the Sun of 43–44 AU, which would put the encounters in the 2018–2019 period. The initial estimated probabilities that these objects were reachable within New Horizons fuel budget were 100%, 7%, and 97%, respectively. All were members of the "cold" (low-inclination, low-eccentricity) classical Kuiper belt, and thus very different from Pluto. PT1 (given the temporary designation "1110113Y" on the HST web site), the most favorably situated object, was magnitude 26.8, 30–45 km in diameter, and was encountered in January 2019. Once sufficient orbital information was provided, the Minor Planet Center gave official designations to the three target KBOs: (PT1), (PT2), and (PT3). By the fall of 2014, a possible fourth target, , had been eliminated by follow-up observations. PT2 was out of the running before the Pluto flyby.
On 26 August 2015, the first target, (nicknamed "Ultima Thule" and later named 486958 Arrokoth), was chosen. Course adjustment took place in late October and early November 2015, leading to a flyby in January 2019. On 1 July 2016, NASA approved additional funding for New Horizons to visit the object.
On 2 December 2015, New Horizons detected what was then called (later named 15810 Arawn) from away.
On 1 January 2019, New Horizons successfully flew by Arrokoth, returning data showing Arrokoth to be a contact binary 32 km long by 16 km wide. The Ralph instrument aboard New Horizons confirmed Arrokoth's red color. Data from the fly-by will continue to be downloaded over the next 20 months.
No follow-up missions for New Horizons are planned, though at least two concepts for missions that would return to orbit or land on Pluto have been studied. Beyond Pluto, there exist many large KBOs that cannot be visited with New Horizons, such as the dwarf planets Makemake and Haumea. New missions would be tasked to explore and study these objects in detail. Thales Alenia Space has studied the logistics of an orbiter mission to Haumea, a high priority scientific target due to its status as the parent body of a collisional family that includes several other TNOs, as well as Haumea's ring and two moons. The lead author, Joel Poncy, has advocated for new technology that would allow spacecraft to reach and orbit KBOs in 10–20 years or less. New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern has informally suggested missions that would flyby the planets Uranus or Neptune before visiting new KBO targets, thus furthering the exploration of the Kuiper belt while also visiting these ice giant planets for the first time since the Voyager 2 flybys in the 1980s.
Design studies and concept missions
Quaoar has been considered as a flyby target for a probe tasked with exploring the interstellar medium, as it currently lies near the heliospheric nose; Pontus Brandt at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and his colleagues have studied a probe that would flyby Quaoar in the 2030s before continuing to the interstellar medium through the heliospheric nose. Among their interests in Quaoar include its likely disappearing methane atmosphere and cryovolcanism. The mission studied by Brandt and his colleagues would launch using SLS and achieve 30 km/s using a Jupiter flyby. Alternatively, for an orbiter mission, a study published in 2012 concluded that Ixion and Huya are among the most feasible targets. For instance, the authors calculated that an orbiter mission could reach Ixion after 17 years cruise time if launched in 2039.
In the late 2010s, a design study by Glen Costigan and colleagues discussed orbital capture and multi-target scenarios for Kuiper belt objects. Some Kuiper belt objects studied in that particular paper included , , and 47171 Lempo. Another design study by Ryan McGranaghan and colleagues in 2011 explored a spacecraft survey of the large trans-Neptunian objects Quaoar, Sedna, Makemake, Haumea, and Eris.
Interstellar missions have evaluated including a flyby of Kuiper Belt objects as part of their mission.
Extrasolar Kuiper belts
By 2006, astronomers had resolved dust discs thought to be Kuiper belt-like structures around nine stars other than the Sun. They appear to fall into two categories: wide belts, with radii of over 50 AU, and narrow belts (tentatively like that of the Solar System) with radii of between 20 and 30 AU and relatively sharp boundaries. Beyond this, 15–20% of solar-type stars have an observed infrared excess that is suggestive of massive Kuiper-belt-like structures. Most known debris discs around other stars are fairly young, but the two images on the right, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in January 2006, are old enough (roughly 300 million years) to have settled into stable configurations. The left image is a "top view" of a wide belt, and the right image is an "edge view" of a narrow belt. Computer simulations of dust in the Kuiper belt suggest that when it was younger, it may have resembled the narrow rings seen around younger stars.
See also
Asteroid belt
List of possible dwarf planets
List of trans-Neptunian objects
Planet Nine
Notes
References
External links
Dave Jewitt's page @ UCLA
The belt's name
List of short period comets by family
Kuiper Belt Profile by NASA's Solar System Exploration
The Kuiper Belt Electronic Newsletter
Wm. Robert Johnston's TNO page
Minor Planet Center: Plot of the Outer Solar System, illustrating Kuiper gap
Website of the International Astronomical Union (debating the status of TNOs)
XXVIth General Assembly 2006
nature.com article: diagram displaying inner solar system, Kuiper Belt, and Oort Cloud, taken from
SPACE.com: Discovery Hints at a Quadrillion Space Rocks Beyond Neptune (Sara Goudarzi) 15 August 2006 06:13 am ET
The Outer Solar System Astronomy Cast episode No. 64, includes full transcript.
The Kuiper belt at 365daysofastronomy.org
Nine Planets' webpage on the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud
List of TNOS
Trans-Neptunian region
19920830
Articles containing video clips
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16797 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraftwerk | Kraftwerk | Kraftwerk (, "power station") are a German band formed in Düsseldorf in 1969 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the genre. The group began as part of West Germany's experimental krautrock scene in the early 1970s before fully embracing electronic instrumentation, including synthesizers, drum machines, and vocoders. Wolfgang Flür joined the band in 1974 and Karl Bartos in 1975, expanding the band to a quartet.
On commercially successful albums such as Autobahn (1974), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), and Computer World (1981), Kraftwerk developed a self-described experimental "robot pop" style that combined electronic music with pop melodies, sparse arrangements, and repetitive rhythms, while adopting a stylized image including matching suits. Following the release of Electric Café (1986), Flür left the group in 1987, followed by Bartos in 1990. Founding member Schneider left in 2008.
The band's work has influenced a diverse range of artists and many genres of modern music, including synth-pop, hip hop, post-punk, techno, house music, ambient, and club music. In 2014, the Recording Academy honoured Kraftwerk with a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. They later won the Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album with their live album 3-D The Catalogue (2017) at the 2018 ceremony. As of 2021, the band continues to tour. An extensive North American tour was announced and is scheduled to take place over 24 dates between May and July 2022. In 2021, Kraftwerk was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the early influence category.
History
Formation and early years (1969–1973)
Florian Schneider (flutes, synthesizers, violin) and Ralf Hütter (organ, synthesizers) met as students at the Robert Schumann Hochschule in Düsseldorf in the late 1960s, participating in the German experimental music and art scene of the time, which Melody Maker jokingly dubbed "krautrock".
They joined a quintet known as Organisation, which released one album, Tone Float in 1970, issued on RCA Records in the UK, and split shortly thereafter. Schneider became interested in synthesizers, deciding to acquire one in 1970. While visiting an exhibition in their hometown about visual artists Gilbert and George, they saw "two men wearing suits and ties, claiming to bring art into everyday life. The same year, Hütter and Schneider started bringing everyday life into art and form Kraftwerk".
Early Kraftwerk line-ups from 1970 to 1974 fluctuated, as Hütter and Schneider worked with around a half-dozen other musicians during the preparations for and the recording of three albums and sporadic live appearances, including guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, who left to form Neu!. The only constant figure in these line-ups was Schneider, whose main instrument at the time was the flute; at times he also played the violin and guitar, all processed through a varied array of electronic devices. Hütter, who left the band for eight months to focus on completing his university studies, played synthesizer and keyboards (including Farfisa organ and electric piano).
The band released two free-form experimental rock albums, Kraftwerk (1970) and Kraftwerk 2 (1972). The albums were mostly exploratory musical improvisations played on a variety of traditional instruments including guitar, bass, drums, organ, flute, and violin. Post-production modifications to these recordings were used to distort the sound of the instruments, particularly audio-tape manipulation and multiple dubbings of one instrument on the same track. Both albums are purely instrumental. Live performances from 1972 to 1973 were mostly made as a duo, using a simple beat-box-type electronic drum machine with preset rhythms taken from an electric organ. Occasionally, they performed with bass players as well. These shows were mainly in Germany, with occasional shows in France. Later in 1973, Wolfgang Flür joined the group for rehearsals, and the unit performed as a trio on the television show Aspekte for German television network ZDF.
With Ralf und Florian, released in 1973, Kraftwerk began to rely more heavily on synthesizers and drum machines. Although almost entirely instrumental, the album marks Kraftwerk's first use of the vocoder, which became one of its musical signatures. According to English music journalist Simon Reynolds, Kraftwerk were influenced by what he called the "adrenalized insurgency" of Detroit artists of the late '60s MC5 and the Stooges.
The input, expertise, and influence of producer and engineer Konrad "Conny" Plank was highly significant in the early years of Kraftwerk. Plank also worked with many of the other leading German electronic acts of that time, including members of Can, Neu!, Cluster, and Harmonia. As a result of his work with Kraftwerk, Plank's studio near Cologne became one of the most sought-after studios in the late 1970s. Plank co-produced the first four Kraftwerk albums.
International breakthrough: Autobahn and Radioactivity (1974–1976)
The release of Autobahn in 1974 saw Kraftwerk moving away from the sound of its first three albums. Hütter and Schneider had invested in newer technology such as the Minimoog and the EMS Synthi AKS, helping give Kraftwerk a newer, "disciplined" sound. Autobahn was also the last album that Conny Plank engineered. After the commercial success of Autobahn in the US, where it peaked at number 5 in the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes, Hütter and Schneider invested in updating their studio, thus lessening their reliance on outside producers. At this time the painter and graphic artist Emil Schult became a regular collaborator, designing artwork, cowriting lyrics, and accompanying the group on tour.
The year 1975 saw a turning point in Kraftwerk's live shows. With financial support from Phonogram Inc., in the US, they were able to undertake a tour to promote the Autobahn album, a tour which took them to the US, Canada and the UK for the first time. The tour also saw a new, stable, live line-up in the form of a quartet. Hütter and Schneider continued playing keyboard synthesizers such as the Minimoog and ARP Odyssey, with Schneider's use of flute diminishing. The two men started singing live for the first time, and Schneider processing his voice with a vocoder live. Wolfgang Flür and new recruit Karl Bartos performed on home-made electronic percussion instruments. Bartos also used a Deagan vibraphone on stage. The Hütter-Schneider-Bartos-Flür formation remained in place until the late 1980s and is now regarded as the classic live line-up of Kraftwerk. Emil Schult generally fulfilled the role of tour manager.
After the 1975 Autobahn tour, Kraftwerk began work on a follow-up album, Radio-Activity (German title: Radio-Aktivität). After further investment in new equipment, the Kling Klang Studio became a fully working recording studio. The group used the central theme in radio communication, which had become enhanced on their last tour of the United States. With Emil Schult working on artwork and lyrics, Kraftwerk began to compose music for the new record. Even though Radio-Activity was less commercially successful than Autobahn in the UK and United States, the album served to open up the European market for Kraftwerk, earning them a gold disc in France. Kraftwerk made videos and performed several European live dates to promote the album. With the release of Autobahn and Radio-Activity, Kraftwerk left behind avant-garde experimentation and moved towards the electronic pop tunes for which they are best known.
In 1976, Kraftwerk toured in support of the Radio-Activity album. David Bowie was among the fans of the record and invited the band to support him on his Station to Station tour, an offer the group declined. Despite some innovations in touring, Kraftwerk took a break from live performances after the Radio-Activity tour of 1976.
Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine and Computer World (1977–1982)
After having finished the Radio-Activity tour Kraftwerk began recording Trans-Europe Express (German: Trans-Europa Express) at the Kling Klang Studio. Trans-Europe Express was mixed at the Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles. It was around this time that Hütter and Schneider met David Bowie at the Kling Klang Studio. A collaboration was mentioned in an interview (Brian Eno) with Hütter, but it never materialised. The release of Trans-Europe Express in March 1977 was marked with an extravagant train journey used as a press conference by EMI France. The album won a disco award in New York later that year.
In May 1978 Kraftwerk released The Man-Machine (German: Die Mensch-Maschine), recorded at the Kling Klang Studio. Due to the complexity of the recording, the album was mixed at Studio Rudas in Düsseldorf. The band hired sound engineer Leanard Jackson from Detroit to work with Joschko Rudas on the final mix. The Man-Machine was the first Kraftwerk album where Karl Bartos was cocredited as a songwriter. The cover, produced in black, white and red, was inspired by Russian artist El Lissitzky and the Suprematism movement. Gunther Frohling photographed the group for the cover, a now-iconic image which featured the quartet dressed in red shirts and black ties. After it was released Kraftwerk did not release another album for three years.
In May 1981 Kraftwerk released Computer World (German: Computerwelt) on EMI Records. It was recorded at Kling Klang Studio between 1978 and 1981. Much of this time was spent modifying the studio to make it portable so the band could take it on tour. Some of the electronic vocals on Computer World were generated using a Texas Instruments language translator. "Computer Love" was released as a single backed with the Man-Machine track "The Model". Radio DJs were more interested in the B-side so the single was repackaged by EMI and re-released with "The Model" as the A-side. The single reached number one in the UK, making "The Model" Kraftwerk's most successful song in that country. As a result, the Man-Machine album also became a success in the UK, peaking at number 9 in the album chart in February 1982. The band's live set focused increasingly on song-based material, with greater use of vocals and the use of sequencing equipment for both percussion and music. In contrast to their cool and controlled image, the group used sequencers interactively, which allowed for live improvisation. Ironically Kraftwerk did not own a computer at the time of recording Computer World.
Kraftwerk returned to live performance with the Computer World tour of 1981, where the band effectively packed up its entire Kling Klang studio and took it along on the road. They also made greater use of live visuals including back-projected slides and films synchronized with the music as the technology developed, the use of hand-held miniaturized instruments during the set (for example, during "Pocket Calculator"), and, perhaps most famously, the use of replica mannequins of themselves to perform on stage during the song "The Robots".
Electric Café (1982–1989)
In 1982 Kraftwerk began to work on a new album that initially had the working title Technicolor but due to trademark issues was changed to Electric Café for its original release in 1986 (for a remastered re-release in 2009, it was retitled again after its original working title, Techno Pop). One of the songs from these recording sessions was "Tour de France", which EMI released as a single in 1983. This song was a reflection of the band's new-found obsession for cycling. After the physically demanding Computer World tour, Ralf Hütter had been looking for forms of exercise that fitted in with the image of Kraftwerk; subsequently he encouraged the group to become vegetarians and take up cycling. "Tour de France" included sounds that followed this theme including bicycle chains, gear mechanisms and the breathing of the cyclist. At the time of the single's release Ralf Hütter tried to persuade the rest of the band that they should record a whole album based on cycling. The other members of the band were not convinced, and the theme was left to the single alone. "Tour de France" was released in German and French. The vocals of the song were recorded on the Kling Klang Studio stairs to create the right atmosphere. "Tour de France" was featured in the 1984 film Breakin', showing the influence that Kraftwerk had on black American dance music.
In May or June 1982, during the recording of "Tour de France", Ralf Hütter was involved in a serious cycling accident. He suffered head injuries and remained in a coma for several days. During 1983 Wolfgang Flür was beginning to spend less time in the studio. Since the band began using sequencers his role as a drummer was becoming less frequent. He preferred to spend his time travelling with his girlfriend. Flür was also experiencing artistic difficulties with the band. Though he toured the world with Kraftwerk as a drummer in 1981, his playing does not appear on that year's Computer World or on the 1986 album Electric Café. In 1987 he left the band and was replaced by Fritz Hilpert.
The Mix (1990–1999)
After years of withdrawal from live performance Kraftwerk began to tour Europe more frequently. In February 1990 the band played a few secret shows in Italy. Karl Bartos left the band shortly afterwards. The next proper tour was in 1991, for the album The Mix. Hütter and Schneider wished to continue the synth-pop quartet style of presentation, and recruited Fernando Abrantes as a replacement for Bartos. Abrantes left the band shortly after though. In late 1991, long-time Kling Klang Studio sound engineer Henning Schmitz was brought in to finish the remainder of the tour and to complete a new version of the quartet that remained active until 2008.
In 1997 Kraftwerk made a famous appearance at the dance festival Tribal Gathering held in England. In 1998, the group toured the US and Japan for the first time since 1981, along with shows in Brazil and Argentina. Three new songs were performed during this period and a further two tested in soundchecks, which remain unreleased. Following this trek, the group decided to take another break.
In July 1999 the single "Tour de France" was reissued in Europe by EMI after it had been out of print for several years. It was released for the first time on CD in addition to a repressing of the 12-inch vinyl single. Both versions feature slightly altered artwork that removed the faces of Flür and Bartos from the four-man cycling paceline depicted on the original cover. In 1999 ex-member Flür published his autobiography in Germany, Ich war ein Roboter. Later English-language editions of the book were titled Kraftwerk: I Was a Robot.
In 1999, Kraftwerk were commissioned to create an a cappella jingle for the Hannover Expo 2000 world's fair in Germany. The jingle was subsequently developed into the single "Expo 2000", which was released in December 1999, and remixed and re-released as "Expo Remix" in November 2000.
Tour de France Soundtracks and touring the world (2000–2009)
In August 2003 the band released Tour de France Soundtracks, its first album of new material since 1986's Electric Café. In January and February 2003, before the release of the album, the band started the extensive Minimum-Maximum world tour, using four customised Sony VAIO laptop computers, effectively leaving the entire Kling Klang studio at home in Germany. The group also obtained a new set of transparent video panels to replace its four large projection screens. This greatly streamlined the running of all of the group's sequencing, sound-generating, and visual-display software. From this point, the band's equipment increasingly reduced manual playing, replacing it with interactive control of sequencing equipment. Hütter retained the most manual performance, still playing musical lines by hand on a controller keyboard and singing live vocals and having a repeating ostinato. Schneider's live vocoding had been replaced by software-controlled speech-synthesis techniques. In November, the group made a surprising appearance at the MTV European Music Awards in Edinburgh, Scotland, performing "Aerodynamik". The same year a promotional box set entitled 12345678 (subtitled The Catalogue) was issued, with plans for a proper commercial release to follow. The box featured remastered editions of the group's eight core studio albums, from Autobahn to Tour de France Soundtracks. This long-awaited box-set was eventually released in a different set of remasters in November 2009.
In June 2005 the band's first-ever official live album, Minimum-Maximum, which was compiled from the shows during the band's tour of spring 2004, received extremely positive reviews. The album contained reworked tracks from existing studio albums. This included a track titled "Planet of Visions" that was a reworking of "Expo 2000". In support of this release, Kraftwerk made another quick sweep around the Balkans with dates in Serbia, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Turkey, and Greece. In December, the Minimum-Maximum DVD was released. During 2006, the band performed at festivals in Norway, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Belgium, and Germany.
In April 2008 the group played three shows in US cities Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Denver, and were a coheadliner at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. This was their second appearance at the festival since 2004. Further shows were performed in Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore later that year. The touring quartet consisted of Ralf Hütter, Henning Schmitz, Fritz Hilpert, and video technician Stefan Pfaffe, who became an official member in 2008. Original member Florian Schneider was absent from the lineup. Hütter stated that he was working on other projects. On 21 November, Kraftwerk officially confirmed Florian Schneider's departure from the band; The Independent commented: "There is something brilliantly Kraftwerkian about the news that Florian Schneider, a founder member of the German electronic pioneers, is leaving the band to pursue a solo career. Many successful bands break up after just a few years. It has apparently taken Schneider and his musical partner, Ralf Hütter, four decades to discover musical differences." Kraftwerk's headline set at Global Gathering in Melbourne, Australia, on 22 November was cancelled moments before it was scheduled to begin, due to a Fritz Hilpert heart problem.
In 2009, Kraftwerk performed concerts with special 3D background graphics in Wolfsburg, Germany; Manchester, UK; and Randers, Denmark. Members of the audience were able to watch this multimedia part of the show with 3D glasses, which were given out. During the Manchester concert (part of the 2009 Manchester International Festival) four members of the GB cycling squad (Jason Kenny, Ed Clancy, Jamie Staff and Geraint Thomas) rode around the Velodrome while the band performed "Tour de France". The group also played several festival dates, the last being at the Bestival 2009 in September, on the Isle of Wight. 2009 also saw the release of The Catalogue box set in November. It is a 12" album-sized box set containing all eight remastered CDs in cardboard slipcases, as well as LP-sized booklets of photographs and artwork for each individual album.
The Catalogue and continued touring (2010–2016)
Although not officially confirmed, Ralf Hütter suggested that a second boxed set of their first three experimental albums—Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk 2 and Ralf and Florian—could be on its way, possibly seeing commercial release after their next studio album: "We've just never really taken a look at those albums. They've always been available, but as really bad bootlegs. Now we have more artwork. Emil has researched extra contemporary drawings, graphics, and photographs to go with each album, collections of paintings that we worked with, and drawings that Florian and I did. We took a lot of Polaroids in those days." Kraftwerk also released an iOS app called Kraftwerk Kling Klang Machine. The Lenbach House in Munich exhibited some Kraftwerk 3-D pieces in Autumn 2011. Kraftwerk performed three concerts to open the exhibit.
Kraftwerk played at Ultra Music Festival in Miami on 23 March 2012. Initiated by Klaus Biesenbach, the Museum of Modern Art of New York organized an exhibit titled Kraftwerk – Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 where the band performed their studio discography from Autobahn to Tour de France over the course of eight days to sell-out crowds. The exhibit later toured to the Tate Gallery as well as to K21 in Düsseldorf. Kraftwerk performed at the No Nukes 2012 Festival in Tokyo, Japan. Kraftwerk were also going to play at the Ultra Music Festival in Warsaw, but the event was cancelled; instead, Kraftwerk performed at Way Out West in Gothenburg. A limited edition version of the Catalogue box set was released during the retrospective, restricted to 2000 sets. Each box was individually numbered and inverted the colour scheme of the standard box. In December, Kraftwerk stated on their website that they would be playing their Catalogue in Düsseldorf and at London's Tate Modern. Kraftwerk tickets were priced at £60 in London, but fans compared that to the $20 ticket price for tickets at New York's MoMA in 2012, which caused consternation. Even so, the demand for the tickets at The Tate was so high that it shut down the website.
In March 2013, the band was not allowed to perform at a music festival in China due to unspecified "political reasons". In an interview in June after performing the eight albums of The Catalogue in Sydney, Ralf Hütter stated: "Now we have finished one to eight, now we can concentrate on number nine." In July, they performed at the 47th Montreux Jazz Festival. The band also played a 3-D concert on 12 July at Scotland's biggest festival – T in the Park – in Balado, Kinross, as well as 20 July at Latitude Festival in Suffolk, and 21 July at the Longitude Festival in Dublin.
In October 2013 the band played four concerts, over two nights, in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The venue, Evoluon (the former technology museum of Philips Electronics, now a conference center) was handpicked by Ralf Hütter, for its retro-futuristic UFO-like architecture. Bespoke visuals of the building, with the saucer section descending from space, were displayed during the rendition of Spacelab.
In 2014, Kraftwerk brought their four-night, 3D Catalogue tour to the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and at NYC's United Palace Theatre. They also played at the Cirkus in Stockholm, Sweden and at the music festival Summer Sonic in Tokyo, Japan. In November 2014 the 3D Catalogue live set was played in Paris, France, at the brand new Fondation Louis-Vuitton from 6 to 14 November. and then in the iconic Paradiso concert hall in Amsterdam, Netherlands, where they played before in 1976. In 2015, Ralf Hütter, being told that the Tour de France would be starting that year in the nearby Dutch city of Utrecht, decided that Kraftwerk would perform during the "Grand Depart". Eventually the band played three concerts 3 and 4 July in TivoliVredenburg performing "Tour de France Soundtracks" and visited the start of the Tour in-between.
3-D The Catalogue and Schneider's death (2017–present)
In April 2017, Kraftwerk announced 3-D The Catalogue, a live album and video documenting performances of all eight albums in The Catalogue that was released 26 May 2017. It is available in multiple formats, the most extensive of which being a 4-disc Blu-ray set with a 236-page hardback book. The album was nominated for the Grammy Awards for Best Dance/Electronic Album and Best Surround Sound Album at the ceremony that took place on 28 January 2018, winning the former, which became the band's first Grammy win.
On 20 July 2018, at a concert in Stuttgart, German astronaut Alexander Gerst performed "Spacelab" with the band while aboard the International Space Station, joining via a live video link. Gerst played melodies using a tablet as his instrument alongside Hütter as a duet, and delivered a short message to the audience.
On 20 July 2019, Kraftwerk headlined the Saturday night lineup on the Lovell Stage at Bluedot Festival, a music and science festival held annually at Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire, UK. The 2019 festival celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
On 21 April 2020, Florian Schneider died at age 73 after a brief battle with cancer. On 3 July 2020, the German-language versions of Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine, Computer World, Techno Pop and The Mix, alongside 3-D The Catalogue, were released worldwide on streaming services for the first time.
On 21 December 2020, Parlophone/WEA released Remixes, a digital compilation album. It includes remixed tracks taken from singles released 1991, 1999, 2000, 2004 and 2007, plus the previously unreleased "Non Stop", a version of "Musique Non-Stop" used as a jingle by MTV Europe beginning in 1993. The cover re-uses the cover from "Expo Remix".
On October 30, 2021, Kraftwerk were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. In November 2021, Kraftwerk announced plans for a 2022 North American tour.
Music and artistry
Style
Kraftwerk have been recognized as pioneers of electronic music as well as subgenres such as electropop, art pop, house music and synth-pop. In its early incarnation, the band pursued an avant-garde, experimental rock style inspired by the compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen. Hütter has also listed the Beach Boys as a major influence. The group was also inspired by the funk music of James Brown and, later, punk rock. They were initially connected to the German krautrock scene. In the mid-1970s, they transitioned to an electronic sound which they described as "robot pop". Kraftwerk's lyrics dealt with post-war European urban life and technology—traveling by car on the Autobahn, traveling by train, using home computers, and the like. They were influenced by the modernist Bauhaus aesthetic, seeing art as inseparable from everyday function. Usually, the lyrics are very minimal but reveal both an innocent celebration of, and a knowing caution about, the modern world, as well as playing an integral role in the rhythmic structure of the songs. Many of Kraftwerk's songs express the paradoxical nature of modern urban life: a strong sense of alienation existing side by side with a celebration of the joys of modern technology.
Starting with the release of Autobahn, Kraftwerk began to release a series of concept albums (Radio-Activity, Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine, Computer World, Tour de France Soundtracks). All of Kraftwerk's albums from Trans Europe Express onwards, except Tour de France Soundtracks, have been released in separate versions: one with German vocals for sale in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and one with English vocals for the rest of the world, with occasional variations in other languages when conceptually appropriate. Live performance has always played an important part in Kraftwerk's activities. Also, despite its live shows generally being based around formal songs and compositions, live improvisation often plays a noticeable role in its performances. This trait can be traced back to the group's roots in the first experimental Krautrock scene of the late 1960s, but, significantly, it has continued to be a part of its playing even as it makes ever greater use of digital and computer-controlled sequencing in its performances. Some of the band's familiar compositions have been observed to have developed from live improvisations at its concerts or sound-checks.
Technological innovations
Throughout their career, Kraftwerk have pushed the limits of music technology with some notable innovations, such as home-made instruments and custom-built devices. The group has always perceived their Kling Klang Studio as a complex music instrument, as well as a sound laboratory; Florian Schneider in particular developed a fascination with music technology, with the result that the technical aspects of sound generation and recording gradually became his main fields of activity within the band. Alexei Monroe called Kraftwerk the "first successful artists to incorporate representations of industrial sounds into non-academic electronic music".
Kraftwerk used a custom-built vocoder on their albums Ralf und Florian and Autobahn; the device was constructed by engineers P. Leunig and K. Obermayer of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig. Hütter and Schneider hold a patent for an electronic drum kit with sensor pads, filed in July 1975 and issued in June 1977. It must be hit with metal sticks, which are connected to the device to complete a circuit that triggers analog synthetic percussion sounds. The band first performed in public with this device in 1973, on the television program Aspekte (on the all-German channel Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen), where it was played by Wolfgang Flür. They created drum machines for Autobahn and Trans-Europe Express
On the Radio-Activity tour in 1976 Kraftwerk tested out an experimental light-beam-activated drum cage allowing Flür to trigger electronic percussion through arm and hand movements. Unfortunately, the device did not work as planned, and it was quickly abandoned. The same year Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider commissioned Bonn-based "Synthesizerstudio Bonn, Matten & Wiechers" to design and build the Synthanorma Sequenzer with Intervallomat, a 4×8 / 2×16 / 1×32 step-sequencer system with some features that commercial products couldn't provide at that time. The music sequencer was used by the band for the first time to control the electronic sources creating the rhythmic sound of the album Trans-Europe Express.
Since 2002, Kraftwerk's live performances have been conducted with the use of virtual technology (i.e. software replicating and replacing original analogue or digital equipment). According to Fritz Hilpert, "the mobility of music technology and the reliability of the notebooks and software have greatly simplified the realization of complex touring setups: we generate all sounds on the laptops in real time and manipulate them with controller maps. It takes almost no time to get our compact stage system set up for performance. [...] This way, we can bring our Kling-Klang Studio with us on stage. The physical light weight of our equipment also translates into an enormous ease of use when working with software synthesizers and sound processors. Every tool imaginable is within immediate reach or just a few mouse clicks away on the Internet."
Reclusiveness and eccentricity
The band is notoriously reclusive, providing rare and enigmatic interviews, using life-size mannequins and robots to conduct official photo shoots, refusing to accept mail and not allowing visitors at the Kling Klang Studio, the precise location of which they used to keep secret.
Another notable example of this eccentric behavior was reported to Johnny Marr of the Smiths by Karl Bartos, who explained that anyone trying to contact the band for collaboration would be told the studio telephone did not have a ringer since, while recording, the band did not like to hear any kind of noise pollution. Instead, callers were instructed to phone the studio precisely at a certain time, whereupon the phone would be answered by Ralf Hütter, despite never hearing the phone ring.
Chris Martin of Coldplay recalled in a 2007 article in Q magazine the process of requesting permission to use the melody from the track "Computer Love" on "Talk" from the album X&Y. He sent a letter through the lawyers of the respective parties and several weeks later received an envelope containing a handwritten reply that simply said "yes".
Influence and legacy
According to music journalist Neil McCormick, Kraftwerk might be "the most influential group in pop history". NME wrote: "'The Beatles and Kraftwerk' may not have the ring of 'the Beatles and the Stones', but nonetheless, these are the two most important bands in music history". AllMusic wrote that their music "resonates in virtually every new development to impact the contemporary pop scene of the late 20th century".
Kraftwerk's musical style and image can be heard and seen in 1980s synth-pop groups such as Gary Numan, Ultravox, John Foxx, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, The Human League, Depeche Mode, Visage, and Soft Cell. Kraftwerk influenced other forms of music such as hip hop, house, and drum and bass, and they are also regarded as pioneers of the electro genre. Most notably, "Trans Europe Express" and "Numbers" were interpolated into "Planet Rock" by Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force, one of the earliest hip-hop/electro hits. Kraftwerk helped ignite the New York electro-movement. Techno was created by three musicians from Detroit, often referred to as the 'Belleville three' (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson & Derrick May), who fused the repetitive melodies of Kraftwerk with funk rhythms. The Belleville three were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk and their sounds because Kraftwerk's sounds appealed to the middle-class blacks residing in Detroit at this time. Depeche Mode's composer Martin Gore emphasized: "For anyone of our generation involved in electronic music, Kraftwerk were the godfathers". Vince Clarke of Erasure, Yazoo and Depeche Mode, is also a notable disco and Kraftwerk fan. Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records, purchased the vocoder used by Kraftwerk in their early albums, comparing it to owning "the guitar Jimi Hendrix used on 'Purple Haze'". Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, founding members of OMD, have stated that Kraftwerk was a major reference on their early work, and covered "Neon Lights" on the 1991 album, Sugar Tax. The electronic band Ladytron were inspired by Kraftwerk's song "The Model" when they composed their debut single "He Took Her to a Movie". Aphex Twin noted Kraftwerk as one of his biggest influences and called Computer World as a very influential album towards his music and sound. Björk has cited the band as one of her main musical influences. Electronic musician Kompressor has cited Kraftwerk as an influence. The band was also mentioned in the song "Rappers We Crush" by Kompressor and MC Frontalot ("I hurry away, get in my Chrysler. Oh, the dismay!/Someone's replaced all of my Backstreet Boys with Kraftwerk tapes!"). Dr. Alex Paterson of the Orb listed The Man-Machine as one of his 13 most favourite albums of all time. According to NME, Kraftwerk's pioneering "robot pop" also spawned groups like The Prodigy and Daft Punk.
Kraftwerk inspired many acts from other styles and genres. David Bowie's "V-2 Schneider", from the 1977's Heroes album, was a tribute to Florian Schneider. Post-punk bands Joy Division and New Order were heavily influenced by the band. Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis was a fan, and showed his colleagues records that would influence their music. New Order also sampled "Uranium" in its biggest hit "Blue Monday". Siouxsie and the Banshees recorded a cover of "Hall of Mirrors" on their 1987 album Through the Looking Glass, which was lauded by Ralf Hütter: "In general, we consider cover versions as an appreciation of our work. The version of 'Hall of Mirrors' by Siouxsie and the Banshees is extraordinary, just like the arrangements of Alexander Bălănescu for his Balanescu Quartet release [of Possessed, 1992]. We also like the album El Baile Alemán of Señor Coconut a lot." Members of Blondie have admitted on several occasions that Kraftwerk were an important reference for their sound by the time they were working on their third album Parallel Lines. The worldwide hit "Heart of Glass" turned radically from an initial reggae-flavoured style to its distinctive electronic sound in order to imitate the technological approach of Kraftwerk's albums and adapt it to a disco concept. U2 recorded a cover version of "Neon Lights" as did Simple Minds. U2 included "Neon Lights" as the B-side of their 2004 single "Vertigo". Simple minds included theirs on an all-cover tunes album by same name. LCD Soundsystem song called "Get Innocuous!" is built on a sample of "The Robots". Rammstein also covered their song "Das Modell", releasing it as a non-album single in 1997. John Frusciante cited the ability to experiment of the group as an inspiration when working in a recording studio. The 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski features a fictional band called "Autobahn", a parody of Kraftwerk and their 1974 record Autobahn.
In January 2018, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the 30-minute documentary Kraftwerk: Computer Love which examined "how Kraftwerk's classic album Computer World has changed people's lives." In October 2019, Kraftwerk were nominated for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for 2020.
On May 12, 2021, Kraftwerk were announced as an official inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the Class of 2021.
Band members
Current members
Ralf Hütter – lead vocals, vocoder, synthesizers, keyboards (1969–1983, 1986–present); organ, drums and percussion, bass guitar, guitar (1969–1974)
Fritz Hilpert – electronic percussion (1987–present)
Henning Schmitz – electronic percussion, live keyboards (1991–present)
Falk Grieffenhagen – live video technician (2012–present)
Former members
Florian Schneider – synthesizers, background vocals, vocoder, computer-generated vocals, acoustic and electronic flute, live saxophone, percussion, electric guitar, violin (1969–2008, died 2020)
Karl Bartos – electronic percussion, vocals, live vibraphone, live keyboards (1975–1990)
Wolfgang Flür – electronic percussion (1973–1987)
Stefan Pfaffe – live video technician (2008–2012)
Fernando Abrantes – electronic percussion, synthesizer (1991)
Klaus Röder – electric guitar, electronic violin (1974)
Emil Schult – electric guitar, electronic violin (1973)
Michael Rother – electric guitar (1971)
Klaus Dinger – drums (1969–1971; died 2008)
Plato Kostic (a.k.a. Plato Riviera) – bass guitar (1973)
Andreas Hohmann – drums (1969)
Thomas Lohmann – drums (1969)
Eberhard Kranemann – bass guitar (1969–1971)
Houschäng Nejadépour – electric guitar (1969–1971)
Peter Schmidt – drums (1969–1971)
Karl "Charly" Weiss – drums (1969; died 2009)
Timeline
Discography
Kraftwerk (1970)
Kraftwerk 2 (1972)
Ralf und Florian (1973)
Autobahn (1974)
Radio-Activity (1975)
Trans-Europe Express (1977)
The Man-Machine (1978)
Computer World (1981)
Electric Café (1986)
The Mix (1991)
Tour de France Soundtracks (2003)
Videography
Romantic Warriors IV: Krautrock (2019)
Awards and achievements
Grammy Awards
|-
| 1982
| "Computer World"
| Best Rock Instrumental Performance
|
|-
| 2006
| Minimum-Maximum
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
|
|-
| 2014
| Kraftwerk
| Lifetime Achievement Award
|
|-
| 2015
| Autobahn
| Hall of Fame
|
|-
| rowspan="2"| 2018
| rowspan="2"| 3-D The Catalogue
| Best Dance/Electronic Album
|
|-
| Best Surround Sound Album
|
|}
See also
List of ambient music artists
References
Sources
Further reading
Tim Barr, "Kraftwerk: From Düsseldorf to the Future" 1998
Vanni Neri & Giorgio Campani: "A Short Introduction to Kraftwerk" 2000
Albert Koch: "Kraftwerk: The Music Makers" 2002
Kraftwerk: "Kraftwerk Photobook" 2005 (included in the Minimum-Maximum Notebook set)
Sean Albiez and David Pattie: Kraftwerk: Music Non-Stop 2010
David Buckley: Kraftwerk: Publikation 2012
Toby Mott: Kraftwerk: 45 RPM 2012
The Guardian: Kraftwerk sue makers of Kraftwerk charging devices 2015
External links
Kraftwerk: Free Listening at SoundCloud
ANTENNA – The International Kraftwerk Mailing List (since 2003 September)
Kraftwerk FAQ – The Kraftwerk FAQ: Frequently asked questions and answers
BBC Radio 1 Kraftwerk documentary– 2006 Kraftwerk documentary with Alex Kapranos
Kraftwerk Vinyl Site for collectors
AllKraftwerk
Mats's Kraftwerk Page with lots of images and information, since 1997
Good evening Kraftwerk, good evening Stuttgart! by the European Space Agency
1969 establishments in West Germany
1970 establishments in West Germany
Art pop musicians
Astralwerks artists
Avant-garde music groups
Electropop groups
Elektra Records artists
German electronic rock musical groups
EMI Records artists
German electronic music groups
German synthpop groups
Grammy Award winners for dance and electronic music
Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners
Krautrock musical groups
Musical groups established in 1969
Musical groups from Düsseldorf
Musical quartets
Mute Records artists
Parlophone artists
Progressive pop musicians
Philips Records artists
Vertigo Records artists
Warner Records artists | [
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16800 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalmar%20Union | Kalmar Union | The Kalmar Union (Danish, Norwegian, and ; Finnish: Kalmarin unioni; ) was a personal union in Scandinavia, agreed at Kalmar in Sweden, that from 1397 to 1523 joined under a single monarch the three kingdoms of Denmark, Sweden (then including most of present-day Finland), and Norway, together with Norway's overseas colonies (then including Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland).
The union was not quite continuous; there were several short interruptions. Legally, the countries remained separate sovereign states. However, their domestic and foreign policies were directed by a common monarch. Gustav Vasa's election as King of Sweden on 6 June 1523, and his triumphant entry into Stockholm eleven days later, marked Sweden's final secession from the Kalmar Union. Formally, the Danish king acknowledged Sweden's independence in 1524 at the Treaty of Malmö.
Inception
The union was the work of Scandinavian aristocracy wishing to counter the influence of the Hanseatic League. More personally, it was achieved by Queen Margaret I of Denmark (1353–1412). She was a daughter of King Valdemar IV and had married King Haakon VI of Norway and Sweden, who was the son of King Magnus IV of Sweden, Norway and Scania. Margaret succeeded in having her son Olaf recognized as heir to the throne of Denmark. In 1376 Olaf inherited the crown of Denmark from his maternal grandfather as King Olaf II, with his mother as guardian; when Haakon VI died in 1380, Olaf also inherited the crown of Norway.
Margaret became regent of Denmark and Norway when Olaf died in 1387, leaving her without an heir. She adopted her great-nephew Eric of Pomerania the same year. The following year, 1388, Swedish nobles called upon her help against King Albert. After Margaret defeated Albert in 1389, her heir Eric was proclaimed King of Norway. Eric was subsequently elected King of Denmark and Sweden in 1396. His coronation was held in Kalmar on 17 June 1397.
One main impetus for its formation was to block German expansion northward into the Baltic region. The main reason for its failure to survive was the perpetual struggle between the monarch, who wanted a strong unified state, and the Swedish and Danish nobility, which did not.
The Union lost territory when Orkney and Shetland were pledged by Christian I, in his capacity as King of Norway, as security against the payment of the dowry of his daughter Margaret, betrothed to James III of Scotland in 1468. The money was never paid, so in 1472 the islands were annexed by the Kingdom of Scotland.
Internal conflict
Diverging interests (especially the Swedish nobility's dissatisfaction with the dominant role played by Denmark and Holstein) gave rise to a conflict that hampered the union in several intervals starting in the 1430s. The Engelbrekt rebellion, which started in 1434, led to the overthrow of King Erik (in Denmark and Sweden in 1439, as well as Norway in 1442). The aristocracy sided with the rebels.
King Erik's foreign policy, in particular his conflict with the Hanseatic League, necessitated greater taxation and complicated exports of iron, which in turn may have precipitated the rebellion. Discontent with the nature of King Erik's regime has also been cited as a motivating factor for the rebellion. King Erik also lacked a standing army and had limited tax revenues.
The death of Christopher of Bavaria (he had no heirs) in 1448 ended a period in which the three Scandinavian kingdoms were uninterruptedly united for a lengthy period. Karl Knutsson Bonde ruled as king of Sweden (1448–1457, 1464–1465 and 1467–1470), and Christian of Oldenburg was king of Denmark (1448–1481), Norway (1450–1481) and Sweden (1457–1464). Karl and Christian fought over control of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, leading Christian to seize Sweden from him from 1457 to 1464 before a rebellion led Karl to become king of Sweden again. When Karl died in 1470, Christian tried to become king of Sweden again, but was defeated by Sten Sture the Elder in the 1471 battle of Brunkeberg outside Stockholm.
After the death of Karl, Sweden was mostly ruled by a series of "protectors of the realm" (riksföreståndare), with the Danish kings attempting to assert control. First of these protectors was Sten Sture, who kept Sweden under his control until 1497 when the Swedish nobility deposed him. A peasant rebellion led Sture to become regent of Sweden again in 1501. After his death, Sweden was ruled by Svante Nilsson (1504–1512) and then Svante's son Sten Sture the Younger (1512–1520). Sten Sture the Younger was killed in the 1520 Battle of Bogesund when the Danish king Christian II invaded Sweden with a large army. Subsequently, Christian II was crowned King of Sweden, and supporters of Sten Sture were executed en masse in the Stockholm Bloodbath.
Swedish War of Liberation
After the Stockholm Bloodbath, Gustav Vasa (whose father, Erik Johansson, was executed) travelled to Dalarna, where he organized a rebellion against Christian II. Vasa made an alliance with Lübeck and successfully conquered most of Sweden. He was crowned King of Sweden in 1523, effectively ending the Kalmar Union. After the Northern Seven Years' War, the Treaty of Stettin (1570) saw Frederick II renounce all claims to Sweden.
End and aftermath
One of the last structures of the Union remained until 1536/1537 when the Danish Privy Council, in the aftermath of the Count's Feud, unilaterally declared Norway to be a Danish province: this did not happen; instead, Norway became a hereditary kingdom in a real union with Denmark. Norway continued to remain a part of the realm of Denmark–Norway under the Oldenburg dynasty for nearly three centuries, until it was transferred to Sweden in 1814. The ensuing union between Sweden and Norway lasted until 1905, when prince Carl of Denmark, a grandson of both the incumbent king of Denmark and the late king of Sweden, was elected king of Norway.
According to historian Sverre Bagge, the Kalmar Union was unstable for several reasons:
The power of national aristocracies.
The varied effects of the Kalmar Union's foreign policy on the three kingdoms. For example, attempted expansions into Northern Germany may have served Danish interests, but was costly to Swedes who had to pay higher taxes and were unable to export iron to the Hanseatic League.
Geography complicated control of the union in the event of rebellion.
The large territorial size of the union complicated control.
Denmark was not strong enough to force Norway and Sweden to stay within the union.
See also
List of Kalmar Union monarchs
Scandinavian royal lineage chart for the time around the founding of the Kalmar Union
Notes
References
Further reading
Albrectsen, Esben, Fælleskabet bliver til. Danmark-Norge 1380–1814, vol. 1, 1380–1536, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1997
Carlsson, Gottfrid, Medeltidens nordiska unionstanke, Stockholm: Gebers, 1945
Christensen, Aksel E., Kalmarunionen og nordisk politik 1319–1439, Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1980
Enemark, Poul, Fra Kalmarbrev til Stockholms blodbad. Den nordiske trestatsunions epoke 1397–1521, Copenhagen: Nordisk ministerråd/Gyldendal/Liber, 1979
Harald Gustafsson (2017) The Forgotten Union, Scandinavian Journal of History, 42:5, 560–582.
Dick Harrison (2020) Kalmarunionen
Helle, Knut, ed. The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Volume 1: Prehistory to 1520 (2003) excerpt and text search
Imsen, Steinar. "The Union of Calmar: Northern Great Power or Northern German Outpost?" in Christopher Ocker, ed. Politics and Reformations: Communities, Polities, Nations, and Empires (BRILL, 2007) pp 471–90 online
Kirby, David. Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period. The Baltic World 1492–1772 (1990)
Larsson, Lars-Olof, Kalmarunionens tid. Från drottning Margareta till Kristian II, Stockholm: Rabén-Prisma, 1997
Roberts, Michael. The Early Vasas: A History of Sweden 1523–1611 (1968)
External links
The Kalmar Union – Maps of the Kalmar Union
1397 establishments in Europe
14th century in Denmark
14th century in Finland
14th century in Norway
14th century in Sweden
14th-century establishments in Denmark
14th-century establishments in Norway
14th-century establishments in Sweden
1520s disestablishments in Sweden
15th century in Denmark
15th century in Finland
15th century in Norway
15th century in Sweden
16th century in Denmark
16th century in Finland
16th century in Norway
16th century in Sweden
16th-century disestablishments in Denmark
16th-century disestablishments in Norway
Danish monarchy
Kalmar
Norwegian monarchy
Personal unions
Scandinavian history
States and territories established in 1397
Swedish monarchy | [
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16801 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krav%20Maga | Krav Maga | Krav Maga (; Hebrew: , , lit. "contact combat") is a military self-defense and fighting system developed for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli security forces derived from a combination of techniques sourced from Boxing, Wrestling, Judo, Aikido, and Karate. Krav Maga is known for its focus on real-world situations and its extreme efficiency. It was derived from the street-fighting experience of Hungarian-Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler, while defending the Jewish quarter against fascist groups in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, during the mid-to-late 1930s. In the late 1940s, after his immigration to Mandatory Palestine, he began to provide lessons on combat training to what was to become the IDF.
From the outset, the original concept of Krav Maga was to take the most effective and practical techniques of other fighting styles (originally European boxing, wrestling, and street fighting) and to make them rapidly teachable to military conscripts. Krav Maga has a philosophy emphasizing aggression, and simultaneous defensive and offensive maneuvers. Krav Maga has been used by the Israel Defense Forces' special forces units, security forces and by regular infantry units. Closely related variations have been developed and adopted by Israeli law enforcement and intelligence organizations. There are several organizations teaching variations of Krav Maga internationally. In addition, there are two types of this martial art; one type is used in the Israeli security forces and one type is in civilian use.
Etymology
The name in Hebrew can be translated as "contact combat". The three letter root of the first word is k-r-v (), and the noun derived from this root can be translated as either "combat" or "battle". Maga is a participle form derived from the verb root "n-g-'a" () which means "contact" or "touch".
Basic principles
Like most martial arts, Krav Maga encourages students to avoid physical confrontation. If this is impossible or unsafe, it promotes finishing a fight as quickly and aggressively as possible. Attacks are aimed at the most vulnerable parts of the body, and training is not limited to techniques that avoid severe injury; some even permanently injure or cause death to the opponent.
Students learn to defend against all variety of attacks and are taught to counter in the quickest and most efficient way.
Ideas in Krav Maga include:
Simultaneous defense and attack
Developing physical aggression (not to be confused with emotional aggression or anger), with the view that physical aggression is the most important component in a fight
Continuing to strike the opponent until they are completely incapacitated.
Attacking pre-emptively or counterattacking as soon as possible
Using any objects at hand that could be used to hit an opponent.
Targeting attacks to the body's most vulnerable points, such as: the eyes, neck or throat, face, solar plexus, groin, ribs, knee, foot, fingers, liver, etc.
Using simple and easily repeatable strikes.
Maintaining awareness of surroundings while dealing with the threat in order to look for escape routes, further attackers, or objects that could be used to strike an opponent.
Developing muscle memory for quick reaction in fight.
Recognizing the importance of and expanding on instinctive response under stress
Training can also cover the study and development of situational awareness to develop an understanding of one's surroundings, learning to understand the psychology of a street confrontation, and identifying potential threats before an attack occurs. It may also cover physical and verbal methods to avoid violence whenever possible. It also teaches mental toughness, using controlled scenarios to strengthen mental fortitude in order for students to control the impulse and not do something rash, but instead attack only when necessary and as a last resort.
Techniques
Some of the key focuses of techniques in Krav Maga are—as described above—effectiveness and instinctive response under stress. To that end, Krav Maga is an eclectic system that has not sought to replace existing effective techniques, taking what is useful from available systems, for example:
Strikes – as per karate, and boxing,
Take-downs and throws – per judo, aikido and wrestling
Ground work – per judo and wrestling
Escapes from chokes and holds – per judo, aikido, wrestling
Empty-hand weapon defenses – per aikido
History
Imre Lichtenfeld (also known as Imi S'de-Or) was born in 1910 in Budapest, Austro-Hungary to a Jewish family and grew up in Bratislava (Slovakia). Lichtenfeld became active in a wide range of sports, including gymnastics, wrestling, and boxing. In 1928, Lichtenfeld won the Slovak Youth Wrestling Championship, and in 1929 the adult championship (light and middle weight divisions). That same year, he also won the national boxing championship and an international gymnastics championship. During the ensuing decade, Lichtenfeld's athletic activities focused mainly on wrestling, both as a contestant and a trainer.
In the mid-1930s, anti-Semitic riots began to threaten the Jews of Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Lichtenfeld became the leader of a group of Jewish boxers and wrestlers who took to the streets to defend Jewish neighborhoods against the growing numbers of anti-Semitic Nazis. Lichtenfeld quickly discovered, however, that actual fighting was very different from competition fighting, and although boxing and wrestling were good sports, they were not always practical for the aggressive and brutal nature of street combat. It was then that he started to re-evaluate his ideas about fighting and started developing the skills and techniques that would eventually become Krav Maga. Having become a thorn in the side of the equally anti-Semitic local authorities, in 1940 Lichtenfeld left his home with his family and friends on the last refugee ship to escape Europe.
After making his way to Mandatory Palestine, Lichtenfeld joined the Haganah paramilitary organization. In 1944 Lichtenfeld began training fighters in his areas of expertise: physical fitness, swimming, wrestling, use of the knife, and defense against knife attacks. During this period, Lichtenfeld trained several elite units of the Haganah including Palmach (striking force of the Haganah and forerunner of the special units of the Israel Defense Forces) and the Pal-Yam, as well as groups of police officers.
In 1948, when the State of Israel was founded and the IDF was formed, Lichtenfeld became Chief Instructor for Physical Fitness and Krav Maga at the IDF School of Combat Fitness. He served in the IDF for about 20 years, during which time he developed and refined his unique method for self-defense and hand-to-hand combat. Self-defense was not a new concept, since nearly all martial arts had developed some form of defensive techniques in their quest for tournament or sport dominance. However, self-defense was based strictly upon the scientific and dynamic principles of the human body. In 1965 judo training was added as part of the Krav Maga training. Until 1968 there were no grades in Krav Maga. Then a trainee's grades were determined largely by his knowledge in judo.
In 1968 Eli Avikzar, Lichtenfeld's principal student and first black belt, began learning aikido. In 1971 Eli left for France, where he received a black belt in aikido. Upon his return, Avikzar started working as an instructor alongside Imi to integrate more traditional martial arts into krav maga. Then in 1974 Imre retired and gave Eli Avikzar control over the Krav Maga training center in Netanya. Shortly after, in 1976, Avikzar joined the permanent force of IDF, as head of the Krav Maga section. The role of Krav Maga in the army advanced greatly after Eli's appointment. More courses were given and every P.E. instructor was obliged to learn Krav Maga. Avikzar continued to develop Krav Maga within the IDF until his retirement in 1987. Up to this date, Eli had trained 80,000 male soldiers and 12,000 female soldiers.
Further pursuing excellence as a student of martial arts, Eli went to Germany in 1977 and received a black belt in aikido from the European Federation.<ref name="wincol.ac.il" In 1978 the Krav Maga association was established, and in 1989, as an active member of the judo association, Eli Avikzar helped to establish the professional and rank committees by founding the Israeli Krav Maga Association (IKMA or KAMI). Eli retired as the Chief Krav Maga instructor in 1987 and Boaz Aviram became the third person to hold the position, being the last head instructor to have studied directly with both Lichtenfeld and Avikzar.
Krav Maga in the Israeli government
The IDF offers a five-week Krav Maga instructor course. It has held an annual Krav Maga competition since May 2013.
Krav Maga for civilians
Upon Imi Lichtenfeld's retirement from the IDF, he decided to open a school and teach Krav Maga to civilians.
The first Krav Maga course took place at the Wingate Institute, Netanya, Israel, in 1971, under his direct supervision.
Lichtenfeld died in January 1998 in Netanya, Israel.
Grading system
Most of the Krav Maga organizations in Israel use Imi Lichtenfeld's colored belt grading system which is based upon the Judo ranking system. It starts with white belt, and then yellow, orange, green, blue, brown and black belts. Black belt students can move up the ranks from 1st to 9th Dan. The time and requirements for advancing have some differences between the organizations.
Other organizations that teach Krav Maga in and outside of Israel use similar grading systems.
A patch system was developed by Eyal Yanilov in the late 1980s. The grades are divided into three main categories; Practitioner, Graduate and Expert. Each of the categories, which are often abbreviated to their initials, has five ranks. Grades P1 through to P5 are the student levels and make up the majority of the Krav Maga community. After P5 are G1-G5, and in order to achieve Graduate level the student has to demonstrate a proficiency in all of the P level techniques before advancing.
Although there are some subtle differences, the various organizations teach the same core techniques and principles. Some other organizations have less formal grading ranks without belts or patches but do have levels by which students can monitor their progress.
Sparring
In some organizations sparring is slow and light until the student reaches G2 level. This takes approximately four to six years because rising one level in the Practitioner and Graduate categories takes at minimum half a year of consistent training. It is, however, more common to observe regular trainees grading only once a year from P3 and up.
Once in G2, students also do simulated "real" fighting with protective gear.
See also
Close-quarters combat
Jieitaikakutojutsu
Defendu
Combatives
References
External links
Hybrid martial arts
Israeli martial arts | [
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16802 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%20Katzenjammer%20Kids | The Katzenjammer Kids | The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by Rudolph Dirks in 1897 and later drawn by Harold Knerr for 35 years (1914 to 1949). It debuted December 12, 1897, in the American Humorist, the Sunday supplement of William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The comic strip was turned into a stage play in 1903. It inspired several animated cartoons and was one of 20 strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of U.S. commemorative postage stamps.
After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the Hearst organization and began a new strip, first titled Hans and Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids. It featured the same characters seen in The Katzenjammer Kids, which was continued by Knerr. The two separate versions of the strip competed with each other until 1979, when The Captain and the Kids ended its six-decade run. The Katzenjammer Kids published its last strip on January 1, 2006, but is still distributed in reprints by King Features Syndicate, making it the oldest comic strip still in syndication and the longest-running ever.
History
Creation and early years
The Katzenjammer Kids was inspired by Max and Moritz, a children's story of the 1860s by German author Wilhelm Busch.
Katzenjammer translates literally as the wailing of cats (i.e. "caterwaul") but is used to mean contrition after a failed endeavor or hangover in German (and, in the latter sense, in English too). Whereas Max & Moritz were grotesquely but comically put to death after seven destructive pranks, the Katzenjammer Kids and the other characters still thrive.
Dirks and Knerr
The Katzenjammer Kids was so popular that it became two competing comic strips and the subject of a lawsuit. This happened because Dirks, in 1912, wanted to take a break after drawing the strip for 15 years, but the Hearst newspaper syndicate would not allow it. Dirks left anyway, and the strip was taken over by Harold Knerr. Dirks' last strip appeared March 16, 1913. Dirks sued, and after a long legal battle, the Hearst papers were allowed to continue The Katzenjammer Kids, with Knerr as writer and artist. He took over permanently in the summer of 1914. However, Dirks was allowed to create an almost identical strip of his own for the rival Pulitzer newspapers, although he had to use a different name for the strip.
Initially named Hans und Fritz after the two naughty protagonist brothers, Dirks' new feature was called The Captain and the Kids from 1918 on. The Captain and the Kids was very similar to The Katzenjammer Kids in terms of content and characters, but Dirks had a looser and more verbal style than Knerr, who on the other hand often produced stronger, more direct gags and drawings. The Captain and the Kids soon proved equal in popularity to The Katzenjammer Kids. It was later distributed by the United Feature Syndicate, while Hearst's King Features distributed The Katzenjammer Kids.
1950s to the present
The Captain and the Kids expanded as a daily strip during the 1930s, but it had only a short run. However, the Sunday strip remained popular for decades. From 1946, Dirks' son, John Dirks, gradually began doing more of the work on The Captain and the Kids. They introduced new characters and plots during the 1950s, including a 1958 science fiction storyline about a brilliant inventor and alien invasions. Even as John Dirks took over most of the work, Rudolph Dirks signed the strip until his death in 1968. John Dirks' drawing shifted slightly towards a more square-formed line, though it maintained the original style until The Captain and the Kids ended its run in 1979.
Knerr continued drawing The Katzenjammer Kids until his death in 1949; the strip was then written and drawn by Charles H. "Doc" Winner (1949–56), with Joe Musial taking over in 1956. Musial was replaced on The Katzenjammer Kids by Mike Senich (1976–81), Angelo DeCesare (1981–86), and Hy Eisman (1986–2006). Now syndicated in reprint form, the strip is distributed internationally to some 50 newspapers and magazines. Eisman reused a lot of old gags and stories in later years.
Characters and story
The Katzenjammer Kids (three brothers in the first strip but soon reduced to two) featured Hans and Fritz, twins who rebelled against authority, particularly in the form of their mother, Mama; der Captain, a sailor who acted as a surrogate father; and der Inspector, a long-bearded school official. Other characters included John Silver, a pirate sea captain; the Herring Brothers, John Silver's three-man crew; and King Bongo, a primitive-living but sophisticated-acting black jungle monarch who ruled a tropical island.
As originally created, Mama's husband was Papa Katzenjammer, her brother was the bungling sailor Heinie, and der Captain–introduced in 1902—was Heinie's boss. After a short while, Papa was dropped from the strip without explanation, with der Captain taking over his function. By the 1940s, der Captain and Mama were often presented as a de facto couple.
The immediate Katzenjammer family usually spoke stereotypical German-accented English. When first introduced, der Captain and der Inspector did not, but within months adopted the accent as well. During World Wars I and II, when the United States was at war with Germany, the Katzenjammer family were temporarily presented as Dutch.
The defining theme of the strip was Hans and Fritz pranking der Captain, der Inspector, Mama, or all three, for which the boys were often spanked, but sometimes shifted the blame to others. Other stories involved der Captain taking the Katzenjammers on treasure hunts or cargo voyages, sometimes aided by or competing with John Silver. Still other stories involved King Bongo enlisting the Katzenjammers to run errands or go on missions related to his kingdom; in both strips, by the mid-1930s, the family lived on Bongo's island—usually called Squee-Jee—and were readily at hand.
Knerr's version of The Katzenjammer Kids introduced several major new characters in the 1930s. Miss Twiddle, a pompous tutor, and her brainy niece Lena came to stay permanently with the Katzenjammers in early 1936. Later in the year Twiddle's ex-pupil, "boy prodigy" Rollo Rhubarb joined them. The ever-smug Rollo is always trying to outwit Hans and Fritz, but his cunning plans often backfire.
The Captain and the Kids also introduced some new characters. Ginga Dun is a snooty Indian trader who can outsmart almost anyone and only talks in verse. Captain Bloodshot is a pint-sized pirate rival of John Silver's.
Notable features of the later strips, at both syndicates, included a more constructive relationship between the Captain and the boys, who sometimes bickered like friendly rivals rather than pranking each other outright. The King and his people, also in both strips, were now Polynesian rather than African.
In other media
The Katzenjammer Kids
The Katzenjammer Kids characters initially appeared outside comics in a handful of live-action silent films, with the first released in 1898. This first film, titled The Katzenjammer Kids In School, was made for the Biograph Company by William George Bitzer. This film was followed in 1900 by another Bitzer-Biograph film, The Katzenjammer Kids in Love.
Between December 1916 and August 1918, a total of 37 Katzenjammer Kids silent cartoon shorts were produced by William Randolph Hearst's own cartoon studio International Film Service, which adapted Hearst's well-known comic strips. The series was retired in 1918 at the height of the characters' popularity – partly because of the growing tension against titles with German associations after World War I. The comic strip was briefly renamed to The Shenanigan Kids around this time, and in 1920 another five cartoons were produced under this title. All Katzenjammer Kids/Shenanigan Kids cartoons from International Film Services were directed (and most likely also animated) by Gregory La Cava.
The Katzenjammer Kids also appeared (along with other King Features comic-strip stars) in Hal Seeger’s TV special Popeye Meets the Man Who Hated Laughter (1972).
The Captain and the Kids
In 1938, The Captain and the Kids became the subject of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's first self-produced series of theatrical short subject cartoons, directed by William Hanna, Bob Allen and Friz Freleng: The Captain and the Kids. Unlike the strip, which focused most of all on the gruesomely amusing antics of Hans and Fritz, the MGM cartoons often centered on the Captain. The series was overall unsuccessful, ending after one year and a total of 15 cartoons. Following that cancellation, Freleng returned to Warner Bros., where he had earlier been an animation director. The Captain was voiced by Billy Bletcher, Mama was voiced by Martha Wentworth, and John Silver was voiced by Mel Blanc.
The Captain and the Kids version of the strip was also animated for television as a back-up segment on Filmation's Archie's TV Funnies in 1971, and in the spinoff series Fabulous Funnies from 1978-1979.
Cultural legacy
In July 2009 a street in Heide, Germany (where Dirks was born) was named after the cartoonist.
The Katzenjammer Kids
The Katzenjammer Kids are still very popular in the Scandinavian countries Denmark and Norway (where they are known as Knoll og Tott); in both countries, an annual comic book has been published almost every Christmas since 1911 (the only exceptions reportedly being the years 1913 and 1944). For the most part, Harold Knerr's version of the comic is used in these annual comic books. In Sweden, the annual Katzenjammer Kids comic book was also a tradition for many years, from 1928–1977.
Art Clokey, the creator of Gumby, has claimed that The Katzenjammer Kids inspired the creation of Gumby's nemeses, The Block-heads.
Playboy frequently featured in its late 1970s-early 1980s "Playboy Funnies" pages a spoof of The Katzenjammer Kids, called The Krautzenbummer Kids, with adult-style gags.
French dark cabaret band Katzenjammer Kabarett is thus named in a homage to the strip, as is the Norwegian symphonic pop/swing group Katzenjammer.
Deputy Barney Fife makes a reference to the Katzenjammer Kids in the third season of The Andy Griffith Show, in the episode titled "Andy and the New Mayor." Also referenced in season 1 episode “the inspector”, and season 3, "Andy's Rich Girfriend."
In the film, Inglourious Basterds, Lt. Archie Hicox is interviewed by Gen. Ed Fenech. Reading his briefing notes, Gen. Fenech states, "It says here that you speak German fluently." To this, Lt. Hicox reassures the general by saying, "Like a Katzenjammer Kid."
In the documentary film, Poto and Cabengo, narrator Jean-Pierre Gorin makes references to The Katzenjammer Kids.
The Captain and the Kids
The Captain and the Kids has been published as an annual comic book in Norway since 1987. When no more reproducible material was available in 2001, Per Sanderhage, the editor of the Danish comic strip agency PIB, negotiated a deal where Ferd'nand cartoonist Henrik Rehr would redraw 32 pages loosely based on old magazine clippings for the annual. This arrangement continues to this day.
See also
References
External links
King Features
The Katzenjammer Kids at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on September 9, 2015.
The Captain and the Kids at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on April 9, 2012.
American comic strips
1890s comics
Comic strips started in the 1890s
2006 comics endings
Gag-a-day comics
Child characters in comics
Male characters in comics
Fictional German people
Fictional twins
Fictional tricksters
Comic strip duos
Articles containing video clips
American comics adapted into films
Comics adapted into animated series
Comics adapted into plays
Comics characters introduced in 1897
1897 establishments in the United States
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animated short films
Nautical comics | [
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16803 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketone | Ketone | In chemistry, a ketone is a functional group with the structure R2C=O, where R can be a variety of carbon-containing substituents. Ketones contain a carbonyl group (a carbon-oxygen double bond). The simplest ketone is acetone (R = R' = methyl), with the formula CH3C(O)CH3. Many ketones are of great importance in biology and in industry. Examples include many sugars (ketoses), many steroids (e.g., testosterone), and the solvent acetone.
Nomenclature and etymology
The word ketone is derived from Aketon, an old German word for 'acetone'.
According to the rules of IUPAC nomenclature, ketone names are derived by changing the suffix -ane of the parent alkane to -anone. Typically, the position of the carbonyl group is denoted by a number, but traditional nonsystematic names are still generally used for the most important ketones, for example acetone and benzophenone. These nonsystematic names are considered retained IUPAC names, although some introductory chemistry textbooks use systematic names such as "2-propanone" or "propan-2-one" for the simplest ketone (C H3−CO−CH3) instead of "acetone".
The derived names of ketones are obtained by writing separately the names of the two alkyl groups attached to the carbonyl group, followed by "ketone" as a separate word. The names of the alkyl groups are written in order of increasing complexity: for example, methyl ethyl ketone. According to the rules of IUPAC nomenclature, the alkyl groups are written alphabetically, i.e., ethyl methyl ketone. When the two alkyl groups are the same, the prefix "di-" is added before the name of alkyl group. The positions of other groups are indicated by Greek letters, the α-carbon being the atom adjacent to carbonyl group.
Although used infrequently, oxo is the IUPAC nomenclature for the oxo group (=O) and used as prefix when the ketone does not have the highest priority. Other prefixes, however, are also used. For some common chemicals (mainly in biochemistry), keto refer to the ketone functional group.
Structure and properties
The ketone carbon is often described as "sp2 hybridized", a description that includes both their electronic and molecular structure. Ketones are trigonal planar around the ketonic carbon, with C−C−O and C−C−C bond angles of approximately 120°. Ketones differ from aldehydes in that the carbonyl group (CO) is bonded to two carbons within a carbon skeleton. In aldehydes, the carbonyl is bonded to one carbon and one hydrogen and are located at the ends of carbon chains. Ketones are also distinct from other carbonyl-containing functional groups, such as carboxylic acids, esters and amides.
The carbonyl group is polar because the electronegativity of the oxygen is greater than that for carbon. Thus, ketones are nucleophilic at oxygen and electrophilic at carbon. Because the carbonyl group interacts with water by hydrogen bonding, ketones are typically more soluble in water than the related methylene compounds. Ketones are hydrogen-bond acceptors. Ketones are not usually hydrogen-bond donors and cannot hydrogen-bond to themselves. Because of their inability to serve both as hydrogen-bond donors and acceptors, ketones tend not to "self-associate" and are more volatile than alcohols and carboxylic acids of comparable molecular weights. These factors relate to the pervasiveness of ketones in perfumery and as solvents.
Classes of ketones
Ketones are classified on the basis of their substituents. One broad classification subdivides ketones into symmetrical and unsymmetrical derivatives, depending on the equivalency of the two organic substituents attached to the carbonyl center. Acetone and benzophenone (C6H5C(O)C6H5) are symmetrical ketones. Acetophenone (C6H5C(O)CH3) is an unsymmetrical ketone.
Diketones
Many kinds of diketones are known, some with unusual properties. The simplest is diacetyl (CH3C(O)C(O)CH3), once used as butter-flavoring in popcorn. Acetylacetone (pentane-2,4-dione) is virtually a misnomer (inappropriate name) because this species exists mainly as the monoenol CH3C(O)CH=C(OH)CH3. Its enolate is a common ligand in coordination chemistry.
Unsaturated ketones
Ketones containing alkene and alkyne units are often called unsaturated ketones. The most widely used member of this class of compounds is methyl vinyl ketone, CH3C(O)CH=CH2, which is useful in the Robinson annulation reaction. Lest there be confusion, a ketone itself is a site of unsaturation; that is, it can be hydrogenated.
Cyclic ketones
Many ketones are cyclic. The simplest class have the formula (CH2)nCO, where n varies from 2 for cyclopropanone to the tens. Larger derivatives exist. Cyclohexanone, a symmetrical cyclic ketone, is an important intermediate in the production of nylon. Isophorone, derived from acetone, is an unsaturated, asymmetrical ketone that is the precursor to other polymers. Muscone, 3-methylpentadecanone, is an animal pheromone. Another cyclic ketone is cyclobutanone, having the formula C4H6O.
Keto-enol tautomerization
Ketones that have at least one alpha-hydrogen, undergo keto-enol tautomerization; the tautomer is an enol. Tautomerization is catalyzed by both acids and bases. Usually, the keto form is more stable than the enol. This equilibrium allows ketones to be prepared via the hydration of alkynes.
Acid/base properties of ketones
C-H bonds adjacent to the carbonyl in ketones are more acidic (pKa ≈ 20) than the C-H bonds in alkane (pKa ≈ 50). This difference reflects resonance stabilization of the enolate ion that is formed upon deprotonation. The relative acidity of the α-hydrogen is important in the enolization reactions of ketones and other carbonyl compounds. The acidity of the α-hydrogen also allows ketones and other carbonyl compounds to react as nucleophiles at that position, with either stoichiometric and catalytic base. Using very strong bases like lithium diisopropylamide (LDA, pKa of conjugate acid ~36) under non-equilibrating conditions (–78 °C, 1.1 equiv LDA in THF, ketone added to base), the less-substituted kinetic enolate is generated selectively, while conditions that allow for equilibration (higher temperature, base added to ketone, using weak or insoluble bases, e.g., NaOEt in EtOH, or NaH) provides the more-substituted thermodynamic enolate.
Ketones are also weak bases, undergoing protonation on the carbonyl oxygen in the presence of Brønsted acids. Ketonium ions (i.e., protonated ketones) are strong acids, with pKa values estimated to be somewhere between –5 and –7. Although acids encountered in organic chemistry are seldom strong enough to fully protonate ketones, the formation of equilibrium concentrations of protonated ketones is nevertheless an important step in the mechanisms of many common organic reactions, like the formation of an acetal, for example. Acids as weak as pyridinium cation (as found in pyridinium tosylate) with a pKa of 5.2 are able to serve as catalysts in this context, despite the highly unfavorable equilibrium constant for protonation (Keq < 10−10).
Characterization
An aldehyde differs from a ketone in that it has a hydrogen atom attached to its carbonyl group, making aldehydes easier to oxidize. Ketones do not have a hydrogen atom bonded to the carbonyl group, and are therefore more resistant to oxidation. They are oxidized only by powerful oxidizing agents which have the ability to cleave carbon–carbon bonds.
Spectroscopy
Ketones and aldehydes absorb strongly in the infra-red spectrum near 1700 cm−1. The exact position of the peak depends on the substituents.
Whereas 1H NMR spectroscopy is generally not useful for establishing the presence of a ketone, 13C NMR spectra exhibit signals somewhat downfield of 200 ppm depending on structure. Such signals are typically weak due to the absence of nuclear Overhauser effects. Since aldehydes resonate at similar chemical shifts, multiple resonance experiments are employed to definitively distinguish aldehydes and ketones.
Qualitative organic tests
Ketones give positive results in Brady's test, the reaction with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine to give the corresponding hydrazone. Ketones may be distinguished from aldehydes by giving a negative result with Tollens' reagent or with Fehling's solution. Methyl ketones give positive results for the iodoform test. Ketones also give positive results when treated with m-dinitrobenzene in presence of dilute sodium hydroxide to give violet coloration.
Synthesis
Many methods exist for the preparation of ketones in industrial scale and academic laboratories. Ketones are also produced in various ways by organisms; see the section on biochemistry below.
In industry, the most important method probably involves oxidation of hydrocarbons, often with air. For example, a billion kilograms of cyclohexanone are produced annually by aerobic oxidation of cyclohexane. Acetone is prepared by air-oxidation of cumene.
For specialized or small scale organic synthetic applications, ketones are often prepared by oxidation of secondary alcohols:
R2CH(OH) + O → R2C=O + H2O
Typical strong oxidants (source of "O" in the above reaction) include potassium permanganate or a Cr(VI) compound. Milder conditions make use of the Dess–Martin periodinane or the Moffatt–Swern methods.
Many other methods have been developed, examples include:
By geminal halide hydrolysis.
By hydration of alkynes. Such processes occur via enols and require the presence of an acid and HgSO4. Subsequent enol–keto tautomerization gives a ketone. This reaction always produces a ketone, even with a terminal alkyne, the only exception being the hydration of acetylene, which produces acetaldehyde.
From Weinreb Amides using stoichiometric organometallic reagents.
Aromatic ketones can be prepared in the Friedel–Crafts acylation, the related Houben–Hoesch reaction, and the Fries rearrangement.
Ozonolysis, and related dihydroxylation/oxidative sequences, cleave alkenes to give aldehydes or ketones, depending on alkene substitution pattern.
In the Kornblum–DeLaMare rearrangement ketones are prepared from peroxides and base.
In the Ruzicka cyclization, cyclic ketones are prepared from dicarboxylic acids.
In the Nef reaction, ketones form by hydrolysis of salts of secondary nitro compounds.
In the Fukuyama coupling, ketones form from a thioester and an organozinc compound.
By the reaction of an acid chloride with organocadmium compounds or organocopper compounds.
The Dakin–West reaction provides an efficient method for preparation of certain methyl ketones from carboxylic acids.
Ketones can also be prepared by the reaction of Grignard reagents with nitriles, followed by hydrolysis.
By decarboxylation of carboxylic anhydride.
Ketones can be prepared from haloketones in reductive dehalogenation of halo ketones.
In ketonic decarboxylation symmetrical ketones are prepared from carboxylic acids.
Oxidation of amines with iron(III) chloride.
Hydrolysis of unsaturated secondary amides, β-Keto acid esters, or β-diketones.
Acid-catalysed rearrangement of 1,2-diols.
Reactions
Ketones engage in many organic reactions. The most important reactions follow from the susceptibility of the carbonyl carbon toward nucleophilic addition and the tendency for the enolates to add to electrophiles.
Nucleophilic additions include in approximate order of their generality:
With water (hydration) gives geminal diols, which are usually not formed in appreciable (or observable) amounts
With an acetylide to give the α-hydroxyalkyne
With ammonia or a primary amine gives an imine
With secondary amine gives an enamine
With Grignard and organolithium reagents to give, after aqueous workup, a tertiary alcohol
With an alcohols or alkoxides to gives the hemiketal or its conjugate base. With a diol to the ketal. This reaction is employed to protect ketones.
With sodium amide resulting in C–C bond cleavage with formation of the amide RCONH2 and the alkane or arene R'H, a reaction called the Haller–Bauer reaction.
With strong oxidizing agents to give carboxylic acids.
Electrophilic addition, reaction with an electrophile gives a resonance stabilized cation
With phosphonium ylides in the Wittig reaction to give the alkenes
With thiols to give the thioacetal
With hydrazine or 1-disubstituted derivatives of hydrazine to give hydrazones.
With a metal hydride gives a metal alkoxide salt, hydrolysis of which gives the alcohol, an example of ketone reduction
With halogens to form an α-haloketone, a reaction that proceeds via an enol (see Haloform reaction)
With heavy water to give an α-deuterated ketone
Fragmentation in photochemical Norrish reaction
Reaction of 1,4-aminodiketones to oxazoles by dehydration in the Robinson–Gabriel synthesis
In the case of aryl–alkyl ketones, with sulfur and an amine give amides in the Willgerodt reaction
With hydroxylamine to produce oximes
With reducing agents to form secondary alcohols
With peroxy acids to form esters in the Baeyer–Villiger oxidation
Biochemistry
Ketones are pervasive in nature. The formation of organic compounds in photosynthesis occurs via the ketone ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate. Many sugars are ketones, known collectively as ketoses. The best known ketose is fructose; it exists as a cyclic hemiketal, which masks the ketone functional group. Fatty acid synthesis proceeds via ketones. Acetoacetate is an intermediate in the Krebs cycle which releases energy from sugars and carbohydrates.
In medicine, acetone, acetoacetate, and beta-hydroxybutyrate are collectively called ketone bodies, generated from carbohydrates, fatty acids, and amino acids in most vertebrates, including humans. Ketone bodies are elevated in the blood (ketosis) after fasting, including a night of sleep; in both blood and urine in starvation; in hypoglycemia, due to causes other than hyperinsulinism; in various inborn errors of metabolism, and intentionally induced via a ketogenic diet, and in ketoacidosis (usually due to diabetes mellitus). Although ketoacidosis is characteristic of decompensated or untreated type 1 diabetes, ketosis or even ketoacidosis can occur in type 2 diabetes in some circumstances as well.
Applications
Ketones are produced on massive scales in industry as solvents, polymer precursors, and pharmaceuticals. In terms of scale, the most important ketones are acetone, methylethyl ketone, and cyclohexanone. They are also common in biochemistry, but less so than in organic chemistry in general. The combustion of hydrocarbons is an uncontrolled oxidation process that gives ketones as well as many other types of compounds.
Toxicity
Although it is difficult to generalize on the toxicity of such a broad class of compounds, simple ketones are, in general, not highly toxic. This characteristic is one reason for their popularity as solvents. Exceptions to this rule are the unsaturated ketones such as methyl vinyl ketone with of 7 mg/kg (oral).
See also
Diketone
Ketone bodies
Thioketone
Triketone
Ynone
Ketosis
References
External links
Functional groups | [
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16804 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketene | Ketene | A ketene is an organic compound of the form R′R″C=C=O, where R and R' are two arbitrary monovalent chemical groups (or two separate substitution sites in the same molecule). The name may also refer to the specific compound ethenone , the simplest ketene.
Although they are highly useful, most ketenes are unstable. When used as reagents in a chemical procedure, they are typically generated when needed, and consumed as soon as (or while) they are produced.
History
Ketenes were first studied as a class by Hermann Staudinger before 1905.
Ketenes were systematically investigated by Hermann Staudinger in 1905 in the form of diphenylketene (conversion of -chlorodiphenyl acetyl chloride with zinc). Staudinger was inspired by the first examples of reactive organic intermediates and stable radicals discovered by Moses Gomberg in 1900 (compounds with triphenylmethyl group).
Properties
Ketenes are highly electrophilic at the carbon atom bonded with the heteroatom, due to its sp character. Ketene can be formed with different heteroatom bonded to the sp carbon atom, such as O, S or Se, respectively named ketene, thioketene and selenoketene.
Ethenone, the simplest ketene, has different experimental lengths for each of the double bonds; the C=O bond is 1,160Å and the C=C bond is 1,314Å. The angle between the two H atoms is 121.5°, similar to the theoretically ideal angle formed in alkenes between sp2 carbon atom and H substituents.
Ketenes are unstable and cannot be stored. In the absence of nucleophiles with which to react, ethenone dimerises to give β-lactone, a cyclic ester. If the ketene is disubstituted, the dimerisation product is a substituted cyclobutadione. For monosubstituted ketenes, the dimerisation could afford either the ester or the diketone product.
Synthesis
Ethenone can be generated by pyrolysis (thermal cracking) of acetone:
CH3−CO−CH3 → CH2=C=O + CH4
This reaction is called the Schmidlin ketene synthesis.
Other ketenes can be prepared from acyl chlorides by an elimination reaction in which HCl is lost:
In this reaction, a base, usually triethylamine, removes the acidic proton alpha to the carbonyl group, inducing the formation of the carbon-carbon double bond and the loss of a chloride ion:
Ketenes can also be formed from α-diazoketones by Wolff rearrangement.
Another way to generate ketenes is through flash vacuum thermolysis (FVT) with 2-pyridylamines. Plüg and Wentrup developed a method in 1997 that improved on FVT reactions to produce ketenes with a stable FVT that is moisture insensitive, using mild conditions (480 °C). The N-pyridylamines are prepared via a condensation with R-malonates with N-amino(pyridene) and DCC as the solvent.
A more robust method for preparing ketenes is the carbonylation of metal-carbenes, and in situ reaction of the thus produced highly reactive ketenes with suitable reagents such as imines, amines, or alcohols. This method is an efficient one‐pot tandem protocol of the carbonylation of α‐diazocarbonyl compounds and a variety of N‐tosylhydrazones catalysed by Co(II)–porphyrin metalloradicals leading to the formation of ketenes, which subsequently react with a variety of nucleophiles and imines to form esters, amides and β‐lactams. This system has a broad substrate scope and can be applied to various combinations of carbene precursors, nucleophiles and imines.
Reactions and applications
Due to their cumulated double bonds, ketenes are very reactive.
Formation of carboxylic acid esters
By reaction with alcohols, carboxylic acid esters are formed:
Formation of carboxylic anhydrides
Ketenes react with a carboxylic acids to form carboxylic acid anhydrides:
Formation of carboxylic acid amides
Ketenes react with ammonia to primary amides:
The reaction of ketenes with primary amines produces secondary amides:
Ketenes react with secondary amines to give tertiary amides:
Hydrolysis
By reaction with water, carboxylic acids are formed from ketenes
Formation of enol esters
Enol esters are formed from ketenes with enolisable carbonyl compounds. The following example shows the reaction of ethenone with acetone to form a propen-2-yl acetate:
Dimerisation
At room temperature, ketene quickly dimerizes to diketene, but the ketene can be recovered by heating:
[2+2]-cycloaddition
Ketenes can react with alkenes, carbonyl compounds, carbodiimides and imines in a [2+2] cycloaddition. The example shows the synthesis of a β-lactam by the reaction of a ketene with an imine (see Staudinger synthesis):
Applications
Ketenes are generally very reactive, and participate in various cycloadditions. One important process is the dimerization to give propiolactones. A specific example is the dimerization of the ketene of stearic acid to afford alkyl ketene dimers, which are widely used in the paper industry. AKD's react with the hydroxyl groups on the cellulose via esterification reaction.
They will also undergo [2+2] cycloaddition reactions with electron-rich alkynes to form cyclobutenones, or carbonyl groups to form beta-lactones. With imines, beta-lactams are formed. This is the Staudinger synthesis, a facile route to this important class of compounds. With acetone, ketene reacts to give isopropenyl acetate.
A variety of hydroxylic compounds can add as nucleophiles, forming either enol or ester products. As examples, a water molecule easily adds to ketene to give 1,1-dihydroxyethene and acetic anhydride is produced by the reaction of acetic acid with ketene. Reactions between diols (HO−R−OH) and bis-ketenes (O=C=CH−R′−CH=C=O) yield polyesters with a repeat unit of (−O−R−O−CO−R′−CO).
Ethyl acetoacetate, an important starting material in organic synthesis, can be prepared using a diketene in reaction with ethanol. They directly form ethyl acetoacetate, and the yield is high when carried out under controlled circumstances; this method is therefore used industrially.
See also
Ynol
Thioketene
References
External links
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16806 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kistvaen | Kistvaen | A kistvaen or cistvaen is a tomb or burial chamber formed from flat stone slabs in a box-like shape. If set completely underground, it may be covered by a tumulus. The word is derived from the Welsh cist (chest) and maen (stone). The term originated in relation to Celtic structures, typically pre-Christian, but in antiquarian scholarship of the 19th and early 20th centuries it was sometimes applied to similar structures outside the Celtic world.
One of the most numerous kinds of kistvaen are the Dartmoor kistvaens. These often take the form of small rectangular pits about 3 ft. (0.9 m) long by 2 feet (0.6 m) wide. The kistvaens were usually covered with a mound of earth and surrounded by a circle of small stones. When a body was placed in the kistvaen, it was usually lain in a contracted position. Sometimes however the body was cremated with the ashes placed in a cinerary urn.
Kistvaens and Celtic saints
Kistvaens are also found associated with holy sites or burial places of early Celtic saints, who are often semi-legendary. Saints associated with kistvaens include Callwen daughter of Brychan, Geraint, Begnet, and Melangell. Foundation remains of stone slab- or gable-shrines, or the cella memoriae of Mediterranean origin, may sometimes have been misunderstood in an earlier era of scholarship as a kistvaen, and the subject is complicated by this "woolly nomenclature."
See also
Dolmen, a type of above-ground burial chamber
References
External links
Dartmoor tomb raiders
Dartmoor Kistvaen
Dartmoor
Burial monuments and structures
Archaeology of death
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16807 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim%20Stanley%20Robinson | Kim Stanley Robinson | Kim Stanley Robinson (born March 23, 1952) is an American writer of science fiction. He has published twenty-two novels and numerous short stories but is best known for his Mars trilogy. His work has been translated into 24 languages. Many of his novels and stories have ecological, cultural, and political themes and feature scientists as heroes. Robinson has won numerous awards, including the Hugo Award for Best Novel, the Nebula Award for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award. Robinson's work has been labeled by The Atlantic as "the gold-standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing." According to an article in The New Yorker, Robinson is "generally acknowledged as one of the greatest living science-fiction writers."
Early life and education
Robinson was born in Waukegan, Illinois. He moved to Southern California as a child.
In 1974, he earned a B.A. in literature from the University of California, San Diego. In 1975, he earned an M.A. in English from Boston University. In 1978 Robinson moved to Davis, California, to take a break from his graduate studies at the University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego). During this time, he worked as a bookseller for Orpheus Books. He also taught freshman composition and other courses at University of California, Davis.
In 1982, Robinson earned a PhD in English from UC San Diego. His initial PhD advisor was literary critic and Marxist scholar Fredric Jameson, who told Robinson to read works by Philip K. Dick. Jameson described Dick to Robinson as "the greatest living American writer". Robinson's doctoral thesis, The Novels of Philip K. Dick, was published in 1984 and a hardcover version was published by UMI Research Press.
Career
In 2009, Robinson was an instructor at the Clarion Workshop. In 2010, he was the guest of honor at the 68th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Melbourne. In April 2011, Robinson presented at the second annual Rethinking Capitalism conference, held at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among other points made, his talk addressed the cyclical nature of capitalism.
Robinson was appointed as a Muir Environmental Fellow in 2011 by John Muir College at UC San Diego.
Major themes
Nature and culture
Sheldon Brown described Robinson's novels as ways to explore how nature and culture continuously reformulate one another; Three Californias Trilogy as California in the future; Washington DC undergoing the impact of climate change in the Science in the Capital series; or Mars as a stand-in for Earth in the Mars trilogy to think about re-engineering on a global scale, both social and natural conditions.
Ecological sustainability
Virtually all of Robinson's novels have an ecological component; sustainability is one of his primary themes (a strong contender for the primary theme would be the nature of a plausible utopia). The Orange County trilogy is about the way in which the technological intersects with the natural, highlighting the importance of keeping the two in balance. In the Mars trilogy, one of the principal divisions among the population of Mars is based on dissenting views on terraforming. Colonists debate whether or not the barren Martian landscape has a similar ecological or spiritual value when compared with a living ecosphere like Earth's. Forty Signs of Rain has an entirely ecological thrust, taking global warming as its principal subject.
Economic and social justice
Robinson's work often explores alternatives to modern capitalism. In the Mars trilogy, it is argued that capitalism is an outgrowth of feudalism, which could be replaced in the future by a more democratic economic system. Worker ownership and cooperatives figure prominently in Green Mars and Blue Mars as replacements for traditional corporations. The Orange County trilogy explores similar arrangements; Pacific Edge includes the idea of attacking the legal framework behind corporate domination to promote social egalitarianism. Tim Kreider writes in the New Yorker that Robinson may be our greatest political novelist and describes how Robinson uses the Mars trilogy as a template for a credible utopia. His works have made reference to real-world examples of economic organization that have been cited as examples of alternatives to conventional capitalist structures, such as the Mondragon Corporation and the Kerala model.
Robinson's writing also reflects an interest in economic models that reject the growth-oriented basis of capitalism: Robert Markley has identified the work of Murray Bookchin as an influence on his thinking, as well as steady-state economics.
Robinson's work often portrays characters struggling to preserve and enhance the world around them in an environment characterized by individualism and entrepreneurialism, often facing the political and economic authoritarianism of corporate power acting in this environment. Robinson has been described as anti-capitalist, and his work often portrays a form of frontier capitalism that promotes egalitarian ideals that closely resemble socialist systems, but faced with a capitalism that is maintained by entrenched hegemonic corporations. In particular, his Martian Constitution draws upon social democratic ideals explicitly emphasizing a community-participation element in political and economic life.
Robinson's works often portray the worlds of tomorrow in a manner similar to the mythologized American Western frontier, showing a sentimental affection for the freedom and wildness of the frontier. This aesthetic includes a preoccupation with competing models of political and economic organization.
The environmental, economic, and social themes in Robinson's oeuvre stand in marked contrast to the right-libertarian science fiction prevalent in much of the genre (Robert A. Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle being prominent examples). He has been described as "one of America's best-selling […] left-wing novelists" and his work has been called "probably the most successful attempt to reach a mass audience with an anti-capitalist utopian vision since Ursula K. Le Guin's 1974 novel, The Dispossessed".
Scientists as heroes
Robinson's work often features scientists as heroes. They are portrayed in a mundane way compared to most work featuring scientists: rather than being adventurers or action heroes, Robinson's scientists become critically important because of research discoveries, networking and collaboration with other scientists, political lobbying, or becoming public figures. Robinson captures the joy of scientists as they work at something they care about. Robert Markley has argued that Robinson "views science as the model for a utopian politics... Even in Robinson’s novels that don’t seem to be sci-fi, like Shaman, the inductive method, the collective search for greater knowledge about the world that can be put to use for the good for all, is front and center". The Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt rely heavily on the idea that scientists must take responsibility for ensuring public understanding and responsible use of their discoveries. Robinson's scientists often emerge as the best people to direct public policy on important environmental and technological questions, of which politicians are often ignorant.
Climate change and global warming
Related to Robinson's focus on the environment are his themes of the imminent catastrophe of global warming and the need to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the present day. His 2012 novel 2312 explores the detrimental, long-term effects of climate change, which include food shortages, global instability, mass extinction, and sea level rise that has drowned many major coastal cities. The novel condemns the people of the period it calls "the Dithering", from 2005 to 2060, for failing to address climate change and thereby causing mass suffering and death in the future. Robinson and his work accuse global capitalism for the failure to address climate change. In his 2017 novel New York 2140 Robinson explores the themes of climate change and global warming, setting the novel in the year 2140 when the New York City he imagines is beset by a sea level rise that submerges half of the city. Climate change is also the focus of his Science in the Capital series and his 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future.
Awards and honors
Asteroid 72432 Kimrobinson discovered by astronomer Donald P. Pray in 2001, was named in his honor. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on April 22, 2016 ().
In 2008, Time magazine named Robinson a "Hero of the Environment" for his optimistic focus on the future.
Personal life
Robinson and his wife have two sons. Robinson has lived in Washington, D.C., California, and during some of the 1980s, in Switzerland. At times, Robinson was a stay-at-home dad. He later moved to Davis, California, in a cohousing community.
Robinson has described himself as an avid backpacker with the Sierra Nevada serving as his home range and a big influence on how he sees the world.
Politically, Robinson identifies as a democratic socialist, and in a February 2019 interview mentioned he is a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America. He has also remarked that libertarianism has never "[made] any sense to me, nor sounds attractive as a principle."
Works
References
External links
KimStanleyRobinson.info – unofficial site
Short descriptions of K.S. Robinson's novels
All of Kim Stanley Robinson's audio interviews on the podcast The Future And You (in which he describes his expectations of the future)
Guardian interview with K.S. Robinson (Wednesday September 14, 2005)
"Comparative Planetology: an Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson" at BLDGBLOG
Complete list of sci-fi award wins and nominations by novel
Interview on the SciFiDimensions Podcast (original webpage down; link to archive.org version of page.)
"Terraforming Earth", essay by KSR at Slate, December 4, 2012
Worldwatch Institute State of the World – Kim Stanley Robinson, 04/16/2013 Washington, DC
Kim Stanley Robinson discusses Marxism, scientism and bureaucrats with The Dig podcast.
1952 births
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American novelists
21st-century American male writers
21st-century American novelists
American alternate history writers
American democratic socialists
American humanists
American male novelists
American science fiction writers
American social commentators
Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni
Cultural critics
Environmental fiction writers
Hugo Award-winning writers
Members of the Democratic Socialists of America
Nebula Award winners
Novelists from California
Novelists from Illinois
Living people
People from Davis, California
People from Waukegan, Illinois
Philosophers of culture
Philosophers of history
Philosophers of science
Philosophers of technology
Social critics
Social philosophers
University of California, San Diego alumni
World Fantasy Award-winning writers
Writers of historical fiction set in the modern age
Writers of historical fiction set in the Middle Ages
Writers of historical fiction set in the early modern period | [
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16808 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King%20Arthur | King Arthur | King Arthur (, , ) was a legendary British leader who, according to medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the late 5th and early 6th centuries. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of Welsh and English folklore and literary invention, and modern historians generally agree that he is unhistorical. The sparse historical background of Arthur is gleaned from various sources, including the Annales Cambriae, the Historia Brittonum, and the writings of Gildas. Arthur's name also occurs in early poetic sources such as Y Gododdin.
Arthur is a central figure in the legends making up the Matter of Britain. The legendary Arthur developed as a figure of international interest largely through the popularity of Geoffrey of Monmouth's fanciful and imaginative 12th-century Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain). In some Welsh and Breton tales and poems that date from before this work, Arthur appears either as a great warrior defending Britain from human and supernatural enemies or as a magical figure of folklore, sometimes associated with the Welsh otherworld Annwn. How much of Geoffrey's Historia (completed in 1138) was adapted from such earlier sources, rather than invented by Geoffrey himself, is unknown.
Although the themes, events and characters of the Arthurian legend varied widely from text to text, and there is no one canonical version, Geoffrey's version of events often served as the starting point for later stories. Geoffrey depicted Arthur as a king of Britain who defeated the Saxons and established a vast empire. Many elements and incidents that are now an integral part of the Arthurian story appear in Geoffrey's Historia, including Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, the magician Merlin, Arthur's wife Guinevere, the sword Excalibur, Arthur's conception at Tintagel, his final battle against Mordred at Camlann, and final rest in Avalon.
The 12th-century French writer Chrétien de Troyes, who added Lancelot and the Holy Grail to the story, began the genre of Arthurian romance that became a significant strand of medieval literature. In these French stories, the narrative focus often shifts from King Arthur himself to other characters, such as various Knights of the Round Table. Arthurian literature thrived during the Middle Ages but waned in the centuries that followed, until it experienced a major resurgence in the 19th century. In the 21st century, the legend continues to have prominence, not only in literature but also in adaptations for theatre, film, television, comics and other media.
Historicity
The historical basis for King Arthur has been long debated by scholars. One school of thought, citing entries in the Historia Brittonum (History of the Britons) and Annales Cambriae (Welsh Annals), saw Arthur as a genuine historical figure, a Romano-British leader who fought against the invading Anglo-Saxons some time in the late 5th to early 6th century.
The Historia Brittonum, a 9th-century Latin historical compilation attributed in some late manuscripts to a Welsh cleric called Nennius, contains the first datable mention of King Arthur, listing twelve battles that Arthur fought. These culminate in the Battle of Badon, where he is said to have single-handedly killed 960 men. Recent studies, however, question the reliability of the Historia Brittonum.
The other text that seems to support the case for Arthur's historical existence is the 10th-century Annales Cambriae, which also link Arthur with the Battle of Badon. The Annales date this battle to 516–518, and also mention the Battle of Camlann, in which Arthur and Medraut (Mordred) were both killed, dated to 537–539. These details have often been used to bolster confidence in the Historia's account and to confirm that Arthur really did fight at Badon.
Problems have been identified, however, with using this source to support the Historia Brittonums account. The latest research shows that the Annales Cambriae was based on a chronicle begun in the late 8th century in Wales. Additionally, the complex textual history of the Annales Cambriae precludes any certainty that the Arthurian annals were added to it even that early. They were more likely added at some point in the 10th century and may never have existed in any earlier set of annals. The Badon entry probably derived from the Historia Brittonum.
This lack of convincing early evidence is the reason many recent historians exclude Arthur from their accounts of sub-Roman Britain. In the view of historian Thomas Charles-Edwards, "at this stage of the enquiry, one can only say that there may well have been an historical Arthur [but ...] the historian can as yet say nothing of value about him". These modern admissions of ignorance are a relatively recent trend; earlier generations of historians were less sceptical. The historian John Morris made the putative reign of Arthur the organising principle of his history of sub-Roman Britain and Ireland, The Age of Arthur (1973). Even so, he found little to say about a historical Arthur.
Partly in reaction to such theories, another school of thought emerged which argued that Arthur had no historical existence at all. Morris's Age of Arthur prompted the archaeologist Nowell Myres to observe that "no figure on the borderline of history and mythology has wasted more of the historian's time". Gildas's 6th-century polemic De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae (On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain), written within living memory of Badon, mentions the battle but does not mention Arthur. Arthur is not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or named in any surviving manuscript written between 400 and 820. He is absent from Bede's early-8th-century Ecclesiastical History of the English People, another major early source for post-Roman history that mentions Badon. The historian David Dumville wrote: "I think we can dispose of him [Arthur] quite briefly. He owes his place in our history books to a 'no smoke without fire' school of thought ... The fact of the matter is that there is no historical evidence about Arthur; we must reject him from our histories and, above all, from the titles of our books."
Some scholars argue that Arthur was originally a fictional hero of folklore—or even a half-forgotten Celtic deity—who became credited with real deeds in the distant past. They cite parallels with figures such as the Kentish Hengist and Horsa, who may be totemic horse-gods that later became historicised. Bede ascribed to these legendary figures a historical role in the 5th-century Anglo-Saxon conquest of eastern Britain. It is not even certain that Arthur was considered a king in the early texts. Neither the Historia nor the Annales calls him "rex": the former calls him instead "dux bellorum" (leader of wars) and "miles" (soldier).
The consensus among academic historians today is that there is no solid evidence for his historical existence. However, because historical documents for the post-Roman period are scarce, a definitive answer to the question of Arthur's historical existence is unlikely. Sites and places have been identified as "Arthurian" since the 12th century, but archaeology can confidently reveal names only through inscriptions found in secure contexts. The so-called "Arthur stone", discovered in 1998 among the ruins at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall in securely dated 6th-century contexts, created a brief stir but proved irrelevant. Other inscriptional evidence for Arthur, including the Glastonbury cross, is tainted with the suggestion of forgery.
Andrew Breeze has recently argued that Arthur was historical, and claimed to have identified the locations of his battles as well as the place and date of his death, (in the context of the Extreme weather events of 535–536) but his conclusions are disputed.
Several historical figures have been proposed as the basis for Arthur, ranging from Lucius Artorius Castus, a Roman officer who served in Britain in the 2nd or 3rd century, to sub-Roman British rulers such as Riotamus, Ambrosius Aurelianus, Owain Ddantgwyn, the Welsh king Enniaun Girt, and Athrwys ap Meurig. However, no convincing evidence for these identifications has emerged.
Name
The origin of the Welsh name "Arthur" remains a matter of debate. The most widely accepted etymology derives it from the Roman nomen gentile (family name) Artorius. Artorius itself is of obscure and contested etymology, but possibly of Messapian or Etruscan origin. Linguist Stephan Zimmer suggests Artorius possibly had a Celtic origin, being a Latinization of a hypothetical name *Artorījos, in turn derived from an older patronym *Arto-rīg-ios, meaning "son of the bear/warrior-king". This patronym is unattested, but the root, *arto-rīg, "bear/warrior-king", is the source of the Old Irish personal name Artrí. Some scholars have suggested it is relevant to this debate that the legendary King Arthur's name only appears as Arthur or Arturus in early Latin Arthurian texts, never as Artōrius (though Classical Latin Artōrius became Arturius in some Vulgar Latin dialects). However, this may not say anything about the origin of the name Arthur, as Artōrius would regularly become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh.
Another commonly proposed derivation of Arthur from Welsh arth "bear" + (g)wr "man" (earlier *Arto-uiros in Brittonic) is not accepted by modern scholars for phonological and orthographic reasons. Notably, a Brittonic compound name *Arto-uiros should produce Old Welsh *Artgur (where u represents the short vowel /u/) and Middle/Modern Welsh *Arthwr, rather than Arthur (where u is a long vowel /ʉː/). In Welsh poetry the name is always spelled Arthur and is exclusively rhymed with words ending in -ur—never words ending in -wr—which confirms that the second element cannot be [g]wr "man".
An alternative theory, which has gained only limited acceptance among professional scholars, derives the name Arthur from Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes, near Ursa Major or the Great Bear. Classical Latin Arcturus would also have become Art(h)ur when borrowed into Welsh, and its brightness and position in the sky led people to regard it as the "guardian of the bear" (which is the meaning of the name in Ancient Greek) and the "leader" of the other stars in Boötes.
Medieval literary traditions
The familiar literary persona of Arthur began with Geoffrey of Monmouth's pseudo-historical Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), written in the 1130s. The textual sources for Arthur are usually divided into those written before Geoffrey's Historia (known as pre-Galfridian texts, from the Latin form of Geoffrey, Galfridus) and those written afterwards, which could not avoid his influence (Galfridian, or post-Galfridian, texts).
Pre-Galfridian traditions
The earliest literary references to Arthur come from Welsh and Breton sources. There have been few attempts to define the nature and character of Arthur in the pre-Galfridian tradition as a whole, rather than in a single text or text/story-type. A 2007 academic survey led by Caitlin Green has identified three key strands to the portrayal of Arthur in this earliest material. The first is that he was a peerless warrior who functioned as the monster-hunting protector of Britain from all internal and external threats. Some of these are human threats, such as the Saxons he fights in the Historia Brittonum, but the majority are supernatural, including giant cat-monsters, destructive divine boars, dragons, dogheads, giants, and witches. The second is that the pre-Galfridian Arthur was a figure of folklore (particularly topographic or onomastic folklore) and localised magical wonder-tales, the leader of a band of superhuman heroes who live in the wilds of the landscape. The third and final strand is that the early Welsh Arthur had a close connection with the Welsh Otherworld, Annwn. On the one hand, he launches assaults on Otherworldly fortresses in search of treasure and frees their prisoners. On the other, his warband in the earliest sources includes former pagan gods, and his wife and his possessions are clearly Otherworldly in origin.
One of the most famous Welsh poetic references to Arthur comes in the collection of heroic death-songs known as Y Gododdin (The Gododdin), attributed to 6th-century poet Aneirin. One stanza praises the bravery of a warrior who slew 300 enemies, but says that despite this, "he was no Arthur" – that is, his feats cannot compare to the valour of Arthur. Y Gododdin is known only from a 13th-century manuscript, so it is impossible to determine whether this passage is original or a later interpolation, but John Koch's view that the passage dates from a 7th-century or earlier version is regarded as unproven; 9th- or 10th-century dates are often proposed for it. Several poems attributed to Taliesin, a poet said to have lived in the 6th century, also refer to Arthur, although these all probably date from between the 8th and 12th centuries. They include "Kadeir Teyrnon" ("The Chair of the Prince"), which refers to "Arthur the Blessed"; "Preiddeu Annwn" ("The Spoils of Annwn"), which recounts an expedition of Arthur to the Otherworld; and "Marwnat vthyr pen[dragon]" ("The Elegy of Uther Pen[dragon]"), which refers to Arthur's valour and is suggestive of a father-son relationship for Arthur and Uther that pre-dates Geoffrey of Monmouth.
Other early Welsh Arthurian texts include a poem found in the Black Book of Carmarthen, "Pa gur yv y porthaur?" ("What man is the gatekeeper?"). This takes the form of a dialogue between Arthur and the gatekeeper of a fortress he wishes to enter, in which Arthur recounts the names and deeds of himself and his men, notably Cei (Kay) and Bedwyr (Bedivere). The Welsh prose tale Culhwch and Olwen (), included in the modern Mabinogion collection, has a much longer list of more than 200 of Arthur's men, though Cei and Bedwyr again take a central place. The story as a whole tells of Arthur helping his kinsman Culhwch win the hand of Olwen, daughter of Ysbaddaden Chief-Giant, by completing a series of apparently impossible tasks, including the hunt for the great semi-divine boar Twrch Trwyth. The 9th-century Historia Brittonum also refers to this tale, with the boar there named Troy(n)t. Finally, Arthur is mentioned numerous times in the Welsh Triads, a collection of short summaries of Welsh tradition and legend which are classified into groups of three linked characters or episodes to assist recall. The later manuscripts of the Triads are partly derivative from Geoffrey of Monmouth and later continental traditions, but the earliest ones show no such influence and are usually agreed to refer to pre-existing Welsh traditions. Even in these, however, Arthur's court has started to embody legendary Britain as a whole, with "Arthur's Court" sometimes substituted for "The Island of Britain" in the formula "Three XXX of the Island of Britain". While it is not clear from the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae that Arthur was even considered a king, by the time Culhwch and Olwen and the Triads were written he had become Penteyrnedd yr Ynys hon, "Chief of the Lords of this Island", the overlord of Wales, Cornwall and the North.
In addition to these pre-Galfridian Welsh poems and tales, Arthur appears in some other early Latin texts besides the Historia Brittonum and the Annales Cambriae. In particular, Arthur features in a number of well-known vitae ("Lives") of post-Roman saints, none of which are now generally considered to be reliable historical sources (the earliest probably dates from the 11th century). According to the Life of Saint Gildas, written in the early 12th century by Caradoc of Llancarfan, Arthur is said to have killed Gildas's brother Hueil and to have rescued his wife Gwenhwyfar from Glastonbury. In the Life of Saint Cadoc, written around 1100 or a little before by Lifris of Llancarfan, the saint gives protection to a man who killed three of Arthur's soldiers, and Arthur demands a herd of cattle as wergeld for his men. Cadoc delivers them as demanded, but when Arthur takes possession of the animals, they turn into bundles of ferns. Similar incidents are described in the medieval biographies of Carannog, Padarn, and Eufflam, probably written around the 12th century. A less obviously legendary account of Arthur appears in the Legenda Sancti Goeznovii, which is often claimed to date from the early 11th century (although the earliest manuscript of this text dates from the 15th century and the text is now dated to the late 12th to early 13th century). Also important are the references to Arthur in William of Malmesbury's De Gestis Regum Anglorum and Herman's De Miraculis Sanctae Mariae Laudunensis, which together provide the first certain evidence for a belief that Arthur was not actually dead and would at some point return, a theme that is often revisited in post-Galfridian folklore.
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, completed , contains the first narrative account of Arthur's life. This work is an imaginative and fanciful account of British kings from the legendary Trojan exile Brutus to the 7th-century Welsh king Cadwallader. Geoffrey places Arthur in the same post-Roman period as do Historia Brittonum and Annales Cambriae. He incorporates Arthur's father Uther Pendragon, his magician advisor Merlin, and the story of Arthur's conception, in which Uther, disguised as his enemy Gorlois by Merlin's magic, sleeps with Gorlois's wife Igerna (Igraine) at Tintagel, and she conceives Arthur. On Uther's death, the fifteen-year-old Arthur succeeds him as King of Britain and fights a series of battles, similar to those in the Historia Brittonum, culminating in the Battle of Bath. He then defeats the Picts and Scots before creating an Arthurian empire through his conquests of Ireland, Iceland and the Orkney Islands. After twelve years of peace, Arthur sets out to expand his empire once more, taking control of Norway, Denmark and Gaul. Gaul is still held by the Roman Empire when it is conquered, and Arthur's victory leads to a further confrontation with Rome. Arthur and his warriors, including Kaius (Kay), Beduerus (Bedivere) and Gualguanus (Gawain), defeat the Roman emperor Lucius Tiberius in Gaul but, as he prepares to march on Rome, Arthur hears that his nephew Modredus (Mordred)—whom he had left in charge of Britain—has married his wife Guenhuuara (Guinevere) and seized the throne. Arthur returns to Britain and defeats and kills Modredus on the river Camblam in Cornwall, but he is mortally wounded. He hands the crown to his kinsman Constantine and is taken to the isle of Avalon to be healed of his wounds, never to be seen again.
How much of this narrative was Geoffrey's own invention is open to debate. He seems to have made use of the list of Arthur's twelve battles against the Saxons found in the 9th-century Historia Brittonum, along with the battle of Camlann from the Annales Cambriae and the idea that Arthur was still alive. Arthur's status as the king of all Britain seems to be borrowed from pre-Galfridian tradition, being found in Culhwch and Olwen, the Welsh Triads, and the saints' lives. Finally, Geoffrey borrowed many of the names for Arthur's possessions, close family, and companions from the pre-Galfridian Welsh tradition, including Kaius (Cei), Beduerus (Bedwyr), Guenhuuara (Gwenhwyfar), Uther (Uthyr) and perhaps also Caliburnus (Caledfwlch), the latter becoming Excalibur in subsequent Arthurian tales. However, while names, key events, and titles may have been borrowed, Brynley Roberts has argued that "the Arthurian section is Geoffrey's literary creation and it owes nothing to prior narrative." Geoffrey makes the Welsh Medraut into the villainous Modredus, but there is no trace of such a negative character for this figure in Welsh sources until the 16th century. There have been relatively few modern attempts to challenge the notion that the Historia Regum Britanniae is primarily Geoffrey's own work, with scholarly opinion often echoing William of Newburgh's late-12th-century comment that Geoffrey "made up" his narrative, perhaps through an "inordinate love of lying". Geoffrey Ashe is one dissenter from this view, believing that Geoffrey's narrative is partially derived from a lost source telling of the deeds of a 5th-century British king named Riotamus, this figure being the original Arthur, although historians and Celticists have been reluctant to follow Ashe in his conclusions.
Whatever his sources may have been, the immense popularity of Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae cannot be denied. Well over 200 manuscript copies of Geoffrey's Latin work are known to have survived, as well as translations into other languages. For example, 60 manuscripts are extant containing the Brut y Brenhinedd, Welsh-language versions of the Historia, the earliest of which were created in the 13th century. The old notion that some of these Welsh versions actually underlie Geoffrey's Historia, advanced by antiquarians such as the 18th-century Lewis Morris, has long since been discounted in academic circles. As a result of this popularity, Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae was enormously influential on the later medieval development of the Arthurian legend. While it was not the only creative force behind Arthurian romance, many of its elements were borrowed and developed (e.g., Merlin and the final fate of Arthur), and it provided the historical framework into which the romancers' tales of magical and wonderful adventures were inserted.
Romance traditions
The popularity of Geoffrey's Historia and its other derivative works (such as Wace's Roman de Brut) gave rise to a significant numbers of new Arthurian works in continental Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, particularly in France. It was not, however, the only Arthurian influence on the developing "Matter of Britain". There is clear evidence that Arthur and Arthurian tales were familiar on the Continent before Geoffrey's work became widely known (see for example, the Modena Archivolt), and "Celtic" names and stories not found in Geoffrey's Historia appear in the Arthurian romances. From the perspective of Arthur, perhaps the most significant effect of this great outpouring of new Arthurian story was on the role of the king himself: much of this 12th-century and later Arthurian literature centres less on Arthur himself than on characters such as Lancelot and Guinevere, Percival, Galahad, Gawain, Ywain, and Tristan and Iseult. Whereas Arthur is very much at the centre of the pre-Galfridian material and Geoffrey's Historia itself, in the romances he is rapidly sidelined. His character also alters significantly. In both the earliest materials and Geoffrey he is a great and ferocious warrior, who laughs as he personally slaughters witches and giants and takes a leading role in all military campaigns, whereas in the continental romances he becomes the roi fainéant, the "do-nothing king", whose "inactivity and acquiescence constituted a central flaw in his otherwise ideal society". Arthur's role in these works is frequently that of a wise, dignified, even-tempered, somewhat bland, and occasionally feeble monarch. So, he simply turns pale and silent when he learns of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere in the Mort Artu, whilst in Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, he is unable to stay awake after a feast and has to retire for a nap. Nonetheless, as Norris J. Lacy has observed, whatever his faults and frailties may be in these Arthurian romances, "his prestige is never—or almost never—compromised by his personal weaknesses ... his authority and glory remain intact."
Arthur and his retinue appear in some of the Lais of Marie de France, but it was the work of another French poet, Chrétien de Troyes, that had the greatest influence with regard to the development of Arthur's character and legend. Chrétien wrote five Arthurian romances between and 1190. Erec and Enide and Cligès are tales of courtly love with Arthur's court as their backdrop, demonstrating the shift away from the heroic world of the Welsh and Galfridian Arthur, while Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, features Yvain and Gawain in a supernatural adventure, with Arthur very much on the sidelines and weakened. However, the most significant for the development of the Arthurian legend are Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, which introduces Lancelot and his adulterous relationship with Arthur's queen Guinevere, extending and popularising the recurring theme of Arthur as a cuckold, and Perceval, the Story of the Grail, which introduces the Holy Grail and the Fisher King and which again sees Arthur having a much reduced role. Chrétien was thus "instrumental both in the elaboration of the Arthurian legend and in the establishment of the ideal form for the diffusion of that legend", and much of what came after him in terms of the portrayal of Arthur and his world built upon the foundations he had laid. Perceval, although unfinished, was particularly popular: four separate continuations of the poem appeared over the next half century, with the notion of the Grail and its quest being developed by other writers such as Robert de Boron, a fact that helped accelerate the decline of Arthur in continental romance. Similarly, Lancelot and his cuckolding of Arthur with Guinevere became one of the classic motifs of the Arthurian legend, although the Lancelot of the prose Lancelot () and later texts was a combination of Chrétien's character and that of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet. Chrétien's work even appears to feed back into Welsh Arthurian literature, with the result that the romance Arthur began to replace the heroic, active Arthur in Welsh literary tradition. Particularly significant in this development were the three Welsh Arthurian romances, which are closely similar to those of Chrétien, albeit with some significant differences: Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain is related to Chrétien's Yvain; Geraint and Enid, to Erec and Enide; and Peredur son of Efrawg, to Perceval.
Up to , continental Arthurian romance was expressed primarily through poetry; after this date the tales began to be told in prose. The most significant of these 13th-century prose romances was the Vulgate Cycle (also known as the Lancelot-Grail Cycle), a series of five Middle French prose works written in the first half of that century. These works were the Estoire del Saint Grail, the Estoire de Merlin, the Lancelot propre (or Prose Lancelot, which made up half the entire Vulgate Cycle on its own), the Queste del Saint Graal and the Mort Artu, which combine to form the first coherent version of the entire Arthurian legend. The cycle continued the trend towards reducing the role played by Arthur in his own legend, partly through the introduction of the character of Galahad and an expansion of the role of Merlin. It also made Mordred the result of an incestuous relationship between Arthur and his sister Morgause and established the role of Camelot, first mentioned in passing in Chrétien's Lancelot, as Arthur's primary court. This series of texts was quickly followed by the Post-Vulgate Cycle (), of which the Suite du Merlin is a part, which greatly reduced the importance of Lancelot's affair with Guinevere but continued to sideline Arthur, and to focus more on the Grail quest. As such, Arthur became even more of a relatively minor character in these French prose romances; in the Vulgate itself he only figures significantly in the Estoire de Merlin and the Mort Artu. During this period, Arthur was made one of the Nine Worthies, a group of three pagan, three Jewish and three Christian exemplars of chivalry. The Worthies were first listed in Jacques de Longuyon's Voeux du Paon in 1312, and subsequently became a common subject in literature and art.
The development of the medieval Arthurian cycle and the character of the "Arthur of romance" culminated in Le Morte d'Arthur, Thomas Malory's retelling of the entire legend in a single work in English in the late 15th century. Malory based his book—originally titled The Whole Book of King Arthur and of His Noble Knights of the Round Table—on the various previous romance versions, in particular the Vulgate Cycle, and appears to have aimed at creating a comprehensive and authoritative collection of Arthurian stories. Perhaps as a result of this, and the fact that Le Morte D'Arthur was one of the earliest printed books in England, published by William Caxton in 1485, most later Arthurian works are derivative of Malory's.
Decline, revival, and the modern legend
Post-medieval literature
The end of the Middle Ages brought with it a waning of interest in King Arthur. Although Malory's English version of the great French romances was popular, there were increasing attacks upon the truthfulness of the historical framework of the Arthurian romances – established since Geoffrey of Monmouth's time – and thus the legitimacy of the whole Matter of Britain. So, for example, the 16th-century humanist scholar Polydore Vergil famously rejected the claim that Arthur was the ruler of a post-Roman empire, found throughout the post-Galfridian medieval "chronicle tradition", to the horror of Welsh and English antiquarians. Social changes associated with the end of the medieval period and the Renaissance also conspired to rob the character of Arthur and his associated legend of some of their power to enthrall audiences, with the result that 1634 saw the last printing of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur for nearly 200 years. King Arthur and the Arthurian legend were not entirely abandoned, but until the early 19th century the material was taken less seriously and was often used simply as a vehicle for allegories of 17th- and 18th-century politics. Thus Richard Blackmore's epics Prince Arthur (1695) and King Arthur (1697) feature Arthur as an allegory for the struggles of William III against James II. Similarly, the most popular Arthurian tale throughout this period seems to have been that of Tom Thumb, which was told first through chapbooks and later through the political plays of Henry Fielding; although the action is clearly set in Arthurian Britain, the treatment is humorous and Arthur appears as a primarily comedic version of his romance character. John Dryden's masque King Arthur is still performed, largely thanks to Henry Purcell's music, though seldom unabridged.
Tennyson and the revival
In the early 19th century, medievalism, Romanticism, and the Gothic Revival reawakened interest in Arthur and the medieval romances. A new code of ethics for 19th-century gentlemen was shaped around the chivalric ideals embodied in the "Arthur of romance". This renewed interest first made itself felt in 1816, when Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur was reprinted for the first time since 1634. Initially, the medieval Arthurian legends were of particular interest to poets, inspiring, for example, William Wordsworth to write "The Egyptian Maid" (1835), an allegory of the Holy Grail. Pre-eminent among these was Alfred Tennyson, whose first Arthurian poem "The Lady of Shalott" was published in 1832. Arthur himself played a minor role in some of these works, following in the medieval romance tradition. Tennyson's Arthurian work reached its peak of popularity with Idylls of the King, however, which reworked the entire narrative of Arthur's life for the Victorian era. It was first published in 1859 and sold 10,000 copies within the first week. In the Idylls, Arthur became a symbol of ideal manhood who ultimately failed, through human weakness, to establish a perfect kingdom on earth. Tennyson's works prompted a large number of imitators, generated considerable public interest in the legends of Arthur and the character himself, and brought Malory's tales to a wider audience. Indeed, the first modernisation of Malory's great compilation of Arthur's tales was published in 1862, shortly after Idylls appeared, and there were six further editions and five competitors before the century ended.
This interest in the "Arthur of romance" and his associated stories continued through the 19th century and into the 20th, and influenced poets such as William Morris and Pre-Raphaelite artists including Edward Burne-Jones. Even the humorous tale of Tom Thumb, which had been the primary manifestation of Arthur's legend in the 18th century, was rewritten after the publication of Idylls. While Tom maintained his small stature and remained a figure of comic relief, his story now included more elements from the medieval Arthurian romances and Arthur is treated more seriously and historically in these new versions. The revived Arthurian romance also proved influential in the United States, with such books as Sidney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur (1880) reaching wide audiences and providing inspiration for Mark Twain's satire A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889). Although the 'Arthur of romance' was sometimes central to these new Arthurian works (as he was in Burne-Jones's "The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon", 1881–1898), on other occasions he reverted to his medieval status and is either marginalised or even missing entirely, with Wagner's Arthurian opera—Parsifal—providing a notable instance of the latter. Furthermore, the revival of interest in Arthur and the Arthurian tales did not continue unabated. By the end of the 19th century, it was confined mainly to Pre-Raphaelite imitators, and it could not avoid being affected by World War I, which damaged the reputation of chivalry and thus interest in its medieval manifestations and Arthur as chivalric role model. The romance tradition did, however, remain sufficiently powerful to persuade Thomas Hardy, Laurence Binyon and John Masefield to compose Arthurian plays, and T. S. Eliot alludes to the Arthur myth (but not Arthur) in his poem The Waste Land, which mentions the Fisher King.
Modern legend
In the latter half of the 20th century, the influence of the romance tradition of Arthur continued, through novels such as T. H. White's The Once and Future King (1958), Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave (1970) and its four sequels, Thomas Berger's tragicomic Arthur Rex and Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon (1982) in addition to comic strips such as Prince Valiant (from 1937 onward). Tennyson had reworked the romance tales of Arthur to suit and comment upon the issues of his day, and the same is often the case with modern treatments too. Stewart's first three Arthurian novels present the wizard Merlin as the central character, rather than Arthur, and The Crystal Cave is narrated by Merlin in the first person, whereas Bradley's tale takes a feminist approach to Arthur and his legend, in contrast to the narratives of Arthur found in medieval materials, and American authors often rework the story of Arthur to be more consistent with values such as equality and democracy. In John Cowper Powys's Porius: A Romance of the Dark Ages (1951), set in Wales in 499, just prior to the Saxon invasion, Arthur, the Emperor of Britain, is only a minor character, whereas Myrddin (Merlin) and Nineue, Tennyson's Vivien, are major figures. Myrddin's disappearance at the end of the novel is "in the tradition of magical hibernation when the king or mage leaves his people for some island or cave to return either at a more propitious or more dangerous time" (see King Arthur's messianic return). Powys's earlier novel, A Glastonbury Romance (1932) is concerned with both the Holy Grail and the legend that Arthur is buried at Glastonbury.
The romance Arthur has become popular in film and theatre as well. T. H. White's novel was adapted into the Lerner and Loewe stage musical Camelot (1960) and Walt Disney's animated film The Sword in the Stone (1963); Camelot, with its focus on the love of Lancelot and Guinevere and the cuckolding of Arthur, was itself made into a film of the same name in 1967. The romance tradition of Arthur is particularly evident and in critically respected films like Robert Bresson's Lancelot du Lac (1974), Éric Rohmer's Perceval le Gallois (1978) and John Boorman's Excalibur (1981); it is also the main source of the material used in the Arthurian spoof Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). The Crystal Cave was adapted as a TV series by the BBC in 1991, starring George Winter as Merlin.
Retellings and reimaginings of the romance tradition are not the only important aspect of the modern legend of King Arthur. Attempts to portray Arthur as a genuine historical figure of , stripping away the "romance", have also emerged. As Taylor and Brewer have noted, this return to the medieval "chronicle tradition" of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Historia Brittonum is a recent trend which became dominant in Arthurian literature in the years following the outbreak of the Second World War, when Arthur's legendary resistance to Germanic enemies struck a chord in Britain. Clemence Dane's series of radio plays, The Saviours (1942), used a historical Arthur to embody the spirit of heroic resistance against desperate odds, and Robert Sherriff's play The Long Sunset (1955) saw Arthur rallying Romano-British resistance against the Germanic invaders. This trend towards placing Arthur in a historical setting is also apparent in historical and fantasy novels published during this period.
Arthur has also been used as a model for modern-day behaviour. In the 1930s, the Order of the Fellowship of the Knights of the Round Table was formed in Britain to promote Christian ideals and Arthurian notions of medieval chivalry. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of boys and girls joined Arthurian youth groups, such as the Knights of King Arthur, in which Arthur and his legends were promoted as wholesome exemplars. However, Arthur's diffusion within modern culture goes beyond such obviously Arthurian endeavours, with Arthurian names being regularly attached to objects, buildings, and places. As Norris J. Lacy has observed, "The popular notion of Arthur appears to be limited, not surprisingly, to a few motifs and names, but there can be no doubt of the extent to which a legend born many centuries ago is profoundly embedded in modern culture at every level."
See also
Arthur's O'on
Artus Court
Historicity of King Arthur
King Arthur's family
King Arthur's messianic return
List of Arthurian characters
List of books about King Arthur
List of films based on Arthurian legend
List of legendary kings of Britain
Nine Worthies, of which Arthur was one
References
Citations
Sources
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{{Citation| author = BNF| author-link = Bibliothèque nationale de France| author-mask = Bibliothèque nationale de France [French National Library]| others = Illuminated by Évrard d'Espinques. Originally commissioned for Jacques d'Armagnac, now held by the BNF Department of Manuscripts (Paris)| date = c. 1475| title = Français 116: Lancelot en prose|trans-title=French MS 116: The Prose Lancelot| language = fr|url=http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b6000093b/f78.item}}
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Further reading
External links
International Arthurian Society
. An excellent site detailing Welsh Arthurian folklore.
. A detailed and comprehensive academic site, which includes numerous scholarly articles.
Arthuriana: The Journal of Arthurian Studies, published by Scriptorium Press for Purdue University, US. The only academic journal solely concerned with the Arthurian Legend; a good selection of resources and links.
. Provides texts and translations (of varying quality) of Welsh medieval sources, many of which mention Arthur.
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The Camelot Project, The University of Rochester. Provides valuable bibliographies and freely downloadable versions of Arthurian texts.
The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe. An online peer-reviewed journal that includes regular Arthurian articles; see especially the first issue.
Of Arthour and of Merlin translated and retold in modern English prose, the story from Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.2.1 (the Auchinleck MS) (from the Middle English of the Early English Text Society edition: O D McCrae-Gibson, 1973, Of Arthour and of Merlin'', 2 vols, EETS and Oxford University Press).
Alliterative Morte Arthure translated and retold in modern English alliterative prose, from Lincoln Cathedral MS 91, the Lincoln Thornton Manuscript.
Arthurian legend
British male characters in television
Burials at Glastonbury Abbey
Characters in works by Geoffrey of Monmouth
English folklore
English mythology
King Arthur's family
Legendary British kings
Male characters in animation
Male characters in film
Male characters in literature
Mythological swordfighters
People whose existence is disputed | [
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16810 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad%20Zuse | Konrad Zuse | Konrad Zuse (; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Zuse has often been regarded as the inventor of the modern computer.
Zuse was noted for the S2 computing machine, considered the first process control computer. In 1941, he founded one of the earliest computer businesses, producing the Z4, which became the world's first commercial computer. From 1943 to 1945 he designed Plankalkül, the first high-level programming language. In 1969, Zuse suggested the concept of a computation-based universe in his book Rechnender Raum (Calculating Space).
Much of his early work was financed by his family and commerce, but after 1939 he was given resources by the Nazi German government. Due to World War II, Zuse's work went largely unnoticed in the United Kingdom and the United States. Possibly his first documented influence on a US company was IBM's option on his patents in 1946.
Early life and education
Konrad Zuse was born in Berlin on 22 June 1910. In 1912, his family moved to East Prussian Braunsberg (now Braniewo in Poland), where his father was a postal clerk. Zuse attended the Collegium Hosianum in Braunsberg, and in 1923, the family moved to Hoyerswerda, where he passed his Abitur in 1928, qualifying him to enter university.
He enrolled in the Technische Hochschule Berlin (now Technical University of Berlin) and explored both engineering and architecture, but found them boring. Zuse then pursued civil engineering, graduating in 1935.
Career
After graduation, Zuse worked for the Ford Motor Company, using his artistic skills in the design of advertisements. He started work as a design engineer at the Henschel aircraft factory in Schönefeld near Berlin. This required the performance of many routine calculations by hand, which he found mind-numbing, leading him to dream of doing them by machine.
Beginning in 1935, he experimented in the construction of computers in his parents' flat on Wrangelstraße 38, moving with them into their new flat on Methfesselstraße 10, the street leading up the Kreuzberg, Berlin. Working in his parents' apartment in 1936, he produced his first attempt, the Z1, a floating point binary mechanical calculator with limited programmability, reading instructions from a perforated 35 mm film.
In 1937, Zuse submitted two patents that anticipated a von Neumann architecture. In 1938, he finished the Z1 which contained some 30,000 metal parts and never worked well due to insufficient mechanical precision. On 30 January 1944, the Z1 and its original blueprints were destroyed with his parents' flat and many neighbouring buildings by a British air raid in World War II.
Zuse completed his work entirely independently of other leading computer scientists and mathematicians of his day. Between 1936 and 1945, he was in near-total intellectual isolation.
1939–1945
In 1939, Zuse was called to military service, where he was given the resources to ultimately build the Z2. In September 1940 Zuse presented the Z2, covering several rooms in the parental flat, to experts of the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (DVL; i.e. German Research Institute for Aviation). The Z2 was a revised version of the Z1 using telephone relays.
In 1940, the German government began funding him and his company through the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA, Aerodynamic Research Institute, forerunner of the DLR), which used his work for the production of glide bombs. Zuse built the S1 and S2 computing machines, which were special purpose devices which computed aerodynamic corrections to the wings of radio-controlled flying bombs. The S2 featured an integrated analog-to-digital converter under program control, making it the first process-controlled computer.
In 1941 Zuse started a company, Zuse Apparatebau (Zuse Apparatus Construction), to manufacture his machines, renting a workshop on the opposite side in Methfesselstraße 7 and stretching through the block to Belle-Alliance Straße 29 (renamed and renumbered as Mehringdamm 84 in 1947).
In 1941, he improved on the basic Z2 machine, and built the Z3. On 12 May 1941 Zuse presented the Z3, built in his workshop, to the public. The Z3 was a binary 22-bit floating point calculator featuring programmability with loops but without conditional jumps, with memory and a calculation unit based on telephone relays. The telephone relays used in his machines were largely collected from discarded stock. Despite the absence of conditional jumps, the Z3 was a Turing complete computer. However, Turing-completeness was never considered by Zuse (who had practical applications in mind) and only demonstrated in 1998 (see History of computing hardware).
The Z3, the first fully operational electromechanical computer, was partially financed by German government-supported DVL, which wanted their extensive calculations automated. A request by his co-worker Helmut Schreyer—who had helped Zuse build the Z3 prototype in 1938—for government funding for an electronic successor to the Z3 was denied as "strategically unimportant".
In 1937, Schreyer had advised Zuse to use vacuum tubes as switching elements; Zuse at this time considered it a crazy idea ("Schnapsidee" in his own words). Zuse's workshop on Methfesselstraße 7 (with the Z3) was destroyed in an Allied Air raid in late 1943 and the parental flat with Z1 and Z2 on 30 January the following year, whereas the successor Z4, which Zuse had begun constructing in 1942 in new premises in the Industriehof on Oranienstraße 6, remained intact.
On 3 February 1945, aerial bombing caused devastating destruction in the Luisenstadt, the area around Oranienstraße, including neighbouring houses. This event effectively brought Zuse's research and development to a complete halt. The partially finished, telephone relay-based Z4 computer was then packed and moved from Berlin on 14 February, arriving in Göttingen approximately two weeks later.
These machines contributed to the Henschel Werke Hs 293 and Hs 294 guided missiles developed by the German military between 1941 and 1945, which were the precursors to the modern cruise missile. The circuit design of the S1 was the predecessor of Zuse's Z11. Zuse believed that these machines had been captured by occupying Soviet troops in 1945.
While working on his Z4 computer, Zuse realised that programming in machine code was too complicated. He started working on a PhD thesis, containing groundbreaking research years ahead of its time, mainly the first high-level programming language, Plankalkül ("Plan Calculus") and, as an elaborate example program, the first real computer chess engine.
1945–1995
After the 1945 Luisenstadt bombing, he fled from Berlin to the rural Allgäu. In the extreme deprivation of post-war Germany Zuse was unable to build computers.
Zuse founded one of the earliest computer companies: the Zuse-Ingenieurbüro Hopferau. Capital was raised in 1946 through ETH Zurich and an IBM option on Zuse's patents.
In 1947, according to the memoirs of the German computer pioneer Heinz Billing from the Max Planck Institute for Physics, there was a meeting between Alan Turing and Konrad Zuse in Göttingen. The encounter had the form of a colloquium. Participants were Womersley, Turing, Porter from England and a few German researchers like Zuse, Walther, and Billing. (For more details see Herbert Bruderer, Konrad Zuse und die Schweiz).
It was not until 1949 that Zuse was able to resume work on the Z4. He would show the computer to the mathematician Eduard Stiefel of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich) who then ordered one in 1950. In November 1949, Zuse KG was founded and that Z4 was delivered to ETH Zurich in July 1950, and proved very reliable.
In 1949, Zuse founded another company, Zuse KG in Haunetal-Neukirchen; in 1957 the company's head office moved to Bad Hersfeld. The Z4 was finished and delivered to the ETH Zurich, Switzerland in September 1950. At that time, it was the only working computer in continental Europe, and the second computer in the world to be sold, beaten only by the BINAC, which never worked properly after it was delivered. Other computers, all numbered with a leading Z, up to Z43, were built by Zuse and his company. Notable are the Z11, which was sold to the optics industry and to universities, and the Z22, the first computer with a memory based on magnetic storage.
Unable to do any hardware development, he continued working on the Plankalkül, eventually publishing some brief excerpts of his thesis in 1948 and 1959; the work in its entirety, however, remained unpublished until 1972. The PhD thesis was submitted at University of Augsburg, but rejected for formal reasons, because Zuse forgot to pay the 400 Mark university enrollment fee. The rejection did not bother him.
Plankalkül slightly influenced the design of ALGOL 58 but was itself implemented only in 1975 in a dissertation by Joachim Hohmann. Heinz Rutishauser, one of the inventors of ALGOL, wrote: "The very first attempt to devise an algorithmic language was undertaken in 1948 by K. Zuse. His notation was quite general, but the proposal never attained the consideration it deserved". Further implementations followed in 1998 and then in 2000 by a team from the Free University of Berlin. Donald Knuth suggested a thought experiment: What might have happened had the bombing not taken place, and had the PhD thesis accordingly been published as planned?
In 1956, Zuse began to work on a high precision, large format plotter. It was demonstrated at the 1961 Hanover Fair, and became well known also outside of the technical world thanks to Frieder Nake's pioneering computer art work. Other plotters designed by Zuse include the ZUSE Z90 and ZUSE Z9004.
In 1967, Zuse suggested that the universe itself is running on a cellular automaton or similar computational structure (digital physics); in 1969, he published the book Rechnender Raum (translated into English as Calculating Space).
In the last years of his life, Zuse conceptualized and created a purely mechanical, extensible, modular tower automaton he named "helix tower" ("Helixturm"). The structure is based on a gear drive that employs rotary motion (e.g. provided by a crank) to assemble modular components from a storage space, elevating a tube-shaped tower; the process is reversible, and inverting the input direction will deconstruct the tower and store the components. The Deutsches Museum restored Zuse's original 1:30 functional model that can be extended to a height of 2.7 m. Zuse intended the full construction to reach a height of 120 m, and envisioned it for use with wind power generators and radio transmission installations.
Between 1987 and 1989, Zuse recreated the Z1, suffering a heart attack midway through the project. It cost 800,000 DM, (approximately $500,000) and required four individuals (including Zuse) to assemble it. Funding for this retrocomputing project was provided by Siemens and a consortium of five companies.
Personal life
Konrad Zuse married Gisela Brandes in January 1945, employing a carriage, himself dressed in tailcoat and top hat and with Gisela in a wedding veil, for Zuse attached importance to a "noble ceremony". Their son Horst, the first of five children, was born in November 1945.
While Zuse never became a member of the Nazi Party, he is not known to have expressed any doubts or qualms about working for the Nazi war effort. Much later, he suggested that in modern times, the best scientists and engineers usually have to choose between either doing their work for more or less questionable business and military interests in a Faustian bargain, or not pursuing their line of work at all.
After Zuse retired, he focused on his hobby of painting.
Zuse was an atheist.
Zuse died on 18 December 1995 in Hünfeld, Hesse (near Fulda) from heart failure.
Awards and honours
Zuse received several awards for his work:
Werner von Siemens Ring in 1964 (together with Fritz Leonhardt and Walter Schottky)
Harry H. Goode Memorial Award in 1965 (together with George Stibitz)
Wilhelm Exner Medal in 1969.
Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1972 – Great Cross of Merit
Computer History Museum Fellow Award in 1999 "for his invention of the first program-controlled, electromechanical, digital computer and the first high-level programming language, Plankalkül."
The Zuse Institute Berlin is named in his honour.
The Konrad Zuse Medal of the Gesellschaft für Informatik, and the Konrad Zuse Medal of the Zentralverband des Deutschen Baugewerbes (Central Association of German Construction), are both named after Zuse.
A replica of the Z3, as well as the original Z4, is in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin has an exhibition devoted to Zuse, displaying twelve of his machines, including a replica of the Z1 and several of Zuse's paintings.
The 100th anniversary of his birth was celebrated by exhibitions, lectures and workshops.
See also
Z5
Z23
Z25
Digital philosophy
List of pioneers in computer science
John Vincent Atanasoff
German inventors and discoverers
References
Sources
Zuse, Konrad (1993). The Computer – My Life. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. (translated from the original German edition (1984): Der Computer – Mein Lebenswerk. Springer. .) ( Electronic version from Springer)
Zuse, Konrad (1969). Rechnender Raum Braunschweig: Vieweg & Sohn.
Rechnender Raum (PDF document), Elektronische Datenverarbeitung, 8: 336–344, 1967.
Calculating Space English translation as PDF document
Zuse, Konrad. Direction-bound engraving tool with program control. U.S. Patent 3,163,936
U.S.Patents 3,234,819; 3,306,128; 3,408,483; 3,356,852; 3,316,442
Further reading
Konrad Zuse: The Computer – My Life, Springer Verlag, ,
Jürgen Alex, Hermann Flessner, Wilhelm Mons, Horst Zuse: Konrad Zuse: Der Vater des Computers. Parzeller, Fulda 2000,
Raul Rojas (Ed.): Die Rechenmaschinen von Konrad Zuse. Springer, Berlin 1998, .
Wilhelm Füßl (Ed.): 100 Jahre Konrad Zuse. Einblicke in den Nachlass, München 2010, .
Jürgen Alex: "Wege und Irrwege des Konrad Zuse." In: Spektrum der Wissenschaft (German edition of Scientific American) 1/1997, .
Hadwig Dorsch: Der erste Computer. Konrad Zuses Z1 – Berlin 1936. Beginn und Entwicklung einer technischen Revolution. Mit Beiträgen von Konrad Zuse und Otto Lührs. Museum für Verkehr und Technik, Berlin 1989.
Clemens Kieser: "'Ich bin zu faul zum Rechnen': Konrad Zuses Computer Z22 im Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe." In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg, 4/34/2005, Esslingen am Neckar, S. 180–184, .
Mario G. Losano (ed.), Zuse. L'elaboratore nasce in Europa. Un secolo di calcolo automatico, Etas Libri, Milano 1975, pp. XVIII–184.
Arno Peters: Was ist und wie verwirklicht sich Computer-Sozialismus: Gespräche mit Konrad Zuse. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 2000, .
Paul Janositz: Informatik und Konrad Zuse: "Der Pionier des Computerbaus in Europa – Das verkannte Genie aus Adlershof." In: Der Tagesspiegel Nr. 19127, Berlin, 9. März 2006, Beilage Seite B3.
Jürgen Alex: Zum Einfluß elementarer Sätze der mathematischen Logik bei Alfred Tarski auf die drei Computerkonzepte des Konrad Zuse. TU Chemnitz 2006.
Jürgen Alex: Zur Entstehung des Computers – von Alfred Tarski zu Konrad Zuse. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007, , .
Herbert Bruderer: Konrad Zuse und die Schweiz. Wer hat den Computer erfunden? Charles Babbage, Alan Turing und John von Neumann Oldenbourg Verlag, München 2012, XXVI, 224 Seiten,
External links
Konrad Zuse Internet Archive
– By Prof. Horst Zuse (K. Zuse's son); an extensive and well-written historical account
Konrad Zuse and his computers, from Technische Universität Berlin
Konrad Zuse
Konrad Zuse, inventor of first working programmable computer
Zuse's thesis of digital physics and the computable universe
Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin
Konrad Zuse Museum Hoyerswerda
Computermuseum Kiel Z11
Computermuseum Kiel Z22
Computermuseum Kiel
Video lecture by Zuse discussing the history of Z1 to 4
Video showing the model of the helix tower in action
1910 births
1995 deaths
Businesspeople from Berlin
Cellular automatists
Computer designers
Computer hardware engineers
German atheists
20th-century atheists
German civil engineers
German computer scientists
20th-century German inventors
Grand Crosses with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Programming language designers
Technical University of Berlin alumni
Werner von Siemens Ring laureates
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16812 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenesaw%20Mountain%20Landis | Kenesaw Mountain Landis | Kenesaw Mountain Landis (; November 20, 1866 – November 25, 1944) was an American jurist who served as a United States federal judge from 1905 to 1922 and the first Commissioner of Baseball from 1920 until his death. He is remembered for his handling of the Black Sox scandal, in which he expelled eight members of the Chicago White Sox from organized baseball for conspiring to lose the 1919 World Series and repeatedly refused their reinstatement requests. His firm actions and iron rule over baseball in the near quarter-century of his commissionership are generally credited with restoring public confidence in the game.
Born in Millville, Ohio, Landis' given name was a spelling variation of the site of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, a major battle of the American Civil War in which his father had been wounded. Raised in Indiana, he became a lawyer, and then personal secretary to Walter Q. Gresham, the new United States Secretary of State, in 1893. He returned to private practice after Gresham died in office.
President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Landis as a judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in 1905. Landis received national attention in 1907 when he fined Standard Oil of Indiana more than $29 million (approximately $800 million in 2021) for violating federal laws forbidding rebates on railroad freight tariffs. Though Landis was reversed on appeal, he was seen as a judge determined to rein in big business. During and after World War I, Landis presided over several high-profile trials of draft resisters and others whom he saw as opposing the war effort. He imposed heavy sentences on those who were convicted; some of the convictions were reversed on appeal, and other sentences were commuted.
In 1920, Landis was a leading candidate when American League and National League team owners, embarrassed by the Black Sox scandal and other instances of players throwing games, sought someone to rule over baseball. Landis was given full power to act in the sport's best interest, and used that power extensively over the next quarter-century. Landis was widely praised for cleaning up the game, although some of his decisions in the Black Sox matter remain controversial: supporters of "Shoeless Joe" Jackson and Buck Weaver contend that he was overly harsh with those players. Others blame Landis for, in their view, delaying the racial integration of baseball. Landis was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by a special vote shortly after he died in 1944.
Early life and pre-judicial career (1866–1905)
Boyhood and early career (1866–1893)
Kenesaw Mountain Landis was born in Millville, Ohio, the sixth child and fourth son of Abraham Hoch Landis, a physician, and Mary Kumler Landis, on November 20, 1866. The Landises descended from Swiss Mennonites who had emigrated to Alsace before coming to the United States. Abraham Landis had been wounded fighting on the Union side at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia, and when his parents proved unable to agree on a name for the new baby, Mary Landis proposed that they call him Kenesaw Mountain. At the time, both spellings of "Kenesaw" were used, but in the course of time, "Kennesaw Mountain" became the accepted spelling of the battle site.
Abraham Landis worked in Millville as a country physician. When Kenesaw was eight, the elder Landis moved his family to Delphi, Indiana, and subsequently to Logansport, Indiana, where the doctor purchased and ran several local farms—his war injury had caused him to scale back his medical practice. Two of Kenesaw's four brothers, Charles Beary Landis and Frederick Landis, became members of Congress.
As "Kenny", as he was sometimes known, grew, he did an increasing share of the farm work, later stating, "I did my share—and it was a substantial share—in taking care of the 13 acres ... I do not remember that I particularly liked to get up at 3:30 in the morning." Kenesaw began his off-farm career at age ten as a news delivery boy. He left school at 15 after an unsuccessful attempt to master algebra; he then worked at the local general store. He left that job for a position as errand boy with the Vandalia Railroad. Landis applied for a job as a brakeman, but was laughingly dismissed as too small. He then worked for the Logansport Journal, and taught himself shorthand reporting, becoming in 1883 official court reporter for the Cass County Circuit Court. Landis later wrote, "I may not have been much of a judge, nor baseball official, but I do pride myself on having been a real shorthand reporter." He served in that capacity until 1886. In his spare time, he became a prize-winning bicycle racer and played on and managed a baseball team. Offered a professional contract as a ballplayer, he turned it down, stating that he preferred to play for the love of the game.
In 1886, Landis first ventured into Republican Party politics, supporting a friend, Charles F. Griffin, for Indiana Secretary of State. Griffin won, and Landis was rewarded with a civil service job in the Indiana Department of State. While employed there, he applied to be an attorney. At that time, in Indiana, an applicant needed only to prove that he was 21 and of good moral character, and Landis was admitted. Landis opened a practice in Marion, Indiana, but attracted few clients in his year of work there. Realizing that an uneducated lawyer was unlikely to build a lucrative practice, Landis enrolled at Cincinnati's YMCA Law School (now part of Northern Kentucky University) in 1889. Landis transferred to Union Law School (part of Northwestern University) the following year, and in 1891, he took his law degree from Union and was admitted to the Illinois Bar. He began a practice in Chicago, served as an assistant instructor at Union and with fellow attorney Clarence Darrow helped found the nonpartisan Chicago Civic Centre Club, devoted to municipal reform. Landis practiced with college friend Frank O. Lowden; the future commissioner and his law partner went into debt to impress potential clients, buying a law library secondhand.
Washington years and aftermath (1893–1905)
In March 1893, President Grover Cleveland appointed federal judge Walter Q. Gresham as his Secretary of State, and Gresham hired Landis as his personal secretary. Gresham had a long career as a political appointee in the latter part of the 19th century; though he lost his only two bids for elective office, he served in three Cabinet positions and was twice a dark horse candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Although Gresham was a Republican, he had supported Cleveland (a Democrat) in the 1892 election because of his intense dislike for the Republican nominee, President Benjamin Harrison. Kenesaw Landis had appeared before Judge Gresham in court. According to Landis biographer J.G. Taylor Spink, Gresham thought Landis "had something on the ball" and believed that Landis's shorthand skills would be of use.
In Washington, Landis worked hard to protect Gresham's interests in the State Department, making friends with many members of the press. He was less popular among many of the Department's senior career officials, who saw him as brash. When word leaked concerning President Cleveland's Hawaiian policy, the President was convinced Landis was the source of the information and demanded his dismissal. Gresham defended Landis, stating that Cleveland would have to fire both of them, and the President relented, later finding out that he was mistaken in accusing Landis. President Cleveland grew to like Landis, and when Gresham died in 1895, offered Landis the post of United States Ambassador to Venezuela. Landis declined the diplomatic post, preferring to return to Chicago to begin a law practice and to marry Winifred Reed, daughter of the Ottawa, Illinois postmaster. The two married July 25, 1895; they had two surviving children, a boy, Reed, and a girl, Susanne—a third child, Winifred, died almost immediately after being born.
Landis built a corporate law practice in Chicago; with the practice doing well, he deeply involved himself in Republican Party politics. He built a close association with his friend Lowden and served as his campaign manager for governor of Illinois in 1904. Lowden was defeated, but would later serve two terms in the office and be a major contender for the 1920 Republican presidential nomination. A seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois was vacant; President Theodore Roosevelt offered it to Lowden, who declined it and recommended Landis. Other recommendations from Illinois politicians followed, and Roosevelt nominated Landis for the seat. According to Spink, President Roosevelt wanted "a tough judge and a man sympathetic with his viewpoint in that important court"; Lowden and Landis were, like Roosevelt, on the progressive left of the Republican Party. On March 18, 1905, Roosevelt transmitted the nomination to the Senate, which confirmed Landis the same afternoon, without any committee hearing; he received his commission the same day.
Judge (1905–1922)
Landis's courtroom, room 627 in the Chicago Federal Building, was ornate and featured two murals; one of King John conceding Magna Carta, the other of Moses about to smash the tablets of the Ten Commandments. The mahogany and marble chamber was, according to Landis biographer David Pietrusza, "just the spot for Landis's sense of the theatrical. In it he would hold court for nearly the next decade and a half." According to Spink, "It wasn't long before Chicago writers discovered they had a 'character' on the bench." A. L. Sloan of the Chicago Herald-American, a friend of Landis, recalled:
The Judge was always headline news. He was a great showman, theatrical in appearance, with his sharp jaw and shock of white hair, and people always crowded into his courtroom, knowing there would be something going on. There were few dull moments.
If Judge Landis was suspicious of an attorney's line of questioning, he would begin to wrinkle his nose, and once told a witness, "Now let's stop fooling around and tell exactly what did happen, without reciting your life's history." When an elderly defendant told him that he would not be able to live to complete a five-year sentence, Landis scowled at him and asked, "Well, you can try, can't you?" When a young man stood before him for sentencing after admitting to stealing jewels from a parcel, the defendant's wife stood near him, infant daughter in her arms, and Landis mused what to do about the situation. After a dramatic pause, Landis ordered the young man to take his wife and daughter and go home with them, expressing his unwillingness to have the girl be the daughter of a convict. According to sportswriter Ed Fitzgerald in SPORT magazine, "[w]omen wept unashamed and the entire courtroom burst into spontaneous, prolonged applause."
Landis had been a lawyer with a corporate practice; upon his elevation to the bench, corporate litigants expected him to favor them. According to a 1907 magazine article about Landis, "Corporations smiled pleasantly at the thought of a corporation lawyer being on the bench. They smile no more." In an early case, Landis fined the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company the maximum $4,000 for illegally importing workers, even though his wife's brother-in-law served on the corporate board. In another decision, Landis struck down a challenge to the Interstate Commerce Commission's (ICC) jurisdiction over rebating, a practice banned by the Elkins Act of 1903 in which railroads and favored customers agreed that the customers would pay less than the posted tariff, which by law was to be the same for all shippers. Landis's decision allowed the ICC to take action against railroads which gave rebates.
Standard Oil (1905–1909)
By the first decade of the 20th century, a number of business entities had formed themselves into trusts, which dominated their industries. Trusts often sought to purchase or otherwise neutralize their competitors, allowing the conglomerates to raise prices to high levels. In 1890, Congress had passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, but it was not until the Theodore Roosevelt administration (1901–09) that serious efforts were made to break up or control the trusts. The dominant force in the oil industry was Standard Oil, controlled by John D. Rockefeller. Modern-day ExxonMobil, Atlantic Richfield, Chevron, Sohio, Amoco and Continental Oil all trace their ancestry to various parts of Standard Oil.
In March 1906, Commissioner of Corporations James Rudolph Garfield submitted a report to President Roosevelt, alleging large-scale rebating in Standard Oil shipments. Federal prosecutors in several states and territories sought indictments against components of the Standard Oil Trust. On June 28, 1906, Standard Oil of Indiana was indicted on 6,428 counts of violation of the Elkins Act for accepting rebates on shipments on the Chicago & Alton Railroad. The case was assigned to Landis.
Trial on the 1,903 counts that survived pretrial motions began on March 4, 1907. The fact that rebates had been given was not contested; what was at issue was whether Standard Oil knew the railroad's posted rates, and if it had a duty to enquire if it did not. Landis charged the jury that it "was the duty of the defendant diligently in good faith to get from the Chicago & Alton ... the lawful rate". The jury found Standard Oil guilty on all 1,903 counts.
The maximum fine that Landis could impose was $29,240,000. To aid the judge in determining the sentence, Landis issued a subpoena for Rockefeller to testify as to Standard Oil's assets. The tycoon had often evaded subpoenas, not having testified in court since 1888. Deputy United States marshals visited Rockefeller's several homes, as well as the estates of his friends, in the hope of finding him. After several days, Rockefeller was found at his lawyer's estate, Taconic Farm in northwestern Massachusetts, and was served with the subpoena. The tycoon duly came to Landis's Chicago courtroom, making his way through a mob anxious to see the proceedings. Rockefeller's actual testimony, proffered after the judge made him wait through several cases and witnesses, proved to be anticlimactic, as he professed almost no knowledge of Standard Oil's corporate structure or assets.
On August 3, 1907, Landis pronounced sentence. He fined Standard Oil the maximum penalty, $29,240,000, the largest fine imposed on a corporation to that date. The corporation quickly appealed; in the meantime, Landis was lionized as a hero. According to Pietrusza, "much of the nation could hardly believe a federal judge had finally cracked down on a trust—and cracked down hard ". President Roosevelt, when he heard the sentence, reportedly stated, "That's bully." Rockefeller was playing golf in Cleveland when he was brought a telegram containing the news. Rockefeller calmly informed his golfing partners of the amount of the fine, and proceeded to shoot a personal record score, later stating, "Judge Landis will be dead a long time before this fine is paid." He proved correct; the verdict and sentence were reversed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit on July 22, 1908. In January 1909, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case, and in a new trial before another judge (Landis recused himself), Standard Oil was acquitted.
Federal League and Baby Iraene cases (1909–1917)
A lifelong baseball fan, Landis often slipped away from the courthouse for a White Sox or Cubs game. In 1914, the two existing major leagues were challenged by a new league, the Federal League. In 1915, the upstart league brought suit against the existing leagues and owners under the Sherman Act and the case was assigned to Landis. Baseball owners feared that the reserve clause, which forced players to sign new contracts only with their former team, and the 10-day clause, which allowed teams (but not players) to terminate player contracts on ten days notice, would be struck down by Landis.
Landis held hearings in late January 1915, and newspapers expected a quick decision, certainly before spring training began in March. During the hearings, Landis admonished the parties, "Both sides must understand that any blows at the thing called baseball would be regarded by this court as a blow to a national institution". When the National League's chief counsel, future Senator George Wharton Pepper referred to the activities of baseball players on the field as "labor", Landis interrupted him: "As a result of 30 years of observation, I am shocked because you call playing baseball 'labor.' " Landis reserved judgment, and the parties waited for his ruling. Spring training passed, as did the entire regular season and the World Series. In December 1915, still with no word from Landis, the parties reached a settlement, and the Federal League disbanded. Landis made no public statement as to the reasons for his failure to rule, though he told close friends that he had been certain the parties would reach a settlement sooner or later. Most observers thought that Landis waited because he did not want to rule against the two established leagues and their contracts.
In 1916, Landis presided over the "Ryan Baby" or "Baby Iraene" case. The recent widow of a prominent Chicago banker, Anna Dollie Ledgerwood Matters, had brought a baby girl home from a visit to Canada and claimed that the child was her late husband's posthumous heir. Matters had left an estate of $250,000. However, a shop girl from Ontario, Margaret Ryan, claimed the baby was hers, and brought a writ of habeas corpus in Landis's court. Ryan stated that she had given birth to the girl in an Ottawa hospital, but had been told her baby had died. In the era before blood and DNA testing, Landis relied on witness testimony and awarded the child to Ryan. The case brought comparisons between Landis and King Solomon, who had judged a similar case. Landis was reversed by the Supreme Court, which held he had no jurisdiction in the matter. A Canadian court later awarded the child to Ryan.
Although Landis was an autocrat in the courtroom, he was less so at home. In a 1916 interview, he stated,
Every member of this family does exactly what he or she wants to do. Each one is his or her supreme court. Everything for the common good of the family is decided according to the wishes of the whole family. Each one knows what is right and each one can do whatever he thinks is best. It is purely democratic.
Wartime cases (1917–1919)
In early 1917, Landis considered leaving the bench and returning to private practice—though he greatly enjoyed being a judge, the salary of $7,500 was considerably lower than what he could make as an attorney. The entry of the United States into World War I in April ended Landis's determination to resign; a firm supporter of the war effort, he felt he could best serve the country by remaining on the bench. Despite this decision and his age, fifty, Landis wrote to Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, asking him to take him into the service and send him to France, where the war was raging. Baker urged Landis to make speeches in support of the war instead, which he did. The judge's son, Reed, had already served briefly in the Illinois National Guard; during the war he became a pilot, and eventually an ace.
Landis's disdain for draft dodgers and other opponents of the war was evident in July 1917, when he presided over the trials of some 120 men, mostly foreign-born Socialists, who had resisted the draft and rioted in Rockford, Illinois. According to Pietrusza, Landis "was frequently brutal in his remarks" to the defendants, interrogating them on their beliefs. Landis tried the case in Rockford, and found all guilty, sentencing all but three to a year and a day in jail, the maximum sentence. The prisoners were ordered to register for the draft after serving their sentences—except 37, whom he ordered deported.
On September 5, 1917, federal officers raided the national headquarters, in Chicago, of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, sometimes "Wobblies"), as well as 48 of the union's halls across the nation. The union had opposed the war and urged members and others to refuse conscription into the armed forces. On September 28, 166 IWW leaders, including union head Big Bill Haywood were indicted in the Northern District of Illinois; their cases were assigned to Landis. Some 40 of the indicted men could not be found; a few others had charges dismissed against them. Ultimately, Landis presided over a trial against 113 defendants, the largest federal criminal trial to that point.
The trial began on April 1, 1918. Landis quickly dismissed charges against a dozen defendants, including one A.C. Christ, who showed up in newly obtained army uniform. Jury selection occupied a month. Journalist John Reed attended the trial, and wrote of his impressions of Landis:
Small on the huge bench sits a wasted man with untidy white hair, an emaciated face in which two burning eyes are set like jewels, parchment-like skin split by a crack for a mouth; the face of Andrew Jackson three years dead ... Upon this man has devolved the historic role of trying the Social Revolution. He is doing it like a gentleman. In many ways a most unusual trial. When the judge enters the court-room after recess, no one rises—he himself has abolished the pompous formality. He sits without robes, in an ordinary business suit, and often leaves the bench to come down and perch on the step of the jury box. By his personal orders, spittoons are placed by the prisoners' seats ... and as for the prisoners themselves, they are permitted to take off their coats, move around, read newspapers. It takes some human understanding for a Judge to fly in the face of judicial ritual as much as that.
Haywood biographer Melvyn Dubofsky wrote that Landis "exercised judicial objectivity and restraint for five long months". Baseball historian Harold Seymour stated that "[o]n the whole, Landis conducted the trial with restraint, despite his reputation as a foe of all radical groups." Landis dismissed charges against an elderly defendant who was in obvious pain as he testified, and allowed the release of a number of prisoners on bail or on their own recognizances.
On August 17, 1918, following the closing argument for the prosecution (the defendants waived argument), Landis instructed the jury. The lead defense counsel objected to the wording of the jury charge several times, but Haywood believed it to have been fair. After 65 minutes, the jury returned with guilty verdicts for all of the remaining accused, much to their shock; they had believed that Landis's charge pointed towards their acquittal. When the defendants returned to court on August 29, Landis listened with patience to the defendants' final pleas. For the sentencing, according to Richard Cahan in his history of Chicago's district court, "mild-mannered Landis returned a changed man". Although two defendants received only ten days in jail, all others received at least a year and a day, and Haywood and fourteen others received twenty years. A number of defendants, including Haywood, obtained bail during the appeal; even before Haywood's appeals were exhausted, he jumped bail and took ship for the Soviet Union. The labor leader hung a portrait of Landis in his Moscow apartment, and when Haywood died in 1928, he was interred near John Reed (who had died of illness in Moscow after the Bolshevik Revolution) in the Kremlin Wall—they remain the only Americans so honored. President Calvin Coolidge commuted the sentences of the remaining incarcerated defendants in 1923, much to the disgust of Landis, who issued an angry statement. After leaving his judgeship, Landis referred to the defendants in the Haywood case as "scum", "filth", and "slimy rats".
Landis hoped that the Kaiser, Wilhelm II would be captured and tried in his court; he wanted to indict the Kaiser for the murder of a Chicagoan who lost his life on the RMS Lusitania in 1915. The State Department notified Landis that extradition treaties did not permit the rendition of the Kaiser, who fled into exile in the Netherlands as the war concluded. Nevertheless, in a speech, Landis demanded that Kaiser Wilhelm, his six sons, and 5,000 German military leaders "be lined up against a wall and shot down in justice to the world and to Germany".
Even with the armistice in November 1918, the war-related trials continued. The Socialist Party of America, like the IWW, had opposed the war, and had also been raided by federal authorities. Seven Socialist Party leaders, including Victor Berger, who was elected to Congress in November 1918, were indicted for alleged anti-war activities. The defendants were charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, which made it illegal "to utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language" about the armed forces, the flag, the Constitution, or democracy. The defendants, who were mostly of German birth or descent, moved for a change of venue away from Landis's courtroom, alleging that Landis had stated on November 1, 1918, that "[i]f anybody has said anything about the Germans that is worse than I have said, I would like to hear it so I could use it myself." Landis, however, examined the transcript of the trial in which the statement was supposedly made, failed to find it, declared the affidavit in support of the motion "perjurious", and denied the motion. While the jury was being selected, Berger was indicted on additional espionage charges for supposedly violating the law during an earlier, unsuccessful political campaign. At the conclusion of the case, Landis took an hour to dramatically charge the jury, emphasizing the secretive nature of conspiracies and pointing at the jury box as he noted, "the country was then at war". At one point, Landis leapt out of his seat, twirled his chair around, then sat on its arm. Later in his charge, he lay prone upon the bench. The jury took less than a day to convict Congressman-elect Berger and his four remaining codefendants. Landis sentenced each defendant to twenty years in federal prison. Landis denied the defendants bail pending appeal, but they quickly obtained it from an appellate court judge. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals declined to rule on the case itself, sending it on to the Supreme Court, which on January 31, 1921, overturned the convictions and sentences by a 6–3 vote, holding that Landis should have stepped aside once he was satisfied that the affidavit was legally sufficient, leaving it for another judge to decide whether it was actually true. Landis refused to comment on the Supreme Court's decision, which ordered a new trial. In 1922, the charges against the defendants were dropped by the government.
Building trades award, controversy, and resignation (1920–1922)
The postwar period saw considerable deflation; the shortage of labor and materials during the war had led to much higher wages and prices, and in the postwar economic readjustment, wages were cut heavily. In Chicago, employers in the building trades attempted a 20% wage cut; when this was rejected by the unions, a lockout followed. Both sides agreed to submit the matter to a neutral arbitrator, and settled on Landis, who agreed to take the case in June 1921. By this time, Landis was Commissioner of Baseball, and still a federal judge. In September, Landis issued his report, cutting wages by an average of 12.5%. To improve productivity, he also struck restrictions on machinery which saved labor, established a standardized overtime rate, and resolved jurisdictional conflicts between unions. The labor organizations were not completely satisfied, but Landis's reforms were adopted in many places across the country and were credited with reviving the building industry.
Criticism of Landis having both the judicial and baseball positions began almost as soon as his baseball appointment was announced in November 1920. On February 2, 1921, lame duck Congressman Benjamin F. Welty (Democrat-Ohio) offered a resolution calling for Landis's impeachment. On February 11, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer opined that there was no legal impediment to Landis holding both jobs. On February 14, the House Judiciary Committee voted 24–1 to investigate Landis. Reed Landis later stated, "[n]one of the other congressmen wanted Father impeached but they did want him to come down and defend himself because they knew what a show it would be."
Although Welty's departure from office on March 4, 1921, began a lull in criticism of Landis, in April, the judge made a controversial decision in the case of Francis J. Carey, a 19-year-old bank teller, who had pleaded guilty to embezzling $96,500. Carey, the sole support of his widowed mother and unmarried sisters, gained Landis's sympathy. He accused the bank of underpaying Carey, and sent the youth home with his mother. Two members of the Senate objected to Landis's actions, and the New York Post compared Carey with Les Misérables's Jean Valjean, noting "[b]etween a loaf of bread [Valjean was incarcerated for stealing one] and $96,500 there is a difference." A bill barring outside employment by federal judges had been introduced by Landis's foes, but had expired with the end of the congressional session in March; his opponents tried again in July, and the bill failed in the Senate on a tie vote. On September 1, 1921, the American Bar Association, a trade group of lawyers, passed a resolution of censure against Landis.
By the end of 1921, the controversy was dying down, and Landis felt that he could resign without looking pressured. On February 18, 1922, he announced his resignation as judge effective March 1, stating, "There are not enough hours in the day for all these activities". In his final case, he fined two theatre owners for evading the federal amusement tax. One owner had refused to make restitution before sentencing; he was fined $5,000. The owner who had tried to make his shortfall good was fined one cent.
Baseball Commissioner (1920–1944)
Appointment
Black Sox scandal
By 1919, the influence of gamblers on baseball had been a problem for several years. Historian Paul Gardner wrote,
Baseball had for some time been living uneasily in the knowledge that bribes were being offered by gamblers, and that some players were accepting them. The players knew it was going on, and the owners knew it was going on. But more important, the players knew that the owners knew—and they knew the owners were doing nothing about it for fear of a scandal that might damage organized baseball. Under such conditions it quite obviously did not pay to be honest.
The 1919 World Series between the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds was much anticipated, as the nation attempted to return to normalcy in the postwar period. Baseball had seen a surge of popularity during the 1919 season, which set several attendance records. The powerful White Sox, with their superstar batter "Shoeless Joe" Jackson and star pitchers Eddie Cicotte and Claude "Lefty" Williams, were believed likely to defeat the less-well-regarded Reds. To the surprise of many, the Reds defeated the White Sox, five games to three (during 1919–21, the World Series was a best-of-nine affair).
Rumors that the series was fixed began to circulate after gambling odds against the Reds winning dropped sharply before the series began, and gained more credibility after the White Sox lost four of the first five games. Cincinnati lost the next two games, and speculation began that the Reds were losing on purpose to extend the series and increase gate revenues. However, Cincinnati won Game Eight, 10–5, to end the series, as Williams lost his third game (Cicotte lost the other two). After the series, according to Gene Carney, who wrote a book about the scandal, "there was more than the usual complaining from those who had bet big on the Sox and lost".
The issue of the 1919 Series came to the public eye again in September 1920, when, after allegations that a game between the Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies on August 31 had been fixed, a grand jury was empaneled in state court in Chicago to investigate baseball gambling. Additional news came from Philadelphia, where gambler Billy Maharg stated that he had worked with former boxer Abe Attell and New York gambler Arnold Rothstein to get the White Sox to throw the 1919 Series. Cicotte and Jackson were called before the grand jury, where they gave statements incriminating themselves and six teammates: Williams, first baseman Chick Gandil, shortstop Swede Risberg, third baseman Buck Weaver, center fielder Happy Felsch and reserve infielder Fred McMullin. Williams and Felsch were also called before the grand jury and incriminated themselves and their teammates. Through late September, the 1920 American League season had been one of the most exciting on record, with the White Sox, Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees dueling for the league lead. By September 28, the Yankees were close to elimination, but the White Sox and Indians were within percentage points of each other. On that day, however, the eight players, seven of whom were still on the White Sox, were indicted. They were immediately suspended by White Sox owner Charles Comiskey. The Indians were able to pull ahead and win the pennant, taking the American League championship by two games over Chicago.
Search for a commissioner
Baseball had been governed by a three-man National Commission, consisting of American League President Ban Johnson, National League President John Heydler and Cincinnati Reds owner Garry Herrmann. In January 1920, Herrmann left office at the request of other club owners, leaving the Commission effectively deadlocked between Johnson and Heydler. A number of club owners, disliking one or both league presidents, preferred a single commissioner to rule over the game, but were willing to see the National Commission continue if Herrmann was replaced by someone who would provide strong leadership. Landis's name was mentioned in the press for this role, and the influential baseball newspaper The Sporting News sought his appointment.
Another proposal, known as the "Lasker Plan" after Albert Lasker, a shareholder in the Chicago Cubs who had proposed it, was for a three-man commission to govern the game, drawn from outside baseball. On September 30, 1920, with the Black Sox scandal exposed, National League President Heydler began to advocate for the Lasker Plan, and by the following day, four major league teams had supported him. Among the names discussed in the press for membership on the new commission were Landis, former Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo, former President William Howard Taft, and General John J. Pershing.
The start of the 1920 World Series on October 5 distracted the public from baseball's woes for a time, but discussions continued behind the scenes. By mid-October, 11 of the 16 team owners (all eight from the National League and the owners of the American League Yankees, White Sox and Boston Red Sox) were demanding the end of the National Commission and the appointment of a three-man commission whose members would have no financial interest in baseball. Heydler stated his views on baseball's requirements:
We want a man as chairman who will rule with an iron hand ... Baseball has lacked a hand like that for years. It needs it now worse than ever. Therefore, it is our object to appoint a big man to lead the new commission.
On November 8, the owners of the eight National League and three American League teams which supported the Lasker Plan met and unanimously selected Landis as head of the proposed commission. The American League clubs that supported the plan threatened to move to the National League, away from Johnson, who opposed it. Johnson had hoped that the minor leagues would support his position; when they did not, he and the "Loyal Five" teams agreed to the Lasker Plan. In the discussions among the owners that followed, they decided that Landis would be the only commissioner–no associate members would be elected. On November 12, the team owners came to Landis's courtroom to approach him. Landis was trying a bribery case; when he heard noise in the back of the courtroom from the owners, he gaveled them to silence. He made them wait 45 minutes while he completed his docket, then met with them in his chambers.
The judge heard out the owners; after expressing initial reluctance, he took the job for seven years at a salary of $50,000, on condition he could remain on the federal bench. During Landis's time serving as both judge and commissioner, he allowed a $7,500 reduction in his salary as commissioner, to reflect his pay as judge. The appointment of Landis was met with acclaim in the press. A tentative agreement was signed by the parties a month later—an agreement which itemized Landis's powers over baseball, and which was drafted by the judge. The owners were still reeling from the perception that baseball was crooked, and accepted the agreement virtually without dissent. Under the terms of the contract, Landis could not be dismissed by the team owners, have his pay reduced, or even be criticized by them in public. He also had nearly unlimited authority over every person employed in the major or minor leagues, from owners to batboys, including the ability to ban people from the leagues for life. The owners waived any recourse to the courts to contest Landis's will. Humorist Will Rogers stated, "[D]on't kid yourself that that old judicial bird isn't going to make those baseball birds walk the chalkline". Player and manager Leo Durocher later stated, "The legend has been spread that the owners hired the Judge off the federal bench. Don't you believe it. They got him right out of Dickens."
Establishing control
Banning the Black Sox
On January 30, 1921, Landis, speaking at an Illinois church, warned:
Now that I am in baseball, just watch the game I play. If I catch any crook in baseball, the rest of his life is going to be a pretty hot one. I'll go to any means and to anything possible to see that he gets a real penalty for his offense.
The criminal case against the Black Sox defendants suffered unexpected setbacks, with evidence vanishing, including some of the incriminating statements made to the grand jury. The prosecution was forced to dismiss the original indictments, and bring new charges against seven of the ballplayers (McMullin was not charged again). Frustrated by the delays, Landis placed all eight on an "ineligible list", banning them from major and minor league baseball. Comiskey supported Landis by giving the seven who remained under contract to the White Sox their unconditional release. Public sentiment was heavily against the ballplayers, and when Jackson, Williams, Felsch, and Weaver played in a semi-pro game, The Sporting News mocked the 3,000 attendees, "Just Like Nuts Go to See a Murderer".
The criminal trial of the Black Sox indictees began in early July 1921. Despite what Robert C. Cottrell, in his book on the scandal, terms "the mysterious loss of evidence", the prosecution was determined to pursue the case, demanding five-year prison terms for the ballplayers for defrauding the public by throwing the World Series. On August 2, 1921, the jury returned not guilty verdicts against all defendants, leading to happy pandemonium in the courtroom, joined by the courtroom bailiffs, with even the trial judge, Hugo Friend, looking visibly pleased. The players and jury then retired to an Italian restaurant and partied well into the night.
The jubilation proved short-lived. On August 3, Landis issued a statement:
Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ball game; no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ball game; no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing ball games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball. Of course, I don't know that any of these men will apply for reinstatement, but if they do, the above are at least a few of the rules that will be enforced. Just keep in mind that, regardless of the verdict of juries, baseball is competent to protect itself against crooks, both inside and outside the game.
According to ESPN columnist Rob Neyer, "with that single decision, Landis might have done more for the sport than anyone else, ever. Certainly, Landis never did anything more important." According to Carney, "The public amputation of the eight Sox was seen as the only acceptable cure." Over the years of Landis's commissionership, a number of the players applied for reinstatement to the game, notably Jackson and Weaver. Jackson, raised in rural South Carolina and with limited education, was said to have been drawn unwillingly into the conspiracy, while Weaver, though admitting his presence at the meetings, stated that he took no money. Both men stated that their play on the field, and their batting percentages during the series (.375 for Jackson, .324 for Weaver) indicated that they did not help to throw the series. None was ever reinstated, with Landis telling a group of Weaver supporters that his presence at the meetings with the gamblers was sufficient to bar him. Even today, long after the deaths of all three men, efforts are periodically made to reinstate Jackson (which would make him eligible for election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame) and Weaver (deemed by some the least culpable of the eight). In the 1990s, a petition drive to reinstate Jackson drew 60,000 signatures. He has been treated sympathetically in movies such as Eight Men Out and Field of Dreams, and Hall of Famers Ted Williams and Bob Feller expressed their support for Jackson's induction into the Hall. Landis's expulsion of the eight men remains in force.
Cracking down on gambling
Landis felt that the Black Sox scandal had been initiated by people involved in horse racing, and stated that "by God, as long as I have anything to do with this game, they'll never get another hold on it." In 1921, his first season as commissioner, New York Giants owner Charles Stoneham and manager John McGraw purchased Oriental Park Racetrack in Havana, Cuba. Landis gave Stoneham and McGraw an ultimatum—they could not be involved in both baseball and horse racing. They quickly put the track back on the market.
Even before the Black Sox scandal had been resolved, Landis acted to clean up other gambling cases. Eugene Paulette, a first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, had been with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1919, and had met with gamblers. It is uncertain if any games were fixed, but Paulette had written a letter naming two other Cardinals who might be open to throwing games. The letter had fallen into the hands of Phillies President William F. Baker, who had taken no action until Landis's appointment, then turned the letter over to him. Paulette met with Landis once, denying any wrongdoing, then refused further meetings. Landis placed him on the ineligible list in March 1921. In November 1921, Landis banned former St. Louis Browns player Joe Gedeon, who had been released by the Browns after admitting to sitting in on meetings with gamblers who were trying to raise the money to bribe the Black Sox. When a minor league official asked if he was eligible, Landis settled the matter by placing Gedeon on the ineligible list.
Two other player gambling affairs marked Landis's early years as commissioner. In 1922, Giants pitcher Phil Douglas, embittered at McGraw for disciplining him for heavy drinking, wrote a letter to Cardinals outfielder Leslie Mann, suggesting that he would take a bribe to ensure the Giants did not win the pennant. Although Mann had been a friend, the outfielder neither smoked nor drank and had long been associated with the YMCA movement; according to baseball historian Lee Allen, Douglas might as well have sent the letter to Landis himself. Mann immediately turned over the letter to his manager, Branch Rickey, who ordered Mann to contact Landis at once. The Giants placed Douglas on the ineligible list, an action backed by Landis after meeting with the pitcher. On September 27, 1924, Giants outfielder Jimmy O'Connell offered Phillies shortstop Heinie Sand $500 if Sand didn't "bear down too hard against us today". Sand was initially inclined to let the matter pass, but recalling the fate of Weaver and other Black Sox players, told his manager, Art Fletcher. Fletcher met with Heydler, who contacted Landis. O'Connell did not deny the bribe attempt, and was placed on the ineligible list.
In total, Landis banned eighteen players from the game. Landis biographer Pietrusza details the effect of Landis's stand against gambling:
Before 1920 if one player approached another player to throw a contest, there was a very good chance he would not be informed upon. Now, there was an excellent chance he would be turned in. No honest player wanted to meet the same fate as Buck Weaver ... Without the forbidding example of Buck Weaver to haunt them, it is unlikely Mann and Sand would have snitched on their fellow players. After Landis' unforgiving treatment of the popular and basically honest Weaver they dared not to. And once prospectively crooked players knew that honest players would no longer shield them, the scandals stopped.
Ruth-Meusel barnstorming incident
At the time of Landis's appointment as commissioner, it was common for professional baseball players to supplement their pay by participating in postseason "barnstorming" tours, playing on teams which would visit smaller cities and towns to play games for which admission would be charged. Since 1911, however, players on the two World Series teams had been barred from barnstorming. The rule had been leniently enforced—in 1916, several members of the champion Red Sox, including pitcher George Herman "Babe" Ruth had barnstormed and had been fined a token $100 each by the National Commission.
Ruth, who after the 1919 season had been sold to the Yankees, and who by then had mostly abandoned his pitching role for the outfield, was the focus of considerable fan interest as he broke batting records in 1920 and 1921, some by huge margins. Ruth's major league record 29 home runs with the Red Sox in 1919 fell to his own efforts in 1920, when he hit 54. He then proceeded to hit 59 in 1921, leading the Yankees to their first pennant. Eight major league teams failed to hit as many home runs in 1921 as Ruth hit by himself. The Yankees lost the 1921 World Series to the Giants (Ruth was injured and missed several games) and after the series, the outfielder proposed to capitalize on fan interest by leading a team of barnstormers, including Yankees teammate Bob Meusel, in violation of the rule. According to Cottrell,
[T]he two men clashed who helped the national pastime overcome the Black Sox scandal, one through his seemingly iron will, the other thanks to his magical bat. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis and Babe Ruth battled over the right of a ballplayer from a pennant-winning squad to barnstorm in the off-season. Also involved was the commissioner's continued determination to display, as he had through his banishment of the Black Sox, that he had established the boundaries for organized baseball. These boundaries, Landis intended to demonstrate, applied even to the sport's most popular and greatest star. Significant too, only Babe Ruth now contended with Commissioner Landis for the title of baseball's most important figure.
Ruth had asked Yankees general manager Ed Barrow for permission to barnstorm. Barrow had no objection but warned Ruth he must obtain Landis's consent. Landis biographer Spink, who was at the time the editor of The Sporting News, stated, "I can say that Ruth knew exactly what he was doing when he defied Landis in October, 1921. He was willing to back his own popularity and well-known drawing powers against the Judge." Ruth, to the commissioner's irritation, did not contact Landis until October 15, one day before the first exhibition. When the two spoke by telephone, Landis ordered Ruth to attend a meeting with him; Ruth refused, stating that he had to leave for Buffalo for the first game. Landis angrily refused consent for Ruth to barnstorm, and after slamming down the receiver, is recorded as saying, "Who the hell does that big ape think he is? That blankety-blank! If he goes on that trip it will be one of the sorriest things he has ever done." By one account, Yankees co-owner Colonel Tillinghast Huston attempted to dissuade Ruth as he departed, only to be told by the ballplayer, "Aw, tell the old guy to jump in a lake."
The tour also featured fellow Yankees Bob Meusel and Bill Piercy (who had been called up late in the season and was ineligible for the World Series) as well as Tom Sheehan, who had been sent to the minor leagues before the end of the season. Two other Yankees, Carl Mays and Wally Schang, had been scheduled to join the tour, but given Landis's position, according to Spink, "wisely decided to pass it up". Spink describes the tour as "a fiasco." On Landis's orders, it was barred from all major and minor league ballparks. In addition, it was plagued by poor weather, and was called off in late October. In early December, Landis suspended Ruth, Piercy, and Meusel until May 20, 1922. Yankee management was actually relieved; they had feared Landis would suspend Ruth for the season or even longer. Both the Yankees and Ruth repeatedly asked Landis for the players' early reinstatement, which was refused, and when Landis visited the Yankees during spring training in New Orleans, he lectured Ruth for two hours on the value of obeying authority. "He sure can talk", noted Ruth.
When Ruth returned on May 20, he batted 0-for-4, and was booed by the crowd at the Polo Grounds. According to Pietrusza, "Always a politician, there was one boss Landis did fear: public opinion. He had no guarantee at the start of the Ruth controversy that the public and press would back him as he assumed unprecedented powers over baseball. Now, he knew they would."
Policies as commissioner
Major-minor league relations; development of the farm system
At the start of Landis's commissionership, the minor league teams were for the most part autonomous of the major leagues; in fact the minor leagues independently chose to accept Landis's rule. To ensure players did not become mired in the minor leagues without a chance to earn their way out, major league teams were able to draft players who played two consecutive years with the same minor league team. Several minor leagues were not subject to the draft; Landis fought for the inclusion of these leagues, feeling that the non-draft leagues could prevent players from advancing as they became more skilled. By 1924, he had succeeded, as the International League, the final holdout, accepted the draft.
By the mid-1920s, major league clubs were beginning to develop "farm systems", that is, minor league teams owned or controlled by them, at which they could develop young prospects without the risk of the players being acquired by major league rivals. The pioneer in this development was Branch Rickey, who then ran the St. Louis Cardinals. As the 1921 National Agreement among the major and minor leagues which implemented Landis's hiring lifted a ban on major league teams owning minor league ones, Landis was limited in his avenues of attack on Rickey's schemes. Developing talent at little cost thanks to Rickey, the Cardinals dominated the National League, winning nine league titles in the years from 1926 to 1946.
Soon after Landis's appointment, he surprised the major league owners by requiring that they disclose their minor league interests. Landis fought against the practice of "covering up", using transfers between two teams controlled by the same major league team to make players ineligible for the draft. His first formal act as commissioner was to declare infielder Phil Todt a free agent, dissolving his contract with the St. Louis Browns (at the time run by Rickey, who soon thereafter moved across town to run the Cardinals); in 1928, he ruled future Hall of Famer Chuck Klein a free agent as he held the Cardinals had tried to cover Klein up by having him play in a league where they owned two affiliates. The following year, he freed Detroit Tigers prospect and future Hall of Famer Rick Ferrell, who attracted a significant signing bonus from the Browns. In 1936, Landis found that teenage pitching prospect Bob Feller's signing by minor league club Fargo-Moorhead had been a charade; the young pitcher was for all intents and purposes property of the Cleveland Indians. However, Feller indicated that he wanted to play for Cleveland and Landis issued a ruling which required the Indians to pay damages to minor league clubs, but allowed them to retain Feller, who went on to a Hall of Fame career with the Indians.
Landis's attempts to crack down on "covering up" provoked the only time he was ever sued by one of his owners. After the 1930 season, minor leaguer Fred Bennett, convinced he was being covered up by the Browns, petitioned Landis for his release. Landis ruled that the Browns could either keep Bennett on their roster for the entire 1931 season, trade him, or release him. Instead, Browns owner Phil Ball brought suit against Landis in his old court in Chicago. Federal Judge Walter Lindley ruled for Landis, noting that the agreements and rules were intended to "endow the Commissioner with all the attributes of a benevolent but absolute despot and all the disciplinary powers of the proverbial pater familias". Ball intended to appeal, but after a meeting between team owners and Landis in which the commissioner reminded owners of their agreement not to sue, decided to drop the case.
Landis had hoped that the large Cardinal farm system would become economically unfeasible; when it proved successful for the Cardinals, he had tolerated it for several years and was in a poor position to abolish it. In 1938, however, finding that the Cardinals effectively controlled multiple teams in the same league (a practice disliked by Landis), he freed 70 players from their farm system. As few of the players were likely prospects for the major leagues, Landis's actions generated headlines, but had little effect on the Cardinals organization, and the development of the modern farm system, whereby each major league club has several minor league teams which it uses to develop talent, proceeded apace. Rob Neyer describes Landis's effort as "a noble effort in a good cause, but it was also doomed to fail."
Baseball color line
One of the most controversial aspects of Landis's commissionership is the question of race. From 1884, black ballplayers were informally banned from organized baseball. No black ballplayer played in organized baseball during Landis's commissionership; Rickey (then running the Brooklyn Dodgers) broke the color line by signing Jackie Robinson to play for the minor league Montreal Royals in 1946, after Landis's death. Robinson became the first African-American in the major leagues since the 19th century, playing with the Dodgers beginning in 1947.
According to contemporary newspaper columns, at the time of his appointment as commissioner, Landis was considered a liberal on race questions; two Chicago African-American newspapers defended him against the 1921 efforts to impeach him from his judgeship. However, a number of baseball authors have ascribed racism to Landis, who they say actively perpetuated baseball's color line. James Bankes, in The Pittsburgh Crawfords, tracing the history of that Negro league team, states that Landis, whom the author suggests was a Southerner, made "little effort to disguise his racial prejudice during 25 years in office" and "remained a steadfast foe of integration". Negro league historian John Holway termed Landis "the hard-bitten Carolinian Kennesaw Mountain Landis". In a 2000 article in Smithsonian magazine, writer Bruce Watson states that Landis "upheld baseball's unwritten ban on black players and did nothing to push owners toward integration". A number of authors say that Landis banned major league play against black teams for fear the white teams would lose, though they ascribe various dates for this action, and the Dodgers are known to have played black teams in and around their Havana spring training base as late as 1942.
Landis's documented actions on race are inconsistent. In 1938, Yankee Jake Powell was interviewed by a radio station, and when asked what he did in the offseason, made comments that were interpreted as meaning he worked as a police officer and beat up African Americans. Landis suspended Powell for ten days. In June 1942, the Negro league Kansas City Monarchs played several games against the white "Dizzy Dean All-Stars" at major league ballparks, attracting large crowds. After three games, all won by the Monarchs, Landis ordered a fourth canceled, on the ground that the games were outdrawing major league contests. On one occasion, Landis intervened in Negro league affairs, though he had no jurisdiction to do so. The Crawfords lost a game to a white semi-pro team when their star catcher, Josh Gibson dropped a pop fly, and Gibson was accused of throwing the game at the behest of gamblers. Landis summoned the black catcher to his office, interviewed him, and announced that Gibson was cleared of wrongdoing.
In July 1942, Dodger manager Leo Durocher charged that there was a "grapevine understanding" keeping blacks out of baseball. He was summoned to Landis's Chicago office, and after emerging from a meeting with the commissioner, alleged that he had been misquoted. Landis then addressed the press, and stated,
Negroes are not barred from organized baseball by the commissioner and never have been in the 21 years I have served. There is no rule in organized baseball prohibiting their participation and never has been to my knowledge. If Durocher, or if any other manager, or all of them, want to sign one, or twenty-five Negro players, it is all right with me. That is the business of the managers and the club owners. The business of the commissioner is to interpret the rules of baseball, and to enforce them.
In his 1961 memoir, Veeck as in Wreck, longtime baseball executive and owner Bill Veeck told of his plan, in 1942, to buy the Phillies and stock the team with Negro league stars. Veeck wrote that he told Landis, who reacted with shock, and soon moved to block the purchase. In his book, Veeck placed some of the blame on National League President Ford Frick, but later reserved blame exclusively for Landis, whom he accused of racism, stating in a subsequent interview, "[a]fter all, a man who is named Kenesaw Mountain was not born and raised in the state of Maine." However, when Veeck was asked for proof of his allegations against Landis, he stated, "I have no proof of that. I can only surmise." According to baseball historian David Jordan, "Veeck, nothing if not a storyteller, seems to have added these embellishments, sticking in some guys in black hats, simply to juice up his tale."
In November 1943, Landis agreed after some persuasion that black sportswriter Sam Lacy should make a case for integration of organized baseball before the owners' annual meeting. Instead of Lacy attending the meeting, actor Paul Robeson did. Robeson, though a noted black actor and advocate of civil rights, was a controversial figure due to his affiliation with the Communist Party. The owners heard Robeson out, but at Landis's suggestion, did not ask him any questions or begin any discussion with him.
Neyer noted that "Landis has been blamed for delaying the integration of the major leagues, but the truth is that the owners didn't want black players in the majors any more than Landis did. And it's not likely that, even if Landis hadn't died in 1944, he could have prevented Branch Rickey from bringing Jackie Robinson to the National League in 1947." The Baseball Writers' Association of America after Landis's death in 1944 renamed its Most Valuable Player Awards after Landis, but removed his name in 2020 with a vote of 89 percent of voting members in favor. The president of the association said Landis had "notably failed to integrate the game during his tenure".
C.C. Johnson Spink, son of Landis biographer J.G. Taylor Spink and his successor as editor of The Sporting News, noted in the introduction to the reissue of his father's biography of Landis,
K.M. Landis was quite human and not infallible. If, for example, he did drag his feet at erasing baseball's color line, he was grievously wrong, but then so were many others of his post-Civil War generation.
World Series and All-Star Game; other innovations
Landis took full jurisdiction over the World Series, as a contest between representatives of the two major leagues. Landis was blamed when the umpires called a game on account of darkness with the score tied during the 1922 World Series, even though there was still light. Landis decided that such decisions in future would be made by himself, moved forward the starting time of World Series games in future years, and announced that proceeds from the tied game would be donated to charity. In the 1932 World Series, Landis ordered that tickets for Game One at Yankee Stadium only be sold as part of strips, forcing fans to purchase tickets for all Yankee home games during that Series. Bad weather and the poor economy resulted in a half-filled stadium, and Landis allowed individual game sales for Game Two. During the 1933 World Series, he instituted a rule that only he could throw a player out of a World Series game, a rule which followed the ejection of Washington Senator Heinie Manush by umpire Charley Moran. The following year, with the visiting Cardinals ahead of the Detroit Tigers, 9–0 in Game Seven, he removed Cardinal Joe Medwick from the game for his own safety when Medwick, the left fielder, was pelted with fruit by Tiger fans after Medwick had been involved in a fight with one of the Tigers. Spink notes that Landis would most likely not have done so were the game within reach of the Tigers. In the 1938 World Series, umpire Moran was hit by a wild throw and suffered facial injuries. He was able to continue, but the incident caused Landis to order that World Series games and All-Star Games be played with six umpires.
The All-Star Game began in 1933; Landis had been a strong supporter of the proposal for such a contest, and after the first game remarked, "That's a grand show, and it should be continued." He never missed an All-Star Game in his lifetime; his final public appearance was at the 1944 All-Star Game in Pittsburgh.
In 1928, National League ball clubs proposed an innovation whereby each team's pitcher, usually the weakest hitter in the lineup, would not bat, but be replaced for the purposes of batting and base-running by a tenth player. There were expectations that at the interleague meetings that year, the National League teams would vote for it, and the American League teams against it, leaving Landis to cast the deciding vote. In the event, the proposal was withdrawn, and Landis did not disclose how he would have voted on this early version of the "designated hitter" rule.
Landis disliked the innovation of "night baseball", played in the evening with the aid of artificial light, and sought to discourage teams from it. Despite this, he attended the first successful minor league night game, in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1930. When major league night baseball began in the late 1930s, Landis got the owners to restrict the number of such games. During World War II, many restrictions on night baseball were reduced, with the Washington Senators permitted to play all their home games (except those on Sundays and holidays) at night.
World War II, death, and legacy
With the entry of the United States into World War II in late 1941, Landis wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, inquiring as to the wartime status of baseball. The President responded, urging Landis to keep baseball open, foreseeing that even those fully engaged in war work would benefit from inexpensive diversions such as attending baseball games. Many major leaguers enlisted or were drafted; even so Landis repeatedly stated, "We'll play as long as we can put nine men on the field." Although many of the teams practiced at their normal spring training sites in 1942, beginning the following year they were required to train near their home cities or in the Northeast. Landis was as virulently opposed to the Axis Powers as he had been towards the Kaiser, writing that peace would not be possible until "about fifteen thousand little Hitler, Himmlers and Hirohitos" were killed.
Landis retained a firm hold on baseball despite his advancing years and, in 1943, banned Phillies owner William D. Cox from baseball for betting on his own team. In 1927, Landis's stance regarding gambling had been codified in the rules of baseball: "Any player, umpire, or club or league official or employee who shall bet any sum whatsoever upon any baseball game in connection with which the bettor had a duty to perform shall be declared permanently ineligible." Cox was required to sell his stake in the Phillies.
In early October 1944, Landis checked into St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago, where his wife Winifred had been hospitalized, with a severe cold. While in the hospital, he had a heart attack, causing him to miss the World Series for the first time in his commissionership. He remained fully alert, and as usual signed the World Series share checks to players. His contract was due to expire in January 1946; on November 17, 1944, baseball's owners voted him another seven-year term. However, on November 25, he died surrounded by family, five days after his 78th birthday. His longtime assistant, Leslie O'Connor, wept as he read the announcement for the press. Landis is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery in Chicago.
Two weeks after his death, Landis was voted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by a special committee vote. American League President Will Harridge said of Landis, "He was a wonderful man. His great qualities and downright simplicity impressed themselves deeply on all who knew him." Pietrusza suggests that the legend on Landis's Hall of Fame plaque is his true legacy: "His integrity and leadership established baseball in the esteem, respect, and affection of the American people." Pietrusza notes that Landis was hired by the baseball owners to clean up the sport, and "no one could deny Kenesaw Mountain Landis had accomplished what he had been hired to do". According to his first biographer, Spink:
[Landis] may have been arbitrary, self-willed and even unfair, but he 'called 'em as he saw 'em' and he turned over to his successor and the future a game cleansed of the nasty spots which followed World War I. Kenesaw Mountain Landis put the fear of God into weak characters who might otherwise have been inclined to violate their trust. And for that, I, as a lifelong lover of baseball, am eternally grateful.
References
Notes
Bibliography
External links
A Brief Biography
Lyrics to 'Kenesaw Mountain Landis' by Jonathan Coulton
1866 births
1944 deaths
People from Butler County, Ohio
Judges of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees
Major League Baseball commissioners
People from Cass County, Indiana
Lawyers from Chicago
American people of Swiss descent
Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law alumni
United States district court judges appointed by Theodore Roosevelt
20th-century American judges
Illinois Republicans
History of baseball in the United States
Indiana Republicans | [
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16814 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler%E2%80%93Poinsot%20polyhedron | Kepler–Poinsot polyhedron | In geometry, a Kepler–Poinsot polyhedron is any of four regular star polyhedra.
They may be obtained by stellating the regular convex dodecahedron and icosahedron, and differ from these in having regular pentagrammic faces or vertex figures. They can all be seen as three-dimensional analogues of the pentagram in one way or another.
Characteristics
Non-convexity
These figures have pentagrams (star pentagons) as faces or vertex figures. The small and great stellated dodecahedron have nonconvex regular pentagram faces. The great dodecahedron and great icosahedron have convex polygonal faces, but pentagrammic vertex figures.
In all cases, two faces can intersect along a line that is not an edge of either face, so that part of each face passes through the interior of the figure. Such lines of intersection are not part of the polyhedral structure and are sometimes called false edges. Likewise where three such lines intersect at a point that is not a corner of any face, these points are false vertices. The images below show spheres at the true vertices, and blue rods along the true edges.
For example, the small stellated dodecahedron has 12 pentagram faces with the central pentagonal part hidden inside the solid. The visible parts of each face comprise five isosceles triangles which touch at five points around the pentagon. We could treat these triangles as 60 separate faces to obtain a new, irregular polyhedron which looks outwardly identical. Each edge would now be divided into three shorter edges (of two different kinds), and the 20 false vertices would become true ones, so that we have a total of 32 vertices (again of two kinds). The hidden inner pentagons are no longer part of the polyhedral surface, and can disappear. Now Euler's formula holds: 60 − 90 + 32 = 2. However, this polyhedron is no longer the one described by the Schläfli symbol {5/2, 5}, and so can not be a Kepler–Poinsot solid even though it still looks like one from outside.
Euler characteristic χ
A Kepler–Poinsot polyhedron covers its circumscribed sphere more than once, with the centers of faces acting as winding points in the figures which have pentagrammic faces, and the vertices in the others. Because of this, they are not necessarily topologically equivalent to the sphere as Platonic solids are, and in particular the Euler relation
does not always hold. Schläfli held that all polyhedra must have χ = 2, and he rejected the small stellated dodecahedron and great dodecahedron as proper polyhedra. This view was never widely held.
A modified form of Euler's formula, using density (D) of the vertex figures () and faces () was given by Arthur Cayley, and holds both for convex polyhedra (where the correction factors are all 1), and the Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra:
Duality and Petrie polygons
The Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra exist in dual pairs. Duals have the same Petrie polygon, or more precisely, Petrie polygons with the same two dimensional projection.
The following images show the two dual compounds with the same edge radius. They also show that the Petrie polygons are skew.
Two relationships described in the article below are also easily seen in the images: That the violet edges are the same, and that the green faces lie in the same planes.
Summary
Relationships among the regular polyhedra
Conway's operational terminology
John Conway defines the Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra as greatenings and stellations of the convex solids.
In his naming convention the small stellated dodecahedron is just the stellated dodecahedron.
Stellation changes pentagonal faces into pentagrams. (In this sense stellation is a unique operation, and not to be confused with the more general stellation described below.)
Greatening maintains the type of faces, shifting and resizing them into parallel planes.
Stellations and facetings
The great icosahedron is one of the stellations of the icosahedron. (See The Fifty-Nine Icosahedra)
The three others are all the stellations of the dodecahedron.
The great stellated dodecahedron is a faceting of the dodecahedron.
The three others are facetings of the icosahedron.
If the intersections are treated as new edges and vertices, the figures obtained will not be regular, but they can still be considered stellations.
(See also List of Wenninger polyhedron models)
Shared vertices and edges
The great stellated dodecahedron shares its vertices with the dodecahedron. The other three Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra share theirs with the icosahedron.
The stellated dodecahedra
Hull and core
The small and great stellated dodecahedron
can be seen as a regular and a great dodecahedron with their edges and faces extended until they intersect.
The pentagon faces of these cores are the invisible parts of the star polyhedra's pentagram faces.
For the small stellated dodecahedron the hull is times bigger than the core, and for the great it is times bigger.
(The midradius is a common measure to compare the size of different polyhedra.)
Augmentations
Traditionally the two star polyhedra have been defined as augmentations (or cumulations),
Kepler calls the small stellation an augmented dodecahedron (then nicknaming it hedgehog).
These naïve definitions are still used.
E.g. MathWorld states that the two star polyhedra can be constructed by adding pyramids to the faces of the Platonic solids.
Symmetry
All Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra have full icosahedral symmetry, just like their convex hulls.
The great icosahedron and its dual resemble the icosahedron and its dual in that they have faces and vertices on the 3-fold (yellow) and 5-fold (red) symmetry axes.
In the great dodecahedron and its dual all faces and vertices are on 5-fold symmetry axes (so there are no yellow elements in these images).
The following table shows the solids in pairs of duals. In the top row they are shown with pyritohedral symmetry, in the bottom row with icosahedral symmetry (to which the mentioned colors refer).
The table below shows orthographic projections from the 5-fold (red), 3-fold (yellow) and 2-fold (blue) symmetry axes.
History
Most, if not all, of the Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra were known of in some form or other before Kepler. A small stellated dodecahedron appears in a marble tarsia (inlay panel) on the floor of St. Mark's Basilica, Venice, Italy. It dates from the 15th century and is sometimes attributed to Paolo Uccello.
In his Perspectiva corporum regularium (Perspectives of the regular solids), a book of woodcuts published in 1568, Wenzel Jamnitzer depicts the great stellated dodecahedron and a great dodecahedron (both shown below). There is also a truncated version of the small stellated dodecahedron. It is clear from the general arrangement of the book that he regarded only the five Platonic solids as regular.
The small and great stellated dodecahedra, sometimes called the Kepler polyhedra, were first recognized as regular by Johannes Kepler around 1619. He obtained them by stellating the regular convex dodecahedron, for the first time treating it as a surface rather than a solid. He noticed that by extending the edges or faces of the convex dodecahedron until they met again, he could obtain star pentagons. Further, he recognized that these star pentagons are also regular. In this way he constructed the two stellated dodecahedra. Each has the central convex region of each face "hidden" within the interior, with only the triangular arms visible. Kepler's final step was to recognize that these polyhedra fit the definition of regularity, even though they were not convex, as the traditional Platonic solids were.
In 1809, Louis Poinsot rediscovered Kepler's figures, by assembling star pentagons around each vertex. He also assembled convex polygons around star vertices to discover two more regular stars, the great icosahedron and great dodecahedron. Some people call these two the Poinsot polyhedra. Poinsot did not know if he had discovered all the regular star polyhedra.
Three years later, Augustin Cauchy proved the list complete by stellating the Platonic solids, and almost half a century after that, in 1858, Bertrand provided a more elegant proof by faceting them.
The following year, Arthur Cayley gave the Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra the names by which they are generally known today.
A hundred years later, John Conway developed a systematic terminology for stellations in up to four dimensions. Within this scheme the small stellated dodecahedron is just the stellated dodecahedron.
Regular star polyhedra in art and culture
A dissection of the great dodecahedron was used for the 1980s puzzle Alexander's Star.
Regular star polyhedra first appear in Renaissance art. A small stellated dodecahedron is depicted in a marble tarsia on the floor of St. Mark's Basilica, Venice, Italy, dating from ca. 1430 and sometimes attributed to Paulo Ucello.
In the 20th Century, Artist M. C. Escher's interest in geometric forms often led to works based on or including regular solids; Gravitation is based on a small stellated dodecahedron.
Norwegian artist Vebjørn Sands sculpture The Kepler Star is displayed near Oslo Airport, Gardermoen. The star spans 14 meters, and consists of an icosahedron and a dodecahedron inside a great stellated dodecahedron.
See also
Regular polytope
Regular polyhedron
List of regular polytopes
Uniform polyhedron
Uniform star polyhedron
Polyhedral compound
Regular star 4-polytope – the ten regular star 4-polytopes, 4-dimensional analogues of the Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra
References
Notes
Bibliography
J. Bertrand, Note sur la théorie des polyèdres réguliers, Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Sciences, 46 (1858), pp. 79–82, 117.
Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Recherches sur les polyèdres. J. de l'École Polytechnique 9, 68-86, 1813.
Arthur Cayley, On Poinsot's Four New Regular Solids. Phil. Mag. 17, pp. 123–127 and 209, 1859.
John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, Chaim Goodman-Strauss, The Symmetry of Things 2008, (Chapter 24, Regular Star-polytopes, pp. 404–408)
Kaleidoscopes: Selected Writings of H. S. M. Coxeter, edited by F. Arthur Sherk, Peter McMullen, Anthony C. Thompson, Asia Ivic Weiss, Wiley-Interscience Publication, 1995,
(Paper 1) H.S.M. Coxeter, The Nine Regular Solids [Proc. Can. Math. Congress 1 (1947), 252–264, MR 8, 482]
(Paper 10) H.S.M. Coxeter, Star Polytopes and the Schlafli Function f(α,β,γ) [Elemente der Mathematik 44 (2) (1989) 25–36]
Theoni Pappas, (The Kepler–Poinsot Solids) The Joy of Mathematics. San Carlos, CA: Wide World Publ./Tetra, p. 113, 1989.
Louis Poinsot, Memoire sur les polygones et polyèdres. J. de l'École Polytechnique 9, pp. 16–48, 1810.
Lakatos, Imre; Proofs and Refutations, Cambridge University Press (1976) - discussion of proof of Euler characteristic
, pp. 39–41.
John H. Conway, Heidi Burgiel, Chaim Goodman-Strauss, The Symmetries of Things 2008, (Chapter 26. pp. 404: Regular star-polytopes Dimension 3)
Chapter 8: Kepler Poisot polyhedra
External links
Paper models of Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra
Free paper models (nets) of Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra
The Uniform Polyhedra
Kepler-Poinsot Solids in Visual Polyhedra
VRML models of the Kepler–Poinsot polyhedra
Stellation and facetting - a brief history
Stella: Polyhedron Navigator: Software used to create many of the images on this page.
Johannes Kepler
Nonconvex polyhedra | [
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16815 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krak%C3%B3w | Kraków | Kraków (), also known in English as Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 and has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, economic, cultural and artistic life. Cited as one of Europe's most beautiful cities, its Old Town with Wawel Royal Castle was declared the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in the world.
The city has grown from a Stone Age settlement to Poland's second-most-important city. It began as a hamlet on Wawel Hill and was reported as a busy trading centre of Central Europe in 965. With the establishment of new universities and cultural venues at the emergence of the Second Polish Republic in 1918 and throughout the 20th century, Kraków reaffirmed its role as a major national academic and artistic centre. The city has a population of about 780,000, with approximately 8 million additional people living within a radius of its main square.
After the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany at the start of World War II, the newly defined Distrikt Krakau (Kraków District) became the capital of Germany's General Government. The Jewish population of the city was forced into a walled zone known as the Kraków Ghetto, from where they were sent to Nazi extermination camps such as the nearby Auschwitz, and Nazi concentration camps like Płaszów. However, the city was spared from destruction and major bombing.
In 1978, Karol Wojtyła, archbishop of Kraków, was elevated to the papacy as Pope John Paul II—the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. Also that year, UNESCO approved Kraków's entire Old Town and historic centre as its first World Heritage Site alongside Quito. Kraków is classified as a global city with the ranking of "high sufficiency" by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Its extensive cultural heritage across the epochs of Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque architecture includes Wawel Cathedral and Wawel Royal Castle on the banks of the Vistula, St. Mary's Basilica, Saints Peter and Paul Church and the largest medieval market square in Europe, Rynek Główny. Kraków is home to Jagiellonian University, one of the oldest universities in the world and traditionally Poland's most reputable institution of higher learning.
In 2000, Kraków was named European Capital of Culture. In 2013, Kraków was officially approved as a UNESCO City of Literature. The city hosted World Youth Day in July 2016.
Etymology
The name of Kraków is traditionally derived from Krakus (Krak, Grakch), the legendary founder of Kraków and a ruler of the tribe of Lechitians. In Polish, is an archaic possessive form of Krak and essentially means "Krak's (town)". The true origin of the name is highly disputed among historians, with many theories in existence and no unanimous consensus. The first recorded mention of Prince Krakus (then written as Grakch) dates back to 1190, although the town existed as early as the seventh century, when it was inhabited by the tribe of Vistulans. It is possible that the name of the city is derived from the word "kruk", meaning crow or raven.
The city's full official name is , which can be translated as "Royal Capital City of Kraków". In English, a person born or living in Kraków is a Cracovian ( or krakus). Up through
the 1990s the English version of the name was often written as Cracow, but now the most widespread modern English version is Krakow.
History
Kraków's early history begins with evidence of a Stone Age settlement on the present site of the Wawel Hill. A legend attributes Kraków's founding to the mythical ruler Krakus, who built it above a cave occupied by a dragon, Smok Wawelski. The first written record of the city's name dates back to 965, when Kraków was described as a notable commercial centre controlled first by Moravia (876–879), but captured by a Bohemian duke Boleslaus I in 955. The first acclaimed ruler of Poland, Mieszko I, took Kraków from the Bohemians and incorporated it into the holdings of the Piast dynasty towards the end of his reign.
In 1038, Kraków became the seat of the Polish government. By the end of the tenth century, the city was a leading centre of trade. Brick buildings were constructed, including the Royal Wawel Castle with St. Felix and Adaukt Rotunda, Romanesque churches such as St. Adalbert's, a cathedral, and a basilica. The city was sacked and burned during the Mongol invasion of 1241. It was rebuilt practically identical, based on new location act and incorporated in 1257 by the high duke Bolesław V the Chaste who following the example of Wrocław, introduced city rights modelled on the Magdeburg law allowing for tax benefits and new trade privileges for the citizens. In 1259, the city was again ravaged by the Mongols. A third attack in 1287 was repelled thanks in part to the newly built fortifications.
In 1335, King Casimir III the Great (Kazimierz in Polish) declared the two western suburbs to be a new city named after him, Kazimierz (Casimiria in Latin). The defensive walls were erected around the central section of Kazimierz in 1362, and a plot was set aside for the Augustinian order next to Skałka. The city rose to prominence in 1364, when Casimir founded the University of Kraków, the second oldest university in central Europe after the Charles University in Prague. Casimir also began work on a campus for the academy in Kazimierz, but he died in 1370 and the campus was never completed.
The city continued to grow under the joint Lithuanian-Polish Jagiellon dynasty. As the capital of the Kingdom of Poland and a member of the Hanseatic League, the city attracted many craftsmen from abroad, businesses, and guilds as science and the arts began to flourish. The royal chancery and the university ensured a first flourishing of Polish literary culture in the city.
Kraków's "Golden Age"
The 15th and 16th centuries were known as Poland's Złoty Wiek or Golden Age. Many works of Polish Renaissance art and architecture were created, including ancient synagogues in Kraków's Jewish quarter located in the north-eastern part of Kazimierz, such as the Old Synagogue. During the reign of Casimir IV, various artists came to work and live in Kraków, and Johann Haller established a printing press in the city after Kasper Straube had printed the Calendarium Cracoviense, the first work printed in Poland, in 1473.
In 1520, the most famous church bell in Poland, named Zygmunt after Sigismund I of Poland, was cast by Hans Behem. At that time, Hans Dürer, a younger brother of artist and thinker Albrecht Dürer, was Sigismund's court painter. Hans von Kulmbach made altarpieces for several churches. In 1553, the Kazimierz district council gave the Jewish Qahal a licence for the right to build their own interior walls across the western section of the already existing defensive walls. The walls were expanded again in 1608 due to the growth of the community and influx of Jews from Bohemia. In 1572, King Sigismund II, the last of the Jagiellons, died childless. The Polish throne passed to Henry III of France and then to other foreign-based rulers in rapid succession, causing a decline in the city's importance that was worsened by pillaging during the Swedish invasion and by an outbreak of bubonic plague that left 20,000 of the city's residents dead. In 1596, Sigismund III of the House of Vasa moved the administrative capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from Kraków to Warsaw.
19th century
Already weakened during the 18th century, by the mid-1790s the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth had twice been partitioned by its neighbors: Russia, the Habsburg empire and Prussia. In 1791, the Austrian and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II changed the status of Kazimierz as a separate city and made it into a district of Kraków. The richer Jewish families began to move out. However, because of the injunction against travel on the Sabbath, most Jewish families stayed relatively close to the historic synagogues. In 1794, Tadeusz Kościuszko initiated an unsuccessful insurrection in the town's Main Square which, in spite of his victorious Battle of Racławice against a numerically superior Russian army, resulted in the third and final partition of Poland. In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte captured former Polish territories from Austria and made the town part of the Duchy of Warsaw. Following Napoleon's defeat, the 1815 Congress of Vienna restored the pre-war boundaries but also created the partially independent Free City of Kraków. An insurrection in 1846 failed, resulting in the city being annexed by Austria under the name the Grand Duchy of Kraków (, ).
In 1866, Austria granted a degree of autonomy to Galicia after its own defeat in the Austro-Prussian War. Politically freer Kraków became a Polish national symbol and a centre of culture and art, known frequently as the "Polish Athens" (). Many leading Polish artists of the period resided in Kraków, among them the seminal painter Jan Matejko, laid to rest at Rakowicki Cemetery, and the founder of modern Polish drama, Stanisław Wyspiański. Fin de siècle Kraków evolved into a modern metropolis; running water and electric streetcars were introduced in 1901, and between 1910 and 1915, Kraków and its surrounding suburban communities were gradually combined into a single administrative unit called Greater Kraków ().
At the outbreak of World War I on 3 August 1914, Józef Piłsudski formed a small cadre military unit, the First Cadre Company—the predecessor of the Polish Legions—which set out from Kraków to fight for the liberation of Poland. The city was briefly besieged by Russian troops in November 1914. Austrian rule in Kraków ended in 1918 when the Polish Liquidation Committee assumed power.
20th century to the present
With the emergence of the Second Polish Republic, Kraków resumed its role as a major academic and cultural centre, with the establishment of new universities such as the AGH University of Science and Technology and the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, including a number of new and essential vocational schools. It became an important cultural centre for the Polish Jews, including both Zionist and Bundist groups. Kraków was also an influential centre of Jewish spiritual life, with all its manifestations of religious observance from Orthodox, to Hasidic and Reform Judaism flourishing side by side.
Following the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in September 1939, the city of Kraków became part of the General Government, a separate administrative region of the Third Reich. On 26 October 1939, the Nazi Regime constructed Distrikt Krakau, one of four total districts within the General Government. On the same day, the city of Kraków also became the capital of the administration. The General Government was ruled by Hans Frank who was based in the city's Wawel Castle. The Nazis envisioned turning Kraków into a completely Germanised city; after removal of all the Jews and Poles, renaming of locations and streets into the German language, and sponsorship of propaganda trying to portray it as a historically German city. On 28 November 1939 Hans Frank created Judenräte (Jewish Councils) which were to be run by Jewish citizens for the purpose of carrying out orders for the Nazis. These orders included registration of all Jewish people living in the area, the collection of taxes, and forced labour groups.
On the eve of the war some 56,000 Jews resided in Krakow, almost one-quarter of a total population of about 250,000. By November 1939, the Jewish population of Krakow had grown to approximately 70,000. According to German statistics from 1940, over 200,000 Jews lived within the entire Kraków District, exceeding 5 percent of the total population in the district. These statistics, however, are likely an underestimate.
During an operation called "", more than 180 university professors and academics were arrested and sent to Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps, though the survivors were later released on the request of prominent Italians.
Before the formation of ghettos, which began in the District in December 1939, Jews were encouraged to flee the city. For those who remained the German authorities decided in March 1941 to allocate a then suburban neighborhood, Podgórze District, to become Kraków's ghetto where so many Jews were destined to die of illness or starvation. Initially, most ghettos were open and Jews were allowed to enter and exit freely. However, with time ghettos were generally closed and security became tighter. From autumn 1941, the SS developed the policy of Extermination through labour, which further worsened the already bleak Jewish condition. The ghetto inhabitants were later murdered or sent to German Extermination camps, including Bełżec and Auschwitz, and to Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp. The largest deportations within the District occurred from June to September 1942. More specifically, the Kraków ghetto deportation occurred in the first week of June 1942, and in March 1943 the ghetto was definitely liquidated.
Roman Polanski, the film director, is a survivor of the Kraków Ghetto, while Oskar Schindler selected employees from the ghetto to work in his enamelware factory, ( for short) saving them from the camps. Similarly, many men capable of physical labor were saved from the deportations to extermination camps and instead set to labor camps across the General Government.
By September 1943, the last of the Jews from the Kraków ghetto were deported. Although looted by occupational authorities, Kraków remained relatively undamaged at the end of World War II, sparing most of the city's historical and architectural legacy. Soviet forces entered the city on 18 January 1945, and began arresting Poles loyal to the Polish government-in-exile or those who had served in the Home Army.
After the war, under the Polish People's Republic, the intellectual and academic community of Kraków was put under complete political control. The universities were soon deprived of printing rights and autonomy. The Stalinist government ordered the construction of the country's largest steel mill in the newly created suburb of Nowa Huta. The creation of the giant Lenin Steelworks (now Sendzimir Steelworks owned by Mittal) sealed Kraków's transformation from a university city, into an industrial centre. The new working-class, drawn by the industrialization of Kraków, contributed to rapid population growth.
In an effort that spanned two decades, Karol Wojtyła, cardinal archbishop of Kraków, successfully lobbied for permission to build the first churches in the newly industrial suburbs. In 1978, Wojtyła was elevated to the papacy as John Paul II, the first non-Italian pope in 455 years. In the same year, UNESCO following the application of local authorities, placed Kraków Old Town on the first-ever list of World Heritage Sites.
Geography
Kraków lies in the southern part of Poland, on the Vistula River, in a valley at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, above sea level; halfway between the Jurassic Rock Upland () to the north, and the Tatra Mountains to the south, constituting the natural border with Slovakia and the Czech Republic; west from the border with Ukraine.
There are five nature reserves in Kraków, with a combined area of ca. . Due to their ecological value, these areas are legally protected. The western part of the city, along its northern and north-western side, borders an area of international significance known as the Jurassic Bielany-Tyniec refuge. The main motives for the protection of this area include plant and animal wildlife and the area's geomorphological features and landscape. Another part of the city is located within the ecological 'corridor' of the Vistula River valley. This corridor is also assessed as being of international significance as part of the Pan-European ecological network. The city centre is situated on the left (northern) bank of the river.
Climate
Officially, Kraków has a temperate oceanic climate, denoted by Köppen classification as Cfb, best defined as a semicontinental climate. In older reference periods it was classified as a warm summer continental climate (Dfb). By classification of Wincenty Okołowicz, it has a warm temperate climate in the centre of continental Europe with the "fusion" of different features.
Due to its geographic location, the city may be under marine influence, sometimes Arctic influence, but without direct influence, giving the city variable meteorological conditions over short spaces of time.
Being towards Eastern Europe and a relatively considerable distance from the sea, Krakow has significant temperature differences according to the progress of different air masses, having four defined seasons of the year. Average temperatures in summer range from and in winter from . The average annual temperature is . In summer temperatures often exceed , even reaching , while in winter temperatures drop to at night and about during the day. During very cold nights the temperature can drop to . The city lies near the Tatra Mountains, there are often occurrences of halny blowing (a foehn wind), causing temperatures to rise rapidly, and even in winter reach up to .
In relation to Warsaw, temperatures are very similar for most of the year, except that in the colder months southern Poland has a larger daily temperature range, more moderate winds, generally more rainy days and with greater chances of clear skies on average, especially in winter. The higher sun angle also allows for a longer growing season. In addition, for older data there was less sun than the capital of the country, about 30 minutes daily per year, but both have small differences in relative humidity and the direction of the winds is northeast.
The climate table below presents weather data from the years 2000–2012 although the official Köppen reference period was from 1981 to 2010 (therefore not being technically a climatological normal). According to ongoing measurements, the temperature has increased during these years as compared with the last series. This increase averages about 0.6 °C over all months. Warming is most pronounced during the winter months, with an increase of more than 1.0 °C in January.
Cityscape
Developed over many centuries, Kraków provides a showcase setting for many historic styles of architecture. As the city expanded, so too did the architectural achievements of its builders. It is for this reason that the variations in style and urban planning are so easily recognisable.
Built from its earliest nucleus outward, and having escaped much of the destruction endured by Poland during the 20th-century wars, Kraków's many architectural monuments can typically be seen in historical order by walking from the city centre out, towards its later districts. Kraków is one of the few medieval towns in Poland that does not have a historic Ratusz town hall in its Main Square, because it has not survived the Partitions of Poland.
Kraków's historic centre, which includes the Old Town, Kazimierz and the Wawel Castle, was included as the first of its kind on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978. The Stare Miasto is the most prominent example of an old town in the country. For many centuries Kraków was the royal capital of Poland, until Sigismund III Vasa relocated the court to Warsaw in 1596. The whole district is bisected by the Royal Road, the coronation route traversed by the Kings of Poland. The Route begins at St. Florian's Church outside the northern flank of the old city-walls in the medieval suburb of Kleparz; passes the Barbican of Kraków (Barbakan) built in 1499, and enters Stare Miasto through the Florian Gate. It leads down Floriańska Street through the Main Square, and up Grodzka to Wawel, the former seat of Polish royalty, overlooking the Vistula river. Old Town attracts visitors from all over the World. Kraków historic centre is one of the 13 places in Poland that are included in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The architectural design of the district had survived all cataclysms of the past and retained its original form coming from the medieval times.
In addition to the old town, the city's district of Kazimierz is particularly notable for its many renaissance buildings and picturesque streets, as well as the historic Jewish quarter located in the north-eastern part of Kazimierz. Kazimierz was founded in the 14th century to the south-east of the city centre and soon became a wealthy, well-populated area where construction of imposing properties became commonplace. Perhaps the most important feature of medieval Kazimierz was the only major, permanent bridge (Pons Regalis) across the northern arm of the Vistula. This natural barrier used to separate Kazimierz from the Old Town for several centuries, while the bridge connected Kraków to the Wieliczka Salt Mine and the lucrative Hungarian trade route. The last structure at this location (at the end of modern Stradom Street) was dismantled in 1880 when the northern arm of the river was filled in with earth and rock, and subsequently built over.
By the 1930s, Kraków had 120 officially registered synagogues and prayer houses that spanned across the old city. Much of Jewish intellectual life had moved to new centres like Podgórze. This in turn, led to the redevelopment and renovation of much of Kazimierz and the development of new districts in Kraków. Most historic buildings in central Kazimierz today are preserved in their original form. Some old buildings, however, were not repaired after the devastation brought by the Second World War, and have remained empty. Most recent efforts at restoring the historic neighborhoods gained new impetus around 1993. Kazimierz is now a well-visited area, seeing a booming growth in Jewish-themed restaurants, bars, bookstores and souvenir shops.
As the city of Kraków began to expand further under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the new architectural styles also developed. Key buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries in Kraków include the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, the directorate of the Polish State Railways as well as the original complex of Kraków Główny railway station and the city's Academy of Economics. It was also at around that time that Kraków's first radial boulevards began to appear, with the city undergoing a large-scale program aimed at transforming the ancient Polish capital into a sophisticated regional centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. New representative government buildings and multi-story tenement houses were built at around that time. Much of the urban-planning beyond the walls of the Old Town was done by Polish architects and engineers trained in Vienna. Some major projects of the era include the development of the Jagiellonian University's new premises and the building of the Collegium Novum just west of the Old Town. The imperial style planning of the city's further development continued until the return of Poland's independence, following the First World War. Early modernist style in Kraków is represented by such masterpieces as the Palace of Art by Franciszek Mączyński and the 'House under the Globe'. Secession style architecture, which had arrived in Kraków from Vienna, became popular towards the end of the Partitions.
With Poland's regained independence came the major change in the fortunes of Kraków—now the second most important city of a sovereign nation. The state began to make new plans for the city development and commissioned a number of representative buildings. The predominant style for new projects was modernism with various interpretations of the art-deco style. Important buildings constructed in the style of Polish modernism include the Feniks 'LOT' building on Basztowa Street, the Feniks department store on the Main Square and the Municipal Savings Bank on Szczepański Square. The Józef Piłsudski house is also of note as a particularly good example of interwar architecture in the city.
After the Second World War, new government turned toward Soviet influence and the Stalinist monumentalism. The doctrine of Socialist realism in Poland, as in other countries of the People's Republics, was enforced from 1949 to 1956. It involved all domains of art, but its most spectacular achievements were made in the field of urban design. The guidelines for this new trend were spelled-out in a 1949 resolution of the National Council of Party Architects. Architecture was to become a weapon in establishing the new social order by the communists. The ideological impact of urban design was valued more than aesthetics. It aimed at expressing persistence and power. This form of architecture was implemented in the new industrial district of Nowa Huta with apartment blocks constructed according to a Stalinist blueprint, with repetitious courtyards and wide, tree-lined avenues.
Since the style of the Renaissance was generally regarded as the most revered in old Polish architecture, it was also used for augmenting Poland's Socialist national format. However, in the course of incorporating the principles of Socialist realism, there were quite a few deviations introduced by the communists. One of these was to more closely reflect Soviet architecture, which resulted in the majority of works blending into one another. From 1953, critical opinions in the Party were increasingly frequent, and the doctrine was given up in 1956 marking the end of Stalinism. The soc-realist centre of Nowa Huta is considered to be a meritorious monument of the times. This period in postwar architecture was followed by the mass-construction of large Panel System apartment blocks, most of which were built outside the city centre and thus do not encroach upon the beauty of the old or new towns. Some examples of the new style (e.g., Hotel Cracovia) recently listed as heritage monuments were built during the latter half of the 20th century in Kraków.
After the Revolutions of 1989 and the birth of the Third Republic in the latter half of the 20th century, a number of new architectural projects were completed, including the construction of large business parks and commercial facilities such as the Galeria Krakowska, or infrastructure investments like the Kraków Fast Tram. A good example of this would be the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology designed by Arata Isozaki, the 2007-built Pawilon Wyspiański 2000, which is used as a multi-purpose information and exhibition space, or the Małopolski Garden of Arts (Małopolski Ogród Sztuki), a multi-purpose exhibition and theatre complex located in the historic Old Town.
Parks and gardens
There are about 40 parks in Kraków including dozens of gardens and forests. Several, like the Planty Park, Botanical Garden, Zoological Garden, Park Krakowski, Jordan Park and Błonia Park are located in the centre of the city; with Zakrzówek, Lasek Wolski forest, Strzelecki Park and Park Lotników (among others) in the surrounding districts. Parks cover about 318.5 hectares (787 acres, 1.2 sq mi) of the city.
The Planty Park is the best-known park in Kraków. It was established between 1822 and 1830 in place of the old city walls, forming a green belt around the Old Town. It consists of a chain of smaller gardens designed in various styles and adorned with monuments. The park has an area of and a length of , forming a scenic walkway popular with Cracovians.
The Jordan Park founded in 1889 by Dr Henryk Jordan, was the first public park of its kind in Europe. The park built on the banks of the Rudawa river was equipped with running and exercise tracks, playgrounds, the swimming pool, amphitheatre, pavilions, and a pond for boat rowing and water bicycles. It is located on the grounds of a larger Kraków's Błonia Park. The less prominent Park Krakowski was founded in 1885 by Stanisław Rehman but has since been greatly reduced in size because of rapid real estate development. It was a popular destination point with many Cracovians at the end of the 19th century.
Environment
There are five nature reserves in Kraków with a total area of 48.6 ha (120 acres). Smaller green zones constitute parts of the Kraków-Częstochowa Upland Jurassic Landscape Parks' Board, which deals with the protection areas of the Polish Jura. Under its jurisdiction are: the Bielany-Tyniec Landscape Park (Park Bielańsko-Tyniecki), Tenczynek Landscape Park (Park Tencziński) and Kraków Valleys Landscape Park (Park Krajobrazowy Dolinki Krakowskie), with their watersheds. All natural reserves of the Polish Jura Chain are part of the CORINE biotopes programme due to their unique flora, fauna, geomorphology and landscape. The western part of Kraków constitutes the so-called Obszar Krakowski ecological network, including the ecological corridor of the Vistula river. The southern slopes of limestone hills provide conditions for the development of thermophilous vegetation, grasslands and scrubs.
The city is spaced along an extended latitudinal transect of the Vistula River Valley with a network of tributaries including its right tributary Wilga, and left: Rudawa, Białucha, Dłubnia and Sanka. The rivers and their valleys along with bodies of water are some of the most interesting natural wonders of Kraków.
Kraków and its environment, surrounded by mountains, suffer from Europe's dirtiest air pollution because of smog, caused by burning coal for heating, especially in winter.
Governance
The Kraków City Council has 43 elected members, one of whom is the mayor, or President of Kraków, elected every four years. The election of the City Council and of the local head of government, which takes place at the same time, is based on legislation introduced on 20 June 2002. The President of Kraków, re-elected for his fourth term in 2014, is Jacek Majchrowski. Several members of the Polish national Parliament (Sejm) are elected from the Kraków constituency. The city's official symbols include a coat of arms, a flag, a seal, and a banner.
The responsibilities of Kraków's president include drafting and implementing resolutions, enacting city bylaws, managing the city budget, employing city administrators, and preparing against floods and natural disasters. The president fulfills his duties with the help of the City Council, city managers and city inspectors. In the 1990s, the city government was reorganised to better differentiate between its political agenda and administrative functions. As a result, the Office of Public Information was created to handle inquiries and foster communication between city departments and citizens at large.
In 2000, the city government introduced a new long-term program called "Safer City" in cooperation with the Police, Traffic, Social Services, Fire, Public Safety, and the Youth Departments. Subsequently, the number of criminal offences dropped by 3 percent between 2000 and 2001, and the rate of detection increased by 1.4 percent to a total of 30.2 percent in the same period. The city is receiving help in carrying out the program from all educational institutions and the local media, including TV, radio and the press.
Districts
Kraków is divided into 18 administrative districts (dzielnica) or boroughs, each with a degree of autonomy within its own municipal government. Prior to March 1991, the city had been divided into four quarters which still give a sense of identity to Kraków – the towns of Podgórze, Nowa Huta, and Krowodrza which were amalgamated into the city of Kraków as it expanded, and the ancient town centre of Kraków itself.
The oldest neighborhoods of Kraków were incorporated into the city before the late-18th century. They include the Old Town (Stare Miasto), once contained within the city defensive walls and now encircled by the Planty park; the Wawel District, which is the site of the Royal Castle and the cathedral; Stradom and Kazimierz with its historic Jewish quarter, the latter originally divided into Christian and Jewish quarters; as well as the ancient town of Kleparz.
Major districts added in the 19th and 20th centuries include Podgórze, which until 1915, was a separate town on the southern bank of the Vistula, and Nowa Huta, east of the city centre, built after World War II.
Among the most notable historic districts of the city are: Wawel Hill, home to Wawel Castle and Wawel Cathedral, where many historic Polish kings are buried; the medieval Old Town, with its Main Market Square ( square); dozens of old churches and museums; the 14th-century buildings of the Jagiellonian University; and Kazimierz, the historical centre of Kraków's Jewish social and religious life.
The Old Town district of Kraków is home to about 6,000 historic sites and more than 2,000,000 works of art. Its rich variety of heritage architecture includes Romanesque (e.g., St. Andrew's Church, Kraków), Renaissance, Baroque and Gothic buildings. Kraków's palaces, churches, theatres and mansions display a great variety of color, architectural details, stained glass, paintings, sculptures, and furnishings.
In the Market Square stands the Gothic St. Mary's Basilica (Kościół Mariacki). It was rebuilt in the 14th-century and features the famous wooden altar (Altarpiece of Veit Stoss), the largest Gothic altarpiece in the world, carved by Veit Stoss. From the church's main tower a trumpet call (hejnał mariacki), is sounded every hour. The melody, which used to announce the opening and closing of city gates, ends unexpectedly in midstream. According to legend, the tune was played during the 13th-century Tatar invasion by a guard warning citizens against the attack. He was shot by an archer of the invading Tatar forces whilst playing, the bugle call breaking off at the moment he died. The story was recounted in a book published in 1928 called The Trumpeter of Krakow, by Eric P. Kelly, which won a Newbery Award.
The current divisions were introduced by the Kraków City Hall on 19 April 1995. Districts were assigned Roman numerals as well as the name: Stare Miasto (I), Grzegórzki (II), Prądnik Czerwony (III), Prądnik Biały (IV), Łobzów (V), Bronowice (VI), Zwierzyniec (VII), Dębniki (VIII), Łagiewniki-Borek Fałęcki (IX), Swoszowice (X), Podgórze Duchackie (XI), Bieżanów-Prokocim (XII), Podgórze (XIII), Czyżyny (XIV), Mistrzejowice (XV), Bieńczyce (XVI), Wzgórza Krzesławickie (XVII), and Nowa Huta (XVIII).
Economy
Kraków is one of Poland's most important economic centres and the economic hub of the Lesser Poland (Małopolska) region. Since the fall of communism, the private sector has been growing steadily. There are about 50 large multinational companies in the city, including Google, IBM, Royal Dutch Shell, UBS, HSBC, Motorola, Aptiv, MAN SE, General Electric, ABB, Aon, Akamai, Cisco Systems, Hitachi, Philip Morris, Capgemini, and Sabre Holdings, along with other British, German and Scandinavian-based firms. The city is also the global headquarters for Comarch, an enterprise software house. Kraków is the second most-visited city in Poland (after Warsaw). According to the World Investment Report 2011 by the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Kraków is also the most emergent city location for investment in global BPO projects (Business Process Outsourcing) in the world.
In 2011, the city budget, which is presented by the Mayor of Kraków on 15 November annually, has a projected revenue of 3,500,000,000 złoty. The primary sources of revenue were as follows: 14% from the municipal taxation on real estate properties and the use of amenities, 30% in transfers from the national budget, and 34% in state subsidies. Projected expenditures, totaling 3,520,000,000 złoty, included 21% in city development costs and 79% in city maintenance costs. Of the maintenance costs, as much as 39% were spent on education and childcare. The City of Kraków's development costs included; 41% toward construction of roads, transport, and communication (combined), and 25% for the city's infrastructure and environment. The city has a high bond credit rating, and some 60% of the population is under the age of 45.
Unity Tower was completed in 2020 after almost 30 years, creating a new business and residential centre. It is the tallest building in the city.
Entrepreneurship
Krakow has a long history of entrepreneurship, perhaps best reflected in the fact the most important square in the city is called the Main Market Square (Rynek Główny).
Startup community
Since the early 2000s a startup community has emerged in Krakow, In the early days the Krakow: Europe's Silicon Valley web page was the on line hub of the community. Most important now is the OMGKRK foundation and its Facebook group which has over 5000 members and acts as a community notice board for the startup community.
Entrepreneurs
Jan Thurzo, a Hungarian entrepreneur and mining engineer who was from 1477 an Alderman and later Mayor of Kraków. He established the Fugger–Thurzo company with Jakob Fugger. Fugger monopolised copper mining and trade in the Holy Roman Empire around 1500 and has been described as the richest man who has ever lived.
Michal Hornstein, born in Krakow, and graduate of a Krakow Business School, escaped from a Nazi death camp transport. He moved to Montreal in 1951 where he founded Federal Construction Ltd., a real estate company focussing on apartments and shopping centres. He was recognised as a major philanthropist in Montreal and supported the arts, education and medicine, for example with this Gift of Old Masters to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
Helena Rubinstein, born in Kraków, established the Helena Rubenstein inc. cosmetics company which was sold to Colgate Palmolive in 1973 for $142.3 million in stock and cash, and was said to be one of the world's richest women.
Janusz Filipiak established the successful IT company Comarch in 1993 which in 2018 employed 5500 people, and sponsors the Cracovia football team.
Piotr Wilam established the Pascal Publishing House, the internet portal Onet.pl and seed capital fund Innovation Nest.
Rafal Brzoska is the founder and CEO of InPost, which went public in January 2021 raising $3 billion.
Knowledge and innovation community
Kraków is one of the co-location centres of Knowledge and Innovation Community (Sustainable Energy) of The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).
InnoEnergy is an integrated alliance of reputable organisations from the education, research and industry sectors. It was created based on long standing links of cooperation as well as the principles of excellence. The partners have jointly developed a strategy to tackle the weaknesses of the European innovation landscape in the field of sustainable energy.
Transport
Public transport is based on a fairly dense network of tram and bus routes operated by a municipal company, supplemented by a number of private minibus operators. Local trains connect some of the suburbs. The bulk of the city's historic area has been turned into a pedestrian zone with rickshaws and horse-drawn carriages; however, the trams run within a three-block radius. The historic means of transportation in the city can be examined at the Museum of Municipal Engineering in the Kazimierz district, with many old trams, cars and buses.
Railway connections are available to most Polish cities, e.g. Katowice, Częstochowa, Szczecin, Gdynia and Warsaw. International destinations include Bratislava, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Hamburg, Lviv, Kyiv, and Odessa (June–September). The main railway station is located just outside the Old Town District and is well-served by public transport.
Kraków's airport, officially named Kraków John Paul II International Airport , is located west of the city. Direct trains cover the route between Kraków Główny train station and the airport in 20 minutes. Kraków Airport served around 5,800,000 passengers in 2017. Also, the Katowice International Airport is located or about 75 minutes from Kraków.
In Autumn 2016 Poland's oldest Bicycle-sharing system was modernized and now offers 1,500 bikes at 150 stations under the name of Wavelo (pl), which is owned by BikeU of the French multinational company Egis.
Demographics
Kraków had a recorded population of 774,839 in 2019. According to the 2006 data, the population of Kraków comprised about 2% of the population of Poland and 23% of the population of the Lesser Poland Voivodeship. Selected demographic indicators are presented in a table (below), compiled on the basis of only the population living in Kraków permanently. The larger metropolitan area of the city encompasses a territory in which (in 2010) 1,393,893 inhabitants live.
Already in the Middle Ages, the population of Kraków consisting of numerous ethnic groups, began to grow rapidly. It doubled between 1100 and 1300 from 5,000 to 10,000, and in 1400 counted 14,000 inhabitants. By 1550, the population of metropolitan Kraków was 18,000; although it decreased to 15,000 in the next fifty years due to calamity. By the early 17th century the Kraków population had reached 28,000 inhabitants.
In the historical 1931 census preceding World War II, 78.1% of Cracovians declared Polish as their primary language, with Yiddish or Hebrew at 20.9%, Ukrainian 0.4%, German 0.3%, and Russian 0.1%. The ravages of history have greatly reduced the percentage of ethnic minorities living in Kraków.
In the last two decades, Kraków has seen a large growth of immigrant population. In the 2002 census, only 0.25% of respondents living in the city declared a non-Polish nationality (primarily Romani, Ukrainian and Russian). As of 2019, it was estimated that foreigners accounted for as much as 10% of the city's population, with Ukrainians being the most numerous group (between 11,000 and 50,000).
Population growth in Kraków since 1791
Religion
The metropolitan city of Kraków is known as the city of churches. The abundance of landmark, historic temples along with the plenitude of monasteries and convents earned the city a countrywide reputation as the "Northern Rome" in the past. The churches of Kraków comprise over 120 places of worship (2007) of which over 65 were built in the 20th century. More are still being added. In addition to Roman Catholicism, other denominations present include Jehovah's Witnesses, Mariavite Church, Polish Catholic Church, Polish Orthodox Church, Protestantism and Latter-Day Saints.
As of 2017, weekly Mass attendance in the Archdiocese of Krakow was 49.9 percent, above the national Polish average of 38.3 percent.
Kraków contains also an outstanding collection of monuments of Jewish sacred architecture unmatched anywhere in Poland. Kraków was an influential centre of Jewish spiritual life before the outbreak of World War II, with all its manifestations of religious observance from Orthodox to Hasidic and Reform flourishing side by side. There were at least 90 synagogues in Kraków active before the Nazi German invasion of Poland, serving its burgeoning Jewish community of 60,000–80,000 (out of the city's total population of 237,000), established since the early 12th century.
Most synagogues of Kraków were ruined during World War II by the Nazis who despoiled them of all ceremonial objects, and used them as storehouses for ammunition, firefighting equipment, as general storage facilities and stables. The post-Holocaust Jewish population of the city had dwindled to about 5,900 before the end of the 1940s. Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah (emigration to Israel) without visas or exit permits upon the conclusion of World War II. By contrast, Stalin forcibly kept Russian Jews in the Soviet Union, as agreed to in the Yalta Conference. In recent time, thanks to efforts of the local Jewish and Polish organisations including foreign financial aid from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, many synagogues underwent major restorations and serve religious and tourist purposes.
Education
Kraków is a major centre of education. Twenty-four institutions of higher education offer courses in the city, with more than 200,000 students. Jagiellonian University, the oldest university in Poland and ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement as the second-best university in the country, was founded in 1364 as Studium Generale and renamed in 1817 to commemorate the royal Jagiellonian dynasty of Poland and Lithuania. Its principal academic asset is the Jagiellonian Library, with more than 4 million volumes, including a large collection of medieval manuscripts like Copernicus' De Revolutionibus and the Balthasar Behem Codex. With 42,325 students (2005) and 3,605 academic staff, the Jagiellonian University is also one of the leading research centres in Poland. Famous historical figures connected with the university include Saint John Cantius, Jan Długosz, Nicolaus Copernicus, Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski, Jan Kochanowski, King John III Sobieski, Pope John Paul II and Nobel laureates Ivo Andrić and Wisława Szymborska.
AGH University of Science and Technology, established in 1919, is the largest technical university in Poland, with more than 15 faculties and student enrollment exceeding 30,000. It was ranked by the Polish edition of Newsweek as the best technical university in the country in 2004. During its 80-year history, more than 73,000 students graduated from AGH with master's or bachelor's degrees. Some 3,600 persons were granted the degree of Doctor of Science, and about 900 obtained the qualification of Habilitated Doctor.
Other institutions of higher learning include Academy of Music in Kraków first conceived as conservatory in 1888, one of the oldest and most prestigious conservatories in Central Europe and a major concert venue; Kraków University of Economics, established in 1925; Pedagogical University, in operation since 1946; Agricultural University of Kraków, offering courses since 1890 (initially as a part of Jagiellonian University); Academy of Fine Arts, the oldest Fine Arts Academy in Poland, founded by the Polish painter Jan Matejko; Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts; The Pontifical Academy of Theology; and Krakow University of Technology, which has more than 37,000 graduates.
Scientific societies and their branches in Kraków conduct scientific and educational work in local and countrywide scale. The Academy of Learning, Krakow Scientific Society, Association of Law Students' Library of the Jagiellonian University, Polish Copernicus Society of Naturalists, Polish Geological Society, Polish Theological Society in Kraków, Polish Section of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and Polish Society for Synchrotron Radiation all have their main seats in Kraków.
Culture
Kraków was named the official European Capital of Culture for the year 2000 by the European Union. It is a major attraction for both local and international tourists, attracting nearly 13 million visitors a year. Major landmarks include the Main Market Square with St. Mary's Basilica and the Sukiennice Cloth Hall, the Wawel Castle, the National Art Museum, the Zygmunt Bell at the Wawel Cathedral, and the medieval St. Florian's Gate with the Barbican along the Royal Coronation Route. Kraków has 28 museums and public art galleries. Among them is the Czartoryski Museum featuring works by Leonardo da Vinci and Rembrandt as well as the EUROPEUM - European Culture Centre and the Archaeological Museum of Kraków whose collection highlights include the Zbruch Idol and the Bronocice Pot.
Museums and national art galleries
Kraków's 28 museums are separated into the national and municipal museums; the city also has a number of art collections and public art galleries. The National Museum, established in 1879, as well as the National Art Collection on Wawel Hill, are all accessible to the general public.
The National Art Collection is located at the Wawel, the former residence of three dynasties of Polish monarchs. Royal Chambers feature art, period furniture, Polish and European paintings, collectibles, and a major collection of 16th-century monumental Flemish tapestries. Wawel Treasury and Armoury features Polish royal memorabilia, jewels, applied art, and 15th- to 18th-century arms. The Wawel Eastern Collection features Turkish tents and military accessories. The National Museum holds the largest body of artworks in the country with collections consisting of several hundred thousand items kept in big part in the Main Building at Ul. 3 Maja, although there are eleven other separate divisions of the museum in the city, one of the most popular being The Gallery of the 19th Century Polish Art in Sukiennice with the collection of some of the best known paintings and sculptures of the Young Poland movement. The latest division called Europeum with Brueghel among a hundred Western European paintings was inaugurated in 2013.
Other notable museums in Kraków include the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology (at M. Konopnickiej 26), Stanisław Wyspiański Museum (at 11 Szczepanska St), Jan Matejko Manor in Krzesławice, – a museum devoted to the master painter and his life, Emeryk Hutten Czapski Museum, and Józef Mehoffer Manor.
The Rynek Underground museum, under the main square, showcases Kraków's over 1000-year history though its streets, activities and artifacts. The construction of the museum was preceded by extensive excavations which started in 2005 and, as more and more was found, continued eventually until 2010.
Krakil - Museum of illusions is a space where illusions meet scientific inventions and the arts: physics and optics are displayed together with artworks and classical riddles.
The Polish Aviation Museum, considered the world's eigth best aviation museum by CNN, features over 200 aircraft including a Sopwith Camel among other First World War biplanes; a comprehensive display of aero engines; and a complete collection of airplane types developed by Poland after 1945. Activities of smaller museums around Kraków and in the Lesser Poland region are promoted and supported by the Małopolska Institute of Culture; the Institute organises annual Małopolska Heritage Days.
Performing arts
The city has several famous theatres, including the Narodowy Stary Teatr (the National Old Theatre), the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre, the Bagatela Theatre, the Ludowy Theatre, and the Groteska Theatre of Puppetry, as well as the Opera Krakowska and Kraków Operetta. The city's principal concert hall and the home of the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra is the Kraków Philharmonic (Filharmonia Krakowska) built in 1931.
Kraków hosts many annual and biannual artistic events, some of international significance such as the Misteria Paschalia (Baroque music), Sacrum-Profanum (contemporary music), the Krakow Screen Festival (popular music), the Festival of Polish Music (classical music), Dedications (theatre), the Kraków Film Festival (one of Europe's oldest short films events), Etiuda&Anima International Film Festival (the oldest international art-film event in Poland), Biennial of Graphic Arts, and the Jewish Culture Festival. Kraków was the residence of two Polish Nobel laureates in literature, Wisława Szymborska and Czesław Miłosz; a third Nobel laureate, the Yugoslav writer Ivo Andric, lived and studied in Kraków. Other former longtime residents include internationally renowned Polish film directors Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polanski, both of whom are Academy Award winners.
Music
Opera Krakowska one of the leading national opera companies, stages 200 performances each year including ballet, operettas and musicals. It has, in its main repertoire, the greatest world and Polish opera classics. The Opera moved into its first permanent House in the autumn of 2008. It is in charge also of the Summer Festival of Opera and Operetta.
Kraków is home to two major Polish festivals of early music presenting forgotten Baroque oratorios and operas: Opera Rara, and Misteria Paschalia. Meanwhile, Capella Cracoviensis runs the Music in Old Krakow International Festival.
Academy of Music in Kraków, founded in 1888, is known worldwide as the alma mater of the contemporary Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and it is also the only one in Poland to have two winners of the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw among its alumni. The academy organises concerts of its students and guests throughout the whole year.
Music organisations and venues include: Kraków Philharmonic, Sinfonietta Cracovia (a.k.a. the Orchestra of the Royal City of Kraków), the Polish Radio Choir of Kraków, Organum Academic Choir, the Mixed Mariański Choir (Mieszany Chór Mariański), Kraków Academic Choir of the Jagiellonian University, the Kraków Chamber Choir, Amar Corde String Quartet, Consortium Iagellonicum Baroque Orchestra of the Jagiellonian University, Brass Band of T. Sendzimir Steelworks, and Camerata Chamber Orchestra of Radio Kraków.
Tourism
According to official statistics, in 2019 Kraków was visited by over 14 million tourists including 3.3 million foreign travellers. The visitors spent over 7.5 billion złoty (ca. €1.7 billion) in the city (without travel costs and pre-booked accommodation). Most foreign tourists came from Germany (14.2%), United Kingdom (13.9%), Italy (11.5%), France (11.2%), Spain (10.4%) and Ukraine (5.4%). The Kraków tour-guide from the Lesser Poland Visitors Bureau indicated that not all statistics are recorded due to the considerable number of those who come, staying in readily available private rooms paid for by cash, especially from Eastern Europe.
The main reasons for visiting the city are: its historical monuments, recreation as well as relatives and friends (placing third in the ranking), religion and business. There are 120 quality hotels in Kraków (usually about half full) offering 15,485 overnight accommodations. The average stay last for about 4 to 7 nights. The survey conducted among the travelers showed that they enjoyed the city's friendliness most, with 90% of Polish tourists and 87% foreigners stating that they would recommend visiting it. Notable points of interest outside the city include the Wieliczka salt mine, the Tatra Mountains to the south, the historic city of Częstochowa (north-west), the well-preserved former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, and Ojcowski National Park, which includes the Renaissance Castle at Pieskowa Skała. Kraków has been awarded a number of top international rankings such as the 1st place in the Top city-break destinations 2014 survey conducted by the British Which?.
Sports
Kraków was the host city of the 2014 FIVB Men's Volleyball World Championship and 2016 European Men's Handball Championship. It has also been selected as the European City of Sport for 2014.
Football is one of the most popular sports in the city. The two teams with the largest following are thirteen-time Polish champion Wisła Kraków, and five-time champion Cracovia, both founded in 1906 as the oldest still existing in Poland. They have been involved in the most intense rivalry in the country and one of the most intense in all of Europe, known as the Holy War (). Other football clubs include Hutnik Kraków, Wawel Kraków, and one-time Polish champion Garbarnia Kraków. There is also the first-league rugby club Juvenia Kraków. Kraków has a number of additional, equally valued sports teams including twelve-time Polish ice hockey champions Cracovia and the twenty-time women's basketball champions Wisła Kraków.
The Cracovia Marathon, with over a thousand participants from two dozen countries annually, has been held in the city since 2002. Poland's first F1 racing driver Robert Kubica was born and brought up in Kraków, as was former WWE tag team champion Ivan Putski, and Top 10 ranked women's tennis player Agnieszka Radwańska.
The construction of a new Tauron Arena Kraków began in May 2010; for concerts, indoor athletics, hockey, basketball, futsal and other events. The facility area has 61,434 m2, with maximum area of the arena court of 4 546 m2. The average capacity is 18,000 for concerts, and 15,000 for sport events, with maximum number of spectators being 22,000. The Arena boasts Poland's largest LED media façade, with a total surface of 5,200 m2 of LED strip lighting, wrapping around the stadium, and one of Europe's largest LED screens, measuring over 540 m2.
Kraków was bidding to host the 2022 Winter Olympics with Jasná but the bid was rejected by a majority (69.72%) of the vote in a referendum on 16 May 2014. The referendum was organised after a wave of criticism from citizens who believed that the Olympics would not promote the city. The organizing committee of "Krakow 2022" spent almost $40,000 to pay for a citizen-approved logo, but many citizens considered this a waste of public money. The committee was rumoured to have fraudulently used several million zlotys for unknown expenses.
In May 2019, the Polish Olympic Committee announced Kraków as host of the Polish bid for the 2023 European Games, On 22 June 2019, The European Olympic Committees at the General Assembly in Minsk, Belarus announced that Kraków will host the 2023 edition.
Notable people
International relations
Contemporary foreign names for the city
Kraków is referred to by various names in different languages. An old English name for the city is Cracow; though it has become less common in recent decades, some sources still use it. The city is known in Czech, Slovak and Serbian as Krakov, in Hungarian as , in Lithuanian as , in Finnish as , in German and Dutch as , in Latin, Spanish and Italian as , in French as , in Portuguese as and in Russian as Краков. Ukrainian and Yiddish languages refer to it as (Краків) and () respectively.
Twin towns and sister cities
Kraków is twinned, or maintains close relations, with 36 cities around the world:
Batu, Indonesia (2000)
Bordeaux, France (1993)
Bratislava, Slovakia
Budapest, Hungary (2005)
Cambridge, Massachusetts, US (1989)
Curitiba, Brazil (1993)
Cusco, Peru
Edinburgh, Scotland (1995)
Fes, Morocco (2004)
Florence, Italy (1992)
Frankfurt, Germany (1991)
Göteborg, Sweden (1990)
Grozny, Russia (1997)
Guadalajara, Mexico
Innsbruck, Austria (1998)
Kyiv, Ukraine (1993)
La Serena, Chile (1995)
Leipzig, Germany (1995)
Leuven, Belgium (1991)
Lviv, Ukraine (1995)
Malang, Indonesia (1997)
Milan, Italy (2003)
Nuremberg, Germany (1991)
Orléans, France (1992)
Pécs, Hungary (1998)
Quito, Ecuador
Rochester, New York, US (1973)
Rome, Italy
San Francisco, US (2009)
Seville, Spain (2002)
Solothurn, Switzerland (1990)
Split, Croatia
Tbilisi, Georgia
Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria (1975)
Vilnius, Lithuania
Zagreb, Croatia (1975)
See also
Cracow Circle Thomism
Tourism in Poland
References
Bibliography
Jane Hardy, Al Rainnie, Restructuring Krakow: Desperately Seeking Capitalism. Published 1996 by Mansell Publishing, 285 pages. Business, economics, finance. .
Edward Hartwig, Kraków, with Jerzy Broszkiewicz (contributor). Published 1980, by Sport i Turystyka, 239 pages. .
Bolesław T. Łaszewski, Kraków: karta z dziejów dwudziestolecia. Published 1985, by Bicentennial Pub. Corp. (original from the University of Michigan), 132 pages.
Joanna Markin, Bogumiła Gnypowa, Kraków: The Guide. Published 1996 by Pascal Publishing, 342 pages. .
Tim Pepper, Andrew Beattie, Krakow. Published 2007 by Hunter Pub Inc., 160 pages. . The book includes description of public art galleries and museums.
Scott Simpson, Krakow. Published 2003 by Thomas Cook Publishing, 192 pages. Transport, geography, sightseeing, history, and culture. Includes weblinks CD. .
Dorota Wąsik, Emma Roper-Evans, Krakow. Published 2002 by Somerset. Cultural guidebook series, 160 pages. .
Richard Watkins, Best of Kraków, Published 2006, by Lonely Planet, 64 pages, complemented by fold-out maps. .
External links
Protect Kraków Heritage Campaign
krakowmiasto.pl
Jewish Community in Kraków on Virtual Shtetl
Map: Kraków Heritage Under Threat
Municipal spatial information system – GIS maps of Kraków
Cultural heritage of Kraków (in yellow on city map)
Kraków old map from 1785 year
Beatniks and Beyond: An Alternative Guide to Kraków
Things to do in Kraków
Interesting places to visit in Kraków
10 must-see things in Krakow
Krakow.wiki – biggest knowledge base about Krakow in English
Must See Attractions & Activities in Krakow
City counties of Poland
Cities and towns in Lesser Poland Voivodeship
Former capitals of Poland
Kraków Voivodeship (14th century – 1795)
Free City of Kraków
Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria
Kraków Voivodeship (1919–1939)
Historic Jewish communities
World Heritage Sites in Poland
Members of the Hanseatic League
Magdeburg rights
Holocaust locations in Poland | [
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16818 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kora%20%28instrument%29 | Kora (instrument) | The kora (Manding languages: köra) is a stringed instrument used extensively in West Africa. A kora typically has 21 strings, which are played by plucking with the fingers. It combines features of the lute and harp.
Description
The kora is built from a large calabash, cut in half and covered with cow skin to make a resonator with a long hardwood neck. The skin is supported by two handles that run underneath it. It has 21 strings, each of which plays a different note. These strings are supported by a notched, double free-standing bridge. The kora doesn't fit into any one category of musical instrument, but rather several, and must be classified as a "double-bridge-harp-lute." The strings run in two divided ranks, characteristic of a double harp. They do not end in a soundboard but are instead held in notches on a bridge, classifying it as a bridge harp. The strings originate from a string arm or neck and cross a bridge directly supported by a resonating chamber, also making it a lute.
The sound of a kora resembles that of a harp, though when played in the traditional style it bears resemblance to a guitar played using the flamenco or Delta blues technique of plucking polyrhythmic patterns with both hands (using the remaining fingers to secure the instrument by holding the hand posts on either side of the strings). Ostinato riffs ("Kumbengo") and improvised solo runs ("Birimintingo") are played at the same time by skilled players.
Kora players have traditionally come from jali families (also from the Mandinka tribes) who are traditional historians, genealogists and storytellers who pass their skills on to their descendants. Though played in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Senegal and Burkina Faso, the instrument was first discovered in the Gambia. While those from neighbouring Guinea were known to carry the lute, Senegalese Griots were known as carriers of a hand drum known as the Sabar. Most West African musicians prefer the term "jali" to "griot," which is the French word. "Jali" means something similar to a "bard" or oral historian.
Traditional koras feature strings, eleven played by the left hand and ten by the right. Modern koras made in the Casamance region of southern Senegal sometimes feature additional bass strings, adding up to four strings to the traditional 21. Strings were traditionally made from thin strips of hide, such as cow or antelope skin. Today, most strings are made from harp strings or nylon fishing line, sometimes plaited together to create thicker strings.
A vital accessory in the past was the nyenmyemo, a leaf-shaped plate of tin or brass with wire loops threaded around the edge. Clamped to the bridge, or the top end of the neck it produced sympathetic sounds, serving as an amplifier since the sound carried well into the open air. In today's environment, players usually prefer or need an electronic pickup.
By moving the konso (a system of leather tuning rings) up and down the neck, a kora player can retune the instrument into one of four seven-note scales. These scales are close in tuning to western major, minor and Lydian modes.
History
In the 1300s, the traveller Ibn Battuta mentioned that the women who accompanied Dugha to perform were carrying bows that they plucked. He did not mention the number of strings, but this clearly shows the existence of harp instruments in 14th century Mali and could be the earliest written reference to the kora. The kora is designed like a bow with a gourd, similarly to Ibn Battuta's description, but Battuta did not go into enough detail about the instruments for them to be identifiable. The earliest European reference to the kora in Western literature is in Travels in Interior Districts of Africa (1799) by the Scotsman
Mungo Park. The most likely scenario, based on Mandinka oral tradition, suggests that the origins of the kora may ultimately be linked with Jali Mady Fouling Cissoko, some time after the founding of Kaabu in the 16th century.
The kora is mentioned in the Senegalese national anthem "Pincez Tous vos Koras, Frappez les Balafons."
Nowadays, koras are increasingly made with guitar machine heads instead of the traditional konso (leather rings). The advantage is that they are much easier to tune. The disadvantage is that this design limits the tuning range of the instrument because string lengths are more fixed and lighter strings are needed to lift it much more than a tone. Learning to tune a traditional kora is arguably as difficult as learning to play it, and many tourists who are entranced by the sound while in West Africa buy koras and then find themselves unable to keep it in tune once they are home, relegating it to the status of ornament. Koras can be converted to replace the leather rings with machine heads. Wooden pegs and harp pegs are also used, but both can still cause tuning problems in damper climates unless made with great skill.
In the late 20th century, a 25-string model of the kora was developed, though it has been adopted by only a few players, primarily in the region of Casamance, in southern Senegal. Some kora players such as Seckou Keita have double necked koras, allowing them to switch from one tuning to another within seconds, giving them increased flexibility.
The French Benedictine monks of the Keur Moussa Abbey in Senegal (who possibly were the first to introduce guitar machine heads instead of leather rings in the late seventies) conceived a method based on scores to teach the instrument. Brother Dominique Catta, choirmaster of the Keur Moussa Abbey, was the first Western composer who wrote for the kora (solo pieces as well as duets with Western instruments).
An electric instrument modeled on the kora (but made primarily of metal) called the gravikord was invented in the late 20th century by instrument builder and musician Robert Grawi. It has 24 strings and is tuned and played differently than the kora. Another instrument, the gravi-kora, a 21-stringed electro-acoustic instrument, was later developed by Robert Grawi especially for kora players who wanted a modern instrument. Its playing and tuning are the same as the traditional kora. The gravi-kora has been adopted by kora players such as Daniel Berkman, Jacques Burtin, and Foday Musa Suso, who featured it in recordings with jazz innovator Herbie Hancock, with his band Mandingo, and on Suso's New World Power album.
Scores
Being part of the oral tradition of West Africa, music for the kora was not written until the 20th century. Ethnomusicologists were the only ones to record some traditional airs in the normal grand staff method, using the G clef and the F clef.
Today, kora scores are written on a single G clef, following the Keur Moussa notation system. This notation system was created for the kora in the late 1970s by Brother Dominique Catta, a monk of the Keur Moussa Monastery (Senegal). The seven low notes that should be written on the F clef are replaced by Arabic or Roman numerals and written on the G clef.
While jali still compose in the traditional way (without writing scores), some Western musicians began to write partitures for the kora and adopted the Keur Moussa notation system at the beginning of the 1980s. More than 200 scores have already been written for kora solo or kora and Western instruments. Two notable Western composers for the kora are Brother Dominique Catta and Jacques Burtin (France), who wrote most of these scores, though composers like Carole Ouellet (Canada), Brother Grégoire Philippe (Monastère de Keur Moussa) and Sister Claire Marie Ledoux (France) have also contributed with their own original works.
Derek Gripper (Cape Town, South Africa) has transcribed a number of West African kora compositions by Toumani Diabaté and others for performance on western-style classical guitar, and has performed some of these transcriptions on two recordings and in concert from 2012 through 2017.
Bibliography
Eric Charry, Mande Music : Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa, University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Ousmane Sow Huchard, La kora : objet-témoin de la civilisation manding : essai d'analyse organologique d'une harpe-luth africaine, Presses universitaires de Dakar, Dakar, 2000.
Selected discography
African composers (oral tradition)
Mali: cordes anciennes ("Mali: Ancient Strings"), Sidiki Diabaté and Djelimadi Sissoko, Buda Music, 2000. First published in 1970, this CD was the first album totally devoted to the kora. Sidiki Diabaté was the father of Toumani Diabaté and Mamadou Sidiki Diabaté, and Djelimadi Sissoko was the father of Ballaké Sissoko. Toumani and Ballaké recorded New Ancient Strings - Nouvelles Cordes Anciennes in 1999 (Hannibal), as a tribute to their fathers.
Gambie : l'art de la kora, Jali Nyama Suso, edited by Roderic Knight, Ocora, 1996. First published in 1972, this CD is also a historical recording.
Kora Melodies from the Republic of The Gambia, West Africa, Alhaji Bai Konte, Recorded and produced by Marc D. Pevar; photography and notes by Marc and Susan Pever. Rounder Records 5001.
Jali Kunda - Griots of West Africa & Beyond, Ellipsis Arts, 1996. A book and a CD edited by Foday Musa Suso, produced by Bill Laswell. Photographs by Daniel Lainé. A journey through traditional kora music and three original meetings: kora and piano ("Spring Waterfall" by Foday Musa Suso and Philip Glass); kora and synthesizers ("Lanmbasy Dub'", with Bill Laswell, bass, and Jeff Bova, synthesizers); kora and saxophone ("Samma", a duet with jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders).
The Mandé Variations, Toumani Diabaté, World Circuit, 2008. Twenty years after his first CD, Kaira (Hannibal, 1988) - the first CD ever recorded with solo kora pieces without any song, Toumani Diabate alternates traditional pieces on a kora with leather rings and his own creations with a special tuning on a kora with wooden pegs.
Western composers (written music)
Quand renaît le matin, Abbaye de Keur Moussa, Art et Musique, 2007. First published in 1991, this album gathers pieces composed and performed by Brother Dominique Catta and Carole Ouellet: solo kora pieces, songs with kora accompaniment and a Concerto for flute and three koras. There is also a piece composed by Brother Grégoire for three koras differently tuned and played by one musician.
Le Jour des Merveilles, Jacques Burtin, 3-CD Box Set, Bayard Musique, 2009. Pieces for solo kora, duets with cello, viola, guitar and koto, suites for flute, guitar and three koras.
Notable players
Toumani Diabaté (Mali)
Soriba Kouyate (Senegal)
Sidiki Diabaté (Mali)
Mamadou Sidiki Diabaté (Mali)
Foday Musa Suso (Gambia, United States), recorded with Herbie Hancock
Yerko Lorca (Spain)
Jali Nyama Suso (Gambia)
Jalli Lamin Kuyateh (Gambia/The Netherlands)
Ablaye Cissoko (Senegal)
Tasana Camara (Guinea)
Mamadou Diabaté (Mali)
Djeli Moussa Diawara also known as Jali Musa Jawara (Guinea, now playing a 32-stringed Kora)
Tunde Jegede (Nigeria/United Kingdom)
Sona Jobarteh (Gambia/United Kingdom, female kora player)
David Gilden (Texas/United States)
Seckou Keita (United Kingdom)
Guylene Solon (Haiti/United States, female kora player)
Adam Doughty (United Kingdom)
Bai Konte (Gambia)
Dembo Konte (Gambia)
Kandia Kouyaté (Mali)
Moussa Kouyate (Mali)
N'Faly Kouyate (Guinea)
Toumany Kouyate (Senegal) - singer and musician for O (Cirque du Soleil) in Las Vegas.
Jaliba Kuyateh (Gambia)
Jacques Burtin (France)
William Parker (United States)
Justin Perkins (United States)
Lamin Saho (Gambia)
Ballaké Sissoko (Mali)
Papa Susso (Gambia)
Alhaji Bai Konte (Gambia)
See also
Banjo
Griot
Gravi-kora
Mandinka people
Music of Africa
Polyrhythm
References
External links
Cora Connection
Kora Music
Kumbengo Koras, Makers of Fine Koras Combining Traditional Techniques and Innovative Design
The Kora Workshop
History of the 'Keur Moussa' kora
A history of the Kora, with an overview of its current practices, by Jacques Burtin (text in French):
The Webpage of Dennis Havlena contains a number of construction articles for Koras and accessories
KORA Manding Harps (Kora Luthier. African harps sales)
Harps
West African musical instruments
String instruments | [
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16820 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen%20Kenyon | Kathleen Kenyon | Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon, (5 January 1906 – 24 August 1978) was a British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She led excavations of Tell es-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho, from 1952 to 1958, and has been called one of the most influential archaeologists of the 20th century. She was Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford from 1962 to 1973 and studied herself at Somerville College, Oxford.
Biography
Kathleen Kenyon was born in London, England, in 1906. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Frederic Kenyon, biblical scholar and later director of the British Museum. Her grandfather was lawyer and Fellow of All Souls College, John Robert Kenyon, and her great-great-grandfather was the politician and lawyer Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon. She grew up in Bloomsbury, London, in a house attached to the British Museum, with her mother, Amy Kenyon, and sister Nora Kenyon. Known for being hard-headed and stubborn, Kathleen grew up as a tomboy, fishing, climbing trees and playing a variety of sports.
Determined that she and her sister should be well educated, Kathleen's father encouraged wide reading and independent study. In later years Kenyon would remark that her father's position at the British Museum was particularly helpful for her education. Kathleen was an excellent student, winning awards at school and particularly excelling in history. She studied first at St Paul's Girls' School, where she was Head Girl, before winning an Exhibition to read History at Somerville College, Oxford. While at Oxford, Kenyon won a Blue for her college in hockey and became the first female president of the Oxford University Archaeological Society. She graduated in 1929 and began a career in archaeology.
Although working on several important sites across Europe, it was her excavations in Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) in the 1950s that established her as one of the foremost archaeologists in the field. In 1962 Kenyon was made Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford. She retired in 1973 to Erbistock and was appointed a DBE. Kenyon never married. From 1974, Kenyon was the Honorary Vice President of the Chester Archaeological Society.
Archaeological career
A career in archaeology was first suggested to Kathleen by Margery Fry, librarian at Somerville College. After graduation Kenyon's first field experience was as a photographer for the pioneering excavations at Great Zimbabwe in 1929, led by Gertrude Caton-Thompson. Returning to England, Kenyon joined the archaeological couple Tessa Wheeler and her husband Mortimer Wheeler on their excavation of the Romano-British settlement of Verulamium (St Albans), 20 miles north of London. Working there each summer between 1930 and 1935, Kenyon learned from Mortimer Wheeler the discipline of meticulously controlled and recorded stratigraphic excavation. Wheeler entrusted her with the direction of the excavation of the Roman theatre.
In the years 1931 to 1934 Kenyon worked simultaneously at Samaria, then under the administration of the British Mandate for Palestine, with John and Grace Crowfoot. There she cut a stratigraphic trench across the summit of the mound and down the northern and southern slopes, exposing the Iron II to the Roman period stratigraphic sequence of the site. In addition to providing crucial dating material for the Iron Age stratigraphy of Palestine, she obtained key stratified data for the study of Eastern terra sigilata ware.
In 1934 Kenyon was closely associated with the Wheelers in the foundation of the Institute of Archaeology of University College London. From 1936 to 1939 she carried out important excavations at the Jewry Wall in the city of Leicester. These were published in the Illustrated London News1937 with pioneering reconstruction drawings by the artist Alan Sorrell whom she had happened to notice sketching her dig.
Digging Jericho
During the Second World War, Kenyon served as Divisional Commander of the Red Cross in Hammersmith, London, and later as Acting Director and Secretary of the Institute of Archaeology of the University of London.
After the war, she excavated in Southwark, at The Wrekin, Shropshire and elsewhere in Britain, as well as at Sabratha, a Roman city in Libya. As a member of the Council of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (BSAJ), Kenyon was involved in the efforts to reopen the School after the hiatus of the Second World War. In January 1951 she travelled to the Transjordan and undertook excavations in the West Bank at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) on behalf of the BSAJ. The initial finding were first viewed by the public in the Dome of Discovery at the Festival of Britain 1951 with a reconstruction drawing by Alan Sorrell. Her work at Jericho, from 1952 until 1958, made her world-famous and established a lasting legacy in the archaeological methodology of the Levant. Ground-breaking discoveries concerning the Neolithic cultures of the Levant were made in this ancient settlement. Her excavation of the Early Bronze Age walled city and the external cemeteries of the end of the Early Bronze Age, together with her analysis of the stratified pottery of these periods established her as the leading authority on that period. Kenyon focused her attention on the absence of certain Cypriot pottery at City IV, arguing for an older destruction date than that of her predecessors. Jericho was recognized as the oldest continuously occupied settlement in history because of her discoveries. At the same time she also completed the publication of the excavations at Samaria. Her volume, Samaria Sebaste III: The Objects, appeared in 1957. Having completed her excavations at Tell es-Sultan in 1958, Kenyon excavated in Jerusalem from 1961 to 1967, concentrating on the 'City of David' to the immediate south of the Temple Mount.
Although Kenyon had no doubt the sites she excavated were linked to the Old Testament narrative she nevertheless drew attention to inconsistencies, concluding that Solomon's "stables" at Megiddo were totally impractical for holding horses (1978:72), and that Jericho fell long before Joshua's arrival (1978:35). Consequently, Kenyon's work has been cited to support the Minimalist School of Biblical Archaeology.
Legacy
Kenyon's legacy in the field of excavation technique and ceramic methodology is attested to by Larry G. Herr, one of the directors of the Madaba Plains Project. He attributes to her directly the first of the key events (after the advances made by William F. Albright at Tell Beit Mirsim in the 1920s) that brought about our modern understanding of pottery in the southern Levant:
"The first event was the refinement of stratigraphic techniques that Kathleen Kenyon's dig at Jericho catalyzed. The strict separation of earth layers, or archaeological sediments, also allowed the strict separation of ceramic assemblages".
Herr detects Kenyon's powerful indirect influence in the second event that promoted advance within ceramic methodology, namely:
"the importation of Kenyon's digging techniques by Larry Toombs and Joe Callaway to Ernest Wright's project at Balata. Here, they combined Wright's interest in ceramic typology in the best Albright tradition with Kenyon's methods of excavation, which allowed the isolation of clear, stratigraphically determined pottery assemblages".
Herr summarises the somewhat mixed nature of Kenyon's legacy: for all the positive advances, there were also shortcomings:
"Kenyon... did not capitalize fully on (the) implication of her stratigraphic techniques by producing final publications promptly. Indeed her method of digging, which most of us have subsequently adopted, causes a proliferation of loci that excavators often have difficulty keeping straight long enough to produce coherent published stratigraphic syntheses. Moreover, her insistence that excavation proceed in narrow trenches denies us, when we use the Jericho reports, the confidence that her loci, and the pottery assemblages that go with them, represent understandable human activity patterns over coherently connected living areas. The individual layers, insufficiently exposed horizontally, simply cannot be interpreted credibly in terms of function. This further makes publication difficult, both to produce and to use".
From 1948 to 1962 she lectured in Levantine Archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. Kenyon's teaching complemented her excavations at Jericho Jericho and Jerusalem. In 1962, she was appointed Principal of St Hugh's College, Oxford.
Awards and commemoration
In the 1973 New Year Honours, following her retirement from Oxford, she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) "for services to archaeology". She was an elected Fellow of the British Academy (FBA) and of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA). She was made a Grand Officer of the Order of Independence by the King of Jordan in 1977.
The British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, amalgamated within the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) in 1998, was officially renamed the Kenyon Institute on 10 July 2003 in honour of Kathleen Kenyon.
Kenyon Collection
The Kathleen Kenyon Archaeology Collection, a collection of Kenyon's books and papers purchased from her estate in 1984, is housed at Baylor University in Waco, Texas.
The finds from her excavations are held in a number of collections, including the British Museum, the UCL Institute of Archaeology, while the bulk of archive is located at the Manchester Museum.
Published works
1942 The Buildings at Samaria, [Samaria-Sebaste I], London, 1942 (co-authored with Crowfoot, J.W. & Sukenik, E.L.)
1948 Excavations at the Jewry Wall Site, [Reports of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London 15], Leicester, London : Society of Antiquaries, 1948.
1949 Guide to Wroxeter Roman City, London, 1949.
1951 "Some Notes on the History of Jericho in the Second Millennium B.C.", PEQ 83 (1951), 101-138.
1952 Beginning in Archaeology, London, 1952.
1952 "Early Jericho", Antiquity 26 (1952), 116-122.
1953 Beginning in Archaeology, second edition, London, 1953.
1954 Guide to Ancient Jericho, Jerusalem, 1954.
1957 Digging Up Jericho, London, 1957. (also published in Dutch, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish and Swedish editions).
1957 The Objects from Samaria, [Samaria-Sebaste III], London, 1957 (co-authored with Crowfoot, J.W. & Crowfoot, G.M.
1958 "Some Notes on the Early and Middle Bronze Age Strata of Megiddo", Eretz Israel 5 (1958), pp. 51–60.
1959 Excavations at Southwark, [Research Papers of Surrey Archaeological Society 5], 1959.
1960 Archaeology in the Holy Land, first edition, London, 1960.
1960 Excavations at Jericho - Volume I Tombs Excavated in 1952-4, London 1960.
1961 Beginning in Archaeology, revised edition, London, 1961.
1965 Archaeology in the Holy Land, second edition, London, 1965.
1965 Excavations at Jericho - Volume II Tombs Excavated in 1955-8, London, 1965.
1965, "British Archaeology Abroad - Jerusalem", Antiquity 39 (1965), 36-37.
1966 Amorites and Canaanites, (Schweich Lectures Series, 1963), London : Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 1966.
1966 "Excavations in Jerusalem, 1965", PEQ (1966), 73-88.
1967 Jerusalem - Excavating 3000 Years of History, [New Aspects of Antiquity], London, 1967 (also published in a German edition).
1969 "Middle and Late Bronze Age Strata at Megiddo", Levant 1 (1969), pp. 25–60.
1970 Archaeology in the Holy Land, third edition, 1970 (also published in Dutch, Danish, German, Spanish and Swedish editions).
1971 Royal Cities of the Old Testament, London, 1971.
1971 "An Essay on Archaeological Technique: the Publication of Results from the Excavation of a Tell", Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971), 271-279.
1974 Digging up Jerusalem, London : Benn, 1974.
1974 "Tombs of the Intermediate Early Bronze - Middle Bronze Age at Tel 'Ajjul", in Stewart, J.R. (ed.), Tell el Ajjul - the Middle Bronze Age Remains, [App. 2. Studies in Mediterranean Archaeology], Göteborg, 1974, 76-85.
1978 The Bible and recent archaeology, London : British Museum Publications Ltd, 1978.
See also
Archaeology of Israel
Kursi, Sea of Galilee
Plastered human skulls
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
References
Further reading
Callaway, Joseph A. (1979), "Dame Kathleen Kenyon, 1906 -1978", The Biblical Archaeologist 42.2 (1979), pp. 122–125.
Davis, Miriam (2008), Dame Kathleen Kenyon: Digging Up the Holy Land, Walnut Creek (CA), Left Coast Press, 304 pp.
Dever, William G. (1978), "Kathleen Kenyon (1906-1978): A Tribute", BASOR 232 (1978), pp. 3–4.
Herr, Larry G. (2002), "W.F. Albright and the History of Pottery in Palestine", NEA 65.1 (2002), pp. 51–55.
Kenrick, Philip M. (1986), Excavations at Sabratha, 1948-1951: a Report on the Excavations conducted by Kathleen Kenyon and John Ward-Perkins, (Journal of Roman Studies Monographs 2), London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1986.
Lönnqvist, Minna (2008) "Kathleen M. Kenyon 1906-1978, A hundred years after her birth,The formative years of a female archaeologist: From socio-politics to the stratigraphical method and the radiocarbon revolution in archaeology," in Proceedings of the 5th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Madrid, 3–8 April 2006, ed. by Joaquín Mª Córdoba, Miquel Molist, Mª Carmen Pérez, Isabel Rubio, Sergio Martínez, UAM Ediciones: Madrid 2008, Vol. II, pp. 379–414.
Moorey, P. Roger S. and Parr, Peter (eds) (1978), Archaeology in the Levant - Essays for Kathleen Kenyon, Aris & Phillips, 1978.
Steiner, Margreet L. (2001), Excavations by Kathleen M. Kenyon in Jerusalem 1961–1967, Volume III—The Settlement in the Bronze and Iron Ages, London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001.
1906 births
1978 deaths
British archaeologists
British women archaeologists
Biblical archaeologists
Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford
Fellows of St Hugh's College, Oxford
Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
People educated at St Paul's Girls' School
People associated with the UCL Institute of Archaeology
Principals of St Hugh's College, Oxford
Fellows of the British Academy
20th-century British women scientists
20th-century British women writers
20th-century archaeologists
Ancient Jericho | [
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16821 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callicrates | Callicrates | Callicrates or Kallikrates (; ) was an ancient Greek architect active in the middle of the fifth century BC. He and Ictinus were architects of the Parthenon (Plutarch, Pericles, 13). An inscription identifies him as the architect of "the Temple of Nike" on the Acropolis of Athens (IG I3 35). The temple in question is either the amphiprostyle Temple of Athena Nike now visible on the site or a small-scale predecessor (naiskos) whose remains were found in the later temple's foundations.
An inscription identifies Callicrates as one of the architects of the Classical circuit wall of the Acropolis (IG I3 45), and Plutarch further states (loc. cit.) that he was contracted to build the Middle of three amazing walls linking Athens and Piraeus.
References
Sources
Plutarch, Pericles 13
Ancient Greek architects
5th-century BC Athenians
Acropolis of Athens
Year of birth unknown
Year of death unknown | [
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16822 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom%20of%20Jerusalem | Kingdom of Jerusalem | The Kingdom of Jerusalem (; ; Arabic: مملكة القدس) also known as the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Frankish Kingdom of Palestine, was a Crusader state established in the Southern Levant by Godfrey of Bouillon in 1099 after the First Crusade. The kingdom lasted nearly two hundred years, from 1099 until 1291 when its last remaining possession, Acre, was destroyed by the Mamluks. Its history is divided into two distinct periods.
The First Kingdom of Jerusalem lasted from 1099 to 1187 before being almost entirely overrun by Saladin. Following the Third Crusade, the kingdom was re-established in Acre in 1192, and lasted until the city's destruction in 1291. This second kingdom is sometimes called the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem or the Kingdom of Acre, after its new capital. Acre remained the capital, except for the two decades which followed Frederick II of Hohenstaufen regaining the city of Jerusalem from the Ayyubids during the Sixth Crusade through diplomacy.
The vast majority of the crusaders who established and settled the Kingdom of Jerusalem were from the Kingdom of France, as were the knights and soldiers who made up the bulk of the steady flow of reinforcements throughout the two-hundred-year span of its existence. Its rulers and elite were therefore of French origin. The French Crusaders also brought the French language to the Levant, thus making Old French the lingua franca of the Crusader states.
Local Muslims and Christians made up the majority of the population in the countryside, but European—mainly French, Italian and Catalan—colonists also settled in the villages. Sugar refining, based on local sugarcane plantations, developed into an important industry.
Geographic boundaries
At first the kingdom was little more than a loose collection of towns and cities captured during the First Crusade, but at its height in the mid-12th century, the kingdom encompassed roughly the territory of modern-day Israel, Palestine and the southern parts of Lebanon. From the Mediterranean Sea, the kingdom extended in a thin strip of land from Beirut in the north to the Sinai Desert in the south; into modern Jordan and Syria in the east, and towards Fatimid Egypt in the west. Three other Crusader states founded during and after the First Crusade were located further north: the County of Edessa (1097–1144), the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268), and the County of Tripoli (1109–1289). While all three were independent, they were closely tied to Jerusalem. Beyond these to the north and west lay the states of Armenian Cilicia and the Byzantine Empire, with which Jerusalem had a close relationship in the twelfth century. Further east, various Muslim emirates were located which were ultimately allied with the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad. The kingdom was ruled by King Aimery of Lusignan (1197–1205), the King of Cyprus, another crusader state founded during the Third Crusade. Dynastic ties also strengthened with Tripoli, Antioch, and Armenia. The kingdom was soon increasingly dominated by the Italian city-states of Venice and Genoa. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (reigned 1220–1250) had ambitions in the Crusader state, claiming the kingdom by marriage, but his presence sparked a civil war (1228–1243) among the kingdom's nobility. The kingdom became little more than a pawn in the politics and warfare of the Ayyubid and Mamluk dynasties in Egypt, as well as the Khwarezmian and Mongol invaders. As a relatively minor kingdom, it received little financial or military support from Europe; despite numerous small expeditions, Europeans generally proved unwilling to undertake an expensive journey to the east for an apparently losing cause. The Mamluk sultans Baibars (reigned 1260–1277) and al-Ashraf Khalil (reigned 1290–1293) eventually reconquered all the remaining crusader strongholds, culminating in the destruction of Acre in 1291.
People
The kingdom was ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse, although the crusaders themselves and their descendants were an elite Catholic minority. They imported many customs and institutions from their homelands in Western Europe, and there were close familial and political connections with the West throughout the kingdom's existence. The kingdom also inherited "oriental" qualities, influenced by the pre-existing customs and populations. The majority of the kingdom's inhabitants were native Christians, especially Greek and Syriac Orthodox, as well as Sunni and Shi'a Muslims. The native Christians and Muslims, who were a marginalized lower class, tended to speak Greek and Arabic, while the crusaders, who came mainly from France, spoke French. There were also a small number of Jews and Samaritans.
According to Benjamin of Tudela, who travelled through the kingdom around 1170, there were 1,000 Samaritans in Nablus, 200 in Caesarea and 300 in Ascalon. This sets a lower bound for the Samaritan population at 1,500, since the contemporary Tolidah, a Samaritan chronicle, also mentions communities in Gaza and Acre. Benjamin of Tudela estimated the total Jewish population of 14 cities in the kingdom to be 1,200, making the Samaritan population of the time larger than the Jewish, perhaps for the only time in history.
History
First Crusade and the foundation of the kingdom
The First Crusade was preached at the Council of Clermont in 1095 by Pope Urban II, with the goal of assisting the Byzantine Empire against the invasions of the Seljuk Turks. However, the main objective quickly became the control of the Holy Land. The Byzantines were frequently at war with the Seljuks and other Turkish dynasties for control of Anatolia and Syria. The Sunni Seljuks had formerly ruled the Great Seljuk Empire, but this empire had collapsed into several smaller states after the death of Malik-Shah I in 1092. Malik-Shah was succeeded in the Anatolian Sultanate of Rûm by Kilij Arslan I, and in Syria by his brother Tutush I, who died in 1095. Tutush's sons Fakhr al-Mulk Radwan and Duqaq inherited Aleppo and Damascus respectively, further dividing Syria amongst emirs antagonistic towards each other, as well as Kerbogha, the atabeg of Mosul. This disunity among the Anatolian and Syrian emirs allowed the crusaders to overcome any military opposition they faced on the way to Jerusalem.
Egypt and much of Palestine were controlled by the Arab Shi'ite Fatimid Caliphate, which had extended further into Syria before the arrival of the Seljuks. Warfare between the Fatimids and Seljuks caused great disruption for the local Christians and for western pilgrims. The Fatimids, under the nominal rule of caliph al-Musta'li but actually controlled by vizier al-Afdal Shahanshah, had lost Jerusalem to the Seljuks in 1073; they recaptured it in 1098 from the Artuqids, a smaller Turkish tribe associated with the Seljuks, just before the arrival of the crusaders.
The crusaders arrived at Jerusalem in June 1099; a few of the neighbouring towns (Ramla, Lydda, Bethlehem, and others) were taken first, and Jerusalem itself was captured on July 15. On 22 July, a council was held in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to establish a king for the newly created Kingdom of Jerusalem. Raymond IV of Toulouse and Godfrey of Bouillon were recognized as the leaders of the crusade and the siege of Jerusalem. Raymond was the wealthier and more powerful of the two, but at first he refused to become king, perhaps attempting to show his piety and probably hoping that the other nobles would insist upon his election anyway. The more popular Godfrey did not hesitate like Raymond, and accepted a position as secular leader. Although it is widely claimed that he took the title Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ("advocate" or "defender" of the Holy Sepulchre), this title is used only in a letter that was not written by Godfrey. Instead, Godfrey himself seems to have used the more ambiguous term princeps, or simply retained his title of dux from Lower Lorraine. According to William of Tyre, writing in the later 12th century when Godfrey had become a legendary hero, he refused to wear "a crown of gold" where Christ had worn "a crown of thorns". Robert the Monk is the only contemporary chronicler of the crusade to report that Godfrey took the title "king". Raymond was incensed and took his army to forage away from the city. The new kingdom, and Godfrey's reputation, was secured with the defeat of the Fatimid Egyptian army under al-Afdal Shahanshah at the Battle of Ascalon one month after the conquest, on August 12, but Raymond and Godfrey's continued antagonism prevented the crusaders from taking control of Ascalon itself.
There was still some uncertainty about what to do with the new kingdom. The papal legate Daimbert of Pisa convinced Godfrey to hand over Jerusalem to him as Latin Patriarch, with the intention to set up a theocratic state directly under papal control. According to William of Tyre, Godfrey may have supported Daimbert's efforts, and he agreed to take possession of "one or two other cities and thus enlarge the kingdom" if Daimbert were permitted to rule Jerusalem. Godfrey did indeed increase the boundaries of the kingdom, by capturing Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberias, and other cities, and reducing many others to tributary status. He set the foundations for the system of vassalage in the kingdom, establishing the Principality of Galilee and the County of Jaffa, but his reign was short, and he died of an illness in 1100. His brother Baldwin of Boulogne successfully outmanoeuvred Daimbert and claimed Jerusalem for himself as "King of the Latins of Jerusalem". Daimbert compromised by crowning Baldwin I in Bethlehem rather than Jerusalem, but the path for a secular state had been laid. Within this secular framework, a Catholic church hierarchy was established, overtop of the local Eastern Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox authorities, who retained their own hierarchies (the Catholics considered them schismatics and thus illegitimate, and vice versa). Under the Latin Patriarch, there were four suffragan archdioceses and numerous dioceses.
Expansion
During Baldwin I's reign, the kingdom expanded even further. The number of European inhabitants increased, as the minor crusade of 1101 brought reinforcements to the kingdom. Baldwin repopulated Jerusalem with Franks and native Christians, after his expedition across the Jordan in 1115. With help from the Italian city-states and other adventurers, notably King Sigurd I of Norway, Baldwin captured the port cities of Acre (1104), Beirut (1110), and Sidon (1111), while exerting his suzerainty over the other crusader states to the north – Edessa (which he had founded in 1097 during the crusade), Antioch, and Tripoli, which he helped capture in 1109. He successfully defended against Muslim invasions, from the Fatimids at the numerous battles at Ramla and elsewhere in the southwest of the kingdom, and from Damascus and Mosul at the Battle of al-Sannabra in the northeast in 1113. As Thomas Madden says, Baldwin was "the true founder of the kingdom of Jerusalem", who "had transformed a tenuous arrangement into a solid feudal state. With brilliance and diligence, he established a strong monarchy, conquered the Palestinian coast, reconciled the crusader barons, and built strong frontiers against the kingdom's Muslim neighbours."
Baldwin brought with him an Armenian wife, traditionally named Arda (although never named such by contemporaries), whom he had married to gain political support from the Armenian population in Edessa, and whom he quickly set aside when he no longer needed Armenian support in Jerusalem. He bigamously married Adelaide del Vasto, regent of Sicily, in 1113, but was convinced to divorce her as well in 1117; Adelaide's son from her first marriage, Roger II of Sicily, never forgave Jerusalem, and for decades withheld much-needed Sicilian naval support.
Baldwin died without heirs in 1118, during a campaign against Egypt, and the kingdom was offered to his brother Eustace III of Boulogne, who had accompanied Baldwin and Godfrey on the crusade. Eustace was uninterested, and instead the crown passed to Baldwin's relative, probably a cousin, Baldwin of Le Bourg, who had previously succeeded him in Edessa. Baldwin II was an able ruler, and he too successfully defended against Fatimid and Seljuk invasions. Although Antioch was severely weakened after the Battle of Ager Sanguinis in 1119, and Baldwin himself was held captive by the emir of Aleppo from 1122 to 1124, Baldwin led the crusader states to victory at the Battle of Azaz in 1125. His reign saw the establishment of the first military orders, the Knights Hospitaller and the Knights Templar; the earliest surviving written laws of the kingdom, compiled at the Council of Nablus in 1120; and the first commercial treaty with the Republic of Venice, the Pactum Warmundi, in 1124. The increase of naval and military support from Venice led to the capture of Tyre that year. The influence of Jerusalem was further extended over Edessa and Antioch, where Baldwin II acted as regent when their own leaders were killed in battle, although there were regency governments in Jerusalem as well during Baldwin's captivity. Baldwin was married to the Armenian noblewoman Morphia of Melitene, and had four daughters: Hodierna and Alice, who married into the families of the Count of Tripoli and Prince of Antioch; Ioveta, who became an influential abbess; and the eldest, Melisende, who was his heir and succeeded him upon his death in 1131, with her husband Fulk V of Anjou as king-consort. Their son, the future Baldwin III, was named co-heir by his grandfather.
Edessa, Damascus, and the Second Crusade
Fulk was an experienced crusader and had brought military support to the kingdom during a pilgrimage in 1120. He brought Jerusalem into the sphere of the Angevin Empire, as the father of Geoffrey V of Anjou and grandfather of the future Henry II of England. Not everyone appreciated the imposition of a foreigner as king. In 1132 Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa all asserted their independence and conspired to prevent Fulk from exercising the suzerainty of Jerusalem over them. He defeated Tripoli in battle, and settled the regency in Antioch by arranging a marriage between the countess, Melisende's niece Constance, and his own relative Raymond of Poitiers. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, the native crusader nobles opposed Fulk's preference for his Angevin retinue. In 1134 Hugh II of Jaffa revolted against Fulk, allying with the Muslim garrison at Ascalon, for which he was convicted of treason in absentia. The Latin Patriarch intervened to settle the dispute, but an assassination attempt was then made on Hugh, for which Fulk was blamed. This scandal allowed Melisende and her supporters to gain control of the government, just as her father had intended. Accordingly, Fulk "became so uxorious that...not even in unimportant cases did he take any measures without her knowledge and assistance."
Fulk was then faced with a new and more dangerous enemy: the atabeg Zengi of Mosul, who had taken control of Aleppo and had set his sights on Damascus as well; the union of these three states would have been a serious blow to the growing power of Jerusalem. A brief intervention in 1137–1138 by the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus, who wished to assert imperial suzerainty over all the crusader states, did nothing to stop the threat of Zengi; in 1139 Damascus and Jerusalem recognized the severity of the threat to both states, and an alliance was concluded which halted Zengi's advance. Fulk used this time to construct numerous castles, including Ibelin and Kerak. After the death of both Fulk and Emperor John in separate hunting accidents in 1143, Zengi invaded and conquered Edessa in 1144. Queen Melisende, now regent for her elder son Baldwin III, appointed a new constable, Manasses of Hierges, to head the army after Fulk's death, but Edessa could not be recaptured, despite Zengi's own assassination in 1146. The fall of Edessa shocked Europe, and a Second Crusade arrived in 1148.
After meeting in Acre in June, the crusading kings Louis VII of France and Conrad III of Germany agreed with Melisende, Baldwin III and the major nobles of the kingdom to attack Damascus. Zengi's territory had been divided amongst his sons after his death, and Damascus no longer felt threatened, so an alliance had been made with Zengi's son Nur ad-Din, the emir of Aleppo. Perhaps remembering attacks launched on Jerusalem from Damascus in previous decades, Damascus seemed to be the best target for the crusade, rather than Aleppo or another city to the north which would have allowed for the recapture of Edessa. The subsequent Siege of Damascus was a complete failure; when the city seemed to be on the verge of collapse, the crusader army suddenly moved against another section of the walls, and was driven back. The crusaders retreated within three days. There were rumours of treachery and bribery, and Conrad III felt betrayed by the nobility of Jerusalem. Whatever the reason for the failure, the French and German armies returned home, and a few years later Damascus was firmly under Nur ad-Din's control.
Civil war
The failure of the Second Crusade had dire long-term consequences for the kingdom. The West was hesitant to send large-scale expeditions; for the next few decades, only small armies came, headed by minor European nobles who desired to make a pilgrimage. The Muslim states of Syria were meanwhile gradually united by Nur ad-Din, who defeated the Principality of Antioch at the Battle of Inab in 1149 and gained control of Damascus in 1154. Nur ad-Din was extremely pious and during his rule the concept of jihad came to be interpreted as a kind of counter-crusade against the kingdom, which was an impediment to Muslim unity, both political and spiritual.
In Jerusalem, the crusaders were distracted by a conflict between Melisende and Baldwin III. Melisende continued to rule as regent long after Baldwin came of age. She was supported by, among others, Manasses of Hierges, who essentially governed for her as constable; her son Amalric, whom she set up as Count of Jaffa; Philip of Milly; and the Ibelin family. Baldwin asserted his independence by mediating disputes in Antioch and Tripoli, and gained the support of the Ibelin brothers when they began to oppose Manasses' growing power, thanks to his marriage to their widowed mother Helvis of Ramla. In 1153 Baldwin had himself crowned as sole ruler, and a compromise was reached by which the kingdom was divided in two, with Baldwin taking Acre and Tyre in the north and Melisende remaining in control of Jerusalem and the cities of the south. Baldwin was able to replace Manasses with one of his own supporters, Humphrey II of Toron. Baldwin and Melisende knew that this situation was untenable. Baldwin soon invaded his mother's possessions, defeated Manasses, and besieged his mother in the Tower of David in Jerusalem. Melisende surrendered and retired to Nablus, but Baldwin appointed her his regent and chief advisor, and she retained some of her influence, especially in appointing ecclesiastical officials. In 1153, Baldwin launched an offensive against Ascalon, the fortress in the south from which Fatimid Egyptian armies had continually raided Jerusalem since the foundation of the kingdom. The fortress was captured and was added to the County of Jaffa, still in the possession of his brother Amalric.
Byzantine alliance and invasion of Egypt
With the capture of Ascalon the southern border of the kingdom was now secure, and Egypt, formerly a major threat to the kingdom but now destabilized under the reign of several underaged caliphs, was reduced to a tributary state. Nur ad-Din remained a threat in the east, and Baldwin had to contend with the advances of Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus, who claimed suzerainty over the Principality of Antioch. In order to bolster the defences of the kingdom against the growing strength of the Muslims, Baldwin III made the first direct alliance with the Byzantine Empire, by marrying Theodora Comnena, a niece of emperor Manuel; Manuel married Baldwin's cousin Maria. As William of Tyre put it, it was hoped that Manuel would be able "to relieve from his own abundance the distress under which our realm was suffering and to change our poverty into superabundance".
When Baldwin died childless in 1162, a year after his mother Melisende, the kingdom passed to his brother Amalric, who renewed the alliance negotiated by Baldwin. In 1163 the chaotic situation in Egypt led to a refusal to pay tribute to Jerusalem, and requests were sent to Nur ad-Din for assistance; in response, Amalric invaded, but was turned back when the Egyptians flooded the Nile at Bilbeis. The Egyptian vizier Shawar again requested help from Nur ad-Din, who sent his general Shirkuh, but Shawar quickly turned against him and allied with Amalric. Amalric and Shirkuh both besieged Bilbeis in 1164, but both withdrew due to Nur ad-Din's campaigns against Antioch, where Bohemond III of Antioch and Raymond III of Tripoli were defeated at the Battle of Harim. It seemed likely that Antioch itself would fall to Nur ad-Din, but he withdrew when Emperor Manuel sent a large Byzantine force to the area. Nur ad-Din sent Shirkuh back to Egypt in 1166, and Shawar again allied with Amalric, who was defeated at the Battle of al-Babein. Despite the defeat, both sides withdrew, but Shawar remained in control with a crusader garrison in Cairo. Amalric cemented his alliance with Manuel by marrying Manuel's niece Maria Komnene in 1167, and an embassy led by William of Tyre was sent to Constantinople to negotiate a military expedition, but in 1168 Amalric pillaged Bilbeis without waiting for the naval support promised by Manuel. Amalric accomplished nothing else, but his actions prompted Shawar to switch sides again and seek help from Shirkuh. Shawar was promptly assassinated, and when Shirkuh died in 1169, he was succeeded by his nephew Yusuf, better known as Saladin. That year, Manuel sent a large Byzantine fleet of some 300 ships to assist Amalric, and the town of Damietta was placed under siege. However, the Byzantine fleet sailed with enough provisions for only three months. By the time that the crusaders were ready supplies were already running out and the fleet retired. Each side sought to blame the other for the failure, but both knew that they could not take Egypt without the other's assistance: the alliance was maintained, and plans for another campaign in Egypt were made, which ultimately were to come to nought.
In the end, Nur ad-Din was victorious and Saladin established himself as Sultan of Egypt. Saladin soon began to assert his independence from Nur ad-Din, and with the death of both Amalric and Nur ad-Din in 1174, he was well-placed to begin exerting control over Nur ad-Din's Syrian possessions as well. Upon the death of the pro-western Emperor Manuel in 1180, the Kingdom of Jerusalem lost its most powerful ally.
The subsequent events have often been interpreted as a struggle between two opposing factions, the "court party", made up of Baldwin's mother, Amalric's first wife Agnes of Courtenay, her immediate family, and recent arrivals from Europe who were inexperienced in the affairs of the kingdom and who were in favour of war with Saladin; and the "noble party", led by Raymond of Tripoli and the lesser nobility of the kingdom, who favoured peaceful co-existence with the Muslims. This is the interpretation offered by William of Tyre, who was firmly placed in the "noble" camp, and his view was taken up by subsequent historians; in the 20th century, Marshall W. Baldwin, Steven Runciman, and Hans E. Mayer favoured this interpretation. Peter W. Edbury, on the other hand, argues that William, as well as the thirteenth-century authors who continued William's chronicle in French and were allied to Raymond's supporters in the Ibelin family, cannot be considered impartial. Although the events were clearly a dynastic struggle, "the division was not between native barons and newcomers from the West, but between the king's maternal and paternal kin."
Miles of Plancy was briefly bailli or regent during Baldwin IV's minority. Miles was assassinated in October 1174, and Count Raymond III of Tripoli, Amalric's first cousin, became regent. It is highly probable that Raymond or his supporters engineered the assassination. Baldwin reached his majority in 1176, and despite his illness he no longer had any legal need for a regent. Since Raymond was his nearest relative in the male line with a strong claim to the throne, there was concern about the extent of his ambitions, although he had no direct heirs of his own. To balance this, the king turned from time to time to his uncle, Joscelin III of Edessa, who was appointed seneschal in 1176; Joscelin was more closely related to Baldwin than Raymond was, but had no claim to the throne himself.
As a leper, Baldwin had no children and could not be expected to rule much longer, so the focus of his succession passed to his sister Sibylla and his younger half-sister Isabella. Baldwin and his advisors recognised that it was essential for Sibylla to be married to a Western nobleman in order to access support from European states in a military crisis; while Raymond was still regent, a marriage was arranged for Sibylla and William of Montferrat, a cousin of Louis VII of France and of Frederick Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor. It was hoped that by allying with a relative of the western emperor, Frederick would come to the kingdom's aid. Jerusalem looked again towards the Byzantine Empire for help, and Emperor Manuel was looking for a way to restore his empire's prestige after his defeat at the Battle of Myriokephalon in 1176; this mission was undertaken by Raynald of Châtillon. After William of Montferrat arrived in 1176, he fell ill and died in June 1177, leaving Sibylla widowed and pregnant with the future Baldwin V. Raynald was then named regent.
Soon afterwards, Philip of Flanders arrived in Jerusalem on pilgrimage; he was Baldwin IV's cousin, and the king offered him the regency and command of the army, both of which Philip refused, although he objected to the appointment of Raynald as regent. Philip then attempted to intervene in the negotiations for Sibylla's second husband, and suggested one of his own retinue, but the native barons refused his suggestion. In addition, Philip seemed to think he could carve out a territory of his own in Egypt, but he refused to participate in the planned Byzantine-Jerusalem expedition. The expedition was delayed and finally cancelled, and Philip took his army away to the north.
Most of the army of Jerusalem marched north with Philip, Raymond III, and Bohemond III to attack Hama, and Saladin took the opportunity to invade the kingdom. Baldwin proved to be an effective and energetic king as well as being a brilliant military commander: he defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard in September 1177 despite being greatly outnumbered and having to rely on a levee-en-masse. Although Baldwin's presence despite his illness was inspirational, direct military decisions were actually made by Raynald.
Hugh III of Burgundy was expected to come to Jerusalem and marry Sibylla, but Hugh was unable to leave France due to the political unrest there in 1179–1180 following the death of Louis VII. Meanwhile, Baldwin IV's stepmother Maria, mother of Isabella and stepmother of Sibylla, married Balian of Ibelin. At Easter in 1180, Raymond and his cousin Bohemond III of Antioch attempted to force Sibylla to marry Balian's brother Baldwin of Ibelin. Raymond and Bohemond were King Baldwin's nearest male relatives in the paternal line, and could have claimed the throne if the king died without an heir or a suitable replacement. Before Raymond and Bohemond arrived, Agnes and King Baldwin arranged for Sibylla to be married to a Poitevin newcomer, Guy of Lusignan, whose older brother Amalric of Lusignan was already an established figure at court. Internationally, the Lusignans were useful as vassals of Baldwin and Sibylla's cousin Henry II of England. Baldwin betrothed eight-year-old Isabella to Humphrey IV of Toron, stepson of the powerful Raynald of Châtillon, thereby removing her from the influence of the Ibelin family and that of her mother.
The dispute between the two factions in the kingdom affected the election of a new Patriarch in 1180. When Patriarch Amalric died on 6 October 1180, the two most obvious choices for his successor were William of Tyre and Heraclius of Caesarea. They were fairly evenly matched in background and education, but politically they were allied with opposite parties, as Heraclius was one of Agnes of Courtenay's supporters. The canons of the Holy Sepulchre asked the king for advice, and Heraclius was chosen through Agnes' influence. There were rumours that Agnes and Heraclius were lovers, but this information comes from the partisan 13th-century continuations of William of Tyre's history, and there is no other evidence to substantiate such a claim.
At the end of 1181, Raynald of Châtillon raided south into Arabia, in the direction of Medina, although he did not make it that far. It was probably around this time that Raynald also attacked a Muslim caravan. The kingdom had a truce with Saladin at the time, and Raynald's actions have been seen as an independent act of brigandage; it is possible that he was trying to prevent Saladin from moving his forces north to take control of Aleppo, which would have strengthened Saladin's position. In response, Saladin attacked the kingdom in 1182, but was defeated at Belvoir Castle. King Baldwin, although quite ill, was still able to command the army in person. Saladin attempted to besiege Beirut from land and sea, and Baldwin raided Damascene territory, but neither side did significant damage. In December 1182, Raynald launched a naval expedition on the Red Sea, which made it as far south as Rabigh. The expedition was defeated and two of Raynald's men were actually taken to Mecca to be executed in public. Like his earlier raids, Raynald's expedition is usually seen as selfish and ultimately fatal for Jerusalem, but according to Bernard Hamilton, it was actually a shrewd strategy, meant to damage Saladin's prestige and reputation.
In 1183 a general tax was levied throughout the kingdom, which was unprecedented in Jerusalem and almost all of medieval Europe to that point. The tax helped pay for larger armies for the next few years. More troops were certainly needed, since Saladin was finally able to gain control of Aleppo, and with peace in his northern territories, he could focus on Jerusalem in the south. King Baldwin was so incapacitated by his leprosy that it was necessary to appoint a regent, and Guy of Lusignan was chosen, as he was Baldwin's legal heir and the king was not expected to live. The inexperienced Guy led the Frankish army against Saladin's incursions into the kingdom, but neither side made any real gains, and Guy was criticized by his opponents for not striking against Saladin when he had the chance.
In October 1183, Isabella married Humphrey of Toron at Kerak during a siege by Saladin, who perhaps hoped to take some valuable prisoners. As King Baldwin, although now blind and crippled, had recovered enough to resume his reign and his command of the army, Guy was removed from the regency and his five-year-old stepson, King Baldwin's nephew and namesake Baldwin, was crowned as co-king in November. King Baldwin himself then went to relieve the castle, carried on a litter, and attended by his mother. He was reconciled with Raymond of Tripoli and appointed him military commander. The siege was lifted in December and Saladin retreated to Damascus. Saladin attempted another siege in 1184, but Baldwin repelled that attack as well, and Saladin raided Nablus and other towns on the way home.
In October 1184, Guy of Lusignan led an attack on the Bedouin nomads from his base in Ascalon. Unlike Raynald's attacks on caravans, which may have had some military purpose, Guy attacked a group that was usually loyal to Jerusalem and provided intelligence about the movements of Saladin's troops. At the same time, King Baldwin contracted his final illness and Raymond of Tripoli, rather than Guy, was appointed as his regent. His nephew Baldwin was paraded in public, wearing his crown as Baldwin V. Baldwin IV finally succumbed to his leprosy in May 1185.
Meanwhile, the succession crisis had prompted a mission to the west to seek assistance. In 1184, Patriarch Heraclius travelled throughout the courts of Europe, but no help was forthcoming. Heraclius offered the "keys of the Holy Sepulchre, those of the Tower of David and the banner of the Kingdom of Jerusalem", but not the crown itself, to both Philip II of France and Henry II of England; the latter, as a grandson of Fulk, was a first cousin of the royal family of Jerusalem, and had promised to go on crusade after the murder of Thomas Becket. Both kings preferred to remain at home to defend their own territories, rather than act as regent for a child in Jerusalem. The few European knights who did travel to Jerusalem did not even see any combat, since the truce with Saladin had been re-established. William V of Montferrat was one of the few who came to his grandson Baldwin V's aid.
Baldwin V's rule, with Raymond of Tripoli as regent and his great-uncle Joscelin of Edessa as his guardian, was short. He was a sickly child and died in the summer of 1186. Raymond and his supporters went to Nablus, presumably in an attempt to prevent Sibylla from claiming the throne, but Sibylla and her supporters went to Jerusalem, where it was decided that the kingdom should pass to her, on the condition that her marriage to Guy be annulled. She agreed but only if she could choose her own husband and king, and after being crowned, she immediately crowned Guy with her own hands. Raymond had refused to attend the coronation, and in Nablus he suggested that Isabella and Humphrey should be crowned instead, but Humphrey refused to agree to this plan which would have certainly started a civil war. Humphrey went to Jerusalem and swore allegiance to Guy and Sibylla, as did most of Raymond's other supporters. Raymond himself refused to do so and left for Tripoli; Baldwin of Ibelin also refused, gave up his fiefs, and left for Antioch.
Loss of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade
Raymond of Tripoli allied with Saladin against Guy and allowed a Muslim garrison to occupy his fief in Tiberias, probably hoping that Saladin would help him overthrow Guy. Saladin, meanwhile, had pacified his Mesopotamian territories, and was now eager to attack the crusader kingdom; he did not intend to renew the truce when it expired in 1187. Before the truce expired, Raynald of Chatillon, the lord of Oultrejourdain and of Kerak and one of Guy's chief supporters, recognized that Saladin was massing his troops, and attacked Muslim caravans in an attempt to disrupt this. Guy was on the verge of attacking Raymond, but realized that the kingdom would need to be united in the face of the threat from Saladin, and Balian of Ibelin effected a reconciliation between the two during Easter in 1187. Saladin attacked Kerak again in April, and in May, a Muslim raiding party ran into the much smaller embassy on its way to negotiate with Raymond, and defeated it at the Battle of Cresson near Nazareth. Raymond and Guy finally agreed to attack Saladin at Tiberias, but could not agree on a plan; Raymond thought a pitched battle should be avoided, but Guy probably remembered the criticism he faced for avoiding battle in 1183, and it was decided to march out against Saladin directly. On July 4, 1187, the army of the kingdom was utterly destroyed at the Battle of Hattin. Raymond of Tripoli, Balian of Ibelin, and Reginald of Sidon escaped, but Raynald was executed by Saladin and Guy was imprisoned in Damascus.
Over the next few months, Saladin easily overran the entire kingdom. Only the port of Tyre remained in Frankish hands, defended by Conrad of Montferrat, who had coincidentally arrived just in time from Constantinople. The fall of Jerusalem essentially ended the first Kingdom of Jerusalem. Much of the population, swollen with refugees fleeing Saladin's conquest of the surrounding territory, was allowed to flee to Tyre, Tripoli, or Egypt (whence they were sent back to Europe), but those who could not pay for their freedom were sold into slavery, and those who could were often robbed by Christians and Muslims alike on their way into exile. The capture of the city led to the Third Crusade, launched in 1189 and led by Richard the Lionheart, Philip Augustus and Frederick Barbarossa, though the last drowned en route.
Guy of Lusignan, who had been refused entry to Tyre by Conrad, began to besiege Acre in 1189. During the lengthy siege, which lasted until 1191, Patriarch Heraclius, Queen Sibylla and her daughters, and many others died of disease. With the death of Sibylla in 1190, Guy now had no legal claim to the kingship, and the succession passed to Sibylla's half-sister Isabella. Isabella's mother Maria and the Ibelins (now closely allied to Conrad) argued that Isabella and Humphrey's marriage was illegal, as she had been underage at the time; underlying this was the fact that Humphrey had betrayed his wife's cause in 1186. The marriage was annulled amid some controversy. Conrad, who was now the nearest kinsman to Baldwin V in the male line, and had already proved himself a capable military leader, then married Isabella, but Guy refused to concede the crown.
When Richard arrived in 1191, he and Philip took different sides in the succession dispute. Richard backed Guy, his vassal from Poitou, while Philip supported Conrad, a cousin of his late father Louis VII. After much ill-feeling and ill-health, Philip returned home in 1191, soon after the fall of Acre. Richard defeated Saladin at the Battle of Arsuf in 1191 and the Battle of Jaffa in 1192, recovering most of the coast, but could not recover Jerusalem or any of the inland territory of the kingdom. It has been suggested that this may have actually been a strategic decision by Richard rather than a failure as such, as he may have recognized that Jerusalem, in particular, was in fact a strategic liability as long as the crusaders were obligated to defend it, as it was isolated from the sea where Western reinforcements could arrive. Conrad was unanimously elected king in April 1192, but was murdered by the Hashshashin only days later. Eight days after that, the pregnant Isabella was married to Count Henry II of Champagne, nephew of Richard and Philip, but politically allied to Richard. As compensation, Richard sold Guy the island of Cyprus, which Richard had captured on the way to Acre, although Guy continued to claim the throne of Jerusalem until his death in 1194.
The crusade came to an end peacefully, with the Treaty of Ramla negotiated in 1192; Saladin allowed pilgrimages to be made to Jerusalem, allowing the crusaders to fulfill their vows, after which they all returned home. The native crusader barons set about rebuilding their kingdom from Acre and the other coastal cities.
The Kingdom of Acre
For the next hundred years, the Kingdom of Jerusalem remained as a tiny kingdom hugging the Syrian coastline. Its capital was moved to Acre and controlled most of the coastline of present-day Israel and southern and central Lebanon, including the strongholds and towns of Jaffa, Arsuf, Caesarea, Tyre, Sidon, and Beirut. At best, it included only a few other significant cities, such as Ascalon and some interior fortresses, as well as suzerainty over Tripoli and Antioch. The new king, Henry of Champagne, died accidentally in 1197, and Isabella married for a fourth time, to Aimery of Lusignan, Guy's brother. Aimery had already inherited Cyprus from Guy, and had been crowned king by Frederick Barbarossa's son, Emperor Henry VI. Henry led a crusade in 1197 but died along the way. Nevertheless, his troops recaptured Beirut and Sidon for the kingdom before returning home in 1198. A five-year truce was then concluded with the Ayyubids in Syria in 1198.
The Ayyubid empire had fallen into civil war after the death of Saladin in 1193. His sons claimed various parts of his empire: az-Zahir took control of Aleppo, al-Aziz Uthman held Cairo, while his eldest son, al-Afdal, retained Damascus. Saladin's brother Al-Adil Sayf ad-Din (often called "Saphadin" by the crusaders) acquired al-Jazira (northern Mesopotamia), and al-Adil's son al-Mu'azzam took possession of Karak and Transjordan. In 1196, al-Afdal was driven out of Damascus by al Adil in alliance with Uthman. When Uthman died in 1198, al Afdal returned to power as regent in Egypt for Uthman's infant son. Allied with az-Zahir, he then attacked his uncle in Damascus. The alliance fell apart, and al-Adil then defeated al Afdal in Egypt and annexed the country. In 1200 Al-Adil proclaimed himself Sultan of Egypt and Syria, entrusting Damascus to al-Mu'azzam and al-Jazira to another son, al-Kamil. Following a second unsuccessful siege of Damascus by the two brothers, Al Afdal accepted a fief consisting of Samosata and a number of other towns. Az-Zahir of Aleppo submitted to his uncle in 1202, thus re-uniting the Ayyubid territories.
Meanwhile, schemes were hatched to reconquer Jerusalem through Egypt. A Fourth Crusade was planned after the failure of the Third, but it resulted in the sack of Constantinople in 1204, and most of the crusaders involved never arrived in the kingdom. Aimery, however, not knowing of the diversion to Constantinople, raided Egypt in advance of the expected invasion. Both Isabella and Aimery died in 1205 and again an underage girl, Isabella and Conrad's daughter Maria of Montferrat, became queen of Jerusalem. Isabella's half-brother John of Ibelin, the Old Lord of Beirut governed as regent until 1210 when Maria married an experienced French knight, John of Brienne. Maria died in childbirth in 1212, and John of Brienne continued to rule as regent for their daughter Isabella II.
Fifth and Sixth Crusades and Frederick II
The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 called for a new, better-organized crusade against Egypt. In late 1217 Andrew II of Hungary and Leopold VI, Duke of Austria arrived in Acre and, along with John of Brienne, raided territory further inland, including Mount Tabor, but without success. After the departure of the Hungarians, the remaining crusaders set about refortifying Caesarea and the Templar fortress of Château Pèlerin throughout the winter of 1217 and spring of 1218.
In the spring of 1218 the Fifth Crusade began in earnest when German crusader fleets landed at Acre. Along with King John, who was elected leader of the crusade, the fleets sailed to Egypt and besieged Damietta at the mouth of the Nile in May. The siege progressed slowly, and the Egyptian sultan al-Adil died in August 1218, supposedly of shock after the crusaders managed to capture one of Damietta's towers. He was succeeded by his son al-Kamil. In the autumn of 1218 reinforcements arrived from Europe, including the papal legate Pelagius of Albano. In the winter the crusaders were affected by floods and disease, and the siege dragged on throughout 1219, when Francis of Assisi arrived to attempt to negotiate a truce. Neither side could agree to terms, despite the Ayyubid offer of a thirty-year truce and the restoration of Jerusalem and most of the rest of the former kingdom. The crusaders finally managed to starve out the city and captured it in November. Al-Kamil retreated to the nearby fortress of al-Mansurah, but the crusaders remained in Damietta throughout 1219 and 1220, awaiting the arrival of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, while King John returned to Acre briefly to defend against al-Mu'azzam, who was raiding the kingdom from Damascus in John's absence. Still expecting the emperor's imminent arrival, in July 1221, the crusaders set off towards Cairo, but they were stopped by the rising Nile, which al-Kamil allowed to flood by breaking the dams along its course. The sultan easily defeated the trapped crusader army and regained Damietta. Emperor Frederick had, in fact, never left Europe at all.
After the failure of the crusade, John travelled throughout Europe seeking assistance, but found support only from Frederick, who then married John and Maria's daughter Isabella II in 1225. The next year, Isabella died giving birth to their son Conrad IV, who succeeded his mother to the throne although he never appeared in the east. Frederick had reneged on his promise to lead the Fifth Crusade, but was now eager to cement his claim to the throne through Conrad. There were also plans to join with al-Kamil in attacking al-Mu'azzam in Damascus, an alliance which had been discussed with Egyptian envoys in Italy. But after continually delaying his departure for the Holy Land, including suffering an outbreak of disease in his fleet, he was excommunicated by Pope Gregory IX in 1227. The crusaders, led not by Frederick but by his representatives Richard Filangieri, Henry IV, Duke of Limburg, and Hermann of Salza, Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, arrived in the east late in 1227, and while waiting for the emperor they set about refortifying Sidon, where they built the sea castle, and Montfort, which later became the headquarters of the Teutonic Knights. The Ayyubids of Damascus did not dare attack, as al-Mu'azzam had suddenly died not long before. Frederick finally arrived on the Sixth Crusade in September 1228, and claimed the regency of the kingdom in the name of his infant son.
Frederick immediately came into conflict with the native nobles of Outremer, some of whom resented his attempts to impose Imperial authority over both Cyprus and Jerusalem. The Cypriot nobles were already quarrelling amongst themselves about the regency for Henry I of Cyprus, who was still a child. The High Court of Cyprus had elected John of Ibelin as regent, but Henry's mother Alice of Champagne wished to appoint one of her supporters; Alice and her party, members or supporters of the Lusignan dynasty, sided with Frederick, whose father had crowned Aimery of Lusignan king in 1197. At Limassol, Frederick demanded that John give up not only the regency of Cyprus, but also John's own lordship of Beirut on the mainland. John argued that Frederick had no legal authority to make such demands and refused to give up either title. Frederick then imprisoned John's sons as hostages to guarantee John's support for his crusade.
John did accompany Frederick to the mainland, but Frederick was not well-received there; one of his few supporters was Balian, Lord of Sidon, who had welcomed the crusaders the year before and now acted as an ambassador to the Ayyubids. The death of al-Mu'azzam negated the proposed alliance with al-Kamil, who along with his brother al-Ashraf had taken possession of Damascus (as well as Jerusalem) from their nephew, al-Mu'azzam's son an-Nasir Dawud. However, al-Kamil presumably did not know of the small size of Frederick's army, nor the divisions within it caused by his excommunication, and wished to avoid defending his territories against another crusade. Frederick's presence alone was sufficient to regain Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and a number of surrounding castles without a fight: these were recovered in February 1229, in return for a ten-year truce with the Ayyubids and freedom of worship for Jerusalem's Muslim inhabitants. The terms of the treaty were unacceptable to the Patriarch of Jerusalem Gerald of Lausanne, who placed the city under interdict. In March, Frederick crowned himself in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but because of his excommunication and the interdict Jerusalem was never truly reincorporated into the kingdom, which continued to be ruled from Acre.
Meanwhile, in Italy, the Pope had used Frederick's excommunication as an excuse to invade his Italian territories; the papal armies were led by Frederick's former father-in-law John of Brienne. Frederick was forced to return home in 1229, leaving the Holy Land "not in triumph, but showered with offal" by the citizens of Acre.
War of the Lombards and the Barons' Crusade
Nevertheless, Frederick sent an Imperial army in 1231, under Richard Filangieri, who occupied Beirut and Tyre, but was unable to gain control of Acre. John's supporters formed a commune in Acre, of which John himself was elected mayor in 1232. With the help of the Genoese merchants, the commune recaptured Beirut. John also attacked Tyre, but was defeated by Filangieri at the Battle of Casal Imbert in May 1232.
In Cyprus, King Henry I came of age in 1232 and John's regency was no longer necessary. Both John and Filangieri raced back to Cyprus to assert their authority, and the imperial forces were defeated at the Battle of Agridi on June 15. Henry became the undisputed king of Cyprus, but continued to support the Ibelins over the Lusignans and the imperial party. On the mainland, Filangieri had the support of Bohemund IV of Antioch, the Teutonic Knights, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Pisan merchants. John was supported by his nobles on Cyprus, and by his continental holdings in Beirut, Caesarea, and Arsuf, as well as by the Knights Templar and the Genoese. Neither side could make any headway, and in 1234 Gregory IX excommunicated John and his supporters. This was partly revoked in 1235, but still no peace could be made. John died in 1236 and the war was taken up by his son Balian of Beirut and his nephew Philip of Montfort.
Meanwhile, the treaty with the Ayyubids was set to expire in 1239. Plans for a new crusade to be led by Frederick came to nothing, and Frederick himself was excommunicated by Gregory IX again in 1239. However, other European nobles took up the cause, including Theobald IV, Count of Champagne and King of Navarre, Peter of Dreux, and Amaury VI of Montfort, who arrived in Acre in September 1239. Theobald was elected leader of the crusade at a council in Acre, attended by most of the important nobles of the kingdom, including Walter of Brienne, John of Arsuf, and Balian of Sidon. The arrival of the crusade was a brief respite from the Lombard War; Filangieri remained in Tyre and did not participate. The council decided to refortify Ascalon in the south and attack Damascus in the north.
The crusaders may have been aware of the new divisions among the Ayyubids; al-Kamil had occupied Damascus in 1238 but had died soon afterwards, and his territory was inherited by his family. His sons al-Adil abu Bakr and as-Salih Ayyub inherited Egypt and Damascus. Ayyub marched on Cairo in an attempt to drive out al-Adil, but during his absence al-Kamil's brother as-Salih Isma'il took over Damascus, and Ayyub was taken prisoner by an-Nasir Dawud. The crusaders, meanwhile, marched to Ascalon. Along the way, Walter of Brienne captured livestock intended to resupply Damascus, as the Ayyubids had probably learned of the crusaders' plans to attack it. The victory was short-lived, however, as the crusaders were then defeated by the Egyptian army at Gaza in November 1239. Henry II, Count of Bar was killed and Amaury of Montfort captured. The crusaders returned to Acre, possibly because the native barons of the kingdom were suspicious of Filangieri in Tyre. Dawud took advantage of the Ayyubid victory to recapture Jerusalem in December, the ten-year truce having expired.
Although Ayyub was Dawud's prisoner, the two now allied against al-Adil in Egypt, which Ayyub seized in 1240. In Damascus, Isma'il recognized the threat of Dawud and Ayyub against his own possessions, and turned to the crusaders for assistance. Theobald concluded a treaty with Isma'il, in return for territorial concessions that restored Jerusalem to Christian control, as well as much of the rest of the former kingdom, even more territory than Frederick had recovered in 1229. Theobald, however, was frustrated by the Lombard War, and returned home in September 1240. Almost immediately after Theobald's departure, Richard of Cornwall arrived. He completed the rebuilding of Ascalon, and also made peace with Ayyub in Egypt. Ayyub confirmed Isma'il's concessions in 1241, and prisoners taken at Gaza were exchanged by both sides. Richard returned to Europe in 1241.
Although the kingdom had essentially been restored, the Lombard War continued to occupy the kingdom's nobility. As the Templars and Hospitallers supported opposite sides, they also attacked each other, and the Templars broke the treaty with the Ayyubids by attacking Nablus in 1241. Conrad proclaimed that he had come of age in 1242, eliminating both Frederick's claim to the regency and the need for an imperial guardian to govern in his place, although he had not yet turned 15, the age of majority according to the customs of Jerusalem. Through Conrad, Frederick tried to send an imperial regent, but the anti-imperial faction in Acre argued that Jerusalem's laws allowed them to appoint their own regent. In June the Haute Cour granted the regency to Alice of Champagne, who, as the daughter of Isabella I, was Conrad's great-aunt and his closest relative living in the kingdom. Alice ordered Filangieri to be arrested, and along with the Ibelins and Venetians, besieged Tyre, which fell in July 1243. The Lombard War was over, but the king was still absent, as Conrad never came to the east. Alice was prevented from exercising any real power as regent by Philip of Montfort, who took control of Tyre, and Balian of Beirut, who continued to hold Acre.
Crusade of Louis IX
The Ayyubids were still divided between Ayyub in Egypt, Isma'il in Damascus, and Dawud in Kerak. Isma'il, Dawud, and al-Mansur Ibrahim of Homs went to war with Ayyub, who hired the Khwarazmians to fight for him. The Khwarazmians were nomadic Turks from central Asia, who had recently been displaced by the Mongols further to the east and were now residing in Mesopotamia. With Ayyub's support, they sacked Jerusalem in the summer of 1244, leaving it in ruins and useless to both Christians and Muslims. In October, the Khwarazmians, along with the Egyptian army under the command of Baibars, were met by the Frankish army, led by Philip of Montfort, Walter of Brienne, and the masters of the Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights, along with al-Mansur and Dawud. On October 17 the Egyptian-Khwarazmian army destroyed the Frankish-Syrian coalition, and Walter of Brienne was taken captive and later executed. By 1247, Ayyub had reoccupied most of the territory that had been conceded in 1239, and had also gained control of Damascus.
A new crusade was discussed at the Council of Lyon in 1245 by Pope Innocent IV. The council deposed Frederick II, so no help could be expected from the empire, but King Louis IX of France had already vowed to go on crusade. Louis arrived in Cyprus in 1248, where he gathered an army of his own men, including his brothers Robert of Artois, Charles of Anjou, and Alphonse of Poitiers, and those of Cyprus and Jerusalem, led by the Ibelin family John of Jaffa, Guy of Ibelin, and Balian of Beirut. Once again the target was Egypt. Damietta was captured without resistance when the crusaders landed in June 1249, but the crusade halted there until November, by which time the Egyptian sultan Ayyub had died and had been succeeded by his son Turanshah. In February, the crusaders were defeated at the Battle of al-Mansurah, where Robert of Artois was killed. The crusaders were unable to cross the Nile, and, suffering from disease and lack of supplies, retreated towards Damietta in April. They were defeated along the way at the Battle of Fariskur, with Louis being taken captive by Turanshah. During Louis' captivity, Turanshah was overthrown by his Mamluk soldiers, led by the general Aybak, who then released Louis in May in return for Damietta and a large ransom. For the next four years Louis resided in Acre, and helped refortify that city along with Caesarea, Jaffa, and Sidon. He also made truces with the Ayyubids in Syria, and sent embassies to negotiate with the Mongols, who were beginning to threaten the Muslim world, before returning home in 1254. He left behind a large garrison of French soldiers in Acre, under the command of Geoffrey of Sergines.
In the midst of these events, Alice of Champagne had died in 1246 and had been replaced as regent by her son King Henry I of Cyprus, for whom John of Jaffa served as bailli in Acre. During Louis IX's stay in Acre, Henry I died in 1253, and was succeeded in Cyprus by his infant son Hugh II. Hugh was technically regent of Jerusalem as well, both for Conrad and for Conrad's son Conradin after Conrad died in 1254. Both Cyprus and Jerusalem were governed by Hugh's mother Plaisance of Antioch, but John remained bailli for Hugh in Acre. John made peace with Damascus and attempted to regain Ascalon; the Egyptians, now ruled by the Mamluk sultanate, besieged Jaffa in 1256 in response. John defeated them, and afterwards gave up the bailliage to his cousin John of Arsuf.
War of Saint Sabas
In 1256 the commercial rivalry between the Venetian and Genoese merchant colonies broke out into open warfare. In Acre, the two colonies disputed possession of the monastery of Saint Sabas. The Genoese, assisted by the Pisan merchants, attacked the Venetian quarter and burned their ships, but the Venetians drove them out. The Venetians were then expelled from Tyre by Philip of Monfort. John of Arsuf, John of Jaffa, John II of Beirut, the Templars, and the Teutonic Knights supported the Venetians, who also convinced the Pisans to join them, while the Hospitallers supported the Genoese. In 1257 the Venetians conquered the monastery and destroyed its fortifications, although they were unable to expel the Genoese completely. They blockaded the Genoese quarter, but the Genoese were supplied by the Hospitallers, whose complex was nearby, and by Philip of Montfort who sent food from Tyre. In August 1257, John of Arsuf tried to end the war by granting commercial rights in Acre to the Republic of Ancona, an Italian ally of Genoa, but aside from Philip of Montfort and the Hospitallers, the rest of the nobles continued to support Venice. In June 1258, Philip and the Hospitallers marched on Acre while a Genoese fleet attacked the city by sea. The naval battle was won by Venice, and the Genoese were forced to abandon their quarter and flee to Tyre with Philip. The war also spread to Tripoli and Antioch, where the Embriaco family, descended from Genoese crusaders, was pitted against Bohemond VI of Antioch, who supported the Venetians. In 1261 the Patriarch, Jacques Pantaleon, organised a council to re-establish order in the kingdom, though the Genoese did not return to Acre.
Mongols
It was during this period that the Mongols arrived in the Near East. Their presence further east had already displaced the Khwarazmians, and embassies had been sent by various popes as well as Louis IX to ally or negotiate with them, but they were uninterested in alliances. They sacked Baghdad in 1258, and Aleppo and Damascus in 1260, destroying both the Abbasid caliphate and the last vestiges of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hethum I of Armenia and Bohemond VI of Antioch had already submitted to the Mongols as vassals. Some of the Mongols were Nestorian Christians, including Kitbuqa, one of the generals at the sieges of Baghdad and Damascus, but despite this, the nobles of Acre refused to submit. As the kingdom was by now a relatively unimportant state, the Mongols paid little attention to it, but there were a few skirmishes in 1260: the forces of Julian of Sidon killed the nephew of Kitbuqa, who responded by sacking Sidon, and John II of Beirut was also captured by the Mongols during another raid. The apparently inevitable Mongol conquest was stalled when Hulagu, the Mongol commander in Syria, returned home after the death of his brother Möngke Khan, leaving Kitbuqa with a small garrison. The Mamluks of Egypt then sought, and were granted, permission to advance through Frankish territory, and defeated the Mongols at the Battle of Ain Jalut in September 1260. Kitbuqa was killed and all of Syria fell under Mamluk control. On the way back to Egypt, the Mamluk sultan Qutuz was assassinated by the general Baibars, who was far less favourable than his predecessor to alliances with the Franks.
Fall of Acre
John of Arsuf had died in 1258 and was replaced as bailli by Geoffrey of Sergines, Louis IX's lieutenant in Acre. Plaisance died in 1261, but as her son Hugh II was still underage, Cyprus passed to his cousin Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan, whose mother Isabella of Cyprus, Alice of Champagne and Hugh I of Cyprus' daughter and Hugh II's aunt, took over the regency in Acre. She appointed, as bailli, her husband Henry of Antioch (who was also Plaisance's uncle), but died in 1264. The regency in Acre was then claimed by Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan and his cousin Hugh of Brienne, and Hugh II died in 1267 before he reached the age of majority. Hugh of Antioch-Lusignan won the dispute and succeeded Hugh II on Cyprus as Hugh III. When Conradin was executed in Sicily in 1268, there was no other Hohenstaufen heir to succeed him, and Hugh III inherited the Kingdom of Jerusalem as well in 1269. This was disputed by another branch of the Lusignan family: Maria of Antioch, daughter of Bohemond IV of Antioch and Melisende of Lusignan (herself a daughter of Isabella I and Amalric II), claimed the throne as the oldest living relative of Isabella I, but for the moment her claim was ignored. By this time, the Mamluks under Baibars were taking advantage of the kingdom's constant disputes, and began conquering the remaining crusader cities along the coast. In 1265, Baibars took Caesarea, Haifa and Arsuf, and Safad and Toron in 1266. In 1268 he captured Jaffa and Beaufort, and then besieged and destroyed Antioch.
Hugh III and Baibars made a one-year truce after these conquests; Baibars knew that Louis IX was planning another crusade from Europe, and assumed that the target would once again be Egypt. But instead the crusade was diverted to Tunis, where Louis died. Baibars was free to continue his campaigns: in 1270 he had the Assassins kill Philip of Montfort, and in 1271 he captured the Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights strongholds of Krak des Chevaliers and Montfort Castle. He also besieged Tripoli, but abandoned it in May when Prince Edward of England arrived, the only part of Louis IX's crusade to arrive in the east. Edward could do nothing except arrange a ten-year truce with Baibars, who nevertheless attempted to have him assassinated as well. Edward left in 1272, and despite the Second Council of Lyon's plans for another crusade in 1274, no further large-scale expedition ever arrived. Hugh III's authority on the mainland began to break down; he was an unpopular king, and Beirut, the only territory left outside of Acre and Tyre, started to act independently. Its heiress, Isabella of Ibelin (widow of Hugh II), actually placed it under Baibars' protection. Finding the mainland ungovernable, Hugh III left for Cyprus, leaving Balian of Arsuf as bailli. Then in 1277, Maria of Antioch sold her claim to the kingdom to Charles of Anjou, who sent Roger of San Severino to represent him. The Venetians and Templars supported the claim, and Balian was powerless to oppose him. Baibars died in 1277 and was succeeded by Qalawun. In 1281 the ten-year truce expired and was renewed by Roger. Roger returned to Europe after the Sicilian Vespers in 1282, and was replaced by Odo Poilechien. Hugh III attempted to re-assert his authority on the mainland by landing at Beirut in 1283, but this was ineffective and he died in Tyre in 1284. He was succeeded briefly by his son John II, who died soon after in 1285, and was succeeded by his brother, Hugh III's other son Henry II. That year Qalawun captured the Hospitaller fortress of Marqab. Charles of Anjou also died in 1285, and the military orders and the commune of Acre accepted Henry II as king; Odo Poilechen refused to recognize him, but was allowed to hand Acre over to the Templars rather than Henry directly, and the Templars then handed it to the king. War broke out between the Venetians and Genoese again in 1287, and Tripoli fell to Qalawun in 1289. Although it was only a matter of time before Acre also fell, the end of the crusader kingdom was actually instigated in 1290 by newly arrived crusaders, who rioted in Acre and attacked the city's Muslim merchants. Qalawun died before he could retaliate, but his son al-Ashraf Khalil arrived to besiege Acre in April 1291. Acre was defended by Henry II's brother Amalric of Tyre, the Hospitallers, Templars, and Teutonic Knights, the Venetians and Pisans, the French garrison led by Jean I de Grailly, and the English garrison led by Otton de Grandson, but they were vastly outnumbered. Henry II himself arrived in May during the siege, but the city fell on May 18. Henry, Amalric, Otton, and Jean escaped, as did a young Templar named Roger de Flor, but most of the other defenders did not, including the master of the Templars Guillaume de Beaujeu. Tyre fell without a fight the next day, Sidon fell in June, and Beirut in July.
The crusaders moved their headquarters north to cities such as Tortosa, but lost that too, and were forced to relocate their headquarters offshore to Cyprus. Some naval raids and attempts to retake territory were made over the next ten years, but with the loss of the island of Arwad in 1302–1303, the Kingdom of Jerusalem ceased to exist on the mainland. The kings of Cyprus for many decades hatched plans to regain the Holy Land, but without success. For the next seven centuries, up to today, a veritable multitude of European monarchs have used the title of King of Jerusalem.
Life in the early kingdom
The Latin population of the kingdom was always small; although a steady stream of settlers and new crusaders continually arrived, most of the original crusaders who fought in the First Crusade simply went home. According to William of Tyre, "barely three hundred knights and two thousand foot soldiers could be found" in the kingdom in 1100 during Godfrey's siege of Arsuf. From the very beginning, the Latins were little more than a colonial frontier exercising rule over the native Jewish, Samaritan, Muslim, Greek Orthodox, and Syriac populations, who were more numerous.
As new generations grew up in the kingdom, they began to think of themselves as natives, rather than immigrants, much as the Arabs had done before them. Although they never gave up their core identity as Western Europeans or Franks, their clothing, diet, and commercialism integrated much Oriental, particularly Byzantine, influence. As the chronicler Fulcher of Chartres wrote around 1124,
For we who were Occidentals now have been made Orientals. He who was a Roman or Frank has in this land been made into a Galilaean, or an inhabitant of Palestine. He who was of Rheims or Chartres has now become a citizen of Tyre or Antioch. We have already forgotten the places of our birth; already these are unknown to many of us or not mentioned anymore.
The crusaders and their descendants often learned to speak Greek, Arabic, and other eastern languages, and intermarried with the native Christians (whether Greek, Syriac, or Armenian) and sometimes with converted Muslims. Nonetheless, the Frankish principalities remained a distinctive Occidental colony in the heart of Islam.
Fulcher, a participant in the First Crusade and chaplain of Baldwin I, continued his chronicle up to 1127. Fulcher's chronicle was very popular and was used as a source by other historians in the west, such as Orderic Vitalis and William of Malmesbury. Almost as soon as Jerusalem had been captured, and continuing throughout the 12th century, many pilgrims arrived and left accounts of the new kingdom; among them are the English Sæwulf, the Kievan Abbot Daniel, the Frank Fretellus, the Byzantine Johannes Phocas, and the Germans John of Würzburg and Theoderich. Aside from these, thereafter there is no eyewitness to events in Jerusalem until William of Tyre, archbishop of Tyre and chancellor of Jerusalem, who began writing around 1167 and died around 1184, although he includes much information about the First Crusade and the intervening years from the death of Fulcher to his own time, drawn mainly from the writings of Albert of Aix and Fulcher himself. From the Muslim perspective, a chief source of information is Usamah ibn Munqidh, a soldier and frequent ambassador from Damascus to Jerusalem and Egypt, whose memoirs, Kitab al i'tibar, include lively accounts of crusader society in the east. Further information can be gathered from travellers such as Benjamin of Tudela and Ibn Jubayr.
Crusader society
The Kingdom at first was virtually bereft of a loyal subject population and had few knights to implement the laws and orders of the realm. With the arrival of Italian trading firms, the creation of the military orders, and immigration by European knights, artisans, and farmers, the affairs of the Kingdom improved and a feudal society developed, similar to but distinct from the society the crusaders knew in Europe. The nature of this society has long been a subject of debate among crusade historians.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, French scholars, such as E. G. Rey, Gaston Dodu, and René Grousset believed that the crusaders, Muslims and Christians lived in a totally integrated society. Ronnie Ellenblum claims this view was influenced by French imperialism and colonialism; if medieval French crusaders could integrate themselves into local society, then certainly modern French colonies in the Levant could thrive. In the mid-20th century, scholars such as Joshua Prawer, R. C. Smail, Meron Benvenisti, and Claude Cahen argued instead that the crusaders lived totally segregated from the native inhabitants, who were thoroughly Arabicized and/or Islamicized and were a constant threat to the foreign crusaders. Prawer argued further that the kingdom was an early attempt at colonization, in which the crusaders were a small ruling class, who were dependent on the native population for survival but made no attempt to integrate with them. For this reason, the rural European society to which the crusaders were accustomed was replaced by a more secure urban society in the pre-existing cities of the Levant.
According to Ellenblum's interpretation, the inhabitants of the Kingdom (Latin Christians living alongside native Greek and Syriac Christians, Shia and Sunni Arabs, Sufis, Bedouin, Druze, Jews, and Samaritans) all had major differences between each other as well as with the crusaders. Relations between eastern Christians and the Latin crusaders were "complex and ambiguous", not simply friendly or hostile. The eastern Christians, at least, probably felt closer ties to their fellow Christian crusaders than Muslim Arabs.
Although the crusaders came upon an ancient urban society, Ellenblum argues that they never completely abandoned their rural European lifestyle, nor was European society completely rural to begin with. Crusader settlement in the Levant resembled the types of colonization and settlement that were already being practiced in Europe, a mixture of urban and rural civilization centred around fortresses. The crusaders were neither totally integrated with the native population, nor segregated in the cities away from the rural natives; rather they settled in both urban and rural areas; specifically, in areas traditionally inhabited by Eastern Christians. Areas that were traditionally Muslim had very little crusader settlement, just as they already had very few native Christian inhabitants.
Into this mixed society the crusaders adapted existing institutions and introduced their familiar customs from Europe. As in Europe the nobles had vassals and were themselves vassals to the king. Agricultural production was regulated by the iqta, a Muslim system of land ownership and payments roughly (though far from exactly) equivalent to the feudal system of Europe, and this system was not heavily disrupted by the crusaders.
As Hans Mayer says, "the Muslim inhabitants of the Latin Kingdom hardly ever appear in the Latin chronicles", so information on their role in society is difficult to find. The crusaders "had a natural tendency to ignore these matters as simply without interest and certainly not worthy of record." Although Muslims, as well as Jews and Eastern Christians, had virtually no rights in the countryside, where they were essentially the property of the crusader lord who owned the land, tolerance for other faiths was in general no higher or lower than that found elsewhere in the Middle East. Greeks, Syriacs, and Jews continued to live as they had before, subject to their own laws and courts, with their former Muslim overlords simply replaced by the crusaders; Muslims now joined them at the lowest level of society. The ra'is, the leader of a Muslim or Syriac community, was a kind of vassal to whatever noble owned his land, but as the crusader nobles were absentee landlords the ra'is and their communities had a high degree of autonomy.
Arab-Andalusian geographer and traveler Ibn Jubayr, who was hostile to the Franks, described the Muslims living under the Christian crusaders' Kingdom of Jerusalem in the late 12th-century:
In the cities, Muslims and Eastern Christians were free, although no Muslims were permitted to live in Jerusalem itself. They were second-class citizens and played no part in politics or law, and owed no military service to the crown, although in some cities they may have been the majority of the population. Likewise, citizens of the Italian city-states owed nothing as they lived in autonomous quarters in the port cities.
21st century positions on the question of cultural integration or cultural apartheid remain divergent. Interactions between the Franks and the native Muslims and Christians, though muddled, exhibited a practical coexistence. Though likely overstated, the accounts of Usamah Ibn-Munqidh of Shaizar's travels through Antioch and Jerusalem described a level of aristocratic exchange elevated above ethnic prejudice. Contact between Muslims and Christians came on the administrative or personal level (on the basis of taxes or translation), not communal or cultural, representative of a hierarchical lord over subject relationship. Evidence of inter-cultural integration remains scarce, but evidence of inter-cultural cooperation and complex social interaction proves more common. Key use of the word dragoman, literally translator, with Syriac administrators and Arabic headsmen represented the direct need for negotiation of interests on both sides. Comments on households with Arabic-speaking Christians and a few Arabized Jews and Muslims represent a less dichotomous relationship than the mid-20th-century historians depicted. Rather, the commonality of Frankish Christians having non-Frankish priests, doctors, and other roles within households and inter-cultural communities presents the lack of standardized discrimination. Jerusalemite William of Tyre complained about a trend to hire Jewish or Muslim medical practitioners over their Latin and Frankish counterparts. Evidence even indicates alterations to Frankish cultural and social customs regarding hygiene (notorious amongst Arabs for their lack of washing and knowledge of bathhouse culture), going so far as to ensure water supplies for domestic use in addition to irrigation.
Population
It is impossible to give an accurate estimate of the population of the kingdom. Josiah Russell calculates that all of Syria had about 2.3 million people at the time of the crusades, with perhaps eleven thousand villages; most of these, of course, were outside of crusader rule even at the greatest extent of all four crusader states. It has been estimated by scholars such as Joshua Prawer and Meron Benvenisti that there were at most 120,000 Franks and 100,000 Muslims living in the cities, with another 250,000 Muslim and Eastern Christian peasants in the countryside. The crusaders accounted for 15–25% of the total population. Benjamin Z. Kedar estimates that there were between 300,000 and 360,000 non-Franks in the Kingdom, 250,000 of whom were villagers in the countryside, and "one may assume that Muslims were in the majority in some, possibly most parts of the kingdom of Jerusalem…" As Ronnie Ellenblum points out, there simply is not enough existing evidence to accurately count the population and any estimate is inherently unreliable. Contemporary chronicler William of Tyre recorded the census of 1183, which was intended to determine the number of men available to defend against an invasion, and to determine the amount of tax money that could be obtained from the inhabitants, Muslim or Christian. If the population was actually counted, William did not record the number. In the 13th century, John of Ibelin drew up a list of fiefs and the number of knights owed by each, but this gives no indication of the non-noble, non-Latin population.
The Mamluks, led by Baibars, eventually made good their pledge to cleanse the entire Middle East of the Franks. With the fall of Antioch (1268), Tripoli (1289), and Acre (1291), those Christians unable to leave the cities were massacred or enslaved and the last traces of Christian rule in the Levant disappeared.
Slavery
An unknown number of Muslim slaves lived in the Kingdom. There was a very large slave market in Acre that functioned throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Italian merchants were sometimes accused of selling Southeastern European Christians as slaves along with Muslim slaves. Slavery was less common than ransom, especially for prisoners of war; the large numbers of prisoners taken during raids and battles every year ensured that ransom money flowed freely between the Christian and Muslim states. Escape for prisoners and slaves was probably not difficult, as the inhabitants of the countryside were majority Muslim, and fugitive slaves were always a problem. The only legal means of manumission was conversion to (Catholic) Christianity. No Christian, whether Western or Eastern, was permitted by law to be sold into slavery.
The assizes of Jerusalem provided a legal framework for slavery in the Kingdom. The document stipulated that « villeins, animals or some other chattel » could be traded. « Villeins » were rural semi-free laborers akin to serfs. There were also multiple ways to become chattel slaves. People could be slaves by birth, enslaved by being captured in a raid, or as a penalty for debt or for helping a runaway slave.
The nomadic Bedouin tribes were considered to be the property of the king and under his protection. They could be sold or alienated just like any other property, and later in the 12th century, they were often under the protection of a lesser noble or one of the military orders.
Economy
The urban composition of the area, combined with the presence of the Italian merchants, led to the development of an economy that was much more commercial than it was agricultural. Palestine had always been a crossroads for trade; now, this trade extended to Europe as well. European goods, such as the woolen textiles of northern Europe, made their way to the Middle East and Asia, while Asian goods were transported back to Europe. Jerusalem was especially involved in the silk, cotton and spice trade; other items that first appeared in Europe through trade with crusader Jerusalem included oranges and sugar, the latter of which chronicler William of Tyre called "very necessary for the use and health of mankind." In the countryside, wheat, barley, legumes, olives, grapes, and dates were grown. The Italian city-states made enormous profits from this trade, thanks to commercial treaties like the Pactum Warmundi, and it influenced their Renaissance in later centuries.
Colonies of Genoa and Venice in Palestine also took on agricultural ventures in their concessions. They especially cultivated Sugar for export to Europe. Sugar cane had been introduced in Palestine by the Arabs. To work on the sugar fields, Italian colonists utilized slaves or serfs of Arab or Syrian origin, or local serfs. Sugar manufacturing began in Tyre. In the 13th century, sugar production continued to increase in Palestine, and merchants could export it duty-free through the port of Acre until its conquest in 1291. The sugar exploitation system pioneered in the Kingdom of Jerusalem is seen as a precursor to the sugar plantations in the Americas.
Jerusalem collected money through tribute payments, first from the coastal cities which had not yet been captured, and later from other neighbouring states such as Damascus and Egypt, which the crusaders could not conquer directly. After Baldwin I extended his rule over Oultrejordain, Jerusalem gained revenue from the taxation of Muslim caravans passing from Syria to Egypt or Arabia. The money economy of Jerusalem meant that their manpower problem could be partially solved by paying for mercenaries, an uncommon occurrence in medieval Europe. Mercenaries could be fellow European crusaders, or, perhaps more often, Muslim soldiers, including the famous Turcopoles.
Education
Jerusalem was the center of education in the kingdom. There was a school in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the basic skills of reading and writing Latin were taught; the relative wealth of the merchant class meant that their children could be educated there along with the children of nobles – it is likely that William of Tyre was a classmate of future king Baldwin III. Higher education had to be undertaken at one of the universities in Europe; the development of a university was impossible in the culture of crusader Jerusalem, where warfare was far more important than philosophy or theology. Nonetheless, the nobility and general Frankish population were noted for their high literacy: lawyers and clerks were in abundance, and the study of law, history, and other academic subjects was a beloved pastime of the royal family and the nobility. Jerusalem had an extensive library not only of ancient and medieval Latin works but of Arabic literature, much of which was apparently captured from Usamah ibn Munqidh and his entourage after a shipwreck in 1154. The Holy Sepulchre contained the kingdom's scriptorium and the city had a chancery where royal charters and other documents were produced. Aside from Latin, the standard written language of medieval Europe, the populace of crusader Jerusalem communicated in vernacular forms of French and Italian; Greek, Armenian, and even Arabic were used by Frankish settlers.
Art and architecture
In Jerusalem itself the greatest architectural endeavour was the expansion of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in western Gothic style. This expansion consolidated all the separate shrines on the site into one building, and was completed by 1149. Outside of Jerusalem, castles and fortresses were the major focus of construction: Kerak and Montreal in Oultrejordain and Ibelin near Jaffa are among the numerous examples of crusader castles.
Crusader art was a mix of Western, Byzantine, and Islamic styles. The major cities featured baths, interior plumbing, and other advanced hygienic tools which were lacking in most other cities and towns throughout the world. The foremost examples of crusader art are perhaps the Melisende Psalter, an illuminated manuscript commissioned between 1135 and 1143 and now located in the British Library, and the sculpted Nazareth Capitals. Paintings and mosaics were popular forms of art in the kingdom, but many of these were destroyed by the Mamluks in the 13th century; only the most durable fortresses survived the reconquest.
Government and legal system
Immediately after the First Crusade, land was distributed to loyal vassals of Godfrey, forming numerous feudal lordships within the kingdom. This was continued by Godfrey's successors. The number and importance of the lordships varied throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and many cities were part of the royal domain. The king was assisted by a number of officers of state. The king and the royal court were normally located in Jerusalem, but due to the prohibition on Muslim inhabitants, the capital was small and underpopulated. The king just as often held court at Acre, Nablus, Tyre, or wherever else he happened to be. In Jerusalem, the royal family lived firstly on the Temple Mount, before the foundation of the Knights Templar, and later in the palace complex surrounding the Tower of David; there was another palace complex in Acre.
Because the nobles tended to live in Jerusalem rather than on estates in the countryside, they had a larger influence on the king than they would have had in Europe. The nobles, along with the bishops, formed the haute cour (high court), which was responsible for confirming the election of a new king (or a regent if necessary), collecting taxes, minting coins, allotting money to the king, and raising armies. The haute cour was the only judicial body for the nobles of the kingdom, hearing criminal cases such as murder, rape, and treason, and simpler feudal disputes such as recovery of slaves, sales and purchases of fiefs, and default of service. Punishments included forfeiture of land and exile, or in extreme cases death. The first laws of the kingdom were, according to tradition, established during Godfrey of Bouillon's short reign, but were more probably established by Baldwin II at the Council of Nablus in 1120. Benjamin Z. Kedar argued that the canons of the Council of Nablus were in force in the 12th century but had fallen out of use by the thirteenth. Marwan Nader questions this and suggests that the canons may not have applied to the whole kingdom at all times. The most extensive collection of laws, together known as the Assizes of Jerusalem, were written in the mid-13th century, although many of them are purported to be twelfth-century in origin.
There were other, lesser courts for non-nobles and non-Latins; the Cour des Bourgeois provided justice for non-noble Latins, dealing with minor criminal offences such as assault and theft, and provided rules for disputes between non-Latins, who had fewer legal rights. Special courts such as the Cour de la Fond (for commercial disputes in the markets) and the Cour de la Mer (an admiralty court) existed in the coastal cities. The extent to which native Islamic and Eastern Christian courts continued to function is unknown, but the ra'is probably exercised some legal authority on a local level. The Cour des Syriens judged non-criminal matters among the native Christians (the "Syriacs"). For criminal matters non-Latins were to be tried in the Cour des Bourgeois (or even the Haute Cour if the crime was sufficiently severe).
The Italian communes were granted almost complete autonomy from the very early days of the Kingdom, thanks to their military and naval support in the years following the First Crusade. This autonomy included the right to administer their own justice, although the kinds of cases that fell under their jurisdiction varied at different times.
The king was recognised as head of the Haute Cour, although he was legally only primus inter pares.
Legacy
After the loss of all territory in the Levant in 1291, there were late attempts at further crusades, nominally proposing to recapture Jerusalem, but with the rise of the Ottoman Empire
their character was more and more that of a desperate defensive war rarely reaching beyond the Balkans (Alexandrian Crusade, Smyrniote crusades).
Henry IV of England made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1393–4, and he later vowed to lead a crusade to recapture the city, but he did not undertake such a campaign before his death in 1413.
The Levant remained under Ottoman control from 1517 until the Partition of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.
With the Fall of Ruad in 1302, the Kingdom of Jerusalem lost its final outpost on the Levantine coast, its possession closest to the Holy Land now being Cyprus.
Henry II of Jerusalem retained the title of king of Jerusalem until his death in 1324, and the title continued to be claimed by his successors, the kings of Cyprus.
The title of "king of Jerusalem" was also continuously used by the Angevin kings of Naples, whose founder, Charles of Anjou, had in 1277 bought a claim to the throne from Mary of Antioch. Thereafter, this claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem was treated as a tributary of the crown of Naples, which often changed hands by testament or conquest rather than direct inheritance. As Naples was a papal fief, the Popes often endorsed the title of King of Jerusalem as well as of Naples, and the history of these claims is that of the Neapolitan Kingdom.
In 1441, control of the Kingdom of Naples was lost to Alfonso V of Aragon and the title thus was claimed by the kings of Spain, and after the War of the Spanish Succession both by the House of Bourbon and the House of Habsburg.
The title is still in de facto use by the Spanish Crown, currently held by Felipe VI of Spain. It was also claimed by Otto von Habsburg as Habsburg pretender until 1958, and by the kings of Italy until 1946.
See also
Assizes of Jerusalem
Crusade
Haute Cour of Jerusalem
History of Palestine
Jerusalem during the Crusader period
Kings of Jerusalem family tree
List of Kings of Jerusalem
Officers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
Terra Mariana, contemporary crusader state in the Baltics
Timeline of Jerusalem
Vassals of the Kingdom of Jerusalem
References
Citations
Sources
Primary sources
Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem, 1095–1127, trans. Frances Rita Ryan. University of Tennessee Press, 1969.
William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, trans. E.A. Babcock and A.C. Krey. Columbia University Press, 1943.
Philip K. Hitti, trans., An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades; Memoirs of Usamah ibn-Munqidh (Kitab al i'tibar). New York, 1929
Secondary sources
Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King & His Heirs. Cambridge, 2000.
Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives. Routledge, 2000.
Holt, P. M. The Age of the Crusades: The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517. Longman, 1989.
Humphreys, R. S. (1997) From Saladin to the Mongols: The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193-1260, SUNY Press
Benjamin Z. Kedar, Hans Eberhard Mayer & R. C. Smail, ed., Outremer: Studies in the history of the Crusading Kingdom of Jerusalem presented to Joshua Prawer. Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Institute, 1982.
John L. La Monte, Feudal Monarchy in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1100–1291. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1932.
Hans E. Mayer, The Crusades. Oxford University Press, 1965 (trans. John Gillingham, 1972).
Pernoud, Régine, The Crusaders: The Struggle for the Holy Land. Ignatius Press, 2003.
Joshua Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages. London, 1972.
Joshua Prawer, Crusader Institutions. Oxford University Press, 1980.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Feudal Nobility and the Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1174–1277. The Macmillan Press, 1973.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading. University of Pennsylvania, 1991.
Jonathan Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford History of the Crusades. Oxford, 2002.
Steven Tibble, Monarchy and Lordships in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099–1291. Clarendon Press, 1989.
Jerusalem, Latin Kingdom of (1099–1291) – Article in the Catholic Encyclopedia
External links
1099 establishments in Asia
1291 disestablishments in Asia
Jerusalem
Former countries in the Middle East
Medieval Israel
Medieval Jordan
Medieval Palestine
Middle Ages by country
Political entities in the Land of Israel
States and territories established in 1099
States and territories disestablished in 1291
Christian states
Former monarchies of Asia | [
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16824 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korfball | Korfball | Korfball () is a ball sport, with similarities to netball and basketball. It is played by two teams of eight players with four female players and four male players in each team. The objective is to throw a ball into a netless basket that is mounted on a high pole.
The sport was invented by Dutch school teacher Nico Broekhuysen in 1902. In the Netherlands, there are approximately 500 clubs and more than 90,000 people playing korfball. The sport is also played in Belgium and Taiwan, and in nearly 70 other countries.
History
In 1902 Nico Broekhuysen, a Dutch school teacher from Amsterdam, was sent to Nääs, a town in Sweden, to follow an educational course about teaching gymnastics to children. This is where he was introduced to the Swedish game "ringboll". In ringboll one could score points by throwing the ball through a ring that was attached to a 3 m pole. Men and women played together, and the field was divided into three zones. Players could not leave their zone.
Broekhuysen was inspired; and when he returned to Amsterdam he decided to teach his students a similar game. He replaced the ring with a basket (for which the Dutch word is or ), so it was easier to see whether or not a player had scored. Broekhuysen also simplified the rules so that children could also understand and play the game. Thus korfball was born. The main idea was the same as ringboll, but the new sport now stood on its own.
The oldest still existing korfball club never to have merged with any other club is a Dutch korfball club H.K.C. ALO from The Hague, Netherlands. H.K.C. ALO was founded on 1 February 1906.
Korfball was featured as a demonstration sport in the Summer Olympics of 1920 and 1928.
The International Korfball Federation was founded in 1933 in Antwerp, Belgium.
Korfball is played in 69 countries including the United States, China, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Greece, Serbia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, The Netherlands, Belgium, Nigeria, Morocco, Ghana, Russia, Germany, Taiwan, Turkey, Hong Kong, Portugal, Pakistan, India, Sweden, Hungary, Philippines, Indonesia, Italy, Spain, France and Romania. It is growing in popularity in the U.K., and is referenced in a song by the band Half Man Half Biscuit entitled "Joy in Leeuwarden (We Are Ready)" on their 2011 album 90 Bisodol (Crimond).
Korfball has been played in the World Games since 1985. IKF World Korfball Championships have been held every four years since 1978. The leading nations are the Netherlands, Chinese Taipei, and Belgium.
Hong Kong hosted its first international tournament, the IKF Asia Oceania Korfball Championship, in 2006. New Zealand hosted the IKF Asia Oceania Youth Korfball Championships in 2007.
Rules and regulations
Equipment
Korfball is played inside in winter and outdoors in spring and autumn.
The size of the indoor court is , as are most outdoor courts. The court is divided into halves called zones. In each zone is a tall post with a basket at the top. This is positioned two-thirds of the distance between the center line and the back of the zone.
The ball is very similar to an association football ball, with a circumference of 68.0-70.5 cm (or a diameter of 21.75-22.45 cm), a weight of 445-475 grams, and a bounce height of 1.10-1.30 metres when dropped from a height of 1.80 metres.
Team
A korfball team consists of eight players: four female and four male.
Match
An international korfball match typically consists of two halves or four periods, with the length varying depending on the competition. When the match consists of halves, the duration is typically 25 minutes, with periods typically between 7 and 10 minutes, with a one-minute break between the first and second periods and between the third and fourth periods. At half time the break is five or ten minutes.
Four players of each team are in one zone and the other four are in the other zone. Within each zone, a player may only defend a member of the opposite team of the same gender.
At the beginning of the match, one team chooses a particular half of the court. That half will be that team's defending zone, with "their" basket in it. Players score by throwing the ball through the opposing team's basket. After two goals, the teams change zones: defenders become attackers and attackers become defenders. In between those zone-changes, attackers cannot set foot on their defending zone or vice versa. At half time the teams swap halves of the court.
The rules prevent physical strength dominating the game. Blocking, tackling, and holding are not allowed, nor is kicking the ball.
Once a player has the ball, that player cannot dribble or walk with it; however, the player can move one foot as long as the foot on which the player landed when catching the ball stays in the same spot. Therefore, tactical and efficient teamwork is required, because players need each other in order to keep the ball moving.
A player may not attempt to score when defended, which occurs when the defender is in between the opponent and the basket, is facing his/her opponent, or is within arm's length and attempting to block the ball. This rule encourages fast movement while also limiting the impact of players' height compared to their opponents.
International tournaments
World Games
The national teams competition organized by the International World Games Association has been played roughly every four years since 1981.
IKF World Korfball Championship
The national teams competition organized by the International Korfball Federation has been played roughly every four years since 1978.
IKF U23 World Korfball Championship
2008 Kaohsiung, Taiwan – Winner: Netherlands
2012 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain – Winner: Netherlands
2016 Olomouc, Czech Republic – Winner: Netherlands
Continental championships
IKF promotes four continental championships: European Korfball Championship, All-Africa Korfball Championship, Pan-American Korfball Championship and Asia-Oceania Korfball Championship.
Europa Cup for Clubs
Every year the IKF organises the Europa Cup for national champions (clubs). The Europa Cup was organized for the first time in 1967, and was won by Ons Eibernest from the Netherlands. The winner of the last edition was Fortuna/Delta Logistiek, which won the 2020 edition.
PKC from Papendrecht, the Netherlands, have won the championship the most times, a record 12 wins in total.
Until now, the winning team was either from the Netherlands or Belgium, with respectively 45 and 6 Europa Cups. The only club from the United Kingdom to reach the final was Mitcham Korfball Club from London. Mitcham lost the final against Catbavrienden from Belgium in 1998.
Beach korfball
For beach korfball, the rules of the game differ slightly from those of regular korfball. Each team has 4 starters and 2 substitutes. The field of play is 20 metres by 10 metres, and goals are to be placed 4 metres from the end line. Matches consist of two halves of 6 minutes with a 1-minute rest.
Each team has 4 players in the field, two men and two women. Players can be substituted at any time.
Furthermore, if a goal is scored from a 2-point zone, a two-point goal is awarded. Free shots can both be executed at the standard Free Shot line, or at the spot where the fault was made by the opponent.
The current European beach korfball champion is Portugal, who won the IKF Beach Korfball World Cup (Europe) 2019. Belgium claimed victory in the U19 division.
PNW Beach Korfball from Seattle, Washington, USA is the first Beach Korfball club established in the United States. They will represent the United States in the first ever Beach Korfball World Championships in Nador, Morocco in 2022.
Cultural references
Korfball is the theme of the song "Joy in Leeuwarden (We Are Ready)" on the album 90 Bisodol (Crimond) by Half Man Half Biscuit.
See also
British Student Korfball Nationals
Commonwealth Korfball Championships
Korfball Europa Shield
Korfball European Bowl
References
External links
International Korfball Federation (IKF) includes rules, all national associations and event results.
Extensive description and explanation of rules and requirements in competition korfball.
Infographic about what korfball is
PNW Beach Korfball (US)
Articles containing video clips
Ball games
Forms of basketball
Games and sports introduced in 1902
Hybrid sports
Mixed-sex sports
Sports originating in the Netherlands
Team sports | [
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16826 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabul | Kabul | Kabul (; , ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan, located in the eastern section of the country. It is also a municipality, forming part of the greater Kabul Province, and divided into 22 districts. According to estimates in 2021, the population of Kabul was 4.6 million and it serves as Afghanistan's political, cultural and economical center. Rapid urbanization has made Kabul the world's 75th largest city.
people in Kabul speaks Pashto language and also they know Dari as well.
Kabul is located high up in a narrow valley between the Hindu Kush mountains and bounded by the Kabul River, with an elevation of making it one of the highest capitals in the world. The city is said to be over 3,500 years old, mentioned since at least the time of the Achaemenid Empire. Located at crossroads in Asia – roughly halfway between Istanbul in the west and Hanoi in the east – it is in a strategic location along the trade routes of South and Central Asia, and a key location of the ancient Silk Road. It was so that it was compared to a meeting place between Tartary, India and Persia. The city had also been under the rule of various other dynasties and empires including the Seleucids, Kushans, the Hindu Shahi and Turk Shahis, Samanids, Khwarazmians, Timurids, Mongols and others. In the 16th century, Kabul served as an initial summer capital of the Mughal Empire, during which time it increasingly prospered and was of significance to the empire. It briefly passed to Persian Afsharid control following Nader Shah's invasion of India, until finally becoming part of the Afghan Durrani Empire in 1747. Kabul became the capital of Afghanistan in 1776 during the reign of Timur Shah Durrani, the son of Ahmad Shah Durrani. In the 19th century, the British occupied the city, but after establishing foreign relations, they were compelled to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan.
Kabul is known for its historical gardens, bazaars, and palaces, well known examples being the Gardens of Babur and Darul Aman Palace. In the latter half of the 20th century, it became a stop on the hippie trail attracting tourists, while the city also gained the nickname Paris of Central Asia. This period of tranquility ended as Kabul was occupied by the Soviets in 1979, while a civil war in the 1990s between various rebel groups destroyed much of the city. From 2001, the city was occupied by a coalition of forces including NATO until August 2021 when Kabul was seized by the Taliban's forces.
Toponymy and etymology
Kabul (, ; , ; , ) is also spelled as Cabool, Cabol, Kabol, or Cabul.
Kabul was known by different names throughout history. Its meaning is unknown, but "certainly pre-dates the advent of Islam when it was an important centre on the route between India and the Hellenic world". In Sanskrit, it was known as Kubha, whereas Greek authors of classical antiquity referred to it as Kophen, Kophes or Koa. The Chinese traveler Xuanzang (fl. 7th century CE) recorded the city as Kaofu. The name "Kabul" was first applied to the Kabul river before being applied to the area situated between the Hindu Kush and Sindh (present-day Pakistan). This area was also known as Kabulistan. Alexander Cunningham (died 1893) noted in the 19th century that Kaofu as recorded by the Chinese was in all likelihood the name of "one of the five Yuchi or Tukhari tribes". Cunningam added that this tribe gave its name to the city after it was occupied by them in the 2nd century BCE. This "supposition seems likely" as the Afghan historian Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghobar (1898–1978) wrote that in the Avesta (sacred book of Zoroastrianism), Kabul was known as Vaekereta, whereas the Greeks of antiquity referred to it as Ortospana ("High Place"), which corresponds to the Sanskrit word Urddhastana, which was applied to Kabul. The Greek geographer Ptolemy (died CE) recorded Kabul as Καβουρα (Kabura).
According to a legend, one could find a lake in Kabul, in the middle of which the so-called "Island of Happiness" could be found, where a joyous family of musicians lived. According to this same legend, the island became accessible by the order of a king through the construction of a bridge (i.e. "pul" in Persian) made out of straw (i.e. "kah" in Persian). According to this legend the name Kabul was thus formed as a result of these two words combined, i.e. kah + pul. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Place Names argues that the "suggestion that the name is derived from the Arabic root qbl ‘meeting’ or ‘receiving’ is unlikely".
It remains unknown when the name "Kabul" was first applied to the city. However, it "came into prominence" following the destruction of Kapisa and other cities in what is present-day Afghanistan by Genghis Khan (c. 1162–1227) in the thirteenth century. Due to the centrality of the city within the region, as well as its cultural importance as a nexus of ethnic groups in the region, Kabul became known as the Paris of Central Asia in the late 20th century.
History
Antiquity
The origin of Kabul, who built it and when, is largely unknown. The Rigveda, composed between 1500 and 1200 BC, and the Avesta, the primary canon of texts of Zoroastrianism, refer to the Kabul River and to a settlement called Kubha.
The Kabul valley was part of the Median Empire (c. 678–549 BC). In 549 BC, the Median Empire was annexed by Cyrus The Great and Kabul became part the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550–330 BC). During that period, Kabul became a center of learning for Zoroastrianism, followed by Buddhism and Hinduism. An inscription on Darius the Great's tombstone lists Kabul as one of the 29 countries of the Achaemenid Empire.
When Alexander annexed the Achaemenid Empire, the Kabul region came under his control. After his death, his empire was seized by his general Seleucus, becoming part of the Seleucid Empire. In 305 BCE, the Seleucid Empire was extended to the Indus River which led to friction with the neighboring Mauryan Empire, but it is widely believed that the two empires reached an alliance treaty.
During the Mauryan period, trade flourished because of uniform weights and measures. Irrigation facilities for public use were developed leading to an increased harvest of crops. People were also employed as artisans, jewelers, carpenters.
The Greco-Bactrians took control of Kabul from the Mauryans in the early 2nd century BC, then lost the city to their subordinates in the Indo-Greek Kingdom around the mid-2nd century BC. Buddhism was greatly patronized by the rulers and majority of people of the city were adherents of the religion. Indo-Scythians expelled the Indo-Greeks by the mid 1st century BC, but lost the city to the Kushan Empire about 100 years later.
It is mentioned as Kophes or Kophene in some classical writings. Hsuan Tsang refers to the city as Kaofu in the 7th century AD, which is the appellation of one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi who had migrated from across the Hindu Kush into the Kabul valley around the beginning of the Christian era. It was conquered by Kushan Emperor Kujula Kadphises in about 45 AD and remained Kushan territory until at least the 3rd century AD. The Kushans were Indo-European-speaking peoples based in Bactria (northern Afghanistan).
Around 230 AD, the Kushans were defeated by the Sassanid Empire and replaced by Sassanid vassals known as the Indo-Sassanids. During the Sassanian period, the city was referred to as "Kapul" in Pahlavi scripts. Kapol in the Persian language means Royal (ka) Bridge (pol), which is due to the main bridge on the Kabul River that connected the east and west of the city. In 420 AD the Indo-Sassanids were driven out of Afghanistan by the Xionite tribe known as the Kidarites, who were then replaced in the 460s by the Hephthalites. It became part of the surviving Turk Shahi Kingdom of Kapisa, also known as Kabul-Shahan. According to Táríkhu-l Hind by Al-Biruni, Kabul was governed by princes of Turkic lineage whose rule lasted for about 60 generations.
The Kabul rulers built a defensive wall around the city to protect it from enemy raids. This wall has survived until today. It was briefly held by the Tibetan Empire between 801 and 815.
Islamization and Mongol invasion
The Islamic conquest reached modern-day Afghanistan in 642 AD, at a time when Kabul was independent. A number of failed expeditions were made to Islamize the region. In one of them, Abdur Rahman bin Samara arrived to Kabul from Zaranj in the late 600s and converted 12,000 inhabitants to Islam before abandoning the city. Muslims were a minority until Ya'qub bin Laith as-Saffar of Zaranj conquered Kabul in 870 and established the first Islamic dynasty in the region. It was reported that the rulers of Kabul were Muslims with non-Muslims living close by. Iranian traveller and geographer Istakhri described it in 921:
Over the following centuries, the city was successively controlled by the Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Khwarazmshahs, Qarlughids, and Khaljis. In the 13th century, the invading Mongols caused major destruction in the region. Report of a massacre in the close by Bamiyan is recorded around this period, where the entire population of the valley was annihilated by the Mongol troops as a revenge for the death of Genghis Khan's grandson. As a result, many natives of Afghanistan fled south toward the Indian subcontinent where some established dynasties in Delhi. The Chagatai Khanate and Kartids were vassals of Ilkhanate till dissolution of latter in 1335.
Following the era of the Khalji dynasty in 1333, the famous Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta was visiting Kabul and wrote:
Timurid and Mughal era
In the 14th century, Kabul became a major trading center under the kingdom of Timur (Tamerlane). In 1504, the city fell to Babur from the north and made into his headquarters, which became one of the principal cities of his later Mughal Empire. In 1525, Babur described Kabulistan in his memoirs by writing that:
Mirza Muhammad Haidar Dughlat, a poet from Hindustan who visited at the time wrote: "Dine and drink in Kabul: it is mountain, desert, city, river and all else." It was from here that Babur began his 1526 conquest of Hindustan, which was ruled by the Afghan Lodi dynasty and began east of the Indus River in what is present-day Pakistan. Babur loved Kabul due to the fact that he lived in it for 20 years and the people were loyal to him, including its weather that he was used to. His wish to be buried in Kabul was finally granted. The inscription on his tomb contains the famous Persian couplet, which states: اگرفردوس روی زمین است همین است و همین است و همین است (If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this!)
Kabul remained in Mughal control for the next 200 years. Though Mughal power became centred within the Indian subcontinent, Kabul retained importance as a frontier city for the empire; Abul Fazl, Emperor Akbar's chronicler, described it as one of the two gates to Hindustan (the other being Kandahar). As part of administrative reforms under Akbar, the city was made capital of the eponymous Mughal province, Kabul Subah. Under Mughal governance, Kabul became a prosperous urban centre, endowed with bazaars such as the non-extant Char Chatta. For the first time in its history, Kabul served as a mint centre, producing gold and silver Mughal coins up to the reign of Alamgir II. It acted as a military base for Shah Jahan's campaigns in Balkh and Badakhshan. Kabul was also a recreational retreat for the Mughals, who hunted here and constructed several gardens. Most of the Mughals' architectural contributions to the city (such as gardens, fortifications, mosques) have not survived. During this time, the population was about 60,000.
Under later Mughal Emperors, Kabul became neglected. The empire lost the city when it was captured in 1738 by Nader Shah, who was en route to invade the Indian subcontinent.
Durrani and Barakzai dynasties
Nine years after Nader Shah and his forces invaded and occupied the city as part of the more easternmost parts of his Empire, he was assassinated by his own officers, causing the rapid disintegration of it. Ahmad Shah Durrani, commander of 4,000 Abdali Afghans, asserted Pashtun rule in 1747 and further expanded his new Afghan Empire. His ascension to power marked the beginning of Afghanistan. By this time, Kabul had lost its status as a metropolitan city, and its population had decreased to 10,000. Interest in the city was renewed when Ahmad Shah's son Timur Shah Durrani, after inheriting power, transferred the capital of the Durrani Empire from Kandahar to Kabul in 1776. Kabul experienced considerable urban development during the reigns of Timur Shah and his successor Zaman Shah; several religious and public buildings were constructed, and diverse groups of Sufis, jurists, and literary families were encouraged to settle the city through land grants and stipends. Kabul's first visitor from Europe was Englishman George Forster, who described 18th-century Kabul as "the best and cleanest city in Asia".
In 1826, the kingdom was claimed by Dost Mohammad Khan, but in 1839 Shujah Shah Durrani was re-installed with the help of the British Empire during the First Anglo-Afghan War. In 1841 a local uprising resulted in the killing of the British resident and loss of mission in Kabul and the 1842 retreat from Kabul to Jalalabad. In 1842 the British returned to Kabul, demolishing the city's main bazaar in revenge before returning to British India (now Pakistan). Akbar Khan took to the throne from 1842 to 1845 and was followed by Dost Mohammad Khan.
The Second Anglo-Afghan War broke out in 1879 when Kabul was under Sher Ali Khan's rule, as the Afghan king initially refused to accept British diplomatic missions and later the British residents were again massacred. During the war, Bala Hissar was partially destroyed by a fire and an explosion.
20th century
Having become an established bazaar city, leather and textile industries developed by 1916. The majority of the population was concentrated on the south side of the river.
Kabul modernized throughout the regime of King Habibullah Khan, with the introduction of electricity, telephone, and a postal service. The first modern high school, Habibia, was established in 1903. In 1919, after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, King Amanullah Khan announced Afghanistan's independence in foreign affairs at Eidgah Mosque in Kabul. Amanullah was reform-minded and he had a plan to build a new capital city on land about 6 km away from Kabul. This area was named Darulaman and it consisted of the famous Darul Aman Palace, where he later resided. Many educational institutions were founded in Kabul during the 1920s. In 1929 King Amanullah left Kabul due to a local uprising orchestrated by Habibullah Kalakani, but he himself was imprisoned and executed after nine months in power by King Nader Khan. Three years later, in 1933, the new king was assassinated during an award ceremony inside a school in Kabul. The throne was left to his 19-year-old son, Zahir Shah, who became the last King of Afghanistan. Unlike Amanullah Khan, Nader Khan and Zahir Shah had no plans to create a new capital city, and thus Kabul remained the country's seat of government.
During the inter-war period France and Germany helped develop the country and maintained high schools and lycees in the capital, providing education for the children of the city's elite families. Kabul University opened in 1932 and by the 1960s western educated Afghans made up the majority of teachers. By the 1960s the majority of instructors at the university had degrees from Western universities.
Kabul's only railway service, the Kabul–Darulaman Tramway, operated for six years from 1923 to 1929.
When Zahir Shah took power in 1933 Kabul had the only of rail in the country and the country had few internal telegraphs, phone lines or roads. Zahir turned to the Japanese, Germans and Italians for help developing a modern transportation and communication network. A radio tower built by the Germans in 1937 in Kabul allowing instant communication with outlying villages. A national bank and state cartels were organized to allow for economic modernization. Textile mills, power plants, carpet and furniture factories were also built in Kabul, providing much needed manufacturing and infrastructure.
During the 1940s and 1950s, urbanization accelerated and the built-up area was increased to 68 km2 by 1962, an almost fourteen-fold increase compared to 1925. The Serena Hotel opened in 1945 as the first Western style luxury hotel. Under the premiership of Mohammad Daoud Khan in the 1950s, foreign investment and development increased. In 1955, the Soviet Union forwarded $100 million in credit to Afghanistan, which financed public transportation, airports, a cement factory, mechanized bakery, a five-lane highway from Kabul to the Soviet border and dams, including the Salang Pass to the north of Kabul. During the 1960s, Soviet-style microrayon housing estates were built, containing sixty blocks. The government also built many ministry buildings in the brutalist architecture style. In the 1960s the first Marks & Spencer store in Central Asia was built in the city. Kabul Zoo was inaugurated in 1967, which was maintained with the help of visiting German zoologists. During this time, Kabul experimented with liberalization, notably the loosening of restrictions on speech and assembly which led to student politics in the capital and various demonstrations by Socialist, Maoist, liberal or Islamist factions.
Foreigners flocked to Kabul and the nation's tourism industry picked up speed. To accompany the city with newfound tourism, western-style accommodations were opened in the 1960s, notably the Spinzar Hotel. Western, American and Japanese tourists were visiting the city's attractions including the "celebrated" Chicken Street and the National Museum that used to have some of Asia's finest cultural artifacts. Lonely Planet called it an upcoming "tourist trap" in 1973. Additionally, Pakistanis were also visiting to watch Indian movies in cinemas that were banned in their own country. During this time, Kabul had been nicknamed the Paris of Central Asia. According to J. Bruce Amstutz, an American diplomat in Kabul:
Until the late 1970s, Kabul was a major stop on the famous Hippie trail, coming from Bamyan to the west on towards Peshawar. At the time, Kabul became known for its street sales of hashish and became a major tourist attraction for western hippies.
Occupations wars and Taliban Regime (1996-2001)
On April 28, 1978, President Daoud and most of his family were assassinated in Kabul's Presidential Palace in what is called the Saur Revolution. Pro-Soviet PDPA under Nur Muhammad Taraki seized power and slowly began to institute reforms. Private businesses were nationalized in the Soviet manner. Education was modified into the Soviet model, with lessons focusing on teaching Russian, Marxism–Leninism and learning of other countries belonging to the Soviet bloc.
Amid growing internal chaos and heightened cold war tensions, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Adolph Dubs, was kidnapped on his way to work at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on February 14, 1979 and killed during a rescue attempt at the Serena Hotel. There were conflicting reports of who abducted Dubs and what demands were made for his release. Several senior Soviet officials were in the lobby of the hotel during a standoff with the kidnappers, who were holding Dubs in room 117. Afghan police, acting on the advice of Soviet advisors and over the objections of U.S. officials, launched a rescue attempt, during which Dubs was shot in the head from a distance of six inches and killed. Many questions about the killing remain unanswered.
On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and Kabul was heavily occupied by Soviet Armed Forces. In Pakistan, Director-General of the ISI Akhtar Abdur Rahman advocated for the idea of covert operation in Afghanistan by arming Islamic extremists who formed the mujahideen. General Rahman was heard loudly saying: "Kabul must burn! Kabul must burn!", and mastered the idea of proxy war in Afghanistan. Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq authorized this operation under General Rahman, which was later merged with Operation Cyclone, a programme funded by the United States and carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The Soviets turned the city of Kabul into their command center during the Soviet–Afghan War, and while fighting was mostly taking place in the countryside, Kabul was widely disturbed. Political crime and guerrilla attacks on military and government targets were common, and the sound of gunfire became commonplace at night in the outskirts. Large numbers of PDPA party members and Soviet troops were kidnapped or assassinated, sometimes in broad daylight, with acts of terrorism committed by civilians, anti-regime militias and also Khalqists. By July 1980, as much as twelve party members were being assassinated on a daily basis, and the Soviet Army stopped patrolling the city in January 1981. A major uprising against the Soviet presence broke out in Kabul in February 1980 in what is called the 3 Hut uprising. It led to a night curfew in the city that would remain in place for seven years. The Soviet Embassy also, was attacked four times with arms fire in the first five years of the war. A Western correspondent revisiting Kabul in December 1983 after a year, said that the city was "converted into a fortress bristling with weapons". Contrastingly, that same year American diplomat Charles Dunbar commented that the Soviet troops' presence was "surprisingly modest", and an author in a 1983 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article thought that the Soviet soldiers had a "friendly" atmosphere.
The city's population increased from around 500,000 in 1978 to 1.5 million in 1988. The large influx were mostly internal refugees who fled other parts of the country for safety in Kabul. During this time, women made up 40% of the workforce. Soviet men and women were very common in the city's shopping roads, with the large availability of Western products. Most Soviet civilians (numbering between 8,000 and 10,000) lived in the northeastern Soviet-style Mikrorayon (microraion) housing complex that was surrounded by barbed-wire and armed tanks. They sometimes received abuse from anti-Soviet civilians on the streets. The mujahideen rebels managed to strike at the city a few times—on October 9, 1987, a car bomb planted by a mujahideen group killed 27 people, and on April 27, 1988, in celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the Saur Revolution, a truck bomb killed six people.
After the fall of Mohammad Najibullah's government in April 1992, different mujahideen factions entered the city and formed a government under the Peshawar Accords, but Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's party refused to sign the accords and started shelling the city for power, which soon escalated into a full-scale conflict. This marked the start of a dark period of the city: at least 30,000 civilians were killed in a period known locally as the "Kabul Wars." About 80 percent of the city was devastated and destroyed by 1996. The old city and western areas were among the worst-hit. A The New York Times analyst said in 1996 that the city was more devastated than Sarajevo, which was similarly damaged during the Bosnian War at the time.
The city suffered heavily under a bombardment campaign between rival militias which intensified during the summer of 1992. Its geographic location in a narrow valley made it an easy target from rockets fired by militias who based themselves in the surrounding mountains. Within two years' time, the majority of infrastructure was destroyed, a massive exodus of the population left to the countryside or abroad, and electricity and water was completely out. In late 1994, bombardment of the capital came to a temporary halt. These forces took steps to restore law and order. Courts started to work again, convicting individuals inside government troops who had committed crimes. On September 27, 1996, the hardline Taliban militia seized Kabul and established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They imposed a strict form of Sharia (Islamic law), restricting women from work and education, conducting amputations against common thieves, and hit-squads from the infamous "Ministry for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice" watching public beatings of people.
21st century
In November 2001, the Northern Alliance captured Kabul after the Taliban had abandoned it following the American invasion. A month later a new government under President Hamid Karzai began to assemble. In the meantime, a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was deployed in Afghanistan. The war-torn city began to see some positive development as many expatriate Afghans returned to the country. The city's population grew from about 500,000 in 2001 to over 3 million in recent years. Many foreign embassies re-opened. In 2008 the process started to gradually hand over security responsibilities from NATO to Afghan forces. From late 2001 the city has been continuously rebuilt - many of the damaged landmarks were rebuilt or renovated, for example the Gardens of Babur in 2005, the arch of Paghman, the Mahmoud Khan Bridge clock tower in 2013, and the Taj Beg Palace in 2021. Local community efforts have also managed to restore war-ravaged local homes and dwellings.
The city has experienced rapid urbanization with an increasing population. Many informal settlements have been built. Since the late 2000s, numerous modern housing complexes have been built, many of which are gated and secured, to serve a growing Afghan middle class. Some of these include the Aria City (in District 10) and Golden City (District 8). Some complexes have been built out-of-town, such as the Omid-e-Sabz township (District 13), Qasaba/Khwaja Rawash township (District 15), and Sayed Jamaludin township (District 12).
Throughout the years, a high-security "Green Zone" was formed in the center of the city. In 2010, a series of manned checkpoints called the Ring of Steel was put into operation. Concrete blast walls also appeared throughout Kabul in the 2000s for security reasons.
Despite frequent terrorist attacks in the city, mainly by Taliban insurgents, the city continued to develop and was the fifth fastest-growing city in the world as of 2012. Until August 2021, the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) had been in charge of security in and around the city. Kabul was periodically the scene of deadly bombings carried out mostly by the Taliban but also by the Haqqani network, ISIL, and other anti-state groups. Government employees, soldiers and ordinary civilians have all been targets of attacks. The Afghan government called the actions of the terrorists war crimes. The deadliest attack yet was a truck bombing in May 2017. As of August 2021, the Taliban have been in control of the city after it was seized during the 2021 Taliban offensive.
Geography
Kabul was situated in the eastern part of the country, above sea level in a narrow valley, wedged between the Hindu Kush mountains along the Kabul River. Immediately to the south of the old city are the ancient city walls and the Sher Darwaza mountain, with the Shuhadayi Salihin cemetery behind it. A bit further east is the ancient Bala Hissar fortress with the Kol-e Hasmat Khan lake behind it.
Its location has been described as a "bowl surrounded by mountains". Some of the mountains (which are called koh) include: Khair Khana-e Shamali, Khwaja Rawash, Shakhi Baran Tey, Chihil Sutun, Qurugh, Khwaja Razaq and Sher Darwaza. There are also two mountains in between urban areas to the west: Koh-e Asamai (locally known as the Television hill) and Ali Abad. Hills within the city (which are called tapa) include Bibi Mahro and Maranjan.
The Logar River flows into Kabul from the south, joining the Kabul River not far from the city center.
The city covers an area size of , making it by far the largest in the country. The closest foreign capital cities as the crow flies are Islamabad, Dushanbe, Tashkent, New Delhi and Bishkek. Kabul is roughly equidistant between Istanbul (western Asia) and Hanoi (eastern Asia).
Climate
Kabul has a continental, cold semi-arid climate (BSk) with precipitation concentrated in the winter (almost exclusively falling as snow) and spring months. Temperatures are cool compared to much of Southwest Asia, mainly due to the high elevation of the city. Summer has very low humidity, providing relief from the heat. Autumn features warm afternoons and sharply cooler evenings. Winters are cold, with a January daily average of . Spring is the wettest time of the year. Sunny conditions dominate year-round. The annual mean temperature is , much lower than the other large cities of Afghanistan.
Environment
The Kabul River flowed through the heart of the city, dividing the central bazaars. There are several bridges (pul) crossing the river, the major ones being Pul-e Shah-Do Shamshira, Pul-e Bagh-e Omomi, Pul-e Khishti, and Pul-e Mahmoud. Due to climate change, since the 21st century, the river runs dry most of the year, only filling up in the wetter winter and spring seasons.
A large lake and wetland was located just to the southeast from the old city called Kol-e Hashmat Khan. The marsh provides a critical resting place to thousands of birds who fly between the Indian subcontinent and Siberia. In 2017 the government declared the lake a protected area. Some rare species of birds have been spotted at the lake, such as the Eastern imperial eagle and the Dalmatian pelican. Kabul's other large lake is Qargha, located some 9 km northwest from the center. It is a major attraction for locals as well as foreigners.
Air pollution is a major problem in the city during the winter season, when many residents burn low-quality fuels.
Districts
The city of Kabul located within Kabul District, one of the 15 districts of Kabul Province. As the provincial capital, it forms a municipality (shārwāli) which is further divided into 22 administrative districts called municipal districts or city districts (nāhia), which coincide with the official Police Districts (PD). The number of city districts increased from 11 to 18 in 2005, and then to 22 by 2010 after the incorporation of Districts 14 and 19-22 which were annexed by Kabul Municipality from surrounding rural districts. The city limits have thus substantially increased. Due to demarcation disputes with the provincial administration, some of these new districts are more administered by the provincial districts than the municipality.
District 1 contains most of the old city. Downtown Kabul mostly consist of Districts 2, 4 and 10. In addition, Districts 3 and 6 house many commercial and governmental points of interests. The city's north and west are the most urbanized, as opposed to the south and east.
The table below show the 22 city districts and their settlements, with information about its land size and usage, accurate as of 2011.
Demographics
Kabul's population was estimated in 2020 at about 4.6 million. The city's population has long fluctuated due to the wars. The lack of an up-to-date census means that there are various estimates of the population.
Kabul's population was estimated to have been about 10,000 in 1700, 65,000 by 1878, and 120,000 by 1940. More recently, the population was around 500,000 in 1979, whilst another source claims 337,715 as of 1976. This figure rose to about 1.5 million by 1988, before dramatically dropping in the 1990s. Kabul became one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, with its population growing fourfold from 2001 to 2014. This was partly due to the return of refugees after the fall of the Taliban regime, and partly due to Afghans moving from other provinces mainly due to war between Taliban insurgents and Afghan government forces in their native areas as well as looking for labor. This resulting rapid urbanization means that many residents today live in informal settlements. Shanty mud-brick homes on the mountainsides and steep hills have been built by them and these are usually poverty-stricken, not connected to the water and electricity grid. Although the settlements are illegal, they have been tolerated by authorities. In 2017 Kabul Municipality started a project to paint the homes in these settlements in bright colors in an effort to "cheer up" residents.
Kabul is and has historically been the most ethnically diverse city in the country, with the population including Afghans from all over the country. In 1525, Babur described the region in his memoirs by writing that:
Along with Pashtun, Tajik and Hazara communities, who make up the majority of the population of the city, there was a significant population of Uzbek, Turkmen, Kuchi, Qizilbash, Hindu, Sikh and other groups. The broader province of Kabul however, is dominated by Pashtun and Tajik groups. The Dari (Persian) and Pashto languages are widely used in the region, although Dari serves as the lingua franca. Multilingualism is common throughout the area, particularly among the Pashtun people.
The term "Kabuli" (کابلی) is referred to the urbanites of the city. They were ethnic-neutral, typically speak Dari (Persian), were generally secularly educated, and favor Western fashion. Many Kabulites (especially elites and the upper class) left the country during the civil war and are now outnumbered by rural people who moved in from the countryside, mostly refugees but also labor-seekers.
About 68% of the city's population follow Sunni Islam while 30% are Shiites (mainly the Hazaras and Qizilbash). The remaining 2% are followers of Sikhism and Hinduism, as well as one known Christian resident (First Lady Rula Ghani) and one Jewish resident (Zablon Simintov) in the 2010s. It is estimated that there were 500–8,000 Afghan Christians in the country as a whole; due to restrictions on religious freedom, they often worship in secret, rendering it difficult to estimate the number of Christians in Kabul specifically. Hundreds of non-Muslims still remain after the Taliban retakeover Afghanistan. Kabul also has small Indian (which the Sikhs and Hindus belong to) and Turkish communities (mostly business-owners and investors), and in the 1980s had a sizable Russian community during the Soviet campaign in the country.
Sports
Cricket has historically been the dominant sport in Kabul, with 2 of 3 sports stadiums reserved for it.
Professional sports teams from Kabul
Sports complexes
Alokozay Kabul International Cricket Ground
Ghazi Stadium used for football
Olympic Committee Gymnasium
Government and politics
The municipality's administrative structure consisted of 17 departments under a mayor. Like other provincial municipalities in Afghanistan, the municipality of Kabul dealt with city affairs such as construction and infrastructure. The city districts (nāhia) collected certain taxes and issued building licenses. Each city district had a district head appointed by the mayor, and lead six major departments in the district office. The neighborhood organization structure at the nahia level was called a gozar. Kabul has been Divided in to 630 Gozars. A wakil-e gozar was a person chosen to represent a community within a city district.
Kabul's Chief of Police was Lt. Gen. Abdul Rahman Rahimi. The police were part of the Afghan National Police (ANP) under the Ministry of Interior and were arranged by city districts. The Police Chief was selected by the Interior Minister and is responsible for all law enforcement activities throughout the Kabul province.
Economy and infrastructure
Kabul's main products included fresh and dried fruit, nuts, beverages, Afghan rugs, leather and sheep skin products, furniture, antique replicas, and domestic clothes. The World Bank authorized US$25 million for the Kabul Urban Reconstruction Project which closed in 2011. Over the last decade, the United States has invested approximately $9.1 billion into urban infrastructure in Afghanistan. The wars since 1978 have limited the city's economic productivity but after the establishment of the Karzai administration since late 2001, local economic developments have included a number of indoor shopping malls. The first of these was the Kabul City Center, opened 2005. Others have also opened in recent years including Gulbahar Center, City Walk Mall and Majid Mall.
Mandawi Road on the south side of the river, located between Murad Khani and Shur Bazaar neighborhoods, is one of the main bazaars of Kabul. This wholesale market is very popular amongst locals. Nearby is the Sarai Shahzada money exchange market. Chicken Street is perhaps best known to foreigners.
Kabul's largest industrial hub was located in District 9, on the north banks of the River Kabul and near the airport. About from downtown Kabul, in Bagrami, a industrial complex had been completed with modern facilities, which allowed companies to operate businesses there. The park had professional management for the daily maintenance of public roads, internal streets, common areas, parking areas, 24 hours perimeter security, access control for vehicles and people. A number of factories operated there, including the $25 million Coca-Cola bottling plant and the Omaid Bahar juice factory.
According to Transparency International, the government of Afghanistan was the third most-corrupt in the world, as of 2010. Experts believe that the poor decisions of Afghan politicians contributed to the unrest in the region. This also prevented foreign investment in Afghanistan, especially by Western countries. In 2012, there were reportedly $3.9 billion paid to public officials in bribes which contributed to these issues.
Da Afghanistan Bank, the nation's central bank, was headquartered in Kabul. In addition, there are several commercial banks in the city.
Each year about 20,000 foreign tourists visited Afghanistan.
Development planning
A US$1 billion contract was signed in 2013 to commence work on the "New Kabul City", which is a major residential scheme that would accommodate 1.5 million people. In the meantime, many high rise buildings were being constructed in order to control the overcrowding and also to modernize the city.
An initial concept design called the City of Light Development, envisioned by Dr. Hisham N. Ashkouri, for the development and the implementation of a privately based investment enterprise has been proposed for multi-function commercial, historic and cultural development within the limits of the Old City of Kabul, along the southern side of the Kabul River and along Jade Meywand Avenue,
Communications
As of November 2015, there were more than 24 television stations based out of Kabul. Terrestrial TV transmitters were located at the summit of the Koh-e Asamai.
In Kabul, Minister Amir Zai Sangin of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology maintained statistics regarding telecommunications in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Afghanistan Information Management Services (AIMS) provided software development, capacity development, information management, and project management services to the Afghan Government and other NGOs, thereby supporting their on-the-ground activities.
GSM/GPRS mobile phone services in the city were provided by Afghan Wireless, Etisalat, Roshan, MTN and Salaam. , all of them provided 3G services as well. In November 2006, the Afghan Ministry of Communications signed a $64.5 million US dollar deal with ZTE on the establishment of a countrywide fibre optical cable network to help improve telephone, internet, television and radio broadcast services not just in Kabul but throughout the country. Internet cafes were introduced in 2002 and has been expanding throughout the country. , 3G services were also available.
There were a number of post offices throughout the city. Package delivery services like FedEx, TNT N.V., and DHL were also available.
Hotels and other lodging
Major hotels in Kabul included; the Serena Hotel, the Inter-Continental, and the Safi Landmark Hotel above the Kabul City Center. Most visitors preferred lodging at guest houses, which were found all over the city. The better and safer ones were in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood where the embassies were located.
Serena Hotel
Inter-Continental
Safi Landmark Hotel
Culture and landmarks
The old part of Kabul was filled with bazaars nestled along its narrow, crooked streets, examples being the Mandawi and the Bird Market (Ka Foroshi). Cultural sites included: the National Museum of Afghanistan, notably displaying an impressive statue of Surya excavated at Khair Khana, the ruined Darul Aman Palace, the tomb of Mughal Emperor Babur at Bagh-e Babur, and Chihil Sutun Park, the Minar-i-Istiqlal (Column of Independence) built in 1919 after the Third Afghan War, the tomb of Timur Shah Durrani, the Bagh-e Bala Palace and the imposing Id Gah Mosque (founded 1893). Bala Hissar was a fort which was partially destroyed during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, then restored as a military college. There was also the Kolola Pushta fort, which was garrisoned by the Afghan Army, and the nearby 19th-century Shahrara Tower fort, which was ruined in 1928. The Koh-e Asamai mountain had a temple that was considered important to Hinduism.
Other places of interest include Kabul City Center, which was Kabul's first shopping mall, the shops around Flower Street and Chicken Street, Wazir Akbar Khan district, Kabul Golf Club, Kabul Zoo, Abdul Rahman Mosque, Shah-Do Shamshira and other famous mosques, the National Gallery of Afghanistan, the National Archives of Afghanistan, Afghan Royal Family Mausoleum, the OMAR Mine Museum, Bibi Mahro Hill, Kabul Cemetery, and Paghman Gardens best known for the famous Taq-e Zafar arch. The Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) was also involved in the restoration of the Bagh-e Babur (Babur Gardens).
Maranjan Hill (Tappe-i-Maranjan) was a nearby hill where Buddhist statues and Graeco-Bactrian coins from the 2nd century BC have been found. Outside the city proper lied the Buddhist Guldara stupa and another stupa at Shewaki. Paghman and Jalalabad were interesting valleys west and east of the city. On the latter road, about 16 miles east of the city, was the Tang-e Gharu gorge.
Kabul used to have as many as 23 cinemas, but currently only had four, including the state owned Ariana Cinema. The decline of cinema of Afghanistan since the 1990s, both due to war and oppressive regimes, had meant many of these have closed. The Nandari, or Kabul National Theater, was one of the largest theaters in Asia before it was destroyed in the civil war and has not been restored. The lack of investment meant that the sector did not recover after 2001, and notably the rundown Park Cinema was controversially demolished in 2020.
Parks
Bagh-e Babur (Gardens of Babur)
Bagh-e Chihil Sutun (Gardens of Chihil Sutun)
Bagh-e Bala Park
Zarnegar Park
Shahr-e Naw Park
Bagh-e Zanana
Chaman-e-Hozori
Bibi Mahro Park
Lake Qargha
Mosques
Abdul Rahman Mosque
Id Gah Mosque
Abul Fazl Shrine
Sakhi Shrine
Pul-e Khishti Mosque
Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque
Mausoleums
Mausoleum of Timur Shah Durrani
Mausoleum of Abdur Rahman Khan
Mausoleum of Zahir Shah, Nadir Shah and other members of the royal Musahiban family
Mausoleum of Jamal-al-Din al-Afghani
Palaces
Tajbeg Palace
Stor Palace
Darul Aman Palace
Chihil Sutun Palace
Bagh-e Bala Palace
Shah Bobo Jan Palace
Arg (Presidential Palace), including numerous other palaces inside the compound
Char Chenar Palace
Delgusha Palace and its clock tower
Haram Sara Palace
Salam Khana Palace
Kuti Baghcha
Museums
National Museum of Afghanistan
National Archives of Afghanistan
National Gallery of Afghanistan
Negaristani Milli
Other landmarks
Clock tower at Mahmoud Khan Bridge
Minaret of Knowledge and Ignorance
Minaret of the Unknown Corps on Jada-e Maiwand
Sherpur Cantonment (British Cemetery)
Architecture
Kabul's various architectural designs reflected the various links it has had with empires and civilizations, particularly being on the ancient trade route connecting India and China with Persia and the West.
The Buddhist Chakari minaret was likely built in the Kushan era and had traces of Greco-Bactrian and Gandhara Art. It had Buddhist swastika and both Mahayana and Theravada qualities. Following the Islamic conquest, a new age of architectural realms appeared in the Kabul region. The Gardens of Babur was perhaps the best preserved example of Islamic and Mughal architecture. Emperor Babur had also built seven other big gardens in Kabul at the time. The present Gardens of Babur also reflect Afghanistan's traditional architecture by the wooden carving, pressed stucco, decorative stone masonry and other features. Another fine example of the Babur era is the Id Gah Mosque, using stones from the Punjab and Sindh and designed by Persians.
Ahmad Shah Durrani's rise as the Afghan ruler brought changes to Kabul and the nation, with a more inward-looking and self-protecting society reflecting the architecture that were no different between the rich and poor peoples. mausoleum of Timur Shah Durrani, the Afghan ruler until his death in 1793, was another example of Islamic design, built in an octagonal structure. It followed Central Asian traditions of decorative brick masonries along with a colorless appearance. After the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the country's emir Abdur Rahman Khan brought European styles for the first time. The Bagh-e Bala Palace was designed in a mixed Mughal and British Indian style, the first significant change from traditional Afghan and Islamic styles. However palaces were still built with Central Asian Islamic design at heart. Numerous lavish buildings were created during this time, combined with large gardens. The Dilkusha Palace within the Arg was the first created by a British architect. Its accompanying clock tower, circa 1911, was also a British creation.
Houses in Kabul during this time were generally made up of walled compounds, built around courtyards and having narrow passageways to places.
In the 1920s, new styles were strongly influenced by European architectural styles due to king Amanullah Khan's visits to Europe, particularly Berlin and Paris. Darul Aman Palace was the best known example of modern Western design. The Shah-Do Shamshira Mosque was built in an unusual style for a mosque in Western and Italian style baroque. The Taq-e Zafar in Paghman and other landmarks there were also based on European designs. Houses also became more open, without having many of the walls. Later in the century, several Soviet inspired designs made its way into Kabul. Most notable of these were the various microraions built in the city in the 1960s and afterwards. A different flavor of modern style was seen on the Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul and Serena Hotel.
In the 21st century, modern designs based on glass facades became popular. Examples of this modern Western style were the Kabul City Center and Golbahar Center. The National Assembly building opened in 2015 had elements of modern Islamic Mughal architecture, considered to have the largest dome in Asia. The Indian architecture could also be influenced by the fact it was built by the government of India, but its carving and large porch represent Afghan traditional architectural forms. The new Ministry of Defense building followed traditional, Islamic and Western designs inspired by the Pentagon. Another mix of these designs appeared on the Paghman Hill Castle completed in 2014. Increasing numbers of high rises have been built in this period, with the Kabul Markaz tower in 2020 becoming the city's first to break the tall barrier. The construction boom with modern high-rises throughout the 2010s had led to a major change in the city's skyline.
Transportation
Kabul has no train service.
Air
Hamid Karzai International Airport (Kabul International Airport) was located from the center of Kabul, which had always served as the country's main airport. It was a hub to Ariana Afghan Airlines, the national carrier of Afghanistan, as well as private airlines such as Afghan Jet International, East Horizon Airlines, Kam Air, Pamir Airways, and Safi Airways. Regional airlines such as Air India, SpiceJet, flydubai, Emirates, Gulf Air, Mahan Air, Pakistan International Airlines, Turkish Airlines and others also had regularly scheduled flights to the airport. A new international terminal was built by the government of Japan and began operation in 2008.
Road
The AH76 highway (or Kabul-Charikar Highway) connected Kabul north towards Charikar, Pol-e Khomri and Mazar-i-Sharif ( away), with leading roads to Kunduz ( away). The AH77 highway went west towards Bamiyan Province ( away) and Chaghcharan in the central mountains of Afghanistan. To the south-west, the Kabul-Ghazni Highway went to Ghazni ( away) and Kandahar ( away). To the south, the Kabul-Gardez Highway connected it to Gardez ( away) and Khost. To the east, the Kabul-Jalalabad Highway went to Jalalabad ( away) and across the border to Peshawar.
Much of the road network in downtown Kabul consisted of square or circle intersections (char-rahi). The main square in the city was Pashtunistan Square (named after Pashtunistan), which had a large fountain in it and was located adjacent to the presidential palace, the Central Bank, and other landmarks. The Massoud Circle was located by the U.S. Embassy and had the road leading to the airport. In the old city, Sar-e Chawk roundabout was at the center of Maiwand Road (Jadayi Maiwand). Once all roads led to it, and in the 16th century was called the "navel of Kabul". In the Shahr-e Naw district there were several major intersections: Ansari, Haji Yaqub, Quwayi Markaz, Sedarat, and Turabaz Khan. The latter, named after Turabaz Khan, connected Flower Street and Chicken Street. There were also two major intersections in western Kabul: the Deh Mazang Circle and Kote Sangi. Salang Watt was the main road to the north-west, whereas Asamayi Watt and Seh Aqrab (also called Sevom Aqrab) was the main road to western Kabul.
The steep population rise in the 21st century had caused major congestion problems for the city's roads. In efforts to tackle this issue, a 95 km outer ring road costing $110 million was approved in 2017. Construction would have taken five years and it will run from Char Asiab via Ahmad Shah Baba Mina, Deh Sabz ("Kabul New City" development area), the AH76 highway, Paghman and back to Char Asyab. A new bus public transport service was also planned to be opened in 2018 (see below). In September 2017, the head of the Kabul Municipality announced that 286 meters of pedestrian overpass footbridges will be built in eight busy areas "in the near future".
Under the Kabul Urban Transport Efficiency Improvement Project that was signed in 2014 and backed by the World Bank, the city has seen widespread improvements in road conditions, including the building of new pedestrian sidewalks, drainage systems, lighting and asphalted road surfaces. The project runs until December 31, 2019.
Private vehicles had been on the rise in Kabul since 2002, with about 700,000 cars registered as of 2013 and up to 80% of the cars reported to be Toyota Corollas. The number of dealerships had also increased from 77 in 2003 to over 550 by 2010. Gas stations were mainly private-owned. Bicycles on the road were a common sight in the city.
Public transport
The taxicabs in Kabul were painted in a white and yellow livery. The majority of these were older model Toyota Corollas. A few Soviet-era Russian cabs were also still in operation.
Long-distance road journeys were made by private Mercedes-Benz coach buses or vans, trucks and cars. Although a nationwide bus service was available from Kabul, flying was safer, especially for foreigners. The city's public bus service (Millie Bus / "National Bus") was established in the 1960s to take commuters on daily routes to many destinations. The service had about 800 buses. The Kabul bus system had discovered a new source of revenue in whole-bus advertising from MTN similar to "bus wrap" advertising on public transit in more developed nations. There was also an express bus that runs from downtown to Hamid Karzai International Airport for Safi Airways passengers.
An electric trolleybus system operated in Kabul from February 1979 to 1992 using Škoda fleet built by a Czechoslovak company (see Trolleybuses in Kabul for more). The trolleybus service was highly popular mainly due to its low price compared to the Millie Bus conventional bus service. The last trolleybus came to a halt in late 1992 due to warfare - much of the copper overhead wires were later looted but a few of them, including the steel poles, can still be seen in Kabul today.
In June 2017 Kabul Municipality unveiled plans for a new bus rapid transit system, the first major urban public transportation scheme. It was expected to open by 2018, but its construction had been hampered. In March 2021, a new city bus service was launched in Kabul using American vehicles built by IC Bus, and accompanied by newly built bus stops throughout the city. Five buses entered service on one route which is expected to be expanded to a fleet of 200 buses on 16 different routes.
Education
The Ministry of Education led by Ghulam Farooq Wardak was responsible for the education system in Afghanistan. Public and private schools in the city have reopened since 2002 after they were shut down or destroyed during fighting in the 1980s to the late 1990s. Boys and girls were strongly encouraged to attend school under the Karzai administration but many more schools were needed not only in Kabul but throughout the country. The Afghan Ministry of Education had plans to build more schools in the coming years so that education was provided to all citizens of the country. High schools in Kabul included:
Abdul Rahim-e-Shaheed High School, a school for boys and girls (up to Year 6) founded in 1970
Habibia High School, a British-Afghan school founded in 1903 by King Habibullah Khan
Lycée Esteqlal, a Franco-Afghan school founded in 1922
Malalai High School, a Franco-Afghan school for girls
Amani High School, a German-Afghan school for boys founded in 1924
Aisha-i-Durani School, a German-Afghan school for girls
Rahman Baba High School, an American-Afghan school for boys
International School of Kabul, an American-Afghan school
Afghan Turk High Schools, Turkish-Afghan schools
Ghulam Haider Khan High School, a school for boys
Abdul Hadi Dawi High School, a school for boys
Nazo Ana High School, a school for boys
Universities
Universities included:
American University of Afghanistan
Kabul University
Kabul Polytechnic University
Kateb University
Rana University
Health care
Health care in Afghanistan was relatively poor. The wealthy Afghans usually went abroad when seeking treatment.
Jinnah Hospital
French Medical Institute for Children
Kabul City Hospital
Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital
Jamhuriat Hospital
Sardar Mohammad Daud Khan Hospital
Wazir Akbar Khan Hospital
Malalai Maternity Hospital
Rabia-I-Balki Maternity Hospital
Maywand Hospital
Afshar Hospital
Noor Eye Hospital
Atatürk Children's Hospital
American Medical Center Afghanistan
DK-German Medical Diagnostic Center
CURE International Hospital
KIA ISAF Role 3 Hospital
Notable people
Asghar Afghan, Retired Afghan Cricketer, their greatest captain
Karim Janat, Afghan Cricketer, brother to Former Afghan Captain, Asghar Afghan
Omar Nazar (born 1978), Afghan footballer
Twin towns – sister cities
Ankara, Turkey (since 2003)
Istanbul, Turkey (since 1992)
Kazan, Russia (since 2005)
Omaha, Nebraska, United States (since 2003)
Kansas City, Missouri, United States (since 2018)
See also
List of cities in Afghanistan
2002 Hindu Kush earthquakes
Kabul Province
Kabul Airport
List of rulers of Kabul
Timeline of Kabul
References
Further reading
Hill, John E. (2009). Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Later Han Dynasty, 1st to 2nd Centuries CE. Charleston, South Carolina: BookSurge. .
External links
People of Kabul – report by Radio France Internationale in English
2nd-millennium BC establishments
Capitals in Asia
Cities in Afghanistan
Kabul Shahi
Places in Shahnameh
Populated places along the Silk Road
Populated places established in the 2nd millennium BC
Populated places in Kabul Province
Provincial capitals in Afghanistan | [
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16827 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin%20Bacon | Kevin Bacon | Kevin Norwood Bacon (born July 8, 1958) is an American actor. His films include the musical-drama film Footloose (1984), the controversial historical conspiracy legal thriller JFK (1991), the legal drama A Few Good Men (1992), the historical docudrama Apollo 13 (1995), and the mystery drama Mystic River (2003). Bacon is also known for voicing the title character in Balto (1995), and was taking on darker roles, such as that of a sadistic guard in Sleepers (1996), and troubled former child abuser in The Woodsman (2004). He is further known for the hit comedies National Lampoon's Animal House (1978), Diner (1982), Tremors (1990) and Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011). His other well-known films are Friday the 13th (1980), Flatliners (1990), The River Wild (1994), Wild Things (1998), Stir of Echoes (1999), Hollow Man (2000), Frost/Nixon (2008), X-Men: First Class (2011), Black Mass (2015) and Patriots Day (2016). He is equally prolific on television, having starred in the Fox drama series The Following (2013–2015). For the HBO original film Taking Chance (2009), Bacon won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, also receiving a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. More recently, Bacon portrayed the title character, and was the series lead, of the Amazon Prime streaming television series I Love Dick, for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.
The Guardian named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination. In 2003, Bacon received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the motion picture industry.
Bacon has become associated with the concept of interconnectedness among people, having been popularized by the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". In 2007, he created SixDegrees.org, a charitable foundation. He is a brand ambassador for British mobile network operator EE and has been featured in several ads for the company.
Early life and education
Bacon, the youngest of six children, was born and raised in a close-knit family in Philadelphia. His mother, Ruth Hilda (née Holmes; 1916–1991), taught at an elementary school and was a liberal activist, while his father, Edmund Norwood Bacon (1910–2005), was an architect who served for many years as executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.
Bacon attended Julia R. Masterman High School for both middle and high school. At age 16, in 1975, Bacon won a full scholarship to and attended the Pennsylvania Governor's School for the Arts at Bucknell University, a state-funded five-week arts program at which he studied theater under Glory Van Scott. The experience solidified Bacon's passion for the arts.
Acting career
Early work
Bacon left home at age 17 to pursue a theater career in New York City, where he appeared in a production at the Circle in the Square Theater School. "I wanted life, man, the real thing", he later recalled to Nancy Mills of Cosmopolitan. "The message I got was 'The arts are it. Business is the devil's work. Art and creative expression are next to godliness.' Combine that with an immense ego and you wind up with an actor."
Bacon's debut in the fraternity comedy National Lampoon's Animal House (1978) did not lead to the fame he had sought, and Bacon returned to waiting tables and auditioning for small roles in theater. He briefly worked on the television soap operas Search for Tomorrow (1979) and Guiding Light (1980–81) in New York.
1980s
In 1980, he appeared in the slasher film Friday the 13th. Some of his early stage work included Getting Out, performed at New York's Phoenix Theater, and Flux, at Second Stage Theatre during their 1981–1982 season.
In 1982, he won an Obie Award for his role in Forty Deuce, and soon afterward he made his Broadway debut in Slab Boys, with then-unknowns Sean Penn and Val Kilmer. However, it was not until he portrayed Timothy Fenwick that same year in Barry Levinson's film Dinercostarring Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Tim Daly, and Ellen Barkinthat he made an indelible impression on film critics and moviegoers alike.
Bolstered by the attention garnered by his performance in Diner, Bacon starred in Footloose (1984). Richard Corliss of TIME likened Footloose to the James Dean classic Rebel Without a Cause and the old Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musicals, commenting that the film includes "motifs on book burning, mid-life crisis, AWOL parents, fatal car crashes, drug enforcement, and Bible Belt vigilantism." To prepare for the role, Bacon enrolled at a high school as a transfer student named "Ren McCormick" and studied teenagers before leaving in the middle of the day. Bacon earned strong reviews for Footloose.
Bacon's critical and box office success led to a period of typecasting in roles similar to the two he portrayed in Diner and Footloose, and he had difficulty shaking this on-screen image. For the next several years he chose films that cast him against either type and experienced, by his own estimation, a career slump.
In 1988, he starred in John Hughes' comedy She's Having a Baby, and the following year he was in another comedy called The Big Picture.
1990s
In 1990, Bacon had two successful roles. He played a character who saved his town from under-the-earth "graboid" monsters in the comedy/horror film Tremors, and he portrayed an earnest medical student experimenting with death in Joel Schumacher's Flatliners.
In Bacon's next project he starred opposite Elizabeth Perkins in He Said, She Said. Despite lukewarm reviews and low audience turnout, He Said, She Said was illuminating for Bacon. Required to play a character with sexist attitudes, he admitted that the role was not that large a stretch for him.
By 1991, Bacon began to give up the idea of playing leading men in big-budget films and to remake himself as a character actor. "The only way I was going to be able to work on 'A' projects with really 'A' directors was if I wasn't the guy who was starring", he confided to The New York Times writer Trip Gabriel. "You can't afford to set up a $40 million movie if you don't have your star." He performed that year as gay prostitute Willie O'Keefe in Oliver Stone's JFK and went on to play a prosecuting attorney in the military courtroom drama A Few Good Men. Later that year he returned to the theater to play in Spike Heels, directed by Michael Greif.
In 1994, Bacon earned a Golden Globe nomination for his role in The River Wild, opposite Meryl Streep. He described the film to Chase in Cosmopolitan as a "grueling shoot", in which "every one of us fell out of the boat at one point or another and had to be saved".
His next film, Murder in the First, earned him the Broadcast Film Critic's Association Award in 1995, the same year that he starred in the blockbuster hit Apollo 13. Bacon played a trademark dark role once again in Sleepers (1996). This part starkly contrasted with his appearance in the lighthearted romantic comedy, Picture Perfect (1997).
Bacon made his debut as a director with the television film Losing Chase (1996), which was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, and won one. Bacon again resurrected his oddball mystique that year as a mentally-challenged houseguest in Digging to China and as a disc jockey corrupted by payola in Telling Lies in America. As the executive producer of Wild Things (1998), Bacon reserved a supporting role for himself and went on to star in Stir of Echoes (1999), directed by David Koepp.
2000s
In 2000, he appeared in Paul Verhoeven's Hollow Man. Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard depict a ménage à trois in their film, Where the Truth Lies. Bacon and director Atom Egoyan have condemned the MPAA ratings board decision to rate the film "NC-17" rather than the preferable "R". Bacon commented: "I don't get it, when I see films (that) are extremely violent, extremely objectionable sometimes in terms of the roles that women play, slide by with an R, no problem, because the people happen to have more of their clothes on."
In 2003 he acted with Sean Penn and Tim Robbins in Clint Eastwood's movie Mystic River.
Bacon was again acclaimed for a dark starring role playing an offending pedophile on parole in The Woodsman (2004), for which he was nominated for best actor and received the Independent Spirit Award. He appeared in the HBO Films production of Taking Chance, based on an eponymous story written by Lieutenant Colonel Michael Strobl, an American Desert Storm war veteran. The film premiered on HBO on February 21, 2009. Bacon won a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie for his role.
2010s
On July 15, 2010, it was confirmed that Bacon would appear in Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class as mutant villain Sebastian Shaw.
In March 2012, Bacon was featured in a performance of Dustin Lance Black's play, 8 – a staged reenactment of the federal trial that overturned California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage – as Attorney Charles J. Cooper. The production was held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre and broadcast on YouTube to raise money for the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
From 2013 to 2015, Bacon starred as Ryan Hardy in the FOX television series The Following. In 2013, he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor on Television for that role.
In 2015, he said in a Huffington Post interview he would like to return to the Tremors franchise. However, Bacon did not appear in Tremors 5: Bloodline (2015).
Advertising work
Beginning in 2012, Bacon has appeared in a major advertising campaign for the EE mobile network in the United Kingdom, based on the Six Degrees concept and his various film roles. In 2015, he became a commercial spokesperson for the U.S. egg industry.
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon
Bacon is the subject of the trivia game titled "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," based on the idea that, due to his prolific screen career covering a diverse range of genres, any Hollywood actor can be linked to another in a handful of steps based on their association with Bacon. The name of the game derives from the idea of six degrees of separation.
Although he was initially dismayed by the game, the meme stuck, and Bacon eventually embraced it, forming the charitable initiative SixDegrees.org, a social networking service intended to link people and charities to each other.
The measure of proximity to Bacon has been mathematically formalized as the Bacon number and can be referenced at websites including Oracle of Bacon, which is in turn based upon Internet Movie Database data. In 2012, Google added a feature to their search engine, whereby searching for an actor's name followed by the words "Bacon Number" will show the ways in which that actor is connected to Kevin Bacon. This feature is no longer active.
A similar measurement exists in the mathematics community, where one measures how far one is removed from co-writing a mathematical paper with the famous mathematician Paul Erdős. This is done by means of the Erdős number, which is 0 for Paul Erdős himself, 1 for someone who co-wrote an article with him, 2 for someone who co-wrote with someone who co-wrote with him, etc. People have combined the Bacon number and the Erdős number to form the Erdős–Bacon number, which is the sum of the two.
Music
In 1995, Kevin formed a band called The Bacon Brothers with his brother, Michael. The duo has released six albums.
Personal life
Bacon has been married to actress Kyra Sedgwick since September 4, 1988; they met on the set of the PBS version of Lanford Wilson's play Lemon Sky. He has said: "The time I was hitting what I considered to be bottom was also the time I met my wife, our kids were born, good things were happening. And I was able to keep supporting myself; that always gave me strength." Bacon and Sedgwick have starred together in Pyrates, Murder in the First, The Woodsman, and Loverboy. They have two children, Travis Sedgwick (b. 1989) and Sosie Ruth (b. 1992). They reside on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Bacon was previously in a five-year relationship with actress Tracy Pollan, in the 1980s.
Bacon has spoken out for the separation of church and state, and told The Times in 2005 that he did not "believe in God." He has also said that he is not anti-religion.
Bacon and Sedgwick appeared in will.i.am's video "It's a New Day", which was released following Barack Obama's 2008 presidential win.
The pair lost part of their savings in the Ponzi scheme of infamous swindler Bernie Madoff.
Bacon and Sedgwick learned in 2011, via their appearance on the PBS TV show Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, that they are ninth cousins, once removed. They also appeared in a video promoting the "Bill of Reproductive Rights", supporting among other things a woman's right to choose and have access to birth control.
Accolades
Awards and nominations
Other honors
2003, September 30: Inducted into Hollywood Walk of Fame with a star for his contribution to Motion Picture presented to him by the Chamber of Commerce.
2004: Received the John Cassavetes Award during the Denver International Film Festival.
2005: Received the Copper Wing Tribute Award during the Phoenix Film Festival.
2005: Received the American Rivera Award during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.
2010: Honored with the Joel Siegel Award by the Broadcast Film Critics Association.
2015: Honored with the Career Achievement in Acting Award by the Seattle International Film Festival.
See also
List of actors with Hollywood Walk of Fame motion picture stars
References
External links
Oracle of Bacon
1958 births
20th-century American male actors
21st-century American male actors
American atheists
American male film actors
American male soap opera actors
American male television actors
American male voice actors
The Bacon Brothers members
Best Miniseries or Television Movie Actor Golden Globe winners
Circle in the Square Theatre School alumni
Living people
Male actors from Philadelphia
Obie Award recipients
Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie Screen Actors Guild Award winners
Sedgwick family
People from the Upper West Side | [
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16829 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kornilov | Kornilov | Kornilov () and Kornilova (feminine; ) is a common Russian surname derived from the baptismal name Kornil (). Notable people with this surname include:
Aleksandr Kornilov (1862–1925), Russian historian and politician
Aleksandr Kornilov (born 1985), Russian Olympic rower
Boris Kornilov (1907–1938), Soviet poet
Denis Kornilov (born 1986), Russian ski jumper
Ivan Kornilov (1899–1953), Soviet general
Lavr Kornilov (1870–1918), Russian general and one of the leaders of the White Movement
Lev Kornilov (born 1984), Russian professional footballer
Roman Kornilov (born 1981), Kyrgyzstani football player
Sergey Kornilov (born 1978), Russian Olympic speedskater
Vladimir Kornilov (1806–1854), Russian admiral, killed during the Battle of Malakoff
Yevgeni Kornilov (born 1985), Russian football player
See also
Russian cruiser Admiral Kornilov (1887)
Kornilov Affair
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16830 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard%20technology | Keyboard technology | The technology of computer keyboards includes many elements. Among the more important of these is the switch technology that they use. Computer alphanumeric keyboards typically have 80 to 110 durable switches, generally one for each key. The choice of switch technology affects key response (the positive feedback that a key has been pressed) and pre-travel (the distance needed to push the key to enter a character reliably). Virtual keyboards on touch screens have no physical switches and provide audio and haptic feedback instead. Some newer keyboard models use hybrids of various technologies to achieve greater cost savings or better ergonomics.
The modern keyboard also includes a control processor and indicator lights to provide feedback to the user (and to the central processor) about what state the keyboard is in. Plug and play technology means that its 'out of the box' layout can be notified to the system, making the keyboard immediately ready to use without need for further configuration unless the user so desires.
Types
Membrane keyboard
There are two types of membrane-based keyboards, flat-panel membrane keyboards and full-travel membrane keyboards:
Flat-panel membrane keyboards are most often found on appliances like microwave ovens or photocopiers. A common design consists of three layers. The top layer has the labels printed on its front and conductive stripes printed on the back. Under this it has a spacer layer, which holds the front and back layer apart so that they do not normally make electrical contact. The back layer has conductive stripes printed perpendicularly to those of the front layer. When placed together, the stripes form a grid. When the user pushes down at a particular position, their finger pushes the front layer down through the spacer layer to close a circuit at one of the intersections of the grid. This indicates to the computer or keyboard control processor that a particular button has been pressed.
Generally, flat-panel membrane keyboards do not produce a noticeable physical feedback. Therefore, devices using these issue a beep or flash a light when the key is pressed. They are often used in harsh environments where water- or leak-proofing is desirable. Although used in the early days of the personal computer (on the Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and Atari 400), they have been supplanted by the more tactile dome and mechanical switch keyboards.
Full-travel membrane-based keyboards are the most common computer keyboards today. They have one-piece plastic keytop/switch plungers which press down on a membrane to actuate a contact in an electrical switch matrix.
Dome-switch keyboard
Dome-switch keyboards are a hybrid of flat-panel membrane and mechanical-switch keyboards. They bring two circuit board traces together under a rubber or silicone keypad using either metal "dome" switches or polyurethane formed domes. The metal dome switches are formed pieces of stainless steel that, when compressed, give the user a crisp, positive tactile feedback. These metal types of dome switches are very common, are usually reliable to over 5 million cycles, and can be plated in either nickel, silver or gold. The rubber dome switches, most commonly referred to as polydomes, are formed polyurethane domes where the inside bubble is coated in graphite. While polydomes are typically cheaper than metal domes, they lack the crisp snap of the metal domes, and usually have a lower life specification. Polydomes are considered very quiet, but purists tend to find them "mushy" because the collapsing dome does not provide as much positive response as metal domes. For either metal or polydomes, when a key is pressed, it collapses the dome, which connects the two circuit traces and completes the connection to enter the character. The pattern on the PC board is often gold-plated.
Both are common switch technologies used in mass market keyboards today. This type of switch technology happens to be most commonly used in handheld controllers, mobile phones, automotive, consumer electronics and medical devices. Dome-switch keyboards are also called direct-switch keyboards.
Scissor-switch keyboard
A special case of the computer keyboard dome-switch is the scissor-switch. The keys are attached to the keyboard via two plastic pieces that interlock in a "scissor"-like fashion, and snap to the keyboard and the key. It still uses rubber domes, but a special plastic 'scissors' mechanism links the keycap to a plunger that depresses the rubber dome with a much shorter travel than the typical rubber dome keyboard. Typically scissor-switch keyboards also employ 3-layer membranes as the electrical component of the switch. They also usually have a shorter total key travel distance (2 mm instead of 3.5–4 mm for standard dome-switch keyswitches). This type of keyswitch is often found on the built-in keyboards on laptops and keyboards marketed as 'low-profile'. These keyboards are generally quiet and the keys require little force to press.
Scissor-switch keyboards are typically slightly more expensive. They are harder to clean (due to the limited movement of the keys and their multiple attachment points) but also less likely to get debris in them as the gaps between the keys are often smaller (as there is no need for extra room to allow for the 'wiggle' in the key, as typically found on a membrane keyboard).
Capacitive keyboard
In this type of keyboard, pressing a key changes the capacitance of a pattern of capacitor pads. The pattern consists of two D-shaped capacitor pads for each switch, printed on a printed circuit board (PCB) and covered by a thin, insulating film of soldermask which acts as a dielectric.
Despite the sophistication of the concept, the mechanism of capacitive switching is physically simple. The movable part ends with a flat foam element about the size of an aspirin tablet, finished with aluminum foil. Opposite the switch is a PCB with the capacitor pads. When the key is pressed, the foil tightly clings to the surface of the PCB, forming a daisy chain of two capacitors between contact pads and itself separated with thin soldermask, and thus "shorting" the contact pads with an easily detectable drop of capacitive reactance between them. Usually this permits a pulse or pulse train to be sensed. Because the switch does not have an actual electrical contact, there is no debouncing necessary. The keys do not need to be fully pressed to be actuated, which enables some people to type faster. The sensor tells enough about the position of the key to allow the user to adjust the actuation point (key sensitivity). This adjustment can be done with the help of the bundled software and individually for each key, if so implemented.
The IBM Model F keyboard is mechanical-key design consisted of a buckling spring over a capacitive PCB, similarly to the later Model M keyboard that used a membrane in place of the PCB.
The Topre Corporation design for key switches uses a spring below a rubber dome. The dome provides most of the force that keeps the key from being pressed, similar to a membrane keyboard, while the spring helps with the capacitive action.
Mechanical-switch keyboard
Every key on a mechanical-switch keyboard contains a complete switch underneath. Each switch is composed of a housing, a spring, and a stem, and sometimes other parts such as a separate tactile leaf or a clickbar. Switches come in three variants: "linear" with consistent resistance, "tactile" with a non-audible bump, and "clicky" with both a bump and an audible click. Depending on the resistance of the spring, the key requires different amounts of pressure to actuate and to bottom out. The shape of the stem as well as the design of the switch housing varies the actuation distance and travel distance of the switch. The sound can be altered by the material of the plate, case, lubrication, the keycap profile, and even modifying the individual switch. These modifications, or "mods" include applying lubricant to reduce friction inside the switch itself, inserting "switch films" to reduce wobble, swapping out the spring inside to modify the resistance of the switch itself and many more. Mechanical keyboards allow for the removal and replacement of keycaps, but replacing them is more common with mechanical keyboards due to common stem shape.
Alongside the mechanical keyboard switch is the stabilizer, which supports longer keys such as the "spacebar", "enter", "backspace", and "shift" keys. Although these aren't as diverse as switches, they do come in different sizes. These different sizes are meant for keyboards that are longer in build than normal. Just like the mechanical keyboard switch, the stabilizer can be modified to alter the sound and feel of these certain keys. Lubricant is the big one, to reduce the rattle of the metal wire that makes up a stabilizer. Furthermore, implementing padding in the "housing" of the stabilizer will lessen rattle and improve acoustics.
Mechanical keyboards typically have a longer lifespan than membrane or dome-switch keyboards. Cherry MX switches, for example, have an expected lifespan of 50 million clicks per switch, while switches from Razer have a rated lifetime of 60 million clicks per switch.
A major producer of mechanical switches is Cherry, who has manufactured the MX family of switches since the 1980s. Cherry's color-coding system of categorizing switches has been imitated by other switch manufacturers.
Hot-swappable keyboard
Hot-swappable keyboards are keyboards where switches can be pulled out and replaced rather than requiring the typical solder connection. Hot-swappable keyboards can accept any switch that is in the 'MX' style. Instead of the switch being soldered to the keyboard's PCB, hot-swap sockets are instead soldered on. They are mostly used by keyboard enthusiasts that build custom keyboards, and have recently begun being adopted by larger companies on production keyboards. Hot-swap sockets typically cost anywhere from $10–25 USD to fill a complete board and can allow users to try a variety of different switches without having the tools or knowledge required to solder electronics.
Buckling-spring keyboard
Many typists prefer buckling spring keyboards. The buckling spring mechanism (expired ) atop the switch is responsible for the tactile and aural response of the keyboard. This mechanism controls a small hammer that strikes a capacitive or membrane switch.
In 1993, two years after spawning Lexmark, IBM transferred its keyboard operations to the daughter company. New Model M keyboards continued to be manufactured for IBM by Lexmark until 1996, when Unicomp was established and purchased the keyboard patents and tooling equipment to continue their production.
IBM continued to make Model M's in their Scotland factory until 1999.
Hall-effect keyboard
Hall effect keyboards use magnets and Hall effect sensors instead of switches with mechanical contacts. When a key is depressed, it moves a magnet that is detected by a solid-state sensor. Because they require no physical contact for actuation, Hall-effect keyboards are extremely reliable and can accept millions of keystrokes before failing. They are used for ultra-high reliability applications such as nuclear power plants, aircraft cockpits, and critical industrial environments. They can easily be made totally waterproof, and can resist large amounts of dust and contaminants. Because a magnet and sensor are required for each key, as well as custom control electronics, they are expensive to manufacture.
Laser projection keyboard
A laser projection device approximately the size of a computer mouse projects the outline of keyboard keys onto a flat surface, such as a table or desk. This type of keyboard is portable enough to be easily used with PDAs and cellphones, and many models have retractable cords and wireless capabilities. However, sudden or accidental disruption of the laser will register unwanted keystrokes. Also, if the laser malfunctions, the whole unit becomes useless, unlike conventional keyboards which can be used even if a variety of parts (such as the keycaps) are removed. This type of keyboard can be frustrating to use since it is susceptible to errors, even in the course of normal typing, and its complete lack of tactile feedback makes it even less user-friendly than the lowest quality membrane keyboards.
Roll-up keyboard
Keyboards made of flexible silicone or polyurethane materials can roll up in a bundle. Tightly folding the keyboard may damage the internal membrane circuits. When they are completely sealed in rubber, they are water resistant. Like membrane keyboards, they are reported to be very hard to get used to, as there is little tactile feedback, and silicone will tend to attract dirt, dust, and hair.
Optical keyboard technology
Also known as photo-optical keyboard, light responsive keyboard, photo-electric keyboard, and optical key actuation detection technology.
Optical keyboard technology was introduced in 1962 by Harley E. Kelchner for use in a typewriter machine with the purpose of reducing the noise generating by actuating the typewriter keys.
An optical keyboard technology utilizes light-emitting devices and photo sensors to optically detect actuated keys. Most commonly the emitters and sensors are located at the perimeter, mounted on a small PCB. The light is directed from side to side of the keyboard interior, and it can only be blocked by the actuated keys. Most optical keyboards require at least two beams (most commonly a vertical beam and a horizontal beam) to determine the actuated key. Some optical keyboards use a special key structure that blocks the light in a certain pattern, allowing only one beam per row of keys (most commonly a horizontal beam).
The mechanism of the optical keyboard is very simple – a light beam is sent from the emitter to the receiving sensor, and the actuated key blocks, reflects, refracts or otherwise interacts with the beam, resulting in an identified key.
Some earlier optical keyboards were limited in their structure and required special casing to block external light, no multi-key functionality was supported and the design was very limited to a thick rectangular case.
The advantages of optical keyboard technology are that it offers a real waterproof keyboard, resilient to dust and liquids; and it uses about 20% PCB volume, compared with membrane or dome switch keyboards, significantly reducing electronic waste.
Additional advantages of optical keyboard technology over other keyboard technologies such as Hall effect, laser, roll-up, and transparent keyboards lie in cost (Hall effect keyboard) and feel – optical keyboard technology does not require different key mechanisms, and the tactile feel of typing has remained the same for over 60 years.
The specialist DataHand keyboard uses optical technology to sense keypresses with a single light beam and sensor per key. The keys are held in their rest position by magnets; when the magnetic force is overcome to press a key, the optical path is unblocked and the keypress is registered.
Debouncing
When a key is pressed, it oscillates (bounces) against its contacts several times before settling. When released, it oscillates again until it comes to rest. Although it happens on a scale too small to be visible to the naked eye, it can be enough to register multiple keystrokes.
To resolve this, the processor in a keyboard debounces the keystrokes, by averaging the signal over time to produce one "confirmed" keystroke that (usually) corresponds to a single press or release. Early membrane keyboards had limited typing speed because they had to do significant debouncing. This was a noticeable problem on the ZX81.
Keycaps
Keycaps are used on full-travel keyboards. While modern keycaps are typically surface-printed, they can also be double-shot molded, laser printed, sublimation printed, engraved, or they can be made of transparent material with printed paper inserts.
There are also keycaps which are thin shells that are placed over key bases. These were used on IBM PC keyboards.
Other parts
The modern PC keyboard also includes a control processor and indicator lights to provide feedback to the user about what state the keyboard is in. Depending on the sophistication of the controller's programming, the keyboard may also offer other special features. The processor is usually a single chip 8048 microcontroller variant. The keyboard switch matrix is wired to its inputs and it processes the incoming keystrokes and sends the results down a serial cable (the keyboard cord) to a receiver in the main computer box. It also controls the illumination of the "caps lock", "num lock" and "scroll lock" lights.
A common test for whether the computer has crashed is pressing the "caps lock" key. The keyboard sends the key code to the keyboard driver running in the main computer; if the main computer is operating, it commands the light to turn on. All the other indicator lights work in a similar way. The keyboard driver also tracks the shift, alt and control state of the keyboard.
Keyboard switch matrix
The keyboard switch matrix is often drawn with horizontal wires and vertical wires in a grid which is called a matrix circuit. It has a switch at some or all intersections, much like a multiplexed display. Almost all keyboards have only the switch at each intersection, which causes "ghost keys" and "key jamming" when multiple keys are pressed (rollover). Certain, often more expensive, keyboards have a diode between each intersection, allowing the keyboard microcontroller to accurately sense any number of simultaneous keys being pressed, without generating erroneous ghost keys.
Alternative text-entering methods
Optical character recognition (OCR) is preferable to rekeying for converting existing text that is already written down but not in machine-readable format (for example, a Linotype-composed book from the 1940s). In other words, to convert the text from an image to editable text (that is, a string of character codes), a person could re-type it, or a computer could look at the image and deduce what each character is. OCR technology has already reached an impressive state (for example, Google Book Search) and promises more for the future.
Speech recognition converts speech into machine-readable text (that is, a string of character codes). This technology has also reached an advanced state and is implemented in various software products. For certain uses (e.g., transcription of medical or legal dictation; journalism; writing essays or novels) speech recognition is starting to replace the keyboard. However, the lack of privacy when issuing voice commands and dictation makes this kind of input unsuitable for many environments.
Pointing devices can be used to enter text or characters in contexts where using a physical keyboard would be inappropriate or impossible. These accessories typically present characters on a display, in a layout that provides fast access to the more frequently used characters or character combinations. Popular examples of this kind of input are Graffiti, Dasher and on-screen virtual keyboards.
Other issues
Keystroke logging
Unencrypted Bluetooth keyboards are known to be vulnerable to signal theft for keylogging by other Bluetooth devices in range. Microsoft wireless keyboards 2011 and earlier are documented to have this vulnerability.
Keystroke logging (often called keylogging) is a method of capturing and recording user keystrokes. While it can be used legally to measure employee activity, or by law enforcement agencies to investigate suspicious activities, it is also used by hackers for illegal or malicious acts. Hackers use keyloggers to obtain passwords or encryption keys.
Keystroke logging can be achieved by both hardware and software means. Hardware key loggers are attached to the keyboard cable or installed inside standard keyboards. Software keyloggers work on the target computer's operating system and gain unauthorized access to the hardware, hook into the keyboard with functions provided by the OS, or use remote access software to transmit recorded data out of the target computer to a remote location. Some hackers also use wireless keylogger sniffers to collect packets of data being transferred from a wireless keyboard and its receiver, and then they crack the encryption key being used to secure wireless communications between the two devices.
Anti-spyware applications are able to detect many keyloggers and remove them. Responsible vendors of monitoring software support detection by anti-spyware programs, thus preventing abuse of the software. Enabling a firewall does not stop keyloggers per se, but can possibly prevent transmission of the logged material over the net if properly configured. Network monitors (also known as reverse-firewalls) can be used to alert the user whenever an application attempts to make a network connection. This gives the user the chance to prevent the keylogger from "phoning home" with his or her typed information. Automatic form-filling programs can prevent keylogging entirely by not using the keyboard at all. Most keyloggers can be fooled by alternating between typing the login credentials and typing characters somewhere else in the focus window.
Keyboards are also known to emit electromagnetic signatures that can be detected using special spying equipment to reconstruct the keys pressed on the keyboard. Neal O'Farrell, executive director of the Identity Theft Council, revealed to InformationWeek that "More than 25 years ago, a couple of former spooks showed me how they could capture a user's ATM PIN, from a van parked across the street, simply by capturing and decoding the electromagnetic signals generated by every keystroke," O'Farrell said. "They could even capture keystrokes from computers in nearby offices, but the technology wasn't sophisticated enough to focus in on any specific computer."
Physical injury
The use of any keyboard may cause serious injury (such as carpal tunnel syndrome or other repetitive strain injuries) to the hands, wrists, arms, neck or back. The risks of injuries can be reduced by taking frequent short breaks to get up and walk around a couple of times every hour. Users should also vary tasks throughout the day, to avoid overuse of the hands and wrists. When typing on a keyboard, a person should keep the shoulders relaxed with the elbows at the side, with the keyboard and mouse positioned so that reaching is not necessary. The chair height and keyboard tray should be adjusted so that the wrists are straight, and the wrists should not be rested on sharp table edges. Wrist or palm rests should not be used while typing.
Some adaptive technology ranging from special keyboards, mouse replacements and pen tablet interfaces to speech recognition software can reduce the risk of injury. Pause software reminds the user to pause frequently. Switching to a much more ergonomic mouse, such as a vertical mouse or joystick mouse may provide relief.
By using a touchpad or a stylus pen with a graphic tablet, in place of a mouse, one can lessen the repetitive strain on the arms and hands.
See also
List of mechanical keyboards
Keyboard layout
AZERTY
QWERTY
QWERTZ
Keyboard mapping
References
External links
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16831 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick | Kick | A kick is a physical strike using the leg, in unison usually with an area of the knee or lower using the foot, heel, tibia (shin), ball of the foot, blade of the foot, toes or knee (the latter is also known as a knee strike). This type of attack is used frequently by hooved animals as well as humans in the context of stand-up fighting. Kicks play a significant role in many forms of martial arts, such as capoeira, kalaripayattu, karate, kickboxing, kung fu, MMA, Muay thai, pankration, pradal serey, savate, sikaran, silat, taekwondo, vovinam, and Yaw-Yan. Kicks are a universal act of aggression among humans.
Kicking is also prominent from its use in many sports, especially those called football. The best known of these sports is association football, also known as soccer.
History
The English verb to kick appears only in the late 14th century, apparently as a loan from Old Norse, originally in the sense of a hooved animal delivering strikes with his hind legs.
Kicks as an act of human aggression have likely existed worldwide since prehistory. However, the earliest documentation of high kicks, aimed above the waist or to the head, comes from Asian martial arts. Such kicks were introduced to the west in the 19th century with early hybrid martial arts inspired by Asian styles such as Bartitsu and Savate. Practice of high kicks became more universal in the second half of the 20th century with the more widespread development of hybrid styles such as kickboxing and eventually mixed martial arts.
The history of the high kick in Asian martial arts is difficult to trace, it appears to be prevalent in all traditional forms of Indochinese kickboxing, but these cannot be traced with any technical detail to pre-modern times. In Muay Boran ("ancient boxing" in Thailand) was developed under Rama V (r. 1868–1910) and while it is known that earlier forms of "boxing" existed during the Ayutthaya Kingdom, the details regarding these techniques are unclear. Some stances that look like low kicks, but not high kicks, are visible in the Shaolin temple frescoes, dated to the 17th century. The Mahabharata (4.13), an Indian epic compiled at some point before the 5th century AD, describes an unarmed hand-to-hand battle, including the sentence "and they gave each other violent kicks" (without providing any further detail). Kicks including ones above the waist are commonly depicted in the stone carvings of the Khmer Empire temples in Cambodia.
Applications
As the human leg is longer and stronger than the arm, kicks are generally used to keep an opponent at a distance, surprise them with their range and inflict substantial damage. Stance is also very important in any combat system and any attempt to deliver a kick will necessarily compromise stability to some degree. The application of kicks is a trade-off between the power and range that can be delivered against the cost incurred to balance. As combat situations are fluid, understanding this trade-off and making the appropriate decision to adjust to each moment is key.
Kicks are commonly directed against helpless or downed targets, while for more general self-defense applications, the consensus is that simple kicks aimed at vulnerable targets below the chest may be highly efficient, but should be executed with a degree of care. Self-defense experts, such as author and teacher Marc Macyoung, claim that kicks should be aimed no higher than the waist/stomach. Thus, the fighter should not compromise their balance while delivering a kick and retract the leg properly to avoid grappling. It is often recommended to build and drill simple combinations that involve attacking different levels of an opponent. A common example would be distracting an opponent's focus via a fake jab, following up with a powerful attack at the opponent's legs and punching.
Further, since low kicks are inherently quicker and harder to see and dodge in general they are often emphasized in a street fight scenario.
Practicality of high kicks
The utility of high kicks (above chest level) has been debated. Proponents have viewed that some high front snap kicks are effective for striking the face or throat, particularly against charging opponents and flying kicks can be effective to scare off attackers. Martial arts systems that utilize high kicks also emphasize training of very efficient and technically perfected forms of kicks, include recovery techniques in the event of a miss or block and will employ a wide repertoire of kicks adapted to specific situations.
Detractors have asserted that the flying/jumping kicks performed in synthesis styles are primarily performed for conditioning or aesthetic reasons, while the high kicks as practiced in sport martial arts are privileged due to specialized tournament rules, such as limiting the contest to stand-up fighting, or reducing the penalty resulting from a failed attempt at delivering a kick.
Although kicks can result in an easy takedown for the opponent if they are caught or the resulting imbalance is exploited, kicks to all parts of the body are very present in mixed martial arts, with some fighters employing them sporadically, while others, like Lyoto Machida, Edson Barboza and Donald Cerrone rely heavily on their use and have multiple knockouts by kicks on their resume.
Basic kicks
Roundhouse kick
The attacker swings their leg sideways in a circular motion, kicking the opponent's side with the front of the leg, usually with the instep, ball of the foot, toe, or shin. It can also be performed is a 360-degree kick where the attacker performs a full circle with their leg, in which the striking surface is generally either the instep, shin or ball of the foot.
There are many variations of the roundhouse kick based on various chambering of the cocked leg (small, or full, or universal or no chambering) or various footwork possibilities (rear-leg, front-leg, hopping, switch, oblique, dropping, ground spin-back or full 360 spin-back). An important variation is the downward roundhouse kick, nicknamed the Brazilian Kick from recent K-1 use: A more pronounced twist of the hips allows for a downward end of the trajectory of the kick that is very deceiving.
Due to its power, the roundhouse kick may also be performed at low level against targets, such as the knees, calf, or even thigh, since attacking leg muscles will often cripple an opponent's mobility. It is the most commonly used kick in kickboxing due to its power and ease of use. In most Karate styles, the instep is used to strike, though use of the shin as an official technique for a street fight would mostly be allowed.
Front kick
Delivering a front kick involves raising the knee and foot of the striking leg to the desired height and extending the leg to contact the target. The strike is usually delivered by the ball of the foot for a forward kick or the top of the toes for an upward kick. Taekwondo practitioners utilize both the heel and ball of the foot for striking. Various combat systems teach 'general' front kick using the heel or whole foot when footwear is on. Depending on the fighter's tactical needs, a front kick may involve more or less body motion and thrusting with the hips is a common method of increasing both reach and power of the kick. The front kick is typically executed with the upper body straight and balanced. Front kicks are typically aimed at targets below the chest: stomach, thighs, groin, knees or lower. Highly skilled martial artists are often capable of striking head-level targets with front kick.
Side kick
The side kick is delivered sideways in relation to the body of the person kicking. A standard side kick is performed by first 'chambering' by raising the kicking leg diagonally across the body, then extending the leg in a linear fashion toward the target, while flexing the abdominals. The two common impact points in sidekicks are the heel or the outer edge of the foot, with the heel is more suited to hard targets such as the ribs, stomach, jaw, temple and chest. When executing a side kick with the heel, the toes should be pulled back so that they only make contact the heel and not with the whole foot as striking with the arch or the ball of the foot can injure the foot or break an ankle.
Another way of doing the side kick is to make it a result of a faked roundhouse. This technique is considered antiquated and used only after an opponent is persuaded to believe it is a roundhouse (a feint) and then led to believe that closing the distance is best for an upper body attack, which plays into the tactical position and relative requirement of this version of the side kick. In Korean, yeop chagi and in Okinawan fighting, it is sometimes called a dragon kick. Some have called this side kick a "twist kick" due to its roundhouse like origins. This side kick begins as would a roundhouse kick however the practitioner allows the heel to move towards the center of the body. The kick is then directed outward from a cross-leg chamber so that the final destination of the kick is a target to the side, rather than one that is directly ahead.
Back kick
Also referred to as a donkey kick, mule kick, horse kick or turning back kick. This kick is directed backwards, keeping the kicking leg close to the standing leg and using the heel as a striking surface. In wushu, this kick is called the "half-moon" kick but involves the slight arching of the back and a higher lift of the leg to give a larger curvature. It is often used to strike opponents by surprise when facing away from them.
Advanced kicks
These are often complicated variations of basic kicks, either with a different target or combined with another move, such as jumping.
Axe kick
In Japanese, kakato-geri or kakato-otoshi; in Korean, doki bal chagi or naeryeo chagi or "chikka chagi". In Chinese, "pigua tui" or "xiapi tui".
An axe kick, also known as a hammer kick or stretch kick, is characterized by a straightened leg with the heel descending onto an opponent like the blade of an axe. It begins with one foot rising upward as in a crescent kick then the upward arc motion is stopped and then the attacking foot is lowered to strike the target from above. The arc can be performed in either an inward (counter-clockwise) or outward (clockwise) fashion.
A well-known proponent of the axe kick was Andy Hug, the Swiss Kyokushinkai Karateka who won the 1996 K-1 Grand Prix.
Butterfly kick
The butterfly kick is done by doing a large circular motion with both feet in succession, making the combatant airborne. There are many variations of this kick. The kick may look like a slanted aerial cartwheeland at the same time, the body spins horizontally in a circle. It begins as a jump with one leg while kicking with the other, then move the kicking leg down and the jumping leg up into a kick, landing with the first kicking leg, all while spinning. This kick involves also the arching the back backwards when airborne to give a horizontal body with high angled legs to the horizontal. It may also resemble a jumping spin roundhouse kick (developed by James 'Two Screens' Perkins) into a spinning hook kick, all in one jump and one spin although the difference is that both legs should remain in the air at the same time for a considerable amount of time.
First practiced in Chinese martial arts, the butterfly kick, or "xuan zi", is widely viewed as ineffective for actual combat. However, its original purpose was to evade an opponent's floor sweep and flip to the antagonist's exposed side or it may be used as a double aerial kick to an opponent standing off to the side. It is now widely used in demonstrative wushu forms (taolu) as a symbol of difficulty. Also note the similarity in execution when compared to an ice skating maneuver known as a flying camel spin (aka: Button Camel).
Calf kick
This strike is a low roundhouse kick that hits the backside of the calf with the shin. While a Calf Kick sacrifices range in comparison to a standard low roundhouse kick to the thigh, the Calf Kick can't be checked with a knee or grabbed with an arm making it a safer kick for a striker in MMA matches vs opponents capable of checking low kicks or grapplers looking for takedown opportunities. The kick was popularized by former UFC Lightweight champion Benson Henderson during his tenure in the UFC.
Crescent kick
In Korean, bandal chagi (반달 차기).
The crescent kick, also referred to as a "swing" kick, has some similarities to a hook kick and is sometimes practised as an off-target front snap kick. The leg is bent like the front kick, but the knee is pointed at a target to the left or right of the true target. The energy from the snap is then redirected, whipping the leg into an arc and hitting the target from the side. This is useful for getting inside defenses and striking the side of the head or for knocking down hands to follow up with a close attack. In many styles of T'ai chi ch'uan and Kalaripayattu, crescent kicks are taught as tripping techniques. When training for crescent kicks, it is common to keep the knee extended to increase the difficulty. This also increases the momentum of the foot and can generate more force, though it takes longer to build up the speed.
The inward/inner/inside crescent hits with the inside edge of the foot. Its arch is clockwise for the left leg and counter-clockwise for the right leg with force generated by both legs' movement towards from the midline of the body. The inward variant has also been called a hangetsu geri (Half moon kick) in karate and is employed to "wipe" an opponents hand off of the wrist. It can quickly be followed up by a low side-blade kick to the knee of the offender.
The outward/outer/outside crescent hits with the 'blade', the outside edge of the foot. Its path is counter-clockwise for the left leg and clockwise for the right leg and force is generated by both legs' hip abduction. This is similar to a rising side kick, only with the kicking leg's hip flexed so that the line of force travels parallel to the ground from front to side rather than straight up, beginning and ending at the side.
Hook kick
In Korean, () or .
The hook kick strikes with the heel from the side. It is executed similar to a side kick. However, the kick is intentionally aimed slightly off target in the direction of the kicking foot's toes. At full extension, the knee is bent and the foot snapped to the side, impacting the target with the heel. In Taekwondo it is often used at the resulting miss of a short slide side kick to the head, but is considered a very high level technique in said circumstance. Practitioners of jeet kune do frequently use the term heel hook kick or sweep kick. It is known as Gancho in Capoeira.
There are many variations of the hook kick, generally based on different foot work: rear- or front-leg, oblique or half-pivot, dropping, spin-back and more. The hook kick can be delivered with a near-straight leg at impact, or with a hooked finish (Kake in Japanese Karate) where the leg bends before impact to catch the target from behind. An important variation is the downward hook kick, delivered as a regular or a spin-back kick, in which the end of the trajectory is diagonally downwards for a surprise effect or following an evading opponent. Another important variation is the whip kick, which strikes with the flat of the foot instead of heel.
The hook kick is mainly used to strike the jaw area of an opponent, but is also highly effective in the temple region.
Reverse roundhouse/wheel kick
In Japanese, ; in Korean, (), , or .
This kick is also known as a heel kick, turning kick, reverse round kick, spinning hook kick, spin kick, or "wheel kick". A low reverse roundhouse is also known as a Sweep Kick or Sitting Spin Kick, however, in some martial arts circles, when aimed at a downward angle to the anterior side of the knee it is commonly referred to as "The Shark Kick" due to its tendency to tear the anterior cruciate ligament.
The Reverse Roundhouse kick traditionally uses the protruding point on the backside of the heel to strike with, the kicking leg coming from around the kicker's back as they pivot and the knee remaining relatively straight on the follow through, unlike the leg position in a reverse hooking kick, despite the spinning motion and the part of the heel being roughly the same. See above for more on hook kicks. Variations exist for low, middle and high heights. Spinning and leaping variations of the kick are also popular and are often showcased in film and television media. At UFC 142, Edson Barboza knocked out Terry Etim using a wheel kick in the third round of their fight, the first such in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
A similarly named but technically different kick, is a roundhouse kick performed by turning as if for a back straight kick and executing a roundhouse kick. It is known as a Reverse Roundhouse Kick because the kicker turns in the opposite, or "reverse", direction before the kick is executed. This kick strikes with the ball of the foot for power or the top of the foot for range. This was exhibited by Bruce Lee on numerous occasions in his films Enter the Dragon, Fist of Fury and The Big Boss, Bill Wallace was also a great user of this kick, as seen in his fight with Bill Briggs, where he KO'd his opponent with the clocked 60 mph kick. The Jump Spin Hook Kick was popularized in the mid-eighties by Steven Ho in open martial art competitions.
In Olympic format (sport) taekwondo, this technique is performed using the balls of the feet and in a manner similar to a back thrust, rather than the circular technique adopted in other styles/Martial Arts.
Flying kicks
A flying kick, in martial arts, is a general description of kicks that involve a running start, jump, then a kick in mid-air. Compared to a regular kick, the user is able to achieve greater momentum from the run at the start. Flying kicks are not to be mistaken for jumping kicks, which are similar maneuvers. A jumping kick is very similar to a flying kick, except that it lacks the running start and the user simply jumps and kicks from a stationary position. Flying kicks are often derived from the basic kicks. Some of the more commonly known flying kicks are the: flying side kick, flying back kick and the flying roundhouse kick, as well as the flying reverse roundhouse kick. Flying kicks are commonly practiced in Taekwondo, Karate, Wushu and Muay Thai for fitness, exhibitions and competition. It is known as in Japanese martial arts and in Taekwondo.
Showtime kick
The Showtime kick gained notability after being used by mixed martial artist Anthony Pettis, during his fight against Benson Henderson on December 16, at WEC 53 for the WEC Lightweight Championship. In the fifth round Pettis ran up the cage, jumped off the cage, then landed a switch kick while airborne. Sports reporters later named this the Showtime Kick. The kick was also used by mixed martial artists: Zabit Magomedsharipov and others. The kick was featured in the movie Here Comes the Boom.
Scissor kick
Several kicks may be called a scissor kick, involving swinging out the legs to kick multiple targets or using the legs to take down an opponent.
The popularized version of a scissor kick is, while lying down, or jumping, the kicker brings both legs to both sides of the opponent's legs or to their body and head, then brings both in as a take down (as the name states, leg motions are like that of a pair of scissors).
The scissor kick in Taekwondo is called kawi chagi. In Capoeira it is called tesoura (scissors).
Scissor kicks and other variants are also commonly applied in Vovinam.
Spinning heel kick
A spinning heel kick is where the artist turns his/her body 360 degrees before landing the heel or the ball of his/her foot on the target. It is found in Muay Thai and is known in Capoeira as armada.
Vertical kick (thrust kick/push kick/side kick)
The vertical kick involves bringing the knee forward and across the chest, then swinging the hip while extending the kicking leg outward, striking with the outside ("sword") edge of the foot. In karate this is called a yoko geri keage, in Taekwondo it is referred to as sewo chagi and can be performed as either an inward (anuro) or outward (bakuro) kick.
Multiple kick/machine gun kick
In Japanese karate, the term ren geri is used for several kicks performed in succession. Old karate did not promote the use of the legs for weapons as much as modern karate does, seeing them as being too open for countering, in modern sport karate (non-traditional) competitions, however, the ability to use multiple kicks without setting the foot down has become a viable option, not only for effectiveness but also for stylish aesthetics.
In Taekwondo, three types of multiple kick are distinguished:
Double kick (i-jung chagi): two kicks of the same type executed in succession by the same foot in the same direction.
Consecutive kick (yonsok chagi): two or more kicks executed in succession by the same foot but in different directions, or with different attacking tools.
Combination kick (honhap chagi): two or more kicks executed in succession by both feet.
One such Multiple Kick commonly seen in Taekwondo, is a slightly complex Side Kick where a High Side Kick is followed by a Low Side Kick which is in turn followed by a more powerful Side Kick. This combination is done rapidly and is meant not for multiple targets but for a single one. The Multiple Kick usually targets the face, thigh and chest, but in turn can be a multiple chest attack which is useful for knocking the breath out of an attacker. The Multiple Kick is usually done in the "second" style described in the Side Kick article which "involves shooting the leg forward as in a front kick and then pivoting and turning so" to actually deliver a side kick. That style "has far less power but is much faster and more deceptive", which is what the Multiple Kick was designed for. The Multiple Kick, unlike some Side Kicks or "side blade kicks", never uses the outer edge of the foot; it is intended solely for the heel to be used as the impact point. Depending on the strength and skill of the attacker and the attacked, the combination can be highly effective or highly ineffective when compared to more pragmatic attacks. In some encounters with highly trained and conditioned fighters, multiple side-kicks have seen disastrous results against the abs of their target.
See also
Dynamic stretching
Stomp
References
External links
Kickboxing terminology
Martial art techniques
Pain infliction methods | [
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16838 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid%20al-Mihdhar | Khalid al-Mihdhar | Khalid Muhammad Abdallah al-Mihdhar (, ; also transliterated as Almihdhar) (May 16, 1975 – September 11, 2001) was a Saudi Arabian terrorist hijacker. He was one of the five hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, which was flown into the Pentagon as part of the September 11 attacks.
Al-Mihdhar was born in Saudi Arabia and fought with the Bosnian mujahideen during the Bosnian War of the 1990s. In early 1999, he traveled to Afghanistan where, as an experienced and respected jihadist, he was selected by Osama bin Laden to participate in the attacks. Al-Mihdhar arrived in California with fellow hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi in January 2000, after traveling to Malaysia for the Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda Summit. At this point, the CIA was aware of al-Mihdhar, and he was photographed in Malaysia with another al-Qaeda member who was involved in the USS Cole bombing. The CIA did not inform the FBI when it learned that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi had entered the United States, and al-Mihdhar was not placed on any watchlists until late August 2001.
Upon arriving in San Diego County, California, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were to train as pilots, but spoke English poorly and did not do well with flight lessons. In June 2000, al-Mihdhar left the United States for Yemen, leaving al-Hazmi behind in San Diego. Al-Mihdhar spent some time in Afghanistan in early 2001 and returned to the United States in early July 2001. He stayed in New Jersey in July and August, before arriving in the Washington, D.C. area at the beginning of September.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, al-Mihdhar boarded American Airlines Flight 77, and assisted in the hijacking of the plane which was hijacked approximately 30 minutes after takeoff. al-Midhar and his team of hijackers then deliberately crashed the plane into the Pentagon, killing all 64 people aboard the flight, along with 125 on the ground.
Background
Al-Mihdhar was born on May 16, 1975 in Mecca, Saudi Arabia to a prominent family that belonged to the Quraysh tribe of Mecca. Little is known about his life before the age of 20, when he and childhood friend Nawaf al-Hazmi went to Bosnia and Herzegovina to fight with the mujahideen in the Bosnian War. After the war, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi went to Afghanistan where they fought alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance, and al-Qaeda would later dub al-Hazmi his "second in command". In 1997, al-Mihdhar told his family that he was leaving to fight in Chechnya, though it is not certain that he actually went to Chechnya. The same year, both men attracted the attention of Saudi Intelligence, who believed they were involved in arms smuggling, and the following year they were eyed as possible collaborators in the 1998 United States embassy bombings in East Africa after it emerged that Mohamed Rashed Daoud Al-Owhali had given the FBI the phone number of al-Mihdhar's father-in-law; 967-1-200578, which turned out to be a key communications hub for al-Qaeda militants, and eventually tipped off the Americans about the upcoming Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda Summit.
In the late 1990s, al-Mihdhar married Hoda al-Hada, who was the sister of a comrade from Yemen, and they had two daughters. Through marriage, al-Mihdhar was related to a number of individuals involved with al-Qaeda in some way. Al-Mihdhar's father-in-law, Ahmad Mohammad Ali al-Hada, helped facilitate al-Qaeda communications in Yemen, and in late 2001, al-Mihdhar's brother-in-law, Ahmed al-Darbi, was captured in Azerbaijan and sent to Guantanamo Bay on charges of supporting a plot to bomb ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Selection for the attacks
In Spring 1999, al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden committed to support the 9/11 attacks plot, which was largely organized by prominent al-Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were among the first group of participants selected for the operation, along with Tawfiq bin Attash and Abu Bara al Yemeni, al-Qaeda members from Yemen. Al-Mihdhar, who had spent time in al-Qaeda camps in the 1990s, was known and highly regarded by Bin Laden. Al-Mihdhar was so eager to participate in jihad operations in the United States that he had already obtained a one-year B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) multiple-entry visa from the consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on April 7, 1999, one day after obtaining a new passport. Al-Mihdhar listed the Los Angeles Sheraton as his intended destination.
Once selected, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were sent to the Mes Aynak training camp in Afghanistan. In late 1999, al-Hazmi, bin Attash and al Yemeni went to Karachi, Pakistan to see Mohammed, who instructed them on Western culture and travel; however, al-Mihdhar did not go to Karachi, instead returning to Yemen. He was known as Sinaan during the preparations.
2000
Malaysia summit
The CIA was aware of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi's involvement with al-Qaeda, having been informed by Saudi intelligence during a 1999 meeting in Riyadh. Based on information uncovered by the FBI in the 1998 United States embassy bombings case, the National Security Agency (NSA) began tracking the communications of Hada, al-Mihdhar's father-in-law. In late 1999, the NSA informed the CIA of an upcoming meeting in Malaysia, which Hada mentioned would involve "Khalid", "Nawaf", and "Salem", who was al-Hazmi's younger brother, Salem al-Hazmi.
On January 4, 2000, al-Mihdhar left Yemen and flew to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where he spent the night. The CIA broke into his hotel room and photocopied his passport, which gave them his full name, birth information and passport number for the first time, and alerted them that he held an entry visa to the United States. The photocopy was sent to the CIA's Alec Station, which was tracking al-Qaeda.
On January 5, 2000, al-Mihdhar traveled to Kuala Lumpur, where he joined al-Hazmi, bin Attash and al-Yemeni, who were all arriving from Pakistan. Hamburg cell member Ramzi bin al-Shibh was also at the summit, and Mohammed possibly attended. The group was in Malaysia to meet with Hambali, the leader of Jemaah Islamiyah, an Asian al-Qaeda affiliate. During the Kuala Lumpur al-Qaeda Summit, many key details of the 9/11 attacks may have been arranged. At the time, the attacks plot had an additional component involving hijacking aircraft in Asia, as well as in the United States. Bin Attash and al-Yemeni were slated for this part of the plot. However, it was later canceled by bin Laden for being too difficult to coordinate with United States operations.
In Malaysia, the group stayed with Yazid Sufaat, a local Jemaah Islamiyah member, who provided accommodation at Hambali's request. Both al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were secretly photographed at the meeting by Malaysian authorities, whom the CIA had asked to provide surveillance. The Malaysians reported that al-Mihdhar spoke at length with bin Attash, and he met with Fahd al-Quso and others who were later involved in the USS Cole bombing. After the meeting, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, on January 8 and left a week later on January 15 for the United States.
United States entry
On January 15, 2000, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Bangkok and were admitted as tourists for a period of six months. Immediately after entering the country, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi met Omar al-Bayoumi in an airport restaurant. Al-Bayoumi claimed he was merely being charitable in assisting the two seemingly out-of-place Muslims with moving to San Diego, where he helped them find an apartment near his own, co-signed their lease, and gave them $1,500 to help pay their rent. Mohammed later claimed that he suggested San Diego as their destination, based on information gleaned from a San Diego phone book that listed language and flight schools. Mohammed also recommended that the two seek assistance from the local Muslim community, since neither spoke English nor had experience with Western culture.
While in San Diego, witnesses told the FBI he and al-Hazmi had a close relationship with Anwar Al Awlaki, an imam who served as their spiritual advisor. Authorities say the two regularly attended the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque al-Awlaki led in San Diego, and al-Awlaki had many closed-door meetings with them, which led investigators to believe al-Awlaki knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance.
In early February 2000, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi rented an apartment at the Parkwood Apartments complex in the Clairemont Mesa area of San Diego, and al-Mihdhar purchased a used 1988 Toyota Corolla. Neighbors thought that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were odd because months passed without the men getting any furniture, and they slept on mattresses on the floor, yet they carried briefcases, were frequently on their mobile phones, and were occasionally picked up by a limousine. Those who met al-Mihdhar in San Diego described him as "dark and brooding, with a disdain for American culture". Neighbors also said that the pair constantly played flight simulator games.
Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi took flight lessons on May 5, 2000, at the Sorbi Flying Club in San Diego, with al-Mihdhar flying an aircraft for 42 minutes. They took additional lessons on May 10; however, with poor English skills, they did not do well with flight lessons. Al-Mihdhar and Al-Hazmi raised some suspicion when they offered extra money to their flight instructor, Richard Garza, if he would train them to fly jets. Garza refused the offer but did not report them to authorities. After the 9/11 attacks, Garza described the two men as "impatient students" who "wanted to learn to fly jets, specifically Boeings".
Return to Yemen
Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi moved out of the Parkwood Apartments at the end of May 2000, and al-Mihdhar transferred registration for the Toyota Corolla to al-Hazmi. On June 10, 2000,al-Mihdhar left the United States and returned to Yemen to visit his wife, against the wishes of Mohammed who wanted him to remain in the United States to help al-Hazmi adapt. Mohammed was so angered by this that he decided to remove al-Mihdhar from the 9/11 plot, but he was overruled by bin Laden. Al-Mihdhar remained part of the plot as a muscle hijacker, who would help take over the aircraft. On October 12, 2000, the USS Cole was bombed by a small boat loaden with explosives. After the bombing, Yemeni Prime Minister Abdul Karim al-Iryani reported that al-Mihdhar had been one of the key planners of the attack and had been in the country at the time of the attacks. In late 2000, al-Mihdhar was back in Saudi Arabia, staying with a cousin in Mecca.
2001
In February 2001, al-Mihdhar returned to Afghanistan for several months, possibly entering across the Iranian border after a flight from Syria. FBI director Robert Mueller later stated his belief that al-Mihdhar served as the coordinator and organizer for the muscle hijackers. He was the last of the muscle hijackers to return to the United States. On June 10, he returned to Saudi Arabia for a month, where he applied to re-enter the United States through the Visa Express program, indicating that he intended to stay at a Marriott hotel in New York City. On his visa application, al-Mihdhar falsely stated that he had never previously traveled to the United States.
On July 4, al-Mihdhar returned to the United States, arriving at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport, using a new passport obtained the previous month. A digital copy of one of al-Mihdhar's passports was later recovered during a search of an al-Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan, which held indicators, such as fake or altered passport stamps, that al-Mihdhar was a member of a known terrorist group. At the time when al-Mihdhar was admitted to the United States, immigration inspectors had not been trained to look for such indicators. Upon arriving, al-Mihdhar did not check into the Marriott but instead spent a night at another hotel in the city.
Al-Mihdhar bought a fake ID on July 10 from All Services Plus in Passaic County, New Jersey, which was in the business of selling counterfeit documents, including another ID to Flight 11 hijacker Abdulaziz al-Omari. On August 1, al-Mihdhar and fellow Flight 77 hijacker Hani Hanjour drove to Virginia in order to obtain driver's licenses. Once they arrived, they scouted out a 7-Eleven convenience store and a dollar store in Falls Church, and found two Salvadoran immigrants who, for $50 each, were willing to vouch for al-Mihdhar and Hanjour as being Virginian residents. With notarized residency forms, al-Mihdhar and Hanjour were able to obtain driver's licenses at a Virginian motor vehicle office. Flight 77 hijackers Salem al-Hazmi and Majed Moqed, and United Airlines Flight 93 hijacker Ziad Jarrah used the same addresses obtained from the Salvadorans to obtain Virginian driver's licenses.
In August 2001, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi made several visits to the library at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey, where they used computers to look up travel information and book flights. On August 22, al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi tried to purchase flight tickets from the American Airlines online ticket-merchant, but had technical difficulties and gave up. Al-Mihdhar and Moqed were able to make flight reservations for Flight 77 on August 25, using Moqed's credit card; however, the transaction did not fully go through because the billing address and the shipment address for the tickets did not match.
On August 31, al-Mihdhar closed an account at Hudson United Bank in New Jersey, having opened the account when he arrived in July, and was with Hanjour when he made a withdrawal from an ATM in Paterson on September 1. The next day, al-Mihdhar, Moqed and Hanjour traveled to Maryland, where they stayed at budget motels in Laurel. Al-Mihdhar was among the muscle hijackers who worked out at a Gold's Gym in Greenbelt in early September. On September 5, al-Mihdhar and Moqed went to the American Airlines ticket counter at Baltimore-Washington International Airport to pick up their tickets for Flight 77, paying $2,300 in cash.
Intelligence leads
Al-Mihdhar was placed on a CIA watchlist on August 21, 2001, and a note was sent on August 23 to the Department of State and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) suggesting that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi be added to their watchlists. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) was not notified about the two men. On August 23, the CIA informed the FBI that al-Mihdhar had obtained a U.S. visa in Jeddah. The FBI headquarters received a copy of the Visa Express application from the Jeddah embassy on August 24, showing the New York Marriott as al-Mihdhar's destination.
On August 28, the FBI New York field office requested that a criminal case be opened to determine whether al-Mihdhar was still in the United States, but the request was refused. The FBI ended up treating al-Mihdhar as an intelligence case, which meant that the FBI's criminal investigators could not work on the case, due to the barrier separating intelligence and criminal case operations. An agent in the New York office sent an e-mail to FBI headquarters saying, "Whatever has happened to this, someday someone will die, and the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain 'problems.'" The reply from headquarters was, "we [at headquarters] are all frustrated with this issue ... [t]hese are the rules. NSLU does not make them up."
The FBI contacted Marriott on August 30, requesting that they check guest records, and on September 5, they reported that no Marriott hotels had any record of al-Mihdhar checking in. The day before the attacks, Robert Fuller of the New York office requested that the Los Angeles FBI office check all local Sheraton Hotels, as well as Lufthansa and United Airlines bookings, because those were the two airlines al-Mihdhar had used to enter the country. Neither the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network nor the FBI's Financial Review Group, which have access to credit card and other private financial records, were notified about al-Mihdhar prior to September 11.
Regarding the CIA's refusal to inform the FBI about al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, author Lawrence Wright suggests the CIA wanted to protect its turf and was concerned about giving sensitive intelligence to FBI Agent John P. O'Neill, who Alec Station chief Michael Scheuer described as duplicitous. Wright also speculates that the CIA may have been protecting intelligence operations overseas, and might have been eying al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi as recruitment targets to obtain intelligence on al-Qaeda, although the CIA was not authorized to operate in the United States and might have been leaving them for Saudi intelligence to recruit.
September 11 attacks
On September 10, 2001, al-Mihdhar and the other hijackers checked into the Marriott Residence Inn in Herndon, Virginia, near Washington Dulles International Airport. Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman Hussayen, a prominent Saudi Arabian government official, was staying at the same hotel that night, although there is no evidence that they met or knew of each other's presence.
At 6:22 a.m. on September 11, 2001, the group checked out of the hotel and headed to Dulles airport. At 7:15 a.m., al-Mihdhar and Moqed checked in at the American Airlines ticket counter and arrived at the passenger security checkpoint at 7:20 a.m. Both men set off the metal detector and were put through secondary screening. Security video footage later released shows that Moqed was wanded, but the screener did not identify what set off the alarm, and both Moqed and al-Mihdhar were able to proceed without further hindrance. Al-Mihdhar was also selected by the Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System (CAPPS), which involved extra screening of his luggage; however, because al-Mihdhar did not check any luggage, this had no effect. By 7:50 a.m., al-Mihdhar and the other hijackers, carrying knives and box cutters, had made it through the airport security checkpoint and boarded Flight 77 to Los Angeles. Al-Mihdhar was seated in seat 12B, next to Moqed.
The flight was scheduled to depart from Gate D26 at 8:10 a.m. but was delayed by 10 minutes. The last routine radio communication from the plane to air traffic control occurred at 8:50:51 a.m. At 8:54 a.m., Flight 77 deviated from its assigned flight path and began to turn south, at which point the hijackers set the flight's autopilot setting for Washington, D.C. Passenger Barbara Olson called her husband, United States Solicitor General Ted Olson (whose 61st birthday was on that day), and reported that the plane had been hijacked. At 9:37:45 a.m, Flight 77 crashed into the west facade of the Pentagon, killing all 64 people aboard, along with 125 in the Pentagon. In the recovery process, remains of the five hijackers were identified through a process of elimination, since their DNA did not match any from the victims, and put into the custody of the FBI.
Aftermath
After the attacks, the identification of al-Mihdhar was one of the first links suggesting that bin Laden had played a role in their organization, since al-Mihdhar had been seen at the Malaysian conference speaking to bin Laden's associates. The FBI interrogated Quso, who was arrested following the USS Cole bombing and in custody in Yemen. Quso was able to identify al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi and bin Attash in photos provided by the FBI, and he also knew Marwan al-Shehhi, a hijacker aboard United Airlines Flight 175. From Quso, the FBI was able to establish an al-Qaeda link to the attacks.
On September 12, 2001, the Toyota Corolla purchased by al-Mihdhar was found in Dulles International Airport's hourly parking lot. Inside the vehicle, authorities found a letter written by Mohamed Atta, a hijacker aboard American Airlines Flight 11; maps of Washington, D.C. and New York City; a cashier's check made out to a Phoenix, Arizona flight school; four drawings of a Boeing 757 cockpit; a box cutter; and a page with notes and phone numbers, which contained evidence that led investigators to San Diego.
On September 19, 2001, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) distributed a special alert that listed al-Mihdhar as still alive, and other reports began suggesting that a number of the alleged hijackers were likewise still alive. For instance, on September 23, 2001, the BBC published an article that suggested al-Mihdhar and others named as hijackers were still at large. The German magazine Der Spiegel later investigated the BBC's claims of "living" hijackers and reported they were cases of mistaken identities. In 2002, Saudi Arabian officials stated that the names of the hijackers were correct and that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian. In 2006, in response to 9/11 conspiracy theories surrounding its original news story, the BBC said that confusion had arisen with the common Arabic names, and that its later reports on the hijackers superseded its original story.
In 2005, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and Congressman Curt Weldon alleged that the Defense Department data mining project Able Danger identified al-Mihdhar, al-Hazmi, al-Shehri, and Atta as members of a Brooklyn-based al-Qaeda cell in early 2000. Shaffer largely based his allegations on the recollections of Navy Captain Scott Phillpott, who later recanted his recollection, telling investigators that he was "convinced that Atta was not on the chart that we had". Phillpott said that Shaffer was "relying on my recollection 100 percent", and the Defense Department Inspector General's report indicated that Philpott strongly supported the social network analysis techniques used in Able Danger, and might have exaggerated claims of identifying the hijackers.
See also
Hijackers in the September 11 attacks
Notes
References
Sources
1975 births
2001 deaths
Saudi Arabian al-Qaeda members
Participants in the September 11 attacks
American Airlines Flight 77
People from Mecca
Anwar al-Awlaki
Saudi Arabian mass murderers
Saudi Arabian murderers of children
Bosnian mujahideen | [
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16839 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilo- | Kilo- | Kilo is a decimal unit prefix in the metric system denoting multiplication by one thousand (103). It is used in the International System of Units, where it has the symbol k, in lower case.
The prefix kilo is derived from the Greek word (), meaning "thousand".
In 19th century English it was sometimes spelled chilio, in line with a puristic opinion by Thomas Young. As an opponent of suggestions to introduce the metric system in Britain, he qualified the nomenclature adopted in France as barbarous.
Examples
one kilogram (kg) is 1000 grams
one kilometre (km) is 1000 metres
one kilojoule (kJ) is 1000 joules
one kilolitre (kL) is 1000 litres
one kilobaud (kBd) is 1000 baud
one kilohertz (kHz) is 1000 hertz
one kilobit (kb) is 1000 bits
one kilobyte (kB) is 1000 bytes
one kiloohm is (kΩ) is 1000 ohms
one kilosecond (ks) is 1000 seconds
one kilotonne (kt) is 1000 tonnes
By extension, currencies are also sometimes preceded by the prefix kilo-:
one kiloeuro (k€) is 1000 euros
one kilodollar (k$) is 1000 dollars
kilobyte
For the kilobyte, a second definition has been in common use in some fields of computer science and information technology. It uses kilobyte to mean 210 bytes (= 1024 bytes), because of the mathematical coincidence that 210 is approximately 103. The reason for this application is that digital hardware and architectures natively use base 2 exponentiation, and not decimal systems. JEDEC memory standards still permit this definition, but acknowledge the correct SI usage.
NIST comments on the confusion caused by these contrasting definitions: "Faced with this reality, the IEEE Standards Board decided that IEEE standards will use the conventional, internationally adopted, definitions of the SI prefixes", instead of kilo for 1024. To address this conflict, a new set of binary prefixes has been introduced, which is based on powers of 2. Therefore, 1024 bytes are defined as one kibibyte (1 KiB).
Exponentiation
When units occur in exponentiation, such as in square and cubic forms, any multiplier prefix is considered part of the unit, and thus included in the exponentiation.
1 km2 means one square kilometre or the area of a square that measures 1000 m on each side or 106 m2 (as opposed to 1000 square meters, which is the area of a square that measures 31.6 m on each side).
1 km3 means one cubic kilometre or the volume of a cube that measures 1000 m on each side or 109 m3 (as opposed to 1000 cubic meters, which is the volume of a cube that measures 10 m on each side).
See also
milli- (inverse of kilo- prefix, denoting a factor of 1/1000)
kibi- (binary prefix, denoting a factor of 1024)
RKM code
References
SI prefixes
1000 (number)
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16843 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utamaro | Utamaro | Kitagawa Utamaro (; – 31 October 1806) was a Japanese artist. He is one of the most highly regarded designers of ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings, and is best known for his bijin ōkubi-e "large-headed pictures of beautiful women" of the 1790s. He also produced nature studies, particularly illustrated books of insects.
Little is known of Utamaro's life. His work began to appear in the 1770s, and he rose to prominence in the early 1790s with his portraits of beauties with exaggerated, elongated features. He produced over 2000 known prints and was one of the few ukiyo-e artists to achieve fame throughout Japan in his lifetime. In 1804 he was arrested and manacled for fifty days for making illegal prints depicting the 16th-century military ruler Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and died two years later.
Utamaro's work reached Europe in the mid-nineteenth century, where it was very popular, enjoying particular acclaim in France. He influenced the European Impressionists, particularly with his use of partial views and his emphasis on light and shade, which they imitated. The reference to the "Japanese influence" among these artists often refers to the work of Utamaro.
Background
Ukiyo-e art flourished in Japan during the Edo period from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. The artform took as its primary subjects courtesans, kabuki actors, and others associated with the ukiyo "floating world" lifestyle of the pleasure districts. Alongside paintings, mass-produced woodblock prints were a major form of the genre. Ukiyo-e art was aimed at the common townspeople at the bottom of the social scale, especially of the administrative capital of Edo. Its audience, themes, aesthetics, and mass-produced nature kept it from consideration as serious art.
In the mid-eighteenth century, full-colour prints became common. They were printed by using a large number of woodblocks, one for each colour. Towards the close of the eighteenth century there was a peak in both quality and quantity of the work. Kiyonaga was the pre-eminent portraitist of beauties during the 1780s, and the tall, graceful beauties in his work had a great influence on Utamaro, who was to succeed him in fame. Shunshō of the Katsukawa school introduced the "large-headed picture" in the 1760s. He and other members of the Katsukawa school, such as Shunkō, popularized the form for actor prints, and popularized the dusting of mica in the backgrounds to produce a glittering effect.
Biography
Early life
Little is known of Utamaro's life. He was born Kitagawa Ichitarō in . As an adult, he was known by the given names Yūsuke, and later Yūki. Early accounts have given his birthplace as Kyoto, Osaka, Yoshiwara in Edo (modern Tokyo), or Kawagoe in Musashi Province (modern Saitama Prefecture); none of these places has been verified. The names of his parents are not known; it has been suggested his father may have been a Yoshiwara teahouse owner, or Toriyama Sekien, an artist who tutored him and who wrote of Utamaro playing in his garden as a child.
Apparently, Utamaro married, although little is known about his wife and there is no record of their having had children. There are, however, many prints of tender and intimate domestic scenes featuring the same woman and child over several years of the child's growth among his works.
Apprenticeship and early work
Sometime during his childhood Utamaro came under the tutelage of Sekien, who described his pupil as bright and devoted to art. Sekien, although trained in the upper-class Kanō school of Japanese painting, had become in middle age a practitioner of ukiyo-e and his art was aimed at the townspeople in Edo. His students included haiku poets and ukiyo-e artists such as Eishōsai Chōki.
Utamaro's first published work may be an illustration of eggplants in the haikai poetry anthology Chiyo no Haru published in 1770. His next known works appear in 1775 under the name Kitagawa Toyoaki,—the cover to a kabuki playbook entitled Forty-eight Famous Love Scenes which was distributed at the Edo playhouse Nakamura-za. As Toyoaki, Utamaro continued as an illustrator of popular literature for the rest of the decade, and occasionally produced single-sheet portraits of kabuki actors.
The young, ambitious publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō enlisted Utamaro and in the autumn of 1782 the artist hosted a lavish banquet whose list of guests included artists such as Kiyonaga, Kitao Shigemasa, and Katsukawa Shunshō, as well as writers such as Ōta Nanpo (1749–1823)and . It was at this banquet that it is believed the artist first announced his new art name, Utamaro. Per custom, he distributed a specially made print for the occasion, in which, before a screen bearing the names of his guests, is a self-portrait of Utamaro making a deep bow.
Utamaro's first work for Tsutaya appeared in a publication dated as 1783: The Fantastic Travels of a Playboy in the Land of Giants, a picture book created in collaboration with his friend Shimizu Enjū, a writer. In the book, Tsutaya described the pair as making their debuts.
At some point in the mid-1780s, probably 1783, he went to live with Tsutaya Jūzaburō. It is estimated that he lived there for approximately five years. He seems to have become a principal artist for the Tsutaya firm. Evidence of his prints for the next few years is sporadic, as he mostly produced illustrations for books of kyōka ("crazy verse"), a parody of the classical waka form. None of his work produced during the period 1790–1792 has survived.
Height of fame
In about 1791 Utamaro gave up designing prints for books and concentrated on making single portraits of women displayed in half-length, rather than the prints of women in groups favoured by other ukiyo-e artists.
In 1793 he achieved recognition as an artist, and his semi-exclusive arrangement with the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō ended. Utamaro then went on to produce several series of well-known works, all featuring women of the Yoshiwara district.
Over the years, he also created a number of volumes of animal, insect, and nature studies and shunga, or erotica. Shunga prints were quite acceptable in Japanese culture, not associated with a negative concept of pornography as found in western cultures, but considered rather as a natural aspect of human behavior and circulated among all levels of Japanese society.
Later life
Tsutaya Jūzaburō died in 1797, and Utamaro thereafter lived in Kyūemon-chō, then Bakuro-chō, and finally near the Benkei Bridge. Utamaro was apparently very upset by the loss of his long-time friend and supporter. Some commentators feel that after this event, his work never reached the heights previously attained.
A law went into effect in 1790 requiring prints to bear a censor's seal of approval to be sold. Censorship increased in strictness over the following decades, and violators could receive harsh punishments. From 1799 even preliminary drafts required approval. A group of Utagawa-school offenders including Toyokuni had their works repressed in 1801. In 1804, Utamaro ran into legal trouble over a series of prints of samurai warriors, with their names slightly disguised; the depiction of warriors, their names, and their crests was forbidden at the time. Records have not survived of what sort of punishment Utamaro received.
Arrest of 1804
The , published from 1797 to 1802, detailed the life of the 16th-century military ruler, Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The work was widely adapted, such as for kabuki and bunraku theatre. When artists and writers put out prints and books based on the Ehon Taikōki in the disparaged ukiyo-e style, it attracted reprisals from the government. In probably the most famous case of censorship of the Edo period, Utamaro was imprisoned in 1804, after which he was manacled along with Tsukimaro, Toyokuni, Shuntei, Shun'ei, and Jippensha Ikku for fifty days and their publishers subjected to heavy fines.
Government documents of the case are no longer extant, and there are few other documents relating to the incident. It appears that Utamaro was most prominent of the group. The artists might have offended the authorities by identifying the historical figures by name and with their identifying crests and other symbols, which was prohibited, and by depicting Hideyoshi with prostitutes of the pleasure quarters. Utamaro's censored prints include one of the daimyō Katō Kiyomasa lustily gazing at a Korean dancer at a party, another of Hideyoshi holding the hand of his page Ishida Mitsunari in a sexually suggestive manner, and another of Hideyoshi with his five consorts viewing the cherry blossoms at the temple Daigo-ji in Kyoto, a historical event famous for displaying Hideyoshi's extravagance. This last displays the names of each consort while placing them in the typical poses of courtesans at a Yoshiwara party.
Death
Records give Utamaro's death date as the 20th day of the 9th month of the year Bunka, which equates to 31 October 1806. He was given the Buddhist posthumous name Shōen Ryōkō Shinshi. Apparently with no heirs, his tomb at the temple was left untended. A century later, in 1917, admirers of Utamaro had the decayed grave repaired.
Pupils
Utamaro had a number of pupils, who took names such as Kikumaro (later Tsukimaro), Hidemaro, and Takemaro. These artists produced works in the master's style, though none are considered of Utamaro's quality. Sometimes he allowed them to sign his name. Of his students, Koikawa Shunchō married Utamaro's widow on the master's death and took on the name . After 1820 he produced his work under the name Kitagawa Tetsugorō.
Analysis
What little information about Utamaro's life that has been passed down is often contradictory, so analysis of his development as an artist relies chiefly on his work itself. Utamaro is known primarily for his bijin-ga portraits of female beauties, though his work ranges from kachō-e "flower-and-bird pictures" to landscapes to book illustrations.
Utamaro's early bijin-ga follow closely the example of Kiyonaga. In the 1790s his figures became more exaggerated, with thin bodies and long faces with small features. Utamaro experimented with line, colour, and printing techniques to bring out subtle differences in the features, expressions, and backdrops of subjects from a wide variety of class and background. Utamaro's individuated beauties were in sharp contrast to the stereotyped, idealized images that had been the norm.
By the end of the 1790s, especially following the death of his patron Tsutaya Jūzaburō in 1797, Utamaro's prodigious output declined in quality. By 1800 his exaggerations had become more extreme, with faces three times as long as they are wide and body proportions of eight heads length to the body. By this point, critics such as Basil Stewart consider Utamaro's figures to "lose much of their grace"; these later works are less prized amongst collectors.
Utamaro produced more than two thousand prints during his working career, amongst which are over 120 bijin-ga print series. He made illustrations for nearly 100 books and about 30 paintings. He also created a number of paintings and surimono, as well as many illustrated books, including more than thirty shunga books, albums, and related publications. Among his best-known works are the series Ten Studies in Female Physiognomy, A Collection of Reigning Beauties, Great Love Themes of Classical Poetry (sometimes called Women in Love containing individual prints such as Revealed Love and Pensive Love), and Twelve Hours in the Pleasure Quarters. His work appeared from at least 60 publishers, of which Tsutaya Jūzaburō and Izumiya Ichibei were the most important.
He alone, of his contemporary ukiyo-e artists, achieved a national reputation during his lifetime. His sensuous beauties generally are considered the finest and most evocative bijinga in all of ukiyo-e.
He succeeded in capturing the subtle aspects of personality and the transient moods of women of all classes, ages, and circumstances. His reputation has remained undiminished since. Kitagawa Utamaro's work is known worldwide, and he generally is regarded as one of the half-dozen greatest ukiyo-e artists of all time.
Legacy
Utamaro was recognized as a master in his own age. He appears to have achieved a national reputation at a time when even the most popular Edo ukiyo-e artists were little known outside the city. Due to his popularity Utamaro had many imitators, some of whom likely signed their work with his name; this is believed to include students of his and his successor, Utamaro II. On rare occasions Utamaro signed his work "the genuine Utamaro" to distinguish himself from these imitators. Forgeries and reprints of Utamaro's work are common; he produced a large body of work, but his earlier, more popular works are difficult to find in good condition.
A wave of interest in Japanese art swept France from the mid-19th century, called Japonisme. Exhibitions in Paris of Japanese art began to be staged in the 1880s, include an Utamaro exhibition in 1888 by the German-French art dealer Siegfried Bing. The French Impressionists regarded Utamaro's work on a level akin with Hokusai and Hiroshige. French artist-collectors of Utamaro's work included Monet, Degas, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec
Utamaro had an influence on the compositional, colour, and sense of tranquility of the American painter Mary Cassatt's work. The shin-hanga ("new prints") artist Goyō Hashiguchi (1880–1921) was called the "Utamaro of the Taishō period" (1912–1926) for his manner of depicting women. The painter character Seiji Moriyama in the British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World (1986) has a reputation as a "modern Utamaro" for his combination of Western techniques Utamaro-like feminine subjects.
In 2016 Utamaro's Fukaku Shinobu Koi set the record price for an ukiyo-e print sold at auction at €.
Historiography
The only surviving official record of Utamaro is a stele at Senkō-ji Temple, which gives his death date as the 20th day of the 9th month of the year Bunka, which equates to 31 October 1806. The record states he was 54 by East Asian age reckoning, by which age begins at 1 rather than 0. From this a birth year of is deduced.
Utamaro has gained general acceptance as one of the form's greatest masters. The earliest document of ukiyo-e artists, Ukiyo-e Ruikō, was first compiled while Utamaro was active. The work was not printed, but exists in various manuscripts that different writers altered and expanded. The earliest surviving copy, the Ukiyo-e Kōshō, wrote of Utamaro:
Kitagawa Utamaro, personal name Yūsuke
At the start entered the studio of Toriyama Sekien and studied pictures in the Kanō school. Later drew pictures of the styles and manners of men and women and resided temporarily with ezōshiya Tsutaya Jūzaburō. Now lives in . Many nishiki-e.
The earliest comprehensive historical and critical works on ukiyo-e came from the West, and often denied Utamaro a place in the ukiyo-e canon. Ernest Fenollosa's Masters of of 1896 was the first such overview of ukiyo-e. The book posited ukiyo-e as having evolved towards a late-18th-century golden age that began to decline with the advent of Utamaro, which he condemned for his "gradual elongation of the figure, and an adoption of violent emotion and extravagant attitudes". Fenollosa had harsher criticism for Utamaro's pupils, who he considered to have "carried the extravagances of their teacher to a point of ugliness". In his Chats on Japanese Prints of 1915, Arthur Davison Ficke concurred that with Utamaro ukiyo-e entered a period of exaggerated, manneristic decadence.
Laurence Binyon, the Keeper of Oriental Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, wrote an account in Painting in the Far East in 1908 that was similar to Fenollosa's, considering the 1790s a period of decline, but placing Utamaro amongst the masters. He called Utamaro "one of the world's artists for the intrinsic qualities of his genius" and "the greatest of all the figure-designers" in ukiyo-e, with a "far greater resource of composition" than his peers and an "endless" capacity for "unexpected invention". James A. Michener re-evaluated the development of ukiyo-e in The Floating World of 1954, in which he places the 1790s as "the culminating years of ukiyo-e", when "Utamaro brought the grace of Sukenobu to its apex". 's Traditional Woodblock Prints of Japan of 1964 set the golden age of ukiyo-e at the period of Kiyonaga, Utamaro, and Sharaku, followed by a period of decline with the declaration beginning in the 1790s of strict sumptuary laws that dictated what could be depicted in artworks.
The French art critic Edmond de Goncourt published Outamaro, the first monograph on Utamaro, in 1891, with help from the Japanese art dealer Tadamasa Hayashi. British ukiyo-e scholar Jack Hillier had the monograph Utamaro: Colour Prints and Paintings published in 1961.
Print series
A partial list of his print series and their dates includes:
Utamakura (1788) attributed
Chosen Poems (1791–1792)
Ten Types of Women's Physiognomies (1792–1793)
Famous Beauties of Edo (1792–1793)
Ten Learned Studies of Women (1792–1793)
Anthology of Poems: The Love Section (1793–1794)
Snow, Moon, and Flowers of the Green Houses (1793–1795)
Five Shades of Ink in the Northern Quarter (1794–1795)
Array of Supreme Beauties of the Present Day (1794)
Twelve Hours of the Green Houses (1794–1795)
Renowned Beauties from the Six Best Houses (1795–96)
Flourishing Beauties of the Present Day (1795–1797)
An Array of Passionate Lovers (1797–1798)
Ten Forms of Feminine Physiognomy (1802)
Paintings
Shinagawa no Tsuki, Yoshiwara no Hana, and Fukagawa no Yuki
Gallery
Notes
References
Works cited
Further reading
Siegfried Bing, The Art of Utamaro, (The Studio, February 1895)
Jack Hillier, Utamaro: Color Prints and Paintings (Phaidon, London, 1961)
Muneshige Narazaki, Sadao Kikuchi, (translated John Bester), Masterworks of Ukiyo-E: Utamaro (Kodansha, Tokyo, 1968)
Shugo Asano, Timothy Clark, The Passionate Art of Kitagawa Utamaro (British Museum Press, London, 1995)
Julie Nelson Davis, Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty (Reaktion Books, London, and University of Hawai'i Press, 2007)
Gina Collia-Suzuki, The Complete Woodblock Prints of Kitagawa Utamaro: A Descriptive Catalogue'' (Nezu Press, 2009) - complete catalogue raisonné
External links
Works by Utamaro in the British Museum
Exploring the World of Kitagawa Utamaro
Utamaro's books in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
Kitagawa Utamaro Online at www.artcyclopedia.com
Songs of the garden, the "Insect Book" by Utamaro, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF)
1753 births
1806 deaths
Ukiyo-e artists
Japanese printmakers
Japanese portrait painters
Shunga by artist
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16844 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi%20Annan | Kofi Annan | Kofi Atta Annan (; 8 April 193818 August 2018) was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organization founded by Nelson Mandela.
Annan studied economics at Macalester College, international relations at the Graduate Institute Geneva, and management at MIT. Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organization's Geneva office. He went on to work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including serving as the Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996. He was appointed the Secretary-General on 13 December 1996 by the Security Council, and later confirmed by the General Assembly, making him the first office holder to be elected from the UN staff itself. He was re-elected for a second term in 2001, and was succeeded as Secretary-General by Ban Ki-moon on 1 January 2007.
As Secretary-General, Annan reformed the UN bureaucracy; worked to combat HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa; and launched the UN Global Compact. He was criticized for not expanding the Security Council and faced calls for his resignation after an investigation into the Oil-for-Food Programme, but was largely exonerated of personal corruption. After the end of his term as UN Secretary-General, he founded the Kofi Annan Foundation in 2007 to work on international development. In 2012, Annan was the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, to help find a resolution to the ongoing conflict there. Annan quit after becoming frustrated with the UN's lack of progress with regards to conflict resolution. In September 2016, Annan was appointed to lead a UN commission to investigate the Rohingya crisis. He died in 2018 and was given a state funeral.
Early years and education
Kofi Annan was born in Kumasi in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) on 8 April 1938. His twin sister Efua Atta, who died in 1991, shared the middle name Atta, which in the Akan language means "twin". Annan and his sister were born into one of the country's Fante aristocratic families; both of their grandfathers and their uncle were Fante paramount chiefs.
In the Akan names tradition, some children are named according to the day of the week on which they were born, sometimes in relation to how many children precede them. Kofi in Akan is the name that corresponds with Friday, the day of which Annan was born. Annan said that his surname rhymes with "cannon" in English. the last name Annan in Fante means fourth-born child.
From 1954 to 1957, Annan attended the elite Mfantsipim, an all-boys Methodist boarding school in Cape Coast founded in the 1870s. Annan said that the school taught him that "suffering anywhere, concerns people everywhere". In 1957, the year Annan graduated from Mfantsipim, the Gold Coast gained independence from the UK and began using the name "Ghana".
In 1958, Annan began studying economics at the Kumasi College of Science and Technology, now the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology of Ghana. He received a Ford Foundation grant, enabling him to complete his undergraduate studies in economics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States, in 1961. Annan then completed a diplôme d'études approfondies DEA degree in International Relations at The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1961 to 1962. After some years of work experience, he studied at the MIT Sloan School of Management (1971–72) in the Sloan Fellows program and earned a master's degree in management.
Annan was fluent in English, French, Akan, and some Kru languages as well as other African languages.
Career
In 1962, Annan started working as a budget officer for the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations (UN). From 1974 to 1976, he worked as a manager of the state-owned Ghana Tourist Development Company in Accra. In 1980 he became the head of personnel for the office of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva. Between 1981 and 1983 he was a member of the Governing Board of the International School of Geneva. In 1983 he became the director of administrative management services of the UN Secretariat in New York. In 1987, Annan was appointed as an Assistant Secretary-General for Human Resources Management and Security Coordinator for the UN system. In 1990, he became Assistant Secretary-General for Program Planning, Budget and Finance, and Control.
When Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali established the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) in 1992, Annan was appointed to the new department as Deputy to then Under-Secretary-General Marrack Goulding. Annan was subsequently appointed in March 1993 as Under-Secretary-General of that department. On 29 August 1995, while Boutros-Ghali was unreachable on an airplane, Annan instructed United Nations officials to "relinquish for a limited period of time their authority to veto air strikes in Bosnia." This move allowed NATO forces to conduct Operation Deliberate Force and made him a favorite of the United States. According to Richard Holbrooke, Annan's "gutsy performance" convinced the United States that he would be a good replacement for Boutros-Ghali.
He was appointed a Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the former Yugoslavia, serving from November 1995 to March 1996.
Criticism
In 2003, retired Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, who was force commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, claimed that Annan was overly passive in his response to the imminent genocide. In his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (2003), Dallaire asserted that Annan held back UN troops from intervening to settle the conflict, and from providing more logistical and material support. Dallaire claimed that Annan failed to provide responses to his repeated faxes asking for access to a weapons depository; such weapons could have helped Dallaire defend the endangered Tutsis. In 2004, ten years after the genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed, Annan said, "I could and should have done more to sound the alarm and rally support."
In his book Interventions: A Life in War and Peace, Annan again argued that the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations could have made better use of the media to raise awareness of the violence in Rwanda and put pressure on governments to provide the troops necessary for an intervention. Annan explained that the events in Somalia and the collapse of the UNOSOM II mission fostered a hesitation among UN Member states to approve robust peacekeeping operations. As a result, when the UNAMIR mission was approved just days after the battle, the resulting force lacked the troop levels, resources and mandate to operate effectively.
Secretary-General of the United Nations (1997–2006)
Appointment
In 1996, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali ran unopposed for a second term. Although he won 14 of the 15 votes on the Security Council, he was vetoed by the United States. After four deadlocked meetings of the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali suspended his candidacy, becoming the only Secretary-General ever to be denied a second term. Annan was the leading candidate to replace him, beating Amara Essy by one vote in the first round. However, France vetoed Annan four times before finally abstaining. The UN Security Council recommended Annan on 13 December 1996. Confirmed four days later by the vote of the General Assembly, he started his first term as Secretary-General on 1 January 1997.
Due to Boutros-Ghali's overthrow, a second Annan term would give Africa the office of Secretary-General for three consecutive terms. In 2001, the Asia-Pacific Group agreed to support Annan for a second term in return for the African Group's support for an Asian Secretary-General in the 2006 selection. The Security Council recommended Annan for a second term on 27 June 2001, and the General Assembly approved his reappointment on 29 June 2001.
Activities
Recommendations for UN reform
Soon after taking office in 1997, Annan released two reports on management reform. On 17 March 1997, the report Management and Organisational Measures (A/51/829) introduced new management mechanisms through the establishment of a cabinet-style body to assist him and be grouping the UN's activities in accordance with four core missions. A comprehensive reform agenda was issued on 14 July 1997 entitled Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform (A/51/950). Key proposals included the introduction of strategic management to strengthen unity of purpose, the establishment of the position of Deputy Secretary-General, a 10-percent reduction in posts, a reduction in administrative costs, the consolidation of the UN at the country level, and reaching out to civil society and the private sector as partners. Annan also proposed to hold a Millennium Summit in 2000.
After years of research, Annan presented a progress report, In Larger Freedom, to the UN General Assembly, on 21 March 2005. Annan recommended Security Council expansion and a host of other UN reforms.
On 31 January 2006, Annan outlined his vision for a comprehensive and extensive reform of the UN in a policy speech to the United Nations Association UK. The speech, delivered at Central Hall, Westminster, also marked the 60th Anniversary of the first meetings of the General Assembly and Security Council.
On 7 March 2006, he presented to the General Assembly his proposals for a fundamental overhaul of the United Nations Secretariat. The reform report is entitled Investing in the United Nations, For a Stronger Organization Worldwide.
On 30 March 2006, he presented to the General Assembly his analysis and recommendations for updating the entire work programme of the United Nations Secretariat. The reform report is entitled: Mandating and Delivering: Analysis and Recommendations to Facilitate the Review of Mandates.
Regarding the UN Human Rights Council, Annan said "declining credibility" had "cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system. Unless we re-make our human rights machinery, we may be unable to renew public confidence in the United Nations itself." However, he did believe that, despite its flaws, the council could do good.
In March 2000, Annan appointed the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations to assess the shortcomings of the then existing system and to make specific and realistic recommendations for change. The panel was composed of individuals experienced in conflict prevention, peacekeeping and peace-building. The report it produced, which became known as the Brahimi Report, after Chair of the Panel Lakhdar Brahimi, called for:
renewed political commitment on the part of Member States;
significant institutional change;
increased financial support.
The Panel further noted that in order to be effective, UN peacekeeping operations must be properly resourced and equipped, and operate under clear, credible and achievable mandates. In a letter transmitting the report to the General Assembly and Security Council, Annan stated that the Panel's recommendations were essential to make the United Nations truly credible as a force for peace. Later that same year, the Security Council adopted several provisions relating to peacekeeping following the report, in Resolution 1327.
Millennium Development Goals
In 2000, Annan issued a report entitled: "We the peoples: the role of the United Nations in the 21st century". The report called for member states to "put people at the centre of everything we do. No calling is more noble, and no responsibility greater, than that of enabling men, women and children, in cities and villages around the world, to make their lives better".
In the final chapter of the report, Annan called to "free our fellow men and women from the abject and dehumanizing poverty in which more than 1 billion of them are currently confined".
At the Millennium Summit in September 2000, national leaders adopted the Millennium Declaration, which was subsequently implemented by the United Nations Secretariat as the Millennium Development Goals in 2001.
United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS)
Within the "We the Peoples" document, Annan suggested the establishment of a United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS), a consortium of high-tech volunteer corps, including NetCorps Canada and Net Corps America, which United Nations Volunteers would co-ordinate. In the Report of the high-level panel of experts on information and communication technology (22 May 2000) suggesting a UN ICT Task Force, the panel welcomed the establishment of UNITeS, and made suggestions on its configuration and implementation strategy, including that ICT4D volunteering opportunities make mobilizing "national human resources" (local ICT experts) within developing countries a priority, for both men and women. The initiative was launched at the United Nations Volunteers and was active from February 2001 to February 2005. Initiative staff and volunteers participated in the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in December 2003.
The United Nations Global Compact
In an address to The World Economic Forum on 31 January 1999, Secretary-General Annan argued that the "goals of the United Nations and those of business can, indeed, be mutually supportive" and proposed that the private sector and the United Nations initiate "a global compact of shared values and principles, which will give a human face to the global market".
On 26 July 2000, the United Nations Global Compact was officially launched at UN headquarters in New York. It is a principle-based framework for businesses which aims to "Catalyse actions in support of broader UN goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)". The Compact established ten core principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption, and under the Compact, companies commit to the ten principles and are brought together with UN agencies, labour groups and civil society to effectively implement them.
Establishment of The Global Fund
Towards the end of the 1990s, increased awareness of the destructive potential of epidemics such as HIV/AIDS pushed public health issues to the top of the global development agenda. In April 2001, Annan issued a five-point "Call to Action" to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Stating it was a "personal priority", Annan proposed the establishment of a Global AIDS and Health Fund, "dedicated to the battle against HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases" to stimulate the increased international spending needed to help developing countries confront the HIV/AIDS crisis. In June of that year, the General Assembly of the United Nations committed to the creation of such a fund during a special session on AIDS, and the permanent secretariat of the Global Fund was subsequently established in January 2002.
Responsibility to Protect
Following the failure of Annan and the International Community to intervene in the genocide in Rwanda and in Srebrenica, Annan asked whether the international community had an obligation in such situations to intervene to protect civilian populations. In a speech to the General Assembly on 20 September 1999 "to address the prospects for human security and intervention in the next century," Annan argued that individual sovereignty—the protections afforded by the Declaration of Human Rights and the Charter of the UN—was being strengthened, while the notion of state sovereignty was being redefined by globalization and international co-operation. As a result, the UN and its member states had to consider a willingness to act to prevent conflict and civilian suffering, a dilemma between "two concepts of sovereignty" that Annan also presented in a preceding article in The Economist, on 16 September 1999.
In September 2001 the Canadian government established an ad hoc committee to address this balance between state sovereignty and humanitarian intervention. The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published its final report in 2001, which focused on not on the right of states to intervene but a responsibility to protect populations at risk. The report moved beyond the question of military intervention, arguing that a range of diplomatic and humanitarian actions could also be utilized to protect civilian populations.
In 2005, Annan included the doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" in his report Larger Freedom. When that report was endorsed by the UN General Assembly, it amounted to the first formal endorsement by UN Member States of the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect.
Iraq
In the years after 1998 when UNSCOM was expelled by the government of Saddam Hussein and during the Iraq disarmament crisis, in which the United States blamed UNSCOM and former IAEA director Hans Blix for failing to properly disarm Iraq, former UNSCOM chief weapons inspector Scott Ritter blamed Annan for being slow and ineffective in enforcing Security Council resolutions on Iraq and was overtly submissive to the demands of the Clinton administration for regime removal and inspection of sites, often Presidential palaces, that were not mandated in any resolution and were of questionable intelligence value, severely hampering UNSCOM's ability to co-operate with the Iraqi government and contributed to their expulsion from the country. Ritter also claimed that Annan regularly interfered with the work of the inspectors and diluted the chain of command by trying to micromanage all of the activities of UNSCOM, which caused intelligence processing (and the resulting inspections) to be backed up and caused confusion with the Iraqis as to who was in charge and as a result, they generally refused to take orders from Ritter or Rolf Ekéus without explicit approval from Annan, which could have taken days, if not weeks. He later believed that Annan was oblivious to the fact the Iraqis took advantage of this in order to delay inspections. He claimed that on one occasion, Annan refused to implement a no-notice inspection of the SSO headquarters and instead tried to negotiate access, but the negotiation ended up taking nearly six weeks, giving the Iraqis more than enough time to clean out the site.
During the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Annan called on the United States and the United Kingdom not to invade without the support of the United Nations. In a September 2004 interview on the BBC, when questioned about the legal authority for the invasion, Annan said he believed it was not in conformity with the UN charter and was illegal.
Other diplomatic activities
In 1998, Annan was deeply involved in supporting the transition from military to civilian rule in Nigeria. The following year, he supported the efforts of East Timor to secure independence from Indonesia. In 2000, he was responsible for certifying Israel 's withdrawal from Lebanon, and in 2006, he led talks in New York between the presidents of Cameroon and Nigeria which led to a settlement of the dispute between the two countries over the Bakassi peninsula.
Annan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disagreed sharply on Iran's nuclear program, on an Iranian exhibition of cartoons mocking the Holocaust, and on the then upcoming International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, an Iranian Holocaust denial conference in 2006. During a visit to Iran instigated by continued Iranian uranium enrichment, Annan said "I think the tragedy of the Holocaust is an undeniable historical fact and we should really accept that fact and teach people what happened in World War II and ensure it is never repeated."
Annan supported sending a UN peacekeeping mission to Darfur, Sudan. He worked with the government of Sudan to accept a transfer of power from the African Union peacekeeping mission to a UN one. Annan also worked with several Arab and Muslim countries on women's rights and other topics.
Beginning in 1998, Annan convened an annual UN "Security Council Retreat" with the 15 States' representatives of the council. It was held at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) Conference Center at the Rockefeller family estate in Pocantico Hills, New York, and was sponsored by both the RBF and the UN.
Lubbers sexual-harassment investigation
In June 2004, Annan was given a copy of the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) report on the complaint brought by four female workers against Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, for sexual harassment, abuse of authority, and retaliation. The report also reviewed a long-serving staff member's allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct against Werner Blatter, Director of UNHCR Personnel. The investigation found Lubbers guilty of sexual harassment; no mention was made publicly of the other charge against a senior official, or two subsequent complaints filed later that year. In the course of the official investigation, Lubbers wrote a letter which some considered was a threat to the female worker who had brought the charges. On 15 July 2004, Annan cleared Lubbers of the accusations, saying they were not substantial enough legally. The internal UN-OIOS report on Lubbers was leaked, and sections accompanied by an article by Kate Holt were published in a British newspaper. In February 2005, Lubbers resigned as head of the UN refugee agency, saying that he wanted to relieve political pressure on Annan.
Oil-for-Food scandal
In December 2004, reports surfaced that the Secretary-General's son Kojo Annan received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection SA, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Programme. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations. On 11 November 2005, The Sunday Times agreed to apologise and pay a substantial sum in damages to Kojo Annan, accepting that the allegations were untrue.
Annan appointed the Independent Inquiry Committee, which was led by former US Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, then the director of the United Nations Association of the US. In his first interview with the Inquiry Committee, Annan denied having had a meeting with Cotecna. Later in the inquiry, he recalled that he had met with Cotecna's chief executive Elie-Georges Massey twice. In a final report issued on 27 October, the committee found insufficient evidence to indict Kofi Annan on any illegal actions, but did find fault with Benon Sevan, an Armenian-Cypriot national who had worked for the UN for about 40 years. Appointed by Annan to the Oil-For-Food role, Sevan repeatedly asked Iraqis for allocations of oil to the African Middle East Petroleum Company. Sevan's behavior was "ethically improper", Volcker said to reporters. Sevan repeatedly denied the charges and argued that he was being made a "scapegoat". The Volcker report was highly critical of the UN management structure and the Security Council oversight. It strongly recommended a new position be established of Chief Operating Officer (COO), to handle the fiscal and administrative responsibilities then under the Secretary-General's office. The report listed the companies, both Western and Middle Eastern, which had benefited illegally from the program.
Nobel Peace Prize
In 2001, its centennial year, the Nobel Committee decided that the Peace Prize was to be divided between the UN and Annan. They were awarded the Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world," having revitalized the UN and for having given priority to human rights. The Nobel Committee also recognized his commitment to the struggle to containing the spread of HIV in Africa and his declared opposition to international terrorism.
Soon after Annan was awarded the Peace Prize, he was given the title of Busumuru by Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Asantehene. The honour was conferred upon him for his selfless contributions to humanity and promotion of peace throughout the world.
Relations between the United States and the United Nations
Annan defended his deputy Secretary-General Mark Malloch Brown, who openly criticized the United States in a speech on 6 June 2006: "[T]he prevailing practice of seeking to use the UN almost by stealth as a diplomatic tool while failing to stand up for it against its domestic critics is simply not sustainable. You will lose the UN one way or another. [...] [That] the US is constructively engaged with the UN [...] is not well known or understood, in part because much of the public discourse that reaches the US heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News." Malloch later said his talk was a "sincere and constructive critique of U.S. policy toward the U.N. by a friend and admirer."
The talk was unusual because it violated unofficial policy of not having top officials publicly criticize member nations. The interim U.S. ambassador John R. Bolton, appointed by President George W. Bush, was reported to have told Annan on the phone: "I've known you since 1989 and I'm telling you this is the worst mistake by a senior UN official that I have seen in that entire time." Observers from other nations supported Malloch's view that conservative politicians in the U.S. prevented many citizens from understanding the benefits of U.S. involvement in the UN.
Farewell addresses
On 19 September 2006, Annan gave a farewell address to world leaders gathered at the UN headquarters in New York, in anticipation of his retirement on 31 December. In the speech he outlined three major problems of "an unjust world economy, world disorder, and widespread contempt for human rights and the rule of law", which he believed "have not resolved, but sharpened" during his time as Secretary-General. He also pointed to violence in Africa, and the Arab–Israeli conflict as two major issues warranting attention.
On 11 December 2006, in his final speech as Secretary-General, delivered at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri, Annan recalled Truman's leadership in the founding of the United Nations. He called for the United States to return to President Truman's multilateralist foreign policies, and to follow Truman's credo that "the responsibility of the great states is to serve and not dominate the peoples of the world". He also said that the United States must maintain its commitment to human rights, "including in the struggle against terrorism."
Post-UN career
After his service as UN Secretary-General, Annan took up residence in Geneva and worked in a leading capacity on various international humanitarian endeavors.
Kofi Annan Foundation
In 2007, Annan established the Kofi Annan Foundation, an independent, not-for-profit organization that works to promote better global governance and strengthen the capacities of people and countries to achieve a fairer, more peaceful world.
The organisation was founded on the principles that fair and peaceful societies rest on three pillars: Peace and Security, Sustainable Development, and Human Rights and the Rule of Law, and they have made it their mission to mobilise the leadership and the political resolve needed to tackle threats to these three pillars ranging from violent conflict to flawed elections and climate change, with the aim of achieving a fairer, more peaceful world.
The Foundation provides the analytical, communication and co-ordination capacities needed to ensure that these objectives are achieved. Annan's contribution to peace worldwide is delivered through mediation, political mentoring, advocacy and advice. Through his engagement, Annan aimed to strengthen local and international conflict resolution capabilities. The Foundation provides the analytical and logistical support to facilitate this in co-operation with relevant local, regional and international actors. The Foundation works mainly through private diplomacy, where Annan provided informal counsel and participated in discreet diplomatic initiatives to avert or resolve crises by applying his experience and inspirational leadership. He was often asked to intercede in crises, sometimes as an impartial independent mediator, sometimes as a special envoy of the international community. In recent years he had provided such counsel to Burkina Faso, Kenya, Myanmar, Senegal, Iraq and Colombia.
Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Process (KNDR)
Following the outbreak of violence after the 2007 Presidential elections in Kenya, the African Union (AU) established the Panel of Eminent African Personalities to assist in finding a peaceful solution to the crisis. Annan was appointed as chair of the panel, to lead it with former President of Tanzania, Benjamin Mkapa, and humanitarian and former First Lady of Mozambique and South Africa, Graça Machel.
The panel managed to convince the two principal parties to the conflict, President Mwai Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU) and Raila Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), to participate in the Kenya National Dialogue and Reconciliation Process (KNDR). Over the course of 41 days of negotiations, several agreements regarding taking actions to stop the violence and remedying its consequences were signed. On 28 February, President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga signed a coalition government agreement.
Joint Special Envoy for Syria
On 23 February 2012, Annan was appointed as the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, in an attempt to end the civil war taking place. He developed a six-point plan for peace:
commit to work with the Envoy in an inclusive Syrian-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people, and, to this end, commit to appoint an empowered interlocutor when invited to do so by the Envoy;
commit to stop the fighting and achieve urgently an effective United Nations supervised cessation of armed violence in all its forms by all parties to protect civilians and stabilise the country.
To this end, the Syrian government should immediately cease troop movements towards, and end the use of heavy weapons in, population centres, and begin pullback of military concentrations in and around population centres.
As these actions are being taken on the ground, the Syrian government should work with the Envoy to bring about a sustained cessation of armed violence in all its forms by all parties with an effective United Nations supervision mechanism.
Similar commitments would be sought by the Envoy from the opposition and all relevant elements to stop the fighting and work with him to bring about a sustained cessation of armed violence in all its forms by all parties with an effective United Nations supervision mechanism;
ensure timely provision of humanitarian assistance to all areas affected by the fighting, and to this end, as immediate steps, to accept and implement a daily two-hour humanitarian pause and to co-ordinate exact time and modalities of the daily pause through an efficient mechanism, including at local level;
intensify the pace and scale of release of arbitrarily detained persons, including especially vulnerable categories of persons, and persons involved in peaceful political activities, provide without delay through appropriate channels a list of all places in which such persons are being detained, immediately begin organizing access to such locations and through appropriate channels respond promptly to all written requests for information, access or release regarding such persons;
ensure freedom of movement throughout the country for journalists and a non-discriminatory visa policy for them;
respect freedom of association and the right to demonstrate peacefully as legally guaranteed.
On 2 August, he resigned as UN and Arab League joint special envoy to Syria, citing the intransigence of both the Assad government and the rebels, as well as the stalemate on the Security Council as preventing any peaceful resolution of the situation. Annan also stated that the lack of international unity and ineffective diplomacy among the world leaders had made the peaceful resolution in Syria an impossible task.
Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security
Annan served as the Chair of the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security. The commission was launched in May 2011 as a joint initiative of the Kofi Annan Foundation and the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. It comprised 12 eminent individuals from around the world, including Ernesto Zedillo, Martti Ahtisaari, Madeleine Albright and Amartya Sen, and aimed to highlight the importance of the integrity of elections to achieving a more secure, prosperous and stable world. The Commission released its final report: Democracy, a Strategy to Improve the Integrity of Elections Worldwide, in September 2012.
Rakhine Commission (Myanmar)
In September 2016, Annan was asked to lead the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State (in Myanmar) – an impoverished region beset by ethnic conflict and extreme sectarian violence, particularly by Myanmar's Buddhist majority against the Rohingya Muslim minority, further targeted by government forces. The commission, widely known simply as the "Annan Commission", was opposed by many Myanmar Buddhists as unwelcome interference in their relations with the Rohingya.
When the Annan commission released its final report, the week of 24 August 2017, with recommendations unpopular with all sides, violence exploded in the Rohingya conflict – the largest and bloodiest humanitarian disaster in the region in decades – driving most of the Rohingya from Myanmar. Annan attempted to engage the United Nations to resolve the matter, but failed.
Annan died a week before the first anniversary of the report, shortly after an announcement by a replacement commission that it would not "point fingers" at the guilty parties – leading to widespread concern that the new commission was just a sham to protect culpable Myanmar government officials and citizens from accountability.
In 2018, before Annan's death, Myanmar's civilian government, under the direction of State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, made a gesture of acceptance of the Annan commission's recommendations by convening another board – the Advisory Board for the Committee for Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State – ostensibly to implement the Annan commission's proposed reforms, but never actually implemented them. Some of the international representatives resigned – notably the panel's Secretary, Thailand's former foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai, and former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Bill Richardson – decrying the "implementation" committee as ineffective, or a "whitewash."
Other activities
Corporate boards
In March 2011, Annan became a member of the Advisory Board for Investcorp Bank B. S. C. Europe, an international private equity firm and sovereign wealth fund owned by the United Arab Emirates. He held the position until 2018.
Annan became member of the Global Advisory Board of Macro Advisory Partners LLP, Risk and strategic consulting firm based in London and New York, for business, finance and government decision-makers, with some operations related to Investcorp.
Non-profit organizations
In addition to the above, Annan also became involved with several organizations with both global and African focuses, including the following:
United Nations Foundation, member of the board of directors (2008–2018)
University of Ghana, chancellor (2008–2018)
School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University, global fellow (2009–2018)
The Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, fellow
Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Li Ka Shing Professor (2009–2018)
Global Centre for Pluralism, member of the board of directors (2010–2018)
Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, chairman of the prize committee (2007–2018)
Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), chairman (2007–2018)
Global Humanitarian Forum, founder and president (2007–2018)
Global Commission on Drug Policy, founding commissioner. The commission had declared in a 2011 report that the war on drugs was a failure. Annan believed that, since drug use represents a health risk, it should be regulated, comparing it to the regulation of tobacco which reduced smoking in many countries.
Annan served as Chair of The Elders, a group of independent global leaders who work together on peace and human rights issues. In November 2008, Annan and fellow Elders Jimmy Carter and Graça Machel attempted to travel to Zimbabwe to make a first-hand assessment of the humanitarian situation in the country. Refused entry, the Elders instead carried out their assessment from Johannesburg, where they met Zimbabwe- and South Africa-based leaders from politics, business, international organisations, and civil society. In May 2011, following months of political violence in Côte d'Ivoire, Annan travelled to the country with Elders Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson to encourage national reconciliation. On 16 October 2014, Annan attended the One Young World Summit in Dublin. During a session with fellow Elder Mary Robinson, Annan encouraged 1,300 young leaders from 191 countries to lead on intergenerational issues such as climate change and the need for action to take place now, not tomorrow.
"We don't have to wait to act. The action must be now. You will come across people who think we should start tomorrow. Even for those who believe action should begin tomorrow, remind them tomorrow begins now, tomorrow begins today, so let's all move forward."
Annan chaired the Africa Progress Panel (APP), a group of ten distinguished individuals who advocate at the highest levels for equitable and sustainable development in Africa. As Chair, he facilitates coalition building to leverage and broker knowledge, in addition to convening decision-makers to influence policy and create lasting change in Africa. Every year, the Panel releases a report, the Africa Progress Report, which outlines an issue of immediate importance to the continent and suggests a set of associated policies. In 2014, the Africa Progress Report highlighted the potential of African fisheries, agriculture, and forests to drive economic development. The 2015 report explores the role of climate change and the potential of renewable energy investments in determining Africa's economic future.
Memoir
On 4 September 2012, Annan with Nader Mousavizadeh wrote a memoir, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace. Published by Penguin Press, the book has been described as a "personal biography of global statecraft".
Personal life
In 1965, Annan married Titi Alakija, a Nigerian woman from an aristocratic family. Several years later they had a daughter, Ama, and later a son, Kojo. The couple separated in the late 1970s, and divorced in 1983.
In 1984, Annan married Nane Lagergren, a Swedish lawyer at the UN and a maternal half-niece of diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. She has a daughter, Nina, from a previous marriage.
Annan's brother Kobina was Ghana's ambassador to Morocco.
Death and state funeral
Annan died on the morning of 18 August 2018 in Bern, Switzerland at the age of 80, after a short illness. António Guterres, the current UN Secretary-General, said that "Kofi Annan was a champion for peace and a guiding force for good." His body was returned to his native Ghana from Geneva in a brief and solemn ceremony at the Kotoka International Airport in Accra, on 10 September 2018. His coffin, draped in the blue UN flag, was accompanied by his widow Nane Annan, his children and senior diplomats from the international organisation.
On 13 September 2018, a state funeral was held for Annan in Ghana at the Accra International Conference Centre. The ceremony was attended by several political leaders from across Africa as well as Ghanaian traditional rulers, European royalty and dignitaries from the international community, including the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. Prior to the funeral service, his body lay in state in the foyer of the same venue, from 11 to 12 September 2018. A private burial followed the funeral service at the new Military Cemetery at Burma Camp, with full military honours and the sounding of the Last Post by army buglers and a 17-gun salute.
Memorials and legacy
The United Nations Postal Administration released a new stamp in memory of Annan on 31 May 2019. His portrait on the stamp was designed by artist Martin Mörck. The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre and the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, both in Accra, are named in his honour. The Kofi Annan University of Guinea is also named after him.
See also
List of black Nobel laureates
References
Bibliography
Biography of Kofi Annan, by Chloé Maurel, in: BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF SECRETARIES-GENERAL OF INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS. [archive]
Friederike Bauer, Kofi Annan. Ein Leben (in German), Fischer, 2005.
Stanley Meisler, Kofi Annan. A Man of Peace in a World of War (in English), Wiley, 2007.
External links
Kofi Annan papers at the United Nations Archives
including the Nobel Lecture 10 December 2001
Speeches
Statements of Secretary-General Kofi Annan
Nobel Peace Prize lecture
Lectures
The MacArthur Award for International Justice, 2008 in the Lecture Series of the United Nations Audiovisual Library of International Law
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16846 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky | Kentucky | Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered by Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to the east; Tennessee to the south; and Missouri to the west. The Commonwealth's northern border is defined by the Ohio River. Its capital is Frankfort, and its two largest cities are Louisville and Lexington. The state's population in 2020 was approximately 4.5 million.
Kentucky was admitted into the Union as the 15th state on June 1, 1792, splitting from Virginia in the process. It is known as the "Bluegrass State", a nickname based on Kentucky bluegrass, a species of grass found in many of its pastures, which has supported the thoroughbred horse industry in the center of the state. Historically, it was known for excellent farming conditions for this reason. Kentucky ranks 5th nationally in goat farming, 8th in beef cattle production, and 14th in corn production. Kentucky has also been a long-standing major center of the tobacco industry. Today, Kentucky's economy has expanded to importance in non-agricultural sectors, including auto manufacturing, energy fuel production, and medical facilities. The state ranks 4th among U.S. states in the number of automobiles and trucks assembled.
The state is home to the world's longest cave system in Mammoth Cave National Park, as well as the greatest length of navigable waterways and streams in the contiguous United States and the two largest man-made lakes east of the Mississippi River. Kentucky is also known for its unique blended culture, which includes horse racing, bourbon, moonshine, coal, "My Old Kentucky Home" historic state park, automobile manufacturing, tobacco, bluegrass music, college basketball, Louisville Slugger baseball bats, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the Kentucky colonel.
Etymology
In 1776 the counties of Virginia beyond the Appalachian Mountains became known to European Americans as Kentucky County, named for the Kentucky River. The precise etymology of the name is uncertain, but likely based on an Iroquoian name meaning "(on) the meadow" or "(on) the prairie" (cf. Mohawk kenhtà:ke, Seneca gëdá'geh (phonemic ), "at the field").
Others have suggested the term Kenta Aki, which could have come from an Algonquian language and were possibly derived from Shawnee. Folk etymology translates this as "Land of Our Fathers". The closest approximation in another Algonquian language, Ojibwe, translates as "Land of Our In-Laws", thus making a fairer English translation "The Land of Those Who Became Our Fathers". In any case, the word aki means "land" in most Algonquian languages. Some also theorize that the name Kentucky may be a corruption of the word Catawba, in reference to the Catawba people who inhabited Kentucky.
History
Native American settlement
It is not known exactly when the first humans arrived in what is now Kentucky. Based on the evidence in other regions, humans were likely living in Kentucky prior to 10,000 BCE, but "archaeological evidence of their occupation has yet to be documented". Around 1800 BCE, a gradual transition began from a hunter-gatherer economy to agriculturalism. Around 900 CE, a Mississippian culture took root in western and central Kentucky; by contrast, a Fort Ancient culture appeared in eastern Kentucky. While the two had many similarities, the distinctive ceremonial earthwork mounds constructed in the former's centers were not part of the culture of the latter.
In about the 10th century, the Kentucky native people's variety of corn became highly productive, supplanting the Eastern Agricultural Complex, and replaced it with a maize-based agriculture in the Mississippian Era. French explorers in the 17th century documented numerous tribes living in Kentucky until the Beaver Wars in the 1670s; however, by the time that European colonial explorers and settlers began entering Kentucky in greater numbers in the mid-18th century, there were no major Native American settlements in the region.
As of the 16th century, the area known as Kentucky was home to tribes from five different culture groupsIroquoian, Sioux, Algonquian, Muskogean and Yuchi. Around the Bluestone River was the Siouan Tutelo. North of the Tennessee River was the Yuchi and south of it was the Cherokee. Much of the interior of the state was controlled by the Algonquian Cisca; the confluence region of the Mississippi and Ohio was home to the Chickasaw. During a period known as the Beaver Wars, 1640–1680, another Algonquian tribe called the Maumee, or Mascouten was chased out of southern Michigan. The vast majority of them moved to Kentucky, pushing the Kispoko east and war broke out with the Tutelo that pushed them deeper into Appalachia, where they merged with the Saponi and Moneton. The Maumee were closely related to the Miami of Indiana. Later, the Kispoko merged with the Shawnee (who broke off from the Powhatan on the east coast) and the Thawikila of Ohio to form the larger Shawnee nation which inhabited the Ohio River Valley into the 19th century.
The Shawnee from the northeast and Cherokee from the south also sent parties into the area regularly for hunting.
European settlement
In 1774 James Harrod founded the first permanent European settlement in Kentucky at the site of present-day Harrodsburg.
County of Kentucky and statehood
On December 31, 1776, by an act of the Virginia General Assembly, the portion of Fincastle County west of the Appalachians extending to the Mississippi River, previously known as Kentucky (or Kentucke) territory, was split off into its own county of Kentucky. Harrod's Town (Oldtown as it was known at the time) was named the county seat. The county was subdivided into Jefferson, Lincoln and Fayette Counties in 1780, but continued to be administered as the District of Kentucky even as new counties were split off.
On several occasions the region's residents petitioned the General Assembly and the Confederation Congress for separation from Virginia and statehood. Ten constitutional conventions were held in Danville between 1784 and 1792.
One petition, which had Virginia's assent, came before the Confederation Congress in early July 1788. Unfortunately, its consideration came up a day after word of New Hampshire's all-important ninth ratification of the proposed Constitution, thus establishing it as the new framework of governance for the United States. In light of this development, Congress thought that it would be "unadvisable" to admit Kentucky into the Union, as it could do so "under the Articles of Confederation" only, but not "under the Constitution", and so declined to take action.
On December 18, 1789, Virginia again gave its consent to Kentucky statehood. The United States Congress gave its approval on February 4, 1791. (This occurred two weeks before Congress approved Vermont's petition for statehood.) Kentucky officially became the fifteenth state in the Union on June 1, 1792. Isaac Shelby, a military veteran from Virginia, was elected its first Governor.
Relationship Between Native Americans and European Settlers
A 1790 U.S. government report states that 1,500Kentucky settlers had been killed by Native Americans since the end of the Revolutionary War. As more settlers entered the area, warfare broke out with the Native Americans over their traditional hunting grounds. Historian Susan Sleeper-Smith documents the role of Kentucky settlers in displacing Native American communities living in the northern Ohio River Valley during the late 18th century.
19th century
Central Kentucky, the bluegrass region, was the area of the state with the most slave owners. Planters cultivated tobacco and hemp (see Hemp in Kentucky) and were noted for their quality livestock. During the 19th century, Kentucky slaveholders began to sell unneeded slaves to the Deep South, with Louisville becoming a major slave market and departure port for slaves being transported downriver.
Kentucky was one of the border states during the American Civil War, and it remained part of the Union. Despite this, representatives from 68 of 110 counties met at Russellville calling themselves the "Convention of the People of Kentucky" and passed an Ordinance of Secession on November 20, 1861. They established a Confederate government of Kentucky with its capital in Bowling Green. The Confederate shadow government was never popularly elected statewide. Although Confederate forces briefly controlled Frankfort, they were expelled by Union forces before a Confederate government could be installed in the state capital. After the expulsion of Confederate forces after the Battle of Perrysville, this government operated in-exile. Though it existed throughout the war, Kentucky's provisional government had very little effect on the events in the Commonwealth or in the war.
Kentucky remained officially "neutral" throughout the war due to the Union sympathies of a majority of the Commonwealth's citizens. Despite this, some 21st-century Kentuckians observe Confederate Memorial Day on Confederate leader Jefferson Davis' birthday, June 3, and participate in Confederate battle re-enactments. Both Davis and U.S. president Abraham Lincoln were born in Kentucky. John C. Breckinridge, the 14th and youngest-ever Vice President was born in Lexington, Kentucky at Cabell's Dale Farm. Breckenridge was expelled from the U. S. Senate for his support of the Confederacy.
On January 30, 1900, Governor William Goebel, flanked by two bodyguards, was mortally wounded by an assassin while walking to the State Capitol in downtown Frankfort. Goebel was contesting the Kentucky gubernatorial election of 1899, which William S. Taylor was initially believed to have won. For several months, J. C. W. Beckham, Goebel's running mate, and Taylor fought over who was the legal governor until the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in May in favor of Beckham. After fleeing to Indiana, Taylor was indicted as a co-conspirator in Goebel's assassination. Goebel is the only governor of a U.S. state to have been assassinated while in office.
20th century
The Black Patch Tobacco Wars, a vigilante action, occurred in Western Kentucky in the early 20th century. As a result of the tobacco industry monopoly, tobacco farmers in the area were forced to sell their crops at prices that were too low. Many local farmers and activists united in a refusal to sell their crops to the major tobacco companies.
An Association meeting occurred in downtown Guthrie, where a vigilante wing of "Night Riders", formed. The riders terrorized farmers who sold their tobacco at the low prices demanded by the tobacco corporations. They burned several tobacco warehouses throughout the area, stretching as far west as Hopkinsville to Princeton. In the later period of their operation, they were known to physically assault farmers who broke the boycott. Governor Augustus E. Willson declared martial law and deployed the Kentucky National Guard to end the wars.
On October 15, 1959, a B-52 carrying two nuclear weapons collided in midair with a KC-135 tanker near Hardinsburg, Kentucky. One of the nuclear bombs was damaged by fire but both weapons were recovered.
Geography
Kentucky is situated in the Upland South. A significant portion of eastern Kentucky is part of Appalachia.
Kentucky borders seven states, from the Midwest and the Southeast. West Virginia lies to the northeast, Virginia to the east, Tennessee to the south, Missouri to the west, Illinois to the northwest, and Indiana and Ohio to the north. Only Missouri and Tennessee, both of which border eight states, touch more.
Kentucky's northern border is formed by the Ohio River and its western border by the Mississippi River; however, the official border is based on the courses of the rivers as they existed when Kentucky became a state in 1792. For instance, northbound travelers on U.S. 41 from Henderson, after crossing the Ohio River, will be in Kentucky for about . Ellis Park, a thoroughbred racetrack, is located in this small piece of Kentucky. Waterworks Road is part of the only land border between Indiana and Kentucky.
Kentucky has a non-contiguous part known as Kentucky Bend, at the far west corner of the state. It exists as an exclave surrounded completely by Missouri and Tennessee, and is included in the boundaries of Fulton County. Road access to this small part of Kentucky on the Mississippi River (populated by 18 people ) requires a trip through Tennessee.
The epicenter of the 1811–12 New Madrid earthquakes was near this area, causing the Mississippi River to flow backwards in some places. Though the series of quakes changed the area geologically and affected the small number of inhabitants of the area at the time, the Kentucky Bend is the result of a surveying error, not the New Madrid earthquake.
Regions
Kentucky can be divided into five primary regions: the Cumberland Plateau in the east, which contains much of the historic coal mines; the north-central Bluegrass region, where the major cities and the capital are located; the south-central and western Pennyroyal Plateau (also known as the Pennyrile or Mississippi Plateau); the Western Coal Fields; and the far-west Jackson Purchase.
The Bluegrass region is commonly divided into two regions, the Inner Bluegrass encircling around Lexington, and the Outer Bluegrass that contains most of the northern portion of the state, above the Knobs. Much of the outer Bluegrass is in the Eden Shale Hills area, made up of short, steep, and very narrow hills.
Climate
Located within the southeastern interior portion of North America, Kentucky has a climate that is best described as a humid subtropical climate (Köppen: Cfa), only small higher areas of the southeast of the state has an oceanic climate (Cfb) influenced by the Appalachians. Temperatures in Kentucky usually range from daytime summer highs of to the winter low of . The average precipitation is a year. Kentucky has four distinct seasons, with substantial variations in the severity of summer and winter. The highest recorded temperature was at Greensburg on July 28, 1930, while the lowest recorded temperature was at Shelbyville on January 19, 1994. The state rarely experiences the extreme cold of far northern states, nor the high heat of the states in the Deep South. Temperatures seldom drop below 0 degrees or rise above 100 degrees. Rain and snowfall totals about 45 inches per year.
The climate varies markedly within the state. The northern parts tend to be about five degrees cooler than those in the western parts of the state. Somerset in the south-central part receives ten more inches of rain per year than, for instance, Covington to the north. Average temperatures for the entire Commonwealth range from the low 30s in January to the high 70s in mid-July. The annual average temperature varies from : of in the far north as an average annual temperature and of in the extreme southwest.
In general, Kentucky has relatively hot, humid, rainy summers, and moderately cold and rainy winters. Mean maximum temperatures in July vary from ; the mean minimum July temperatures are . In January the mean maximum temperatures range from ; the mean minimum temperatures range from . Temperature means vary with northern and far-eastern mountain regions averaging five degrees cooler year-round, compared to the relatively warmer areas of the southern and western regions of the state. Precipitation also varies north to south with the north averaging of , and the south averaging of . Days per year below the freezing point vary from about sixty days in the southwest to more than a hundred days in the far-north and far-east.
Natural disasters
Lakes and rivers
Kentucky has more navigable miles of water than any other state in the union, other than Alaska.
Kentucky is the only U.S. state to have a continuous border of rivers running along three of its sidesthe Mississippi River to the west, the Ohio River to the north, and the Big Sandy River and Tug Fork to the east. Its major internal rivers include the Kentucky River, Tennessee River, Cumberland River, Green River and Licking River.
Though it has only three major natural lakes, Kentucky is home to many artificial lakes. Kentucky has both the largest artificial lake east of the Mississippi in water volume (Lake Cumberland) and surface area (Kentucky Lake). Kentucky Lake's of shoreline, of water surface, and of flood storage are the most of any lake in the TVA system.
Kentucky's of streams provides one of the most expansive and complex stream systems in the nation.
Natural environment and conservation
Kentucky has an expansive park system, which includes one national park, two National Recreation Areas, two National Historic Parks, two national forests, two National Wildlife Refuges, 45 state parks, of state forest, and 82 wildlife management areas.
Kentucky has been part of two of the most successful wildlife reintroduction projects in United States history. In the winter of 1997, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources began to re-stock elk in the state's eastern counties, which had been extinct from the area for over 150 years. , the herd had reached the project goal of 10,000 animals, making it the largest herd east of the Mississippi River.
The state also stocked wild turkeys in the 1950s. There were reported to be fewer than 900 at one point. Once nearly extinct here, wild turkeys thrive throughout today's Kentucky. Hunters officially reported a record 29,006 birds taken during the 23-day season in spring 2009.
In 1991 the Land Between the Lakes partnered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Red Wolf Recovery Program, a captive breeding program.
Natural attractions
Cumberland Gap, chief passageway through the Appalachian Mountains in early American history.
Cumberland Falls, the only place in the Western Hemisphere where a "moonbow" may be regularly seen, due to the spray of the falls.
Mammoth Cave National Park, featuring the world's longest known cave system.
Red River Gorge Geological Area, part of the Daniel Boone National Forest.
Land Between the Lakes, a National Recreation Area managed by the United States Forest Service.
Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area near Whitley City.
Black Mountain, state's highest point. Runs along the south ridge of Pine Mountain in Letcher County, Kentucky. The highest point located in Harlan County.
Bad Branch Falls State Nature Preserve, state nature preserve on southern slope of Pine Mountain in Letcher County. Includes one of the largest concentrations of rare and endangered species in the state, as well as a waterfall and a Kentucky Wild River.
Jefferson Memorial Forest, located in the southern fringes of Louisville in the Knobs region, the largest municipally run forest in the United States.
Lake Cumberland, of shoreline located in South Central Kentucky.
Natural Bridge, located in Slade, Kentucky Powell County.
Breaks Interstate Park, located in southeastern Pike County, Kentucky and Southwestern Virginia. The Breaks is commonly known as the "Grand Canyon of the South".
Administrative divisions
Counties
Kentucky is subdivided into 120 counties, the largest being Pike County at , and the most populous being Jefferson County (which coincides with the Louisville Metro governmental area) with 741,096 residents .
County government, under the Kentucky Constitution of 1891, is vested in the County Judge/Executive, (formerly called the County Judge) who serves as the executive head of the county, and a legislature called a Fiscal Court. Despite the unusual name, the Fiscal Court no longer has judicial functions.
Consolidated city-county governments
Kentucky's two most populous counties, Jefferson and Fayette, have their governments consolidated with the governments of their largest cities. Louisville-Jefferson County Government (Louisville Metro) and Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government (Lexington Metro) are unique in that their city councils and county Fiscal Court structures have been merged into a single entity with a single chief executive, the Metro Mayor and Urban County Mayor, respectively. Although the counties still exist as subdivisions of the state, in reference the names Louisville and Lexington are used to refer to the entire area coextensive with the former cities and counties.
Major cities
The Metro Louisville government area has a 2018 population of 1,298,990. Under United States Census Bureau methodology, the population of Louisville was 623,867. The latter figure is the population of the so-called "balance"the parts of Jefferson County that were either unincorporated or within the City of Louisville before the formation of the merged government in 2003. In 2018 the Louisville Combined Statistical Area (CSA) had a population of 1,569,112; including 1,209,191 in Kentucky, which means more than 25% of the state's population now lives in the Louisville CSA. Since 2000, over one-third of the state's population growth has occurred in the Louisville CSA. In addition, the top 28 wealthiest places in Kentucky are in Jefferson County and seven of the 15 wealthiest counties in the state are located in the Louisville CSA.
The second-largest city is Lexington with a 2018 census population of 323,780, its metro had a population of 516,697, and its CSA, which includes the Frankfort and Richmond statistical areas, having a population of 746,310. The Northern Kentucky area, which comprises the seven Kentucky counties in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky metropolitan area, had a population of 447,457 in 2018. The metropolitan areas of Louisville, Lexington, and Northern Kentucky have a combined population of 2,402,958 , which is 54% of the state's total population on only about 19% of the state's land. This area is often referred to as the Golden triangle as it contains a majority of the state's wealth, population, population growth, and economic growth, it is also where most of the state's largest cities by population are located. It is referred to as the Golden triangle as the metro areas of Lexington, Louisville, and Northern Kentucky/Cincinnati outline a triangle shape. Interstates I-71, I-75, and I-64 form the triangle shape. Additionally, all counties in Kentucky that are part of an MSA or CSA have a total population of 2,970,694, which is 67% of the state's population.
Bowling Green had a population of 67,067, making it the third most populous city in the state. The Bowling Green metropolitan area had an estimated population of 174,835; and the combined statistical area it shares with Glasgow has an estimated population of 228,743.
The two other fast-growing urban areas in Kentucky are the Bowling Green area and the "Tri-Cities Region" of southeastern Kentucky, comprising Somerset, London and Corbin.
Although only one town in the "Tri-Cities" (Somerset) currently has more than 12,000 people, the area has been experiencing heightened population and job growth since the 1990s. Growth has been especially rapid in Laurel County, which outgrew areas such as Scott and Jessamine counties around Lexington or Shelby and Nelson Counties around Louisville. London significantly grew in population in the 2000s, from 5,692 in 2000 to 7,993 in 2010. London also landed a Wal-Mart distribution center in 1997, bringing thousands of jobs to the community.
In northeast Kentucky, the greater Ashland area is an important transportation, manufacturing, and medical center. Iron and petroleum production, as well as the transport of coal by rail and barge, have been historical pillars of the region's economy. Due to a decline in the area's industrial base, Ashland has seen a sizable reduction in its population since 1990; however, the population of the area has since stabilized with the medical service industry taking a greater role in the local economy. The Ashland area, including the counties of Boyd and Greenup, is part of the Huntington-Ashland, WV-KY-OH, Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). As of the 2000 census, the MSA had a population of 288,649. More than 21,000 of those people () reside within the city limits of Ashland.
The largest county in Kentucky by area is Pike, which contains Pikeville and suburb Coal Run Village. The county and surrounding area is the most populated region in the state that is not part of a Micropolitan Statistical Area or a Metropolitan Statistical Area containing nearly 200,000 people in five counties: Floyd County, Martin County, Letcher County, and neighboring Mingo County, West Virginia. Pike County contains slightly more than 68,000 people.
Only three U.S. states have capitals with smaller populations than Kentucky's Frankfort (pop. 25,527): Augusta, Maine (pop. 18,560), Pierre, South Dakota (pop. 13,876), and Montpelier, Vermont (pop. 8,035).
Demographics
The United States Census Bureau determined that the population of Kentucky was 4,505,836 in 2020, increasing since the 2010 United States census.
As of July 1, 2016, Kentucky had an estimated population of 4,436,974, which is an increase of 12,363 from the prior year and an increase of 97,607, or 2.2%, since the year 2010. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 73,541 people (that is 346,968 births minus 273,427 deaths) and an increase due to net migration of 26,135 people into the state. Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 40,051 people, and migration within the country produced a net decrease of 13,916 people. , Kentucky's population included about 149,016 foreign-born persons (3.4%). In 2016 the population density of the state was 110 people per square mile (42.5/km2).
Kentucky's population has grown during every decade since records have been kept. But during most decades of the 20th century there was also net out-migration from Kentucky. Since 1900, rural Kentucky counties have had a net loss of more than a million people to migration, while urban areas have experienced a slight net gain.
Kentucky's center of population is in Washington County, in the city of Willisburg.
Race and ancestry
According to U.S. Census Bureau official statistics, the largest ancestry in 2013 was American totalling 20.2%. In 1980, before the status of ethnic American was an available option on the official census, the largest claimed ancestries in the commonwealth were English (49.6%), Irish (26.3%), and German (24.2%). In the state's most urban counties of Jefferson, Oldham, Fayette, Boone, Kenton, and Campbell, German is the largest reported ancestry. Americans of Scots-Irish and English stock are present throughout the entire state. Many residents claim Irish ancestry because of known "Scots-Irish" among their ancestors, who immigrated from Ireland, where their ancestors had moved for a period from Scotland during the plantation period.
As of the 1980s, the only counties in the United States where over half of the population cited "English" as their only ancestry group were in the hills of eastern Kentucky (virtually every county in this region had a majority of residents identifying as exclusively English in ancestry).
The Ridgetop Shawnee organized in the early 21st century as a non-profit to gain structure for their community and increase awareness of Native Americans in Kentucky. In the 2000 census, some 20,000 people in the state identified as Native American (0.49%). In June 2011, Jerry "2 Feather" Thornton, a Cherokee, led a team in the Voyage of Native American Awareness 2011 canoe journey, to begin on the Green River in Rochester, Kentucky and travel through to the Ohio River at Henderson.
African Americans, who were mostly enslaved at the time, made up 25% of Kentucky's population before the Civil War; they were held and worked primarily in the central Bluegrass region, an area of hemp and tobacco cultivation, as well as raising blooded livestock. The number of African Americans living in Kentucky declined during the 20th century. Many migrated during the early part of the century to the industrial North and Midwest during the Great Migration for jobs and the chance to leave the segregated, oppressive societies. Today, less than 9% of the state's total population is African-American.
The state's African-American population is highly urbanized and 52% of them live in the Louisville metropolitan area; 44.2% of them reside in Jefferson County. The county's population is 20% African American. Other areas with high concentrations, besides Christian and Fulton counties and the Bluegrass region, are the cities of Paducah and Lexington. Some mining communities in far Southeastern Kentucky have populations that are between five and 10 percent African-American.
Language
In 2000 96.1% of all residents five years old and older spoke only English at home, a decrease from 97.5% in 1990.
Speech patterns in the state generally reflect the first settlers' Virginia and Kentucky backgrounds. South Midland features are best preserved in the mountains, with Southern in most other areas of Kentucky, but some common to Midland and Southern are widespread. After a vowel, the /r/ may be weak or missing. For instance, Coop has the vowel of put, but the root rhymes with boot. In southern Kentucky, earthworms are called redworms, a burlap bag is known as a tow sack or the Southern grass sack, and green beans are called snap beans. In Kentucky English, a young man may carry, not escort, his girlfriend to a party.
Spanish is the second-most-spoken language in Kentucky, after English.
Religion
, the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) reported the following groupings of Kentucky's 4,339,367 residents:
48% not affiliated with any religious group, 2,101,653 persons
42% Protestant Christian, 1,819,860 adherents
33% Evangelical Protestant, 1,448,947 adherents (23% within the Southern Baptist Convention, 1,004,407 adherents)
7.1% Mainline Protestant, 305,955 adherents (4.4% in the United Methodist Church, 189,596 adherents)
1.5% Black Protestant, 64,958 adherents
8.3% Catholic Church, 359,783 adherents
0.74% Latter-day Saints, 31,991 adherents
0.60% other religions, 26,080 adherents (0.26% Muslim, 0.16% Judaism, 0.06% Buddhism, 0.01% Hindu, other Christian, etc.)
Kentucky is home to several seminaries. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville is the principal seminary for the Southern Baptist Convention. Louisville is also the home of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, an institution of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Lexington has one seminary, Lexington Theological Seminary (affiliated with the Disciples of Christ). The Baptist Seminary of Kentucky is located on the campus of Georgetown College in Georgetown. Asbury Theological Seminary, a multi-denominational seminary in the Methodist tradition, is located in nearby Wilmore.
In addition to seminaries, there are several colleges affiliated with denominations:
In Louisville, Bellarmine University and Spalding University are affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church.
In Lexington, Transylvania University is affiliated with the Disciples of Christ.
In Owensboro, Kentucky Wesleyan College is associated with the United Methodist Church, and Brescia University is associated with the Roman Catholic Church.
In Pikeville, the University of Pikeville is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA).
In Wilmore, Asbury University (a separate institution from the seminary) is associated with the Christian College Consortium.
The Baptist denomination is associated with several colleges:
University of the Cumberlands, in Williamsburg
Campbellsville University, in Campbellsville
Georgetown College, in Georgetown
Clear Creek Baptist Bible College, in Pineville, Kentucky
Grayson in Carter County is home to Kentucky Christian University which is affiliated with the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ.
The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani is located in Bardstown, Kentucky. Author Thomas Merton, known as a social activist, worked to reconcile Christianity with other major religions, had converted to Catholicism as a young man, and became a Trappist monk; he lived and worked here from 1941 until his death in 1968.
Louisville is home to the Cathedral of the Assumption, the third-oldest Catholic cathedral in continuous use in the United States. The city also holds the headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and their printing press. Reflecting late 19th, 20th and 21st-century immigration from different countries, Louisville also has Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu communities.
In 1996 the Center for Interfaith Relations established the Festival of Faiths, the first and oldest annual interfaith festival to be held in the United States.
The Christian creationist apologetics group, Answers in Genesis, along with its Creation Museum, is headquartered in Petersburg, Kentucky.
Economy
Early in its history, Kentucky gained recognition for its excellent farming conditions. It was the site of the first commercial winery in the United States (started in present-day Jessamine County in 1799) and due to the high calcium content of the soil in the Bluegrass region quickly became a major horse breeding (and later racing) area. Today Kentucky ranks 5th nationally in goat farming, 8th in beef cattle production, and 14th in corn production. Kentucky has also been a long-standing major center of the tobacco industryboth as a center of business and tobacco farming.
Today Kentucky's economy has expanded to importance in non-agricultural terms as well, especially in auto manufacturing, energy fuel production, and medical facilities.
Kentucky ranks 4th among U.S. states in the number of automobiles and trucks assembled. The Chevrolet Corvette, Cadillac XLR (2004–2009), Ford Escape, Ford Super Duty trucks, Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator, Toyota Camry, Toyota Avalon, Toyota Solara, Toyota Venza, and Lexus ES 350 are assembled in Kentucky.
Kentucky has historically been a major coal producer, but the coal industry has been in decline since the 1980s, and the number of people employed in the coal industry there dropped by more than half between 2011 and 2015.
, 24% of electricity produced in the U.S. depended on either enriched uranium rods coming from the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (the only domestic site of low-grade uranium enrichment), or from the 107,336 tons of coal extracted from the state's two coal fields (which combined produce 4% percent of the electricity in the United States).
Kentucky produces 95% of the world's supply of bourbon whiskey, and the number of barrels of bourbon being aged in Kentucky (more than 5.7million) exceeds the state's population. Bourbon has been a growing marketwith production of Kentucky bourbon rising 170 percent between 1999 and 2015. In 2019 the state had more than fifty distilleries for bourbon production.
Kentucky exports reached a record $22.1billion in 2012, with products and services going to 199 countries.
According to the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development, the primary state agency in Kentucky responsible for creating new jobs and new investment in the state, new business investment in Kentucky in 2012 totaled nearly $2.7billion, with the creation of more than 14,000 new jobs. One such investment was L'Oréal in Northern Kentucky, which added 200 jobs on top of the 280 already in existing facilities in Florence and Walton.
Fort Knox, a United States Army post best known as the site of the United States Bullion Depository, which is used to house a large portion of the United States official gold reserves, is located in Kentucky between Louisville and Elizabethtown. In May 2010, the Army Human Resource Center of Excellence, the largest office building in the state at nearly opened at Fort Knox. The complex employs nearly 4,300 soldiers and civilians.
Kentucky contains two of the twenty U.S. Federal Penitentiaries: USP Big Sandy (in the east in Martin County near Inez) and USP McCreary (in the south in McCreary County in the Daniel Boone National Forest).
The total gross state product for 2020 was $212.539billion. Its per capita income was $25,888 in 2017. An organization called the Institute for Truth in Accounting estimated that the state government's debts exceeded its available assets by $26,300 per taxpayer , ranking the state as having the 5th highest such debt burden in the nation.
As of December 2021, the state's unemployment rate is 3.9%. In 2014 Kentucky was found to be the most affordable U.S. state in which to live.
Taxation
Tax is collected by the Kentucky Department of Revenue.
There are six income tax brackets, ranging from 2% to 6% of personal income. The sales tax rate in Kentucky is 6%.
Kentucky has a broadly based classified property tax system. All classes of property, unless exempted by the Constitution, are taxed by the state, although at widely varying rates. Many of these classes are exempted from taxation by local government. Of the classes that are subject to local taxation, three have special rates set by the General Assembly, one by the Kentucky Supreme Court and the remaining classes are subject to the full local rate, which includes the tax rate set by the local taxing bodies plus all voted levies. Real property is assessed on 100% of the fair market value and property taxes are due by December 31. Once the primary source of state and local government revenue, property taxes now account for only about 6% of the Kentucky's annual General Fund revenues.
Until January 1, 2006, Kentucky imposed a tax on intangible personal property held by a taxpayer on January1 of each year. The Kentucky intangible tax was repealed under House Bill 272. Intangible property consisted of any property or investment that represents evidence of value or the right to value. Some types of intangible property included: bonds, notes, retail repurchase agreements, accounts receivable, trusts, enforceable contracts sale of real estate (land contracts), money in hand, money in safe deposit boxes, annuities, interests in estates, loans to stockholders, and commercial paper.
Government-promoted slogans
In December 2002, the Kentucky governor Paul Patton unveiled the state slogan "It's that friendly", in hope of drawing more people into the state based on the idea of southern hospitality. This campaign was neither a failure nor a success. Though it was meant to embrace southern values, many Kentuckians rejected the slogan as cheesy and ineffective. It was quickly seen that the slogan did not encourage tourism as much as initially hoped for. So government decided to create a different slogan to embrace Kentucky as a whole while also encouraging more people to visit the Bluegrass.
In 2004, then Governor Ernie Fletcher launched a comprehensive branding campaign with the hope of making the state's $12–14million advertising budget more effective. The resulting "Unbridled Spirit" brand was the result of a $500,000 contract with New West, a Kentucky-based public relations advertising and marketing firm, to develop a viable brand and tag line. The Fletcher administration aggressively marketed the brand in both the public and private sectors. Since that time, the "Welcome to Kentucky" signs at border areas have an "Unbridled Spirit" symbol on them.
Tourism
Tourism has become an increasingly important part of the Kentucky economy. In 2019 tourism grew to $7.6billion in economic impact. Key attractions include horse racing with events like the Kentucky Derby and the Keeneland Fall and Spring Meets, bourbon distillery tours and natural attractions such as the state's many lakes and parks to include Mammoth Cave, Lake Cumberland and Red River Gorge.
The state also has several religious destinations such as the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter of Answers in Genesis.
The Horse Industry
Horse Racing has long been associated with Kentucky. Churchill Downs, the home of the Derby, is a large venue with a capacity exceeding 165,000. The track hosts multiple events throughout the year and is a significant draw to the city of Louisville. Keeneland Race Course, in Lexington, hosts two major meets, the Spring and Fall running. Beyond hosting races Keeneland also hosts a significant horse auction drawing buyers from around the world. In 2019 $360million was spent on the September Yearling sale. The Kentucky Horse Park in Georgetown hosts multiple events throughout the year, including international equestrian competitions and also offers horseback riding from April to October.
Education
Kentucky maintains eight public four-year universities. There are two general tiers: major research institutions (the University of Kentucky and the University of Louisville) and regional universities, which encompass the remaining six schools. The regional schools have specific target counties that many of their programs are targeted towards (such as Forestry at Eastern Kentucky University or Cave Management at Western Kentucky University), however, most of their curriculum varies little from any other public university.
The University of Kentucky (UK) and the University of Louisville (UofL) have the highest academic rankings and admissions standards although the regional schools aren't without their national recognized departmentsexamples being Western Kentucky University's nationally ranked Journalism Department or Morehead State University offering one of the nation's only Space Science degrees. UK is the flagship and land grant of the system and has agriculture extension services in every county. The two research schools split duties related to the medical field, UK handles all medical outreach programs in the eastern half of the state while UofL does all medical outreach in the state's western half.
The state's sixteen public two-year colleges have been governed by the Kentucky Community and Technical College System since the passage of the Postsecondary Education Improvement Act of 1997, commonly referred to as House Bill 1. Before the passage of House Bill 1, most of these colleges were under the control of the University of Kentucky.
Transylvania University, a liberal arts university located in Lexington, was founded in 1780 as the oldest university west of the Allegheny Mountains.
Berea College, located at the extreme southern edge of the Bluegrass below the Cumberland Plateau, was the first coeducational college in the South to admit both black and white students, doing so from its very establishment in 1855. This policy was successfully challenged in the United States Supreme Court in the case of Berea College v. Kentucky in 1908. This decision effectively segregated Berea until the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.
There are 173 school districts and 1,233 public schools in Kentucky. For the 2010 to 2011 school year, there were approximately 647,827 students enrolled in public school.
Kentucky has been the site of much educational reform over the past two decades. In 1989 the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled the state's education system was unconstitutional. The response of the General Assembly was passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) the following year. Years later, Kentucky has shown progress, but most agree that further reform is needed.
The West Virginia teachers' strike in 2018 inspired teachers in other states, including Kentucky, to take similar action.
Transportation
Roads
Kentucky is served by six major Interstate highways (I-24, I-64, I-65, I-69, I-71, and I-75), seven parkways, and six bypasses and spurs (I-165, I-169, I-264, I-265, I-275, and I-471). The parkways were originally toll roads, but on November 22, 2006, Governor Ernie Fletcher ended the toll charges on the William H. Natcher Parkway and the Audubon Parkway, the last two parkways in Kentucky to charge tolls for access. The related toll booths have been demolished.
Ending the tolls some seven months ahead of schedule was generally agreed to have been a positive economic development for transportation in Kentucky. In June 2007, a law went into effect raising the speed limit on rural portions of Kentucky Interstates and parkways from .
Road tunnels include the interstate Cumberland Gap Tunnel and the rural Nada Tunnel.
Rails
Amtrak, the national passenger rail system, provides service to Ashland, South Portsmouth, Maysville and Fulton. The Cardinal (trains 50 and 51) is the line that offers Amtrak service to Ashland, South Shore, Maysville and South Portsmouth. The City of New Orleans (trains 58 and 59) serve Fulton. The Northern Kentucky area is served by the Cardinal at Cincinnati Union Terminal. The terminal is just across the Ohio River in Cincinnati.
Norfolk Southern Railway passes through the Central and Southern parts of the Commonwealth, via its Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Texas Pacific (CNO&TP) subsidiary. The line originates in Cincinnati and terminates 338 miles south in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
, there were approximately of railways in Kentucky, with about 65% of those being operated by CSX Transportation. Coal was by far the most common cargo, accounting for 76% of cargo loaded and 61% of cargo delivered.
Bardstown features a tourist attraction known as My Old Kentucky Dinner Train. Run along a stretch of rail purchased from CSX in 1987, guests are served a four-course meal as they make a two-and-a-half-hour round-trip between Bardstown and Limestone Springs. The Kentucky Railway Museum is located in nearby New Haven.
Other areas in Kentucky are reclaiming old railways in rail trail projects. One such project is Louisville's Big Four Bridge. When the bridge's Indiana approach ramps opened in 2014, completing the pedestrian connection across the Ohio River, the Big Four Bridge rail trail became the second-longest pedestrian-only bridge in the world. The longest pedestrian-only bridge is also found in Kentuckythe Newport Southbank Bridge, popularly known as the "Purple People Bridge", connecting Newport to Cincinnati, Ohio.
Air
Kentucky's primary airports include Louisville International Airport (Standiford Field (SDF)) of Louisville, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) of Cincinnati/Covington, and Blue Grass Airport (LEX) in Lexington. Louisville International Airport is home to UPS's Worldport, its international air-sorting hub. Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport is the largest airport in the state, and is a focus city for passenger airline Delta Air Lines and headquarters of its Delta Private Jets. The airport is one of DHL Aviation's three super-hubs, serving destinations throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia, making it the 7th busiest airport in the U.S. and 36th in the world based on passenger and cargo operations. CVG is also a focus city for Frontier Airlines and is the largest O&D airport and base for Allegiant Air, along with home to a maintenance for American Airlines subsidiary PSA Airlines and Delta Air Lines subsidiary Endeavor Air. There are also a number of regional airports scattered across the state.
On August 27, 2006, Blue Grass Airport was the site of a crash that killed 47 passengers and 2crew members aboard a Bombardier CRJ designated Comair Flight 191, or Delta Air Lines Flight 5191, sometimes mistakenly identified by the press as Comair Flight 5191. The lone survivor was the flight's first officer, James Polehinke, who doctors determined to be brain damaged and unable to recall the crash at all.
Water
As the state is bounded by two of the largest rivers in North America, water transportation has historically played a major role in Kentucky's economy. Louisville was a major port for steamships in the nineteenth century. Today, most barge traffic on Kentucky waterways consists of coal that is shipped from both the Eastern and Western Coalfields, about half of which is used locally to power many power plants located directly off the Ohio River, with the rest being exported to other countries, most notably Japan.
Many of the largest ports in the United States are located in or adjacent to Kentucky, including:
Huntington-Tristate (includes Ashland, Kentucky), largest inland port and 7th largest overall
Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky, 5th largest inland port and 43rd overall
Louisville-Southern Indiana, 7th largest inland port and 55th overall
As a state, Kentucky ranks 10th overall in port tonnage.
The only natural obstacle along the entire length of the Ohio River is the Falls of the Ohio, located just west of Downtown Louisville.
Law and government
Kentucky is one of four U.S. states to officially use the term commonwealth. The term was used for Kentucky as it had also been used by Virginia, from which Kentucky was created. The term has no particular significance in its meaning and was chosen to emphasize the distinction from the status of royal colonies as a place governed for the general welfare of the populace. Kentucky was originally styled as the "State of Kentucky" in the act admitting it to the union since that is how it was referred to in Kentucky's first constitution.
The commonwealth term was used in citizen petitions submitted between 1786 and 1792 for the creation of the state. It was also used in the title of a history of the state that was published in 1834 and was used in various places within that book in references to Virginia and Kentucky. The other three states officially called "commonwealths" are Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands are also formally commonwealths.
Kentucky is one of only five states that elect their state officials in odd-numbered years (the others being Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia). Kentucky holds elections for these offices every four years in the years preceding Presidential election years. Thus, Kentucky held gubernatorial elections in 2011, 2015 and 2019.
Executive branch
The executive branch is headed by the governor who serves as both head of state and head of government. The lieutenant governor may or may not have executive authority depending on whether the person is a member of the Governor's cabinet. Under the current Kentucky Constitution, the lieutenant governor assumes the duties of the governor only if the governor is incapacitated. (Before 1992 the lieutenant governor assumed power any time the governor was out of the state.) The governor and lieutenant governor usually run on a single ticket (also per a 1992 constitutional amendment) and are elected to four-year terms. The current governor is Andy Beshear, and the lieutenant governor is Jacqueline Coleman. Both are Democrats.
The executive branch is organized into the following "cabinets", each headed by a secretary who is also a member of the governor's cabinet:
General Government Cabinet
Transportation Cabinet
Cabinet for Economic Development
Finance and Administration Cabinet
Tourism, Arts, and Heritage Cabinet
Education and Workforce Development Cabinet
Cabinet for Health and Family Services
Justice and Public Safety Cabinet
Personnel Cabinet
Labor Cabinet
Energy and Environment Cabinet
Public Protection Cabinet
The cabinet system was introduced in 1972 by Governor Wendell Ford to consolidate hundreds of government entities that reported directly to the governor's office.
Other elected constitutional offices include the Secretary of State, Attorney General, Auditor of Public Accounts, State Treasurer and Commissioner of Agriculture. Currently, Republican Michael G. Adams serves as the Secretary of State. The commonwealth's chief prosecutor, law enforcement officer, and law officer is the Attorney General, currently Republican Daniel Cameron. The Auditor of Public Accounts is Republican Mike Harmon. Republican Allison Ball is the current Treasurer. Republican Ryan Quarles is the current Commissioner of Agriculture.
Legislative branch
Kentucky's legislative branch consists of a bicameral body known as the Kentucky General Assembly.
The Senate is considered the upper house. It has 38 members and is led by the President of the Senate, currently Robert Stivers (R).
The House of Representatives has 100 members, and is led by the Speaker of the House, currently David Osborne of the Republican Party.
In November 2016, Republicans won control of the House for the first time since 1922, and currently have supermajorities in both the House and Senate.
Judicial branch
The judicial branch of Kentucky is called the Kentucky Court of Justice and comprises courts of limited jurisdiction called District Courts; courts of general jurisdiction called Circuit Courts; specialty courts such as Drug Court and Family Court; an intermediate appellate court, the Kentucky Court of Appeals; and a court of last resort, the Kentucky Supreme Court.
The Kentucky Court of Justice is headed by the Chief Justice of the Commonwealth. The chief justice is appointed by, and is an elected member of, the Supreme Court of Kentucky. The current chief justice is John D. Minton Jr.
Unlike federal judges, who are usually appointed, justices serving on Kentucky state courts are chosen by the state's populace in non-partisan elections.
Federal representation
Kentucky's two U.S. Senators are Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, both Republicans. The state is divided into six Congressional Districts, represented by Republicans James Comer (1st), Brett Guthrie (2nd), Thomas Massie (4th), Hal Rogers (5th) and Andy Barr (6th) and Democrat John Yarmuth (3rd).
In the federal judiciary, Kentucky is served by two United States district courts: the Eastern District of Kentucky, with its primary seat in Lexington, and the Western District of Kentucky, with its primary seat in Louisville. Appeals are heard in the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, based in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Law
Kentucky's body of laws, known as the Kentucky Revised Statutes (KRS), were enacted in 1942 to better organize and clarify the whole of Kentucky law. The statutes are enforced by local police, sheriffs and deputy sheriffs, and constables and deputy constables. Unless they have completed a police academy elsewhere, these officers are required to complete Police Officer Professional Standards (POPS) training at the Kentucky Department of Criminal Justice Training Center on the campus of Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond. Additionally, in 1948, the Kentucky General Assembly established the Kentucky State Police, making it the 38th state to create a force whose jurisdiction extends throughout the given state.
Kentucky is one of the 32 states in the United States that sanctions the death penalty for certain murders defined as heinous. Those convicted of capital crimes after March 31, 1998 are always executed by lethal injection; those convicted on or before this date may opt for the electric chair. Only three people have been executed in Kentucky since the U.S. Supreme Court re-instituted the practice in 1976. The most notable execution in Kentucky was that of Rainey Bethea on August 14, 1936. Bethea was publicly hanged in Owensboro for the rape and murder of Lischia Edwards. Irregularities with the execution led to this becoming the last public execution in the United States.
Kentucky has been on the front lines of the debate over displaying the Ten Commandments on public property. In the 2005 case of McCreary County v. ACLU of Kentucky, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that a display of the Ten Commandments in the Whitley City courthouse of McCreary County was unconstitutional. Later that year, Judge Richard Fred Suhrheinrich, writing for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of ACLU of Kentucky v. Mercer County, wrote that a display including the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, The Star-Spangled Banner, and the national motto could be erected in the Mercer County courthouse.
Kentucky has also been known to have unusually high political candidacy age laws, especially compared to surrounding states. The origin of this is unknown, but it has been suggested it has to do with the commonwealth tradition.
A 2008 study found that Kentucky's Supreme Court to be the least influential high court in the nation with its decisions rarely being followed by other states.
Politics
Throughout its history, Kentucky has remained politically competitive. The state has leaned toward the Democratic Party since 1860, when the Whig Party dissolved. The southeastern region of the state aligned with the Union during the war and tends to support Republican candidates. The central and western portions of the state were heavily Democratic in the years leading to the Civil War and in the decades following the war. Kentucky was part of the Democratic Solid South in the second half of the nineteenth century and through the majority of the twentieth century.
Mirroring a broader national reversal of party composition, the Kentucky Democratic Party of the twenty-first century primarily consists of liberal whites, African Americans, and other minorities. As of January 2022, 45.71% of the state's voters were officially registered as Democrats, and 44.74% were registered Republican Some 9.55% were registered with some other political party or as Independents. Despite this, a majority of the state's voters have generally elected Republican candidates for federal office beginning around the turn of the 21st century.
From 1964 through 2004, Kentucky voted for the eventual winner of the election for President of the United States; however, in the 2008 election the state lost its bellwether status. Republican John McCain won Kentucky, but he lost the national popular and electoral vote to Democrat Barack Obama (McCain carried Kentucky 57% to 41%). 116 of Kentucky's 120 counties supported former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney in the 2012 election while he lost to Barack Obama nationwide.
Voters in the Commonwealth have supported the previous three Democratic candidates elected to the White House in the late 20th century, all from Southern states: Lyndon B. Johnson (Texas) in 1964, Jimmy Carter (Georgia) in 1976, and Bill Clinton (Arkansas) in 1992 and 1996. In the twenty-first century presidential elections, the state has become a Republican stronghold, supporting that party's presidential candidates by double-digit margins from 2000 through 2016. At the same time, voters have continued to elect Democratic candidates to state and local offices in many jurisdictions.
Kentucky is one of the most pro-life states in the United States. A 2014 poll conducted by Pew Research Center found that 57% of Kentucky's population thought that abortion should be illegal in all/most cases, while only 36% thought that abortion should be legal in all/most cases.
In a 2020 study, Kentucky was ranked as the 8th hardest state for citizens to vote in.
Culture
Although Kentucky's culture is generally considered to be Southern, it is unique in that it is also influenced by the Midwest and Southern Appalachia in certain areas of the state. The state is known for bourbon and whiskey distilling, tobacco, horse racing, and college basketball. Kentucky is more similar to the Upland South in terms of ancestry that is predominantly American.
Nevertheless, during the 19th century, Kentucky did receive a substantial number of German immigrants, who settled mostly in the Midwest, along the Ohio River primarily in Louisville, Covington and Newport. Only Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia have higher German ancestry percentages than Kentucky among Census-defined Southern states, although Kentucky's percentage is closer to Arkansas and Virginia's than the previously named state's percentages. Scottish Americans, English Americans and Scotch-Irish Americans have heavily influenced Kentucky culture, and are present in every part of the state. As of the 1980s the only counties in the United States where more than half the population cited "English" as their only ancestry group were all in the hills of eastern Kentucky (and made up virtually every county in this region).
Kentucky was a slave state, and black people once comprised over one-quarter of its population; however, it lacked the cotton plantation system and never had the same high percentage of African Americans as most other slave states. While less than 8% of the total population is black, Kentucky has a relatively significant rural African American population in the Central and Western areas of the state.
Kentucky adopted the Jim Crow system of racial segregation in most public spheres after the Civil War. Louisville's 1914 ordinance for residential racial segregation was struck down by the US Supreme Court in 1917. However, in 1908 Kentucky enacted the Day Law, "An Act to Prohibit White and Colored Persons from Attending the Same School", which Berea College unsuccessfully challenged at the US Supreme Court in 1908; in 1948, Lyman T. Johnson filed suit for admission to the University of Kentucky; as a result in the summer of 1949, nearly thirty African American students entered UK graduate and professional programs. Kentucky integrated its schools after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education verdict, later adopting the first state civil rights act in the South in 1966.
The biggest day in American horse racing, the Kentucky Derby, is preceded by the two-week Derby Festival in Louisville. The Derby Festival features many events, including Thunder Over Louisville, the Pegasus Parade, the Great Steamboat Race, Fest-a-Ville, the Chow Wagon, BalloonFest, BourbonVille, and many others leading up to the big race.
Louisville also plays host to the Kentucky State Fair and the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival. Bowling Green, the state's third-largest city and home to the only assembly plant in the world that manufactures the Chevrolet Corvette, opened the National Corvette Museum in 1994. The fourth-largest city, Owensboro, gives credence to its nickname of "Barbecue Capital of the World" by hosting the annual International Bar-B-Q Festival.
Old Louisville, the largest historic preservation district in the United States featuring Victorian architecture and the third largest overall, hosts the St. James Court Art Show, the largest outdoor art show in the United States. The neighborhood was also home to the Southern Exposition (1883–1887), which featured the first public display of Thomas Edison's light bulb, and was the setting of Alice Hegan Rice's novel, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch.
Hodgenville, the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, hosts the annual Lincoln Days Celebration, and also hosted the kick-off for the National Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Celebration in February 2008. Bardstown celebrates its heritage as a major bourbon-producing region with the Kentucky Bourbon Festival. Glasgow mimics Glasgow, Scotland by hosting the Glasgow Highland Games, its own version of the Highland Games, and Sturgis hosts "Little Sturgis", a mini version of Sturgis, South Dakota's annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.
Winchester celebrates an original Kentucky creation, Beer Cheese, with its Beer Cheese Festival held annually in June. Beer Cheese was developed in Clark County at some point in the 1940s along the Kentucky River.
The residents of tiny Benton pay tribute to their favorite tuber, the sweet potato, by hosting Tater Day. Residents of Clarkson in Grayson County celebrate their city's ties to the honey industry by celebrating the Clarkson Honeyfest. The Clarkson Honeyfest is held the last Thursday, Friday and Saturday in September, and is the "Official State Honey Festival of Kentucky".
Music
Renfro Valley, Kentucky is home to Renfro Valley Entertainment Center and the Kentucky Music Hall of Fame and is known as "Kentucky's Country Music Capital", a designation given it by the Kentucky State Legislature in the late 1980s. The Renfro Valley Barn Dance was where Renfro Valley's musical heritage began, in 1939, and influential country music luminaries like Red Foley, Homer & Jethro, Lily May Ledford &the Original Coon Creek Girls, Martha Carson and many others have performed as regular members of the shows there over the years. The Renfro Valley Gatherin' is today America's second-oldest continually broadcast radio program of any kind. It is broadcast on local radio station WRVK and a syndicated network of nearly 200 other stations across the United States and Canada every week.
Contemporary Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman is a Paducah native, and Rock and Roll Hall of Famers The Everly Brothers are closely connected with Muhlenberg County, where older brother Don was born. Merle Travis, Country &Western artist known for both his signature "Travis picking" guitar playing style, as well as his hit song "Sixteen Tons", was also born in Muhlenberg County. Kentucky was also home to Mildred and Patty Hill, the Louisville sisters credited with composing the tune to the ditty Happy Birthday to You in 1893; Loretta Lynn (Johnson County), Brian Littrell and Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys, and Billy Ray Cyrus (Flatwoods).
However, its depth lies in its signature soundBluegrass music. Bill Monroe, "The Father of Bluegrass", was born in the small Ohio County town of Rosine, while Ricky Skaggs, Keith Whitley, David "Stringbean" Akeman, Louis Marshall "Grandpa" Jones, Sonny and Bobby Osborne, and Sam Bush (who has been compared to Monroe) all hail from Kentucky. The Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum is located in Owensboro, while the annual Festival of the Bluegrass is held in Lexington.
Kentucky is also home to famed jazz musician and pioneer, Lionel Hampton. Blues legend W. C. Handy and R&B singer Wilson Pickett also spent considerable time in Kentucky. The R&B group Midnight Star and Hip-Hop group Nappy Roots were both formed in Kentucky, as were country acts The Kentucky Headhunters, Montgomery Gentry and Halfway to Hazard, The Judds, as well as Dove Award-winning Christian groups Audio Adrenaline (rock) and Bride (metal). Heavy Rock band Black Stone Cherry hails from rural Edmonton. Rock band My Morning Jacket with lead singer and guitarist Jim James originated out of Louisville, as well as bands Wax Fang, White Reaper, Tantric. Rock bands Cage the Elephant, Sleeper Agent, and Morning Teleportation are also from Bowling Green. The bluegrass groups Driftwood and Kentucky Rain, along with Nick Lachey of the pop band 98 Degrees are also from Kentucky. King Crimson guitarist Adrian Belew is from Covington. Post rock band Slint also hails from Louisville. Noted singer and actress Rosemary Clooney was a native of Maysville, her legacy being celebrated at the annual music festival bearing her name. Noted songwriter and actor Will Oldham is from Louisville. More recently in the limelight are country artists Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, and Chris Knight.
In eastern Kentucky, old-time music carries on the tradition of ancient ballads and reels developed in historical Appalachia.
Literature
Kentucky has played a major role in Southern and American literature, producing works that often celebrate the working class, rural life, nature, and explore issues of class, extractive economy, and family. Major works from the state include Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, widely seen as one of the impetuses for the American Civil War; The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come (1908) by John Fox Jr., which was the first novel to sell a million copies in the United States; All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren (1946), rated as the 36th best English-language novel of the 20th century; The Dollmaker (1954) by Harriette Arnow; Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1962) by Harry Caudill, which contributed to initiating the U.S. Government's War on poverty, and others.
Author Thomas Merton lived most of his life and wrote most of his booksincluding The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), ranked on National Review list of the 100 best non-fiction books of the centuryduring his time as a monk at the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani near Bardstown, Kentucky. Author Hunter S. Thompson is also a native of the state. Since the later part of the 20th century, several writers from Kentucky have published widely read and critically acclaimed books, including: Wendell Berry (fl. 1960–), Silas House (fl. 2001–), Barbara Kingsolver (fl. 1988–), poet Maurice Manning (fl. 2001–), and Bobbie Ann Mason (fl. 1988–).
Well-known playwrights from Kentucky include Marsha Norman (works include 'night, Mother, 1983) and Naomi Wallace (works include One Flea Spare, 1995).
Cuisine
Kentucky's cuisine is generally similar to traditional southern cooking, although in some areas of the state it can blend elements of both the South and Midwest. One original Kentucky dish is called the Hot Brown, a dish normally layered in this order: toasted bread, turkey, bacon, tomatoes and topped with mornay sauce. It was developed at the Brown Hotel in Louisville. The Pendennis Club in Louisville is the birthplace of the Old Fashioned cocktail. Also, western Kentucky is known for its own regional style of barbecue. Central Kentucky is the birthplace of Beer Cheese.
Harland Sanders, a Kentucky colonel, originated Kentucky Fried Chicken at his service station in North Corbin, though the first franchised KFC was located in South Salt Lake, Utah.
Sports
Kentucky is the home of several sports teams such as Minor League Baseball's Triple-A Louisville Bats and High-A Bowling Green Hot Rods. It is also home to the independent Atlantic League of Professional Baseball's Lexington Legends and the Frontier League's Florence Y'alls. The Lexington Horsemen and Louisville Fire of the now-defunct af2 had been interested in making a move up to the "major league" Arena Football League, but nothing has come of those plans.
The northern part of the state lies across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, which is home to the National Football League's Cincinnati Bengals, Major League Baseball's Cincinnati Reds. It is not uncommon for fans to park in the city of Newport and use the Newport Southbank Pedestrian Bridge, locally known as the "Purple People Bridge", to walk to these games in Cincinnati. Also, Georgetown College in Georgetown was the location for the Bengals' summer training camp, until it was announced in 2012 that the Bengals would no longer use the facilities.
As in many states, especially those without major league professional sports teams, college athletics are prominent. This is especially true of the state's three DivisionI Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) programs, including the Kentucky Wildcats, the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, and the Louisville Cardinals. The Wildcats, Hilltoppers, and Cardinals are among the most tradition-rich college men's basketball teams in the United States, combining for 11 National Championships and 24 NCAA Final Fours; all three are high on the lists of total all-time wins, wins per season, and average wins per season.
The Kentucky Wildcats are particularly notable, leading all DivisionI programs in all-time wins, win percentage, NCAA tournament appearances, and being second only to UCLA in NCAA championships. Louisville has also stepped onto the football scene in recent years, including winning the 2007 Orange Bowl as well as the 2013 Sugar Bowl, and also producing 2016 Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson. Western Kentucky, the 2002 national champion in DivisionI-AA football (now Football Championship Subdivision (FCS)), completed its transition to DivisionI FBS football in 2009.
The Kentucky Derby is a horse race held annually in Louisville on the first Saturday in May. The Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville has hosted several editions of the PGA Championship, Senior PGA Championship and Ryder Cup since the 1990s.
The NASCAR Cup Series held a race at the Kentucky Speedway in Sparta, Kentucky from 2011 to 2020, which is within an hour driving distance from Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington. The race is called the Quaker State 400. The NASCAR Nationwide Series and the Camping World Truck Series also raced there through 2020. The IndyCar Series previously raced there as well.
Ohio Valley Wrestling in Louisville was the primary location for training and rehab for WWE professional wrestlers from 2000 until 2008, when WWE moved its contracted talent to Florida Championship Wrestling. OVW later became the primary developmental territory for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) from 2011 to 2013.
In 2014 Louisville City FC, a professional soccer team in the league then known as USL Pro and now as the United Soccer League, was announced. The team made its debut in 2015, playing home games at Louisville Slugger Field. In its first season, Louisville City was the official reserve side for Orlando City SC, who made its debut in Major League Soccer at the same time. That arrangement ended in 2016 when Orlando City established a directly controlled reserve side in the USL.
Kentucky colonel
The distinction of being named a Kentucky colonel is the highest title of honor bestowed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Commissions for Kentucky colonels are given by the Governor and the Secretary of State to individuals in recognition of noteworthy accomplishments and outstanding service to a community, state or the nation. The sitting governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky bestows the honor of a colonel's commission, by issuance of letters patent. Kentucky colonels are commissioned for life and act officially as the state's goodwill ambassadors.
See also
Index of Kentucky-related articles
Outline of Kentucky
Notes
References
Bibliography
Politics
Miller, Penny M. Kentucky Politics & Government: Do We Stand United? (1994)
Jewell, Malcolm E. and Everett W. Cunningham, Kentucky Politics (1968)
History
Surveys and reference
Bodley, Temple and Samuel M. Wilson. History of Kentucky 4 vols. (1928).
Caudill, Harry M., Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1963).
Channing, Steven. Kentucky: A Bicentennial History (1977).
Clark, Thomas Dionysius. A History of Kentucky (many editions, 1937–1992).
Collins, Lewis. History of Kentucky (1880).
Harrison, Lowell H. and James C. Klotter. A New History of Kentucky (1997).
Kleber, John E. et al. The Kentucky Encyclopedia (1992), standard reference history.
Klotter, James C. Our Kentucky: A Study of the Bluegrass State (2000), high school text
Lucas, Marion Brunson and Wright, George C. A History of Blacks in Kentucky 2 vols. (1992).
World-Wide Web Resources – Notable Kentucky African Americans
Share, Allen J. Cities in the Commonwealth: Two Centuries of Urban Life in Kentucky (1982).
Wallis, Frederick A. and Hambleton Tapp. A Sesqui-Centennial History of Kentucky 4 vols. (1945).
Ward, William S., A Literary History of Kentucky (1988) ().
WPA, Kentucky: A Guide to the Bluegrass State (1939), classic guide.
Specialized scholarly studies
Bakeless, John. Daniel Boone, Master of the Wilderness (1989)
Blakey, George T. Hard Times and New Deal in Kentucky, 1929–1939 (1986)
Coulter, E. Merton. The Civil War and Readjustment in Kentucky (1926)
Davis, Alice. "Heroes: Kentucky's Artists from Statehood to the New Millennium" (2004)
Ellis, William E. The Kentucky River (2000).
Faragher, John Mack. Daniel Boone (1993)
Fenton, John H. Politics in the Border States: A Study of the Patterns of Political Organization, and Political Change, Common to the Border States: Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri (1957)
Harlow, Luke E. Religion, Race, and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830–1880. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Ireland, Robert M. The County in Kentucky History (1976)
Kelly, Andrew, Ed. "Kentucky by Design: The Decorative Arts and American Culture". Lexington, University Press of Kentucky, 2015.
Klotter, James C. Kentucky: Portrait in Paradox, 1900–1950 (1992)
Pearce, John Ed. Divide and Dissent: Kentucky Politics, 1930–1963 (1987)
Remini, Robert V. Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (1991).
Sonne, Niels Henry. Liberal Kentucky, 1780–1828 (1939)
Tapp, Hambleton and James C. Klotter. Kentucky Decades of Discord, 1865–1900 (1977)
Townsend, William H. Lincoln and the Bluegrass: Slavery and Civil War in Kentucky (1955)
Waldrep, Christopher Night Riders: Defending Community in the Black Patch, 1890–1915 (1993) tobacco wars
External links
Kentucky State Guide, from the Library of Congress
Kentucky Department of Tourism
GPS Specific Map of Kentucky Destinations (map)
USGS real-time, geographic, and other scientific resources of Kentucky
Energy & Environmental Data for Kentucky
Kentucky State Facts from USDA
Kentucky: Unbridled Spirit
Kentucky Virtual Library
U.S. Census Bureau Kentucky QuickFacts
Kentucky State Databases – Annotated list of searchable databases produced by Kentucky state agencies and compiled by the Government Documents Roundtable of the American Library Association.
1792 establishments in the United States
Southern United States
States and territories established in 1792
States of the United States
U.S. states with multiple time zones
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16848 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurtosis | Kurtosis | In probability theory and statistics, kurtosis (from , kyrtos or kurtos, meaning "curved, arching") is a measure of the "tailedness" of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable. Like skewness, kurtosis describes the shape of a probability distribution and there are different ways of quantifying it for a theoretical distribution and corresponding ways of estimating it from a sample from a population. Different measures of kurtosis may have different interpretations.
The standard measure of a distribution's kurtosis, originating with Karl Pearson, is a scaled version of the fourth moment of the distribution. This number is related to the tails of the distribution, not its peak; hence, the sometimes-seen characterization of kurtosis as "peakedness" is incorrect. For this measure, higher kurtosis corresponds to greater extremity of deviations (or outliers), and not the configuration of data near the mean.
The kurtosis of any univariate normal distribution is 3. It is common to compare the kurtosis of a distribution to this value. Distributions with kurtosis less than 3 are said to be platykurtic, although this does not imply the distribution is "flat-topped" as is sometimes stated. Rather, it means the distribution produces fewer and less extreme outliers than does the normal distribution. An example of a platykurtic distribution is the uniform distribution, which does not produce outliers. Distributions with kurtosis greater than 3 are said to be leptokurtic. An example of a leptokurtic distribution is the Laplace distribution, which has tails that asymptotically approach zero more slowly than a Gaussian, and therefore produces more outliers than the normal distribution. It is also common practice to use an adjusted version of Pearson's kurtosis, the excess kurtosis, which is the kurtosis minus 3, to provide the comparison to the standard normal distribution. Some authors use "kurtosis" by itself to refer to the excess kurtosis. For clarity and generality, however, this article follows the non-excess convention and explicitly indicates where excess kurtosis is meant.
Alternative measures of kurtosis are: the L-kurtosis, which is a scaled version of the fourth L-moment; measures based on four population or sample quantiles. These are analogous to the alternative measures of skewness that are not based on ordinary moments.
Pearson moments
The kurtosis is the fourth standardized moment, defined as
where μ4 is the fourth central moment and σ is the standard deviation. Several letters are used in the literature to denote the kurtosis. A very common choice is κ, which is fine as long as it is clear that it does not refer to a cumulant. Other choices include γ2, to be similar to the notation for skewness, although sometimes this is instead reserved for the excess kurtosis.
The kurtosis is bounded below by the squared skewness plus 1:
where μ3 is the third central moment. The lower bound is realized by the Bernoulli distribution. There is no upper limit to the kurtosis of a general probability distribution, and it may be infinite.
A reason why some authors favor the excess kurtosis is that cumulants are extensive. Formulas related to the extensive property are more naturally expressed in terms of the excess kurtosis. For example, let X1, ..., Xn be independent random variables for which the fourth moment exists, and let Y be the random variable defined by the sum of the Xi. The excess kurtosis of Y is
where is the standard deviation of . In particular if all of the Xi have the same variance, then this simplifies to
The reason not to subtract 3 is that the bare fourth moment better generalizes to multivariate distributions, especially when independence is not assumed. The cokurtosis between pairs of variables is an order four tensor. For a bivariate normal distribution, the cokurtosis tensor has off-diagonal terms that are neither 0 nor 3 in general, so attempting to "correct" for an excess becomes confusing. It is true, however, that the joint cumulants of degree greater than two for any multivariate normal distribution are zero.
For two random variables, X and Y, not necessarily independent, the kurtosis of the sum, X + Y, is
Note that the binomial coefficients appear in the above equation.
Interpretation
The exact interpretation of the Pearson measure of kurtosis (or excess kurtosis) used to be disputed, but is now settled. As Westfall notes in 2014, "...its only unambiguous interpretation is in terms of tail extremity; i.e., either existing outliers (for the sample kurtosis) or propensity to produce outliers (for the kurtosis of a probability distribution)." The logic is simple: Kurtosis is the average (or expected value) of the standardized data raised to the fourth power. Standardized values that are less than 1 (i.e., data within one standard deviation of the mean, where the "peak" would be) contribute virtually nothing to kurtosis, since raising a number that is less than 1 to the fourth power makes it closer to zero. The only data values (observed or observable) that contribute to kurtosis in any meaningful way are those outside the region of the peak; i.e., the outliers. Therefore, kurtosis measures outliers only; it measures nothing about the "peak".
Many incorrect interpretations of kurtosis that involve notions of peakedness have been given. One is that kurtosis measures both the "peakedness" of the distribution and the heaviness of its tail. Various other incorrect interpretations have been suggested, such as "lack of shoulders" (where the "shoulder" is defined vaguely as the area between the peak and the tail, or more specifically as the area about one standard deviation from the mean) or "bimodality". Balanda and MacGillivray assert that the standard definition of kurtosis "is a poor measure of the kurtosis, peakedness, or tail weight of a distribution" and instead propose to "define kurtosis vaguely as the location- and scale-free movement of probability mass from the shoulders of a distribution into its center and tails".
Moors' interpretation
In 1986 Moors gave an interpretation of kurtosis. Let
where X is a random variable, μ is the mean and σ is the standard deviation.
Now by definition of the kurtosis , and by the well-known identity
.
The kurtosis can now be seen as a measure of the dispersion of Z2 around its expectation. Alternatively it can be seen to be a measure of the dispersion of Z around +1 and −1. κ attains its minimal value in a symmetric two-point distribution. In terms of the original variable X, the kurtosis is a measure of the dispersion of X around the two values μ ± σ.
High values of κ arise in two circumstances:
where the probability mass is concentrated around the mean and the data-generating process produces occasional values far from the mean,
where the probability mass is concentrated in the tails of the distribution.
Excess kurtosis
The excess kurtosis is defined as kurtosis minus 3. There are 3 distinct regimes as described below.
1. Mesokurtic
2. Leptokurtic
3. Platykurtic
Mesokurtic
Distributions with zero excess kurtosis are called mesokurtic, or mesokurtotic. The most prominent example of a mesokurtic distribution is the normal distribution family, regardless of the values of its parameters. A few other well-known distributions can be mesokurtic, depending on parameter values: for example, the binomial distribution is mesokurtic for .
Leptokurtic
A distribution with positive excess kurtosis is called leptokurtic, or leptokurtotic. "Lepto-" means "slender". In terms of shape, a leptokurtic distribution has fatter tails. Examples of leptokurtic distributions include the Student's t-distribution, Rayleigh distribution, Laplace distribution, exponential distribution, Poisson distribution and the logistic distribution. Such distributions are sometimes termed super-Gaussian.
Platykurtic
A distribution with negative excess kurtosis is called platykurtic, or platykurtotic. "Platy-" means "broad". In terms of shape, a platykurtic distribution has thinner tails. Examples of platykurtic distributions include the continuous and discrete uniform distributions, and the raised cosine distribution. The most platykurtic distribution of all is the Bernoulli distribution with p = 1/2 (for example the number of times one obtains "heads" when flipping a coin once, a coin toss), for which the excess kurtosis is −2.
Graphical examples
The Pearson type VII family
The effects of kurtosis are illustrated using a parametric family of distributions whose kurtosis can be adjusted while their lower-order moments and cumulants remain constant. Consider the Pearson type VII family, which is a special case of the Pearson type IV family restricted to symmetric densities. The probability density function is given by
where a is a scale parameter and m is a shape parameter.
All densities in this family are symmetric. The kth moment exists provided m > (k + 1)/2. For the kurtosis to exist, we require m > 5/2. Then the mean and skewness exist and are both identically zero. Setting a2 = 2m − 3 makes the variance equal to unity. Then the only free parameter is m, which controls the fourth moment (and cumulant) and hence the kurtosis. One can reparameterize with , where is the excess kurtosis as defined above. This yields a one-parameter leptokurtic family with zero mean, unit variance, zero skewness, and arbitrary non-negative excess kurtosis. The reparameterized density is
In the limit as one obtains the density
which is shown as the red curve in the images on the right.
In the other direction as one obtains the standard normal density as the limiting distribution, shown as the black curve.
In the images on the right, the blue curve represents the density with excess kurtosis of 2. The top image shows that leptokurtic densities in this family have a higher peak than the mesokurtic normal density, although this conclusion is only valid for this select family of distributions. The comparatively fatter tails of the leptokurtic densities are illustrated in the second image, which plots the natural logarithm of the Pearson type VII densities: the black curve is the logarithm of the standard normal density, which is a parabola. One can see that the normal density allocates little probability mass to the regions far from the mean ("has thin tails"), compared with the blue curve of the leptokurtic Pearson type VII density with excess kurtosis of 2. Between the blue curve and the black are other Pearson type VII densities with γ2 = 1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16. The red curve again shows the upper limit of the Pearson type VII family, with (which, strictly speaking, means that the fourth moment does not exist). The red curve decreases the slowest as one moves outward from the origin ("has fat tails").
Other well-known distributions
Several well-known, unimodal, and symmetric distributions from different parametric families are compared here. Each has a mean and skewness of zero. The parameters have been chosen to result in a variance equal to 1 in each case. The images on the right show curves for the following seven densities, on a linear scale and logarithmic scale:
D: Laplace distribution, also known as the double exponential distribution, red curve (two straight lines in the log-scale plot), excess kurtosis = 3
S: hyperbolic secant distribution, orange curve, excess kurtosis = 2
L: logistic distribution, green curve, excess kurtosis = 1.2
N: normal distribution, black curve (inverted parabola in the log-scale plot), excess kurtosis = 0
C: raised cosine distribution, cyan curve, excess kurtosis = −0.593762...
W: Wigner semicircle distribution, blue curve, excess kurtosis = −1
U: uniform distribution, magenta curve (shown for clarity as a rectangle in both images), excess kurtosis = −1.2.
Note that in these cases the platykurtic densities have bounded support, whereas the densities with positive or zero excess kurtosis are supported on the whole real line.
One cannot infer that high or low kurtosis distributions have the characteristics indicated by these examples. There exist platykurtic densities with infinite support,
e.g., exponential power distributions with sufficiently large shape parameter b
and there exist leptokurtic densities with finite support.
e.g., a distribution that is uniform between −3 and −0.3, between −0.3 and 0.3, and between 0.3 and 3, with the same density in the (−3, −0.3) and (0.3, 3) intervals, but with 20 times more density in the (−0.3, 0.3) interval
Also, there exist platykurtic densities with infinite peakedness,
e.g., an equal mixture of the beta distribution with parameters 0.5 and 1 with its reflection about 0.0
and there exist leptokurtic densities that appear flat-topped,
e.g., a mixture of distribution that is uniform between -1 and 1 with a T(4.0000001) Student's t-distribution, with mixing probabilities 0.999 and 0.001.
Sample kurtosis
Definitions
A natural but biased estimator
For a sample of n values, a method of moments estimator of the population excess kurtosis can be defined as
where m4 is the fourth sample moment about the mean, m2 is the second sample moment about the mean (that is, the sample variance), xi is the ith value, and is the sample mean.
This formula has the simpler representation,
where the values are the standardized data values using the standard deviation defined using n rather than n − 1 in the denominator.
For example, suppose the data values are 0, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 0, 2, 1, 3, 2, 0, 2, 2, 3, 2, 5, 2, 3, 999.
Then the values are −0.239, −0.225, −0.221, −0.234, −0.230, −0.225, −0.239, −0.230, −0.234, −0.225, −0.230, −0.239, −0.230, −0.230, −0.225, −0.230, −0.216, −0.230, −0.225, 4.359
and the values are 0.003, 0.003, 0.002, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.003, 0.002, 0.003, 0.003, 360.976.
The average of these values is 18.05 and the excess kurtosis is thus 18.05 − 3 = 15.05. This example makes it clear that data near the "middle" or "peak" of the distribution do not contribute to the kurtosis statistic, hence kurtosis does not measure "peakedness". It is simply a measure of the outlier, 999 in this example.
Standard unbiased estimator
Given a sub-set of samples from a population, the sample excess kurtosis above is a biased estimator of the population excess kurtosis. An alternative estimator of the population excess kurtosis, which is unbiased in random samples of a normal distribution, is defined as follows:
where k4 is the unique symmetric unbiased estimator of the fourth cumulant, k2 is the unbiased estimate of the second cumulant (identical to the unbiased estimate of the sample variance), m4 is the fourth sample moment about the mean, m2 is the second sample moment about the mean, xi is the ith value, and is the sample mean. This adjusted Fisher–Pearson standardized moment coefficient is the version found in Excel and several statistical packages including Minitab, SAS and SPSS.
Unfortunately, in nonnormal samples is itself generally biased.
Upper bound
An upper bound for the sample kurtosis of n (n > 2) real numbers is
where is the corresponding sample skewness.
Variance under normality
The variance of the sample kurtosis of a sample of size n from the normal distribution is
Stated differently, under the assumption that the underlying random variable is normally distributed, it can be shown that .
Applications
The sample kurtosis is a useful measure of whether there is a problem with outliers in a data set. Larger kurtosis indicates a more serious outlier problem, and may lead the researcher to choose alternative statistical methods.
D'Agostino's K-squared test is a goodness-of-fit normality test based on a combination of the sample skewness and sample kurtosis, as is the Jarque–Bera test for normality.
For non-normal samples, the variance of the sample variance depends on the kurtosis; for details, please see variance.
Pearson's definition of kurtosis is used as an indicator of intermittency in turbulence. It is also used in magnetic resonance imaging to quantify non-Gaussian diffusion.
A concrete example is the following lemma by He, Zhang, and Zhang:
Assume a random variable has expectation , variance and kurtosis .
Assume we sample many independent copies. Then
.
This shows that with many samples, we will see one that is above the expectation with probability at least .
In other words: If the kurtosis is large, we might see a lot values either all below or above the mean.
Kurtosis convergence
Applying band-pass filters to digital images, kurtosis values tend to be uniform, independent of the range of the filter. This behavior, termed kurtosis convergence, can be used to detect image splicing in forensic analysis.
Other measures
A different measure of "kurtosis" is provided by using L-moments instead of the ordinary moments.
See also
Kurtosis risk
Maximum entropy probability distribution
References
Further reading
Alternative source (Comparison of kurtosis estimators)
External links
Kurtosis calculator
Free Online Software (Calculator) computes various types of skewness and kurtosis statistics for any dataset (includes small and large sample tests)..
Kurtosis on the Earliest known uses of some of the words of mathematics
Celebrating 100 years of Kurtosis a history of the topic, with different measures of kurtosis.
Moment (mathematics)
Statistical deviation and dispersion | [
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16849 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kon%20Ichikawa | Kon Ichikawa | was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. His work displays a vast range in genre and style, from the anti-war films The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959), to the documentary Tokyo Olympiad (1965), which won two BAFTA Film Awards, and the 19th-century revenge drama An Actor's Revenge (1963). His film Odd Obsession (1959) won the Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival.
Early life and career
Ichikawa was born in Ise, Mie Prefecture as Giichi Ichikawa (市川儀一). His father died when he was four years old, and the family kimono shop went bankrupt, so he went to live with his sister. He was given the name "Kon" by an uncle who thought the characters in the kanji 崑 signified good luck, because the two halves of the Chinese character look the same when it is split in half vertically. As a child he loved drawing and his ambition was to become an artist. He also loved films and was a fan of "chambara" or samurai films. In his teens he was fascinated by Walt Disney's "Silly Symphonies" and decided to become an animator. He attended a technical school in Osaka. Upon graduation, in 1933, he found a job with a local rental film studio, J.O Studio, in their animation department. Decades later, he told the American writer on Japanese film Donald Richie, "I'm still a cartoonist and I think that the greatest influence on my films (besides Chaplin, particularly The Gold Rush) is probably Disney."
He moved to the feature film department as an assistant director when the company closed its animation department, working under directors including Yutaka Abe and Nobuo Aoyagi.
In the early 1940s J.O Studio merged with P.C.L. and Toho Film Distribution to form the Toho Film Company. Ichikawa moved to Tokyo. His first film was a puppet play short, A Girl at Dojo Temple (Musume Dojoji 1946), which was confiscated by the interim U.S. Occupation authorities under the pretext that it was too "feudal", though some sources suggest the script had not been approved by the occupying authorities. Thought lost for many years, it is now archived at the Cinémathèque Française.
It was at Toho that he met Natto Wada. Wada was a translator for Toho. They agreed to marry sometime after Ichikawa completed his first film as director. Natto Wada's original name was Yumiko Mogi (born 13 September 1920 in Himeji, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan); the couple both had failed marriages behind them. She graduated with a degree in English literature from Tokyo Woman's Christian University. She married Kon Ichikawa on 10 April 1948, and died on 18 February 1983 of breast cancer.
1950–1965
It was after Ichikawa's marriage to Wada that the two began collaborating, first on Design of a Human Being (Ningen moyo) and Endless Passion (Hateshinaki jonetsu) in 1949. The period 1950–1965 is often referred to as Ichikawa's Natto Wada period. It's the period that contains the majority of Ichikawa's most highly respected works, such as Tokyo Olympiad (Tōkyō Orinpikku), for which he was awarded the Olympic Diploma of Merit, as well as the BAFTA United Nations Award and the Robert Flaherty Award (now known as the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary). It is also during this period that Wada wrote 34 screenplays, most of which were adaptations.
He gained Western recognition during the 1950s and 1960s with two anti-war films, The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain, and the technically formidable period-piece An Actor's Revenge (Yukinojo henge) about a kabuki actor.
Among his many literary adaptations were Jun'ichirō Tanizaki's The Key (Kagi), Natsume Sōseki's The Heart (Kokoro) and I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru), in which a teacher's cat critiques the foibles of the humans surrounding him, and Yukio Mishima's Conflagration (Enjo), in which a priest burns down his temple to save it from spiritual pollution. The Key, released in the United States as Odd Obsession, was entered in the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Jury Prize with Antonioni's L'Avventura.
After 1965
After Tokyo Olympiad Wada retired from screenwriting, and it marked a significant change in Ichikawa's films from that point onward. Concerning her retirement, he said "She doesn't like the new film grammar, the method of presentation of the material; she says there's no heart in it anymore, that people no longer take human love seriously."
His final film, 2006's Inugamis, a remake of Ichikawa's own 1976 film The Inugami Family, was entered into the 29th Moscow International Film Festival.
Also in 2006, Ichikawa was the subject of a feature-length documentary, The Kon Ichikawa Story, directed by Shunji Iwai.
Ichikawa died of pneumonia on 13 February 2008 in a Tokyo hospital. He was 92 years old.
The Magic Hour marked Ichikawa's last appearance and was dedicated to his memory. (This message can be seen in the end of this film.) In this film, a movie director played by Ichikawa is shooting Kuroi Hyaku-ichi-nin no Onna (a hundred and one dark women), a parody of Ten Dark Women.
Legacy
Ichikawa's films are marked with a certain darkness and bleakness, punctuated with sparks of humanity.
It can be said that his main trait is technical expertise, irony, detachment and a drive for realism married with a complete spectrum of genres. Some critics class him with Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujirō Ozu as one of the masters of Japanese cinema.
The Kon Ichikawa Memorial Room, a small museum dedicated to him and his wife Natto Wada displaying materials from his personal collection, was opened in Shibuya in 2015, on the site of his former home.
Filmography
Yowamushi Chinsengumi (1935)
A Girl at Dojo Temple (1946)
A Thousand and One Nights with Toho (東宝千一夜 Toho senichi-ya) (1947)
The Lovers (1951)
The Woman Who Touched the Legs (Ashi ni sawatta onna) (1951)
Mr. Pu (1953)
Okuman Chōja (1954)
Ghost Story of Youth (Seishun kaidan) (1955)
The Heart (Kokoro) (1955)
The Burmese Harp (1956) - black and white version
Punishment Room (1956)
Bridge of Japan (1956)
The Men of Tohoku (1957)
The Hole (1957)
Enjo (1958)
Odd Obsession (1959)
Fires on the Plain (1959)
A Woman's Testament (1960) - together with Kōzaburō Yoshimura and Yasuzo Masumura
Bonchi (1960)
Her Brother (1960)
Ten Dark Women (1961)
The Sin (a.k.a. The Broken Commandments)(1962)
Being Two Isn't Easy (1962)
An Actor's Revenge (1963)
Alone Across the Pacific (1963)
Money Talks (1963)
Tokyo Olympiad (documentary) (1965)
The Tale of Genji (1966)
Topo Gigio and the Missile War (1967)
To Love Again (1971)
Kogarashi Monjirō (1972) TV
Visions of Eight (1973) - documentary; anthology film
The Wanderers (1973)
I Am a Cat (1975)
The Inugami Family (1976)
Rhyme of Vengeance (1978)
Hi no Tori (The Phoenix) (1978)
The Devil's Island (1978)
Byoinzaka no Kubikukuri no Ie (1979)
Koto (a.k.a. Koto, the Ancient City) (1980)
Kofuku (1981)
The Makioka Sisters (a.k.a. Fine Snow, 細雪 Sasame-yuki) (1983)
Ohan (1984)
The Burmese Harp (1985) - color remake
The Adventures of Milo and Otis (1986) - associate director
Princess from the Moon (1987)
Actress (1987)
(1991)
Kaetekita Kogarashi Monjirō (1993)
47 Ronin (1994)
The 8-Tomb Village (1996)
Shinsengumi (2000)
Dora-heita (2000)
Kah-chan(2001)Yume jûya (2006)
''The Inugamis (2006)
References
External links
(official site, in Japanese)
Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
Strictly Film School: Kon Ichikawa
1915 births
2008 deaths
People from Ise, Mie
Akira Kurosawa Award winners
Deaths from pneumonia in Japan
Japanese film directors
Japanese animated film directors
Anime directors
Samurai film directors
Japanese animators
Persons of Cultural Merit | [
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16850 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel%20van%20het%20Reve | Karel van het Reve | Karel van het Reve (19 May 1921 – 4 March 1999) was a Dutch writer, translator and literary historian, teaching and writing on Russian literature.
He was born in Amsterdam and was raised as a communist. He lost his 'faith' in his twenties and became an active critic and opponent of the Soviet regime. With his help, work of dissident Andrei Sakharov was smuggled to the west, and his Alexander Herzen Foundation published dissident Soviet literature.
He is considered to be one of the finest Dutch essayists, his interests ranging from the fallacies of Marxism to nude beach etiquette. His works include a history of Russian literature, 2 novels and several collections of essays. In 1978, Karel van het Reve delivered the Huizinga Lecture, under the title: Literatuurwetenschap: het raadsel der onleesbaarheid (Literary studies: the enigma of unreadability).
His brother, Gerard Reve, was a prominent prose writer.
The main-belt asteroid 12174 van het Reve, discovered by the Palomar–Leiden Survey in 1977, was named in his honor.
Bibliography
Novels
("Two minutes' silence", 1959)
("Night on the bare mountain", 1961)
References
External links
1921 births
1999 deaths
Dutch essayists
Dutch literary critics
20th-century Dutch novelists
20th-century Dutch male writers
Dutch male novelists
Dutch translators
Dutch anti-communists
Netherlands–Russia relations
Writers from Amsterdam
P. C. Hooft Award winners
20th-century translators
Male essayists
20th-century essayists
Translators to Dutch
Translators from Russian | [
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16851 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana | Katakana | is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived from components or fragments of more complex kanji. Katakana and hiragana are both kana systems. With one or two minor exceptions, each syllable (strictly mora) in the Japanese language is represented by one character or kana, in each system. Each kana represents either a vowel such as "a" (katakana ア); a consonant followed by a vowel such as "ka" (katakana カ); or "n" (katakana ン), a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n or ng () or like the nasal vowels of Portuguese or Galician.
In contrast to the hiragana syllabary, which is used for Japanese words not covered by kanji and for grammatical inflections, the katakana syllabary usage is quite similar to italics in English; specifically, it is used for transcription of foreign-language words into Japanese and the writing of loan words (collectively gairaigo); for emphasis; to represent onomatopoeia; for technical and scientific terms; and for names of plants, animals, minerals and often Japanese companies.
Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and sharp corners. There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.
Writing system
Overview
The complete katakana script consists of 48 characters, not counting functional and diacritic marks:
5 nucleus vowels
42 core or body (onset-nucleus) syllabograms, consisting of nine consonants in combination with each of the five vowels, of which three possible combinations (yi, ye, wu) are not canonical
1 coda consonant
These are conceived as a 5×10 grid (gojūon, 五十音, literally "fifty sounds"), as shown in the adjacent table, read , , , , , , , , , and so on. The gojūon inherits its vowel and consonant order from Sanskrit practice. In vertical text contexts, which used to be the default case, the grid is usually presented as 10 columns by 5 rows, with vowels on the right hand side and ア (a) on top. Katakana glyphs in the same row or column do not share common graphic characteristics. Three of the syllabograms to be expected, yi, ye and wu, may have been used idiosyncratically with varying glyphs, but never became conventional in any language and are not present at all in modern Japanese.
The 50-sound table is often amended with an extra character, the nasal ン (n). This can appear in several positions, most often next to the N signs or, because it developed from one of many mu hentaigana, below the u column. It may also be appended to the vowel row or the a column. Here, it is shown in a table of its own.
The script includes two diacritic marks placed at the upper right of the base character that change the initial sound of a syllabogram. A double dot, called dakuten, indicates a primary alteration; most often it voices the consonant: k→g, s→z, t→d and h→b; for example, becomes . Secondary alteration, where possible, is shown by a circular handakuten: h→p; For example; becomes . Diacritics, though used for over a thousand years, only became mandatory in the Japanese writing system in the second half of the 20th century. Their application is strictly limited in proper writing systems, but may be more extensive in academic transcriptions.
Furthermore, some characters may have special semantics when used in smaller sizes after a normal one (see below), but this does not make the script truly bicameral.
The layout of the gojūon table promotes a systematic view of kana syllabograms as being always pronounced with the same single consonant followed by a vowel, but this is not exactly the case (and never has been). Existing schemes for the romanization of Japanese either are based on the systematic nature of the script, e.g. nihon-siki チ ti, or they apply some Western graphotactics, usually the English one, to the common Japanese pronunciation of the kana signs, e.g. Hepburn-shiki チ chi. Both approaches conceal the fact, though, that many consonant-based katakana signs, especially those canonically ending in u, can be used in coda position, too, where the vowel is unvoiced and therefore barely perceptible.
Japanese
Syllabary and orthography
Of the 48 katakana syllabograms described above, only 46 are used in modern Japanese, and one of these is preserved for only a single use:
wi and we are pronounced as vowels in modern Japanese and are therefore obsolete, having been supplanted by i and e, respectively.
wo is now used only as a particle, and is normally pronounced the same as vowel オ o. As a particle, it is usually written in hiragana (を) and the katakana form, ヲ, is almost obsolete.
A small version of the katakana for ya, yu or yo (ャ, ュ or ョ, respectively) may be added to katakana ending in i. This changes the i vowel sound to a glide (palatalization) to a, u or o, e.g. キャ (ki + ya) /kja/. Addition of the small y kana is called yōon.
A character called a sokuon, which is visually identical to a small tsu ッ, indicates that the following consonant is geminated (doubled). This is represented in rōmaji by doubling the consonant that follows the sokuon. In Japanese this is an important distinction in pronunciation; for example, compare サカ saka "hill" with サッカ sakka "author". Geminated consonants are common in transliterations of foreign loanwords; for example, English "bed" is represented as ベッド (beddo). The sokuon also sometimes appears at the end of utterances, where it denotes a glottal stop. However, it cannot be used to double the na, ni, nu, ne, no syllables' consonants; to double these, the singular n (ン) is added in front of the syllable. The sokuon may also be used to approximate a non-native sound: Bach is written (Bahha); Mach as (Mahha).
Both katakana and hiragana usually spell native long vowels with the addition of a second vowel kana. However, in foreign loanwords, katakana instead uses a vowel extender mark, called a chōonpu ("long vowel mark"). This is a short line (ー) following the direction of the text, horizontal for yokogaki (horizontal text), and vertical for tategaki (vertical text). For example, メール mēru is the gairaigo for e-mail taken from the English word "mail"; the ー lengthens the e. There are some exceptions, such as () or (), where Japanese words written in katakana use the elongation mark, too.
Standard and voiced iteration marks are written in katakana as ヽ and ヾ, respectively.
Extended Katakana
Small versions of the five vowel kana are sometimes used to represent trailing off sounds (ハァ haa, ネェ nee), but in katakana they are more often used in yōon-like extended digraphs designed to represent phonemes not present in Japanese; examples include チェ (che) in チェンジ chenji ("change"), ファ (fa) in ファミリー famirī ("family") and ウィ (wi) and ディ (di) in ウィキペディア Wikipedia.
Many of these digraphs have been used, mainly to represent the sounds in words of other languages.
Digraphs with orange backgrounds are the general ones used for loanwords or foreign places or names, and those with blue backgrounds are used for more accurate transliterations of foreign sounds, both suggested by the Cabinet of Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Katakana combinations with beige backgrounds are suggested by the American National Standards Institute and the British Standards Institution as possible uses. Ones with purple backgrounds appear on the 1974 version of the Hyōjun-shiki formatting.
Pronunciations are shown in Hepburn romanization.
* — The use of in these two cases to represent w is rare in modern Japanese except for Internet slang and transcription of the Latin sound [w] into katakana. E.g.: ミネルウァ (Mineruwa "Minerva", from Latin MINERVA [mɪˈnɛrwa]); ウゥルカーヌス (Wurukānusu "Vulcan", from Latin VVLCANVS, Vulcānus [wʊlˈkaːnʊs]). The wa-type of foreign sounds (as in watt or white) is usually transcribed to ワ (wa), while the wu-type (as in wood or woman) is usually to ウ (u) or ウー (ū).
⁑ — has a rarely-used hiragana form in that is also vu in Hepburn romanization systems.
⁂ — The characters in are obsolete in modern Japanese and very rarely used.
Usage
In modern Japanese, katakana is most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages or loanwords (other than words historically imported from Chinese), called gairaigo. For example, "television" is written テレビ (terebi). Similarly, katakana is usually used for country names, foreign places, and foreign personal names. For example, the United States is usually referred to as Amerika, rather than in its ateji kanji spelling of Amerika.
Katakana are also used for onomatopoeia, words used to represent sounds – for example, ピンポン (pinpon), the "ding-dong" sound of a doorbell.
Technical and scientific terms, such as the names of animal and plant species and minerals, are also commonly written in katakana. Homo sapiens, as a species, is written ヒト (hito), rather than its kanji .
Katakana are often (but not always) used for transcription of Japanese company names. For example, Suzuki is written スズキ, and Toyota is written トヨタ. As these are common family names, Suzuki being the second most common in Japan, using katakana helps distinguish company names from surnames in writing. Katakana are commonly used on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards), for example, koko ("here"), gomi ("trash"), or megane ("glasses"). Words the writer wishes to emphasize in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the usage of italics in European languages.
Pre–World War II official documents mix katakana and kanji in the same way that hiragana and kanji are mixed in modern Japanese texts, that is, katakana were used for okurigana and particles such as wa or o.
Katakana was also used for telegrams in Japan before 1988, and for computer systems – before the introduction of multibyte characters – in the 1980s. Most computers of that era used katakana instead of kanji or hiragana for output.
Although words borrowed from ancient Chinese are usually written in kanji, loanwords from modern Chinese dialects that are borrowed directly use katakana instead.
The very common Chinese loanword rāmen, written in katakana as , is rarely written with its kanji ().
There are rare instances where the opposite has occurred, with kanji forms created from words originally written in katakana. An example of this is kōhī, ("coffee"), which can alternatively be written as . This kanji usage is occasionally employed by coffee manufacturers or coffee shops for novelty.
Katakana is used to indicate the on'yomi (Chinese-derived readings) of a kanji in a kanji dictionary. For instance, the kanji 人 has a Japanese pronunciation, written in hiragana as hito (person), as well as a Chinese derived pronunciation, written in katakana as jin (used to denote groups of people). Katakana is sometimes used instead of hiragana as furigana to give the pronunciation of a word written in Roman characters, or for a foreign word, which is written as kanji for the meaning, but intended to be pronounced as the original.
Katakana are also sometimes used to indicate words being spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent. For example, in a manga, the speech of a foreign character or a robot may be represented by konnichiwa ("hello") instead of the more typical hiragana . Some Japanese personal names are written in katakana. This was more common in the past, hence elderly women often have katakana names. This was particularly common among women in the Meiji and Taishō periods, when many poor, illiterate parents were unwilling to pay a scholar to give their daughters names in kanji. Katakana is also used to denote the fact that a character is speaking a foreign language, and what is displayed in katakana is only the Japanese "translation" of their words.
Some frequently used words may also be written in katakana in dialogs to convey an informal, conversational tone. Some examples include ("manga"), aitsu ("that guy or girl; he/him; she/her"), baka ("fool"), etc.
Words with difficult-to-read kanji are sometimes written in katakana (hiragana is also used for this purpose). This phenomenon is often seen with medical terminology. For example, in the word hifuka ("dermatology"), the second kanji, , is considered difficult to read, and thus the word hifuka is commonly written or , mixing kanji and katakana. Similarly, difficult-to-read kanji such as gan ("cancer") are often written in katakana or hiragana.
Katakana is also used for traditional musical notations, as in the Tozan-ryū of shakuhachi, and in sankyoku ensembles with koto, shamisen and shakuhachi.
Some instructors teaching Japanese as a foreign language "introduce katakana after the students have learned to read and write sentences in hiragana without difficulty and know the rules." Most students who have learned hiragana "do not have great difficulty in memorizing" katakana as well. Other instructors introduce katakana first, because these are used with loanwords. This gives students a chance to practice reading and writing kana with meaningful words. This was the approach taken by the influential American linguistics scholar Eleanor Harz Jorden in Japanese: The Written Language (parallel to Japanese: The Spoken Language).
Ainu
Katakana is commonly used by Japanese linguists to write the Ainu language. In Ainu katakana usage, the consonant that comes at the end of a syllable is represented by a small version of a katakana that corresponds to that final consonant followed by an arbitrary vowel. For instance "up" is represented by ウㇷ゚ (ウプ [u followed by small pu]). Ainu also uses three handakuten modified katakana, セ゚ ([tse]), and ツ゚ or ト゚ ([tu̜]). In Unicode, the Katakana Phonetic Extensions block (U+31F0–U+31FF) exists for Ainu language support. These characters are used for the Ainu language only.
Taiwanese
Taiwanese kana (タイ ヲァヌ ギイ カア ビェン) is a katakana-based writing system once used to write Holo Taiwanese, when Taiwan was under Japanese control. It functioned as a phonetic guide for Chinese characters, much like furigana in Japanese or Zhùyīn fúhào in Chinese. There were similar systems for other languages in Taiwan as well, including Hakka and Formosan languages.
Unlike Japanese or Ainu, Taiwanese kana are used similarly to the zhùyīn fúhào characters, with kana serving as initials, vowel medials and consonant finals, marked with tonal marks. A dot below the initial kana represents aspirated consonants, and チ, ツ, サ, セ, ソ, ウ and オ with a superpositional bar represent sounds found only in Taiwanese.
Okinawan
Katakana is used as a phonetic guide for the Okinawan language, unlike the various other systems to represent Okinawan, which use hiragana with extensions. The system was devised by the Okinawa Center of Language Study of the University of the Ryukyus. It uses many extensions and yōon to show the many non-Japanese sounds of Okinawan.
Table of katakana
This is a table of katakana together with their Hepburn romanization and rough IPA transcription for their use in Japanese. Katakana with dakuten or handakuten follow the gojūon kana without them.
Characters shi シ and tsu ツ, and so ソ and n(g) ン, look very similar in print except for the slant and stroke shape. These differences in slant and shape are more prominent when written with an ink brush.
History
Katakana was developed in the 9th century (during the early Heian period) by Buddhist monks in Nara by taking parts of man'yōgana characters as a form of shorthand, hence this kana is so-called . For example, comes from the left side of . The adjacent table shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character (used as man'yōgana) eventually became each corresponding symbol.
Early on, katakana was almost exclusively used by men for official text and text imported from China.
Official documents of the Empire of Japan were written exclusively with kyūjitai and katakana.
Obsolete Kana
Variant forms
Katakana have variant forms. For example, (ネ) and (ヰ). However, katakana's variant forms are fewer than hiragana's ones. Katakana's choices of man'yōgana segments had stabilized early on and established – with few exceptions – an unambiguous phonemic orthography (one symbol per sound) long before the 1900 script regularization.
Polysyllabic kana
Yi, Ye and Wu
Stroke order
The following table shows the method for writing each katakana character. It is arranged in a traditional manner, where characters are organized by the sounds that make them up. The numbers and arrows indicate the stroke order and direction, respectively.
Gugyeol-inspired theory
According to Yoshinori Kobayashi, professor of linguistics at Tokushima Bunri University, katakana is likely based on a system of writing from the Korean Peninsula. He claims that his findings suggest the possibility that the katakana-like annotations used in possibly originated in 8th-century Korea – Silla – and were then introduced to Japan through Buddhist texts. Linguist Alexander Vovin elaborates on Kobayashi's argument, asserting that katakana derives from the Korean gugyeol (구결) system.
Computer encoding
In addition to fonts intended for Japanese text and Unicode catch-all fonts (like Arial Unicode MS), many fonts intended for Chinese (such as MS Song) and Korean (such as Batang) also include katakana.
Hiragana and katakana
In addition to the usual display forms of characters, katakana has a second form, (there are no kanji). The half-width forms were originally associated with the JIS X 0201 encoding. Although their display form is not specified in the standard, in practice they were designed to fit into the same rectangle of pixels as Roman letters to enable easy implementation on the computer equipment of the day. This space is narrower than the square space traditionally occupied by Japanese characters, hence the name "half-width". In this scheme, diacritics (dakuten and handakuten) are separate characters. When originally devised, the half-width katakana were represented by a single byte each, as in JIS X 0201, again in line with the capabilities of contemporary computer technology.
In the late 1970s, two-byte character sets such as JIS X 0208 were introduced to support the full range of Japanese characters, including katakana, hiragana and kanji. Their display forms were designed to fit into an approximately square array of pixels, hence the name "full-width". For backward compatibility, separate support for half-width katakana has continued to be available in modern multi-byte encoding schemes such as Unicode, by having two separate blocks of characters – one displayed as usual (full-width) katakana, the other displayed as half-width katakana.
Although often said to be obsolete, the half-width katakana are still used in many systems and encodings. For example, the titles of mini discs can only be entered in ASCII or half-width katakana, and half-width katakana are commonly used in computerized cash register displays, on shop receipts, and Japanese digital television and DVD subtitles. Several popular Japanese encodings such as EUC-JP, Unicode and Shift JIS have half-width katakana code as well as full-width. By contrast, ISO-2022-JP has no half-width katakana, and is mainly used over SMTP and NNTP.
Unicode
Katakana was added to the Unicode Standard in October, 1991 with the release of version 1.0.
The Unicode block for (full-width) katakana is U+30A0–U+30FF.
Encoded in this block along with the katakana are the nakaguro word-separation middle dot, the chōon vowel extender, the katakana iteration marks, and a ligature of コト sometimes used in vertical writing.
Half-width equivalents to the usual full-width katakana also exist in Unicode. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF) (which also includes full-width forms of Latin characters, for instance), starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are half-width punctuation marks). This block also includes the half-width dakuten and handakuten. The full-width versions of these characters are found in the Hiragana block.
Circled katakana are code points U+32D0–U+32FE in the Enclosed CJK Letters and Months block (U+3200–U+32FF). A circled ン (n) is not included.
Extensions to Katakana for phonetic transcription of Ainu and other languages were added to the Unicode standard in March 2002 with the release of version 3.2.
The Unicode block for Katakana Phonetic Extensions is U+31F0–U+31FF:
Historic and variant forms of Japanese kana characters were added to the Unicode standard in October 2010 with the release of version 6.0.
The Unicode block for Kana Supplement is U+1B000–U+1B0FF:
The Unicode block for Small Kana Extension is U+1B130–U+1B16F:
Katakana in other Unicode blocks:
Dakuten and handakuten diacritics are located in the Hiragana block:
U+3099 COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK (non-spacing dakuten): ゙
U+309A COMBINING KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (non-spacing handakuten): ゚
U+309B KATAKANA-HIRAGANA VOICED SOUND MARK (spacing dakuten): ゛
U+309C KATAKANA-HIRAGANA SEMI-VOICED SOUND MARK (spacing handakuten): ゜
Two katakana-based emoji are in the Enclosed Ideographic Supplement block:
U+1F201 SQUARED KATAKANA KOKO ('here' sign): 🈁
U+1F202 SQUARED KATAKANA SA ('service' sign): 🈂
A katakana-based Japanese TV symbol from the ARIB STD-B24 standard is in the Enclosed Ideographic Supplement block:
U+1F213 SQUARED KATAKANA DE ('data broadcasting service linked with a main program' symbol): 🈓
Furthermore, as of Unicode 14.0, the following combinatory sequences have been explicitly named, despite having no precomposed symbols in the katakana block. Font designers may want to optimize the display of these composed glyphs. Some of them are mostly used for writing the Ainu language, the others are called bidakuon in Japanese. Other, arbitrary combinations with U+309A handakuten are also possible.
See also
Japanese phonology
Hiragana
Historical kana usage
Rōmaji
Gugyeol
Tōdaiji Fujumonkō, oldest example of kanji text with katakana annotations
:File:Beschrijving van Japan - ABC (cropped).jpg for the kana as described by Engelbert Kaempfer in 1727
Notes
References
External links
Practice pronunciation and stroke order of Kana
Katakana Unicode chart
Japanese dictionary with Katakana, Hiragana and Kanji on-screen keyboards
Katakana study tool
Japanese writing system terms
Kana
Japanese writing system
sv:Kana (skriftsystem)#Katakana | [
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16852 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia%20Asamiya | Kia Asamiya | , best known by the pen name , is a Japanese manga artist whose work spans multiple genres and appeals to diverse audiences.
He is well known for using influences from American comics, television, and films in his work, and describes himself as a big fan of Batman and Star Wars. One of the most widely published Japanese manga artist, nearly all of his stories have been translated into other languages, including English. His two most successful and popular manga series to-date are Martian Successor Nadesico and Silent Möbius.
Before becoming a manga artist, Asamiya graduated from the Tokyo Designer School, then worked as a character designer for a number of anime series, and even designed models for some of the later Godzilla films (1980s). For this career, he used his real name, and maintained the two professional identities separately for many years. Several of the anime series that he worked on were very popular inside and outside Japan, most notably Sonic Soldier Borgman and Project A-ko. Even after focusing primarily on his manga career, Asamiya continued to do character designs and creative consultation on anime series based on his stories, occasionally under the Kikuchi name.
In the early 2000s, Asamiya has shifted his focus from teenage and young-adult stories to stories designed for children and for an American audience. In the former case, he credits his children as a motivation but, in the latter case, he points to a long-standing desire to work with his favorite American characters. To that end, he has worked on projects with Image Comics, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics, as well as developing a manga adaptation of the film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.
While many Japanese artists (and artists in general) are quite reclusive, Asamiya often makes an effort to be available to his fans. He maintains a website with news and information about his studio, TRON (named after the Disney film Tron). He aids and assists his official fan club by sending them regular announcements and limited-edition merchandise. Despite these actions, he shunned all public photography and had the habit of depicting himself with a placeholder sign for a face. It has become a trademark feature of his books that instead of a picture of the artist, there is an elaborately decorated rectangle sporting the words "Now Printing" (a message used in Japan for placeholder images).
Works
Manga
Shin Seiki Vagrants (1986–1988)
Silent Möbius (1989–1999)
Silent Möbius Klein (1994)—prequel
Silent Möbius Tales (2003)
Silent Möbius QD (2013–2018)
Gunhed (1990)—adaptation of the film
Compiler (1991–1993)
Assembler 0X (1992)
Dark Angel (1992–1997)
Dark Angel: Phoenix Resurrection (2001–2002)
Steam Detectives (1994–2000)
New Steam Detectives (2001–2003)
Martian Successor Nadesico (1997–1999)
Corrector Yui (1999–2000)
Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)—adaptation of the film
Batman: Child of Dreams (2000–2001)
Gacha Gacha Family Ebiru-Kun (2000–2001)
D-Divine (2001)
Color Pri (2004)
Junk: Record of the Last Hero (2004–2007)
My Favorite Carrera (2004–2012)
Kanojo no Carrera RS (2013–2015)
Zero Angel -Sōheki no Datenshi (2016–2018)
(2019–)
Other
Detonator Orgun (character design: as Michitaka Kikuchi)
"Hellboy: Toy Soldier" from Hellboy: Weird Tales issue #8
Kamen Rider Fourze (Zodiarts design)
Sonic Soldier Borgman (character design: as Michitaka Kikuchi)
White Diamond (game designs for main characters)
Uncanny X-Men
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Vess/Musubi character design)
Filmography
Video Games
Crash Fever (Malthus)
References
External links
Kia Asamiya and Michitaka Kikuchi's Official Web Site
Kia Asamiya on marvel.com
1963 births
20th-century Japanese artists
21st-century Japanese artists
Anime character designers
Japanese animators
Japanese graphic novelists
Living people
Manga artists from Iwate Prefecture
Manga artists | [
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16853 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit%C3%A1b-i-Aqdas | Kitáb-i-Aqdas | The Kitáb-i-Aqdas (), or simply Aqdas () is the central religious text of the Baháʼí Faith written by Baháʼu'lláh, the founder of the religion, in 1873. Though it is the main source of Baháʼí laws and practices, much of the content deals with other matters, like foundational principles of the religion, the establishment of Baháʼí institutions, mysticism, ethics, social principles, and prophecies. In Baha'i literature it is described as "the Mother-Book" of the Baháʼí teachings, and the "Charter of the future world civilization".
Baháʼu'lláh had manuscript copies sent to Baháʼís in Iran some years after its writing in 1873, and in 1890–91 (1308 AH, 47 BE) he arranged for its first publication in Bombay, India. Parts of the text were translated to English by Shoghi Effendi, which, along with a Synopsis and Codification were published in 1973 by the Universal House of Justice at the centennial anniversary of its writing. The full authoritative English translation, along with clarifying texts from Baháʼu'lláh and detailed explanatory notes from the Universal House of Justice, was first published in 1992.
Etymology
The work was written in Arabic under the Arabic title (), but in English it is commonly known by its Persian pronunciation Kitáb-i-Aqdas, and is subtitled with the translation of "the Most Holy Book". The word Aqdas is a superlative form derived from the triconsonantal root Q-D-Š, denoting holiness or sanctity in Semitic languages.
Overview
Rather than a narrative, the book is written as a series of short teachings or principles. A summary lends itself to a bullet-point list of the various ideas shared throughout the text. Main themes cover the appointment of Baháʼu'lláh's successor, who remains unnamed in the text; the layout of the future Baháʼí administration, including the mention of the Universal House of Justice and allusions to what would later be known as the Guardian; certain laws, particularly around prayer, fasting, marriage, divorce, and inheritance; admonitions toward certain individuals; and a variety of specific laws, ordinances, and prohibitions, ranging from tithes, to the Baháʼí calendar, to prohibitions on opium, slave trading, and gossip.
Besides the main themes above, the Synopsis and Codification lists the last of six themes as "Miscellaneous Subjects" and lists 33 topics:
The transcendent character of the Bahá'í Revelation
The exalted station of the Author of the Faith
The supreme importance of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, "The Most Holy Book"
The doctrine of the "Most Great Infallibility"
The twin duties of recognition of the Manifestation and observance of His Laws, and their inseparability
The end of all learning is the recognition of Him Who is the Object of all knowledge
The blessedness of those who have recognized the fundamental verity "He shall not be asked of His doings"
The revolutionizing effect of the "Most Great Order"
The selection of a single language and the adoption of a common script for all on earth to use: one of two signs of the maturity of the human race
Prophecies of the Báb regarding "He Whom God will make manifest"
Prediction relating to opposition to the Faith
Eulogy of the king who will profess the Faith and arise to serve it
The instability of human affairs
The meaning of true liberty
The merit of all deeds is dependent upon God's acceptance
The importance of love for God as the motive of obedience to His Laws
The importance of utilizing material means
Eulogy of the learned among the people of Bahá
Assurance of forgiveness to Mírzá Yahyá should he repent
Apostrophe addressed to Tihrán
Apostrophe addressed to Constantinople and its people
Apostrophe addressed to the "banks of the Rhine"
Condemnation of those who lay false claim to esoteric knowledge
Condemnation of those who allow pride in their learning to debar them from God
Prophecies relating to Khurásán
Prophecies relating to Kirmán
Allusion to Shaykh Ahmad-i-Ahsá'í
Allusion to the Sifter of Wheat
Condemnation of Hájí Muhammad-Karím Khán
Condemnation of Shaykh Muhammad-Hasan
Allusion to Napoleon III
Allusion to Siyyid Muhammad-i-Isfahání
Assurance of aid to all those who arise to serve the Faith
Laws
While it is the core text on laws of the religion, it is not the exclusive source.
Baháʼu'lláh stated that the observance of the laws that he prescribed should be subject to "tact and wisdom", and that they do not cause "disturbance and dissension." He left for the progressive application of the laws to be decided by the Universal House of Justice; for example certain Baháʼí laws are currently only applicable to Iranian Baháʼís such as the limit to the period of engagement, while any Baháʼí may practice the laws if they so decide. Shoghi Effendi also stated that certain other laws, such as criminal laws, that are dependent upon the existence of a predominantly Baháʼí society would only be applicable in a possible future Baháʼí society. He also stated that if the laws were in conflict with the civil law of the country where a Baháʼí lives the laws could not be practiced. Baha'is believe the Aqdas supersedes and succeeds previous revelations such as the Quran and the Bible.
Form and style
The text of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas consists of several hundred verses, which have been grouped in 189 numbered paragraphs in the English translation most of which are just a few sentences. The style combines elements of both poetry (shi'r) and rhymed prose (saj) and the text contains instances of literary devices like alliteration, assonance, repetition, onomatopoeia, juxtaposition and antithesis, metaphors, alternation of person and personification.
It is written to the individual reader, as there are no clergy in the religion. The text also moves between statements said to be plain and statements suggesting the key to understanding the book is to look at the text for clues to itself.
Translations
The Kitáb-i-Aqdas was completed by Baháʼu'lláh in 1873. It was published in the Arabic for circulation among Baháʼís speaking the language circa 1890. A Russian translation was undertaken by Alexander Tumansky in 1899 and was his most important contribution to Baháʼí studies. Around 1900 an informal English translation was made by Baháʼí Anton Haddad, which circulated among the early American Baháʼí community in a typewritten form. In 1961, an English scholar of Arabic, Dr. Earl E. Elder, and William McElwee Miller, published an English translation, "Al-Kitab Al-Aqdas", through the Royal Asiatic Society, however its translation of the notes section was problematic and overall lacked "poetic sensibility, and skill in Arabic translation". Miller only ever used it to further his polemical agenda. In 1973 a "Synopsis and Codification" of the book was published in English by the Universal House of Justice, with 21 passages of the Aqdas that had already been translated into English by Shoghi Effendi with additional terse lists of laws and ordinances contained in the book outside of any contextual prose. Finally, in 1992, a full and authorized Baháʼí translation in English was published. This version is used as the basis of translation into many other languages highlighting the practice of an indirect translation and how the purpose of the translation affects the act of translation. The Baháʼí Library Online provides a side-by-side comparison of the authorized translation with earlier translations of Anton Haddad and Earl Elder.
Content
The Kitáb-i-Aqdas is supplemented by the
"Questions and Answers"', which consists of 107 questions submitted to Baháʼu'lláh by Zaynu'l-Muqarrabin concerning the application of the laws and Baháʼu'lláh's replies to those questions
"Some Texts Revealed by Baháʼu'lláh"
Synopsis and Codification of the Laws and Ordinances, prepared by Shoghi Effendi
explanatory notes prepared by the Universal House of Justice
The book was divided into six main themes in the Synopsis and Codification by Shoghi Effendi:
The appointment of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá as the successor of Baháʼu'lláh
Anticipation of the Institution of the Guardianship
The Institution of the Universal House of Justice
Laws, Ordinances and exhortations
Specific admonitions, reproofs and warnings
Miscellaneous subjects
Further, the laws were divided into four categories:
A. Prayer
B. Fasting
C. Laws of personal status
D. Miscellaneous laws, ordinances and exhortations
Themes
Scholarly review finds the Aqdas has themes of laws of worship, societal relations and administrative organization, or governance, of the religion. Through the authority vested in ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in the Aqdas there is an expanse of internationalism related to the law in works like The Secret of Divine Civilization and through his extended authority to Shoghi Effendi works like his World Order of Baháʼu'lláh further elaborates on the internationalism theme. This stands in some distinction from other scriptures by not using triumphal tones as the voice of God is given to be viewed but rather one of progressive development, social context, and outright delay in application until another day. It insists that divine law is applicable only in situations with requisite conditions, where it is likely to have certain social effects. The goal of application of the law and its methods are not to cause disturbance and dissension and requires an appreciation for context and intention. Additionally one is to eschew emphasis in the development of textualist and intentionalist arguments about the law though some of this is visible in scholarship on the Aqdas. Such methods of application of law in a religious context are, in the opinion of Roshan Danish, common in Islam and Judaism.
The Aqdas is understood by Baháʼís to be a factor in the process of ongoing developments in world order. This can be seen comparing the Baháʼí approach to history and the future to that of the theory of the Clash of Civilizations on the one hand and the development of a posthegemony system on the other (compared with work of Robert Cox, for example, in Approaches to World Order, (Robert Cox & Timonthy Sinclair eds, Cambridge University Press, 1996).)
Certain possible sources of law are specifically abrogated: laws of the Bábí religion, notably in the Persian Bayán, oral traditions (linked with pilgrim notes, and natural law, (that is to say God's sovereign will through revelation is the independent authority.) Divine revelation's law-making is both unconditioned in terms of the divine right to choose, and conditioned in the sense of the progress of history from one revelation to the next.
Laws of personal status
Marriage and divorce
Baha'u'llah's statements about marriage in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas are brief. Marriage is highly recommended but is stated to not be obligatory. Baháʼu'lláh states that the maximum number of wives is two, but also states that having only one wife would add more tranquility to both partners. These statements were later interpreted by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá that having a second wife is conditional upon treating both wives with justice and equality and was not possible in practice, thus establishing monogamy.
That Baháʼu'lláh had three wives, while his religion teaches monogamy, has been the subject of criticism. The writing of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and Baháʼí teachings on gender equality and monogamy post-date Baháʼu'lláh's marriages and are understood to be evolutionary in nature, slowly leading Baháʼís away from what had been a deeply rooted cultural practice.
Administration
The institutional status of the authority of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá and a House of Justice are specifically delineated. On the basis of the authority granted ʻAbdu'l-Bahá he extended forms of the authority vested in him to the Guardianship, whose sole member was Shoghi Effendi, and the Universal, or International, House of Justice through his Will and Testament. This was confirmed and amplified in other texts, notably the Kitáb-i-'Ahd. The Universal House of Justice is specifically empowered to write and rescind any laws it is felt necessary aside from those of the text of scripture and actual application of the laws of the Aqdas among Baháʼís are dependent on the choice of the Universal House of Justice.
See also
Kitáb-i-Íqán
Baháʼí prophecies
Notes
References
Further reading
The Kitab-i-Aqdas: its place in Baha'i literature. Published in Baháʼí World, 1992–1993. pp. 105–117.
Danesh, Roshan (2015). Some Reflections on the Structure of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas in Journal of Baháʼí Studies, 25:3, pp. 81–94.
External links
Kitáb-i-Aqdas Research Tools
Timeline and related material on Baháʼí Library Online
Works by Baháʼu'lláh
1873 books
Superlatives in religion
1873 in religion | [
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16854 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala%20Lumpur | Kuala Lumpur | {{Infobox settlement
| name = Kuala Lumpur
| settlement_type = Federal territory and Commercial capital city
| official_name = Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur{{nobold|Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur}}
| translit_lang1 = Other
| translit_lang1_type1 = Jawi
| translit_lang1_info1 =
| translit_lang1_type2 = Chinese
| translit_lang1_info2 =
| translit_lang1_type3 = Tamil
| translit_lang1_info3 =
| image_skyline =
| image_caption =
| image_flag = Flag of Kuala Lumpur Malaysia.svg
| image_shield =
| nickname = KL, The Garden City of Lights, City of Contrasts and Diversity
| motto = Bersedia Menyumbang Bandaraya Cemerlang| anthem = Maju dan Sejahtera
| image_map =
| map_caption =
| pushpin_map = Malaysia#Southeast Asia#Asia
| pushpin_map_caption =
| coordinates =
| subdivision_type = Country
| subdivision_name = Malaysia
| subdivision_type1 = Administrative areas
| subdivision_name1 =
| established_title = Establishment
| established_date = 1857
| established_title2 = City status
| established_date2 = 1 February 1972
| established_title3 = Transferred to federal jurisdiction
| established_date3 = 1 February 1974
| government_type = Federal administrationwith local government
| governing_body = Kuala Lumpur City Hall
| leader_title = Mayor
| leader_name = Mahadi bin Che Ngah
| total_type = Federal territory
| area_footnotes =
| area_total_km2 = 243
| area_metro_km2 = 2,243.27
| elevation_footnotes =
| elevation_m = 66
| elevation_max_ft = 2227
| elevation_max_m = 678.9
| elevation_max_point = Merdeka 118
| population_total = 1,782,500
| population_as_of = 2019 est.
| population_rank = 1st
| population_footnotes =
| population_density_km2 = 7,802
| population_urban =
| population_metro = 7,564,000
| population_density_metro_km2 = 2,708
| population_blank1_title = Demonym
| population_blank1 = KL-ite / Kuala Lumpurian
| postal_code_type = Postal code
| postal_code = 50000 to 60000
| imagesize = 275px
| timezone = MST
| utc_offset = +8
| blank_name = Mean solar time
| blank_info = UTC+06:46:46
| blank1_name = Area code(s)
| blank1_info = 03
| blank2_name = Vehicle registration
| blank2_info = V and W (except taxis) HW (for taxis only)
| blank3_name = ISO 3166-2
| blank3_info = MY-14
| demographics_type2 = City Index
| demographics2_title1 = HDI
| demographics2_info1 = 0.867 (very high) (1st)
| demographics2_title2 = GDP
| demographics2_info2 = RM 244,210 million ($59,831 million) (2nd)
| demographics2_title3 = Per capita
| demographics2_info3 = RM 129,472 ($31,720) (1st)
| blank5_name = Official language(s)
| blank5_info = Malay
English
| website =
| image_seal = Seal of Kuala Lumpur.svg
| image_blank_emblem =
| blank_emblem_size = 280px
| blank_emblem_type = Logo
}}
Kuala Lumpur (), officially the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur () and colloquially referred to as KL, is a federal territory and the capital city of Malaysia. It is the largest city in Malaysia, covering an area of with an estimated population of 1.73 million . Greater Kuala Lumpur, also known as the Klang Valley, is an urban agglomeration of 7.564 million people . It is among the fastest growing metropolitan regions in Southeast Asia, both in population and economic development.
The city serves as the cultural, financial, and economic centre of Malaysia. It is also home to the Parliament of Malaysia, and the Istana Negara, the official residence of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (monarch of Malaysia). Kuala Lumpur first developed around 1857 as a town serving the tin mines of the region and served as the capital of Selangor from 1880 until 1978. Kuala Lumpur was the founding capital of the Federation of Malaya and its successor Malaysia, and the city remained the seat of the executive and judicial branches of the Malaysian federal government until these were relocated to Putrajaya in early 1999. However, some sections of the political bodies still remain in Kuala Lumpur.
Kuala Lumpur is one of the three federal territories of Malaysia, enclaved within the state of Selangor, on the central west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. Since the 1990s, the city has played host to many international sporting, political and cultural events including the 1998 Commonwealth Games and the 2017 Southeast Asian Games. Kuala Lumpur has undergone rapid development in recent decades and is home to the tallest twin buildings in the world, the Petronas Towers, which have since become an iconic symbol of Malaysian development.
It has a comprehensive road system supported by an extensive range of public transport networks, such as mass rapid transit (MRT), light rapid transit (LRT), monorail, commuter rail, public buses, hop on & hop off buses (free of charge) and airport rail links. Kuala Lumpur is one of the leading cities in the world for tourism and shopping, the 6th most-visited city in the world in 2019. The city houses three of the world's ten largest shopping malls.
Kuala Lumpur ranks 70th in the world and second in Southeast Asia for Economist Intelligence Unit's Global Liveability Ranking and ninth in ASPAC and second in Southeast Asia for KPMG's Leading Technology Innovation Hub 2021. Kuala Lumpur was named World Book Capital 2020 by UNESCO.
Etymology
Kuala Lumpur means "muddy confluence" in Malay; Kuala is the point where two rivers join together or an estuary, and lumpur means "mud". One suggestion is that it was named after Sungai Lumpur ("muddy river"); in the 1820s Sungai Lumpur was the most important tin-producing settlement up the Klang River. However this derivation does not account for this: Kuala Lumpur lies at the confluence of Gombak River and Klang River, and therefore should be named Kuala Gombak, since the kuala is typically named after the river that joins a larger river or the sea. Some have argued that Sungai Lumpur in fact extended down to the confluence and therefore the point where it joined the Klang River would be Kuala Lumpur, although this Sungai Lumpur is said to be another river joining the Klang River upstream from the Gombak confluence, or perhaps located to the north of the Batu Caves area.
It has also been proposed that Kuala Lumpur was originally named Pengkalan Lumpur ("muddy landing place") in the same way that Klang was once called Pengkalan Batu ("stone landing place"), but became corrupted into Kuala Lumpur. Another theory says that it was initially a Cantonese word, lam-pa, meaning 'flooded jungle' or 'decayed jungle'. There is no firm contemporary evidence for these suggestions other than anecdotes. The name may also be a corrupted form of an earlier forgotten name.
History
Early years
Nobody specifically knows who founded or named Kuala Lumpur. Chinese miners were involved in tin mining up the Selangor River in the 1840s about north of present-day Kuala Lumpur, and Mandailing Sumatrans led by and Sutan Puasa were also involved in tin mining and trade in the Ulu Klang region before 1860, and Sumatrans may have settled in the upper reaches of Klang River in the first quarter of the 19th century, or possibly earlier. Kuala Lumpur was originally a small hamlet of just a few houses and shops at the confluence of the Sungai Gombak and Sungai Klang (Klang River). Kuala Lumpur became established as a town circa 1857, when the Malay Chief of Klang, Raja Abdullah bin Raja Jaafar, aided by his brother Raja Juma'at of Lukut, raised funds from Malaccan Chinese businessmen to hire Chinese miners from Lukut to open new tin mines there. The miners landed at Kuala Lumpur and continued on foot to Ampang, where they opened the first mine. Kuala Lumpur was the furthest point up the Klang River to which supplies could conveniently be brought by boat, and therefore became a collection and dispersal point serving the tin mines.
Despite a high death toll from the malarial conditions of the jungle, the Ampang mines succeeded, and exported the first tin in 1859. At that time, Sutan Puasa was already trading near Ampang. Two traders from Lukut, Hiu Siew and Yap Ah Sze, arrived in Kuala Lumpur and set up shops to sell provisions to miners in exchange for tin. The town, spurred on by tin-mining, started to develop around Old Market Square (Medan Pasar), with roads radiating out towards Ampang as well as Pudu and Batu (the destinations became the names of these roads), where miners had also begun to settle in, and Petaling and Damansara. The miners formed gangs and the gangs frequently fought in this period, particularly factions of Kuala Lumpur and Kanching, mainly over control of the best tin mines. Leaders of the Chinese community were conferred the title of Kapitan Cina (Chinese headman) by the Malay chief, and Hiu Siew, the early Chinese trader, became the first Kapitan of Kuala Lumpur. The third Chinese Kapitan of Kuala Lumpur, Yap Ah Loy, was appointed in 1868.
Important Malay figures of early Kuala Lumpur also included Haji Mohamed Tahir, who became the Dato Dagang ("chief of traders"). The Minangkabaus of Sumatra became another important group who traded and established tobacco plantations in the area. Notable Minangkabaus included their headman, Dato' Sati, Utsman Abdullah, and Haji Mohamed Taib, who was involved in the early development of Kampung Baru. The Minangkabaus were also significant socio-religious figures, for example Utsman bin Abdullah was the first kadi of Kuala Lumpur, as well as Muhammad Nur bin Ismail.
Beginning of modern Kuala Lumpur
Early Kuala Lumpur was a small town that suffered from many social and political problems – the buildings were made of wood and ‘’atap’’, (palm frond thatching). The buildings were prone to catching on fire, and due to a lack of proper sanitation the town was plagued with diseases. It also suffered from a constant threat of flooding due to its location. The town became embroiled in the Selangor Civil War in part over control of revenue from the tin mines. Yap Ah Loy allied himself with , and the rival Chinese gang allied themselves with Raja Mahdi. Raja Asal and Sutan Puasa also switched sides to Raja Mahdi, and Kuala Lumpur was captured in 1872 and burnt to the ground. Yap escaped to Klang where he assembled another fighting force and recaptured Kuala Lumpur in March 1873, defeating Raja Mahdi's forces with the help of fighters from Pahang. The war and other setbacks, such as dropping tin prices, led to a slump. A major outbreak of cholera caused many to flee. The slump lasted until late 1879, when rising prices for tin allowed the town to recover. In late 1881, the town was severely flooded, after a fire that had destroyed the entire town in January. The town was rebuilt a few times and thrived, due in large part to the tenacity and persistence of Yap Ah Loy. Yap, together with Frank Swettenham who was appointed the Resident in 1882, were the two most important figures of early Kuala Lumpur with Swettenham credited with its rapid growth and development and its transformation into a major urban centre.
The early Chinese and Malay settled along the east bank of the Klang River. The Chinese mainly settled around the commercial centre of Market Square. The Malays, and later Indian Chettiars and Muslims, resided in the Java Street area, now Jalan Tun Perak. In 1880, the colonial administration moved the state capital of Selangor from Klang to the more strategically advantageous Kuala Lumpur, and British Resident William Bloomfield Douglas decided to locate the government buildings and living quarters to the west of the river. Government offices and a new police headquarters were built on Bukit Aman, and the Padang initially created for police training. The Padang, now known as Merdeka Square, would later become the centre of the British administrative offices when the colonial government offices moved to the Sultan Abdul Samad Building in 1897.
Frank Swettenham, on becoming the British Resident, began improving the town by cleaning up the streets. He also stipulated in 1884 that buildings should be constructed of brick and tile so that they would be less flammable, and that the town be rebuilt with wider streets to reduce fire risk. Kapitan Yap Ah Loy bought a sprawling piece of real estate to set up a brick factory for the rebuilding of Kuala Lumpur, the eponymous Brickfields. Demolished atap buildings were replaced with brick and tile buildings, and many of the new brick buildings had "five-foot ways" and Chinese carpentry work. This resulted in a distinct eclectic shop house architecture typical to this region. Kapitan Yap Ah Loy expanded road access, linking tin mines with the city with the main arterial routes of the present Ampang Road, Pudu Road and Petaling Street. As Chinese Kapitan, he held wide powers on a par with Malay community leaders. Law reforms were implemented and new legal measures introduced to the assembly. Yap also presided over a small claims court. With a police force of six, he was able to uphold the rule of law, constructing a prison that could accommodate sixty prisoners at a time. Yap Ah Loy also built Kuala Lumpur's first school and a major tapioca mill in Petaling Street, in which the Selangor's Sultan Abdul Samad held an interest.
A railway line between Kuala Lumpur and Klang, initiated by Swettenham and completed in 1886, increased access and resulted in rapid growth. The population grew from 4,500 in 1884 to 20,000 in 1890. As development intensified in the 1880s, putting pressure on sanitation, waste disposal and other health measures. A Sanitary Board created on 14 May 1890 was responsible for sanitation, road upkeep, street lighting, and other functions. This would eventually become the Kuala Lumpur Municipal Council. In 1896, Kuala Lumpur was chosen as the capital of the newly formed Federated Malay States.
20th century–present
Kuala Lumpur expanded considerably in the 20th century. It was in 1895, but was extended to encompass in 1903. By the time it became a municipality in 1948 it had expanded to , and then to in 1974 as a Federal Territory.
The development of a rubber industry in Selangor fueled by the demand for car tyres in the early 20th century led to a boom, and the population of Kuala Lumpur increased from 30,000 in 1900 to 80,000 in 1920. The commercial activities of Kuala Lumpur had been run to a large extent by Chinese businessmen such as Loke Yew, who was then the richest and most influential Chinese in Kuala Lumpur. The growth of the rubber industry led to an influx of foreign capital and planters, with new companies and industries becoming established in Kuala Lumpur, and other companies previously based elsewhere also found a presence here.
During World War II, Kuala Lumpur was captured by the Imperial Japanese Army on 11 January 1942. Despite suffering little damage during the course of the battle, the wartime occupation of the city resulted in significant loss of lives; at least 5,000 Chinese were killed in Kuala Lumpur in just a few weeks of occupation by Japanese forces, and thousands of Indians were sent as forced labour to work on the Burma Railway where many died. They occupied the city until 15 August 1945, when the commander in chief of the Japanese Seventh Area Army in Singapore and Malaysia, Seishirō Itagaki, surrendered to the British administration following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kuala Lumpur grew during the war, and continued after the war during the Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), during which Malaya was preoccupied with a communist insurgency and New Villages were established on the outskirts of the city.
The first municipal election in Kuala Lumpur was held on 16 February 1952. An ad hoc alliance between the Malay UMNO and Chinese MCA party candidates won a majority of the seats, and this led to the formation of the Alliance Party (later the Barisan Nasional). On 31 August 1957, the Federation of Malaya gained its independence from British rule. The British flag was lowered and the Malayan flag raised for the first time at the Padang at midnight on 30 August 1957, and on the morning of 31 August, the ceremony for the Declaration of Independence was held at the Merdeka Stadium by the first Prime Minister of Malaya, Tunku Abdul Rahman. Kuala Lumpur remained the capital after the formation of Malaysia on 16 September 1963. The Malaysian Houses of Parliament were completed at the edge of the Lake Gardens in 1963.
Kuala Lumpur had seen a number of civil disturbances over the years. A riot in 1897 was a relatively minor affair that began with the confiscation of faulty dacing (a scale used by traders), and in 1912, a more serious disturbance called the tauchang riot began during the Chinese New Year with the cutting of pigtails and ended with rioting and factional fighting lasting a number of days. The worst rioting on record in Malaysia, however, occurred on 13 May 1969, when race riots broke out in Kuala Lumpur. The so-called 13 May Incident included violent conflicts between members of the Malay and the Chinese communities, the result of Malaysian dissatisfaction with their socio-political status. The riots caused the deaths of 196 people, according to official figures, and led to major changes in the country's economic policy to promote and prioritise Malay economic development over that of other ethnicities.
Kuala Lumpur achieved city status on 1 February 1972, becoming the first settlement in Malaysia to be granted the status after independence. Later, on 1 February 1974, Kuala Lumpur became a federal territory. Kuala Lumpur ceased to be the capital of Selangor in 1978 after the city of Shah Alam was declared the new state capital. On 14 May 1990, Kuala Lumpur celebrated the centennial of the local council. The new federal territory Kuala Lumpur flag and anthem were introduced. On 1 February 2001, Putrajaya was declared a Federal Territory, as well as the seat of the federal government. The administrative and judicial functions of the government were shifted from Kuala Lumpur to Putrajaya. Kuala Lumpur however still retained its legislative function, and remained the home of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong (Constitutional King).
From the 1990s onwards, major urban developments in the Klang Valley extended the Kuala Lumpur metropolitan area. This area, known as Greater Kuala Lumpur, extends from the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur westward to Port Klang, east to the edge of the Titiwangsa Mountains as well as to the north and south. The area covers other administratively separate towns and cities such as Klang, Shah Alam, Putrajaya and others, and is served by the Klang Valley Integrated Transit System. Notable projects undertaken within Kuala Lumpur itself include the development of a new Kuala Lumpur City Centre around Jalan Ampang and the Petronas Towers.
Geography
The geography of Kuala Lumpur is characterised by the huge Klang Valley, bordered by the Titiwangsa Mountains in the east, several minor ranges in the north and the south, and the Strait of Malacca in the west. Kuala Lumpur is a Malay term that translates to "muddy confluence" and is located at the confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers.
Located in the centre of Selangor state, Kuala Lumpur was a territory of Selangor State Government. In 1974, Kuala Lumpur was split off from Selangor to form the first Federal Territory governed directly by the Malaysian federal government. Its location in the most developed state on the west coast of peninsular Malaysia, which has a wider stretch of flat land than the east coast, has helped it develop faster than other cities in Malaysia. The municipality covers an area of , with an average elevation of .
Climate and weather
Protected by the Titiwangsa Range in the east and Indonesia's Sumatra Island in the west, Kuala Lumpur is sheltered from strong winds and has a tropical rainforest climate (Köppen climate classification Af), hot, humid and sunny, with abundant rainfall, especially during the northeast monsoon season from October to March. Temperatures tend to remain constant. Maximums hover between and sometimes hit , while minimums hover between and have never fallen below . Kuala Lumpur typically receives at least of rain annually; June and July are relatively dry, but even then rainfall typically exceeds a month.
Floods are frequent in Kuala Lumpur after heavy downpours, especially in the city centre, because irrigation structure lags behind the intense development in the city. Smoke from forest fires in nearby Sumatra sometimes casts a haze over the region, and is a major source of pollution, along with open burning, motor vehicle emissions, and construction.
Governance
Kuala Lumpur was administered by a corporation sole called the Federal Capital Commissioner from April 1, 1961, until it was awarded city status in 1972, after which executive power transferred to the Lord Mayor (Datuk Bandar). Thirteen mayors have been appointed since then. The current mayor is Datuk Mahadi Che Ngah, who has been in office since October 1, 2020.
Local government
The local administration is carried out by the Kuala Lumpur City Hall, an agency under the Federal Territories Ministry of Malaysia. It is responsible for public health and sanitation, waste removal and management, town planning, environmental protection and building control, social and economic development, and general maintenance functions of urban infrastructure. Executive power lies with the mayor in the city hall, who is appointed for three years by the Federal Territories Minister. This system of appointing the mayor has been in place ever since the local government elections were suspended in 1970.
Districts
Kuala Lumpur's eleven parliamentary constituencies, with estimated population and percentage of the total, are congruent with administrative subdivisions under the authority of the Kuala Lumpur City Hall authority. These 11 districts can be divided into 29 subdistricts.
Politics
Kuala Lumpur is home to the Parliament of Malaysia. The federal Constitution stipulates the three branches of the Malaysian government: the Executive, Judiciary and Legislative branches. The Parliament consists of the Dewan Negara (Upper House / House of Senate) and Dewan Rakyat (Lower House / House of Representatives).
List of Kuala Lumpur representatives in the Federal Parliament (Dewan Rakyat)
Economy
Kuala Lumpur and its surrounding urban areas form the most industrialised and economically, the fastest-growing region in Malaysia. Despite the relocation of federal government administration to Putrajaya, certain government institutions such as Bank Negara Malaysia (National Bank of Malaysia), Companies Commission of Malaysia and Securities Commission as well as most embassies and diplomatic missions have remained in the city.
The city remains the economic and business hub of the country. Kuala Lumpur is a centre for finance, insurance, real estate, media and the arts of Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur is rated the only global city in Malaysia, according to the Globalization and World Cities Study Group and Network (GaWC). The infrastructure development in the surrounding areas such as the Kuala Lumpur International Airport at Sepang, the creation of the Multimedia Super Corridor and the expansion of Port Klang further reinforce the economic significance of the city.
Bursa Malaysia or the Malaysia Exchange is based in the city and forms one of its core economic activities. As of July 5, 2013, the market capitalisation stood at US$505.67 billion.
The gross domestic product (GDP) for Kuala Lumpur is estimated at RM73,536 million in 2008 with an average annual growth rate of 5.9 percent. By 2015, the GDP had reached RM160,388 million, representing 15.1% of the total GDP of Malaysia. The per capita GDP for Kuala Lumpur in 2013 was RM79,752 with an average annual growth rate of 5.6 percent, and RM94,722 in 2015. Average monthly household income is RM9,073 (~$2,200) as of 2016, growing at a pace of approximately 6% a year. The service sector, comprising finance, insurance, real estate, business services, wholesale and retail trade, restaurants and hotels, transport, storage and communication, utilities, personal services and government services form the largest component of employment, representing about 83.0 percent of the total. The remaining 17 percent comes from manufacturing and construction.
The large service sector is evident in the number of local and foreign banks and insurance companies operating in the city. Kuala Lumpur is poised to become the global Islamic financing hub with an increasing number of financial institutions providing Islamic financing and the strong presence of Gulf financial institutions such as the world's largest Islamic bank, the Al-Rajhi Bank and Kuwait Finance House. Apart from that, the Dow Jones & Company is keen to work with Bursa Malaysia to set up Islamic Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs), which would help raise Malaysia's profile in the Gulf. The city has a large number of foreign corporations and is also host to many multi national companies' regional offices or support centres, particularly for finance and accounting, and information technology functions. Most of the country's largest companies have their headquarters here, and as of December 2007 and excluding Petronas, there are 14 companies that are listed in Forbes 2000 based in Kuala Lumpur.
Other important economic activities in the city are education and health services. Kuala Lumpur also has advantages stemming from the high concentration of educational institutions that provide a wide-ranging of courses. Numerous public and private medical specialist centres and hospitals in the city offer general health services, and a wide range of specialist surgery and treatment that caters to locals and tourists.
There has been growing emphasis on expanding the economic scope of the city in other service activities, such as research and development, which support the rest of the economy of Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur has been home for years to important research centres such as the Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia, the Forest Research Institute Malaysia and the Institute of Medical Research. A new financial district for Kuala Lumpur is currently under construction: the Tun Razak Exchange (TRX), formerly known as Kuala Lumpur International Financial District (KLIFD). The TRX's landmark and prominent building is The Exchange 106 tower. The 70-acre development will be situated in the heart of Kuala Lumpur and will serve international finance and business opportunities. The new financial hub is a strategic enabler of the Malaysian government's Economic Transformation Programme (ETP), an initiative by the Malaysian government to turn Malaysia into a high income economy nation.
Tourism
thumb|The Istana Negara or known as National Palace in Kuala Lumpur, the official residence of the Yang di-Pertuan AgongTourism plays an important role in the city's service-driven economy. Many large worldwide hotel chains have a presence in the city. One of the oldest hotels is the Hotel Majestic. Kuala Lumpur is the sixth most visited city in the world, with 8.9 million tourists per year. Tourism here is driven by the city's cultural diversity, relatively low costs, and wide gastronomic and shopping variety. MICE tourism, which mainly encompasses conventions— has expanded in recent years to become a vital component of the industry, and is expected to grow further once the Malaysian government's Economic Transformation Programme kicks in, and with the completion of a new 93,000 square meter-size MATRADE Centre in 2014. The MATRADE agency is also the owner of the Malaysia International Trade And Exhibition Centre (MITEC), the largest trade and exhibition centre of Malaysia, which is a component of the larger KL Metropolis development situated in the suburb of Segambut. Another notable trend is the increased presence of budget hotels in the city.The major tourist destinations in Kuala Lumpur include the Petronas Twin Towers, the Bukit Bintang shopping district, the Kuala Lumpur Tower, Petaling Street (Chinatown), the Merdeka Square, the Kuala Lumpur railway station, the House of Parliament building, the National Palace (Istana Negara), the National Museum, the Royal Museum, Islamic Arts Museum, Central Market, KL Bird Park, Aquaria KLCC, KL River of Life, Saloma Link, the National Monument, and religious sites such as the Sultan Abdul Samad Jamek Mosque, Thean Hou Temple and Buddhist Maha Vihara in Brickfields. Kuala Lumpur plays host to many cultural festivals such as the Thaipusam procession at the Sri Mahamariamman Temple. Every year during the Thaipusam celebration, a silver chariot carrying the statue of Lord Muruga together with his consort Valli and Teivayanni would be paraded through the city beginning at the temple all the way to Batu Caves in the neighboring Gombak, Selangor.
The entertainment hub of the city is mainly centred in the Golden Triangle encompassing Jalan P. Ramlee, Jalan Sultan Ismail, Ampang Road and Bintang Walk as well as Kuala Lumpur's largest nightlife and entertainment hotspot, TREC KL. Trendy nightclubs, bars and lounges, such as Marini's on 57, Skybar at Traders Hotel, the Beach Club, Espanda, the Hakka Republic Wine Bar & Restaurant, Hard Rock Cafe, the Luna Bar, Nuovo, Rum Jungle, No Black Tie, the Thai Club, Zion Club, Zouk KL, Club Kyō, Dragonfly KL and many others are located here.
Retail
Kuala Lumpur alone has 66 shopping malls and is the retail and fashion hub of both Malaysia and Southeast Asia. Shopping in Malaysia contributed RM7.7 billion (US$2.26 billion) or 20.8 percent of the RM31.9 billion tourism receipts in 2006.
Suria KLCC is one of Malaysia's premier upscale shopping destinations due to its location beneath the Petronas Twin Towers.
Apart from Suria KLCC, the Bukit Bintang district has the highest concentration of shopping malls in Kuala Lumpur. It includes: Pavilion KL, Fahrenheit 88, Plaza Low Yat, Berjaya Times Square, Lot 10, Sungei Wang Plaza, Starhill Gallery, Quill City Mall and Avenue K. Changkat area of Bukit Bintang hosts various cafes, alfresco dining outlets, illegal activities such as prostitution and more. It is best known as one of the red-light districts in Kuala Lumpur. Bangsar district also has a few shopping complexes, including Bangsar Village, Bangsar Shopping Centre, KL Gateway, Bangsar South, KL Eco City and Mid Valley Megamall.
Apart from shopping complexes, Kuala Lumpur has designated numerous zones in the city to market locally manufactured products such as textiles, fabrics and handicrafts. The Chinatown of Kuala Lumpur, commonly known as Petaling Street, is one of them. Chinatown features many pre-independence buildings with Straits Chinese and colonial architectural influences.
Since 2000, the Malaysian Ministry of Tourism introduced a mega sale event for shopping in Malaysia. The mega sale event is held three times a year – in March, May and December – in which all shopping malls are encouraged to participate to boost Kuala Lumpur as a leading shopping destination in Asia which has been maintained until present with new mega sales.
Demographics
Kuala Lumpur is the most populous city in Malaysia, with a population of 1.76 million in the city proper . It has a population density of , and is the most densely populated administrative district in Malaysia. Residents of the city are colloquially known as KLites. Kuala Lumpur is also the centre of the wider Klang Valley metropolitan area covering Petaling Jaya, Klang, Subang Jaya, Puchong, Shah Alam, and Gombak, with an estimated metropolitan population of 7.25 million .
Kuala Lumpur's heterogeneous populace includes the country's three major ethnic groups: the Malays, the Chinese and the Indians, although the city also has a mix of different cultures including Eurasians, Kadazans, Ibans and other indigenous races from around Malaysia.
Historical demographics
Historically Kuala Lumpur was a predominantly Chinese city, although more recently the Bumiputera component of the city has grown substantially and they are now the dominant group. The Kuala Lumpur of 1872 beside the Klang River was described by Frank Swettenham as a "purely Chinese village", although a Malay stockade already existed at Bukit Nanas at that time. By 1875, after participation in the Selangor Civil War by Pahang Malays had ended, Swettenham noted Malay quarters near the Chinese area in a sketch map he had drawn. There were said to be 1,000 Chinese and 700 Malays in the town in this period. Many of the Malays may have settled in Kuala Lumpur after the war. The population of Kuala Lumpur had increased to around three thousand in 1880 when it was made the capital of Selangor. A significant component of the Malay population in Kuala Lumpur of this period consisted of Malays recruited by the British in 1880, mostly from rural Malacca, to establish a police force of 2–300, many of whom brought their families. Many of the Malays were originally from the other islands of Malay Archipelago i.e. Sumatra and Java. The Mandailings, the Minangkabaus, Javanese, and Buginese began arriving in Kuala Lumpur in the 19th century, while the Acehnese arrived in the late 20th century. In the following decades that saw the rebuilding of the town, it grew considerably with a large influx of immigrants, due in large part to the construction of a railway line in 1886 connecting Kuala Lumpur and Klang.
A census in 1891 of uncertain accuracy gave a figure of 43,796 inhabitants, 79% of whom were Chinese (71% of the Chinese were Hakka 客家人), 14% Malay, and 6% Indian. Another perhaps more accurate estimate put the population of Kuala Lumpur in 1890 at 20,000. The rubber boom in the early 20th century led to a further increase in population, from 30,000 in 1900 to 80,000 in 1920. In 1931, 61% of Kuala Lumpur's 111,418 inhabitants were Chinese, and in 1947 63.5%. The Malays however began to settle in Kuala Lumpur in significant numbers, in part due to government employment, as well as the expansion of the city that absorbed the surrounding rural areas where many Malays lived. Between 1947 and 1957 the population of Malays in Kuala Lumpur increased from 12.5 to 15%, while the proportion of Chinese dropped. The process continued after Malayan independence with the growth of a largely Malay civil service, and later the implementation of the New Economic Policy which encouraged Malay participation in urban industries and business. In 1980 the population of Kuala Lumpur had reached over a million, with 52% Chinese, 33% Malay, and 15% Indian. From 1980 to 2000 the number of Bumiputeras increased by 77%, but the Chinese still outnumbered the Bumiputeras in Kuala Lumpur in the 2000 census at 43% compared to 38%. By the 2010 census, according to the Department of Statistics and excluding non-citizens, the percentage of the Bumiputera population in Kuala Lumpur had reached around 45.9% (44.7% Malay), with the Chinese population at 43.2% and Indians 10.3%.
A notable phenomenon in recent times has been the increased portion of foreign residents in Kuala Lumpur, which rose from 1% of the city's population in 1980 to about 8% in the 2000 census, and 9.4% in the 2010 census. These figures also do not include a significant number of illegal immigrants. Kuala Lumpur's rapid development has triggered a huge influx of low-skilled foreign workers from Indonesia, Nepal, Myanmar, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia into Malaysia, many of whom enter the country illegally or without proper permits.
Birth rates in Kuala Lumpur have declined and resulted in a lower proportion of young people – the proportion of those below 15 years old fell from 33% in 1980 to slightly less than 27% in 2000. On the other hand, the working age group of 15–59 increased from 63% in 1980 to 67% in 2000. The elderly age group, 60 years old and above has increased from 4% in 1980 and 1991 to 6% in 2000.
Languages and religions
Kuala Lumpur is pluralistic and religiously diverse. The city has many places of worship catering to the multi-religious population. Islam is practised primarily by the Malays, the Indian Muslim communities and a small number of Chinese Muslims. Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism are practised mainly among the Chinese. Indians traditionally adhere to Hinduism. Some Chinese and Indians also subscribe to Christianity.
As of the 2010 Census, the population of Kuala Lumpur was 46.4% Muslim, 35.7% Buddhist, 8.5% Hindu, 5.8% Christian, 1.4% of unknown affiliations, 1.1% Taoist or Chinese religion adherent, 0.6% follower of other religions, and 0.5% non-religious.
Kuala Lumpur is one of the three states where less than 50% of the population are self-identified Muslims, the other two being Penang and Sarawak.
Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 87.4% of the Chinese population identify as Buddhists, with significant minorities of adherents identifying as Christians (7.9%), Chinese folk religions (2.7%) and Muslims (0.6%). The majority of the Indian population identify as Hindus (81.1%), with a significant minorities of identifying as Christians (7.8%), Muslims (4.9%) and Buddhists (2.1%). The non-Malay bumiputera community are predominantly Christians (44.9%), with significant minorities identifying as Muslims (31.2%) and Buddhists (13.5%). All bumiputera Malays are Muslim; due to the criterion in the definition of a Malay in the Malaysian constitution that they should adhere to Islam.
Bahasa Malaysia is the principal language in Kuala Lumpur. Kuala Lumpur residents are generally literate in English, with a large proportion adopting it as their first language. Malaysian English is a widely used. It has a strong presence, especially in business, and is taught as a compulsory language in schools. Cantonese and Mandarin are prominent, as they are spoken by the local majority Chinese population. Another major dialect spoken is Hakka. While Tamil is dominant amongst the local Indian population, other Indian languages spoken by minorities include Telugu, Malayalam, Punjabi, and Hindi. Beside Malay, there are a variety of languages spoken by people of Indonesian descent, such as Minangkabau and Javanese.
Cityscape
Architecture
The architecture of Kuala Lumpur is a mixture of old colonial influences, Asian traditions, Malay Islamic inspirations, modern, and postmodern architecture. A relatively young city compared with other Southeast Asian capitals such as Bangkok, Jakarta and Manila, most of Kuala Lumpur's notable colonial-era buildings were built toward the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries. These buildings were designed in a number of styles – Mughal/Moorish Revival, Mock Tudor, Neo-Gothic or Grecian-Spanish style or architecture. Most of the styling has been modified to use local resources and adapted to the local climate, which is hot and humid all year around. A significant architect of the early period is Arthur Benison Hubback who designed a number of the colonial-era buildings including the Kuala Lumpur Railway Station and Jamek Mosque.
Prior to the Second World War, many shophouses, usually two stories with functional shops on the ground floor and separate residential spaces upstairs, were built around the old city centre. These shop-houses drew inspiration from Straits Chinese and European traditions. Some of these shophouses have made way for new developments but there are still many standing today in the Medan Pasar Besar (Old Market Square), Chinatown, Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman, Jalan Doraisamy, Bukit Bintang and Tengkat Tong Shin areas.
Independence coupled with rapid economic growth from the 1970s to the 1990s and with Islam being the official religion in the country, has resulted in the construction of buildings with a more local and Islamic flavour arise around the city. Many of these buildings derive their design from traditional Malay items such as the songkok and the keris. Some of these buildings have Islamic geometric motifs integrated into the designs of the building, due to Islamic restrictions on imitating nature through drawings. Examples of these buildings are Telekom Tower, Maybank Tower, Dayabumi Complex, and the Islamic Centre. Some buildings such as the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia and National Planetarium have been built to masquerade as a place of worship, complete with dome and minaret, when in fact they are places of science and knowledge. The Petronas Towers are the tallest twin buildings in the world and the tallest buildings in the country. They were designed to resemble motifs found in Islamic art.
Late modern and postmodern architecture began to appear in the late-1990s and early-2000s. With economic development, old buildings such as Bok House have been razed to make way for new ones. Buildings with all-glass shells exist throughout the city, with the most prominent examples being the Petronas Towers and Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre. Kuala Lumpur's central business district today has shifted to the Kuala Lumpur city centre (KLCC) where many new and tall buildings with modern and postmodern architecture fill the skyline. According to the World Tallest 50 Urban Agglomeration 2010 Projection by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, Kuala Lumpur ranks 10th among cities that have most buildings above 100 metres with a combined height of 34,035 metres from its 244 high rise buildings.
Parks
The Lake Gardens, a botanical garden, was the first recreational park created in Kuala Lumpur. The Malaysian Parliament building is located close by, and Carcosa Seri Negara, which was once the official residence of British colonial administration, is also sited here. The park includes a butterfly park, deer park, orchid garden, a hibiscus garden, and the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park, which is the world's largest aviary bird park. Other parks in the city include the ASEAN Sculpture Garden, KLCC Park, Titiwangsa Lake Gardens, Metropolitan Lake Gardens in Kepong, the Forest Research Institute Malaysia, Taman Tasik Permaisuri (Queen's Lake Gardens), Bukit Kiara Botanical Gardens, the equestrian park and West Valley Park near TTDI, and Bukit Jalil International Park.
There are three forest reserves within the city, the Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve in the city centre, the oldest gazetted forest reserve in the country , Bukit Sungai Putih Forest Reserve () and Bukit Sungai Besi Forest Reserve (). Bukit Nanas, in the heart of the city centre, is one of the oldest virgin forests in the world within a city. These residual forest areas are home to a number of fauna species, particularly monkeys, treeshrews, pygmy goats, budgerigars, squirrels and birds.
There is another park in close vicinity to Kuala Lumpur i.e. Templer Park initiated and opened by Sir Gerald Templer in 1954 during the "Emergency" time.
Education
According to government statistics, Kuala Lumpur has a literacy rate of 97.5% in 2000, the highest rate in any state or territory in Malaysia.
In Malaysia, Malay is the language of instruction for most subjects while English is a compulsory subject, but , English is still the language of instruction for mathematics and the natural sciences for certain schools. Some schools provide instruction in Mandarin and Tamil for certain subjects.
Kuala Lumpur contains 14 tertiary education institutions, 79 high schools, 155 elementary schools and 136 kindergartens.
Several institutions in the city are more than 100 years old — such as Bukit Bintang Girls' School (1893–2000, relocated to Taman Shamelin Perkasa in Cheras and renamed GIS Garden International school Seri Bintang Utara), the Victoria Institution (1893); Methodist Girls' School (1896); Methodist Boys' School (1897); Convent Bukit Nanas (1899), St. John's Institution (1904), Confucian Private Secondary School (1906), Kuen Cheng High School (1908), Tsun Jin High School (1913) and Maxwell School (1917).
Kuala Lumpur is home to the University of Malaya (UM). Established in 1949, it is the oldest university in Malaysia, and one of the oldest in the region. It was ranked the best university in Malaysia, the 22nd best in Asia, and 3rd in Southeast Asia in QS World University Rankings 2019. In recent years, the number of international students at the University of Malaya has risen, as a result of increasing efforts made to attract more international students.
Other universities located in Kuala Lumpur include Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR), International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College (TARUC), UCSI University (UCSI), Taylor's University (TULC), International Medical University (IMU), Open University Malaysia (OUM), Kuala Lumpur University (UniKL), Perdana University (PU), Wawasan Open University (WOU), HELP University and the branch campus of the National University of Malaysia (UKM) and University of Technology Malaysia (UTM). The National Defence University of Malaysia is located at Sungai Besi Army Base, at the southern part of central Kuala Lumpur. It was established to be a major centre for military and defence technology studies. This institution covers studies for the army, navy, and air force.
Greater Kuala Lumpur covers an even more extensive selection of universities including several international branches such as Monash University Malaysia Campus, University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus and Xiamen University Malaysia.
Culture
Arts
Kuala Lumpur is a hub for cultural activities and events in Malaysia. Among the centres is the National Museum, which is situated along the Mahameru Highway. Its collection comprises artefacts and paintings collected throughout the country. The Islamic Arts Museum, which houses more than seven thousand Islamic artefacts including rare exhibits and a library of Islamic art books, is the largest Islamic arts collection in Southeast Asia. The museum's collection not only concentrates on works from the Middle East, but also includes work from elsewhere in Asia, such as China and Southeast Asia. Kuala Lumpur has a craft complex coupled with a museum that displays a variety of textile, ceramic, metal craft and weaved products. Information on the production process is portrayed in diorama format complete with historical facts, technique and traditionally engineered equipment. Among the processes shown are pottery making, intricate wood carving, silver-smithing, weaving songket cloth, stamping batik patterns on cloth, and boat-making. Royal Selangor has an ultra modern visitor's centre, which allows tours to be conducted through its pewter museum, gallery and factory. In its pewter-smithing workshop, "The School of Hard Knocks", participants are taught to create their own pewter dish using traditional tools and methods.The premier performing arts venue is the Petronas Philharmonic Hall located underneath the Petronas Towers. The resident orchestra is the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO), consisting of musicians from all over the world, and features regular concerts, chamber concerts and traditional cultural performances. The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLPac) in Sentul West and Damansara Performing Arts Centre (DPac) in Damansara Perdana are two of the most established centres in the country for the performing arts, notably theatre, plays, music, and film screening. It has housed many local productions and has been a supporter of local and regional independent performance artists. The Future Music Festival Asia has been held in the city since 2012, featuring local and international artists.
The National Art Gallery of Malaysia is located on Jalan Temerloh, off Jalan Tun Razak on a site neighbouring the National Theatre (Istana Budaya) and National Library. The architecture of the gallery incorporates elements of traditional Malay architecture, as well as contemporary modern architecture. The National Art Gallery serves as a centre of excellence and is a trustee of the national art heritage. The Petronas Art Gallery, another centre for fine art, is situated in Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC). The Ilham Tower Gallery near Ampang Park houses exhibitions of works by local and foreign artists.
Kuala Lumpur holds the Malaysia International Gourmet Festival annually. Another event hosted annually by the city is the Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week, which includes international brands and local designers.
Kuala Lumpur also is becoming the centre for new media, innovation and creative industry development in the region and hosts the international creative industry event Kreative.Asia, which gathers local, regional and international experts in the creative industry who are involved in the creation, development and delivery of interactive content, arts, community and applications. Kuala Lumpur is at the forefront of the convergence of media, art, culture and communications.
Sports and recreation
Kuala Lumpur has numerous parks, gardens and open spaces for recreational purposes. Total open space for recreational and sport facilities land use in the city has increased significantly by 169.6 percent from in 1984 to in 2000.
Kuala Lumpur was touted as one of the host cities for the Formula One World Championship from 1999 to 2017. The open-wheel auto racing A1 Grand Prix was held until the series folded in 2009. The Motorcycle Grand Prix races are held at the Sepang International Circuit in Sepang in the neighbouring state of Selangor. The Formula One event contributed significantly to tourist arrivals and tourism income to Kuala Lumpur. This was evident during the Asian financial crisis in 1998. Despite cities around Asia suffering declining tourist arrivals, in Kuala Lumpur tourist arrivals increased from 6,210,900 in 1997 to 10,221,600 in 2000, or 64.6%. In 2015, the Kuala Lumpur Street Circuit was constructed to host the Kuala Lumpur City Grand Prix motor racing event.
Football is one of the most popular sports in Kuala Lumpur. The Merdeka Tournament is mainly held at Stadium Merdeka. The city is also the home of Kuala Lumpur City, which plays in the Malaysia Super League.
Kuala Lumpur hosted the official Asian Basketball Championship in 1965, 1977 and 1985. The city's basketball supporters cheered Malaysia's national basketball team to a Final Four finish in 1985, the team's best performance to date. Further, the city is home to the Kuala Lumpur Dragons, 2016 Champions of the ASEAN Basketball League. The team plays its home games in the MABA Stadium.
KL Grand Prix CSI 5*, a five-star international showjumping equestrian event, is held annually in the city. This annual event draws the world's top riders and their prize horses to Malaysia.
Other annual sport events hosted by the city include the KL Tower Run, the KL Tower International BASE Jump Merdeka Circuit and the Kuala Lumpur International Marathon. Kuala Lumpur is also one of the stages of the Tour de Langkawi cycling race.
The annual Malaysia Open Super Series badminton tournament is held in Kuala Lumpur.
Kuala Lumpur has a considerable array of international class sports facilities after hosting the 1998 Commonwealth Games. Many of these facilities, including the main stadium (with running track and a football field), hockey stadium and swimming pools located in the National Sports Complex at Bukit Jalil while a velodrome and more swimming pools are located in Bandar Tun Razak, next to the Taman Tasik Permaisuri Lake Gardens. There are also football fields, local sports complexes, swimming pools and tennis courts scattered around the suburbs. Badminton and 'takraw' courts are usually included in community halls. The AFC House—current headquarters of the Asian Football Confederation—is built on a complex in the Kuala Lumpur suburb of Bukit Jalil.
Kuala Lumpur has several golf courses including the Kuala Lumpur Golf and Country Club (KLGCC) and the Malaysia Civil Service Golf Club in Kiara and the Berjaya Golf Course at Bukit Jalil. The city also has numerous large private fitness centres run by Celebrity Fitness, Fitness First, True Fitness and major five-star hotels.
Kuala Lumpur is also the birthplace of Hashing, which began in December 1938 when a group of British colonial officers and expatriates, some from the Selangor Club, began meeting on Monday evenings to run, in a fashion patterned after the traditional British Paper Chase or "Hare and Hounds".
Kuala Lumpur hosted the 128th IOC Session in 2015 where the IOC elected Beijing as the host city of the 2022 Winter Olympics and Lausanne as the host city of the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics.
Media
Kuala Lumpur daily, business, and digital papers include The Malaysian Reserve, The Edge, The Star, New Straits Times, The Sun, Malay Mail, Berita Harian, and Harian Metro. Mandarin and Tamil newspapers are also published daily, for example Sin Chew Daily, China Press, Nanyang Siang Pau and Tamil Nesan, Malaysia Nanban, and Makkal Osai.
Kuala Lumpur is also the headquarters for Malaysia's state media public government terrestrial television stations: TV1 and TV2, the subsidiaries of RTM, TV Alhijrah, a subsidiary of Alhijrah Media Corporation, and Media Prima Berhad, a media corporation that houses the private commercial terrestrial television stations: TV3, NTV7, 8TV and TV9. Programmes are broadcast in Malay, English, Chinese and Tamil.
The city is home to the country's main pay television service, Astro, a satellite television service.
Kuala Lumpur female diva pop singers include Elizabeth Tan, Ernie Zakri and Azira Shafinaz.
Kuala Lumpur has been featured in aspects of popular culture such as movies, television, music and books. Television series set in Kuala Lumpur include A Tale of 2 Cities (starring Rui En and Joanne Peh). Movies set in Kuala Lumpur include Police Story 3: Super Cop (starring Jackie Chan and Michelle Yeoh) and Entrapment (starring Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones), in which the Petronas Towers were depicted in flames for a few seconds.
Books set in Kuala Lumpur include KL 24/7 by Ida M Rahim, Shireen Zainudin and Rizal Zainudin, My Life As a Fake by Peter Carey, and Democracy by Joan Didion.
A few notable local films featured Kuala Lumpur as background location, such as Masam-masam Manis (1965), Keluarga Si Comat (1973), Jiwa Remaja (1976), Abang (1981), Matinya Seorang Patriot (1984), Kembara Seniman Jalanan (1986), Orang Kampung Otak Kimia (1988), Hati Bukan Kristal (1990), Mat Som (1990), Mira Edora (1990), Femina (1993), Maria Mariana (1996), Hanya Kawan (1997), KLU (1999), Soal Hati (2000), KL Menjerit (2002), Laila Isabella (2003), Gangster (2005), Gol & Gincu (2005), Remp-it (2006), Cinta (2006), Anak Halal (2007) Evolusi KL Drift (2008), Adnan Sempit (2010), KL Gangster (2011), Kepong Gangster (2012), Lagenda Budak Setan 2: Katerina (2012) and Kolumpo (2013). A few local films featured Kuala Lumpur during the historical era, such as 1975: Hati Malaya (2007), Petaling Streets Warrior (2011) and Tanda Putera (2013).
Kuala Lumpur is mentioned in many songs by local Malaysian artists, such as "Keroncong Kuala Lumpur'" by P. Ramlee, "Kuala Lumpur, Ibu Kota" by Saloma, "Chow Kit Road" by Sudirman Arshad, "Senyumlah Kuala Lumpur" by Alleycats, "Streets of Kuala Lumpur" by Murkyway, "K.L." by Vandal, "Kuala Lumpur" by Poetic Ammo, "Anak Dara" by Azmyl Yunor, "KL"' by Too Phat, "Kotarayaku" by Hujan and Altimet, and "Lagu Untuk Kuala Lumpur" by Tom.
Kuala Lumpur was one of the destinations in The Amazing Race Asia and The Amazing Race.
Video games have also been set in Kuala Lumpur, including three levels of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and two tracks in the racing game Burnout Dominator.
A reality game show set in Kuala Lumpur from February until April 2013 was aired on AXN Asia. The Apprentice Asia was launched on 22 May 2013.
Transportation
As in most other Asian cities, driving is the main commuting choice in Kuala Lumpur. Every part of the city is well connected with highways. Kuala Lumpur has a comprehensive road network with more transportation development planned. Public transportation covers a variety of transport modes such as bus, rail and taxi. Despite efforts to promote public transport, utilisation rates are low, 16 percent of the population in 2006. However, public transport utilisation will increase with the expansion of the rail network, operated by Prasarana Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley via its subsidiaries Rapid Rail and Rapid Bus, using the Rapid KL brand name. Since the take over from Intrakota Komposit Sdn Bhd, Prasarana Malaysia has redrawn the entire bus network of Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley metropolitan area to increase passenger numbers and improve Kuala Lumpur's public transport system. Prasarana Malaysia has adopted the hub and spoke system to provide greater connectivity, and reduce the need for more buses. KL Sentral was added on 16 April 2001 and served as the new transport hub of the Klang Valley Integrated Transit System.
Urban rail
The KTM Komuter, a commuter rail service, was introduced in 1995 as the first rail transit system to provide local rail services in Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding Klang Valley suburban areas. Services were later expanded to other parts of Malaysia with the introduction of the Northern and Southern sectors. KTM Komuter's 175 km (109 mi) network in the Central Sector has 53 stations. It consists of two cross-city routes, namely the Port Klang Line (Tanjung Malim to Port Klang) and Seremban Line (Batu Caves to Pulau Sebang/Tampin). Transfers between the two main lines can be made at any of the four stations on the central core: KL Sentral, Kuala Lumpur, Bank Negara and Putra.
Light Rapid Transit (LRT) Malaysia is the medium-capacity rail lines in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. The first LRT line was opened in 1996 and the system has since expanded to three lines, which opened in 1998 and 1999. Along with the MRT, the LRT is constructed and owned by the Prasarana, with operating concessions currently run by Rapid KL and Rapid Rail. In 2006, the government announced the Sri Petaling Line and Kelana Jaya line extension projects. Unlike the original line, which used the fixed-block signalling block system, the extension uses the communications-based train control (CBTC) signaling system.
Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Malaysia is a heavy rail rapid transit system that constitutes the bulk of the railway network in Kuala Lumpur and the rest of the Klang Valley. The first section of the MRT opened on 16 December 2016, and the network has since grown rapidly in accordance with Malaysia's aim of developing a comprehensive rail network as the backbone of the country's public transportation system. The network consists of three lines – the MRT Circle Line, looping around Kuala Lumpur, the MRT Kajang Line and the MRT Putrajaya Line, covering a 20 km radius in the southeast–northwest direction from the city centre, will integrate the current rapid transit system and serve high-density areas which are currently not serviced by any rapid transit system. About 90 new stations are planned in this "wheel and spoke" concept, out of which 26 in the city centre will be underground. Ridership capacity will be 2 million passengers per day.
The KL Monorail opened on 31 August 2003 with 11 stations running on two parallel elevated tracks. The line is numbered and coloured light green on official transit maps. It connects the KL Sentral transport hub in the south and Titiwangsa in the north with the "Golden Triangle", a commercial, shopping, and entertainment area comprising Bukit Bintang, Imbi, Sultan Ismail, and Raja Chulan.
Kuala Lumpur is served by two airports. The main airport, Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at Sepang, Selangor, which is also the aviation hub of Malaysia, is located about south of city. The other airport is Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport, also known as Subang Skypark and served as the main international gateway to Kuala Lumpur from 1965 until KLIA opened in 1998.
KLIA connects the city with direct flights to destinations on six continents around the world, and is the main hub for the national carrier, Malaysia Airlines and low-cost carrier, AirAsia. KLIA can be reached using the KLIA Ekspres, an airport rail link service from KL Sentral, which takes twenty-eight minutes and costs RM 55 (roughly US$13.50), while travelling by car or bus via highway will take about an hour but cost a lot less. Direct buses from KLIA to the city centre are plentiful (every 10 to 15 minutes during peak hours), air-conditioned and comfortable with fares ranging from RM 11 (roughly US$2.70) to RM 15 (roughly US$3.70). Air Asia and other low-cost carrier flights do not fly out of KLIA main terminal, but from KLIA2, which is two kilometres from KLIA. KLIA2 is served by an extension of the KLIA Ekspres and by a free shuttle bus service from KLIA. , Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah Airport is only used for chartered and turboprop flights by airlines such as Firefly and Malindo Air.
BusesBas Mini KL'' or Kuala Lumpur Mini-Bus Service was one of the oldest and popular Malaysia public bus service, having served Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley region. The buses were primarily painted pink with a white stripe on the sides, and had a capacity of only 20-30 passengers, due to their smaller size. The buses operated on a commission basis, with service operators paid according to the fares they collected. The mini-bus service was from 23 September 1975 and discontinued on 1 July 1998, to be replaced by the Intrakota bus service and later, Rapid Bus in 2005.
Rapid Bus began the first phase of the revamp of its bus network in January 2006, introducing 15 City Shuttle bus routes which serve major areas in the Central Business District (CBD) of Kuala Lumpur. In 2008, Rapid Bus operated 167 routes with 1,400 buses covering 980 residential areas with a ridership of about 400,000 per day. The buses run between four hubs at the edge of the central business district, namely KL Sentral, Titiwangsa, Kuala Lumpur City Centre, Maluri, and Medan Pasar in the city centre. These bus hubs also serve as rail interchanges, with the exception of Medan Pasar, although it is at a walking distance from Masjid Jamek LRT station.
es
On June 18, 2020, Rapid Bus released a new feature: real-time location of bus in Google Maps, via collaboration with Google Transit.
Effective 10 April 2019, all RapidKL buses are implementing fully cashless journey for all routes by stages, in which the bus accepts Touch n Go card only for user convenience. These systems were fully implemented by May 27, 2019. Almost 170 RapidKL bus routes are covered with the real time feature, which was expanded to the MRT feeder bus service. Rapid Bus is however not the only bus operator in Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley. Other bus operators are Selangor Omnibus, Setara Jaya bus, and Causeway Link.
Taxis
In Kuala Lumpur, most taxis have distinctive white and red liveries. Many companies operate and maintain pools of different model of cars in their own brands. Before local car production began, the Mercedes-Benz 200, Mazda 323/Ford Laser, Toyota Mark II X80 series and the Opel Kadett were used. Most were scrapped and replaced by Protons, but there are still a large number of these models running the roads. Kuala Lumpur is one of the major ASEAN cities with taxis extensively running on natural gas. Taxis can be hailed from taxi stands or from the streets. Taxis may be flagged down at any time of the day along any public road outside of the Central Business District (CBD). However, increased usage of ridesharing services like Grab, MyCar and JomRides has resulted in a decrease in taxi use.
Nevertheless, the London-based website, LondonCabs.co.uk has claimed that taxis in the city charge passengers high rates, refusing to turn on their meters and offering instead over-priced flat-rate fares, although other passengers refute such claims. The heads of some taxi associations came out and distanced themselves from taxi drivers who had given the taxi industry a bad name, promising the public that not all taxi drivers were like that.
Twin towns – sister cities
Kuala Lumpur is twinned with:
Ankara, Turkey
Casablanca, Morocco
Chennai, India
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Isfahan, Iran
Karachi, Pakistan
London, United Kingdom
Malacca City, Malaysia
Mashhad, Iran
See also
Greater Kuala Lumpur
Putrajaya
Cyberjaya
Bandar Sri Damansara
Ahmad Fuad Osman, contemporary artist and painter
Vasseti Group
References
Bibliography
External links
Official Website of Kuala Lumpur
The Official Tourism Website of Malaysia – Malaysia Truly Asia
Official Website of Tourism Malaysia Corp
Official Portal of Kuala Lumpur City Hall
An Insider's Guide to Kuala Lumpur – Pathfinder City
Capital districts and territories
Capitals in Asia
Federal Territories in Malaysia
Klang Valley
Peninsular Malaysia
Enclaves and exclaves
Populated places established in 1857
1857 establishments in Asia
Cities in Malaysia | [
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16855 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas%20State%20University | Kansas State University | Kansas State University (KSU, Kansas State, or K-State) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It was opened as the state's land-grant college in 1863 and was the first public institution of higher learning in the state of Kansas. It has an enrollment of 16,835 students for the Fall 2021 semester.
The university is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". Kansas State's academic offerings are administered through nine colleges, including the College of Veterinary Medicine and the College of Technology and Aviation in Salina. Graduate degrees offered include 65 master's degree programs and 45 doctoral degrees.
Branch campuses are in Salina and Olathe. The Kansas State University Salina Aerospace and Technology Campus is home to the College of Technology and Aviation. The Olathe Innovation Campus has a focus on graduate work in research bioenergy, animal health, plant science and food safety and security.
History
Kansas State University, originally named Kansas State Agricultural College, was founded in Manhattan on February 16, 1863, during the American Civil War, as a land-grant institution under the Morrill Act. The school was the first land-grant college created under the Morrill Act. K-State is the third-oldest school in the Big 12 Conference and the oldest public institution of higher learning in the state of Kansas.
The effort to establish the school began in 1861, the year that Kansas was admitted to the United States. One of the new state legislature's top priorities involved establishing a state university. That year, the delegation from Manhattan introduced a bill to convert the private Blue Mont Central College in Manhattan, incorporated in 1858, into the state university. But the bill establishing the university in Manhattan was controversially vetoed by Governor Charles L. Robinson of Lawrence, and an attempt to override the veto in the Legislature failed by two votes. In 1862, another bill to make Manhattan the site of the state university failed by one vote. Finally, upon the third attempt on February 16, 1863, the state accepted Manhattan's offer to donate the Blue Mont College building and grounds and established the state's land-grant college at the site – the institution that would become Kansas State University.
When the college opened for its first session on September 2, 1863, it became only the second public institution of higher learning to admit women and men equally in the United States. Enrollment for the first session totaled 52 students: 26 men and 26 women. Twelve years after opening, the university moved its main campus from the location of Blue Mont Central College to its present site in 1875. The original site is now occupied by Central National Bank of Manhattan and Founders Hill Apartments.
The early years of the institution witnessed debate over whether the college should provide a focused agricultural education or a full liberal arts education. During this era, the tenor of the school shifted with the tenure of college presidents. For example, President John A. Anderson (1873–1879) favored a limited education and President George T. Fairchild (1879–1897) favored a classic liberal education. Fairchild was credited with saying, "Our college exists not so much to make men farmers as to make farmers men."
During this era, in 1873, Kansas State helped pioneer the academic teaching of home economics for women, becoming one of the first two colleges to offer the program of study.
In November 1928, the school was accredited by the Association of American Universities (AAU) as a school whose graduates were deemed capable of advanced graduate work. The name of the school was changed in 1931 to Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science. In 1959, the Kansas legislature changed the name again to Kansas State University of Agriculture and Applied Science to reflect a growing number of graduate programs. However, in modern practice, the "Agriculture and Applied Science" portion has usually been omitted even from official documents such as state statutes. Milton S. Eisenhower served as president of the university from 1943 to 1950, and Dr. James McCain succeeded him, serving from 1950 to 1975. Several buildings, including residence halls and a student union, were added to the campus in the 1950s. The 1960s witnessed demonstrations against the Vietnam War, though fewer than at other college campuses. Enrollment was relatively high through most of the 1970s, but the university endured a downward spiral from approximately 1976 to 1986, when enrollment decreased to 17,570 and a number of faculty resigned. In 1986, Jon Wefald assumed the presidency of Kansas State University. During his tenure, enrollment and donations increased.
On June 15, 2009, Kirk Schulz became the 13th president of Kansas State University. In March 2010 he announced his K-State 2025 plan. The initiative is designed to elevate K-State to a top 50 nationally recognized research university by 2025. His last day was April 22, 2016, as he was selected as Washington State University's next president.
In late April 2016, Ret. General Richard Myers began serving as the interim president of Kansas State University and was announced as the permanent 14th president on November 15, 2016. On May 24, 2021, Myers announced that we would be retiring from his duties as President of Kansas State University, and that his last day would be February 11, 2022.
On February 14, 2022, Richard Linton became the 15th president of the university. Linton, a former professor of food science at Purdue University (1994-2011), has prior administrative service as department chair of food science and technology at The Ohio State University (2011-2012) and dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Science at North Carolina State University (2012-2022).
Oldest public university in Kansas
The state legislature established the state's land-grant college in Manhattan on January 13, 1863. A commission to establish a state university in Lawrence was called for later in the same legislative session, provided that town could meet certain requirements, and finalized later that year. Kansas State was the first public institution of higher learning founded in the state and began teaching college-level classes in 1863. By comparison, the University of Kansas opened in 1866, and offered only preparatory-level classes until college-level classes began in 1869.
Kansas State was founded with an agricultural and scientific college consistent with the land-grant college mandate, as well as departments for military science and literature. It was formally renamed as Kansas State University in 1959.
Campus
The main campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan now covers . The campus is historic, featuring more buildings built before 1910 than any other campus in Kansas. Holtz Hall, built in 1876, is the oldest free-standing building on campus. However, the oldest building on campus is the original section of Seaton Hall, which now forms Seaton Court, facing the courtyard of Hale Library and Eisenhower Hall. Originally named the Industrial Workshop, this section of Seaton Hall is the oldest remaining education building on the Manhattan campus.
The predominant architectural feature of the Manhattan campus is its use of native limestone. This includes the signature building at Kansas State University, Anderson Hall, developed in three stages between 1877 and 1885. Anderson Hall, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has housed the university's administrative offices for more than a century. Dickens Hall was constructed in 1908 and currently houses the statistics and philosophy departments. Although there are many historic building on the campus, since 1986 Kansas State has also added over two million square feet (186,000 m²) of new buildings to the campus, including an expanded library, new art museum, and plant sciences building.
Several of the buildings on campus were heavily damaged by an EF4 tornado on June 11, 2008. Damage estimates totaled more than $20 million. K-State paid a deductible of $5 million for their insurance to repair all damages.
Since 2014, the Main campus has been under significant renovation to accommodate infrastructure changes. The campus is also adopting a more walking friendly atmosphere by closing off many small access roads to vehicles.
Academics
Since 1986, Kansas State ranks first nationally among public universities in its total of Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, Goldwater, and Udall scholars with 147 recipients. The school is a member of the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools, and is home to the Kansas Beta chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. The institution petitioned in 1925, and three years later received, a charter of Mortar Board National College Senior Honor Society.
Kansas State University has 65 academic departments in nine colleges: Agriculture; Architecture, Planning and Design; Arts and Sciences; Business Administration; Education; Engineering; Health and Human Sciences; Technology and Aviation; and Veterinary Medicine. The graduate school offers 65 master's degree programs and nearly 50 doctoral programs.
In 1991, the former Kansas Technical Institute in Salina, Kansas was merged with Kansas State University by an act of the Kansas legislature. The College of Technology and Aviation is at the Salina campus. Initially, this campus was referred to as Kansas State University – Salina, but on October 14, 2014, the Kansas Board of Regents approved a name change to Kansas State University Polytechnic Campus. The campus was again renamed in 2021 to Kansas State University Salina Aerospace and Technology Campus.
In 2018, the Kansas Board of Regents approved that the name of the College of Engineering should be changed to the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering in Ice's honor.
Research
Agriculture
The university has had a long-standing interest in agriculture, particularly native Great Plains plant and animal life. The Kansas State University Gardens is an on-campus horticulture display garden that serves as an educational resource and learning laboratory for K-State students and the public. The Konza Prairie is a native tallgrass prairie preserve south of Manhattan, which is co-owned by The Nature Conservancy and Kansas State University and operated as a field research station by the department of biology. The university also owns an additional in cities across the state that it operates as Agricultural Experiment Stations in research centers in Hays, Garden City, Colby, and Parsons.
In 2006, K-State dedicated the Biosecurity Research Institute. The BRI, in Pat Roberts Hall, is a safe and secure location in which scientists and their collaborators can study high-consequence pathogens. It was designed and constructed for biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) and biosafety level 3 agriculture (BSL-3Ag) research.
Following the NBAF decision, leaders at two additional federal facilities announced they are coming to K-State. The Arthropod-Borne Animal Disease Research Unit, or ABADRU, specializes in animal and plant diseases transmitted by insects. The lab relocated from Laramie, Wyo., to K-State in order to fully realize its research mandate. The Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, or CEEZAD, will research foreign animal, zoonotic and newly discovered pathogens that can have a consequential economic impact on U.S. agriculture, homeland security and human and animal health. It will be led by K-State's Dr. Juergen Richt.
The university's extensive list of research facilities includes the James R. Macdonald Laboratory for research in atomic, molecular and optical physics and the NASA Center for Gravitational Studies in Cellular and Developmental Biology. The excimer laser, which made LASIK eye surgery possible, is a technology developed by Kansas State researchers.
Radio & television
Kansas State was involved in early experimentation with television and radio broadcasts. The first radio station licensed in Manhattan was Kansas State's experimental station 9YV. In 1912 the station began a daily broadcast (in morse code) of the weather forecast, becoming the first radio station in the U.S. to air a regularly-scheduled forecast. After a series of efforts to secure a more high-powered signal for the university – including a brief cooperation with John R. Brinkley's notorious KFKB – Kansas State was granted a license for KSAC, which began broadcasting with 500 watts of power on December 1, 1924. The station was reassigned to the frequency of AM 580 in 1928, and continued broadcasting on that frequency until November 27, 2002, when it made its last broadcast after the frequency was bought out by WIBW in Topeka, Kansas.
On March 9, 1932, the Federal Radio Commission granted Kansas State a license to operate the television station W9XAK. It was the first television station in Kansas. Activity on the station peaked in 1933 and 1934, with original programs being produced three nights a week. On October 28, 1939, the station broadcast the Homecoming football game in Manhattan between Kansas State and Nebraska, which was the second college football game ever televised. The station went off the air in 1939.
K-State Research Exchange
K-State Research Exchange referred to as K-REx is a local branding of Kansas State University's implementation of DSpace.
Kansas State University graduate students are required to submit an electronic version of their thesis, dissertation, or report, and then are made openly available through the K-State Research Exchange (K-REx), and become indexed by search engines.
Campus life
The university is home to several museums, including the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, the KSU Historic Costume and Textiles Museum, the K-State Insect Zoo, and the Chang, Chapman, and Kemper galleries, which feature faculty and student artwork. The university also offers an annual cycle of performance art at McCain Auditorium, including concerts, plays and dance.
K-State is also known for several distinguished lecture series: Landon Lecture, Lou Douglas Lecture, Huck Boyd Lecture, and Dorothy L. Thompson Civil Rights Lectures. The Landon Lecture Series annually brings high-profile speakers to KSU – primarily current or former political or government leaders. Speakers in the last few years include President George W. Bush, President Bill Clinton, former Mexican President Vicente Fox and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Overall, seven U.S. presidents and ten current or former foreign heads of state have given Landon Lectures at K-State since the series was inaugurated in 1966. The series is named after former Kansas governor and presidential candidate Alfred Landon.
The former All-University Convocation lecture series – which began with a speech by Harry Golden on April 3, 1963, and ended in 1997 – brought to campus prominent leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justices Byron White and William O. Douglas, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, and thinkers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Betty Friedan, Buckminster Fuller, and Saul Alinsky.
Student life
K-State has twelve residence halls on campus: Boyd Hall, Ford Hall, Goodnow Hall, Haymaker Hall, Marlatt Hall, Moore Hall, West Hall, Putnam Hall, Van Zile Hall, and the new Wefald hall, completed in 2016. The Living Community at Jardine, and Smurthwaite, as well as Jardine Apartments. Smurthwaite, Ford, and Boyd Halls are all female. Haymaker and Marlatt Halls were all-male residence halls until the fall semesters of 2002 and 2009 respectively, when they became co-educational. The residence halls are divided into three complexes: Derby, Kramer, and Strong.
K-State implemented an academic honor code in 1999. When students are admitted, it is implied that they will adhere to the Honor Pledge: "On my honor, as a student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this academic work."
Kansas State has more than 400 student organizations. The Student Governing Association is the largest organization of student leaders, composed of elected and appointed officials. The Student Governing Association follows the model of the U.S. government, with executive, legislative and judicial branches.
The Association of Residence Halls (KSUARH) is the second largest organization of student leaders working towards better the on-campus living experience for students living in the Residence Halls around campus. GSA is the Graduate Student Association, and members include K-State's graduate-level business students. GSC is the Graduate Student Council, open to graduate-level students of all disciplines. Kansas State University also offers Army ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) and Air Force ROTC programs.
Student media includes KSDB-FM The Wildcat 91.9 Student Radio, the Kansas State Collegian, the Royal Purple Yearbook, and the "Purple Power Hour," "Manhattan Matters," & "Wildcat Watch".
Alma Mater is the name of the official school song of Kansas State University. In 1888, when the University was still Kansas State Agricultural College, H.W. Jones submitted the song as part of a school-wide contest. It was originally a four-stanza song and, over the years, some lyrics have changed. The song is sung at most K-State sporting events by fans, students and alumni. Wildcat Victory and Wabash Cannonball are both commonly used as fight songs. Wildcat Victory is used by many high schools as their fight song.
Fraternities and sororities
There are several national and international social-leadership and service fraternities and sororities at Kansas State University:
Fraternities
Acacia
Alpha Gamma Rho
Alpha Kappa Lambda
Alpha Phi Alpha
Alpha Phi Omega
Alpha Sigma Phi
Alpha Tau Omega
Alpha Chi Sigma
Beta Sigma Psi
Beta Theta Pi
Delta Chi
Delta Lambda Phi
Delta Sigma Phi
Delta Upsilon
FarmHouse
Iota Phi Theta
Kappa Alpha Psi
Kappa Kappa Psi
Kappa Sigma
Lambda Chi Alpha
Omega Delta Phi
Omega Psi Phi
Phi Beta Sigma
Phi Delta Theta
Phi Gamma Delta
Phi Kappa Theta
Pi Kappa Alpha
Pi Kappa Phi
Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia
Sigma Alpha Epsilon
Sigma Chi
Sigma Lambda Beta
Sigma Phi Epsilon
Sigma Pi
Sigma Tau Gamma
Tau Kappa Epsilon
Theta Xi
Triangle
Sororities
Alpha Chi Omega
Alpha Delta Pi
Alpha Gamma Delta
Alpha Kappa Alpha
Alpha Xi Delta
Beta Sigma Chi
Chi Omega
Delta Delta Delta
Delta Sigma Theta
Gamma Phi Beta
Gamma Rho Lambda
Kappa Alpha Theta
Kappa Delta
Kappa Kappa Gamma
Lambda Theta Nu
Pi Beta Phi
Sigma Alpha Iota
Sigma Kappa
Sigma Lambda Gamma
Sigma Gamma Rho
Tau Beta Sigma
Zeta Phi Beta
Zeta Tau Alpha
Athletics
Intercollegiate sports began at Kansas State in the 1890s. The school's sports teams are called the Wildcats, and they participate in the NCAA Division I and the Big 12 Conference. The official school color is Royal Purple, making Kansas State one of very few schools (alongside Syracuse and Harvard) that have only one official color. White and silver are commonly used as complementary colors; white is mentioned with purple in the university's fight song "Wildcat Victory." The athletics logo is a stylized Wildcat head in profile usually featured in the school color, called the "Powercat."
Sports sponsored by the school include football, basketball, cross country and track, baseball, golf, tennis, rowing, women's soccer, and volleyball. The head football coach is Chris Klieman, the head men's basketball coach is Bruce Weber, the head women's basketball coach is Jeff Mittie, and the head baseball coach is Pete Hughes. In 2012−2013, Kansas State became only the second Big 12 school to win conference titles in football, men's basketball, and baseball in the same school year.
Historically, African-American athletes at Kansas State were responsible for breaking the modern "color barrier" in Big Seven Conference athletics. Harold Robinson became the first African-American athlete in the conference in more than two decades and the first ever to receive a scholarship, playing football for Kansas State in 1949. In the spring of 1951 the conference's baseball color barrier was broken by Kansas State's Earl Woods, and in the winter of 1951–1952 Kansas State's Gene Wilson broke the conference color barrier in basketball (together with LaVannes Squires at the University of Kansas).
Notable people
Alumni
Beginning with the first graduating class in 1867, a number of Kansas State alums have gone on to distinguished careers. The 46th Governor of Kansas, who served as Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom under President Donald Trump, Sam Brownback, and one U.S. Senator from Kansas, Pat Roberts, are graduates of Kansas State University. Other graduates currently serve as the vice-president of Liberia, the president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the president of the University of the Virgin Islands. Kansas State alums have been enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame, served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and have earned Emmy Awards and Olympic gold medals. Geraldine L. Richmond, the National Medal of Science laureate (2013) and Priestley Medalist (2018), received a B.S. in chemistry in 1975.
Faculty
In line with its roots as a land grant college, a number of Kansas State's most eminent faculty in its earliest years were in the areas of agriculture, science and military. For example, famed geologist Benjamin Franklin Mudge was chair of the geology department, while famed Army officer Andrew Summers Rowan, the subject of the essay A Message to Garcia, served as professor of military tactics.
Kansas State faculty have received a number of awards. Fred Albert Shannon was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1929, while teaching history at Kansas State. In 2008, CASE and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching honored Michael Wesch as national Professor of the Year. At least eight Kansas State faculty members have gone on to serve as university presidents, including Naomi B. Lynn, the first Hispanic female president of an American public university.
See also
June 1966 tornado outbreak sequence
International Food Safety Network
Aggieville, six square blocks around KSU campus
Further reading
Kansas : A Cyclopedia of State History, Embracing Events, Institutions, Industries, Counties, Cities, Towns, Prominent Persons, Etc; 3 Volumes; Frank W. Blackmar; Standard Publishing Co; 944 / 955 / 824 pages; 1912. (Volume1 – 54 MB PDF), (Volume2 – 53 MB PDF), (Volume3 – 33 MB PDF)
References
External links
Kansas State Athletics website
Land-grant universities and colleges
Education in Riley County, Kansas
Public universities and colleges in Kansas
Educational institutions established in 1863
Buildings and structures in Riley County, Kansas
Tourist attractions in Riley County, Kansas
1863 establishments in Kansas
Manhattan, Kansas | [
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16857 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporting%20Kansas%20City | Sporting Kansas City | Sporting Kansas City, often shortened to Sporting KC, is an American professional soccer club based in the Kansas City metropolitan area. The administrative offices are located in Downtown Kansas City, Missouri, and the team clubhouse and practice facilities are located in Kansas City, Kansas, near Children's Mercy Park. The club competes as a member of the Western Conference in Major League Soccer (MLS), having returned in 2015 after spending ten seasons in the Eastern Conference.
Sporting KC began play in 1996 as a charter team in the league, then known as the Kansas City Wiz. The team was founded by Lamar Hunt in 1995. Since moving across the state line, they have been the only major professional sports league franchise to play their home games in Kansas.
For the majority of their existence, the franchise were known as the Kansas City Wizards. The team rebranded in November 2010, coinciding with its move to their home stadium, now known as Children's Mercy Park. The franchise has won the MLS Cup twice (2000, 2013), the Supporters' Shield in 2000, and the U.S. Open Cup in 2004, 2012, 2015 and 2017.
The club also has a reserve team, Sporting Kansas City II, that began play in the second-tier USL Championship and are set to switch to MLS Next Pro in 2022.
History
The early years (1996–1999)
The Kansas City MLS franchise was founded by Lamar Hunt, who was also the founder of the American Football League, the Kansas City Chiefs, the United Soccer Association, and Major League Soccer.
The Kansas City Wiz played their first game on April 13, 1996, defeating the Colorado Rapids at Arrowhead Stadium, 3–0. The Wiz players included Preki, Mo Johnston and Digital Takawira, and were coached by Ron Newman. The team finished third in the Western Conference (fifth overall) in 1996 regular season with a 17–15 record, qualifying for the first ever MLS Playoffs. In the 1996 conference semi-finals, the Wiz beat the Dallas Burn in three games, winning the final game in a shootout, before losing the conference final to the LA Galaxy.
Following the 1996 season, the Wiz changed names, becoming the "Wizards", following legal action from electronics retailer The Wiz. For the 1997 MLS season, their record was 21–11, sufficient for the Western Conference regular season championship. Preki was named 1997 MLS MVP. In the first round of the playoffs, the Wizards lost to the last-seeded Colorado Rapids. The Wizards had losing records for the 1998 and 1999 seasons, finishing last in the Western Conference both years. The Wizards fired Ron Newman early during the 1999 season, and replaced him with Bob Gansler. The Wizards finished the 1999 season with a record of 8–24, which put them in last place in the Western Conference once again.
Supporters' Shield and MLS Cup (2000)
In 2000, their first full season under Bob Gansler, the Wizards opened the season on a 12-game unbeaten streak. Goalkeeper Tony Meola recorded an MLS record shutout streak at 681 minutes and 16 shutouts, and won MLS Goalkeeper of the Year and MLS MVP. Peter Vermes was named 2000 MLS Defender of the Year. The Wizards finished the 2000 regular season 16–7–9, the best record in the league, winning the MLS Supporters' Shield.
In the 2000 playoffs, fell behind 4 to 1 to the LA Galaxy, but Miklos Molnar scored a penalty kick in game three to send the series into a tiebreaker, where he scored again to send the Wizards to their first MLS Cup. At RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., the Wizards, with the league's best defense, faced the team with the league's best offense, the Chicago Fire. The Wizards took the lead on an 11th-minute goal by Miklos Molnar. The Fire put ten shots on goal, but Tony Meola and the defense held, and the Wizards claimed their first MLS Cup Championship. Tony Meola was named 2000 MLS Cup MVP.
Post-championship struggles (2001–2002)
After the loss of Preki to the Miami Fusion, the team struggled to defend their championship in 2001, making the playoffs as the 8th seed with a record of 11–13–3. In the first round, the Wizards reign as champion ended with a 6 points to 3 loss to Preki and the Miami Fusion. Despite getting back Preki, the Wizards sat in last place in the Western Conference in 2002. They made the playoffs with a record of 9–10–9. The last two teams in the East, the MetroStars and D.C. United missed the playoffs, which propelled the Wizards into the playoffs. In the first round, the team would fall, 6 points to 3 to eventual champions, Los Angeles Galaxy.
More success (2003–2004)
The Wizards returned to the top half of the West in 2003 with a record of 11–10–9. In the first round of the playoffs, the Wizards defeated the Colorado Rapids in the aggregate goal series, 3–1. That set up a one-game showdown with the San Jose Earthquakes the winner would advance to the 2003 MLS Cup. The Wizards took the lead, but the Earthquakes battled back and forced golden goal in overtime by Landon Donovan in the 117th minute, which sent his team to the 2003 MLS Cup and the Wizards home.
The Wizards started out 2004 mediocre, before turning around in the summer. The Wizards finished the season on a six-game unbeaten streak to finish 14–9–9 for the Western Conference regular season championship. Goalkeeper Tony Meola went down with injury and backup Bo Oshoniyi filled as a replacement.
In the first round of the 2004 playoffs, the Wizards lost the first game to San Jose Earthquakes, 2–0. In the second game, however, the Wizards scored 2 goals before Jack Jewsbury scored in stoppage time to move KC onto the conference final. In the conference final, the Wizards held off the Los Angeles Galaxy to reach their second MLS Cup. In the 2004 MLS Cup final, the Wizards went up against D.C. United at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. The Wizards Jose Burciaga scored in the sixth minute, but D.C. United replied with three goals in the first half. KC was given a lifeline in the 58th minute as Josh Wolff scored the first penalty kick in MLS Cup history, but KC lost the 2004 MLS Cup final 3–2.
Move to the East (2005–2010)
Following MLS expansion, the Wizards moved to the Eastern Conference in 2005. By the end of the 2005 season, despite the solid play of 2005 MLS Defender of the Year Jimmy Conrad, the Wizards found themselves outside the playoffs with a record of 11–9–12. After the season, the team's veteran leader, Preki announced his retirement.
In the 2006 season, the Wizards just missed out on a playoff berth with a loss to the New York Red Bulls on the final day of the regular season, finishing with a 10–14–8 record. Lamar Hunt sold the club in August 2006 to OnGoal, LLC, a six-man ownership group led by Cerner Corporation co-founders Neal Patterson and Cliff Illig, a local group committed to keeping the Wizards in Kansas City.
The club dedicated its 2007 season to Lamar Hunt, who had died in December 2006. A good start earned them four wins in the first seven weeks of the season. The club picked up goalkeeper Kevin Hartman from the LA Galaxy to help with that position. Despite winning just four games after the All-Star break, Kansas City managed to finish fifth in the East at 11–12–7 and qualify for the playoffs. The club shifted over to the West as a result of a playoff format change, the Wizards played against Chivas USA. With the Wizards Davy Arnaud's goal in the first game to win the series, the defense and Kevin Hartman did the rest and kept Chivas USA off the scoreboard. In the conference final, the Wizards came up short to the Houston Dynamo, 2–0.
In 2008, the Wizards played their home games at CommunityAmerica Ballpark in Kansas, and ended a four-year playoff drought by posting an 11–10–9 record, good enough for fourth place in the Eastern Conference. Facing the Columbus Crew, the Wizards earned a 1–1 tie in Game 1 of the first round series, but with a 2–0 loss in Game 2 the Wizards lost the aggregate series 3–1.
In the 2009 season, the Wizards remained at CommunityAmerica Ballpark, but struggled to score. They went 426 minutes without scoring a goal, the longest streak of the season. In August 2009, with the team holding a 5–7–6 record, KC fired Head Coach Curt Onalfo, and named general manager Peter Vermes the head coach. The Wizards finished with the worst home record in the league, and at 8–13–9 were third to last in the league standings. Top players were Claudio López (8 goals & 7 assists) and Josh Wolff (11 goals), who sparked the Wizards offense.
The Wizards hosted Manchester United F.C. in a friendly on July 25, 2010, and won the match by a score of 2–1. The announced attendance of 52,342 is a record for a professional soccer match in the Kansas City area It would be the franchise's final overall game played at Arrowhead Stadium. In the 2010 regular season, the Wizards finished third in the Eastern Conference and narrowly missed qualifying for the playoffs.
A 'Sporting' rebrand (2011–2012)
With the rebranding (of Wizards to Sporting) the team followed a recent trend in MLS of adopting European-style names, such as Toronto FC, D.C. United, and Real Salt Lake. The title "Sporting" has its origins in Iberia where it is used only by multi-sports clubs with a history of having multiple departments fielding teams across different sports, the most notable being Sporting Lisbon. Kansas City's use of the term has been criticized for inaccuracy and cultural appropriation. At the rebrand announcement, the Kansas City's president announced they had planned to add a rugby club and lacrosse club. Since then, a partnership with the Kansas City Blues Rugby Club has been announced, but the two sides are not part of one "Sporting Club" and no lacrosse team has been established. The rebranding was met with a mixture of both excitement and disdain by fans when originally announced.
With the opening of the new Children's Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas, Sporting became the first major-league team to have played in stadiums on both sides of the state line in Kansas City, while Kansas City became the only U.S. metropolitan area other than New York City to have major professional sports teams playing in different states.
Because Children's Mercy Park was not ready for the beginning of the 2011 season, Sporting Kansas City played its first ten games on the road, only winning one game. Once the road trip was over, the team found more success and ended the regular season with the most points of any Eastern Conference team. After defeating the Colorado Rapids on a 4–0 aggregate in the Eastern Conference semifinals, Sporting lost to the Houston Dynamo 2–0 in the Eastern Conference finals.
KC began the 2012 season with seven consecutive wins, in the process setting an MLS record for 335 minutes without allowing a shot on goal. The team finished the regular season first in the East with an 18–7–9 record. KC was led by Graham Zusi, who delivered a league-leading 15 assists and was named finalist for 2012 MLS MVP, Jimmy Nielsen, who notched a league leading 15 shutouts and was named 2012 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, and Matt Besler, who was named MLS Defender of the Year. KC lost to the Houston Dynamo in the conference semifinals. KC won the 2012 U.S. Open Cup, defeating Seattle Sounders FC in the finals, to qualify for the 2013–14 CONCACAF Champions League.
MLS Cup champions (2013)
In 2013, Kansas City took advantage of MLS's newly created retention funds to renew contracts with U.S. national team players Graham Zusi and Matt Besler. Sporting had finished second in the Eastern Conference and overall with 17 wins, 10 losses, and tied 7 times in the regular season. In the 2013 MLS Playoffs, Sporting KC defeated NE Revolution in the conference semifinals and Houston Dynamo in the conference finals, advancing to MLS Cup 2013. SKC defeated Real Salt Lake on penalties (7–6) after the match was tied 1–1 in regulation and overtime. It was the coldest MLS Cup game on record.
Return to the West (2014–present)
In the 2014 MLS Cup Playoffs, Sporting were eliminated in the East Knockout Round by the New York Red Bulls.
On October 27, 2014, the league announced that Sporting, along with the Houston Dynamo, would move from the Eastern Conference to the Western Conference when two teams from East Coast states, New York City FC and Orlando City SC, joined the league in 2015. Sporting finished sixth in the Western Conference that year, again qualifying for postseason play due to the expanded twelve-club field in the 2015 MLS Cup Playoffs. They were eliminated in the Western Knockout Round by the Portland Timbers, 6–7 in a Penalty Shootout.
Sporting's co-owner Neal Patterson died due to soft tissue cancer in July 2017. Kansas City unveiled wordmarks that was worn on the team's jerseys and on Children's Mercy Park to commemorate their late owner. Later that month, the club traded Dom Dwyer to Orlando City in exchange for $1.6 million (in general and targeted allocation money with additional incentives), setting the record for the most expensive internal trade in league history.
The team won the 2017 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, defeating the New York Red Bulls 2–1 in the final. The win gave Sporting their fourth Open Cup title, and their third in the last six years. The victory extended head coach Peter Vermes's record to 4–0 in cup finals and championship games with the club. In Open Cup history, Kansas City became just the second franchise in the single elimination tournament to have won four Open Cup finals in the same number of appearances.
Colors and badge
Sporting Kansas City's official colors are "sporting blue" and "dark indigo" with "lead" as a tertiary color. The primary logo is composed of a teardrop-shaped shield containing a stylized representation of the Kansas-Missouri state line with "sporting blue" stripes on the "Kansas" side and an interlocking "SC" on the "Missouri" side. The shield's contour alludes to the team's former logo while under the "Kansas City Wizards" appellation. The stateline represents Sporting's fanbase in both of the Kansas and Missouri portions of the Kansas City metropolitan area. The eleven alternating horizontal stripes of "sporting blue" and "dark indigo" forming the state line are a nod to the number of players a team fields. The "SC" (for Sporting Club) is inspired by Asclepius' rod representing health and fitness, a Greek statue called the Winged Victory of Samothrace – alluding to strength and movement, and to the Spanish architecture of Kansas City's Country Club Plaza. Beginning in 2013, Ivy Funds became the club's first uniform sponsor, and a new home and away jersey design was unveiled, as well as an alternate argyle design.
Sponsorship
Uniform evolution
Home: 1996–2010
Home: 2011–present
Third
Stadiums
Arrowhead Stadium
From 1996 through 2007, the Wizards played home games in Arrowhead Stadium, the American football stadium mainly used by the Kansas City Chiefs. Wizards management kept the west end of Arrowhead tarped off for the first 10 years of play, limiting seating near the field. In 2006, fans could sit all the way around the field, but, in 2007, seating was [again] only available along the sidelines. After the 2007 final season at Arrowhead, the Wizards continued to use the stadium for select large events. In 2008, the club played a regular season home game against the Los Angeles Galaxy at the stadium to accommodate the large crowd expected for David Beckham's Galaxy debut. Again in 2010, the Wizards played a friendly here against English club Manchester United, winning 2–1.
CommunityAmerica Ballpark
The Wizards entered an agreement with the Kansas City T-Bones to use their home stadium, CommunityAmerica Ballpark, during the 2008 and 2009 seasons. The deal was later extended to include 2010. The stadium, located across the state line in Kansas City, Kansas, built a new bleacher section financed by the Wizards to increase its capacity to 10,385. This move made the Wizards the third MLS team to share their home ground with a baseball team. D.C. United had been sharing RFK Stadium with Major League Baseball's Washington Nationals in Washington, D.C., before the latter's move into Nationals Park. The San Jose Earthquakes used Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, home of the Oakland A's (and Oakland Raiders), for certain games during the 2008 and 2009 seasons.
The Wizards originally planned to return to Kansas City, Missouri, and build a new stadium there – tentatively called Trails Stadium – as part of a major mixed-use development. The team had received all required approvals and was awaiting site demolition; however, the 2008–09 financial crisis ultimately led to the scrapping of the Trails Stadium project.
Children's Mercy Park
The team sought a new site for its stadium, quickly settling on a development in Kansas City, Kansas, known as Village West, near CommunityAmerica Ballpark and the Kansas Speedway.
In September 2009, the developer asked Wyandotte County (in Kansas) and Kansas state officials for permission to use revenues from existing tax increment financing in the Village West area to help finance the soccer complex. On December 17, Wizards president Robb Heineman provided an update on the stadium situation, identifying the Kansas City, Kansas, location as near final, pending the signature of the final agreements. On January 19, 2010, Wyandotte County approved the bonds to help finance the stadium, and on January 20 the groundbreaking ceremony was made, with Wizards CEO Robb Heineman using heavy machinery to move dirt on the construction site.
When the Kansas City Wizards first rebranded as Sporting Kansas City, they built Livestrong Sporting Park. Spending $200 million on the complex, it was the first "European style" soccer complex in the United States. Name rights were held by the Livestrong Foundation until the downfall of Lance Armstrong from his doping scandal; Sporting Kansas City subsequently changed the name of their stadium to Sporting Park.
On November 19, 2015, the stadium was renamed to Children's Mercy Park in a ten-year deal with Children's Mercy Hospital.
Home venue(s):
Other stadiums used:
Blue Valley Sports Complex; Overland Park, Kansas (2001, 2004, 2006, 2011); 6 games in Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup
Julian Field; Parkville, Missouri (2005); 2 games in Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup
Hermann Stadium; St. Louis, Missouri (2009) 1 game in North American SuperLiga
Durwood Soccer Stadium; Kansas City, Missouri (2010) 1 game in Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup
Club culture
Supporters
Sporting regularly sells out its matches, with over 100 straight sellouts as of August 2017. Sporting has 14,000 season-ticket holders, with a wait list for season tickets of 3,000 people. Sporting KC has a relatively young fan base, with season-ticket holders having an average age of 29.7 years. Sporting KC works with Sporting Innovations, a consulting firm spun off from the team that focuses on fan engagement. Administrators from several college football teams, such as the Florida Gators, have visited Sporting KC to learn from the team's success at fan engagement.
The main supporters group of Sporting Kansas City cheers in the Members' Stand on the North side of Children's Mercy Park and is known as "The Cauldron". The name is derived from the large metal pots used for boiling potions, due to the team's former name Wizards. Since the rebranding in 2010, Sporting have seen dramatic growth in their fan section, with several fan groups adding their voice to The Cauldron culture and atmosphere.
Current groups in the north stands along with The Cauldron include: La Barra KC, Mass Street Mob, King City Yardbirds, Trenches, Omaha Boys, Northland Noise, Ladies of SKC, Fountain City Ultras, and K.C. Futbol Misfits.
The South Stand SC cheers from the south end of Children's Mercy Park and is the umbrella group for The Wedge and Ad Astra SKC (a reference to the motto of the state of Kansas), while American Outlaws – Kansas City Chapter are also present in the stands.
Mascot
SKC's "Blue the Dog" is the franchise's official mascot.
Rivalries
Houston Dynamo
The two teams had faced each other regularly over the years, while both having been members of the Eastern conference. During that time, Sporting KC had frequently faced Houston in the playoffs, beginning their rivalry. As of 2021, SKC is 16–18–15 (W–L–T) against the Dynamo.
Real Salt Lake
In their total meetings, Sporting KC is 15–18–10 (W–L–T), (as of the team's 2021 season). The two teams faced each other in MLS Cup 2013 in what was the coldest MLS Cup final to date; many agree that this match was when the rivalry had unfolded.
Minnesota United FC
Kansas City also has a newer rivalry with Minnesota United FC known as the "Nicest Rivalry In Sports" due to "their general regional proximity in a location known for niceness."
Broadcasting
Prior to 2017 matches were broadcast in high definition on KMCI-TV (except for nationally broadcast matches). The play-by-play announcer was WHB 810AM 'Border Patrol' host Nate Bukaty, who began broadcasting for the team in the 2015 season. Former Sporting Kansas City goalkeeper Andy Gruenebaum provided color commentary following his retirement after the 2014 season. Color commentary was covered by Jake Yadrich through the 2013 season, after which he transitioned to be the lead analyst on the sidelines during games. Morning reporter Kacie McDonnell of KSHB-TV, an NBC affiliate and KMCI-TV's sister station, served as the network host of the pregame and postgame shows.
In addition, the Sporting Kansas City Television Network provided coverage across markets in six states:
Mediacom 22 throughout Kansas, Missouri, and Iowa
KZOU in Columbia, Missouri
The Cox Channel in Northwest Arkansas, Topeka, Kansas, Wichita, Kansas, Omaha, Nebraska, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa, Oklahoma
LAKE-TV Channel 32 in the Lake of the Ozarks
Matches that are not broadcast nationally are now broadcast on Fox Sports Kansas City (it was also carried on Fox Sports Midwest in the St. Louis market until 2023, where it will be removed due to the new St Louis City FC MLS team). In 2017, Fox Sports Midwest only carried select matches, while in 2018, the club announced the St. Louis market would receive all matches while the Mid-Missouri and Iowa markets would receive most matches. Nate Bukaty continues to provide the play-by-play commentary, while Jacob Peterson joined as the color commentator ahead of the 2020 season with Carter Augustine returning as the sideline reporter.
In 2022, prior to an upcoming leaguewide TV deal, KMCI returned as broadcast partner for those in the Kansas City market, with other areas being able to stream all matches on the club's website.
Regular local radio coverage in English is provided through an official partnership with Sports Radio 810 WHB and its affiliate ESPN Kansas City 99.3FM. Spanish broadcasting was previously found on KDTD 1340AM, but is on KCZZ (ESPN Deportes Kansas City 1480AM) for the 2018 season. The broadcasts are produced by Jorge Moreno and feature the voice of 13-year MLS veteran Diego Gutierrez along with Ale Cabero, Raul Villegas and Alonso Cadena.
Players and staff
Roster
Head coaches
General managers / presidents
Honors
Individual Club Trophies
MLS Fair Play Award (4): 1998, 2002, 2005, 2006
CONCACAF Champions League Fair Play Award: 2019
Team record
Seasons
This is a partial list of the last five seasons completed by SKC. For the full season-by-season history, see List of Sporting Kansas City seasons.
1. Avg. Attendance include statistics from league matches only.
2. Top Goalscorer(s) includes all goals scored in League, MLS Cup Playoffs, U.S. Open Cup, MLS is Back Tournament, CONCACAF Champions League, FIFA Club World Cup, and other competitive continental matches.
International tournaments
2001 Copa Merconorte
Group stage v. Sporting Cristal: 1–2
Group stage v. Santos Laguna: 2–4
Group stage v. Barcelona: 3–2
Group stage v. Sporting Cristal: 1–2
Group stage v. Barcelona: 1–1
Group stage v. Santos Laguna: 0–1
2002 CONCACAF Champions Cup
First Round v. W Connection: 1–0, 2–0 (Wizards win 3–0 on aggregate)
Quarterfinal v. Santos Laguna: 1–2, 2–0 (Wizards win 3–2 on aggregate)
Semifinals v. Monarcas Morelia: 1–6, 1–1 (Morelia advance 7–2 on aggregate)
2005 CONCACAF Champions Cup
First Round v. Deportivo Saprissa: 0–0, 1–2 (Saprissa advance 2–1 on aggregate after added extra time)
2009 North American SuperLiga
Group stage v. Atlas: 0–0
Group stage v. New England Revolution: 1–1
Group stage v. Santos Laguna: 1–3
2013–14 CONCACAF Champions League
Group stage v. Real Estelí: 2–0, 1–1
Group stage v. Olimpia: 2–0, 0–0
Quarterfinals v. Cruz Azul: 1–0, 1–5 (Cruz Azul advance 5–2 on aggregate)
2014–15 CONCACAF Champions League
Group stage v. Real Estelí: 1–1, 3–0
Group stage v. Deportivo Saprissa: 3–1, 0–2
2016–17 CONCACAF Champions League
Group stage v. Central FC: 2–2, 3–1
Group stage v. Vancouver Whitecaps FC: 3–0, 1–2
2019 CONCACAF Champions League
Round of 16 v. Toluca: 3–0, 2–0 (Sporting KC advance 5–0 on aggregate)
Quarterfinals v. Independiente: 1–2, 3–0 (Sporting KC advance 4–2 on aggregate)
Semifinals v. Monterrey 0–5, 2–5 (Monterrey advance 10–2 on aggregate)
Player records
Top goalscorers
The following records are for MLS regular season only:
Games: Graham Zusi (320)
Goals: Preki (71)
Assists: Preki (98)
Wins: Tim Melia (73)
Shutouts: Tim Melia (52)
Saves Tim Melia (530)
Ejections: Roger Espinoza (11)
Source: Updated: March 8, 2020
Sporting Legends
Sporting Legends is an initiative launched in 2013 that pays tribute to the individuals who played an instrumental role for Sporting Kansas City and in the growth of soccer in the region.
The individuals named as Sporting Legends, their year of induction, and a brief description are listed below:
Preki (2013) – 2005 MLS All-Time Best XI, 1997 and 2003 MLS League MVP, Club's all-time leader in goals and assists.
Tony Meola (2013) – 2005 MLS All-Time Best XI, 2000 MLS MVP, 2000 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year, 2000 MLS Cup MVP.
Bob Gansler (2013) – 2000 MLS Coach of the Year, 2000 MLS Cup, 2000 MLS Supporters Shield.
Peter Vermes (2014) – as player: 2000 MLS Defender of the Year, 2000 MLS Cup, 2000 MLS Supporters Shield; as manager: 2012, 2015 and 2017 U.S. Open Cups, 2013 MLS Cup.
Jimmy Conrad – (2014) – 2004–06, 2008 MLS Best XI, 2004 U.S. Open Cup, 2005 MLS Defender of the Year.
Lamar Hunt (2014) – A founder of Major League Soccer, owned the Kansas City Wizards 1996–2006.
Chris Klein (2015) – 2000 MLS Cup, 2000 MLS Supporters Shield, 2004 U.S. Open Cup, 2002–2005 MLS All-Star.
Kerry Zavagnin (2016) – 2000 MLS Cup, 2000 MLS Supporters Shield, 2004 U.S. Open Cup, 2004 MLS All-Star, 2004 MLS Best XI.
Mo Johnston (2017) – 2000 MLS Cup, 2000 MLS Supporters Shield, 1996-1998 MLS All-Star.
Josh Wolff (2019) – 2004 U.S. Open Cup, 2004 MLS Western Conference Championship.
Jimmy Nielsen (2021) – 2012 U.S. Open Cup, 2013 MLS Cup, 2010, 2012, 2013 MLS Eastern Conference, 2012 MLS Best XI, 2012 MLS Goalkeeper of the Year.
Hat tricks
+ Dom Dwyer scored four goals in this game
Home attendance
@ DNQ = Did not qualify; NHG = No home game was played during the playoffs
# The 73% jump in attendance between 2010 and 2011 coincides with the team's move from CommunityAmerica Ballpark (capacity 10,400) to their new soccer-specific stadium Livestrong Sporting Park (now known as Children's Mercy Park) (capacity 18,500).
References
External links
Association football clubs established in 1995
W
Soccer clubs in Kansas
Soccer clubs in Missouri
1995 establishments in Missouri
Major League Soccer teams
Sports teams in the Kansas City metropolitan area
U.S. Open Cup winners | [
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16858 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights%20of%20Columbus | Knights of Columbus | The Knights of Columbus (K of C) is a global Catholic fraternal service order founded by Michael J. McGivney on March 29, 1882. Membership is limited to practicing Catholic men. It is led by Patrick E. Kelly, the order's 14th Supreme Knight.
The organization was founded in March 1882 as a mutual benefit society for working-class and immigrant Catholics in the United States. It has grown to support refugee relief, Catholic education, local parishes and dioceses, and global Catholic social and political causes. The Knights promote the Catholic view on public policy issues, including opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion. Between 2008 and 2012, K of C gave at least $15 million to lobbies opposed to same-sex marriage.
The organization also provides certain financial services to the individual and institutional Catholic market. Its wholly owned insurance company, one of the largest in the world, underwrites more than two million insurance contracts, totaling more than $100 billion of life insurance in force. The order also owns the Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors, a money management firm which invests in accordance with Catholic social teachings.
As of 2019, there were nearly two million members around the world. Women may participate in K of C through the Columbiettes and other female auxiliaries, and boys may join the Columbian Squires. The Order comprises four different "degrees", each one of which exemplifies one of the core principles of the order. There are more than 16,000 local Knights of Columbus councils around the world, including over 300 on college campuses.
History
Early years
American Catholic priest Michael J. McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus in 1882 as a mutual benefit society for Catholic immigrants in New Haven, Connecticut.
Early 20th century
During World War I, the Knights established soldiers' welfare centers in the U.S. and abroad. After the war, the Knights participated in education, occupational training, and employment programs for veterans.
The Oregon Compulsory Education Act of 1922 would have disallowed parochial schools, including Catholic schools, in that state. The Knights of Columbus challenged the law in court, and, in a landmark 1925 ruling (Pierce v. Society of Sisters), the U.S. Supreme Court struck it down.
In the 1920s, to combat animus targeted at racial and religious minorities, the organization published a series of three books: "Knights of Columbus Racial Contributions Series": The Gift of Black Folk, by W. E. B. Du Bois, The Jews in the Making of America by George Cohen, and The Germans in the Making of America by Frederick Schrader.
During the nadir of American race relations, the Ku Klux Klan promoted a conspiracy theory which claimed that Fourth Degree Knights swore an oath to exterminate Freemasons and Protestants. The Knights began suing distributors for libel in an effort to stop this, and the KKK ended its publication of the false oath.
Recent history
According to church historian Massimo Faggioli, the Knights of Columbus are today "'an extreme version' of a post-VaticanII phenomenon, the rise of discrete lay groups that have become centers of power themselves".
Degrees
The order is dedicated to the principles (Degrees) of charity, unity, fraternity, and patriotism. The first ritual handbook, printed in 1885, contained only the first two Degrees teaching unity and charity. Fourth Degree assemblies may form color guards, which are often the most visible arm of the Knights, to attend important civic and church events.
Charitable giving
The Knights of Columbus states that charity is its most important principle. Beginning in 1897, the National Council encouraged local councils to establish funds to support members affected by the 1890s depression. Aid was also dispensed to assist victims of natural and man-made disasters in the early 20th century. Councils also offered employment agency services and provided aid to the poor and sick as well as people burdened with intellectual disability. At their 2019 convention, Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said that the organization had donated $185 million and 76 million volunteer hours toward charity projects in 2018. Charitable activities include support for refugees, aid for victims of natural disasters, and advocating Catholic ethics, such as opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion. After the Knights had donated more than 1,000 ultrasound machines to crisis pregnancy centers from 2009-2019, Anderson said "Our ultrasound initiative is now the greatest humanitarian achievement in the history of the Knights of Columbus. ... We can, and I am confident that we will, save millions of unborn lives."
Membership
Membership is restricted to adult male Catholics. , there were 2 million knights. Each member belongs to one of more than 16,000 local "councils" around the world. The college councils program started with the chartering of University of Notre Dame Council #1477 in 1910. As of 2018, there are more than 300 college councils.
Corporate governance
The Supreme Council is the governing body of the order. It elects insurance members to serve three-year terms on a 24-member Board of Directors. Leaders' salaries are set by the board of directors and ratified by the delegates to the Supreme Convention. The seven-figure salaries of senior K of C officers have been criticized as excessive. In 1969, the Knights opened a 23-story headquarters building in New Haven.
Promotion of the Catholic faith
Efforts against religious discrimination
Since its earliest days, the Knights of Columbus has been a "Catholic anti-defamation society". In 1914, it established a Commission on Religious Prejudices. As part of the effort, the order distributed pamphlets, and lecturers toured the country speaking on how Catholics could love and be loyal to America.
The creation of the 4th Degree, with its emphasis on patriotism, performed an anti-defamation function as well as asserting claims to Americanism. In response to a defamatory "bogus oath" circulated by the KKK, in 1914 the Knights set up a framework for a lecture series and educational programs to combat anti-Catholic sentiment.
New evangelization
The Knights have been urged to take a prominent role in the new evangelization. The CIS published a series on the new evangelization in 2011, and donations to other Catholic mass communication services represent one of the Knights' major expenditures. The Knights have also established councils in both secular and Catholic universities.
Political activity
While the Knights were active politically from an early date, in the years following the Second Vatican Council, as the "Catholic anti-defamation character" of the order began to diminish as Catholics became more accepted, the leadership began to use its financial resources to directly influence the direction of the church. That led to the creation of a "variety of new programs reflecting the proliferation of the new social ministries of the church".
The leadership of the order has been, at times, both liberal and conservative. Martin H. Carmody and Luke E. Hart were both political conservatives, but John J. Phelan was a Democratic politician prior to becoming Supreme Knight, John Swift's "strong support for economic democracy and social-welfare legislation marks him as a fairly representative New Deal anti-communist," and Francis P. Matthews was a civil rights official and member of Harry Truman's cabinet. The former Supreme Knight, Carl A. Anderson, previously served in the Office of Public Liaison under Ronald Reagan.
The Knights of Columbus is classified by the IRS as a 501(c)(8) fraternal benefit society. Unlike the more common 501(c)(3) nonprofits, 501(c)(8)s are allowed to engage in limited direct political activity without jeopardizing their tax exemptions. However, former Supreme Knight Carl Anderson said “One of our most important traditions throughout our 125-year history is that we do not, as an organization, become involved in partisan politics."
The Knights of Columbus support political awareness and activity among their membership and local councils. Public policy activity is limited to issue-specific campaigns, typically dealing with Catholic family and sanctity of life issues. They state that
In addition to performing charitable works, the Knights of Columbus encourages its members to meet their responsibilities as Catholic citizens and to become active in the political life of their local communities, to vote and to speak out on the public issues of the day.... In the political realm, this means opening our public policy efforts and deliberations to the life of Christ and the teachings of the Church. In accord with our Bishops, the Knights of Columbus has consistently maintained positions that take these concerns into account. The order supports and promotes the social doctrine of the Church, including a robust vision of religious liberty that embraces religion's proper role in the private and public spheres.
The order opposed persecution of Catholics in Mexico during the Cristero War, and opposed communism. Also during the 20th century, the order established the Commission on Religious Prejudices, and the Knights of Columbus Historical Commission which combated racism. It was also supportive of trade unionism, and published the works "of the broad array of intellectuals", including George Schuster, Samuel Flagg Bemis, Allan Nevins, and W. E. B. DuBois.
During the Cold War, the order had a history of anti-socialist, anti-communist and anti-anarchist crusades. They lobbied to add "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance, as a religious response to Soviet atheism. The Knights have been active opponents against the legal introduction of same-sex marriage and have been a key contributor in terms of funding to local measures. The Knights have donated over to the Susan B. Anthony Foundation and other anti-abortion and anti-contraception organizations.
Subsidiaries
Insurance
Under the initial insurance scheme devised by founder McGivney, a deceased Knight's widow was granted a 1,000 death benefit, funded by a pro-rata contribution from the membership. In addition, there was also a sick benefit for members who fell ill and could not work.
Museum
On March 10, 2001, the order opened a museum in New Haven dedicated to their history. The 77,000 square foot building cost to renovate. It holds mosaics on loan from the Vatican and gifts from Popes, the membership application from John F. Kennedy, and a number of other items related to the history of the Knights. Near the entrance is the cross held by Jesus Christ on the facade of St. Peter's Basilica before undergoing a Knights-financed renovation.
Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors
In 2015, the order launched Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors, a money management firm which invests money in accordance with Catholic social teaching. The firm uses the Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to guide their investment decisions. The guidelines include protecting human life, promoting human dignity, reducing arms production, pursuing economic justice, protecting the environment, and encouraging corporate responsibility.
In addition to the wholly owned subsidiary, it also purchased 20% of Boston Advisors, a boutique investment management firm, managing assets for institutional and high-net-worth investors. Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors manages the fixed-income strategies for their funds while Boston Advisors sub-advises on the equity strategies. Knights of Columbus Asset Advisors also offers model portfolio, outsourced CIO services, a bank loan strategy, and other alternative investment strategies. In 2019, the Knights purchased the institutional management business of Boston Advisors.
Saint John Paul II National Shrine
The order owns and operates the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington D.C. In 2011, the Order purchased the 130,000-square-foot John Paul II Cultural Center. The mission as a cultural center ended in 2009 and the Knights rebranded it as a shrine to Pope John Paul II. Soon after the pope was canonized, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops named the building a national shrine.
Each year 64,000 pilgrims visit the shrine, which features video content, interactive displays, and personal effects from John Paul. There is also a first class relic of the pope's blood on display for veneration. It also serves as a base for the Order in Washington, D.C.
Notable Knights
Many notable Catholic men from all over the world have been Knights of Columbus. In the US, some of the most notable include John F. Kennedy; Ted Kennedy; Al Smith; Sargent Shriver; Samuel Alito; Conrad Hilton; John Boehner; Ray Flynn; Jeb Bush; and Sergeant Major Daniel Daly, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient.
In the world of sports, Vince Lombardi, the famed former coach of the Green Bay Packers; James Connolly, the first Olympic gold medal champion in modern times; Floyd Patterson, former heavyweight boxing champion; and baseball legend Babe Ruth were all knights.
On October 15, 2006, Bishop Rafael Guizar Valencia (1878–1938) was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome. In 2000, six other Knights, who were killed in the violence following the Mexican Revolution, were declared saints by Pope John Paul II.
Emblem of the order
The emblem of the order was designed by Past Supreme Knight James T. Mullen and adopted at the second Supreme Council meeting on May 12, 1883. Shields used by medieval knights served as the inspiration. The emblem consists of a shield mounted on a Formée cross, which is an artistic representation of the cross of Christ. This represents the Catholic identity of the order.
Mounted on the shield are three objects: the fasces, an anchor, and a dagger. In ancient Rome, the fasces was carried before magistrates as an emblem of authority. The order uses it as "symbolic of authority which must exist in any tightly-bonded and efficiently operating organization". The anchor represents Christopher Columbus, admiral under the orders of the kings of Spain and patron of this partnership, here a symbol of the Catholic contribution to America. The short sword, or dagger, was a weapon used by medieval knights. The shield as a whole, with the letters "K of C", represents "Catholic Knighthood in organized merciful action".
Auxiliary groups
Women's auxiliaries
Many councils also have women's auxiliaries. At the turn of the 20th century, two were formed by local councils, each taking the name Daughters of Isabella. They expanded and issued charters to other circles but never merged. The newer organization renamed itself the Catholic Daughters of the Americas in 1921, and both have structures independent of the Knights of Columbus. Other groups are known as the Columbiettes. In the Philippines, the ladies' auxiliary is known as the Daughters of Mary Immaculate.
A proposal in 1896 to establish councils for women did not pass and was never proposed again.
Columbian Squires
The Knights' official junior organization is the Columbian Squires. According to McDonald, "The supreme purpose of the Columbian Squires is character building."
It was founded in 1925 in Duluth, Minnesota, by Barnabas McDonald. The formation of new Squire Circles in the United States and Canada is discouraged, as the Order desires to move youth activities from exclusive clubs into the local parish youth groups.
Similar Christian organizations
The Knights of Columbus is a member of the International Alliance of Catholic Knights (IACK), which includes fifteen fraternal orders such as the Knights of Saint Columbanus in Ireland, the Knights of St Columba in Great Britain, the Knights of Peter Claver in the United States, the Knights of the Southern Cross in Australia and New Zealand, the Knights of Marshall in Ghana, the Knights of Da Gama in South Africa, and the Knights of Saint Mulumba in Nigeria.
The Loyal Orange Institution, also known as the Orange Order, is a similar organization for Protestant Christians.
See also
Columbus Fountain
Columbus School of Law
Father Millet Cross
James Cardinal Gibbons Memorial Statue
Knights of Columbus Hostel fire
List of Knights of Columbus buildings
List of Massachusetts State Deputies of the Knights of Columbus
Manuscripta
Parish Priest (book)
Pope John Paul II Cultural Center
Notes
References
Works cited
Further reading
External links
Father Michael J. McGivney Guild
Financial services companies established in 1882
1882 establishments in Connecticut
Religious organizations established in 1882
Organizations based in New Haven, Connecticut | [
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16860 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese%20sword | Japanese sword | A is one of several types of traditionally made swords from Japan. Bronze swords were made as early as the Yayoi period (1000 BC – 300 AD), though most people generally refer to the curved blades made after the Heian period (794 – 1185) when speaking of "Japanese swords". There are many types of Japanese swords that differ by size, shape, field of application and method of manufacture. Some of the more commonly known types of Japanese swords are the katana, tachi, odachi, wakizashi, and tantō.
Classification
Classification by shape and usage
In modern times the most commonly known type of Japanese sword is the Shinogi-Zukuri katana, which is a single-edged and usually curved longsword traditionally worn by samurai from the 15th century onwards. Western historians have said that Japanese katana were among the finest cutting weapons in world military history, for their intended use.
Other types of Japanese swords include: tsurugi or ken, which is a double-edged sword; ōdachi, tachi, which are older styles of a very long single-edged sword; wakizashi, a medium-sized sword and tantō which is an even smaller knife-sized sword. Naginata and yari despite being polearms are still considered to be swords.
The type classifications for Japanese swords indicate the combination of a blade and its mounts as this, then, determines the style of use of the blade. An unsigned and shortened blade that was once made and intended for use as a tachi may be alternately mounted in tachi koshirae and katana koshirae. It is properly distinguished, then, by the style of mount it currently inhabits. A long tanto may be classified as a wakizashi due to its length being over 30 cm, however it may have originally been mounted and used as a tanto making the length distinction somewhat arbitrary but necessary when referring to unmounted short blades. When the mounts are taken out of the equation, a tanto and wakizashi will be determined by length under or over 30 cm unless their intended use can be absolutely determined or the speaker is rendering an opinion on the intended use of the blade. In this way, a blade formally attributed as a wakizashi due to length may be informally discussed between individuals as a tanto because the blade was made during an age where tanto were popular and the wakizashi as a companion sword to katana did not yet exist.
The following are types of Japanese swords:
: A straight two edged sword that was mainly produced prior to the 10th century. Before the 10th century, they completely disappeared as weapons and came to be made only as offerings to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples.
: A straight single edged sword that was mainly produced prior to the 10th century. Since the 10th century, they disappeared as weapons and came to be made only as offerings to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples.
: A sword that is generally longer and more curved than the later katana, with curvature often centered from the middle or towards the tang, and often including the tang. Tachi were worn suspended, with the edge downward. The tachi was in vogue before the 15th century.
: A shorter version of the tachi, but with similar mounts and intended use, mostly found in the 13th century or earlier.
/: Very large tachi, some in excess of 90 cm, and usually a blade of the late 14th century.
: A sword with an exceptionally long handle, usually about as long as the blade. The name refers to the length of the handle wrapping.
: A sword with a curved blade longer than 60 cm (there is no upper length limit but generally they are shorter than 90 cm), worn with the edge upwards in the sash. It was developed from sasuga, a kind of tantō, around the 14th century, and became the mainstream replacing tachi from the 15th century.
: A general term for a sword between one and two shaku long (30 cm and 60 cm in modern measurement), predominantly made after 1600. Generally it is the short blade that accompanies a katana in the traditional samurai daisho pairing of swords, but may be worn by classes other than the samurai as a single blade, also worn edge up as the katana. The name derives from the way the sword would be stuck at one's side through the obi (sash/belt).
: A sword with a blade shorter than 30 cm. Tantō is generally classified as a sword, but its usage is the same as that of a knife. Usually one-edged, but some were double-edged, though asymmetrical.
There are bladed weapons made in the same traditional manner as Japanese swords, which are not swords, but which are still Japanese sword (nihontō) (as "tō" means "blade", rather than specifically "sword"):
: A polearm with a curved single-edged blade. Naginata mounts consist of a long wooden pole, different from a nagamaki mount, which is shorter and wrapped.
: A spear, or spear-like polearm. Yari have various blade forms, from a simple double edged and flat blade, to a triangular cross section double edged blade, to those with a symmetric cross-piece (jumonji-yari) or those with an asymmetric cross piece. The main blade is symmetric and straight unlike a naginata, and usually smaller but can be as large or bigger than some naginata blades.
Other edged weapons or tools that are made using the same methods as Japanese swords:
Arrowheads for war, yajiri (or yanone).
: An accessory or utility knife, sometimes found mounted in a pocket on the side of the scabbard of a sword. A typical blade is about 10 cm long and 1 cm wide, and is made using the same techniques as the larger sword blades. Also referred to as a "Kozuka" (小柄), which literally means 'small handle', but this terminology can also refer to the handle and the blade together. In entertainment media, the kogatana is sometimes shown as a throwing weapon, but its real purpose was the same as a 'pocket knife' in the West.
Classification by period
Each Japanese sword is classified according to when the blade was made.:
Jōkotō ( "ancient swords", until around 900 A.D.)
Kotō ("old swords" from around 900–1596)
Shintō ( "new swords" 1596–1780)
Shinshintō ( "new new swords" 1781–1876)
Gendaitō ( "modern or contemporary swords" 1876– present)
Historically in Japan, the ideal blade of a Japanese sword has been considered to be the kotō in the Kamakura period, and the swordsmiths from the Edo period to the present day after the Shinto period focused on reproducing the blade of a Japanese sword in the Kamakura period. There are more than 100 Japanese swords designated as National Treasures in Japan, of which the Kotō of the Kamakura period account for 80% and the tachi account for 70%.
Japanese swords after shintō are different from kotō in forging method and steel. This was due to the destruction of the Bizen school due to a great flood, the spread of the Mino school, and the virtual unification of Japan by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, which made almost no difference in the steel used by each school. Japanese swords since the Sintō period often have gorgeous decorations carved on the blade and lacquered maki-e decorations on the scabbard. This was due to the economic development and the increased value of swords as arts and crafts as the Sengoku Period ended and the peaceful Edo Period began.
Japanese swords are still commonly seen today, antique and modern forged swords can be found and purchased. Modern, authentic Japanese swords (nihontō) are made by a few hundred swordsmiths. Many examples can be seen at an annual competition hosted by the All Japan Swordsmith Association, under the auspices of the Nihontō Bunka Shinkō Kyōkai (Society for the promotion of Japanese Sword Culture). However, in order to maintain the quality of Japanese swords, the Japanese government limits the number of Japanese swords a swordsmith can make in a year to 24. Therefore, many of the swords called "Japanese sword" distributed around the world today are made in China, and the manufacturing process and quality are not authorized.
Classification by school
Many old Japanese swords can be traced back to one of five provinces, each of which had its own school, traditions, and "trademarks" (e.g., the swords from Mino province were "from the start famous for their sharpness"). These schools are known as Gokaden (The Five Traditions). In the Kotō era there were several other schools that did not fit within the Five Traditions or were known to mix elements of each Gokaden, and they were called (small school). There were 19 commonly referenced . The number of swordsmiths of Gokaden, as confirmed by signatures and documents, were 4005 in Bizen, 1269 in Mino, 1025 in Yamato, 847 in Yamashiro and 438 in Sōshū. These traditions and provinces are as follows:
Yamato School
The Yamato school is a school that originated in Yamato Province corresponding to present-day Nara Prefecture. Nara was the capital of ancient Japan.
Since there is a legend that it was a swordsmith named Amakuni who first signed the tang of a sword, he is sometimes regarded as the founder and the oldest school.
However, the founder identified in the material is Yukinobu in the Heian period. They forged the swords that were often worn by monk warriors called sōhei in Nara's large temples. The Yamato school consists of five schools: Senjuin, Shikkake, Taima, Tegai, and Hōshō.
Each school forged swords under the supervision of a different temple. In the middle of the Muromachi period, swordsmiths moved to various places such as Mino, and the school disappeared. Their swords are often characterized by deep curve, a narrow width from blade to back, a high central ridge, and a small tip. There are direct line on the surface of the blade, hamon is linear, and the grain at the boundary of hamon is medium in size. It is often evaluated as a sword with a simple and strong impression.
Yamashiro School
The Yamashiro school is a school that originated in Yamashiro Province correspondsing to present-day Kyoto Prefecture. When Emperor Kanmu relocated the capital to Kyoto in 794, swordsmiths began to gather. The founder of the school was Sanjō Munechika in the late 10th century in the Heian period. The Yamashiro school consisted of schools such as Sanjō, Ayanokōji, Awataguchi, and Rai. At first, they often forged swords in response to aristocrats' demands, so importance was placed on aesthetics and practicality was not emphasized. However, when a domestic conflict occurred at the end of the Heian period, practicality was emphasized and a swordsmith was invited from the Bizen school. In the Kamakura period, tachi from a magnificent rai school became popular among samurai. After that, they also adopted the forging method of Sōshū school. Their swords are often characterized by long and narrow, curved from the base or center, and have a sparkle on the surface of the blade, with the hamon being straight and the grains on the boundary of the hamon being small. It is often evaluated as a sword with an elegant impression.
Bizen School
The Bizen school is a school that originated in Bizen Province corresponding to present-day Okayama Prefecture. Bizen has been a major production area of high quality iron sand since ancient times. The Ko-bizen school in the mid Heian period was the originator. The Bizen school consisted of schools such as Ko-bizen, Fukuoka-ichimonji, Osafune, and Hatakeda.
According to a sword book written in the Kamakura period, out of 12 best swordsmiths in Japan who were convened by the Retired Emperor Go-Toba, 10 were from the Bizen school.
Great swordsmiths were born one after another in the Osafune school which started in the Kamakura period, and it developed to the largest school in the history of Japanese swords.
Kanemitsu and Nagayoshi of the Osafune school were apprentices to Masamune of the Sōshū school, the greatest swordsmith in Japan. While they forged high-quality swords by order, at the same time, from the Muromachi period, when wars became large-scale, they mass-produced low-quality swords for drafted farmers and for export.
The Bizen school had enjoyed the highest prosperity for a long time, but declined rapidly due to a great flood occurred in the late 16th century during the Sengoku period. Their swords are often characterized by curved from the base, irregular fingerprint-like patterns on the surface of the blade, while the hamon has a flashy pattern like a series of cloves, and there is little grain but a color gradient at the boundary of the hamon. It is often evaluated as a sword with a showy and gorgeous impression.
Sōshū School
The Sōshū school is a school that originated in Sagami Province corresponding to present-day Kanagawa Prefecture. Sagami Province was the political center of Japan where the Kamakura shogunate was established in the Kamakura period. At the end of 13th century, the Kamakura shogunate invited swordsmiths from Yamashiro school and Bizen school, and swordsmiths began to gather. Shintōgo Kunimitsu forged experimental swords by combining the forging technology of Yamashiro school and Bizen school. Masamune, who learned from Shintōgo Kunimitsu, became the greatest swordsmith in Japan. From the lessons of the Mongol invasion of Japan, they revolutionized the forging process to make stronger swords. Although this forging method is not fully understood to date, one of the elements is heating at higher temperatures and rapid cooling. Their revolution influenced other schools to make the highest quality swords, but this technique was lost before the Azuchi–Momoyama period (Shintō period). The Sōshū school declined after the fall of the Kamakura shogunate. Their swords are often characterized by a shallow curve, a wide blade to the back, and a thin cross-section. There are irregular fingerprint-like pattern on the surface of the blade, hamon has a pattern of undulations with continuous roundness, and the grains at the boundary of hamon are large.
Mino School
The Mino school is a school that originated in Mino Province corresponding to present-day Gifu Prefecture. Mino Province was a strategic traffic point connecting the Kanto and Kansai regions, and was surrounded by powerful daimyo (feudal lords). The Mino school started in the middle of the Kamakura period when swordsmiths of the Yamato school who learned the Sōshū school gathered in Mino. The Mino school became the largest production area of Japanese swords after the Bizen school declined due to a great flood. The production rate of katana was high because it was the newest school among 5 big schools. Their swords are often characterized by a slightly higher central ridge and a thinner back. There are irregular fingerprint-like pattern on the surface of the blade, and the hamon are various, and the grain on the border of the hamon are hardly visible.
Etymology
The word katana was used in ancient Japan and is still used today, whereas the old usage of the word nihontō is found in the poem, the Song of Nihontō, by the Song dynasty poet Ouyang Xiu. The word nihontō became more common in Japan in the late Tokugawa shogunate. Due to importation of Western swords, the word nihontō was adopted in order to distinguish it from the .
Meibutsu (noted swords) is a special designation given to sword masterpieces which are listed in a compilation from the 18th century called the "Kyoho Meibutsucho". The swords listed are Koto blades from several different provinces, 100 of the 166 swords listed are known to exist today with Sōshū blades being very well represented. The "Kyoho Meibutsucho" also listed the nicknames, prices, history and length of the Meibutsu with swords by Yoshimitsu, Masamune, Yoshihiro, and Sadamune being very highly priced.
Anatomy
Blade
Each blade has a unique profile, mostly dependent on the swordsmith and the construction method. The most prominent part is the middle ridge, or shinogi. In the earlier picture, the examples were flat to the shinogi, then tapering to the blade edge. However, swords could narrow down to the shinogi, then narrow further to the blade edge, or even expand outward towards the shinogi then shrink to the blade edge (producing a trapezoidal shape). A flat or narrowing shinogi is called shinogi-hikushi, whereas a flat blade is called a shinogi-takushi.
The shinogi can be placed near the back of the blade for a longer, sharper, more fragile tip or a more moderate shinogi near the center of the blade.
The sword also has an exact tip shape, which is considered an extremely important characteristic: the tip can be long (ōkissaki), medium (chūkissaki), short (kokissaki), or even hooked backwards (ikuri-ōkissaki). In addition, whether the front edge of the tip is more curved (fukura-tsuku) or (relatively) straight (fukura-kareru) is also important.
The kissaki (point) is not usually a "chisel-like" point, and the Western knife interpretation of a "tantō point" is rarely found on true Japanese swords; a straight, linearly sloped point has the advantage of being easy to grind, but less stabbing/piercing capabilities compared to traditional Japanese kissaki Fukura (curvature of the cutting edge of tip) types. Kissaki usually have a curved profile, and smooth three-dimensional curvature across their surface towards the edge—though they are bounded by a straight line called the yokote and have crisp definition at all their edges. While the straight tip on the "American tanto" is identical to traditional Japanese fukura, two characteristics set itself apart from Japanese sword makes; The absolute lack of curve only possible with modern tools, and the use of the word "tanto" in the nomenclature of the western tribute is merely a nod to the Japanese word for knife or short sword, rather than a tip style.
Although it is not commonly known, the "chisel point" kissaki originated in Japan. Examples of such are shown in the book "The Japanese Sword" by Kanzan Sato. Because American bladesmiths use this design extensively it is a common misconception that the design originated in America.
A hole is punched through the tang nakago, called a mekugi-ana. It is used to anchor the blade using a mekugi, a small bamboo pin that is inserted into another cavity in the handle tsuka and through the mekugi-ana, thus restricting the blade from slipping out. To remove the handle one removes the mekugi. The swordsmith's signature mei is carved on the tang.
Mountings
In Japanese, the scabbard is referred to as a saya, and the handguard piece, often intricately designed as an individual work of art—especially in later years of the Edo period—was called the tsuba. Other aspects of the mountings (koshirae), such as the menuki (decorative grip swells), habaki (blade collar and scabbard wedge), fuchi and kashira (handle collar and cap), kozuka (small utility knife handle), kogai (decorative skewer-like implement), saya lacquer, and tsuka-ito (professional handle wrap, also named ), received similar levels of artistry.
Signature and date
The mei is the signature inscribed on to the tang of the Japanese sword. Fake signatures ("gimei") are common not only due to centuries of forgeries but potentially misleading ones that acknowledge prominent smiths and guilds, and those commissioned to a separate signer.
Sword scholars collect and study oshigata, or paper tang-rubbings, taken from a blade:
to identify the mei, the hilt is removed and the sword is held point side up. The mei is chiseled onto the tang on the side which traditionally faces away from the wearer's body while being worn; since the katana and wakizashi are always worn with the cutting-edge up, the edge should be held to the viewer's left. The inscription will be viewed as kanji on the surface of the tang: the first two kanji represent the province; the next pair is the smith; and the last, when present, is sometimes a variation of 'made by', or, 'respecfully'. The date will be inscribed near the mei, either with the reign name; the Zodiacal Method; or those calculated from the reign of the legendary Emperor Jimmu, dependent upon the period.
Length
What generally differentiates the different swords is their length. Japanese swords are measured in units of shaku. Since 1891, the modern Japanese shaku is approximately equal to a foot (11.93 inches), calibrated with the meter to equal exactly 10 meters per 33 shaku (30.30 cm).
However the historical shaku was slightly longer (13.96 inches or 35.45 cm). Thus, there may sometimes be confusion about the blade lengths, depending on which shaku value is being assumed when converting to metric or U.S. customary measurements.
The three main divisions of Japanese blade length are:
Less than 1 shaku for tantō (knife or dagger).
Between 1 to 2 shaku for (wakizashi or kodachi).
Greater than 2 shaku for (long sword, such as katana or tachi).
A blade shorter than one shaku is considered a tantō (knife). A blade longer than one shaku but less than two is considered a shōtō (short sword). The wakizashi and kodachi are in this category. The length is measured in a straight line across the back of the blade from tip to munemachi (where blade meets tang). Most blades that fall into the "shōtō" size range are wakizashi. However, some daitō were designed with blades slightly shorter than 2 shaku. These were called kodachi and are somewhere in between a true daitō and a wakizashi. A shōtō and a daitō together are called a daishō (literally, "big-little"). The daishō was the symbolic armament of the Edo period samurai.
A blade longer than two shaku is considered a daitō, or long sword. To qualify as a daitō the sword must have a blade longer than 2 shaku (approximately 24 inches or 60 centimeters) in a straight line. While there is a well defined lower-limit to the length of a daitō, the upper limit is not well enforced; a number of modern historians, swordsmiths, etc. say that swords that are over 3 shaku in blade length are "longer than normal daitō" and are usually referred to or called ōdachi. The word "daitō" is often used when explaining the related terms shōtō (short sword) and daishō (the set of both large and small sword). Miyamoto Musashi refers to the long sword in The Book of Five Rings. He is referring to the katana in this, and refers to the nodachi and the odachi as "extra-long swords".
Before about 1500 most swords were usually worn suspended from cords on a belt, edge-down. This style is called jindachi-zukuri, and daitō worn in this fashion are called tachi (average blade length of 75–80 cm). From 1600 to 1867, more swords were worn through an obi (sash), paired with a smaller blade; both worn edge-up. This style is called buke-zukuri, and all daitō worn in this fashion are katana, averaging 70–74 cm (2 shaku 3 sun to 2 shaku 4 sun 5 bu) in blade length. However, Japanese swords of longer lengths also existed, including lengths up to 78 cm (2 shaku 5 sun 5 bu).
It was not simply that the swords were worn by cords on a belt, as a 'style' of sorts. Such a statement trivializes an important function of such a manner of bearing the sword. It was a very direct example of 'form following function.' At this point in Japanese history, much of the warfare was fought on horseback. Being so, if the sword or blade were in a more vertical position, it would be cumbersome, and awkward to draw. Suspending the sword by 'cords,' allowed the sheath to be more horizontal, and far less likely to bind while drawing it in that position.
Abnormally long blades (longer than 3 shaku), usually carried across the back, are called ōdachi or nodachi. The word ōdachi is also sometimes used as a synonym for Japanese swords. Odachi means "great sword", and Nodachi translates to "field sword". These greatswords were used during war as the longer sword gave a foot soldier a reach advantage. These swords are now illegal in Japan. Citizens are not allowed to possess an odachi unless it is for ceremonial purposes.
Here is a list of lengths for different types of blades:
Nodachi, Ōdachi, Jin tachi: 90.9 cm and over (more than three shaku)
Tachi, Katana: over 60.6 cm (more than two shaku)
Wakizashi: between 30.3 and 60.6 cm (between one and two shaku)
Tantō, Aikuchi: under 30.3 cm (less than one shaku)
Blades whose length is next to a different classification type are described with a prefix 'O-' (for great) or 'Ko-' (for small), e.g. a Wakizashi with a length of 59 cm is called an O-wakizashi (almost a Katana) whereas a Katana with 61 cm is called a Ko-Katana (for small Katana; but note that a small accessory blade sometimes found in the sheath of a long sword is also a "kogatana" (小刀)).
Since 1867, restrictions and/or the deconstruction of the samurai class meant that most blades have been worn jindachi-zukuri style, like Western navy officers. Since 1953, there has been a resurgence in the buke-zukuri style, permitted only for demonstration purposes.
History
The production of swords in Japan is divided into specific time periods: jōkotō (ancient swords, until around 900 A.D.), kotō (old swords from around 900–1596), shintō (new swords 1596–1780), shinshintō (new new swords 1781–1876), gendaitō (modern or contemporary swords 1876–present)
Jōkotō – Kotō (Old swords)
Early examples of iron swords were straight tsurugi, chokutō and others with unusual shapes, some of styles and techniques probably are derived from Chinese dao, and some of them are directly imported through trade. The swords of this period were a mixture of swords of Japanese original style and those of Chinese style brought to Japan via the Korean Peninsula and East China Sea. The cross-sectional shape of the blades of these early swords was an isosceles triangular hira-zukuri, and the kiriha-zukuri sword, which sharpened only the part close to the cutting edge side of a planar blade, gradually appeared. Swords of this period are classified as jōkotō and are often referred to in distinction from Japanese swords.
The direct predecessor of the tachi (太刀) has been called Warabitetō (:ja:蕨手刀) by the Emishi (Not to be confused with Ainu) of Tohoku. The Nihonto Meikan shows the earliest and by far the largest group of Ōshū smiths from the beginning of the 8th century were from the Mokusa school, listing over 100 Mokusa smiths before the beginning of the Kamakura period. Archaeological excavations of the Ōshū Tohoku region show iron ore smelting sites dating back to the early Nara period. The Tohoku region and indeed the whole Ōshū district in the 8th century was controlled and populated by the Emishi. Archaeological evidence of recovered Warabitetō (蕨手刀) show a high concentration in the burial goods of the Ōshū and Hokkaido regions. Mokusa Area was famous for legendary swordsmiths in the Heian Period (AD 794-1185). They are considered as the original producers of the Japanese swords known as "Warabitetō " which can date back to the sixth to eighth centuries. "Warabitetō " gained its fame through the series of battles between Emishi people (蝦夷) and the Yamato-chotei government (大 和朝廷) in the late eighth century. Using "Warabitetō ," the small number of Emishi soldiers could resist against the numerous Yamato-chotei army over a Thirty-Eight Years' War (三十八年戦争) (AD 770-811). The Meikan describes that from earlier time there was a list of forty two famous swordsmiths in the Toukou Meikan 刀工銘鑑 at Kanchiin 観智院. Eight of the swordsmiths on this list were from Ōshū schools. Five from Mokusa being Onimaru 鬼丸, Yoyasu 世安, Morifusa 森房, Hatafusa 幡房 and Gaan 瓦安, two from the Tamatsukuri Fuju 諷誦,Houji 寶次 and one from Gassan signing just Gassan 月山. According to the Nihonto Meikan, the Ōshū swordsmith group consists of the Mokusa ( 舞草 ), the Gassan ( 月山 ) and the Tamatsukuri ( 玉造 ), later to become the Hoju (寶壽) schools. Ōshū swords appear in various old books of this time, for example Heiji Monogatari 平治物語 ( Tale of Heiji ), Konjaku Monogatari 今昔物語 ( Anthology of tales from the past ), Kojidan 古事談 ( Japanese collection of Setsuwa 説話 ), and Gikeiki 義経記 (War tale that focuses on the legends of Minamoto no Yoshitsune 源義経 and his followers). Ōshū swordsmiths appeared in books in quite early times compared to others. Tales in these books tell of the Emishi-to in the capital city and these swords seem to have been quite popular with the Bushi. Maybe a badge of honour being captured weapons. For example In “Nihongiryaku” 日本紀略 983AD :” the number of people wearing a funny looking Tachi 太刀 is increasing.” In “Kauyagokau” 高野御幸 1124AD :“ when emperor Shirakawa 白河法皇 visited Kouyasan 高 野山, Fujiwara Zaemon Michisue 藤原左衛門通季 was wearing a Fushū sword “ In “Heihanki” 兵範記 1158AD there was a line that mentioned the Emperor himself had Fushū Tachi.” It seems that during the late Heian the Emishi-to was gaining popularity in Kyoto.
In the middle of the Heian period (794–1185), samurai improved on the Warabitetō to develop Kenukigata-tachi (:ja:毛抜形太刀) -early Japanese sword-. To be more precise, it is thought that the Emishi improved the warabitetō and developed Kenukigata-warabitetō (:ja:毛抜形蕨手刀) with a hole in the hilt and kenukigatatō (:ja:毛抜形刀) without decorations on the tip of the hilt, and the samurai developed kenukigata-tachi based on these swords. Kenukigata-tachi, which was developed in the first half of the 10th century, has a three-dimensional cross-sectional shape of an elongated pentagonal or hexagonal blade called shinogi-zukuri and a gently curved single-edged blade, which are typical features of Japanese swords. There is no wooden hilt attached to kenukigata-tachi, and the tang (nakago) which is integrated with the blade is directly gripped and used. The term kenukigata is derived from the fact that the central part of tang is hollowed out in the shape of a ancient Japanese tweezers (kenuki).
In the tachi developed after kenukigata-tachi, a structure in which the hilt is fixed to the tang (nakago) with a pin called mekugi was adopted. As a result, a sword with three basic external elements of Japanese swords, the cross-sectional shape of shinogi-zukuri, a gently curved single-edged blade, and the structure of nakago, was completed. Its shape may reflects the changing form of warfare in Japan. Cavalry were now the predominant fighting unit and the older straight chokutō were particularly unsuitable for fighting from horseback. The curved sword is a far more efficient weapon when wielded by a warrior on horseback where the curve of the blade adds considerably to the downward force of a cutting action. Early models had uneven curves with the deepest part of the curve at the hilt. As eras changed the center of the curve tended to move up the blade.
The tachi is a sword which is generally larger than a katana, and is worn suspended with the cutting edge down. This was the standard form of carrying the sword for centuries, and would eventually be displaced by the katana style where the blade was worn thrust through the belt, edge up. The tachi was worn slung across the left hip. The signature on the tang of the blade was inscribed in such a way that it would always be on the outside of the sword when worn. This characteristic is important in recognizing the development, function, and different styles of wearing swords from this time onwards.
When worn with full armour, the tachi would be accompanied by a shorter blade in the form known as koshigatana (腰刀, "waist sword"); a type of short sword with no handguard, and where the hilt and scabbard meet to form the style of mounting called an aikuchi ("meeting mouth"). Daggers (tantō), were also carried for close combat fighting as well as carried generally for personal protection.
By the 11th century during the Heian period, Japanese swords had already been exported to neighboring countries in Asia. For example, in the poem "The Song of Japanese Swords" Ouyang Xiu, a statesman of the Song Dynasty in China, described Japanese swords as "It is a treasured sword with a scabbard made of fragrant wood covered with fish skin, decorated with brass and copper, and capable of exorcising evil spirits. It is imported at a great cost.".
In the Kamakura period (1185–1333), high-ranking samurai worn hyogo gusari tachi (hyogo kusari tachi) in the style of covering the scabbard with gilt-bronze plates and suspending the scabbard with chains, while ordinary samurai worn kuro urushi tachi (kokushitsu no tachi) in the style of wrapping the scabbard with leather or stingray skin, wrapping it with leather strings or black threads, and coating it with black lacquer.
The Mongol invasions of Japan in the 13th century during the Kamakura period spurred further evolution of the Japanese sword. The swordsmiths of the Sōshū school represented by Masamune studied tachi that were broken or bent in battle, developed new production methods, and created innovative Japanese swords. They forged the blade using a combination of soft and hard steel to optimize the temperature and timing of the heating and cooling of the blade, resulting in a lighter but more robust blade. They also made the curve of the blade gentle, lengthened the tip linearly, widened the width from the cutting edge to the opposite side of the blade, and thinned the cross section to improve the penetration and cutting ability of the blade.
Historically in Japan, the ideal blade of a Japanese sword has been considered to be the (lit., "old swords") in the Kamakura period, and the swordsmiths from the Edo period (1603–1868) to the present day after the (lit., "new swords") period focused on reproducing the blade of the Japanese sword made in Kamakura period. There are more than 100 Japanese swords designated as National Treasures in Japan, of which the Kotō of the Kamakura period account for 80% and the tachi account for 70%.
In the Nanboku-chō period (1336-1392) which corresponds to the early Muromachi period (1336-1573), huge Japanese swords such as ōdachi became popular. The reason for this is thought to be that the conditions for making a practical large-sized sword were established due to the nationwide spread of strong and sharp swords of the Sōshū school. In the case of ōdachi whose blade was 150 cm long, it was impossible to draw a sword from the scabbard on the waist, so people carried it on their back or had their servants carry it. Large naginata and kanabō were also popular in this period.
Katana originates from sasuga, a kind of tantō used by lower-ranking samurai who fought on foot in the Kamakura period. Their main weapon was a long naginata and sasuga was a spare weapon. In the Nanboku-chō period, long weapons such as ōdachi were popular, and along with this, sasuga lengthened and finally became katana. Also, there is a theory that koshigatana (腰刀), a kind of tantō which was equipped by high ranking samurai together with tachi, developed to katana through the same historical background as sasuga, and it is possible that both developed to katana. The oldest katana in existence today is called Hishizukuri uchigatana, which was forged in the Nanbokuchō period, and was dedicated to Kasuga Shrine later.
Traditionally, yumi (bows) were the main weapon of war in Japan, and tachi and naginata were used only for close combat. The Ōnin War in the late 15th century in the Muromachi period expanded into a large-scale domestic war, in which employed farmers called ashigaru were mobilized in large numbers. They fought on foot using katana shorter than tachi. In the Sengoku period (period of warring states) in the late Muromachi period, the war became bigger and ashigaru fought in a close formation using yari (spears) lent to them. Furthermore, in the late 16th century, tanegashima (muskets) were introduced from Portugal, and Japanese swordsmiths mass-produced improved products, with ashigaru fighting with leased guns. On the battlefield in Japan, guns and spears became main weapons in addition to bows. Due to the changes in fighting styles in these wars, the tachi and naginata became obsolete among samurai, and the katana, which was easy to carry, became the mainstream. The dazzling looking tachi gradually became a symbol of the authority of high-ranking samurai.
On the other hand, kenjutsu (swordsmanship) that makes use of the characteristics of katana was invented. The quicker draw of the sword was well suited to combat where victory depended heavily on short response times. (The practice and martial art for drawing the sword quickly and responding to a sudden attack was called ‘Battōjutsu’, which is still kept alive through the teaching of Iaido.) The katana further facilitated this by being worn thrust through a belt-like sash (obi) with the sharpened edge facing up. Ideally, samurai could draw the sword and strike the enemy in a single motion. Previously, the curved tachi had been worn with the edge of the blade facing down and suspended from a belt.
From the 15th century, low-quality swords were mass-produced under the influence of the large-scale war. These swords, along with spears, were lent to recruited farmers called ashigaru and swords ware exported . Such mass-produced swords are called kazuuchimono, and swordsmiths of the Bisen school and Mino school produced them by division of labor. The export of Japanese sword reached its height during the Muromachi period when at least 200,000 swords were shipped to Ming Dynasty China in official trade in an attempt to soak up the production of Japanese weapons and make it harder for pirates in the area to arm. In the Ming Dynasty of China, Japanese swords and their tactics were studied to repel pirates, and wodao and miaodao were developed based on Japanese swords.
From this period, the tang () of many old were cut and shortened into . This kind of remake is called (磨上げ). For example, many of the tachi that Masamune forged during the Kamakura period were converted into katana, so his only existing works are katana and tantō. During this period , a great flood occurred in Bizen, which was the largest production area of Japanese swords, and the Bizen school rapidly declined, after which the Mino school flourished.
In later Japanese feudal history, during the Sengoku and Edo periods, certain high-ranking warriors of what became the ruling class would wear their sword tachi-style (edge-downward), rather than with the scabbard thrust through the belt with the edge upward. This style of swords is called handachi, "half tachi". In handachi, both styles were often mixed, for example, fastening to the obi was katana style, but metalworking of the scabbard was tachi style.
In the Muromachi period, especially the Sengoku period, anybody such as farmers, townspeople and monks could equip a sword. However, in 1588 during the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1573–1603), Toyotomi Hideyoshi conducted a sword hunt and banned farmers from owning them with weapons.
However, Toyotomi's sword hunt couldn't disarm peasants. Farmers and townspeople could wear daisho until 1683. And most of them kept wearing wakizashi on a daily basis until the middle of the 18th century. After then they wore it special times(travel, wedding, funeral) until meiji restoration.
Shintō – Shinshintō (New swords)
Swords forged after 1596 in the Keichō period of the Azuchi-Momoyama period are classified as shintō (New swords). Japanese swords after shintō are different from kotō in forging method and steel (tamahagane). This is thought to be because Bizen school, which was the largest swordsmith group of Japanese swords, was destroyed by a great flood in 1590 and the mainstream shifted to Mino school, and because Toyotomi Hideyoshi virtually unified Japan, uniform steel began to be distributed throughout Japan. The kotō swords, especially the Bizen school swords made in the Kamakura period, had a midare-utsuri like a white mist between hamon and shinogi, but the swords after shinto have almost disappeared. In addition, the whole body of the blade became whitish and hard. Almost no one was able to reproduce midare-utsurii until Kunihira Kawachi reproduced it in 2014.
Japanese swords since the sintō period often have gorgeous decorations carved on the blade and lacquered maki-e decorations on the scabbard. This was due to the economic development and the increased value of swords as arts and crafts as the Sengoku Period ended and the peaceful Edo Period began. The Umetada school led by Umetada Myoju who was considered to be the founder of shinto led the improvement of the artistry of Japanese swords in this period. They were both swordsmiths and metalsmiths, and were famous for carving the blade, making metal accouterments such as tsuba (handguard), remodeling from tachi to katana (suriage), and inscriptions inlaid with gold.
During this period, the Tokugawa shogunate required samurai to wear Katana and shorter swords in pairs. These short swords were wakizashi and tantō, and wakizashi were mainly selected. This set of two is called a daishō. Only samurai could wear the daishō: it represented their social power and personal honour. Samurai could wear decorative sword mountings in their daily lives, but the Tokugawa shogunate regulated the formal sword that samurai wore when visiting a castle by regulating it as a daisho made of a black scabbard, a hilt wrapped with white ray skin and black string.
Townspeople (Chōnin) and farmers were allowed to equip a short wakizashi, and the public were often equipped with wakizashi on their travels. Under the Tokugawa shogunate, swordmaking and the use of firearms declined. Japanese swords made in this period is classified as shintō.
In the late 18th century, swordsmith Suishinshi Masahide criticized that the present katana blades only emphasized decoration and had a problem with their toughness. He insisted that the bold and strong kotō blade from the Kamakura period to the Nanboku-chō period was the ideal Japanese sword, and started a movement to restore the production method and apply it to katana. Katana made after this is classified as a , "new revival swords" or literally "new-new swords." One of the most popular swordsmiths in Japan today is Minamoto Kiyomaro who was active in this shinshintō period. His popularity is due to his timeless exceptional skill, as he was nicknamed "Masamune in Yotsuya" and his disastrous life. His works were traded at high prices and exhibitions were held at museums all over Japan from 2013 to 2014.
The arrival of Matthew Perry in 1853 and the subsequent Convention of Kanagawa caused chaos in Japanese society. Conflicts began to occur frequently between the forces of sonnō jōi (尊王攘夷派), who wanted to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate and rule by the Emperor, and the forces of sabaku (佐幕派), who wanted the Tokugawa Shogunate to continue. These political activists, called the shishi (志士), fought using a practical katana, called the kinnōtō (勤皇刀) or the bakumatsutō (幕末刀). Their katana were often longer than 90 cm (35.43 in) in blade length, less curved, and had a big and sharp point, which was advantageous for stabbing in indoor battles.
Gendaitō (Modern or contemporary swords)
In 1867, the Tokugawa Shogunate declared the return of Japan's sovereignty to the Emperor, and from 1868, the government by the Emperor and rapid modernization of Japan began, which was called the Meiji Restoration. The Haitōrei Edict in 1876 all but banned carrying swords and guns on streets. Overnight, the market for swords died, many swordsmiths were left without a trade to pursue, and valuable skills were lost. Swords forged after the Haitōrei Edict are classified as gendaitō. The craft of making swords was kept alive through the efforts of some individuals, notably Miyamoto kanenori (宮本包則, 1830–1926) and Gassan Sadakazu (月山貞一, 1836–1918) , who were appointed Imperial Household Artist. These smiths produced fine works that stand with the best of the older blades for the Emperor and other high-ranking officials. The businessman Mitsumura Toshimo (光村利藻, 1877-1955)tried to preserve their skills by ordering swords and sword mountings from the swordsmiths and craftsmen. He was especially enthusiastic about collecting sword mountings, and he collected about 3,000 precious sword mountings from the end of the Edo period to the Meiji period. About 1200 items from a part of the collection are now in the Nezu Museum.
The Japanese sword remained in use in some occupations such as the police force. At the same time, kendo was incorporated into police training so that police officers would have at least the training necessary to properly use one. In time, it was rediscovered that soldiers needed to be armed with swords, and over the decades at the beginning of the 20th century swordsmiths again found work. These swords, derisively called guntō, were often oil-tempered, or simply stamped out of steel and given a serial number rather than a chiseled signature. The mass-produced ones often look like Western cavalry sabers rather than Japanese swords, with blades slightly shorter than blades of the shintō and shinshintō periods. In 1934 the Japanese government issued a military specification for the shin guntō (new army sword), the first version of which was the Type 94 Katana, and many machine- and hand-crafted swords used in World War II conformed to this and later shin guntō specifications.
Under the United States occupation at the end of World War II all armed forces in occupied Japan were disbanded and production of Japanese swords with edges was banned except under police or government permit. The ban was overturned through a personal appeal by Dr. Junji Honma. During a meeting with General Douglas MacArthur, Honma produced blades from the various periods of Japanese history and MacArthur was able to identify very quickly what blades held artistic merit and which could be considered purely weapons. As a result of this meeting, the ban was amended so that guntō weapons would be destroyed while swords of artistic merit could be owned and preserved. Even so, many Japanese swords were sold to American soldiers at a bargain price; in 1958 there were more Japanese swords in America than in Japan. The vast majority of these one million or more swords were guntō, but there were still a sizable number of older swords.
After the Edo period, swordsmiths turned increasingly to the production of civilian goods. The Occupation and its regulations almost put an end to the production of Japanese swords. A few smiths continued their trade, and Honma went on to be a founder of the , who made it their mission to preserve the old techniques and blades. Thanks to the efforts of other like-minded individuals, the Japanese swords did not disappear, many swordsmiths continued the work begun by Masahide, and the old swordmaking techniques were rediscovered.
Nowadays, iaitō is used for iaidō. Due to their popularity in modern media, display-only Japanese swords have become widespread in the sword marketplace. Ranging from small letter openers to scale replica "wallhangers", these items are commonly made from stainless steel (which makes them either brittle (if made from cutlery-grade 400-series stainless steel) or poor at holding an edge (if made from 300-series stainless steel)) and have either a blunt or very crude edge. There are accounts of good quality stainless steel Japanese swords, however, these are rare at best. Some replica Japanese swords have been used in modern-day armed robberies. As a part of marketing, modern ahistoric blade styles and material properties are often stated as traditional and genuine, promulgating disinformation. Some companies and independent smiths outside Japan produce katana as well, with varying levels of quality. According to the Parliamentary Association for the Preservation and Promotion of Japanese Swords, organized by Japanese Diet members, many Japanese swords distributed around the world as of the 21st century are fake Japanese swords made in China. The Sankei Shimbun analyzed that this is because the Japanese government allowed swordsmiths to make only 24 Japanese swords per person per year in order to maintain the quality of Japanese swords.
In Japan, genuine edged hand-made Japanese swords, whether antique or modern, are classified as art objects (and not weapons) and must have accompanying certification in order to be legally owned.
Prior to WWII Japan had 1.5million swords in the country – 200,000 of which had been manufactured in factories during the Meiji Restoration. As of 2008, only 100,000 swords remain in Japan. It is estimated that 250,000–350,000 sword have been brought to other nations as souvenirs, art pieces or for Museum purposes. 70% of daito (long swords), formerly owned by Japanese officers, have been exported or brought to the United States.
Many swordsmiths after the Edo period have tried to reproduce the sword of the Kamakura period which is considered as the best sword in the history of Japanese swords, but they have failed. Then, in 2014, Kunihira Kawachi succeeded in reproducing it and won the Masamune Prize, the highest honor as a swordsmith. No one could win the Masamune Prize unless he made an extraordinary achievement, and in the section of tachi and katana, no one had won for 18 years before Kawauchi.
Cultural and social significance
The events of Japanese society have shaped the craft of sword making, as has the sword itself influenced the course of cultural and social development within the nation.
The Museum of Fine Arts states that when an artisan plunged the newly crafted sword into the cold water, a portion of his spirit was transferred into the sword. His spirit, morals and state of mind at the time became crucial to the defining of the swords moral and physical characteristics
During the Jōmon Period (10,000-1000BCE) swords resembled iron knife blades and were used for hunting, fishing and farming. There is the idea that swords were more than a tool during the Jōmon period, no swords have been recovered to back this hypothesis.
The Yayoi Period (1000BCE-300CE) saw the establishment of villages and the cultivation of rice farming within Japan. Rice farming came as a result of Chinese and Korean influence, they were the first group of people to introduce swords into the Japanese Isles. Subsequently, bronze swords were used for religious ceremonies. The Yayoi period saw swords be used primarily for religious and ceremonial purposes.
During the Kofun Period (250-538CE) Animism was introduced into Japanese society. Animism is the belief that everything in life contains or is connected to a divine spirits. This connection to the spirit world premediates the introduction of Buddhism into Japan. During this time, China was craving steel blades on the Korean Peninsula. Japan saw this as a threat to national security and felt the need to develop their military technology. As a result, clan leaders took power as military elites, fighting one another for power and territory. As dominant figures took power, loyalty and servitude became an important part of Japanese life – this became the catalyst for the honour culture that is often affiliated with Japanese people.
In the Edo period (1603–1868), swords gained prominence in everyday life as the “most important” part of a warrior's amour. The Edo era saw swords became a mechanism for bonding between Daimyo and Samurai. Daimyo would gift samurai's with swords as a token of their appreciation for their services. In turn, samurai would gift Daimyo swords as a sign of respect, most Daimyo would keep these swords as family heirlooms. In this period, it was believed that swords were multifunctional; in spirit they represent proof of military accomplishment, in practice they are coveted weapons of war and diplomatic gifts.
The peace of the Edo period saw the demand for swords fall. To retaliate, in 1719 the eighth Tokugawa shogun, Yoshimune, compiled a list of “most famous swords”. Masamune, Awatacuchi Yoshimitsu, and Go no Yoshihiro were dubbed the “Three Famous Smiths”, their swords became sought after by the Daimyo. The prestige and demand for these status symbols spiked the price for these fine pieces.
During the Late-Edo period, Suishinshi Masahide wrote that swords should be less extravagant. Swords began to be simplified and altered to be durable, sturdy and made to cut well. In 1543 guns arrived in Japan, changing military dynamic and practicality of swords and samurai's. This period also saw introduction of martial arts as a means to connecting to the spirit world and allowed common people to participate in samurai culture.
The Meiji Period (1868–1912) saw the dissolution of the samurai class, after foreign powers demanded Japan open their borders to international trade – 300-hundred years of Japanese isolation came to an end. In 1869 and 1873, two petition were submitted to government to abolish the custom of sword wearing because people feared the outside world would view swords as a “tool for bloodshed” and would consequentially associate Japanese people as violent. Haitōrei (1876) outlawed and prohibited wearing swords in public, with the exception for those in the military and government official; swords lost their meaning within society. Emperor Meiji was determined to westernize Japan with the influence of American technological and scientific advances; however, he himself appreciated the art of sword making. The Meiji era marked the final moments of samurai culture, as samurai's were no match for conscript soldiers who were trained to use western firearms. Some samurai found it difficult to assimilate to the new culture as they were forced to give up their privileges, while others preferred this less-hierarchical way of life. Even with the ban, the Sino-Japanese War (1894) saw Japanese troops wear swords into battle, not for practical use but for symbolic reasons.
The Meiji era also saw the integration of Buddhism into Shinto Japanese beliefs. Swords were no longer necessary, in war or lifestyle, and those who practiced martial arts became the “modern samurai” – young children were still groomed to serve the emperor and put loyalty and honour above all else, as this new era of rapid development required loyal, hard working men. The practice of sword making was prohibited, thus swords during the Meiji period were obsolete and a mere symbol of status. Swords were left to rust, sold or melted into more ‘practical’ objects for everyday life.
Prior to and during WWII, even with the modernization of the army, the demand for swords exceeded the number of swordsmiths still capable of making them. As a result, swords of this era are of poor quality. In 1933, during the Shōwa era (1926–1989), a sword making factory designed to re-establish the “spirit of Japan” through the art of sword making was built to preserve the legacy and art of swordsmiths and sword making. The government at the time feared that the warrior spirit (loyalty and honour) was disappearing within Japan, along with the integrity and quality of swords.
For a portion of the US occupation of Japan, sword making, swordsmiths and wielding of swords was prohibited. As a means to preserve the warrior culture of Japan, martial arts was put into the school curriculum. In 1953, America finally lifted the ban on swords after realizing that sword making is an important cultural asset to preserving Japanese history and legacy.
Religion, honour and mythology
The origins of Japanese swords and their effects and influence on society differs depending on the story that is followed.
Swords and warriors are closely associated with Shinto in Japanese culture. Shinto is “the way of the gods”, meaning that all elements of the world are embedded with god like spirits. Shinto endorses self-purification, ancestral worship, nature-worship and imperial divinity. It is said that swords are a source of wisdom and “emanate energy” to inspire the wielder. As Shintoism shaped the progress of Japanese expansionism and international affairs so too did the sword become a mechanism for change.
There is a Japanese legend that, along with the mirror and the jewels, the sword makes up one of three Imperial Icons. The Imperial Icons present the three values and personality traits that all good emperors should possess as leaders of celestial authority.
Japanese mythology states that the sword is a “symbol of truth” and a “token of virtue”. Legend states originate from the battle between Amaterasu and her brother, Susa-no-wo-o-no Mikotot (Susa-no). In order to defeat Susa-no, Amaterasu split the ten-span sword until she broke herself into three pieces. Legend states that the sword can “create union by imposing social order” because it hold the ability to cut objects into two or more pieces and dictate the shape and size of the pieces.
Mythology also suggests that when Emperor Jimmu Tennō was moving his army through the land, a deity blocked their path with toxic gas which caused them to drift into an indefinite slumber. Upon seeing this, Amaterasu pleaded with the God of Thunder to punish the deity and allow the emperor to proceed. The God of Thunder, instead of following her orders, sent his sword down to the emperor to subdue the land. Upon receiving the sword, the emperor woke up, along with his troops and they proceeded with their mission. According this legend, swords have the power to save the imperial (divine) bloodline in times of need.
In martial arts training, it is believed that within a sword:
"The blade represents the juncture where the wisdom of leaders and gods intersects with the commoner. The sword represents the implement by which societies are managed. The effectiveness of the sword as a tool and the societal beliefs surrounding it both lift the sword to the pinnacle of warrior symbolism."
Swords are a symbol of Japanese honour and esteem for hand-to-hand combat. They represent the idea that taking another's life should be done with honour, and long-range combat (firearms) is a cowardly way to end another's life. This also connects to the Japanese belief of self-sacrifice, warriors should be ready to lay down their lives for their nation (emperor).
There is a rich relationship between swords, Japanese culture, and societal development. The different interpretations of the origins of swords and their connection to the spirit world, each hold their own merit within Japanese society, past and present. Which one and how modern-day samurai interpret the history of swords, help influence the kind of samurai and warrior they choose to be.
Manufacturing
Japanese swords are generally made by a division of labor between six and eight craftsmen. Tosho (Toko, Katanakaji) is in charge of forging blades, togishi is in charge of polishing blades, kinkosi (chokinshi) is in charge of making metal fittings for sword fittings, shiroganeshi is in charge of making habaki (brade collar), sayashi is in charge of making scabbards, nurishi is in charge of applying lacquer to scabbards, tsukamakishi is in charge of making hilt, and tsubashi is in charge of making tsuba (hand guard). Tosho use apprentice swordsmiths as assistants. Prior to the Muromachi period, tosho and kacchushi (armorer) used surplus metal to make tsuba, but from the Muromachi period onwards, specialized craftsmen began to make tsuba. Nowadays, kinkoshi sometimes serves as shiroganeshi and tsubashi.
Typical features of Japanese swords represented by katana and tachi are a three-dimensional cross-sectional shape of an elongated pentagonal or hexagonal blade called shinogi-zukuri, a style in which the blade and the tang (nakago) are integrated and fixed to the hilt (tsuka) with a pin called mekugi, and a gentle curve.
When a shinogi-zukuri sword is viewed from the side, there is a ridge line of the thickest part of the blade called shinogi between the cutting edge side and the back side. This shinogi contributes to lightening and toughening of the blade and high cutting ability.
Japanese swords were often forged with different profiles, different blade thicknesses, and varying amounts of grind. Wakizashi and tantō, for instance, were not simply scaled-down versions of katana; they were often forged in a shape called hira-zukuri, in which the cross-sectional shape of the blade becomes an isosceles triangle.
The daishō was not always forged together. If a samurai was able to afford a daishō, it was often composed of whichever two swords could be conveniently acquired, sometimes by different smiths and in different styles. Even when a daishō contained a pair of blades by the same smith, they were not always forged as a pair or mounted as one. Daishō made as a pair, mounted as a pair, and owned/worn as a pair, are therefore uncommon and considered highly valuable, especially if they still retain their original mountings (as opposed to later mountings, even if the later mounts are made as a pair).
The forging of a Japanese blade typically took weeks or even months and was considered a sacred art. As with many complex endeavors, rather than a single craftsman, several artists were involved. There was a smith to forge the rough shape, often a second smith (apprentice) to fold the metal, a specialist polisher (called a togi) as well as the various artisans that made the koshirae (the various fittings used to decorate the finished blade and saya (sheath) including the tsuka (hilt), fuchi (collar), kashira (pommel), and tsuba (hand guard)). It is said that the sharpening and polishing process takes just as long as the forging of the blade itself.
The legitimate Japanese sword is made from Japanese steel "Tamahagane". The most common lamination method the Japanese sword blade is formed from is a combination of two different steels: a harder outer jacket of steel wrapped around a softer inner core of steel. This creates a blade which has a hard, razor sharp cutting edge with the ability to absorb shock in a way which reduces the possibility of the blade breaking when used in combat. The hadagane, for the outer skin of the blade, is produced by heating a block of raw steel, which is then hammered out into a bar, and the flexible back portion. This is then cooled and broken up into smaller blocks which are checked for further impurities and then reassembled and reforged. During this process the billet of steel is heated and hammered, split and folded back upon itself many times and re-welded to create a complex structure of many thousands of layers. Each different steel is folded differently, in order to provide the necessary strength and flexibility to the different steels. The precise way in which the steel is folded, hammered and re-welded determines the distinctive grain pattern of the blade, the jihada, (also called jigane when referring to the actual surface of the steel blade) a feature which is indicative of the period, place of manufacture and actual maker of the blade. The practice of folding also ensures a somewhat more homogeneous product, with the carbon in the steel being evenly distributed and the steel having no voids that could lead to fractures and failure of the blade in combat.
The shingane (for the inner core of the blade) is of a relatively softer steel with a lower carbon content than the hadagane. For this, the block is again hammered, folded and welded in a similar fashion to the hadagane, but with fewer folds. At this point, the hadagane block is once again heated, hammered out and folded into a ‘U’ shape, into which the shingane is inserted to a point just short of the tip. The new composite steel billet is then heated and hammered out ensuring that no air or dirt is trapped between the two layers of steel. The bar increases in length during this process until it approximates the final size and shape of the finished sword blade. A triangular section is cut off from the tip of the bar and shaped to create what will be the kissaki. At this point in the process, the blank for the blade is of rectangular section. This rough shape is referred to as a .
The is again heated, section by section and hammered to create a shape which has many of the recognisable characteristics of the finished blade. These are a thick back (), a thinner edge (), a curved tip (), notches on the edge () and back () which separate the blade from the tang (). Details such as the ridge line () another distinctive characteristic of the Japanese sword, are added at this stage of the process. The smith's skill at this point comes into play as the hammering process causes the blade to naturally curve in an erratic way, the thicker back tending to curve towards the thinner edge, and he must skillfully control the shape to give it the required upward curvature. The is finished by a process of filing and scraping which leaves all the physical characteristics and shapes of the blade recognisable. The surface of the blade is left in a relatively rough state, ready for the hardening processes. The is then covered all over with a clay mixture which is applied more thickly along the back and sides of the blade than along the edge. The blade is left to dry while the smith prepares the forge for the final heat treatment of the blade, the yaki-ire, the hardening of the cutting edge.
This process takes place in a darkened smithy, traditionally at night, in order that the smith can judge by eye the colour and therefore the temperature of the sword as it is repeatedly passed through the glowing charcoal. When the time is deemed right (traditionally the blade should be the colour of the moon in February and August which are the two months that appear most commonly on dated inscriptions on the tang), the blade is plunged edge down and point forward into a tank of water. The precise time taken to heat the sword, the temperature of the blade and of the water into which it is plunged are all individual to each smith and they have generally been closely guarded secrets. Legend tells of a particular smith who cut off his apprentice's hand for testing the temperature of the water he used for the hardening process. In the different schools of swordmakers there are many subtle variations in the materials used in the various processes and techniques outlined above, specifically in the form of clay applied to the blade prior to the yaki-ire, but all follow the same general procedures.
The application of the clay in different thicknesses to the blade allows the steel to cool more quickly along the thinner coated edge when plunged into the tank of water and thereby develop into the harder form of steel called martensite, which can be ground to razor-like sharpness. The thickly coated back cools more slowly retaining the pearlite steel characteristics of relative softness and flexibility. The precise way in which the clay is applied, and partially scraped off at the edge, is a determining factor in the formation of the shape and features of the crystalline structure known as the hamon. This distinctive tempering line found near the edge is one of the main characteristics to be assessed when examining a blade.
The martensitic steel which forms from the edge of the blade to the hamon is in effect the transition line between these two different forms of steel, and is where most of the shapes, colours and beauty in the steel of the Japanese sword are to be found. The variations in the form and structure of the hamon are all indicative of the period, smith, school or place of manufacture of the sword. As well as the aesthetic qualities of the hamon, there are, perhaps not unsurprisingly, real practical functions. The hardened edge is where most of any potential damage to the blade will occur in battle. This hardened edge is capable of being reground and sharpened many times, although the process will alter the shape of the blade. Altering the shape will allow more resistance when fighting in hand-to-hand combat.
Almost all blades are decorated, although not all blades are decorated on the visible part of the blade. Once the blade is cool, and the mud is scraped off, grooves and markings (hi or bo-hi) may be cut into it. One of the most important markings on the sword is performed here: the file markings. These are cut into the tang or the hilt-section of the blade, where they will be covered by the hilt later. The tang is never supposed to be cleaned; doing this can reduce the value of the sword by half or more. The purpose is to show how well the steel ages.
Some other marks on the blade are aesthetic: dedications written in Kanji characters as well as engravings called horimono depicting gods, dragons, or other acceptable beings. Some are more practical. The presence of a groove (the most basic type is called a hi) reduces the weight of the sword yet keeps its structural integrity and strength.
Use
The tachi became the primary weapon on the battlefield during the Kamakura period, used by cavalry. The sword was mostly considered as a secondary weapon until then, used in the battlefield only after the bow and polearm were no longer feasible. During the Edo period samurai went about on foot unarmored, and with much less combat being fought on horseback in open battlefields the need for an effective close quarter weapon resulted in samurai being armed with daishō.
Testing of swords, called tameshigiri, was practiced on a variety of materials (often the bodies of executed criminals) to test the sword's sharpness and practice cutting technique.
Kenjutsu is the Japanese martial art of using the Japanese swords in combat. The Japanese swords are primarily a cutting weapon, or more specifically, a slicing one. Its moderate curve, however, allowed for effective thrusting as well. The hilt was held with two hands, though a fair amount of one-handed techniques exist. The placement of the right hand was dictated by both the length of the handle and the length of the wielder's arm. Two other martial arts were developed specifically for training to draw the sword and attack in one motion. They are battōjutsu and iaijutsu, which are superficially similar, but do generally differ in training theory and methods.
For cutting, there was a specific technique called "ten-uchi." Ten-uchi refers to an organized motion made by arms and wrist, during a descending strike. As the sword is swung downwards, the elbow joint drastically extends at the last instant, popping the sword into place. This motion causes the swordsman's grip to twist slightly and if done correctly, is said to feel like wringing a towel (Thomas Hooper reference). This motion itself caused the sword's blade to impact its target with sharp force, and is used to break initial resistance. From there, fluidly continuing along the motion wrought by ten-uchi, the arms would follow through with the stroke, dragging the sword through its target. Because the Japanese swords slices rather than chops, it is this "dragging" which allows it to do maximum damage, and is thus incorporated into the cutting technique. At full speed, the swing will appear to be full stroke, the sword passing through the targeted object. The segments of the swing are hardly visible, if at all. Assuming that the target is, for example, a human torso, ten-uchi will break the initial resistance supplied by shoulder muscles and the clavicle. The follow through would continue the slicing motion, through whatever else it would encounter, until the blade inherently exited the body, due to a combination of the motion and its curved shape.
Nearly all styles of kenjutsu share the same five basic guard postures. They are as follows; chūdan-no-kamae (middle posture), jōdan-no-kamae (high posture), gedan-no-kamae (low posture), hassō-no-kamae (eight-sided posture), and waki-gamae (side posture).
The Japanese swords razor-edge was so hard that upon hitting an equally hard or harder object, such as another sword's edge, chipping became a definite risk. As such, blocking an oncoming blow blade-to-blade was generally avoided. In fact, evasive body maneuvers were preferred over blade contact by most, but, if such was not possible, the flat or the back of the blade was used for defense in many styles, rather than the precious edge. A popular method for defeating descending slashes was to simply beat the sword aside. In some instances, an "umbrella block", positioning the blade overhead, diagonally (point towards the ground, pommel towards the sky), would create an effective shield against a descending strike. If the angle of the block was drastic enough, the curve of the Japanese swords blade would cause the attacker's blade to slide along its counter and off to the side.
Carrying
Japanese swords were carried in several different ways, varying throughout Japanese history. The style most commonly seen in "samurai" movies is called buke-zukuri, with the katana (and wakizashi, if also present) carried edge up, with the sheath thrust through the obi (sash).
The sword would be carried in a sheath and tucked into the samurai's belt. Originally, they would carry the sword with the blade turned down. This was a more comfortable way for the armored samurai to carry his very long sword or to draw while mounted. The bulk of the samurai armor made it difficult to draw the sword from any other place on his body. When unarmored, samurai would carry their sword with the blade facing up. This made it possible to draw the sword and strike in one quick motion. In one such method of drawing the sword, the samurai would turn the sheath downward ninety degrees and pull it out of his sash just a bit with his left hand, then gripping the hilt with his right hand he would slide it out while sliding the sheath back to its original position.
Appreciation
Historically, Japanese swords have been regarded not only as weapons but also as works of art, especially for high-quality ones. For a long time, Japanese people have developed a unique appreciation method in which the blade is regarded as the core of their aesthetic evaluation rather than the sword mountings decorated with luxurious lacquer or metal works.
It is said that the following three objects are the most noteworthy objects when appreciating a blade. The first is the overall shape referred to as sugata. Curvature, length, width, tip, and shape of tang of the sword are the objects for appreciation. The second is a fine pattern on the surface of the blade, which is referred to as hada or jigane. By repeatedly folding and forging the blade, fine patterns such as fingerprints, tree rings and bark are formed on its surface. The third is hamon. Hamon is a white pattern of the cutting edge produced by quenching and tempering. The object of appreciation is the shape of hammon and the crystal particles formed at the boundary of hammon. Depending on the size of the particles, they can be divided into two types, a nie and a nioi, which makes them look like stars or mist. In addition to these three objects, a swordsmith signature and a file pattern engraved on tang, and a carving inscribed on the blade, which is referred to as horimono, are also the objects of appreciation.
The Hon'ami clan, which was an authority of appraisal of Japanese swords, rated Japanese swords from these artistic points of view. In addition, experts of modern Japanese swords judge when and by which swordsmith school the sword was made from these artistic points of view.
Generally, the blade and the sword mounting of Japanese swords are displayed separately in museums, and this tendency is remarkable in Japan. For example, the Nagoya Japanese Sword Museum "Nagoya Touken World", one of Japan's largest sword museums, posts separate videos of the blade and the sword mounting on its official website and YouTube.
Rating of Japanese swords and swordsmiths
In Japan, Japanese swords are rated by authorities of each period, and some of the authority of the rating is still valid today.
In 1719, Tokugawa Yoshimune, the 8th shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, ordered Hon'ami Kōchū, who was an authority of sword appraisal, to record swords possessed by daimyo all over Japan in books. In the completed "Kyōhō Meibutsu Chō" (享保名物帳) 249 precious swords were described, and additional 25 swords were described later. The list also includes 81 swords that had been destroyed in previous fires. The precious swords described in this book were called "Meibutsu" (名物) and the criteria for selection were artistic elements, origins and legends. The list of "Meibutsu" includes 59 swords made by Masamune, 34 by Awataguchi Yoshimitsu and 22 by Go Yoshihiro, and these 3 swordsmiths were considered special. Daimyo hid some swords for fear that they would be confiscated by the Tokugawa Shogunate, so even some precious swords were not listed in the book. For example, Daihannya Nagamitsu and Yamatorige, which are now designated as National Treasures, were not listed.
Yamada Asaemon V, who was the official sword cutting ability examiner and executioner of the Tokugawa shogunate, published a book "Kaiho Kenjaku" (懐宝剣尺) in 1797 in which he ranked the cutting ability of swords. The book lists 228 swordsmiths, whose forged swords are called "Wazamono" (業物) and the highest "Saijo Ō Wazamono" (最上大業物) has 12 selected. In the reprinting in 1805, 1 swordsmith was added to the highest grade, and in the major revised edition in 1830 "Kokon Kajibiko" (古今鍛冶備考), 2 swordsmiths were added to the highest grade, and in the end, 15 swordsmiths were ranked as the highest grade. The katana forged by Nagasone Kotetsu, one of the top-rated swordsmith, became very popular at the time when the book was published, and many counterfeits were made. In these books, the 3 swordsmiths treated specially in "Kyōhō Meibutsu Chō" and Muramasa, who was famous at that time for forging swords with high cutting ability, were not mentioned. The reasons for this are considered to be that Yamada was afraid of challenging the authority of the shogun, that he could not use the precious sword possessed by the daimyo in the examination, and that he was considerate of the legend of Muramasa's curse.
At present, by the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, important swords of high historical value are designated as Important Cultural Properties (Jūyō Bunkazai, 重要文化財), and special swords among them are designated as National Treasures (Kokuhō, 国宝). The swords designated as cultural properties based on the law of 1930, which was already abolished, have the rank next to Important Cultural Properties as Important Art Object (Jūyō Bijutsuhin, 重要美術品). In addition, The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords, a public interest incorporated foundation, rates high-value swords in four grades, and the highest grade Special Important Sword (Tokubetsu Juyo Token, 特別重要刀剣) is considered to be equivalent to the value of Important Art Object. Although swords owned by the Japanese Imperial Family are not designated as National Treasures or Important Cultural Properties because they are outside the jurisdiction of the Law for the Protection of Cultural Properties, there are many swords of the National Treasure class, and they are called "Gyobutsu" (御物).
Currently, there are several authoritative rating systems for swordsmiths. According to the rating approved by the Japanese government, from 1890 to 1947, 2 swordsmiths who were appointed as Imperial Household Artist and after 1955, 6 swordsmiths who were designated as Living National Treasure are regarded as the best swordsmiths. According to the rating approved by The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords, a public interest incorporated foundation, 39 swordsmiths who were designated as Mukansa (無鑑査) since 1958 are considered to be the highest ranking swordsmiths. The best sword forged by Japanese swordsmiths is awarded the most honorable Masamune prize by The Society for Preservation of Japanese Art Swords. Since 1961, 8 swordsmiths have received the Masamune Prize, and among them, 3 swordsmiths, Masamine Sumitani, Akitsugu Amata and Toshihira Osumi, have received the prize 3 times each and Sadakazu Gassan II has received the prize 2 times. These 4 persons were designated both Living National Treasures and Mukansa.
Gallery
Generally, the blade and the sword mounting of Japanese swords are displayed separately in museums, and this tendency is remarkable in Japan. For example, the Nagoya Japanese Sword Museum "Nagoya Touken World", one of Japan's largest sword museums, posts separate videos of the blade and the sword mounting on its official website and YouTube.
See also
Glossary of Japanese swords
Tatara (furnace)
List of Wazamono
Tamahagane
Tsujigiri
Kiku-ichimonji
Iaijutsu
Iaido
Iaitō—An unsharpened blade
Japanese sword mountings
Kenjutsu
Kendo
Sugari no Ontachi – Sacred treasure of Ise Grand Shrine
List of National Treasures of Japan (crafts-swords)
Tenka-Goken – the five best swords in Japan
Types of swords: Various types of swords in other countries as well as Japan
Indian sword
Chinese sword
Korean sword
References
Further reading
External links
Nihonto forum
Glossary of Japanese sword terms
Japanese Sword Index and Visual Glossary
Diagrams of different nihontō and wakizashi blade shapes
Classification and history of Japanese sword
Dramatic and Accurate Explanation of Manufacture
Forging the Katana
Samurai weapons and equipment | [
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16861 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt%20Vonnegut | Kurt Vonnegut | Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works, with further collections being published after his death.
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Vonnegut attended Cornell University but withdrew in January 1943 and enlisted in the U.S. Army. As part of his training, he studied mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) and the University of Tennessee. He was then deployed to Europe to fight in World War II and was captured by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge. He was interned in Dresden, where he survived the Allied bombing of the city in a meat locker of the slaughterhouse where he was imprisoned. After the war, he married Jane Marie Cox, with whom he had three children. He adopted his nephews after his sister died of cancer and her husband was killed in a train accident. He and his wife both attended the University of Chicago, while he worked as a night reporter for the City News Bureau.
Vonnegut published his first novel, Player Piano, in 1952. The novel was reviewed positively but was not commercially successful at the time. In the nearly 20 years that followed, he published several novels that were well regarded, two of which (The Sirens of Titan [1959] and Cat's Cradle [1963]) were nominated for the Hugo Award for best SF or Fantasy novel of the year. He published a short story collection titled Welcome to the Monkey House in 1968. His breakthrough was his commercially and critically successful sixth novel, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). The book's anti-war sentiment resonated with its readers amidst the ongoing Vietnam War and its reviews were generally positive. After its release, Slaughterhouse-Five went to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list, thrusting Vonnegut into fame. He was invited to give speeches, lectures, and commencement addresses around the country, and received many awards and honors.
Later in his career, Vonnegut published several autobiographical essays and short-story collections, such as Fates Worse Than Death (1991) and A Man Without a Country (2005). After his death, he was hailed as one of the most important contemporary writers and a dark humor commentator on American society. His son Mark published a compilation of his unpublished works, titled Armageddon in Retrospect, in 2008. In 2017, Seven Stories Press published Complete Stories, a collection of Vonnegut's short fiction, including five previously unpublished stories. Complete Stories was collected and introduced by Vonnegut friends and scholars Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield. Numerous scholarly works have examined Vonnegut's writing and humor.
Biography
Family and early life
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born in Indianapolis on November 11, 1922, the youngest of three children of Kurt Vonnegut Sr. and his wife Edith (née Lieber). His older siblings were Bernard (born 1914) and Alice (born 1917). He had descended from German immigrants who settled in the United States in the mid-19th century; his paternal great-grandfather, Clemens Vonnegut, settled in Indianapolis and founded the Vonnegut Hardware Company. His father and grandfather Bernard were architects; the architecture firm under Kurt Sr. designed such buildings as Das Deutsche Haus (now called "The Athenæum"), the Indiana headquarters of the Bell Telephone Company, and the Fletcher Trust Building. Vonnegut's mother was born into Indianapolis high society, as her family, the Liebers, were among the wealthiest in the city with their fortune deriving from ownership of a successful brewery.
Both of Vonnegut's parents were fluent German speakers, but the ill feeling toward Germany during and after World War I caused them to abandon German culture in order to show their American patriotism. Thus, they did not teach Vonnegut to speak German or introduce him to German literature and traditions, leaving him feeling "ignorant and rootless". Vonnegut later credited Ida Young, his family's African-American cook and housekeeper during the first decade of his life, for raising him and giving him values; he said that she "gave [him] decent moral instruction and was exceedingly nice to [him]," and "was as great an influence on [him] as anybody". He described her as "humane and wise" and added that "the compassionate, forgiving aspects of [his] beliefs" came from her.
The financial security and social prosperity that the Vonneguts had once enjoyed were destroyed in a matter of years. The Liebers' brewery was closed in 1921 after the advent of prohibition. When the Great Depression hit, few people could afford to build, causing clients at Kurt Sr.'s architectural firm to become scarce. Vonnegut's brother and sister had finished their primary and secondary educations in private schools, but Vonnegut was placed in a public school called Public School No. 43 (now the James Whitcomb Riley School). He was bothered by the Great Depression, and both his parents were affected deeply by their economic misfortune. His father withdrew from normal life and became what Vonnegut called a "dreamy artist". His mother became depressed, withdrawn, bitter, and abusive. She labored to regain the family's wealth and status, and Vonnegut said that she expressed hatred for her husband that was "as corrosive as hydrochloric acid". She unsuccessfully tried to sell short stories she had written to Collier's, The Saturday Evening Post, and other magazines.
High school and Cornell
Vonnegut enrolled at Shortridge High School in Indianapolis in 1936. While there, he played clarinet in the school band and became a co-editor (along with Madelyn Pugh) for the Tuesday edition of the school newspaper, The Shortridge Echo. Vonnegut said his tenure with the Echo allowed him to write for a large audience—his fellow students—rather than for a teacher, an experience he said was "fun and easy". "It just turned out that I could write better than a lot of other people," Vonnegut observed. "Each person has something he can do easily and can't imagine why everybody else has so much trouble doing it."
After graduating from Shortridge in 1940, Vonnegut enrolled at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He wanted to study the humanities or become an architect like his father, but his father and brother Bernard, an atmospheric scientist, urged him to study a "useful" discipline. As a result, Vonnegut majored in biochemistry, but he had little proficiency in the area and was indifferent towards his studies. As his father had been a member at MIT, Vonnegut was entitled to join the Delta Upsilon fraternity, and did. He overcame stiff competition for a place at the university's independent newspaper, The Cornell Daily Sun, first serving as a staff writer, then as an editor. By the end of his first year, he was writing a column titled "Innocents Abroad" which reused jokes from other publications. He later penned a piece, "Well All Right," focusing on pacifism, a cause he strongly supported, arguing against U.S. intervention in World War II.
World War II
The attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into the war. Vonnegut was a member of Reserve Officers' Training Corps, but poor grades and a satirical article in Cornell's newspaper cost him his place there. He was placed on academic probation in May 1942 and dropped out the following January. No longer eligible for a deferment as a member of ROTC, he faced likely conscription into the United States Army. Instead of waiting to be drafted, he enlisted in the Army and in March 1943 reported to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for basic training. Vonnegut was trained to fire and maintain howitzers and later received instruction in mechanical engineering at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee as part of the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP). In early 1944, the ASTP was canceled due to the Army's need for soldiers to support the D-Day invasion, and Vonnegut was ordered to an infantry battalion at Camp Atterbury, south of Indianapolis in Edinburgh, Indiana, where he trained as a scout. He lived so close to his home that he was "able to sleep in [his] own bedroom and use the family car on weekends". On May 14, 1944, Vonnegut returned home on leave for Mother's Day weekend to discover that his mother had committed suicide the previous night by overdosing on sleeping pills. Possible factors that contributed to Edith Vonnegut's suicide include the family's loss of wealth and status, Vonnegut's forthcoming deployment overseas, and her own lack of success as a writer. She was inebriated at the time and under the influence of prescription drugs.
Three months after his mother's suicide, Vonnegut was sent to Europe as an intelligence scout with the 106th Infantry Division. In December 1944, he fought in the Battle of the Bulge, the final German offensive of the war. During the battle, the 106th Infantry Division, which had only recently reached the front and was assigned to a "quiet" sector due to its inexperience, was overrun by advancing German armored forces. Over 500 members of the division were killed and over 6,000 were captured.
On December 22, Vonnegut was captured with about 50 other American soldiers. Vonnegut was taken by boxcar to a prison camp south of Dresden, in Saxony. During the journey, the Royal Air Force mistakenly attacked the trains carrying Vonnegut and his fellow prisoners of war, killing about 150 of them. Vonnegut was sent to Dresden, the "first fancy city [he had] ever seen". He lived in a slaughterhouse when he got to the city, and worked in a factory that made malt syrup for pregnant women. Vonnegut recalled the sirens going off whenever another city was bombed. The Germans did not expect Dresden to be bombed, Vonnegut said. "There were very few air-raid shelters in town and no war industries, just cigarette factories, hospitals, clarinet factories."
On February 13, 1945, Dresden became the target of Allied forces. In the hours and days that followed, the Allies engaged in a fierce firebombing of the city. The offensive subsided on February 15, with around 25,000 civilians killed in the bombing. Vonnegut marveled at the level of both the destruction in Dresden and the secrecy that attended it. He had survived by taking refuge in a meat locker three stories underground. "It was cool there, with cadavers hanging all around", Vonnegut said. "When we came up the city was gone ... They burnt the whole damn town down." Vonnegut and other American prisoners were put to work immediately after the bombing, excavating bodies from the rubble. He described the activity as a "terribly elaborate Easter-egg hunt".
The American POWs were evacuated on foot to the border of Saxony and Czechoslovakia after US General George S. Patton captured Leipzig. With the captives abandoned by their guards, Vonnegut reached a prisoner-of-war repatriation camp in Le Havre, France, before the end of May 1945, with the aid of the Soviets. He returned to the United States and continued to serve in the Army, stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas, typing discharge papers for other soldiers. Soon after he was awarded a Purple Heart, about which he remarked: "I myself was awarded my country's second-lowest decoration, a Purple Heart for frost-bite." He was discharged from the U.S. Army and returned to Indianapolis.
Marriage, University of Chicago, and early employment
After he returned to the United States, 22-year-old Vonnegut married Jane Marie Cox, his high school girlfriend and classmate since kindergarten, on September 1, 1945. The pair relocated to Chicago; there, Vonnegut enrolled in the University of Chicago on the G.I. Bill, as an anthropology student in an unusual five-year joint undergraduate/graduate program that conferred a master's degree. He augmented his income by working as a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago at night. Jane accepted a scholarship from the university to study Russian literature as a graduate student. Jane dropped out of the program after becoming pregnant with the couple's first child, Mark (born May 1947), while Kurt also left the university without any degree (despite having completed his undergraduate education) when his master's thesis on the Ghost Dance religious movement was unanimously rejected by the department.
Shortly thereafter, General Electric (GE) hired Vonnegut as a technical writer, then publicist, for the company's Schenectady, New York, research laboratory. Although his work required a college degree, Vonnegut was hired after claiming to hold a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago. His brother Bernard had worked at GE since 1945, contributing significantly to an iodine-based cloud seeding project. In 1949, Kurt and Jane had a daughter named Edith. Still working for GE, Vonnegut had his first piece, titled "Report on the Barnhouse Effect," published in the February 11, 1950 issue of Collier's, for which he received $750. Vonnegut wrote another story, after being coached by the fiction editor at Collier's, Knox Burger, and again sold it to the magazine, this time for $950. While Burger supported Vonnegut's writing, he was shocked when Vonnegut quit GE as of January 1, 1951, later stating: "I never said he should give up his job and devote himself to fiction. I don't trust the freelancer's life, it's tough." Nevertheless, in early 1951 Vonnegut moved with his family to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to write full time, leaving GE behind.
First novel
In 1952, Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, was published by Scribner's. The novel has a post-Third World War setting, in which factory workers have been replaced by machines. Player Piano draws upon Vonnegut's experience as an employee at GE. He satirizes the drive to climb the corporate ladder, one that in Player Piano is rapidly disappearing as automation increases, putting even executives out of work. His central character, Paul Proteus, has an ambitious wife, a backstabbing assistant, and a feeling of empathy for the poor. Sent by his boss, Kroner, as a double agent among the poor (who have all the material goods they want, but little sense of purpose), he leads them in a machine-smashing, museum-burning revolution. Player Piano expresses Vonnegut's opposition to McCarthyism, something made clear when the Ghost Shirts, the revolutionary organization Paul penetrates and eventually leads, is referred to by one character as "fellow travelers".
In Player Piano, Vonnegut originates many of the techniques he would use in his later works. The comic, heavy-drinking Shah of Bratpuhr, an outsider to this dystopian corporate United States, is able to ask many questions that an insider would not think to ask, or would cause offense by doing so. For example, when taken to see the artificially intelligent supercomputer EPICAC, the Shah asks it "what are people for?" and receives no answer. Speaking for Vonnegut, he dismisses it as a "false god". This type of alien visitor would recur throughout Vonnegut's literature.
The New York Times writer and critic Granville Hicks gave Player Piano a positive review, favorably comparing it to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Hicks called Vonnegut a "sharp-eyed satirist". None of the reviewers considered the novel particularly important. Several editions were printed—one by Bantam with the title Utopia 14, and another by the Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club—whereby Vonnegut gained the repute of a science fiction writer, a genre held in disdain by writers at that time. He defended the genre, and deplored a perceived sentiment that "no one can simultaneously be a respectable writer and understand how a refrigerator works."
Struggling writer
After Player Piano, Vonnegut continued to sell short stories to various magazines. Contracted to produce a second novel (which eventually became Cat's Cradle), he struggled to complete it and the work languished for years. In 1954 the couple had a third child, Nanette. With a growing family and no financially successful novels yet, Vonnegut's short stories helped to sustain the family, though he frequently needed to find additional sources of income as well. In 1957, he and a partner opened a Saab automobile dealership on Cape Cod, but it went bankrupt by the end of the year.
In 1958, his sister, Alice, died of cancer two days after her husband, James Carmalt Adams, was killed in a train accident. The Vonneguts took in three of the Adams' young sons—James, Steven, and Kurt, aged 14, 11, and 9, respectively. A fourth Adams son, Peter (2), also stayed with the Vonneguts for about a year before being given to the care of a paternal relative in Georgia.
Grappling with family challenges, Vonnegut continued to write, publishing novels vastly dissimilar in terms of plot. The Sirens of Titan (1959) features a Martian invasion of Earth, as experienced by a bored billionaire, Malachi Constant. He meets Winston Rumfoord, an aristocratic space traveler, who is virtually omniscient but stuck in a time warp that allows him to appear on Earth every 59 days. The billionaire learns that his actions and the events of all of history are determined by a race of robotic aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, who need a replacement part that can only be produced by an advanced civilization in order to repair their spaceship and return home—human history has been manipulated to produce it. Some human structures, such as the Kremlin, are coded signals from the aliens to their ship as to how long it may expect to wait for the repair to take place. Reviewers were uncertain what to think of the book, with one comparing it to Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann.
Rumfoord, who is based on Franklin D. Roosevelt, also physically resembles the former president. Rumfoord is described, "he put a cigarette in a long, bone cigarette holder, lighted it. He thrust out his jaw. The cigarette holder pointed straight up." William Rodney Allen, in his guide to Vonnegut's works, stated that Rumfoord foreshadowed the fictional political figures who would play major roles in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Jailbird.
Mother Night, published in 1961, received little attention at the time of its publication. Howard W. Campbell Jr., Vonnegut's protagonist, is an American who is raised in Germany from age 11 and joins the Nazi party during the war as a double agent for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, and rises to the regime's highest ranks as a radio propagandist. After the war, the spy agency refuses to clear his name and he is eventually imprisoned by the Israelis in the same cell block as Adolf Eichmann, and later commits suicide. Vonnegut wrote in a foreword to a later edition, "we are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be". Literary critic Lawrence Berkove considered the novel, like Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, to illustrate the tendency for "impersonators to get carried away by their impersonations, to become what they impersonate and therefore to live in a world of illusion".
Also published in 1961 was Vonnegut's short story, "Harrison Bergeron", set in a dystopic future where all are equal, even if that means disfiguring beautiful people and forcing the strong or intelligent to wear devices that negate their advantages. Fourteen-year-old Harrison is a genius and athlete forced to wear record-level "handicaps" and imprisoned for attempting to overthrow the government. He escapes to a television studio, tears away his handicaps, and frees a ballerina from her lead weights. As they dance, they are killed by the Handicapper General, Diana Moon Glampers. Vonnegut, in a later letter, suggested that "Harrison Bergeron" might have sprung from his envy and self-pity as a high school misfit. In his 1976 biography of Vonnegut, Stanley Schatt suggested that the short story shows "in any leveling process, what really is lost, according to Vonnegut, is beauty, grace, and wisdom". Darryl Hattenhauer, in his 1998 journal article on "Harrison Bergeron", theorized that the story was a satire on American Cold War misunderstandings of communism and socialism.
With Cat's Cradle (1963), Allen wrote, "Vonnegut hit full stride for the first time". The narrator, John, intends to write of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, one of the fictional fathers of the atomic bomb, seeking to cover the scientist's human side. Hoenikker, in addition to the bomb, has developed another threat to mankind, "ice-nine", solid water stable at room temperature, but more dense than liquid water. If a particle of ice-nine is dropped in water and sinks, all of the surrounding water eventually becomes ice-nine. Much of the second half of the book is spent on the fictional Caribbean island of San Lorenzo, where John explores a religion called Bokononism, whose holy books (excerpts from which are quoted) give the novel the moral core science does not supply. After the oceans are converted to ice-nine, wiping out most of humankind, John wanders the frozen surface, seeking to save himself and to make sure that his story survives.
Vonnegut based the title character of God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1964), on an accountant he knew on Cape Cod, who specialized in clients in trouble and often had to comfort them. Eliot Rosewater, the wealthy son of a Republican senator, seeks to atone for his wartime killing of noncombatant firefighters by serving in a volunteer fire department, and by giving away money to those in trouble or need. Stress from a battle for control of his charitable foundation pushes him over the edge, and he is placed in a mental hospital. He recovers, and ends the financial battle by declaring the children of his county to be his heirs. Allen deemed God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater more "a cry from the heart than a novel under its author's full intellectual control", that reflected family and emotional stresses Vonnegut was going through at the time.
In the mid-1960s, Vonnegut contemplated abandoning his writing career. In 1999 he wrote in The New York Times, "I had gone broke, was out of print and had a lot of kids..." But then, on the recommendation of an admirer, he received a surprise offer of a teaching job at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, employment that he likened to the rescue of a drowning man.
Slaughterhouse-Five
After spending almost two years at the writer's workshop at the University of Iowa, teaching one course each term, Vonnegut was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for research in Germany. By the time he won it, in March 1967, he was becoming a well-known writer. He used the funds to travel in Eastern Europe, including to Dresden, where he found many prominent buildings still in ruins. At the time of the bombing, Vonnegut had not appreciated the sheer scale of destruction in Dresden; his enlightenment came only slowly as information dribbled out, and based on early figures he came to believe that 135,000 had died there.
Vonnegut had been writing about his war experiences at Dresden ever since he returned from the war, but had never been able to write anything acceptable to himself or his publishers—Chapter 1 of Slaughterhouse-Five tells of his difficulties. Released in 1969, the novel rocketed Vonnegut to fame. It tells of the life of Billy Pilgrim, who like Vonnegut was born in 1922 and survives the bombing of Dresden. The story is told in a non-linear fashion, with many of the story's climaxes—Billy's death in 1976, his kidnapping by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore nine years earlier, and the execution of Billy's friend Edgar Derby in the ashes of Dresden for stealing a teapot—disclosed in the story's first pages. In 1970, he was also a correspondent in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War.
Slaughterhouse-Five received generally positive reviews, with Michael Crichton writing in The New Republic, "he writes about the most excruciatingly painful things. His novels have attacked our deepest fears of automation and the bomb, our deepest political guilts, our fiercest hatreds and loves. No one else writes books on these subjects; they are inaccessible to normal novelists." The book went immediately to the top of The New York Times Best Seller list. Vonnegut's earlier works had appealed strongly to many college students, and the antiwar message of Slaughterhouse-Five resonated with a generation marked by the Vietnam War. He later stated that the loss of confidence in government that Vietnam caused finally allowed for an honest conversation regarding events like Dresden.
Later career and life
After Slaughterhouse-Five was published, Vonnegut embraced the fame and financial security that attended its release. He was hailed as a hero of the burgeoning anti-war movement in the United States, was invited to speak at numerous rallies, and gave college commencement addresses around the country. In addition to briefly teaching at Harvard University as a lecturer in creative writing in 1970, Vonnegut taught at the City College of New York as a distinguished professor during the 1973–1974 academic year. He was later elected vice president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and given honorary degrees by, among others, Indiana University and Bennington College. Vonnegut also wrote a play called Happy Birthday, Wanda June, which opened on October 7, 1970, at New York's Theatre de Lys. Receiving mixed reviews, it closed on March 14, 1971. In 1972, Universal Pictures adapted Slaughterhouse-Five into a film which the author said was "flawless".
Meanwhile, Vonnegut's personal life was disintegrating. His wife Jane had embraced Christianity, which was contrary to Vonnegut's atheistic beliefs, and with five of their six children having left home, Vonnegut said the two were forced to find "other sorts of seemingly important work to do". The couple battled over their differing beliefs until Vonnegut moved from their Cape Cod home to New York in 1971. Vonnegut called the disagreements "painful", and said the resulting split was a "terrible, unavoidable accident that we were ill-equipped to understand". The couple divorced and they remained friends until Jane's death in late 1986. Beyond his marriage, he was deeply affected when his son Mark suffered a mental breakdown in 1972, which exacerbated Vonnegut's chronic depression, and led him to take Ritalin. When he stopped taking the drug in the mid-1970s, he began to see a psychologist weekly.
Vonnegut's difficulties materialized in numerous ways; most distinctly though, was the painfully slow progress he was making on his next novel, the darkly comical Breakfast of Champions. In 1971, Vonnegut stopped writing the novel altogether. When it was finally released in 1973, it was panned critically. In Thomas S. Hischak's book American Literature on Stage and Screen, Breakfast of Champions was called "funny and outlandish", but reviewers noted that it "lacks substance and seems to be an exercise in literary playfulness". Vonnegut's 1976 novel Slapstick, which meditates on the relationship between him and his sister (Alice), met a similar fate. In The New York Times's review of Slapstick, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt said Vonnegut "seems to be putting less effort into [storytelling] than ever before", and that "it still seems as if he has given up storytelling after all." At times, Vonnegut was disgruntled by the personal nature of his detractors' complaints.
In 1979, Vonnegut married Jill Krementz, a photographer whom he met while she was working on a series about writers in the early 1970s. With Jill, he adopted a daughter, Lily, when the baby was three days old. In subsequent years, his popularity resurged as he published several satirical books, including Jailbird (1979), Deadeye Dick (1982), Galápagos (1985), Bluebeard (1987), and Hocus Pocus (1990). Although he remained a prolific writer in the 1980s Vonnegut struggled with depression and attempted suicide in 1984. Two years later, Vonnegut was seen by a younger generation when he played himself in Rodney Dangerfield's film Back to School. The last of Vonnegut's fourteen novels, Timequake (1997), was, as University of Detroit history professor and Vonnegut biographer Gregory Sumner said, "a reflection of an aging man facing mortality and testimony to an embattled faith in the resilience of human awareness and agency." Vonnegut's final book, a collection of essays entitled A Man Without a Country (2005), became a bestseller.
Death and legacy
In a 2006 Rolling Stone interview, Vonnegut sardonically stated that he would sue the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, the maker of the Pall Mall-branded cigarettes he had been smoking since he was around 12 or 14 years old, for false advertising: "And do you know why? Because I'm 83 years old. The lying bastards! On the package Brown & Williamson promised to kill me." He died in the Manhattan borough of New York City on the night of April 11, 2007, as a result of brain injuries incurred several weeks prior from a fall at his brownstone home. His death was reported by his wife Jill. He was 84 years old. At the time of his death, he had written 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five non-fiction books. A book composed of his unpublished pieces, Armageddon in Retrospect, was compiled and posthumously published by his son Mark in 2008.
When asked about the impact Vonnegut had on his work, author Josip Novakovich stated that he has "much to learn from Vonnegut—how to compress things and yet not compromise them, how to digress into history, quote from various historical accounts, and not stifle the narrative. The ease with which he writes is sheerly masterly, Mozartian." Los Angeles Times columnist Gregory Rodriguez said that the author will "rightly be remembered as a darkly humorous social critic and the premier novelist of the counterculture", and Dinitia Smith of The New York Times dubbed Vonnegut the "counterculture's novelist".
Vonnegut has inspired numerous posthumous tributes and works. In 2008, the Kurt Vonnegut Society was established, and in November 2010, the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library was opened in Vonnegut's hometown of Indianapolis. The Library of America published a compendium of Vonnegut's compositions between 1963 and 1973 the following April, and another compendium of his earlier works in 2012. Late 2011 saw the release of two Vonnegut biographies, Gregory Sumner's Unstuck in Time and Charles J. Shields's And So It Goes. Shields's biography of Vonnegut created some controversy. According to The Guardian, the book portrays Vonnegut as distant, cruel and nasty. "Cruel, nasty and scary are the adjectives commonly used to describe him by the friends, colleagues, and relatives Shields quotes", said The Daily Beasts Wendy Smith. "Towards the end he was very feeble, very depressed and almost morose", said Jerome Klinkowitz of the University of Northern Iowa, who has examined Vonnegut in depth.
Vonnegut's works have evoked ire on several occasions. His most prominent novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, has been objected to or removed at various institutions in at least 18 instances. In the case of Island Trees School District v. Pico, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a school district's ban on Slaughterhouse-Five—which the board had called "anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, and just plain filthy"—and eight other novels was unconstitutional. When a school board in Republic, Missouri decided to withdraw Vonnegut's novel from its libraries, the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library offered a free copy to all the students of the district.
Tally, writing in 2013, suggests that Vonnegut has only recently become the subject of serious study rather than fan adulation, and much is yet to be written about him. "The time for scholars to say 'Here's why Vonnegut is worth reading' has definitively ended, thank goodness. We know he's worth reading. Now tell us things we don't know." Todd F. Davis notes that Vonnegut's work is kept alive by his loyal readers, who have "significant influence as they continue to purchase Vonnegut's work, passing it on to subsequent generations and keeping his entire canon in print—an impressive list of more than twenty books that [Dell Publishing] has continued to refurbish and hawk with new cover designs." Donald E. Morse notes that Vonnegut, "is now firmly, if somewhat controversially, ensconced in the American and world literary canon as well as in high school, college and graduate curricula". Tally writes of Vonnegut's work:
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted Vonnegut posthumously in 2015. The asteroid 25399 Vonnegut is named in his honor. A crater on the planet Mercury has also been named in his honor. In 2021, the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library in Indianapolis was designated a Literary Landmark by the Literary Landmarks Association.
Views
War
In the introduction to Slaughterhouse-Five Vonnegut recounts meeting the film producer Harrison Starr at a party who asked him whether his forthcoming book was an anti-war novel—"I guess", replied Vonnegut. Starr responded "Why don't you write an anti-glacier novel?" This underlined Vonnegut's belief that wars were, unfortunately, inevitable, but that it was important to ensure the wars one fought were just wars.
In 2011, NPR wrote, "Kurt Vonnegut's blend of anti-war sentiment and satire made him one of the most popular writers of the 1960s." Vonnegut stated in a 1987 interview that, "my own feeling is that civilization ended in World War I, and we're still trying to recover from that", and that he wanted to write war-focused works without glamorizing war itself. Vonnegut had not intended to publish again, but his anger against the George W. Bush administration led him to write A Man Without a Country.
Slaughterhouse-Five is the Vonnegut novel best known for its antiwar themes, but the author expressed his beliefs in ways beyond the depiction of the destruction of Dresden. One character, Mary O'Hare, opines that "wars were partly encouraged by books and movies", starring "Frank Sinatra or John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men". Vonnegut made a number of comparisons between Dresden and the bombing of Hiroshima in Slaughterhouse-Five and wrote in Palm Sunday (1991) that "I learned how vile that religion of mine could be when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima".
Nuclear war, or at least deployed nuclear arms, is mentioned in almost all of Vonnegut's novels. In Player Piano, the computer EPICAC is given control of the nuclear arsenal, and is charged with deciding whether to use high-explosive or nuclear arms. In Cat's Cradle, John's original purpose in setting pen to paper was to write an account of what prominent Americans had been doing as Hiroshima was bombed.
Religion
Vonnegut was an atheist, a humanist and a freethinker, serving as the honorary president of the American Humanist Association. In an interview for Playboy, he stated that his forebears who came to the United States did not believe in God, and he learned his atheism from his parents. He did not, however, disdain those who seek the comfort of religion, hailing church associations as a type of extended family. He occasionally attended a Unitarian church, but with little consistency. In his autobiographical work Palm Sunday, Vonnegut says he is a "Christ-worshipping agnostic"; in a speech to the Unitarian Universalist Association, he called himself a "Christ-loving atheist". However, he was keen to stress that he was not a Christian.
Vonnegut was an admirer of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, particularly the Beatitudes, and incorporated it into his own doctrines. He also referred to it in many of his works. In his 1991 book Fates Worse than Death, Vonnegut suggests that during the Reagan administration, "anything that sounded like the Sermon on the Mount was socialistic or communistic, and therefore anti-American". In Palm Sunday, he wrote that "the Sermon on the Mount suggests a mercifulness that can never waver or fade." However, Vonnegut had a deep dislike for certain aspects of Christianity, often reminding his readers of the bloody history of the Crusades and other religion-inspired violence. He despised the televangelists of the late 20th century, feeling that their thinking was narrow-minded.
Religion features frequently in Vonnegut's work, both in his novels and elsewhere. He laced a number of his speeches with religion-focused rhetoric, and was prone to using such expressions as "God forbid" and "thank God". He once wrote his own version of the Requiem Mass, which he then had translated into Latin and set to music. In God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian, Vonnegut goes to heaven after he is euthanized by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Once in heaven, he interviews 21 deceased celebrities, including Isaac Asimov, William Shakespeare, and Kilgore Trout—the last a fictional character from several of his novels. Vonnegut's works are filled with characters founding new faiths, and religion often serves as a major plot device, for example in Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle. In The Sirens of Titan, Rumfoord proclaims The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent. Slaughterhouse-Five sees Billy Pilgrim, lacking religion himself, nevertheless become a chaplain's assistant in the military and displaying a large crucifix on his bedroom wall. In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut invented the religion of Bokononism.
Politics
Vonnegut did not particularly sympathize with liberalism or conservatism, and mused on the specious simplicity of American politics, saying facetiously, "If you want to take my guns away from me, and you're all for murdering fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other ... you're a liberal. If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you're a conservative. What could be simpler?" Regarding political parties, Vonnegut said, "The two real political parties in America are the Winners and the Losers. The people don't acknowledge this. They claim membership in two imaginary parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, instead."
Vonnegut disregarded more mainstream American political ideologies in favor of socialism, which he thought could provide a valuable substitute for what he saw as social Darwinism and a spirit of "survival of the fittest" in American society, believing that "socialism would be a good for the common man". Vonnegut would often return to a quote by socialist and five-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs: "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I'm of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free." Vonnegut expressed disappointment that communism and socialism seemed to be unsavory topics to the average American, and believed that they offered beneficial substitutes to contemporary social and economic systems.
Writing
Influences
Vonnegut's writing was inspired by an eclectic mix of sources. When he was younger, Vonnegut stated that he read works of pulp fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and action-adventure. He also read the classics, such as the plays of Aristophanes—like Vonnegut's works, humorous critiques of contemporary society. Vonnegut's life and work also share similarities with that of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn writer Mark Twain. Both shared pessimistic outlooks on humanity, and a skeptical take on religion, and, as Vonnegut put it, were both "associated with the enemy in a major war", as Twain briefly enlisted in the South's cause during the American Civil War, and Vonnegut's German name and ancestry connected him with the United States' enemy in both world wars. He also cited Ambrose Bierce as an influence, calling An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge the greatest American short story and deeming any who disagreed or had not read the story 'twerps.'
Vonnegut called George Orwell his favorite writer, and admitted that he tried to emulate Orwell. "I like his concern for the poor, I like his socialism, I like his simplicity", Vonnegut said. Vonnegut also said that Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, heavily influenced his debut novel, Player Piano, in 1952. Vonnegut commented that Robert Louis Stevenson's stories were emblems of thoughtfully put together works that he tried to mimic in his own compositions. Vonnegut also hailed playwright and socialist George Bernard Shaw as "a hero of [his]", and an "enormous influence". Within his own family, Vonnegut stated that his mother, Edith, had the greatest influence on him. "[My] mother thought she might make a new fortune by writing for the slick magazines. She took short-story courses at night. She studied writers the way gamblers study horses."
Early on in his career, Vonnegut decided to model his style after Henry David Thoreau, who wrote as if from the perspective of a child, allowing Thoreau's works to be more widely comprehensible. Using a youthful narrative voice allowed Vonnegut to deliver concepts in a modest and straightforward way. Other influences on Vonnegut include The War of the Worlds author H. G. Wells, and satirist Jonathan Swift. Vonnegut credited American journalist and critic H. L. Mencken for inspiring him to become a journalist.
Style and technique
In his book Popular Contemporary Writers, Michael D. Sharp describes Vonnegut's linguistic style as straightforward; his sentences concise, his language simple, his paragraphs brief, and his ordinary tone conversational. Vonnegut uses this style to convey normally complex subject matter in a way that is intelligible to a large audience. He credited his time as a journalist for his ability, pointing to his work with the Chicago City News Bureau, which required him to convey stories in telephone conversations. Vonnegut's compositions are also laced with distinct references to his own life, notably in Slaughterhouse-Five and Slapstick.
Vonnegut believed that ideas, and the convincing communication of those ideas to the reader, were vital to literary art. He did not always sugarcoat his points: much of Player Piano leads up to the moment when Paul, on trial and hooked up to a lie detector, is asked to tell a falsehood, and states, "every new piece of scientific knowledge is a good thing for humanity". Robert T. Tally Jr., in his volume on Vonnegut's novels, wrote, "rather than tearing down and destroying the icons of twentieth-century, middle-class American life, Vonnegut gently reveals their basic flimsiness." Vonnegut did not simply propose utopian solutions to the ills of American society, but showed how such schemes would not allow ordinary people to live lives free from want and anxiety. The large artificial families that the U.S. population is formed into in Slapstick soon serve as an excuse for tribalism, with people giving no help to those not part of their group, and with the extended family's place in the social hierarchy becoming vital.
In the introduction to their essay "Kurt Vonnegut and Humor", Tally and Peter C. Kunze suggest that Vonnegut was not a "black humorist", but a "frustrated idealist" who used "comic parables" to teach the reader absurd, bitter or hopeless truths, with his grim witticisms serving to make the reader laugh rather than cry. "Vonnegut makes sense through humor, which is, in the author's view, as valid a means of mapping this crazy world as any other strategies." Vonnegut resented being called a black humorist, feeling that, as with many literary labels, it allows readers to disregard aspects of a writer's work that do not fit the label's stereotype.
Vonnegut's works have, at various times, been labeled science fiction, satire and postmodern. He also resisted such labels, but his works do contain common tropes that are often associated with those genres. In several of his books, Vonnegut imagines alien societies and civilizations, as is common in works of science fiction. Vonnegut does this to emphasize or exaggerate absurdities and idiosyncrasies in our own world. Furthermore, Vonnegut often humorizes the problems that plague societies, as is done in satirical works. However, literary theorist Robert Scholes noted in Fabulation and Metafiction that Vonnegut "reject[s] the traditional satirist's faith in the efficacy of satire as a reforming instrument. [He has] a more subtle faith in the humanizing value of laughter." Examples of postmodernism may also be found in Vonnegut's works. Postmodernism often entails a response to the theory that the truths of the world will be discovered through science. Postmodernists contend that truth is subjective, rather than objective, as it is biased towards each individual's beliefs and outlook on the world. They often use unreliable, first-person narration, and narrative fragmentation. One critic has argued that Vonnegut's most famous novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, features a metafictional, Janus-headed outlook as it seeks both to represent actual historical events while problematizing the very notion of doing exactly that. This is encapsulated in the opening lines of the novel: "All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true." This bombastic opening—"All this happened"—"reads like a declaration of complete mimesis" which is radically called into question in the rest of the quote and "[t]his creates an integrated perspective that seeks out extratextual themes [like war and trauma] while thematizing the novel's textuality and inherent constructedness at one and the same time." While Vonnegut does use elements as fragmentation and metafictional elements, in some of his works, he more distinctly focuses on the peril posed by individuals who find subjective truths, mistake them for objective truths, then proceed to impose these truths on others.
Themes
Vonnegut was a vocal critic of American society, and this was reflected in his writings. Several key social themes recur in Vonnegut's works, such as wealth, the lack of it, and its unequal distribution among a society. In The Sirens of Titan, the novel's protagonist, Malachi Constant, is exiled to Saturn's moon Titan as a result of his vast wealth, which has made him arrogant and wayward. In God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, readers may find it difficult to determine whether the rich or the poor are in worse circumstances as the lives of both groups' members are ruled by their wealth or their poverty. Further, in Hocus Pocus, the protagonist is named Eugene Debs Hartke, a homage to the famed socialist Eugene V. Debs and Vonnegut's socialist views. In Kurt Vonnegut: A Critical Companion, Thomas F. Marvin states: "Vonnegut points out that, left unchecked, capitalism will erode the democratic foundations of the United States." Marvin suggests that Vonnegut's works demonstrate what happens when a "hereditary aristocracy" develops, where wealth is inherited along familial lines: the ability of poor Americans to overcome their situations is greatly or completely diminished. Vonnegut also often laments social Darwinism, and a "survival of the fittest" view of society. He points out that social Darwinism leads to a society that condemns its poor for their own misfortune, and fails to help them out of their poverty because "they deserve their fate". Vonnegut also confronts the idea of free will in a number of his pieces. In Slaughterhouse-Five and Timequake the characters have no choice in what they do; in Breakfast of Champions, characters are very obviously stripped of their free will and even receive it as a gift; and in Cat's Cradle, Bokononism views free will as heretical.
The majority of Vonnegut's characters are estranged from their actual families and seek to build replacement or extended families. For example, the engineers in Player Piano called their manager's spouse "Mom". In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut devises two separate methods for loneliness to be combated: A "karass", which is a group of individuals appointed by God to do his will, and a "granfalloon", defined by Marvin as a "meaningless association of people, such as a fraternal group or a nation". Similarly, in Slapstick, the U.S. government codifies that all Americans are a part of large extended families.
Fear of the loss of one's purpose in life is a theme in Vonnegut's works. The Great Depression forced Vonnegut to witness the devastation many people felt when they lost their jobs, and while at General Electric, Vonnegut witnessed machines being built to take the place of human labor. He confronts these things in his works through references to the growing use of automation and its effects on human society. This is most starkly represented in his first novel, Player Piano, where many Americans are left purposeless and unable to find work as machines replace human workers. Loss of purpose is also depicted in Galápagos, where a florist rages at her spouse for creating a robot able to do her job, and in Timequake, where an architect kills himself when replaced by computer software.
Suicide by fire is another common theme in Vonnegut's works; the author often returns to the theory that "many people are not fond of life". He uses this as an explanation for why humans have so severely damaged their environments, and made devices such as nuclear weapons that can make their creators extinct. In Deadeye Dick, Vonnegut features the neutron bomb, which he claims is designed to kill people, but leave buildings and structures untouched. He also uses this theme to demonstrate the recklessness of those who put powerful, apocalypse-inducing devices at the disposal of politicians.
"What is the point of life?" is a question Vonnegut often pondered in his works. When one of Vonnegut's characters, Kilgore Trout, finds the question "What is the purpose of life?" written in a bathroom, his response is, "To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool." Marvin finds Trout's theory curious, given that Vonnegut was an atheist, and thus for him, there is no Creator to report back to, and comments that, "[as] Trout chronicles one meaningless life after another, readers are left to wonder how a compassionate creator could stand by and do nothing while such reports come in." In the epigraph to Bluebeard, Vonnegut quotes his son Mark, and gives an answer to what he believes is the meaning of life: "We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
Awards and nominations
1953 International Fantasy Award nomination: Player Piano
1960 Writers Guild of America Award: "Auf Wiedersehen"
1960 Hugo Award for Best Novel finalist: The Sirens of Titan
1964 Hugo Award for Best Novel finalist: Cat's Cradle
1970 Nebula Award nomination: Slaughterhouse-Five
1970 Hugo Award for Best Novel finalist: Slaughterhouse-Five
1971 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding New Play: Happy Birthday Wanda June
1973 Seiun Award winner for foreign novel: The Sirens of Titan
1973 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation winner: Slaughterhouse-Five
1986 John W. Campbell Award second place: Galapagos
2009 Audie Award for Short Stories/Collections: Armageddon in Retrospect
2015 Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame from the Science Fiction Museum
2019 Prometheus Hall of Fame award for "Harrison Bergeron" from the Libertarian Futurist Society
Works
Unless otherwise cited, items in this list are taken from Thomas F. Marvin's 2002 book Kurt Vonnegut: A Critical Companion, and the date in parentheses is the date the work was first published:
Novels
Player Piano (1952)
The Sirens of Titan (1959)
Mother Night (1962)
Cat's Cradle (1963)
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Slapstick (1976)
Jailbird (1979)
Deadeye Dick (1982)
Galápagos (1985)
Bluebeard (1987)
Hocus Pocus (1990)
Timequake (1997)
Short fiction collections
Canary in a Cat House (1961)
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968)
Bagombo Snuff Box (1997)
God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999)
Armageddon in Retrospect (2008) – short stories and essays
Look at the Birdie (2009)
While Mortals Sleep (2011)
We Are What We Pretend to Be (2012)
Sucker's Portfolio (2013)
Complete Stories (2017)
Plays
The First Christmas Morning (1962)
Fortitude (1968)
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
Between Time and Timbuktu (1972)
Stones, Time and Elements (A Humanist Requiem) (1987)
Make Up Your Mind (1993)
L’Histoire du Soldat (1997)
Nonfiction
Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (1974)
Palm Sunday (1981)
Nothing Is Lost Save Honor: Two Essays (1984)
Fates Worse Than Death (1991)
A Man Without a Country (2005)
Kurt Vonnegut: The Cornell Sun Years 1941–1943 (2012)
If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: Advice to the Young (2013)
Vonnegut by the Dozen (2013)
Kurt Vonnegut: Letters (2014)
Pity the Reader: On Writing With Style (2019) with Suzanne McConnell
Love, Kurt: The Vonnegut Love Letters, 1941-1945 (2020) Editor Edith Vonnegut
Interviews
Conversations with Kurt Vonnegut (1988) with William Rodney Allen
Like Shaking Hands with God: A Conversation About Writing (1999) with Lee Stringer
Kurt Vonnegut: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (2011)
Children's books
Sun Moon Star (1980)
Art
Kurt Vonnegut Drawings (2014)
See also
List of peace activists
Explanatory notes
Citations
General sources
Further reading
Craig, Cairns (1983), An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, in Hearn, Sheila G. (ed.), Cencrastus No. 13, Summer 1983, pp. 29 – 32,
Oltean-Cîmpean, A. A. (2016). "Kurt Vonnegut's Humanism: An Author's Journey Towards Preaching for Peace". Studii De Ştiintă Şi Cultură, 12(2), 259–266.
Párraga, J. J. (2013). "Kurt Vonnegut's Quest for Identity". Revista Futhark, 8185–8199
External links
Kurt Vonnegut papers at the Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington
Vonnegut, Kurt at the Library of Congress
Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library
Award Bibliography: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. at ISFDB
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. at SFADB
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16862 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan | Koan | A (; , ; , ; ) is a story, dialogue, question, or statement which is used in Zen practice to provoke the "great doubt" and to practice or test a student's progress in Zen.
Etymology
The Japanese term is the Sino-Japanese reading of the Chinese word (). The term is a compound word, consisting of the characters "public; official; governmental; common; collective; fair; equitable" and "table; desk; (law) case; record; file; plan; proposal."
According to the Yuan dynasty Zen master Zhongfeng Mingben ( 1263–1323), originated as an abbreviation of (, Japanese —literally the "official correspondence; documents; files" of a "government post"), which referred to a "public record" or the "case records of a public law court" in Tang dynasty China. / thus serves as a metaphor for principles of reality beyond the private opinion of one person, and a teacher may test the student's ability to recognize and understand that principle.
Commentaries in collections bear some similarity to judicial decisions that cite and sometimes modify precedents. An article by T. Griffith Foulk claims
was itself originally a metonym—an article of furniture involved in setting legal precedents came to stand for such precedents. For example, () is the original title of Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, the famous Chinese detective novel based on a historical Tang dynasty judge. Similarly, Zen collections are public records of the notable sayings and actions of Zen masters and disciples attempting to pass on their teachings.
Origins and development
China
Commenting on old cases
developed during the Tang dynasty (618–907) from the recorded sayings collections of Chán masters, which quoted many stories of "a famous past Chán figure's encounter with disciples or other interlocutors and then offering his own comment on it". Those stories and the accompanying comments were used to educate students, and broaden their insight into the Buddhist teachings.
Those stories came to be known as , "public cases". Such a story was only considered a gongan when it was commented upon by another Chán master. This practice of commenting on the words and deeds of past masters confirmed the master's position as an awakened master in a lineage of awakened masters of the past.
Literary practice
practice developed from a literary practice, styling snippets of encounter-dialogue into well-edited stories. It arose in interaction with "educated literati". There were dangers involved in such a literary approach, such as ascribing specific meanings to the cases. Dahui Zonggao is even said to have burned the woodblocks of the Blue Cliff Record, for the hindrance it had become to study of Chán by his students. literature was also influenced by the pre-Zen Chinese tradition of the "literary game"—a competition involving improvised poetry.
The style of writing of Zen texts has been influenced by "a variety of east Asian literary games":
Observing the phrase
During the Song dynasty (960–1297) the use of took a decisive turn. Dahui Zonggao (1089–1163) introduced the use of , "observing the phrase". In this practice students were to observe () or concentrate on a single word or phrase (), such as the famous of the .
In the 11th century this practice had become common. A new literary genre developed from this tradition as well. Collections of such commented cases were compiled which consisted of the case itself, accompanied by verse or prose commentary.
Dahui's invention was aimed at balancing the insight developed by reflection on the teachings with developing samatha, calmness of mind. Ironically, this development became in effect silent illumination, a "[re-absorbing] of -study into the "silence" of meditation ()". It led to a rejection of Buddhist learning:
This development left Chinese Chán vulnerable to criticisms by neo-Confucianism, which developed after the Sung Dynasty. Its anti-intellectual rhetoric was no match for the intellectual discourse of the neo-Confucianists.
Interaction
The recorded encounter dialogues, and the collections which derived from this genre, mark a shift from solitary practice to interaction between master and student:
This mutual enquiry of the meaning of the encounters of masters and students of the past gave students a role model:
training requires a qualified teacher who has the ability to judge a disciple's depth of attainment. In the Rinzai Zen school, which uses s extensively, the teacher certification process includes an appraisal of proficiency in using that school's extensive curriculum.
Contemporary use
In China and Korea, "observing the phrase" is still the sole form of practice, though Seung Sahn used the Rinzai-style of practice in his Kwan Um School of Zen.
Japan
Japanese Zen, both Rinzai and Sōtō, took over the use of study and commenting. In Sōtō-Zen, commentary was not linked to seated meditation.
manuals
When the Chán tradition was introduced in Japan, Japanese monks had to master the Chinese language and specific expressions used in the training. The desired "spontaneity" expressed by enlightened masters required a thorough study of Chinese language and poetry. Japanese Zen imitated the Chinese "syntax and stereotyped norms".
In the officially recognized monasteries belonging to the (Five Mountain System) the Chinese system was fully continued. Senior monks were supposed to compose Chinese verse in a complex style of matched counterpoints known as . It took a lot of literary and intellectual skills for a monk to succeed in this system.
The Rinka monasteries, the provincial temples with less control of the state, laid less stress on the correct command of the Chinese cultural idiom. These monasteries developed "more accessible methods of instruction". It had three features:
A standardized curriculum;
A standardized set of answers based on stereotypes Chinese sayings;
A standardized method of secretly guiding students through the curriculum of and answers.
By standardizing the curriculum every generation of students proceeded to the same series of s. Students had to memorize a set number of stereotyped sayings, , "appended words". The proper series of responses for each were taught by the master in private instruction sessions to selected individual students who would inherit the dharma lineage.
and , "Records of secret instruction" have been preserved for various Rinzai lineages. They contain both the curricula and the standardized answers. In Sōtō-Zen they are called , an abbreviation of , "secret instructions of the lineage". The follow a standard question-and-answer format. A series of questions is given, to be asked by the master. The answers are also given by the master, to be memorized by the student.
Contemporary curricula
In the 18th century the Rinzai school became dominated by the legacy of Hakuin, who laid a strong emphasis on study as a means to gain and develop insight. There are two curricula used in Rinzai, both derived from the principal heirs of Rinzai: the Takuju curriculum, and the Inzan curriculum. According to AMA Samy, "the s and their standard answers are fixed."
Suppression in the Sōtō school
During the late 18th and 19th century the tradition of commentary became suppressed in the Sōtō school, due to a reform movement that sought to standardise the procedures for dharma transmission. One reason for suppressing the tradition in the Sōtō school may have been to highlight the differences with the Rinzai school, and create a clear identity. This movement also started to venerate Dogen as the founding teacher of the Sōtō school. His teachings became the standard for the Sōtō teachings, neglecting the fact that Dogen himself made extensive use of commentary.
Doctrinal background
The popular western understanding sees kōan as referring to an unanswerable question or a meaningless or absurd statement. However, in Zen practice, a kōan is not meaningless, and not a riddle or a puzzle. Teachers do expect students to present an appropriate response when asked about a kōan.
Koans are also understood as pointers to an unmediated "Pure Consciousness", devoid of cognitive activity. Victor Hori criticizes this understanding:
According to Hori, a central theme of many koans is the 'identity of opposites':
Comparable statements are: "Look at the flower and the flower also looks"; "Guest and host interchange".
Koan-practice
Study of kōan literature is common to all schools of Zen, though with varying emphases and curricula. The Rinzai-school uses extensive koan-curricula, checking questions, and jakogo ("capping phrases", quotations from Chinese poetry) in its use of koans. The Sanbo Kyodan, and its western derivates of Taizan Maezumi and the White Plum Asanga, also use koan-curricula, but have omitted the use of capping phrases. In Chinese Chán and Korean Seon, the emphasis is on Hua Tou, the study of one koan throughout one's lifetime. In Japanese Sōtō Zen, the use of koans has been abandoned since the late eighteenth and nineteenth century.
Hua-tou or breakthrough-koan
In the Rinzai-school, the Sanbo Kyodan, and the White Plum Asanga, koan practice starts with the assignment of a hosshi or "break-through koan", usually the mu-koan or "the sound of one hand clapping". In Chinese Chán and Korean Seon, various koan can be used for the hua-tou practice.
Students are instructed to concentrate on the "word-head", like the phrase "mu". In the Wumenguan (Mumonkan), public case No. 1 ("Zhaozhou's Dog"), Wumen (Mumon) wrote:
Arousing this great inquiry or "Great Doubt" is an essential element of kōan practice. It builds up "strong internal pressure (gidan), never stopping knocking from within at the door of [the] mind, demanding to be resolved". To illustrate the enormous concentration required in kōan meditation, Zen Master Wumen commented,
Analysing the koan for its literal meaning won't lead to insight, though understanding the context from which koans emerged can make them more intelligible. For example, when a monk asked Zhaozhou (Joshu) "does a dog have Buddha-nature or not?", the monk was referring to the understanding of the teachings on Buddha-nature, which were understood in the Chinese context of absolute and relative reality.
Insight
The continuous pondering of the break-through koan (shokan) or Hua Tou, "word head", leads to kensho, an initial insight into "seeing the (Buddha-)nature.
The aim of the break-through koan is to see the "nonduality of subject and object":
Various accounts can be found which describe this "becoming one" and the resulting breakthrough:
But the use of the mu-koan has also been criticised. According to AMA Samy, the main aim is merely to "'become one' with the koan". Showing to have 'become one' with the first koan is enough to pass the first koan. According to Samy, this is not equal to prajna:
Testing insight – or learning responses
Sassho – Checking questions
Teachers may probe students about their kōan practice using sassho, "checking questions" to validate their satori (understanding) or kensho (seeing the nature). For the mu-koan and the clapping hand-koan there are twenty to a hundred checking questions, depending on the teaching lineage. The checking questions serve to deepen the insight of the student, but also to test his or her understanding.
Those checking questions, and their answers, are part of a standardised set of questions and answers. Students are learning a "ritual performance", learning how to behave and respond in specific ways, learning "clever repartees, ritualized language and gestures and be submissive to the master’s diktat and arbitration."
Jakugo – Capping phrases
In the Rinzai-school, passing a koan and the checking questions has to be supplemented by jakugo, "capping phrases", citations of Chinese poetry to demonstrate the insight. Students can use collections of those citations, instead of composing poetry themselves.
Post-satori practice
After the initial insight further practice is necessary, to deepen the insight and learn to express it in daily life. In Chinese Chán and Korean Seon, this further practice consists of further pondering of the same Hua Tou. In Rinzai-Zen, this further practice is undertaken by further koan-study, for which elaborate curricula exist. In Sōtō-Zen, Shikantaza is the main practice for deepening insight.
Varieties in koan-practice
Chinese Chán and Korean Seon
In Chinese Chán and Korean Seon, the primary form of Koan-study is kanhua, "reflection on the koan", also called Hua Tou, "word head". In this practice, a fragment of the koan, such as "mu", or a "what is"-question is used by focusing on this fragment and repeating it over and over again:
The student is assigned only one hua-tou for a lifetime. In contrast to the similar-sounding "who am I?" question of Ramana Maharshi, hua-tou involves raising "great doubt":
Japanese Rinzai
Kōan practice is particularly important among Japanese practitioners of the Rinzai sect.
Importance of koan-study
This importance is reflected in writings in the Rinzai-school on the koan-genre. Zhongfeng Mingben (1263–1323), a Chinese Chán-master who lived at the beginning of the Yuan Dynasty, revitalized the Rinzai-tradition, and put a strong emphasis on the use of koans. He saw the kung-ans as "work of literature [that] should be used as objective, universal standards to test the insight of monks who aspired to be recognized as Ch'an masters":
Musō Soseki (1275–1351), a Japanese contemporary of Zhongfeng Mingben, relativized the use of koans. The study of koans had become popular in Japan, due to the influence of Chinese masters such as Zhongfeng Mingben. Despite belonging to the Rinzai-school, Musō Soseki also made extensive use of richi (teaching), explaining the sutras, instead of kikan (koan). According to Musō Soseki, both are upaya, "skillful means" meant to educate students. Musō Soseki called both shōkogyu, "little jewels", tools to help the student to attain satori.
Koan curricula
In Rinzai a gradual succession of koans is studied. There are two general branches of curricula used within Rinzai, derived from the principal heirs of Rinzai: the Takuju curriculum, and the Inzan curriculum. However, there are a number of sub-branches of these, and additional variations of curriculum often exist between individual teaching lines which can reflect the recorded experiences of a particular lineage's members. Koan curricula are, in fact, subject to continued accretion and evolution over time, and thus are best considered living traditions of practice rather than set programs of study.
Koan practice starts with the shokan, or "first barrier", usually the mu-koan or the koan "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" After having attained kensho, students continue their practice investigating subsequent koans. In the Takuju-school, after breakthrough students work through the Gateless Gate (Mumonkan), the Blue Cliff Record (Hekigan-roku), the Entangling Vines (Shumon Kattoshu), and the Collection of Wings of the Blackbird (, Chin'u shū). The Inzan-school uses its own internally generated list of koans.
Hakuin's descendants developed a fivefold classification system:
Hosshin, dharma-body koans, are used to awaken the first insight into sunyata. They reveal the dharmakaya, or Fundamental. They introduce "the undifferentitated and the unconditional".
Kikan, dynamic action koans, help to understand the phenomenal world as seen from the awakened point of view; Where hosshin koans represent tai, substance, kikan koans represent yu, function.
Gonsen, explication of word koans, aid to the understanding of the recorded sayings of the old masters. They show how the Fundamental, though not depending on words, is nevertheless expressed in words, without getting stuck to words.
Hachi Nanto, eight "difficult to pass" koans. There are various explanations for this category, one being that these koans cut off clinging to the previous attainment. They create another Great Doubt, which shatters the self attained through satori. It is uncertain which are exactly those eight koans. Hori gives various sources, which altogether give ten hachi nanto koans:
Miura and Sasaki:
Nansen's Flower (Hekigan-roku Case 40)
A Buffalo Passes the Window (Mumonkan Case 38)
Sōzan's Memorial Tower (Kattō-shō Case 140)
Suigan's Eyebrows (Hekigan-roku Case 8)
Enkan's Rhinoceros Fan (Hekigan-roku Case 91)
Shimano:
The Old Woman Burns the Hut (Kattō-shō Case 162)
Asahina Sōgen:
Goso Hōen's "Hakuun Said 'Not Yet'" (Kattō-shō Case 269)
Shuzan's Main Cable (Kattō-shō Case 280).
Akizuki:
Nansen Has Died (Kattō-shō Case 282)
Kenpō’s Three Illnesses (Kattō-shō Case 17).
Goi jujukin koans, the Five Ranks of Tozan and the Ten Grave Precepts.
According to Akizuki there was an older classification-system, in which the fifth category was Kojo, "Directed upwards". This category too was meant to rid the monk of any "stink of Zen". The very advanced practitioner may also receive the Matsugo no rokan, "The last barrier, and Saigo no ikketsu, "The final confirmation". "The last barrier" when one left the training hall, for example "Sum up all of the records of Rinzai in one word!" It is not meant to be solved immediately, but to be carried around in order to keep practising. "the final confirmation" may be another word for the same kind of koan.
Post-satori practice
Completing the koan-curriculum in the Rinzai-schools traditionally also led to a mastery of Chinese poetry and literary skills:
After completing the koan-training, Gogo no shugyo, post-satori training is necessary:
Breathing practices
Hakuin Ekaku, the 17th century revitalizer of the Rinzai school, taught several practices which serve to correct physical and mental imbalances arising from, among other things, incorrect or excessive koan practice. The "soft-butter" method (nanso no ho) and "introspection method" (naikan no ho) involve cultivation of ki centered on the tanden (Chinese:dantian). These practices are described in Hakuin's works Orategama and Yasen Kanna, and are still taught in some Rinzai lineages today.
Japanese Sōtō
Though few Sōtō practitioners concentrate on kōans during meditation, the Sōtō sect has a strong historical connection with kōans, since many kōan collections were compiled by Sōtō priests.
During the 13th century, Dōgen, founder of the Sōtō sect in Japan, quoted 580 kōans in his teachings. He compiled some 300 kōans in the volumes known as the Greater Shōbōgenzō. Dōgen wrote of Genjokōan, which points out that everyday life experience is the fundamental kōan.
However, according to Michel Mohr,
Sanbo Kyodan and White Plum Asanga
The Sanbo Kyodan school and the White Plum Asanga, which originated with the Sōtō-priest Hakuun Yasutani, incorporates koan-study. The Sanbo kyodan places great emphasis on kensho, initial insight into one's true nature, as a start of real practice. It follows the so-called Harada-Yasutani koan-curriculum, which is derived from Hakuin's student Takuju. It is a shortened koan-curriculum, in which the so-called "capping phrases" are removed. The curriculum takes considerably less time to study than the Takuju-curriculum of Rinzai.
To attain kensho, most students are assigned the mu-koan. After breaking through, the student first studies twenty-two "in-house" koans, which are "unpublished and not for the general public", but are nevertheless published and commented upon. There-after, the students goes through the Gateless Gate (Mumonkan), the Blue Cliff Record, the Book of Equanimity, and the Record of Transmitting the Light. The koan-curriculum is completed by the Five ranks of Tozan and the precepts.
Classical kōan collections
Kōans collectively form a substantial body of literature studied by Zen practitioners and scholars worldwide. Kōan collections commonly referenced in English include:
The Blue Cliff Record (Chinese: Bìyán Lù; Japanese: Hekiganroku), 12th century;
The Book of Equanimity (also known as the Book of Serenity; Chinese: Cóngróng Lù; Japanese: Shoyoroku), 12th century;
The Gateless Gate (also known as The Gateless Barrier; Chinese: Wúménguān; Japanese: Mumonkan) collected during the 13th century).
In these and subsequent collections, a terse "main case" of a kōan often accompanies prefatory remarks, poems, proverbs and other phrases, and further commentary about prior emendations.
The Blue Cliff Record
The Blue Cliff Record (Chinese: Bìyán Lù; Japanese: Hekiganroku) is a collection of 100 kōans compiled in 1125 by Yuanwu Keqin ( 1063–1135).
The Book of Equanimity
The Book of Equanimity or Book of Serenity (Chinese: Cóngróng lù; Japanese: Shōyōroku) is a collection of 100 Kōans by Hongzhi Zhengjue (Chinese: ; Japanese: Wanshi Shōgaku) (1091–1157), compiled with commentaries by Wansong Xingxiu (1166–1246). The full title is The Record of the Temple of Equanimity With the Classic Odes of Venerable Tiantong Jue and the Responsive Commentary of Old Man Wansong (Wansong Laoren Pingchang Tiantong Jue Heshang Songgu Congrong An Lu) (Taisho Tripitaka Vol. 48, No. 2004)
The Gateless Gate
The Gateless Gate (Chinese: Wumenguan; Japanese: Mumonkan) is a collection of 48 kōans and commentaries published in 1228 by Chinese monk Wumen () (1183–1260). The title may be more accurately rendered as Gateless Barrier or Gateless Checkpoint).
Five kōans in the collection derive from the sayings and doings of Zhaozhou Congshen, (transliterated as Chao-chou in Wade-Giles and pronounced Jōshū in Japanese).
Treasury of the True Dharma Eye
Dahui Zonggao (大慧宗杲) (1089–1163) the Zhengfayan zang (正法眼藏), "Treasury of the true dharma eye" (W-G.: Cheng-fa yen-tsang, (J.: Shōbōgenzō) a collection of koans and dialogues compiled between 1147 and 1150 by Dahui Zonggao . Dahui's 'Treasury' is composed of three scrolls prefaced by three short introductory pieces. The Zongmen liandeng huiyao 宗門聯燈會要 was compiled in 1183 by Huiweng Wuming 晦翁悟明 (n.d.), three generations after Dahui in the same line; the sermon is found in zh 20 (x 79: 173a).
Other kōan collections compiled and annotated by Sōtō priests include:
Treasury of the true dharma eye (Jap. Shobogenzo (正法眼蔵), compiled by Eihei Dogen (永平道元), 13th Century.
The Iron Flute (Japanese: Tetteki Tōsui 鐵笛倒吹, compiled by Genrō Ōryū 玄楼奥龍 in 1783)
Verses and Commentaries on One Hundred Old Cases of Tenchian (Japanese: Tenchian hyakusoku hyoju, compiled by Tetsumon in 1771.)
Examples of traditional kōans
Does a dog have Buddha-nature
("Zhaozhou" is rendered as "Chao-chou" in Wade-Giles, and pronounced "Joshu" in Japanese. "Wu" appears as "mu" in Japanese, meaning "no", "not", "nonbeing", or "without" in English. This is a fragment of Case No. 1 of the Wúménguān. However, another koan presents a longer version, in which Zhaozhou answered "yes" in response to the same question asked by a different monk: see Case No. 18 of the Book of Serenity.)
The sound of one hand
Victor Hori comments:
Original face
Huìnéng asked Hui Ming, "Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born." (This is a fragment of case No. 23 of the Wumenguan.)
Killing the Buddha
Other koans
A student asked Master Yun-Men (A.D. 949) "Not even a thought has arisen; is there still a sin or not?" Master replied, "Mount Sumeru!"
A monk asked Dongshan Shouchu, "What is Buddha?" Dongshan said, "Three pounds of flax." (This is a fragment of case No. 18 of the Wumenguan as well as case No. 12 of the Blue Cliff Record.)
A monk asked Zhaozhou, "What is the meaning of the ancestral teacher's (i.e., Bodhidharma's) coming from the west?" Zhaozhou said, "The cypress tree in front of the hall." (This is a fragment of case No. 37 of the Wumenguan as well as case No. 47 of the Book of Serenity.)
See also
Buddhism
Kirigami
Koans mentioning Subhuti, Tanzan, and Tetsugen
List of koans by Yunmen Wenyan
Mu-koan
Original face
Wild fox koan
Christianity
Apophatic theology
Other
Hacker koans, humorous expressions of hacker culture
Notes
References
Book references
Web references
Sources
Further reading
Loori, John Daido. Sitting with Koans: Essential Writings on the Zen Practice of Koan Study. Wisdom Publications, 2005.
Steven Heine, and Dale S. Wright, eds. The Kōan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Hoffmann, Yoel.tr. The Sound of the One Hand. Basic Books, 1975. This book contains examples of how some Zen practitioners answer the koans "correctly". Originally published in Japan almost a century ago as a critique of fossilization of Zen, that is formalization of koan practice.
External links
Zen Buddhism Koan Study Pages
Koan Collections and Studies
Metaphors
Riddles
Zen texts
Spiritual practice | [
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16864 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karma | Karma | Karma (; , ; ) means action, work, or deed. For the believers in spirituality the term also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect): Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and bad rebirths.
For the believers, the concept of karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Indian religions (particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism), as well as Taoism. In these schools, karma in the present affects one's future in the current life, as well as the nature and quality of future lives—one's saṃsāra. This concept has also been adopted in Western popular culture, in which the events which happen after a person's actions may be considered natural consequences.
Definition
The term karma (; ) refers to both the executed 'deed, work, action, act' and the 'object, intent'.
Wilhelm Halbfass (2000) explains karma (karman) by contrasting it with the Sanskrit word kriya: whereas kriya is the activity along with the steps and effort in action, karma is (1) the executed action as a consequence of that activity, as well as (2) the intention of the actor behind an executed action or a planned action (described by some scholars as metaphysical residue left in the actor). A good action creates good karma, as does good intent. A bad action creates bad karma, as does bad intent.
Difficulty in arriving at a definition of karma arises because of the diversity of views among the schools of Hinduism; some, for example, consider karma and rebirth linked and simultaneously essential, some consider karma but not rebirth to be essential, and a few discuss and conclude karma and rebirth to be flawed fiction. Buddhism and Jainism have their own karma precepts. Thus, karma has not one, but multiple definitions and different meanings. It is a concept whose meaning, importance, and scope varies between the various traditions that originated in India, and various schools in each of these traditions. Wendy O'Flaherty claims that, furthermore, there is an ongoing debate regarding whether karma is a theory, a model, a paradigm, a metaphor, or a metaphysical stance.
Principle of karma
Karma also refers to a conceptual principle that originated in India, often descriptively called the principle of karma, and sometimes the karma theory or the law of karma.
In the context of theory, karma is complex and difficult to define. Different schools of Indology derive different definitions for the concept from ancient Indian texts; their definition is some combination of (1) causality that may be ethical or non-ethical; (2) ethicization, i.e., good or bad actions have consequences; and (3) rebirth. Other Indologists include in the definition that which explains the present circumstances of an individual with reference to his or her actions in past. These actions may be those in a person's current life, or, in some schools of Indian traditions, possibly actions in their past lives; furthermore, the consequences may result in current life, or a person's future lives. The law of karma operates independent of any deity or any process of divine judgment.
Causality
A common theme to theories of karma is its principle of causality. This relationship between karma and causality is a central motif in all schools of Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain thought. One of the earliest association of karma to causality occurs in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad of Hinduism. For example, at 4.4.5–6, it states:
The theory of karma as causation holds that: (1) executed actions of an individual affects the individual and the life he or she lives, and (2) the intentions of an individual affects the individual and the life he or she lives. Disinterested actions, or unintentional actions do not have the same positive or negative karmic effect, as interested and intentional actions. In Buddhism, for example, actions that are performed, or arise, or originate without any bad intent such as covetousness, are considered non-existent in karmic impact or neutral in influence to the individual.
Another causality characteristic, shared by karmic theories, is that like deeds lead to like effects. Thus, good karma produces good effect on the actor, while bad karma produces bad effect. This effect may be material, moral, or emotional—that is, one's karma affects both one's happiness and unhappiness. The effect of karma need not be immediate; the effect of karma can be later in one's current life, and in some schools it extends to future lives.
The consequence or effects of one's karma can be described in two forms: phala and samskara. A phala () is the visible or invisible effect that is typically immediate or within the current life. In contrast, a samskara () is an invisible effect, produced inside the actor because of the karma, transforming the agent and affecting his or her ability to be happy or unhappy in their current and future lives. The theory of karma is often presented in the context of samskaras.
Karl Potter (1964) and Harold Coward (1983) suggest that karmic principle can also be understood as a principle of psychology and habit. Karma seeds habits (vāsanā), and habits create the nature of man. Karma also seeds self perception, and perception influences how one experiences life events. Both habits and self perception affect the course of one's life. Breaking bad habits is not easy: it requires conscious karmic effort. Thus, psyche and habit, according to Potter and Coward, link karma to causality in ancient Indian literature. The idea of karma may be compared to the notion of a person's 'character', as both are an assessment of the person and determined by that person's habitual thinking and acting.
Ethicization
The second theme common to karma theories is ethicization. This begins with the premise that every action has a consequence, which will come to fruition in either this life or a future life; thus, morally good acts will have positive consequences, whereas bad acts will produce negative results. An individual's present situation is thereby explained by reference to actions in his present or in previous lifetimes. Karma is not itself 'reward and punishment', but the law that produces consequence. Wilhelm Halbfass (1998) notes that good karma is considered as dharma and leads to punya ('merit'), while bad karma is considered adharma and leads to pāp ('demerit, sin').
Reichenbach (1988) suggests that the theories of karma are an ethical theory. This is so because the ancient scholars of India linked intent and actual action to the merit, reward, demerit, and punishment. A theory without ethical premise would be a pure causal relation; the merit or reward or demerit or punishment would be same regardless of the actor's intent. In ethics, one's intentions, attitudes and desires matter in the evaluation of one's action. Where the outcome is unintended, the moral responsibility for it is less on the actor, even though causal responsibility may be the same regardless. A karma theory considers not only the action, but also actor's intentions, attitude, and desires before and during the action. The karma concept thus encourages each person to seek and live a moral life, as well as avoid an immoral life. The meaning and significance of karma is thus as a building block of an ethical theory.
Rebirth
The third common theme of karma theories is the concept of reincarnation or the cycle of rebirths (saṃsāra). Rebirth is a fundamental concept of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Rebirth, or saṃsāra, is the concept that all life forms go through a cycle of reincarnation, that is, a series of births and rebirths. The rebirths and consequent life may be in different realm, condition, or form. The karma theories suggest that the realm, condition and form depends on the quality and quantity of karma. In schools that believe in rebirth, every living being's soul transmigrates (recycles) after death, carrying the seeds of Karmic impulses from life just completed, into another life and lifetime of karmas. This cycle continues indefinitely, except for those who consciously break this cycle by reaching moksha. Those who break the cycle reach the realm of gods, those who don't continue in the cycle.
The concept has been intensely debated in ancient literature of India; with different schools of Indian religions considering the relevance of rebirth as either essential, or secondary, or unnecessary fiction. Hiriyanna (1949) suggests rebirth to be a necessary corollary of karma; Yamunacharya (1966) asserts that karma is a fact, while reincarnation is a hypothesis; and Creel (1986) suggests that karma is a basic concept, rebirth is a derivative concept.
The theory of 'karma and rebirth' raises numerous questions—such as how, when, and why did the cycle start in the first place, what is the relative Karmic merit of one karma versus another and why, and what evidence is there that rebirth actually happens, among others. Various schools of Hinduism realized these difficulties, debated their own formulations, some reaching what they considered as internally consistent theories, while other schools modified and de-emphasized it, while a few schools in Hinduism such as Charvakas (or Lokayata) abandoned the theory of 'karma and rebirth' altogether. Schools of Buddhism consider karma-rebirth cycle as integral to their theories of soteriology.
Early development
The Vedic Sanskrit word (nominative ) means 'work' or 'deed', often used in the context of Srauta rituals. In the Rigveda, the word occurs some 40 times. In Satapatha Brahmana 1.7.1.5, sacrifice is declared as the "greatest" of works; Satapatha Brahmana 10.1.4.1 associates the potential of becoming immortal (amara) with the karma of the agnicayana sacrifice.
The earliest clear discussion of the karma doctrine is in the Upanishads. For example, causality and ethicization is stated in Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.2.13:Truly, one becomes good through good deeds, and evil through evil deeds."Some authors state that the samsara (transmigration) and karma doctrine may be non-Vedic, and the ideas may have developed in the "shramana" traditions that preceded Buddhism and Jainism. Others state that some of the complex ideas of the ancient emerging theory of karma flowed from Vedic thinkers to Buddhist and Jain thinkers. The mutual influences between the traditions is unclear, and likely co-developed.
Many philosophical debates surrounding the concept are shared by the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist traditions, and the early developments in each tradition incorporated different novel ideas. For example, Buddhists allowed karma transfer from one person to another and sraddha rites, but had difficulty defending the rationale. In contrast, Hindu schools and Jainism would not allow the possibility of karma transfer.
In Hinduism
The concept of karma in Hinduism developed and evolved over centuries. The earliest Upanishads began with the questions about how and why man is born, and what happens after death. As answers to the latter, the early theories in these ancient Sanskrit documents include pancagni vidya (the five fire doctrine), pitryana (the cyclic path of fathers) and devayana (the cycle-transcending, path of the gods). Those who do superficial rituals and seek material gain, claimed these ancient scholars, travel the way of their fathers and recycle back into another life; those who renounce these, go into the forest and pursue spiritual knowledge, were claimed to climb into the higher path of the gods. It is these who break the cycle and are not reborn. With the composition of the Epics – the common man's introduction to dharma in Hinduism – the ideas of causality and essential elements of the theory of karma were being recited in folk stories. For example:
The 6th chapter of the Anushasana Parva (the Teaching Book), the 13th book of the Mahabharata, opens with Yudhishthira asking Bhishma: "Is the course of a person's life already destined, or can human effort shape one's life?" The future, replies Bhishma, is both a function of current human effort derived from free will and past human actions that set the circumstances. Over and over again, the chapters of Mahabharata recite the key postulates of karma theory. That is: intent and action (karma) has consequences; karma lingers and doesn't disappear; and, all positive or negative experiences in life require effort and intent. For example:
Over time, various schools of Hinduism developed many different definitions of karma, some making karma appear quite deterministic, while others make room for free will and moral agency. Among the six most studied schools of Hinduism, the theory of karma evolved in different ways, as their respective scholars reasoned and attempted to address the internal inconsistencies, implications and issues of the karma doctrine. According to Professor Wilhelm Halbfass,
The Nyaya school of Hinduism considers karma and rebirth as central, with some Nyaya scholars such as Udayana suggesting that the Karma doctrine implies that God exists.
The Vaisesika school does not consider the karma from past lives doctrine very important.
The Samkhya school considers karma to be of secondary importance (second to prakrti).
The Mimamsa school gives a negligible role to karma from past lives, disregards samsara and moksa.
The Yoga school considers karma from past lives to be secondary, one's behavior and psychology in the current life is what has consequences and leads to entanglements.
The Vedanta school acknowledges the karma-rebirth doctrine, but concludes it is a theory that is not derived from reality and cannot be proven, considers it invalid for its failure to explain evil / inequality / other observable facts about society, treats it as a convenient fiction to solve practical problems in Upanishadic times, and declares it irrelevant.
In the Advaita Vedanta school, actions in current life have moral consequences and liberation is possible within one's life as jivanmukti (self-realized person).
The above schools illustrate the diversity of views, but are not exhaustive. Each school has sub-schools in Hinduism, such as that of non-dualism and dualism under Vedanta. Furthermore, there are other schools of Indian philosophy such as Charvaka (or Lokayata; the materialists) who denied the theory of karma-rebirth as well as the existence of God; to this non-Vedic school, the properties of things come from the nature of things. Causality emerges from the interaction, actions and nature of things and people, determinative principles such as karma or God are unnecessary.
In Buddhism
Karma and karmaphala are fundamental concepts in Buddhism, which explain how our intentional actions keep us tied to rebirth in samsara, whereas the Buddhist path, as exemplified in the Noble Eightfold Path, shows us the way out of samsara.
The cycle of rebirth is determined by karma, literally 'action'. Karmaphala (wherein phala means 'fruit, result') refers to the 'effect' or 'result' of karma. The similar term karmavipaka (wherein vipāka means 'ripening') refers to the 'maturation, ripening' of karma.
In the Buddhist tradition, karma refers to actions driven by intention (cetanā), a deed done deliberately through body, speech or mind, which leads to future consequences. The Nibbedhika Sutta, Anguttara Nikaya 6.63:
How these intentional actions lead to rebirth, and how the idea of rebirth is to be reconciled with the doctrines of impermanence and no-self, is a matter of philosophical inquiry in the Buddhist traditions, for which several solutions have been proposed. In early Buddhism no explicit theory of rebirth and karma is worked out, and "the karma doctrine may have been incidental to early Buddhist soteriology." In early Buddhism, rebirth is ascribed to craving or ignorance.
The Buddha's teaching of karma is not strictly deterministic, but incorporated circumstantial factors, unlike that of the Jains. It is not a rigid and mechanical process, but a flexible, fluid and dynamic process. There is no set linear relationship between a particular action and its results. The karmic effect of a deed is not determined solely by the deed itself, but also by the nature of the person who commits the deed, and by the circumstances in which it is committed. Karmaphala is not a "judgement" enforced by a God, Deity or other supernatural being that controls the affairs of the Cosmos. Rather, karmaphala is the outcome of a natural process of cause and effect.
Within Buddhism, the real importance of the doctrine of karma and its fruits lies in the recognition of the urgency to put a stop to the whole process. The Acintita Sutta warns that "the results of kamma" is one of the four incomprehensible subjects (or acinteyya), subjects that are beyond all conceptualization and cannot be understood with logical thought or reason.
Nichiren Buddhism teaches that transformation and change through faith and practice changes adverse karma—negative causes made in the past that result in negative results in the present and future—to positive causes for benefits in the future.
In Jainism
In Jainism, karma conveys a totally different meaning from that commonly understood in Hindu philosophy and western civilization. Jain philosophy is the one of the oldest Indian philosophy that completely separates body (matter) from the soul (pure consciousness). In Jainism, karma is referred to as karmic dirt, as it consists of very subtle particles of matter that pervade the entire universe. Karmas are attracted to the karmic field of a soul due to vibrations created by activities of mind, speech, and body as well as various mental dispositions. Hence the karmas are the subtle matter surrounding the consciousness of a soul. When these two components (consciousness and karma) interact, we experience the life we know at present. Jain texts expound that seven tattvas (truths or fundamentals) constitute reality. These are:
Jīva: the soul which is characterized by consciousness
Ajīva: the non-soul
Āsrava: inflow of auspicious and evil karmic matter into the soul.
Bandha (bondage): mutual intermingling of the soul and karmas.
Samvara (stoppage): obstruction of the inflow of karmic matter into the soul.
Nirjara (gradual dissociation): separation or falling off of part of karmic matter from the soul.
Mokṣha (liberation): complete annihilation of all karmic matter (bound with any particular soul).
According to Padmanabh Jaini,
This emphasis on reaping the fruits only of one's own karma was not restricted to the Jainas; both Hindus and Buddhist writers have produced doctrinal materials stressing the same point. Each of the latter traditions, however, developed practices in basic contradiction to such belief. In addition to shrardha (the ritual Hindu offerings by the son of deceased), we find among Hindus widespread adherence to the notion of divine intervention in ones fate, while Buddhists eventually came to propound such theories like boon-granting bodhisattvas, transfer of merit and like. Only Jainas have been absolutely unwilling to allow such ideas to penetrate their community, despite the fact that there must have been tremendous amount of social pressure on them to do so.
The relationship between the soul and karma, states Padmanabh Jaini, can be explained with the analogy of gold. Like gold is always found mixed with impurities in its original state, Jainism holds that the soul is not pure at its origin but is always impure and defiled like natural gold. One can exert effort and purify gold, similarly, Jainism states that the defiled soul can be purified by proper refining methodology. Karma either defiles the soul further, or refines it to a cleaner state, and this affects future rebirths. Karma is thus an efficient cause (nimitta) in Jain philosophy, but not the material cause (upadana). The soul is believed to be the material cause.
The key points where the theory of karma in Jainism can be stated as follows:
Karma operates as a self-sustaining mechanism as natural universal law, without any need of an external entity to manage them. (absence of the exogenous 'Divine entity' in Jainism)
Jainism advocates that a soul attracts karmic matter even with the thoughts, and not just the actions. Thus, to even think evil of someone would endure a karma-bandha or an increment in bad karma. For this reason, Jainism emphasise on developing Ratnatraya (The Three Jewels): samyak darśana ('Right Faith'), samyak jnāna ('Right Knowledge') and samyak charitra ('Right Conduct').
In Jain theology, a soul is released of worldly affairs as soon as it is able to emancipate from the karma-bandha. In Jainism, nirvana and moksha are used interchangeably. Nirvana represents annihilation of all karmas by an individual soul and moksha represents the perfect blissful state (free from all bondage). In the presence of a Tirthankara, a soul can attain Kevala Jnana ('omniscience') and subsequently nirvana, without any need of intervention by the Tirthankara.
The karmic theory in Jainism operates endogenously. Even the Tirthankaras themselves have to go through the stages of emancipation, for attaining that state.
Jainism treats all souls equally, inasmuch as it advocates that all souls have the same potential of attaining nirvana. Only those who make effort, really attain it, but nonetheless, each soul is capable on its own to do so by gradually reducing its karma.
Eight Karmas
There are eight types of Karma which attach a soul to Samsar (the cycle of birth and death):
Gyanavarniya (knowledge-obstructing): like a veil prevents a face and its features from being seen, this karma prevents the soul from knowing an object along with details about that object. This karma obstructs the soul from realizing its essential quality of knowledge. In its absence, a soul is omniscient. There are five sub-types of gyanavarniya karma which prevents the five types of knowledge: mati gyan (sensory knowledge), shrut gyan (articulate knowledge), avadhi gyan (clairvoyance), mana paryay gyan (telepathy) and keval gyan (omniscience).
Darshanavarniya (perception-obstructing): like a gatekeeper prevents the sight of the king, this karma prevents an object from being perceived, hiding it. This karma obstructs the soul from realizing its essential quality of perception. In its absence, a soul completely perceives all substances in the universe. There are nine sub-types of this karma. Four of these prevent the four types of perception; visual perception, non-visual perception, clairvoyant perception and omniscient perception. The other five sub-types of darshanavarniya karma bondage induce five kinds of sleep causing reduction in consciousness: light sleep, deep sleep, drowsiness, heavy drowsiness, and sleep-walking.
Vedaniya (sensation-producing): like licking honey from a sword gives a sweet taste but cuts the tongue, this karma makes a soul experience pleasure and pain. The soul's bliss is continuously disturbed by experiences of external sensual pleasure and pain. In the absence of the vedaniya karma, the soul experiences undisturbed bliss. There are two sub-types of this karma; pleasure-producing and pain-producing.
Mohniya (deluding): like a bee becomes infatuated with the smell of a flower and is attracted to it, this karma attracts the soul to the objects that it considers favorable while repelling it from objects it considers unfavorable. It creates a delusion in the soul that external objects can affect it. This karma obstructs the soul's essential quality of happiness and prevents the soul from finding pure happiness in itself.
Ayu (lifespan-determining): like a prisoner remains trapped by iron chains (around his legs, hands, etc.) this karma keeps a soul trapped in a particular life (or birth).
Naam (body-producing): like a painter creates various pictures and gives them various names, this karma gives souls various types of bodies (that are classified based on various attributes). It is the naamkarma which determines the body of living organism into which the soul must enter.
Gotra (status-determining): like a potter makes short and tall pots, this karma bestows a low or high (societal) status on the body of soul. It creates social inequalities and in its absence, all souls are equal. There are two sub-types of gotra karma: high status and low status.
Antaray (power-obstructing): like a treasurer obstructs a king from spending his wealth, this karma prevents the soul from using its innate power for acts of charity, profit, enjoyment, repeated enjoyment and will-power. It obstructs and prevents the soul's essential quality of infinite power from manifesting. In its absence, a soul has infinite power.
Reception in other traditions
Sikhism
In Sikhism, all living beings are described as being under the influence of the three qualities of maya. Always present together in varying mix and degrees, these three qualities of maya bind the soul to the body and to the earth plane. Above these three qualities is the eternal time. Due to the influence of three modes of maya's nature, jivas (individual beings) perform activities under the control and purview of the eternal time. These activities are called karma, wherein the underlying principle is that karma is the law that brings back the results of actions to the person performing them.
This life is likened to a field in which our karma is the seed. We harvest exactly what we sow; no less, no more. This infallible law of karma holds everyone responsible for what the person is or is going to be. Based on the total sum of past karma, some feel close to the Pure Being in this life and others feel separated. This is the law of karma in Gurbani (Sri Guru Granth Sahib). Like other Indian and oriental schools of thought, the Gurbani also accepts the doctrines of karma and reincarnation as the facts of nature.
Falun Gong
David Ownby, a scholar of Chinese history at the University of Montreal, asserts that Falun Gong differs from Buddhism in its definition of the term "karma" in that it is taken not as a process of award and punishment, but as an exclusively negative term. The Chinese term de, or 'virtue', is reserved for what might otherwise be termed 'good karma' in Buddhism. Karma is understood as the source of all suffering – what Buddhism might refer to as 'bad karma'. According to Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong: "A person has done bad things over his many lifetimes, and for people this results in misfortune, or for cultivators it's karmic obstacles, so there's birth, aging, sickness, and death. This is ordinary karma."
Falun Gong teaches that the spirit is locked in the cycle of rebirth, also known as samsara, due to the accumulation of karma. This is a negative, black substance that accumulates in other dimensions lifetime after lifetime, by doing bad deeds and thinking bad thoughts. Falun Gong states that karma is the reason for suffering, and what ultimately blocks people from the truth of the universe and attaining enlightenment. At the same time, karma is also the cause of one's continued rebirth and suffering. Li says that due to accumulation of karma the human spirit upon death will reincarnate over and over again, until the karma is paid off or eliminated through cultivation, or the person is destroyed due to the bad deeds he has done.
Ownby regards the concept of karma as a cornerstone to individual moral behaviour in Falun Gong, and also readily traceable to the Christian doctrine of "one reaps what one sows". Others say Matthew 5:44 means no unbeliever will not fully reap what they sow until they are judged by God after death in Hell. Ownby says Falun Gong is differentiated by a "system of transmigration", although, "in which each organism is the reincarnation of a previous life form, its current form having been determined by karmic calculation of the moral qualities of the previous lives lived." Ownby says the seeming unfairness of manifest inequities can then be explained, at the same time allowing a space for moral behaviour in spite of them. In the same vein of Li's monism, matter and spirit are one, karma is identified as a black substance which must be purged in the process of cultivation.
According to Li, Human beings all fell here from the many dimensions of the universe. They no longer met the requirements of the Fa at their given levels in the universe, and thus had to drop down. Just as we have said before, the heavier one's mortal attachments, the further down one drops, with the descent continuing until one arrives at the state of ordinary human beings.He says that, in the eyes of higher beings, the purpose of human life is not merely to be human, but to awaken quickly on Earth, a "setting of delusion," and return. "That is what they really have in mind; they are opening a door for you. Those who fail to return will have no choice but to reincarnate, with this continuing until they amass a huge amount of karma and are destroyed."
Ownby regards this as the basis for Falun Gong's apparent "opposition to practitioners' taking medicine when ill; they are missing an opportunity to work off karma by allowing an illness to run its course (suffering depletes karma) or to fight the illness through cultivation." Benjamin Penny shares this interpretation. Since Li believes that "karma is the primary factor that causes sickness in people," Penny asks: "if disease comes from karma and karma can be eradicated through cultivation of xinxing, then what good will medicine do?" Li himself states that he is not forbidding practitioners from taking medicine, maintaining that "What I'm doing is telling people the relationship between practicing cultivation and medicine-taking." Li also states that "An everyday person needs to take medicine when he gets sick." Danny Schechter (2001) quotes a Falun Gong student who says "It is always an individual choice whether one should take medicine or not."
Taoism
Karma is an important concept in Taoism. Every deed is tracked by deities and spirits. Appropriate rewards or retribution follow karma, just like a shadow follows a person.
The karma doctrine of Taoism developed in three stages. In the first stage, causality between actions and consequences was adopted, with supernatural beings keeping track of everyone's karma and assigning fate (ming). In the second phase, transferability of karma ideas from Chinese Buddhism were expanded, and a transfer or inheritance of Karmic fate from ancestors to one's current life was introduced. In the third stage of karma doctrine development, ideas of rebirth based on karma were added. One could be reborn either as another human being or another animal, according to this belief. In the third stage, additional ideas were introduced; for example, rituals, repentance and offerings at Taoist temples were encouraged as it could alleviate Karmic burden.
Shinto
Interpreted as musubi, a view of karma is recognized in Shinto as a means of enriching, empowering and life affirming.
Discussion
Free will and destiny
One of the significant controversies with the karma doctrine is whether it always implies destiny, and its implications on free will. This controversy is also referred to as the moral agency problem; the controversy is not unique to karma doctrine, but also found in some form in monotheistic religions.
The free will controversy can be outlined in three parts:
A person who kills, rapes or commits any other unjust act, can claim all his bad actions were a product of his karma: he is devoid of free will, he can not make a choice, he is an agent of karma, and he merely delivers necessary punishments his "wicked" victims deserved for their own karma in past lives. Are crimes and unjust actions due to free will, or because of forces of karma?
Does a person who suffers from the unnatural death of a loved one, or rape or any other unjust act, assume a moral agent is responsible, that the harm is gratuitous, and therefore seek justice? Or, should one blame oneself for bad karma over past lives, and assume that the unjust suffering is fate?
Does the karma doctrine undermine the incentive for moral education—because all suffering is deserved and consequence of past lives, why learn anything when the balance sheet of karma from past lives will determine one's action and sufferings?
The explanations and replies to the above free will problem vary by the specific school of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The schools of Hinduism, such as Yoga and Advaita Vedanta, that have emphasized current life over the dynamics of karma residue moving across past lives, allow free will. Their argument, as well of other schools, are threefold:
The theory of karma includes both the action and the intent behind that action. Not only is one affected by past karma, one creates new karma whenever one acts with intent – good or bad. If intent and act can be proven beyond reasonable doubt, new karma can be proven, and the process of justice can proceed against this new karma. The actor who kills, rapes or commits any other unjust act, must be considered as the moral agent for this new karma, and tried.
Life forms not only receive and reap the consequence of their past karma, together they are the means to initiate, evaluate, judge, give and deliver consequence of karma to others.
Karma is a theory that explains some evils, not all (cf. moral evil versus natural evil).
Other schools of Hinduism, as well as Buddhism and Jainism that do consider cycle of rebirths central to their beliefs and that karma from past lives affects one's present, believe that both free will (cetanā) and karma can co-exist; however, their answers have not persuaded all scholars.
Psychological indeterminacy
Another issue with the theory of karma is that it is psychologically indeterminate, suggests Obeyesekere (1968). That is, if no one can know what their karma was in previous lives, and if the karma from past lives can determine one's future, then the individual is psychologically unclear what if anything he or she can do now to shape the future, be more happy, or reduce suffering. If something goes wrong, such as sickness or failure at work, the individual is unclear if karma from past lives was the cause, or the sickness was caused by curable infection and the failure was caused by something correctable.
This psychological indeterminacy problem is also not unique to the theory of karma; it is found in every religion adopting the premise that God has a plan, or in some way influences human events. As with the karma-and-free-will problem above, schools that insist on primacy of rebirths face the most controversy. Their answers to the psychological indeterminacy issue are the same as those for addressing the free will problem.
Transferability
Some schools of Asian religions, particularly popular Buddhism, allow transfer of karma merit and demerit from one person to another. This transfer is an exchange of non-physical quality just like an exchange of physical goods between two human beings. The practice of karma transfer, or even its possibility, is controversial. Karma transfer raises questions similar to those with substitutionary atonement and vicarious punishment. It defeats the ethical foundations, and dissociates the causality and ethicization in the theory of karma from the moral agent. Proponents of some Buddhist schools suggest that the concept of karma merit transfer encourages religious giving, and such transfers are not a mechanism to transfer bad karma (i.e., demerit) from one person to another.
In Hinduism, Sraddha rites during funerals have been labelled as karma merit transfer ceremonies by a few scholars, a claim disputed by others. Other schools in Hinduism, such as the Yoga and Advaita Vedantic philosophies, and Jainism hold that karma can not be transferred.
The problem of evil
There has been an ongoing debate about karma theory and how it answers the problem of evil and related problem of theodicy. The problem of evil is a significant question debated in monotheistic religions with two beliefs:
There is one God who is absolutely good and compassionate (omnibenevolent); and
That one God knows absolutely everything (omniscient) and is all powerful (omnipotent).
The problem of evil is then stated in formulations such as, "why does the omnibenevolent, omniscient and omnipotent God allow any evil and suffering to exist in the world?" Sociologist Max Weber extended the problem of evil to Eastern traditions.
The problem of evil, in the context of karma, has been long discussed in Eastern traditions, both in theistic and non-theistic schools; for example, in Uttara Mīmāṃsā Sutras Book 2 Chapter 1; the 8th century arguments by Adi Sankara in Brahma Sutra bhasya where he posits that God cannot reasonably be the cause of the world because there exists moral evil, inequality, cruelty and suffering in the world; and the 11th century theodicy discussion by Ramanuja in Sri Bhasya. Epics such as the Mahabharata, for example, suggests three prevailing theories in ancient India as to why good and evil exists one being that everything is ordained by God, another being karma, and a third citing chance events (yadrccha, यदृच्छा). The Mahabharata, which includes Hindu deity Vishnu in the form of Krishna as one of the central characters in the Epic, debates the nature and existence of suffering from these three perspectives, and includes a theory of suffering as arising from an interplay of chance events (such as floods and other events of nature), circumstances created by past human actions, and the current desires, volitions, dharma, adharma and current actions (purusakara) of people. However, while karma theory in the Mahabharata presents alternative perspectives on the problem of evil and suffering, it offers no conclusive answer.
Other scholars suggest that nontheistic Indian religious traditions do not assume an omnibenevolent creator, and some theistic schools do not define or characterize their God(s) as monotheistic Western religions do and the deities have colorful, complex personalities; the Indian deities are personal and cosmic facilitators, and in some schools conceptualized like Plato's Demiurge. Therefore, the problem of theodicy in many schools of major Indian religions is not significant, or at least is of a different nature than in Western religions. Many Indian religions place greater emphasis on developing the karma principle for first cause and innate justice with Man as focus, rather than developing religious principles with the nature and powers of God and divine judgment as focus. Some scholars, particularly of the Nyaya school of Hinduism and Sankara in Brahma Sutra bhasya, have posited that karma doctrine implies existence of god, who administers and affects the person's environment given that person's karma, but then acknowledge that it makes karma as violable, contingent and unable to address the problem of evil. Arthur Herman states that karma-transmigration theory solves all three historical formulations to the problem of evil while acknowledging the theodicy insights of Sankara and Ramanuja.
Some theistic Indian religions, such as Sikhism, suggest evil and suffering are a human phenomenon and arises from the karma of individuals. In other theistic schools such as those in Hinduism, particularly its Nyaya school, karma is combined with dharma and evil is explained as arising from human actions and intent that is in conflict with dharma. In nontheistic religions such as Buddhism, Jainism and the Mimamsa school of Hinduism, karma theory is used to explain the cause of evil as well as to offer distinct ways to avoid or be unaffected by evil in the world.
Those schools of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism that rely on karma-rebirth theory have been critiqued for their theological explanation of suffering in children by birth, as the result of his or her sins in a past life. Others disagree, and consider the critique as flawed and a misunderstanding of the karma theory.
Comparable concepts
Western culture, influenced by Christianity, holds a notion similar to karma, as demonstrated in the phrase "what goes around comes around".
Christianity
Mary Jo Meadow suggests karma is akin to "Christian notions of sin and its effects." She states that the Christian teaching on a Last Judgment according to one's charity is a teaching on karma. Christianity also teaches morals such as one reaps what one sows (Galatians 6:7) and live by the sword, die by the sword (Matthew 26:52). Most scholars, however, consider the concept of Last Judgment as different from karma, with karma as an ongoing process that occurs every day in one's life, while Last Judgment, by contrast, is a one-time review at the end of life.
Judaism
There is a concept in Judaism called in Hebrew midah k'neged midah, which is often translated as "measure for measure". The concept is used not so much in matters of law, but rather in matters of divine retribution for a person's actions. David Wolpe compared midah k'neged midah to karma.
Psychoanalysis
Carl Jung once opined on unresolved emotions and the synchronicity of karma;
Popular methods for negating cognitive dissonance include meditation, metacognition, counselling, psychoanalysis, etc., whose aim is to enhance emotional self-awareness and thus avoid negative karma. This results in better emotional hygiene and reduced karmic impacts. Permanent neuronal changes within the amygdala and left prefrontal cortex of the human brain attributed to long-term meditation and metacognition techniques have been proven scientifically. This process of emotional maturation aspires to a goal of Individuation or self-actualisation. Such peak experiences are hypothetically devoid of any karma (nirvana or moksha).
Theosophy, Spiritism, New Age
The idea of karma was popularized in the Western world through the work of the Theosophical Society. In this conception, karma was a precursor to the Neopagan law of return or Threefold Law, the idea that the beneficial or harmful effects one has on the world will return to oneself. Colloquially this may be summed up as 'what goes around comes around.'
Theosophist I. K. Taimni wrote, "Karma is nothing but the Law of Cause and Effect operating in the realm of human life and bringing about adjustments between an individual and other individuals whom he has affected by his thoughts, emotions and actions." Theosophy also teaches that when humans reincarnate they come back as humans only, not as animals or other organisms.
See also
Adrsta
Amor fati
Anantarika-karma
Causes of karma in Jainism
Consequentialism
Divine retribution
Ethic of reciprocity
Hoʻoponopono#Freedom from karma
Just-world hypothesis
Karma yoga
Luck
Moksha
Nishkam Karma
Pratītyasamutpāda
Saṅkhāra
Self-fulfilling prophecy
Social Credit System
Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy of Karma
Types of Karma
Unintended consequence
Work (Christian theology)
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
External links
Buddhist philosophical concepts
Hindu philosophical concepts
Jain philosophical concepts
Reincarnation
Spirituality | [
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16869 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights%20Templar | Knights Templar | The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (), also known as the Order of Solomon's Temple, the Knights Templar, or simply the Templars, was a Catholic military order, one of the most wealthy and popular of the Western Christian military orders. They were founded in 1119, headquartered on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and existed for nearly two centuries during the Middle Ages.
Officially endorsed by the Roman Catholic Church by such decrees as the papal bull Omne datum optimum of Pope Innocent II, the Templars became a favored charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were amongst the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades. They were prominent in Christian finance; non-combatant members of the order, who made up as much as 90% of their members, managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom. They developed innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking, building a network of nearly 1,000 commanderies and fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land, and arguably forming the world's first multinational corporation.
The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the order faded. Rumours about the Templars' secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of France, while being deeply in debt to the order, used this distrust to take advantage of the situation. In 1307, he pressured Pope Clement to have many of the order's members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and then burned at the stake. Under further pressure, Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312. The abrupt disappearance of a major part of the European infrastructure gave rise to speculation and legends, which have kept the "Templar" name alive into the present day.
History
Rise
After the Franks in the First Crusade captured Jerusalem from the Fatimid Caliphate in 1099 A.D., many Christians made pilgrimages to various sacred sites in the Holy Land. Although the city of Jerusalem was relatively secure under Christian control, the rest of Outremer was not. Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon these Christian pilgrims, who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at Jaffa through to the interior of the Holy Land.
In 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a monastic order for the protection of these pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request, probably at the Council of Nablus in January 1120, and the king granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al-Aqsa Mosque as Solomon's Temple, and from this location the new order took the name of Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or "Templar" knights. The order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive. Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasizing the order's poverty.
The impoverished status of the Templars did not last long. They had a powerful advocate in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading Church figure, the French abbot primarily responsible for the founding of the Cistercian Order of monks and a nephew of André de Montbard, one of the founding knights. Bernard put his weight behind them and wrote persuasively on their behalf in the letter 'In Praise of the New Knighthood', and in 1129, at the Council of Troyes, he led a group of leading churchmen to officially approve and endorse the order on behalf of the church. With this formal blessing, the Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the Holy Land. At the Council of Pisa in 1135, Pope Innocent II initiated the first papal monetary donation to the Order. Another major benefit came in 1139, when Innocent II's papal bull Omne Datum Optimum exempted the order from obedience to local laws. This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through all borders, were not required to pay any taxes, and were exempt from all authority except that of the pope.
With its clear mission and ample resources, the order grew rapidly. Templars were often the advance shock troops in key battles of the Crusades, as the heavily armoured knights on their warhorses would set out to charge at the enemy, ahead of the main army bodies, in an attempt to break opposition lines. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 during the Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templar knights helped several thousand infantry to defeat Saladin's army of more than 26,000 soldiers.
Although the primary mission of the order was militaristic, relatively few members were combatants. The others acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the financial infrastructure. The Templar Order, though its members were sworn to individual poverty, was given control of wealth beyond direct donations. A nobleman who was interested in participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar management while he was away. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom and the Outremer, the order in 1150 began generating letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, then used that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds in an amount of treasure of equal value. This innovative arrangement was an early form of banking and may have been the first formal system to support the use of cheques; it improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets for thieves, and also contributed to the Templar coffers.
Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built massive stone cathedrals and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualifies as the world's first multinational corporation.
Decline
In the mid-12th century, the tide began to turn in the Crusades. The Islamic world had become more united under effective leaders such as Saladin. Dissension arose among Christian factions in and concerning the Holy Land. The Knights Templar were occasionally at odds with the two other Christian military orders, the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights, and decades of internecine feuds weakened Christian positions, both politically and militarily. After the Templars were involved in several unsuccessful campaigns, including the pivotal Battle of Hattin, Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim forces under Saladin in 1187. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II reclaimed the city for Christians in the Sixth Crusade of 1229, without Templar aid, but only held it for a little more than a decade. In 1244, the Ayyubid dynasty together with Khwarezmi mercenaries recaptured Jerusalem, and the city did not return to Western control until 1917 when, during World War I, the British captured it from the Ottoman Empire.
The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to other cities in the north, such as the seaport of Acre, which they held for the next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their last mainland strongholds, Tortosa (Tartus in what is now Syria) and Atlit in present-day Israel. Their headquarters then moved to Limassol on the island of Cyprus, and they also attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny Arwad Island, just off the coast from Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in coordinated military efforts with the Mongols via a new invasion force at Arwad. In 1302 or 1303, however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate in the siege of Arwad. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land.
With the order's military mission now less important, support for the organization began to dwindle. The situation was complex, however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom. The organisation's Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level. The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The order was still not subject to local government, making it everywhere a "state within a state" – its standing army, though it no longer had a well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders. This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia and the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes.
Arrests, charges and dissolution
In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two orders. Neither was amenable to the idea, but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months. While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed criminal charges that had been made two years earlier by an ousted Templar and were being discussed by King Philip IV of France and his ministers. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent the king a written request for assistance in the investigation. According to some historians, King Philip, who was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war against England, decided to seize upon the rumours for his own purposes. He began pressuring the church to take action against the order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.
At dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307—a date sometimes incorrectly linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition—King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the words: " ("God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom"). Claims were made that during Templar admissions ceremonies, recruits were forced to spit on the Cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent kissing; brethren were also accused of worshipping idols, and the order was said to have encouraged homosexual practices. These allegations, though, were highly politicised without any real evidence. Still, the Templars were charged with numerous other offences such as financial corruption, fraud, and secrecy. Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture (even though the Templars denied being tortured in their written confessions), and their confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. The prisoners were coerced to confess that they had spat on the Cross. One said: ("I, Raymond de La Fère, 21 years old, admit that I have spat three times on the Cross, but only from my mouth and not from my heart"). The Templars were accused of idolatry and were suspected of worshiping either a figure known as Baphomet or a mummified severed head they recovered, amongst other artifacts, at their original headquarters on the Temple Mount that many scholars theorize might have been that of John the Baptist, among other things.
Relenting to Phillip's demands, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull Pastoralis praeeminentiae on 22 November 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars' guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors' torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310, having appointed the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.
With Philip threatening military action unless the pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in excelso, which officially dissolved the order, and Ad providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.
As for the leaders of the order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his confession. Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, also retracted his confession and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on 18 March 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer. According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows: "Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort" ("God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death"). Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died while hunting before the end of the year.
The remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other Catholic military orders, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller except in the Kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. Portugal was the first country in Europe where they had settled, occurring only two or three years after the order's foundation in Jerusalem and even having presence during Portugal's conception.
The Portuguese king, Denis I, refused to pursue and persecute the former knights, as had occurred in all other sovereign states under the influence of the Catholic Church. Under his protection, Templar organizations simply changed their name, from "Knights Templar" to the reconstituted Order of Christ and also a parallel Supreme Order of Christ of the Holy See; both are considered successors to the Knights Templar.
Chinon Parchment
In September 2001, a document known as the Chinon Parchment dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Barbara Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312, as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were "restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church". This other Chinon Parchment has been well known to historians, having been published by Étienne Baluze in 1693 and by Pierre Dupuy in 1751.
The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the order or its rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement's relative.
Organization
The Templars were organized as a monastic order similar to Bernard's Cistercian Order, which was considered the first effective international organization in Europe. The organizational structure had a strong chain of authority. Each country with a major Templar presence (France, Poitou, Anjou, Jerusalem, England, (Spain), Portugal, Italy, Tripoli, Antioch, Hungary, and Croatia) had a Master of the Order for the Templars in that region.
All of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the order's military efforts in the East and their financial holdings in the West. The Grand Master exercised his authority via the visitors-general of the order, who were knights specially appointed by the Grand Master and convent of Jerusalem to visit the different provinces, correct malpractices, introduce new regulations, and resolve important disputes. The visitors-general had the power to remove knights from office and to suspend the Master of the province concerned.
No precise numbers exist, but it is estimated that at the order's peak there were between 15,000 and 20,000 Templars, of whom about a tenth were actual knights.
Ranks within the order
Three main ranks
There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars: the noble knights, the non-noble sergeants, and the chaplains. The Templars did not perform knighting ceremonies, so any knight wishing to become a Knight Templar had to be a knight already. They were the most visible branch of the order, and wore the famous white mantles to symbolize their purity and chastity. They were equipped as heavy cavalry, with three or four horses and one or two squires. Squires were generally not members of the order but were instead outsiders who were hired for a set period of time. Beneath the knights in the order and drawn from non-noble families were the sergeants. They brought vital skills and trades from blacksmiths and builders, including administration of many of the order's European properties. In the Crusader States, they fought alongside the knights as light cavalry with a single horse. Several of the order's most senior positions were reserved for sergeants, including the post of Commander of the Vault of Acre, who was the de facto Admiral of the Templar fleet. The sergeants wore black or brown. From 1139, chaplains constituted a third Templar class. They were ordained priests who cared for the Templars' spiritual needs. All three classes of brother wore the order's red cross.
Grand Masters
Starting with founder Hugues de Payens in 1118–1119, the order's highest office was that of Grand Master, a position which was held for life, though considering the martial nature of the order, this could mean a very short tenure. All but two of the Grand Masters died in office, and several died during military campaigns. For example, during the Siege of Ascalon in 1153, Grand Master Bernard de Tremelay led a group of 40 Templars through a breach in the city walls. When the rest of the Crusader army did not follow, the Templars, including their Grand Master, were surrounded and beheaded. Grand Master Gérard de Ridefort was beheaded by Saladin in 1189 at the Siege of Acre.
The Grand Master oversaw all of the operations of the order, including both the military operations in the Holy Land and Eastern Europe and the Templars' financial and business dealings in Western Europe. Some Grand Masters also served as battlefield commanders, though this was not always wise: several blunders in de Ridefort's combat leadership contributed to the devastating defeat at the Battle of Hattin. The last Grand Master was Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 by order of King Philip IV.
Conduct, costume and beards
Bernard de Clairvaux and founder Hugues de Payens devised a specific code of conduct for the Templar Order, known to modern historians as the Latin Rule. Its 72 clauses laid down the details of the knights' way of life, including the types of garments they were to wear and how many horses they could have. Knights were to take their meals in silence, eat meat no more than three times per week, and not have physical contact of any kind with women, even members of their own family. A Master of the Order was assigned "4 horses, and one chaplain-brother and one clerk with three horses, and one sergeant brother with two horses, and one gentleman valet to carry his shield and lance, with one horse". As the order grew, more guidelines were added, and the original list of 72 clauses was expanded to several hundred in its final form.
The knights wore a white surcoat with a red cross, and a white mantle also with a red cross; the sergeants wore a black tunic with a red cross on the front and a black or brown mantle. The white mantle was assigned to the Templars at the Council of Troyes in 1129, and the cross was most probably added to their robes at the launch of the Second Crusade in 1147, when Pope Eugenius III, King Louis VII of France, and many other notables attended a meeting of the French Templars at their headquarters near Paris. Under the Rule, the knights were to wear the white mantle at all times: they were even forbidden to eat or drink unless wearing it.
The red cross that the Templars wore on their robes was a symbol of martyrdom, and to die in combat was considered a great honour that assured a place in heaven. There was a cardinal rule that the warriors of the order should never surrender unless the Templar flag had fallen, and even then they were first to try to regroup with another of the Christian orders, such as that of the Hospitallers. Only after all flags had fallen were they allowed to leave the battlefield. This uncompromising principle, along with their reputation for courage, excellent training, and heavy armament, made the Templars one of the most feared combat forces in medieval times.
Although not prescribed by the Templar Rule, it later became customary for members of the order to wear long and prominent beards. In about 1240, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines described the Templars as an "order of bearded brethren"; while during the interrogations by the papal commissioners in Paris in 1310–1311, out of nearly 230 knights and brothers questioned, 76 are described as wearing a beard, in some cases specified as being "in the style of the Templars", and 133 are said to have shaved off their beards, either in renunciation of the order or because they had hoped to escape detection.
Initiation, known as Reception (receptio) into the order, was a profound commitment and involved a solemn ceremony. Outsiders were discouraged from attending the ceremony, which aroused the suspicions of medieval inquisitors during the later trials. New members had to willingly sign over all of their wealth and goods to the order and take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience. Most brothers joined for life, although some were allowed to join for a set period. Sometimes a married man was allowed to join if he had his wife's permission, but he was not allowed to wear the white mantle.
Legacy
With their military mission and extensive financial resources, the Knights Templar funded a large number of building projects around Europe and the Holy Land. Many of these structures are still standing. Many sites also maintain the name "Temple" because of centuries-old association with the Templars. For example, some of the Templars' lands in London were later rented to lawyers, which led to the names of the Temple Bar gateway and the Temple Underground station. Two of the four Inns of Court which may call members to act as barristers are the Inner Temple and Middle Temple – the entire area known as Temple, London.
Distinctive architectural elements of Templar buildings include the use of the image of "two knights on a single horse", representing the Knights' poverty, and round buildings designed to resemble the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
Modern organizations
The Knights Templar were dismantled in the Rolls of the Catholic Church in 1309. Following the suppression of the Order, a number of Knights Templar joined the newly established Order of Christ, which effectively reabsorbed the Knights Templar and its properties in AD 1319, especially in Portugal. The story of the persecution and sudden dissolution of the secretive yet powerful medieval Templars has drawn many other groups to use alleged connections with them as a way of enhancing their own image and mystery. Apart from the Order of Christ, there is no clear historical connection between the Knights Templar and any other modern organization, the earliest of which emerged publicly in the 18th century.
Order of Christ
Following the dissolution of the Knights Templar, the Order of Christ was erected in 1319 and absorbed many of the Knights Templar into its ranks, along with Knights Templar properties in Portugal. Its headquarters became a castle in Tomar, a former Knights Templar castle.
The Military Order of Christ consider themselves the successors of the former Knights Templar. After the Templars were abolished on 22 March 1312, the Order of Christ was founded in 1319 under the protection of the Portuguese king Denis, who refused to persecute the former knights as in most other states under the influence of the Catholic Church. Denis revived the Templars of Tomar as the Order of Christ, grateful for their aid during the Reconquista and in the reconstruction of Portugal after the wars. Denis negotiated with Clement's successor John XXII for recognition of the new order and its right to inherit Templar assets and property. This was granted in the papal bull Ad ea ex quibus of 14 March 1319.
Temperance movement
Many temperance organizations named themselves after the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, citing the belief that the original Knights Templar "drank sour milk, and also because they were fighting 'a great crusade' against 'this terrible vice' of alcohol". The largest of these, the International Order of Good Templars (IOGT), grew throughout the world after being started in the 19th century and continues to advocate for the abstinence from alcohol and other drugs; other Orders in this tradition include those of the Templars of Honor and Temperance (Tempel Riddare Orden), which has a large presence in Scandinavia.
Self-styled orders
The Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem (French: Ordre Souverain et Militaire du Temple de Jérusalem, OSMTJ) ( (Latin: Ordo Supremus Militaris Templi Hierosolymitani, OSMTH) is a self-styled order which was publicly disclosed in 1804 and "accredited as a nongovernmental organization (NGO) by the UN in 2001". It is ecumenical in that it admits Christians of many denominations in its ranks. Bernard-Raymond Fabré-Palaprat produced the Larmenius Charter in 1804 with a claim of succession to the original Catholic Christian military order.
Freemasonry
Freemasonry has incorporated the symbols and rituals of several medieval military orders in a number of Masonic bodies since at least the 18th century. This can be seen in the "Red Cross of Constantine," inspired by the Military Constantinian Order; the "Order of Malta," inspired by the Knights Hospitaller; and the "Order of the Temple", inspired by the Knights Templar. The Orders of Malta and the Temple feature prominently in the York Rite. One theory on the origin of Freemasonry claims direct descent from the historical Knights Templar through its final fourteenth-century members who were thought to have taken refuge in Scotland and aided Robert the Bruce in his victory at Bannockburn. This theory is usually rejected both by Masonic authorities and historians due to lack of evidence.
Modern popular culture
The Knights Templar have become associated with legends concerning secrets and mysteries handed down to the select from ancient times. Rumours circulated even during the time of the Templars themselves. Masonic writers added their own speculations in the 18th century, and further fictional embellishments have been added in popular novels such as Ivanhoe, Foucault's Pendulum, and The Da Vinci Code; modern movies such as National Treasure, The Last Templar, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; the television series Knightfall; as well as video games such as Broken Sword, Deus Ex, Assassin's Creed and Dante's Inferno.
There have been speculative popular publications surrounding the order's early occupation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as well as speculation about what relics the Templars may have found there.
The association of the Holy Grail with the Templars has precedents even in 12th-century fiction; Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival calls the knights guarding the Grail Kingdom templeisen, apparently a conscious fictionalisation of the templarii.
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
Isle of Avalon, Lundy. "The Rule of the Knights Templar A Powerful Champion" The Knights Templar. Mystic Realms, 2010. Web
Mario Dal Bello (2013). Gli Ultimi Giorni dei Templari, Città Nuova,
Selwood, Dominic (2013). ” The Knights Templar 1: The Knights”
Selwood, Dominic (2013). ”The Knights Templar 2: Sergeants, Women, Chaplains, Affiliates”
Selwood, Dominic (2013). ”The Knights Templar 3: Birth of the Order”
Selwood, Dominic (2013). ”The Knights Templar 4: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux”
Further reading
Addison, Charles (1842). The History of the Knights Templar
d'Albon, André. Cartulaire général de l'ordre du Temple: 1119?–1150 (1913–1922) (at Gallica)
Malcolm Barber, Keith Bate (2002). The Templars: Selected Sources Translated and Annotated by Malcolm Barber and Keith Bate. Manchester University Press
Jochen Burgtorf, Shlomo Lotan, Enric Mallorquí-Ruscalleda (eds.) (2021). The Templars: The Rise, Fall, and Legacy of a Military Religious Order, Routledge
Levaye, Patrick (2007). Géopolitique du Catholicisme''. Éditions Ellipses
External links
Knights Templar - World History Encyclopedia
1119 establishments in Asia
1312 disestablishments in Asia
1119 establishments in Europe
1312 disestablishments in Europe
Religious organizations established in the 1110s
Organizations disestablished in the 14th century
Philip IV of France
12th-century Christianity | [
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16871 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazaa | Kazaa | Kazaa Media Desktop (once stylized as "KaZaA", but later usually written "Kazaa") is a discontinued peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol licensed by Joltid Ltd. and operated as Kazaa by Sharman Networks. Kazaa was subsequently under license as a legal music subscription service by Atrinsic, Inc. According to one of its creators, Jaan Tallinn, Kazaa is pronounced ka-ZAH (/kəˈzaː/).
Kazaa Media Desktop was commonly used to exchange MP3 music files and other file types, such as videos, applications, and documents over the Internet. The Kazaa Media Desktop client could be downloaded free of charge; however, it was bundled with adware and for a period there were "No spyware" warnings found on Kazaa's website. During the years of Kazaa's operation, Sharman Networks and its business partners and associates were the target of copyright-related lawsuits, related to the copyright of content distributed via Kazaa Media Desktop on the FastTrack protocol.
By August 2012, the Kazaa website was no longer active.
History
Kazaa and FastTrack were originally created and developed by Estonian programmers from BlueMoon Interactive including Jaan Tallinn and sold to Swedish entrepreneur Niklas Zennström and Danish programmer Janus Friis (who were later to create Skype and later still Joost and Rdio). Kazaa was introduced by the Dutch company Consumer Empowerment in March 2001, near the end of the first generation of P2P networks typified by the shutdown of Napster in July 2001. Skype itself was based on Kazaa's P2P backend, which allowed users to make a call by directly connecting them with each other.
Initially, some users of the Kazaa network were users of the Morpheus client program, formerly made available by MusicCity. Eventually, the official Kazaa client became more widespread. In February 2002, when Morpheus developers failed to pay license fees, Kazaa developers used an automatic update ability to shut out Morpheus clients by changing the protocol. Morpheus later became a client of the gnutella network.
Lawsuits
Consumer Empowerment was sued in the Netherlands in 2001 by the Dutch music publishing body, Buma/Stemra. The court ordered Kazaa's owners to take steps to prevent its users from violating copyrights or else pay a heavy fine. In October 2001 a lawsuit was filed against Consumer Empowerment by members of the music and motion picture industry in the USA. In response Consumer Empowerment sold the Kazaa application to Sharman Networks, headquartered in Australia and incorporated in Vanuatu. In late March 2002, a Dutch court of appeal reversed an earlier judgment and stated that Kazaa was not responsible for the actions of its users. Buma/Stemra lost its appeal before the Dutch Supreme Court in December 2003.
In 2003, Kazaa signed a deal with Altnet and Streamwaves to try to convert users to paying, legal customers. Searchers on Kazaa were offered a free 30-second sample of songs for which they were searching and directed to sign up for the full-featured Streamwaves service.
However, Kazaa's new owner, Sharman, was sued in Los Angeles by the major record labels and motion pictures studios and a class of music publishers. The other defendants in that case (Grokster and MusicCity, makers of the Morpheus file-sharing software) initially prevailed against the plaintiffs on summary judgment (Sharman joined the case too late to take advantage of that ruling). The summary judgment ruling was upheld by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, but was unanimously reversed by the US Supreme Court in a decision titled MGM Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd.
Following that ruling in favor of the plaintiff labels and studios, Grokster almost immediately settled the case. Shortly thereafter, on 27 July 2006, it was announced that Sharman had also settled with the record industry and motion picture studios. As part of that settlement, the company agreed to pay $100 million in damages to the four major music companies—Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music—and an undisclosed amount to the studios. Sharman also agreed to convert Kazaa into a legal music download service. Like the creators of similar products, Kazaa's owners have been taken to court by music publishing bodies to restrict its use in the sharing of copyrighted material.
While the U.S. action was still pending, the record industry commenced proceedings against Sharman on its home turf. In February 2004, the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) announced its own legal action against Kazaa, alleging massive copyright breaches. The trial began on 29 November 2004. On 6 February 2005, the homes of two Sharman Networks executives and the offices of Sharman Networks in Australia were raided under a court order by ARIA to gather evidence for the trial.
On 5 September 2005, the Federal Court of Australia issued a landmark ruling that Sharman, though not itself guilty of copyright infringement, had "authorized" Kazaa users illegally to swap copyrighted songs. The court ruled six defendants—including Kazaa's owners Sharman Networks, Sharman's Sydney-based boss Nikki Hemming and associate Kevin Bermeister—had knowingly allowed Kazaa users illegally to swap copyrighted songs. The company was ordered to modify the software within two months (a ruling enforceable only in Australia). Sharman and the other five parties faced paying millions of dollars in damages to the record labels that instigated the legal action.
On 5 December 2005, the Federal Court of Australia ceased downloads of Kazaa in Australia after Sharman Networks failed to modify their software by the 5 December deadline. Users with an Australian IP address were greeted with the message "Important Notice: The download of the Kazaa Media Desktop by users in Australia is not permitted" when visiting the Kazaa website. Sharman planned to appeal against the Australian decision, but ultimately settled the case as part of its global settlement with the record labels and studios in the United States.
In yet another set of related cases, in September 2003, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed suit in civil court against several private individuals who had shared large numbers of files with Kazaa; most of these suits were settled with monetary payments averaging $3,000. Sharman Networks responded with a lawsuit against the RIAA, alleging that the terms of use of the network were violated and that unauthorized client software (such as Kazaa Lite, see below) was used in the investigation to track down the individual file sharers. An effort to throw out this suit was denied in January 2004. However, that suit was also settled in 2006 (see above). Most recently, in Duluth, Minnesota, the recording industry sued Jammie Thomas-Rasset, a 30-year-old single mother. On 5 October 2007, Thomas was ordered to pay the six record companies (Sony BMG, Arista Records LLC, Interscope Records, UMG Recordings Inc., Capitol Records Inc. and Warner Bros. Records Inc.) $9,250 for each of the 24 songs they had focused on in this case. She was accused of sharing a total of 1,702 songs through her Kazaa account. Along with attorney fees, Thomas may owe as much as half a million dollars. Thomas testified that she does not have a Kazaa account, but her testimony was complicated by the fact that she had replaced her computer's hard drive after the alleged downloading took place, and later than she originally said in a deposition before the trial.
Thomas-Rasset appealed the verdict and was given a new trial. In June 2009 that jury awarded the recording industry plaintiffs a judgment of $80,000 per song, or $1.92 million. This is less than half of the $150,000 amount authorized by statute.
The federal court found the award "monstrous and shocking" and reduced it to $54,000. The recording industry offered to accept a settlement of $25,000, with the money going to charities that support musicians. Apparently undaunted, Thomas-Rasset was able to obtain a third trial on the issue of damages. In November 2010 she was again ordered to pay for her violation, this time $62,500 per song, for a total of $1.5 million. At last word, her attorneys were examining a challenge to the constitutional validity of massive statutory damages, where actual damages would have been $24.
Bundled malware
In 2006 StopBadware.org identified Kazaa as a spyware application. They identified the following components:
Cydoor (spyware): Collects information on the PC's surfing habits and passes it on to Cydoor Desktop Media.
B3D (adware): An add-on which causes advertising popups if the PC accesses a website which triggers the B3D code.
Altnet (adware): A distribution network for paid "gold" files.
The Best Offers (adware): Tracks user's browsing habits and internet usage to display advertisements similar to their interests.
InstaFinder (hijacker): Redirects URL typing errors to InstaFinder's web page instead of the standard search page.
TopSearch (adware): Displays paid songs and media related to a Kazaa search.
RX Toolbar (spyware): The toolbar monitors all sites visited with Microsoft Internet Explorer and provides links to competitors' websites.
New.net (hijacker): A browser plugin that allowed users to access several of its own unofficial Top Level Domain names, e.g., .chat and .shop. The main purpose of this was to sell domain names such as www.record.shop which is actually www.record.shop.new.net (ICANN did not allow third-party registration of generic top level domains until 2012).
Transitional period
Kazaa's legal issues ended after a settlement of $100 million in reparations to the recording industry. Kazaa, including the domain name, was then sold off to Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc. Kazaa then operated as a monthly music subscription service allowing users to download unlimited songs, before finally ending the service in 2012. The Kazaa.com website is no longer accessible as of 2017, however Brilliant Digital Entertainment, Inc. continues to own the domain name.
Some users still use the old network on the unauthorized versions of Kazaa, either Kazaa Lite or Kazaa Resurrection, which is still a self-sustaining network where thousands of users still share unrestricted media. This fact was previously stated by Kazaa when they claimed their FastTrack network was not centralized (like the old Napster), but instead a link between millions of computers around the world.
However, in the wake of the bad publicity and lawsuits, the number of users on Kazaa Lite has dropped dramatically. They have gone from several millions of users at a given time to mere thousands.
Without further recourse, and until the lawsuit was settled, the RIAA actively sued thousands of people and college campuses across the U.S. for sharing copyrighted music over the network. Particularly, students were targeted and most were threatened with a penalty of $750 per song. Although the lawsuits were mainly in the U.S., other countries also began to follow suit. Beginning in 2008, however, RIAA announced an end to individual lawsuits.
While Napster lasted just three years, Kazaa survived much longer. However, the lawsuits eventually ended the company.
Variations
Kazaa Lite was an unauthorized modification of the Kazaa Media Desktop application which excluded adware and spyware and provided slightly extended functionality. It became available in April 2002. It was available free of charge, and as of mid-2005 was almost as widely used as the official Kazaa client itself. It connected to the same FastTrack network and thus allowed to exchange files with all Kazaa users, and was created by third party programmers by modifying the binary of the original Kazaa application. Later versions of Kazaa Lite included K++, a memory patcher that removed search limit restrictions, and set one's "participation level" to the maximum of 1000. Sharman Networks considers Kazaa Lite to be a copyright violation.
After development of Kazaa Lite stopped, K-Lite v2.6, Kazaa Lite Resurrection and Kazaa Lite Tools appeared. Unlike Kazaa Lite, which is a modification of an old version of Kazaa, K-Lite v2.6 and later require the corresponding original KMD executable to run. K-Lite doesn't include any code by Sharman: instead, it runs the user's original Kazaa Media Desktop executable in an environment which removes the malware, spyware and adware and adds features.
In November 2004, the developers of K-Lite released K-Lite v2.7, which similarly requires the KMD 2.7 executable.
Other clean variants used an older core (2.02) and thus, K-Lite had some features that others didn't have. K-Lite included multiple search tabs, a custom toolbar, and autostart, a download accelerator, an optional splash screen, preview with option (to view files you are currently downloading), an IP blocker, Magnet links support, and ad blocking, although the clients based on the 2.02 core abstract these functions to third-party programs.
Kazaa Lite Tools was an update of the original Kazaa Lite, with modifications to the third-party programs included, it is newer and includes more tools.
Kazaa Lite Resurrection (KLR) appeared almost immediately after Kazaa Lite development was stopped in August 2003. KLR was a copy of Kazaa Lite 2.3.3.
See also
μTorrent
WinMX
Bearshare
eMule
iMesh
LimeWire
Napster
The Pirate Bay
References
External links
"Malware prevalence in the KaZaA file-sharing network". Seungwon Shin, Jaeyeon Jung, and Hari Balakrishnan. 2006.
2001 software
Adware
Discontinued software
Estonian inventions
File sharing software
Internet services shut down by a legal challenge
Music retailers of the United States
Online music database clients
Online music stores of Australia
United States Internet case law
Windows file sharing software
Peer-to-peer software | [
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16873 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimono | Kimono | The is a traditional Japanese garment and the national dress of Japan. The kimono is a T-shaped, wrapped-front garment with square sleeves and a rectangular body, and is worn left side wrapped over right, unless the wearer is deceased. The kimono is traditionally worn with a broad sash, called an , and is commonly worn with accessories such as zōri sandals and socks.
Kimono have a set method of construction and are typically made from a long, narrow bolt of cloth known as a , though Western-style fabric bolts are also sometimes used. There are different types of kimono for men, women and children, varying based on the occasion, the season, the wearer's age, and – less commonly in the modern day – the wearer's marital status. Despite perception of the kimono as a formal and difficult to wear garment, there are types of kimono suitable for every formality, including informal occasions. The way a person wears their kimono is known as .
In the present day, the kimono is not typically worn as everyday dress, and has steadily fallen out of fashion as the most common garment for a Japanese person to own and wear. Kimono are now most frequently seen at summer festivals, where people frequently wear the , the most informal type of kimono; however, more formal types of kimono are also worn to funerals, weddings, graduations, and other formal events. Other people who commonly wear kimono include geisha and , who are required to wear it as part of their profession, and , or sumo wrestlers, who must wear kimono at all times in public.
Despite the low number of people who wear kimono commonly and the garment's reputation as a complicated article of clothing, the kimono has experienced a number of revivals in previous decades, and is still worn today as fashionable clothing within Japan.
History
Yamato period (300–710 CE)
The first instances of kimono-like garments in Japan were traditional Chinese clothing introduced to Japan via Chinese envoys in the Kofun period (300 – 538 CE; the first part of the Yamato period), with immigration between the two countries and envoys to the Tang dynasty court leading to Chinese styles of dress, appearance and culture becoming extremely popular in Japanese court society. The Imperial Japanese court quickly adopted Chinese styles of dress and clothing, with evidence of the oldest samples of tie-dyed fabric stored at the Shōsōin Temple being Chinese in origin, due to the limitations of Japan's ability to produce the fabrics at the time. As early as the 4th century CE, images of priestess-queens and tribal chiefs in Japan depicted figures wearing clothing similar that of Han dynasty China.
Nara period (710–794 CE)
In 718 CE, the Yoro clothing code was instituted, which stipulated that all robes had to be overlapped at the front with a left-to-right closure, following typical Chinese fashions. This convention of wear is still followed today, with a right-to-left closure worn only by the deceased.
Upper-class clothing was significantly simpler to don and wear than later Heian dress. Status was associated with covering more of the body, so sleeves, while narrow, were long enough to cover the fingers.
Heian period to Azuchi-Momoyama period (794–1600)
During the Heian period (794-1193 CE), Japan stopped sending envoys to the Chinese dynastic courts. This prevented Chinese-imported goods—including clothing—from entering the Imperial Palace and disseminating to the upper classes, who were the main arbiters of traditional Japanese culture at the time and the only people allowed to wear such clothing. The ensuing cultural vacuum facilitated the development of a Japanese culture independent from Chinese fashions. Elements previously lifted from the Tang Dynastic courts developed independently into what is known literally as "national culture" or , the term used to refer to Heian-period Japanese culture, particularly that of the upper classes.
Women's clothing in the imperial palace became increasingly stylised in the formal , with some elements—such as the round-necked and tube-sleeved jacket, worn by both genders in the early 7th century—being abandoned by both male and female courtiers. Others, such as the wrapped front robes also worn by men and women, were kept. Some elements, such as the skirt worn by women, continued on in a reduced capacity, worn only to formal occasions; the grew too narrow to wrap all the way around and became a trapezoidal pleated train. (trousers) became longer than the legs and also trailed behind the wearer.
During the later Heian period, various clothing edicts reduced the number of layers a woman could wear, leading to the () garment—previously considered underwear—becoming outerwear by the time of the Muromachi period (1336-1573 CE). Originally worn with , the began to be held closed with a small belt known as an instead. The resembled a modern kimono, though at this time the sleeves were sewn shut at the back and were smaller in width (shoulder seam to cuff) than the body of the garment. During the Sengoku period (1467-1615) and the Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568-1600), decoration of the developed further, with bolder designs and flashy primary colours becoming popular. By this time, separate lower-body garments such as the and were almost never worn, allowing full-length patterns to be seen.
Edo period (1603–1867)
During the Edo period (1603–1867 CE), both Japan's culture and economy developed significantly. A particular factor in the development of the Edo period was the early Genroku period (1688–1704 CE), wherein "Genroku culture" - luxurious displays of wealth and increased patronage of the arts - led to the further development of many art forms, including those of clothing. Genroku culture was spearheaded by the growing and increasingly-powerful merchant classes (); the clothing of classes, representative of their increasing economic power, rivalled that of the aristocracy and samurai classes, with their brightly-coloured kimono utilising expensive production techniques, such as handpainted dyework. , a damask fabric, also became the preferred material for kimono at this time, replacing the previously-popular plain-weave silk, which had been used to create .
In response to the increasing material wealth of the merchant classes, the Tokugawa shogunate issued a number of sumptuary laws on kimono for the lower classes, prohibiting the use of purple or red fabric, gold embroidery, and the use of intricately dyed patterns. As a result, a school of aesthetic thought known as , which valued and prioritised the display of wealth through almost mundane appearances, developed, a concept of kimono design and wear that continues to this day as a major influence.
From this point onwards, the basic shape of both men's and women's kimono remained largely unchanged. The sleeves of the began to grow in length, especially amongst unmarried women, and the became much longer and wider, with various styles of knots coming into fashion, alongside stiffer weaves of material to support them.
In the Edo period, the kimono market was divided into craftspeople, who made the and accessories, , or wholesalers, and retailers.
Modern period, by regnal era
Meiji period (1868–1912)
In 1869, the social class system was abolished, and with them, class-specific sumptuary laws. Kimono with formerly-restricted elements, like red and purple colours, became popular, particularly with the advent of synthetic dyestuffs such as mauvine.
Following the opening of Japan's borders in the early Meiji period to Western trade, a number of materials and techniques - such as wool and the use of synthetic dyestuffs - became popular, with casual wool kimono being relatively common in pre-1960s Japan; the use of safflower dye () for silk linings fabrics (known as ; literally, "red silk") was also common in pre-1960s Japan, making kimono from this era easily identifiable.
During the Meiji period, the opening of Japan to Western trade after the enclosure of the Edo period led to a drive towards Western dress as a sign of "modernity". After an edict by Emperor Meiji, policemen, railroad workers and teachers moved to wearing Western clothing within their job roles, with the adoption of Western clothing by men in Japan happening at a much greater pace than by women. Initiatives such as the promoted Western dress as everyday clothing.
Taishō period (1912–1926)
Western clothing quickly became standard issue as army uniform for men and school uniform for boys, and between 1920 and 1930, the sailor outfit replaced the kimono and undivided as school uniform for girls. However, kimono still remained popular as an item of everyday fashion; following the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, cheap, informal and ready-to-wear kimono, woven from raw and waste silk threads unsuitable for other uses, became highly popular, following the loss of many people's possessions. By 1930, ready-to-wear kimono had become highly popular for their bright, seasonally changing designs, many of which took inspiration from the Art Deco movement. kimono were usually dyed using the ikat () technique of dyeing, where either warp or both warp and weft threads (known as ) were dyed using a stencil pattern before weaving.
It was during the Taishō period that the modern formalisation of kimono and kimono types began to emerge. The Meiji period had seen the slow introduction of kimono types that mediated between the informal and the most formal, a trend that continued throughout the Taishō period, as social occasions and opportunities for leisure increased under the abolition of class distinctions. As Western clothing increased in popularity for men as everyday clothing, the kimono industry further established its own traditions of formal and informal dress for women; this saw the invention of the , divisions of (short-sleeved) kimono for women, and . The bridal kimono trousseau (), an uncommon practice of the upper classes in the Edo period, also became common throughout the middle classes; traditions of kimono bridalwear for marriage ceremonies were also codified in this time, which resembled the bridalwear of samurai-class women. Standards of at this time began to slowly graduate to a more formalised, neatened appearance, with a flat, uniform and a smooth, uncreased , which also resembled the "proper" of upper-class women. However, standards were still relatively informal, and would not become formalised until after World War II.
Shōwa period (1926–1989)
While kimono were no longer common wear for men, they remained everyday wear for Japanese women until World War II (1940–1945). Though the Taishō period had seen a number of invented traditions, standards of (wearing kimono) were still not as formalised in this time, with creases, uneven and crooked still deemed acceptable.
During the war, kimono factories shut down, and the government encouraged people to wear (also romanised as ) - trousers constructed from old kimono - instead. Fibres such as rayon became widespread during WWII, being inexpensive to produce and cheap to buy, and typically featured printed designs. Cloth rationing persisted until 1951, so most kimono were made at home from repurposed fabrics.
In the second half of the 20th century, the Japanese economy boomed, and silk became cheaper, making it possible for the average family to afford silk kimono. The kimono retail industry had developed an elaborate codification of rules for kimono-wearing, with types of kimono, levels of formality, and rules on seasonality, which intensified after the war; there had previously been rules about kimono-wearing, but these were not rigidly codified and varied by region and class. Formalisation sought perfection, with no creases or uneveness in the kimono, and an increasingly tubular figure was promoted as the ideal for women in kimono. The kimono-retail industry also promoted a sharp distinction between Japanese and Western clothes; for instance, wearing Western shoes with Japanese clothing (while common in the Taishō period) was codified as improper; these rules on proper dressing are often described in Japanese using the English phrase "Time, Place, and Occasion" (TPO). As neither Japanese men or women commonly wore kimono, having grown up under wartime auspices, commercial schools were set up to teach women how to don kimono. Men in this period rarely wore kimono, and menswear thus escaped most of the formalisation.).
Kimono were promoted as essential for ceremonial occasions; for instance, the expensive worn by young women for was deemed a necessity. Bridal trousseaus containing tens of kimono of every possible subtype were also promoted as de rigueur, and parents felt obliged to provide kimono trousseaus that cost up to 10 million yen (~£70,000), which were displayed and inspected publicly as part of the wedding, including being transported in transparent trucks.
By the 1970s, formal kimono formed the vast majority of kimono sales. Kimono retailers, due to the pricing structure of brand new kimono, had developed a relative monopoly on not only prices but also a perception of kimono knowledge, allowing them to dictate prices and heavily promote more formal (and expensive) purchases, as selling a single formal kimono could support the seller comfortably for three months. The kimono industry peaked in 1975, with total sales of 2.8 trillion yen (~£18 billion). The sale of informal brand new kimono was largely neglected.
Heisei period (1989–2019)
The economic collapse of the 1990s bankrupted much of the kimono industry and ended a number of expensive practices. The rules for how to wear kimono lost their previous hold over the entire industry, and formerly-expensive traditions such as bridal kimono trousseaus generally disappeared, and when still given, were much less extensive. It was during this time that it became acceptable and even preferred for women to wear Western dress to ceremonial occasions like weddings and funerals. Many women had dozens or even hundreds of kimono, mostly unworn, in their homes; a secondhand kimono, even if unworn, would sell for about 500 yen (less than £3.50; about US$5), a few percent of the bought-new price. In the 1990s and early 2000s, many secondhand kimono shops opened as a result of this.
In the early years of the 21st century, the cheaper and simpler became popular with young people. Around 2010, men began wearing kimono again in situations other than their own wedding, and kimono were again promoted and worn as everyday dress by a small minority.
Reiwa period (2019–present)
Today, the vast majority of people in Japan wear Western clothing in the everyday, and are most likely to wear kimono either to formal occasions such as wedding ceremonies and funerals, or to summer events, where the standard kimono is the easy-to-wear, single-layer cotton .
In 2019, the mayor of Kyoto announced that his staff were working to register "Kimono Culture" on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list.
Textiles
Both kimono and are made from a wide variety of fibre types, including hemp, linen, silk, Japanese crêpe (known as ), and figured damask weaves (). Fabrics are typically – for both and kimono – woven as tanmono (bolts of narrow width), save for certain types of (such as the ), woven to double-width. Formal kimono are almost always made from silk, with thicker, heavier, stiff or matte fabrics generally being considered informal.
Modern kimono are widely available in fabrics considered easier to care for, such as polyester. Kimono linings are typically silk or imitation silk, and generally match the top fabric in fibre type, though the lining of some casual silk kimono may be cotton, wool or linen.
Kimono motifs
Kimono fabrics are often decorated, sometimes by hand, before construction. Customarily, woven patterns are considered more informal within kimono, though for , the reverse is true, with dyed patterns being less formal than the sometimes very heavily woven brocade fabrics used in formal . Traditionally, woven kimono are matched with decorated with dyed patterns, and vice versa, though for all but the most formal kimono, this is more of a general suggestion than a strict rule. Formal kimono are almost-entirely decorated with dyed patterns, commonly along the hem.
Many kimono motifs are seasonal, and denote the season in which the kimono can be worn; however, some motifs have no season and can be worn all-year round; others, such as the combination of pine, plum and bamboo - known as the Three Friends of Winter - are auspicious, and thus worn to formal occasions for the entire year. Motifs seen on are commonly seasonal motifs worn out of season, either to denote the spring just passed or the desire for cooler autumn or winter temperatures. Colour also contributes to the seasonality of kimono, with some seasons - such as autumn - generally favouring warmer, darker colours over lighter, cooler ones.
A number of different guides on seasonal kimono motifs exist, with some guides - such as those for tea ceremony in particular - being especially stringent on their reflection of the seasons. Motifs typically represent either the flora, fauna, landscape or otherwise culture of Japan - such as cherry blossoms, a famously seasonal motif worn in spring until just before the actual cherry blossoms begin to bloom, it being considered unlucky to try and 'compete' with the cherries. Motifs are typically worn a few weeks before the official 'start' of any given season, it being considered fashionable to anticipate the coming season.
In the modern era, the principal distinction of men's kimono is the fabric. The typical men's kimono is a subdued, dark colour; black, dark blues, greens, and browns are common. Fabrics are usually matte. Some have a subtle pattern, and textured fabrics are common in more casual kimono. More casual kimono may be made in slightly brighter colours, such as lighter purples, greens and blues. Sumo wrestlers have occasionally been known to wear quite bright colours such as fuchsia.
Terms
The fabrics that kimono are made from are classified in two categories within Japan. is the term used to indicate silk kimono fabrics, composed of the characters (meaning "Wu" - a kingdom in ancient China where the technology of weaving silk developed) and (meaning "clothing").
The term is also used to refer to kimono in general within Japan, particularly within the context of the kimono industry, as traditional kimono shops are referred to as either or - with the additional character of meaning 'shop'.
Cotton and hemp fabrics are referred to generally as , meaning "thick materials", with both cotton and hemp yarns being considerably thicker than silk yarns used for weaving. Cotton kimono are specifically referred to in the context of materials as , "cotton clothes", whereas hemp kimono are known as , "hemp clothes", in Japanese, with the character for hemp - - also being used to refer widely to hemp, linen and ramie kimono fabrics.
Mercers' terms
Until the end of the Edo period, the tailoring of both and fabrics was separated, with silk kimono handled at shops known as , and kimono of other fibres sold at shops known as . Stores that handled all types of fabric were known as , though after the Meiji period, stores only retailing kimono became less profitable in the face of cheaper everyday Western clothing, and eventually went out of business, leaving only stores to sell kimono - leading to kimono shops becoming known only as today.
Reuse
Kimono can readily be resized, or dismantled back into tanmono (bolt) lengths.
Outside of being re-woven into new fabrics, worn-out kimono have historically been recycled in a variety of ways, depending on the type of kimono and its original use. When the cloth is worn out, it may be used as fabric for smaller items or to create (patchwork) kimono (which were also sometimes made for the sake of fashion). The fact that the pattern pieces of a kimono consist of rectangles, and not complex shapes, make reuse in garments or other items easier. are used to hold cloth together and decorate it. The cloth used for patchwork clothing must all be of similar weight, elasticity, and stiffness.
Formal kimono, made of expensive and thin silk fabrics, would have been re-sewn into children's kimono when they became unusable for adults, as they were typically unsuitable for practical clothing; kimono were shortened, with the taken off and the collar re-sewn to create , or were simply cut at the waist to create a side-tying jacket. After marriage or a certain age, young women would shorten the sleeves of their kimono; the excess fabric would be used as a (wrapping cloth), could be used to lengthen the kimono at the waist, or could be used to create a patchwork undergarment known as a . Kimono that were in better condition could be re-used as an under-kimono, or to create a false underlayer known as a .
Children also traditionally wore , kimono made of a fancier material in the and upper back.
Construction
Kimono are traditionally made from a single bolt of fabric known as a , which is roughly long and wide for women, and long and wide for men. The entire bolt is used to make one kimono, and some men's are woven to be long enough to create a matching jacket and as well. Kimono linings are made from bolts of the same width.
Some custom bolts of fabric are produced for especially tall or heavy people, such as sumo wrestlers, who must have kimono custom-made by either joining multiple bolts, weaving custom-width fabric, or using non-standard size fabric. For children, in the early 1900s, shorter lengths were used, and sometimes the body of the kimono was made only a single cloth width wide (). Tucks were also used to take in the garment; an outwards-facing pleat at each shoulder () and a kolpos-like overfold at the hip (), so that the child appeared to be wearing a sleeveless vest of the same fabric over their garment. These sewn tucks were let out as the child grew, and are mostly only seen today on the kimono of apprentice geisha in Kyoto, as apprentices previously began their training at a young age, requiring tucks to be let out as they grew. In the present day, apprentices begin their training aged 17-18, and the tucks are retained merely as an anachronism.
Though adult women also retained a 'tuck' at the hip, this was a leftover from the trailing length of most women's kimono, which had previously been either held up by hand when walking or tied up loosely with a ; though kimono were not worn as trailing towards the end of the 19th century, the excess length of most women's kimono remained, with the hip fold formalised and neatened into the of the modern day.
Kimono have a set method of construction, which allows the entire garment to be taken apart, cleaned and resewn easily. As the seam allowance on nearly every panel features two selvedges that will not fray, the woven edges of the fabric bolt are retained when the kimono is sewn, leading to large and often uneven seam allowances; unlike Western clothing, the seam allowances are not trimmed down, allowing for a kimono to be resewn to different measurements without the fabric fraying at the seams. This was also used to prolong the life of the garment by reversing the sleeves (hiding the worn cuff hem in the shoulder seam) or the back panels (swapping the high-stress center seam and the low-stress sides), like the European custom of side-to-middling or end-to-middling bedsheets.
Historically, kimono were taken apart entirely to be washed - a process known as . Once cleaned, the fabric would be resewn by hand; this process, though necessary in previous centuries, is uncommon in modern-day Japan, as it is relatively expensive.
Despite the expense of hand-sewing, however, some modern kimono, including silk kimono and all formal kimono, are still hand-sewn entirely; even machine-sewn kimono require some degree of hand-sewing, particularly in finishing the collar, the hem, and the lining, if present. Hand-sewn kimono are usually sewn with a single running stitch roughly to long, with stitches growing shorter around the collar area for strength. Kimono seams, instead of being pressed entirely flat, are pressed to have a 'lip' of roughly (known as the ) pressed over each seam. This disguises the stitches, as hand-sewn kimono are not tightly sewn, rendering the stitches visible if pressed entirely flat.
Terms
A number of different terms are used to refer to the different parts of a kimono. Kimono that are lined are known as kimono, whereas unlined kimono are known as kimono; partially lined kimono — with lining only at the sleeve cuff, the back of the sleeve, the lower chest portion of the and the entirety of the — are known as (lit., "chest-single-layer") kimono. Some fully lined kimono do not have a separate lower and upper lining, and are instead lined with solid panels on the , the and the .
These terms refer to parts of a kimono:
: the upper lining of a kimono.
: the lower lining of a kimono.
: the collar.
: the hem guard.
: lit., "dangling" — the part of the sleeve left hanging below the armhole.
: lit., "front body" — the front panels on a kimono, excluding the . The panels are divided into the "right " and "left ".
: the opening under the sleeve on a woman's kimono.
: the overlapping front panel.
: the entire sleeve.
: the wrist opening of the sleeve.
: the kimono armhole.
: lower lining.
: the sleeve pouch of a kimono.
: lit., "over-collar" — the collar cover sewn on top of the .
: lit., "neckband lining" — the inner collar.
: lit., "back body" — the back panels. The back panels consist of the "right " and "left ".
Evolution of kimono construction
Though the basic shape of the kimono has not changed in centuries, proportions have, historically, varied in different eras of Japanese history. Beginning in the later Heian period, the - an unlined robe worn as underwear - became the predominant outerwear garment for both men and women, known as the (lit. "small sleeve"). Court-appropriate dress continued to resemble the previous eras.
By the beginning of the Kamakura period, the was an ankle-length garment for both men and women, and had small, rounded sleeves that were sewn to the body of the garment. The was a relatively thin belt tied somewhat low on the waist, usually in a plain bow, and was known as a . During this time period, the fashion of wearing a draped around the shoulders, over the head, or as the outermost garment stripped off the shoulders and held in place by the , led to the rise of the - a heavily decorated over-kimono, stemming from the verb (lit., "to drape upon"), worn unbelted over the top of the - becoming popular as formal dress for the upper classes.
In the following centuries, the mostly retained its small, narrow and round-sleeved nature, with the length of women's sleeves gradually increasing over time and eventually becoming mostly detached from the body of the garment below the shoulders. The collar on both men's and women's retained its relatively long and wide proportions, and the front panel kept its long, shallow angle towards the hem. During the Edo period, the had developed roughly modern kimono proportions, though variety existed until roughly the mid- to later years of the era. Men's sleeves continued to be sewn shut to the body of the kimono down most of their length, with no more than a few inches unattached at the bottom, unlike the women's style of very deep sleeves mostly detached from the body of the kimono. Men's sleeves are less deep than women's kimono sleeves so that they don't get tied under the narrow around the hips, whereas on a woman's kimono, the long, unattached bottom of the sleeve can hang over the wider without getting in the way. Sleeves for both men and women grew in proportion to be of roughly equal width to the body panels, and the collar for both men's and women's kimono became shorter and narrower.
In the present day, both men's and women's kimono retain some historical features - for instance, women's kimono trailed along the floor throughout certain eras, and when the wearer went outside, the excess length would be tucked and tied underneath the in a hip fold known as the . The is now used for fine length adjustments, and takes up of excess length. A handsewn tuck across the back under the is used for coarse adjustments, and made deliberately weak so that the stitches will tear before the cloth does under tension. Men's kimono, on the other hand, are cut to length and tied with a narrow belt at the hips, with no overfold.
Formal women's kimono also retain the wider collar of previous eras (made from a full -width instead of a half width), though it is always folded in half lengthwise before wearing - a style known as (lit. "wide collar", as opposed to , a normal width collar).
Though length of kimono, collar style and the way the sleeves are sewn on varies for kimono, in all other types of women's kimono, the construction generally does not change; the collar is set back slightly into the nape of the neck, the sleeves are only attached at the shoulder, not all the way down the sleeve length, and the kimono's length from shoulder to hem should generally equal the entire height of the woman wearing it, to allow for the hip fold.
Sleeve length
The sleeve length (perpendicular to the shoulders, what would generally be called the width in a Western garment) varies in kimono.
Cost
Both men's and women's brand-new kimono can range in expense, from the relatively cheap nature of second-hand garments, to high-end artisan pieces costing as much as US$50,000 (not allowing for the cost of accessories).
The high expense of some hand-crafted brand-new kimono reflects the traditional kimono making industry, where the most skilled artisans practice specific, expensive and time-consuming techniques, known to and mastered only by a few. These techniques, such as hand-plied fabrics and hand-tied dotwork dyeing, may take over a year to finish. Kimono artisans may be made Living National Treasures in recognition of their work, with the pieces they produce being considered culturally important.
Even kimono that have not been hand-crafted will constitute a relatively high expense when bought new, as even for one outfit, a number of accessories of the right formality and appearance must be bought. Not all brand-new kimono originate from artisans, and mass-production of kimono - mainly of casual or semi-formal kimono - does exist, with mass-produced pieces being mostly cheaper than those purchased through a (kimono shop, see below).
Though artisan-made kimono are some of the most accomplished works of textile art on the market, many pieces are not bought solely for appreciation of the craft. Unwritten social obligations to wear kimono to certain events - weddings, funerals - often leads consumers to purchase artisan pieces for reasons other than personal choice, fashion sense or love of kimono:
[Third-generation dyer Jotaro Saito] believes we are in a strange age where people who know nothing about kimono are the ones who spend a lot of money on a genuine handcrafted kimono for a wedding that is worn once by someone who suffers wearing it, and then is never used again.
The high cost of most brand-new kimono reflects in part the pricing techniques within the industry. Most brand-new kimono are purchased through , where kimono are sold as fabric rolls only, the price of which is often left to the shop's discretion. The shop will charge a fee separate to the cost of the fabric for it to be sewn to the customer's measurements, and fees for washing the fabric or weatherproofing it may be added as another separate cost. If the customer is unfamiliar with wearing kimono, they may hire a service to help dress them; the end cost of a new kimono, therefore, remains uncertain until the kimono itself has been finished and worn.
are also regarded as notorious for sales practices seen as unscrupulous and pressuring:
Many [Japanese kimono consumers] feared a tactic known as : being surrounded by staff and essentially pressured into purchasing an expensive kimono...Shops are also renowned for lying about the origins of their products and who made them...[My kimono dressing () teacher] gave me careful instructions before we entered the []: 'do not touch anything. And even if you don't buy a kimono today, you have to buy something, no matter how small it is.'
In contrast, kimono bought by hobbyists are likely to be less expensive, purchased from second-hand stores with no such sales practices or obligation to buy. Hobbyists may also buy cheaper synthetic kimono (marketed as 'washable') brand-new. Some enthusiasts also make their own kimono; this may be due to difficulty finding kimono of the right size, or simply for personal choice and fashion.
Second-hand items are seen as highly affordable; costs can be as little as ¥100 (about US$0.90) at thrift stores within Japan, and certain historic kimono production areas around the country - such as the Nishijin district of Kyoto - are well known for their second-hand kimono markets. Kimono themselves do not go out of fashion, making even vintage or antique pieces viable for wear, depending on condition.
However, even second-hand women's are likely to remain somewhat pricey; a used, well-kept and high-quality second-hand can cost upwards of US$300, as they are often intricately woven, or decorated with embroidery, goldwork and may be hand-painted. Men's , in contrast, retail much cheaper, as they are narrower, shorter, and have either very little or no decoration, though high-end men's can still retail at a high cost equal to that of a high-end women's .
Types of kimono
Formality
Kimono range in variation from extremely formal to very casual. The formality is determined mostly by pattern placement, decoration style, fabric choice and colour, and by the accessories and worn with the kimono.
The formality levels of different types of kimono are a relatively modern invention, having been developed between late Meiji- to post-war Japan, following the abolition of Edo-period sumptuary clothing laws in 1868. These laws changed constantly, as did the strictness with which they were enforced, and were designed to keep the nouveau riche merchant classes from dressing above their station, and appearing better-dressed than monetarily-poor but status-rich samurai class. Colours were restricted; for instance, indigo-dyed clothing was allowed for all classes, and was commonly seen in hand-dyed cotton, linen or hemp fabrics, but other dyes, such as reds and purples, were forbidden to those below a certain class. Sometimes, for some classes, designs were restricted to below the belt, to the bottoms of the sleeves (for ) or to along the hem (); sometimes they were banned altogether, and were transferred to the collar of the underkimono, or the inside of the hem, where only the faintest glimpse would be intermittently visible. This type of subtle ostentation became an aesthetic known as , and outlasted the sumptuary laws. Modern-day rules of formality, however, still echo clothing distinctions typically employed by the uppermost samurai classes.
Aspects of men's kimono still follow this extreme of . Bright, elaborate decoration is used on the lining of the (jacket), and on men's (underkimono), which is not worn as an outer layer outside the home, and so only shows at the neck and inside the sleeves. Women's were once bright and boldly-patterned (and were often kimono too damaged to use as an outer layer, repurposed), but are now typically muted pastel shades. The outside of men's garments tended towards subtle patterns and colours even after the sumptuary laws lifted, with blues and blacks predominating, but designers later came to use browns, greens, purples, and other colours in increasingly bold patterns.
Glossy silk fabrics such as habutai are more formal; , a type of crêpe, is less formal, and , a slubbed silk, even less so. Some fabrics are only worn at certain times of year; , for instance, is a plain-weave fabric with leno weave stripes only worn in high summer (July and August), but is used for all types of kimono and for other garments. Lined and even quilted kimono are worn in cold weather. Some fabrics - such as crêpe and - are never seen in certain varieties of kimono, and some fabrics such as (heavy satin) silk are barely ever seen in modern kimono or altogether, having been more popular in previous eras than in the present-day.
Formality is also determined by the number and type of or (crests). Five crests () are the most formal, three crests () are mid-formality, and one crest () is the least formal, used for occasions such as tea ceremony. Kimono (and other garments, like ) with are called ("-carrying"). The type of crest adds formality as well. A "full sun" () crest, where the design is outlined and filled in with white, is the most formal type. A "mid-shadow" () crest is mid-formality, with only the outline of the crest visible in white. A "shadow" () crest is the least formal, with the outline of the crest relatively faint. Shadow crests may be embroidered onto the kimono, and full-embroidery crests, called , are also seen.
Formality can also be determined by the type and colour of accessories. For women, this may be the weave of and the style of . For men, adding a (a traditional jacket) makes an outfit more formal, and adding both and (traditional trousers) is more formal still. The material, colour, and pattern of these overgarments also varies in formality. Longer are also more formal.
Sleeve length increases with formality for - young women's and girl's dress - but young women are not limited to wearing only , and outside of formal occasions that warrant it, can wear all other types of women's kimono such as and short-sleeved . Older people generally wear more subtle patterns, and younger people brighter, bolder ones.
General types of kimono
are casual cotton summer kimono. were originally very simple indigo and white cotton kimono, little more than a bathrobe worn either within the house, or for a short walk locally; were also worn by guests at inns, with the design of the displaying the inn a person was staying at. From roughly the mid-1980s onwards, they began to be produced in a wider variety of colours and designs, responding to demand for a more casual kimono that could be worn to a summer festival, and have since become more formal than their previous status as bathrobes, with high-end, less colourful sometimes standing in place of .
In the present day, many are brightly coloured, featuring large motifs from a variety of different seasons. They are worn with (half-width ) or (a soft, sash-like ), and are often accessorised with colourful hair accessories. are always unlined, and it is possible to wear a casual with a high-end, more subdued , often with a underneath.
A is traditionally worn as a single layer or over a , an under-kimono with small or no sleeves and no collar, technically a type of kimono underwear considered optional; may also be worn over the top of a t-shirt and shorts. This distinguishes from a more-formal kimono, where a (also simply referred to as a ) is worn underneath, showing a second layer of collar at the neckline. However, some modern are worn with collared cotton featuring a collar of linen, cotton or , for occasions such as informal eating-out.
(lit., "small pattern", though the patterns may in fact be large) are informal kimono. They were the type most often used for everyday wear in pre-war Japan, though some are considered a shade more formal than others. They mostly have no (crests), and the sleeves are fairly short. They are made with a repeating designs, though the repeat length may be quite long. Designs can be made with any method; woven patterns, prints, stencilled patterns in alternating orientations, freehand painting () or tie-dye patterns (). Traditionally the direction of the fabric was alternated in adjacent panels (necessary due to the lack of shoulder seam), so patterns were generally reversible. If the pattern is the same way up on each panel, the is more formal, approaching -level formality.
Woven geometric patterns (such as stripes) have no season, but others show images representing the season in general. Woven non-geometric patterns () are also common. Small, dense patterns are often used; this is practical, as fine-scale patterns hides stains.
are made with informal materials such as (slubbed silk), cotton, linen, ramie, and hemp. In the modern day, synthetic blends and synthetics are also used; rayon () and polyester are common.
Formerly, were the most common formality level of kimono. Now that kimono are not the standard informal wear, are not worn as often as formal kimono, with the exception of , the least-formal type of kimono. are the most formal type of ; they may have crests, and the pattern is so fine that from a distance they look like the somewhat more formal .
are a type of characterised by an extremely small repeating pattern, usually done in white on a coloured background. The dyeing technique is sometimes said to originate in the late Heian Period (circa mid-12th century), with a motif called "", which shows tiny stylised cherry blossoms on a background of white dots. In the Edo period (1603-1867), the samurai classes used them for formal wear, with specific patterns becoming associated with specific families. Towards the end of the Edo period, in the early 1800s, commoners began to wear them. are of a similar formality to , and with one can be worn as low-formality visiting wear; because of this, they are always made of silk, unlike regular .
are monochromatic, undecorated kimono mainly worn to tea ceremonies. Despite being monochromatic, may feature a woven design; suitable for autumn are often made of damask silk. are typically worn for tea ceremony, as the monochrome appearance is considered to be unobtrusive to the ceremony itself. Some with incredibly fine patterns are also considered suitable for tea ceremony, as from a distance they are visually similar to . may occasionally have one , though likely no more than this, and are always made of silk. accessories such as are never worn with if the purpose of wear is a tea ceremony; instead, flat and untextured silks are chosen for accessories.
are lower-ranking formalwear, and are a step below , though the two sometimes appear similar or indistinguishable. The motifs on a are placed similarly to those of a - across the back-right shoulder and back-right sleeve, the front-left shoulder and the front-left sleeve, and across the hem, higher at the left than the right - but, unlike , do not typically cross over the seams of each kimono panel, though some confusingly do. In older examples, the motifs may instead be placed symmetrically along the hem, with the skirt patterns mirrored down the centre-back seam.
Similarities between and often lead to confusion, with some indistinguishable from ; often, are only distinguishable from by the size of the motifs used, with smaller, less fluid motifs generally considered to be , and larger, more fluid motifs considered to be .
can have between one and three , and can be worn to parties, but not ceremonies or highly formal events.
have the same pattern placement as a , but the patterns generally match across seams. They are always made of silk, and are considered more formal than the .
are first roughly sewn up, and the design is sketched onto the fabric, before the garment is taken apart to be dyed again. The 's close relative, the , has its patterns dyed on the bolt before sewing up. This method of production can usually distinguish the two, as the motifs on a are likely to cross fluidly over seams in a way a generally will not. However, the two can prove near-indistinguishable at times.
may be worn by both married and unmarried women; often friends of the bride will wear to weddings (except relatives) and receptions. They may also be worn to formal parties.
and
kimono with a design along the hem and a coloured background, making them slightly lower-ranking in formality than , which have roughly the same pattern placement on a black background. , though worn to formal events, may be chosen when a would make the wearer appear to be overdressed for the situation. The pattern placement for is roughly identical to , though patterns seen along the and may drift slightly into the back hem itself. with five are of the same formality as any . may be made of figured silk such as .
Because formalwear for men requires , men typically do not wear the formal types of kimono that have elaborate patterns on the hem, as these would be hidden. Men wear (lit., "colour -decorated"), which (apart from the cut of the sleeve) appear the same as from the waist up, and thus cannot be distinguished in pattern when worn under the hakama.
and
kimono are formal kimono with a black background and a design along the hem, worn to formal events such as weddings and wedding parties. The design is only present along the hem; the further up the body this design reaches, the younger the wearer is considered to be, though for a very young woman an may be chosen instead, being considered somewhat more mature. The design is either symmetrically placed on the and portions of the kimono, or asymmetrically placed along the entirety of the hem, with the design being larger and higher-placed at the left side than the right. Vintage kimono are more likely to have the former pattern placement than the latter, though this is not a hard rule.
are always made of silk, and may have a - a false lining layer - attached, occasionally with a slightly padded hem. A usually has between 3 and 5 crests; a of any number of crests outranks an with less than five. , though formalwear, are not allowed at the royal court, as black is the colour of mourning, despite the colour designs decorating the kimono itself; outside of the royal court, this distinction for does not exist. are never made of flashy silks such as , but are instead likely to be a matte fabric with little texture.
Men wear ("black -decorated") which (apart from the cut of the sleeve) looks exactly the same from the waist up, and thus cannot be distinguished in pattern when worn under the required for men's formal dress.
Occasion-specific types
are a category of kimono and kimono accessories suitable for mourning. kimono, and accessories for both men and women are characterised by their plain, solid black appearance. kimono are plain black silk with five , worn with white undergarments and white . Men wear a kimono of the same kind, with a subdued and a black-and-white or black-and-grey striped , worn with black or white zōri.
A completely black mourning ensemble for women - a plain black , black and black - is usually reserved for those closest to the deceased. Those further away will wear kimono in dark and subdued colours, rather than a plain black kimono with a reduced number of crests. In time periods when kimono were worn more often, those closest to the deceased would slowly begin dressing in coloured kimono over a period of weeks after the death, with the being the last thing to be changed over to colour.
are highly formal kimono worn only in bridalwear or on stage. The name comes from the Japanese verb , "to drape upon", originating in roughly the 16th century from a fashion of the ruling classes of the time to wear kimono (then called , lit. "small sleeve") unbelted over the shoulders of one's other garments; the progressed into being an over-kimono worn by samurai women before being adopted some time in the 20th century as bridalwear.
are worn in the same manner in the present day, though unlike their 16th century counterparts, could not double as a regular kimono due to their typically heavily decorated, highly formal and often heavily padded nature. are designed to trail along the floor as a sort of coat. Bridal are typically red or white, and often decorated heavily with auspicious motifs. Because they are not designed to be worn with an , the designs cover the entirety of the back.
are the pure-white wedding kimono worn by brides for a traditional Japanese Shinto wedding ceremony. Comparable to an and sometimes described as a white , the is worn for the part of the wedding ceremony, symbolising the purity of the bride coming into the marriage. The bride may later change into a red after the ceremony to symbolise good luck.
A will form part of a bridal ensemble with matching or coordinating accessories, such as a bridal (bridal wig), a set of matching (usually mock-tortoiseshell), and a fan tucked into the kimono. Due to the expensive nature of traditional bridal clothing, few are likely to buy brand-new ; it is not unusual to rent kimono for special occasions, and Shinto shrines are known to keep and rent out for traditional weddings. Those who do possess already are likely to have inherited them from close family members.
(lit. "trailing skirt") (also known as ) kimono are extremely long kimono worn by geisha, , actors in kabuki and people performing traditional Japanese dance. A can be up to long, and are generally no shorter than from shoulder to hem; this is to allow the kimono to trail along the floor.
, apart from their extreme length, are also sewn differently to normal kimono due to the way they are worn. The collar on a is sewn further and deeper back into the nape of the neck, so that it can be pulled down much lower without causing the front of the kimono to ride up. The sleeves are set unevenly onto the body, shorter at the back than at the front, so that the underarm does not show when the collar is pulled down.
are also tied differently when they are put on - whereas regular kimono are tied with a visible , and the side seams are kept straight, are pulled up somewhat diagonally, to emphasise the hips and ensure the kimono trails nicely on the floor. A small is tied, larger at the back than the front, but it wrapped against the body with a (lit. "red silk") wrap, which is then covered by the , rendering the invisible.
Related garments and accessories
Though the kimono is the national dress of Japan, it has never been the sole item of clothing worn throughout Japan; even before the introduction of Western dress to Japan, many different styles of dress were worn, such as the of the Ainu people and the of the Ryukyuan people. Though similar to the kimono, these garments are distinguishable by their separate cultural heritage, and are not considered to be simply 'variations' of kimono such as the clothing worn by the working class is considered to be.
Some related garments still worn today were the contemporary clothing of previous time periods, and have survived on in an official and/or ceremonial capacity, worn only on certain occasions by certain people.
There are a number of accessories that can be worn with the kimono, and these vary by occasion and use. Some are ceremonial, or worn only for special occasions, whereas others are part of dressing in kimono and are used in a more practical sense.
Both geisha and wear variations on common accessories that are not found in everyday dress. As an extension of this, many practitioners of Japanese traditional dance wear similar kimono and accessories to geisha and .
For certain traditional holidays and occasions some specific types of kimono accessories are worn. For instance, , also known as , are worn by girls for , alongside brightly coloured . are also worn by young women on (Coming of Age Day).
Layering
Pre-WW2, kimono were commonly worn layered, with three being the standard number of layers worn over the top of undergarments. The layered kimono underneath were known as , and were often a patchwork of older or unwearable kimono taken apart for their fabric. Specifically-designed matching sets of formal layered kimono were known as , and generally featured the same design presented on different background colours, such as white (innermost), red (middle layer) and black (outermost). The innermost layers, known as , typically featured the plainest decorative techniques, such as dyework only, and the successive outer layers would feature techniques such as embroidery and couched gold thread, with the outermost layer - known as the - displaying the most extensive decoration. These matching sets would be designed and created together, commonly as part of a bride's outfit for a wedding. Extant intact sets of kimono are difficult to find, particularly in good condition, with the innermost kimono typically damaged and in poor condition.
In modern Japan, at least one layer is typically worn next to the skin when wearing kimono. Traditionally, this would be the or , a tube-sleeved, wrapped-front garment considered to be underwear, though in the modern day, regular underwear is sometimes worn instead, and a traditional is not considered strictly necessary. A is typically made of something more washable than silk, such as cotton, hemp, linen or some synthetic fibres.
For all forms of kimono except the (excluding high-quality dressed up as ), a (lit. "long "), often known and referred to as a , is worn over the top of any underwear. The resembles a kimono made of a lighter, thinner fabric, not uncommonly constructed without an panel at the front, and often has a collar cover known as a sewn over its collar. The , which is visible at the neckline when worn underneath a kimono, is designed to be replaced and washed when needed.
In modern-day Japan, layered kimono are generally only seen on the stage, whether for classical dances or in kabuki. A false second layer called a may be attached instead of an entirely separate kimono to achieve this look; the resembles the lower half of a kimono's lining which, and is sewn to the kimono horizontally along the back. A may have a false collar attached to it, or a matching false collar sewn to the kimono separately, creating the illusion of a layered kimono at the neckline; separate false sleeve cuffs may also be sewn into the kimono to create this effect.
Kimono featuring can be seen in some kabuki performances such as , where the kimono is worn with the flipped back slightly underneath the to expose the design on the . The can also be seen on some bridal kimono.
Care
In the past, a kimono would often be entirely taken apart for washing, and then re-sewn for wearing. This traditional washing method is called . Because the stitches must be taken out for washing, traditional kimono need to be hand sewn. is very expensive and difficult and is one of the causes of the declining popularity of kimono. Modern fabrics and cleaning methods have been developed that eliminate this need, although the traditional washing of kimono is still practiced, especially for high-end garments.
New, custom-made kimono are generally delivered to a customer with long, loose basting stitches placed around the outside edges. These stitches are called . They are sometimes replaced for storage. They help to prevent bunching, folding and wrinkling, and keep the kimono's layers in alignment.
Like many other traditional Japanese garments, there are specific ways to fold kimono. These methods help to preserve the garment and to keep it from creasing when stored. Kimono are often stored wrapped in paper called .
Kimono need to be aired out at least seasonally and before and after each time they are worn. Many people prefer to have their kimono dry cleaned. Although this can be extremely expensive, it is generally less expensive than but may be impossible for certain fabrics or dyes.
Outside of Japan
Kimono are worn outside of Japan in a variety of circumstances. Kimono may be worn to Shinto ceremonies by Brazilian girls of Japanese descent in Curitiba, in the Brazilian state of Paraná.
Kimono are also worn by Japanese Americans, and by other members of the Japanese diaspora overseas. Kimono are collected in the same way as Japanese hobbyists by some non-Japanese, and may be worn to events such as Kimono de Jack gatherings.
Notes
References
External links
The Canadian Museum of Civilization - Archive of the exhibition "The Landscape Kimonos of Itchiku Kubota"
The Kyoto Costume Museum - Costume History in Japan
Archived link to the Immortal Geisha Forums; comprehensive resource on kimono knowledge and culture
Articles on kimono from the V&A Collection
Dresses
Japanese full-body garments
Robes and cloaks
Folk costumes
History of Asian clothing | [
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16876 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston%20upon%20Thames | Kingston upon Thames | Kingston upon Thames (hyphenated until 1965, colloquially known as Kingston) is a town in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, South West London, England. It is situated on the River Thames and southwest of Charing Cross. It is notable as the ancient market town in which Saxon kings were crowned and today is the administrative centre of the Royal Borough.
Historically in the county of Surrey, the ancient parish of Kingston became absorbed in the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, reformed in 1835. From 1893 to 2021 it was the location of Surrey County Council, extraterritorially in terms of local government administration since 1965, when Kingston became a part of Greater London.
Today, most of the town centre is part of the KT1 postcode area, but some areas north of Kingston railway station are within KT2. The United Kingdom Census 2011 recorded the population of the town (comprising the four wards of Canbury, Grove, Norbiton and Tudor) as 43,013, while the borough overall counted 175,470. Kingston is identified as a metropolitan centre in the London Plan and is one of the biggest retail centres in the UK, receiving 18 million visitors a year. It is also home to Kingston University.
History
Early history
Kingston was called Cyninges tun in 838 AD, Chingestune in 1086, Kingeston in 1164, Kyngeston super Tamisiam in 1321 and Kingestowne upon Thames in 1589. The name means 'the king's manor or estate' from the Old English words cyning and tun. It belonged to the king in Saxon times and was the earliest royal borough.
The first surviving record of Kingston is from AD 838 as the site of a meeting between King Egbert of Wessex and Ceolnoth, Archbishop of Canterbury. Kingston lay on the boundary between the ancient kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, until in the early tenth century when King Athelstan united both to create the kingdom of England. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, two tenth-century kings were consecrated in Kingston: Æthelstan (925), and Æthelred the Unready (978). There are certain other kings who are said to have been crowned there, but for whom the evidence (including the writings of Florence of Worcester and Ralph de Diceto) is less substantial: Edward the Elder (902), Edmund I (939), Eadred (946), Eadwig (956), Edgar the Peaceful (circa 960) and Edward the Martyr (975). It was later thought that the coronations were conducted in the chapel of St Mary, which collapsed in 1730. Tradition dating to the 18th century holds that a large stone recovered from the ruins played a part in the coronations. It was initially used as a mounting block, but in 1850 it was moved to a more dignified place in the market before finally being moved to its current location in the grounds of the Guildhall.
From Medieval times Shrovetide Football was played annually at Kingston upon Thames and in surrounding towns including Richmond and Twickenham. The windows of the houses and shops were boarded up and from 12 noon the inhabitants would kick several balls around the town before retiring to the public houses. The last game was played in 1866, by which time the urban development of the town meant it caused too much damage and the custom was outlawed.
Local government
Kingston upon Thames formed an ancient parish in the Kingston hundred of Surrey. The parish of Kingston upon Thames covered a large area including Hook, Kew, New Malden, Petersham, Richmond, Surbiton, Thames Ditton and East Molesey.
The town of Kingston was granted a charter by King John in 1200, but the oldest one to survive is from 1208 and this document is housed in the town's archives. Other charters were issued by later kings, including Edward IV's charter that gave the town the status of a borough in 1481.
The borough covered a much smaller area than the ancient parish, although as new parishes were split off the borough and parish eventually became identical in 1894. The borough was reformed by the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, becoming the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames (then spelt with hyphens). It had been known as a Royal borough through custom and the right to the title was confirmed by George V in 1927. Kingston upon Thames was the seat of Surrey County Council when it moved from Newington in 1893 through until 2021 despite not being governed by it.
In 1965, the local government of Greater London was reorganised and the municipal borough was abolished. Its former area was merged with that of the Municipal Borough of Surbiton and the Municipal Borough of Malden and Coombe, to form the London Borough of Kingston upon Thames. At the request of Kingston upon Thames London Borough Council another Royal Charter was granted by Queen Elizabeth II entitling it to continue using the title "Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames" for the new borough.
Urban development
Kingston was built at the first crossing point of the Thames upstream from London Bridge and a bridge still exists at the same site. It was this 'great bridge' that gave it its early importance in the 13th century. Kingston was occupied by the Romans, and later it was either a royal residence or a royal demesne. There is a record of a council held there in 838, at which Egbert of Wessex, King of Wessex, and his son Ethelwulf of Wessex were present. In the Domesday Book it was held by William the Conqueror. Its domesday assets were: a church, five mills, four fisheries worth 10s, 27 ploughs, of meadow, woodland worth six hogs. It rendered £31 10s (£31.5).
In 1730, the chapel containing the royal effigies collapsed, burying the sexton, who was digging a grave, the sexton's daughter and another person. The daughter survived this accident and was her father's successor as sexton. Kingston sent members to early Parliaments, until a petition by the inhabitants prayed to be relieved from the burden. Another chapel, the collegiate chapel of St Mary Magdalene, The Lovekyn Chapel, still exists. It was founded in 1309 by a former mayor of London, Edward Lovekyn. It is the only private chantry chapel to survive the Reformation.
With the coming of the railway in the 1830s, there was much building development to the south of the town. Much of this became the new town of Surbiton, but the Surbiton Park estate, built in the grounds of Surbiton Place in the 1850s, remained part of Kingston during the period of the Municipal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames.
A permanent military presence was established in the borough with the completion of The Barracks in 1875.
Economic development
For much of the 20th century, Kingston was a major military aircraft manufacturing centre specialising in fighter aircraft – first with Sopwith Aviation, H G Hawker Engineering, later Hawker Aircraft, Hawker Siddeley and eventually British Aerospace. The renowned Sopwith Camel, Hawker Fury, Hurricane, Hunter and Harrier Jump Jet were all designed and built in the town and examples of all of these aircraft can be seen today at the nearby Brooklands Museum in Weybridge.
Well known aviation personalities Sydney Camm, Harry Hawker and Tommy Sopwith were responsible for much of Kingston's achievements in aviation. British Aerospace finally closed its Lower Ham Road factory in 1992; part of the site was subsequently redeveloped for housing but the riverside part houses a community centre and sports complex. The growth and development of Kingston Polytechnic and its transformation into Kingston University has made Kingston a university town.
Recent developments
Following the construction of the Kingston Relief Road (commonly known as the "Kingston one-way system") in 1989, major shopping streets in the town centre and the historic Market Place were pedestrianised. Two major commercial developments were also built in Kingston town centre - with John Lewis Kingston department store opening in 1990 and the Bentall Centre shopping centre opening in 1992. In the early 2000s, the Charter Quay development south of Kingston Bridge completed the riverside walk, as well as adding bars, restaurants and the Rose Theatre, which opened in 2008 with Sir Peter Hall as the director.
Governance
Kingston straddles two Parliamentary constituencies: the area north of the railway line is part of Richmond Park, which is represented by Sarah Olney of the Liberal Democrats, and the area south of the railway line (including the ancient town centre) is part of Kingston and Surbiton which is represented by Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats.
Notable locations
Central Kingston is a busy, largely pedestrian and predominantly retail centre, with a small number of commercial offices and civic buildings.
The shopping centre includes a shopping mall, "The Bentall Centre", containing the Bentalls department store and large branches of chain stores found in many British high streets. There is a large branch of the John Lewis department store group, with a Waitrose supermarket in the basement. A smaller 1960s shopping centre called Eden Walk exists nearby. The Rotunda, in a former Bentalls furniture depository building (a local landmark), includes a bowling alley, fitness centre, a 15-screen Odeon multiplex cinema and a few restaurants.
The ancient market is still held daily in the Market Place, including such produce as fish, jewellery, exotic foods, local foods and flowers.
Kingston's civic buildings include Kingston Museum, public library, modern Crown Court, smaller county court and the Guildhall. The Guildhall is located by the part-culverted mouth of the Hogsmill River, and houses Kingston Council and magistrates' court. A short distance away is the County Hall Building which houses the main offices of Surrey County Council. From 1893 to 1965, before Kingston became one of the 32 London boroughs of Greater London, it was the county town of Surrey following the period of 1791–1893 when Newington had this role. Guildford has officially reclaimed this ancient, now ceremonial title as Kingston is no longer administered by Surrey.
Kingston's main open space is the River Thames, with its lively frontage of bars and restaurants. Downstream there is a walk through Canbury Gardens towards Teddington Lock. Upstream there is a promenade crossing the Hogsmill river and reaching almost to Surbiton. Eagle Brewery Wharf is a council-owned public space located on the riverside. Across Kingston Bridge is a tree lined river bank fronting the expanse of Hampton Court Park.
Economy
Kingston has many pubs and restaurants and several public houses in the centre have become restaurants or bars. The more traditional pubs tend to be in the northern part of the town (Canbury) and include The Canbury Arms, Park Tavern, The Wych Elm and Willoughby Arms. Further south are found the Druid's Head, the Spring Grove, The Cricketers, The Albion Tavern, The Duke of Buckingham, and several small local pubs around Fairfield. The Druid's Head is notable as one of the first taverns to make the famous dessert syllabub in the 18th century. There are several Chinese, Indian, Thai and Italian restaurants.
The local newspapers are the weekly Surrey Comet, which celebrated its 150th year in 2004, and the Kingston Guardian.
In 2010 retail footprint research, Kingston ranked 25th in terms of retail expenditure in the UK at £810 million, equal to Covent Garden and just ahead of Southampton. This puts it as generating the fifth most amount of money from the retail sector in Greater London, passing Croydon, with just four West End alternatives ahead. In 2005, Kingston was 24th with £864 million, and 3rd in London. In a 2015 study by CACI, Kingston was ranked 28th in the UK in the Hot 100 Retail Locations - and the second highest in Greater London after Croydon. In 2018, Kingston was ranked joint 5th in the UK by Knight Frank in the "High Street Investment Ranking", only bettered by Cambridge, Bath, Chichester and Reading.
As of 2011, Kingston upon Thames has the fourth highest retail turnover for comparison goods in Greater London, £432 million annually, only bettered by the West End, Shepherd's Bush and Stratford. As of 2012, Kingston has of total town centre floorspace, the 3rd highest in London.
Culture
A notable dramatic arts venue is the Rose Theatre. This theatre opened on 16 January 2008 and seats about 900 people. The audience are arranged around the semi-circular stage. All Saints Church is host to classical choral and music concerts mostly on Saturdays and houses a Frobenius organ. There are a number of choral societies including the Kingston Orpheus Choir and the Kingston Choral Society, an amateur symphony orchestra the Kingston Philharmonia, and the Kingston and District Chamber Music Society. A number of annual festivals are organised by the Council and Kingston Arts Council including Kingston Readers' Festival, Think-in-Kingston and the Festival of the Voice. Kingston University runs the Stanley Picker Gallery and Kingston Museum has a changing gallery on the first floor. A regular singing group at the Rose Theatre caters to schools and families.
John Galsworthy the author was born on Kingston Hill and Jacqueline Wilson grew up, and went to school in Kingston and still lives there today. Both are commemorated at Kingston University – Galsworthy in the newest building and Wilson in the main hall. Also commemorated at the University is photographer Eadweard Muybridge who was born at Kingston and changed the spelling of his first name in reference to the name of the Saxon king on the Coronation Stone. He was a pioneer in the photography of the moving image. R. C. Sherriff the playwright is also associated with Kingston, writing his first play to support Kingston Rowing Club. An earlier writer born in Kingston was John Cleland.
Kingston has been covered in literature, film and television. It is where the comic Victorian novel Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome begins; cannons aimed against the Martians in H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds are positioned on Kingston Hill; in The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence the youngest Brangwen dreams of a job in Kingston upon Thames in a long, lyrical passage; Mr. Knightly in Emma by Jane Austen regularly visits Kingston, although the narrative never follows him there.
Fine art is also a prominent feature in the history of Kingston. Both John Hoyland and Jeremy Moon worked from permanent studios in Kingston and many prominent artists and designers have studied at the university including Fiona Banner, John Bratby, David Nash and Jasper Morrison.
Early in his music career, the guitarist and singer-songwriter Eric Clapton spent time busking in Kingston upon Thames, having grown up and studied in the area. Rock band Cardiacs were formed in the town.
Kingston is mentioned (and used as a filming location) in episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus. More recently, a scene from Mujhse Dosti Karoge, a Bollywood film starring Hrithik Roshan as the leading actor, was filmed by the toppled telephone boxes sculpture in Old London Road. A scene in the television programme The Good Life sees Richard Briers get on a 71 bus in 'The Avenue' towards Kingston town centre (albeit this route never served the east side of Surbiton where the series is set).
The 1974 Doctor Who story "Invasion of the Dinosaurs" used several locations in the town for filming. The 2008 series of Primeval, shown on ITV1 in January, featured almost an entire episode filmed inside the Bentall Centre and John Lewis department stores. Kingston featured in Primeval again in May 2009 with several scenes shot in and around the Market Place. Nipper, the famous "His Master's Voice" (HMV) dog, is buried in the town under Lloyds Bank. His owners lived nearby in Fife Road.
Kingston Green Fair was held annually from 1987 to 2008 in Canbury Gardens, next to the river, on the Spring Bank Holiday. The word "Green" in the title refers to the ethos of the fair as promoting sustainable development. For instance no meat or other products derived from dead animals were allowed to be sold, and no electricity was permitted on the site unless generated by wind, sun, or bicycle power. Kingston is also home to Crack Comedy Club which opened at The Grey Horse Pub in 2002.
Public art
One of the more unusual sights in Kingston is Out of Order by David Mach, a sculpture in the form of twelve disused red telephone boxes that have been tipped up to lean against one another in an arrangement resembling dominoes. The work was commissioned in 1988 as part of the landscaping for the new Relief Road, and was described by its creator as "anti-minimalist".
Transport
Rail
Kingston is principally served by Kingston railway station, which opened in 1863.
The station is in London fare zone 6 and is served by South Western Railway trains from London Waterloo. Trains to Waterloo link Kingston directly to destinations such as Wimbledon, Clapham Junction and Vauxhall. Eastbound trains travel to Shepperton via Teddington, Hampton and Sunbury. Eastbound trains also travel on the Kingston loop line towards Teddington, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham and Richmond, after which trains continue towards Waterloo. From Waterloo, trains to Kingston are advertised towards "Shepperton" and "Strawberry Hill".
A nearby station in Norbiton (in fare zone 5) is on the same lines.
Nearby Surbiton station - originally named Kingston when it opened in 1838 - is on the South West Main Line in London fare zone 6. Surbiton is also served by South Western Railway trains from Waterloo. Southbound services link Surbiton to destinations in Surrey and Hampshire, such as Hampton Court, Guildford, Woking and Basingstoke. The station building at Surbiton was built in 1937, designed in Art Deco style by James Robb Scott. It is Grade II listed.
Bus
Kingston is served by two bus stations, Cromwell Road and Fairfield, and a large number of bus stops, with destinations across Greater London and Surrey including links directly to Heathrow Airport.
Road
The Kingston Bypass passes to the south and east of Kingston. The bypass carries the A3, which links the area to Wandsworth, Clapham and the City of London to the north. To the south, the A3 runs to Portsmouth via Guildford and Petersfield.
A portion of the bypass carries the A309 to Thames Ditton, Hampton Court and the A308.
There are several radial routes including:
A238 towards Raynes Park, Colliers Wood and Tooting
A240 towards Banstead and Epsom
A2043 towards New Malden and Cheam
A307 northbound towards Petersfield, Richmond and the M4, or southbound towards Thames Ditton, Esher and Cobham
A308 eastbound towards the A3, Putney and Wandsworth and westbound towards Hampton Court, Sunbury-on-Thames (for M3) and Staines
A310 via A308 northbound towards Teddington and Twickenham
Kingston Relief Road
In the 1960s, planners proposed a partially elevated ring road encircling the town centre, to alleviate congestion on major shopping streets and traffic heading towards Kingston Bridge. After objections from local residents, an interim one-way system was implemented in July 1963. Following this, the Kingston Relief Road was constructed in Kingston town centre in the late 1980s. Commonly known as the "Kingston one-way system", the road encircles the town centre, allowing for major shopping streets such as Clarence Street to be pedestrianised. On the eastern side of the town centre, the road passes underneath John Lewis Kingston in a tunnel, before crossing the River Thames via Kingston Bridge. As part of the project, two bus stations were constructed, cycle lanes installed and several artworks commissioned including Out of Order by David Mach and River Celebration by Carole Hodgson.
River
Kingston Town End and Kingston Turks piers are situated in Kingston. Turk Launches operates a Summer-only river tour between Hampton Court and Richmond St Helena.
Cycling
There is a network of cycle lanes throughout Kingston linking the area to destinations throughout south-west London and England.
Key routes include:
National Cycle Route 4 - A route from Greenwich in south-east London to St David's in west Wales. NCR4 follows the route of the River Thames near Kingston, crossing from the south side of the river to the north over Kingston Bridge. Northbound, the route runs towards Central London and Greenwich via Ham, Richmond Park and Barnes. Westbound, NCR4 runs towards Reading via Walton, Egham and Eton. The route is part of EuroVelo 2, a route from Moscow to Galway.
Cycleway 28 - A two-way, segregated cycle track between Kingston and Seething Wells along Portsmouth Road.
Cycleway 29 - A cycle route, much of which is two-way and segregated from other road traffic between Kingston and Fishponds Park. Much of the route follows Penrhyn Road and Ewell Road.
Cycleway 30 - A segregated cycle track between C29 at Kingston to Putney Vale, following the route of A308 London Road.
Education
Kingston is the location of Kingston University and Kingston College. Primary schools in the town include Latchmere School, Fernhill School, King Athelstan School and St Agatha's Catholic Primary School. Secondary schools in the town include The Kingston Academy, Holy Cross School and Richard Challoner School. Kingston also is home to Tiffin School, Tiffin Girls' School and Kingston Grammar School, all of which have large catchment areas across Greater London and Surrey.
Religious sites
The 12th-century All Saints Church serves the Church of England parish of Kingston which lies ecclesiastically in the Diocese of Southwark, although there has been a church in Kingston since at least 838. The suffragan or Area Bishop of Kingston is the Rt Rev Dr Richard Cheetham. Other Anglican churches in Kingston, of more recent date, are St John the Evangelist and St Luke.
Kingston lies in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark, and there is a Roman Catholic Church dedicated to Saint Agatha.
Kingston is also the home of the Kingston Surbiton & District Synagogue. It also has a Quaker meeting house, a Mosque and a Sikh Gurdwara.
Lady Booth Road, formally Fairfield Road, is named to commemorate the former location of the Salvation Army citadel.
Sport
Kingston is the home of four association football clubs, AFC Wimbledon who play at the Kingsmeadow Stadium, Corinthian-Casuals and Kingstonian who play in Tolworth and Chessington & Hook United who play in Chessington. AFC Wimbledon have played in League One since the 2016–17 season, whereas Kingstonian, Corinthian-Casuals and Chessington & Hook United are non-league clubs.
Kingston Athletic Club and Polytechnic Harriers are based at the neighbouring Kingsmeadow athletics stadium. This stadium boasts a 400m track which is floodlit, a gym and 5-a-side football facilities. In the 2013 season the men competed in Division 3 of the British Athletics League. Kingston Rugby Club is based on the outskirts of the town, and Kingston Rowing Club (founded in 1858) is based in Canbury Gardens on the River Thames. The Club holds two large timed race events (HEADs) in the Spring and Autumn. Kingston Regatta takes place on the river just above the bridge over a weekend in early July.
The town has a large leisure centre next to Fairfield named the Kingfisher Centre, which contains an indoor swimming pool and gymnasium. Sport in Kingston is promoted and encouraged by Sport Kingston, an organisation funded by the Royal Borough of Kingston.
Kingston Wildcats School of Basketball is a community basketball development club that practices and plays its home fixtures at Chessington School, competing in the Surrey League and Basketball England National League.
London 2012 Summer Olympics
Prior to the opening of the games, Kingston hosted the 2012 Summer Olympics torch relay on two occasions with the flame travelling through the borough on 24 July 2012 and aboard the Gloriana in a cauldron on 27 July 2012 en route to the Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony. The borough was the setting for four cycling events during the Olympics, the men's road race, women's road race, men's road time trial and women's road time trial.
Following the games, the London–Surrey Classic professional road bicycle race ran through the town from 2013-18, using a similar course to the Olympic road race. Following the COVID-19 pandemic, the race will not return to Kingston, with the RideLondon festival using the roads of Essex instead.
Geography
Kingston is south-east of Twickenham, north-east of Walton-on-Thames, and north-west of Sutton.
Nearest places
Town twinning
Kingston upon Thames has been twinned with Oldenburg in Germany since 2010. It also has been historically twinned with Delft in the Netherlands.
In 2016, Kingston upon Thames has been twinned with Jaffna in Sri Lanka.
Notable people
List of people from Kingston upon Thames
References
Bibliography
– A guide to the Thames written by the novelist's son
External links
The Kingston upon Thames Society
Areas of London
Business improvement districts in London
Districts of London on the River Thames
Districts of the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames
Former county towns in England
Market towns in London
Market towns in Surrey
Metropolitan centres of London | [
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60533355 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne%20Amie | Anne Amie | Anne Amie is an Indian playback singer. Her career began when she sang her first solo, "Ethu Meghamari", in the film Kochavva Paulo Ayyappa Coelho.
Career
She participated in the music reality show, Star Singer on Asianet. Subsequently, she got a chance to work with Shaan Rahman for the film Kochavva Paulo Ayyappa Coelho. However, that song was not included in the movie. She has also worked with known music directors like M. Jayachandran, Bijibal, Gopi Sunder, Alphons Joseph, Ratheesh Vega, Sushin Shyam, Mejo Joseph and Ifthi.
Discography
2016
2017
2018
2019
Filmography
As Dubbing Artist
Varane Avashyamund for Kalyani Priyadarshan
Sufiyum Sujathayum for Aditi Rao Hydari
Nizhal for Divya Prabha
Tsunami for Aradhya Ann
Bhramam for Raashi Khanna
Meppadiyan for Anju Kurian
Bro Daddy for Kalyani Priyadarshan
Kaaval for
Awards
References
External links
List of Malayalam songs by Anne Amie at MalayalaSangeetham
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Indian women playback singers
21st-century Indian women singers
Filmfare Awards winners
Singers from Kerala | [
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16880 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnataka | Karnataka | Karnataka (; ISO: , ) is a state in the south western region of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reorganisation Act. Originally known as the State of Mysore , it was renamed Karnataka in 1973. The state corresponds to the Carnatic region. Its capital and largest city is Bangalore.
Karnataka is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, Goa to the northwest, Maharashtra to the north, Telangana to the northeast, Andhra Pradesh to the east, Tamil Nadu to the southeast, and Kerala to the southwest. It is the only southern state to have land borders with all of the other 4 southern Indian sister states. The state covers an area of , or 5.83 percent of the total geographical area of India. It is the sixth largest Indian state by area. With 61,130,704 inhabitants at the 2011 census, Karnataka is the eighth largest state by population, comprising 31 districts. Kannada, one of the classical languages of India, is the most widely spoken and official language of the state. Other minority languages spoken include Urdu, Konkani, Marathi, Tulu, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kodava and Beary. Karnataka also contains some of the only villages in India where Sanskrit is primarily spoken.
Though several etymologies have been suggested for the name Karnataka, the generally accepted one is that Karnataka is derived from the Kannada words karu and nādu, meaning "elevated land". Karu Nadu may also be read as karu, meaning "black" and nadu, meaning "region", as a reference to the black cotton soil found in the Bayalu Seeme region of the state. The British used the word Carnatic, sometimes Karnatak, to describe both sides of peninsular India, south of the Krishna.
With an antiquity that dates to the paleolithic, Karnataka has been home to some of the most powerful empires of ancient and medieval India. The philosophers and musical bards patronised by these empires launched socio-religious and literary movements which have endured to the present day. Karnataka has contributed significantly to both forms of Indian classical music, the Carnatic and Hindustani traditions.
The economy of Karnataka is the Sixth-largest of any Indian state with in gross domestic product and a per capita GDP of . Karnataka has the nineteenth highest ranking among Indian states in Human Development Index.
History
Karnataka's pre-history goes back to a paleolithic hand-axe culture evidenced by discoveries of, among other things, hand axes and cleavers in the region. Evidence of neolithic and megalithic cultures have also been found in the state. Gold discovered in Harappa was found to be imported from mines in Karnataka, prompting scholars to hypothesise about contacts between ancient Karnataka and the Indus Valley Civilisation ca. 3300 BCE.
Prior to the third century BCE, most of Karnataka formed part of the Nanda Empire before coming under the Mauryan empire of Emperor Ashoka. Four centuries of Satavahana rule followed, allowing them to control large areas of Karnataka. The decline of Satavahana power led to the rise of the earliest native kingdoms, the Kadambas and the Western Gangas, marking the region's emergence as an independent political entity. The Kadamba Dynasty, founded by Mayurasharma, had its capital at Banavasi; the Western Ganga Dynasty was formed with Talakad as its capital.
These were also the first kingdoms to use Kannada in administration, as evidenced by the Halmidi inscription and a fifth-century copper coin discovered at Banavasi. These dynasties were followed by imperial Kannada empires such as the Badami Chalukyas, the Rashtrakuta Empire of Manyakheta and the Western Chalukya Empire, which ruled over large parts of the Deccan and had their capitals in what is now Karnataka. The Western Chalukyas patronised a unique style of architecture and Kannada literature which became a precursor to the Hoysala art of the 12th century. Parts of modern-day Southern Karnataka (Gangavadi) were occupied by the Chola Empire at the turn of the 11th century. The Cholas and the Hoysalas fought over the region in the early 12th century before it eventually came under Hoysala rule.
At the turn of the first millennium, the Hoysalas gained power in the region. Literature flourished during this time, which led to the emergence of distinctive Kannada literary metres, and the construction of temples and sculptures adhering to the Vesara style of architecture. The expansion of the Hoysala Empire brought minor parts of modern Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu under its rule. In the early 14th century, Harihara and Bukka Raya established the Vijayanagara empire with its capital, Hosapattana (later named Vijayanagara), on the banks of the Tungabhadra River in the modern Bellary district. Under the rule of Krishnadevaraya, a distinct form of literature and architecture evolved. The empire rose as a bulwark against Muslim advances into South India, which it completely controlled for over two centuries. In 1537, Kempe Gowda I, a chieftain of the Vijayanagara Empire, widely held as the founder of modern Bangalore, built a fort and established the area around it as Bengaluru Pete.
In 1565, Karnataka and the rest of South India experienced a major geopolitical shift when the Vijayanagara empire fell to a confederation of Islamic sultanates in the Battle of Talikota. The Bijapur Sultanate, which had risen after the demise of the Bahmani Sultanate of Bidar, soon took control of the Deccan; it was defeated by the Moghuls in the late 17th century. The Bahmani and Bijapur rulers encouraged Urdu and Persian literature and Indo-Saracenic architecture, the Gol Gumbaz being one of the high points of this style. During the sixteenth century, Konkani Hindus migrated to Karnataka, mostly from Salcette, Goa, while during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, Goan Catholics migrated to North Canara and South Canara, especially from Bardes, Goa, as a result of food shortages, epidemics and heavy taxation imposed by the Portuguese.
In the period that followed, parts of northern Karnataka were ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Maratha Empire, the British, and other powers. In the south, the Mysore Kingdom, a former vassal of the Vijayanagara Empire, was briefly independent. With the death of Krishnaraja Wodeyar II, Haidar Ali, the commander-in-chief of the Mysore army, gained control of the region. After his death, the kingdom was inherited by his son Tipu Sultan. To contain European expansion in South India, Haidar Ali and later Tipu Sultan fought four significant Anglo-Mysore Wars, the last of which resulted in Tippu Sultan's death and the incorporation of Mysore into the British Raj in 1799. The Kingdom of Mysore was restored to the Wodeyars and Mysore remained a princely state under the British Raj.
As the "doctrine of lapse" gave way to dissent and resistance from princely states across the country, Kittur Chennamma, Sangolli Rayanna and others spearheaded rebellions in Karnataka in 1830, nearly three decades before the Indian Rebellion of 1857. However, Kitturu was taken over by the British East India Company even before the doctrine was officially articulated by Lord Dalhousie in 1848. Other uprisings followed, such as the ones at Supa, Bagalkot, Shorapur, Nargund and Dandeli. These rebellions—which coincided with the Indian Rebellion of 1857—were led by Mundargi Bhimarao, Bhaskar Rao Bhave, the Halagali Bedas, Raja Venkatappa Nayaka and others. By the late 19th century, the independence movement had gained momentum; Karnad Sadashiva Rao, Aluru Venkata Raya, S. Nijalingappa, Kengal Hanumanthaiah, Nittoor Srinivasa Rau and others carried on the struggle into the early 20th century.
After India's independence, the Maharaja, Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar, allowed his kingdom's accession to India. In 1950, Mysore became an Indian state of the same name; the former Maharaja served as its Rajpramukh (head of state) until 1975. Following the long-standing demand of the Ekikarana Movement, Kodagu- and Kannada-speaking regions from the adjoining states of Madras, Hyderabad and Bombay were incorporated into the Mysore state, under the States Reorganisation Act of 1956. The thus expanded state was renamed Karnataka, seventeen years later, on 1 November 1973. In the early 1900s through the post-independence era, industrial visionaries such as Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvarayya, played an important role in the development of Karnataka's strong manufacturing and industrial base.
Geography
The state has three principal geographical zones:
The coastal region of Karavali and Tulu Nadu
The hilly Malenadu region comprising the Western Ghats
The Bayaluseeme region comprising the plains of the Deccan Plateau
The bulk of the state is in the Bayaluseeme region, the northern part of which is the second-largest arid region in India. The highest point in Karnataka is the Mullayanagiri hills in Chikmagalur district which has an altitude of . The two main river systems of the state are the Krishna and its tributaries, the Bhima, Ghataprabha, Vedavathi, Malaprabha and Tungabhadra in North Karnataka, and the Kaveri and its tributaries, the Hemavati, Shimsha, Arkavati, Lakshmana Thirtha and Kabini, in South Karnataka. Most of these rivers flow out of Karnataka eastward, reaching the sea at the Bay of Bengal. Other prominent rivers such as the Sharavati in Shimoga and Netravati in Dakshina Kannada flow westward, reaching the sea at the Arabian Sea. A large number of dams and reservoirs are constructed across these rivers which richly add to the irrigation and hydroelectricity power generation capacities of the state.
Karnataka consists of four main types of geological formations – the Archean complex made up of Dharwad schists and granitic gneisses, the Proterozoic non-fossiliferous sedimentary formations of the Kaladgi and Bhima series, the Deccan trappean and intertrappean deposits and the tertiary and recent laterites and alluvial deposits. Laterite cappings that are found in many districts over the Deccan Traps were formed after the cessation of volcanic activity in the early tertiary period. Eleven groups of soil orders are found in Karnataka, viz. Entisols, Inceptisols, Mollisols, Spodosols, Alfisols, Ultisols, Oxisols, Aridisols, Vertisols, Andisols and Histosols. Depending on the agricultural capability of the soil, the soil types are divided into six types, viz. red, lateritic, black, alluvio-colluvial, forest and coastal soils.
About of Karnataka (i.e. 16% of the state's geographic area) is covered by forests. The forests are classified as reserved, protected, unclosed, village and private forests. The percentage of forested area is slightly less than the all-India average of about 23%, and significantly less than the 33% prescribed in the National Forest Policy.
Climate
Karnataka experiences four seasons. The winter in January and February is followed by summer between March and May, the monsoon season between June and September and the post-monsoon season from October till December. Meteorologically, Karnataka is divided into three zones – coastal, north interior and south interior. Of these, the coastal zone receives the heaviest rainfall with an average rainfall of about per annum, far in excess of the state average of . Amagaon in Khanapura taluka of Belgaum district received of rainfall in the year 2010. In the year 2014, Kokalli in Sirsi taluka of Uttara Kannada district received of rainfall. Agumbe in Thirthahalli taluka and Hulikal of Hosanagara taluka in Shimoga district were the rainiest cities in Karnataka, situated in one of the wettest regions in the world.
The state is projected to warm about by 2030. The monsoon is set to provide less rainfall. Agriculture in Karnataka is mostly rainfed as opposed to irrigated, making it highly vulnerable to expected changes in the monsoon. The highest recorded temperature was in Raichuru district. The lowest recorded temperature was at Bidar district.
Sub-divisions
There are 31 districts in Karnataka. Each district (zila) is governed by a district commissioner (ziladar). The districts are further divided into sub-districts (talukas), which are governed by sub-commissioners (talukdars); sub-divisions comprise blocks (tehsils/hobli), which are governed by block development officers (tehsildars), which contain village councils (panchayats), town municipal councils (purasabhe), city municipal councils (nagarasabhe), and city municipal corporations (mahanagara palike).
Demographics
According to the 2011 census of India, the total population of Karnataka was 61,095,297 of which 30,966,657 (50.7%) were male and 30,128,640 (49.3%) were female, or 1000 males for every 973 females. This represents a 15.60% increase over the population in 2001. The population density was 319 per km2 and 38.67% of the people lived in urban areas. The literacy rate was 75.36% with 82.47% of males and 68.08% of females being literate.
Religion
84% of the population are Hindu, 12.92% were Muslim, 1.87% were Christian, 0.72% were Jains, 0.16% were Buddhist, 0.05% were Sikh and 0.02% were belonging to other religions and 0.27% of the population did not state their religion , as per the last census.
In 2007 the state had a birth rate of 2.2%, a death rate of 0.7%, an infant mortality rate of 5.5% and a maternal mortality rate of 0.2%. The total fertility rate was 2.2.
Karnataka's private sector speciality health care competes with the best in the world. Karnataka has also established a modicum of public health services having a better record of health care and child care than most other states of India. In spite of these advances, some parts of the state still suffer from the lack of primary health care.
Government and administration
Karnataka has a parliamentary system of government with two democratically elected houses, the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. The Legislative Assembly consists of 224 members who are elected for five-year terms. The Legislative Council is a permanent body of 75 members with one-third (25 members) retiring every two years.
The government of Karnataka is headed by the Chief Minister who is chosen by the ruling party members of the Legislative Assembly. The Chief Minister, along with the council of ministers, executes the legislative agenda and exercises most of the executive powers. However, the constitutional and formal head of the state is the Governor who is appointed for a five-year term by the President of India on the advice of the Union government. The people of Karnataka also elect 28 members to the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament. The members of the state Legislative Assembly elect 12 members to the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament.For administrative purposes, Karnataka has been divided into four revenue divisions, 49 sub-divisions, 31 districts, 175 taluks and 745 hoblies / revenue circles. The administration in each district is headed by a Deputy Commissioner who belongs to the Indian Administrative Service and is assisted by a number of officers belonging to Karnataka state services. The Deputy Commissioner of Police, an officer belonging to the Indian Police Service and assisted by the officers of the Karnataka Police Service, is entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining law and order and related issues in each district. The Deputy Conservator of Forests, an officer belonging to the Indian Forest Service, is entrusted with the responsibility of managing forests, environment and wildlife of the district, he will be assisted by the officers belonging to Karnataka Forest Service and officers belonging to Karnataka Forest Subordinate Service. Sectoral development in the districts is looked after by the district head of each development department such as Public Works Department, Health, Education, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, etc. The judiciary in the state consists of the Karnataka High Court (Attara Kacheri) in Bangalore, Hubballi-Dharwad, and Kalaburagi, district and session courts in each district and lower courts and judges at the taluk level.
Politics in Karnataka has been dominated by three political parties, the Indian National Congress, the Janata Dal (Secular) and the Bharatiya Janata Party. Politicians from Karnataka have played prominent roles in federal government of India with some of them having held the high positions of Prime Minister and Vice-President. Border disputes involving Karnataka's claim on the Kasaragod and Solapur districts and Maharashtra's claim on Belagavi are ongoing since the states reorganisation.
The official emblem of Karnataka has a Ganda Berunda in the centre. Surmounting this are four lions facing the four directions, taken from the Lion Capital of Ashoka at Sarnath. The emblem also carries two Sharabhas with the head of an elephant and the body of a lion.
Economy
Karnataka had an estimated GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) of about US$115.86 billion in the 2014–15 fiscal year. The state registered a GSDP growth rate of 7% for the year 2014–2015. Karnataka's contribution to India's GDP in the year 2014–15 was 7.54%. With GDP growth of 17.59% and per capita GDP growth of 16.04%, Karnataka is on the 6th position among all states and union territories. In an employment survey conducted for the year 2013–2014, the unemployment rate in Karnataka was 1.8% compared to the national rate of 4.9%. In 2011–2012, Karnataka had an estimated poverty ratio of 20.91% compared to the national ratio of 21.92%.
Nearly 56% of the workforce in Karnataka is engaged in agriculture and related activities. A total of 12.31 million hectares of land, or 64.6% of the state's total area, is cultivated. Much of the agricultural output is dependent on the southwest monsoon as only 26.5% of the sown area is irrigated.
Karnataka is the manufacturing hub for some of the largest public sector industries in India, including Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, National Aerospace Laboratories, Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Bharat Earth Movers Limited and HMT (formerly Hindustan Machine Tools), which are based in Bangalore. Many of India's premier science and technology research centres, such as Indian Space Research Organisation, Central Power Research Institute, Bharat Electronics Limited and the Central Food Technological Research Institute, are also headquartered in Karnataka. Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited is an oil refinery, located in Mangalore.
The state has also begun to invest heavily in solar power centred on the Pavagada Solar Park. As of December 2017, the state has installed an estimated 2.2 gigawatts of block solar panelling and in January 2018 announced a tender to generate a further 1.2 gigawatts in the coming years: Karnataka Renewable Energy Development suggests that this will be based on 24 separate systems (or 'blocks') generating 50 megawatts each.
Since the 1980s, Karnataka has emerged as the pan-Indian leader in the field of IT (information technology). In 2007, there were nearly 2,000 firms operating in Karnataka. Many of them, including two of India's biggest software firms, Infosys and Wipro, are also headquartered in the state. Exports from these firms exceeded in 2006–07, accounting for nearly 38% of all IT exports from India. The Nandi Hills area in the outskirts of Devanahalli is the site of the upcoming $22 billion, 50 km2 BIAL IT Investment Region, one of the largest infrastructure projects in the history of Karnataka. All this has earned the state capital, Bangalore, the sobriquet Silicon Valley of India.
Karnataka also leads the nation in biotechnology. It is home to India's largest biocluster, with 60% of the country's biotechnology firms being based here. The state has 18,000 hectares of land under flower cultivation, an upcoming industry which supplies flowers and ornamental plants worldwide.
Seven of India's banks, Canara Bank, Syndicate Bank, Corporation Bank, Vijaya Bank, Karnataka Bank, ING Vysya Bank and the State Bank of Mysore originated in this state. The coastal districts of Udupi and Dakshina Kannada have a branch for every 500 persons—the best distribution of banks in India. In March 2002, Karnataka had 4767 branches of different banks with each branch serving 11,000 persons, which is lower than the national average of 16,000.
A majority of the silk industry in India is headquartered in Karnataka, much of it in Doddaballapura in Bangalore Rural district and the state government intends to invest in a "Silk City" at Muddenahalli in Chikkaballapura district.
Transport
Air transport in Karnataka, as in the rest of the country, is still a fledgling but fast expanding sector. Karnataka has airports at Bangalore, Mangalore, Belgaum, Hubli, Hampi, Bellary, Gulbarga, and Mysore with international operations from Bangalore and Mangalore airports. Shimoga and Bijapur airports are being built under the UDAN Scheme.
Karnataka has a railway network with a total length of approximately . Until the creation of the South-Western Railway Zone headquartered at Hubballi in 2003, the railway network in the state was in the Southern Railway zone, South-Central Railway Zone and Western Railway zone. Several parts of the state now come under the South Western Railway zone with 3 Railway Divisions at Bangalore, Mysore, Hubli, with the remainder under the Southern Railway zone and Konkan Railway Zone, which is considered one of India's biggest railway projects of the century due to the difficult terrain. Bangalore and other cities in the state are well-connected with intrastate and inter-state destinations.
Karnataka has 11 ports, including the New Mangalore Port, a major port and ten minor ports, of which three were operational in 2012. The New Mangalore port was incorporated as the ninth major port in India on 4 May 1974. This port handled 32.04 million tonnes of traffic in the fiscal year 2006–07 with 17.92 million tonnes of imports and 14.12 million tonnes of exports. The port also handled 1015 vessels including 18 cruise vessels during the year 2006–07. Foreigners can enter Mangalore through the New Mangalore Port with the help of Electronic visa (e-visa). Cruise ships from Europe, North America and UAE arrive at New Mangalore Port to visit the tourist places across Coastal Karnataka. The port of Mangalore is among the 4 major ports of India that receive over 25 international cruise ships every year.
The total lengths of National Highways and State Highways in Karnataka are , respectively.
The state transport corporations, transports an average of 2.2 million passengers daily and employs about 25,000 people. The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) and The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) headquartered in Bangalore, The Kalyana Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (KKRTC) headquartered in Gulbarga, and The North Western Karnataka Road Transport Corporation (NWKRTC) headquartered in Hubballi are the 4 state-owned transport corporations.
Culture
The diverse linguistic and religious ethnicities that are native to Karnataka, combined with their long histories, have contributed immensely to the varied cultural heritage of the state. Apart from Kannadigas, Karnataka is home to Tuluvas, Kodavas and Konkanis. Minor populations of Tibetan Buddhists and tribes like the Soligas, Yeravas, Todas and Siddhis also live in Karnataka. The traditional folk arts cover the entire gamut of music, dance, drama, storytelling by itinerant troupes, etc. Yakshagana of Malnad and coastal Karnataka, a classical dance drama, is one of the major theatrical forms of Karnataka. Contemporary theatre culture in Karnataka remains vibrant with organisations like Ninasam, Ranga Shankara, Rangayana and Prabhat Kalavidaru continuing to build on the foundations laid by Gubbi Veeranna, T. P. Kailasam, B. V. Karanth, K V Subbanna, Prasanna and others. Veeragase, Kamsale, Kolata and Dollu Kunitha are popular dance forms. The Mysore style of Bharatanatya, nurtured and popularised by the likes of the legendary Jatti Tayamma, continues to hold sway in Karnataka, and Bangalore also enjoys an eminent place as one of the foremost centres of Bharatanatya.
Karnataka also has a special place in the world of Indian classical music, with both Karnataka (Carnatic) and Hindustani styles finding place in the state, and Karnataka has produced a number of stalwarts in both styles. The Haridasa movement of the sixteenth century contributed significantly to the development of Karnataka (Carnatic) music as a performing art form. Purandara Dasa, one of the most revered Haridasas, is known as the Karnataka Sangeeta Pitamaha ('Father of Karnataka a.k.a. Carnatic music'). Celebrated Hindustani musicians like Gangubai Hangal, Mallikarjun Mansur, Bhimsen Joshi, Basavaraja Rajaguru, Sawai Gandharva and several others hail from Karnataka, and some of them have been recipients of the Kalidas Samman, Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibhushan awards. Noted Carnatic musicians include Violin T. Chowdiah, Veena Sheshanna, Mysore Vasudevachar, Doreswamy Iyengar and Thitte Krishna Iyengar.
Gamaka is another classical music genre based on Carnatic music that is practised in Karnataka. Kannada Bhavageete is a genre of popular music that draws inspiration from the expressionist poetry of modern poets. The Mysore school of painting has produced painters like Sundarayya, Tanjavur Kondayya, B. Venkatappa and Keshavayya. Chitrakala Parishat is an organisation in Karnataka dedicated to promoting painting, mainly in the Mysore painting style.
Saree is the traditional dress of women in Karnataka. Women in Kodagu have a distinct style of wearing the saree, different from the rest of Karnataka. Dhoti, known as Panche in Karnataka, is the traditional attire of men. Shirt, Trousers and Salwar kameez are widely worn in Urban areas. Mysore Peta is the traditional headgear of southern Karnataka, while the pagadi or pataga (similar to the Rajasthani turban) is preferred in the northern areas of the state.
Rice and Ragi form the staple food in South Karnataka, whereas Jolada rotti, Sorghum is staple to North Karnataka. Bisi bele bath, Jolada rotti, Ragi mudde, Uppittu, Benne Dose, Masala Dose and Maddur Vade are some of the popular food items in Karnataka. Among sweets, Mysore Pak, Karadantu of Gokak and Amingad, Belgaavi Kunda and Dharwad pedha are popular. Apart from this, coastal Karnataka and Kodagu have distinctive cuisines of their own. Udupi cuisine of coastal Karnataka is popular all over India.
Religion
Adi Shankaracharya (788–820) chose Sringeri in Karnataka to establish the first of his four mathas (monastery). Madhvacharya (1238–1317) was the chief proponent of Tattvavada (Philosophy of Reality), popularly known as Dvaita or Dualistic school of Hindu philosophy – one of the three most influential Vedanta philosophies. Madhvacharya was one of the important philosophers during the Bhakti movement. He was a pioneer in many ways, going against standard conventions and norms. According to tradition, Madhvacharya is believed to be the third incarnation of Vayu (Mukhyaprana), after Hanuman and Bhima. The Haridasa devotional movement is considered one of the turning points in the cultural history of India. Over a span of nearly six centuries, several saints and mystics helped shape the culture, philosophy, and art of South India and Karnataka in particular by exerting considerable spiritual influence over the masses and kingdoms that ruled South India.
This movement was ushered in by the Haridasas (literally "servants of Lord Hari") and took shape in the 13th century – 14th century CE, period, prior to and during the early rule of the Vijayanagara empire. The main objective of this movement was to propagate the Dvaita philosophy of Madhvacharya (Madhva Siddhanta) to the masses through a literary medium known as Dasa Sahitya literature of the servants of the Lord. Purandara dasa is widely recognised as the "Pithamaha" of Carnatic Music for his immense contribution. Ramanujacharya, the leading expounder of Vishishtadvaita, spent many years in Melkote. He came to Karnataka in 1098 CE and lived here until 1122 CE. He first lived in Tondanur and then moved to Melkote where the Cheluvanarayana Swamy Temple and a well-organised matha were built. He was patronised by the Hoysala king, Vishnuvardhana.
In the twelfth century, Lingayatism emerged in northern Karnataka as a protest against the rigidity of the prevailing social and caste system. Leading figures of this movement were Basava, Akka Mahadevi and Allama Prabhu, who established the Anubhava Mantapa which was the centre of all religious and philosophical thoughts and discussions pertaining to Lingayats. These three social reformers did so by the literary means of "Vachana Sahitya" which is very famous for its simple, straight forward and easily understandable Kannada language. Lingayatism preached women equality by letting women wear Ishtalinga i.e. Symbol of god around their neck. Basava shunned the sharp hierarchical divisions that existed and sought to remove all distinctions between the hierarchically superior master class and the subordinate, servile class. He also supported inter-caste marriages and Kaayaka Tatva of Basavanna. This was the basis of the Lingayat faith which today counts millions among its followers.
The Jain philosophy and literature have contributed immensely to the religious and cultural landscape of Karnataka.
Islam, which had an early presence on the west coast of India as early as the tenth century, gained a foothold in Karnataka with the rise of the Bahamani and Bijapur sultanates that ruled parts of Karnataka. Christianity reached Karnataka in the sixteenth century with the arrival of the Portuguese and St. Francis Xavier in 1545.
Buddhism was popular in Karnataka during the first millennium in places such as Gulbarga and Banavasi. A chance discovery of edicts and several Mauryan relics at Sannati in Kalaburagi district in 1986 has proven that the Krishna River basin was once home to both Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism. There are Tibetan refugee camps in Karnataka.
Festivals
Mysore Dasara is celebrated as the Nada habba (state festival) and this is marked by major festivities at Mysore. Bangalore Karaga, celebrated in the heart of Bangalore, is the second most important festival celebrated in Karnataka. Ugadi (Kannada New Year), Makara Sankranti (the harvest festival), Ganesh Chaturthi, Gowri Habba, Ram Navami, Nagapanchami, Basava Jayanthi, Deepavali, and Balipadyami are the other major festivals of Karnataka.
Language
Kannada is the official language of the state of Karnataka, as the native language of 66.46% of its population as of 2011 and is one of the classical languages of India. Urdu is the second largest language, spoken by 10.83% of the population, and is the language of Muslims outside the coastal region. Telugu (5.84%) is a major language in areas bordering Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka as well as Bangalore, while Tamil (3.45%) is a major language of Bangalore and in the Kolar district. Marathi (3.29%) is concentrated in areas of Uttara Kannada, Belgaum and Bidar districts bordering Maharashtra. Lambadi is spoken by the Lambadis scattered throughout North Karnataka, while Hindi is spoken in Bangalore. Tulu (2.61%), Konkani (1.29%), and Malayalam (1.27%) are all found in linguistically diverse Coastal Karnataka, where a number of mixed and distinct dialects such as Are Bhashe, Beary Bhashe, and Nayawathi are found. Kodava Takk is the language of Kodagu.
Kannada played a crucial role in the creation of Karnataka: linguistic demographics played a major role in defining the new state in 1956. Tulu, Konkani and Kodava are other minor native languages that share a long history in the state. Urdu is spoken widely by the Muslim population. Less widely spoken languages include Beary bashe and certain languages such as Sankethi. Some of the regional languages in Karnataka are Tulu, Kodava, Konkani and Beary.
Kannada features a rich and ancient body of literature including religious and secular genre, covering topics as diverse as Jainism (such as Puranas), Lingayatism (such as Vachanas), Vaishnavism (such as Haridasa Sahitya) and modern literature. Evidence from edicts during the time of Ashoka (reigned 274–232 BCE) suggest that Buddhist literature influenced the Kannada script and its literature. The Halmidi inscription, the earliest attested full-length inscription in the Kannada language and script, dates from 450 CE, while the earliest available literary work, the Kavirajamarga, has been dated to 850 CE. References made in the Kavirajamarga, however, prove that Kannada literature flourished in the native composition metres such as Chattana, Beddande and Melvadu during earlier centuries. The classic refers to several earlier greats (purvacharyar) of Kannada poetry and prose.
Kuvempu, the renowned Kannada poet and writer who wrote Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate, the state anthem of Karnataka
was the first recipient of the Karnataka Ratna, the highest civilian award bestowed by the Government of Karnataka. Contemporary Kannada literature has received considerable acknowledgement in the arena of Indian literature, with eight Kannada writers winning India's highest literary honour, the Jnanpith award.
Tulu is the majority language in the coastal district of Dakshina Kannada and is the second most spoken in the Udupi district. This region is also known as Tulu Nadu. Tulu Mahabharato, written by Arunabja in the Tigalari script, is the oldest surviving Tulu text. Tigalari script was used by Brahmins to write Sanskrit language. The use of the Kannada script for writing Tulu and non-availability of print in Tigalari script contributed to the marginalisation of Tigalari script.
In Karnataka Konkani is mostly spoken in the Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannada districts and in parts of Udupi, Konkani use the Devanagari Script (which is official)/Kannada script( Optional ) for writing as identified by government of Karnataka. The Kodavas who mainly reside in the Kodagu district, speak Kodava Takk. Two regional variations of the language exist, the northern Mendale Takka and the southern Kiggaati Takka. Kodava Takk use the Kannada script for writing. English is the medium of education in many schools and widely used for business communication in most private companies.
All of the state's languages are patronised and promoted by governmental and quasi-governmental bodies. The Kannada Sahitya Parishat and the Kannada Sahitya Akademi are responsible for the promotion of Kannada while the Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Akademi, the Tulu Sahitya Akademi and the Kodava Sahitya Akademi promote their respective languages.
Education
As per the 2011 census, Karnataka had a literacy rate of 75.60%, with 82.85% of males and 68.13% of females in the state being literate.
The Indian Institute of Science and Manipal Academy of Higher Education were ranked within the top 10 universities of India by NIRF 2020. The state is home to some of the premier educational and research institutions of India such as the Indian Institute of Management – Bangalore, the Indian Institute of Technology – Dharwad the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences – Bangalore, the National Institute of Technology Karnataka – Surathkal and the National Law School of India University – Bangalore.
In March 2006, Karnataka had 54,529 primary schools with 252,875 teachers and 8.495 million students, and 9498 secondary schools with 92,287 teachers and 1.384 million students. There are three kinds of schools in the state, viz., government-run, private aided (financial aid is provided by the government) and private unaided (no financial aid is provided). The primary languages of instruction in most schools are Kannada and English.
The syllabus taught in the schools is either of KSEEB (SSLC) and Pre-University Couse (PUC) of the State Syllabus, the CBSE of the Central Syllabus, CISCE, IGCSE, IB, NIOS, etc., are all defined by the Department of Public Instruction of the Government of Karnataka. The state has two Sainik Schools – Kodagu Sainik School in Kodagu and Vijayapura Sainik School in Vijayapura.
To maximise attendance in schools, the Karnataka Government has launched a mid-day meal scheme in government and aided schools in which free lunch is provided to the students.
Statewide board examinations are conducted at the end of secondary education. Students who qualify are allowed to pursue a two-year pre-university course, after which they become eligible to pursue under-graduate degrees.
There are 481-degree colleges affiliated with one of the universities in the state, viz. Bangalore University, Rani Channamma University, Belagavi, Gulbarga University, Karnatak University, Kuvempu University, Mangalore University and Mysore University. In 1998, the engineering colleges in the state were brought under the newly formed Visvesvaraya Technological University headquartered in Belgaum, whereas the medical colleges are run under the jurisdiction of the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences headquartered in Bangalore. Some of these baccalaureate colleges are accredited with the status of a deemed university. There are 186 engineering, 39 medical and 41 dental colleges in the state. Udupi, Sringeri, Gokarna and Melkote are well-known places of Sanskrit and Vedic learning. In 2015 the Central Government decided to establish the first Indian Institute of Technology in Karnataka at Dharwad. Tulu and Konkani languages are taught as an optional subject in the twin districts of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi.
Christ University, Jain University, CMR University, Dayananda Sagar University, PES University, and REVA University are famous private universities in Karnataka.
On 9 February 2022, Karnataka shut its schools for three days after the regional administration-backed schools imposed a hijab ban, leading to widespread protests and violence. Other universities in the state began enforcing prohibitions after Hindu students, supported by rightwing Hindu groups, argued that if hijabs were allowed in classrooms, they should wear saffron shawls. On 5 February 2022, the Karnataka state government advised colleges to guarantee that "clothes which disturb equality, integrity, and public law and order should not be worn" in apparent support of schools' ability to enforce a ban.
Media
The era of Kannada newspapers started in the year 1843 when Hermann Mögling, a missionary from Basel Mission, published the first Kannada newspaper called Mangaluru Samachara in Mangalore. The first Kannada periodical, Mysuru Vrittanta Bodhini was started by Bhashyam Bhashyacharya in Mysore. Shortly after Indian independence in 1948, K. N. Guruswamy founded The Printers (Mysuru) Private Limited and began publishing two newspapers, Deccan Herald and Prajavani. Presently The Times of India and Vijaya Karnataka are the largest-selling English and Kannada newspapers respectively. A vast number of weekly, biweekly and monthly magazines are under publication in both Kannada and English. Udayavani, Kannadaprabha, Samyukta Karnataka, VarthaBharathi, Sanjevani, Eesanje, Hosa digantha, Karavali Ale are also some popular dailies published from Karnataka.
Doordarshan is the broadcaster of the Government of India and its channel DD Chandana is dedicated to Kannada. Prominent Kannada channels include Colors Kannada, Zee Kannada, Star Suvarna and Udaya TV.
Karnataka occupies a special place in the history of Indian radio. In 1935, Aakashvani, the first private radio station in India, was started by Prof. M.V. Gopalaswamy in Mysore. The popular radio station was taken over by the local municipality and later by All India Radio (AIR) and moved to Bangalore in 1955. Later in 1957, AIR adopted the original name of the radio station, Aakashavani as its own. Some of the popular programs aired by AIR Bangalore included Nisarga Sampada and Sasya Sanjeevini which were programs that taught science through songs, plays, and stories. These two programs became so popular that they were translated and broadcast in 18 different languages and the entire series was recorded on cassettes by the Government of Karnataka and distributed to thousands of schools across the state. Karnataka has witnessed a growth in FM radio channels, mainly in the cities of Bangalore, Mangalore and Mysore, which has become hugely popular.
Sports
Karnataka's smallest district, Kodagu, is a major contributor to Indian field hockey, producing numerous players who have represented India at the international level. The annual Kodava Hockey Festival is the largest hockey tournament in the world. Bangalore has hosted a WTA tennis event and, in 1997, it hosted the fourth National Games of India. The Sports Authority of India, the premier sports institute in the country, and the Nike Tennis Academy are also situated in Bangalore. Karnataka has been referred to as the cradle of Indian swimming because of its high standards in comparison to other states.
One of the most popular sports in Karnataka is cricket. The state cricket team has won the Ranji Trophy seven times, second only to Mumbai in terms of success. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore regularly hosts international Cricket matches and is also the home of the National Cricket Academy, which was opened in 2000 to nurture potential international players. Many cricketers have represented India and in one international match held in the 1990s; players from Karnataka composed the majority of the national team. The Royal Challengers Bangalore, an Indian Premier League franchise, the Bengaluru Football Club, an Indian Super League franchise, the Bengaluru Yodhas, a Pro Wrestling League franchise, the Bengaluru Blasters, a Premier Badminton League franchise and the Bengaluru Bulls, a Pro Kabaddi League franchise are based in Bangalore. The Karnataka Premier League is an inter-regional Twenty20 cricket tournament played in the state.
Notable sportsmen from Karnataka include B.S. Chandrasekhar, Roger Binny, E. A. S. Prasanna, Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Rahul Dravid, Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Uthappa, Vinay Kumar, Gundappa Vishwanath, Syed Kirmani, Stuart Binny, K. L. Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, Manish Pandey, Karun Nair, Ashwini Ponnappa, Mahesh Bhupathi, Rohan Bopanna, Prakash Padukone who won the All England Badminton Championships in 1980 and Pankaj Advani who has won three world titles in cue sports by the age of 20 including the amateur World Snooker Championship in 2003 and the World Billiards Championship in 2005.
Bijapur district has produced some of the best-known road cyclists in the national circuit. Premalata Sureban was part of the Indian contingent at the Perlis Open '99 in Malaysia. In recognition of the talent of cyclists in the district, the state government laid down a cycling track at the B.R. Ambedkar Stadium at a cost of .
Flora and fauna
Karnataka is home to a variety of wildlife. It has a recorded forest area of which constitutes 12.3% of the total geographical area of the state. These forests support 25% of the elephant and 10% of the tiger population of India. Many regions of Karnataka are as yet unexplored, so new species of flora and fauna are found periodically. The Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot, includes the western region of Karnataka. The Bandipur and Nagarahole National Parks were included in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in 1986, a UNESCO designation. The Indian roller and the Indian elephant are recognised as the state bird and animal while sandalwood and the lotus are recognised as the state tree and flower respectively. Karnataka has five national parks: Anshi, Bandipur, Bannerghatta, Kudremukh and Nagarhole. It also has 27 wildlife sanctuaries of which seven are bird sanctuaries.
Wild animals that are found in Karnataka include the elephant, the tiger, the leopard, the gaur, the sambar deer, the chital or spotted deer, the muntjac, the bonnet macaque, the slender loris, the common palm civet, the small Indian civet, the sloth bear, the dhole, the striped hyena, the Bengal fox and the golden jackal. Some of the birds found here are the great hornbill, the Malabar pied hornbill, the Ceylon frogmouth, herons, ducks, kites, eagles, falcons, quails, partridges, lapwings, sandpipers, pigeons, doves, parakeets, cuckoos, owls, nightjars, swifts, kingfishers, bee-eaters and munias. Some species of trees found in Karnataka are Callophyllum tomentosa, Callophyllum wightianum, Garcina cambogia, Garcina morealla, Alstonia scholaris, , Artocarpus hirsutus, Artocarpus lacoocha, Cinnamomum zeylanicum, Grewia tilaefolia, Santalum album, Shorea talura, Emblica officinalis, Vitex altissima and Wrightia tinctoria. Wildlife in Karnataka is threatened by poaching, habitat destruction, human-wildlife conflict and pollution.
Tourism
By virtue of its varied geography and long history, Karnataka hosts numerous spots of interest for tourists. There is an array of ancient sculptured temples, modern cities, scenic hill ranges, forests and beaches. Karnataka has been ranked as the fourth most popular destination for tourism among the states of India. Karnataka has the second highest number of nationally protected monuments in India, second only to Uttar Pradesh, in addition to 752 monuments protected by the State Directorate of Archaeology and Museums. Another 25,000 monuments are yet to receive protection.
The districts of the Western Ghats and the southern districts of the state have popular eco-tourism locations including Kudremukh, Madikeri and Agumbe. Karnataka has 25 wildlife sanctuaries and five national parks. Popular among them are Bandipura National Park, Bannerghatta National Park and Nagarhole National Park. The ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire at Hampi and the monuments of Pattadakal are on the list of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. The cave temples at Badami and the rock-cut temples at Aihole representing the Badami Chalukyan style of architecture are also popular tourist destinations. The Hoysala temples at Beluru and Halebidu, which were built with Chloritic schist (soapstone) are proposed UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Gol Gumbaz and Ibrahim Rauza are famous examples of the Deccan Sultanate style of architecture. The monolith of Gomateshwara Bahubali at Shravanabelagola is the tallest sculpted monolith in the world, attracting tens of thousands of pilgrims during the Mahamastakabhisheka festival.
The waterfalls of Karnataka and Kudremukh are considered by some to be among the "1001 Natural Wonders of the World". Jog Falls is India's tallest single-tiered waterfall with Gokak Falls, Unchalli Falls, Magod Falls, Abbey Falls and Shivanasamudra Falls among other popular waterfalls.
Several popular beaches dot the coastline, including Murudeshwara, Gokarna, Malpe and Karwar. In addition, Karnataka is home to several places of religious importance. Several Hindu temples including the famous Udupi Sri Krishna Matha, the Marikamba Temple at Sirsi, the Kollur Mookambika Temple, the Sri Manjunatha Temple at Dharmasthala, Kukke Subramanya Temple, Janardhana and Mahakali Temple at Ambalpadi, Sharadamba Temple at Shringeri attract pilgrims from all over India. Most of the holy sites of Lingayatism, like Kudalasangama and Basavana Bagewadi, are found in northern parts of the state. Shravanabelagola, Mudabidri and Karkala are famous for Jain history and monuments. Jainism had a stronghold in Karnataka in the early medieval period with Shravanabelagola as its most important centre. The Shettihalli Rosary Church near Shettihalli, an example of French colonial Gothic architecture, is a rare example of a Christian ruin, is a popular tourist site.
Karnataka has become a center of health care tourism and has the highest number of approved health systems and alternative therapies in India. Along with some ISO certified government-owned hospitals, private institutions which provide international-quality services, Hospitals in Karnataka treat around 8,000 health tourists every year.
See also
Outline of Karnataka
Media in Karnataka
List of Governors of Karnataka
List of districts of Karnataka
List of people from Karnataka
List of butterflies of Karnataka
List of airports in Karnataka
Citations
General sources
John Keay, India: A History, 2000, Grove publications, New York,
Dr. Suryanath U. Kamath, Concise history of Karnataka, 2001, MCC, Bangalore (Reprinted 2002)
Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. (1955). A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar, OUP, New Delhi (Reprinted 2002) .
R. Narasimhacharya, History of Kannada Literature, 1988, Asian Educational Services, New Delhi, Madras, 1988, .
K.V. Ramesh, Chalukyas of Vātāpi, 1984, Agam Kala Prakashan, Delhi. . . . . .
Malini Adiga (2006), The Making of Southern Karnataka: Society, Polity and Culture in the Early Medieval Period, AD 400–1030, Orient Longman, Chennai,
Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund, A History of India, fourth edition, Routledge, 2004,
Foekema, Gerard [2003] (2003). Architecture Decorated with Architecture: Later Medieval Temples of Karnataka, 1000–1300 AD. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers Pvt. Ltd. .
External links
Government
Official Site of Karnataka
General information
.
1956 establishments in India
States and territories established in 1956
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16881 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashrut | Kashrut | Kashrut (also kashruth or kashrus, ) is a set of dietary laws dealing with the foods that Jews are permitted to eat and how those foods must be prepared according to Jewish law. Food that may be consumed is deemed kosher ( in English, ), from the Ashkenazic pronunciation (KUHsher) of Hebrew kashér (), meaning "fit" (in this context: "fit for consumption").
Although the details of the laws of kashrut are numerous and complex, they rest on a few basic principles:
Only certain types of mammals, birds and fish meeting specific criteria are kosher; the consumption of the flesh of any animals that do not meet these criteria, such as pork, frogs, and shellfish, is forbidden.
Kosher mammals and birds must be slaughtered according to a process known as shechita; blood may never be consumed and must be removed from meat by a process of salting and soaking in water for the meat to be permissible for use.
Meat and meat derivatives may never be mixed with milk and milk derivatives: separate equipment for the storage and preparation of meat-based and dairy-based foods must be used.
Every food that is considered kosher is also categorized as follows:
"Meat" products (also called b'sari or fleishig) are those that contain kosher meat, such as beef, lamb or venison, kosher poultry such as chicken, goose, duck or turkey, or derivatives of meat, such as animal gelatin; non-animal products that were processed on equipment used for meat or meat-derived products must also be considered as meat (b'chezkat basar)
"Dairy" products (also called chalavi or milchig) contain milk or any derivatives such as butter or cheese; non-dairy products that were processed on equipment used for milk or milk-derived products must also be considered as milk (b'chezkat halav)
Pareve products contain neither meat, nor milk nor their respective derivatives, and include foods such as fish, eggs, grains, fruit and produce; they remain pareve if they are not mixed with or processed using equipment that is used for any meat or dairy products.
While any produce that grows from the earth, such as fruits, grains, vegetables and mushrooms, is always permissible, laws regarding the status of certain agricultural produce, especially that grown in the Land of Israel, such as tithes and produce of the Sabbatical year, impact their permissibility for consumption.
Most of the basic laws of kashrut are derived from the Torah's books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Their details and practical application, however, are set down in the Oral Torah (eventually codified in the Mishnah and Talmud) and elaborated on in the later rabbinical literature. Although the Torah does not state the rationale for most kashrut laws, some suggest that they are only tests of obedience, while others have suggested philosophical, practical and hygienic reasons.
Over the past century, many kashrut certification agencies have started to certify products, manufacturers, and restaurants as kosher, usually authorizing the use of a proprietary symbol or certificate, called a hechsher, to be displayed by the food establishment or on the product, which indicates that they are in compliance with the kosher laws. This labeling is useful for many people, including those whose religions expect adherence to a similar set of dietary laws, people with allergies to dairy foods, or vegans, who use the various kosher designations to determine whether a food contains meat or dairy-derived ingredients.
Explanations
Philosophical
Jewish philosophy divides the 613 commandments (or mitzvot) into three groups—laws that have a rational explanation and would probably be enacted by most orderly societies (mishpatim), laws that are understood after being explained but would not be legislated without the Torah's command (eidot), and laws that do not have a rational explanation (chukim).
Some Jewish scholars say that kashrut should be categorized as laws for which there is no particular explanation since the human mind is not always capable of understanding divine intentions. In this line of thinking, the dietary laws were given as a demonstration of God's authority, and man must obey without asking why. Although Maimonides concurs that all the statutes of the Torah are decrees, he is of the view that whenever possible, one should seek out reasons for the Torah's commandments.
Some theologians have said that the laws of kashrut are symbolic in character: kosher animals represent virtues, while non-kosher animals represent vices. The 1st-century BCE Letter of Aristeas argues that the laws "have been given ... to awake pious thoughts and to form the character". This view reappears in the work of the 19th-century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.
The Torah prohibits "cooking the kid (goat, sheep, calf) in its mother's milk". While the Bible does not provide a reason, it has been suggested that the practice was perceived as cruel and insensitive.
Hasidic Judaism believes that everyday life is imbued with channels connecting with Divinity, the activation of which it sees as helping the Divine Presence to be drawn into the physical world; Hasidism argues that the food laws are related to the way such channels, termed sparks of holiness, interact with various animals. These sparks of Holiness are released whenever a Jew manipulates any object for a holy reason (which includes eating); however, not all animal products are capable of releasing their sparks of holiness. The Hasidic argument is that animals are imbued with signs that reveal the release of these sparks, and the signs are expressed in the biblical categorization of ritually clean and ritually unclean.
Medical
Although the reason for Kashrut is that it is a decree from the Torah, there have been attempts to provide scientific support for the view that Jewish food laws have an incidental health benefit. One of the earliest is that of Maimonides in The Guide for the Perplexed.
In 1953, David Macht, an Orthodox Jew and proponent of the theory of biblical scientific foresight, conducted toxicity experiments on many kinds of animals and fish. His experiment involved lupin seedlings being supplied with extracts from the meat of various animals; Macht reported that in 100% of cases, extracts from ritually unclean meat inhibited the seedling's growth more than that from ritually clean meats.
At the same time, these explanations are controversial. Scholar Lester L. Grabbe, writing in the Oxford Bible Commentary on Leviticus, says "[a]n explanation now almost universally rejected is that the laws in this section have hygiene as their basis. Although some of the laws of ritual purity roughly correspond to modern ideas of physical cleanliness, many of them have little to do with hygiene. For example, there is no evidence that the 'unclean' animals are intrinsically bad to eat or to be avoided in a Mediterranean climate, as is sometimes asserted."
Rules
Prohibited foods
The laws of kashrut can be classified according to the origin of the prohibition (Biblical or rabbinical) and whether the prohibition concerns the food itself or a mixture of foods.
Biblically prohibited foods include:
Non-kosher animals—any mammals without certain identifying characteristics (cloven hooves and being ruminants); any birds without a tradition that they can be consumed; any fish without fins or scales (thus excluding catfish, for instance).
All invertebrates are non-kosher apart from certain types of locust, on which most communities lack a clear tradition. No reptiles or amphibians are kosher.
Carrion (nevelah)—meat from a kosher animal that has not been slaughtered according to the laws of shechita. This prohibition includes animals that have been slaughtered by non-Jews.
Injured (terefah)—an animal with a significant defect or injury, such as a fractured bone or particular types of lung adhesions.
Blood (dam)—the blood of kosher mammals and fowl is removed through salting, with special procedures for the liver, which is very rich in blood.
Particular fats (chelev)—particular parts of the abdominal fat of cattle, goats and sheep must be removed by a process called nikkur.
The twisted nerve (gid hanasheh)—the sciatic nerve, as according to Genesis 32:32 the patriarch Jacob's was damaged when he fought with an angel, so may not be eaten and is removed by nikkur.
A limb of a living animal (ever min ha-chai)—according to Jewish law, God forbade Noah and his descendants to consume flesh torn from a live animal. Hence, Jewish law considers this prohibition applicable even to non-Jews, and therefore, a Jew may not give or sell such meat to a non-Jew.
Untithed food (tevel)—produce of the Land of Israel requires the removal of certain tithes, which in ancient times were given to the kohanim (priests), Levites and the poor (terumah, maaser rishon and maasar ani respectively) or taken to the Old City of Jerusalem to be eaten there (maaser sheni).
Fruit during the first three years (orlah)—according to Leviticus 19:23, fruit from a tree in the first three years after planting may not be consumed (both in the Land of Israel and the diaspora). This applies also to the fruit of the vine—grapes, and wine produced from them.
New grain (chadash)—the Bible prohibits newly grown grain (planted after Passover the previous year) until the second day of Passover; there is debate as to whether this law applies to grain grown outside the Land of Israel.
Wine of libation (yayin nesekh)—wine that may have been dedicated to idolatrous practices.
Biblically prohibited mixtures include:
Mixtures of meat and milk (basar be-chalav)—this law derives from the broad interpretation of the commandment not to "cook a kid in its mother's milk"; other non-kosher foods are permitted for non-dietary use (e.g. to be sold to non-Jews), but Jews are forbidden to benefit from mixtures of meat and milk in any way.
Different species of plants grown together (kilayim)—in the Land of Israel different species of plants are to be grown separately and not in close proximity according to Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:9–11.
A specific subdivision of this law is kil'ei ha-kerem, the prohibition of planting any grain or vegetable near a grapevine; this law applies to Jews throughout the world, and a Jew may not derive benefit from such produce.
Rabbinically prohibited foods include:
Non-Jewish milk (chalav akum)—milk that may have an admixture of milk from non-kosher animals (see below for current views on this prohibition).
Non-Jewish cheese (gevinat akum)—cheese that may have been produced with non-kosher rennet.
Non-Jewish wine (stam yeinam)—wine that while not produced for idolatrous purposes may otherwise have been poured for such a purpose or alternatively when consumed will lead to intermarriage.
Food cooked by a non-Jew (bishul akum)—this law was enacted for concerns of intermarriage.
Non-Jewish bread (pat akum)—this law was enacted for concerns of intermarriage.
Health risk (sakanah)—certain foods and mixtures are considered a health risk, such as mixtures of fish and meat.
Permitted and forbidden animals
Only meat from particular species is permissible. Mammals that both chew their cud (ruminate) and have cloven hooves can be kosher. Animals with one characteristic but not the other (the camel, the hyrax, and the hare because they have no cloven hooves, and the pig because it does not ruminate) are specifically excluded.
In 2008, a rabbinical ruling determined that giraffes and their milk are eligible to be considered kosher. The giraffe has both split hooves and chews its cud, characteristics of animals considered kosher. Findings from 2008 show that giraffe milk curdles, meeting kosher standards. Although kosher, the giraffe is not slaughtered today because the process would be very costly. Giraffes are difficult to restrain, and their use for food could cause the species to become endangered.
Non-kosher birds are listed outright but the exact zoological references are disputed and some references refer to families of birds (24 are mentioned). The Mishnah refers to four signs provided by the sages. First, a dores (predatory bird) is not kosher. Additionally, kosher birds possess three physical characteristics: an extra toe in the back (which does not join the other toes in supporting the leg), a zefek (crop), and a korkoban (gizzard) with a peelable lumen. However, individual Jews are barred from merely applying these regulations alone; an established tradition (masorah) is necessary to allow birds to be consumed, even if it can be substantiated that they meet all four criteria. The only exception to this is the turkey. There was a time when certain authorities considered the signs sufficient, so Jews started eating this bird without a masorah because it possesses all the signs (simanim) in Hebrew.
Fish must have fins and scales to be kosher. Shellfish and other non-fish water fauna are not kosher. (See kosher species of fish.) Insects are not kosher, except for certain species of kosher locust. Generally, any animal that eats other animals, whether they kill their food or eat carrion, is not kosher, as well as any animal that has been partially eaten by other animals.
Separation of meat and milk
Meat and milk (or derivatives) may not be mixed in the sense that meat and dairy products are not served at the same meal, served or cooked in the same utensils, or stored together.
Observant Jews have separate sets of dishes, and sometimes different kitchens, for meat and milk, and wait anywhere between one and six hours after eating meat before consuming milk products. The milchig and fleishig (lit. "milky" and "meaty") utensils and dishes are the commonly referred-to Yiddish delineations between dairy and meat ones, respectively.
Shelomo Dov Goitein writes, "the dichotomy of the kitchen into a meat and a milk section, so basic in an observant Jewish household, is … never mentioned in the Geniza." Goitein believed that in the early Middle Ages Jewish families kept only one set of cutlery and cooking ware. According to David C. Kraemer the practice of keeping separate sets of dishes developed only in the late 14th and 15th centuries. It's possible observant Jews before then waited overnight for the meat or dairy gravy absorbed in a pot’s walls to become insignificant (lifgam) before using the pot for the other foodstuff (meat or dairy).
Kosher slaughter
Mammals and fowl must be slaughtered by a trained individual (a shochet) using a special method of slaughter, shechita. Shechita slaughter severs the jugular vein, carotid artery, esophagus, and trachea in a single continuous cutting movement with an unserrated, sharp knife. Failure of any of these criteria renders the meat of the animal non-kosher.
The body of the slaughtered animal must be checked after slaughter to confirm that the animal had no medical condition or defect that would have caused it to die of its own accord within a year, which would make the meat unsuitable.
These conditions (treifot) include 70 different categories of injuries, diseases, and abnormalities whose presence renders the animal non-kosher.
It is forbidden to consume certain parts of the animal, such as certain fats (chelev) and the sciatic nerves from the legs, the process of excision being done by experts before the meat is sold.
As much blood as possible must be removed through the kashering process; this is usually done through soaking and salting the meat, but the liver, as it is rich in blood, is grilled over an open flame.
Fish (and kosher locusts, for those who follow the traditions permitting them) must be killed before being eaten, but no particular method has been specified in Jewish law. Legal aspects of ritual slaughter are governed not only by Jewish law but civil law as well.
Some believe that this ensures the animal dies instantly without unnecessary suffering, but many animal-rights activists view the process as cruel, claiming that the animal may not lose consciousness immediately, and activists have called for it to be banned.
Preparation of meats
When an animal is ritually slaughtered (shechted) the raw meat is traditionally cut, rinsed and salted, prior to cooking. Salting of raw meat draws out the blood that lodges on the inner surface of the meat. The salting is done with coarse grain salt, commonly referred to as kosher salt, after which the meat is laid over a grating or colander to allow for drainage, remaining so for the duration of time that it takes to walk one biblical mile (approx. 18–24 minutes). Afterwards, the residue of salt is rinsed away with water, and the meat cooked.
Meat that is roasted requires no prior salting, as fire causes a natural purging of blood.
Turei Zahav ("Taz"), a 17th-century commentary on the Shulchan Arukh, ruled that the pieces of meat can be "very thick" when salting. The Yemenite Jewish practice, however, follows Saadiah Gaon, who required that the meat not be larger than half a "rotal" (i.e. ca. 216 grams) when salting. This allows the effects of the salt to penetrate.
Some Orthodox Jewish communities require the additional stricture of submersing raw meat in boiling water prior to cooking it, a practice known as ḥaliṭah (), “blanching.” This was believed to constrict the blood lodged within the meat, to prevent it from oozing out when the meat was eaten. The raw meat is left in the pot of boiling water for as long as it takes for the meat to whiten on its outer layer.
If someone wanted to use the water for soup after making ḥaliṭah in the same pot, he could simply scoop out the film, froth and scum that surface in the boiling water.
Ḥaliṭah is not required when roasting meat over a fire, as the fire constricts the blood.
Kosher utensils
Utensils used for non-kosher foods become non-kosher, and make even otherwise kosher food prepared with them non-kosher.
Some such utensils, depending on the material they are made from, can be made suitable for preparing kosher food again by immersion in boiling water or by the application of a blowtorch.
Food prepared in a manner that violates the Shabbat (Sabbath) may not be eaten; although in certain instances it is permitted after the Shabbat is over.
Passover laws
Passover has stricter dietary rules, the most important of which is the prohibition on eating leavened bread or derivatives of this, which are known as chametz. This prohibition is derived from Exodus 12:15.
Utensils used in preparing and serving chametz are also forbidden on Passover unless they have been ritually cleansed (kashered).
Observant Jews often keep separate sets of meat and dairy utensils for Passover use only. In addition, some groups follow various eating restrictions on Passover that go beyond the rules of kashrut, such as not eating kitniyot, gebrochts or garlic.
Produce of the Land of Israel
Biblical rules also control the use of agriculture produce, for example, with respect to their tithing, or when it is permitted to eat them or to harvest them, and what must be done to make them suitable for human consumption.
For produce grown in the Land of Israel a modified version of the biblical tithes must be applied, including Terumat HaMaaser, Maaser Rishon, Maaser Sheni, and Maasar Ani (untithed produce is called tevel); the fruit of the first three years of a tree's growth or replanting are forbidden for eating or any other use as orlah; produce grown in the Land of Israel on the seventh year obtains k'dushat shvi'it, and unless managed carefully is forbidden as a violation of the Shmita (Sabbatical Year).
Some rules of kashrut are subject to different rabbinical opinions. For example, many hold that the rule against eating chadash (new grain) before the 16th of the month Nisan does not apply outside the Land of Israel.
Vegetables
Although plants and minerals are nearly always kosher, vegetarian restaurants and producers of vegetarian foods are required to obtain a hechsher, certifying that a rabbinical organization has approved their products as being kosher, because the hechsher usually certifies that certain vegetables have been checked for insect infestation and steps have been taken to ensure that cooked food meets the requirements of bishul Yisrael. Vegetables such as spinach and cauliflower must be checked for insect infestation. The proper procedure for inspecting and cleaning varies by species, growing conditions, and views of individual rabbis.
Pareve foods
A pareve food is one which is neither meat nor dairy. Fish fall into this category, as well as any food that is not animal-derived. Eggs are also considered pareve despite being an animal product.
Some processes convert a meat- or dairy-derived product into a pareve one. For example, rennet is sometimes made from stomach linings, yet is acceptable for making kosher cheese. Gelatins derived from kosher animal sources (which were ritually slaughtered) are also pareve. Other gelatin-like products from non-animal sources such as agar agar and carrageenan are pareve by nature. Fish gelatin, like all kosher fish products, is pareve.
Jewish law generally requires that bread be kept parve (i.e., not kneaded with meat or dairy products nor made on meat or dairy equipment).
Kashrut has procedures by which equipment can be cleaned of its previous non-kosher or meat/dairy use, but those may be inadequate for vegetarians, those with allergies, or adherents to other religious laws.
For example, dairy manufacturing equipment can be cleaned well enough that the rabbis grant pareve status to products manufactured with it but someone with a strong allergic sensitivity to dairy products might still react to the dairy residue. That is why some products that are legitimately pareve carry "milk" warnings.
Cannabis
For cannabis grown in Israel, the plants must observe shmittah, but this does not apply to cannabis from elsewhere. At least one brand of cannabis edibles is certified to follow the laws of kashrut.
Tobacco
Although it is not a food product, some tobacco receives a year-long kosher for Passover certification. This year-long certification means that the tobacco is certified also for Passover where different restrictions may be in place. Tobacco may, for example, come into contact with some chametz grains that are strictly forbidden during Passover and the certification is a guarantee that it is free from this type of contamination.
In Israel this certification is given by a private kashrut rabbinic group Beit Yosef, but the Chief Rabbinate has objected to granting of any certification by rabbis because of health risks from tobacco.
Genetically modified foods
With the advent of genetic engineering, a whole new type of food has been brought into the world, and scholars in both academia and Judaic faith have differing viewpoints on whether these new strains of foods are to be considered kosher or not. The first genetically modified animal approved by the FDA for human consumption is the AquAdvantage salmon and, while salmon is normally an acceptably kosher food, this modified organism has a gene from a non-kosher organism.
In 2015, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly released a document regarding genetically modified organisms, stating that modification of gene sequences via the introduction of foreign DNA in order to convey a specific capability in the new organism is allowable, that entirely new species should not be intentionally created, and that the health implications of genetically modified foods must be considered on an individual basis.
Some put forth that this intermixing of species is against the teachings of the Talmud and thus against Jewish Law and non-kosher. Others argue that the one in sixty parts law of kashrut is of significance, and that the foreign gene accounts for less than 1/60 of the animal and thus the modified salmon is kosher.
Supervision and marketing
Hashgacha
Certain foods must be prepared in whole or in part by Jews. This includes grape wine, certain cooked foods (bishul akum), cheese (g'vinat akum), and according to some also butter (chem'at akum), dairy products (Hebrew: חלב ישראל chalav Yisrael "milk of Israel"), and bread (Pas Yisroel).
Product labeling standards
Although reading the label of food products can identify obviously non-kosher ingredients, some countries allow manufacturers to omit identification of certain ingredients. Such "hidden" ingredients may include lubricants and flavorings, among other additives; in some cases, for instance, the use of natural flavorings, these ingredients are more likely to be derived from non-kosher substances. Furthermore, certain products, such as fish, have a high rate of mislabeling, which may result in a non-kosher fish being sold in a package labeled as a species of kosher fish.
Producers of foods and food additives can contact Jewish religious authorities to have their products certified as kosher: this involves a visit to the manufacturing facilities by an individual rabbi or a committee from a rabbinic organization, who will inspect the production methods and contents and, if everything is sufficiently kosher a certificate would be issued.
Manufacturers sometimes identify the products that have received such certification by adding particular graphical symbols to the label. These symbols are known in Judaism as hechsherim. Due to differences in kashrut standards held by different organizations, the hechsheirim of certain Jewish authorities may at times be considered invalid by other Jewish authorities. The certification marks of the various rabbis and organisations are too numerous to list, but one of the most commonly used in the United States of America is that of the Union of Orthodox Congregations, who use a U inside a circle ("O-U"), symbolising the initials of Orthodox Union. In Britain, commonly used symbols are the "KLBD" logo of the London Beth Din and the "MK" logo of the Manchester Beth Din. A single K is sometimes used as a symbol for kosher, but since many countries do not allow letters to be trademarked (the method by which other symbols are protected from misuse), it only indicates that the company producing the product claims that it is kosher.
Many of the certification symbols are accompanied by additional letters or words to indicate the category of the product, according to Jewish law; the categorization may conflict with legal classifications, especially in the case of food that Jewish law regards as dairy, but legal classification does not.
D—Dairy
DE—Dairy equipment
M—Meat, including poultry
Pareve—Food that is neither meat nor dairy
Fish
P—Passover-related (P is not used for Pareve)
In many cases constant supervision is required because, for various reasons such as changes in manufacturing processes, products that once were kosher may cease to be so. For example, a kosher lubricating oil may be replaced by one containing tallow, which many rabbinic authorities view as non-kosher. Such changes are often coordinated with the supervising rabbi or supervising organization to ensure that new packaging does not suggest any hechsher or kashrut. In some cases, however, existing stocks of pre-printed labels with the hechsher may continue to be used on the now non-kosher product. An active grapevine among the Jewish community discusses which products are now questionable, as well as products which have become kosher but whose labels have yet to carry the hechsher. Some newspapers and periodicals also discuss kashrut products.
Products labeled kosher-style are non-kosher products that have characteristics of kosher foods, such as all-beef hot dogs, or are flavored or prepared in a manner consistent with Ashkenazi practices, like dill pickles. The designation usually refers to delicatessen items.
History of kosher supervision and marketing
Food producers often look to expand their markets or marketing potential, and offering kosher food has become a way to do that. The uniqueness of kosher food was advertised as early as 1849. In 1911 Procter & Gamble became the first company to advertise one of their products, Crisco, as kosher. Over the next two decades, companies such as Lender's Bagels, Maxwell House, Manischewitz, and Empire evolved and gave the kosher market more shelf-space. In the 1960s, Hebrew National hotdogs launched a "we answer to a higher authority" campaign to appeal to Jews and non-Jews alike. From that point on, "kosher" became a symbol for both quality and value. The kosher market quickly expanded, and with it more opportunities for kosher products. Menachem Lubinsky, founder of the Kosherfest trade fair, estimates as many as kosher consumers and in sales of kosher products in the U.S.A.
In 2014 the Israeli Defense Forces decided to allow female kosher supervisors to work in its kitchens on military bases, and the first women kosher inspectors were certified in Israel.
Legal usage
Advertising standards laws in many jurisdictions prohibit the use of the phrase kosher in a product's labeling unless the producer can show that the product conforms to Jewish dietary laws; however, different jurisdictions often define the legal qualifications for conforming to Jewish dietary laws differently. For example, in some places the law may require that a rabbi certify the kashrut nature, in others the rules of kosher are fully defined in law, and in others still it is sufficient that the manufacturer only believes that the product complies with Jewish dietary regulations. In several cases, laws restricting the use of the term kosher have later been determined to be illegal religious interference.
Costs
In the United States, the cost of certification for mass-produced items is typically minuscule and is usually more than offset by the advantages of being certified. In 1975 The New York Times estimated the cost per item for obtaining kosher certification at 6.5 millionths of a cent ($0.000000065) per item for a General Foods frozen-food item. According to a 2005 report by Burns & McDonnell, most U.S. national certifying agencies are non-profit, only charging for supervision and on-site work, for which the on-site supervisor "typically makes less per visit than an auto mechanic does per hour". However, re-engineering an existing manufacturing process can be costly. Certification usually leads to increased revenues by opening up additional markets to Jews who keep kosher, Muslims who keep halal, Seventh-day Adventists who keep the main laws of Kosher Diet, vegetarians, and the lactose-intolerant who wish to avoid dairy products (products that are reliably certified as pareve meet this criterion). The Orthodox Union, one of the largest kashrut organizations in the United States, claims that "when positioned next to a competing non-kosher brand, a kosher product will do better by 20%".
In some European Jewish communities, kosher supervision of meat includes a "tax" used to fund Jewish education in the community, which makes kosher meat more expensive than the cost of supervision alone would imply.
Society and culture
Adherence
Many Jews partially observe kashrut, by abstaining from pork or shellfish or by not drinking milk with meat dishes. Some keep kosher at home but eat in non-kosher restaurants. In 2012, one analysis of the specialty food market in North America estimated that only 15% of kosher consumers were Jewish. Kosher meat is regularly consumed by Muslims when halal is not available. Muslims, Hindus, and people with allergies to dairy foods often consider the kosher-pareve designation as an assurance that a food contains no animal-derived ingredients, including milk and all of its derivatives. However, since kosher-pareve foods may contain honey, eggs, or fish, vegans cannot rely on the certification.
About a sixth of American Jews or 0.3% of the American population fully keep kosher, and many more of them do not strictly follow all of the rules but still abstain from some prohibited foods (especially pork). The Seventh-day Adventist Church, a Christian denomination, preaches a health message which expects adherence to the kosher dietary laws.
A 2013 survey found that 22% of American Jews claimed to keep kosher in their homes.
Linguistics
In Ancient Hebrew the word kosher () means be advantageous, proper, suitable, or succeed, according to the Brown–Driver–Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon. In Modern Hebrew it generally refers to kashrut but it can also sometimes mean "proper". For example, the Babylonian Talmud uses kosher in the sense of "virtuous" when referring to Darius I as a "kosher king"; Darius, a Persian king (reigned 522–486 BCE), fostered the building of the Second Temple. In colloquial English, kosher often means "legitimate", "acceptable", "permissible", "genuine", or "authentic".
The word kosher can form part of some common product names. Sometimes it is used as an abbreviation of koshering, meaning the process for making something kosher; for example, kosher salt is a form of salt with irregularly shaped crystals, making it particularly suitable for preparing meat according to the rules of kashrut, because the increased surface area of the crystals absorbs blood more effectively. At other times kosher can occur as a synonym for Jewish tradition; for example, a kosher dill pickle is simply a pickle made in the traditional manner of Jewish New York City pickle-makers, using a generous addition of garlic to the brine, and is not necessarily compliant with the traditional Jewish food laws.
Other uses
Although the term kosher relates mainly to food, it sometimes occurs in other contexts. Some Orthodox retailers sell kosher cell-phones - stripped-down devices with limited features.
See also
Abomination (Judaism)
Ahimsa (non-violence to living beings)
Buddhist cuisine
Buddhist vegetarianism
Christian dietary laws
Comparison of Islamic and Jewish dietary laws
Hindu dietary laws
Islamic dietary laws
Halāl
Jewish cuisine
Eco-Kashrut
Israeli cuisine
Jewish vegetarianism
Jewish Veg
Kosher certification agency
Sabbath food preparation
Jhatka
.kosher
Kosher tax
Kosher tax conspiracy theory
Taoist diet
Treef
Trefa banquet
References
Further reading
Isaac Klein, A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, JTSA, 1992
David C. Kraemer, Jewish Eating and Identity Throughout the Ages, Routledge, 2008
James M. Lebeau, The Jewish Dietary Laws: Sanctify Life, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, New York, 1983
Yacov Lipschutz, Kashruth: A Comprehensive Background and Reference Guide to the Principles of Kashruth. New York: Mesorah Publications Ltd, 1989
Jordan D. Rosenblum, The Jewish Dietary Laws in the Ancient World. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
External links
Chabad.org: Kosher
Kashrut.com
OU Kosher
Aish.com: ABCs of Kosher
Jewfaq.org: Kashrut - Jewish Dietary Laws
Hebrew words and phrases in Jewish law
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16882 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLM | KLM | KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, legally Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. (literal translation: Royal Aviation Company, Inc.), is the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands. KLM is headquartered in Amstelveen, with its hub at nearby Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. It is part of the Air France–KLM group and a member of the SkyTeam airline alliance. Founded in 1919, KLM is the oldest operating airline in the world, and has 35,488 employees with a fleet of 110 (excluding subsidiaries) . KLM operates scheduled passenger and cargo services to 145 destinations.
History
Early years
In 1919, a young aviator lieutenant named Albert Plesman sponsored the ELTA aviation exhibition in Amsterdam. Attendance at the exhibition was over half a million, and after it closed, several Dutch commercial interests intended to establish a Dutch airline, which Plesman was nominated to head. In September 1919, Queen Wilhelmina awarded the yet-to-be-founded KLM its "Royal" ("Koninklijke") predicate. On 7 October 1919, eight Dutch businessmen, including Frits Fentener van Vlissingen, founded KLM as one of the first commercial airline companies. Plesman became its first administrator and director.
The first KLM flight took place on 17 May 1920. KLM's first pilot, Jerry Shaw, flew from Croydon Airport, London, to Amsterdam. The flight was flown using a leased Aircraft Transport and Travel De Haviland DH-16, registration G-EALU, which was carrying two British journalists and some newspapers. In 1920, KLM carried 440 passengers and 22 tons of freight. In April 1921, after a winter hiatus, KLM resumed its services using its pilots, and Fokker F.II and Fokker F.III aircraft. In 1921, KLM started scheduled services.
KLM's first intercontinental flight took off on 1 October 1924. The final destination was Jakarta (then called 'Batavia'), Java, in the Dutch East Indies; the flight used a Fokker F.VII with registration H-NACC and was piloted by Van der Hoop. In September 1929, regular scheduled services between Amsterdam and Batavia commenced. Until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, this was the world's longest-distance scheduled service by airplane. By 1926, it was offering flights to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels, Paris, London, Bremen, Copenhagen, and Malmö, using primarily Fokker F.II and Fokker F.III aircraft.
In 1930, KLM carried 15,143 passengers. The Douglas DC-2 was introduced on the Batavia service in 1934. The first experimental transatlantic KLM flight was between Amsterdam and Curaçao in December 1934 using the Fokker F.XVIII "Snip". The first of the airline's Douglas DC-3 aircraft were delivered in 1936; these replaced the DC-2s on the service via Batavia to Sydney. KLM was the first airline to serve Manchester's new Ringway airport, starting June 1938. KLM was the only civilian airline to receive the Douglas DC-5; the airline used two of them in the West Indies and sold two to the East Indies government, and is thus the only airline to have operated all Douglas 'DC' models other than the DC-1.
Second World War
The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 restricted KLM's operations, with flights over France and Germany prohibited, and many of its aircraft painted in over-all orange to limit the potential for confusion with military aircraft. European routes were limited to services to Scandinavia, Belgium and the UK, with flights to Lisbon (bypassing both British and French airspace) starting in April 1940. When Germany invaded the Netherlands on 10 May 1940, several KLM aircraft—mostly DC-3s and a few DC-2s—were en route to or from the Far East, or were operating services in Europe. Five DC-3s and one DC-2 were taken to Britain. During the war, these aircraft and crew members flew scheduled passenger flights between Bristol and Lisbon under BOAC flight numbers and registration.
On 3 March 1942, Douglas DC-3 PH-ALP "Pelikaan", then registered as PK-AFV, was shot down over Western Australia by Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service Mitsubishi A6M Zeros during the Attack on Broome while carrying a package of diamonds. The DC-3 crash landed at Carnot Bay, 80 kilometers from Broome. Pelikaan was subsequently strafed by the Zeros that had shot it down, killing three passengers and the flight engineer. Diamonds worth an estimated Australian pound 150,000–300,000 were stolen from the wreckage of the aircraft, and nobody has been convicted of the crime.
Douglas DC-3 PH-ALI "Ibis", then registered as G-AGBB, was attacked by the Luftwaffe on 15 November 1942, 19 April 1943, and finally shot down on 1 June 1943 as BOAC Flight 777, killing all passengers and crew.
Some KLM aircraft and their crews ended up in the Australia-Dutch East Indies region, where they helped transport refugees from Japanese aggression in that area.
Although operations paused in Europe, KLM continued to fly and expand in the Caribbean.
Post-World War II
After the end of the Second World War in August 1945, KLM immediately started to rebuild its network. Since the Dutch East Indies were in a state of revolt, Plesman's priority was to re-establish KLM's route to Batavia. This service was reinstated by the end of 1945. Domestic and European flights resumed in September 1945, initially with a fleet of Douglas DC-3s and Douglas DC-4s. On 21 May 1946, KLM was the first continental European airline to start scheduled transatlantic flights between Amsterdam and New York City using Douglas DC-4 aircraft. By 1948, KLM had reconstructed its network and services to Africa, North and South America, and the Caribbean resumed.
Long-range, pressurized Lockheed Constellations and Douglas DC-6s joined KLM's fleet in the late 1940s; the Convair 240 short-range pressurized twin-engine airliner began European flights for the company in late 1948.
During the immediate post-war period, the Dutch government expressed interest in gaining a majority stake in KLM, thus partially nationalizing it. Plesman wanted KLM to remain a private company under private control; he allowed the Dutch government to acquire a minority stake in the airline. In 1950, KLM carried 356,069 passengers. The expansion of the network continued in the 1950s with the addition of several destinations in western North America. KLM's fleet expanded with the addition of new versions of the Lockheed Constellation and Lockheed Electra, of which KLM was the first European airline to fly.
On 31 December 1953, the founder and president of KLM, Albert Plesman, died at the age of 64. He was succeeded as president by Fons Aler. After Plesman's death, the company and other airlines entered a difficult economic period. The conversion to jet aircraft placed a further financial burden on KLM. The Netherlands government increased its ownership of the company to two-thirds, thus partly nationalizing it. The board of directors remained under the control of private shareholders.
On 25 July 1957, the airline introduced its flight simulator for the Douglas DC-7C – the last KLM aircraft with piston engines – which opened the transpolar route from Amsterdam via Anchorage to Tokyo on 1 November 1958. Each crew flying the transpolar route over the Arctic was equipped with a winter survival kit, including a 7.62 mm selective-fire AR-10 carbine for use against polar bears, in the event the plane was forced down onto the polar ice.
Jet age
The four-engine turboprop Vickers Viscount 800 was introduced on European routes in 1957. Beginning in September 1959, KLM introduced the four-engine turboprop Lockheed L-188 Electra onto some of its European and Middle Eastern routes. In March 1960, the airline introduced the first Douglas DC-8 jet into its fleet. In 1961, KLM reported its first year of losses. In 1961, the airline's president Fons Aler was succeeded by Ernst van der Beugel. This change of leadership, however, did not lead to a reversal of KLM's financial difficulties. Van der Beugel resigned as president in 1963 due to health reasons. Horatius Albarda was appointed to succeed Ernst van der Beugel as president of KLM in 1963. Alberda initiated a reorganization of the company, which led to the reduction of staff and air services. In 1965, Alberda died in an air crash and was succeeded as president by Dr. Gerrit van der Wal. Van der Wal forged an agreement with the Dutch government that KLM would be once again run as a private company. By 1966, the stake of the Dutch government in KLM was reduced to a minority stake of 49.5%. In 1966, KLM introduced the Douglas DC-9 on European and Middle East routes.
The new terminal buildings at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol opened in April 1967, and in 1968 the stretched Douglas DC-8-63 ("Super DC-8") entered service. With 244 seats, the Super DC-8 was the largest airliner in scheduled passenger service at the time. KLM was the first airline to put the higher-gross-weight Boeing 747-200B, powered by Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines, into service in February 1971; this began the airline's use of widebody jets. In March 1971, KLM opened its current headquarters in Amstelveen. In 1972, it purchased the first of several McDonnell Douglas DC-10 aircraft—McDonnell Douglas's response to Boeing's 747.
In 1973, Sergio Orlandini was appointed to succeed Gerrit van der Wal as president of KLM. At the time, KLM, as well as other airlines, had to deal with overcapacity. Orlandini proposed to convert KLM 747s to "combis" that could carry a combination of passengers and freight in a mixed configuration on the main deck of the aircraft. In November 1975, the first of these seven Boeing 747-200B Combi aircraft were added to the KLM fleet. The airline previously operated DC-8 passenger and freight combi aircraft as well and currently operates Boeing 747-400 combi aircraft.
The 1973 oil crisis, which caused difficult economic conditions, led KLM to seek government assistance in arranging debt refinancing. The airline issued additional shares of stock to the government in return for its money. In the late 1970s, the government's stake had again increased to a majority of 78%, effectively re-nationalizing it. The company management remained under the control of private stakeholders.
1980s and 1990s
In 1980, KLM carried 9,715,069 passengers. In 1983, it reached an agreement with Boeing to upgrade ten of its Boeing 747-200 aircraft (Three 747-200Bs and seven 747-200Ms) with the stretched-upper-deck modification. The work started in 1984 at the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington, and finished in 1986. The converted aircraft were called Boeing 747-200SUD or 747-300, which the airline operated in addition to three newly built Boeing 747-300s manufactured from the ground up. In 1983, KLM took delivery of the first of ten Airbus A310 passenger jets. Sergio Orlandini retired in 1987 and was succeeded as president of KLM by Jan de Soet. In 1986, the Dutch government's shareholding in KLM was reduced to 54.8 percent. It was expected that this share would be further reduced during the decade. The Boeing 747-400 was introduced into KLM's fleet in June 1989.
With the liberalization of the European market, KLM started developing its hub at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol by feeding its network with traffic from affiliated airlines. As part of its development of a worldwide network, KLM acquired a 20% stake in Northwest Airlines in July 1989. In 1990, KLM carried 16,000,000 passengers. KLM president Jan de Soet retired at the end of 1990 and was succeeded in 1991 by Pieter Bouw. In December 1991, KLM was the first European airline to introduce a frequent flyer loyalty program, which was called Flying Dutchman.
Joint venture
In January 1993, the United States Department of Transportation granted KLM and Northwest Airlines anti-trust immunity, which allowed them to intensify their partnership. As of September 1993, the airlines operated their flights between the United States and Europe as part of a joint venture. In March 1994, KLM and Northwest Airlines introduced World Business Class on intercontinental routes. KLM's stake in Northwest Airlines was increased to 25% in 1994.
KLM introduced the Boeing 767-300ER in July 1995. In January 1996, KLM acquired a 26% share in Kenya Airways, the flag-carrier airline of Kenya. In 1997, Pieter Bouw resigned as president of KLM and was succeeded by Leo van Wijk. In August 1998, KLM repurchased all regular shares from the Dutch government to make KLM a private company. On 1 November 1999, KLM founded AirCares, a communication and fundraising platform supporting worthy causes and focusing on underprivileged children.
KLM renewed its intercontinental fleets by replacing the Boeing 767s, Boeing 747-300s, and eventually, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11s with Boeing 777-200ERs and Airbus A330-200s. Some 747s were withdrawn from service first. The MD-11s remained in service until October 2014. The first Boeing 777 was received on 25 October 2003, while the first Airbus A330-200 was introduced on 25 August 2005.
Air France–KLM merger
On 30 September 2003, Air France and KLM agreed to a merger plan in which Air France and KLM would become subsidiaries of a holding company called Air France–KLM. Both airlines would retain their own brands; both Charles de Gaulle Airport and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol would become key hubs. In February 2004, the European Commission and United States Department of Justice approved the proposed merger of the airlines. In April 2004, an exchange offer in which KLM shareholders exchanged their KLM shares for Air France shares took place. Since 5 May 2004, Air France–KLM has been listed on the Euronext exchanges in Paris, Amsterdam and New York. In September 2004, the merger was completed by creation of the Air France–KLM holding company. The merger resulted in the world's largest airline group and should have led to an estimated annual cost-saving of between €400 million and €500 million.
It did not appear that KLM's longstanding joint venture with Northwest Airlines—which merged with Delta Air Lines in 2008—was affected by the merger with Air France. KLM and Northwest joined the SkyTeam alliance in September 2004. Also in 2004, senior management came under fire for providing itself with controversial bonuses after the merger with Air France, while 4,500 jobs were lost at KLM. After external pressure, management gave up on these bonuses.
In March 2007, KLM started to use the Amadeus reservation system, along with partner Kenya Airways. After 10 years as president of the airline, Leo van Wijk resigned from his position and was succeeded by Peter Hartman.
2010s
Beginning in September 2010, KLM integrated the passenger division of Martinair into KLM, transferring all personnel and routes. By November 2011, Martinair consisted of only the cargo and maintenance division. In March 2011, KLM and InselAir reached an agreement for mutual cooperation on InselAir destinations, thus expanding its passenger services. Beginning 27 March 2011, KLM passengers could fly to all InselAir destinations through InselAir's hubs in Curaçao and Sint Maarten. This cooperation was extended to a code share agreement in 2012. In early 2018, the cooperation with Inselair was terminated, including any interlining agreements, after Inselair found itself in financial difficulties which forced the airline to sell off part of its fleet and cancel some of its routes.
On 20 February 2013, KLM announced that Peter Hartman would resign as president and CEO of KLM on 1 July 2013. He was succeeded by Camiel Eurlings. Hartman remained employed by the company until he retired on 1 January 2014. On 15 October 2014, KLM announced that Eurlings, in joint consultation with the supervisory board, had decided to immediately resign as president and CEO. As of this date, he was succeeded by Pieter Elbers. KLM received the award for "Best Airline Staff Service" in Europe at the World Airline Awards 2013. This award represents the rating for an airline's performance across both airport staff and cabin staff combined. It is the second consecutive year that KLM won this award; in 2012 it was awarded with this title as well. On 19 June 2012, KLM made the first transatlantic flight fueled partly by sustainable biofuels to Rio de Janeiro. This was the longest distance any aircraft had flown on bio fuels.
In 2019, KLM celebrated its centennial, as it was founded in 1919. Since it is the oldest airline still operating under its original name, it was the first airline to achieve this feat.
2020s
Being heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, KLM cut at least 6,000 jobs total. It also said that the decisions of the government to have all the passengers and crew COVID-19 tested before flying will have an impact on its flights. On December 16th, 2021, Air France-KLM announced an order for 100 Airbus A320neos to be divided between Transavia and KLM. This was the second order placed within 24 hours after Qantas ordered 20 Airbus A220s and A321XLRs from the same company.
Corporate affairs and identity
Business trends
Key business and operating results of KLM are shown below (as at year ending 31 December):
Management
, KLM's corporate leader is its president and chief executive officer (CEO) Pieter Elbers, who replaced Camiel Eurlings suddenly on 15 October 2014. The president and CEO is part of the larger Executive Committee, which manages KLM and consists of the statutory managing directors and executive vice-presidents of KLM's business units that are represented in the Executive Committee. The supervision and management of KLM are structured in accordance with the two-tier model; the Board of Managing Directors is supervised by a separate and independent Supervisory Board. The Supervisory Board also supervises the general performance of KLM. The Board of Managing Directors is formed by the four Managing Directors, including the CEO. Nine Supervisory Directors compose the Supervisory Board.
Head office
KLM's head office is located in Amstelveen, on a site near Schiphol Airport. The airline's current headquarters was built between 1968 and 1970. Before the opening of the new headquarters, the airline's head office was on the property of Schiphol Airport in Haarlemmermeer.
Subsidiaries
Companies in which KLM has a stake include:
Former subsidiaries
Subsidiaries, associates, and joint ventures of KLM in the past include:
KLM also worked closely with ALM Antillean Airlines in the Caribbean in order to provide air service for the Dutch controlled islands in the region with KLM aircraft such as the Douglas DC-8 and McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 being operated by KLM flight crews on behalf of ALM.
KLM Asia
KLM Asia () is a wholly owned subsidiary registered in Taiwan. The airline was established in 1995 to operate flights to Taipei without compromising the traffic rights held by KLM for destinations in the People's Republic of China.
Aircraft operated by the subsidiary receive several modifications to their livery. The Flag of the Netherlands and Europe are removed while KLM's stylised Dutch Crown logo is replaced with the KLM Asia wordmark.
The fleet of aircraft operated by the subsidiary consists of seven Boeing 777-200ER and two Boeing 777-300ER aircraft as of March 2020. KLM Asia initially operated the Amsterdam-Bangkok-Taipei route with Boeing 747-400 Combi and Boeing 747-400 aircraft. Since March 2012, it has operated the revised Amsterdam-Taipei-Manila route with Boeing 777-200ER/-300ER aircraft.
KLM Asia aircraft are also occasionally used to service other destinations in the wider KLM network.
Branding
Dirk Roosenburg designed the KLM logo at its establishment in 1919; he intertwined the letter K, L, and M, and gave them wings and a crown. The crown was depicted to denote KLM's royal status, which was granted at KLM's establishment. The logo became known as the "vinklogo" in reference to the common chaffinch. The KLM logo was largely redesigned in 1961 by F.H.K. Henrion. The crown, redesigned using a line, four blue circles and a cross, was retained. In 1991, the logo was further revised by Chris Ludlow of Henrion, Ludlow & Schmidt. In addition to its main logo, KLM displays its alliance status in its branding, including "Worldwide Reliability" with Northwest Airlines (1993–2002) and the SkyTeam alliance (2004–present).
Livery and uniforms
KLM has utilized several major liveries since its founding, with numerous variations on each. Initially, many aircraft featured a bare-metal fuselage with a stripe above the windows bearing the phrase "The Flying Dutchman". The rudder was divided into three segments and painted to match the Dutch flag. Later aircraft types sometimes bore a white upper fuselage, and additional detail striping and titling. In the mid-1950s, the livery was changed to feature a split cheatline in two shades of blue on a white upper fuselage and angled blue stripes on the vertical stabilizer. The tail stripes were later enlarged and made horizontal, and the then-new crown logo was placed in a white circle. The final major variation of this livery saw the vertical stabilizer painted completely white with the crown logo in the center. All versions of this livery had small "KLM Royal Dutch Airlines" titles, first in red, and later in blue.
Since 1971, the KLM livery has primarily featured a bright blue fuselage, with variations on the striping and details. Originally a wide, dark blue cheatline covered the windows and was separated from the light grey lower fuselage by a thin white stripe. The KLM logo was placed centrally on the white tail and the front of the fuselage. In December 2002, KLM introduced an updated livery in which the white strip was removed and the dark-blue cheatline was significantly narrowed. The bright blue colour was retained and now covers most of the fuselage. The KLM logo was placed more centrally on the fuselage while its position on the tail and the tail design remained the same. In 2014, KLM modified its livery with a swooping cheatline that wraps around the entire forward fuselage. The livery was first introduced on Embraer 190s.
In April 2010, KLM introduced new uniforms for its female cabin attendants, ground attendants and pilots at KLM and KLM Cityhopper. The new uniform was designed by Dutch couturier Mart Visser. It retains the KLM blue colour that was introduced in 1971 and adds a touch of orange—the national colour of the Netherlands.
Marketing slogans
KLM has used several slogans for marketing throughout its operational history:
"The businessman travels, sends, and receives by KLM" (translated from Dutch) (1920s)
"The Flying Dutchman"
"Bridging the World" (1994)
"The Reliable Airline"
"Journeys of Inspiration" (2009–present)
Social media
KLM has an extensive presence on social media platforms and also runs a blog. Customers can make inquiries through these channels. The airline also uses these networks to inform customers of KLM news, marketing campaigns and promotions.
The airline's use of social media platforms to reach customers peaked when the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted in April 2010, causing widespread disruption to air traffic. Customers used the social networks to contact the airline, which used them to provide information about the situation. Following the increased use of social media, KLM created a centralized, public social media website named the Social Media Hub in October 2010.
KLM has developed several services based on these social platforms, including:
Meet & Seat; this service allows passengers to find information about people who will be on the same KLM flight by connecting their Facebook or LinkedIn profiles to the flight. Meet & Seat facilitates contact with fellow travelers who have the same background or interests. By launching Meet & Seat, KLM became the first airline to integrate social networking into its regular flight process.
Trip Planner; this platform uses Facebook to organize a trip with Facebook friends.
Twitterbots; KLM operates several Twitterbots, including one to request the current status of a flight and one to request the lowest KLM fares to a destination on a specified date or month.
In June 2013, KLM launched its own 3D strategy game "Aviation Empire" for iOS and Android platforms. The game allows users to experience airline management. Players manage KLM from its establishment until the present; they can invest in a fleet, build a network with international destinations and develop airports. The game combines the digital world with the real world by enabling the unlocking of airports by GPS check-ins.
Philanthropy
KLM started KLM AirCares, a program that aids underprivileged children in developing countries to which KLM flies, in 1999. The airline collects money and airmiles from passengers. In 2012, new applications for support from the program were suspended because it needed an overhaul.
Destinations
KLM and its partners serve 133 destinations in 70 countries on five continents from their hub at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Codeshare agreements bring the total amount of destinations available via KLM to 826.
Codeshare agreements
KLM has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:
Aeroflot
Aerolíneas Argentinas
Aeroméxico
Air Astana
Air Baltic
Air Europa
Air France
Air Malta
Air Serbia
Bangkok Airways
Belavia
Bulgaria Air
China Airlines
China Eastern Airlines
China Southern Airlines
Copa Airlines
Croatia Airlines
Czech Airlines
Delta Air Lines
Etihad Airways
Garuda Indonesia
Georgian Airways
Gol Transportes Aéreos
IndiGo
ITA Airways
Kenya Airways
KLM Cityhopper
Korean Air
Malaysia Airlines
Middle East Airlines
Saudia
Sichuan Airlines
TAROM
Transavia
Vietnam Airlines
WestJet
Widerøe
XiamenAir
Fleet
Fleet strategy
KLM's first of 8 Boeing 787-10 aircraft was delivered on 28 June 2019; it featured 100th anniversary markings.
On 19 June 2013, KLM ordered 7 Airbus A350-900s. In June 2019, Air France–KLM announced that KLM will not take up any of the group's ordered A350s, because of fleet rationalization purposes.
CEO Ben Smith has announced at Air France's Investor Day (5 November 2019) in Paris that "in the near future" KLM will only use the 777 and 787 as their long-haul fleet, retiring their 13 A330's.
In December 2021 Air France-KLM ordered 100 Airbus A320neo family aircraft to replace KLM and Transavia’s Boeing 737 Next Generation and Air France’s Airbus A320’s.
Special liveries
KLM has several aircraft painted in special liveries; they include:
PH-BVA, a Boeing 777-300ER, features an orange forward fuselage that fades into the standard blue to commemorate the Netherlands national team's participation in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
PH-KZU, a Fokker F70, had been applied with a special livery featuring Anthony Fokker prior to its phase-out, the founder of Fokker, commemorating the airline's long-standing history with Fokker aircraft and the phase-out of the Fokker 70 aircraft in October 2017.
Several aircraft bear the silver SkyTeam alliance livery, including PH-BVD (a 777-300ER), PH-BXO (a 737-900), and PH-EZX (a KLM Cityhopper ERJ-190).
PH-BKA, a Boeing 787-10, features the standard KLM livery with a 100 wrapped around its lettering on the plane, this is because of the 100 years of being an established airline.
Cabin
KLM has three cabin classes for international long-haul routes; World Business Class, Economy Comfort and Economy. Personal screens with audio-video on-demand, satellite telephone, SMS, and e-mail services are available in all cabins on all long-haul aircraft. European short-haul and medium-haul flights have Economy seats in the rear cabin, and Economy Comfort and Europe Business in the forward cabin.
World Business Class
World Business Class is KLM's long-haul business class product. Seats in the older World Business Class are wide and have a pitch. Seats can be reclined into a 170-degree angled flat bed with a length of . Seats are equipped with a personal entertainment system with audio and video on demand in the armrest, privacy canopy, massage function and laptop power ports. World Business Class seating is in a 2–2–2 abreast arrangement on all Airbus A330s.
In March 2013, KLM introduced a new World Business Class seat to the long-haul fleet. Dutch designer Hella Jongerius designed the new cabin. The diamond-type seat is manufactured by B/E Aerospace and is currently installed on all Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s. The seats were also refurbished on former KLM Boeing 747-400s between 2013 and 2014. The new seats are fully flat and offer -high definition personal entertainment systems. When fully flat, the bed is about long. The cabin features a cradle-to-cradle carpet made from old uniforms woven in an intricate pattern, which is combined with new pillows and curtains with a similar design.
A completely new design of Business Class seat was introduced with the launch of KLM's Boeing 787; this aircraft's business class seats are based on the Zodiac Cirrus platform used by Air France. The new seats lie fully flat, with a 1-2-1 layout so every passenger has direct aisle access, a large side-storage area and HD video screen. Dutch design group Viktor & Rolf has designed and provides amenity kits to World Business Class passengers. A new design will be introduced each year and the color of the kits will change every six months. The kit contains socks, eye mask, toothbrush, toothpaste, earplugs and Viktor & Rolf lip balm.
Europe Business Class
Europe Business Class is KLM's and KLM Cityhopper's short-haul business-class. Europe Business Class seats are wide and have an average pitch of . Middle seats in rows of three are blocked to increase passengers' personal space. Europe Business Class seats feature extra legroom and recline further than regular Economy Class seats. In-seat power is available on all Boeing 737 aircraft's. Europe Business Class has no personal entertainment. Seating is arranged 3–3 abreast with the middle seat blocked on the Boeing 737 aircraft, and a 2–2 abreast arrangement on the Embraer E-Jet family and Embraer E-Jet E2 aircraft.
Economy Comfort
Economy Comfort is the premium economy class offered on all KLM and KLM Cityhopper flights. Economy Comfort seats on long-haul flights have more pitch than Economy Class, a pitch and recline up to ; double the recline of Economy. Economy Comfort seats on short-haul flights have more pitch, totaling , and can recline up to (40%) further. Except for the increased pitch and recline, seating and service in Economy Comfort is the same as in Economy Class. Economy Comfort is located in a separate cabin before the Economy Class; passengers can exit the aircraft before Economy passengers.
Economy Comfort seats can be reserved by Economy Class passengers. The service is free for passengers with a full-fare ticket, for Flying Blue Platinum members and Delta Air Lines SkyMiles Platinum or Diamond members. Discounts apply for Flying Blue Silver or Gold members, SkyTeam Elite Plus members and Delta SkyMiles members.
Economy Class
The Economy Class seats on long-haul flights have a pitch and are wide. All seats are equipped with adjustable winged headrests, a PTV with AVOD, and a personal handset satellite telephone that can be used with a credit card. Economy Class seats in Airbus A330-300 aircraft are also equipped with in-seat power. The Economy Class seats on short-haul flights have a pitch and are wide. The Economy Class seats on short-haul flights do not feature any personal entertainment. The long-haul Economy Class seating is in a 3–4–3 abreast arrangement on the Boeing 747-400, Boeing 777-300ER aircraft and on Boeing 777-200ER aircraft, a 3-3-3 abreast arrangement on the Boeing 787-9 aircraft, and a 2–4–2 abreast arrangement on the Airbus A330 aircraft. The short-haul Economy Class seating is in a 3–3 abreast arrangement on the Boeing 737 aircraft and a 2–2 abreast arrangement on the Embraer 175 and 190 aircraft, and the seats on these aircraft are wide.
Services
In-flight entertainment
KLM's in-flight entertainment system is available in all classes on all widebody aircraft's; it provides all passengers with Audio/Video on Demand (AVOD). The system includes interactive entertainment including movies, television programs, music, games, and language courses. About 80 movies including recent releases, classics and world cinema are available in several languages. The selection is changed every month. The in-flight entertainment system can be used to send SMS text messages and emails to the ground. Panasonic's 3000i system is installed on all Boeing 747-400, Boeing 777-200ER, and on most of the Airbus A330-200 aircraft. All Airbus A330-300 and Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, and some Airbus A330-200 aircraft are fitted with the Panasonic eX2 in-flight entertainment system.
KLM provides a selection of international newspapers to its passengers on long-haul flights; on short-haul flights they are only offered to Europe Business Class passengers. A selection of international magazines is available for World Business Class passengers on long-haul flights. All passengers are provided with KLM's in-flight magazine, the Holland Herald. On board flights to China, South Korea and Japan, the airline offers in-flight magazines EuroSky (China and Japan), in either Chinese or Japanese, and Wings of Europe (South Korea) in Korean. On 29 May 2013, KLM and Air France launched a pilot scheme to test in-flight WiFi internet access. Each airline equipped one Boeing 777-300ER in its fleet with WiFi, which passengers can use with their WiFi-enabled devices. Wireless service was available after the aircraft reached in altitude.
Catering
World Business Class passengers are served a three-course meal. Each year KLM partners with a leading Dutch chef to develop the dishes that are served on board. Passengers in Europe Business Class are served either a cold meal, a hot main course, or a three-course meal depending on the duration of the flight. All chicken served in World and Europe Business Class meets the standards of the Dutch Beter Leven Keurmerk (Better Life Quality Mark). KLM partnered with Dutch designer Marcel Wanders to design the tableware of World and European Business Class.
Economy Class passengers on long-haul flights are served a hot meal and a snack, and second hot meal or breakfast, depending on the duration of the flight. On short-haul flights, passengers are served sandwiches or a choice of sweet or savoury snack, depending on the duration and time of the day. If the flight is at least two hours long, "stroopwafel" cookies are served before the descent. Most alcoholic beverages are free-of-charge for all passengers. After a successful trial period, KLM introduced à la carte meals in Economy Class on 14 September 2011; Dutch, Japanese, Italian, cold delicacies, and Indonesian meals are offered.
Special meals, include children's, vegetarian, medical, and religious meals, can be requested in each class up to 24 or 36 hours before departure. On flights to India, China, South Korea, and Japan, KLM offers authentic Asian meals in all classes. Meals served on KLM flights departing from Amsterdam are provided by KLM Catering Services.
In September 2016, KLM launched the world's first in-flight draft beer under the partnership with Heineken. The new service made its premiere aboard a flight to Curaçao in the airline's World Business Class cabin.
Delft Blue houses
Since the 1950s, KLM has presented its World Business Class passengers with a Delft blue miniature traditional Dutch house. These miniatures are reproductions of real Dutch houses and are filled with Dutch genever. Initially the houses were filled with Bols liqueur, which in 1986 was changed to Bols young genever.
In 1952, KLM started to give the houses to its First Class passengers. With the elimination of First Class in 1993, the houses were handed out to all Business Class passengers. The impetus for these houses was a rule aimed at curtailing a previously widespread practise of offering incentives to passengers by limiting the value of gifts given by airlines to $0.75 USD. KLM did not bill the Delft Blue houses as a gift, but as a last drink on the house, which was served in the house.
Every year, a new house is presented on 7 October, the anniversary of KLM's founding in 1919. The number on the last-presented house thus represents the number of years KLM has been in operation. Special edition houses—the Dutch Royal Palace and the 17th century Cheese Weighing House De Waag in Gouda—are offered to special guests, such as VIPs and honeymoon couples.
Ground services
KLM offers various check-in methods to its passengers, who can check in for their flights at self-service check-in kiosks at the airport, via the Internet, or a mobile telephone or tablet. At destinations where these facilities are not available, check-in is by an airline representative at the counter. Electronic boarding passes can be received on a mobile device while boarding passes can be printed at airport kiosks.
Since 4 July 2008 KLM, in cooperation with Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, has been offering self-service baggage drop-off to its passengers. The project started with a trial that included one drop-off point. The number of these points has gradually increased; there are 12 of them. KLM passengers can now drop off their bags themselves. Before they are allowed to do that they are being checked by a KLM employee.
In November 2012, KLM started a pilot scheme at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol to test self-service boarding. Passengers boarded the aircraft without any interference of a gate agent by scanning their boarding passes, which opened a gate. KLM partner airline Air France ran the same pilot at its hub at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The pilot ran until March 2013, which was followed by an evaluation.
KLM is the first airline to offer self-service transfer kiosks on its European and intercontinental routes for passengers connecting through Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. The kiosks enable connecting passengers to view flight details of connecting flights, to change seat assignments or upgrade to a more comfortable seat. When a passenger misses a connecting flight, details about alternative flights can be viewed on the kiosk and a new boarding pass can be printed. Passengers who are entitled to coupons for a beverage, meal, the use of a telephone, or a travel discount can have these printed at the kiosk.
Bus services and train codeshares
KLM has bus services for customers living in certain cities without flights from KLM, transporting them to airports where they may board KLM flights. It operates buses from Nijmegen railway station and Arnhem Central Station in the Netherlands to Amsterdam Schiphol, from Maastricht railway station (IATA-code ZYT) via Maastricht-Aachen Airport (IATA-code MST) and Eindhoven Airport (IATA-code EIN) to Amsterdam Schiphol (IATA-code AMS), and from Ottawa Railway Station to Montreal Dorval Airport in Canada. In addition KLM has codeshares with Thalys and SNCF services so passengers from various French cities may travel to Charles de Gaulle Airport and passengers from Belgium may go to Schiphol (from Antwerp) or Charles de Gaulle (from Brussels).
Flying Blue
Air France-KLM's frequent flyer program, Flying Blue, awards miles based on the distance traveled, ticket fare and class of service. Other airlines that adopted the Flying Blue programme include Air Europa, Garuda Indonesia, Kenya Airways, Aircalin, and TAROM. Miles can also be earned from all other SkyTeam partners. Membership in the program is free. Two types of miles can be earned within the Flying Blue program; Award Miles and Level Miles. Award Miles can be exchanged for rewards and expire after 20 months without flying. Level Miles are used to determine membership level and remain valid until 31 December of each year.
Award Miles can be earned on Flying Blue partner airlines including Air Corsica, Airlinair, Bangkok Airways, Chalair Aviation, Comair, Copa Airlines, Gol Transportes Aéreos, Japan Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Qantas, TAAG Angola, Twin Jet, and Ukraine International Airlines, as well as SkyTeam partners. Award Miles are redeemable for free tickets, upgrades to a more expensive seating class, extra baggage allowance, and lounge access. They can also be donated to charity through KLM AirCares, or can be spent in the Flying Blue Store.
The Flying Blue programme is divided into four tiers; Explorer, Silver (SkyTeam Elite), Gold (SkyTeam Elite Plus) and Platinum (SkyTeam Elite Plus). Then, you have the special tiers, such as Platinum For Life, ultimate platinum, ultimate platinum skipper, club2000 skipper (for those who did something special for KLM, cannot be requested but will be distributed by KLM). The membership tier depends on the number of Level Miles earned and is recalculated each calendar year. Flying Blue privileges are additive by membership tier; higher tiers include all benefits listed for prior tiers. There is an additional fifth tier, Platinum for Life, which can be obtained after 10 consecutive years of Platinum membership. After the Platinum for Life status is obtained, re-qualification is not required. Level Miles can be earned with Air France, KLM, Air Europa, Kenya Airways, TAROM, and other SkyTeam partners. Qualification levels and general benefits with SkyTeam airline partners of the Flying Blue tiers are:
Flight Bundle
KLM offers customers a prepaid flight subscription program called Flight Bundle, which it operates in conjunction with USA-based Optiontown Inc.
With KLM Flight Bundle, passengers can select one or more destinations in advance for a pre-set, fixed price and decide their travel dates later. Passengers can customize their own Flight Bundle and depending on the choices they make, can determine the ultimate price for the tickets in the Flight Bundle. Flight Bundle can be shared with family, friends or colleagues.
Accidents and incidents
Tenerife airport disaster
The Tenerife disaster, which occurred on 27 March 1977, remains the accident with the highest number of airliner passenger fatalities, as well as the most recent fatal and notable incident involving a KLM aircraft. 583 people died when a KLM Boeing 747-200B attempted to take off without clearance, and collided with a taxiing Pan Am Boeing 747-100 at Los Rodeos Airport on the Canary Island of Tenerife, Spain. No one on the KLM 747 survived (14 crew, 234 passengers were killed) while 61 of the 396 passengers and crew on the Pan Am aircraft survived. Pilot error from the KLM aircraft was the primary cause. Owing to a communication misunderstanding, the KLM captain thought he had clearance for takeoff. Another cause was dense fog, meaning the KLM flight crew was unable to see the Pan Am aircraft on the runway until immediately prior to the collision. The accident had a lasting influence on the industry, particularly in the area of communication. An increased emphasis was placed on using standardized phraseology in air traffic control (ATC) communication by both controllers and pilots alike, thereby reducing the chance for misunderstandings. As part of these changes, the word "takeoff" was removed from general usage, and is only spoken by ATC when clearing an aircraft to take off.
Other accidents and incidents
Notable employees
Jacob Veldhuyzen van Zanten, pilot
Ingrid de Caluwé
Bob Hiensch, flight attendant
Joop van Werkhoven
Leo Visser, pilot
Lisa Westerhof, pilot
King Willem-Alexander, guest pilot
See also
Air transport in the Netherlands
List of airports in the Netherlands
List of companies of the Netherlands
Citations
General bibliography
External links
Air France-KLM
A century KLM
Air France–KLM
Airlines established in 1919
Airlines of the Netherlands
Association of European Airlines members
Amstelveen
Companies based in North Holland
Dutch brands
Dutch companies established in 1919
Former seaplane operators
Multinational companies headquartered in the Netherlands
Organisations based in the Netherlands with royal patronage
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16883 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas%20City%20Royals | Kansas City Royals | The Kansas City Royals are an American professional baseball team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Royals compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. The team was founded as an expansion franchise in 1969, and has played in four World Series, winning in 1985 and 2015, and losing in 1980 and 2014.
The name "Royals" pays homage to the American Royal, a livestock show, horse show, rodeo, and championship barbeque competition held annually in Kansas City since 1899, as well as the identical names of two former Negro league baseball teams that played in the first half of the 20th century. (One a semi-pro team based in Kansas City in the 1910s and 1920s that toured the Midwest and a California Winter League team based in Los Angeles in the 1940s that was managed by Chet Brewer and included Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson on its roster.) The Los Angeles team had personnel connections to the Monarchs but could not use the Monarchs name. The name also fits into something of a theme for other professional sports franchises in the city, including the Kansas City Chiefs of the NFL, the former Kansas City Kings of the NBA, and the former Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro National League.
In 1968, the team held a name-the-team contest that received more than 17,000 entries. Sanford Porte, a bridge engineer from the suburb of Overland Park, Kansas, was named the winner for his “Royals” entry. His reason had nothing to do with royalty. “Kansas City’s new baseball team should be called the Royals because of Missouri’s billion-dollar livestock income, Kansas City’s position as the nation’s leading stocker and feeder market and the nationally known American Royal parade and pageant,” Porte wrote. The team's board voted 6–1 on the name, with the only opposition coming from team owner Ewing Kauffman, who eventually changed his vote and said the name had grown on him.
Entering the American League in 1969 along with the Seattle Pilots, the club was founded by Kansas City businessman Ewing Kauffman. The franchise was established following the actions of Stuart Symington, then-U.S. Senator from Missouri, who demanded a new franchise for the city after the Athletics (Kansas City's previous major league team that played from 1955 to 1967) moved to Oakland, California in 1968. Since April 10, 1973, the Royals have played at Kauffman Stadium, formerly known as Royals Stadium.
The new team quickly became a powerhouse, appearing in the playoffs seven times from 1976 to 1985, winning one World Series championship and another AL pennant, led by stars such as Amos Otis, Hal McRae, John Mayberry, George Brett, Frank White, Willie Wilson, and Bret Saberhagen. The team remained competitive throughout the early 1990s, but then had only one winning season from 1995 to 2012. For 28 consecutive seasons (1986–2013), the Royals did not qualify to play in the MLB postseason, one of the longest postseason droughts during baseball's current wild-card era. The team broke this streak in 2014 by securing the franchise's first wild card berth and advancing to the 2014 World Series, where they lost to the San Francisco Giants in seven games. The Royals followed this up by winning the team's first AL Central division title in 2015 and defeating the New York Mets in five games in the 2015 World Series to win their second World Series championship.
Through 2021, the Royals have an all time win-loss record of 4,001–4,344 ().
Franchise history
Baseball returns to Kansas City
When the Kansas City Athletics moved to Oakland after the 1967 season, Kansas City was left without major league baseball or, for the first time since 1883, professional baseball at all. The team was led by Charlie Finley, who explored many elaborate relocation plans and essentially shunned Kansas City before the team even relocated. An enraged Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri threatened to introduce legislation removing baseball's antitrust exemption unless Kansas City was granted a team in the next round of expansion. Major League Baseball complied with a hasty round of expansion at the 1967 winter meetings. Kansas City was awarded one of four teams to begin play in 1971. However, Symington was not satisfied with having Kansas City wait three years for baseball to return, and pressured MLB to allow the new teams to start play in 1969. Symington's intervention may have contributed to the financial collapse of the Royals' companion expansion team, the Seattle Pilots, who had to begin play in 1969 before they were ready (the league required new franchises to enter in pairs to preserve symmetry for scheduling purposes).
Pharmaceutical executive Ewing Kauffman won the bidding for the new Kansas City team. He conducted a contest to determine the best and most appropriate name for the new franchise. Sanford Porte from Overland Park, Kansas submitted the name Royals, in recognition of Missouri's billion-dollar livestock industry. His suggestion was that the American Royal best exemplified Kansas City through its pageantry and parade, so the new team should be named the Royals. The name was selected out of 17,000 submissions and the Royals Board voted 6–1 to adopt the name. The one dissenting vote was Mr Kauffman's. He eventually changed his mind after the name grew on him. (Some sources say it was in honor of the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro leagues team.) The team's logo, a crown atop a shield with the letters "KC" inside the shield, was created by Shannon Manning, an artist at Hallmark Cards, based in Kansas City.
1969–1979: Taking Off
The Royals began play in 1969 in Kansas City, Missouri. In their inaugural game, on April 8, 1969, the Royals defeated the Minnesota Twins 4–3 in 12 innings. The Royals went 69–93 in their first season, highlighted by Lou Piniella, who won the AL Rookie of the Year Award.
The team was quickly built through a number of trades engineered by its first General Manager, Cedric Tallis, who picked up center fielder Amos Otis, who became the team's first great star, first baseman John Mayberry, who provided power, second baseman Cookie Rojas, shortstop Fred Patek, designated hitter Hal McRae, and others. The Royals also invested in a strong farm system and soon developed such future stars as pitchers Paul Splittorff, Dennis Leonard, and Steve Busby, infielders George Brett and Frank White, and outfielder Al Cowens. Under these young players, the Royals started to build a young core set up for future success.
In 1971, the Royals had their first winning season, with manager Bob Lemon leading them to a second-place finish. In 1973, under manager Jack McKeon, the Royals adopted their iconic "powder blue" road uniforms and moved from Municipal Stadium to the brand-new Royals Stadium (now known as Kauffman Stadium).
The 1973 All-Star Game was hosted at Royals Stadium, with Otis and Mayberry in the AL starting lineup. The event was previously held at Municipal Stadium in 1960, when the Athletics were based in Kansas City.
Manager Whitey Herzog replaced McKeon in 1975, and the Royals quickly became the dominant franchise in the American League's Western Division. After a second-place, 91 win season, they won three straight division championships from 1976 to 1978, including the franchise's only 100-win season in 1977. However, the Royals lost to the New York Yankees in three straight American League Championship Series encounters.
1980–1984: From Pennant to Pine Tar Incident
After the Royals finished in second place in 1979, Herzog was fired and replaced by Jim Frey. Under Frey and a legendary .390 season from George Brett, the Royals rebounded in 1980 and advanced to the ALCS, where they again faced the Yankees. The Royals vanquished the Yankees in a three-game sweep punctuated by Brett's home run off of Yankees' star relief pitcher Goose Gossage. After reaching their first World Series, the Royals fell to the Philadelphia Phillies in six games. Game 6 was also significant because it remains the most-watched game in World Series history with a television audience of 54.9 million viewers.
In July 1983, while the Royals were headed for a second-place finish behind the Chicago White Sox another chapter in the team's rivalry with the New York Yankees occurred. In what has come to be known as "the Pine Tar Incident", umpires discovered illegal placement of pine tar (more than 18 inches up the handle) on third baseman George Brett's bat after he had hit a two-run home run off Gossage that put the Royals up 5–4 in the top of the 9th. After Yankee Manager Billy Martin came out of the dugout to talk to home plate umpire Tim McClelland, McClelland and the other umpires mulled over the bat (measuring it over home plate, touching it, etc.). McClelland then pointed to Brett in the dugout and gave the "out" sign, disallowing the home run. Enraged, Brett stormed out of the dugout toward McClelland and Martin, and McClelland ejected Brett. The homer was later reinstated by AL President Lee MacPhail, and the Royals won the game after it was resumed several weeks later.
The 1983 season was also notable for some transitional changes in the Royals organization. First, owner Ewing Kauffman sold 49% of his interest to Memphis developer Avron Fogelman. Second, John Schuerholz was named general manager. Schuerholz soon bolstered the farm system with pitchers Bud Black, Danny Jackson, Mark Gubicza, David Cone, and Bret Saberhagen, as well as hitters such as Kevin Seitzer.
Thanks to the sudden and surprising maturation (specifically, in pitching) of most of the aforementioned players, the Royals won their fifth division championship in 1984, relying on Brett's bat and the young pitching staff of Saberhagen, Gubicza, Charlie Leibrandt, Black and Jackson. The Royals were then swept by the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series. The Tigers went on to win the World Series.
1985: "The I-70 Series"
In the 1985 regular season the Royals topped the Western Division for the sixth time in ten years, led by Bret Saberhagen's Cy Young Award-winning performance and George Brett's self-described best "all around year." Throughout the ensuing playoffs, the Royals came back from 2–0 and 3–1 deficits, but managed to win the Series. In game three, with KC down 2 games to 0, George Brett homered twice and doubled off the fence in right field to put Kansas City back into the series. With the Royals down three games to one in the American League Championship Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Royals eventually rallied to win the series 4–3.
1985 World Series
In the 1985 World Series (nicknamed the "I-70 Series" because the two teams are both located in the state of Missouri and connected by Interstate 70) against the cross-state St. Louis Cardinals, the Royals again fell behind, three games to one. After Danny Jackson pitched the Royals to a 6–1 win in game five, the Cardinals and Royals headed back to Kansas City for game six. Facing elimination, the Royals trailed 1–0 in the bottom of the 9th inning, when Jorge Orta led off, hitting a bouncing ground ball to Cardinals 1st basemen Jack Clark, who flipped the ball back to pitcher Todd Worrell at first base. The ball beat Orta to the bag, but umpire Don Denkinger called him safe, and following a dropped popup by Clark and a pass ball the Royals rallied to score two runs, winning on a walk-off single from pinch hitter Dane Iorg to send the series to game seven. In game seven Bret Saberhagen shutout the Cardinals as Kansas City dominated the Cardinals 11–0, clinching their first title in franchise history.
1986–1994: Staying in the Picture
The Royals maintained a reputation as one of the American League West's top teams throughout the late 1980s. The club posted a winning record in three of the four seasons following its 1985 World Series championship, while developing young stars such as Bo Jackson, Tom Gordon, and Kevin Seitzer. The Royals finished the 1989 season with a 92–70 record (third-best in the major leagues) but did not qualify for the playoffs, finishing second in their division behind the eventual World Series champion Oakland Athletics.
At the end of the 1989 season, the team boasted a powerhouse pitching rotation, including the AL Cy Young Award-winner Bret Saberhagen (who set franchise record 23 wins that year), two-time All-Star Mark Gubicza (a 15-game winner in 1989) and 1989 AL Rookie of the Year runner-up Tom Gordon (who won 17 games that year). But the organization felt it was still missing a few necessary pieces to give its divisional rival Oakland Athletics a run for their money. So prior to the 1990 season, the Royals acquired Mark Davis, the 1989 National League Cy Young Award-winner and league leader in saves, signing him to a 4-year, $13 million contract (the largest annual salary in baseball history at the time). The Royals also signed starting pitcher Storm Davis, who was coming off a career-high 19-game win season (third-best in the AL), to a three-year $6 million contract. Despite the promising off-season moves, the team suffered critical bullpen injuries while both newly signed Davises experienced lackluster seasons in 1990. The Royals concluded the season with a 75–86 record, in second-to-last place in the AL West (and with the worst franchise record since 1970). Bo Jackson—the team's potential future franchise player—suffered a devastating hip injury while playing football in the off-season, so the Royals waived him during spring training in 1991.
Though the team dropped out of contention from 1990 to 1992, the Royals still could generally be counted on to post winning records through the strike-shortened 1994 season. With no playoff appearances despite the winning records during this era, many of the team's highlights instead centered around the end of George Brett's career, such as his third and final batting title in 1990—which made him the first player to win batting titles in three different decades—and his 3,000th hit.
In 1994, the Royals moved from the AL West to the newly created AL Central along with the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins, joined by the Cleveland Indians and Milwaukee Brewers from the AL East. The Brewers left for the NL Central in 1998, replaced by the Detroit Tigers that moved from the AL East.
1995–2002: Decline in the Post-Kauffman Era
At the start of the 1990s, the Royals had been hit with a double-whammy when General Manager John Schuerholz departed in 1990 and team owner Ewing Kauffman died in 1993. Shortly before Kauffman's death, he set up an unprecedented complex succession plan to keep the team in Kansas City. The team was donated at his death to the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation and Affiliated Trusts with operating decisions of the team decided by a five-member group chaired by Wal-Mart executive David Glass. According to the plan the Royals had six years to find a local owner for the team before opening ownership to an outside bidder. The new owners would be required to say they would keep the team in Kansas City. Kauffman had feared that new owners would move it noting, "No one would want to buy a baseball team that consistently loses millions of dollars and had little prospect of making money because it was in a small city." If no owner could be found the Kauffman restrictions were to end on January 1, 2002, and the team was to be sold to the highest bidder. In 1999, New York City lawyer and minor league baseball owner Miles Prentice, vowing not to move the team, bid $75 million for the team. This was the minimum amount Kauffman had stipulated the team could be sold for. MLB rejected Prentice's first bid without specifying any reason. In a final round of bids on March 13, 2000, the Foundation voted to accept Glass' bid of $96 million, rejecting Prentice's revised bid of $115 million.
During the interregnum under Foundation ownership, the team declined. In the 1994 season, the Royals reduced payroll by trading pitcher David Cone and outfielder Brian McRae, then continued their salary dump in the 1995 season. The team payroll, which had previously remained among the league's highest, was sliced in half from $40.5 million in 1994 (fourth-highest in the major leagues) to $18.5 million in 1996 (second-lowest in the major leagues).
As attendance slid and the average MLB salary continued to rise, rather than pay higher salaries or lose their players to free agency, the Royals traded their remaining stars such as Kevin Appier, Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye. By 1999, the team's payroll had fallen again to $16.5 million. Making matters worse, most of the younger players that the Royals received in exchange for these All-Stars proved of little value, setting the stage for an extended downward spiral. Indeed, the Royals set a franchise-low with a .398 winning percentage (64–97 record) in 1999, and lost 97 games again in 2001.
In the middle of this era, in 1997, the Royals declined the opportunity to switch to the National League as part of a realignment plan to introduce the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays as expansion teams. The Milwaukee Brewers made the switch instead.
In 2002, the Royals set a new team record for futility, losing 100 games for the first time in franchise history. They fired manager Tony Muser, and he was replaced by Tony Peña.
2003: A Winning Season
The 2003 season saw a temporary end to the losing, when manager Tony Peña, in his first full season with the club, guided the team to its first winning record (83–79) since 1994 and finished in third place in the AL Central. He was named the American League Manager of the Year for his efforts and shortstop Ángel Berroa was named AL Rookie of the Year.
2004–2008: Rock Bottom
From the 2004 season through the 2012 season, the Royals posted nine consecutive losing records, the longest streak in team history. In six of those seasons, the team finished in last place in the American League Central, and in eight of those nine seasons the team lost at least 90 games. The worst seasons came in 2004–2006, when the Royals lost at least 100 games each year and set the franchise's all-time record for losses (56–106 in 2005).
Picked by many to win their division in 2004 after faring well in the free agent market, the Royals got off to a disappointing start and by late June were back in a rebuilding mode, releasing veteran reliever Curtis Leskanic and trading veteran reliever Jason Grimsley and superstar center fielder Carlos Beltrán for prospects, all within a week of each other.
The team subsequently fell apart completely, losing 104 games and breaking the franchise record set just two years earlier. The Royals did, however, see promising seasons from two rookies, center fielder David DeJesus and starting pitcher Zack Greinke. The team continued a youth movement in 2005, but finished with a 56–106 record (.346), a full 43 games out of first place, marking the third time in four seasons that the team reestablished the mark for worst record in franchise history. The season also saw the Royals lose 19 games in a row, a franchise record. During the season manager Tony Peña quit and was replaced by interim manager Bob Schaefer until the Indians' bench coach Buddy Bell was chosen as the next manager. Looking for a quick turnaround, general manager Allard Baird signed several veteran players prior to the 2006 season, including Doug Mientkiewicz, Mark Grudzielanek, Joe Mays and Scott Elarton. Nevertheless, the Royals struggled through another 100-loss season in 2006, becoming just the eleventh team in major league history to lose 100 games in three straight seasons. During the season Baird was fired as GM and replaced by Dayton Moore.
Kansas City entered the 2007 season looking to rebound from four out of five seasons ending with at least 100 losses. The Royals outbid the Cubs and Blue Jays for free agent righty Gil Meche, signing him to a five-year, $55 million contract, the largest contract in Royals history. Reliever Octavio Dotel also inked a one-year, $5 million contract. The team also added several new prospects, including Alex Gordon and Billy Butler. Among Dayton Moore's first acts as General Manager was instating a new motto for the team: "True. Blue. Tradition." In June 2007, the Royals had their first winning month since July 2003 and followed it up with a winning July. The Royals finished the season 69–93, but 2007 marked the club's first season with fewer than 100 losses since 2003. Manager Buddy Bell resigned following the 2007 season.
The Royals hired Trey Hillman, formerly the manager of the Nippon Ham Fighters and a minor league manager with the New York Yankees, to be the 15th manager in franchise history. The 2008 season began with the release of fan-favorite Mike Sweeney and the trade of Ángel Berroa to the Dodgers. Through 13 games in 2008, the Royals were 8–5 and in first place in the AL Central, a vast improvement over their start from the previous season. However, by the All-Star break, the Royals were again in losing territory, with their record buoyed only by a 13–5 record in interleague play, the best in the American League. The team finished the season in fourth place in the division with a 75–87 record.
2009–2012: Kauffman Renovations and Further Rebuilding
Prior to the 2009 season, the Royals renovated Kauffman Stadium, and after the season began, the Royals ended April at the top of the AL Central, both of which raised excitement levels among fans. However, the team faded as the season progressed and finished the year with a final record of 65–97, in a tie for fourth place in the AL Central. The season was highlighted by starter Zack Greinke, who did not allow an earned run in the first 24 innings of the season, went on to finish the year with a Major League-leading 2.16 earned run average, and won the American League Cy Young Award. Greinke joined Bret Saberhagen (in 1985 and 1989) and David Cone (in 1994) as only the third player in Royals history to receive the award.
The Royals began the 2010 season with a rocky start, and after the team's record fell to 12–23, manager Trey Hillman was fired. Former Milwaukee Brewers skipper Ned Yost took over as the 16th manager in franchise history, At the end of the 2010 season, the Royals finished with a 67–95 record, in last place in the division for the sixth time in seven years. The Royals also set a dubious franchise record during the season, allowing 42 runs in a three-day span from July 25 to 27. The Royals began 2011 with a hot start, compiling 10–4 record after 14 games, but success faded as the season progressed. The Royals last had a .500 record at 22–22, and by the All-Star break, the Royals had a record of 37–54, the worst in the American League. Almost all of the Royals' bullpen was made up of 2011 minor league call ups, in addition to the infielders Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas, Johnny Giavotella, and catchers Salvador Pérez and Manny Piña. Hosmer won the AL Rookie of the Month award in July and September and finished the season with 19 home runs. Moustakas collected a fifteen-game hitting streak, which tied the longest such streak by a Royals rookie. The Royals finished the 2011 season with a 71–91 record, in fourth place in the AL Central. The 2012 team saw more of the same, as they improved by one game to 72–90, but finished one spot better in the division.
The 2012 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was hosted by the Royals at Kauffman Stadium on July 10, 2012 (in addition to the 2012 Home Run Derby, All-Star Futures Game and Taco Bell All-Star Legends and Celebrity Softball Game during the All-Star break), which the National League won 8–0. The 2012 season marked the third time the "Midsummer Classic" was held in Kansas City.
2013: Return to Respectability
On December 10, 2012, in an attempt to strengthen the pitching staff (which was among the worst in baseball in 2012), the Royals traded for Rays pitchers James Shields and Wade Davis, giving Tampa top prospects Wil Myers, Jake Odorizzi, Mike Montgomery, and Patrick Leonard in return. This trade helped catalyze a return to winning records.
For most of the 2013 season, the Royals hovered near .500. The team also did not commit an error in its first seven games (for innings) for the first time in team history. On September 22, the Royals won their 82nd game of the season to clinch the franchise's first winning season since 2003. The Royals finished the season 86–76 and in third place in the AL Central, securing the team's best winning percentage since 1994.
2014: Return to the World Series
The 2014 season was even more successful, featuring a return to the postseason for the first time in 29 years, and what would unfold as a historic playoff run from the Wild Card all the way to the 2014 World Series.
Anchored by the "HDH" trio of Kelvin Herrera, Wade Davis, and Greg Holland, the bullpen became one of the most dominant in MLB history.
Entering the 2014 season, the Royals had the longest playoff drought of any team in the four main American professional sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA). On July 21, 2014, the Royals had a losing record (48–50) and were eight games behind the Detroit Tigers in the AL Central standings. But spurred by a 22–5 record from July 22 to August 19 coinciding with a mediocre 12–15 stretch by the Tigers, the team surged into first place in the AL Central. The Royals reached the top of the division standings on August 11, after winning their eighth game in a row. This marked the latest date the Royals had led their division since August 29, 2003. The team retained its division lead for a month, before falling out of first-place permanently on September 12. They finished the 2014 regular season with a record 89–73, still the most wins for the Royals since 1989. Though the team finished one game behind Detroit in the AL Central, the Royals secured their first-ever wild card berth.
After qualifying for the postseason, the Royals embarked on a record-setting eight-game winning streak. They hosted the Oakland Athletics in the 2014 American League Wild Card Game and won 9–8 on a Salvador Pérez walk-off single in the 12th inning, having earlier rallied back from a 7–3 deficit in the eighth. The Royals then swept the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the 2014 American League Division Series. In Game 1 of the ALDS, the score was 2–2 going into the 11th inning, when Mike Moustakas hit a game-winning solo home run. The next day, Kansas City beat the Angels 4–1 in another extra-innings affair, in the process setting an MLB postseason record of three straight extra-inning wins. The Royals then completed the sweep at home, winning 8–3 in game three and advancing to the 2014 American League Championship Series against the Baltimore Orioles.
In the opening game of the ALCS on October 11, 2014, the Royals defeated the Orioles 8–6, with two home runs in the 10th inning. Thus, in eight extra innings over five postseason games in 2014, they succeeded in hitting four homers in extra innings, more than any team in the history of Major League Baseball. In the second ALCS game, the Royals again beat the Orioles 6–4, behind Lorenzo Cain's four hits, including an RBI single. After game three, the ALCS was delayed one day due to rainy weather, when the Royals hosted the Orioles at Kauffman Stadium on October 14, 2014. Pitcher Jeremy Guthrie allowed only one run as KC beat the Orioles 2–1, taking a 3–0 lead in the series. In game four, the Royals completed the sweep of the Orioles with another 2–1 win to advance to the World Series for the first time since 1985. The win marked the team's eighth consecutive postseason win in one year, breaking a major league record previously held by the Colorado Rockies in 2007 and Cincinnati Reds in 1976. It also marked the Royals' 11th win in a row overall in postseason play, dating back to the franchise's final three wins of the 1985 Series, the third-longest multi-year postseason streak in baseball history.
The Royals faced the San Francisco Giants in the 2014 World Series. They had home-field advantage, due to the American League's win in the 2014 All-Star Game.
After setting an AL record by winning eight straight games to reach the World Series, the Royals opened the series by losing 7–1 in the first game against starter Madison Bumgarner. The Royals bounced back with a 7–2 win in game two to tie the series at 1–1. The Royals won game three in San Francisco 3–2 to take the series lead for the first time. In game four, the Royals lost 11–4, which tied the series with the Giants. In game five, they lost 5–0 to the Giants against starter Madison Bumgarner. In game six, the Royals beat the Giants 10–0. In game seven, the Royals started Jeremy Guthrie against Giants pitcher Tim Hudson. Guthrie lasted innings before he was replaced by Kelvin Herrera, who himself lasted innings. He was then replaced by Wade Davis, who pitched in two innings. Closer Greg Holland ended the game. On the Giants side, Hudson lasted only innings before he was replaced by Jeremy Affeldt, who was later replaced by Madison Bumgarner. The Royals lost game seven, 3–2, with the tying run (Alex Gordon) on third base in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, when Salvador Pérez fouled out to Pablo Sandoval to end the game and the series.
2015: World Series Champions
After earning a wild card entry to the playoffs in 2014, in 2015, the Royals won the franchise's first division title since 1985 and first Central division title ever. The Royals went on to win the 2015 World Series – the first championship for the Royals since 1985 – beating the New York Mets four games to one.
The Royals entered the 2015 All-Star break with the best record in the American League at 52–34. The team continued its momentum into the second half of the season, and on July 26, Royals management traded three prospects Brandon Finnegan, John Lamb, and Cody Reed for 2014 All-Star pitcher Johnny Cueto to help bolster its starting pitching rotation, as well as trading two pitchers to the Oakland Athletics for super-utility player Ben Zobrist. The team ended the regular season with a record of 95–67, the best in the entire American League, and the organization's best record since 1980.
The Royals faced the Houston Astros in the ALDS. Down 2–1 in the series and trailing 6–2 in the 8th inning of Game 4, the Royals rallied for 5 runs en route to a 9–6 win before Cueto's gem in Game 5 powered the Royals to a second consecutive ALCS. The Royals defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 6, to win the 2015 ALCS and earn a trip to face the New York Mets in the 2015 World Series.
The Royals beat the New York Mets 4 games to 1 to become the 2015 World Series champions. It was the Royals' first World Series title since 1985. The series win was sealed after the Royals beat the Mets 7–2 in the 12th inning of Game 5. The Royals rallied in the 9th inning down 2–0 to tie the score 2–2, forcing the game into extra innings. The five-run 12th inning was initiated by a Salvador Pérez single, with Jarrod Dyson pinch-running for him. This was followed by a single from Christian Colon and doubles from both Alcides Escobar and Lorenzo Cain, scoring runs from Jarrod Dyson, Colon, Paulo Orlando (who reached base on an error by Daniel Murphy), Escobar and Ben Zobrist (who was intentionally walked). Wade Davis, who hadn't allowed a run yet that postseason, closed out the game with a flawless 12th, allowing one hit and striking out Wilmer Flores to end the game and win the World Series for the Royals. Upon conclusion of the final game, catcher Salvador Perez was named World Series MVP.
2016–2017: End of an Era
The Royals followed up their World Series victory with an underachieving, injury-riddled campaign in 2016. The Royals had an inconsistent season in which they ultimately finished 81–81, third place in the division and out of playoff contention. This season is notable for the debut of future star Whit Merrifield. The 2017 season marked the end of the World Series core: pitcher Yordano Ventura was killed in a car accident on January 22, and the Royals wore patches that said 'ACE 30' on their jerseys for the 2017 season to honor him; Wade Davis was traded in the offseason. In 2017, the Royals finished similarly to 2016 at 80–82, third place in the division, and missed the playoffs for a second consecutive year. Stars Lorenzo Cain and Eric Hosmer became free agents after the season and signed contracts with the Milwaukee Brewers and San Diego Padres, respectively.
2018–present: Another Rebuild and Selling of the Team
Although Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain left in free agency, the Royals were able to re-sign Mike Moustakas and Alcides Escobar. In 2018, the team started a new rebuild, trading Moustakas mid-season for prospects, and giving playing time to young players like Adalberto Mondesi, Ryan O'Hearn, and Brad Keller. Despite this, the team finished with only 58 wins, the team's lowest win total since 2005. The 2018 season also marked the emergence of Whit Merrifield as a star, as he led the MLB in hits (192) and stolen bases (45).
On June 3, 2019, the Royals selected Bobby Witt Jr. with the second pick in the MLB draft. Widely considered one of the top prospects in baseball, Witt is regarded as one of the biggest prospects to be drafted by Kansas City since Eric Hosmer and Mike Moustakas.
The Royals announced on July 28, 2020, that Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback and the son of former Major League player Pat Mahomes, had bought a minority interest in the team.
On August 30, 2019, it was announced that John Sherman, a minority owner of the Cleveland Indians, had agreed to purchase the team from David Glass for a reported amount of $1 billion. In September, manager Ned Yost announced that he would retire at the end of the season after ten seasons and a franchise-record 746 wins. The Royals finished the 2019 season one game better than 2018, at 59–103. Whit Merrifield once again led the league in hits, while Jorge Soler led the American League with 48 home runs and three Royals players paced the league in triples (Mondesi, Merrifield and Hunter Dozier, with 10 apiece). On October 31, 2019, the Royals announced the hiring of former St. Louis Cardinals manager Mike Matheny to replace Ned Yost. In 2020, the season was shortened to 60 games because of the COVID-19 pandemic; the Royals finished with a 26–34 record (an 0.433 winning percentage), good for fourth place in the AL Central. Overall in 2021, the Royals finished with a 74–88 record (an 0.457 winning percentage), landing in fourth place in the AL Central but seeing improvement over both 2019 and 2020, as catcher Salvador Pérez led MLB in both home runs and runs batted in and Bobby Witt Jr. continued to emerge as one of the top prospects in Minor League Baseball.
Beginning with the 2022 season, Dayton Moore will be promoted to the team's President of Baseball Operations and J. J. Picollo will begin his tenure as general manager.
Uniform history
1969–72: Original look
The Royals' home uniform remained almost unchanged from its first season. The original design featured blue arm and neck piping, along with "Royals" in blue and in script lettering. The road uniform mirrored that of the home uniform, with "Kansas City" written in blue, in script lettering and in an arch arrangement. For the 1971 season the "Kansas City" on the road uniforms were changed to block lettering, while both uniforms added a roundel containing the team logo on the left sleeve. The blue cap with "KC" stitched in front was also introduced and remained in use today.
1973–82: Pullover and powder blue uniforms
The Royals switched to pullover uniforms for the 1973 season. While the home uniform did not deviate much from its original design, the road uniform changed to a powder blue base and white letters. Names were added in the 1978 season.
1983–91: Return to button-down style
The Royals returned to wearing buttoned uniforms for the 1983 season. The most notable change came on the powder blue uniform, where "Royals" in script replaced "Kansas City". Both uniforms added numbers on the left chest.
1992–2001: Return to grey uniforms and alternate blue uniforms
For the 1992 season, the Royals resumed wearing grey uniforms on the road, but the uniforms retained the "Royals" script and letters in blue with white trim. In 1994 a blue alternate uniform was introduced, with "Royals" script and letters in white. The following season, the road uniforms were tweaked to feature "Kansas City" in block letters, while neck piping was removed. A grey cap with blue brim and "KC" in blue was also used for a few games.
2002–2005: Addition of black
Before the 2002 season, the Royals added black to the color scheme, and this was also reflected on the team's uniforms. Initially, the home uniforms were only updated to remove blue piping and include black drop shadows, but in 2003, the Royals went with sleeveless uniforms with blue undershirts. The grey uniforms also removed the sleeves and piping, and were paired with black undershirts and a black cap with blue brim. Letters were also given black drop shadows. The Royals also went with a black alternate uniform, featuring blue piping and "Royals" written in blue with white trim. The sleeve patch was updated without the roundel on the home and blue alternate uniforms, while a new "Royals" roundel logo was placed on the grey undershirt and black alternates.
2006–2021: New alternates and return to powder blue
In 2006, black was eliminated from the uniforms, and the Royals returned to wearing sleeved uniforms with arm piping. The road uniforms brought back the "Kansas City" script, albeit written diagonally, with a slight adjustment in size prior to the 2012 season. For a few games in 2006, the black uniforms were used, albeit with the "Kansas City" script, before it was retired. In 2008, the Royals introduced a new powder blue alternate with "Royals" in blue with white trim, and letters in white with blue trim; the color lettering scheme in front was reversed starting in 2012. The uniforms were briefly paired with a powder blue cap with blue brim in 2010. Unlike the previous powder blue uniform, this set is paired with the home white pants.
Powder blue was added as a trim color when the Royals issued a new blue alternate in 2014. The "KC" insignia replaced "Royals" and the number in front, while piping was added. After winning the 2015 World Series, the Royals began wearing an alternate white uniform, featuring "Royals" in metallic gold with blue trim. In 2017, the uniform was updated with the team name in blue with gold trim, and numbers in gold and blue trim. A new blue cap with "KC" in gold was paired with this uniform.
2022–present: Block road letters return
The Royals unveiled a fresh uniform set for the 2022 season. The primary home uniform remained the same save for the thicker sleeve stripes. The road primary and blue road alternate returned to the block "Kansas City" wordmark the team used from 1971–1982, adding chest numbers on both uniforms. The alternate home powder blue uniform removed the royal blue elements, with the numbers taking the same color as the "Royals" script.
Rivalries
St. Louis Cardinals
The Royals' most prominent rivalry is with the intrastate St. Louis Cardinals. For geographic reasons, the teams long played exhibition games, but a true rivalry began with the Royals' victory over the Cardinals in the 1985 World Series, known as the "I-70 Series." Notably, the manager for the Cardinals in the series was Whitey Herzog, who had been the Royals' manager from 1975 to 1979, and led Kansas City to the franchise's first three playoff appearances – in 1976, 1977, and 1978 – before getting fired just shortly after the Royals were eliminated from the playoffs in 1979. Interleague play in 1997 allowed the I-70 Series to be revived in non-exhibition games. The first few seasons of the series were rather even, with the Cardinals holding a slight advantage with a 14–13 record through the 2003 season. Through the 2019 season, the Cardinals hold the series advantage 62–42.
Historic rivalry
From 1976 to 1980, the Royals faced the New York Yankees four times in five years in the American League Championship Series. The Yankees won in 1976, 1977 and 1978, while the Royals won in 1980. In a 2013 article about the 1983 Pine Tar Incident involving the two teams, Lou Pinella said: "As a team, we didn't really like Kansas City. We had played them in the '76, '77 and '78 postseason and beaten them every time. There was no love lost between the teams. We didn't like each other. They were our big rivals..." George Brett agreed: "I hated everyone on the Yankees, I really did. I hated 'em all, back in that era."
Baseball Hall of Famers
Ford C. Frick Award recipients
Other players of note
Team captains
5 George Brett 1989–1993
20 Frank White 1989–1990
29 Mike Sweeney 2003–2007
Missouri Sports Hall of Fame
Retired numbers
The Royals have retired the numbers of former players George Brett (No. 5) and Frank White (No. 20). Former manager Dick Howser's No. 10 was retired following his death in 1987. Former Brooklyn Dodgers player Jackie Robinson's No. 42 is retired throughout Major League Baseball.
Out of circulation, but not retired
No. 29, worn by Royals greats Dan Quisenberry (238 saves, 2.55 ERA) and Mike Sweeney (.299 batting average, 197 home runs, 837 RBI), has not been assigned since Sweeney's departure in 2007.
Hall of Fame
Roster
Managers
Statistics current through December 1, 2018
Minor league affiliations
The Kansas City Royals farm system consists of seven minor league affiliates.
Season records
Highest batting average: .390, George Brett (1980)
Most games: 162, Al Cowens (1977), Hal McRae (1977), Carlos Beltrán (2002), Billy Butler (2013), Alcides Escobar (2014, 2016), Whit Merrifield (2019), Jorge Soler (2019)
Most runs: 136, Johnny Damon (2000)
Most hits: 230, Willie Wilson (1980)
Highest slugging %: .664, George Brett (1980)
Most doubles: 54, Hal McRae (1977)
Most triples: 21, Willie Wilson (1985)
Most home runs: 48, Jorge Soler (2019)
Most grand slams: 3, Danny Tartabull (1988)
Most RBIs: 144, Mike Sweeney (2000)
Most stolen bases: 83, Willie Wilson (1979)
Most wins: 23, Bret Saberhagen (1989)
Lowest ERA: 2.08, Roger Nelson (1972)
Strikeouts: 244, Dennis Leonard (1977)
Most strikeouts, single game: 16, Danny Duffy (2016)
Most strikeouts, Reliever: 109, Wade Davis (2014)
Complete games: 21, Dennis Leonard (1977)
Shutouts: 6, Roger Nelson (1972)
Saves: 47, Greg Holland (2013)
All-time records
Highest batting average: .306, Jose Offerman
Most games: 2,707, George Brett
Most runs: 1,583, George Brett
Most hits: 3,154, George Brett
Highest Slugging %: .518, Danny Tartabull
Most doubles: 665, George Brett
Most triples: 137, George Brett
Most home runs: 317, George Brett
Most RBIs: 1,596, George Brett
Most stolen bases: 612, Willie Wilson
Most wins: 166, Paul Splittorff
Lowest ERA: 2.55, Dan Quisenberry
Strikeouts: 1,458, Kevin Appier
Complete games: 103, Dennis Leonard
Shutouts: 23, Dennis Leonard
Saves: 304, Jeff Montgomery
Radio and television
, the Royals affiliate radio station is KCSP 610AM, the station having entered into a new four-year deal starting from the 2015 season. The radio announcers are Denny Matthews and Ryan Lefebvre, with Steve Stewart and Steve Physioc.
Televised games are aired on Bally Sports Kansas City, a branch of Bally Sports Midwest. For the 2012 season, Ryan Lefebvre will be joined by Jeff Montgomery for about 20 games while the rest of the broadcasts will be covered by former Angels announcer duo of Rex Hudler and Steve Physioc. During the 2016 season, the Royals averaged an 11.7 rating and 105,000 viewers on primetime TV broadcasts. Selected Royals games previously aired in the 2000s on the Royals Network, and its former flagship was KMCI-TV.
On February 22, 2007, Matthews was selected as the 2007 recipient of the Ford C. Frick Award, presented annually for major contributions to baseball broadcasting.
Mascot
Sluggerrr is the mascot of the Royals. Sluggerrr is a lion, and made his first appearance on April 5, 1996.
On game day, Sluggerrr can be found giving aggressive encouragement to players and fans, pitching in the "Little K", and firing hot dogs from an air cannon into the stands between innings.
See also
Kansas City Royals Baseball Academy
References
External links
Around the Horn in KC – Official MLBlog of the Kansas City Royals front office
CBS SportsLine.com
Sports E-Cyclopedia
& 2015
Cactus League
1969 establishments in Missouri
Major League Baseball teams
Baseball teams established in 1969
Sports teams in Kansas City, Missouri | [
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16887 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosher%20%28disambiguation%29 | Kosher (disambiguation) | Kosher is food that may be consumed according to the Kashrut, or Jewish dietary laws.
Kosher may also refer to:
Kosher (band), an American punk rock band formed in 1995 in Warrensburg, Missouri
Kosher Gym, a fitness club on Coney Island Avenue in the Midwood section of Flatbush, Brooklyn
See also
Absolutely Kosher Records, a California-based record label
Chametz, the dietary laws of Passover
Kosher dill, a style of pickled cucumber
Kosher foods
Kosher locust, an insect considered kosher under Jewish dietary laws
Kosher restaurant, a restaurant or similar establishment specializing in kosher foods
Kosher salt, a form of coarse salt used for kashering
Kosher style, food made with a kosher appearance but without any claim to be kosher
Kosher tax, an urban legend and antisemitic conspiracy theory
Kosher wine
Koshur
Alternative Kosher, in Israel, obtaining a non-Chief Rabbinate Kosher certificate | [
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16890 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon%20language | Klingon language | The Klingon language (, : , ) is the constructed language spoken by a fictional alien race, the Klingons, in the Star Trek universe.
Described in the 1985 book The Klingon Dictionary by Marc Okrand and deliberately designed to sound "alien", it has a number of typologically uncommon features. The language's basic sound, along with a few words, was first devised by actor James Doohan ("Scotty") and producer Jon Povill for Star Trek: The Motion Picture. That film marked the first time the language had been heard on screen. In all previous appearances, Klingons spoke in English, even to each other. Klingon was subsequently developed by Okrand into a full-fledged language.
Klingon is sometimes referred to as Klingonese (most notably in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles", where it was actually pronounced by a Klingon character as "Klingonee" ), but among the Klingon-speaking community, this is often understood to refer to another Klingon language called Klingonaase that was introduced in John M. Ford's 1984 Star Trek novel The Final Reflection, and appears in other Star Trek novels by Ford.
The play A Klingon Christmas Carol is the first production that is primarily in Klingon (only the narrator speaks English). The opera is entirely in Klingon.
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Because its vocabulary is heavily centered on Star Trek-Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, it can sometimes be cumbersome for everyday use.
History
The language is first mentioned in the original Star Trek series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" (1967), but is not heard until Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). According to the actor who spoke the lines, Mark Lenard, James Doohan recorded the lines he had written on a tape, and Lenard transcribed the recorded lines in a way he found useful in learning them.
For Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), director Leonard Nimoy and writer-producer Harve Bennett wanted the Klingons to speak a structured language instead of random gibberish, and so commissioned a full language, based on the phrases Doohan had originated, from Marc Okrand, who had earlier constructed four lines of Vulcan dialogue for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
Okrand enlarged the lexicon and developed a grammar based on Doohan's original dozen words. The language appeared intermittently in later films featuring the original cast; for example, in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), where translation difficulties served as a plot device.
Two "non-canon" dialects of Klingon are hinted at in the novelization of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, as Saavik speaks in Klingon to the only Klingon officer aboard Cpt. Kruge's starship after his death, as the survivors of the Enterprise's self-destruction transport up from the crumbling Genesis Planet to the Klingon ship. The surviving officer, Maltz, states that he speaks the Rumaiy dialect, while Saavik is speaking to him in the Kumburan dialect of Klingon, per Maltz's spoken reply to her.
With the advent of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)—in which one of the main characters, Worf, was a Klingon—and successors, the language and various cultural aspects for the fictional species were expanded. In the episode "A Matter of Honor", several members of a Klingon ship's crew speak a language that is not translated for the benefit of the viewer (even Commander Riker, enjoying the benefits of a universal translator, is unable to understand) until one Klingon orders the others to "speak their [i.e., human] language".
A small number of non-Klingon characters were later depicted in Star Trek as having learned to speak Klingon, notably Jean-Luc Picard and Dax.
Language
Hobbyists around the world have studied the Klingon language. At least nine Klingon translations of works of world literature have been published, among which are: (the Epic of Gilgamesh), (Hamlet), (Much Ado About Nothing), (Tao Te Ching), (the Art of War), (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner), (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), (the Little Prince), and (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland). The Shakespearean choices were inspired by a remark from High Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, who said, "You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon." In the bonus material on the DVD, screenwriter Nicholas Meyer and actor William Shatner both explain that this was an allusion to the German myth that Shakespeare was in fact German.
The Klingon Language Institute exists to promote the language.
CBS Television Studios owns the copyright on the official dictionary and other canonical descriptions of the language. While constructed languages ("conlangs") are viewed as creations with copyright protection, natural languages are not protected, excluding dictionaries and other works created with them. Mizuki Miyashita and Laura Moll note, "Copyrights on dictionaries are unusual because the entries in the dictionary are not copyrightable as the words themselves are facts, and facts can not be copyrighted. However, the formatting, example sentences, and instructions for dictionary use are created by the author, so they are copyrightable."
Okrand had studied some Native American and Southeast Asian languages, and phonological and grammatical features of these languages "worked their way into Klingon, but for the most part, not by design." Okrand himself has stated that a design principle of the Klingon language was dissimilarity to existing natural languages in general, and English in particular. He therefore avoided patterns that are typologically common and deliberately chose features that occur relatively infrequently in human languages. This includes above all the highly asymmetric consonant inventory and the basic word order.
Speakers
A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Arika Okrent guessed in her 2009 book In the Land of Invented Languages that there might be 20–30 fluent speakers. Since that time, with the appearance of Duolingo's Klingon course and the increasing popularity of video chat platforms such as Zoom and Discord, the number of conversationally fluent speakers has definitely increased; in 2021, there are perhaps 50-60. Its vocabulary, heavily centered on Star Trek–Klingon concepts such as spacecraft or warfare, can sometimes make it cumbersome for everyday use. For instance, while words for transporter ionizer unit () or bridge (of a ship) () have been known since close to the language's inception, the word for bridge in the sense of a crossing over water () was unknown until August 2012. Nonetheless, mundane conversations are possible among skilled speakers.
One Klingon speaker, d'Armond Speers, raised his son Alec to speak Klingon as a first language, whilst the boy's mother communicated with him in English. Alec rarely responded to his father in Klingon, although when he did, his pronunciation was "excellent". After Alec's fifth birthday, Speers reported that his son eventually stopped responding to him when spoken to in Klingon as he clearly did not enjoy it, so Speers switched to English.
In 2007, a report surfaced that Multnomah County, Oregon, was hiring Klingon translators for its mental health program in case patients came into a psychiatric hospital speaking nothing but Klingon. Most circulations of the report seemingly implied that this was a problem that health officials faced before; however, the original report indicated that this was just a precaution for a hypothetical and that said translator would only be paid on an as needed basis. After the report was misinterpreted, the County issued another release noting that releasing the original report was a "mistake".
In May 2009, Simon & Schuster, in collaboration with Ultralingua Inc., a developer of electronic dictionary applications, announced the release of a suite of electronic Klingon language software for most computer platforms including a dictionary, a phrasebook, and an audio learning tool.
In September 2011, Eurotalk released the "Learn Klingon" course in its Talk Now! series. The language is displayed in both Latin and pIqaD fonts, making this the first language course written in pIqaD and approved by CBS and Marc Okrand. It was translated by Jonathan Brown and Okrand and uses the TrueType font.
In August 2016, a company in the United Kingdom, Bidvine, began offering Klingon lessons as one of their services.
In March 2018, the popular language learning site Duolingo opened a beta course in Klingon. After it proved its effectiveness, the company offered to promote it from beta status, but due to ongoing software issues regarding Klingon's unexpected use of upper- and lower-case letters and the apostrophe as a consonant instead of punctuation, the course developers chose not to accept the offer until the problems were addressed.
There are Klingon language meetings and linguists or students are interested in researching this topic, even writing essays about the language or its users.
Klingon speakers are also referred to in non-Star Trek TV series, including Frasier, The Big Bang Theory, and Lucifer, and heavily feature in the My Big Fat Geek Wedding episode of The Simpsons.
Other media
In 2010, a Chicago Theatre company presented a version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol in Klingon language and a Klingon setting. On September 25, 2010, the Washington Shakespeare Company (now known as WSC Avant Bard) performed selections from Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing in the Klingon language in Arlington, Virginia. The performance was proposed by Okrand in his capacity as chairman of the group's board. This performance was reprised on February 27, 2011 featuring Stephen Fry as the Klingon Osric and was filmed by the BBC as part of a 5-part documentary on language entitled Fry's Planet Word.
Google Search and Minecraft each have a Klingon language setting.
The 2003–2010 version of the puzzle globe logo of Wikipedia, representing its multilingualism, contained a Klingon character. When updated in 2010, the Klingon character was removed from the logo, and substituted with one from the Ge'ez script. A Klingon language Wikipedia was started in June 2004 at tlh.wikipedia.org. It was permanently locked in August 2005 and moved to Wikia. The Klingon Wiktionary was closed in 2008.
The file management software XYplorer has been translated into Klingon by its developer.
Microsoft's Bing Translator attempts to translate Klingon from and to other languages. It can do a good job with individual words, and with phrases included in its training corpus, but it is not well tuned for Klingon's system of prefixes and suffixes. For example, "You must study it" is rendered instead as "They Must Study."
In July 2015, when Conservative Welsh Assembly Member Darren Millar formally asked the Welsh Economy Minister Edwina Hart about the Welsh Government's policy funding research into sightings of UFOs at Cardiff Airport, a press officer in the Minister's office issued a written reply in Klingon: , which was translated as: "The minister will reply in due course. However this is a non-devolved matter."
With the digital only release of Star Trek: Discovery in 2017, streaming service Netflix announced it would provide Klingon subtitles for the entire first season, translated by Klingon language expert Lieven L. Litaer. They can be enabled like any other language provided by the streaming service, and are shown as the phonetic pronunciation rather than Klingon script.
In 2017, a version of “The Gummy Bear Song” was uploaded to YouTube, fully translated to the Klingon language. Its title, “ngalbogh mIl'oD jIH,” translates to English as “I am a sabre bear that is chewy.” The version was released to iTunes in 2018.
In 2020 the German artist Hans Solo (Äi-Tiem) released an EP NuqneH, whose 5 tracks are completely rapped in Klingon language.
Language learning sources
Duolingo features a course for Klingon, which was released on March 15, 2018 and is now in beta testing.
The Klingon Language Institute provides a Learn Klingon Online series of lessons to its members. The first few lessons are free to sample.
Canon
An important concept to spoken and written Klingon is canonicity. Only words and grammatical forms introduced by Marc Okrand are considered canonical Klingon by the KLI and most Klingonists. However, as the growing number of speakers employ different strategies to express themselves, it is often unclear as to what level of neologism is permissible. New vocabulary has been collected in a list maintained by the KLI until 2005 and has since then been followed up by Klingon expert Lieven Litaer.
Internal history
Within the fictional universe of Star Trek, Klingon is derived from the original language spoken by the messianic figure Kahless the Unforgettable, who united the Klingon home-world of under one empire more than 1500 years ago. Many dialects exist, but the standardized dialect of prestige is almost invariably that of the sitting emperor.
Sources
The Klingon Language Institute regards the following works as canon Klingon; they serve as sources of Klingon vocabulary and grammar for all other works.
Books
The Klingon Dictionary (TKD)
The Klingon Way (TKW)
Klingon for the Galactic Traveler (KGT)
Sarek, a novel which includes some Klingon words
Federation Travel Guide, a pamphlet from Pocket Books
: The Klingon Epic (), ed. Floris Schönfeld et al., trans. Marc Okrand. Includes the first full edition of the and fragments.
Audio tapes
Conversational Klingon (CK)
Power Klingon (PK)
Electronic resources
The Klingon Language Suite, language-learning tools from Ultralingua with Simon & Schuster
Star Trek: Klingon, a CD-ROM game (KCD, also STK). The CD-ROM includes a Klingon learning module with speech recognition to train the player in Klingon pronunciation; this module was developed by Dragon Systems, Inc. (which is credited on the box and in the CD-ROM) in collaboration with Marc Okrand.
Talk Now! Learn Klingon a beginners' language course for Klingon by Eurotalk and translated by Jonathan Brown (also known as ) and Marc Okrand. (2011)
Other sources
certain articles in (the journal of the KLI) (HQ)
certain Skybox Trading Cards (SKY)
a Star Trek Bird of Prey poster (BoP)
on-line and in-person text/speech by Marc Okrand (mostly newsgroup postings)
The letters in parentheses following each item (if any) indicate the acronym of each source - used when quoting canon.
Phonology
Klingon has been developed with a phonology that, while based on human natural languages, is intended to sound alien to human ears. When initially developed, Paramount Pictures (owners of the Star Trek franchise) wanted the Klingon language to be guttural and harsh and Okrand wanted it to be unusual, so he selected sounds that combined in ways not generally found in other languages. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number of retroflex and uvular consonants in the language's inventory. Klingon has twenty-one consonants and five vowels. Klingon is normally written in a variant of the Latin alphabet. The orthography of this transliteration is case-sensitive, that is, upper and lower case letters are not interchangeable (uppercase letters mostly represent sounds different from those expected by English speakers), although with the exception of Q/q there are no minimal pairs between case. In other words, while is incorrect Klingon, it cannot be misread as anything but an erroneous form of (which means language); on the other hand, and are two different words, the first meaning be popular and the second meaning accompany. In the discussion below, standard Klingon orthography appears in , and the phonemic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet is written between /slashes/.
Consonants
The inventory of consonants in Klingon is spread over a number of places of articulation. In spite of this, the inventory has many gaps: Klingon has no velar plosives, and only one sibilant fricative. Deliberately, this arrangement is very different from that of most human languages. The combination of an aspirated voiceless alveolar plosive and a voiced retroflex plosive is particularly unusual.
There are a few dialectal pronunciation differences (it is not known if the aforementioned non-canon Kumburan or Rumaiy dialects of hinted at in the novelization of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock might differ):
In the Krotmag dialect and are realized as nasal stops and
In the Tak'ev dialect and are pre-nasalized oral stops and
In the Morskan dialect:
is a central affricate
is realized as glottal syllable-initially and deleted syllable-finally
is realized as a velar fricative
Vowels
In contrast to its consonants, Klingon's inventory of vowels is simple, and similar to those of many human languages, such as Spanish or Japanese. There are five vowels spaced more or less evenly around the vowel space, with two back rounded vowels, one back unrounded vowel, and two front or near-front unrounded vowels. The vowel inventory is asymmetrical in that the back rounded vowels are tense and the front vowels are lax.
The two front vowels, and , represent sounds that are found in English, but are more open and lax than a typical English speaker might assume when reading Klingon text written in the Latin alphabet, thus causing the consonants of a word to be more prominent. This enhances the sense that Klingon is a clipped and harsh-sounding language.
Vowels
open back unrounded vowel (in English spa)
open-mid front unrounded vowel (in English bed)
near-close near-front unrounded vowel (in English bit)
close-mid back rounded vowel (in French eau and English snow)
close back rounded vowel (in Spanish tu and English you)
Diphthongs can be analyzed phonetically as the combination of the five vowels plus one of the two semivowels and (represented by and , respectively). Thus, the combinations , , , , , , and are possible. There are no words in the Klingon language that contain * or *.
Syllable structure
Klingon follows a strict syllable structure. A syllable must start with a consonant (including the glottal stop) followed by one vowel. In prefixes and rare other syllables, this is enough. More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantal codas: /- - -/. Thus, "record", "poison" and "targ" (a type of animal) are all legal syllable forms, but * and * are not. Despite this, one suffix takes the shape vowel+consonant: the endearment suffix .
Stress
In verbs, the stressed syllable is usually the verbal stem itself, as opposed to a prefix or any suffixes, except when a suffix ending with is separated from the verb by at least one other suffix, in which case the suffix ending in is also stressed. In addition, stress may shift to a suffix that is meant to be emphasized.
In nouns, the final syllable of the stem (the noun itself, excluding any affixes) is stressed. If any syllables ending in are present, the stress shifts to those syllables.
The stress in other words seems to be variable, but this is not a serious issue because most of these words are only one syllable in length. There are some words which should fall under the rules above, but do not, although using the standard rules would still be acceptable.
Grammar
Klingon is an agglutinative language, using mainly affixes in order to alter the function or meaning of words. Some nouns have inherently plural forms, such as "plate" (vs. "plates"), but most nouns require a suffix to express plurality explicitly. Depending on the type of noun (body part, being capable of using language, or neither) the suffix changes. For beings capable of using language, the suffix is , as in , meaning "Klingons," or , meaning "enemies". For body parts, the plural suffix is , as in , "eyes". For items that are neither body parts nor capable of speech, the suffix is , such as in ("stars"), or ("targs") for a Klingon animal somewhat resembling a boar. (However, a plural suffix is never obligatory. To say "The stars are beautiful", and are equally grammatical, although the second can also mean "The star is beautiful".)
The words and , which on their own mean "man" and "woman" respectively, can be used in compound words to refer to the referent's sex. For example, from ("child") this process derives ("son") and ("daughter").
Klingon nouns take suffixes to indicate grammatical number. There are three noun classes, two levels of deixis, and a possession and syntactic function. In all, twenty-nine noun suffixes from five classes may be employed: "for my beloved true friends". A word may carry no more than one suffix from each class, and the classes have a specific order of appearance.
Verbs in Klingon take a prefix indicating the number and person of the subject and object, whereas suffixes are taken from nine ordered classes and a special suffix class called rovers. Each of the four known rovers has a unique rule controlling its position among the suffixes in the verb. Verbs are marked for aspect, certainty, predisposition and volition, dynamic, causative, mood, negation, and honorific. The Klingon verb has two moods: indicative and imperative.
The most common word order in Klingon is object–verb–subject, and, in most cases, the word order is the exact reverse of English for an equivalent sentence:
(Hyphens are used in the above only to illustrate the use of affixes. Hyphens are not used in Klingon.)
An important aspect of Klingon grammar is its "ungrammaticality". As with for example Japanese, shortening of communicative statements is common, and is called "Clipped Klingon" ( or, more simply, ) and Ritualized Speech. Clipped Klingon is especially useful in situations where speed is a decisive factor. Grammar is abbreviated, and sentence parts deemed to be superfluous are dropped. Intentional ungrammaticality is widespread, and it takes many forms. It is exemplified by the practice of , which Marc Okrand translates as "to misfollow the rules" or "to follow the rules wrongly".
Writing systems
When written in the Latin alphabet, Klingon is unusual in being case-sensitive, with some letters written in capitals and others in lowercase. In one contrast, and , there is an actual case-sensitive pair representing two different consonants. Capitals are generally reserved for uvular or retroflex consonants pronounced further back in the mouth or throat than is normal for the corresponding English sounds, as with , , and . However, , pronounced like the in German "ach" or Scottish "loch", is further forward in the throat than English /h/. One phoneme, the vowel , is written capital to look more like the IPA symbol for the sound /ɪ/, and can pose problems when writing Klingon in sans-serif fonts such as Arial, as it looks almost the same as the consonant .
This has led some Klingon enthusiasts to write it lowercase like the other vowels ("i") to prevent confusion, but this use is non-canonical. Instead, a serif font that clearly distinguishes "" and "", such as Courier or Courier New, has traditionally been employed for writing Klingon in the Latin alphabet. In any case, it can be disambiguated through context, as never occurs next to another vowel, while always does. The apostrophe, denoting the glottal stop, is considered a letter, not a punctuation mark, as with a Hawaiian 'okina.
Klingon is often written in (in-universe, "transliterated to") the Latin alphabet as used above, but on the television series, the Klingons use their own alien writing system. In The Klingon Dictionary, this alphabet is named as , but no information is given about it. When Klingon symbols are used in Star Trek productions, they are merely decorative graphic elements, designed to emulate real writing and create an appropriate atmosphere. Enthusiasts have settled on the name for this writing system.
The Astra Image Corporation designed the symbols currently used to "write" Klingon for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, although these symbols are often incorrectly attributed to Michael Okuda. They based the letters on the Klingon battlecruiser hull markings (three letters) first created by Matt Jefferies and on Tibetan writing because the script has sharp letter forms—used as a testament to the Klingons' love for knives and blades.
For April Fools' Day in 2013, Nokia and typography company Dalton Maag claimed to have used "communication devices to far-flung star systems" to assist them in localizing the Nokia Pure font to the Klingon writing system. Though the explanation was of course humorous in nature, as part of the practical joke a series of real fonts based upon the most commonly used character mapping were in fact developed, and have been made available for free download.
Vocabulary
A design principle of the Klingon language is the great degree of lexical-cultural correlation in the vocabulary. For example, there are several words meaning "to fight" or "to clash against", each having a different degree of intensity. There is an abundance of words relating to warfare and weaponry and also a great variety of curses (cursing is considered a fine art in Klingon culture). This helps lend a particular character to the language.
There are many in-jokes built into the language. For example, the word for "pair" is , a reference to the original "Siamese twins" Chang and Eng Bunker; a is a mid-size stringed instrument, comparable to a guitar (i.e. Les Paul); a "chronometer" is (pronounced similar to "clock"); the word for "torture" is ; "hangover" is , and the word for "fish" is .
Sources for the vocabulary include English (albeit heavily disguised), and also Yiddish: for "buttocks" (from תּחת tuches spelled backwards), and for "ache, pain, sore" (cf. oy vey).
Many English words do not have direct translations into Klingon. To express "hello", the nearest equivalent is , meaning "What do you want?", with "goodbye" translated as , "Success!".
Example sentences
Do you speak Klingon?
I don't understand.
I can't eat that thing.
You are wrong.
Revenge is a dish best served cold. (lit: When cold revenge is served, the dish is always very good)
Today is a good day to die.
See also
Klingon culture
Klingon grammar
Stovokor, a death metal band whose lyrics are written in Klingon
, the first Klingon opera
Klingon Christmas Carol, a staged adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol in Klingon
Notes
References
References
Bernard Comrie, 1995, "The Paleo-Klingon numeral system". HolQeD 4.4: 6–10.
Klingon ConScript Unicode Registry (CSUR)
pIqaD Support
Klingon (pIqaD) Unicode font (–)
Klingon text converter (transliteration)
External links
Klingon Language Institute
Klingonska Akademien
qepHom Saarbrücken The largest annual Klingon language meeting in Europe
Klingon Language Wiki Open encyclopedia about the Klingon language
Klingon and its User: A Sociolinguistic Profile, a sociolinguistics MA thesis
Is Klingon an Ohlonean language? A comparison of Mutsun and Klingon
Omniglot: Klingon Alphabet
Eatoni Ergonomics' Klingon page includes BDF, TTF fonts and a Klingon text entry demo
paqʼbatlh: The Klingon Epic
Klingon speaking chatbot
Klingon word list and spell checker
photo editor translated into Klingon
Agglutinative languages
Object–verb–subject languages
Constructed languages introduced in the 1970s
1979 introductions
Star Trek | [
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16892 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid%20Icarus | Kid Icarus | Kid Icarus is a platform game for the Family Computer Disk System in Japan and the Nintendo Entertainment System in Europe and North America. It was released in Japan in December 1986, in Europe in February 1987, and in North America in July 1987.
The plot of Kid Icarus revolves around protagonist Pit's quest for three sacred treasures, which he must equip to rescue the Greek-inspired fantasy world Angel Land and its ruler, the goddess Palutena. The player controls Pit through platform areas while fighting monsters and collecting items. Their objective is to reach the end of the levels, and to find and defeat boss monsters that guard the three treasures. The game was developed by Nintendo's Research and Development 1 division, and co-developed with Tose, who helped with additional programming. It was designed by Toru Osawa and Yoshio Sakamoto, directed by Satoru Okada, and produced by Gunpei Yokoi.
Despite its mixed critical reception, Kid Icarus is a cult classic. Reviewers praised the game for its music and its mixture of gameplay elements from different genres, but criticized its graphics and high difficulty level. It was included in several lists of the best games compiled by IGN and Nintendo Power.
It was later re-released for the Game Boy Advance in Japan in 2004. The game was released on the Wii's Virtual Console in 2007 and the Wii U's Virtual Console in 2013. A 3D Classics remake of the game was released in Japan in 2011 and in North America, Europe, and Australia in 2012. In 2016, Kid Icarus was included on the North American and PAL region releases of the NES Classic Edition. It is also released on Nintendo Switch Online in 2019.
A sequel, Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, was released for the Game Boy in 1991. A third entry in the series, Kid Icarus: Uprising, was released for Nintendo 3DS in March 2012, after Pit's inclusion as a playable character in the 2008 game Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
Gameplay
Kid Icarus is a side-scrolling platformer with role-playing elements. The player controls the protagonist Pit through two-dimensional levels, which contain monsters, obstacles and items. Pit's primary weapon is a bow with an unlimited supply of arrows that can be upgraded with three collectable power items: the guard crystal shields Pit from enemies, the flaming arrows hit multiple targets, and the holy bow increases the range of the arrows. These upgrades will work only if Pit's health is high enough. The game keeps track of the player's score, and increases Pit's health bar at the end of a level if enough points were collected.
Throughout the stages, the player may enter doors to access seven different types of chambers. Stores and black markets offer items in exchange for hearts, which are left behind by defeated monsters. Treasure chambers contain items, enemy nests give the player an opportunity to earn extra hearts, and hot springs restore Pit's health. In the god's chamber, the strength of Pit's bow and arrow may be increased depending on several factors, such as the number of enemies defeated and the amount of damage taken in battle. In the training chamber, Pit will be awarded with one of the three power items if he passes a test of endurance.
The game world is divided into three stages – the underworld, the over world (Earth) and the sky world. Each stage encompasses three unidirectional area levels and a fortress. The areas of the underworld and sky world stages have Pit climb to the top, while those of the surface world are side-scrolling levels. The fortresses at the end of the stages are labyrinths with non-scrolling rooms, in which the player must find and defeat a gatekeeper boss. Within a fortress, Pit may buy a check sheet, pencil and torch to guide him through the labyrinth. A single-use item, the hammer, can destroy stone statues, which frees a flying soldier called a Centurion that will aid the player in boss battles. For each of the bosses destroyed, Pit receives one of three sacred treasures that are needed to access the fourth and final stage, the sky temple. This last portion abandons the platforming elements of the previous levels, and resembles a scrolling shooter.
Plot
The game is set in Angel Land, which is a fantasy world with a Greek mythology theme. The backstory of Kid Icarus is described in the instruction booklet: before the events of the game, Earth was ruled by Palutena: Goddess of Light and Medusa: Goddess of Darkness. Palutena bestowed the people with light to make them happy. Medusa hated the humans, dried up their crop, and turned them to stone. Enraged by this, Palutena transformed Medusa into a monster and banished her to the Underworld. Out of revenge, Medusa conspired with the monsters of the Underworld to take over Palutena's residence the Palace in the Sky. She launched a surprise attack, and stole the three sacred treasures — the Mirror Shield, the Light Arrows and the Wings of Pegasus — which deprived Palutena's army of its power. After her soldiers had been turned to stone by Medusa, Palutena was defeated in battle and imprisoned deep inside the Palace in the Sky.
With her last power, she sent a bow and arrow to the young angel Pit. He escapes from his prison in the Underworld and sets out to save Palutena and Angel Land. Throughout the course of the story, Pit retrieves the three sacred treasures from the fortress gatekeepers at their respective fortresses in the Underworld, the Overworld, and the Skyworld. Afterward, he equips himself with the treasures and storms the sky temple where he defeats Medusa and rescues Palutena. The game has five different endings; depending on the player's performance, Palutena may present Pit with headgear or transform him into a full-grown angel. In the Japanese version, the best ending from the English version does not exist, and instead another bad ending is present.
Development and releases
The game was designed at Nintendo's Research and Development 1 (R&D1) division, while the programming was handled by the external company Intelligent Systems. It was developed for the Family Computer Disk System (FDS) because the peripheral's "Disk Card" (floppy disk) media allowed for three times the storage capacity of the Family Computer's cartridges. Combined with the possibility to store the players' progress, the Disk Card format enabled the developers to create a longer game with a more extensive game world. Kid Icarus was the debut of Toru Osawa (credited as Inusawa) as a video game designer, and he was the only staff member working on the game at the beginning of the project. Originally he set out to make an action game with role-playing elements, and wrote a story rooted in Greek mythology, which he had always been fond of. He drew the pixel art, and wrote the technical specifications, which were the basis for the playable prototype that was programmed by Intelligent Systems. After Nintendo's action-adventure Metroid had been finished, more staff members were allotted to the development of Kid Icarus.
The game was directed by Satoru Okada (credited as S. Okada), and produced by the general manager of the R&D1 division, Gunpei Yokoi (credited as G. Yokoi). Hirokazu Tanaka (credited as Hip Tanaka) composed the music for Kid Icarus. Yoshio Sakamoto (credited as Shikao.S) joined the team as soon as he had returned from his vacation after the completion of Metroid. He streamlined the development process, and made many decisions that affected the game design of Kid Icarus. Several out-of-place elements were included in the game, such as credit cards, a wizard turning player character Pit into an eggplant, and a large, moving nose that was meant to resemble composer Tanaka. Sakamoto attributed this unrestrained humor to the former personnel of the R&D1 division, which he referred to as "strange". Osawa said that he had originally tried to make Kid Icarus completely serious, but opted for a more humorous approach after objections from the team.
To meet the game's projected release date of December 19, 1986, the staff members worked overtime and often stayed in the office at night. They used torn cardboard boxes as beds, and covered themselves in curtains to resist the low temperatures of the unheated development building. Eventually, Kid Icarus was finished and entered production a mere three days before the release date. Several ideas for additional stages had to be dropped because of these scheduling conflicts. In February and July 1987, respectively, a cartridge-based version was published for the NES in Europe and North America under the name Kid Icarus. For this release, the graphics of the ending were updated, and staff credits were added to the game. Unlike the Japanese version, which saves the player's progress on the Disk Card, the English version uses a password system to return to a game after the console was turned off, an almost unprecedented feature.
In August 2004, Kid Icarus was re-released as part of the Famicom Mini Disk System Selection for the Game Boy Advance. The game was released on the Wii's Virtual Console on January 23, 2007 in Japan, on February 12, 2007 in North America, and on February 23, 2007 in Europe and Australia; it was released on the Wii U's Virtual Console on August 14, 2013 in Japan, on July 11, 2013 in Europe and Australia, and on July 25, 2013 in North America. Passwords that were valid in the NES version do not work in the Virtual Console version due to the checksum algorithm being changed. In 2016, Kid Icarus was included on the North American and PAL region releases of the NES Classic Edition.
3D Classics
A 3D Classics remake of Kid Icarus was published for the Nintendo 3DS handheld console. The remake features stereoscopic 3D along with updated graphics including backgrounds, which the original lacked. It also uses the same save system as the Family Computer Disk System version does, as opposed to the Password system from the NES version. The 3D Classics version also utilizes the Family Computer Disk System's music and sound effects (utilizing the extra sound channel not available in the NES version).
The game became available for purchase on the Nintendo eShop on January 18, 2012 in Japan, on February 2, 2012 in Europe, on April 12, 2012 in Australia and on April 19, 2012 in North America. The game was available early for free via download code to users who registered two selected 3DS games with Nintendo in Japan, Europe and Australia: in Japan, it was available to users who registered any two Nintendo 3DS titles on Club Nintendo between October 1, 2011 and January 15, 2012 with the game available for download starting December 19, 2011; in Europe, it was available to users who registered any two of a selection of Nintendo 3DS titles on Club Nintendo between November 1, 2011 and January 31, 2012, with the first batch of emails with codes being sent out on January 5, 2012; in Australia, it was available to users who registered any two of a selection of Nintendo 3DS titles on Club Nintendo between November 1, 2011 and March 31, 2012, with the first batch of emails with codes being sent out in January 2012. In North America, download codes for the 3D Classics version were given to customers who pre-ordered Kid Icarus: Uprising at select retailers when they picked up the game itself, which released on March 23, 2012, allowing them to obtain the game before its release for purchase.
Reception
Kid Icarus had shipped 1.76 million copies worldwide by late 2003, and has gained a cult following. The game has been met with mixed reviews from critics over the years. In October 1992, a staff writer of the UK publication Nintendo Magazine System said that Kid Icarus was "pretty good fun", but did not "compare too well" to other platform games, owing in part to its "rather dated" graphics. Retro Gamer magazine's Stuart Hunt called Kid Icarus an "unsung hero of the NES" that "looks and sounds pretty". He described the music by Hirokazu Tanaka as "sublime", and the enemy characters as "brilliantly drawn". Although he considered the blend of gameplay elements from different genres a success, he said that Kid Icarus suffered from "frustrating" design flaws, such as its high difficulty level. Jeremy Parish of 1Up.com expressed his disagreement with the game's status as an "unfairly forgotten masterpiece" among its substantial Internet following. He found Kid Icarus to be "underwhelming", "buggy" and "pretty annoying", and noted that it exhibited "shrill music[, ...] loose controls and some weird design decisions". Notwithstanding his disapproval of these elements, Parish said that the game was "[not] terrible, or even bad – just a little lacking." He recommended players to buy the Virtual Console version, if only because it allowed them to experience Kid Icarus "with a fresh perspective".
GameSpots Frank Provo reviewed the Virtual Console version of the game. He noted that the gameplay of Kid Icarus was "[not] the most unique blueprint for a video game", but that it had been "fairly fresh back in 1987". He considered the difficulty level "excessive", and found certain areas to be designed "solely to frustrate players". Provo said that the presentation of the game had "[not] aged gracefully". Despite his favorable comments on the Grecian scenery, he criticized the graphics for its small, bicolored and barely animated sprites, its black backgrounds, and the absence of multiple scrolling layers. He thought that the music was "nicely composed", but that the sound effects were "all taps and thuds". He was dissatisfied with the emulation of the game, as the Virtual Console release preserves the slowdown problems of the original NES version, but has its cheat codes removed. Provo closed his review with a warning for potential buyers: he said that players could appreciate Kid Icarus for its "straightforward gameplay and challenging level layouts", but might "find nothing special in the gameplay and recoil in horror at the unflinching difficulty." Lucas M. Thomas of IGN noted that the game design was "odd" and "not Nintendo's most focused". He thought that it had "[not] aged in as timeless a manner as many other first-party Nintendo games from the NES era," and described Kid Icarus as "one of those games that made a lot more sense back in the '80s, accompanied by a tips and tricks strategy sheet." He complimented the theme music, which he considered "heroic and memorable". In his review of the Virtual Console release, Thomas frowned upon Nintendo's decision to remove the NES cheat codes, and called the omission "nonsensical". He found it to be "not an issue worthy of a prolonged rant", but said that "[Nintendo has] willfully edited its product, and damaged its nostalgic value in the process".
Kid Icarus was included in IGNs lists of the top 100 NES games and the top 100 games of all time; it came in 20th and 84th place, respectively. It came in 34th place on Electronic Gaming Monthlys 1997 "100 Best Games of All Time", which said it "was one of the first big NES games to show that the system went way beyond offering the single-screen arcade-style experience." In 2001 Game Informer ranked it the 83rd best game ever made. They claimed that despite its high level of difficulty and frustration, it was fun enough to be worth playing. The game was inducted into GameSpys "Hall of Fame", and was voted 54th place in Nintendo Powers top 200 Nintendo games. Nintendo Power also listed it as the 20th best NES video game, and praised it for its "unique vertically scrolling stages, fun platforming, and infectious 8-bit tunes", in spite of its "unmerciful difficulty".
Legacy
Sequels
A Game Boy sequel to Kid Icarus, titled Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, was released in North America in November 1991, and in Europe on May 21, 1992. It was developed by Nintendo in cooperation with the independent company Tose, and largely adopts the gameplay mechanics of its predecessor. Of Myths and Monsters remained the last installment in the series for over 20 years.
In 2008, there were rumors of a three-dimensional Kid Icarus game for the Wii that was allegedly developed by the German American studio Factor 5. However, the title was said to be in production without the approval of Nintendo, and Factor 5 cancelled multiple projects following the closure of its American branch in early 2009. In a 2010 interview, Yoshio Sakamoto was asked about a Kid Icarus game for the Wii, to which he replied that he was not aware of any plans to revive the franchise. A new series entry for the Nintendo 3DS, Kid Icarus: Uprising, was eventually revealed at the E3 2010 trade show and was released in 2012. The game is a third-person shooter, and was developed by Project Sora, the company of Super Smash Bros. designer Masahiro Sakurai.
Other appearances
Pit is a recurring character in the American animated television series Captain N: The Game Master, albeit erroneously named as "Kid Icarus", and made cameo appearances in Nintendo games such as Tetris, F-1 Race and Super Smash Bros. Melee. He became a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. Brawl, for which his appearance was redesigned.
In May 2011, independent development studio Flip Industries released Super Kid Icarus, an unofficial Flash game. Super Kid Icarus is noted for having a SNES style look and including cheats to reduce the difficulty.
Notes
References
External links
1986 video games
Famicom Disk System games
Video games about shapeshifting
Game Boy Advance games
Kid Icarus
Nintendo 3DS eShop games
Nintendo Entertainment System games
Nintendo Research & Development 1 games
Nintendo Switch Online NES games
Side-scrolling platform games
Single-player video games
Video games designed by Yoshio Sakamoto
Video games directed by Satoru Okada
Video games produced by Gunpei Yokoi
Video games scored by Hirokazu Tanaka
Virtual Console games for Wii
Virtual Console games for Wii U | [
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16893 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas%20City%20%28disambiguation%29 | Kansas City (disambiguation) | Kansas City is a metropolitan area in Missouri and Kansas, anchored by Kansas City, Missouri.
Kansas City may also refer to:
Kansas City, Missouri, the largest city in the metropolitan area
Places
Kansas City, Kansas
North Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Oregon
Music
"Kansas City" (Leiber and Stoller song)
covered by Wilbert Harrison in 1959
"Kansas City" (Sneaky Sound System song), 2008
"Kansas City" (Oklahoma!), a song from the 1943 musical Oklahoma!
"Kansas City", a 1974 song by the Les Humphries Singers
"Kansas City", a song by Melissa Etheridge from the 2012 album 4th Street Feeling
"Kansas City", a song by The New Basement Tapes from the 2014 album Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes
"Kansas City", a 2000 song by Okkervil River
"The Kansas City Song", a 1970 song by Buck Owens and the Buckaroos
Kansas City jazz, a style of jazz that originated in the 1920s and 1930s
Kansas City blues (music), a style of blues that developed in the 1940s
Sports and games
Kansas City NWSL team, an as-yet-unnamed team that starts play in the National Women's Soccer League in 2021
Kansas City Roos, the athletic program of the University of Missouri–Kansas City
Kansas City (ABA), a former American Basketball Association team in Kansas City, Missouri
FC Kansas City, a 2012–2017 NWSL team
Kansas City lowball, a nickname for Deuce-to-seven lowball poker
Transport
City of Kansas City, a 1947 to 1968 Wabash Railroad streamliner train
City of St. Louis (train), a Union Pacific streamliner train called City of Kansas City from 1968 to 1971,
USS Kansas City, the name of several U.S. Navy ships
Other
Kansas City (film), a 1996 film by Robert Altman
Diocese of Kansas City, the 1850–1947 name of what is now the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kansas City–Saint Joseph
Kansas City standard, a digital data format for storing computer programs and data on music/audio cassette tapes
See also
North Kansas City, Missouri, a northern suburb of Kansas City, Missouri
Max's Kansas City, a nightclub and restaurant in New York City, from 1965 to 1981
List of cities in Kansas
Kansas City Blues (disambiguation)
Kansas (disambiguation)
KC (disambiguation)
KSC (disambiguation) | [
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16894 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylie%20Minogue | Kylie Minogue | Kylie Ann Minogue (; born 28 May 1968), sometimes known mononymously as Kylie, is an Australian singer and actress who holds both Australian and British citizenship. She is the highest-selling female Australian artist of all time, having sold over 80 million records worldwide. She has been recognised for reinventing herself in music and fashion, for which she is referred to by the European press as the "Princess of Pop" and a style icon. Her accolades include a Grammy Award, three Brit Awards and 17 ARIA Music Awards.
Born and raised in Melbourne, Minogue first achieved recognition starring in the Australian soap opera Neighbours, playing tomboy mechanic Charlene Robinson. She gained prominence as a recording artist in the late 1980s and released four bubblegum and dance-pop-influenced studio albums produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. By the early 1990s, she had amassed several top ten singles in the UK and Australia, including "I Should Be So Lucky", "The Loco-Motion", "Hand on Your Heart", and "Better the Devil You Know". Taking more creative control over her music, Minogue signed with Deconstruction Records in 1993 and released Kylie Minogue (1994) and Impossible Princess (1997), both of which received positive reviews. She returned to mainstream dance-oriented music with 2000's Light Years, including the number-one hits "Spinning Around" and "On a Night Like This". The follow-up, Fever (2001), was an international breakthrough for Minogue, becoming her best-selling album to date. Two of its singles, "Love at First Sight" and "In Your Eyes", became hits, but its lead single, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" became one of the most successful singles of the 2000s, selling over five million units.
Minogue continued reinventing her image and experimenting with a range of genres on her subsequent albums, which spawned successful singles such as "Slow", "2 Hearts", "All the Lovers", "Santa Baby", "Timebomb" and "Dancing". With her 2020 album Disco, she became the first female artist to have a chart-topping album in the UK for five consecutive decades. Minogue made her film debut in The Delinquents (1989) and portrayed Cammy in Street Fighter (1994). She has also appeared in the films Moulin Rouge! (2001), Jack & Diane, Holy Motors (2012) and San Andreas (2015). In 2014, she appeared as a judge on the third series of The Voice UK and The Voice Australia. Her other ventures include product endorsements, children's books, fashion, and charitable work.
Minogue was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to music. She was appointed by the French government as a Chevalier (knight) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her contribution to the enrichment of French culture. In 2005, while Minogue was on tour, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Health Science (D.H.Sc.) degree by Anglia Ruskin University in 2011 for her work in raising awareness for breast cancer. At the 2011 ARIA Music Awards, she was inducted by the Australian Recording Industry Association into the ARIA Hall of Fame. She was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2019 Australia Day Honours.
Life and career
1968–1986: Early life and career beginnings
Kylie Ann Minogue was born in Melbourne on 28 May 1968, the daughter of former ballet dancer Carol Minogue (née Ann Jones) and car company accountant Ronald Charles Minogue. She is of English, Irish, and Welsh descent, and was named after the Nyungar word for "boomerang". She is the eldest of three children: her brother, Brendan Minogue, is a news cameraman in Australia, and her sister, Dannii Minogue, is a singer and television host. The family frequently moved around various suburbs in Melbourne to sustain their living expenses, which Minogue found unsettling as a child. She would often stay at home reading, sewing, and learning to play violin and piano. When they moved to Surrey Hills, Victoria, she went on to Camberwell High School. During her schooling years, she found it difficult to make friends. She got her HSC with subjects including Arts and Graphics and English. Minogue described herself as being of "average intelligence" and "quite modest" during her high school years. Growing up, she and her sister Dannii took singing and dancing lessons.
A 10-year-old Minogue accompanied Dannii to a hearing arranged by the sisters' aunt, Suzette, and, while producers found Dannii too young, Alan Hardy gave Minogue a minor role in soap opera The Sullivans (1979). She also appeared in another small role in Skyways (1980). In 1985, she was cast in one of the lead roles in The Henderson Kids. Minogue took time off school to film The Henderson Kids and while Carol was not impressed, Minogue felt that she needed the independence to make it into the entertainment industry. During filming, co-star Nadine Garner labelled Minogue "fragile" after producers yelled at her for forgetting her lines; she would often cry on set. Minogue was dropped from the second season of the show after producer Alan Hardy felt the need for her character to be "written off". In retrospect, Hardy stated that removing her from the showing "turned out to be the best thing for her". Interested in following a career in music, Minogue made a demo tape for the producers of weekly music program Young Talent Time, which featured Dannii as a regular performer. Minogue gave her first television singing performance on the show in 1985 but was not invited to join the cast. Minogue was cast in the soap opera Neighbours in 1986, as Charlene Mitchell, a schoolgirl turned garage mechanic. Neighbours achieved popularity in the UK, and a story arc that created a romance between her character and the character played by Jason Donovan culminated in a wedding episode in 1987 that attracted an audience of 20 million viewers. Minogue became the first person to win four Logie Awards in one year and was the youngest recipient of the "Gold Logie" as the country's "Most Popular Television Performer", with the result determined by public vote. She was in a relationship with Donovan for three years, until 1989.
1987–1989: Kylie and Enjoy Yourself
During a Fitzroy Football Club benefit concert, Minogue performed "I Got You Babe" as a duet with fellow actor John Waters, and "The Loco-Motion" as an encore. Producer Greg Petherick arranged for Minogue to record a demo of the latter song, re-titled as "Locomotion". The demo was sent to the head of Mushroom Records Michael Gudinski, who decided to sign Minogue in early 1987 based on her popularity from Neighbours. "The Locomotion" was released as her debut single in Australia on 27 July 1987, three weeks after Neighbours wedding episode premiered. The single became the best-selling single of the decade in Australia according to the Kent Music Report. The success of "Locomotion" resulted in Minogue travelling to London to work with record producing trio Stock Aitken Waterman in September 1987. They knew little of Minogue and had forgotten that she was arriving; as a result, they wrote "I Should Be So Lucky" while she waited outside the studio. More sessions with Stock Aitken Waterman occurred from February to April 1988 in London and Melbourne, where Minogue was filming her last episodes for Neighbours. The trio ended up composing and producing all the tracks on the forthcoming album except for "The Loco-Motion".
Minogue's self-titled debut album, Kylie, was released in July 1988. The album is a collection of dance-oriented pop tunes and spent more than a year on the UK Albums Chart, including several weeks at number one, eventually becoming the best-selling album of the 1980s by a female artist. It went gold in the United States, while the single "The Locomotion" reached number three on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and number one on the Canadian dance chart. The single "Got to Be Certain" became her third consecutive number one single on the Australian music charts. Later in the year, she left Neighbours to focus on her music career. Minogue also collaborated with Jason Donovan for the song "Especially for You", which peaked at number-one in the United Kingdom and, in December 2014, sold its one millionth copy in the UK. Minogue was sometimes referred to as "the Singing Budgie" by her detractors over the coming years. In a review of the album Kylie for AllMusic, Chris True described the tunes as "standard, late-80s ... bubblegum", but added, "her cuteness makes these rather vapid tracks bearable". She received the ARIA Award for the year's highest-selling single. The song reached number one in the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Israel and Hong Kong. Minogue won her second consecutive ARIA Award for the year's highest-selling single, and received a "Special Achievement Award".
Minogue's second album, Enjoy Yourself, was released in October 1989. It was a success in the United Kingdom, Europe, New Zealand, Asia and Australia and spawned the UK number-one singles "Hand on Your Heart" and "Tears on My Pillow". However, it failed to sell well throughout North America, and Minogue was dropped by her American record label Geffen Records. She then embarked on her first concert tour, the Enjoy Yourself Tour, in the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia and Australia in February 1990. She was also one of the featured vocalists on the remake of "Do They Know It's Christmas?". Minogue's debut film, The Delinquents, was released in December 1989. The movie received mixed reviews by critics but proved popular with audiences. In the UK it grossed more than £200,000, and in Australia, it was the fourth-highest-grossing local film of 1989 and the highest-grossing local film of 1990. From 1989 to 1991, Minogue dated INXS frontman Michael Hutchence.
1990–1992: Rhythm of Love, Let's Get to It and Greatest Hits
Minogue's third album, Rhythm of Love, was released in November 1990 and was described as "leaps and bounds more mature" than her previous albums by AllMusic's Chris True. The album did not match the commercial success of its predecessors, but three of its singles – "Better the Devil You Know", "Step Back in Time" and "Shocked – reached the top ten in both the UK and Australia. Entertainment Weeklys Ernest Macias observed that, in Rhythm of Love, Minogue "presented a more mature and sexually-fueled image". Macias also pointed out that the album "showcases the beginning of Minogue's career as a pop icon, propelled by her angelic vocals, sensual music videos, chic fashion, and distinct dance sound."
Her relationship with Michael Hutchence was also seen as part of her departure from her earlier persona. The making of the "Better the Devil You Know" music video was the first time Minogue "felt part of the creative process". She said: "I wasn't in charge but I had a voice. I'd bought some clothes on King's Road for the video. I saw a new way to express my point of view creatively." To promote the album, Minogue embarked on the Rhythm of Love Tour in February 1991.
Minogue's fourth album, Let's Get to It, was released in October 1991 and reached number 15 on the UK Albums Chart. It was her first album to fail to reach the top ten. While the first single from the album, "Word Is Out", became her first single to miss the top ten of the UK Singles Chart, subsequent singles "If You Were with Me Now" and "Give Me Just a Little More Time" both reached the top five. In support of the album, she embarked on the Let's Get to It Tour in October. She later expressed her opinion that she was stifled by Stock, Aitken and Waterman, saying, "I was very much a puppet in the beginning. I was blinkered by my record company. I was unable to look left or right." Her first best-of album, simply titled Greatest Hits, was released in August 1992. It reached number one in the United Kingdom and number three in Australia. The singles from the album, "What Kind of Fool" and her cover version of Kool & the Gang's "Celebration", both reached the top 20 of the UK Singles Chart.
1993–1998: Kylie Minogue and Impossible Princess
Minogue's signing with Deconstruction Records in 1993 marked a new phase in her career. Her fifth album, Kylie Minogue, was released in September 1994 and was a departure from her previous efforts as it "no longer featured the Stock-Aitken-Waterman production gloss", with critics praising Minogue's vocals and the album production. It was produced by dance music producers the Brothers in Rhythm, namely Dave Seaman and Steve Anderson, who had previously produced "Finer Feelings", her last single with PWL. As of 2015, Anderson continued to be Minogue's musical director. The album peaked at number four on the UK Albums Chart and was certified gold in the country. Its lead single, "Confide in Me", spent four weeks at number one on the Australian singles chart. The next two singles from the album, "Put Yourself in My Place" and "Where Is the Feeling?", reached the top 20 on the UK Singles Chart.
During this period, Minogue made a guest appearance as herself in an episode of the comedy The Vicar of Dibley. Director Steven E. de Souza saw Minogue's cover photo in Australia's Who Magazine as one of "The 30 Most Beautiful People in the World" and offered her a role opposite Jean-Claude Van Damme in the film Street Fighter. The film was a moderate success, earning US$70 million in the US, but received poor reviews, with The Washington Posts Richard Harrington calling Minogue "the worst actress in the English-speaking world". She had a minor role in the 1996 film Bio-Dome starring Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin. She also appeared in the 1995 short film Hayride to Hell and in the 1997 film Diana & Me. In 1995, Minogue collaborated with Australian artist Nick Cave for the song "Where the Wild Roses Grow". Cave had been interested in working with Minogue since hearing "Better the Devil You Know", saying it contained "one of pop music's most violent and distressing lyrics". The music video for their song was inspired by John Everett Millais's painting Ophelia (1851–1852), and showed Minogue as the murdered woman, floating in a pond as a serpent swam over her body. The single received widespread attention in Europe, where it reached the top 10 in several countries, and reached number two in Australia. The song won ARIA Awards for "Song of the Year" and "Best Pop Release". Following concert appearances with Cave, Minogue recited the lyrics to "I Should Be So Lucky" as poetry in London's Royal Albert Hall.
By 1997, Minogue was in a relationship with French photographer Stéphane Sednaoui, who encouraged her to develop her creativity. Inspired by a mutual appreciation of Japanese culture, they created a visual combination of "geisha and manga superheroine" for the photographs taken for Minogue's sixth album, Impossible Princess, and the video for "German Bold Italic", Minogue's collaboration with Towa Tei. She drew inspiration from the music of artists such as Shirley Manson and Garbage, Björk, Tricky and U2, and Japanese pop musicians such as Pizzicato Five and Towa Tei. The album featured collaborations with musicians including James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore of the Manic Street Preachers. Impossible Princess garnered some negative reviews upon its release in 1997, but would be praised as Minogue's most personal and best work in retrospective reviews. In 2003, Slant Magazines Sal Cinquemani called it a "deeply personal effort" and "Minogue's best album to date", while Evan Sawdey, from PopMatters, described Impossible Princess as "one of the most crazed, damn-near perfect dance-pop albums ever created" in a 2008 review. Mostly a dance album, Minogue countered suggestions that she was trying to become an indie artist.
Acknowledging that she had attempted to escape the perceptions of her that had developed during her early career, Minogue commented that she was ready to "forget the painful criticism" and "accept the past, embrace it, use it". The music video for "Did It Again" paid homage to her earlier incarnations. Retitled Kylie Minogue in the UK following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, it became the lowest-selling album of her career. At the end of the year, a campaign by Virgin Radio stated, "We've done something to improve Kylie's records: we've banned them." In Australia, the album was a success and spent 35 weeks on the album chart. Minogue's Intimate and Live tour in 1998 was extended due to demand. She gave several live performances in Australia, including the 1998 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and the opening ceremonies of Melbourne's Crown Casino, and Sydney's Fox Studios in 1999 (where she performed Marilyn Monroe's "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend") as well as a Christmas concert in Dili, East Timor, in association with the United Nations Peace-Keeping Forces. She played a small role in the Australian-made Molly Ringwald 2000 film Cut.
1999–2003: Light Years, Fever and Body Language
In 1999, Minogue performed a duet with the Pet Shop Boys' on their Nightlife album and spent several months in Barbados performing in Shakespeare's The Tempest. She then appeared in the film Sample People and recorded a cover version of Russell Morris's "The Real Thing" for the soundtrack. She signed with Parlophone in April, who wanted to re-establish Minogue as a pop artist. Her seventh studio album, Light Years, was released on 25 September 2000. NME magazine called it a "fun, perfectly-formed" record, which saw Minogue "dropping her considerable concern for cool and bouncing back to her disco-pop roots". It was a commercial success, becoming Minogue's first number-one album in her native Australia. The lead single, "Spinning Around", debuted atop the UK Singles Chart in July, making her only the second artist to have a number-one single in three consecutive decades (after Madonna). Its accompanying video featured Minogue in revealing gold hotpants, which came to be regarded as a "trademark". Three other singles—"On a Night Like This", "Kids" (with Robbie Williams), and "Please Stay"—peaked in the top ten in the United Kingdom.
An elaborate art book titled Kylie, featuring contributions by Minogue and creative director William Baker, was published by Booth-Clibborn in March 2000. At the time, she began a romantic relationship with model James Gooding. In October, Minogue performed at both the closing ceremonies of 2000 Sydney Olympics and in the opening ceremony of the Paralympics. Her performance of ABBA's "Dancing Queen" was chosen as one of the most memorable Olympic closing ceremony moments by Kate Samuelson of TNT. The following year, she embarked on the On a Night Like This Tour, which was inspired by the style of Broadway shows and the musicals of the 1930s. She also made a brief cameo as The Green Fairy in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!, which earned her an MTV Movie Award nomination in 2002. "Spinning Around" and Light Years consecutively won the ARIA Award for Best Pop Release in 2000 and 2001.
In September 2001, Minogue released "Can't Get You Out of My Head", the lead single from her eighth studio album, Fever. It reached number one in over 40 countries and sold 5 million copies, becoming Minogue's most successful single to date. The accompanying music video featured the singer sporting an infamous hooded white jumpsuit with deep plunging neckline. The remaining singles—"In Your Eyes", "Love at First Sight" and "Come into My World"—all peaked in the top ten in Australia and the United Kingdom. Released on 1 October, Fever topped the charts in Australia, Austria, Germany, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, eventually achieving worldwide sales in excess of six million. Dominique Leone from Pitchfork praised its simple and "comfortable" composition, terming it a "mature sound from a mature artist, and one that may very well re-establish Minogue for the VH1 generation".
The warm reception towards the album led to its release in the United States in February 2002 by Capitol Records, Minogue's first in 13 years. It debuted on the Billboard 200 at number three, her highest-charting album in the region, while peaking at number 10 on the Canadian Albums Chart.
To support the album, Minogue headlined her KylieFever2002 tour in Europe and Australia, which ran from April to August 2002. She performed several songs from the setlist in a series of Jingle Ball concerts in the United States in 2002–2003. In May 2002, Minogue and Gooding announced the end of their relationship after two and a half years. She received four accolades at the ARIA Music Awards of 2002, including Highest Selling Single and Single of the Year for "Can't Get You Out of My Head". That same year, she won her first Brit Award for International Female Solo Artist and Best International Album for Fever. In 2003, she received her first Grammy nomination for Best Dance Recording for "Love at First Sight", before winning the award for "Come into My World" the following year, marking the first time an Australian music artist had won in a major category since Men at Work in 1983.
In November 2003, Minogue released her ninth studio album, Body Language, following an invitation-only concert, titled Money Can't Buy, at the Hammersmith Apollo in London. The album downplayed the disco style and was inspired by 1980s artists such as Scritti Politti, The Human League, Adam and the Ants and Prince, blending their styles with elements of hip hop. The sales of the album were lower than anticipated after the success of Fever, though the first single, "Slow", was a number-one hit in the United Kingdom and Australia. Two more singles from the album were released: "Red Blooded Woman" and "Chocolate". In the US, "Slow" reached number-one on the club chart and received a Grammy Award nomination in the Best Dance Recording category. Body Language achieved first week sales of 43,000 and declined significantly in the second week.
2004–2009: Ultimate Kylie, Showgirl and X
In November 2004, Minogue released her second official greatest hits album, entitled Ultimate Kylie. The album yielded two singles: "I Believe in You" and "Giving You Up". "I Believe in You" was later nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of "Best Dance Recording". In March 2005, Minogue commenced her Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour. After performing in Europe, she travelled to Melbourne, where she was diagnosed with breast cancer, forcing her to cancel the tour. She underwent surgery in May 2005 and commenced chemotherapy treatment soon after. It was announced in January 2006 that she had finished chemotherapy and the disease "had no recurrence" after the surgery. She would continue her treatment for the next months. In December 2005, Minogue released a digital-only single, "Over the Rainbow", a live recording from her Showgirl tour. Her children's book, The Showgirl Princess, written during her period of convalescence, was published in October 2006, and her perfume, "Darling", was launched in November. The range was later augmented by eau de toilettes including Pink Sparkle, Couture and Inverse.
Minogue resumed her then cancelled tour in November 2006, under the title Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour. Her dance routines had been reworked to accommodate her medical condition, with slower costume changes and longer breaks introduced between sections of the show to conserve her strength. The media reported that Minogue performed energetically, with the Sydney Morning Herald describing the show as an "extravaganza" and "nothing less than a triumph". She voiced Florence in the animated film The Magic Roundabout, based on the television series of the same name. She finished her voice role back in 2002, before it was released in 2005 in Europe. A year later, she reprised the role and recorded the theme song for the American edition, re-titled as Doogal, which grossed $26,691,243 worldwide.
In November 2007, Minogue released her tenth and much-discussed "comeback" album, X. The electro-styled album included contributions from Guy Chambers, Cathy Dennis, Bloodshy & Avant and Calvin Harris. The album received some criticism for the triviality of its subject matter in light of Minogue's experiences with breast cancer. X and its lead single, "2 Hearts", entered at number one on the Australian albums and singles charts, respectively. In the United Kingdom, X initially attracted lukewarm sales, although its commercial performance eventually improved. Follow-up singles from the album, "In My Arms" and "Wow", both peaked inside the top ten of the UK Singles Chart. In the US, the album was nominated at the 2009 Grammy Awards for Best Electronic/Dance Album.
Minogue began a relationship with French actor Olivier Martinez after meeting him at the 2003 Grammy Awards ceremony. They ended their relationship in February 2007, but remained on friendly terms. Minogue was reported to have been "saddened by false [media] accusations of [Martinez's] disloyalty". She defended Martinez, and acknowledged the support he had given during her treatment for breast cancer. As part of the promotion of her album, Minogue was featured in White Diamond, a documentary filmed during 2006 and 2007 as she resumed her Showgirl: The Homecoming Tour. She also appeared in The Kylie Show, which featured her performances as well as comedy sketches. She co-starred in the 2007 Doctor Who Christmas special episode, "Voyage of the Damned", as Astrid Peth. The episode was watched by 13.31 million viewers, which was the show's highest viewing figure since 1979.
In May 2008, Minogue embarked on the European leg of the KylieX2008 tour, her most expensive tour to date with production costs of £10 million. The tour was generally acclaimed and sold well. She was then appointed a Chevalier of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the junior grade of France's highest cultural honour. In July, she was officially invested by The Prince of Wales as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. She also won the "Best International Female Solo Artist" award at the 2008 BRIT Awards. In September, she made her Middle East debut as the headline act at the opening of Atlantis, The Palm, an exclusive hotel resort in Dubai, and from November, she continued her KylieX2008 tour, taking the show to cities across South America, Asia and Australia. The tour visited 21 countries, and was considered a success, with ticket sales estimated at $70,000,000. In 2009, Minogue hosted the BRIT Awards with James Corden and Mathew Horne. She then embarked on the For You, for Me tour which was her first North American concert tour. She was also featured in the Hindi movie, Blue, performing an A. R. Rahman song. Minogue was in a relationship with model Andrés Velencoso from 2008 to 2013.
2010–2012: Aphrodite, Anti Tour and The Abbey Road Sessions
In July 2010, Minogue released her eleventh studio album, Aphrodite. The album featured new songwriters and producers including Stuart Price as executive producer. Price also contributed to song writing along with Minogue, Calvin Harris, Jake Shears, Nerina Pallot, Pascal Gabriel, Lucas Secon, Keane's Tim Rice-Oxley and Kish Mauve. The album received favourable reviews from most music critics; Rob Sheffield from Rolling Stone labelled the album Minogue's "finest work since 1997's underrated Impossible Princess" and Tim Sendra from Allmusic commended Minogue's choice of collaborators and producers, commenting that the album is the "work of someone who knows exactly what her skills are and who to hire to help showcase them to perfection". Aphrodite debuted at number-one in the United Kingdom, exactly 22 years after her first number one hit in the United Kingdom. The album's lead single, "All the Lovers," was a success and became her 33rd top ten single in the United Kingdom, though subsequent singles from the album—"Get Outta My Way", "Better than Today", and "Put Your Hands Up"—failed to reach the top ten of the UK Singles Chart. However, all the singles released from the album have topped the US Billboard Hot Dance Club Songs chart.
Minogue recorded a duet with synthpop duo Hurts on their song "Devotion", which was included on the group's album Happiness. She was then featured on Taio Cruz's single "Higher". The result was successful, peaking inside the top 20 in several charts and impacting the US Hot Dance Club Charts. In February 2011, Minogue became the first act to hold two of the top three spots on the US Dance/Club Play Songs survey, with "Better Than Today" at number one and "Higher" at number 3. To conclude her recordings in 2010, she released the extended play A Kylie Christmas, which included covers of Christmas songs including "Let It Snow" and "Santa Baby". Minogue embarked on the Aphrodite: Les Folies Tour in February 2011, travelling to Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and Africa. With a stage set inspired by the birth of the love goddess Aphrodite and Grecian culture and history, it was greeted with positive reviews from critics, who praised the concept and the stage production. The tour was a commercial success, grossing US$60 million and ranking at number six and 21 on the mid-year and annual Pollstar Top Concert Tours of 2011 respectively.
In March 2012, Minogue began a year-long celebration for her 25 years in the music industry, which was often called "K25". The anniversary started with her embarking on the Anti Tour in England and Australia, which featured b-sides, demos and rarities from her music catalogue. The tour was positively received for its intimate atmosphere and was a commercial success, grossing over two million dollars from four shows. She then released the single "Timebomb" in May, the greatest hits compilation album, The Best of Kylie Minogue in June and the singles box-set, K25 Time Capsule in October. She performed at various events around the world, including Sydney Mardi Gras, Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee Concert, and BBC Proms in the Park London 2012. Minogue released the compilation album The Abbey Road Sessions in October. The album contained reworked and orchestral versions of her previous songs. It was recorded at London's Abbey Road Studios and was produced by Steve Anderson and Colin Elliot. The album received favourable reviews from music critics and debuted at number-two in the United Kingdom. The album spawned two singles, "Flower" and "On a Night Like This". Minogue returned to acting and starred in two films: a cameo appearance in the American independent film Jack & Diane and a lead role in the French film Holy Motors. Jack & Diane opened at the Tribeca Film Festival on 20 April 2012, while Holy Motors opened at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, which Minogue attended.
2013–2016: Kiss Me Once and Kylie Christmas
In January 2013, Minogue and her manager Terry Blamey, whom she had worked with since the start of her singing career, parted ways. The following month, she signed to Roc Nation for a management deal. In September, she was featured on Italian singer-songwriter Laura Pausini's single "Limpido", which was a number-one hit in Italy and received a nomination for "World's Best Song" at the 2013 World Music Awards. In the same month, Minogue was hired as a coach for the third series of BBC One's talent competition The Voice UK, alongside record producer and Black Eyed Peas member, will.i.am, Kaiser Chiefs' lead singer Ricky Wilson and singer Sir Tom Jones. The show opened with 9.35 million views from the UK, a large percentage increase from the second season. It accumulated an estimated 8.10 million viewers on average. Minogue's judging and personality on the show were singled out for praise. Ed Power from The Daily Telegraph gave the series premiere 3 stars, praising Minogue for being "glamorous, agreeably giggly [and] a card-carrying national treasure". In November, she was hired as a coach for the third season of The Voice Australia.
In March 2014, Minogue released her twelfth studio album, Kiss Me Once. The album featured contributions from Sia, Mike Del Rio, Cutfather, Pharrell Williams, MNEK and Ariel Rechtshaid. It peaked at number one in Australia and number two in the United Kingdom. The singles from the album, "Into the Blue" and "I Was Gonna Cancel", did not chart inside the top ten of the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 12 and number 59 respectively. In August, Minogue performed a seven-song set at the closing ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, donning a custom Jean Paul Gaultier corset. In September, she embarked on the Kiss Me Once Tour. In January 2015, Minogue appeared as a guest vocalist on Giorgio Moroder's single "Right Here, Right Now" providing her 12th number one hit on the U.S. Dance Chart on 18 April 2015.
In March, Minogue's contract with Parlophone Records ended, leaving her future music releases with Warner Music Group in Australia and New Zealand. The same month, she parted ways with Roc Nation. In April, Minogue played tech reporter Shauna in a two episode arc on the ABC Family series, Young & Hungry. Also in April, reality TV personality Kylie Jenner entered into a trademark dispute with Minogue in her attempt to establish the brand "Kylie", which Minogue has been trading under since the 1990s. The dispute was eventually resolved in Minogue's favor in 2017. Minogue also appeared as Susan Riddick in the disaster film San Andreas, released in May and starring Dwayne Johnson and Carla Gugino. In September 2015, an extended play with Fernando Garibay titled Kylie + Garibay was released. Garibay and Giorgio Moroder served as producers for the extended play. In November, Minogue was a featured artist on the track, "The Other Boys" by Nervo, alongside Jake Shears and Nile Rodgers. This became her 13th chart topper on the U.S Dance Chart, lifting her position in the list of artists with the most U.S. Dance Chart number ones to equal 8th alongside Whitney Houston, Enrique Iglesias and Lady Gaga.
In December 2015, Minogue was the guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. Her choices included "Dancing Queen" by ABBA, "Purple Rain" by Prince and "Need You Tonight" by INXS. Minogue released her first Christmas album, Kylie Christmas, in November 2015. In 2016, she recorded the theme song "This Wheel's on Fire", from the soundtrack Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie. Minogue's holiday album Kylie Christmas was re-released in November entitled as Kylie Christmas: Snow Queen Edition. In November 2015, Minogue confirmed she was dating British actor Joshua Sasse. On 20 February 2016, their engagement was announced in the "Forthcoming Marriages" section of The Daily Telegraph, but in February 2017, she confirmed the couple had ended their relationship.
2017–present: Golden, Step Back in Time: The Definitive Collection and Disco
In February 2017, Minogue signed a new record deal with BMG Rights Management. In December 2017, Minogue and BMG had struck a joint-deal with Mushroom Music Labels — under the sub-division label Liberator to release her new album in Australia and New Zealand. In 2017, Minogue worked with writers and producers for her 14th studio album, including Sky Adams and Richard Stannard, and recorded the album in London, Los Angeles and Nashville, with the latter profoundly influencing the record. Minogue's album Golden was released in April 2018 with "Dancing" serving as its lead single. The album debuted at number one in the UK and Australia. Tim Sendra from AllMusic labelled Golden a "darn bold" for an artist of Minogue's longevity, stating "The amazing thing about the album, and about Minogue, is that she pulls off the country as well as she's pulled off new wave, disco, electro, murder ballads, and everything else she's done in her long career." Golden also received criticism, with Pitchfork'''s Ben Cardew claiming that it "sounds like someone playing at country music, rather than someone who understands it." Minogue was among the performers at The Queen's Birthday Party held at the Royal Albert Hall in April 2018. Minogue began dating Paul Solomons, the creative director of British GQ, in 2018.
Minogue released a greatest hits compilation Step Back in Time: The Definitive Collection on 28 June 2019, featuring "New York City" as the lead single. The album reached number one in her native Australia and in the UK, becoming her seventh album to reach the top spot in the latter. On 30 June, Minogue made her debut at the Glastonbury Festival, fourteen years after her breast cancer diagnosis forced her to cancel her 2005 headlining slot. Performing in the Legends Slot, Minogue's set featured guest appearances from Nick Cave and Chris Martin. Her set received rave reviews from critics, with The Guardian declaring it a "solid-gold", "peerless" and "phenomenal". It was a big hit with fans, with Minogue's performance being the most-watched set of the BBC coverage (earning three million viewers, ahead of The Killers who received 1.4 million) and reportedly breaking records for the most attended Glastonbury set in history. Minogue also appeared in her own Christmas television special, Kylie's Secret Night, which aired on Channel 4 in December 2019.
Following her Glastonbury performance, Minogue stated that she would like to create a "pop-disco album" and return to recording new material after the performance. Work continued on Disco during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, with Minogue using a home studio to record throughout lockdown. Alistair Norbury, president of Minogue's record label BMG, announced to industry title Music Week that Minogue was also learning to record and engineer her own vocals using music software Logic Pro in order to continue working apace during lockdown. On 23 July 2020, "Say Something" was unveiled as the first single from Disco. The album's second single, "Magic", was released on 24 September, and a promotional single, "I Love It", on 23 October.Disco was released on 6 November 2020, reaching number one in her native Australia and in the UK, where Minogue became the first female solo artist to achieve a number one album in five consecutive decades from the 1980s to the 2020s. In the same month, she was featured on Children in Need's charity single – "Stop Crying Your Heart Out". On 5 December 2020, "Real Groove" was announced as the album's third single. A subsequent remix was released on 31 December 2020 with Dua Lipa. In May 2021, Minogue featured on a remix of "Starstruck" with Years & Years. Minogue is set to reissue Disco on 12 November 2021, and this was preceded with the release of "A Second to Midnight" featuring Years & Years. The reissue titled Disco: Guest List Edition will include duets with Jessie Ware and Gloria Gaynor, aside from remixes of Discos singles.
Artistry
Minogue explained that she first became interested in pop music during her adolescence: "I first got into pop music in 1981, I'd say. It was all about Prince, Adam + the Ants, that whole New Romantic period. Prior to that, it was the Jackson 5, Donna Summer, and my dad's records – the Stones and Beatles." She would also listen to the records of Olivia Newton-John and ABBA. Minogue said that she "wanted to be" Newton-John while growing up. Her producer, Pete Waterman, recalled Minogue during the early years of her music career with the observation: "She was setting her sights on becoming the new Prince or Madonna ... What I found amazing was that she was outselling Madonna four to one, but still wanted to be her." Minogue came to prominence in the music scene as a bubblegum pop singer and was deemed a "product of the Stock, Aitken & Waterman Hit Factory". Musician Nick Cave, who worked with Minogue in some occasions, was a major influence on her artistic development. She told The Guardian: "He's definitely infiltrated my life in beautiful and profound ways." Throughout her career, Minogue's work was also influenced by Cathy Dennis, D Mob, Scritti Politti, Björk, Tricky, U2 and Pizzicato Five, among others.
Minogue has been known for her soft soprano vocal range. Tim Sendra of AllMusic reviewed her album Aphrodite and said that Minogue's "slightly nasal, girl-next-door vocals serve her needs perfectly." According to Fiona MacDonald from Madison magazine, Minogue "has never shied away from making some brave but questionable artistic decisions". In musical terms, Minogue has worked with many genres in pop and dance music. However, her signature music has been contemporary disco music. Her first studio albums with Stock, Aitken, and Waterman present a more bubblegum pop influence, with many critics comparing her to Madonna. Chris True from Allmusic, reviewed her debut Kylie and found her music "standard late-'80s Stock-Aitken-Waterman bubblegum", however he stated that she presented the most personality of any 1980s recording artist. He said of her third album Rhythm of Love, from the early 1990s, "The songwriting is stronger, the production dynamic, and Kylie seems more confident vocally." At the time of her third studio album, "She began to trade in her cutesy, bubblegum pop image for a more mature one, and in turn, a more sexual one." Chris True stated that during her relationship with Michael Hutchence, "her shedding of the near-virginal façade that dominated her first two albums, began to have an effect, not only on how the press and her fans treated her, but in the evolution of her music."
From Minogue's work on her sixth studio album, Impossible Princess, her songwriting and musical content began to change. She was constantly writing down words, exploring the form and meaning of sentences. She had written lyrics before, but called them "safe, just neatly rhymed words and that's that". Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine said that the album bears a resemblance to Madonna's Ray of Light. He said that she took inspiration from "both the Brit-pop and electronica movements of the mid-'90s", saying that "Impossible Princess is the work of an artist willing to take risks". Her next effort, Light Years is a disco-influenced dance-pop record, with AllMusic's Chris True calling it "Arguably one of the best disco records since the '70s". True stated that her eighth album, Fever, "combines the disco-diva comeback of Light Years with simple dance rhythms". Her ninth album, Body Language, was quite different from her musical experiments in the past as it was a "successful" attempt at broadening her sound with electro and hip-hop for instance. Incorporating styles of dance music with funk, disco and R&B, the album was listed on Qs "Best Albums of 2003".
Critics said Minogue's tenth record X did not feature enough "consistency" and Chris True called the tracks "cold, calculated dance-pop numbers." Tim Sendra of AllMusic said that her eleventh album, Aphrodite, "rarely strays past sweet love songs or happy dance anthems" and "the main sound is the kind of glittery disco pop that really is her strong suit." Sendra found Aphrodite "One of her best, in fact." Minogue's 14th studio album, Golden was heavily influenced by country music, although maintaining her dance-pop sensibilities. Sal Cinquemani from Slant Magazine wrote that "Golden further bolsters Minogue's reputation for taking risks—and artfully sets the stage for her inevitable disco comeback."
Public image
Minogue's efforts to be taken seriously as a recording artist were initially hindered by the perception that she had not "paid her dues" and was no more than a manufactured pop star exploiting the image she had created during her stint on Neighbours. Minogue acknowledged this viewpoint, saying, "If you're part of a record company, I think to a degree it's fair to say that you're a manufactured product. You're a product and you're selling a product. It doesn't mean that you're not talented and that you don't make creative and business decisions about what you will and won't do and where you want to go."
In 1993, Baz Luhrmann introduced Minogue to photographer Bert Stern, notable for his work with Marilyn Monroe. Stern photographed her in Los Angeles and, comparing her to Monroe, commented that Minogue had a similar mix of vulnerability and eroticism. Throughout her career, Minogue has chosen photographers who attempt to create a new "look" for her, and the resulting photographs have appeared in a variety of magazines, from the cutting edge The Face to the more traditionally sophisticated Vogue and Vanity Fair, making the Minogue face and name known to a broad range of people. Stylist William Baker has suggested that this is part of the reason she entered mainstream pop culture in Europe more successfully than many other pop singers who concentrate solely on selling records.
By 2000, Minogue was considered to have achieved a degree of musical credibility for having maintained her career longer than her critics had expected. Her progression from the wholesome "girl next door" to a more sophisticated performer with a flirtatious and playful persona attracted new fans. Her "Spinning Around" video led to some media outlets referring to her as "SexKylie", and sex became a stronger element in her subsequent videos. In September 2002, she was ranked 27 on VH1's 100 Sexiest Artists list. She was also named one of the 100 Hottest Women of All-Time by Men's Health in 2013. William Baker described her status as a sex symbol as a "double edged sword", observing that "we always attempted to use her sex appeal as an enhancement of her music and to sell a record. But now it has become in danger of eclipsing what she actually is: a pop singer." After 20 years as a performer, Minogue was described by BBCs Fiona Pryor as a fashion "trend-setter" and a "style icon who constantly reinvents herself". Pointing out the several reinventions in Minogue's image, Larissa Dubecki from The Age labelled her the "Mother of Reinvention".
Minogue has been inspired by and compared to Madonna throughout her career. She received negative comments that her Rhythm of Love tour in 1991 was too similar visually to Madonna's Blond Ambition World Tour, for which critics labelled her a Madonna wannabe. Writing for the Observer Music Monthly, Rufus Wainwright described Minogue as "the anti-Madonna. Self-knowledge is a truly beautiful thing and Kylie knows herself inside out. She is what she is and there is no attempt to make quasi-intellectual statements to substantiate it. She is the gay shorthand for joy." Kathy McCabe for The Telegraph noted that Minogue and Madonna follow similar styles in music and fashion, but concluded, "Where they truly diverge on the pop-culture scale is in shock value. Minogue's clips might draw a gasp from some but Madonna's ignite religious and political debate unlike any other artist on the planet ... Simply, Madonna is the dark force; Kylie is the light force." Minogue has said of Madonna, "Her huge influence on the world, in pop and fashion, meant that I wasn't immune to the trends she created. I admire Madonna greatly but in the beginning she made it difficult for artists like me, she had done everything there was to be done", and "Madonna's the Queen of Pop, I'm the princess. I'm quite happy with that."
In January 2007, Madame Tussauds in London unveiled its fourth waxwork of Minogue; only Queen Elizabeth II has had more models created. During the same week a bronze cast of her hands was added to Wembley Arena's "Square of Fame". In 2007, a bronze statue of Minogue was unveiled at Melbourne Docklands for permanent display.
In March 2010, Minogue was declared by researchers as the "most powerful celebrity in Britain". The study examined how marketers identify celebrity and brand partnerships. Mark Husak, head of Millward Brown's UK media practice, said: "Kylie is widely accepted as an adopted Brit. People know her, like her and she is surrounded by positive buzz". In 2016, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, Minogue had a net worth of £55 million.
Minogue is regarded as a gay icon, which she has encouraged with comments including "I am not a traditional gay icon. There's been no tragedy in my life, only tragic outfits" and "My gay audience has been with me from the beginning ... they kind of adopted me." Her status as a gay icon has been attributed to her music, fashion sense and career longevity. Author Constantine Chatzipapatheodoridis wrote about Minogue's appeal to gay men in Strike a Pose, Forever: The Legacy of Vogue... and observed that she "frequently incorporates camp-inflected themes in her extravaganzas, drawing mainly from the disco scene, the S/M culture, and the burlesque stage." In Beautiful Things in Popular Culture (2007), Marc Brennan stated that Minogue's work "provides a gorgeous form of escapism". Minogue has explained that she first became aware of her gay audience in 1988, when several drag queens performed to her music at a Sydney pub, and she later saw a similar show in Melbourne. She said that she felt "very touched" to have such an "appreciative crowd", and this encouraged her to perform at gay venues throughout the world, as well as headlining the 1994 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Minogue has one of the largest gay followings in the world.
Impact and legacyEntertainment Weeklys Ernest Macias said that, by combining "a panache for fabulous fashion" with "her unequivocal disco-pop sound", Minogue "established herself as a timeless icon." Paula Joye of The Sydney Morning Herald wrote that "Minogue's fusion of fashion and music has made a huge contribution to the style zeitgeist." Fiona MacDonald, from fashion magazine Madison, acknowledged Minogue as "one of the handful of singers recognised around the world by her first name alone. ... And yet despite becoming an international music superstar, style icon and honorary Brit, those two syllables still seem as Australian as the smell of eucalyptus or a barbeque on a hot day." In 2009, the Victoria and Albert Museum "celebrated her influence on fashion" with an exhibition called Kylie Minogue: Image of a Pop Star.
In 2012, Dino Scatena of The Sydney Morning Herald wrote about Minogue: "A quarter of a century ago, a sequence of symbiotic events altered the fabric of Australian popular culture and set in motion the transformation of a 19-year-old soap actor from Melbourne into an international pop icon." Scatena also described her as "Australia's single most successful entertainer and a world-renowned style idol". In the same year, VH1 cited Minogue among its choices on the 100 Greatest Women in Music and the 50 Greatest Women of the Video Era.
Minogue has been recognised with many honorific nicknames, most notably the "Princess of Pop". Jon O'Brien of AllMusic reviewed her box-set Kylie: The Albums 2000–2010 and stated that it "contains plenty of moments to justify her position as one of the all-time premier pop princesses." In January 2012, NME critics ranked her single "Can't Get You Out of My Head" at number four on their Greatest Pop Songs in History list. Channel 4 listed her as one of the world's greatest pop stars. In 2020, Rolling Stone Australia placed her at number three on its 50 Greatest Australian Artists of All Time list.
Minogue's work has influenced pop and dance artists including Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware, Alice Chater, Rina Sawayama, Kim Petras, Melanie C, Ricki-Lee Coulter, Years & Years singer Olly Alexander, September, Diana Vickers, The Veronicas, Slayyyter, Pabllo Vittar and Paris Hilton. In 2007, French avant-garde guitarist Noël Akchoté released So Lucky, featuring solo guitar versions of tunes recorded by Minogue.
Achievements
Minogue has received many accolades, including a Grammy Award, three Brit Awards, 17 ARIA Music Awards, two MTV Video Music Awards, two MTV Europe Music Awards and six Mo Awards, including the Australian Performer of the Year in 2001 and 2003. In 2008, she was honoured with Music Industry Trust's award for recognition of her 20-year career and was hailed as "an icon of pop and style", becoming the first female musician to receive a Music Industry Trust award. In April 2017, the Britain-Australia Society recognised Minogue with its 2016 award for outstanding contribution to the improving of relations and bilateral understanding between Britain and Australia. The citation reads: "In recognition of significant contributions to the Britain-Australia relationship as an acclaimed singer, songwriter, actor and iconic personality in both countries". The award was announced at a reception in Australia House but was personally presented the next day by Prince Philip, Patron of the Society, at Windsor Castle.
As of 2020, she has sold 80 million records worldwide. Minogue is the most successful Australian female recording artist of all time and, in November 2011, on the 25th anniversary of the ARIA Music Awards, she was inducted by the Australian Recording Industry Association into the ARIA Hall of Fame. In June 2012, The Official Chart Company revealed that Minogue is the 12th best selling singer in the United Kingdom to date, and the third best selling female artist, selling over 10.1 million singles. In January 2011, Minogue received a Guinness World Records citation for having the most consecutive decades with top five albums in the UK, with all her albums doing so. Minogue and American singer Madonna are the only artists to have had reached the top position of the UK Albums Chart in four consecutive decades, from the 1980s to the 2010s. Minogue's fifteenth studio album, Disco reached number one in the UK Albums Chart in 2020. It made her the first female artist to reach the top spot of the chart in five consecutive decades, from the 1980s to the 2020s.
According to PRS for Music, her single "Can't Get You Out of My Head" was the most-played track of the 2000s, "after receiving the most airplay and live covers" in the decade.
In 2004, she held the record for the most singles at number one in the ARIA singles chart, with nine. In 2011, she made history for having two songs inside the top three on the U.S. Dance Club Songs chart, with her singles "Better than Today" and "Higher" charting at one and three, respectively. In December 2016, Billboard ranked her as the 18th most successful dance artist of all time.
Personal life
Philanthropy
Minogue has helped fundraise on many occasions. In 1989, she participated in recording "Do They Know It's Christmas?" under the name Band Aid II to help raise money. In early 2010, Minogue along with many other artists (under the name Helping Haiti) recorded a cover version of "Everybody Hurts". The single was a fundraiser to help after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. She also spent a week in Thailand after the 2005 tsunami. During her 2011 Aphrodite World Tour, the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, which was on her itinerary. She declared she would continue to tour there, stating, "I was here to do shows and I chose not to cancel, Why did I choose not to cancel? I thought long and hard about it and it wasn't an easy decision to make." While she was there, she and Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard were star guests at an Australian Embassy fundraiser for the disaster. In January 2020, in response to the 2019–20 Australian bushfires, Minogue announced that she and her family were donating A$500,000 towards immediate firefighting efforts and ongoing support.
In 2008, Minogue pledged her support for a campaign to raise money for abused children, to be donated to the British charities ChildLine and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. According to the source, around $93 million was raised. She spoke out in relation to the cause, saying: "Finding the courage to tell someone about being abused is one of the most difficult decisions a child will ever have to make." Minogue is a frequent supporter of amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research, hosting the amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles in 2010. She has also attended amfAR fundraising benefits in Cannes, and performed at galas for the charity in São Paulo and Hong Kong.
Since Minogue's breast cancer diagnosis in 2005, she has been a sponsor and ambassador for the cause. In May 2010, she held a breast cancer campaign for the first time. She later spoke about the cause saying "It means so much to me to be part of this year's campaign for Fashion Targets Breast Cancer. I wholeheartedly support their efforts to raise funds for the vital work undertaken by Breakthrough Breast Cancer." For the cause, she "posed in a silk sheet emblazoned with the distinctive target logo of Fashion Targets Breast Cancer" for photographer Mario Testino. In April 2014, Minogue launched One Note Against Cancer, a campaign to raise funds and awareness for French cancer research charity APREC (The Alliance for Cancer Research). As part of the campaign, Minogue released the single "Crystallize", with fans able to bid via online auction to own each of the song's 4,408 notes. The proceeds of the auction were donated to APREC, with the names of the successful bidders appearing in the accompanying music video's credits.
Health
Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 36 in May 2005, leading to the postponement of the remainder of her Showgirl: The Greatest Hits Tour and her withdrawal from the Glastonbury Festival. Her hospitalisation and treatment in Melbourne resulted in a brief but intense period of media coverage, particularly in Australia, where then Prime Minister John Howard issued a statement of support. As media and fans began to congregate outside the Minogue residence in Melbourne, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks warned the international media that any disruption of the Minogue family's rights under Australian privacy laws would not be tolerated.
Minogue underwent surgery on 21 May 2005 at Cabrini Hospital in Malvern and commenced chemotherapy treatment soon after. After the surgery, the disease "had no recurrence". On 8 July 2005, she made her first public appearance after surgery when she visited a children's cancer ward at Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital. She returned to France where she completed her chemotherapy treatment at the Institut Gustave-Roussy in Villejuif, near Paris. In January 2006, Minogue's publicist announced that she had finished chemotherapy, and her treatment continued for the next months. On her return to Australia for her concert tour, she discussed her illness and said that her chemotherapy treatment had been like "experiencing a nuclear bomb". While appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show'' in 2008, Minogue said that her cancer had originally been misdiagnosed. She commented, "Because someone is in a white coat and using big medical instruments doesn't necessarily mean they're right", but later spoke of her respect for the medical profession.
Minogue was acknowledged for the impact she made by publicly discussing her cancer diagnosis and treatment. In May 2008, the French Cultural Minister Christine Albanel said, "Doctors now even go as far as saying there is a "Kylie effect" that encourages young women to have regular checks." Several scientific studies have been carried out how publicity around her case resulted in more women undergoing regular checks for cancer symptoms. Television host Giuliana Rancic cited Minogue's cancer story as "inspirational" when she too was diagnosed with cancer.
Discography
Tours and concerts
Filmography
See also
List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Dance Club Songs chart
List of artists who reached number one on the UK Singles Chart
List of best-selling singles worldwide
List of songs recorded by Kylie Minogue
References
Citations
Sources
External links
1968 births
Living people
People from Melbourne
20th-century Australian actresses
20th-century Australian women singers
21st-century Australian actresses
21st-century Australian women singers
ARIA Award winners
ARIA Hall of Fame inductees
Actresses from Melbourne
Australian Officers of the Order of the British Empire
Australian child actresses
Australian dance musicians
Australian emigrants to England
Australian women pop singers
Australian film actresses
Australian people of English descent
Australian people of Irish descent
Australian people of Welsh descent
Australian soap opera actresses
Australian television personalities
Women television personalities
Australian video game actresses
Australian voice actresses
Australian women in electronic music
Brit Award winners
Capitol Records artists
Chevaliers of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Dance-pop musicians
Freestyle musicians
Gold Logie winners
Grammy Award winners for dance and electronic music
MTV Europe Music Award winners
Helpmann Award winners
LGBT rights activists from Australia
NME Awards winners
Nu-disco musicians
Officers of the Order of Australia
Parlophone artists
Participants in British reality television series
Recipients of the Centenary Medal
Singers from Melbourne
Synth-pop singers
Warner Records artists | [
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16897 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight | Knight | A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Greek hippeis and hoplite (ἱππεῖς) and Roman eques and centurion of classical antiquity.
In the Early Middle Ages in Europe, knighthood was conferred upon mounted warriors. During the High Middle Ages, knighthood was considered a class of lower nobility. By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior. Often, a knight was a vassal who served as an elite fighter or a bodyguard for a lord, with payment in the form of land holdings. The lords trusted the knights, who were skilled in battle on horseback. Knighthood in the Middle Ages was closely linked with horsemanship (and especially the joust) from its origins in the 12th century until its final flowering as a fashion among the high nobility in the Duchy of Burgundy in the 15th century. This linkage is reflected in the etymology of chivalry, cavalier and related terms. In that sense, the special prestige accorded to mounted warriors in Christendom finds a parallel in the furusiyya in the Islamic world.
In the Late Middle Ages, new methods of warfare began to render classical knights in armour obsolete, but the titles remained in many countries. Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I is often referred to as the "last knight" in this regard. The ideals of chivalry were popularized in medieval literature, particularly the literary cycles known as the Matter of France, relating to the legendary companions of Charlemagne and his men-at-arms, the paladins, and the Matter of Britain, relating to the legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Today, a number of orders of knighthood continue to exist in Christian Churches, as well as in several historically Christian countries and their former territories, such as the Roman Catholic Sovereign Military Order of Malta, the Protestant Order of Saint John, as well as the English Order of the Garter, the Swedish Royal Order of the Seraphim, and the Order of St. Olav. There are also dynastic orders like the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Order of the British Empire and the Order of St. George. In modern times these are orders centered around charity and civic service, and are no longer military orders. Each of these orders has its own criteria for eligibility, but knighthood is generally granted by a head of state, monarch, or prelate to selected persons to recognise some meritorious achievement, as in the British honours system, often for service to the Church or country. The modern female equivalent in the English language is Dame.
Etymology
The word knight, from Old English cniht ("boy" or "servant"), is a cognate of the German word Knecht ("servant, bondsman, vassal"). This meaning, of unknown origin, is common among West Germanic languages (cf Old Frisian kniucht, Dutch knecht, Danish knægt, Swedish knekt, Norwegian knekt, Middle High German kneht, all meaning "boy, youth, lad"). Middle High German had the phrase guoter kneht, which also meant knight; but this meaning was in decline by about 1200.
The meaning of cniht changed over time from its original meaning of "boy" to "household retainer". Ælfric's homily of St. Swithun describes a mounted retainer as a cniht. While cnihtas might have fought alongside their lords, their role as household servants features more prominently in the Anglo-Saxon texts. In several Anglo-Saxon wills cnihtas are left either money or lands. In his will, King Æthelstan leaves his cniht, Aelfmar, eight hides of land.
A rādcniht, "riding-servant", was a servant on horseback.
A narrowing of the generic meaning "servant" to "military follower of a king or other superior" is visible by 1100. The specific military sense of a knight as a mounted warrior in the heavy cavalry emerges only in the Hundred Years' War. The verb "to knight" (to make someone a knight) appears around 1300; and, from the same time, the word "knighthood" shifted from "adolescence" to "rank or dignity of a knight".
An Equestrian (Latin, from eques "horseman", from equus "horse") was a member of the second highest social class in the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. This class is often translated as "knight"; the medieval knight, however, was called miles in Latin (which in classical Latin meant "soldier", normally infantry).
In the later Roman Empire, the classical Latin word for horse, equus, was replaced in common parlance by the vulgar Latin caballus, sometimes thought to derive from Gaulish caballos. From caballus arose terms in the various Romance languages cognate with the (French-derived) English cavalier: Italian cavaliere, Spanish caballero, French chevalier (whence chivalry), Portuguese cavaleiro, and Romanian cavaler. The Germanic languages have terms cognate with the English rider: German Ritter, and Dutch and Scandinavian ridder. These words are derived from Germanic rīdan, "to ride", in turn derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *reidh-.
Evolution of medieval knighthood
Pre-Carolingian legacies
In ancient Rome there was a knightly class Ordo Equestris (order of mounted nobles). Some portions of the armies of Germanic peoples who occupied Europe from the 3rd century AD onward had been mounted, and some armies, such as those of the Ostrogoths, were mainly cavalry. However, it was the Franks who generally fielded armies composed of large masses of infantry, with an infantry elite, the comitatus, which often rode to battle on horseback rather than marching on foot. When the armies of the Frankish ruler Charles Martel defeated the Umayyad Arab invasion at the Battle of Tours in 732, the Frankish forces were still largely infantry armies, with elites riding to battle but dismounting to fight.
Carolingian age
In the Early Medieval period any well-equipped horseman could be described as a knight, or miles in Latin. The first knights appeared during the reign of Charlemagne in the 8th century. As the Carolingian Age progressed, the Franks were generally on the attack, and larger numbers of warriors took to their horses to ride with the Emperor in his wide-ranging campaigns of conquest. At about this time the Franks increasingly remained on horseback to fight on the battlefield as true cavalry rather than mounted infantry, with the discovery of the stirrup, and would continue to do so for centuries afterwards. Although in some nations the knight returned to foot combat in the 14th century, the association of the knight with mounted combat with a spear, and later a lance, remained a strong one. The older Carolingian ceremony of presenting a young man with weapons influenced the emergence of knighthood ceremonies, in which a noble would be ritually given weapons and declared to be a knight, usually amid some festivities. These mobile mounted warriors made Charlemagne's far-flung conquests possible, and to secure their service he rewarded them with grants of land called benefices. These were given to the captains directly by the Emperor to reward their efforts in the conquests, and they in turn were to grant benefices to their warrior contingents, who were a mix of free and unfree men. In the century or so following Charlemagne's death, his newly empowered warrior class grew stronger still, and Charles the Bald declared their fiefs to be hereditary, and also issued the Edict of Pîtres in 864, largely moving away from the infantry-based traditional armies and calling upon all men who could afford it to answer calls to arms on horseback to quickly repel the constant and wide-ranging Viking attacks, which is considered the beginnings of the period of knights that were to become so famous and spread throughout Europe in the following centuries. The period of chaos in the 9th and 10th centuries, between the fall of the Carolingian central authority and the rise of separate Western and Eastern Frankish kingdoms (later to become France and Germany respectively) only entrenched this newly landed warrior class. This was because governing power and defense against Viking, Magyar and Saracen attack became an essentially local affair which revolved around these new hereditary local lords and their demesnes.
Multiple Crusades & Military Orders
Clerics and the Church often opposed the practices of the Knights because of their abuses against women and civilians, and many such as St. Bernard, were convinced that the Knights served the devil and not God and needed reforming.
In the course of the 12th century knighthood became a social rank, with a distinction being made between milites gregarii (non-noble cavalrymen) and milites nobiles (true knights). As the term "knight" became increasingly confined to denoting a social rank, the military role of fully armoured cavalryman gained a separate term, "man-at-arms". Although any medieval knight going to war would automatically serve as a man-at-arms, not all men-at-arms were knights.
The first military orders of knighthood were the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre and the Knights Hospitaller, both founded shortly after the First Crusade of 1099, followed by the Order of Saint Lazarus (1100), Knights Templars (1118) and the Teutonic Knights (1190). At the time of their foundation, these were intended as monastic orders, whose members would act as simple soldiers protecting pilgrims.
It was only over the following century, with the successful conquest of the Holy Land and the rise of the crusader states, that these orders became powerful and prestigious.
The great European legends of warriors such as the paladins, the Matter of France and the Matter of Britain popularized the notion of chivalry among the warrior class. The ideal of chivalry as the ethos of the Christian warrior, and the transmutation of the term "knight" from the meaning "servant, soldier", and of chevalier "mounted soldier", to refer to a member of this ideal class, is significantly influenced by the Crusades, on one hand inspired by the military orders of monastic warriors, and on the other hand also cross-influenced by Islamic (Saracen) ideals of furusiyya.
Knightly culture in the Middle Ages
Training
The institution of knights was already well-established by the 10th century. While the knight was essentially a title denoting a military office, the term could also be used for positions of higher nobility such as landholders. The higher nobles grant the vassals their portions of land (fiefs) in return for their loyalty, protection, and service. The nobles also provided their knights with necessities, such as lodging, food, armour, weapons, horses, and money. The knight generally held his lands by military tenure which was measured through military service that usually lasted 40 days a year. The military service was the quid pro quo for each knight's fief. Vassals and lords could maintain any number of knights, although knights with more military experience were those most sought after. Thus, all petty nobles intending to become prosperous knights needed a great deal of military experience. A knight fighting under another's banner was called a knight bachelor while a knight fighting under his own banner was a knight banneret.
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A knight had to be born of nobility – typically sons of knights or lords. In some cases commoners could also be knighted as a reward for extraordinary military service. Children of the nobility were cared for by noble foster-mothers in castles until they reached age seven.
The seven-year-old boys were given the title of page and turned over to the care of the castle's lords. They were placed on an early training regime of hunting with huntsmen and falconers, and academic studies with priests or chaplains. Pages then become assistants to older knights in battle, carrying and cleaning armour, taking care of the horses, and packing the baggage. They would accompany the knights on expeditions, even into foreign lands. Older pages were instructed by knights in swordsmanship, equestrianism, chivalry, warfare, and combat (but using wooden swords and spears).
Squire
When the boy turned 15, he became a squire. In a religious ceremony, the new squire swore on a sword consecrated by a bishop or priest, and attended to assigned duties in his lord's household. During this time the squires continued training in combat and were allowed to own armour (rather than borrowing it).Squires were required to master the “seven points of agilities” – riding, swimming and diving, shooting different types of weapons, climbing, participation in tournaments, wrestling, fencing, long jumping, and dancing – the prerequisite skills for knighthood. All of these were even performed while wearing armour.
Upon turning 21, the squire was eligible to be knighted.
Accolade
The accolade or knighting ceremony was usually held during one of the great feasts or holidays, like Christmas or Easter, and sometimes at the wedding of a noble or royal. The knighting ceremony usually involved a ritual bath on the eve of the ceremony and a prayer vigil during the night. On the day of the ceremony, the would-be knight would swear an oath and the master of the ceremony would dub the new knight on the shoulders with a sword. Squires, and even soldiers, could also be conferred direct knighthood early if they showed valor and efficiency for their service; such acts may include deploying for an important quest or mission, or protecting a high diplomat or a royal relative in battle.
Chivalric code
Knights were expected, above all, to fight bravely and to display military professionalism and courtesy. When knights were taken as prisoners of war, they were customarily held for ransom in somewhat comfortable surroundings. This same standard of conduct did not apply to non-knights (archers, peasants, foot-soldiers, etc.) who were often slaughtered after capture, and who were viewed during battle as mere impediments to knights' getting to other knights to fight them.
Chivalry developed as an early standard of professional ethics for knights, who were relatively affluent horse owners and were expected to provide military services in exchange for landed property. Early notions of chivalry entailed loyalty to one's liege lord and bravery in battle, similar to the values of the Heroic Age. During the Middle Ages, this grew from simple military professionalism into a social code including the values of gentility, nobility and treating others reasonably. In The Song of Roland (c. 1100), Roland is portrayed as the ideal knight, demonstrating unwavering loyalty, military prowess and social fellowship. In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival (c. 1205), chivalry had become a blend of religious duties, love and military service. Ramon Llull's Book of the Order of Chivalry (1275) demonstrates that by the end of the 13th century, chivalry entailed a litany of very specific duties, including riding warhorses, jousting, attending tournaments, holding Round Tables and hunting, as well as aspiring to the more æthereal virtues of "faith, hope, charity, justice, strength, moderation and loyalty."
Knights of the late medieval era were expected by society to maintain all these skills and many more, as outlined in Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, though the book's protagonist, Count Ludovico, states the "first and true profession" of the ideal courtier "must be that of arms." Chivalry, derived from the French word chevalier ('cavalier'), simultaneously denoted skilled horsemanship and military service, and these remained the primary occupations of knighthood throughout the Middle Ages.
Chivalry and religion were mutually influenced during the period of the Crusades. The early Crusades helped to clarify the moral code of chivalry as it related to religion. As a result, Christian armies began to devote their efforts to sacred purposes. As time passed, clergy instituted religious vows which required knights to use their weapons chiefly for the protection of the weak and defenseless, especially women and orphans, and of churches.
Tournaments
In peacetime, knights often demonstrated their martial skills in tournaments, which usually took place on the grounds of a castle. Knights can parade their armour and banner to the whole court as the tournament commenced. Medieval tournaments were made up of martial sports called hastiludes, and were not only a major spectator sport but also played as a real combat simulation. It usually ended with many knights either injured or even killed. One contest was a free-for-all battle called a melee, where large groups of knights numbering hundreds assembled and fought one another, and the last knight standing was the winner. The most popular and romanticized contest for knights was the joust. In this competition, two knights charge each other with blunt wooden lances in an effort to break their lance on the opponent's head or body or unhorse them completely. The loser in these tournaments had to turn his armour and horse over to the victor. The last day was filled with feasting, dancing and minstrel singing.
Besides formal tournaments, they were also unformalized judicial duels done by knights and squires to end various disputes. Countries like Germany, Britain and Ireland practiced this tradition. Judicial combat was of two forms in medieval society, the feat of arms and chivalric combat. The feat of arms were done to settle hostilities between two large parties and supervised by a judge. The chivalric combat was fought when one party's honor was disrespected or challenged and the conflict could not be resolved in court. Weapons were standardized and must be of the same caliber. The duel lasted until the other party was too weak to fight back and in early cases, the defeated party were then subsequently executed. Examples of these brutal duels were the judicial combat known as the Combat of the Thirty in 1351, and the trial by combat fought by Jean de Carrouges in 1386. A far more chivalric duel which became popular in the Late Middle Ages was the pas d'armes or "passage of arms". In this hastilude, a knight or a group of knights would claim a bridge, lane or city gate, and challenge other passing knights to fight or be disgraced. If a lady passed unescorted, she would leave behind a glove or scarf, to be rescued and returned to her by a future knight who passed that way.
Heraldry
One of the greatest distinguishing marks of the knightly class was the flying of coloured banners, to display power and to distinguish knights in battle and in tournaments. Knights are generally armigerous (bearing a coat of arms), and indeed they played an essential role in the development of heraldry. As heavier armour, including enlarged shields and enclosed helmets, developed in the Middle Ages, the need for marks of identification arose, and with coloured shields and surcoats, coat armoury was born. Armorial rolls were created to record the knights of various regions or those who participated in various tournaments.
Equipment
Knights used a variety of weapons, including maces, axes and swords. Elements of the knightly armour included helmet, cuirass, gauntlet and shield.
The sword was a weapon designed to be used solely in combat and was useless in hunting and impractical as a tool. Therefore, a sword was a status symbol among the knightly class. Swords were effective against lightly armoured enemies meanwhile maces and warhammers were more effective against heavily armoured ones.
One of the primary elements of a knight's armour was the shield, which could be used to block strikes and missile attacks. Oval shields were used during the Dark Ages and were made of wooden boards that were roughly half an inch thick. Towards the end the 10th century, oval shields were lengthened to cover the left knee of the mounted warrior, called the kite shield. The heater shield was used during the 13th and the first half of the 14th century. Around 1350, square like shields called bouched shields appeared, which had a notch to place the couched lance.
Early knights wore mail armor up until the mid-14th century as their main form of defence. Mail was extremely flexible and provided good protection against sword cuts, but weak against blunt weapons such as the mace and piercing weapons such as the lance. Padded undergarment known as aketon was worn to absorb shock damage and prevent chafing caused by mail. In hotter climates metal rings became too hot, so sleeveless surcoats were worn as a protection against the sun, and also to show their heraldic arms. This sort of coat also evolved to be tabards, waffenrocks and other garments with the arms of the wearer sewn into it.
Helmets of the knight of the early periods usually were more open helms such as the nasal helmet, and later forms of the spangenhelm. The lack of more facial protection lead to the evolution of more enclosing helmets to be made in the late 12th to early 13th centuries, this eventually would evolve to make the great helm. Later forms of the bascinet, which was originally a small helm worn over the larger great helm, evolved to have pivoted or hinged visors, the most popular of which was the hounskull also known as the pig-face visor.
Plate armor first appeared in the Medieval Ages in the 13th century, plates were added onto the torso and mounted to a base of leather. This form of armor is known as a coat of plates. The torso wasn't the only part of the knight to receive this plate protection evolution, as the elbows and shoulders were covered with circular pieces of metal, commonly referred to as rondels, eventually evolving into the plate arm harness consisting of the rerebrace, vambrace, and spaulder or pauldron. The legs too were covered in plates, mainly on the shin, called schynbalds which later evolved to fully enclose the leg in the form of enclosed greaves. As for the upper legs, cuisses came about in the mid 14th century. Overall, plate armour offered better protection against piercing weapons such as arrows and especially bolts than mail armour did.
Knights' horses were also armored in later periods, caparisons were the first form of medieval horse coverage and was used much like the surcoat. Other armors such as the facial armoring chanfron, were made for horses.
Medieval and Renaissance chivalric literature
Knights and the ideals of knighthood featured largely in medieval and Renaissance literature, and have secured a permanent place in literary romance. While chivalric romances abound, particularly notable literary portrayals of knighthood include The Song of Roland, Cantar de Mio Cid, The Twelve of England, Geoffrey Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier, and Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, as well as Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur and other Arthurian tales (Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, etc.).
Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), written in the 1130s, introduced the legend of King Arthur, which was to be important to the development of chivalric ideals in literature. Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (The Death of Arthur), written in 1469, was important in defining the ideal of chivalry, which is essential to the modern concept of the knight, as an elite warrior sworn to uphold the values of faith, loyalty, courage, and honour.
Instructional literature was also created. Geoffroi de Charny's "Book of Chivalry" expounded upon the importance of Christian faith in every area of a knight's life, though still laying stress on the primarily military focus of knighthood.
In the early Renaissance greater emphasis was laid upon courtliness. The ideal courtier—the chivalrous knight—of Baldassarre Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier became a model of the ideal virtues of nobility. Castiglione's tale took the form of a discussion among the nobility of the court of the Duke of Urbino, in which the characters determine that the ideal knight should be renowned not only for his bravery and prowess in battle, but also as a skilled dancer, athlete, singer and orator, and he should also be well-read in the humanities and classical Greek and Latin literature.
Later Renaissance literature, such as Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote, rejected the code of chivalry as unrealistic idealism. The rise of Christian humanism in Renaissance literature demonstrated a marked departure from the chivalric romance of late medieval literature, and the chivalric ideal ceased to influence literature over successive centuries until it saw some pockets of revival in post-Victorian literature.
Decline
By the end of the 16th century, knights were becoming obsolete as countries started creating their own professional armies that were quicker to train, cheaper, and easier to mobilize. The advancement of high-powered firearms contributed greatly to the decline in use of plate armour, as the time it took to train soldiers with guns was much less compared to that of the knight. The cost of equipment was also significantly lower, and guns had a reasonable chance to easily penetrate a knight's armour. In the 14th century the use of infantrymen armed with pikes and fighting in close formation also proved effective against heavy cavalry, such as during the Battle of Nancy, when Charles the Bold and his armoured cavalry were decimated by Swiss pikemen. As the feudal system came to an end, lords saw no further use of knights. Many landowners found the duties of knighthood too expensive and so contented themselves with the use of squires. Mercenaries also became an economic alternative to knights when conflicts arose.
Armies of the time started adopting a more realistic approach to warfare than the honor-bound code of chivalry. Soon, the remaining knights were absorbed into professional armies. Although they had a higher rank than most soldiers because of their valuable lineage, they lost their distinctive identity that previously set them apart from common soldiers. Some knightly orders survived into modern times. They adopted newer technology while still retaining their age-old chivalric traditions. Examples include the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, Knights Hospitaller and Teutonic Knights.
Radiance of knighthood into the 21st century
When chivalry had long since declined, the cavalry of the early modern era clung to the old ideals. Even the first fighter pilots of the First World War, even in the 20th century, still resorted to knightly ideas in their duels in the sky, aimed at fairness and honesty. At least; such chivalry was spread in the media. This idea was then completely lost in later wars or was perverted by Nazi Germany, which awarded a "Knight's Cross" as an award. Conversely, the Austrian priest and resistance fighter Heinrich Maier is referred to as Miles Christi, a Christian knight against Nazi Germany.
While on the one hand attempts are made again and again to revive or restore old knightly orders in order to gain prestige, awards and financial advantages, on the other hand old orders continue to exist or are activated. This especially in the environment of ruling or formerly ruling noble houses. For example, the British Queen Elizabeth II regularly appoints new members to the Order of the British Empire, which also includes members such as Steven Spielberg, Nelson Mandela and Bill Gates, in the 21st century. In Central Europe, for example, the Order of St. George, whose roots go back to the so-called "last knight" Emperor Maximilian I, was reactivated by the House of Habsburg after its dissolution by Nazi Germany and the fall of the Iron Curtain. And in republican France, deserved personalities are highlighted to this day by the award of the Knight of Honor (Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur - Legion of Honour). In contrast, the knights of the ecclesiastical knightly orders like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and the Order of Saint John mainly devote themselves to social tasks and care.
The journalist Alexander von Schönburg dealt with nature and the possible necessity of chivalry. In view of the complete social disorientation of the people he diagnosed, he calls for a return to virtues such as modesty, wisdom and, above all, loyalty. For, according to him, the common creed today is roughness, ignorance and egocentrism. Vinzenz Stimpfl-Abele, Procurator of the Habsburg Order of St. George, goes back to Bernhard von Clairvaux to consider the importance of knights in the 21st century. Accordingly, knights must take an active part in the fight against misery in society, especially today. The current activities of the Knights of the Order of Malta and the Order of St. John, who since the beginning of the 20th century have increasingly provided extensive medical and charitable services during wars and peacetime, have also developed in this direction.
Types of knighthood
Hereditary knighthoods
Continental Europe
In continental Europe different systems of hereditary knighthood have existed or do exist. Ridder, Dutch for "knight", is a hereditary noble title in the Netherlands. It is the lowest title within the nobility system and ranks below that of "Baron" but above "Jonkheer" (the latter is not a title, but a Dutch honorific to show that someone belongs to the untitled nobility). The collective term for its holders in a certain locality is the Ridderschap (e.g. Ridderschap van Holland, Ridderschap van Friesland, etc.). In the Netherlands no female equivalent exists. Before 1814, the history of nobility is separate for each of the eleven provinces that make up the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In each of these, there were in the early Middle Ages a number of feudal lords who often were just as powerful, and sometimes more so than the rulers themselves. In old times, no other title existed but that of knight. In the Netherlands only 10 knightly families are still extant, a number which steadily decreases because in that country ennoblement or incorporation into the nobility is not possible anymore.
Likewise Ridder, Dutch for "knight", or the equivalent French Chevalier is a hereditary noble title in Belgium. It is the second lowest title within the nobility system above Écuyer or Jonkheer/Jonkvrouw and below Baron. Like in the Netherlands, no female equivalent to the title exists. Belgium still does have about 232 registered knightly families.
The German and Austrian equivalent of an hereditary knight is a Ritter. This designation is used as a title of nobility in all German-speaking areas. Traditionally it denotes the second lowest rank within the nobility, standing above "Edler" (noble) and below "Freiherr" (baron). For its historical association with warfare and the landed gentry in the Middle Ages, it can be considered roughly equal to the titles of "Knight" or "Baronet".
In the Kingdom of Spain, the Royal House of Spain grants titles of knighthood to the successor of the throne. This knighthood title known as Order of the Golden Fleece is among the most prestigious and exclusive chivalric orders. This order can also be granted to persons not belonging to the Spanish Crown, as the former Emperor of Japan Akihito, the current Queen of United Kingdom Elizabeth II or the important Spanish politician of the Spanish democratic transition Adolfo Suárez, among others.
The Royal House of Portugal historically bestowed hereditary knighthoods to holders of the highest ranks in the Royal Orders. Today, the head of the Royal House of Portugal Duarte Pio, Duke of Braganza, bestows hereditary knighthoods for extraordinary acts of sacrifice and service to the Royal House. There are very few hereditary knights and they are entitled to wear an oval neck badge with the shield of the house of Braganza. Portuguese hereditary knighthoods confer nobility.
In France, the hereditary knighthood existed similarly throughout as a title of nobility, as well as in regions formerly under Holy Roman Empire control. One family ennobled with a title in such a manner is the house of Hauteclocque (by letters patents of 1752), even if its most recent members used a pontifical title of count. In some other regions such as Normandy, a specific type of fief was granted to the lower ranked knights () called the fief de haubert, referring to the hauberk, or chain mail shirt worn almost daily by knights, as they would not only fight for their liege lords, but enforce and carry out their orders on a routine basis as well. Later the term came to officially designate the higher rank of the nobility in the Ancien Régime (the lower rank being Squire), as the romanticism and prestige associated with the term grew in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
Italy and Poland also had the hereditary knighthood that existed within their respective systems of nobility.
Ireland
There are traces of the Continental system of hereditary knighthood in Ireland. Notably all three of the following belong to the Hiberno-Norman FitzGerald dynasty, created by the Earls of Desmond, acting as Earls Palatine, for their kinsmen.
Knight of Kerry or Green Knight (FitzGerald of Kerry) — the current holder is Sir Adrian FitzGerald, 6th Baronet of Valencia, 24th Knight of Kerry. He is also a Knight of Malta, and has served as President of the Irish Association of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
Knight of Glin or Black Knight (FitzGerald of Limerick) — now dormant.
White Knight (see Edmund Fitzgibbon) — now dormant.
Another Irish family were the O'Shaughnessys, who were created knights in 1553 under the policy of surrender and regrant (first established by Henry VIII of England). They were attainted in 1697 for participation on the Jacobite side in the Williamite wars.
British baronetcies
Since 1611, the British Crown has awarded a hereditary title in the form of the baronetcy. Like knights, baronets are accorded the title Sir. Baronets are not peers of the Realm, and have never been entitled to sit in the House of Lords, therefore like knights they remain commoners in the view of the British legal system. However, unlike knights, the title is hereditary and the recipient does not receive an accolade. The position is therefore more comparable with hereditary knighthoods in continental European orders of nobility, such as Ritter, than with knighthoods under the British orders of chivalry. However, unlike the continental orders, the British baronetcy system was a modern invention, designed specifically to raise money for the Crown with the purchase of the title.
Chivalric orders
Military orders
Order of the Holy Sepulchre, founded very shortly after the First Crusade in 1099
Sovereign Military Order of Malta, also founded after the First Crusade in 1099
Order of Saint Lazarus established about 1100
Knights Templar, founded 1118, disbanded 1307
Teutonic Knights, established about 1190, and ruled the Monastic State of the Teutonic Knights in Prussia until 1525
Other orders were established in the Iberian peninsula, under the influence of the orders in the Holy Land and the Crusader movement of the Reconquista:
Order of Aviz, established in Avis in 1143
Order of Alcántara, established in Alcántara in 1156
Order of Calatrava, established in Calatrava in 1158
Order of Santiago, established in Santiago in 1164.
Honorific orders of knighthood
After the Crusades, the military orders became idealized and romanticized, resulting in the late medieval notion of chivalry, as reflected in the chivalric romances of the time. The creation of chivalric orders was fashionable among the nobility in the 14th and 15th centuries, and this is still reflected in contemporary honours systems, including the term order itself. Examples of notable orders of chivalry are:
the Order of Saint George, founded by Charles I of Hungary in 1325/6
the Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, founded by Count Amadeus VI in 1346
the Order of the Garter, founded by Edward III of England around 1348
the Order of the Dragon, founded by King Sigismund of Luxemburg in 1408
the Order of the Golden Fleece, founded by Philip III, Duke of Burgundy in 1430
the Order of Saint Michael, founded by Louis XI of France in 1469
the Order of the Thistle, founded by King James VII of Scotland (also known as James II of England) in 1687
the Order of the Elephant, which may have been first founded by Christian I of Denmark, but was founded in its current form by King Christian V in 1693
the Order of the Bath, founded by George I in 1725
From roughly 1560, purely honorific orders were established, as a way to confer prestige and distinction, unrelated to military service and chivalry in the more narrow sense. Such orders were particularly popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, and knighthood continues to be conferred in various countries:
The United Kingdom (see British honours system) and some Commonwealth of Nations countries such as New Zealand;
Some European countries, such as The Netherlands, Belgium and Spain among others .
The Holy See (see Papal Orders of Chivalry).
There are other monarchies and also republics that also follow this practice. Modern knighthoods are typically conferred in recognition for services rendered to society, which are not necessarily martial in nature. The British musician Elton John, for example, is a Knight Bachelor, thus entitled to be called Sir Elton. The female equivalent is a Dame, for example Dame Julie Andrews.
In the United Kingdom, honorific knighthood may be conferred in two different ways:
The first is by membership of one of the pure orders of chivalry such as the Order of the Garter, the Order of the Thistle and the dormant Order of Saint Patrick, of which all members are knighted. In addition, many British orders of merit, namely the Order of the Bath, the Order of St Michael and St George, the Royal Victorian Order and the Order of the British Empire are part of the British honours system, and the award of their highest ranks (Knight/Dame Commander and Knight/Dame Grand Cross), comes together with an honorific knighthood, making them a cross between orders of chivalry and orders of merit. By contrast, membership of other British orders of merit, such as the Distinguished Service Order, the Order of Merit and the Order of the Companions of Honour does not confer a knighthood.
The second is being granted honorific knighthood by the British sovereign without membership of an order, the recipient being called Knight Bachelor.
In the British honours system the knightly style of Sir and its female equivalent Dame are followed by the given name only when addressing the holder. Thus, Sir Elton John should be addressed as Sir Elton, not Sir John or Mr John. Similarly, actress Dame Judi Dench should be addressed as Dame Judi, not Dame Dench or Ms Dench.
Wives of knights, however, are entitled to the honorific pre-nominal "Lady" before their husband's surname. Thus Sir Paul McCartney's ex-wife was formally styled Lady McCartney (rather than Lady Paul McCartney or Lady Heather McCartney). The style Dame Heather McCartney could be used for the wife of a knight; however, this style is largely archaic and is only used in the most formal of documents, or where the wife is a Dame in her own right (such as Dame Norma Major, who gained her title six years before her husband Sir John Major was knighted). The husbands of Dames have no honorific pre-nominal, so Dame Norma's husband remained John Major until he received his own knighthood. Since the reign of Edward VII a clerk in holy orders in the Church of England has not normally received the accolade on being appointed to a degree of knighthood. He receives the insignia of his honour and may place the appropriate letters after his name or title but he may not be called Sir and his wife may not be called Lady. This custom is not observed in Australia and New Zealand, where knighted Anglican clergymen routinely use the title "Sir". Ministers of other Christian Churches are entitled to receive the accolade. For example, Sir Norman Cardinal Gilroy did receive the accolade on his appointment as Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1969. A knight who is subsequently ordained does not lose his title. A famous example of this situation was The Revd Sir Derek Pattinson, who was ordained just a year after he was appointed Knight Bachelor, apparently somewhat to the consternation of officials at Buckingham Palace. A woman clerk in holy orders may be made a Dame in exactly the same way as any other woman since there are no military connotations attached to the honour. A clerk in holy orders who is a baronet is entitled to use the title Sir.
Outside the British honours system it is usually considered improper to address a knighted person as 'Sir' or 'Dame' (notable exceptions are members of the Order of the Knights of Rizal in the Republic of the Philippines.) Some countries, however, historically have equivalent honorifics for knights, such as Cavaliere in Italy (e.g. Cavaliere Benito Mussolini), and Ritter in Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire (e.g. Georg Ritter von Trapp).
State knighthoods in the Netherlands are issued in three orders: the Order of William, the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and the Order of Orange Nassau. Additionally there remain a few hereditary knights in the Netherlands.
In Belgium, honorific knighthood (not hereditary) can be conferred by the king on particularly meritorious individuals such as scientists or eminent businessmen, or for instance to astronaut Frank De Winne, the second Belgian in space. This practice is similar to the conferral of the dignity of Knight Bachelor in the United Kingdom. In addition, there still are a number of hereditary knights in Belgium .
In France and Belgium, one of the ranks conferred in some orders of merit, such as the Légion d'Honneur, the Ordre National du Mérite, the Ordre des Palmes académiques and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France, and the Order of Leopold, Order of the Crown and Order of Leopold II in Belgium, is that of Chevalier (in French) or Ridder (in Dutch), meaning Knight.
In the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth the monarchs tried to establish chivalric orders, but the hereditary lords who controlled the Union did not agree and managed to ban such assemblies. They feared the king would use orders to gain support for absolutist goals and to make formal distinctions among the peerage, which could lead to its legal breakup into two separate classes, and that the king would later play one against the other and eventually limit the legal privileges of hereditary nobility. But finally in 1705 King managed to establish the Order of the White Eagle which remains Poland's most prestigious order of that kind. The head of state (now the President as the acting Grand Master) confers knighthoods of the order to distinguished citizens, foreign monarchs and other heads of state. The order has its chapter. There were no particular honorifics that would accompany a knight's name, as historically all (or at least by far most) of its members would be royals or hereditary lords anyway. So today, a knight is simply referred to as "Name Surname, knight of the White Eagle (Order)".
In Nigeria, holders of religious honours like the Knighthood of St. Gregory make use of the word Sir as a pre-nominal honorific in much the same way as it is used for secular purposes in Britain and the Philippines. Wives of such individuals also typically assume the title of Lady.
Women
England and the United Kingdom
Women were appointed to the Order of the Garter almost from the start. In all, 68 women were appointed between 1358 and 1488, including all consorts. Though many were women of royal blood, or wives of knights of the Garter, some women were neither. They wore the garter on the left arm, and some are shown on their tombstones with this arrangement. After 1488, no other appointments of women are known, although it is said that the Garter was conferred upon Neapolitan poet Laura Bacio Terricina, by King Edward VI. In 1638, a proposal was made to revive the use of robes for the wives of knights in ceremonies, but this did not occur. Queens consort have been made Ladies of the Garter since 1901 (Queens Alexandra in 1901, Mary in 1910 and Elizabeth in 1937). The first non-royal woman to be made Lady Companion of the Garter was The Duchess of Norfolk in 1990, the second was The Baroness Thatcher in 1995 (post-nominal: LG). On 30 November 1996, Lady Fraser was made Lady of the Thistle, the first non-royal woman (post-nominal: LT). (See Edmund Fellowes, Knights of the Garter, 1939; and Beltz: Memorials of the Order of the Garter). The first woman to be granted a knighthood in modern Britain seems to have been H.H. Nawab Sikandar Begum Sahiba, Nawab Begum of Bhopal, who became a Knight Grand Commander of the Order of the Star of India (GCSI) in 1861, at the foundation of the order. Her daughter received the same honor in 1872, as well as her granddaughter in 1910. The order was open to "princes and chiefs" without distinction of gender. The first European woman to have been granted an order of knighthood was Queen Mary, when she was made a Knight Grand Commander of the same order, by special statute, in celebration of the Delhi Durbar of 1911. She was also granted a damehood in 1917 as a Dame Grand Cross, when the Order of the British Empire was created (it was the first order explicitly open to women). The Royal Victorian Order was opened to women in 1936, and the Orders of the Bath and Saint Michael and Saint George in 1965 and 1971 respectively.
France
Medieval French had two words, chevaleresse and chevalière, which were used in two ways: one was for the wife of a knight, and this usage goes back to the 14th century. The other was possibly for a female knight. Here is a quote from Menestrier, a 17th-century writer on chivalry: "It was not always necessary to be the wife of a knight in order to take this title. Sometimes, when some male fiefs were conceded by special privilege to women, they took the rank of chevaleresse, as one sees plainly in Hemricourt where women who were not wives of knights are called chevaleresses." Modern French orders of knighthood include women, for example the Légion d'Honneur (Legion of Honor) since the mid-19th century, but they are usually called chevaliers. The first documented case is that of Angélique Brûlon (1772–1859), who fought in the Revolutionary Wars, received a military disability pension in 1798, the rank of 2nd lieutenant in 1822, and the Legion of Honor in 1852. A recipient of the Ordre National du Mérite recently requested from the order's Chancery the permission to call herself "chevalière," and the request was granted.
Italy
As related in Orders of Knighthood, Awards and the Holy See by H. E. Cardinale (1983), the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary was founded by two Bolognese nobles Loderingo degli Andalò and Catalano di Guido in 1233, and approved by Pope Alexander IV in 1261. It was the first religious order of knighthood to grant the rank of militissa to women. However, this order was suppressed by Pope Sixtus V in 1558.
The Low Countries
At the initiative of Catherine Baw in 1441, and 10 years later of Elizabeth, Mary, and Isabella of the house of Hornes, orders were founded which were open exclusively to women of noble birth, who received the French title of chevalière or the Latin title of equitissa. In his Glossarium (s.v. militissa), Du Cange notes that still in his day (17th century), the female canons of the canonical monastery of St. Gertrude in Nivelles (Brabant), after a probation of 3 years, are made knights (militissae) at the altar, by a (male) knight called in for that purpose, who gives them the accolade with a sword and pronounces the usual words.
Spain
To honour those women who defended Tortosa against an attack by the Moors, Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, created the Order of the Hatchet (Orden de la Hacha) in 1149.
Notable knights
Adrian von Bubenberg
Andrew Moray
Baldwin of Boulogne
Balian of Ibelin
Bertrand du Guesclin
Bohemond I of Antioch
El Cid
Francis Drake
Francisco Pizarro
Franz von Sickingen
Gerard Thom
Geoffroi de Charny
Gilles de Rais
Godfrey of Bouillon
Götz von Berlichingen
Henry Percy (Hotspur)
Heinrich von Bülow (Grotekop)
Heinrich von Winkelried
Hernán Cortés
Hugues de Payens
Jean III d'Aa of Gruuthuse
Jean Le Maingre
Joanot Martorell
John Hawkwood
Philip Riedesel zu Camberg
Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard
Raymond IV of Toulouse
Roger Bigod
Roger Mortimer
Ruggero di Lauria
Simon de Montfort, the Elder
Simon V de Montfort
Stibor of Stiboricz
Suero de Quiñones
Vincenzo Anastagi
William Clito
William Marshal
William Wallace
Zawisza Czarny
See also
Accolade
Auxilium ad filium militem faciendum et filiam maritandam
Chivalric orders
Christian state
Christian nationalism
Military order (religious society)
Spanish military orders
Destrier
Heavy cavalry
Knightly virtues
Knights of Alleberg
Knight-errant
Knight banneret
Knight bachelor
Black knight
Imperial Knight
Medieval warfare
Nobility
Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom
Papal Orders of Chivalry
Counterparts in other cultures
Aswaran
Baghatur
Boyar
Cataphract
Condottieri
Conquistador
Eagle warrior
Equites
Eso Ikoyi
Furusiyya
Housecarl
Hwarang
Janissaries
Juramentado
Kshatriya
Kheshig
Legion of Honour
Maharlika
Medjay
Mujahideen
Myinsi
Pasha
Praetorian Guard
Rajput
Samurai
Shi
Sipahi
Timawa
Youxia
Notes
References
Arnold, Benjamin. German Knighthood, 1050-1300. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985.
Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society, 2nd ed. Translated by Manyon. London: Routledge & Keagn Paul, 1965.
Bluth, B. J. Marching with Sharpe. London: Collins, 2001.
Boulton, D'Arcy Jonathan Dacre. The Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe, 1325–1520. 2d revised ed. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2000.
Bull, Stephen. An Historical Guide to Arms and Armour. London: Studio Editions, 1991.
Carey, Brian Todd; Allfree, Joshua B; Cairns, John. Warfare in the Medieval World, UK: Pen & Sword Military, June 2006.
Church, S. and Harvey, R. (Eds.) (1994) Medieval knighthood V: papers from the sixth Strawberry Hill Conference 1994. Boydell Press, Woodbridge
Edge, David; John Miles Paddock (1988) Arms & Armor of the Medieval Knight. Greenwich, CT: Bison Books Corp.
Edwards, J. C. "What Earthly Reason? The replacement of the longbow by handguns." Medieval History Magazine, Is. 7, March 2004.
Embleton, Gerry. Medieval Military Costume. UK: Crowood Press, 2001.
Forey, Alan John. The Military Orders: From the Twelfth to the Early Fourteenth Centuries. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Macmillan Education, 1992.
Hare, Christopher. Courts & camps of the Italian renaissance. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908.
Kaeuper, Richard and Kennedy, Elspeth The Book of Chivalry of Geoffrey De Charny : Text, Context, and Translation. 1996.
Keen, Maurice. Chivalry. Yale University Press, 2005.
Laing, Lloyd and Jennifer Laing. Medieval Britain: The Age of Chivalry. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996.
Oakeshott, Ewart. A Knight and his Horse, 2nd ed. Chester Springs, PA: Dufour Editions, 1998.
Robards, Brooks. The Medieval Knight at War. London: Tiger Books, 1997.
(Republished Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1970).
Williams, Alan. "The Metallurgy of Medieval Arms and Armour", in Companion to Medieval Arms and Armour. Nicolle, David, ed. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2002. | [
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16898 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kara%20Sea | Kara Sea | The Kara Sea (, Karskoye more) is a marginal sea, separated from the Barents Sea to the west by the Kara Strait and Novaya Zemlya, and from the Laptev Sea to the east by the Severnaya Zemlya archipelago. Ultimately the Kara, Barents and Laptev Seas are all extensions of the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia. It is named after the Kara River (flowing into Baydaratskaya Bay), which is now relatively insignificant but which played an important role in the Russian conquest of northern Siberia. The Kara River name is derived from a Nenets word meaning "hummocked ice".
The Kara Sea's northern limit is marked geographically by a line running from Cape Kohlsaat in Graham Bell Island, Franz Josef Land, to Cape Molotov (Arctic Cape), the northernmost point of Komsomolets Island in Severnaya Zemlya.
The Kara Sea is roughly long and wide with an area of around and a mean depth of .
Its main ports are Novy Port and Dikson and it is important as a fishing ground although the sea is ice-bound for all but two months of the year. Significant discoveries of petroleum and natural gas, the East-Prinovozemelsky field, an extension of the West Siberian Oil Basin, have been made but have not yet been developed. In 2014, US government sanctions resulted in Exxon having until September 26 to discontinue its operations in the Kara Sea.
Geography
Extent
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Kara Sea as follows:
On the West. The Eastern limit of Barentsz Sea [Cape Kohlsaat to Cape Zhelaniya (Desire); West and Southwest coast of Novaya Zemlya to Cape Kussov Noss and thence to Western entrance Cape, Dolgaya Bay () on Vaigach Island. Through Vaigach Island to Cape Greben; thence to Cape Belyi Noss on the mainland].
On the North. Cape Kohlsaat to Cape Molotov () (Northern extremity of Severnaya Zemlya on Komsomolets Island).
On the East. Komsomolets Island from Cape Molotov to South Eastern Cape; thence to Cape Vorochilov, Oktiabrskaya Revolutziya Island to Cape Anuchin. Then to Cape Unslicht on Bolshevik Island. Bolshevik Island to Cape Yevgenov. Thence to Cape Pronchisthehev on the main land (see Russian chart No. 1484 of the year 1935).
Islands
There are many islands and island groups in the Kara Sea. Unlike the other marginal seas of the Arctic, where most islands lie along the coasts, in the Kara Sea many islands, like the Arkticheskiy Institut Islands, the Izvesti Tsik Islands, the Kirov Islands, Uedineniya or Lonely Island, Wiese Island, and Voronina Island are located in the open sea of its central regions.
The largest group in the Kara Sea is by far the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, with five large subgroups and over ninety islands. Other important islands in the Kara Sea are Bely Island, Dikson Island, Taymyr Island, the Kamennyye Islands and Oleni Island. Despite the high latitude, all islands are unglaciated except for Ushakov Island at the extreme northern limit of the Kara Sea.
Current patterns
Water circulation patterns in the Kara Sea are complex. The Kara Sea tends to be sea ice covered between September and May, and between May and August heavily influenced by freshwater run-off (roughly 1200 km3 yr−1 ) from the Russian rivers (e.g., Ob, Yenisei, Pyasina, Pur, and Taz). The Kara Sea is also affected by the water inflow from the Barents Sea, which brings 0.6 Sv in August and 2.6 Sv in December. The advected water originates from the Atlantic, but it was cooled and mixed with freshwater in the Barents Sea before it reaches the Kara Sea. Simulations with the Hamburg shelf ocean model (HAMSOM) suggest that no typical water current pattern consists in the Kara Sea throughout the year. Depending on the freshwater run-off, the dominant wind patterns, and the sea ice formation, the water currents change.
History
The Kara Sea was formerly known as Oceanus Scythicus or Mare Glaciale and it appears with these names in 16th century maps. Since it is closed by ice most of the year it remained largely unexplored until the late nineteenth century.
In 1556 Stephen Borough sailed in the Searchthrift to try to reach the Ob River, but he was stopped by ice and fog at the entrance to the Kara Sea. Not until 1580 did another English expedition, under Arthur Pet and Charles Jackman, attempt its passage. They too failed to penetrate it, and England lost interest in searching for the Northeast Passage.
In 1736–1737 Russian Admiral Stepan Malygin undertook a voyage from Dolgy Island in the Barents Sea. The two ships in this early expedition were the Perviy, under Malygin's command and the Vtoroy under Captain A. Skuratov. After entering the little-explored Kara Sea, they sailed to the mouth of the Ob River. Malygin took careful observations of these hitherto almost unknown areas of the Russian Arctic coastline. With this knowledge he was able to draw the first somewhat accurate map of the Arctic shores between the Pechora River and the Ob River.
In 1878, Finnish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld on ship Vega sailed across the Kara Sea from Gothenburg, along the coast of Siberia, and despite the ice packs, got to 180° longitude by early September. Frozen in for the winter in the Chukchi Sea, Nordenskiöld waited and bartered with the local Chukchi people. The following July, the Vega was freed from the ice, and continued to Yokohama, Japan. He became the first to force the Northeast Passage. The largest group of islands in the Kara Sea, the Nordenskiöld Archipelago, has been named in his honour. The year 1912 was a tragic one for Russian explorers in the Kara Sea. In that fateful year unbroken consolidated ice blocked the way for the Northern Sea Route and three expeditions that had to cross the Kara Sea became trapped and failed: Sedov's on vessel St. Foka, Brusilov's on the St. Anna, and Rusanov's on the Gercules. Georgy Sedov intended to reach Franz Josef Land on ship, leave a depot over there, and sledge to the pole. Due to the heavy ice the vessel could only reach Novaya Zemlya the first summer and wintered in Franz Josef Land. In February 1914 Sedov headed to the North Pole with two sailors and three sledges, but he fell ill and died on Rudolf Island. Georgy Brusilov attempted to navigate the Northeast Passage, was trapped in the Kara Sea, and drifted northward for more than two years reaching latitude 83° 17' N. Thirteen men, headed by Valerian Albanov, left the vessel and started across the ice to Franz Josef Land, but only Albanov and one sailor (Alexander Konrad) survived after a gruesome three-month ordeal. The survivors brought the ship log of St. Anna, the map of her drift, and daily meteorological records, but the destiny of those who stayed on board remains unknown. In the same year the expedition of Vladimir Rusanov was lost in the Kara Sea. The prolonged absence of those three expeditions stirred public attention, and a few small rescue expeditions were launched, including Jan Nagórski's five air flights over the sea and ice from the NW coast of Novaya Zemlya.
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the scale and scope of exploration of the Kara Sea increased greatly as part of the work of developing the Northern Sea Route. Polar stations, of which five already existed in 1917, increased in number, providing meteorologic, ice reconnaissance, and radio facilities. By 1932 there were 24 stations, by 1948 about 80, and by the 1970s more than 100. The use of icebreakers and, later, aircraft as platforms for scientific work were developed. In 1929 and 1930 the Icebreaker Sedov carried groups of scientists to Severnaya Zemlya, the last major piece of unsurveyed territory in the Soviet Arctic; the archipelago was completely mapped under Georgy Ushakov between 1930 and 1932.
Particularly worth noting are three cruises of the Icebreaker Sadko, which went farther north than most; in 1935 and 1936 the last unexplored areas in the northern Kara Sea were examined and the small and elusive Ushakov Island was discovered.
In the summer of 1942, German Kriegsmarine warships and submarines entered the Kara Sea to destroy as many Russian vessels as possible. This naval campaign was named "Operation Wunderland". Its success was limited by the presence of ice floes, as well as bad weather and fog. These effectively protected the Soviet ships, preventing the damage that could have been inflicted on the Soviet fleet under fair weather conditions.
In October 2010, the Russian government awarded a license to Russian oil company Rosneft for developing the East-Prinovozemelsky oil and gas structure in the Kara Sea.
Nuclear dumping
There is concern about radioactive contamination from nuclear waste the former Soviet Union dumped in the sea and the effect this will have on the marine environment. According to an official "White Paper" report compiled and released by the Russian government in March 1993, the Soviet Union dumped six nuclear submarine reactors and ten nuclear reactors into the Kara Sea between 1965–1988. Solid high- and low-level wastes unloaded from Northern Fleet nuclear submarines during reactor refuelings were dumped in the Kara Sea, mainly in the shallow fjords of Novaya Zemlya, where the depths of the dumping sites range from 12 to 135 meters, and in the Novaya Zemlya Trough at depths of up to 380 meters. Liquid low-level wastes were released in the open Barents and Kara Seas. A subsequent appraisal by the International Atomic Energy Agency showed that releases are low and localized from the 16 naval reactors (reported by the IAEA as having come from seven submarines and the icebreaker Lenin) which were dumped at five sites in the Kara Sea. Most of the dumped reactors had suffered an accident.
The Soviet submarine K-27 was scuttled in Stepovogo Bay with its two reactors filled with spent nuclear fuel. At a seminar in February 2012 it was revealed that the reactors on board the submarine could re-achieve criticality and explode (a buildup of heat leading to a steam explosion vs. nuclear). The catalogue of waste dumped at sea by the Soviets, according to documents seen by Bellona, includes some 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships containing radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, including five that still contain spent nuclear fuel; 735 other pieces of radioactively contaminated heavy machinery, and the K-27 nuclear submarine with its two reactors loaded with nuclear fuel.
Nature reserve
The Great Arctic State Nature Reserve—the largest nature reserve of Russia—was founded on May 11, 1993 by Resolution No. 431 of the Government of the Russian Federation (RF). The Kara Sea Islands section (4,000 km²) of the Great Arctic Nature Reserve includes: the Sergei Kirov Archipelago, the Voronina Island, the Izvestiy TSIK Islands, the Arctic Institute Islands, the Svordrup Island, Uedineniya (Ensomheden) and a number of smaller islands. This section represents rather fully the natural and biological diversity of Arctic sea islands of the eastern part of the Kara Sea.
Nearby, the Franz Josef Land and Severny Island in northern Novaya Zemlya are also registered as a sanctuary, the Russian Arctic National Park.
See also
Valerian Albanov
List of seas
Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld
Northern Sea Route
Boris Vilkitsky
West Siberian petroleum basin
References
External links
International Atomic Energy Agency:Radiological Conditions of the Western Kara Sea
J. Zeeberg. Into the Ice Sea.
Sea ice and polynias in the Kara Sea: &
Marine pollution in the Kara Sea:
"Russians Describe Extensive Dumping of Nuclear Waste", The New York Times, 27 April 1993
Seas of the Arctic Ocean
Seas of Russia
Bodies of water of Arkhangelsk Oblast
Bodies of water of Nenets Autonomous Okrug
Bodies of water of Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug
Bodies of water of Krasnoyarsk Krai | [
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16899 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kareem%20Abdul-Jabbar | Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr.; April 16, 1947) is an American former professional basketball player who played 20 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Lakers. During his career as a center, Abdul-Jabbar was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), a record 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA selection, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team member. A member of six NBA championship teams as a player and two more as an assistant coach, Abdul-Jabbar twice was voted NBA Finals MVP. He was named to the league's 35th, 50th and 75th anniversary teams. NBA coach Pat Riley and players Isiah Thomas and Julius Erving called him the greatest basketball player of all time.
With him on the team, parochial high school Power Memorial, in New York City, won 71 consecutive basketball games. He was recruited by Jerry Norman, the assistant coach at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he played for coach John Wooden on three consecutive national championship teams. He was a record three-time MVP of the NCAA Tournament. Drafted with the first overall pick by the one-season-old Bucks franchise in the 1969 NBA draft, Alcindor spent six seasons in Milwaukee. After leading the Bucks to its first NBA championship at age 24 in 1971, he took the Muslim name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Using his trademark "skyhook" shot, he established himself as one of the league's top scorers. In 1975, he was traded to the Lakers, with whom he played the final 14 seasons of his career in which they won five additional NBA championships. Abdul-Jabbar's contributions were a key component in the "Showtime" era of Lakers basketball. Over his 20-year NBA career, his teams succeeded in making the playoffs 18 times and got past the first round 14 times; his teams reached the NBA Finals on 10 occasions.
At the time of his retirement at age 42 in 1989, Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA's all-time leader in points scored (38,387), games played (1,560), minutes played (57,446), field goals made (15,837), field goal attempts (28,307), blocked shots (3,189), defensive rebounds (9,394), career wins (1,074), and personal fouls (4,657). He remains the all-time leader in points scored, field goals made, and career wins. He is ranked third all-time in both rebounds and blocked shots. ESPN named him the greatest center of all time in 2007, the greatest player in college basketball history in 2008, and the second best player in NBA history (behind Michael Jordan) in 2016. Abdul-Jabbar has also been an actor, a basketball coach, a best-selling author, and a martial artist, having trained in Jeet Kune Do under Bruce Lee and appeared in his film Game of Death (1972). In 2012, Abdul-Jabbar was selected by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be a U.S. global cultural ambassador. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Early life
Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Jr. was born in Harlem, New York City, the only child of Cora Lillian, a department store price checker, and Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor Sr., a transit police officer and jazz musician. He grew up in the Dyckman Street projects in the Inwood neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, where he moved to at the age of 3 in 1950. At birth, Alcindor weighed and was long. He was always very tall for his age. By age nine, he was already tall. Alcindor was often depressed as a teenager because of the stares and comments about his height. By the eighth grade (age 13–14), he had grown to and could already slam dunk a basketball.
Alcindor began his record-breaking basketball accomplishments when he was in high school, where he led coach Jack Donohue's Power Memorial Academy team to three straight New York City Catholic championships, a 71-game winning streak, and a 79–2 overall record. This earned him "The Tower from Power" nickname. His 2,067 total points were a New York City high school record. The team won the national high school boys basketball championship when Alcindor was in 10th and 11th grade and was runner-up his senior year. He had a strained relationship in his final year with Donohue after the coach called him a nigger.
College career
Now tall, Alcindor was relegated to the freshman team in his first year at UCLA, as freshman were ineligible to play varsity until 1972. The freshman squad included fellow high school All-Americans Lucius Allen, Kenny Heitz and Lynn Shackelford. On November 27, 1965, Alcindor made his first public performance in UCLA's annual varsity–freshman exhibition game, attended by 12,051 fans in the inaugural game at the Bruins' new Pauley Pavilion. The 1965–66 varsity team was the two-time defending national champions and the top-ranked team in preseason polls. The freshman team won 75–60 behind Alcindor's 31 points and 21 rebounds. It was the first time a freshman team had beaten the UCLA varsity squad. The varsity had lost Gail Goodrich and Keith Erickson from the championship squad to graduation, and starting guard Freddie Goss was out sick. After the game, UPI wrote: "UCLA's Bruins open defense of their national basketball title this week, but right now they're only the second best team on campus." The freshman team was 21–0 that year, dominating against junior college and other freshman teams.
He made his varsity debut as a sophomore in 1966 and received national coverage: Sports Illustrated described him as "The New Superstar" after he scored 56 points in his first game, which broke the UCLA single-game record held by Gail Goodrich. He averaged 29 points per game during the season and led UCLA to an undefeated 30–0 record and a national championship. After the season, the dunk was banned in college basketball in an attempt to curtail his dominance. The rule was not rescinded until the 1976–77 season. Alcindor was the main contributor to the team's three-year record of 88 wins and only two losses: one to the University of Houston in which Alcindor had an eye injury, and the other to crosstown rival USC who played a "stall game"; there was no shot clock in that era, allowing the Trojans to hold the ball as long as it wanted before attempting to score. They limited Alcindor to only four shots and 10 points.
During his college career, Alcindor was a three-time national player of the year (1967–1969); was a three-time unanimous first-team All-American (1967–1969); played on three NCAA basketball champion teams (1967, 1968 and 1969); was honored as the Most Outstanding Player in the NCAA Tournament three times and became the first-ever Naismith College Player of the Year in 1969. He was the only player to win the Helms Foundation Player of the Year award three times.
Alcindor had considered transferring to Michigan because of unfulfilled recruiting promises. UCLA player Willie Naulls introduced Alcindor and teammate Lucius Allen to athletic booster Sam Gilbert, who convinced the pair to remain at UCLA.
During his junior year, Alcindor suffered a scratched left cornea on January 12, 1968, in a game against Cal when he was struck by Tom Henderson in a rebound battle. He would miss the next two games against Stanford and Portland. His cornea would again be scratched during his pro career, which subsequently caused him to wear goggles for eye protection. On January 20, the Bruins faced coach Guy Lewis's Houston Cougars in the first-ever nationally televised regular-season college basketball game, with 52,693 in attendance at the Astrodome. In a contest billed as the "Game of the Century", Cougar forward Elvin Hayes scored 39 points and had 15 rebounds, while Alcindor, suffering from his eye injury, was held to just 15 points as Houston won 71–69, ending UCLA's 47-game winning streak. Hayes and Alcindor had a rematch in the semi-finals of the NCAA Tournament, where UCLA, with a healthy Alcindor, defeated Houston 101–69 en route to the national championship. UCLA limited Hayes, who was averaging 37.7 points per game, to only ten points. Wooden credited his assistant, Jerry Norman, for devising the diamond-and-one defense that contained Hayes. Sports Illustrated ran a cover story on the game and used the headline: "Lew's Revenge: The Rout of Houston."
During the summer of 1968, Alcindor took the shahada twice and converted to Sunni Islam from Catholicism. He adopted the Arabic name Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, though he did not begin using it publicly until 1971. He boycotted the 1968 Summer Olympics, deciding not to try out for U.S. Olympic basketball team, who went on to easily win the gold medal. Alcindor was protesting the unequal treatment of African Americans in the United States, stating that he was "trying to point out to the world the futility of winning the gold medal for this country and then coming back to live under oppression."
At the time, the NBA did not allow college underclassmen to declare early for the draft. Alcindor completed his studies and earned a Bachelor of Arts with a major in history in 1969. In his free time, he practiced martial arts. He studied aikido in New York between his sophomore and junior year, before learning Jeet Kune Do under Bruce Lee in Los Angeles.
School records
As of the 2019–20 UCLA Bruins men's basketball team season, he still holds or shares a number of individual records at UCLA:
Highest career scoring average: 26.4
Most career field goals: 943 (tied with Don MacLean)
Most points in a season: 870 (1967)
Highest season scoring average: 29.0 (1967)
Most field goals in a season: 346 (1967) (also, the second most: 303 (1969), and third: 294 (1968))
Most free throw attempts in a season: 274 (1967)
Most points in a single game: 61
Most field goals in a single game: 26 (vs. Washington State, February 25, 1967)
He is represented in the top ten in a number of other school records, including season and career rebounds, second only to Bill Walton.
Professional career
Milwaukee Bucks (1969–1975)
Rookie of the Year (1969–1970)
The Harlem Globetrotters offered Alcindor $1 million to play for them, but he declined and was picked first in the 1969 NBA draft by the Milwaukee Bucks, who were in only their second season of existence. The Bucks won a coin-toss with the Phoenix Suns for first pick. He was also chosen first overall in the 1969 American Basketball Association draft by the New York Nets. The Nets believed that they had the upper hand in securing Alcindor's services because he was from New York; however, when Alcindor told both the Bucks and the Nets that he would accept only one offer from each team, the Nets bid too low. Sam Gilbert negotiated the contract along with Los Angeles businessman Ralph Shapiro at no charge. After Alcindor chose the Milwaukee Bucks' offer of $1.4 million, the Nets offered a guaranteed $3.25 million. Alcindor declined the offer, saying, "A bidding war degrades the people involved. It would make me feel like a flesh peddler, and I don't want to think like that."
Alcindor's presence enabled the 1969–70 Bucks to claim second place in the NBA's Eastern Division with a 56–26 record (improved from 27–55 the previous year). On February 21, 1970, he scored 51 points in a 140–127 win over the SuperSonics. Alcindor was an instant star, ranking second in the league in scoring (28.8 ppg) and third in rebounding (14.5 rpg), for which he was awarded the title of NBA Rookie of the Year. In the series-clinching game against the 76ers, he recorded 46 points and 25 rebounds. He was the second rookie to score at least 40 points and 25 rebounds in a playoff game (with the first being Wilt Chamberlain). He also set an NBA rookie record with 10 or more games of 20+ points scored during the playoffs, tied by Jayson Tatum in 2018.
First championship, MVP, and Finals MVP (1970–1971)
The next season, the Bucks acquired All-Star guard Oscar Robertson. Milwaukee went on to record the best record in the league with 66 victories in the 1970–71 season, including a then-record 20 straight wins. Alcindor was awarded his first of six NBA Most Valuable Player Awards, along with his first scoring title (31.7 ppg). He also led the league in total points, with 2,596. The Bucks won the NBA title, sweeping the Baltimore Bullets 4–0 in the 1971 NBA Finals. Alcindor posted 27 points, 12 rebounds and seven assists in Game 4, and he was named the Finals MVP after averaging 27 points per game on 60.5% shooting in the series.
MVP recognition and trade request (1971–1975)
During the offseason, Alcindor and Robertson joined Bucks head coach Larry Costello on a three-week basketball tour of Africa on behalf of the State Department. In a press conference at the State Department on June 3, 1971, he stated that going forward, he wanted to be called by his Muslim name, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (, Karīm Abd al-Jabbār), its translation roughly "noble one, servant of the Almighty [i.e., servant of Allah]".
Abdul-Jabbar remained a dominant force for the Bucks. The following year, he repeated as scoring champion (34.8 ppg and 2,822 total points) and became the first player to be named the NBA Most Valuable Player twice in his first three years. In 1974, Abdul-Jabbar led the Bucks to their fourth consecutive Midwest Division title, and he won his third MVP Award in four years. He was among the top five NBA players in scoring (27.0 ppg, third), rebounding (14.5 rpg, fourth), blocked shots (283, second), and field goal percentage (.539, second).
Robertson, who became a free agent in the offseason, retired in September 1974 after he was unable to agree on a contract with the Bucks. On October 3, Abdul-Jabbar privately requested a trade to the New York Knicks, with his second choice being the Washington Bullets (now the Wizards) and his third, the Los Angeles Lakers. He had never spoken negatively of the city of Milwaukee or its fans, but he said that being in the Midwest did not fit his cultural needs. Two days later in a pre-season game before the 1974–75 season against the Boston Celtics in Buffalo, New York, Abdul-Jabbar caught a fingernail in his left eye from Don Nelson and suffered a corneal abrasion; this angered him enough to punch the backboard stanchion, breaking two bones in his right hand. He missed the first 16 games of the season, during which the Bucks were 3–13, and returned in late November wearing protective goggles. On March 13, 1975, sportscaster Marv Albert reported that Abdul-Jabbar requested a trade to either New York or Los Angeles, preferably to the Knicks. The following day after a loss in Milwaukee to the Lakers, Abdul-Jabbar confirmed to reporters his desire to play in another city. He averaged 30.0 points during the season, but Milwaukee finished in last place in the division at 38–44.
Los Angeles Lakers (1975–1989)
Fourth and fifth MVP awards (1975–1977)
In 1975, the Lakers acquired Abdul-Jabbar and reserve center Walt Wesley from the Bucks for center Elmore Smith, guard Brian Winters, blue-chip rookies Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman, and cash. In the 1975–76 season, his first with the Lakers, he had a dominating season, averaging 27.7 points per game and leading the league in rebounding (16.9), blocked shots (4.12), and total minutes played (3,379). His 1,111 defensive rebounds remains the NBA single-season record (defensive rebounds were not recorded prior to the 1973–74 season). He earned his fourth MVP award, becoming the first winner in Lakers' franchise history, but missed the post-season for the second straight year as the Lakers finished 40–42.
Afer acquiring a cast of no-name free agents, the Lakers were projected to finished near the bottom of the Pacific Division in 1976–77. However, Abdul-Jabbar helped lead the team to the best record (53–29) in the NBA. He won his fifth MVP award, tying Bill Russell's record. Abdul-Jabbar led the league in field goal percentage (.579), was third in scoring (26.2), and was second in rebounds (13.3) and blocked shots (3.18). In the playoffs, the Lakers beat the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference semi-finals, setting up a confrontation with the Portland Trail Blazers. The result was a memorable matchup, pitting Abdul-Jabbar against a young, injury-free Bill Walton. Although Abdul-Jabbar dominated the series statistically, Walton and the Trail Blazers (who were experiencing their first-ever run in the playoffs) swept the Lakers, behind Walton's skillful passing and timely plays.
Playoff disappointments (1977–1979)
Two minutes into the opening game of the 1977–78 season, Abdul-Jabbar broke his right hand punching Milwaukee's Kent Benson in retaliation to the rookie's elbow to his stomach. Benson suffered a black right eye and required two stitches. According to Benson, Abdul-Jabbar initiated the elbowing, but there were no witnesses and it was not captured on replays. Abdul-Jabbar, who broke the same bone in 1975 after he punched the backboard support, was out for almost two months and missed 20 games. He was fined a then-league record $5,000 but was not suspended. Benson missed one game but was not punished by the league. The Lakers were 8–13 when Abdul-Jabbar returned. He was not named to the 1978 NBA All-Star Game, the only time in his 20-year career he was not selected to an All-Star Game. Chicago's Artis Gilmore and Detroit's Bob Lanier were chosen as reserves for the West, with Walton starting
at center. Amid criticism from the media over his performance, Abdul-Jabbar had 39 points, 20 rebounds, six assists and four blocks in a win over the Philadelphia 76ers the day the All-Star rosters were announced. He added 37 points and 30 rebounds in a victory over the New Jersey Nets (now Brooklyn) in the final game before the All-Star break.
Abdul-Jabbar's play remained strong during the next two seasons, being named to the All-NBA Second Team twice, the All-Defense First Team once, and the All-Defense Second Team once. The Lakers, however, continued to be stymied in the playoffs, being eliminated by the Seattle SuperSonics in both 1978 (first round) and 1979 (semifinals).
Last MVP award and championship success (1979–1985)
In 1979, the Lakers selected Magic Johnson with the first overall pick of the draft. They had acquired the pick from the New Orleans Jazz (later Utah) in 1976, when league rules required that they compensate Los Angeles for their signing of free agent Gail Goodrich. The addition of Johnson paved the way for a Laker dynasty of the 1980s, appearing in the finals eight times and winning five NBA championships. While less dominant than in his younger years, Abdul-Jabbar reinforced his status as one of the greatest basketball players ever, adding an additional four All-NBA First Team selections and two All-Defense First Team honors. He won his record sixth MVP award in 1980 and continued to average 20 or more points per game in the following six seasons. He won his second Finals MVP in 1985, when he became the oldest to win the award at 38 years and 54 days old. On April 5, 1984, Abdul-Jabbar broke Chamberlain's record for most career points.
While in Los Angeles, Abdul-Jabbar started doing yoga in 1976 to improve his flexibility, and was notable for his physical fitness regimen. He says, "There is no way I could have played as long as I did without yoga."
In 1983, Abdul-Jabbar's house burned down. Many of his belongings, including his beloved jazz LP collection of about 3,000 albums, were destroyed. Many Lakers fans sent and brought him albums, which he found uplifting.
Final playing years and sixth ring (1985–1989)
Prior to the 1986–87 season, Abdul-Jabbar gained , reaching close to , to compete against the growing number of 7-footers (2.1 m) in the league. The Lakers advanced to the NBA Finals in each of his final three seasons, defeating Boston in 1987, and Detroit in 1988. The Lakers lost to the Pistons in a four-game sweep in his final season. After winning Game 7 of the 1988 finals, the 41-year-old Abdul-Jabbar announced in the locker room that he would return for one more season before retiring. His points, rebounds, and minutes had dropped in his 19th season, and there were reports prior to the game that he was retiring after the contest. On his "retirement tour" he received standing ovations at games, both home and away, and gifts ranging from a yacht that said "Captain Skyhook" to framed jerseys from his career to a Persian rug. At the Forum against Seattle in his final regular season game, every Laker came onto the court wearing Abdul-Jabbar's trademark goggles.
At the time of his retirement, Abdul-Jabbar held the record for most career games played in the NBA; this would later be broken by Robert Parish. He also was the all-time record holder for most points (38,387), most field goals made (15,837), and most minutes played (57,446).
Coaching career
In 1995, Abdul-Jabbar began expressing an interest in coaching and imparting knowledge from his playing days. His opportunities were limited despite the success he enjoyed during his playing days. During his playing years, Abdul-Jabbar had developed a reputation for being introverted and sullen. He was often unfriendly with the media. His sensitivity and shyness created a perception of him being aloof and surly. At the time, his mentality was that he either did not have the time or did not owe anything to anyone. Magic Johnson recalled as a kid being brushed off after asking him for an autograph. Abdul-Jabbar might freeze out a reporter if they touched him, and he once refused to stop reading the newspaper while giving an interview.
Abdul-Jabbar had spent most of his career with a reserved attitude towards media attention (since he did not have to deal with it as a star at UCLA) before he softened up near the end of his career. Abdul-Jabbar said: "I didn't understand that I also had affected people that way and that's what it was all about. I always saw it like they were trying to pry. I was way too suspicious and I paid a price for it." However, he believes it was his reputation as a "difficult person", alongside his attempts at trying to break into coaching while nearing the age of fifty, that affected his chances of becoming a head coach within the NBA or NCAA.
Abdul-Jabbar worked as an assistant for the Los Angeles Clippers and the Seattle SuperSonics, helping mentor, among others, their young centers, Michael Olowokandi and Jerome James. Abdul-Jabbar was the head coach of the Oklahoma Storm of the United States Basketball League in 2002, leading the team to the league's championship that season, but he failed to land the head coaching position at Columbia University a year later. He then worked as a scout for the New York Knicks. He returned to the Lakers as a special assistant coach to Phil Jackson for six seasons (2005–2011). Early on, he mentored their young center, Andrew Bynum. Abdul-Jabbar also served as a volunteer coach at Alchesay High School on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Whiteriver, Arizona, in 1998. He moved on from coaching in 2013 after unsuccessfully lobbying for open head coach positions with UCLA and the Milwaukee Bucks.
Player profile
On offense, Abdul-Jabbar was a dominant low-post threat. In contrast to other low-post specialists like Wilt Chamberlain, Artis Gilmore or Shaquille O'Neal, Abdul-Jabbar was a relatively slender player, standing tall while weighing around to , although he bulked to in 1986; in his early years, he used that frame for agility and speed while in later years he utilized a bigger frame for trying to guard under the basket. He was famous for his ambidextrous skyhook shot. It contributed to his high .559 field goal accuracy, making him the eighth-most accurate scorer of all time and a feared clutch shooter.
Abdul-Jabbar maintained a dominant presence on defense. He was selected to the NBA All-Defensive Team eleven times. He frustrated opponents with his superior shot-blocking ability and denied an average of 2.6 shots a game. After the pounding he endured early in his career, his rebounding average fell to between six or eight a game in his latter years. As a teammate, Abdul-Jabbar exuded natural leadership and was affectionately called "Cap" or "Captain" by his colleagues. He had an even temperament, which Riley said made him coachable. A strict fitness regime made him one of the most durable players of all time. In 1985–86, Abdul-Jabbar broke the previous NBA record of 16 seasons held by Dolph Schayes, John Havlicek, Paul Silas, and Elvin Hayes; he finished his career with a then-record 20 seasons played. In the NBA, his 20 seasons and 1,560 games are performances surpassed only by former Celtics center Robert Parish.
Abdul-Jabbar began wearing his trademark goggles after getting poked in the eye during preseason in 1975. He continued wearing them for years until abandoning them in the 1979 playoffs. He resumed wearing goggles in October 1980 after being accidentally poked in the right eye by Houston's Rudy Tomjanovich. After years of being jabbed in the eyes, Abdul-Jabbar developed corneal erosion syndrome, occasionally experiencing pain when his eyes dry up. He missed three games in December 1986 due to the condition.
Skyhook
Abdul-Jabbar was well known for his trademark "skyhook", a hook shot in which he bent his entire body (rather than just the arm) like a straw in one fluid motion to raise the ball and then release it at the highest point of his arm's arching motion. With his long arms and great height, the skyhook was difficult for a defender to block without committing a goaltending violation. As a right-handed player, he was stronger shooting the skyhook with his right hand than he was with his left, although he was adept at shooting it with either hand, making it a reliable and feared offensive weapon. According to Abdul-Jabbar, he learned the move in fifth grade after practicing with the Mikan Drill and soon learned to value it, as it was "the only shot I could use that didn't get smashed back in my face".
Legacy
Abdul-Jabbar is the NBA's all-time leading scorer with 38,387 points, and he won a league-record six MVP awards. He earned six championship rings, two Finals MVP awards, 15 NBA First or Second Teams, a record 19 NBA All-Star call-ups and averaging 24.6 points, 11.2 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 2.6 blocks per game. He is ranked as the NBA's third leading all-time rebounder (17,440). He is also the third all-time in registered blocks (3,189), which is especially impressive because this stat was not recorded until the fourth year of his career (1974).
Abdul-Jabbar combined dominance during his career peak with the longevity and sustained excellence of his later years. He credited Bruce Lee with teaching him "the discipline and spirituality of martial arts, which was greatly responsible for me being able to play competitively in the NBA for 20 years with very few injuries." After claiming his sixth and final MVP in 1980, Abdul-Jabbar continued to average above 20 points in the following six seasons, including 23 points per game in his 17th season at age 38. He was named to the NBA's 35th, 50th and 75th anniversary teams.
Abdul-Jabbar is regarded as one of the best centers ever, and league experts and basketball legends frequently mentioned him when considering the greatest player of all time. Former Lakers coach Pat Riley once said, "Why judge anymore? When a man has broken records, won championships, endured tremendous criticism and responsibility, why judge? Let's toast him as the greatest player ever." Isiah Thomas remarked, "If they say the numbers don't lie, then Kareem is the greatest ever to play the game." Julius Erving in 2013 said, "In terms of players all-time, Kareem is still the number one guy. He's the guy you gotta start your franchise with." In 2015, ESPN named Abdul-Jabbar the best center in NBA history, and ranked him No. 2 behind Michael Jordan among the greatest NBA players ever. While Jordan's shots were enthralling and considered unfathomable, Abdul-Jabbar's skyhook appeared automatic, and he himself called the shot "unsexy". Abdul-Jabbar's only recognized rookie card became the most expensive basketball card ever sold when it went for $501,900 at auction in 2016. That record has since been surpassed.
NBA career statistics
Regular season
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| style="background:#cfecec;"|82* || || 43.1 || .518 || || .653 || 14.5 || 4.1 || || || 28.8
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|†
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 82 || || 40.1 || .577 || || .690 || 16.0 || 3.3 || || ||style="background-color:#cfecec"| 31.7*
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 81 || || 44.2 || .574 || || .689 || 16.6 || 4.6 || || ||style="background-color:#cfecec"| 34.8*
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 76 || || 42.8 || .554 || || .713 || 16.1 || 5.0 || || || 30.2
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 81 || || 43.8 || .539 || || .702 || 14.5 || 4.8 || 1.4 || 3.5 || 27.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 65 || || 42.3 || .513 || || .763 || 14.0 || 4.1 || 1.0 ||style="background-color:#cfecec"| 3.3* || 30.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 82 || || 41.2 || .529 || || .703 ||style="background-color:#cfecec"| 16.9* || 5.0 || 1.5 ||style="background-color:#cfecec"| 4.1* || 27.7
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 82 || || 36.8 ||style="background-color:#cfecec"| .579* || || .701 || 13.3 || 3.9 || 1.2 || 3.2 || 26.2
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 62 || || 36.5 || .550 || || .783 || 12.9 || 4.3 || 1.7 || 3.0 || 25.8
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 80 || || 39.5 || .577 || || .736 || 12.8 || 5.4 || 1.0 ||style="background-color:#cfecec"| 4.0* || 23.8
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 82 || || 38.3 || .604 || .000 || .765 || 10.8 || 4.5 || 1.0 ||style="background-color:#cfecec"| 3.4* || 24.8
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 80 || || 37.2 || .574 || .000 || .766 || 10.3 || 3.4 || .7 || 2.9 || 26.2
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 76 || 76 || 35.2 || .579 || .000 || .706 || 8.7 || 3.0 || .8 || 2.7 || 23.9
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 79 || 79 || 32.3 || .588 || .000 || .749 || 7.5 || 2.5 || .8 || 2.2 || 21.8
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 80 || 80 || 32.8 || .578 || .000 || .723 || 7.3 || 2.6 || .7 || 1.8 || 21.5
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 79 || 79 || 33.3 || .599 || .000 || .732 || 7.9 || 3.2 || .8 || 2.1 || 22.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 79 || 79 || 33.3 || .564 || .000 || .765 || 6.1 || 3.5 || .8 || 1.6 || 23.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 78 || 78 || 31.3 || .564 || .333 || .714 || 6.7 || 2.6 || .6 || 1.2 || 17.5
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 80 || 80 || 28.9 || .532 || .000 || .762 || 6.0 || 1.7 || .6 || 1.2 || 14.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 74 || 74 || 22.9 || .475 || .000 || .739 || 4.5 || 1.0 || .5 || 1.1 || 10.1
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan=2| Career
| 1,560 || 625 || 36.8 || .559 || .056 || .721 || 11.2 || 3.6 || .9 || 2.6 || 24.6
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan=2| All-Star
|bgcolor="EOCEF2" | 19 || 13 || 24.9 || .493 || .000 || .820 || 8.3 || 2.8 || .4 || bgcolor="EOCEF2"|2.1 || 13.9
Playoffs
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1970
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 10 || || 43.5 || .567 || || .733 || 16.8 || 4.1 || || || 35.2
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"| 1971†
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 14 || || 41.2 || .515 || || .673 || 17.0 || 2.5 || || || 26.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1972
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 11 || || 46.4 || .437 || || .704 || 18.2 || 5.1 || || || 28.7
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1973
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 6 || || 46.0 || .428 || || .543 || 16.2 || 2.8 || || || 22.8
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1974
| style="text-align:left;"| Milwaukee
| 16 || ||47.4 || .557 || || .736 || 15.8 || 4.9 || 1.3 || 2.4 || 32.2
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1977
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 11 || || 42.5 || .607 || || .725 || 17.7 || 4.1 || 1.7 || 3.5 || 34.6
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1978
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 3 || || 44.7 || .521 || || .556 || 13.7 || 3.7 || .7 || 4.0 || 27.0
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1979
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 8 || || 45.9 || .579 || || .839 || 12.6 || 4.8 || 1.0 || 4.1 || 28.5
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"| 1980†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 15 || || 41.2 || .572 || || .790 || 12.1 || 3.1 || 1.1 || 3.9 || 31.9
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1981
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 3 || || 44.7 || .462 || || .714 || 16.7 || 4.0 || 1.0 || 2.7 || 26.7
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"| 1982†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 14 || || 35.2 || .520 || || .632 || 8.5 || 3.6 || 1.0 || 3.2 || 20.4
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1983
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 15 || || 39.2 || .568 || .000 || .755 || 7.7 || 2.8 || 1.1 || 3.7 || 27.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1984
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 21 || || 36.5 || .555 || || .750 || 8.2 || 3.8 || 1.1 || 2.1 || 23.9
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"| 1985†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 19 || 19 || 32.1 || .560 || || .777 || 8.1 || 4.0 || 1.2 || 1.9 || 21.9
|-
| style="text-align:left;"|1986
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 14 || 14 || 34.9 || .557 || || .787 || 5.9 || 3.5 || 1.1 || 1.7 || 25.9
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"|1987†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 18 || 18 || 31.1 || .530 || .000 || .795 || 6.8 || 2.0 || .4 || 1.9 || 19.2
|-
| style="text-align:left;background:#afe6ba;"| 1988†
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 24 || 24 || 29.9 || .464 || .000 || .789 || 5.5 || 1.5 || .6 || 1.5 || 14.1
|-
| style="text-align:left;"| 1989
| style="text-align:left;"| L.A. Lakers
| 15 || 15 || 23.4 || .463 || || .721 || 3.9 || 1.3 || .3 || .7 || 11.1
|- class="sortbottom"
| style="text-align:center;" colspan=2| Career
| 237 || 90 || 37.3 || .533 || .000 || .740 || 10.5 || 3.2 || 1.0 || 2.4 || 24.3
Athletic honors
Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame (May 15, 1995)
College:
2× Associated Press College Basketball Player of the Year (1967, 1969)
2× Oscar Robertson Trophy winner (1967, 1968)
2× UPI College Basketball Player of the Year (1967, 1969)
3× Consensus first-team All-American (1967–1969)
3× NCAA champion (1967–1969)
3× NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player (1967–1969)
Naismith College Player of the Year (1969)
3× First-team All-Pac-8 (1967–1969)
National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame (2007)
National Basketball Association:
Rookie of the Year (1970)
6× NBA champion (1971, 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987, 1988)
6× NBA MVP (1971, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1980)
6× Sporting News NBA MVP (1971, 1972, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1980)
2× Finals MVP (1971, 1985)
Sports Illustrated magazine's "Sportsman of the Year" (1985)
One of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History (1996)
Elected to the NBA 75th Anniversary Team (2021)
November 16, 2012 – a statue of Abdul-Jabbar was unveiled in front of Staples Center in Los Angeles
Film and television
Playing in Los Angeles facilitated Abdul-Jabbar's trying his hand at acting.
He made his film debut in Bruce Lee's 1972 film Game of Death, in which his character Hakim fights Billy Lo (played by Lee).
In 1980, he played co-pilot Roger Murdock in Airplane!. Abdul-Jabbar has a scene in which a little boy looks at him and remarks that he is in fact Abdul-Jabbar, spoofing the appearance of football star Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch as an airplane pilot in the 1957 drama that served as the inspiration for Airplane!, Zero Hour!. Staying in character, Abdul-Jabbar states that he is merely Roger Murdock, an airline co-pilot, but the boy continues to insist that Abdul-Jabbar is "the greatest", but that, according to his father, he doesn't "work hard on defense" and that he does not "really try, except during the playoffs". This causes Abdul-Jabbar's character to snap, "The hell I don't!", then grabs the boy and snarls that he has "been hearing that crap ever ever since I was at UCLA" and been "busting my buns every night!". He instructs the boy to "Tell your old man old man to drag [Bill] Walton and [Bob] Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes". When Murdock loses consciousness later in the film, he collapses at the controls wearing Abdul-Jabbar's goggles and yellow Lakers' shorts. In 2014, Abdul-Jabbar and Airplane! co-star Robert Hays (character Ted Striker) reprised their Airplane! roles in a parody commercial promoting Wisconsin tourism.
Abdul-Jabbar has had numerous other television and film appearances, often playing himself. He has had roles in movies such as Fletch, Troop Beverly Hills and Forget Paris, and television series such as Full House, Living Single, Amen, Everybody Loves Raymond, Martin, Diff'rent Strokes (his height humorously contrasted with that of diminutive child star Gary Coleman), The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Scrubs, 21 Jump Street, Emergency!, Man from Atlantis, and New Girl. Abdul-Jabbar played a genie in a lamp in a 1984 episode of Tales from the Darkside. He also played himself on the February 10, 1994, episode of the sketch comedy television series In Living Color.
He also appeared in the television version of Stephen King's The Stand, played the Archangel of Basketball in Slam Dunk Ernest, and had a brief non-speaking cameo appearance in BASEketball. Abdul-Jabbar was also the co-executive producer of the 1994 TV film The Vernon Johns Story. He has also made appearances on The Colbert Report, in a 2006 skit called "HipHopKetball II: The ReJazzebration Remix '06" and in 2008 as a stage manager who is sent out on a mission to find Nazi gold. Abdul-Jabbar also voiced himself in a 2011 episode of The Simpsons titled "Love Is a Many Strangled Thing". He had a recurring role as himself on the NBC series Guys with Kids, which aired from 2012 to 2013. On Al Jazeera English he expressed his desire to be remembered not just as a player, but also as somebody who used their mind and made other contributions.
In February 2019, he appeared in season 12 episode 16 of The Big Bang Theory, "The D&D Vortex".
Abdul-Jabbar made a guest appearance as himself in a season 2 episode of Dave. The episode he appeared in was also named after him.
Writing
In September 2018, Abdul-Jabbar was announced as one of the writers for the July 2019 revival of Veronica Mars.
Documentaries
On February 10, 2011, Abdul-Jabbar debuted his film On the Shoulders of Giants, documenting the tumultuous journey of the famed yet often-overlooked Harlem Renaissance professional basketball team, at Science Park High School in Newark, New Jersey. The event was simulcast live throughout the school, city, and state.
In 2015, he appeared in an HBO documentary on his life, Kareem: Minority of One.
In 2020, Abdul-Jabbar was the executive producer and narrator of the History channel special Black Patriots: Heroes of the Revolution. He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his narration.
Reality television
Abdul-Jabbar participated in the 2013 ABC reality series Splash, a celebrity diving competition.
In April 2018, Abdul-Jabbar competed in the all-athlete season of season 26 of Dancing with the Stars and partnered with professional dancer Lindsay Arnold.
Writing and activism
Abdul-Jabbar became a best-selling author and cultural critic. He published several books, mostly on African-American history. His first book, his autobiography Giant Steps, was written in 1983 with co-author Peter Knobler. The book's title is an homage to jazz great John Coltrane, referring to his album Giant Steps. Others include On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance, co-written with Raymond Obstfeld, and Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, World War II's Forgotten Heroes, co-written with Anthony Walton, which is a history of the first black armored unit to fight in World War II.
Abdul-Jabbar has also been a regular contributor to discussions about issues of race and religion, among other topics, in national magazines and on television. He has written a regular column for Time, for example, and he appeared on Meet the Press on Sunday, January 25, 2015, to talk about a recent column, which pointed out that Islam should not be blamed for the actions of violent extremists, just as Christianity has not been blamed for the actions of violent extremists who profess Christianity. When asked about being Muslim, he said: "I don't have any misgiving about my faith. I'm very concerned about the people who claim to be Muslims that are murdering people and creating all this mayhem in the world. That is not what Islam is about, and that should not be what people think of when they think about Muslims. But it's up to all of us to do something about all of it."
In November 2014, Abdul-Jabbar published an essay in Jacobin magazine calling for just compensation for college athletes, writing, "in the name of fairness, we must bring an end to the indentured servitude of college athletes and start paying them what they are worth."
Commenting on Donald Trump's 2017 travel ban, he strongly condemned it, saying, "The absence of reason and compassion is the very definition of pure evil because it is a rejection of our sacred values, distilled from millennia of struggle."
Government appointments
Cultural ambassador
In January 2012, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that Abdul-Jabbar had accepted a position as a cultural ambassador for the United States. During the announcement press conference, Abdul-Jabbar commented on the historical legacy of African-Americans as representatives of U.S. culture: "I remember when Louis Armstrong first did it back for President Kennedy, one of my heroes. So it's nice to be following in his footsteps." As part of this role, Abdul-Jabbar has traveled to Brazil to promote education for local youths.
President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition
Former President Barack Obama announced in his last days of office that he has appointed Abdul-Jabbar along with Gabrielle Douglas and Carli Lloyd to the President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition.
Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee
In January 2017, Abdul-Jabbar was appointed to the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee by United States Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin. According to the United States Mint, Abdul-Jabbar is a keen coin collector whose interest in the life of Alexander Hamilton had led him into the hobby. He resigned in 2018 due to what the Mint described as "increasing personal obligations".
Personal life
Abdul-Jabbar met Habiba Abdul-Jabbar (born Janice Brown) at a Lakers game during his senior year at UCLA. They eventually married and together had three children: daughters Habiba and Sultana and son Kareem Jr., who played basketball at Western Kentucky after attending Valparaiso. Abdul-Jabbar and Janice divorced in 1978. He has another son, Amir, with Cheryl Pistono. Another son, Adam, made an appearance on the TV sitcom Full House with him.
In 2016, Abdul-Jabbar performed a tribute to friend Muhammad Ali along with Chance the Rapper.
Religion and name
At age 24 in 1971, he converted to Islam and became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, which means "noble one, servant of the Almighty." He was named by Hamaas Abdul Khaalis. Abdul-Jabbar purchased and donated 7700 16th Street NW, a house in Washington, D.C., for Khaalis to use as the Hanafi Madh-Hab Center. Eventually, Kareem "found that [he] disagreed with some of Hamaas' teachings about the Quran, and [they] parted ways." He then studied the Quran on his own, and "emerged from this pilgrimage with my beliefs clarified and my faith renewed." Abdul-Jabbar was also heavily influenced by Malcolm X, a leader of the Nation of Islam. Abdul-Jabbar was invited to join the group, but he refused.
Abdul-Jabbar has spoken about the thinking that was behind his name change when he converted to Islam. He stated that he was "latching on to something that was part of my heritage, because many of the slaves who were brought here were Muslims. My family was brought to America by a French planter named Alcindor, who came here from Trinidad in the 18th century. My people were Yoruba, and their culture survived slavery... My father found out about that when I was a kid, and it gave me all I needed to know that, hey, I was somebody, even if nobody else knew about it. When I was a kid, no one would believe anything positive that you could say about black people. And that's a terrible burden on black people, because they don't have an accurate idea of their history, which has been either suppressed or distorted." His name change further eroded his public image in the United States, mostly in white areas.
In 1998, Abdul-Jabbar reached a settlement after he sued Miami Dolphins running back Karim Abdul-Jabbar (now Abdul-Karim al-Jabbar, born Sharmon Shah) because he felt Karim was profiting off the name he made famous by having the Abdul-Jabbar moniker and number 33 on his Dolphins jersey. As a result, the younger Abdul-Jabbar had to change his jersey nameplate to simply "Abdul" while playing for the Dolphins. The football player had also been an athlete at UCLA.
Health problems
Abdul-Jabbar suffers from migraines, and his use of cannabis to reduce the symptoms has had legal ramifications.
In November 2009, Abdul-Jabbar announced that he was suffering from a form of leukemia, Philadelphia chromosome-positive chronic myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. The disease was diagnosed in December 2008, but Abdul-Jabbar said his condition could be managed by taking oral medication daily, seeing his specialist every other month and having his blood analyzed regularly. He expressed in a 2009 press conference that he did not believe that the illness would stop him from leading a normal life. Abdul-Jabbar is now a spokesman for Novartis, the company that produces his cancer medication, Gleevec.
In February 2011, Abdul-Jabbar announced via Twitter that his leukemia was gone and he was "100% cancer free". A few days later, he clarified his misstatement. "You're never really cancer-free and I should have known that," Abdul-Jabbar said. "My cancer right now is at an absolute minimum."
In April 2015, Abdul-Jabbar was admitted to hospital when he was diagnosed with cardiovascular disease. Later that week, on his 68th birthday, he underwent quadruple coronary bypass surgery at the UCLA Medical Center.
Non-athletic honors
In 2016, Abdul-Jabbar was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama.
In 2011, Abdul-Jabbar was awarded the Double Helix Medal for his work in raising awareness for cancer research. Also in 2011, Abdul-Jabbar received an honorary degree from New York Institute of Technology.
In 2020, Abdul-Jabbar was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Narrator for his work on the documentary special Black Patriots: Heroes of The Revolution.
Works
Books
Kareem, with Mignon McCarthy (1990)
Selected from Giant Steps (Writers' Voices) (1999)
Black Profiles in Courage: A Legacy of African-American Achievement, with Alan Steinberg (1996)
A Season on the Reservation: My Sojourn with the White Mountain Apaches, with Stephen Singular (2000)
Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, World War II's Forgotten Heroes with Anthony Walton (2004)
On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance with Raymond Obstfeld (2007)
What Color Is My World? The Lost History of African American Inventors with Raymond Obstfeld (2012)
Streetball Crew Book One Sasquatch in the Paint with Raymond Obstfeld (2013)
Streetball Crew Book Two Stealing the Game with Raymond Obstfeld (2015)
Mycroft Holmes with Anna Waterhouse (September 2015)
Writings on the Wall: Searching for a New Equality Beyond Black and White with Raymond Obstfeld (2016)
Coach Wooden and Me: Our 50-Year Friendship On and Off the Court (2017)
Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court (2017)
Mycroft and Sherlock with Anna Waterhouse (October 9, 2018)
Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage with Anna Waterhouse (September 24, 2019)
Audio book
On the Shoulders of Giants: An Audio Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance 8-CD Set Vol. 1–4, with Avery Brooks, Jesse L. Martin, Maya Angelou, Herbie Hancock, Billy Crystal, Charles Barkley, James Worthy, Julius Erving, Jerry West, Clyde Drexler, Bill Russell, Coach John Wooden, Stanley Crouch, Quincy Jones and other chart-topping musicians, as well as legendary actors and performers such as Samuel L. Jackson. (2008)
References
External links
1947 births
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Writers from Manhattan | [
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16900 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung%20fu%20%28term%29 | Kung fu (term) | In general, kung fu/kungfu ( or ; pronounced ) refers to the Chinese martial arts also called wushu and quanfa. In China, it refers to any study, learning, or practice that requires patience, energy, and time to complete. In its original meaning, kung fu can refer to any discipline or skill achieved through hard work and practice, not necessarily martial arts (for example, the discipline of tea making is called the Gongfu tea ceremony). The Chinese literal equivalent of "Chinese martial art" would be .
There are many forms of kung fu, such as Shaolin Kung Fu, Wing Chun, Tai chi, etc., and they are practiced all over the world. Each form of kung fu has its own principles and techniques, but is best known for its trickery and quickness, which is where the word kung fu is derived. It is only in the late twentieth century that this term was used in relation to Chinese martial arts by the Chinese community. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term "kung-fu" as "a primarily unarmed Chinese martial art resembling karate." This illustrates how the meaning of this term has been changed in English. The origin of this change can be attributed to the misunderstanding or mistranslation of the term through movie subtitles or dubbing.
In popular culture
References to the concepts and use of Chinese martial arts can be found in popular culture. Historically, the influence of Chinese martial arts can be found in books and in the performance arts specific to Asia. Recently, those influences have extended to the movies and television that targets a much wider audience. As a result, Chinese martial arts have spread beyond its ethnic roots and have a global appeal.
Martial arts play a prominent role in the literature genre known as wuxia (武俠小說). This type of fiction is based on Chinese concepts of chivalry, a separate martial arts society (武林; Wulin) and a central theme involving martial arts. Wuxia stories can be traced as far back as 2nd and 3rd century BCE, becoming popular by the Tang dynasty and evolving into novel form by the Ming dynasty. This genre is still extremely popular in much of Asia and provides a major influence for the public perception of the martial arts.
Martial arts influences can also be found in dance, theater and especially Chinese opera, of which Beijing opera is one of the best-known examples. This popular form of drama dates back to the Tang dynasty and continues to be an example of Chinese culture. Some martial arts movements can be found in Chinese opera and some martial artists can be found as performers in Chinese operas.
In modern times, Chinese martial arts have spawned the genre of cinema known as the Kung fu film. The films of Bruce Lee were instrumental in the initial burst of Chinese martial arts' popularity in the West in the 1970s. Bruce Lee was the iconic international superstar that popularized Chinese martial arts in the West. Martial artists and actors such as Jet Li and Jackie Chan have continued the appeal of movies of this genre. Jackie Chan successfully brought in a sense of humor in his fighting style into his movies. Martial arts films from China are often referred to as "kung fu movies" (功夫片), or "wire-fu" if extensive wire work is performed for special effects, and are still best known as part of the tradition of kung fu theater. (see also: wuxia, Hong Kong action cinema). In 2003, the Fuse (TV channel) began airing episodes of a half-hour television show titled Kung Faux that married classic kung fu films with hip hop sensibilities and comic affects to gain resilient critical success.
"Bitter Work," the literal Cantonese translation of "kung fu," is the title of the ninth episode of season 2 of Avatar. The episode entails the protagonist and nemesis of the show mastering different aspects of kung fu.
Influence on early hip hop
In the 1970s, Bruce Lee was beginning to gain popularity in Hollywood for his martial arts movies. The fact that he was a non-white male who portrayed self-reliance and righteous self-discipline resonated with black audiences and made him an important figure in this community. With the release of Enter the Dragon in 1973, kung fu movies became a hit in America across all backgrounds; however, black audiences maintained the films’ popularity well after the general public lost interest. Urban youth from every borough in New York City were attending movies in Manhattan's Times Square every night to watch the latest movies.
Among these individuals were those coming from the Bronx where, during this time, hip hop was beginning to take form. One of the pioneers responsible for the development of the foundational aspects of hip-hop was DJ Kool Herc, who began creating this new form of music by taking rhythmic breakdowns of songs and looping them. From the new music came a new form of dance known as b-boying or breakdancing, a style of street dance consisting of improvised acrobatic moves. The pioneers of this dance credit kung fu as one of its influences.
Moves such as the crouching low leg sweep and "up rocking" (standing combat moves) are influenced by choreographed kung fu fights. The dancers’ ability to improvise these moves led way to battles, which were dance competitions between two dancers or crews judged on their creativity, skills and musicality. In a documentary, Crazy Legs, a member of breakdancing group Rock Steady Crew, described the breakdancing battle being like an old kung fu movie, "where the one kung fu master says something along the lines of ‘hun your kung fu is good, but mine is better,’ then a fight erupts."
See also
Wushu
Neigong
Qigong
Chinese philosophy
Tai Chi
References
Chinese martial arts terminology
Cantonese words and phrases
English words | [
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16903 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuomintang | Kuomintang | The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD) or the Chinese Nationalist Party, is a major political party in the Republic of China throughout its historical periods in both the Chinese mainland as well as Taiwan. It was the dominant ruling party of the Republic of China on the mainland from 1928 to 1949. The party was then forced to exile from the mainland due to its defeat in the Chinese Civil War, but retained its authoritarian rule over Taiwan under the Dang Guo system until democratic reforms were enacted in the 1990s. In Taiwanese politics, the KMT is the dominant party in the Pan-Blue Coalition and primarily competes with the rival Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), it is currently the largest opposition party in the Legislative Yuan. The current chairman is Eric Chu.
The party originated as the Revive China Society on 24 November 1894 in Honolulu, Republic of Hawaii. From there, the party underwent major reorganization changes that occurred before and after the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the Qing dynasty, and the establishment of the Beiyang regime. In 1919, Sun Yat-sen re-established that party under the name of the Kuomintang in the French-controlled Shanghai. From 1926 to 1928, the KMT under Chiang Kai-shek successfully led the Northern Expedition against regional warlords and unified the fragmented nation. From 1937 to 1945, the Nationalists led China through the Second Sino-Japanese War against Japan. By 1949, the KMT was decisively defeated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Chinese Civil War and withdrew the Nationalist government to Taiwan, a former Qing territory annexed by the Empire of Japan from 1895 to 1945.
From 1949 to 1987, the Kuomintang ruled Taiwan under martial law. During this period, the KMT oversaw Taiwan's economic development, but also experienced diplomatic setbacks, including the Republic of China losing its United Nations seat and the United States switching diplomatic recognition to the CCP-led People's Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s. In the late 1980s, Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek's son and the next KMT leader in turn, lifted martial law. His successor Lee Teng-hui continued pursuing democratic reforms and constitutional amendments, and was re-elected in 1996 through a direct presidential election, the first time in the ROC history. The 2000 presidential election put an end to over 72-years-long dominance of the KMT in the ROC politics. The KMT briefly reclaimed power from 2008 to 2016, with the landslide victory of Ma Ying-jeou in the 2008 presidential election, whose presidency significantly loosened restrictions placed on cross-strait economic and cultural exchange. The KMT again lost the presidency as well as its legislative majority in the 2016 election, returning to the opposition.
The KMT is a member of the International Democrat Union. The party's guiding ideology is the Three Principles of the People, advocated by Sun Yat-sen. The KMT opposes de jure Taiwan independence, Chinese unification under "One Country, Two Systems" and any non-peaceful means to resolve the cross-strait disputes, instead favoring a closer relation with the PRC and maintaining Taiwan's status quo under the Constitution of the Republic of China. The party also accepts the 1992 consensus, which defines both sides of the Taiwan Strait as "one China" but maintains its ambiguity to different interpretations.
History
Founding and Sun Yat-sen era
The KMT traces its ideological and organizational roots to the work of Sun Yat-sen, a proponent of Chinese nationalism and democracy who founded the Revive China Society at the capital of the Republic of Hawaii, Honolulu, on 24 November 1894. In 1905, Sun joined forces with other anti-monarchist societies in Tokyo, Empire of Japan, to form the Tongmenghui, a group committed to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a republic, on 20 August 1905.
The group supported the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 and the founding of the Republic of China on 1 January 1912. Although Sun and the Tongmenghui are often depicted as the principal organizers of the Xinhai Revolution, this view is disputed by scholars who argue that the Revolution broke out in a leaderless and decentralized way and that Sun was only later elected provisional president of the new Chinese republic. However, Sun did not have military power and ceded the provisional presidency of the republic to Yuan Shikai, who arranged for the abdication of Puyi, the last Emperor, on 12 February.
On 25 August 1912, the Nationalist Party was established at the Huguang Guild Hall in Peking, where the Tongmenghui and five smaller pro-revolution parties merged to contest the first national elections. Sun was chosen as the party chairman with Huang Xing as his deputy.
The most influential member of the party was the third ranking Song Jiaoren, who mobilized mass support from gentry and merchants for the Nationalists to advocate a constitutional parliamentary democracy. The party opposed constitutional monarchists and sought to check the power of Yuan. The Nationalists won an overwhelming majority in the first National Assembly election in December 1912.
However, Yuan soon began to ignore the parliament in making presidential decisions. Song Jiaoren was assassinated in Shanghai in 1913. Members of the Nationalists, led by Sun Yat-sen, suspected that Yuan was behind the plot and thus staged the Second Revolution in July 1913, a poorly planned and ill-supported armed rising to overthrow Yuan, and failed. Yuan, claiming subversiveness and betrayal, expelled adherents of the KMT from the parliament. Yuan dissolved the Nationalists, whose members had largely fled into exile in Japan, in November and dismissed the parliament early in 1914.
Yuan Shikai proclaimed himself emperor in December 1915. While exiled in Japan in 1914, Sun established the Chinese Revolutionary Party on 8 July 1914, but many of his old revolutionary comrades, including Huang Xing, Wang Jingwei, Hu Hanmin and Chen Jiongming, refused to join him or support his efforts in inciting armed uprising against Yuan. To join the Revolutionary Party, members had to take an oath of personal loyalty to Sun, which many old revolutionaries regarded as undemocratic and contrary to the spirit of the revolution. As a result, he became largely sidelined within the Republican movement during this period.
Sun returned to China in 1917 to establish a military junta at Canton to oppose the Beiyang government but was soon forced out of office and exiled to Shanghai. There, with renewed support, he resurrected the KMT on 10 October 1919, under the name Kuomintang of China () and established its headquarters in Canton in 1920.
In 1923, the KMT and its Canton government accepted aid from the Soviet Union after being denied recognition by the western powers. Soviet advisers—the most prominent of whom was Mikhail Borodin, an agent of the Comintern—arrived in China in 1923 to aid in the reorganization and consolidation of the KMT along the lines of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, establishing a Leninist party structure that lasted into the 1990s. The Communist Party of China (CPC) was under Comintern instructions to cooperate with the KMT, and its members were encouraged to join while maintaining their separate party identities, forming the First United Front between the two parties. Mao Zedong and early members of the CPC also joined the KMT in 1923.
Soviet advisers also helped the KMT to set up a political institute to train propagandists in mass mobilization techniques, and in 1923 Chiang Kai-shek, one of Sun's lieutenants from the Tongmenghui days, was sent to Moscow for several months' military and political study. At the first party congress in 1924 in Kwangchow, Kwangtung, (Guangzhou, Guangdong) which included non-KMT delegates such as members of the CPC, they adopted Sun's political theory, which included the Three Principles of the People: nationalism, democracy and people's livelihood.
Under Chiang Kai-shek in Mainland China
When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the political leadership of the KMT fell to Wang Jingwei and Hu Hanmin, respectively the left-wing and right-wing leaders of the party. However, the real power was in the hands of Chiang Kai-shek, who was in near complete control of the military as the superintendent of the Whampoa Military Academy. With their military superiority, the KMT confirmed their rule on Canton, the provincial capital of Kwangtung. The Guangxi warlords pledged loyalty to the KMT. The KMT now became a rival government in opposition to the warlord Beiyang government based in Peking.
Chiang assumed leadership of the KMT on 6 July 1926. Unlike Sun Yat-sen, whom he admired greatly and who forged all his political, economic, and revolutionary ideas primarily from what he had learned in Hawaii and indirectly through Hong Kong and Japan under the Meiji Restoration, Chiang knew relatively little about the West. He also studied in Japan, but he was firmly rooted in his ancient Han Chinese identity and was steeped in Chinese culture. As his life progressed, he became increasingly attached to ancient Chinese culture and traditions. His few trips to the West confirmed his pro-ancient Chinese outlook and he studied the ancient Chinese classics and ancient Chinese history assiduously. In 1923, after the formation of the First United Front, Sun Yat-sen sent Chiang to spend three months in Moscow studying the political and military system of the Soviet Union. Although Chiang did not follow the Soviet Communist doctrine, he, like the Communist Party, sought to destroy warlordism and foreign imperialism in China, and upon his return established the Whampoa Military Academy near Guangzhou, following the Soviet Model.
Chiang was also particularly committed to Sun's idea of "political tutelage". Sun believed that the only hope for a unified and better China lay in a military conquest, followed by a period of political tutelage that would culminate in the transition to democracy. Using this ideology, Chiang built himself into the dictator of the Republic of China, both in the Chinese mainland and after the national government relocated to Taiwan.
Following the death of Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek emerged as the KMT leader and launched the Northern Expedition to defeat the northern warlords and unite China under the party. With its power confirmed in the southeast, the Nationalist Government appointed Chiang Kai-shek commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA), and the Northern Expedition to suppress the warlords began. Chiang had to defeat three separate warlords and two independent armies. Chiang, with Soviet supplies, conquered the southern half of China in nine months.
A split erupted between the Chinese Communist Party and the KMT, which threatened the Northern Expedition. Wang Jing Wei, who led the KMT leftist allies, took the city of Wuhan in January 1927. With the support of the Soviet agent Mikhail Borodin, Wang declared the National Government as having moved to Wuhan. Having taken Nanking in March, Chiang halted his campaign and prepared a violent break with Wang and his communist allies. Chiang's expulsion of the CPC and their Soviet advisers, marked by the Shanghai massacre on 12 April, led to the beginning of the Chinese Civil War. Wang finally surrendered his power to Chiang. Joseph Stalin ordered the Chinese Communist Party to obey the KMT leadership. Once this split had been healed, Chiang resumed his Northern Expedition and managed to take Shanghai.
During the Nanking Incident in March 1927, the NRA stormed the consulates of the United States, the United Kingdom and Imperial Japan, looted foreign properties and almost assassinated the Japanese consul. An American, two British, one French, an Italian and a Japanese were killed. These looters also stormed and seized millions of dollars worth of British concessions in Hankou, refusing to hand them back to the UK government. Both Nationalists and Communist soldiers within the army participated in the rioting and looting of foreign residents in Nanking.
NRA took Peking in 1928. The city was the internationally recognized capital, even when it was previously controlled by warlords. This event allowed the KMT to receive widespread diplomatic recognition in the same year. The capital was moved from Peking to Nanking, the original capital of the Ming dynasty, and thus a symbolic purge of the final Qing elements. This period of KMT rule in China between 1927 and 1937 was relatively stable and prosperous and is still known as the Nanjing decade.
After the Northern Expedition in 1928, the Nationalist government under the KMT declared that China had been exploited for decades under the unequal treaties signed between the foreign powers and the Qing Dynasty. The KMT government demanded that the foreign powers renegotiate the treaties on equal terms.
Before the Northern Expedition, the KMT began as a heterogeneous group advocating American-inspired federalism and provincial autonomy. However, the KMT under Chiang's leadership aimed at establishing a centralized one-party state with one ideology. This was even more evident following Sun's elevation into a cult figure after his death. The control by one single party began the period of "political tutelage", whereby the party was to lead the government while instructing the people on how to participate in a democratic system. The topic of reorganizing the army, brought up at a military conference in 1929, sparked the Central Plains War. The cliques, some of them former warlords, demanded to retain their army and political power within their own territories. Although Chiang finally won the war, the conflicts among the cliques would have a devastating effect on the survival of the KMT. Muslim Generals in Kansu waged war against the Guominjun in favor of the KMT during the conflict in Gansu in 1927–1930.
Although the Second Sino-Japanese War officially broke out in 1937, Japanese aggression started in 1931 when they staged the Mukden Incident and occupied Manchuria. At the same time, the CPC had declared the founding of the Chinese Soviet Republic (CSR) in Jiangxi while they had been secretly recruiting new members within the KMT government and military. Chiang was alarmed by the expansion of the communist influence. He believed that to fight against foreign aggression, the KMT must solve its internal conflicts first, so he started his second attempt to exterminate CPC members in 1934. With the advice from German military advisors, the KMT had destroyed the CSR and forced the Communists within Jiangxi to withdraw from their bases in southern and central China into the mountains in a massive military retreat known as the Long March. Less than 10% of the communist army survived the long retreat to Shaanxi, but they re-established their military base quickly as the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region with aid from the Soviet Union.
The KMT was also known to have used terror tactics against suspected communists, through the use of a secret police force, who were employed to maintain surveillance on suspected communists and political opponents. In The Birth of Communist China, C.P. Fitzgerald describes China under the rule of the KMT thus: "the Chinese people groaned under a regime Fascist in every quality except efficiency."
Zhang Xueliang, who believed that the Japanese invasion was a greater threat, was persuaded by the CPC to take Chiang hostage during the Xi'an Incident in 1937 and forced Chiang to agree to an alliance with them in the total war against the Japanese. However, in many situations the alliance was in name only; after a brief period of cooperation, the armies began to fight the Japanese separately, rather than as coordinated allies. The New Fourth Army Incident, where the KMT ambushed the New Fourth Army with overwhelming numbers and decimated it, effectively ended collaboration between the CPC and the KMT.
While the KMT army sustained heavy casualties fighting the Japanese, the CPC expanded its territory by guerrilla tactics within Japanese occupied regions, leading some claims that the CPC often refused to support the KMT troops, choosing to withdraw and let the KMT troops take the brunt of Japanese attacks.
Japan surrendered in 1945, and Taiwan was returned to the Republic of China on 25 October of that year. The brief period of celebration was soon shadowed by the possibility of a civil war between the KMT and CPC. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan just before it surrendered and occupied Manchuria, the north eastern part of China. The Soviet Union denied the KMT army the right to enter the region but allowed the CPC to take control of the Japanese factories and their supplies.
Full-scale civil war between the Communists and the Nationalists erupted in 1946. The Communist Chinese armies, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), previously a minor faction, grew rapidly in influence and power due to several errors on the KMT's part. First, the KMT reduced troop levels precipitously after the Japanese surrender, leaving large numbers of able-bodied, trained fighting men who became unemployed and disgruntled with the KMT as prime recruits for the PLA. Second, the KMT government proved thoroughly unable to manage the economy, allowing hyperinflation to result. Among the most despised and ineffective efforts it undertook to contain inflation was the conversion to the gold standard for the national treasury and the Chinese gold yuan in August 1948, outlawing private ownership of gold, silver and foreign exchange, collecting all such precious metals and foreign exchange from the people and issuing the Gold Standard Scrip in exchange. As most farmland in the north were under CPC's control, the cities governed by the KMT lacked food supply and this added to the hyperinflation. The new scrip became worthless in only ten months and greatly reinforced the nationwide perception of the KMT as a corrupt or at best inept entity. Third, Chiang Kai-shek ordered his forces to defend the urbanized cities. This decision gave CPC a chance to move freely through the countryside. At first, the KMT had the edge with the aid of weapons and ammunition from the United States (US). However, with the country suffering from hyperinflation, widespread corruption and other economic ills, the KMT continued to lose popular support. Some leading officials and military leaders of the KMT hoarded material, armament and military-aid funding provided by the US. This became an issue which proved to be a hindrance of its relationship with US government. US President Harry S. Truman wrote that "the Chiangs, the Kungs and the Soongs (were) all thieves", having taken $750 million in US aid.
At the same time, the suspension of American aid and tens of thousands of deserted or decommissioned soldiers being recruited to the PLA cause tipped the balance of power quickly to the CPC side, and the overwhelming popular support for the CPC in most of the country made it all but impossible for the KMT forces to carry out successful assaults against the Communists.
By the end of 1949, the CPC controlled almost all of mainland China, as the KMT retreated to Taiwan with a significant amount of China's national treasures and 2 million people, including military forces and refugees. Some party members stayed in the mainland and broke away from the main KMT to found the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang, which still currently exists as one of the eight minor registered parties of the People's Republic of China.
In Taiwan since 1945
In 1895, Formosa (now called Taiwan), including the Penghu islands, became a Japanese colony via the Treaty of Shimonoseki following the First Sino-Japanese War.
After Japan's defeat at the end of World War II in 1945, General Order No. 1 instructed Japan to surrender its troops in Taiwan to Chiang Kai-shek. On 25 October 1945, KMT general Chen Yi acted on behalf of the Allied Powers to accept Japan's surrender and proclaimed that day as Taiwan Retrocession Day.
Tensions between the local Taiwanese and mainlanders from Mainland China increased in the intervening years, culminating in a flashpoint on 27 February 1947 in Taipei when a dispute between a female cigarette vendor and an anti-smuggling officer in front of Tianma Tea House triggered civil disorder and protests that would last for days. The uprising turned bloody and was shortly put down by the ROC Army in the February 28 Incident. As a result of 28 February Incident in 1947, Taiwanese people endured what is called the "White Terror", a KMT-led political repression that resulted in the death or disappearance of over 30,000 Taiwanese intellectuals, activists, and people suspected of opposition to the KMT.
Following the establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) on 1 October 1949, the commanders of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) believed that Kinmen and Matsu had to be taken before a final assault on Taiwan. The KMT fought the Battle of Guningtou on 25–27 October 1949 and stopped the PLA invasion. The KMT headquarter was set up on 10 December 1949 at No. 11 Zhongshan South Road. In 1950, Chiang took office in Taipei under the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion. The provision declared martial law in Taiwan and halted some democratic processes, including presidential and parliamentary elections, until the mainland could be recovered from the CPC. The KMT estimated it would take 3 years to defeat the Communists. The slogan was "prepare in the first year, start fighting in the second, and conquer in the third year." Chiang also initiated the Project National Glory to retake back the mainland in 1965, but was eventually dropped in July 1972 after many unsuccessful attempts.
However, various factors, including international pressure, are believed to have prevented the KMT from militarily engaging the CPC full-scale. The KMT backed Muslim insurgents formerly belonging to the National Revolutionary Army during the KMT Islamic insurgency in 1950–1958 in Mainland China. A cold war with a couple of minor military conflicts was resulted in the early years. The various government bodies previously in Nanjing, that were re-established in Taipei as the KMT-controlled government, actively claimed sovereignty over all China. The Republic of China in Taiwan retained China's seat in the United Nations until 1971 as well as recognition by the United States until 1979.
Until the 1970s, the KMT successfully pushed ahead with land reforms, developed the economy, implemented a democratic system in a lower level of the government, improved relations between Taiwan and the mainland and created the Taiwan economic miracle. However, the KMT controlled the government under a one-party authoritarian state until reforms in the late 1970s through the 1990s. The ROC in Taiwan was once referred to synonymously with the KMT and known simply as Nationalist China after its ruling party. In the 1970s, the KMT began to allow for "supplemental elections" in Taiwan to fill the seats of the aging representatives in the National Assembly.
Although opposition parties were not permitted, the pro-democracy movement Tangwai ("outside the KMT") created the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) on 28 September 1986. Outside observers of Taiwanese politics expected the KMT to clamp down and crush the illegal opposition party, though this did not occur, and instead the party's formation marked the beginning of Taiwan's democratization.
In 1991, martial law ceased when President Lee Teng-hui terminated the Temporary Provisions Effective During the Period of Communist Rebellion. All parties started to be allowed to compete at all levels of elections, including the presidential election. Lee Teng-hui, the ROC's first democratically elected president and the leader of the KMT during the 1990s, announced his advocacy of "special state-to-state relations" with the PRC. The PRC associated this idea with Taiwan independence.
The KMT faced a split in 1993 that led to the formation of the New Party in August 1993, alleged to be a result of Lee's "corruptive ruling style". The New Party has, since the purging of Lee, largely reintegrated into the KMT. A much more serious split in the party occurred as a result of the 2000 Presidential election. Upset at the choice of Lien Chan as the party's presidential nominee, former party Secretary-General James Soong launched an independent bid, which resulted in the expulsion of Soong and his supporters and the formation of the People First Party (PFP) on 31 March 2000. The KMT candidate placed third behind Soong in the elections. After the election, Lee's strong relationship with the opponent became apparent. To prevent defections to the PFP, Lien moved the party away from Lee's pro-independence policies and became more favorable toward Chinese reunification. This shift led to Lee's expulsion from the party and the formation of the Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) by Lee supporters on 24 July 2001.
Prior to this, the party's voters had defected to both the PFP and TSU, and the KMT did poorly in the December 2001 legislative elections and lost its position as the largest party in the Legislative Yuan. However, the party did well in the 2002 local government mayoral and council election with Ma Ying-jeou, its candidate for Taipei mayor, winning reelection by a landslide and its candidate for Kaohsiung mayor narrowly losing but doing surprisingly well. Since 2002, the KMT and PFP have coordinated electoral strategies. In 2004, the KMT and PFP ran a joint presidential ticket, with Lien running for president and Soong running for vice-president.
The loss of the presidential election of 2004 to DPP President Chen Shui-bian by merely over 30,000 votes was a bitter disappointment to party members, leading to large scale rallies for several weeks protesting alleged electoral fraud and the "odd circumstances" of the shooting of President Chen. However, the fortunes of the party were greatly improved when the KMT did well in the legislative elections held in December 2004 by maintaining its support in southern Taiwan achieving a majority for the Pan-Blue Coalition.
Soon after the election, there appeared to be a falling out with the KMT's junior partner, the People First Party and talk of a merger seemed to have ended. This split appeared to widen in early 2005, as the leader of the PFP, James Soong appeared to be reconciling with President Chen Shui-Bian and the Democratic Progressive Party. Many PFP members including legislators and municipal leaders have since defected to the KMT, and the PFP is seen as a fading party.
In 2005, Ma Ying-jeou became KMT chairman defeating speaker Wang Jin-pyng in the first public election for KMT chairmanship. The KMT won a decisive victory in the 3-in-1 local elections of December 2005, replacing the DPP as the largest party at the local level. This was seen as a major victory for the party ahead of legislative elections in 2007. There were elections for the two municipalities of the ROC, Taipei and Kaohsiung in December 2006. The KMT won a clear victory in Taipei, but lost to the DPP in the southern city of Kaohsiung by the slim margin of 1,100 votes.
On 13 February 2007, Ma was indicted by the Taiwan High Prosecutors Office on charges of allegedly embezzling approximately NT$11 million (US$339,000), regarding the issue of "special expenses" while he was mayor of Taipei. Shortly after the indictment, he submitted his resignation as KMT chairman at the same press conference at which he formally announced his candidacy for ROC President. Ma argued that it was customary for officials to use the special expense fund for personal expenses undertaken in the course of their official duties. In December 2007, Ma was acquitted of all charges and immediately filed suit against the prosecutors. In 2008, the KMT won a landslide victory in the Republic of China Presidential Election on 22 March 2008. The KMT fielded former Taipei mayor and former KMT chairman Ma Ying-jeou to run against the DPP's Frank Hsieh. Ma won by a margin of 17% against Hsieh. Ma took office on 20 May 2008, with Vice-Presidential candidate Vincent Siew, and ended 8 years of the DPP presidency. The KMT also won a landslide victory in the 2008 legislative elections, winning 81 of 113 seats, or 71.7% of seats in the Legislative Yuan. These two elections gave the KMT firm control of both the executive and legislative yuans.
On 25 June 2009, President Ma launched his bid to regain the KMT leadership and registered as the sole candidate for the chairmanship election. On 26 July, Ma won 93.87% of the vote, becoming the new chairman of the KMT, taking office on 17 October 2009. This officially allowed Ma to be able to meet with Xi Jinping, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, and other PRC delegates, as he was able to represent the KMT as leader of a Chinese political party rather than as head-of-state of a political entity unrecognized by the PRC.
On 29 November 2014, the KMT suffered a heavy loss in the local election to the DPP, winning only 6 municipalities and counties, down from 14 in the previous election in 2009 and 2010. Ma Ying-jeou subsequently resigned from the party chairmanship on 3 December and replaced by acting Chairman Wu Den-yih. Chairmanship election was held on 17 January 2015 and Eric Chu was elected to become the new chairman. He was inaugurated on 19 February.
Current issues and challenges
Party assets
Upon arriving in Taiwan the KMT occupied assets previously owned by the Japanese and forced local businesses to make contributions directly to the KMT. Some of this real estate and other assets was distributed to party loyalists, but most of it remained with the party, as did the profits generated by the properties.
As the ruling party on Taiwan, the KMT amassed a vast business empire of banks, investment companies, petrochemical firms, and television and radio stations, thought to have made it the world's richest political party, with assets once estimated to be around US$2–10 billion. Although this war chest appeared to help the KMT until the mid-1990s, it later led to accusations of corruption (often referred to as "black gold").
After 2000, the KMT's financial holdings appeared to be more of a liability than a benefit, and the KMT started to divest itself of its assets. However, the transactions were not disclosed and the whereabouts of the money earned from selling assets (if it has gone anywhere) is unknown. There were accusations in the 2004 presidential election that the KMT retained assets that were illegally acquired. During the 2000–2008 DPP presidency, a law was proposed by the DPP in the Legislative Yuan to recover illegally acquired party assets and return them to the government. However, due to the DPP's lack of control of the legislative chamber at the time, it never materialized.
The KMT also acknowledged that part of its assets were acquired through extra-legal means and thus promised to "retro-endow" them to the government. However, the quantity of the assets which should be classified as illegal are still under heated debate. DPP, in its capacity as ruling party from 2000 to 2008, claimed that there is much more that the KMT has yet to acknowledge. Also, the KMT actively sold assets under its title to quench its recent financial difficulties, which the DPP argues is illegal. Former KMT chairman Ma Ying-Jeou's position is that the KMT will sell some of its properties at below market rates rather than return them to the government and that the details of these transactions will not be publicly disclosed.
In 2006, the KMT sold its headquarters at 11 Zhongshan South Road in Taipei to Evergreen Group for NT$2.3 billion (US$96 million). The KMT moved into a smaller building on Bade Road in the eastern part of the city.
In July 2014, the KMT reported total assets of NT$26.8 billion (US$892.4 million) and interest earnings of NT$981.52 million for the year of 2013, making it one of the richest political parties in the world.
In August 2016, the Ill-gotten Party Assets Settlement Committee is set up by the ruling DPP government to investigate KMT party assets acquired during the martial law period and recover those that were determined to be illegally acquired.
Cross-strait relations
In December 2003, then-KMT chairman (present chairman emeritus) and presidential candidate Lien Chan initiated what appeared to some to be a major shift in the party's position on the linked questions of Chinese reunification and Taiwan independence. Speaking to foreign journalists, Lien said that while the KMT was opposed to "immediate independence", it did not wish to be classed as "pro-reunificationist" either.
At the same time, Wang Jin-pyng, speaker of the Legislative Yuan and the Pan-Blue Coalition's campaign manager in the 2004 presidential election, said that the party no longer opposed Taiwan's "eventual independence". This statement was later clarified as meaning that the KMT opposes any immediate decision on unification and independence and would like to have this issue resolved by future generations. The KMT's position on the cross-strait relations was redefined as hoping to remain in the current neither-independent-nor-united situation.
However, there had been a warming of relations between the Pan-Blue Coalition and the PRC, with prominent members of both the KMT and PFP in active discussions with officials on the mainland. In February 2004, it appeared that the KMT had opened a campaign office for the Lien-Soong ticket in Shanghai targeting Taiwanese businessmen. However, after an adverse reaction in Taiwan, the KMT quickly declared that the office was opened without official knowledge or authorization. In addition, the PRC issued a statement forbidding open campaigning in the mainland and formally stated that it had no preference as to which candidate won and cared only about the positions of the winning candidate.
In 2005, then-party chairman Lien Chan announced that he was to leave his office. The two leading contenders for the position included Ma Ying-jeou and Wang Jin-pyng. On 5 April 2005, Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou said he wished to lead the opposition KMT with Wang Jin-pyng. On 16 July 2005, Ma was elected KMT chairman in the first contested leadership in the KMT's 93-year history. Some 54% of the party's 1.04 million members cast their ballots. Ma garnered 72.4% of the vote share, or 375,056 votes, against Wang's 27.6%, or 143,268 votes. After failing to convince Wang to stay on as a vice chairman, Ma named holdovers Wu Po-hsiung, Chiang Pin-kung and Lin Cheng-chi (), as well as long-time party administrator and strategist John Kuan as vice-chairmen. All appointments were approved by a hand count of party delegates.
On 28 March 2005, thirty members of the KMT, led by vice-chairman Chiang Pin-kung, arrived in mainland China. This marked the first official visit by the KMT to the mainland since it was defeated by communist forces in 1949 (although KMT members including Chiang had made individual visits in the past). The delegates began their itinerary by paying homage to the revolutionary martyrs of the Tenth Uprising at Huanghuagang. They subsequently flew to the former ROC capital of Nanjing to commemorate Sun Yat-sen. During the trip, the KMT signed a 10-points agreement with the CCP. The proponents regarded this visit as the prelude of the third KMT-CCP cooperation, after the First and Second United Front. Weeks afterwards, in May 2005, Chairman Lien Chan visited the mainland and met with Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China. This marked the first meeting between leaders of the KMT and CCP after the end of Chinese Civil War in 1949. No agreements were signed because incumbent Chen Shui-bian's government threatened to prosecute the KMT delegation for treason and violation of ROC laws prohibiting citizens from collaborating with CCP.
Supporter base
Support for the KMT in Taiwan encompasses a wide range of social groups but is largely determined by age. KMT support tends to be higher in northern Taiwan and in urban areas, where it draws its backing from big businesses due to its policy of maintaining commercial links with mainland China. As of 2020 only 3% of KMT members are under 40 years of age.
The KMT also has some support in the labor sector because of the many labor benefits and insurance implemented while the KMT was in power. The KMT traditionally has strong cooperation with military officers, teachers, and government workers. Among the ethnic groups in Taiwan, the KMT has stronger support among mainlanders and their descendants, for ideological reasons, and among Taiwanese aboriginals. The support for the KMT generally tend to be stronger in majority-Hakka and Mandarin-speaking counties of Taiwan, in contrast to the Hokkien-majority southwestern counties that tend to support the Democratic Progressive Party.
The deep-rooted hostility between Aboriginals and (Taiwanese) Hoklo, and the Aboriginal communities effective KMT networks, contribute to Aboriginal skepticism towards the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and the Aboriginals' tendency to vote for the KMT. Aboriginals have criticized politicians for abusing the "indigenization" movement for political gains, such as aboriginal opposition to the DPP's "rectification" by recognizing the Taroko for political reasons, with the majority of mountain townships voting for Ma Ying-jeou. In 2005 the Kuomintang displayed a massive photo of the anti-Japanese Aboriginal leader Mona Rudao at its headquarters in honor of the 60th anniversary of Taiwan's retrocession from Japan to the Republic of China.
On social issues, the KMT does not take an official position on same-sex marriage, though most members of legislative committees, mayors of cities, and the most recent presidential candidate (Han Kuo-yu) oppose it. The party does, however, have a small faction that supports same-sex marriage, consisting mainly of young people and people in the Taipei metropolitan area. The opposition to same-sex marriage comes mostly from Christian groups, who wield significant political influence within the KMT.
Organization
Leadership
The Kuomintang's constitution designated Sun Yat-sen as party president. After his death, the Kuomintang opted to keep that language in its constitution to honor his memory forever. The party has since been headed by a director-general (1927–1975) and a chairman (since 1975), positions which officially discharge the functions of the president.
Current Central Committee Leadership
Legislative Yuan leader (Caucus leader)
(1 February 1999 – 1 February 2004)
Tseng Yung-chuan (1 February 2004 – 1 December 2008)
Lin Yi-shih (1 December 2008 – 1 February 2012)
Lin Hung-chih (1 February 2012 – 31 July 2014)
(31 July 2014 – 7 February 2015)
Lai Shyh-bao (7 February 2015 – 7 July 2016)
Liao Kuo-tung (7 July 2016 – 29 June 2017)
(29 June 2017 – 14 June 2018)
Johnny Chiang (14 June 2018 – 2019)
Tseng Ming-chung (2019 – 2020)
(2020 – present)
Party organization and structure
The KMT is organized as such:
National Congress
Party chairman
Vice-Chairmen
Central Steering Committee for Women
Central Standing Committee
Secretary-General
Deputy Secretaries-General
Executive Director
Standing committees and departments
Policy Committee
Policy Coordination Department
Policy Research Department
Mainland Affairs Department
Institute of Revolutionary Practice, formerly National Development Institute
Kuomintang Youth League
Research Division
Education and Counselling Division
Party Disciplinary Committee
Evaluation and Control Office
Audit Office
Culture and Communications Committee
Cultural Department
Communications Department
KMT Party History Institute
Administration Committee
Personnel Office
General Office
Finance Office
Accounting Office
Information Center
Organizational Development Committee
Organization and Operations Department
Elections Mobilization Department
Community Volunteers Department
Overseas Department
Youth Department
Women's Department
Party charter
The Kuomintang Party Charter was adopted on January 28, 1924. The current charter has 51 articles and includes contents of General Principles, Party Membership, Organization, The National President, The Director-General, The National Congress, The Central Committee, District and Sub-District Party Headquarters, Cadres and Tenure, Discipline, Awards and Punishment, Funding, and Supplementary Provisions. The most recent version was made at the Seventeenth National Congress on August 19, 2005.
Ideology in mainland China
Chinese nationalism
The KMT was a nationalist revolutionary party that had been supported by the Soviet Union. It was organized on the Leninist principle of democratic centralism.
The KMT had several influences upon its ideology by revolutionary thinking. The KMT and Chiang Kai-shek used the words feudal and counterrevolutionary as synonyms for evil and backwardness, and they proudly proclaimed themselves to be revolutionaries. Chiang called the warlords feudalists, and he also called for feudalism and counterrevolutionaries to be stamped out by the KMT. Chiang showed extreme rage when he was called a warlord, because of the word's negative and feudal connotations. Ma Bufang was forced to defend himself against the accusations, and stated to the news media that his army was a part of "National army, people's power".
Chiang Kai-shek, the head of the KMT, warned the Soviet Union and other foreign countries about interfering in Chinese affairs. He was personally angry at the way China was treated by foreigners, mainly by the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States. He and his New Life Movement called for the crushing of Soviet, Western, American and other foreign influences in China. Chen Lifu, a CC Clique member in the KMT, said "Communism originated from Soviet imperialism, which has encroached on our country." It was also noted that "the white bear of the North Pole is known for its viciousness and cruelty".
KMT leaders across China adopted nationalist rhetoric. The Chinese Muslim general Ma Bufang of Qinghai presented himself as a Chinese nationalist to the people of China who was fighting against Western imperialism to deflect criticism by opponents that his government was feudal and oppressed minorities like Tibetans and Buddhist Mongols. He used his Chinese nationalist credentials to his advantage to keep himself in power.
The KMT pursued a sinicization policy, it was stated that "the time had come to set about the business of making all natives either turn Chinese or get out" by foreign observers of KMT policy. It was noted that "Chinese colonization" of "Mongolia and Manchuria" led "to a conviction that the day of the barbarian was finally over".
Fascism
The Blue Shirts Society, a fascist paramilitary organization within the KMT that modeled itself after Mussolini's blackshirts, was anti-foreign and anti-communist, and it stated that its agenda was to expel foreign (Japanese and Western) imperialists from China, crush Communism, and eliminate feudalism. In addition to being anticommunist, some KMT members, like Chiang Kai-shek's right-hand man Dai Li were anti-American, and wanted to expel American influence. Close Sino-German ties also promoted cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Nazi Party (NSDAP).
The New Life Movement was a government-led civic movement in 1930s China initiated by Chiang Kai-shek to promote cultural reform and Neo-Confucian social morality and to ultimately unite China under a centralised ideology following the emergence of ideological challenges to the status quo. The Movement attempted to counter threats of Western and Japanese imperialism through a resurrection of traditional Chinese morality, which it held to be superior to modern Western values. As such the Movement was based upon Confucianism, mixed with Christianity, nationalism and authoritarianism that have some similarities to fascism. It rejected individualism and liberalism, while also opposing socialism and communism. Some historians regard this movement as imitating Nazism and being a neo-nationalistic movement used to elevate Chiang's control of everyday lives. Frederic Wakeman suggested that the New Life Movement was "Confucian fascism".
Ideology of the New Guangxi Clique
The KMT branch in Guangxi province, led by the New Guangxi Clique of Bai Chongxi and Li Zongren, implemented anti-imperialist, anti-religious, and anti-foreign policies. During the Northern Expedition, in 1926 in Guangxi, Muslim General Bai Chongxi led his troops in destroying most of the Buddhist temples and smashing idols, turning the temples into schools and KMT headquarters. Bai led an anti-foreign wave in Guangxi, attacking American, European, and other foreigners and missionaries, and generally making the province unsafe for non-natives. Westerners fled from the province, and some Chinese Christians were also attacked as imperialist agents.
The leaders clashed with Chiang Kai-shek, which led to the Central Plains War where Chiang defeated the clique.
Socialism and anti-capitalist agitation
The KMT had a left wing and a right wing, the left being more radical in its pro-Soviet policies, but both wings equally persecuted merchants, accusing them of being counterrevolutionaries and reactionaries. The right wing under Chiang Kai-shek prevailed, and continued radical policies against private merchants and industrialists, even as they denounced communism.
One of the Three Principles of the People of the KMT, Mínshēng, was defined as socialism by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. He defined this principle of saying in his last days "its socialism and its communism". The concept may be understood as social welfare as well. Sun understood it as an industrial economy and equality of land holdings for the Chinese peasant farmers. Here he was influenced by the American thinker Henry George (see Georgism) and German thinker Karl Marx; the land value tax in Taiwan is a legacy thereof. He divided livelihood into four areas: food, clothing, housing, and transportation; and planned out how an ideal (Chinese) government can take care of these for its people.
The KMT was referred to having a socialist ideology. "Equalization of land rights" was a clause included by Dr. Sun in the original Tongmenhui. The KMT's revolutionary ideology in the 1920s incorporated unique Chinese Socialism as part of its ideology.
The Soviet Union trained KMT revolutionaries in the Moscow Sun Yat-sen University. In the West and in the Soviet Union, Chiang was known as the "Red General". Movie theaters in the Soviet Union showed newsreels and clips of Chiang, at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University Portraits of Chiang were hung on the walls, and in the Soviet May Day Parades that year, Chiang's portrait was to be carried along with the portraits of Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and other socialist leaders.
The KMT attempted to levy taxes upon merchants in Canton, and the merchants resisted by raising an army, the Merchant's volunteer corps. Dr. Sun initiated this anti-merchant policy, and Chiang Kai-shek enforced it, Chiang led his army of Whampoa Military Academy graduates to defeat the merchant's army. Chiang was assisted by Soviet advisors, who supplied him with weapons, while the merchants were supplied with weapons from the Western countries.
The KMT was accused of leading a "Red Revolution" in Canton. The merchants were conservative and reactionary, and their Volunteer Corp leader Chen Lianbao was a prominent comprador trader.
The merchants were supported by the Western powers, who led an international flotilla to support them against the KMT. The KMT seized many of Western-supplied weapons from the merchants, using them to equip their troops. A KMT General executed several merchants, and the KMT formed a Soviet-inspired Revolutionary Committee. The British Communist Party sent a letter to Dr. Sun, congratulating him on his military successes.
In 1948, the KMT again attacked the merchants of Shanghai. Chiang Kai-shek sent his son Chiang Ching-kuo to restore economic order. Ching-kuo copied Soviet methods, which he learned during his stay there, to start a social revolution by attacking middle-class merchants. He also enforced low prices on all goods to raise support from the proletariat.
As riots broke out and savings were ruined, bankrupting shop owners, Ching-kuo began to attack the wealthy, seizing assets and placing them under arrest. The son of the gangster Du Yuesheng was arrested by him. Ching-kuo ordered KMT agents to raid the Yangtze Development Corporation's warehouses, which was privately owned by H.H. Kung and his family. H.H. Kung's wife was Soong Ai-ling, the sister of Soong Mei-ling who was Ching-kuo's stepmother. H.H. Kung's son David was arrested, the Kung's responded by blackmailing the Chiang's, threatening to release information about them, eventually he was freed after negotiations, and Ching-kuo resigned, ending the terror on the Shanghainese merchants.
The KMT also promotes government-owned corporations. KMT founder Sun Yat-sen, was heavily influenced by the economic ideas of Henry George, who believed that the rents extracted from natural monopolies or the usage of land belonged to the public. Dr. Sun argued for Georgism and emphasized the importance of a mixed economy, which he termed "The Principle of Minsheng" in his Three Principles of the People.
"The railroads, public utilities, canals, and forests should be nationalized, and all income from the land and mines should be in the hands of the State. With this money in hand, the State can therefore finance the social welfare programs."
The KMT Muslim Governor of Ningxia, Ma Hongkui, promoted state-owned monopolies. His government had a company, Fu Ning Company, which had a monopoly over commerce and industry in Ningxia.
Corporations such as CSBC Corporation, Taiwan, CPC Corporation, Taiwan and Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation are owned by the state in the Republic of China.
Marxists also existed in the KMT. They viewed the Chinese revolution in different terms than the CPC, claiming that China already went past its feudal stage and in a stagnation period rather than in another mode of production. These Marxists in KMT opposed the CPC ideology.
Confucianism and religion in its ideology
The KMT used traditional Chinese religious ceremonies. According to the KMT, the souls of party martyrs were sent to heaven. Chiang Kai-shek believed that these martyrs still witnessed events on Earth.
The KMT backed the New Life Movement, which promoted Confucianism, and it was also against westernization. KMT leaders also opposed the May Fourth Movement. Chiang Kai-shek, as a nationalist, and Confucianist, was against the iconoclasm of the May Fourth Movement. He viewed some western ideas as foreign, as a Chinese nationalist, and that the introduction of western ideas and literature that the May Fourth Movement wanted was not welcome. He and Sun Yat-sen criticized these May Fourth intellectuals for corrupting morals of youth.
The KMT also incorporated Confucianism in its jurisprudence. It pardoned Shi Jianqiao for murdering Sun Chuanfang, because she did it in revenge since Sun executed her father Shi Congbin, which was an example of filial piety to one's parents in Confucianism. The KMT encouraged filial revenge killings and extended pardons to those who performed them.
In response to the Cultural Revolution, Chiang Kai-shek promoted a Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement which followed in the steps of the New Life Movement, promoting Confucian values.
Education
The KMT purged China's education system of Western ideas, introducing Confucianism into the curriculum. Education came under the total control of state, which meant, in effect, the KMT, via the Ministry of Education. Military and political classes on KMT's Three Principles of the People were added. Textbooks, exams, degrees and educational instructors were all controlled by the state, as were all universities.
Soviet-style military
Chiang Ching-kuo, appointed as KMT director of Secret Police in 1950, was educated in the Soviet Union, and initiated Soviet style military organization in the Republic of China Armed Forces, reorganizing and Sovietizing the political officer corps, surveillance, and KMT activities were propagated throughout the whole of the armed forces. Opposed to this was Sun Li-jen, who was educated at the American Virginia Military Institute. Chiang Ching-kuo then arrested Sun Li-jen, charging him of conspiring with the American CIA of plotting to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT, Sun was placed under house arrest in 1955.
Anti-Communism
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Kuomintang, also known as the Chinese Nationalist Party, led by Chiang Kai-shek, was ruling China and strongly opposed the Chinese Communist Party as it was funded and militarily backed by COMINTERN (Soviet Union) and pursuing a communist revolution to overthrow the Republic of China . On 12 April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek purged the communists in what was known as the Shanghai massacre which led to the Chinese Civil War. The Chinese Nationalist government then led 5 military campaigns in order to wipe out Chinese Soviet Republic, a Soviet-puppet state established by the Chinese Communist Party . Initially, the Kuomintang was successful, eventually forcing the Chinese Communist Party to escape on a long march until a full-scale invasion of China by Japan forced both the Nationalists and the Communists into an alliance. After the war, the two parties were thrown back into a civil war. The Kuomintang were defeated in the mainland and escaped in exile to Taiwan while the rest of mainland China became Communist in 1949.
Anti-separatism
The KMT is anti-separatist. During its rule on mainland China, it crushed Uyghur and Tibetan separatist uprisings. The KMT claims sovereignty over Outer Mongolia and Tuva as well as the territories of the modern People's Republic and Republic of China.
KMT Muslim General Ma Bufang waged war on the invading Tibetans during the Sino-Tibetan War with his Muslim army, and he repeatedly crushed Tibetan revolts during bloody battles in Qinghai provinces. Ma Bufang was fully supported by President Chiang Kai-shek, who ordered him to prepare his Muslim army to invade Tibet several times and threatened aerial bombardment on the Tibetans. With support from the KMT, Ma Bufang repeatedly attacked the Tibetan area of Golog seven times during the KMT Pacification of Qinghai, eliminating thousands of Tibetans.
General Ma Fuxiang, the chairman of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission stated that Mongolia and Tibet were an integral part of the Republic of China, arguing:
Our Party [the Guomindang] takes the development of the weak and small and resistance to the strong and violent as our sole and most urgent task. This is even more true for those groups which are not of our kind [Ch. fei wo zulei zhe]. Now the people of Mongolia and Tibet are closely related to us, and we have great affection for one another: our common existence and common honor already have a history of over a thousand years. [...] Mongolia and Tibet's life and death are China's life and death. China absolutely cannot cause Mongolia and Tibet to break away from China's territory, and Mongolia and Tibet cannot reject China to become independent. At this time, there is not a single nation on earth except China that will sincerely develop Mongolia and Tibet.
Under orders from Nationalist Government of Chiang Kai-shek, the Hui General Ma Bufang, Governor of Qinghai (1937–1949), repaired Yushu airport to prevent Tibetan separatists from seeking independence. Ma Bufang also crushed Mongol separatist movements, abducting the Genghis Khan Shrine and attacking Tibetan Buddhist Temples like Labrang, and keeping a tight control over them through the Kokonur God ceremony.
During the Kumul Rebellion, the KMT 36th Division (National Revolutionary Army) crushed a separatist Uyghur First East Turkestan Republic, delivering it a fatal blow at the Battle of Kashgar (1934). The Muslim General Ma Hushan pledged allegiance to the KMT and crushed another Uyghur revolt at Charkhlik Revolt.
During the Ili Rebellion, the KMT fought against Uyghur separatists and the Soviet Union, and against Mongolia.
Ideology in Taiwan
Anti-communism
On 28 February 1947, the Kuomintang cracked down on an anti-government communist uprising in Taiwan known as the February 28 incident and the government began the White Terror in Taiwan in order to purge the communist spies in order to prevent Chinese communist subversion. While in Taiwan, the Republic of China government under Kuomintang remained anti-communist and attempted to recover the mainland from the Communist forces. During the Cold War, the Taiwan was known as Free China while the China on the mainland China was known as Red China or Communist China in the West, to mark the ideological difference between the Free World and Communist Socialist World. The Republic of China government under kuomintang also actively supported anti-communist efforts in Southeast Asia and around the world. This effort did not cease until the death of Chiang Kai-shek in 1975. Kuomintang continued to be anti-communist during the period of Chiang Chin-kuo. Contacts between Kuomintang and Chinese Communist Party have started since 1990s to re-establish Cross-Strait relations even though anti-communism is written under Kuomintang's party charter. The modern Kuomintang is now seen as China-friendly.
Three Principles of the People
Sun Yat Sen was not just the founder of the Republic of China, but also the founder of Kuomintang. Dr.Sun's political ideology was based on building a free and democratic China founded on Three Principles of the People, namely Democracy (civil rights of people), people's economic livelihood and nationalism. Although the kuomintang lost mainland China in 1949, the Republic of China under Kuomintang was able to achieve the political ideal of a democratic Republic of China on Taiwan based on the Three Principles of the People after its retreat to Taiwan. The Three Principles of the People is not just written in the Constitution of the Republic of China, but also in Article 1, 5, 7, 9, 37, 42, 43 of Kuomintang's party charter.
Chinese democracy
The Kuomintang advocates a free and democratic China under the Republic of China founded on Three Principles of the People. In fact, during the 1980s, Chiang Ching-kuo advocated Grand Alliance for China's Reunification under the Three Principles of the People. Since then, a democracy promotion banner for Grand Alliance for China's Reunification under the Three Principles of the People continues to exist in Kinmen today as display to mainland China that the Republic of China's unification principle should be based on Chinese democracy. Today, the Kuomintang continues to view the Republic of China as the free and democratic China.
Anti-Taiwan independence
The Kuomintang strongly adheres to the defense of the Republic of China nation, uphold the Constitution of the Republic of China and is strongly opposed to de jure Taiwan independence (under "Republic of Taiwan").
Chinese conservatism
The Kuomintang believes in Chinese conservatism values. The Kuomintang has a strong tradition of defending the established institutions of the Republic of China, such as defending Constitution of the Republic of China, defending the five branches of government (modeled on Sun Yat-sen's political philosophy of Three Principles of the People), espousing the One-China policy as a vital component for the Republic of China (ROC)'s international security and economic development, as opposed to Taiwanization. The Kuomintang has a strong tradition of fighting to defend, preserve and revive traditional Chinese culture, defending for freedom of religion, advocating Confucian values, Economic liberalism, Anti-communism. The KMT still sees the Republic of China on Taiwan as presenting the true cultural China which has preserved much better Chinese culture, as compared to People's Republic of China which had experienced Chinese cultural destruction by Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural revolution.
Some Kuomintang conservatives see traditional social or family values being threatened by liberal values, and oppose same-sex marriage. KMT conservatives are also typically against the abolishment of capital punishment, arguing the need to maintain deterrence against harsh crimes. Conservative KMT policies may also be characterized by a focus on maintaining the traditions and doctrine of Confucian thought, namely reinforcing the morals of paternalism and patriarchy in Taiwan's society. In terms of education policy, KMT policies advocate increasing more Classical Chinese content in Chinese education and Chinese history content in order to reinforce Chinese cultural identity, as opposed to de-sinicization attempts by advocates of Taiwan independence who typically decrease Classical Chinese and Chinese history content in schools in order to achieve Taiwanization.
Parties affiliated with the Kuomintang
Malaysian Chinese Association
The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA) was initially pro-ROC and mainly consisted of KMT members who joined as an alternative and were also in opposition to the Malayan Communist Party, supporting the KMT in China by funding them with the intention of reclaiming the Chinese mainland from the communists.
Tibet Improvement Party
The Tibet Improvement Party was founded by Pandatsang Rapga, a pro-ROC and pro-KMT Khampa revolutionary, who worked against the 14th Dalai Lama's Tibetan Government in Lhasa. Rapga borrowed Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People doctrine and translated his political theories into the Tibetan language, hailing it as the best hope for Asian peoples against imperialism. Rapga stated that "the Sanmin Zhuyi was intended for all peoples under the domination of foreigners, for all those who had been deprived of the rights of man. But it was conceived especially for the Asians. It is for this reason that I translated it. At that time, a lot of new ideas were spreading in Tibet," during an interview in 1975 by Dr. Heather Stoddard. He wanted to destroy the feudal government in Lhasa, in addition to modernizing and secularizing Tibetan society. The ultimate goal of the party was the overthrow of the Dalai Lama's regime, and the creation of a Tibetan Republic which would be an autonomous Republic within the ROC. Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT funded the party and their efforts to build an army to battle the Dalai Lama's government. The KMT was extensively involved in the Kham region, recruiting the Khampa people to both oppose the Dalai Lama's Tibetan government, fight the Communist Red Army, and crush the influence of local Chinese warlords who did not obey the central government.
Vietnamese Nationalist Party
The KMT assisted the Viet Nam Quoc Dan Dang party which translates literally into Chinese (; ) as the Vietnamese Nationalist Party. When it was established, it was based on the Chinese KMT and was pro Chinese. The Chinese KMT helped the party, known as the VNQDD, set up headquarters in Canton and Yunnan, to aid their anti-imperialist struggle against the French occupiers of Indo China and against the Vietnamese Communist Party. It was the first revolutionary nationalist party to be established in Vietnam, before the communist party. The KMT assisted VNQDD with funds and military training.
The VNQDD was founded with KMT aid in 1925, they were against Ho Chi Minh's Viet Nam Revolutionary Youth League. When the VNQDD fled to China after the failed uprising against the French, they settled in Yunnan and Canton, in two different branches. The VNQDD existed as a party in exile in China for 15 years, receiving help, militarily and financially, and organizationally from the Chinese KMT. The two VNQDD parties merged into a single organization, the Canton branch removed the word "revolutionary" from the party name. Lu Han, a KMT official in Nanjing, who was originally from Yunnan, was contacted by the VNQDD, and the KMT Central Executive Committee and Military made direct contact with VNQDD for the first time, the party was reestablished in Nanjing with KMT help.
The Chinese KMT used the VNQDD for its own interests in south China and Indo China. General Zhang Fakui (Chang Fa-kuei), who based himself in Guangxi, established the Viet Nam Cach Menh Dong Minh Hoi meaning "Viet Nam Revolutionary League" in 1942, which was assisted by the VNQDD to serve the KMT's aims. The Chinese Yunnan provincial army, under the KMT, occupied northern Vietnam after the Japanese surrender in 1945, the VNQDD tagging alone, opposing Ho Chi Minh's communist party. The Viet Nam Revolutionary League was a union of various Vietnamese nationalist groups, run by the pro Chinese VNQDD. Its stated goal was for unity with China under the Three Principles of the People, created by KMT founder Dr. Sun and opposition to Japanese and French Imperialists. The Revolutionary League was controlled by Nguyen Hai Than, who was born in China and could not speak Vietnamese. General Zhang shrewdly blocked the Communists of Vietnam, and Ho Chi Minh from entering the league, as his main goal was Chinese influence in Indo China. The KMT utilized these Vietnamese nationalists during World War II against Japanese forces.
A KMT left-winger, General Chang Fa-kuei, worked with Nguyen Hai Than, a VNQDD member, against French Imperialists and Communists in Indo China. General Chang Fa-kuei planned to lead a Chinese army invasion of Tonkin in Indochina to free Vietnam from French control, and to get Chiang Kai-shek's support. The VNQDD opposed the government of Ngo Dinh Diem during the Vietnam War.
The party dissolved after the Fall of Saigon in 1977 and was later re-founded in 1991 as the People's Action Party of Vietnam.
Ryukyu Guomindang
On 30 November 1958, the establishment of the Ryukyu Guomindang took place. Tsugumasa Kiyuna headed its predecessor party, the Ryukyuan separatist Ryukyu Revolutionary Party which was backed by the Kuomintang in Taiwan.
Hong Kong Pro-ROC camp
The Pro-ROC camp is a political alignment in Hong Kong. It pledges allegiance to the Republic of China.
One of these members, the 123 Democratic Alliance, dissolved in 2000 due to the lack of financial support from the Taiwan government, after the 2000 Taiwan presidential election.
Sponsored organizations
Ma Fuxiang founded Islamic organizations sponsored by the KMT, including the China Islamic Association ().
KMT Muslim General Bai Chongxi was Chairman of the Chinese Islamic National Salvation Federation. The Muslim Chengda school and Yuehua publication were supported by the Nationalist Government, and they supported the KMT.
The Chinese Muslim Association was also sponsored by the KMT, and it evacuated from the mainland to Taiwan with the party. The Chinese Muslim Association owns the Taipei Grand Mosque which was built with funds from the KMT.
The Yihewani (Ikhwan al Muslimun a.k.a. Muslim brotherhood) was the predominant Muslim sect backed by the KMT. Other Muslim sects, like the Xidaotang were also supported by the KMT. The Chinese Muslim brotherhood became a Chinese nationalist organization and supported KMT rule. Brotherhood Imams like Hu Songshan ordered Muslims to pray for the Nationalist Government, salute KMT flags during prayer, and listen to nationalist sermons.
Policy on ethnic minorities
Former KMT leader Chiang Kai-shek considered all the minority peoples of China as descendants of the Yellow Emperor, the semi-mythical initiator of the Chinese civilization. Chiang considered all ethnic minorities in China to belong to the Zhonghua minzu (Chinese nation) and he introduced this into KMT ideology, which was propagated into the educational system of the Republic of China, and the Constitution of the ROC considered Chiang's ideology to be true. In Taiwan, the President performs a ritual honoring the Yellow Emperor, while facing west, in the direction of the Chinese mainland.
The KMT retained the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission for dealing with Mongolian And Tibetan affairs. A Muslim, Ma Fuxiang, was appointed as its chairman.
The KMT was known for sponsoring Muslim students to study abroad at Muslim universities like Al-Azhar University and it established schools especially for Muslims, Muslim KMT warlords like Ma Fuxiang promoted education for Muslims. KMT Muslim Warlord Ma Bufang built a girls' school for Muslim girls in Linxia City which taught modern secular education.
Tibetans and Mongols refused to allow other ethnic groups like Kazakhs to participate in the Kokonur ceremony in Qinghai, but KMT Muslim General Ma Bufang allowed them to participate.
Chinese Muslims were among the most hardline KMT members. Ma Chengxiang was a Muslim KMT member, and he refused to surrender to the Communists.
The KMT incited anti-Yan Xishan and Feng Yuxiang sentiments among Chinese Muslims and Mongols, encouraging for them to topple their rule during the Central Plains War.
Masud Sabri, a Uyghur was appointed as Governor of Xinjiang by the KMT, as was the Tatar Burhan Shahidi and the Uyghur Yulbars Khan.
The Muslim General Ma Bufang also put KMT symbols on his mansion, the Ma Bufang Mansion along with a portrait of party founder Dr. Sun Yatsen arranged with the KMT flag and the Republic of China flag.
General Ma Bufang and other high ranking Muslim Generals attended the Kokonuur Lake Ceremony where the God of the Lake was worshipped, and during the ritual, the Chinese national anthem was sung, all participants bowed to a Portrait of KMT founder Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and the God of the Lake was also bowed to, and offerings were given to him by the participants, which included the Muslims. This cult of personality around the KMT leader and the KMT was standard in all meetings. Sun Yat-sen's portrait was bowed to three times by KMT party members. Dr. Sun's portrait was arranged with two flags crossed under, the KMT flag and the flag of the Republic of China.
The KMT also hosted conferences of important Muslims like Bai Chongxi, Ma Fuxiang, and Ma Liang. Ma Bufang stressed "racial harmony" as a goal when he was Governor of Qinghai.
In 1939, Isa Yusuf Alptekin and Ma Fuliang were sent on a mission by the KMT to the Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Syria to gain support for the Chinese War against Japan, they also visited Afghanistan in 1940 and contacted Muhammad Amin Bughra, they asked him to come to Chongqing, the capital of the Nationalist Government. Bughra was arrested by the British government in 1942 for spying, and the KMT arranged for Bughra's release. He and Isa Yusuf worked as editors of KMT Muslim publications. Ma Tianying () (1900–1982) led the 1939 mission which had 5 other people including Isa and Fuliang.
Election results
Presidential elections
Legislative elections
Local elections
National Assembly elections
See also
1960–61 campaign at the China–Burma border
Chinese nationalism
Conservatism in Taiwan
Elections in Taiwan
February 28 Incident
Index of Taiwan-related articles
History of the Kuomintang cultural policy
History of the Republic of China
Joseph Stilwell
KMT retreat to Taiwan in 1949
Kuomintang Islamic insurgency
Military of the Republic of China
National Revolutionary Army
Nationalist government
New Kuomintang Alliance
Political status of Taiwan
Politics of the Republic of China
Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang
Whampoa Military Academy
White Terror (Taiwan)
Notes
Words in native languages
References
Further reading
John F. Copper. The KMT Returns to Power: Elections in Taiwan, 2008 to 2012 (Lexington Books; 2013) 251 pages. How Taiwan's Nationalist Party regained power after losing in 2000.
Westad, Odd Arne. Decisive encounters: the Chinese civil war, 1946-1950 (Stanford University Press, 2003). excerpt
External links
Kuomintang Official Website
Kuomintang News Network
The History of Kuomintang (Archived 31 October 2009)
National Policy Foundation Website (Kuomintang Think Tank)
1912 establishments in China
History of China
Republic of China
History of Taiwan
Three Principles of the People
International Democrat Union member parties
Neoliberal parties
Centre-right parties in Asia
Conservative parties in Asia
Liberal conservative parties
National conservative parties
Nationalist parties in Asia
Organizations based in Taipei
Parties of one-party systems
Political parties established in 1912
Political parties in the Republic of China
Political parties in Taiwan
Politics of the Republic of China (1912–1949) | [
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16904 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KMT%20%28disambiguation%29 | KMT (disambiguation) | KMT often refers to Kuomintang, a political party in Republic of China (Taiwan).
KMT or kmt may also refer to:
"KMT" (song), a 2017 song by Drake
Kmt (magazine), a magazine on ancient Egypt
kilometre-tonne or kmt, a unit of payload-distance
King in Council (Sweden) or K.M:t, a term of constitutional importance that was used in Sweden before 1975 when the 1974 Instrument of Government came into force
km.t, a name for ancient Egypt using the hieroglyph Km
Kartu multi-trip (KMT). Card for KRL Commuterline | [
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16905 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah | Kabbalah | Kabbalah ( Qabālā, literally "reception, tradition" or "correspondence") is an esoteric method, discipline, and school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist in Judaism is called a Mekubal ( Məqubāl). The definition of Kabbalah varies according to the tradition and aims of those following it, from its religious origin as an integral part of Judaism, to its later adaptations in Western esotericism (Christian Kabbalah and Hermetic Qabalah). Jewish Kabbalah is a set of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between the unchanging, eternal God—the mysterious Ein Sof (, "The Infinite")—and the mortal, finite universe (God's creation). It forms the foundation of mystical religious interpretations within Judaism.
Jewish Kabbalists originally developed their own transmission of sacred texts within the realm of Jewish tradition and often use classical Jewish scriptures to explain and demonstrate its mystical teachings. These teachings are held by followers in Judaism to define the inner meaning of both the Hebrew Bible and traditional rabbinic literature and their formerly concealed transmitted dimension, as well as to explain the significance of Jewish religious observances. One of the fundamental kabbalistic texts, the Zohar, was first published in the 13th century, and the almost universal form adhered to in modern Judaism is Lurianic Kabbalah.
Traditional practitioners believe its earliest origins pre-date world religions, forming the primordial blueprint for Creation's philosophies, religions, sciences, arts, and political systems. Historically, Kabbalah emerged from earlier forms of Jewish mysticism, in 12th- to 13th-century Spain and Southern France, and was reinterpreted during the Jewish mystical renaissance in 16th-century Ottoman Palestine. Isaac Luria is considered the father of contemporary Kabbalah; Lurianic Kabbalah was popularised in the form of Hasidic Judaism from the 18th century onwards. During the 20th century, academic interest in Kabbalistic texts led primarily by the Jewish historian Gershom Scholem has inspired the development of historical research on Kabbalah in the field of Judaic studies.
Traditions
According to the Zohar, a foundational text for kabbalistic thought, Torah study can proceed along four levels of interpretation (exegesis). These four levels are called pardes from their initial letters (PRDS , orchard).
Peshat ( lit. "simple"): the direct interpretations of meaning.
Remez ( lit. "hint[s]"): the allegoric meanings (through allusion).
Derash ( from Heb. darash: "inquire" or "seek"): midrashic (rabbinic) meanings, often with imaginative comparisons with similar words or verses.
Sod ( lit. "secret" or "mystery"): the inner, esoteric (metaphysical) meanings, expressed in kabbalah.
Kabbalah is considered by its followers as a necessary part of the study of Torah – the study of Torah (the Tanakh and rabbinic literature) being an inherent duty of observant Jews.
Modern academic-historical study of Jewish mysticism reserves the term "kabbalah" to designate the particular, distinctive doctrines that textually emerged fully expressed in the Middle Ages, as distinct from the earlier Merkabah mystical concepts and methods. According to this descriptive categorisation, both versions of Kabbalistic theory, the medieval-Zoharic and the early-modern Lurianic Kabbalah together comprise the Theosophical tradition in Kabbalah, while the Meditative-Ecstatic Kabbalah incorporates a parallel inter-related Medieval tradition. A third tradition, related but more shunned, involves the magical aims of Practical Kabbalah. Moshe Idel, for example, writes that these 3 basic models can be discerned operating and competing throughout the whole history of Jewish mysticism, beyond the particular Kabbalistic background of the Middle Ages. They can be readily distinguished by their basic intent with respect to God:
The Theosophical or Theosophical-Theurgic tradition of Theoretical Kabbalah (the main focus of the Zohar and Luria) seeks to understand and describe the divine realm using the imaginative and mythic symbols of human psychological experience. As an intuitive conceptual alternative to rationalist Jewish philosophy, particularly Maimonides' Aristotelianism, this speculation became the central stream of Kabbalah, and the usual reference of the term "kabbalah". Its theosophy also implies the innate, centrally important theurgic influence of human conduct on redeeming or damaging the spiritual realms, as man is a divine microcosm, and the spiritual realms the divine macrocosm. The purpose of traditional theosophical kabbalah was to give the whole of normative Jewish religious practice this mystical metaphysical meaning
The Meditative tradition of Ecstatic Kabbalah (exemplified by Abraham Abulafia and Isaac of Acre) strives to achieve a mystical union with God, or nullification of the meditator in God's Active intellect. Abraham Abulafia's "Prophetic Kabbalah" was the supreme example of this, though marginal in Kabbalistic development, and his alternative to the program of theosophical Kabbalah. Abulafian meditation built upon the philosophy of Maimonides, whose following remained the rationalist threat to theosophical kabbalists
The Magico-Talismanic tradition of Practical Kabbalah (in often unpublished manuscripts) endeavours to alter both the Divine realms and the World using practical methods. While theosophical interpretations of worship see its redemptive role as harmonising heavenly forces, Practical Kabbalah properly involved white-magical acts, and was censored by kabbalists for only those completely pure of intent, as it relates to lower realms where purity and impurity are mixed. Consequently, it formed a separate minor tradition shunned from Kabbalah. Practical Kabbalah was prohibited by the Arizal until the Temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt and the required state of ritual purity is attainable.
According to traditional belief, early kabbalistic knowledge was transmitted orally by the Patriarchs, prophets, and sages (hakhamim in Hebrew), eventually to be "interwoven" into Jewish religious writings and culture. According to this view, early kabbalah was, in around the 10th century BCE, an open knowledge practiced by over a million people in ancient Israel. Foreign conquests drove the Jewish spiritual leadership of the time (the Sanhedrin) to hide the knowledge and make it secret, fearing that it might be misused if it fell into the wrong hands.
It is hard to clarify with any degree of certainty the exact concepts within kabbalah. There are several different schools of thought with very different outlooks; however, all are accepted as correct. Modern halakhic authorities have tried to narrow the scope and diversity within kabbalah, by restricting study to certain texts, notably Zohar and the teachings of Isaac Luria as passed down through Hayyim ben Joseph Vital. However, even this qualification does little to limit the scope of understanding and expression, as included in those works are commentaries on Abulafian writings, Sefer Yetzirah, Albotonian writings, and the Berit Menuhah, which is known to the kabbalistic elect and which, as described more recently by Gershom Scholem, combined ecstatic with theosophical mysticism. It is therefore important to bear in mind when discussing things such as the sephirot and their interactions that one is dealing with highly abstract concepts that at best can only be understood intuitively.
Jewish and non-Jewish Kabbalah
From the Renaissance onwards Jewish Kabbalah texts entered non-Jewish culture, where they were studied and translated by Christian Hebraists and Hermetic occultists. The syncretic traditions of Christian Cabala and Hermetic Qabalah developed independently of Judaic Kabbalah, reading the Jewish texts as universalist ancient wisdom preserved from the Gnostic traditions of antiquity. Both adapted the Jewish concepts freely from their Jewish understanding, to merge with multiple other theologies, religious traditions and magical associations. With the decline of Christian Cabala in the Age of Reason, Hermetic Qabalah continued as a central underground tradition in Western esotericism. Through these non-Jewish associations with magic, alchemy and divination, Kabbalah acquired some popular occult connotations forbidden within Judaism, where Jewish theurgic Practical Kabbalah was a minor, permitted tradition restricted for a few elite. Today, many publications on Kabbalah belong to the non-Jewish New Age and occult traditions of Cabala, rather than giving an accurate picture of Judaic Kabbalah. Instead, academic and traditional Jewish publications now translate and study Judaic Kabbalah for wide readership.
History of Jewish mysticism
Origins
According to the traditional understanding, Kabbalah dates from Eden. It came down from a remote past as a revelation to elect tzadikim (righteous people), and, for the most part, was preserved only by a privileged few. Talmudic Judaism records its view of the proper protocol for teaching this wisdom, as well as many of its concepts, in the Talmud, Tractate Hagigah, 11b-13a, "One should not teach ... the work of Creation in pairs, nor the work of the Chariot to an individual, unless he is wise and can understand the implications himself etc."
Contemporary scholarship suggests that various schools of Jewish esotericism arose at different periods of Jewish history, each reflecting not only prior forms of mysticism, but also the intellectual and cultural milieu of that historical period. Answers to questions of transmission, lineage, influence, and innovation vary greatly and cannot be easily summarised.
Terms
Originally, Kabbalistic knowledge was believed to be an integral part of the Oral Torah, given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai around the 13th century BCE according to its followers; although some believe that Kabbalah began with Adam.
For a few centuries the esoteric knowledge was referred to by its aspect practice—meditation Hitbonenut (), Rebbe Nachman of Breslov's Hitbodedut (), translated as "being alone" or "isolating oneself", or by a different term describing the actual, desired goal of the practice—prophecy ("NeVu'a" ). Kabbalistic scholar Aryeh Kaplan traces the origins of medieval Kabbalistic meditative methods to their inheritance from orally transmitted remnants of the Biblical Prophetic tradition, and reconstructs their terminology and speculated techniques.
From the 5th century BCE, when the works of the Tanakh were edited and canonised and the secret knowledge encrypted within the various writings and scrolls ("Megilot"), esoteric knowledge became referred to as Ma'aseh Merkavah () and Ma'aseh B'reshit (), respectively "the act of the Chariot" and "the act of Creation". Merkabah mysticism alluded to the encrypted knowledge, and meditation methods within the book of the prophet Ezekiel describing his vision of the "Divine Chariot". B'reshit mysticism referred to the first chapter of Genesis () in the Torah that is believed to contain secrets of the creation of the universe and forces of nature. These terms received their later historical documentation and description in the second chapter of the Talmudic tractate Hagigah from the early centuries CE.
Confidence in new Prophetic revelation closed after the Biblical return from Babylon in Second Temple Judaism, shifting to canonisation and exegesis of Scripture after Ezra the Scribe. Lesser level prophecy of Ruach Hakodesh remained, with angelic revelations, esoteric heavenly secrets, and eschatological deliverance from Greek and Roman oppression of Apocalyptic literature among early Jewish proto-mystical circles, such as the Book of Daniel and the Dead Sea Scrolls community of Qumran. Early Jewish mystical literature inherited the developing concerns and remnants of Prophetic and Apocalyptic Judaisms.
Mystic elements of the Torah
When read by later generations of Kabbalists, the Torah's description of the creation in the Book of Genesis reveals mysteries about God himself, the true nature of Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden (), the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (), and the Tree of Life (), as well as the interaction of these supernatural entities with the Serpent (), which leads to disaster when they eat the forbidden fruit (), as recorded in Genesis 3.
The Bible provides ample additional material for mythic and mystical speculation. The prophet Ezekiel's visions in particular attracted much mystical speculation, as did Isaiah's Temple vision. Other mystical events include Jacob's vision of the ladder to heaven, and Moses' encounters with the Burning bush and God on Mount Sinai.
The 72 letter name of God which is used in Jewish mysticism for meditation purposes is derived from the Hebrew verbal utterance Moses spoke in the presence of an angel, while the Sea of Reeds parted, allowing the Hebrews to escape their approaching attackers. The miracle of the Exodus, which led to Moses receiving the Ten Commandments and the Jewish Orthodox view of the acceptance of the Torah at Mount Sinai, preceded the creation of the first Jewish nation approximately three hundred years before King Saul.
Talmudic era
In early Rabbinic Judaism (the early centuries of the 1st millennium CE), the terms Ma'aseh Bereshit ("Works of Creation") and Ma'aseh Merkabah ("Works of the Divine Throne/Chariot") clearly indicate the Midrashic nature of these speculations; they are really based upon Genesis 1 and Ezekiel 1:4–28, while the names Sitrei Torah (Hidden aspects of the Torah) (Talmud Hag. 13a) and Razei Torah (Torah secrets) (Ab. vi. 1) indicate their character as secret lore.
Talmudic doctrine forbade the public teaching of esoteric doctrines and warned of their dangers. In the Mishnah (Hagigah 2:1), rabbis were warned to teach the mystical creation doctrines only to one student at a time. To highlight the danger, in one Jewish aggadic ("legendary") anecdote, four prominent rabbis of the Mishnaic period (1st century CE) are said to have visited the Orchard (that is, Paradise, pardes, Hebrew: lit., orchard):
In notable readings of this legend, only Rabbi Akiba was fit to handle the study of mystical doctrines. The Tosafot, medieval commentaries on the Talmud, say that the four sages "did not go up literally, but it appeared to them as if they went up". On the other hand, Louis Ginzberg, writes in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906) that the journey to paradise "is to be taken literally and not allegorically".
In contrast to the Kabbalists, Maimonides interprets pardes as philosophy and not mysticism.
Pre-Kabbalistic schools
Early mystical literature
The mystical methods and doctrines of Hekhalot (Heavenly "Chambers") and Merkabah (Divine "Chariot") texts, named by modern scholars from these repeated motifs, lasted from the 1st century BCE through to the 10th century CE, before giving way to the documented manuscript emergence of Kabbalah. Initiates were said to "descend the chariot", possibly a reference to internal introspection on the Heavenly journey through the spiritual realms. The ultimate aim was to arrive before the transcendent awe, rather than nearness, of the Divine. The mystical protagonists of the texts are famous Talmudic Sages of Rabbinic Judaism, either pseudepigraphic or documenting remnants of a developed tradition. From the 8th to 11th centuries, the Hekhalot texts, and the proto-Kabbalistic early cosmogonic Sefer Yetzirah ("Book of Creation") made their way into European Jewish circles. A controversial esoteric work from associated literature describing a cosmic Anthropos, Shi'ur Qomah, was interpreted allegorically by subsequent Kabbalists in their meditation on the Sephirot Divine Persona.
Hasidei Ashkenaz
Another, separate influential mystical, theosophical, and pious movement, shortly before the arrival there of Kabbalistic theory, was the "Hasidei Ashkenaz" (חסידי אשכנז) or Medieval German Pietists from 1150 to 1250. This ethical-ascetic movement with elite theoretical and Practical Kabbalah speculations arose mostly among a single scholarly family, the Kalonymus family of the French and German Rhineland. Its Jewish ethics of saintly self-sacrifice influenced Ashkenazi Jewry, Musar literature and later emphases of piety in Judaism.
Medieval emergence of the Kabbalah
Modern scholars have identified several mystical brotherhoods that functioned in Europe starting in the 12th century. Some, such as the "Iyyun Circle" and the "Unique Cherub Circle", were truly esoteric, remaining largely anonymous. The first documented historical emergence of Theosophical Kabbalistic doctrine occurred among Jewish Sages of Provence and Languedoc in southern France in the latter 1100s, with the appearance or consolidation of the mysterious work the Bahir (Book of "Brightness"), a midrash describing God's sephirot attributes as a dynamic interacting hypostatic drama in the Divine realm, and the school of Isaac the Blind (1160–1235) among critics of the rationalist influence of Maimonides. From there Kabbalah spread to Catalonia in north-east Spain around the central Rabbinic figure of Nahmanides (the Ramban) (1194–1270) in the early 1200s, with a Neoplatonic orientation focused on the upper sephirot. Subsequently, Kabbalistic doctrine reached its fullest classic expression among Castilian Kabbalists from the latter 1200s, with the Zohar (Book of "Splendor") literature, concerned with cosmic healing of gnostic dualities between the lower, revealed male and female attributes of God.
Rishonim ("Elder Sages") of exoteric Judaism who were deeply involved in Kabbalistic activity, gave the Kabbalah wide scholarly acceptance, including Nahmanides and Bahya ben Asher (Rabbeinu Behaye) (died 1340), whose classic commentaries on the Torah reference Kabbalistic esotericism.
Many Orthodox Jews reject the idea that Kabbalah underwent significant historical development or change such as has been proposed above. After the composition known as the Zohar was presented to the public in the 13th century, the term "Kabbalah" began to refer more specifically to teachings derived from, or related to, the Zohar. At an even later time, the term began to generally be applied to Zoharic teachings as elaborated upon by Isaac Luria (the Arizal). Historians generally date the start of Kabbalah as a major influence in Jewish thought and practice with the publication of the Zohar and climaxing with the spread of the Lurianic teachings. The majority of Haredi Jews accept the Zohar as the representative of the Ma'aseh Merkavah and Ma'aseh B'reshit that are referred to in Talmudic texts.
Ecstatic Kabbalah
Contemporary with the Zoharic efflorescence of Spanish Theosophical-Theurgic Kabbalah, Spanish exilarch Abraham Abulafia developed his own alternative, Maimonidean system of Ecstatic-Prophetic Kabbalah meditation, each consolidating aspects of a claimed inherited mystical tradition from Biblical times. This was the classic time when various different interpretations of an esoteric meaning to Torah were articulated among Jewish thinkers. Abulafia interpreted Theosophical Kabbalah's Sephirot Divine attributes, not as supernal hypostases which he opposed, but in psychological terms. Instead of influencing harmony in the divine real by theurgy, his meditative scheme aimed for mystical union with God, drawing down prophetic influx on the individual. He saw this meditation using Divine Names as a superior form of Kabbalistic ancient tradition. His version of Kabbalah, followed in the medieval eastern Mediterranean, remained a marginal stream to mainstream Theosophical Kabbalah development. Abulafian elements were later incorporated into the 16th century theosophical Kabbalistic systemisations of Moses Cordovero and Hayim Vital. Through them, later Hasidic Judaism incorporated elements of unio mystica and psychological focus from Abulafia.
Early modern era
Lurianic Kabbalah
Following the upheavals and dislocations in the Jewish world as a result of anti-Judaism during the Middle Ages, and the national trauma of the expulsion from Spain in 1492, closing the Spanish Jewish flowering, Jews began to search for signs of when the long-awaited Jewish Messiah would come to comfort them in their painful exiles. In the 16th century, the community of Safed in the Galilee became the centre of Jewish mystical, exegetical, legal and liturgical developments. The Safed mystics responded to the Spanish expulsion by turning Kabbalistic doctrine and practice towards a messianic focus. Moses Cordovero (The RAMAK 1522–1570) and his school popularized the teachings of the Zohar which had until then been only a restricted work. Cordovero's comprehensive works achieved the first (quasi-rationalistic) of Theosophical Kabbalah's two systemisations, harmonising preceding interpretations of the Zohar on its own apparent terms. The author of the Shulkhan Arukh (the normative Jewish "Code of Law"), Yosef Karo (1488–1575), was also a scholar of Kabbalah who kept a personal mystical diary. Moshe Alshich wrote a mystical commentary on the Torah, and Shlomo Alkabetz wrote Kabbalistic commentaries and poems.
The messianism of the Safed mystics culminated in Kabbalah receiving its biggest transformation in the Jewish world with the explication of its new interpretation from Isaac Luria (The ARI 1534–1572), by his disciples Hayim Vital and Israel Sarug. Both transcribed Luria's teachings (in variant forms) gaining them widespread popularity, Sarug taking Lurianic Kabbalah to Europe, Vital authoring the latterly canonical version. Luria's teachings came to rival the influence of the Zohar and Luria stands, alongside Moses de Leon, as the most influential mystic in Jewish history. Lurianic Kabbalah gave Theosophical Kabbalah its second, complete (supra-rational) of two systemisations, reading the Zohar in light of its most esoteric sections (the Idrot), replacing the broken Sephirot attributes of God with rectified Partzufim (Divine Personas), embracing reincarnation, repair, and the urgency of cosmic Jewish messianism dependent on each person's soul tasks.
Influence on non-Jewish society
From the European Renaissance on, Judaic Kabbalah became a significant influence in non-Jewish culture, fully divorced from the separately evolving Judaic tradition. Kabbalah received the interest of Christian Hebraist scholars and occultists, who freely syncretised and adapted it to diverse non-Jewish spiritual traditions and belief systems of Western esotericism. Christian Cabalists from the 15th-18th centuries adapted what they saw as ancient Biblical wisdom to Christian theology, while Hermeticism lead to Kabbalah's incorporation into Western magic through Hermetic Qabalah. Presentations of Kabbalah in occult and New Age books on Kabbalah bear little resemblance to Judaic Kabbalah.
Ban on studying Kabbalah
The Rabbinic ban on studying Kabbalah in Jewish society was lifted by the efforts of the 16th-century kabbalist Avraham Azulai (1570–1643).
The question, however, is whether the ban ever existed in the first place. Concerning the above quote by Avraham Azulai, it has found many versions in English, another is this
The lines concerning the year 1490 are also missing from the Hebrew edition of Hesed L'Avraham, the source work that both of these quote from. Furthermore, by Azulai's view the ban was lifted thirty years before his birth, a time that would have corresponded with Haim Vital's publication of the teaching of Isaac Luria. Moshe Isserles understood there to be only a minor restriction, in his words, "One's belly must be full of meat and wine, discerning between the prohibited and the permitted." He is supported by the Bier Hetiv, the Pithei Teshuva as well as the Vilna Gaon. The Vilna Gaon says, "There was never any ban or enactment restricting the study of the wisdom of Kabbalah. Any who says there is has never studied Kabbalah, has never seen PaRDeS, and speaks as an ignoramus."
Sefardi and Mizrahi
The Kabbalah of the Sefardi (Iberian Peninsula) and Mizrahi (Middle East, North Africa, and the Caucasus) Torah scholars has a long history. Kabbalah in various forms was widely studied, commented upon, and expanded by North African, Turkish, Yemenite, and Asian scholars from the 16th century onward. It flourished among Sefardic Jews in Tzfat (Safed), Israel even before the arrival of Isaac Luria. Yosef Karo, author of the Shulchan Arukh was part of the Tzfat school of Kabbalah. Shlomo Alkabetz, author of the hymn Lekhah Dodi, taught there.
His disciple Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (or Cordoeiro) authored Pardes Rimonim, an organised, exhaustive compilation of kabbalistic teachings on a variety of subjects up to that point. Cordovero headed the academy of Tzfat until his death, when Isaac Luria rose to prominence. Rabbi Moshe's disciple Eliyahu De Vidas authored the classic work, Reishit Chochma, combining kabbalistic and mussar (moral) teachings. Chaim Vital also studied under Cordovero, but with the arrival of Luria became his main disciple. Vital claimed to be the only one authorised to transmit the Ari's teachings, though other disciples also published books presenting Luria's teachings.
The Oriental Kabbalist tradition continues until today among Sephardi and Mizrachi Hakham sages and study circles. Among leading figures were the Yemenite Shalom Sharabi (1720–1777) of the Beit El Synagogue, the Jerusalemite Hida (1724–1806), the Baghdad leader Ben Ish Chai (1832–1909), and the Abuhatzeira dynasty.
Maharal
One of the most innovative theologians in early-modern Judaism was Judah Loew ben Bezalel (1525–1609) known as the "Maharal of Prague". Many of his written works survive and are studied for their unusual combination of the mystical and philosophical approaches in Judaism. While conversant in Kabbalistic learning, he expresses Jewish mystical thought in his own individual approach without reference to Kabbalistic terms. The Maharal is most well known in popular culture for the legend of the golem of Prague, associated with him in folklore. However, his thought influenced Hasidism, for example being studied in the introspective Przysucha school. During the 20th century, Isaac Hutner (1906–1980) continued to spread the Maharal's works indirectly through his own teachings and publications within the non-Hasidic yeshiva world.
Sabbatian antinomian movements
The spiritual and mystical yearnings of many Jews remained frustrated after the death of Isaac Luria and his disciples and colleagues. No hope was in sight for many following the devastation and mass killings of the pogroms that followed in the wake of the Chmielnicki Uprising (1648–1654), the largest single massacre of Jews until the Holocaust, and it was at this time that a controversial scholar by the name of Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) captured the hearts and minds of the Jewish masses of that time with the promise of a newly minted messianic Millennialism in the form of his own personage.
His charisma, mystical teachings that included repeated pronunciations of the holy Tetragrammaton in public, tied to an unstable personality, and with the help of his greatest enthusiast, Nathan of Gaza, convinced the Jewish masses that the Jewish Messiah had finally come. It seemed that the esoteric teachings of Kabbalah had found their "champion" and had triumphed, but this era of Jewish history unravelled when Zevi became an apostate to Judaism by converting to Islam after he was arrested by the Ottoman Sultan and threatened with execution for attempting a plan to conquer the world and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Unwilling to give up their messianic expectations, a minority of Zevi's Jewish followers converted to Islam along with him.
Many of his followers, known as Sabbatians, continued to worship him in secret, explaining his conversion not as an effort to save his life but to recover the sparks of the holy in each religion, and most leading rabbis were always on guard to root them out. The Dönmeh movement in modern Turkey is a surviving remnant of the Sabbatian schism. Theologies developed by leaders of Sabbatian movements dealt with antinomian redemption of the realm of impurity through sin, based on Lurianic theory. Moderate views reserved this dangerous task for the divine messiah Sabbatai Zevi alone, while his followers remained observant Jews. Radical forms spoke of the messianic transcendence of Torah, and required Sabbatean followers to emulate him, either in private or publicly.
Due to the chaos caused in the Jewish world, the rabbinic prohibition against studying Kabbalah established itself firmly within the Jewish religion. One of the conditions allowing a man to study and engage himself in the Kabbalah was to be at least forty years old. This age requirement came about during this period and is not Talmudic in origin but rabbinic. Many Jews are familiar with this ruling, but are not aware of its origins. Moreover, the prohibition is not halakhic in nature. According to Moses Cordovero, halakhically, one must be of age twenty to engage in the Kabbalah. Many famous kabbalists, including the ARI, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, Yehuda Ashlag, were younger than twenty when they began.
The Sabbatian movement was followed by that of the Frankists, disciples of Jacob Frank (1726–1791), who eventually became an apostate to Judaism by apparently converting to Catholicism. Frank took the Sabbatean impulse to its nihilistic end, declaring himself part of a messianic trinity along with his daughter, and that breaking all of Torah was its fulfilment. This era of disappointment did not stem the Jewish masses' yearnings for "mystical" leadership.
Modern era
Traditional Kabbalah
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto (1707–1746), based in Italy, was a precocious Talmudic scholar who deduced a need for the public teaching and study of Kabbalah. He established a yeshiva for Kabbalah study and actively recruited students. He wrote copious manuscripts in an appealing clear Hebrew style, all of which gained the attention of both admirers and rabbinical critics, who feared another "Sabbatai Zevi" (false messiah) in the making. His rabbinical opponents forced him to close his school, hand over and destroy many of his most precious unpublished kabbalistic writings, and go into exile in the Netherlands. He eventually moved to the Land of Israel. Some of his most important works, such as Derekh Hashem, survive and serve as a gateway to the world of Jewish mysticism.
Elijah of Vilna (Vilna Gaon) (1720–1797), based in Lithuania, had his teachings encoded and publicised by his disciples, such as Chaim Volozhin's posthumously published the mystical-ethical work Nefesh HaChaim. He staunchly opposed the new Hasidic movement and warned against their public displays of religious fervour inspired by the mystical teachings of their rabbis. Although the Vilna Gaon did not look with favor on the Hasidic movement, he did not prohibit the study and engagement in the Kabbalah. This is evident from his writings in the Even Shlema. "He that is able to understand secrets of the Torah and does not try to understand them will be judged harshly, may God have mercy". (The Vilna Gaon, Even Shlema, 8:24). "The Redemption will only come about through learning Torah, and the essence of the Redemption depends upon learning Kabbalah" (The Vilna Gaon, Even Shlema, 11:3).
In the Oriental tradition of Kabbalah, Shalom Sharabi (1720–1777) from Yemen was a major esoteric clarifier of the works of the Ari. The Beit El Synagogue, "yeshivah of the kabbalists", which he came to head, was one of the few communities to bring Lurianic meditation into communal prayer.
In the 20th century, Yehuda Ashlag (1885—1954) in Mandate Palestine became a leading esoteric kabbalist in the traditional mode, who translated the Zohar into Hebrew with a new approach in Lurianic Kabbalah.
Hasidic Judaism
Yisrael ben Eliezer Baal Shem Tov (1698–1760), founder of Hasidism in the area of the Ukraine, spread teachings based on Lurianic Kabbalah, but adapted to a different aim of immediate psychological perception of Divine Omnipresence amidst the mundane. The emotional, ecstatic fervour of early Hasidism developed from previous Nistarim circles of mystical activity, but instead sought communal revival of the common folk by reframing Judaism around the central principle of devekut (mystical cleaving to God) for all. This new approach turned formerly esoteric elite kabbalistic theory into a popular social mysticism movement for the first time, with its own doctrines, classic texts, teachings and customs. From the Baal Shem Tov sprang the wide ongoing schools of Hasidic Judaism, each with different approaches and thought. Hasidism instituted a new concept of Tzadik leadership in Jewish mysticism, where the elite scholars of mystical texts now took on a social role as embodiments and intercessors of Divinity for the masses. With the 19th-century consolidation of the movement, leadership became dynastic.
Among later Hasidic schools Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772–1810), the great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov, revitalised and further expanded the latter's teachings, amassing a following of thousands in Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. In a unique amalgam of Hasidic and Mitnaged approaches, Rebbe Nachman emphasised study of both Kabbalah and serious Torah scholarship to his disciples. His teachings also differed from the way other Hasidic groups were developing, as he rejected the idea of hereditary Hasidic dynasties and taught that each Hasid must "search for the tzaddik ('saintly/righteous person')" for himself and within himself.
The Habad-Lubavitch intellectual school of Hasidism broke away from General-Hasidism's emotional faith orientation, by making the mind central as the route to the internal heart. Its texts combine what they view as rational investigation with explanation of Kabbalah through articulating unity in a common Divine essence. In recent times, the messianic element latent in Hasidism has come to the fore in Habad.
Haskalah opposition to mysticism
The Jewish Haskalah enlightenment movement from the late 1700s renewed an ideology of rationalism in Judaism, giving birth to critical Judaic scholarship. It presented Judaism in apologetic terms, stripped of mysticism and myth, in line with Jewish emancipation. Many foundational historians of Judaism such as Heinrich Graetz, criticised Kabbalah as a foreign import that compromised historical Judaism. In the 20th century Gershom Scholem overturned Jewish historiography, presenting the centrality of Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah to historical Judaism, and their subterranean life as the true creative renewing spirit of Jewish thought and culture. His influence contributed to the flourishing of Jewish mysticism academia today, its impact on wider intellectual currents, and the contribution of mystical spirituality in modernist Jewish denominations today. Traditionalist Kabbalah and Hasidism, meanwhile, continued outside the academic interest in it.
20th-century influence
Jewish mysticism has influenced the thought of some major Jewish theologians, philosophers, writers and thinkers in the 20th century, outside of Kabbalistic or Hasidic traditions. The first Chief Rabbi of Mandate Palestine, Abraham Isaac Kook was a mystical thinker who drew heavily on Kabbalistic notions through his own poetic terminology. His writings are concerned with fusing the false divisions between sacred and secular, rational and mystical, legal and imaginative. Students of Joseph B. Soloveitchik, figurehead of American Modern Orthodox Judaism have read the influence of Kabbalistic symbols in his philosophical works. Neo-Hasidism, rather than Kabbalah, shaped Martin Buber's philosophy of dialogue and Abraham Joshua Heschel's Conservative Judaism. Lurianic symbols of Tzimtzum and Shevirah have informed Holocaust theologians. Gershom Scholem's central academic influence on reshaping Jewish historiography in favour of myth and imagination, made historical arcane Kabbalah of relevance to wide intellectual discourse in the 20th century. Moshe Idel traces the influences of Kabbalistic and Hasidic concepts on diverse thinkers such as Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Franz Kafka, Franz Rosenzweig, Arnaldo Momigliano, Paul Celan and George Steiner. Harold Bloom has seen Kabbalistic hermeneutics as the paradigm for western literary criticism. Sanford Drob discusses the direct and indirect influence of Kabbalah on the depth psychologies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, as well as modern and postmodern philosophers, in his project to develop new intellectual relevance and open dialogue for kabbalah. The interaction of Kabbalah with modern physics, as with other mystical traditions, has generated its own literature. Traditional Kabbalist Yitzchak Ginsburgh brings esoteric dimensions of advanced kabbalistic symmetry into relationship with mathematics and the sciences, including renaming the elementary particles of Quantum theory with Kabbalistic Hebrew names, and developing kabbalistic approaches to debates in Evolutionary theory.
Concepts
Concealed and revealed God
The nature of the divine prompted kabbalists to envision two aspects to God: (a) God in essence, absolutely transcendent, unknowable, limitless divine simplicity beyond revelation, and (b) God in manifestation, the revealed persona of God through which he creates and sustains and relates to mankind. Kabbalists speak of the first as Ein/Ayn Sof (אין סוף "the infinite/endless", literally "there is no end"). Of the impersonal Ein Sof nothing can be grasped. However, the second aspect of divine emanations, are accessible to human perception, dynamically interacting throughout spiritual and physical existence, reveal the divine immanently, and are bound up in the life of man. Kabbalists believe that these two aspects are not contradictory but complement one another, emanations mystically revealing the concealed mystery from within the Godhead.
As a term describing the Infinite Godhead beyond Creation, Kabbalists viewed the Ein Sof itself as too sublime to be referred to directly in the Torah. It is not a Holy Name in Judaism, as no name could contain a revelation of the Ein Sof. Even terming it "No End" is an inadequate representation of its true nature, the description only bearing its designation in relation to Creation. However, the Torah does narrate God speaking in the first person, most memorably the first word of the Ten Commandments, a reference without any description or name to the simple Divine essence (termed also Atzmus Ein Sof – Essence of the Infinite) beyond even the duality of Infinitude/Finitude. In contrast, the term Ein Sof describes the Godhead as Infinite lifeforce first cause, continuously keeping all Creation in existence. The Zohar reads the first words of Genesis, BeReishit Bara Elohim – In the beginning God created, as "With (the level of) Reishit (Beginning) (the Ein Sof) created Elohim (God's manifestation in creation)":
The structure of emanations has been described in various ways: Sephirot (divine attributes) and Partzufim (divine "faces"), Ohr (spiritual light and flow), Names of God and the supernal Torah, Olamot (Spiritual Worlds), a Divine Tree and Archetypal Man, Angelic Chariot and Palaces, male and female, enclothed layers of reality, inwardly holy vitality and external Kelipot shells, 613 channels ("limbs" of the King) and the divine Souls of Man. These symbols are used to describe various levels and aspects of Divine manifestation, from the Pnimi (inner) dimensions to the Hitzoni (outer). It is solely in relation to the emanations, certainly not the Ein Sof Ground of all Being, that Kabbalah uses anthropomorphic symbolism to relate psychologically to divinity. Kabbalists debated the validity of anthropomorphic symbolism, between its disclosure as mystical allusion, versus its instrumental use as allegorical metaphor; in the language of the Zohar, symbolism "touches yet does not touch" its point.
Sephirot
The Sephirot (also spelled "sefirot"; singular sefirah) are the ten emanations and attributes of God with which he continually sustains the existence of the universe. The Zohar and other Kabbalistic texts elaborate on the emergence of the sephirot from a state of concealed potential in the Ein Sof until their manifestation in the mundane world. In particular, Moses ben Jacob Cordovero (known as "the Ramak"), describes how God emanated the myriad details of finite reality out of the absolute unity of Divine light via the ten sephirot, or vessels.
Comparison of the Ramak's counting with Luria's, describes dual rational and unconscious aspects of Kabbalah. Two metaphors are used to describe the sephirot, their theocentric manifestation as the Trees of Life and Knowledge, and their anthropocentric correspondence in man, exemplified as Adam Kadmon. This dual-directional perspective embodies the cyclical, inclusive nature of the divine flow, where alternative divine and human perspectives have validity. The central metaphor of man allows human understanding of the sephirot, as they correspond to the psychological faculties of the soul, and incorporate masculine and feminine aspects after Genesis 1:27 ("God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them"). Corresponding to the last sefirah in Creation is the indwelling shekhinah (Feminine Divine Presence). Downward flow of divine Light in Creation forms the supernal Four Worlds; Atziluth, Beri'ah, Yetzirah and Assiah manifesting the dominance of successive sephirot towards action in this world. The acts of man unite or divide the Heavenly masculine and feminine aspects of the sephirot, their anthropomorphic harmony completing Creation. As the spiritual foundation of Creation, the sephirot correspond to the names of God in Judaism and the particular nature of any entity.
Ten Sephirot as process of Creation
According to Lurianic cosmology, the sephirot correspond to various levels of creation (ten sephirot in each of the Four Worlds, and four worlds within each of the larger four worlds, each containing ten sephirot, which themselves contain ten sephirot, to an infinite number of possibilities), and are emanated from the Creator for the purpose of creating the universe. The sephirot are considered revelations of the Creator's will (ratzon), and they should not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways the one God reveals his will through the Emanations. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes.
Ten Sephirot as process of ethics
Divine creation by means of the Ten Sephirot is an ethical process. They represent the different aspects of Morality. Loving-Kindness is a possible moral justification found in Chessed, and Gevurah is the Moral Justification of Justice and both are mediated by Mercy which is Rachamim. However, these pillars of morality become immoral once they become extremes. When Loving-Kindness becomes extreme it can lead to sexual depravity and lack of Justice to the wicked. When Justice becomes extreme, it can lead to torture and the Murder of innocents and unfair punishment.
"Righteous" humans (tzadikim plural of Tzadik) ascend these ethical qualities of the ten sephirot by doing righteous actions. If there were no righteous humans, the blessings of God would become completely hidden, and creation would cease to exist. While real human actions are the "Foundation" (Yesod) of this universe (Malchut), these actions must accompany the conscious intention of compassion. Compassionate actions are often impossible without faith (Emunah), meaning to trust that God always supports compassionate actions even when God seems hidden. Ultimately, it is necessary to show compassion toward oneself too in order to share compassion toward others. This "selfish" enjoyment of God's blessings but only in order to empower oneself to assist others is an important aspect of "Restriction", and is considered a kind of golden mean in kabbalah, corresponding to the sefirah of Adornment (Tiferet) being part of the "Middle Column".
Moses ben Jacob Cordovero, wrote Tomer Devorah (Palm Tree of Deborah), in which he presents an ethical teaching of Judaism in the kabbalistic context of the ten sephirot. Tomer Devorah has become also a foundational Musar text.
Divine Feminine
Both Rationalist Jewish philosophy and Kabbalah developed among the elite thinkers of medieval Spanish Jewry, but the austere intellectual sublimation of Judaism by the philosophers remained, by their own admission, accessible and appealing to restricted intellectually questioning circles. In contrast, while intuitive kabbalistic creativity was confined to esoteric circles, kabbalah deliberately appealed to wide reaches of the Jewish people in their popular piety, as its profoundly psychological depth theory incorporated the mythic, imaginative, sexual, and demonic in human experience.
Kabbalah describes Man as the inner dimension of all Spiritual and Physical Realms (with angels the outer aspect), from the verses "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them... Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." (Genesis 1:26-27, 2:7). Kabbalists equated the final Sephirah Malkuth (Kingdom) with the indwelling Feminine Divine immanent Presence of God throughout Creation, adapting for it the previous Rabbinic term Shekhinah (Divine Presence), but lending the concept new hypostatic and sexual interpretation (Earlier Biblical Wisdom literature describes Wisdom as a feminine manifestation of God). The fallen, exiled state of Creation by man exiles the Shekhinah into captivity among the Kelipot forces of impurity, awaiting redemption Above by man Below. Nachman of Breslov saw this archetype in fairy tales of the world, but in disordered narrative. His Kabbalistic tales rearrange the symbols to free the Divine Queen for reunion with The Holy One Blessed Be He.
Partzufim
The most esoteric Idrot sections of the classic Zohar make reference to hypostatic male and female Partzufim (Divine Personas) displacing the Sephirot, manifestations of God in particular Anthropomorphic symbolic personalities based on Biblical esoteric exegesis and midrashic narratives. Lurianic Kabbalah places these at the centre of our existence, rather than earlier Kabbalah's Sephirot, which Luria saw as broken in Divine crisis. Contemporary cognitive understanding of the Partzuf symbols relates them to Jungian archetypes of the collective unconscious, reflecting a psychologised progression from youth to sage in therapeutic healing back to the infinite Ein Sof/Unconscious, as Kabbalah is simultaneously both theology and psychology.
Descending spiritual worlds
Medieval Kabbalists believed that all things are linked to God through these emanations, making all levels in creation part of one great, gradually descending chain of being. Through this any lower creation reflects its particular roots in supernal divinity. Kabbalists agreed with the divine transcendence described by Jewish philosophy, but as only referring to the Ein Sof unknowable Godhead. They reinterpreted the theistic philosophical concept of creation from nothing, replacing God's creative act with panentheistic continual self-emanation by the mystical Ayin Nothingness/No-thing sustaining all spiritual and physical realms as successively more corporeal garments, veils and condensations of divine immanence. The innumerable levels of descent divide into Four comprehensive spiritual worlds, Atziluth ("Closeness" – Divine Wisdom), Beriah ("Creation" – Divine Understanding), Yetzirah ("Formation" – Divine Emotions), Assiah ("Action" – Divine Activity), with a preceding Fifth World Adam Kadmon ("Primordial Man" – Divine Will) sometimes excluded due to its sublimity. Together the whole spiritual heavens form the Divine Persona/Anthropos.
Hasidic thought extends the divine immanence of Kabbalah by holding that God is all that really exists, all else being completely undifferentiated from God's perspective. This view can be defined as acosmic monistic panentheism. According to this philosophy, God's existence is higher than anything that this world can express, yet he includes all things of this world within his divine reality in perfect unity, so that the creation effected no change in him at all. This paradox as seen from dual human and divine perspectives is dealt with at length in Chabad texts.
Origin of evil
Among problems considered in the Hebrew Kabbalah is the theological issue of the nature and origin of evil. In the views of some Kabbalists this conceives "evil" as a "quality of God", asserting that negativity enters into the essence of the Absolute. In this view it is conceived that the Absolute needs evil to "be what it is", i.e., to exist. Foundational texts of Medieval Kabbalism conceived evil as a demonic parallel to the holy, called the Sitra Achra (the "Other Side"), and the Kelipot/Qliphoth (the "Shells/Husks") that cover and conceal the holy, are nurtured from it, and yet also protect it by limiting its revelation. Scholem termed this element of the Spanish Kabbalah a "Jewish gnostic" motif, in the sense of dual powers in the divine realm of manifestation. In a radical notion, the root of evil is found within the 10 holy Sephirot, through an imbalance of Gevurah, the power of "Strength/Judgement/Severity".
Gevurah is necessary for Creation to exist as it counterposes Chesed ("loving-kindness"), restricting the unlimited divine bounty within suitable vessels, so forming the Worlds. However, if man sins (actualising impure judgement within his soul), the supernal Judgement is reciprocally empowered over the Kindness, introducing disharmony among the Sephirot in the divine realm and exile from God throughout Creation. The demonic realm, though illusory in its holy origin, becomes the real apparent realm of impurity in lower Creation. In the Zohar, the sin of Adam and Eve (who embodied Adam Kadmon below) took place in the spiritual realms. Their sin was that they separated the Tree of knowledge (10 sefirot within Malkuth, representing Divine immanence), from the Tree of life within it (10 sefirot within Tiferet, representing Divine transcendence). This introduced the false perception of duality into lower creation, an external Tree of Death nurtured from holiness, and an Adam Belial of impurity. In Lurianic Kabbalah, evil originates from a primordial shattering of the sephirot of God's Persona before creation of the stable spiritual worlds, mystically represented by the 8 Kings of Edom (the derivative of Gevurah) "who died" before any king reigned in Israel from Genesis 36. In the divine view from above within Kabbalah, emphasised in Hasidic Panentheism, the appearance of duality and pluralism below dissolves into the absolute Monism of God, psychologising evil. Though impure below, what appears as evil derives from a divine blessing too high to be contained openly. The mystical task of the righteous in the Zohar is to reveal this concealed Divine Oneness and absolute good, to "convert bitterness into sweetness, darkness into light".
Role of Man
Kabbalistic doctrine gives man the central role in Creation, as his soul and body correspond to the supernal divine manifestations. In the Christian Kabbalah this scheme was universalised to describe harmonia mundi, the harmony of Creation within man. In Judaism, it gave a profound spiritualisation of Jewish practice. While the kabbalistic scheme gave a radically innovative, though conceptually continuous, development of mainstream Midrashic and Talmudic rabbinic notions, kabbalistic thought underscored and invigorated conservative Jewish observance. The esoteric teachings of kabbalah gave the traditional mitzvot observances the central role in spiritual creation, whether the practitioner was learned in this knowledge or not. Accompanying normative Jewish observance and worship with elite mystical kavanot intentions gave them theurgic power, but sincere observance by common folk, especially in the Hasidic popularisation of kabbalah, could replace esoteric abilities. Many kabbalists were also leading legal figures in Judaism, such as Nachmanides and Joseph Karo.
Medieval kabbalah elaborates particular reasons for each Biblical mitzvah, and their role in harmonising the supernal divine flow, uniting masculine and feminine forces on High. With this, the feminine Divine presence in this world is drawn from exile to the Holy One Above. The 613 mitzvot are embodied in the organs and soul of man. Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates this in the more inclusive scheme of Jewish messianic rectification of exiled divinity. Jewish mysticism, in contrast to Divine transcendence rationalist human-centred reasons for Jewish observance, gave Divine-immanent providential cosmic significance to the daily events in the worldly life of man in general, and the spiritual role of Jewish observance in particular.
Levels of the soul
The Kabbalah posits that the human soul has three elements, the nefesh, ru'ach, and neshamah. The nefesh is found in all humans, and enters the physical body at birth. It is the source of one's physical and psychological nature. The next two parts of the soul are not implanted at birth, but can be developed over time; their development depends on the actions and beliefs of the individual. They are said to only fully exist in people awakened spiritually. A common way of explaining the three parts of the soul is as follows:
Nefesh (נפש): the lower part, or "animal part", of the soul. It is linked to instincts and bodily cravings. This part of the soul is provided at birth.
Ruach (רוח): the middle soul, the "spirit". It contains the moral virtues and the ability to distinguish between good and evil.
Neshamah (נשמה): the higher soul, or "super-soul". This separates man from all other life-forms. It is related to the intellect and allows man to enjoy and benefit from the afterlife. It allows one to have some awareness of the existence and presence of God.
The Raaya Meheimna, a section of related teachings spread throughout the Zohar, discusses fourth and fifth parts of the human soul, the chayyah and yehidah (first mentioned in the Midrash Rabbah). Gershom Scholem writes that these "were considered to represent the sublimest levels of intuitive cognition, and to be within the grasp of only a few chosen individuals". The Chayyah and the Yechidah do not enter into the body like the other three—thus they received less attention in other sections of the Zohar.
Chayyah (חיה): The part of the soul that allows one to have an awareness of the divine life force itself.
Yehidah (יחידה): The highest plane of the soul, in which one can achieve as full a union with God as is possible.
Both rabbinic and kabbalistic works posit that there are a few additional, non-permanent states of the soul that people can develop on certain occasions. These extra souls, or extra states of the soul, play no part in any afterlife scheme, but are mentioned for completeness:
Ruach HaKodesh (רוח הקודש) ("spirit of holiness"): a state of the soul that makes prophecy possible. Since the age of classical prophecy passed, no one (outside of Israel) receives the soul of prophecy any longer.
Neshamah Yeseira: The "supplemental soul" that a Jew can experience on Shabbat. It makes possible an enhanced spiritual enjoyment of the day. This exists only when one is observing Shabbat; it can be lost and gained depending on one's observance.
Neshamah Kedosha: Provided to Jews at the age of maturity (13 for boys, 12 for girls) and is related to the study and fulfillment of the Torah commandments. It exists only when one studies and follows the Torah; it can be lost and gained depending on one's study and observance.
Reincarnation
Reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul after death, was introduced into Judaism as a central esoteric tenet of Kabbalah from the Medieval period onwards, called Gilgul neshamot ("cycles of the soul"). The concept does not appear overtly in the Hebrew Bible or classic rabbinic literature, and was rejected by various Medieval Jewish philosophers. However, the Kabbalists explained a number of scriptural passages in reference to Gilgulim. The concept became central to the later Kabbalah of Isaac Luria, who systemised it as the personal parallel to the cosmic process of rectification. Through Lurianic Kabbalah and Hasidic Judaism, reincarnation entered popular Jewish culture as a literary motif.
Tzimtzum, Shevirah and Tikkun
Tzimtzum (Constriction/Concentration) is the primordial cosmic act whereby God "contracted" His infinite light, leaving a "void" into which the light of existence was poured. This allowed the emergence of independent existence that would not become nullified by the pristine Infinite Light, reconciling the unity of the Ein Sof with the plurality of creation. This changed the first creative act into one of withdrawal/exile, the antithesis of the ultimate Divine Will. In contrast, a new emanation after the Tzimtzum shone into the vacuum to begin creation, but led to an initial instability called Tohu (Chaos), leading to a new crisis of Shevirah (Shattering) of the sephirot vessels. The shards of the broken vessels fell down into the lower realms, animated by remnants of their divine light, causing primordial exile within the Divine Persona before the creation of man. Exile and enclothement of higher divinity within lower realms throughout existence requires man to complete the Tikkun olam (Rectification) process. Rectification Above corresponds to the reorganization of the independent sephirot into relating Partzufim (Divine Personas), previously referred to obliquely in the Zohar. From the catastrophe stems the possibility of self-aware Creation, and also the Kelipot (Impure Shells) of previous Medieval kabbalah. The metaphorical anthropomorphism of the partzufim accentuates the sexual unifications of the redemption process, while Gilgul reincarnation emerges from the scheme. Uniquely, Lurianism gave formerly private mysticism the urgency of Messianic social involvement.
According to interpretations of Luria, the catastrophe stemmed from the "unwillingness" of the residue imprint after the Tzimtzum to relate to the new vitality that began creation. The process was arranged to shed and harmonise the Divine Infinity with the latent potential of evil. The creation of Adam would have redeemed existence, but his sin caused new shevirah of Divine vitality, requiring the Giving of the Torah to begin Messianic rectification. Historical and individual history becomes the narrative of reclaiming exiled Divine sparks.
Linguistic mysticism and the mystical Torah
Kabbalistic thought extended Biblical and Midrashic notions that God enacted Creation through the Hebrew language and through the Torah into a full linguistic mysticism. In this, every Hebrew letter, word, number, even accent on words of the Hebrew Bible contain Jewish mystical meanings, describing the spiritual dimensions within exoteric ideas, and it teaches the hermeneutic methods of interpretation for ascertaining these meanings. Names of God in Judaism have further prominence, though infinite meaning turns the whole Torah into a Divine name. As the Hebrew name of things is the channel of their lifeforce, parallel to the sephirot, so concepts such as "holiness" and "mitzvot" embody ontological Divine immanence, as God can be known in manifestation as well as transcendence. The infinite potential of meaning in the Torah, as in the Ein Sof, is reflected in the symbol of the two trees of the Garden of Eden; the Torah of the Tree of Knowledge is the external, finite Halachic Torah, enclothed within which the mystics perceive the unlimited infinite plurality of meanings of the Torah of the Tree of Life. In Lurianic terms, each of the 600,000 root souls of Israel find their own interpretation in Torah, as "God, the Torah and Israel are all One".
As early as the 1st century BCE Jews believed that the Torah and other canonical texts contained encoded messages and hidden meanings. Gematria is one method for discovering its hidden meanings. In this system, each Hebrew letter also represents a number. By converting letters to numbers, Kabbalists were able to find a hidden meaning in each word. This method of interpretation was used extensively by various schools.
In contemporary interpretation of kabbalah, Sanford Drob makes cognitive sense of this linguistic mythos by relating it to postmodern philosophical concepts described by Jacques Derrida and others, where all reality embodies narrative texts with infinite plurality of meanings brought by the reader. In this dialogue, kabbalah survives the nihilism of Deconstruction by incorporating its own Lurianic Shevirah, and by the dialectical paradox where man and God imply each other.
Cognition, mysticism, or values
Kabbalists as mystics
The founder of the academic study of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem, privileged an intellectual view of the nature of Kabbalistic symbols as dialectic Theosophical speculation. In contrast, contemporary scholarship of Moshe Idel and Elliot R. Wolfson has opened a phenomenological understanding of the mystical nature of Kabbalistic experience, based on a close reading of the historical texts. Wolfson has shown that among the closed elite circles of mystical activity, medieval Theosophical Kabbalists held that an intellectual view of their symbols was secondary to the experiential. In the context of medieval Jewish philosophical debates on the role of imagination in Biblical prophecy, and essentialist versus instrumental kabbalistic debates about the relation of sephirot to God, they saw contemplation on the sephirot as a vehicle for prophecy. Judaism's ban on physical iconography, along with anthropomorphic metaphors for Divinity in the Hebrew Bible and midrash, enabled their internal visualisation of the Divine sephirot Anthropos in imagination. Disclosure of the aniconic in iconic internal psychology, involved sublimatory revelation of Kabbalah's sexual unifications. Previous academic distinction between Theosophical versus Abulafian Ecstatic-Prophetic Kabbalah overstated their division of aims, which revolved around visual versus verbal/auditory views of prophecy. In addition, throughout the history of Judaic Kabbalah, the greatest mystics claimed to receive new teachings from Elijah the Prophet, the souls of earlier sages (a purpose of Lurianic meditation prostrated on the graves of Talmudic Tannaim, Amoraim and Kabbalists), the soul of the mishnah, ascents during sleep, heavenly messengers, etc. A tradition of parapsychology abilities, psychic knowledge, and theurgic intercessions in heaven for the community is recounted in the hagiographic works Praises of the Ari, Praises of the Besht, and in many other Kabbalistic and Hasidic tales. Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts are concerned to apply themselves from exegesis and theory to spiritual practice, including prophetic drawing of new mystical revelations in Torah. The mythological symbols Kabbalah uses to answer philosophical questions, themselves invite mystical contemplation, intuitive apprehension and psychological engagement.
Paradoxical coincidence of opposites
In bringing Theosophical Kabbalah into contemporary intellectual understanding, using the tools of modern and postmodern philosophy and psychology, Sanford Drob shows philosophically how every symbol of the Kabbalah embodies the simultaneous dialectical paradox of mystical Coincidentia oppositorum, the conjoining of two opposite dualities. Thus the Infinite Ein Sof is above the duality of Yesh/Ayin Being/Non-Being transcending Existence/Nothingness (Becoming into Existence through the souls of Man who are the inner dimension of all spiritual and physical worlds, yet simultaneously the Infinite Divine generative lifesource beyond Creation that continuously keeps everything spiritual and physical in existence); Sephirot bridge the philosophical problem of the One and the Many; Man is both Divine (Adam Kadmon) and human (invited to project human psychology onto Divinity to understand it); Tzimtzum is both illusion and real from Divine and human perspectives; evil and good imply each other (Kelipah draws from Divinity, good arises only from overcoming evil); Existence is simultaneously partial (Tzimtzum), broken (Shevirah), and whole (Tikun) from different perspectives; God experiences Himself as Other through Man, Man embodies and completes (Tikun) the Divine Persona Above. In Kabbalah's reciprocal Panentheism, Theism and Atheism/Humanism represent two incomplete poles of a mutual dialectic that imply and include each other's partial validity. This was expressed by the Chabad Hasidic thinker Aaron of Staroselye, that the truth of any concept is revealed only in its opposite.
Metaphysics or axiology
By expressing itself using symbols and myth that transcend single interpretations, Theosophical Kabbalah incorporates aspects of philosophy, Jewish theology, psychology and unconscious depth psychology, mysticism and meditation, Jewish exegesis, theurgy, and ethics, as well as overlapping with theory from magical elements. Its symbols can be read as questions which are their own existentialist answers (the Hebrew sephirah Chokhmah-Wisdom, the beginning of Existence, is read etymologically by Kabbalists as the question "Koach Mah?" the "Power of What?"). Alternative listings of the Sephirot start with either Keter (Unconscious Will/Volition), or Chokhmah (Wisdom), a philosophical duality between a Rational or Supra-Rational Creation, between whether the Mitzvot Judaic observances have reasons or transcend reasons in Divine Will, between whether study or good deeds is superior, and whether the symbols of Kabbalah should be read as primarily metaphysical intellectual cognition or Axiology values. Messianic redemption requires both ethical Tikkun olam and contemplative Kavanah. Sanford Drob sees every attempt to limit Kabbalah to one fixed dogmatic interpretation as necessarily bringing its own Deconstruction (Lurianic Kabbalah incorporates its own Shevirah self shattering; the Ein Sof transcends all of its infinite expressions; the infinite mystical Torah of the Tree of Life has no/infinite interpretations). The infinite axiology of the Ein Sof One, expressed through the Plural Many, overcomes the dangers of nihilism, or the antinomian mystical breaking of Jewish observance alluded to throughout Kabbalistic and Hasidic mysticisms.
Primary texts
Like the rest of the rabbinic literature, the texts of kabbalah were once part of an ongoing oral tradition, though, over the centuries, much of the oral tradition has been written down.
Jewish forms of esotericism existed over 2,000 years ago. Ben Sira (born c. 170 BCE) warns against it, saying: "You shall have no business with secret things". Nonetheless, mystical studies were undertaken and resulted in mystical literature, the first being the Apocalyptic literature of the second and first pre-Christian centuries and which contained elements that carried over to later kabbalah.
Throughout the centuries since, many texts have been produced, among them the ancient descriptions of Sefer Yetzirah, the Heichalot mystical ascent literature, the Bahir, Sefer Raziel HaMalakh and the Zohar, the main text of Kabbalistic exegesis. Classic mystical Bible commentaries are included in fuller versions of the Mikraot Gedolot (Main Commentators). Cordoveran systemisation is presented in Pardes Rimonim, philosophical articulation in the works of the Maharal, and Lurianic rectification in Etz Chayim. Subsequent interpretation of Lurianic Kabbalah was made in the writings of Shalom Sharabi, in Nefesh HaChaim and the 20th-century Sulam. Hasidism interpreted kabbalistic structures to their correspondence in inward perception. The Hasidic development of kabbalah incorporates a successive stage of Jewish mysticism from historical kabbalistic metaphysics.
Scholarship
The first modern-academic historians of Judaism, the "Wissenschaft des Judentums" school of the 19th century, framed Judaism in solely rational terms in the emancipatory Haskalah spirit of their age. They opposed kabbalah and restricted its significance from Jewish historiography. In the mid-20th century, it was left to Gershom Scholem to overturn their stance, establishing the flourishing present-day academic investigation of Jewish mysticism, and making Heichalot, Kabbalistic and Hasidic texts the objects of scholarly critical-historical study. In Scholem's opinion, the mythical and mystical components of Judaism were at least as important as the rational ones, and he thought that they, rather than the exoteric Halakha or intellectualist Jewish philosophy, were the living subterranean stream in historical Jewish development that periodically broke out to renew the Jewish spirit and social life of the community. Scholem's magisterial Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) among his seminal works, though representing scholarship and interpretations that have subsequently been challenged and revised within the field, remains the only academic survey studying all main historical periods of Jewish mysticism
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has been a centre of this research, including Scholem and Isaiah Tishby, and more recently Joseph Dan, Yehuda Liebes, Rachel Elior, and Moshe Idel. Scholars across the eras of Jewish mysticism in America and Britain have included Alexander Altmann, Arthur Green, Lawrence Fine, Elliot Wolfson, Daniel Matt, Louis Jacobs and Ada Rapoport-Albert.
Moshe Idel has opened up research on the Ecstatic Kabbalah alongside the theosophical, and has called for new multi-disciplinary approaches, beyond the philological and historical that have dominated until now, to include phenomenology, psychology, anthropology and comparative studies.
Claims for authority
Historians have noted that most claims for the authority of kabbalah involve an argument of the antiquity of authority (see, e.g., Joseph Dan's discussion in his Circle of the Unique Cherub). As a result, virtually all early foundational works pseudepigraphically claim, or are ascribed, ancient authorship. For example, Sefer Raziel HaMalach, an astro-magical text partly based on a magical manual of late antiquity, Sefer ha-Razim, was, according to the kabbalists, transmitted by the angel Raziel to Adam after he was evicted from Eden. Another famous work, the early Sefer Yetzirah, is dated back to the patriarch Abraham. This tendency toward pseudepigraphy has its roots in apocalyptic literature, which claims that esoteric knowledge such as magic, divination and astrology was transmitted to humans in the mythic past by the two angels, Aza and Azaz'el (in other places, Azaz'el and Uzaz'el) who fell from heaven (see Genesis 6:4).
As well as ascribing ancient origins to texts, and reception of Oral Torah transmission, the greatest and most innovative Kabbalists claimed mystical reception of direct personal divine revelations, by heavenly mentors such as Elijah the Prophet, the souls of Talmudic sages, prophetic revelation, soul ascents on high, etc. On this basis Arthur Green speculates, that while the Zohar was written by a circle of Kabbalists in medieval Spain, they may have believed they were channeling the souls and direct revelations from the earlier mystic circle of Shimon bar Yochai in 2nd century Galilee depicted in the Zohar's narrative. Academics have compared the Zohar mystic circle of Spain with the romanticised wandering mystic circle of Galilee described in the text. Similarly, Isaac Luria gathered his disciples at the traditional Idra assembly location, placing each in the seat of their former reincarnations as students of Shimon bar Yochai.
Criticism
Dualistic cosmology
Although Kabbalah propounds the Unity of God, one of the most serious and sustained criticisms is that it may lead away from monotheism, and instead promote dualism, the belief that there is a supernatural counterpart to God. The dualistic system holds that there is a good power versus an evil power. There are two primary models of Gnostic-dualistic cosmology: the first, which goes back to Zoroastrianism, believes creation is ontologically divided between good and evil forces; the second, found largely in Greco-Roman metaphysics like Neo-Platonism, argues that the universe knew a primordial harmony, but that a cosmic disruption yielded a second, evil dimension to reality. This second model influenced the cosmology of the Kabbalah.
According to Kabbalistic cosmology, the Ten Sephirot correspond to ten levels of creation. These levels of creation must not be understood as ten different "gods" but as ten different ways of revealing God, one per level. It is not God who changes but the ability to perceive God that changes.
While God may seem to exhibit dual natures (masculine-feminine, compassionate-judgmental, creator-creation), all adherents of Kabbalah have consistently stressed the ultimate unity of God. For example, in all discussions of Male and Female, the hidden nature of God exists above it all without limit, being called the Infinite or the "No End" (Ein Sof)—neither one nor the other, transcending any definition. The ability of God to become hidden from perception is called "Restriction" (Tzimtzum). Hiddenness makes creation possible because God can become "revealed" in a diversity of limited ways, which then form the building blocks of creation.
Kabbalistic texts, including the Zohar, appear to affirm dualism, as they ascribe all evil to the separation from holiness known as the Sitra Achra ("the other side") which is opposed to Sitra D'Kedushah, or the Side of Holiness. The "left side" of divine emanation is a negative mirror image of the "side of holiness" with which it was locked in combat. [Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 6, "Dualism", p. 244]. While this evil aspect exists within the divine structure of the Sephirot, the Zohar indicates that the Sitra Ahra has no power over Ein Sof, and only exists as a necessary aspect of the creation of God to give man free choice, and that evil is the consequence of this choice. It is not a supernatural force opposed to God, but a reflection of the inner moral combat within mankind between the dictates of morality and the surrender to one's basic instincts.
David Gottlieb notes that many Kabbalists hold that the concepts of, e.g., a Heavenly Court or the Sitra Ahra are only given to humanity by God as a working model to understand His ways within our own epistemological limits. They reject the notion that a satan or angels actually exist. Others hold that non-divine spiritual entities were indeed created by God as a means for exacting his will.
According to Kabbalists, humans cannot yet understand the infinity of God. Rather, there is God as revealed to humans (corresponding to Zeir Anpin), and the rest of the infinity of God as remaining hidden from human experience (corresponding to Arich Anpin). One reading of this theology is monotheistic, similar to panentheism; another reading of the same theology is that it is dualistic. Gershom Scholem writes:
Distinction between Jews and non-Jews
According to Isaac Luria (1534–72) and other commentators on the Zohar, righteous Gentiles do not have this demonic aspect and are in many ways similar to Jewish souls. A number of prominent Kabbalists, e.g., Pinchas Eliyahu of Vilna, the author of Sefer ha-Brit, held that only some marginal elements in the humanity represent these demonic forces. On the other hand, the souls of Jewish heretics have much more satanic energy than the worst of idol worshippers; this view is popular in some Hasidic circles, especially Satmar Hasidim.
On the other hand, many prominent Kabbalists rejected this idea and believed in essential equality of all human souls. Menahem Azariah da Fano (1548–1620), in his book Reincarnations of souls, provides many examples of non-Jewish Biblical figures being reincarnated into Jews and vice versa.
But one point of view is represented by the Hasidic work Tanya (1797), in order to argue that Jews have a different character of soul: while a non-Jew, according to the author Shneur Zalman of Liadi (born 1745), can achieve a high level of spirituality, similar to an angel, his soul is still fundamentally different in character, from a Jewish one. A similar view is found in Kuzari, an early medieval philosophical book by Yehuda Halevi (1075–1141 AD).
Another prominent Habad rabbi, Abraham Yehudah Khein (born 1878), believed that spiritually elevated Gentiles have essentially Jewish souls, "who just lack the formal conversion to Judaism", and that unspiritual Jews are "Jewish merely by their birth documents". The great 20th-century Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag viewed the terms "Jews" and "Gentile" as different levels of perception, available to every human soul.
David Halperin argues that the collapse of Kabbalah's influence among Western European Jews over the course of the 17th and 18th century was a result of the cognitive dissonance they experienced between the negative perception of Gentiles found in some exponents of Kabbalah, and their own positive dealings with non-Jews, which were rapidly expanding and improving during this period due to the influence of the Enlightenment.
However, a number of renowned Kabbalists claimed the exact opposite, stressing universality of all human souls and providing universal interpretations of the Kabbalistic tradition, including its Lurianic version. In their view, Kabbalah transcends the borders of Judaism and can serve as a basis of inter-religious theosophy and a universal religion. Pinchas Elijah Hurwitz, a prominent Lithuanian-Galician Kabbalist of the 18th century and a moderate proponent of the Haskalah, called for brotherly love and solidarity between all nations, and believed that Kabbalah can empower everyone, Jews and Gentiles alike, with prophetic abilities.
The works of Abraham Cohen de Herrera (1570–1635) are full of references to Gentile mystical philosophers. Such approach was particularly common among the Renaissance and post-Renaissance Italian Jews. Late medieval and Renaissance Italian Kabbalists, such as Yohanan Alemanno, David Messer Leon and Abraham Yagel, adhered to humanistic ideals and incorporated teachings of various Christian and pagan mystics.
A prime representative of this humanist stream in Kabbalah was Elijah Benamozegh, who explicitly praised Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, as well as a whole range of ancient pagan mystical systems. He believed that Kabbalah can reconcile the differences between the world religions, which represent different facets and stages of the universal human spirituality. In his writings, Benamozegh interprets the New Testament, Hadith, Vedas, Avesta and pagan mysteries according to the Kabbalistic theosophy.
E. R. Wolfson provides numerous examples from the 17th to the 20th centuries, which would challenge the view of Halperin as well as the notion that "modern Judaism" has rejected or dismissed this "outdated aspect" of the religion and, he argues, there are still Kabbalists today who harbor this view. He argues that, while it is accurate to say that many Jews do and would find this distinction offensive, it is inaccurate to say that the idea has been totally rejected in all circles. As Wolfson has argued, it is an ethical demand on the part of scholars to continue to be vigilant with regard to this matter and in this way the tradition can be refined from within.
Medieval views
The idea that there are ten divine sephirot could evolve over time into the idea that "God is One being, yet in that One being there are Ten" which opens up a debate about what the "correct beliefs" in God should be, according to Judaism. The early Kabbalists debated the relationship of the Sephirot to God, adopting a range of essentialist versus instrumental views. Modern Kabbalah, based on the 16th century systemisations of Cordovero and Isaac Luria, takes an intermediate position: the instrumental vessels of the sephirot are created, but their inner light is from the undifferentiated Ohr Ein Sof essence.
The pre-Kabbalistic Saadia Gaon teaches in his book Emunot v'Deot that Jews who believe in reincarnation have adopted a non-Jewish belief.
Maimonides (12th century), celebrated by followers for his Jewish rationalism, rejected many of the pre-Kabbalistic Hekalot texts, particularly Shi'ur Qomah whose starkly anthropomorphic vision of God he considered heretical. Maimonides, a centrally important medieval sage of Judaism, lived at the time of the first emergence of Kabbalah. Modern scholarship views the systemisation and publication of their historic oral doctrine by Kabbalists, as a move to rebut the threat on Judaic observance by the populance misreading Maimonides' ideal of philosophical contemplation over ritual performance in his philosophical Guide of the Perplexed. They objected to Maimonides equating the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah secrets of the Torah with Aristotelean physics and metaphysics in that work and in his legal Mishneh Torah, teaching that their own Theosophy, centred on an esoteric metaphysics of traditional Jewish practice, is the Torah's true inner meaning.
The Kabbalist medieval rabbinic sage Nachmanides (13th century), classic debater against Maimonidean rationalism, provides background to many kabbalistic ideas. An entire book entitled Gevuras Aryeh was authored by Yaakov Yehuda Aryeh Leib Frenkel and originally published in 1915, specifically to explain and elaborate on the kabbalistic concepts addressed by Nachmanides in his classic commentary to the Five books of Moses.
Abraham ben Moses ben Maimon, in the spirit of his father Maimonides, Saadiah Gaon, and other predecessors, explains at length in his Milḥamot HaShem that God is in no way literally within time or space nor physically outside time or space, since time and space simply do not apply to his being whatsoever, emphasising the Monotheist Oneness of Divine transcendence unlike any worldly conception. Kabbalah's Panentheism expressed by Moses Cordovero and Hasidic thought, agrees that G-d's essence transcends all expression, but holds in contrast that existence is a manifestation of God's Being, descending immanently through spiritual and physical condensations of the divine light. By incorporating the pluralist many within God, God's Oneness is deepened to exclude the true existence of anything but God. In Hasidic Panentheism, the world is acosmic from the Divine view, yet real from its own perspective.
Around the 1230s, Rabbi Meir ben Simon of Narbonne wrote an epistle (included in his Milḥemet Mitzvah) against his contemporaries, the early Kabbalists, characterizing them as blasphemers who even approach heresy. He particularly singled out the Sefer Bahir, rejecting the attribution of its authorship to the tanna R. Neḥunya ben ha-Kanah and describing some of its content as truly heretical.
Leone di Modena, a 17th-century Venetian critic of Kabbalah, wrote that if we were to accept the Kabbalah, then the Christian trinity would be compatible with Judaism, as the Trinity seems to resemble the kabbalistic doctrine of the sephirot. This was in response to the belief that some European Jews of the period addressed individual sephirot in their prayers, although the practice was apparently uncommon. Apologists explained that Jews may have been praying for and not necessarily to the aspects of Godliness represented by the sephirot. In contrast to Christianity, Kabbalists declare that one prays only "to Him (God's Essence, male solely by metaphor in Hebrew's gendered grammar), not to his attributes (sephirot or any other Divine manifestations or forms of incarnation)". Kabbalists directed their prayers to God's essence through the channels of particular sephirot using kavanot Divine names intentions. To pray to a manifestation of God introduces false division among the sephirot, disrupting their absolute unity, dependence and dissolving into the transcendent Ein Sof; the sephirot descend throughout Creation, only appearing from man's perception of God, where God manifests by any variety of numbers.
Yaakov Emden (1697–1776), himself an Orthodox Kabbalist who venerated the Zohar, concerned to battle Sabbatean misuse of Kabbalah, wrote the Mitpaḥath Sfarim (Veil of the Books), an astute critique of the Zohar in which he concludes that certain parts of the Zohar contain heretical teaching and therefore could not have been written by Shimon bar Yochai. He also expressed the extremely unconventional view, contrary to all evidence, that the pious Maimonides could not have written the Guide of the Perplexed, which must have been the work of an unknown heretic.
Emden's Kabbalist contemporary the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797) early modern Rabbinic sage, held the Zohar and Luria in deep reverence, critically emending classic Judaic texts from historically accumulated errors by his acute acumen and scholarly belief in the perfect unity of Kabbalah revelation and Rabbinic Judaism. Though a Lurianic Kabbalist, his commentaries sometimes chose Zoharic interpretation over Luria when he felt the matter lent itself to a more exoteric view. Although proficient in mathematics and sciences and recommending their necessity for understanding Talmud, he had no use for canonical medieval Jewish philosophy, declaring that Maimonides had been "misled by the accursed philosophy" in denying belief in the external occult matters of demons, incantations and amulets.
Views of Kabbalists regarding Jewish philosophy varied from those who appreciated Maimonidean and other classic medieval philosophical works, integrating them with Kabbalah and seeing profound human philosophical and Divine kabbalistic wisdoms as compatible, to those who polemicised against religious philosophy during times when it became overly rationalist and dogmatic. A dictum commonly cited by Kabbalists, "Kabbalah begins where Philosophy ends", can be read as either appreciation or polemic. Moses of Burgos (late 13th century) declared, "these philosophers whose wisdom you are praising end where we begin". Moses Cordovero appreciated the influence of Maimonides in his quasi-rational systemisation. From its inception, the Theosophical Kabbalah became permeated by terminology adapted from philosophy and given new mystical meanings, such as its early integration with the Neoplatonism of Ibn Gabirol and use of Aristotelian terms of Form over Matter.
Orthodox Judaism
Pinchas Giller and Adin Steinsaltz write that Kabbalah is best described as the inner part of traditional Jewish religion, the official metaphysics of Judaism, that was essential to normative Judaism until fairly recently. With the decline of Jewish life in medieval Spain, it displaced rationalist Jewish philosophy until the modern rise of Haskalah enlightenment, receiving a revival in our postmodern age. While Judaism always maintained a minority tradition of religious rationalist criticism of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem writes that Lurianic Kabbalah was the last theology that was near predominant in Jewish life. While Lurianism represented the elite of esoteric Kabbalism, its mythic-messianic divine drama and personalisation of reincarnation captured the popular imagination in Jewish folklore and in the Sabbatean and Hasidic social movements. Giller notes that the former Zoharic-Cordoverian classic Kabbalah represented a common exoteric popular view of Kabbalah, as depicted in early modern Musar literature.
In contemporary Orthodox Judaism there is dispute as to the status of the Zohar's and Isaac Luria's (the Arizal) Kabbalistic teachings. While a portion of Modern Orthodox, followers of the Dor De'ah movement, and many students of the Rambam reject Arizal's Kabbalistic teachings, as well as deny that the Zohar is authoritative or from Shimon bar Yohai, all three of these groups accept the existence and validity of the Talmudic Maaseh Breishit and Maaseh Merkavah mysticism. Their disagreement concerns whether the Kabbalistic teachings promulgated today are accurate representations of those esoteric teachings to which the Talmud refers. The mainstream Haredi (Hasidic, Lithuanian, Oriental) and Religious Zionist Jewish movements revere Luria and the Kabbalah, but one can find both rabbis who sympathize with such a view, while disagreeing with it, as well as rabbis who consider such a view heresy. The Haredi Eliyahu Dessler and Gedaliah Nadel maintained that it is acceptable to believe that the Zohar was not written by Shimon bar Yochai and that it had a late authorship. Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg mentioned the possibility of Christian influence in the Kabbalah with the "Kabbalistic vision of the Messiah as the redeemer of all mankind" being "the Jewish counterpart to Christ."
Modern Orthodox Judaism, representing an inclination to rationalism, embrace of academic scholarship, and the individual's autonomy to define Judaism, embodies a diversity of views regarding Kabbalah from a Neo-Hasidic spirituality to Maimonist anti-Kabbalism. In a book to help define central theological issues in Modern Orthodoxy, Michael J. Harris writes that the relationship between Modern Orthodoxy and mysticism has been under-discussed. He sees a deficiency of spirituality in Modern Orthodoxy, as well as the dangers in a fundamentalist adoption of Kabbalah. He suggests the development of neo-Kabbalistic adaptions of Jewish mysticism compatible with rationalism, offering a variety of precedent models from past thinkers ranging from the mystical inclusivism of Abraham Isaac Kook to a compartmentalisation between Halakha and mysticism.
Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ, a 20th-century Yemenite Jewish leader and Chief Rabbi of Yemen, spearheaded the Dor De'ah ("generation of knowledge") movement to counteract the influence of the Zohar and modern Kabbalah. He authored critiques of mysticism in general and Lurianic Kabbalah in particular; his magnum opus was Milḥamoth ha-Shem (Wars of Hashem) against what he perceived as neo-platonic and gnostic influences on Judaism with the publication and distribution of the Zohar since the 13th Century. Rabbi Yiḥyah founded yeshivot, rabbinical schools, and synagogues that featured a rationalist approach to Judaism based on the Talmud and works of Saadia Gaon and Maimonides (Rambam).
Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903–1994), an ultra-rationalist Modern Orthodox philosopher and brother of Nechama Leibowitz, publicly shared views expressed in Yiḥyeh Qafeḥ's book Milḥamoth HaShem against mysticism. For example, Leibowitz called Kabbalah "a collection of "pagan superstitions" and "idol worship" in remarks given after receiving the Yakir Yerushalayim Award (English: worthy citizen of Jerusalem) in 1990. In modern times, rationalists holding similar views as those of the Dor De'ah movement have described themselves as "talmide ha-Rambam" (disciples of Maimonides) rather than as being aligned with Dor De'ah, and are more theologically aligned with the rationalism of Modern Orthodox Judaism than with Orthodox Ḥasidic or Ḥaredi communities.
Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism
Kabbalah tended to be rejected by most Jews in the Conservative and Reform movements, though its influences were not completely eliminated. While it was generally not studied as a discipline, the Kabbalistic Kabbalat Shabbat service remained part of liberal liturgy, as did the Yedid Nefesh prayer. Nevertheless, in the 1960s, Saul Lieberman of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America is reputed to have introduced a lecture by Scholem on Kabbalah with a statement that Kabbalah itself was "nonsense", but the academic study of Kabbalah was "scholarship". This view became popular among many Jews, who viewed the subject as worthy of study, but who did not accept Kabbalah as teaching literal truths.
According to Bradley Shavit Artson (Dean of the Conservative Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in the American Jewish University)
However, in the late 20th century and early 21st century there has been a revival in interest in Kabbalah in all branches of liberal Judaism. The Kabbalistic 12th-century prayer Anim Zemirot was restored to the new Conservative Sim Shalom siddur, as was the B'rikh Shmeh passage from the Zohar, and the mystical Ushpizin service welcoming to the Sukkah the spirits of Jewish forbearers. Anim Zemirot and the 16th-century mystical poem Lekhah Dodi reappeared in the Reform Siddur Gates of Prayer in 1975. All rabbinical seminaries now teach several courses in Kabbalah—in Conservative Judaism, both the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles have full-time instructors in Kabbalah and Hasidut, Eitan Fishbane and Pinchas Giller, respectively. In Reform Judaism, Sharon Koren teaches at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Reform rabbis like Herbert Weiner and Lawrence Kushner have renewed interest in Kabbalah among Reform Jews. At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the only accredited seminary that has curricular requirements in Kabbalah, Joel Hecker is the full-time instructor teaching courses in Kabbalah and Hasidut.
According to Artson:
The Reconstructionist movement, under the leadership of Arthur Green in the 1980s and 1990s, and with the influence of Zalman Schachter Shalomi, brought a strong openness to Kabbalah and hasidic elements that then came to play prominent roles in the Kol ha-Neshamah siddur series.
Contemporary study
Teaching of classic esoteric kabbalah texts and practice remained traditional until recent times, passed on in Judaism from master to disciple, or studied by leading rabbinic scholars. This changed in the 20th century, through conscious reform and the secular openness of knowledge. In contemporary times kabbalah is studied in four very different, though sometimes overlapping, ways:
The traditional method, employed among Jews since the 16th century, continues in learned study circles. Its prerequisite is to either be born Jewish or be a convert and to join a group of kabbalists under the tutelage of a rabbi, since the 18th century more likely a Hasidic one, though others exist among Sephardi-Mizrachi, and Lithuanian rabbinic scholars. Beyond elite, historical esoteric kabbalah, the public-communally studied texts of Hasidic thought explain kabbalistic concepts for wide spiritual application, through their own concern with popular psychological perception of Divine Panentheism.
A second, new universalist form, is the method of modern-style Jewish organisations and writers, who seek to disseminate kabbalah to every man, woman and child regardless of race or class, especially since the Western interest in mysticism from the 1960s. These derive from various cross-denominational Jewish interests in kabbalah, and range from considered theology to popularised forms that often adopt New Age terminology and beliefs for wider communication. These groups highlight or interpret kabbalah through non-particularist, universalist aspects.
A third way are non-Jewish organisations, mystery schools, initiation bodies, fraternities and secret societies, the most popular of which are Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism and the Golden Dawn, although hundreds of similar societies claim a kabbalistic lineage. These derive from syncretic combinations of Jewish kabbalah with Christian, occultist or contemporary New Age spirituality. As a separate spiritual tradition in Western esotericism since the Renaissance, with different aims from its Jewish origin, the non-Jewish traditions differ significantly and do not give an accurate representation of the Jewish spiritual understanding (or vice versa).
Fourthly, since the mid-20th century, historical-critical scholarly investigation of all eras of Jewish mysticism has flourished into an established department of university Jewish studies. Where the first academic historians of Judaism in the 19th century opposed and marginalised kabbalah, Gershom Scholem and his successors repositioned the historiography of Jewish mysticism as a central, vital component of Judaic renewal through history. Cross-disciplinary academic revisions of Scholem's and others' theories are regularly published for wide readership.
Universalist Jewish organisations
The two, unrelated organisations that translate the mid-20th-century teachings of Yehuda Ashlag into a contemporary universalist message, have given kabbalah a public cross-religious profile:
Bnei Baruch is a group of Kabbalah students, based in Israel. Study materials are available in over 25 languages for free online or at printing cost. Michael Laitman established Bnei Baruch in 1991, following the passing of his teacher, Ashlag's son Rav Baruch Ashlag. Laitman named his group Bnei Baruch (sons of Baruch) to commemorate the memory of his mentor. The teaching strongly suggests restricting one's studies to 'authentic sources', kabbalists of the direct lineage of master to disciple.
The Kabbalah Centre was founded in the United States in 1965 as The National Research Institute of Kabbalah by Philip Berg and Rav Yehuda Tzvi Brandwein, disciple of Yehuda Ashlag's. Later Philip Berg and his wife re-established the organisation as the worldwide Kabbalah Centre. In recent times its outreach teaching in New Age style has been "derided by critics as Hollywood's new "non-religion" and even "the McDonald's of spirituality"" after having attracted a cross-religious celebrity following (see Madonna) and media profile, though the organisation is led by Orthodox Jewish teachers.
Other prominent Jewish universalist organisations:
The Kabbalah Society, run by Warren Kenton, an organisation based instead on pre-Lurianic Medieval Kabbalah presented in universalist style. In contrast, traditional kabbalists read earlier kabbalah through later Lurianism and the systemisations of 16th-century Safed.
The New Kabbalah, website and books by Sanford L. Drob, is a scholarly intellectual investigation of the Lurianic symbolism in the perspective of modern and postmodern intellectual thought. It seeks a "new kabbalah" rooted in the historical tradition through its academic study, but universalised through dialogue with modern philosophy and psychology. This approach seeks to enrich the secular disciplines, while uncovering intellectual insights formerly implicit in kabbalah's essential myth:
The Kabbalah of Information is described in the 2018 book From Infinity to Man: The Fundamental Ideas of Kabbalah Within the Framework of Information Theory and Quantum Physics written by Ukrainian-born professor and businessman Eduard Shyfrin. The main tenet of the teaching is “In the beginning He created information”, rephrasing the famous saying of Nahmanides, “In the beginning He created primordial matter and He didn’t create anything else, just shaped it and formed it."
Hasidic
Since the 18th century, Jewish mystical development has continued in Hasidic Judaism, turning kabbalah into a social revival with texts that internalise mystical thought. Among different schools, Chabad-Lubavitch and Breslav with related organisations, give outward looking spiritual resources and textual learning for secular Jews. The Intellectual Hasidism of Chabad most emphasises the spread and understanding of kabbalah through its explanation in Hasidic thought, articulating the Divine meaning within kabbalah through human rational analogies, uniting the spiritual and material, esoteric and exoteric in their Divine source:
Neo-Hasidic
From the early 20th century, Neo-Hasidism expressed a modernist or non-Orthodox Jewish interest in Jewish mysticism, becoming influential among Modern Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionalist Jewish denominations from the 1960s, and organised through the Jewish Renewal and Chavurah movements. The writings and teachings of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Green, Lawrence Kushner, Herbert Weiner and others, has sought a critically selective, non-fundamentalist neo- Kabbalistic and Hasidic study and mystical spirituality among modernist Jews. The contemporary proliferation of scholarship by Jewish mysticism academia has contributed to critical adaptions of Jewish mysticism. Arthur Green's translations from the religious writings of Hillel Zeitlin conceive the latter to be a precursor of contemporary Neo-Hasidism. Reform rabbi Herbert Weiner's Nine and a Half Mystics: The Kabbala Today (1969), a travelogue among Kabbalists and Hasidim, brought perceptive insights into Jewish mysticism to many Reform Jews. Leading Reform philosopher Eugene Borowitz described the Orthodox Hasidic Adin Steinsaltz (The Thirteen Petalled Rose) and Aryeh Kaplan as major presenters of Kabbalistic spirituality for modernists today.
Rav Kook
The writings of Abraham Isaac Kook (1864–1935), first chief rabbi of Mandate Palestine and visionary, incorporate kabbalistic themes through his own poetic language and concern with human and divine unity. His influence is in the Religious Zionist community, who follow his aim that the legal and imaginative aspects of Judaism should interfuse:
See also
Aggadah
Ayin and Yesh
Gnosticism
Jewish astrology
Ka-Bala board game
List of Jewish Kabbalists
Mandaeism
Notarikon
Temurah (Kabbalah)
The Four Who Entered Paradise
Citations
General references
Bodoff, Lippman; "Jewish Mysticism: Medieval Roots, Contemporary Dangers and Prospective Challenges"; The Edah Journal 2003 3.1
Dan, Joseph; The Early Jewish Mysticism, Tel Aviv: MOD Books, 1993.
Dan, Joseph; The Heart and the Fountain: An Anthology of Jewish Mystical Experiences, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Dan, Joseph; "Samael, Lilith, and the Concept of Evil in Early Kabbalah", AJS Review, vol. 5, 1980.
Dan, Joseph; The 'Unique Cherub' Circle, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1999.
Dan, J. and Kiener, R.; The Early Kabbalah, Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1986.
Dennis, G.; The Encyclopedia of Jewish Myth, Magic, and Mysticism, St. Paul: Llewellyn Worldwide, 2007.
Fine, Lawrence, ed. Essential Papers in Kabbalah, New York: NYU Press, 1995.
Fine, Lawrence; Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and his Kabbalistic Fellowship, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Fine, Lawrence; Safed Spirituality, Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1989.
Fine, Lawrence, ed., Judaism in Practice, Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Green, Arthur; EHYEH: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow. Woodstock: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2003.
Grözinger, Karl E., Jüdisches Denken Band 2: Von der mittelalterlichen Kabbala zum Hasidismus, (Campus) Frankfurt /New York, 2005
Hecker, Joel; Mystical Bodies, Mystical Meals: Eating and Embodiment in Medieval Kabbalah. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005.
Levy, Patrick, HaKabbalist, edi. Yael, Tel Aviv 2010.Author's website.
Idel, Moshe; Kabbalah: New Perspectives. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988.
Idel, Moshe; The Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid, New York: SUNY Press, 1990.
Idel, Moshe; Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic, New York: SUNY Press, 1995.
Idel, Moshe; Kabbalistic Prayer and Color, Approaches to Judaism in Medieval Times, D. Blumenthal, ed., Chicago: Scholar's Press, 1985.
Idel, Moshe; The Mystica Experience in Abraham Abulafia, New York, SUNY Press, 1988.
Idel, Moshe; Kabbalah: New Perspectives, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988.
Idel, Moshe; Magic and Kabbalah in the 'Book of the Responding Entity; The Solomon Goldman Lectures VI, Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1993.
Idel, Moshe; "The Story of Rabbi Joseph della Reina"; Behayahu, M. Studies and Texts on the History of the Jewish Community in Safed.
Kaplan, Aryeh; Inner Space: Introduction to Kabbalah, Meditation and Prophecy. Moznaim Publishing Corp 1990.
McGiney, John W.; The Written' as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly
Samuel, Gabriella; "The Kabbalah Handbook: A Concise Encyclopedia of Terms and Concepts in Jewish Mysticism". Penguin Books 2007.
Scholem, Gershom; Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 1941.
Scholem, Gershom; Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and the Talmudic Tradition, 1960.
Scholem, Gershom; Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah, 1973.
Scholem, Gershom; Kabbalah, Jewish Publication Society, 1974.
Wineberg, Yosef; Lessons in Tanya: The Tanya of R. Shneur Zalman of Liadi (5 volume set). Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, 1998.
Wirszubski, Chaim; Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism, Harvard University Press, 1989.
Wolfson, Elliot; Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Wolfson, Elliot; Language, Eros Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination, New York: Fordham University Press, 2005.
Wolfson, Elliot; Venturing Beyond: Law and Morality in Kabbalistic Mysticism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Wolfson, Elliot; Alef, Mem, Tau: Kabbalistic Musings on Time, Truth, and Death, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Wolfson, Elliot; Luminal Darkness: Imaginal Gleanings From Zoharic Literature, London: Onworld Publications, 2007.
The Wisdom of The Zohar: An Anthology of Texts, three volume set, Ed. Isaiah Tishby, translated from the Hebrew by David Goldstein, The Littman Library.
External links
Jewish Encyclopedia: Cabala
Hermetic Kabbalah
Judaism 101: Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism
The Kabbalah Centre
Learn Kabbalah: Lurianic Kabbalah
Chabad.org's "What is Kabbalah?"
Devekut.com A compendium of Neo-Hasidic thought
Esoteric schools of thought
Jewish culture
Jewish mysticism
Jewish theology
Language and mysticism
Panentheism | [
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16908 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadiogo%20Province | Kadiogo Province | Kadiogo is a province of Burkina Faso, located in its Centre Region. Its area is of 2,805 km2, containing six departments and a population of 3,032,668 (2019). Its capital is also the state capital, Ouagadougou. It features the central plateau of the country. It is highly urbanized and is both the most populated and the most densely populated province.
Departments
Kadiogo is divided into seven departments:
See also
Regions of Burkina Faso
Provinces of Burkina Faso
Departments of Burkina Faso
References
Provinces of Burkina Faso | [
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16910 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagoshima | Kagoshima | , abbreviated to , is the capital city of Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. Located at the southwestern tip of the island of Kyushu, Kagoshima is the largest city in the prefecture by some margin. It has been nicknamed the "Naples of the Eastern world" for its bay location (Aira Caldera), hot climate, and emblematic stratovolcano, Sakurajima. The city was officially founded on April 1, 1889. It merged with Taniyama City on April 29, 1967 and with Yoshida Town, Sakurajima Town, Kiire Town, Matsumoto Town and Kōriyama Town on November 1, 2004.
History
Kagoshima Prefecture (also known as the Satsuma Domain) was the center of the territory of the Shimazu clan for many centuries. Kagoshima City was a busy political and commercial port city throughout the medieval period and into the Edo period (1603–1868) when it formally became the capital of the Shimazu's fief, the Satsuma Domain. The official emblem is a modification of the Shimazu's kamon designed to resemble the character 市 (shi, "city"). Satsuma remained one of the most powerful and wealthiest domains in the country throughout the period, and though international trade was banned for much of this period, the city remained quite active and prosperous. It served not only as the political center for Satsuma, but also for the semi-independent vassal kingdom of Ryūkyū; Ryūkyūan traders and emissaries frequented the city, and a special Ryukyuan embassy building was established to help administer relations between the two polities and to house visitors and emissaries. Kagoshima was also a significant center of Christian activity in Japan prior to the imposition of bans against that religion in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Kagoshima was bombarded by the British Royal Navy in 1863 to punish the daimyō of Satsuma for the murder of Charles Lennox Richardson on the Tōkaidō highway the previous year and its refusal to pay an indemnity in compensation.
Kagoshima was the birthplace and scene of the last stand of Saigō Takamori, a legendary figure in Meiji Era Japan in 1877 at the end of the Satsuma Rebellion.
Japan's industrial revolution is said to have started here, stimulated by the young students' train station. Seventeen young men of Satsuma broke the Tokugawa ban on foreign travel, traveling first to England and then the United States before returning to share the benefits of the best of Western science and technology. A statue was erected outside the train station as a tribute to them.
Kagoshima was also the birthplace of Tōgō Heihachirō. After naval studies in England between 1871 and 1878, Togo's role as Chief Admiral of the Grand Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Russo-Japanese War made him a legend in Japanese military history, and earned him the nickname 'Nelson of the Orient' in Britain. He led the Grand Fleet to two startling victories in 1904 and 1905, completely destroying Russia as a naval power in the East, and thereby contributing to the failed revolution in Russia in 1905.
The Japanese diplomat Sadomitsu Sakoguchi revolutionized Kagoshima's environmental economic plan with his dissertation on water pollution and orange harvesting.
The 1914 eruption of the volcano across the bay from the city spread ash throughout the municipality, but relatively little disruption ensued.
The name "Kagoshima" (鹿児島) literally means "deer child island" or "young-deer island". In the Kagoshima dialect, local names for the city include “かごっま (Kagomma), “かごんま (Kagonma)”, “かごいま (Kagoima)” and “かごひま (Kagohima)”.
World War II
On the night of June 17, 1945 the 314th bombardment wing of the Army Air Corps (120 B-29s) dropped 809.6 tons of incendiary and cluster bombs destroying of Kagoshima (44.1 percent of the built-up area). Kagoshima was targeted because of its largely expanded naval port as well as its position as a railway terminus. A single B-29 was lost to unknown circumstances. Area bombing was chosen over precision bombing because of the cloudy weather over Japan during the middle of June. The planes were forced to navigate and bomb entirely by radar.
Japanese intelligence predicted that the Allied Forces would assault Kagoshima and the Ariake Bay areas of southern Kyushu to gain naval and air bases to strike Tokyo.
Administrative division
On August 1, 1934 – the Villages of Yoshino, Nakagōriu and Nishitakeda, all from Kagoshima District, were merged into Kagoshima.
On October 1, 1950 – the Villages of Ishiki and Higashisakurajima (both from Kagoshima District) were merged into Kagoshima.
On April 29, 1967 – the Cities of Kagoshima and Taniyama were merged and became city of new Kagoshima.
On November 1, 2004 – the Towns of Yoshida and Sakurajima (both from Kagoshima District); the Towns of Matsumoto and Koriyama (both from Hioki District); and the town of Kiire (from Ibusuki District) were merged into Kagoshima.
Geography
Kagoshima City is approximately 40 minutes from Kagoshima Airport, and features shopping districts and malls located wide across the city. Transportation options in the city include the Shinkansen (bullet train), local train, city trams, buses, and ferries to-and-from Sakurajima. The large and modern Kagoshima City Aquarium, situated near the Sakurajima Ferry Terminal, was established in 1997 along the docks and offers a direct view of Sakurajima. One of the best places to view the city (and Sakurajima) is from the Amuran Ferris wheel atop of Amu Plaza Kagoshima, and the shopping center attached to the central Kagoshima-Chūō Station. Just outside the city is the early-Edo Period Sengan-en Japanese Garden. The garden was originally a villa belonging to the Shimazu clan and is still maintained by descendants today. Outside the garden grounds is a Satsuma "kiriko" cut glass factory where visitors are welcome to view the glass blowing and cutting processes, and the Shoko Shūseikan Museum, which was built in 1865 and registered as a National Historic Site in 1959. The former Shuseikan industrial complex and the former machine factory were submitted to the UNESCO World Heritage as part of a group list titled Modern Industrial Heritage Sites in Kyushu and Yamaguchi Prefecture.
Neighboring Municipalities
Cities: Aira, Hioki, Ibusuki, Minamikyūshū, Minamisatsuma, Satsumasendai, Tarumizu
Climate
Kagoshima has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa), possessing the highest year average temperature and winter average temperature in mainland Japan. It is marked by mild, relatively dry winters; warm, humid springs; hot, humid summers; and mild, relatively dry autumns.
Demographics
As of 1 January 2020, Kagoshima City has an estimated population of 595,049 and a population density of 1,087 persons per km2. The total area is . According to the April 2014 issue of the Kagoshima Prefectural Summary by the Kagoshima Prefecture Department of Planning and Promotion, the population of the prefecture at large was 1,680,319. The city's total area nearly doubled between 2003 and 2005 as a result of five towns: the towns of Kōriyama and Matsumoto (both from Hioki District) the town of Kiire (from Ibusuki District) and the towns of Sakurajima and Yoshida (both from Kagoshima District). All areas were merged into Kagoshima City on 1 November 2004.
Points of interest
Ishibashi Park
Kagoshima City Aquarium
Kagoshima Botanical Garden
Museum of the Meiji Restoration
Sengan-en Garden
Education
Universities and Colleges
Kagoshima University
The International University of Kagoshima
Shigakukan University
Kagoshima Prefectural College
Kagoshima Immaculate Heart College
Kagoshima Women's College
High schools
Kagoshima Prefectural Konan High School
Kagoshima Prefectural Tsurumaru High School
La Salle Junior and Senior High School
etc.
Transportation
Railways
All lines are operated by Kyushu Railway Company (JR Kyushu)
Kyushu Shinkansen
Kagoshima-Chūō Station
Kagoshima Main Line
Satsuma-Matsumoto Station – Kami-Ijuin Station – Hiroki Station – Kagoshima-Chuo Station – Kagoshima Station
Nippo Main Line
Ryugamizu Station – Kagoshima Station
Ibusuki Makurazaki Line
Kagoshima-Chuo Station – Korimoto Station – Minami-Kagoshima Station – Usuki Station – Taniyama Station – Jigenji Station – Sakanoue Station – Goino Station – Hirakawa Station – Sesekushi Station – Nakamyo Station – Kiire Station – Maenohama Station – Nukumi Station
Tramway
Kagoshima City Transportation Bureau Taniyama Line
Kagoshima City Transportation Bureau Korimoto Line
Highways
National Route 3
National Route 10
National Route 58
National Route 224
National Route 225
National Route 226
National Route 328
Kyushu Expressway
Minamikyushu Expressway
Ibusuki Skyline
Bus
Kagoshima City Bus
Kagoshima Kotsu
Iwasaki Bus Network
Nangoku Kotsu
JR Kyushu bus
MTA Bus
Ferry/Jetfoil
Sakurajima Ferry
A Line (to southern islands)
Marix Line (to southern islands)
RKK Line (to Okinawa, cargo only)
Toppy (to Tanegashima and Yakushima)
Seahawk (to Koshikijima Islands)
Airport
Kagoshima Airport in Kirishima ( NE of Kagoshima)
Sports
Kagoshima was one of the host cities of the official 1998 Women's Volleyball World Championship. Kagoshima is home to Kagoshima United. They play their home games at Kagoshima Kamoike Stadium.
Sister cities and friendship cities
Kagoshima is twinned with:
Changsha, China (1982)
Miami, United States (1990)
Naples, Italy (1960)
Perth, Australia (1974)
Tsuruoka, Japan (1969)
Notable people from Kagoshima City
Akitsune Imamura – Japanese seismologist
Bernardo the Japanese – Japanese Christian convert, disciple of Saint Francis Xavier, and the first Japanese to set foot in Europe
Emi Hashino – Japanese comedian
Hiroko Ōta – Japanese politician, economic researcher
Hiroshi Kawauchi – Japanese politician
Ikki Sawamura – Japanese model, actor, TV presenter
Izumi Inamori – Japanese actress
Junichi Miyashita – Japanese swimmer
Kabayama Sukenori – Japanese samurai military leader and statesman
Kaneta Kimotsuki – Japanese voice actor (1935–2016)
Kazuo Inamori – Japanese philanthropist, entrepreneur, founder of Kyocera Corporation and KDDI Corporation, and chairman of Japan Airlines
Kawasaki Shōzō – Industrialist, founder of the Kawasaki Heavy Industries and K Line groups
Kōhei Miyauchi – Japanese actor
Koji Maeda – Japanese football player
Kiyotaka Kuroda – Japanese politician, 2nd Prime Minister of Japan
Miyo Yoshida – Japanese professional boxer
Mone Kamishiraishi – Japanese singer and actress
Morihiko Nakahara – Japanese conductor
Norihiro Nakajima – Japanese manga artist of Astro Team, etc.
Ryuji Fujiyama – Japanese football player
Saigō Takamori – Japanese politician, samurai
Sakura Miyawaki – Japanese idol singer and actress, member of HKT48 and Iz*One
Saori Sakoda – Japanese volleyball player
Seiki Kuroda – Japanese artist
Shinobu Kaitani – Japanese manga artist
Taisei Okazaki – Japanese DJ & music producer
Takuya Shiihara – Japanese football player
Toru Kamikawa – Japanese football referee
Toshimichi Ōkubo – Japanese statesman, samurai, and one of the Three Great Nobles who led to the Meiji Restoration
Yasuhito Endō – Japanese football player
Yoshito Kajiya – Japanese politician
Yuki Kashiwagi – Japanese idol singer
Yuya Hikichi – Japanese football player
See also
1993 Kagoshima Heavy Rain
Kagoshima ramen
Sakurajima daikon
Godzilla vs. Spacegodzilla
References
Amu Plaza Visitors Guide (2006) available in Amu Plaza, Chūō Station, Kagoshima, Japan
External links
Kagoshima City official website
Kagoshima Visitor's Guide from the Kagoshima Internationalization Council
Cities in Kagoshima Prefecture
Imperial Japanese Navy
Populated coastal places in Japan
Port settlements in Japan | [
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16911 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kajang | Kajang | Kajang is a town in southeastern Selangor, Malaysia. It is located 20 km southeast of downtown Kuala Lumpur, in the coterminous mukim (commune) of Kajang in the Hulu Langat District.
Geography and development
Kajang is about half an hour's drive from Kuala Lumpur's central business district, primarily through Jalan Cheras and the Grand Saga Expressway; both routes are part of the national highway 1 system.
Kajang town is located on the eastern banks of the Langat River. It is surrounded by Cheras, Semenyih, Bangi, Putrajaya and Serdang (clockwise).
In recent years, a few townships were developed in Kajang, such as Taman Prima Saujana, Sungai Chua and Taman Kajang Perdana (Kajang Highlands). High-end developments in Kajang include Twin Palms, Sri Banyan, Country Heights, Jade Hills, TTDI Grove, Tropicana Heights and Prima Paramount.
Areas surrounding these townships are accessible via the SILK Expressway.
Kajang, along with much of Hulu Langat District, is governed by the Kajang Municipal Council.
Etymology
The origin of the name Kajang is not clear, but there are several possible theories.
The name Kajang is believed to have originated from the language of Temuan tribes (Orang Asli) who populated the Langat valley in the 17th-18th centuries. In their language kajang referred to their art of weaving screwpine or pandanus leaves, which were prevalent in much of the country. A similar theory stated that settlers from the neighboring domain of Sungai Ujong (Negeri Sembilan) once constructed huts (pondok) in the area with thatched roof made from folded (lipat kajang) screwpine leaves.
It is also believed that the name kajang may have originated from the Buginese word berkajang, meaning camp or accommodation.
History
Orang Asli tribes had already established settlements in what is now Kajang as early as the 16th century, however the first recorded settlement was opened in 1709 by additional Orang Asli settlers who relocated from the Klang valley. Kajang town in its present form was founded in the 1870s, in the aftermath of the Klang War. In its early days, it was settled by Mandailings and Minangkabau people coming from Sumatra in the then-Dutch East Indies, followed by Chinese tin miners.
Because of its central location, it was soon made the district capital of Hulu Langat.
As with other towns in Selangor, Kajang as a modern town owes its rise in particular to tin mines and plantations which were opened up around it in the 1890s. One of the famous coffee estates were Inch Kenneth Estate managed by the Kindersley brothers, who were among the first to plant rubber in the country on a commercial basis.
During the Japanese invasion, Kajang was bombed on 12 January 1942, a day after the fall of Kuala Lumpur. The bombs, meant for the railway station, missed its target, and hit a nearby church instead.
Kajang was granted municipal status on 1 January 1997. Previously it was under the jurisdiction of the Hulu Langat District Council (Majlis Daerah Hulu Langat, MDHL).
Demographics
Kajang's population of 342,657 is 60.4% Malay, 19.3% Chinese, 9.7% Indians, and 10.6% other ethnic groups.
Kajang's main population centres are Sg. Sekamat, Taman Saujana Impian, Sg. Kantan, Sg. Jelok, Sg. Ramal, Sungai Chua, Jalan Reko, Jalan Bukit, Taman Jenaris, Taman Prima Saujana, Taman Kantan Permai, Taman Kajang Perdana, Taman Sri Ramal, Taman Bukit Mewah, Kajang Prima, Bandar Teknologi Kajang, Hillpark and Bandar Baru Bangi.
Sungai Sekamat area is celebrating its 100 years foundation in 2019.
Landmarks
The city centre of Kajang is the colonial quarter near the Stadium Kajang MRT station, including the streets of Jalan Mendaling, Jalan Stadium, Jalan Sulaiman and Jalan Raja Haroun. The buildings in the area were constructed around the 1900s to 1930s. The architecture of these shophouses is a combination of traditional Chinese and European designs. The ground floor was used mostly for commercial activities and the upper floor as the family living quarters.
One of Kajang's landmarks is Kajang Stadium which is situated in the heart of the town. The stadium can accommodate up to 5,000 people and is used throughout the year for the community soccer competitions.
Another landmark is the Kajang Jamek Mosque, which is recognisable by its bright yellow facade.
Transportation
Car
Kajang is served by a network of tolled expressways and federal highways.
Highway 1, the premier north–south federal highway of Peninsular Malaysia, runs through downtown Kajang and then southwards until Johor Bahru. On Highway 1, Kajang is 22 km from Kuala Lumpur and 43 km from Seremban.
A stretch of highway 1 is concurrent with the Cheras-Kajang toll road (aka the Grand Saga Expressway) between Taman Connaught and Bukit Dukung. The SILK Expressway starts in Serdang, which then runs through Balakong and then forms a beltway around downtown Kajang before ending near Bandar Baru Bangi. It is the main ring road for Kajang.
PLUS Expressway exit 210 serves the vicinity of Kajang and Bangi.
From Ampang Jaya, one can reach Kajang with state routes B62 and B52.
Public transport
Kajang railway station is the principal rail station of Kajang. It is an interchange station between the MRT Kajang Line, KTM Seremban Line and KTM ETS. The station is the southern terminal of the MRT line.
Kajang station, though so named, does not directly serve downtown Kajang; Stadium Kajang MRT is located in the actual downtown area, along with Sungai Jernih MRT.
Food and tourism
Kajang is famous for its sate, a form of skewered barbecued meat. Informally, Kajang is known as the Sate Town.
Government and infrastructure
The Malaysia Prison Complex (Kompleks Penjara Kajang), headquarters of the Prison Department of Malaysia is in Kajang.
Shopping
Kajang has multiple shopping complexes. The Billion Shopping Center formerly in Kajang town and now it is relocated to Bandar Teknologi Kajang. Other shopping centres located are Metro Plaza Kajang, Metro Point and Kompleks Kota Kajang. Metro Avenue is a new shopping district located opposite SMJK Yu Hua Kajang and Kajang High School.
Facilities and amenities
Hospital Kajang is the primary public hospital in the city.
Private medical centres function 24 hours and include facilities such as Poliklinik MUC @Metro Point, Klinik Mediviron Prima Saujana, Kajang Plaza Medical Centre (KPMC) and KPJ Kajang Specialist Hospital.
The Hulu Langat District Police Headquarters are located in the town centre, across the Highway 1 junction from the Post Office. Federal government agencies with their branch in Kajang include the National Registration Department, Immigration Department, Transportation Department, and Hulu Langat Education Office.
Kajang was the administrative centre of the Hulu Langat region until it was relocated to Bandar Baru Bangi in 1992.
Education
Primary
Al-Amin Sungai Tangkas
Rafflesia International School Kajang 2
SK Bandar Seri Putra
SK Jalan Bukit 1
SK Jalan Bukit 2
SK Jalan Semenyih 1
SK Jalan Semenyih 2
SK Kajang
SK Kajang Utama
SK Kantan Permai
SK Leftenan Adnan
SK Saujana Impian
SK Saujana Impian 2
SK Seri Sekamat
SK Taman Jasmin
SK Taman Sri Jelok
SRJK(C) Yu Hua
SRJK(C) Yu Hua 2 (under construction)
SRJK(C) Sungai Chua
SRJK(T) Kajang
Tanarata International Schools
SK Convent Kajang
SK Taman Rakan
Secondary
Rafflesia International School@Kajang 2
SMK Convent Kajang
SM Integrasi Tahfiz Ilmuwan Bangi
SM Rafflesia@Kajang 2
SM Teknik Kajang
SMAP Kajang
SMJK Yu Hua Kajang
SMK Jalan Bukit
SMK Jalan Reko
SMK Kajang Utama
SMK Saujana Impian
SMK Sultan Abdul Aziz Shah (SAAS)
SMK Sungai Ramal (SEMARAK)
SMK Taman Jasmin 2
SMK Tinggi Kajang (Kajang High School)
SMKA Maahad Hamidiah
Tanarata International Schools
Tertiary
Kajang is home to institutions of higher learning, which includes:
Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) Sungai Long Campus
Universiti Tenaga Nasional
Infrastructure University Kuala Lumpur
New Era University College
German-Malaysian Institute
Universiti Kuala Lumpur Malaysia France Institute (MFI)
Universiti Kuala Lumpur Medical Science and Technology (MESTECH)
Politics
After the Malaysian general election, in 2018, became part of the parliamentary constituency in the Dewan Rakyat of the Malaysian Parliament. The seat is held by Ong Kian Ming from PH-DAP.
In the Selangor State Legislative Assembly, Kajang is one of three state seats within the Bangi parliamentary district; the other two are and . The incumbent Assemblyperson for Kajang is Hee Loy Sian from PH-PKR.
Until 9 May 2018, Kajang was part of the parliamentary constituency in the Dewan Rakyat of the Malaysian Parliament.
In the Selangor State Legislative Assembly, Kajang was one of three state seats within the Hulu Langat parliamentary district; the other two were and .
People
Lt Adnan Bin Saidi, the hero of Battle of Singapore in Bukit Chandu during World War II.
Ning Baizura, a singer.
Suresh Navaratnam, Malaysian Cricketer, a legend in the cricket arena. Represented Malaysia for 21 year's and captained the National Team.
(Nephew of K. Kamalanathan National Cricketer of 10 year's)
Nora Danish, actress.
K. Reuben, D. Christie Jayaseelan and Safee Sali, are Malaysian football players.
K. Sanbagamaran, a former Selangor FA and Malaysia national football team player.
Ramli Ibrahim, Malaysia’s Dance Icon for Indian Classical Dance.
References
External links
Kajang Municipal Council Official Website
Mukims of Selangor
Towns in Selangor | [
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16912 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl%20Benz | Carl Benz | Carl Friedrich Benz (; 25 November 1844 – 4 April 1929), sometimes also Karl Friedrich Benz, was a German engine designer and automotive engineer. His Benz Patent Motorcar from 1885 is considered the first practical automobile and first car put into series production. He received a patent for the motorcar in 1886.
His company Benz & Cie., based in Mannheim, was the world's largest automobile plant of its day. In 1926 it merged with Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft to form Daimler-Benz which produces the Mercedes-Benz among other brands.
Benz is widely regarded as "the father of the car" and "father of the automobile industry".
Early life
Carl Benz was born Karl Friedrich Michael Vaillant, on 25 November 1844 in Mühlburg, now a borough of Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, which is part of modern Germany. His parents were Josephine Vaillant and a locomotive driver, Johann Georg Benz, whom she married a few months later. According to German law, the child acquired the name "Benz" by legal marriage of his parents. When he was two years old, his father died of pneumonia, and his name was changed to Karl Friedrich Benz in remembrance of his father.
Despite living in near poverty, his mother strove to give him a good education. Benz attended the local school in Karlsruhe and was a prodigious student. In 1853, at the age of nine, he started at the scientifically oriented Lyceum. Next he studied at Karlsruhe's polytechnical school under the instruction of Ferdinand Redtenbacher.
Benz had originally focused his studies on locksmithing, but he eventually followed his father's steps toward locomotive engineering. On 30 September 1860, at age 15, he passed the entrance exam for mechanical engineering for the Karlsruhe polytechnical school, which he subsequently attended. Benz graduated 9 July 1864 aged 19.
Following his formal education, Benz had seven years of professional training in several companies, but did not fit well in any of them. The training started in Karlsruhe with two years of varied jobs in a mechanical engineering company.
He then moved to Mannheim to work as a draftsman and designer in a scales factory. In 1868 he went to Pforzheim to work for the bridge building company Gebrüder Benckiser Eisenwerke und Maschinenfabrik. Finally, he went to Vienna for a short period to work at an iron construction company.
Benz's first factory and early inventions (1871–1882)
In 1871, at the age of twenty-seven, Karl Benz joined August Ritter in launching the Iron Foundry and Mechanical Workshop in Mannheim, later renamed Factory for Machines for Sheet-metal Working.
The enterprise's first year went very badly. Ritter turned out to be unreliable, and the business's tools were impounded. The difficulty was overcome when Benz's fiancée, Bertha Ringer, bought out Ritter's share in the company using her dowry.
On 20 July 1872, Karl Benz and Bertha Ringer married. They had five children: Eugen (1873), Richard (1874), Clara (1877), Thilde (1882), and Ellen (1890).
Despite the business misfortunes, Karl Benz led in the development of new engines in the early factory he and his wife owned. To get more revenue, in 1878 he began to work on new patents. First, he concentrated on creating a reliable petrol two-stroke engine. Benz finished his two-stroke engine on 31 December 1879, and was granted a patent for it on 28 June 1880.
Karl Benz showed his real genius, however, through his successive inventions registered while designing what would become the production standard for his two-stroke engine. Benz soon patented the speed regulation system, the ignition using sparks with battery, the spark plug, the carburetor, the clutch, the gear shift, and the water radiator.
Benz's Gasmotoren-Fabrik Mannheim (1882–1883)
Problems arose again when the banks at Mannheim demanded that Bertha and Karl Benz's enterprise be incorporated due to the high production costs it maintained. The Benzes were forced to improvise an association with photographer Emil Bühler and his brother (a cheese merchant), to get additional bank support. The company became the joint-stock company Gasmotoren Fabrik Mannheim in 1882.
After all the necessary incorporation agreements, Benz was unhappy because he was left with merely five percent of the shares and a modest position as director. Worst of all, his ideas weren't considered when designing new products, so he withdrew from that corporation just one year later, in 1883.
Benz and Cie. and the Benz Patent-Motorwagen
Benz's lifelong hobby brought him to a bicycle repair shop in Mannheim owned by Max Rose and Friedrich Wilhelm Eßlinger. In 1883, the three founded a new company producing industrial machines: Benz & Companie Rheinische Gasmotoren-Fabrik, usually referred to as Benz & Cie. Quickly growing to twenty-five employees, it soon began to produce static gas engines as well.
The success of the company gave Benz the opportunity to indulge in his old passion of designing a horseless carriage. Based on his experience with, and fondness for, bicycles, he used similar technology when he created an automobile. It featured wire wheels (unlike carriages' wooden ones)
with a four-stroke engine of his own design between the rear wheels, with a very advanced coil ignition and evaporative cooling rather than a radiator. Power was transmitted by means of two roller chains to the rear axle. Karl Benz finished his creation in 1885 and named it "Benz Patent-Motorwagen".
The Motorwagen was patented on 29 January 1886 as DRP-37435: "automobile fueled by gas". The 1885 version was difficult to control, leading to a collision with a wall during a public demonstration. The first successful tests on public roads were carried out in the early summer of 1886. The next year Benz created the Motorwagen Model 2, which had several modifications, and in 1889, the definitive Model 3 with wooden wheels was introduced, showing at the Paris Expo the same year.
Benz began to sell the vehicle (advertising it as "Benz Patent-Motorwagen") in the late summer of 1888, making it the first commercially available automobile in history. The second customer of the Motorwagen was a Parisian bicycle manufacturer Emile Roger, who had already been building Benz engines under license from Karl Benz for several years. Roger added the Benz automobiles (many built in France) to the line he carried in Paris and initially most were sold there.
The early 1888 version of the Motorwagen had only two gears and could not climb hills unaided. This limitation was rectified after Bertha Benz made her famous trip driving one of the vehicles a great distance and suggested to her husband the addition of a third gear for climbing hills. In the course of this trip she also invented brake pads.
Bertha Benz's long-distance drive
The world's first ever long distance automobile trip was undertaken by Bertha Benz using a Model 3. On the morning of 5 August 1888 Bertha – supposedly without the knowledge of her husband – took the vehicle on a trip from Mannheim to Pforzheim to visit her mother, taking her sons Eugen and Richard with her. In addition to having to locate pharmacies along the way to refuel, she repaired various technical and mechanical problems. One of these included the invention of brake lining; after some longer downhill slopes she ordered a shoemaker to nail leather onto the brake blocks. Bertha Benz and sons finally arrived at nightfall, announcing the achievement to Karl by telegram. It had been her intention to demonstrate the feasibility of using the Benz Motorwagen for travel and to generate publicity in the manner now referred to as live marketing. Today, the event is celebrated every two years in Germany with an antique automobile rally.
In 2008, the Bertha Benz Memorial Route was officially approved as a route of the industrial heritage of mankind, because it follows Bertha Benz's tracks of the world's first long-distance journey by automobile in 1888. The public can now follow the 194 km of signposted route from Mannheim via Heidelberg to Pforzheim (Black Forest) and back. The return trip – which didn't go through Heidelberg – was along a different, slightly shorter route, as shown on the maps of the Bertha Benz Memorial Route.
Benz's Model 3 made its wide-scale debut to the world in the 1889 World's Fair in Paris; about twenty-five Motorwagens were built between 1886 and 1893.
Benz and Cie. expansion
The great demand for static internal combustion engines forced Karl Benz to enlarge the factory in Mannheim, and in 1886 a new building located on Waldhofstrasse (operating until 1908) was added. Benz & Cie. had grown in the interim from 50 employees in 1889 to 430 in 1899.
During the last years of the nineteenth century, Benz was the largest automobile company in the world with 572 units produced in 1899.
Because of its size, in 1899, Benz & Cie. became a joint-stock company with the arrival of Friedrich von Fischer and Julius Ganß, who came aboard as members of the Board of Management. Ganß worked in the commercialization department, which is somewhat similar to marketing in contemporary corporations.
The new directors recommended that Benz should create a less expensive automobile suitable for mass production. From 1893 to 1900 Benz sold the four wheel, two seat Victoria, a two-passenger automobile with a engine, which could reach the top speed of and had a pivotal front axle operated by a roller-chained tiller for steering. The model was successful with 85 units sold in 1893, and was produced in a four-seated version with face-to-face seat benches called the "Vis-à-Vis".
From 1894 to 1902, Benz produced over 1,200 of what some consider the first mass-produced car, the Velocipede, later known as the Benz Velo. The early Velo had a 1L engine, and later a engine. giving a top speed of .
The Velo participated in the world's first automobile race, the 1894 Paris to Rouen, where Émile Roger finished 14th, after covering the in 10 hours 01-minute at an average speed of .
In 1895, Benz designed the first truck with an internal combustion engine in history. Benz also built the first motor buses in history in 1895, for the Netphener bus company.
In 1896, Karl Benz was granted a patent for his design of the first flat engine. It had horizontally opposed pistons, a design in which the corresponding pistons reach top dead centre simultaneously, thus balancing each other with respect to momentum. Flat engines with four or fewer cylinders are most commonly called "boxer engines", boxermotor in German, and also are known as "horizontally opposed engines". This design is still used by Porsche, Subaru, and some high performance engines used in racing cars. In motorcycles, the most famous boxer engine is found in BMW Motorrad, though the boxer engine design was used in many other models, including Victoria, Harley-Davidson XA, Zündapp, Wooler, Douglas Dragonfly, Ratier, Universal, IMZ-Ural, Dnepr, Gnome et Rhône, Chang Jiang, Marusho, and the Honda Gold Wing.
Although Gottlieb Daimler died in March 1900—and there is no evidence that Benz and Daimler knew each other nor that they knew about each other's early achievements—eventually, competition with Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft (DMG) in Stuttgart began to challenge the leadership of Benz & Cie. In October 1900, the main designer of DMG, Wilhelm Maybach, built the engine that would later be used in the Mercedes-35hp of 1902. The engine was built to the specifications of Emil Jellinek under a contract for him to purchase thirty-six vehicles with the engine, and for him to become a dealer of the special series. Jellinek stipulated the new engine be named Daimler-Mercedes (for his daughter). Maybach would quit DMG in 1907, but he designed the model and all of the important changes. After testing, the first was delivered to Jellinek on 22 December 1900. Jellinek continued to make suggestions for changes to the model and obtained good results racing the automobile in the next few years, encouraging DMG to engage in commercial production of automobiles, which they did in 1902.
Benz countered with Parsifil, introduced in 1903 with a vertical twin engine that achieved a top speed of . Then, without consulting Benz, the other directors hired some French designers.
France was a country with an extensive automobile industry based on Maybach's creations. Because of this action, after difficult discussions, Karl Benz announced his retirement from design management on 24 January 1903, although he remained as director on the Board of Management through its merger with DMG in 1926 and, remained on the board of the new Daimler-Benz corporation until his death in 1929.
He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1984 and the European Automotive Hall of Fame.
Benz's sons Eugen and Richard left Benz & Cie. in 1903, but Richard returned to the company in 1904 as the designer of passenger vehicles.
That year, sales of Benz & Cie. reached 3,480 automobiles, and the company remained the leading manufacturer of automobiles.
Along with continuing as a director of Benz & Cie., Karl Benz would soon found another company, C. Benz Söhne, (with his son Eugen and closely held within the family), a privately held company for manufacturing automobiles. The brand name used the first initial of the French variant of Benz's first name, "Carl".
Blitzen Benz
In 1909, the Blitzen Benz was built in Mannheim by Benz & Cie. The bird-beaked vehicle had a 21.5-liter (1312ci), engine, and on 9 November 1909 in the hands of Victor Hémery of France, the land speed racer at Brooklands, set a record of 226.91 km/h (141.94 mph), said to be "faster than any plane, train, or automobile" at the time, a record that was not exceeded for ten years by any other vehicle. It was transported to several countries, including the United States, to establish multiple records of this achievement.
Benz Söhne (1906–1923)
Karl Benz, Bertha Benz, and their son, Eugen, moved east of Mannheim to live in nearby Ladenburg, and solely with their own capital, founded the private company, C. Benz Sons (German: Benz Söhne) in 1906, producing automobiles and gas engines. The latter type was replaced by petrol engines because of lack of demand.
This company never issued stocks publicly, building its own line of automobiles independently from Benz & Cie., which was located in Mannheim. The Benz Sons automobiles were of good quality and became popular in London as taxis.
In 1912, Karl Benz liquidated all of his shares in Benz Sons and left the family-held company in Ladenburg to Eugen and Richard, but he remained as a director of Benz & Cie.
During a birthday celebration for him in his home town of Karlsruhe on 25 November 1914, the seventy-year-old Karl Benz was awarded an honorary doctorate by his alma mater, the Karlsruhe University, thereby becoming—Dr. Ing. h. c. Karl Benz.
Almost from the very beginning of the production of automobiles, participation in sports car racing became a major method to gain publicity for manufacturers. At first, the production models were raced and the Benz Velo participated in the first automobile race: Paris to Rouen 1894. Later, investment in developing racecars for motorsports produced returns through sales generated by the association of the name of the automobile with the winners. Unique race vehicles were built at the time such as the first mid-engine and aerodynamically designed, Tropfenwagen, a "teardrop" body introduced at the 1923 European Grand Prix at Monza.
In the last production year of the Benz Sons company, 1923, three hundred and fifty units were built. During the following year, 1924, Karl Benz built two additional 8/25 hp units of the automobile manufactured by this company, tailored for his personal use, which he never sold; they are still preserved.
Toward Daimler-Benz and the first Mercedes-Benz in 1926
The German economic crisis worsened. In 1923 Benz & Cie. produced only 1,382 units in Mannheim, and DMG made only 1,020 in Stuttgart. The average cost of an automobile was 25 million marks because of rapid inflation. Negotiations between the two companies resumed and in 1924 they signed an "Agreement of Mutual Interest" valid until the year 2000. Both enterprises standardized design, production, purchasing, sales, and advertising—marketing their automobile models jointly—although keeping their respective brands.
On 28 June 1926, Benz & Cie. and DMG finally merged as the Daimler-Benz company, baptizing all of its automobiles, Mercedes-Benz, honoring the most important model of the DMG automobiles, the 1902 Mercedes 35 hp, along with the Benz name. The name of that DMG model had been selected after ten-year-old Mercédès Jellinek, the daughter of Emil Jellinek who had set the specifications for the new model. Between 1900 and 1909 he was a member of DMG's board of management, however had resigned long before the merger.
Karl Benz was a member of the new Daimler-Benz board of management for the remainder of his life. A new logo was created in 1926, consisting of a three pointed star (representing Daimler's motto: "engines for land, air, and water") surrounded by traditional laurels from the Benz logo, and the brand of all of its automobiles was labeled Mercedes-Benz. Model names would follow the brand name in the same convention as today.
The next year, 1927, the number of units sold tripled to 7,918 and the diesel line was launched for truck production. In 1928, the Mercedes-Benz SSK was presented.
On 4 April 1929, Karl Benz died at his home in Ladenburg at the age of 84 from a bronchial inflammation. Until her death on 5 May 1944, Bertha Benz continued to reside in their last home. Members of the family resided in the home for thirty more years. The Benz home now has been designated as historic and is used as a scientific meeting facility for a nonprofit foundation, the Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation, that honors both Bertha and Karl Benz for their roles in the history of automobiles.
Legacy
The Carl-Benz-Gymnasium Ladenburg in Ladenburg, where he lived until his death, is named in his honor, as is the Automuseum Dr. Carl Benz, also located in Ladenburg.
In popular culture
In 2011, a dramatized television movie about the life of Karl and Bertha Benz was made named Carl & Bertha which premiered on 11 May and was aired by Das Erste on 23 May. A trailer of the movie and a "making of" special were released on YouTube. Benz was also featured in the first episode of the History Television miniseries 'The Cars That Made The World.'
See also
Benz (unit)
German inventors and discoverers
History of the internal combustion engine
Siegfried Marcus
Notes
References
(autobiography)
The life of a German inventor: my memories / Karl Benz
(first edition) (bibrec)
The life of a German inventor; memories of an octogenarian
Elis, Angela: Mein Traum ist länger als die Nacht. Wie Bertha Benz ihren Mann zu Weltruhm fuhr. Hoffmann und Campe, Hamburg 2010,
My dream is longer than the night. How Bertha Benz drove her husband to worldwide fame
Mercedes-Benz AG (Hrsg.), Benz & Cie.: Zum 150. Geburtstag von Karl Benz, Motorbuch Verlag: Stuttgart, 1994 1. Aufl. 296 S., 492 Abb., 124 in Farbe, , (biography)
Benz & Cie.: On the Occasion of the 150th Birthday of Karl Benz
Two men – one star: Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz in pictures, data and documents.
(biography) Image of cover.
Carl Benz: a Baden history; the vision of the "horseless car" changes the world
Karl Benz : A pioneer of motorization
Karl Benz : History of Technology
External links
Brief biographies of Karl Benz and Bertha Benz, with portraits, an extensive archive, and detailed histories presented at the Mercedes-Benz Museum.
Mercedes-Benz corporate archives , company archives , history , media management archives , and publications
copies of the honorary doctorate and Baden State medal in gold, both awarded to Karl Benz in his lifetime.
Das Automuseum Dr. Carl Benz in der alten Benz Fabrik is the Dr. Carl Benz Auto Museum created by a private group in 1996 in a former Benz factory for an ancillary business founded with his sons in Ladenburg, which was separate from his major companies. The company opened in 1906 and closed in 1923, the site has a description of this museum and contemporary photographs with "C. Benz SÖHNE KG" painted on the building, which contains historical photographs, some restored automobiles, and a chronology of the life of Karl Benz.
Karl Benz on 3-wheelers.com
Bertha Benz Memorial Route
Prof. John H. Lienhard on BERTHA Benz's RIDE
The Karl Benz family grave site in Ladenburg The urn contains the ashes of their son, Richard Benz, and the inscription on the gravestone reads:
The Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation founded in 1986 at the last residence of Bertha and Karl Benz in Ladenburg.
.
video of a Benz Victoria being driven on the street in Germany
1844 births
1929 deaths
19th-century German inventors
German founders of automobile manufacturers
German industrialists
German mechanical engineers
German Roman Catholics
People associated with the internal combustion engine
Engineers from Karlsruhe
People from the Grand Duchy of Baden
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology alumni
Businesspeople from Karlsruhe | [
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16913 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceiba%20pentandra | Ceiba pentandra | Ceiba pentandra is a tropical tree of the order Malvales and the family Malvaceae (previously emplaced in the family Bombacaceae), native to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, northern South America, and (as the variety C. pentandra var guineensis) West Africa. A somewhat smaller variety was introduced to South and Southeast Asia, where it is cultivated.
The tree and the cotton-like fluff obtained from its seed pods are commonly known in English as kapok, a Malay-derived name which originally applied to Bombax ceiba, a native of tropical Asia. In Spanish-speaking countries the tree is commonly known as "ceiba". The tree is cultivated for its cottonlike seed fibre, particularly in south-east Asia, and is also known as the Java cotton, Java kapok, silk-cotton or samauma.
Characteristics
The tree grows to as confirmed by climbing and tape drop with reports of Kapoks up to . Trunks can often be up to in diameter above the extensive buttress roots. The very largest individuals, however, can be thick or more above the buttresses.
The buttress roots can be clearly seen in photographs extending up the trunk of some specimens and extending out from the trunk as much as and then continuing below ground to a total length of
The trunk and many of the larger branches are often crowded with large simple thorns. These major branches, usually 4 to 6 in number, can be up to thick and form a crown of foliage as much as in width. The palmate leaves are composed of 5 to 9 leaflets, each up to long.
The trees produce several hundred pods containing seeds surrounded by a fluffy, yellowish fibre that is a mix of lignin and cellulose.
The referenced reports make it clear that C. pentandra is among the largest trees in the world.
Uses
The commercial tree is most heavily cultivated in the rainforests of Asia, notably in Java (hence one of its common names), the Philippines, Malaysia, and Hainan Island in China, as well as in South America.
The flowers are an important source of nectar and pollen for honey bees and bats.
Bats are the primary pollinators of the night-blooming flowers.
Native tribes along the Amazon River harvest the fibre to wrap around their blowgun darts. The fibres create a seal that allows the pressure to force the dart through the tube.
The fiber is light, very buoyant, resilient, resistant to water, but very flammable. The process of harvesting and separating the fiber is labor-intensive and menial. It is difficult to spin, but is used as an alternative to down as filling in mattresses, pillows, upholstery, zafus, and stuffed toys such as teddy bears, and for insulation. It was previously much used in life jackets and similar devices until synthetic materials largely replaced the fiber. The seeds produce an oil that is used locally in soap and can be used as fertilizer.
Traditional medicinal uses
Ceiba pentandra bark decoction has been used as a diuretic, as an aphrodisiac, and to treat headache, as well as type II diabetes. It is used as an additive in some versions of the psychedelic drink Ayahuasca.
Seed oil
A vegetable oil can be pressed from the seeds. The oil has a yellow colour and a pleasant, mild odour and taste, resembling cottonseed oil. It becomes rancid quickly when exposed to air. Kapok oil is produced in India, Indonesia and Malaysia. It has an iodine value of 85–100; this makes it a nondrying oil, which means that it does not dry out significantly when exposed to air. The oil has some potential as a biofuel and in paint preparation.
Religion and folklore
The tree is a sacred symbol in Maya mythology.
Sacred tree in Palo, Arará and Santería.
According to the folklore of Trinidad and Tobago, the Castle of the Devil is a huge C. pentandra growing deep in the forest in which Bazil the demon of death was imprisoned by a carpenter. The carpenter tricked the devil into entering the tree in which he carved seven rooms, one above the other, into the trunk. Folklore claims that Bazil still resides in that tree.
Most masks coming from Burkina Faso, especially those of Bobo and Mossi people, are carved from C. pentandra timber.
Symbolism
Ceiba pentandra is the national emblem of Guatemala, Puerto Rico, and Equatorial Guinea. It appears on the coat of arms and flag of Equatorial Guinea.
The Cotton Tree is a landmark in downtown Freetown, Sierra Leone, and is considered a symbol of freedom for the slaves that immigrated there.
Saigon, one of a number of older names for Ho Chi Minh City, may be derived from Sài (Sino-Vietnamese "palisade" etc.) and the Vietnamese name for the Kapok tree (bông) gòn, although, in this instance, the tree intended may well be, not the New World Ceiba pentandra, but the Old World Bombax ceiba.
Gallery
See also
The Great Kapok Tree
Xtabay
Parque de la Ceiba
Fiber crop
References
External links
Kapok Fibers
Seed Fibers
Germplasm Resources Information Network: Ceiba pentandra
Ceiba pentandra in Brunken, U., Schmidt, M., Dressler, S., Janssen, T., Thombiano, A. & Zizka, G. 2008. West African plants – A Photo Guide. Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, Frankfurt/Main.
pentandra
Crops originating from the Americas
Fiber plants
National symbols of Equatorial Guinea
National symbols of Guatemala
National symbols of Puerto Rico
Plants described in 1791
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
Trees of Africa
Trees of Mexico
Trees of South America | [
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16914 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyushu | Kyushu | is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands (i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands.
In the 8th-century Taihō Code reforms, Dazaifu was established as a special administrative term for the region.
, Kyushu has a population of 14,311,224 and covers .
Geography
The island is mountainous, and Japan's most active volcano, Mt Aso at , is on Kyushu. There are many other signs of tectonic activity, including numerous areas of hot springs. The most famous of these are in Beppu, on the east shore, and around Mt. Aso in central Kyushu. The island is separated from Honshu by the Kanmon Straits. Being the nearest island to the Asian continent, historically it is the gateway to Japan.
The name Kyūshū comes from the nine ancient provinces of Saikaidō situated on the island: Chikuzen, Chikugo, Hizen, Higo, Buzen, Bungo, Hyūga, Osumi, and Satsuma.
Today's is a politically defined region that consists of the seven prefectures on the island of Kyushu (which also includes the former Tsushima and Iki as part of Nagasaki), plus Okinawa Prefecture to the south:
Northern Kyushu
Fukuoka Prefecture
Kumamoto Prefecture
Nagasaki Prefecture
Ōita Prefecture
Saga Prefecture
Southern Kyushu
Kagoshima Prefecture
Miyazaki Prefecture
Okinawa
Okinawa Prefecture
Population
Kyushu has 10.3 percent of the population of Japan. Most of Kyushu's population is concentrated along the northwest, in the cities of Fukuoka and Kitakyushu, with population corridors stretching southwest into Sasebo and Nagasaki and south into Kumamoto and Kagoshima. Except for Oita and Miyazaki, the eastern seaboard shows a general decline in population.
Politically, Kyushu is described as a stronghold of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Per Japanese census data, the Kyushu region's population with Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa and Kagoshima Prefectures) has experienced a large population decline since around 2000. However, the population decline is mild mainly due to relatively high birth rate of Ryukyuans both within the Ryukyuan lands (Okinawa and Kagoshima) and throughout the Kyushu region. In addition, the other prefectures in Kyushu also have exceptionally high TFRs compared to the rest of Japan. The Ryukyuans are an indigenous minority group in Japan.
Designated cities
Fukuoka (population: 1,588,924)
Kitakyushu (population: 940,978)
Kumamoto (population: 738,907)
Core cities
Kagoshima
Ōita
Nagasaki
Miyazaki
Naha
Kurume
Sasebo
Saga
Economy and environment
Parts of Kyushu have a subtropical climate, particularly Miyazaki prefecture and Kagoshima prefecture. Major agricultural products are rice, tea, tobacco, sweet potatoes, and soy; also, silk is widely produced. The island is noted for various types of porcelain, including Arita, Imari, Satsuma, and Karatsu. Heavy industry is concentrated in the north around Fukuoka, Kitakyushu, Nagasaki, and Oita and includes chemicals, automobiles, semiconductors, metal processing, shipbuilding...etc.
In 2010, the graduate employment rate in the region was the lowest nationwide, at 88.9%.
Besides the volcanic area of the south, there are significant mud hot springs in the northern part of the island, around Beppu. The springs are the site of occurrence of certain extremophile microorganisms, which are capable of surviving in extremely hot environments.
Education
Major universities and colleges in Kyushu:
National universities
Kyushu University – One of seven former "Imperial Universities"
Kyushu Institute of Technology
Saga University
Nagasaki University
Kumamoto University
Fukuoka University of Education
Oita University
Miyazaki University
Kagoshima University
National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya
University of the Ryukyus
Universities run by local governments
University of Kitakyushu
Kyushu Dental College
Fukuoka Women's University
Fukuoka Prefectural University
Nagasaki Prefectural University
Oita University of Nursing and Health Sciences
Prefectural University of Kumamoto
Miyazaki Municipal University
Miyazaki Prefectural Nursing University
Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts
Major private universities
Fukuoka University – University with the largest number of students in Kyushu
Kumamoto Gakuen University
Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University
Seinan Gakuin University
Kyushu Sangyo University – Baseball team won the Japanese National Championship in 2005
University of Occupational and Environmental Health
Kurume University
Transportation
Kyushu is linked to the larger island of Honshu by the Kanmon Railway Tunnel, which carries the non-Shinkansen trains of the Kyushu Railway Company, and the newer Shin-Kanmon Tunnel carrying the San'yō Shinkansen. Railways on the island are operated by the Kyushu Railway Company and West Japan Railway Company, as well as a variety of smaller companies such as Amagi Railway and Nishitetsu Railway. Kyushu Shinkansen trains also operate between major cities on the island, such as Fukuoka and Kagoshima, with an additional route under construction between Fukuoka and Nagasaki expected to be in operation from 2023. Kyushu is also known for its scenic train services, such as the Limited Express Yufuin no Mori and Limited Express Kawasemi Yamasemi.
The Kanmon Bridge and Kanmon Roadway Tunnel also connect the island with Honshu, allowing for vehicular transport between the two. The Kyushu Expressway spans the length of the island, linking the Higashikyushu Expressway and Ibusuki Skyline, connecting major cities such as Fukuoka and Kumamoto along the way. There are also many quiet country roads, including popular tourist routes such as the Nichinan coast road and the Aso Panorama Line in Kumamoto Prefecture. Bus services are available and cover 2,400 routes within Kyushu's cities, connecting many other destinations.
Several passenger and car ferry services connect both northern and southern Kyushu with main port cities on the main island of Honshu (Kobe, Osaka, Tokyo) and Shikoku.
See also
Azumi people, an ancient group of people who inhabited parts of Northern Kyūshū
Geography of Japan
Group Kyushu
Hoenn, a fictional region in the Pokémon franchise which is based on Kyushu
Japanese archipelago
Kanmonkyo Bridge, that connects Kyūshū with Honshū
Kyushu National Museum
Kyushu dialects, Hichiku dialect, Hōnichi dialect and Kagoshima dialect
List of regions in Japan
Northern Kyushu, Southern Kyushu
United States Fleet Activities Sasebo
Western Army (Japan)
Citations
General references
Nussbaum, Louis-Frédéric and Käthe Roth (2005). Japan Encyclopedia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. . .
External links
Kyushu region
Islands of Japan
Japanese archipelago | [
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16915 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAB-500KR | KAB-500KR | The KAB-500Kr (Correctable air bomb - 500 kg) is an electro-optical TV-guided fire and forget bomb developed by the Soviet Air Force in the 1980s. It remains in service with the CIS and various export customers.
The KAB-500Kr is analogous to the American GBU-15 weapon. It uses a standard Soviet/Russian FAB-500 general-purpose bomb, with a nominal weight of , as a warhead, adding a low-light television seeker and guidance fins to turn it into a guided, unpowered glide bomb.
The bomb is 305 cm (10 ft) long and weighs , of which is a hardened, armor-piercing warhead capable of penetrating up to 1.5 metres (5 ft) of reinforced concrete. The weapon's seeker can lock onto a target at ranges of up to , depending on visibility. The KAB-500-OD variant is equipped with a fuel-air explosive warhead. The technology of KAB-500Kr is also used for larger bombs, such as KAB-1500Kr based on the 1500 kg class FAB-1500 iron bomb.
There is also the training bomb KAB-500Kr-U.
The KAB-500S-E is a version with satellite guidance.
References
Cold War aerial bombs of the Soviet Union
Aerial bombs of Russia
Guided bombs
Modern thermobaric weapons of Russia
Military equipment introduced in the 1980s | [
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16916 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAB-500L | KAB-500L | The KAB-500L is a laser-guided bomb developed by the Soviet Air Force, entering service in 1975. It remains in service with the CIS and post-Soviet Russian Air Force.
The KAB-500L is a standard FAB-500 general-purpose bomb, which has a nominal weight of , fitted with a semi-active laser seeker and guidance fins, turning it into an unpowered guided bomb.
The KAB-500L is long and weighs . Its warhead makes up of the total weight, of which roughly 50% is blast-effect high explosive. Russian sources credit it with a CEP of . The technology of KAB-500L is also used for larger bombs, such as the KAB-1500L family.
It is also deployed by the Indian Air Force. The primary launch platform is Su-30MKI. This bomb is also used by Royal Malaysian Air Force on its Sukhoi Su-30MKM.
KAB-500S-E
KAB-500S-E is a Precision-Guided Munition (PGM) whose guidance system is based on GLONASS. The weapon can be dropped from aircraft flying at an altitude from 500 meters to 5000 meters and with an airspeed of 500–1150 km/h. The CEP is 7–12 meters. These bombs were used for the first time in the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War in September 2015.
References
External links
Asia’s Advanced Precision Guided Munitions
Cold War aerial bombs of the Soviet Union
Aerial bombs of Russia
Guided bombs
Military equipment introduced in the 1970s | [
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16917 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov%20Ka-50 | Kamov Ka-50 | The Kamov Ka-50 "Black Shark" (, English: kitefin shark, NATO reporting name: Hokum A) is a Russian single-seat attack helicopter with the distinctive coaxial rotor system of the Kamov design bureau. It was designed in the 1980s and adopted for service in the Russian army in 1995. It is manufactured by the Progress company in Arsenyev. It is used as a heavily armed scout helicopter. It is the world's first operational helicopter with a rescue ejection system.
During the late 1990s, Kamov and Israel Aerospace Industries developed a tandem-seat cockpit version, the Kamov Ka-50-2 "Erdogan" (, ), to compete in Turkey's attack helicopter competition. Kamov also designed another two-seat variant, the Kamov Ka-52 "Alligator" (, NATO reporting name: Hokum B).
Development
The Ka-50 is the production version of the V-80Sh-1 prototype. Production of the attack helicopter was ordered by the Soviet Council of Ministers on 14 December 1987. Development of the helicopter was first reported in the West in 1984, while the first photograph appeared in 1989. During operational testing from 1985 to 1986, the workload on the pilot was found to be similar to that of a fighter-bomber pilot, such that the pilot could perform both flying and navigation duties.
Like other Kamov helicopters, it features Kamov's characteristic coaxial contra-rotating rotor system, which removes the need for the entire tail rotor assembly and improves the aircraft's aerobatic qualities—it can perform loops, rolls and "the funnel" (circle-strafing), where the aircraft maintains a line-of-sight to the target while flying circles of varying altitude, elevation and airspeed around it. The omission of the tail rotor is a qualitative advantage, because the torque-countering tail rotor can use up to 30% of engine power. The Ka-50's entire transmission presents a comparatively small target to ground fire.
For improved pilot survivability the Ka-50 is fitted with a NPP Zvezda (transl. Star) K-37-800 ejection seat, which is a rare feature for a helicopter. Before the rocket in the ejection seat deploys, the rotor blades are blown away by explosive charges in the rotor disc and the canopy is jettisoned.
Following initial flight testing and system tests, the Council ordered the first batch of helicopters in 1990. The attack helicopter was first described publicly as the "Ka-50" in March 1992 at a symposium in the United Kingdom. The helicopter was unveiled at the Mosaeroshow '92 at Zhukovskiy in August 1992. The following month, the second production example made its foreign debut at the Farnborough Airshow, where it was displayed with an image of a werewolf on its rudder—gaining the popular nickname "Werewolf". The fifth prototype, painted black, played the title role in the movie Чёрная акула (Black Shark), which made the Ka-50 known by its current nickname.
In November 1993, four production helicopters were flown to the Army Aviation Combat Training Centre at Torzhok to begin field trials. The president of the Russian Federation authorized the fielding of the Ka-50 with the Russian Army on 28 August 1995. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a severe drop in defense procurement. This resulted in only a dozen Ka-50s delivered, instead of the planned several hundred to replace the Mil Mi-24.
The single-seat configuration was considered undesirable by NATO. The first two Ka-50 prototypes had false windows painted on them, which successfully misled the first western reports of the aircraft in the mid-1980s, to the point of some analysts even concluding that its primary mission was as an air superiority aircraft for hunting and killing NATO attack helicopters, an alarming but expected Soviet move by NATO planners following the recent J-CATCH program evaluation.
The Ka-50 and its modifications have been chosen as the special forces' support helicopter, while the Mil Mi-28 has become the main army's gunship. The production of Ka-50 was recommenced in 2006. In 2009, the Russian Air Force received three units built from incomplete airframes dating from the mid-1990s.
Ka-50N "Night Shark" and Ka-50Sh
From the time the Ka-50 was ordered in 1987, it was known that the limited night-time capability of the original version would have to be upgraded to meet night attack requirements. Initially, Ka-50N was meant to be fitted with the Merkury Low-Light TV (LLTV) system. Due to lack of funding, the system was late and experienced reliability and capability issues. As a result, focus shifted to forward looking infrared (FLIR) systems. Kamov drafted a design in 1993 that included the Shkval-N sighting system with an infrared sensor. Many variants were tried. On some, the original Shkval was supplemented by a thermal imaging system, while others saw a complete replacement by the Samshit day-and-night system (also used on Ka-52). Some of the imagers included in the trials were manufactured by the French SAGEM and Thomson companies. Kamov was forced to consider foreign analogues as a temporary replacement for domestic imaging systems because of their slow development.
Trials led to two "final" versions: Ka-50N "Night Shark" (, "velvet belly lanternshark") and Ka-50Sh (, "ball"; because of the spherical FLIR turret). The first Ka-50Sh, which was the 8th pre-production aircraft, Bort 018, first flew on 4 March 1997. The Kamov company and Black Shark logos were displayed on the endplate fins and the vertical tail. It featured the Samshit-50 system installed within a 640 mm (25 in) diameter sphere under the nose. Shkval system was moved to the nose cone area. Neither of the Ka-50 night-attack versions has entered full production.
Ka-52 "Alligator"
In the early 1980s, while comparative tests of the V-80 (Ka-50 prototype) and the Mi-28 were being conducted, the Kamov design team came up with a proposal to develop a dedicated helicopter to conduct battlefield reconnaissance, provide target designation, support and coordinate group attack helicopter operations. However, the economic hardships that hit the nation in the late 1980s hampered this new development program. This prompted Kamov's Designer General to choose a modified version of Ka-50 on which to install the reconnaissance and target designation system. The modified "Black Shark" required a second crew member to operate the optronics/radar reconnaissance suite. Kamov decided to use side-by-side seating arrangement, due to the verified improvements in co-operation between the crew members. This twin-seat version was designated Ka-52.
In comparison to the original Ka-50, it has a "softer" nose profile and a radar system with two antennas—mast-mounted for aerial targets and nose-mounted for ground targets. Day-and-night TV/thermal sighting system in two spherical turrets (one over the cockpit and the second under the nose) are also fitted. The Ka-52 has the side-mounted cannon of the original Ka-50. It features six wing-mounted hardpoints compared to four on the Ka-50. To keep the weight and performance on par with that of the Ka-50, the armor and the capacity of the cannon magazine/feed were reduced. Also some flight parameters deteriorated: rate of climb dropped from 10 to 8 m/s and maximum positive load factor became 3.0 g. Most of the problems were solved by installing the new VK-2500 engine. The Ka-52 is approved for day, night and adverse weather conditions.
Manufacturing of the first Ka-52 airframe began in mid-1996. Series production was started in autumn 2008. , the 696th Instructor and Research Helicopter Regiment, based at Torzhok Air Base, is operating eight helicopters, in varying degrees of capability and/or modification, for research and development. In December 2010, four new, series-production Kamov Ka-52s were delivered to the Air Base of the 344th Centre for Combat Training and Aircrew Conversion.
The first phase of the official tests (ГСИ) was completed in December 2008 and after that permission was given for the production of an experimental batch for phase 2 (ГСИ, including fire tests and the search for targets)
Serial production of the Ka-52 began at the Progress Arsenyev Aviation Company plant in Arsenyev, Primorsky Krai by end of the 2008. After the completion of the state trials, the Ka-52 entered service in May 2011 with first operational units joining the Russian Air Force the same month. Under previous State Defense Procurement Plans, the Russian Armed Forces was to receive 2 experimental and 24 serial Ka-52s by 2012. The second long-term contract signed in 2011 worth 120 billion rubles is to provide the Russian Air Force with 146 Ka-52 helicopters in total until 2020. In February 2018, the Russian Ministry of Defence expressed an interest to purchase additional 114 Ka-52s within the new State Armament Program for 2018–2027.
Ka-52 "Nile Crocodile"
In 2015, Egypt signed a deal for the purchase of 46 Ka-52 helicopters, the contract is expected to be carried out in full by 2020. Russian Helicopters started producing its first export models in early 2017, the overall production was doubled in order to meet new demands. The first batch of 3 Ka-52 attack helicopters was delivered to Egypt in July 2017, with a second batch of another 3 helicopters being delivered in August. By year-end 2017, Egypt had received 19 Ka-52s.
Egypt's helicopter is a modified version of the basic Ka-52 Alligator that serves in the Russian Air Force. Unlike the basic model, the Egyptian Ka-52 utilizes anti-corrosion materials and has a reinforced fuselage structure. It received new landing gear and wheels, designed for the increased takeoff weight of the helicopter. The Egyptian model features updated avionics and a new cooling system for operating in hot climate. Dmitry Rogozin, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia on defense and space industry, proposed to name it the "Nile Crocodile".
The helicopter is equipped with the new OES-52 electro-optical observation and laser targeting system, replacing the standard GOES-451 mounted under the nose. The new optronic system began development in 2011 as a collaboration between Kamov and Sagem, and is based on the French company's STRIX sighting System. The OES-52 provides greater range of target detection and recognition.
The helicopter features the Arbalet-52 Dual-band coherent pulse radar, which has an Earth mapping range of 32 km and a detection range of 25 km for ground targets and 15 km for aerial targets.
The Nile Crocodiles will receive President-S airborne defense systems for protection against guided missiles. The system includes both radar and laser warning receivers, MAW sensors, chaff/flare dispensers, in addition to ECM and DIRCM jammers. Egyptian Ka-52s feature two new DIRCM sets installed on either side of the fuselage, which are different from the standard L370-5 sets.
Egypt plans to arm its Ka-52s with Russian anti-tank guided missiles. The Air Force has chosen two types of missiles; namely the laser-guided Vikhr and the radar-guided Ataka beam-riding missiles.
Ka-52K "Katran"
Mistral class amphibious assault ships, ordered by the Russian Defense Ministry, were to contain rotary-wing assets, formed into aviation groups. Each of these groups was planned to include eight attack and eight assault/transport helicopters. The Ka-52K "Katran" (, 'mud shark'), a navalised derivative of the Ka-52, has been selected as the new ship-borne attack type for the Russian Naval Aviation. Its features include folding rotor blades, folding wings and life-support systems for the crew members, who will fly in immersion suits. The fuselage and systems receive special anti-corrosion treatment and a new fire-control radar will be capable of operating in "Sea Mode" and of supporting anti-ship missiles. This version increases the takeoff weight by 1.4 tons compared to the original Ka-50, raising it to 12.2 tons. Russian Naval Aviation will need at least 40 Ka-52Ks, the first of which was tentatively slated to enter squadron service by early 2015, coinciding with the delivery of the first carrier. The first of four Ka-52Ks ordered for the Russian Navy flew on 7 March 2015; the Navy also has option on a further 28 helicopters. In total, 4 pre-series Ka-52K are currently operated and used for testing by the Russian Navy. The Ka-52K has passed all tests and is ready for serial production as of September 2020.
However, following the Russian annexation of Crimea the sale of the Mistrals was cancelled and they have since been sold to Egypt. Later, Russia won the Egyptian tender for providing deck helicopters Ka-52K for the Egyptian Mistral carriers. Pre-contract work is underway, including final agreement on the helicopter's technical concept and other financial conditions.
According to the SCMP, China is considering the purchase of 36 Ka-52K to be used aboard the Type 075 helicopter carrier, which would fulfil the role of a heavy attack helicopter. These helicopters are necessary to equip the carrier with powerful attack weapons, which it currently lacks.
Ka-50-2 "Erdogan"
In 1997, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) in cooperation with the Kamov bureau entered the Ka-50-2 Erdoğan in a Turkish design competition for a $4 billion contract for 145 (later changed to 50) combat helicopters.
The Ka-50-2 is a tandem cockpit variant of the Ka-50. It featured a modern, Israeli-made "glass cockpit" avionics and a turret-mounted folding (for landing clearance) 30 mm cannon instead of the fixed cannon on the Ka-50. It features combat-proven avionics and advanced anti-tank guided missiles for a high level of combat effectiveness. It is equipped with IAI's flexible modular avionics suite, which can be readily tailored to meet the TLF's operational requirements and provides growth potential.
IAI and Kamov performed flights of the variant with IAI's Core Avionics. These flights demonstrated the helicopter's "glass cockpit" with multifunctional displays and Control and Display Unit (CDU) driven by centralized mission computers. Also tested were its flight navigation and the operation of the Helicopter Multi-Mission Optronic Stabilized Payload (HMOSP) targeting system. The demonstration flights included night mission capability demonstrations using Night Vision Goggles (NVG) and the day/night targeting system.
Turkey initially selected an improved version of the Bell AH-1 SuperCobra over the Erdogan, Eurocopter Tiger, AH-64 Apache, Denel Rooivalk, and A129 Mangusta. In the end, the contract was awarded to the A129 in 2007.
Design
The Ka-50 and its two-seat version Ka-52 are high-performance combat helicopters with day and night capability, high survivability and fire power, to defeat air targets and heavily armoured tanks armed with air defence weapons. It was designed to be small, fast and agile to improve survivability and lethality.
The coaxial rotor design provides a hovering ceiling of 4,000 m and vertical rate of climb of 10 m a second at an altitude of 2,500 m. The rotor blades are made from polymer materials. The coaxial-rotor configuration results in moments of inertia values relative to vertical and lateral axes between 1.5 and two times less than the values found in single-rotor helicopters with tail rotors. Absence of the tail rotor enables the helicopter to perform flat turns within the entire flight speed range. A maximum vertical load factor of 3.5 g combined with low moments of inertia give the Ka-50 a high level of agility. Flight systems include inertial navigation system (INS), autopilot and head-up display (HUD). Sensors include forward-looking infrared (FLIR) and terrain-following radar.
The Kamov Ka-50 is also fitted with an electronic radio and sighting-piloting-navigating system allowing flights at day and night in VFR and IFR weather conditions. The novelty of this avionics is based on the system of precise target designation with digital coded communication system, which ensures the exchange of information (precise enemy coordinates) between helicopters flying far apart from each other as well as with ground command posts. The Ka-52 is also equipped with a "Phazotron" cockpit radio-locator, allowing flights in adverse meteorological conditions and at night. The necessary information acquired by this radio-locator is transferred to the cockpit's multi-functional display screen. For conducting a fight, both pilots are equipped with range-finders built-in their helmets and they can use night vision eyepieces for night flights.
For its own protection, Ka-50 is fitted with a radar warning receiver, electronic warfare system and chaff and flare dispenser. The dispensers are placed in aerodynamic containers fitted at wings' ends. Each casing (container) contains two dispensers with 32 x 26 mm countermeasures each. The whole system works on principle of evaluated response based on infrared or electronic impulse irradiation. Extensive all-round armour installed in the cockpit protects the pilot against 12.7 mm armour-piercing bullets and 23 mm projectile fragments. The rotor blades are rated to withstand several hits of ground-based automatic weapons.
Other survivability features include twin-engine design for redundancy, protection for vital aircraft systems, and crash absorbing land gear and fuselage. Also, the coaxial main rotor configuration does not require tail rotor, which can improve survivability.
It is the world's first operational helicopter with a rescue ejection system, which allows the pilot to escape at all altitudes and speeds. The K-37-800 rocket-assisted ejection system is manufactured by the Zvezda Research and Production Enterprise Joint Stock Company in the Moscow region.
Armament
The aircraft has one Shipunov 2A42 autocannon. It has selective fire, and a dual-feed, which allows for a cyclic rate of fire between 200 and 800 rounds per minute. This autocannon is mounted near the centre of fuselage and carries 460 high-fragmentation, explosive incendiary, or armour-piercing rounds. The type of ammunition is also selected by the pilot during flight. The integrated 30 mm cannon is semi-rigidly fixed on the helicopter's side, movable only slightly in elevation and azimuth. Semi-rigid mounting improves the cannon's accuracy, giving the 30 mm a longer practical range and better hit ratio at medium ranges than with a free-turning turret mount.
The fire control system automatically shares all target information in real time, allowing one helicopter to engage a target spotted by another aircraft, and the system can also input target information from ground-based forward scouts with personnel-carried target designation gear.
A substantial load of weapons can be carried on four external hardpoints under the stub wings, plus two on the wingtips, a total of some 2,000 kg (depending on the mix). The pylons can be tilted up to 10-degree downward. Fuel tanks may be mounted on a suspension point, whenever necessary.
Anti-tank armament comprises twelve laser-guided Vikhr anti-tank missiles (transl. Vortex or whirlwind), with a maximum range of some 8 km. The laser guidance is reported to be virtually jam-proof and the system features automatic guidance to target, enabling evasive action immediately after missile launch, alternatively it can also use Ataka laser-guided anti-tank missiles.
Kamov-52K can be armed with Hermes-A anti-tank guided missiles.
Ka-50/52 can also carry several rocket pods, including the S-13 and S-8 rockets. The "dumb" rocket pods could be upgraded to laser guided with the proposed Ugroza system.
Operational history
Second Chechen War
The Ka-50 took part in the Russian Army's operations against separatists in the Chechen Republic during the Second Chechen War. In December 2000, a pair of production Ka-50s arrived to the area. With the Ka-50s was a Ka-29 to provide reconnaissance and target designation. On 6 January 2001, the Ka-50 used live weapons against a real enemy for the first time. On 9 January, at the entry into a mountain gorge in the area of a settlement named Komsomolskoye, a single Ka-50 accompanied by an Mi-24 used S-8 unguided rockets to destroy a warehouse full of ammunition belonging to Chechen insurgents. On 6 February, in the forest-covered mountain area to the south of the village of Tsentoroj, the strike group composed of two Ka-50s and the sole Ka-29 discovered and, from a range of 3 km, destroyed a fortified camp of insurgents using two "9K121 Vikhr" guided missiles. 14 February, saw a similar strike group carrying out a "hunting" mission in the area of Oak-Yurt and Hatun. In difficult conditions, pilots found and destroyed eight targets. These missions tested the type's airframe, as well as its on-board systems and armament. Its successful performance in difficult, mountainous terrain once again confirmed the usefulness of the many advanced features of the Ka-50's design, including its power and maneuverability.
Syrian Civil War
Ka-52 helicopters were spotted being deployed in support of the Russian military intervention in the Syrian Civil War in 2015, various sources stating they were involved in defense of the Russian base in Latakia, providing escort for search and rescue helicopters, and supporting Russian special forces. For the first time, Ka-52s were seen near the town of Al-Qaryatayn, recaptured in early April 2016 from ISIS. They took part in the 2017 Palmyra offensive. On 12 August 2017, they took part in a Syrian paratroopers operation conducting a reconnaissance-strike mission.
On 5 May 2018, a Ka-52 crashed near Mayadin due to a technical failure, according to some sources.
Russian Invasion of Ukraine
On 24 February 2022, during the initial stages of the Invasion of Ukraine, at least one Russian Ka-52 helicopter was damaged and forced to crash land.
Other uses
It has participated in a number of exercises, including "Boundary 2004" at the Edelweiss training center in Kyrgyzstan during August 2004. The "Shark" demonstrated its advantages by operating at a high altitude and an air temperature of more than 30 °C. A Ka-50 provided cover for the landing of troops and then worked on the ground targets using its cannons and rockets.
India issued a request for proposal for 22 attack helicopters for the Indian Air Force in May 2008. The Ka-50, the Mil Mi-28, and the Eurocopter Tiger were the front-runners for this order as of October 2008. The tender though was eventually cancelled and later India announced a new tender, with revised conditions. Russia again offered the Mi-28N and Ka-52.
The Russian Air Force has accepted 12 Ka-52 helicopters for operational service in 2011, and the total number of completed Ka-52s was already 65 units. 20 Ka-52 aircraft were located at the 575th Airbase Chernigovsky District, Eastern Military District. 16 were at 393rd "Sevastopol" Airbase Korenovsk, Southern Military District, 12 were transferred to newly formed 15th Army Aviation Brigade of the Western Military District at the airport of Ostrov, 8 – Torzhok 344th Centre for Combat Training and Flight Personnel Training. Five test aircraft are owned by JSC "Kamov"; two machines were lost in accidents. The Ka-52 was displayed to the international community at the 2013 Paris Air Show.
In 2013, the AAC "Progress" has completed the contract with the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, signed in 2009, and would begin the next long-term contract for supplying 143 Ka-52, worth about 120 billion rubles (≈US$3.5 bln).
In June 2015, Sergei Kornev, the head of Rosoboronexport's delegation, said that Russia has signed its first contracts on the export of Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters. "We have the Ka-52 in its export model and we have contracts for it, and it's already being spun because it has a good, firm future" he said at the airshow outside Paris. Kornev did not specify the volume of contracts or with whom they were signed.
Variants
Kamov V-80 Prototype version for Ka-50.
Kamov Ka-50 single-seat version.
Kamov Ka-50N Ka-50 with night attack capability.
Kamov Ka-50Sh Ka-50 with improved night attack capability.
Kamov Ka-50-2 "Erdogan" Version with a two-seat tandem cockpit.
Kamov Ka-52 "Alligator" Highly upgraded version with a two-seat side-by-side cockpit for the Russian Air Force.
Kamov Ka-52K "Katran" Naval version with folding blade and reinforced landing gear, wing shortened for basing on ships and the possibility of using Kh-35 anti-ship missile.
Operators
Egyptian Air Force has received 30 Ka-52Ks of the 46 Ka-52Ks on order as of 2021.
Russian Air Force has 127 Ka-52 helicopters as of 2020.
Russian Naval Aviation
People's Liberation Army Naval Air Force ordered 36 Ka-52s.
Specifications (Ka-50)
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
Donald, David, and Daniel J. March. "Ka-50/52, Kamov's 'Hokum' family". Modern Battlefield Warplanes. AIRtime Publishing, 2004. .
External links
Kamov Ka-50, and Kamov Ka-52 official pages
Helicopter site
The history of the Ka-50 Black Shark, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 on rian.ru
Ka-50 page on GlobalSecurity.org
Ka-52 Rosoboronexport
Kamov aircraft
Attack helicopters
1980s Soviet attack aircraft
Coaxial rotor helicopters
1980s Soviet helicopters
Twin-turbine helicopters
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16919 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny%20Dalglish | Kenny Dalglish | Sir Kenneth Mathieson Dalglish (born 4 March 1951) is a Scottish former football player and manager. During his career, he made 338 appearances for Celtic and 515 for Liverpool, playing as a forward, and earned a record 102 full caps for the Scotland national team, scoring 30 goals, also a joint-record. Dalglish won the Ballon d'Or Silver Award in 1983, the PFA Players' Player of the Year in 1983, and the FWA Footballer of the Year in 1979 and 1983. In 2009, FourFourTwo magazine named Dalglish the greatest striker in post-war British football, and he has been inducted into both the Scottish and English Football Halls of Fame. He is very highly regarded by Liverpool fans, who still affectionately refer to him as King Kenny, and in 2006 voted him top of the fans' poll "100 Players Who Shook the Kop".
Dalglish began his career with Celtic in 1971, going on to win four Scottish league championships, four Scottish Cups and one Scottish League Cup with the club. In 1977, Liverpool manager Bob Paisley paid a British transfer record of £440,000 to bring Dalglish to Liverpool. His years at Liverpool were among the club's most successful periods, as he won six English league championships, the FA Cup, four League Cups, five FA Charity Shields, three European Cups and one European Super Cup. In international football, Dalglish made 102 appearances and scored 30 goals for Scotland between 1971 and 1986, becoming their most capped player and joint-leading goalscorer (with Denis Law).
Dalglish became player-manager of Liverpool in 1985 after the resignation of Joe Fagan, winning a further three First Divisions, two FA Cups and four FA Charity Shields, before resigning in 1991. Eight months later, Dalglish made a return to football management with Blackburn Rovers, whom he led from the Second Division to win the Premier League in 1995. Soon afterwards, he stepped down as manager to become Director of Football at the club, before leaving altogether in 1996. In January 1997, Dalglish took over as manager at Newcastle United. Newcastle finished as runners-up in the Premier League during his first season, but they only finished 13th in 1997–98, which led to his dismissal the following season. Dalglish went on to be appointed Director of Football at Celtic in 1999, and later manager, where he won the Scottish League Cup before an acrimonious departure the following year.
Between 2000 and 2010, Dalglish focused on charitable concerns, founding The Marina Dalglish Appeal with his wife to raise money for cancer care. In January 2011, Dalglish returned to Liverpool for a spell as caretaker manager after the dismissal of Roy Hodgson, becoming the permanent manager in May 2011. Despite winning the League Cup, which was the club's first trophy since 2006, earning them a place in the UEFA Europa League, and reaching the FA Cup Final, Liverpool only finished 8th in the Premier League, and Dalglish was dismissed in May 2012. In October 2013, Dalglish returned to Anfield as a non-executive director, and Anfield's Centenary Stand was renamed after him in May 2017.
Early life
The son of an engineer, Dalglish was born in Dalmarnock in the east end of Glasgow and was brought up in Milton in the north of the city. When he was 14 the family moved to a newly-built tower block in Ibrox overlooking the home ground of Rangers, the club he had grown up supporting.
Dalglish attended Miltonbank Primary School in Milton and started out as a goalkeeper. He then attended High Possil Senior Secondary School, where he won the inter-schools five-a-side and the inter-year five-a-side competitions. He won the Scottish Cup playing for Glasgow Schoolboys and Glasgow Schools, and was then selected for the Scottish schoolboys team that went undefeated in a Home Nations Victory Shield tournament. In 1966, Dalglish had unsuccessful trials at West Ham and Liverpool.
Club career
Celtic
Dalglish signed a professional contract with Celtic in May 1967. The club's assistant manager Sean Fallon went to see Dalglish and his parents at their home, which had Rangers-related pictures on the walls. In his first season, Dalglish was loaned out to Cumbernauld United, for whom he scored 37 goals. During this time he also worked as an apprentice joiner. Celtic manager Jock Stein wanted Dalglish to spend a second season at Cumbernauld, but the youngster wanted to turn professional. Dalglish got his wish and became a regular in the reserve team known as the Quality Street Gang, due to it containing a large number of highly rated players, including future Scottish internationals Danny McGrain, George Connelly, Lou Macari and David Hay. Dalglish made his first-team competitive debut for Celtic in a Scottish League Cup quarter-final tie against Hamilton Academical on 25 September 1968, coming on as a second-half substitute in a 4–2 win.
He spent the 1968–69 season playing for the reserves, though scored just four goals in 17 games. The following season he changed his position, moving into midfield, and enjoyed a good season as he helped the reserve team to the league and cup double, scoring 19 goals in 31 games. Stein put Dalglish in the starting XI for the first team in a league match against Raith Rovers on 4 October 1969. Celtic won 7–1 but Dalglish didn't score, nor did he score in the next three first-team games he played in during the 1969–70 season.
Dalglish continued his goalscoring form in the reserves into the next season, scoring 23 goals. A highlight of his season came in the Reserve Cup Final against Rangers; Dalglish scored one goal in a 4–1 win in the first leg, then in the second leg scored a hat-trick in a 6–1 win to clinch the cup. Still not a first-team regular, Dalglish was in the stands when the Ibrox disaster occurred at an Old Firm match in January 1971, when 66 Rangers fans died. On 17 May 1971, he played for Celtic against Kilmarnock in a testimonial match for the Rugby Park club's long serving midfielder Frank Beattie, and scored six goals in a 7–2 win for Celtic.
The 1971–72 season saw Dalglish finally establish himself in the Celtic first team,. He scored his first competitive goal for the first team on 14 August 1971, Celtic's second goal with a penalty kick in a 2–0 win over Rangers at Ibrox Stadium. He went on to score 29 goals in 53 games that season, including a hat-trick against Dundee and braces against Kilmarnock and Motherwell and helped Celtic win their seventh consecutive league title. Dalglish also played in Celtic's 6–1 win over Hibernian in the 1972 Scottish Cup Final. In 1972–73 Dalglish was Celtic's leading scorer, with 39 goals in all competitions, and the club won the league championship once again. Celtic won a league and cup double in 1973–74 and reached the semi-finals of the European Cup. The ties against Atlético Madrid were acrimonious, and Dalglish described the first leg in Glasgow where the Spanish side had three players sent off as "without doubt the worst game I have ever played in as far as violence is concerned." Dalglish won a further Scottish Cup winner's medal in 1975, providing the cross for Paul Wilson's opening goal in a 3–1 win over Airdrieonians in what transpired to be captain Billy McNeill's last match before retiring from playing football.
Dalglish was made Celtic captain in the 1975–76 season, during which the club failed to win a trophy for the first time in 12 years. Jock Stein had been badly injured in a car crash and missed most of that season while recovering from his injuries. Celtic won another league and cup double in 1976–77, with Dalglish scoring 27 goals in all competitions. On 10 August 1977, after making 320 appearances and scoring 167 goals for Celtic, Dalglish was signed by Liverpool manager Bob Paisley for a British transfer fee record of £440,000 (£ today). The deal was unpopular with the Celtic fans, and Dalglish was booed by the crowd when he returned to Celtic Park in August 1978 to play in a testimonial match for Stein.
Liverpool
Dalglish was signed to replace Kevin Keegan and quickly settled into his new club. He made his debut on 13 August 1977 in the season opener at Wembley, in the 1977 FA Charity Shield against Manchester United. He scored his first goal for Liverpool in his league debut a week later on 20 August, against Middlesbrough. Dalglish also scored three days later on his Anfield debut in a 2–0 victory over Newcastle United, and he scored Liverpool's sixth goal when they beat Keegan's Hamburg 6–0 in the second leg of the 1977 European Super Cup. By the end of his first season with Liverpool, Dalglish had played 62 times and scored 31 goals, including the winning goal in the 1978 European Cup Final at Wembley against Bruges.
In his second season, Dalglish recorded a personal best of 21 league goals for the club and was also named Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year. He did not miss a league game for Liverpool until the 1980–81 season, when he appeared in 34 out of 42 league games and scored only eight goals as Liverpool finished fifth in the league, but still won the European Cup and Football League Cup. He recovered his goal-scoring form the following season, and was an ever-present player in the league once again, scoring 13 goals as Liverpool became league champions for the 13th time, and the third time since Dalglish's arrival. It was also around this time that he began to form a potent strike partnership with Ian Rush; Dalglish began to play just off Rush, "running riot in the extra space afforded to him in the hole". Dalglish was voted PFA Players' Player of the Year for the 1982–83 season, during which he scored 18 league goals as Liverpool retained their title. From 1983 Dalglish became less prolific as a goalscorer, though he remained a regular player.
After becoming player-manager on the retirement of Joe Fagan in the 1985 close season, Dalglish selected himself for just 21 First Division games in 1985–86 as Liverpool won the double, but he started the FA Cup final win over Everton. On the last day of the league season, his goal in a 1–0 away win over Chelsea gave Liverpool their 16th league title. Dalglish had a personally better campaign in the 1986–87 season, scoring six goals in 18 league appearances, but by then he was committed to giving younger players priority for a first-team place.
With the sale of Ian Rush to Juventus in 1987, Dalglish formed a new striker partnership of new signings John Aldridge and Peter Beardsley for the 1987–88 season, and he played only twice in a league campaign which saw Liverpool gain their 17th title. Dalglish did not play in Liverpool's 1988–89 campaign, and he made his final league appearance on 5 May 1990 as a substitute against Derby. At 39, he was one of the oldest players ever to play for Liverpool. His final goal had come three years earlier, in a 3–0 home league win over Nottingham Forest on 18 April 1987.
International career
Tommy Docherty gave Dalglish his debut for the Scottish national side as a substitute in the 1–0 Euro 1972 qualifier victory over Belgium on 10 November 1971 at Pittodrie. Dalglish scored his first goal for Scotland a year later on 15 November 1972 in the 2–0 World Cup qualifier win over Denmark at Hampden Park. Scotland would go on to qualify for the final tournament and he was part of Scotland's 1974 World Cup squad in West Germany. He started in all three games as Scotland were eliminated during the group stages despite not losing any of their three games.
In 1976, Dalglish scored the winning goal for Scotland at Hampden Park against England, by nutmegging Ray Clemence. A year later Dalglish scored against the same opponents and goalkeeper at Wembley, in another 2–1 win. Dalglish went on to play in both the 1978 World Cup in Argentina where he started in all of Scotland's games – scoring against eventual runners-up the Netherlands in a famous 3–2 win – and the 1982 World Cup in Spain, scoring against New Zealand. On both occasions Scotland failed to get past the group stage. Dalglish was selected for the 22-man squad travelling to Mexico for the 1986 World Cup, but had to withdraw due to injury.
In total, Dalglish played 102 times for Scotland (a national record) and he scored 30 goals (also a national record, which matched that set by Denis Law). His final appearance for Scotland, after 15 years as a full international, was on 12 November 1986 at Hampden Park in a Euro 1988 qualifying game against Luxembourg, which Scotland won 3–0. His 30th and final international goal had been two years earlier, on 14 November 1984, in a 3–1 win over Spain in a World Cup qualifier, also at Hampden Park.
Managerial career
Liverpool
After the Heysel Stadium disaster in 1985 and Joe Fagan's subsequent resignation as manager, Dalglish became player-manager of Liverpool. In his first season in charge in 1985–86, he guided the club to its first "double". Liverpool achieved this by winning the League Championship by two points over Everton (Dalglish himself scored the winner in a 1–0 victory over Chelsea at Stamford Bridge to secure the title on the final day of the season), and the FA Cup by beating Everton in the final.
The 1986–87 season was trophyless for Liverpool. They lost 2–1 to Arsenal in the League Cup final at Wembley. Before the 1987–88 season, Dalglish signed two new players: striker Peter Beardsley from Newcastle and winger John Barnes from Watford. He had already purchased goalscorer John Aldridge from Oxford United (a replacement for Ian Rush, who was moving to Italy) in the spring of 1987 and early into the new campaign, bought Oxford United midfielder Ray Houghton. The new-look Liverpool side shaped by Dalglish topped the league for almost the entire season, and had a run of 37 matches unbeaten in all competitions (including 29 in the league; 22 wins and 7 draws) from the beginning of the season to 21 February 1988, when they lost to Everton in the league. Liverpool were crowned champions with four games left to play, having suffered just two defeats from 40 games. However, Dalglish's side lost the 1988 FA Cup Final to underdogs Wimbledon.
In the summer of 1988, Dalglish re-signed Ian Rush. Liverpool beat Everton 3–2 after extra time in the second all-Merseyside FA Cup final in 1989, but was deprived of a second Double in the final game of the season, when Arsenal secured a last-minute goal to take the title from Liverpool. In the 1989–90 season Liverpool won their third league title under Dalglish. They missed out on the Double and a third successive FA Cup final appearance when they lost 4–3 in extra-time to Crystal Palace in an FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park. At the end of the season Dalglish received his third Manager of the Year award. Dalglish resigned as manager of Liverpool on 22 February 1991, two days after a 4–4 draw with rivals Everton in an FA Cup fifth round tie at Goodison Park, in which Liverpool surrendered the lead four times. At the time of his resignation, the club were three points ahead in the league and still in contention for the FA Cup.
Hillsborough disaster
Dalglish was the manager of Liverpool at the time of the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April 1989. The disaster claimed 94 lives on the day, with the final death toll reaching 97. Dalglish attended many funerals of the victims – including four in one day. – and his presence in the aftermath of the disaster has been described as "colossal and heroic". Dalglish broke a twenty-year silence about the disaster in March 2009, expressing regret that the police and the FA did not consider delaying the kick-off of the match. During the Hillsborough Memorial Service on 15 April 2011, Liverpool MP Steve Rotheram announced he would submit an Early Day Motion to have Dalglish knighted, "not only for his outstanding playing and managerial career, but also the charity work he has done with his wife, Marina, for breast cancer support and what he did after Hillsborough. It is common knowledge it affected him deeply".
Blackburn Rovers
Dalglish returned to management in October 1991 at Second Division Blackburn Rovers who had recently been purchased by multi-millionaire Jack Walker. By the turn of 1992 they were top of the Second Division, and then suffered a dip in form before recovering to qualify for the playoffs, during which Dalglish led Blackburn into the new Premier League by beating Leicester City 1–0 in the Second Division Play-off final at Wembley. The resulting promotion meant that Blackburn were back in the top flight of English football for the first time since 1966. In the 1992 close season, Dalglish signed Southampton's Alan Shearer for a British record fee of £3.5 million. Despite a serious injury which ruled Shearer out for half the season, Dalglish achieved fourth position with the team in the first year of the new Premier League. The following year, Dalglish failed in an attempt to sign Roy Keane. Blackburn finished two positions higher the following season, as runners-up to Manchester United. By this time, Dalglish had added England internationals Tim Flowers and David Batty to his squad.
At the start of the 1994–95 season Dalglish paid a record £5 million for Chris Sutton, with whom Shearer formed an effective strike partnership. By the last game of the season, both Blackburn and Manchester United were in contention for the title. Blackburn had to travel to Liverpool, and Manchester United faced West Ham United in London. Blackburn lost 2–1, but still won the title since United failed to win in London. The title meant that Dalglish was only the fourth football manager in history to lead two different clubs to top-flight league championships in England, after Tom Watson, Herbert Chapman and Brian Clough. Dalglish became Director of Football at Blackburn in June 1995. He left the club at the start of the 1996–97 season after a disappointing campaign under his replacement, Ray Harford.
Following his departure from Blackburn Dalglish was appointed for a brief spell as an "international talent scout" at his boyhood club Rangers. He was reported as having played a central role in the signing of Chile international Sebastián Rozental.
Newcastle United
In January 1997, Dalglish was appointed manager of Premier League side Newcastle United on a three-and-a-half-year contract, taking over from Kevin Keegan. Dalglish guided the club from fourth position to a runner-up spot in May and a place in the new format of the following season's UEFA Champions League. He then broke up the team which had finished second two years running, selling popular players like Peter Beardsley, Lee Clark, Les Ferdinand and David Ginola and replacing them with ageing stars like John Barnes (34), Ian Rush (36) and Stuart Pearce (35), as well as virtual unknowns like Des Hamilton and Garry Brady. He also made some good long-term signings like Gary Speed and Shay Given. The 1997–98 campaign saw Newcastle finish in only 13th place and, despite Dalglish achieving some notable successes during the season (including a 3–2 UEFA Champions League win over Barcelona and an FA Cup final appearance against Arsenal), he was dismissed by Freddie Shepherd after two draws in the opening two games of the subsequent 1998–99 season, and replaced by former Chelsea manager Ruud Gullit. One commentator from The Independent has since written, "His 20 months at Newcastle United are the only part of Kenny Dalglish's career that came anywhere near failure".
Celtic
In June 1999 he was appointed director of football operations at Celtic, with his former Liverpool player John Barnes appointed as head coach. Barnes was dismissed in February 2000 and Dalglish took charge of the first team on an interim basis. He guided them to the Scottish League Cup final, where they beat Aberdeen 2–0 at Hampden Park. Dalglish was dismissed in June 2000, after the appointment of Martin O'Neill as manager. After a brief legal battle, Dalglish accepted a settlement of £600,000 from Celtic.
Return to Liverpool
In April 2009 Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez invited Dalglish to take up a role at the club's youth academy. The appointment was confirmed in July 2009, and Dalglish was also made the club's ambassador. Following Benítez's departure from Liverpool in June 2010, Dalglish was asked to help find a replacement, and in July Fulham's Roy Hodgson was appointed manager.
A poor run of results at the start of the 2010–11 season led to Liverpool fans calling for Dalglish's return as manager as early as October 2010, and with no subsequent improvement in Liverpool's results up to the end of the year (during which time the club was bought by New England Sports Ventures), Hodgson left Liverpool and Dalglish was appointed caretaker manager on 8 January 2011. Dalglish's first game in charge was on 9 January 2011 at Old Trafford against Manchester United in the 3rd round of the FA Cup, which Liverpool lost 1–0. Dalglish's first league game in charge was against Blackpool on 12 January 2011; Liverpool lost 2–1. After the game, Dalglish admitted that Liverpool faced "a big challenge".
Shortly after his appointment, Dalglish indicated he would like the job on a permanent basis if it was offered to him, and on 19 January the Liverpool chairman Tom Werner stated that the club's owners would favour this option. On 22 January 2011, Dalglish led Liverpool to their first win since his return, against Wolves at Molineux. After signing Andy Carroll from Newcastle for a British record transfer fee of £35 million and Luis Suárez from Ajax for £22.8 million at the end of January (in the wake of Fernando Torres's sale to Chelsea for £50 million), some journalists noted that Dalglish had begun to assert his authority at the club. Following a 1–0 victory against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in February 2011, described by Alan Smith as "a quite brilliant display in terms of discipline and spirit" and a "defensive masterplan" by David Pleat, Henry Winter wrote, "it can only be a matter of time before he [Dalglish] is confirmed as long-term manager".
On 12 May 2011, Liverpool announced that Dalglish had been given a three-year contract. His first official match in charge was 2–0 defeat to Harry Redknapp's Spurs at Anfield. Dalglish's second stint in charge at Anfield proved controversial at times. The Scot defended Luis Suárez in the wake of the striker's eight-match ban for racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra when the teams met in October 2011. After the Uruguayan's apparent refusal to shake Evra's hand in the return fixture in February 2012, an apology from both player and manager came only after the intervention of the owners.
In February 2012, Dalglish led Liverpool to their first trophy in six years, with victory in the 2011–12 Football League Cup. In the same season he also led Liverpool to the 2012 FA Cup Final where they lost 2–1 to Chelsea. Despite the success in domestic cups, Liverpool finished eighth in the league, their worst showing in the league since 1994, failing to qualify for the Champions League for a third straight season. Following the end of the season, Liverpool dismissed Dalglish on 16 May 2012.
In October 2013, Dalglish returned to Liverpool as a non-executive director.
On 13 October 2017, Anfield's Centenary Stand was officially renamed the Sir Kenny Dalglish Stand in recognition of his unique contribution to the club.
Personal life
Dalglish has been married to Marina since 26 November 1974. The couple have four children, Kelly, Paul, Lynsey and Lauren. Kelly has worked as a football presenter for BBC Radio 5 Live and Sky Sports. Paul followed in his father's footsteps as a footballer, playing in the Premier League and Scottish Premiership before travelling to the United States to play for the Houston Dynamo in Major League Soccer. He retired in 2008 and became a coach, spending time as head coach of Ottawa Fury FC and Miami FC in the second-division leagues of North America. Dalglish's wife Marina was diagnosed with breast cancer in March 2003, but was treated at Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool and recovered. She later launched a charity to fund new cancer treatment equipment for UK hospitals.
Dalglish was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1985 New Year Honours for services to football. He was appointed a Knight Bachelor in the 2018 Birthday Honours for services to football, charity and the City of Liverpool. He dedicated the award to former Celtic and Liverpool coaches Jock Stein, Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley stating that he was "Humbled" and "A wee bit embarrassed".
In 2002, Celtic supporters voted for what they considered to be the greatest Celtic XI of all time. Dalglish was voted into the team, which was; Simpson, McGrain, Gemmell, Murdoch, McNeill, Auld, Johnstone, P. McStay, Dalglish, Larsson and Lennox. He was an inaugural inductee to the English Football Hall of Fame the same year, and later also an inaugural inductee to the Scottish Football Hall of Fame in 2004. He is very highly regarded by Liverpool fans, who still affectionately refer to him as King Kenny, and in 2006 voted him top of the fans' poll "100 Players Who Shook the Kop". In 2009, FourFourTwo magazine named Dalglish the greatest striker in post-war British football.
In early April 2020, while in hospital for treatment for an unrelated condition, Dalglish was found to be positive for COVID-19, though asymptomatic.
Charitable work
In 2004, Dalglish and his wife founded the charity The Marina Dalglish Appeal to raise money to help treat cancer. Dalglish has participated in a number of events to raise money for the charity, including a replay of the 1986 FA Cup Final. In June 2007 a Centre for Oncology at Aintree University Hospital was opened, after the charity had raised £1.5 million. In 2012, the foundation made a £2m donation to The Walton Centre which allowed the purchase of a new state-of-the-art MRI scanner. Dalglish often competes in the annual Gary Player Invitational Tournament, a charity golfing event which raises money for children's causes around the world. On 1 July 2011, Dalglish was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Ulster, for services to football and charity.
Career statistics
Club
International
Managerial record
Honours
Player
Celtic
Scottish Division One/Premier Division: 1971–72, 1972–73, 1973–74, 1976–77
Scottish Cup: 1971–72, 1973–74, 1974–75, 1976–77
Scottish League Cup: 1974–75
Drybrough Cup: 1974–75
Glasgow Cup: 1974–75
Liverpool
Football League First Division: 1978–79, 1979–80, 1981–82, 1982–83, 1983–84, 1985–86
FA Cup: 1985–86
Football League Cup: 1980–81, 1981–82, 1982–83, 1983–84
FA Charity Shield: 1977 (shared), 1979, 1980, 1982, 1986 (shared)
European Cup: 1977–78, 1980–81, 1983–84
European Super Cup: 1977
Individual
Scottish Premier Division Top-scorer: 1975–76 (24 goals)
Ballon d'Or runner-up: 1983
PFA Players' Player of the Year: 1982–83
FWA Footballer of the Year: 1978–79, 1982–83
English Football Hall of Fame (Player): 2002
Scottish Football Hall of Fame: 2004
FIFA 100: 2004
BBC Goal of the Season: 1982–83
Bleacherreport 21th Best Footballer Of All Time: 2011<ref
Scotland's Greatest International Footballer: 2020
Manager
Liverpool
Football League First Division: 1985–86, 1987–88, 1989–90
FA Cup: 1985–86, 1988–89
Football League Cup: 2011–12
Football League Super Cup: 1985–86
FA Charity Shield: 1986 (shared), 1988, 1989, 1990 (shared)
Blackburn Rovers
Premier League: 1994–95
Football League Second Division play-offs: 1992
Celtic
Scottish League Cup: 1999–2000
Individual
FWA Tribute Award: 1987
Premier League Manager of the Season: 1994–95
Premier League Manager of the Month: January 1994, November 1994
Orders
Member of the Order of the British Empire: 1985
Knight Bachelor: 2018
See also
List of men's footballers with 100 or more international caps
List of English football championship winning managers
List of Scotland national football team captains
List of Scottish football families
References
Further reading
External links
Official past players at Liverpool fc.tv
English Football Hall of Fame Profile
LFCHistory.net Player profile
LFCHistory.net Manager profile
ESPN Profile
FIFA.com profile
1951 births
Living people
Footballers from Glasgow
Scottish footballers
Association football forwards
Cumbernauld United F.C. players
Celtic F.C. players
Liverpool F.C. players
Scottish Junior Football Association players
Scottish Football League players
English Football League players
Scottish league football top scorers
UEFA Champions League winning players
English Football Hall of Fame inductees
Scottish Football Hall of Fame inductees
Scotland under-23 international footballers
Scotland international footballers
1974 FIFA World Cup players
1978 FIFA World Cup players
1982 FIFA World Cup players
FIFA Century Club
FIFA 100
Association football player-managers
Scottish football managers
Liverpool F.C. managers
Blackburn Rovers F.C. managers
Newcastle United F.C. managers
Celtic F.C. managers
English Football League managers
Premier League managers
Scottish Premier League managers
Association football people awarded knighthoods
Knights Bachelor
Members of the Order of the British Empire
FA Cup Final players | [
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16920 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge%20representation%20and%20reasoning | Knowledge representation and reasoning | Knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, KR²) is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to representing information about the world in a form that a computer system can use to solve complex tasks such as diagnosing a medical condition or having a dialog in a natural language. Knowledge representation incorporates findings from psychology about how humans solve problems and represent knowledge in order to design formalisms that will make complex systems easier to design and build. Knowledge representation and reasoning also incorporates findings from logic to automate various kinds of reasoning, such as the application of rules or the relations of sets and subsets.
Examples of knowledge representation formalisms include semantic nets, systems architecture, frames, rules, and ontologies. Examples of automated reasoning engines include inference engines, theorem provers, and classifiers.
History
The earliest work in computerized knowledge representation was focused on general problem-solvers such as the General Problem Solver (GPS) system developed by Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon in 1959. These systems featured data structures for planning and decomposition. The system would begin with a goal. It would then decompose that goal into sub-goals and then set out to construct strategies that could accomplish each subgoal.
In these early days of AI, general search algorithms such as A* were also developed. However, the amorphous problem definitions for systems such as GPS meant that they worked only for very constrained toy domains (e.g. the "blocks world"). In order to tackle non-toy problems, AI researchers such as Ed Feigenbaum and Frederick Hayes-Roth realized that it was necessary to focus systems on more constrained problems.
These efforts led to the cognitive revolution in psychology and to the phase of AI focused on knowledge representation that resulted in expert systems in the 1970s and 80s, production systems, frame languages, etc. Rather than general problem solvers, AI changed its focus to expert systems that could match human competence on a specific task, such as medical diagnosis.
Expert systems gave us the terminology still in use today where AI systems are divided into a knowledge base, with facts about the world and rules, and an inference engine, which applies the rules to the knowledge base in order to answer questions and solve problems. In these early systems the knowledge base tended to be a fairly flat structure, essentially assertions about the values of variables used by the rules.
In addition to expert systems, other researchers developed the concept of frame-based languages in the mid-1980s. A frame is similar to an object class: It is an abstract description of a category describing things in the world, problems, and potential solutions. Frames were originally used on systems geared toward human interaction, e.g. understanding natural language and the social settings in which various default expectations such as ordering food in a restaurant narrow the search space and allow the system to choose appropriate responses to dynamic situations.
It was not long before the frame communities and the rule-based researchers realized that there was a synergy between their approaches. Frames were good for representing the real world, described as classes, subclasses, slots (data values) with various constraints on possible values. Rules were good for representing and utilizing complex logic such as the process to make a medical diagnosis. Integrated systems were developed that combined frames and rules. One of the most powerful and well known was the 1983 Knowledge Engineering Environment (KEE) from Intellicorp. KEE had a complete rule engine with forward and backward chaining. It also had a complete frame-based knowledge base with triggers, slots (data values), inheritance, and message passing. Although message passing originated in the object-oriented community rather than AI it was quickly embraced by AI researchers as well in environments such as KEE and in the operating systems for Lisp machines from Symbolics, Xerox, and Texas Instruments.
The integration of frames, rules, and object-oriented programming was significantly driven by commercial ventures such as KEE and Symbolics spun off from various research projects. At the same time as this was occurring, there was another strain of research that was less commercially focused and was driven by mathematical logic and automated theorem proving. One of the most influential languages in this research was the KL-ONE language of the mid-'80s. KL-ONE was a frame language that had a rigorous semantics, formal definitions for concepts such as an Is-A relation. KL-ONE and languages that were influenced by it such as Loom had an automated reasoning engine that was based on formal logic rather than on IF-THEN rules. This reasoner is called the classifier. A classifier can analyze a set of declarations and infer new assertions, for example, redefine a class to be a subclass or superclass of some other class that wasn't formally specified. In this way the classifier can function as an inference engine, deducing new facts from an existing knowledge base. The classifier can also provide consistency checking on a knowledge base (which in the case of KL-ONE languages is also referred to as an Ontology).
Another area of knowledge representation research was the problem of common sense reasoning. One of the first realizations learned from trying to make software that can function with human natural language was that humans regularly draw on an extensive foundation of knowledge about the real world that we simply take for granted but that is not at all obvious to an artificial agent. Basic principles of common sense physics, causality, intentions, etc. An example is the frame problem, that in an event driven logic there need to be axioms that state things maintain position from one moment to the next unless they are moved by some external force. In order to make a true artificial intelligence agent that can converse with humans using natural language and can process basic statements and questions about the world, it is essential to represent this kind of knowledge. One of the most ambitious programs to tackle this problem was Doug Lenat's Cyc project. Cyc established its own Frame language and had large numbers of analysts document various areas of common sense reasoning in that language. The knowledge recorded in Cyc included common sense models of time, causality, physics, intentions, and many others.
The starting point for knowledge representation is the knowledge representation hypothesis first formalized by Brian C. Smith in 1985:
Any mechanically embodied intelligent process will be structural ingredients that a) we as external observers naturally take to represent a propositional account of the knowledge that the overall process exhibits, and b) independent of such external semantic attribution, play a formal but causal and essential role in engendering the behavior that manifests that knowledge.
Currently, one of the most active areas of knowledge representation research are projects associated with the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web seeks to add a layer of semantics (meaning) on top of the current Internet. Rather than indexing web sites and pages via keywords, the Semantic Web creates large ontologies of concepts. Searching for a concept will be more effective than traditional text only searches. Frame languages and automatic classification play a big part in the vision for the future Semantic Web. The automatic classification gives developers technology to provide order on a constantly evolving network of knowledge. Defining ontologies that are static and incapable of evolving on the fly would be very limiting for Internet-based systems. The classifier technology provides the ability to deal with the dynamic environment of the Internet.
Recent projects funded primarily by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have integrated frame languages and classifiers with markup languages based on XML. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) provides the basic capability to define classes, subclasses, and properties of objects. The Web Ontology Language (OWL) provides additional levels of semantics and enables integration with classification engines.
Overview
Knowledge-representation is a field of artificial intelligence that focuses on designing computer representations that capture information about the world that can be used for solving complex problems.
The justification for knowledge representation is that conventional procedural code is not the best formalism to use to solve complex problems. Knowledge representation makes complex software easier to define and maintain than procedural code and can be used in expert systems.
For example, talking to experts in terms of business rules rather than code lessens the semantic gap between users and developers and makes development of complex systems more practical.
Knowledge representation goes hand in hand with automated reasoning because one of the main purposes of explicitly representing knowledge is to be able to reason about that knowledge, to make inferences, assert new knowledge, etc. Virtually all knowledge representation languages have a reasoning or inference engine as part of the system.
A key trade-off in the design of a knowledge representation formalism is that between expressivity and practicality. The ultimate knowledge representation formalism in terms of expressive power and compactness is First Order Logic (FOL). There is no more powerful formalism than that used by mathematicians to define general propositions about the world. However, FOL has two drawbacks as a knowledge representation formalism: ease of use and practicality of implementation. First order logic can be intimidating even for many software developers. Languages that do not have the complete formal power of FOL can still provide close to the same expressive power with a user interface that is more practical for the average developer to understand. The issue of practicality of implementation is that FOL in some ways is too expressive. With FOL it is possible to create statements (e.g. quantification over infinite sets) that would cause a system to never terminate if it attempted to verify them.
Thus, a subset of FOL can be both easier to use and more practical to implement. This was a driving motivation behind rule-based expert systems. IF-THEN rules provide a subset of FOL but a very useful one that is also very intuitive. The history of most of the early AI knowledge representation formalisms; from databases to semantic nets to theorem provers and production systems can be viewed as various design decisions on whether to emphasize expressive power or computability and efficiency.
In a key 1993 paper on the topic, Randall Davis of MIT outlined five distinct roles to analyze a knowledge representation framework:
"A knowledge representation (KR) is most fundamentally a surrogate, a substitute for the thing itself, used to enable an entity to determine consequences by thinking rather than acting," i.e., "by reasoning about the world rather than taking action in it."
"It is a set of ontological commitments", i.e., "an answer to the question: In what terms should I think about the world?"
"It is a fragmentary theory of intelligent reasoning, expressed in terms of three components: (i) the representation's fundamental conception of intelligent reasoning; (ii) the set of inferences the representation sanctions; and (iii) the set of inferences it recommends."
"It is a medium for pragmatically efficient computation", i.e., "the computational environment in which thinking is accomplished. One contribution to this pragmatic efficiency is supplied by the guidance a representation provides for organizing information" so as "to facilitate making the recommended inferences."
"It is a medium of human expression", i.e., "a language in which we say things about the world."
Knowledge representation and reasoning are a key enabling technology for the Semantic Web. Languages based on the Frame model with automatic classification provide a layer of semantics on top of the existing Internet. Rather than searching via text strings as is typical today, it will be possible to define logical queries and find pages that map to those queries. The automated reasoning component in these systems is an engine known as the classifier. Classifiers focus on the subsumption relations in a knowledge base rather than rules. A classifier can infer new classes and dynamically change the ontology as new information becomes available. This capability is ideal for the ever-changing and evolving information space of the Internet.
The Semantic Web integrates concepts from knowledge representation and reasoning with markup languages based on XML. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) provides the basic capabilities to define knowledge-based objects on the Internet with basic features such as Is-A relations and object properties. The Web Ontology Language (OWL) adds additional semantics and integrates with automatic classification reasoners.
Characteristics
In 1985, Ron Brachman categorized the core issues for knowledge representation as follows:
Primitives. What is the underlying framework used to represent knowledge? Semantic networks were one of the first knowledge representation primitives. Also, data structures and algorithms for general fast search. In this area, there is a strong overlap with research in data structures and algorithms in computer science. In early systems, the Lisp programming language, which was modeled after the lambda calculus, was often used as a form of functional knowledge representation. Frames and Rules were the next kind of primitive. Frame languages had various mechanisms for expressing and enforcing constraints on frame data. All data in frames are stored in slots. Slots are analogous to relations in entity-relation modeling and to object properties in object-oriented modeling. Another technique for primitives is to define languages that are modeled after First Order Logic (FOL). The most well known example is Prolog, but there are also many special purpose theorem proving environments. These environments can validate logical models and can deduce new theories from existing models. Essentially they automate the process a logician would go through in analyzing a model. Theorem proving technology had some specific practical applications in the areas of software engineering. For example, it is possible to prove that a software program rigidly adheres to a formal logical specification.
Meta-representation. This is also known as the issue of reflection in computer science. It refers to the capability of a formalism to have access to information about its own state. An example would be the meta-object protocol in Smalltalk and CLOS that gives developers run time access to the class objects and enables them to dynamically redefine the structure of the knowledge base even at run time. Meta-representation means the knowledge representation language is itself expressed in that language. For example, in most Frame based environments all frames would be instances of a frame class. That class object can be inspected at run time, so that the object can understand and even change its internal structure or the structure of other parts of the model. In rule-based environments, the rules were also usually instances of rule classes. Part of the meta protocol for rules were the meta rules that prioritized rule firing.
Incompleteness. Traditional logic requires additional axioms and constraints to deal with the real world as opposed to the world of mathematics. Also, it is often useful to associate degrees of confidence with a statement. I.e., not simply say "Socrates is Human" but rather "Socrates is Human with confidence 50%". This was one of the early innovations from expert systems research which migrated to some commercial tools, the ability to associate certainty factors with rules and conclusions. Later research in this area is known as fuzzy logic.
Definitions and universals vs. facts and defaults. Universals are general statements about the world such as "All humans are mortal". Facts are specific examples of universals such as "Socrates is a human and therefore mortal". In logical terms definitions and universals are about universal quantification while facts and defaults are about existential quantifications. All forms of knowledge representation must deal with this aspect and most do so with some variant of set theory, modeling universals as sets and subsets and definitions as elements in those sets.
Non-monotonic reasoning. Non-monotonic reasoning allows various kinds of hypothetical reasoning. The system associates facts asserted with the rules and facts used to justify them and as those facts change updates the dependent knowledge as well. In rule based systems this capability is known as a truth maintenance system.
Expressive adequacy. The standard that Brachman and most AI researchers use to measure expressive adequacy is usually First Order Logic (FOL). Theoretical limitations mean that a full implementation of FOL is not practical. Researchers should be clear about how expressive (how much of full FOL expressive power) they intend their representation to be.
Reasoning efficiency. This refers to the run time efficiency of the system. The ability of the knowledge base to be updated and the reasoner to develop new inferences in a reasonable period of time. In some ways, this is the flip side of expressive adequacy. In general, the more powerful a representation, the more it has expressive adequacy, the less efficient its automated reasoning engine will be. Efficiency was often an issue, especially for early applications of knowledge representation technology. They were usually implemented in interpreted environments such as Lisp, which were slow compared to more traditional platforms of the time.
Ontology engineering
In the early years of knowledge-based systems the knowledge-bases were fairly small. The knowledge-bases that were meant to actually solve real problems rather than do proof of concept demonstrations needed to focus on well defined problems. So for example, not just medical diagnosis as a whole topic, but medical diagnosis of certain kinds of diseases.
As knowledge-based technology scaled up, the need for larger knowledge bases and for modular knowledge bases that could communicate and integrate with each other became apparent. This gave rise to the discipline of ontology engineering, designing and building large knowledge bases that could be used by multiple projects. One of the leading research projects in this area was the Cyc project. Cyc was an attempt to build a huge encyclopedic knowledge base that would contain not just expert knowledge but common sense knowledge. In designing an artificial intelligence agent, it was soon realized that representing common sense knowledge, knowledge that humans simply take for granted, was essential to make an AI that could interact with humans using natural language. Cyc was meant to address this problem. The language they defined was known as CycL.
After CycL, a number of ontology languages have been developed. Most are declarative languages, and are either frame languages, or are based on first-order logic. Modularity—the ability to define boundaries around specific domains and problem spaces—is essential for these languages because as stated by Tom Gruber, "Every ontology is a treaty- a social agreement among people with common motive in sharing." There are always many competing and differing views that make any general purpose ontology impossible. A general purpose ontology would have to be applicable in any domain and different areas of knowledge need to be unified.
There is a long history of work attempting to build ontologies for a variety of task domains, e.g., an ontology for liquids, the lumped element model widely used in representing electronic circuits (e.g.,), as well as ontologies for time, belief, and even programming itself. Each of these offers a way to see some part of the world.
The lumped element model, for instance, suggests that we think of circuits in terms of components with connections between them, with signals flowing instantaneously along the connections. This is a useful view, but not the only possible one. A different ontology arises if we need to attend to the electrodynamics in the device: Here signals propagate at finite speed and an object (like a resistor) that was previously viewed as a single component with an I/O behavior may now have to be thought of as an extended medium through which an electromagnetic wave flows.
Ontologies can of course be written down in a wide variety of languages and notations (e.g., logic, LISP, etc.); the essential information is not the form of that language but the content, i.e., the set of concepts offered as a way of thinking about the world. Simply put, the important part is notions like connections and components, not the choice between writing them as predicates or LISP constructs.
The commitment made selecting one or another ontology can produce a sharply different view of the task at hand. Consider the difference that arises in selecting the lumped element view of a circuit rather than the electrodynamic view of the same device. As a second example, medical diagnosis viewed in terms of rules (e.g., MYCIN) looks substantially different from the same task viewed in terms of frames (e.g., INTERNIST). Where MYCIN sees the medical world as made up of empirical associations connecting symptom to disease, INTERNIST sees a set of prototypes, in particular prototypical diseases, to be matched against the case at hand.
See also
Alphabet of human thought
Belief revision
Chunking (psychology)
Commonsense knowledge base
Conceptual graph
DATR, a language for lexical knowledge representation
FO(.), a KR language based on First-order logic
Logico-linguistic modeling
Knowledge graph
Knowledge management
Semantic technology
Valuation-based system
References
Further reading
Ronald J. Brachman; What IS-A is and isn't. An Analysis of Taxonomic Links in Semantic Networks; IEEE Computer, 16 (10); October 1983
Ronald J. Brachman, Hector J. Levesque Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Morgan Kaufmann, 2004
Ronald J. Brachman, Hector J. Levesque (eds) Readings in Knowledge Representation, Morgan Kaufmann, 1985,
Chein, M., Mugnier, M.-L. (2009),Graph-based Knowledge Representation: Computational Foundations of Conceptual Graphs, Springer, 2009,.
Randall Davis, Howard Shrobe, and Peter Szolovits; What Is a Knowledge Representation? AI Magazine, 14(1):17-33,1993
Ronald Fagin, Joseph Y. Halpern, Yoram Moses, Moshe Y. Vardi Reasoning About Knowledge, MIT Press, 1995,
Jean-Luc Hainaut, Jean-Marc Hick, Vincent Englebert, Jean Henrard, Didier Roland: Understanding Implementations of IS-A Relations. ER 1996: 42-57
Hermann Helbig: Knowledge Representation and the Semantics of Natural Language, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, New York 2006
Frank van Harmelen, Vladimir Lifschitz and Bruce Porter: Handbook of Knowledge Representation 2007.
Arthur B. Markman: Knowledge Representation Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998
John F. Sowa: Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations. Brooks/Cole: New York, 2000
Adrian Walker, Michael McCord, John F. Sowa, and Walter G. Wilson: Knowledge Systems and Prolog, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, 1990
Mary-Anne Williams and Hans Rott: "Frontiers in Belief Revision, Kluwer", 2001.
External links
What is a Knowledge Representation? by Randall Davis and others
Introduction to Knowledge Modeling by Pejman Makhfi
Introduction to Description Logics course by Enrico Franconi, Faculty of Computer Science, Free University of Bolzano, Italy
DATR Lexical knowledge representation language
Loom Project Home Page
Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Incorporated
Description Logic in Practice: A CLASSIC Application
The Rule Markup Initiative
Nelements KOS - a non-free 3d knowledge representation system
Scientific modelling
Programming paradigms
Automated reasoning | [
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16921 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge%20Aided%20Retrieval%20in%20Activity%20Context | Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context | Knowledge Aided Retrieval in Activity Context (KARNAC) is a system being developed in the United States for use in profiling different categories of terrorist attacks to determine the components of possible future terrorist incidents.
Information for KARNAC is generally to be derived from structured, semi-structured and unstructured databases. This would include information derived from gun registrations, driver's licenses, residential and criminal records, as well as the Internet, newspapers and county records.
For example, the system might raise an alert if someone attempted to buy components for bomb making, hired a car and rented a hotel room near the White House.
External links
Wired article
United States Department of Homeland Security
2001 introductions
Counter-terrorism in the United States
Counter-terrorism intelligence
Terrorism databases | [
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16923 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernow | Kernow | Kernow may refer to:
Cornwall (), a county of the UK
Kernow (bus company), a bus company in Cornwall
Mebyon Kernow, a political party in Cornwall
See also
Cornouaille (), a region of Brittany, France
Kern (disambiguation)
Cornwall (disambiguation)
Cornwallis (disambiguation)
Cornouaille (disambiguation) | [
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16926 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabaddi | Kabaddi | Kabaddi is a contact team sport with origins in Ancient India. Played between two teams of seven players, the objective of the game is for a single player on offence, referred to as a "raider", to run into the opposing team's half of a court, touch out as many of their defenders as possible, and return to their own half of the court, all without being tackled by the defenders, and in a single breath. Points are scored for each player tagged by the raider, while the opposing team earns a point for stopping the raider. Players are taken out of the game if they are touched or tackled, but are brought back in for each point scored by their team from a tag or tackle.
It is popular in the Indian subcontinent and other surrounding Asian countries. Although accounts of kabaddi appear in the histories of ancient India, the game was popularised as a competitive sport in the 20th century. It is the national sport of Bangladesh. It is the state game of the Indian states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh.
There are two major disciplines of kabaddi: "Punjabi kabaddi", also referred to as "circle styles", comprises traditional forms of the sport that are played on a circular field outdoors, while the "standard style", played on a rectangular court indoors, is the discipline played in major professional leagues and international competitions such as the Asian Games.
This game is known by numerous names in different parts of the Indian subcontinent, such as: kabaddi or chedugudu in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana; kabaddi in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala; kabadi or ha-du-du in West Bengal and Bangladesh; bhavatik in Maldives, kauddi or kabaddi in the Punjab region; hu-tu-tu in Western India, hu-do-do in Eastern India; chadakudu in South India; kapardi in Nepal; and kabadi or sadugudu in Tamil Nadu.
History
Although unverified, theories from various sources state that kabaddi originated from the Vedic period of ancient India. The game was said to have been popular among the Yadava people; an abhang by Tukaram stated that the god Krishna played the game in his youth, while the Mahabharata contains an account of Arjuna being able to sneak into hostile areas also take out enemies unscathed—a passage said to parallel the gameplay of kabaddi.
There are also accounts of Gautama Buddha having played the game recreationally.
Despite these conflicting claims, modern kabaddi is a synthesis of the game played in various forms under different names in the Indian continent. India has been first credited with having helped to popularise kabaddi as a competitive sport, with the first organized competitions occurring in the 1920s, their introduction to the programme of the Indian Olympic Games in 1938, the establishment of the All-India Kabaddi Federation in 1950, and it being played as a demonstration sport at the inaugural 1951 Asian Games in New Delhi. These developments helped to formalize the sport, which had traditionally been played in villages, for legitimate international competition.
After being demonstrated again at the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi, Kabaddi was added to the Asian Games programme beginning in 1990.
Variations
Standard style
In the international team version of kabaddi, two teams of seven members each occupy opposite halves of a court of in case of men and in case of women. Each has five supplementary players held in reserve for substitution. The game is played with 20-minute halves with a 5-minute half break in which the teams exchange sides. During each play, known as a "raid", a player from the attacking side, known as the "raider", runs into the opposing team's side of the court and attempts to tag as many of the seven defending players as possible. The raider must cross the baulk line into the defending team's territory, and then return to their half of the field without being tackled. (If an attacker touches a defender and hasn't yet reached the baulk line, they don't need to reach the baulk line to score points and may return to their half of the court.) While raiding, the raider must loudly chant kabaddi, confirming to referees that their raid is done on a single breath without inhaling. Each raid has a 30-second time limit.
A point is scored for each defender tagged. If the raider steps beyond the bonus line marked in the defending team's territory, they earn an additional point known as a bonus point. If the raider is successfully stopped (tackled), the opposite team earns a point instead. All players tagged are taken out of the game, but one is "revived" for each point a team scores from a subsequent tag or tackle. Bonus points do not revive players. Players who step out of the boundary are out. A raid where no points are scored by the raider is referred to as an "empty raid". By contrast, a play where the raider scores three or more points is referred to as a "super raid". If a team gets all seven players on the opposing team out at once ("All Out"), they earn two additional points and the players are placed back in the game.
Circle style
There are four major forms of Indian kabaddi recognised by the amateur federation. In Sanjeevani kabaddi, one player is revived against one player of the opposite team who is out. The game is played over 40 minutes with a five-minute break between halves. There are seven players on each side and the team that outs all the players on the opponent's side scores four extra points. In Gaminee style, seven players play on each side and a player put out has to remain out until all his team members are out. The team that is successful in outing all the players of the opponent's side secures a point. The game continues until five or seven such points are secured and has no fixed time duration. Amar style resembles the Sanjeevani form in the time frame rule, but a player who is declared out stays inside the court while play continues. For every player of the opposition touched "out", a team earns a point. Punjabi kabaddi is a variation that is played on a circular pitch of a diameter of .
International competitions
The following competitions are played in standard format, for that of circle style kabaddi, see Punjabi kabaddi.
Kabaddi World Cup
The Kabaddi World Cup is an outdoor international standard style kabaddi competition conducted by the International Kabaddi Federation (IKF), contested by men's and women's national teams. The competition has been previously contested in 2004, 2007 and 2016. All the tournaments have been won by India. India defeated Iran by 38–29 in the final of the championship game to clinch the title of 2016.
After the establishment of a new kabaddi organization named World Kabaddi Federation, a 2019 Kabaddi World Cup was held in April 2019 at Malacca, Malaysia. It was the largest world cup in kabaddi history, consisting of 32 men’s teams and 24 women’s teams.
Asian Games
Kabaddi was played as a demonstration event at the First Asian Games in 1951, and again in 1982, before becoming a medal event for the first time in 1990.
The Indian national team won every men's and women's kabaddi competition in the Asian Games from 1990 through 2014. At the 2018 Asian Games, Iran became the first country other than India to win gold medals in kabaddi, with India's men's team winning bronze, and India's women's team being beaten by Iran to win silver.
Pro Kabaddi League
The Pro Kabaddi League was established in 2014. The league modeled its business upon that of the Indian Premier League of Twenty20 cricket, with a large focus on marketing, the backing of local broadcaster Star Sports, and changes to the sport's rules and its presentation to make it more suitable for a television audience. The Pro Kabaddi League quickly became a ratings success on Indian television; the 2014 season was watched by at least 435 million viewers over the course of the season, and the inaugural championship match was seen by 98.6 million viewers.
Additional rules are used in the Pro Kabaddi League to encourage scoring: when a defensive side has three or fewer players remaining, tackles are worth two points instead of one. Furthermore, if a team performs two empty raids in a row, the next raider must score a point, or else they will be declared out and the opposing team will score a point.
Indo International Premier Kabaddi League
The Inaugural edition of the IIPKL was on 13 May at Pune, India. The title for the inaugural season was won by the Bangalore Rhinos.
Super Kabaddi League
In May 2018, the Super Kabaddi League was first held in Pakistan, as part of a larger push to promote renewed interest in the sport in Pakistan.
Asian Kabaddi Championship
AKC's tenth season was played in Gorgan, Iran, in 2017 in which India won its tenth gold by defeating Pakistan in the finals.
Kabaddi Masters
The inaugural edition of the Kabaddi Masters was held in Dubai 22–30 June 2018. It was the first kabaddi tournament to be held in the UAE. It featured 6 teams. India won the tournament by defeating Iran in the final with a scoreline of 44–26, with the Indian Defense outperforming the Iran Defense.
Junior World Kabaddi championship
The inaugural Junior Kabaddi World Championship was held in Kish island, Iran, 11–14 November 2019. It featured 13 teams. Iran won the tournament by defeating Kenya in the final, 42–22. Team India did not participate in this tournament.
European Kabaddi championship
The first edition of European Kabaddi Championship was held in Scotland in 2019. The final match was between Poland and Holland, Poland won the tournament. Final score was Poland 47–27 Holland. The second edition was held in Cyprus in 2021 which was organized by World Kabaddi Federation. Poland retained their title by beating hosts Cyprus in the final 29-15. Italy is set to host the third edition in 2022.
Popularity
Kabaddi is a popular sport in the Indian subcontinent. The Kabaddi Federation of India (KFI) was founded in 1950, and it compiled a standard set of rules. The governing body for kabaddi in Pakistan is Pakistan Kabaddi Federation.
In Bangladesh, Kabaddi is known with a different name called "Ha-du-du". Ha-du-du has no definite rules and is played with different rules in different areas. Kabaddi is the national sport of Bangladesh, given official status in 1972. The Amateur Kabaddi Federation of Bangladesh was formed in 1973.
In Iran, the Community of Kabaddi was formed in 1996 (the same year they joined the Asian Kabaddi Federation), and in 2001 they joined the International Kabaddi Federation. The Iran Amateur Kabaddi Federation was formed in 2004.
Kabaddi is one of the national sports of Nepal. Kabaddi is played and taught in most primary schools beginning in about the third grade in most Nepali schools. Kabaddi was also played by the British Army for fun, to keep fit and as an enticement to recruit soldiers from the British Asian community. Kabaddi was brought to United Kingdom by Indian, Nepali and Sri Lankan immigrants. The governing body for kabaddi in United Kingdom is the England Kabaddi Federation UK.
Media
Movies
Okkadu (Telugu; 2003): A state-level kabaddi player trying to prove his parents that he can be successful in it. Film subsequently remade in four other Indian lanuages.
Ghilli (Tamil; 2004): A state-level kabaddi player trying to prove his parents that he can be successful in it. It was a box office hit.
Panga (Hindi; 2020): former Kabaddi world champion attempts a comeback after being a mother for 7 years.
Ajay (Kannada; 2006): A state level kabaddi player trying to prove his parents that he can be successful in it . It was a Blockbuster.
Television
Burning Kabaddi (2021): A Japanese anime about a high school Kabaddi team, It is based on the manga of the same name.
See also
Boli Khela
Ghilli
Kabaddi in India
Punjabi Kabaddi
References
External links
World Kabaddi
"A Game Called Kabbadi", slideshow by The New York Times
Traditional sports of India
Traditional sports of Pakistan
Sports originating in India
Sports originating in South Asia
National symbols of Bangladesh
Traditional sports of Bangladesh | [
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16928 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerameikos | Kerameikos | Kerameikos (, ) also known by its Latinized form Ceramicus, is an area of Athens, Greece, located to the northwest of the Acropolis, which includes an extensive area both within and outside the ancient city walls, on both sides of the Dipylon Gate and by the banks of the Eridanos River. It was the potters' quarter of the city, from which the English word "ceramic" is derived, and was also the site of an important cemetery and numerous funerary sculptures erected along the Sacred Way, a road from Athens to Eleusis.
History and description
The area took its name from the city square or dēmos (δῆμος) of the Kerameis (Κεραμεῖς, potters), which in turn derived its name from the word κέραμος (kéramos, "pottery clay", from which the English word "ceramic" is derived). The "Inner Kerameikos" was the former "potters' quarter" within the city and "Outer Kerameikos" covers the cemetery and also the Dēmósion Sēma (δημόσιον σῆμα, public graveyard) just outside the city walls, where Pericles delivered his funeral oration in 431 BC. The cemetery was also where the Ηiera Hodos (the Sacred Way, i.e. the road to Eleusis) began, along which the procession moved for the Eleusinian Mysteries. The quarter was located there because of the abundance of clay mud carried over by the Eridanos River.
The area has undergone a number of archaeological excavations in recent years, though the excavated area covers only a small portion of the ancient dēmos. It was originally an area of marshland along the banks of the Eridanos river which was used as a cemetery as long ago as the 3rd millennium BC. It became the site of an organised cemetery from about 1200 BC; numerous cist graves and burial offerings from the period have been discovered by archaeologists. Houses were constructed on the higher drier ground to the south. During the Archaic period increasingly large and complex grave mounds and monuments were built along the south bank of the Eridanos, lining the Sacred Way.
The building of the new city wall in 478 BC, following the Persian sack of Athens in 480 BC, fundamentally changed the appearance of the area. At the suggestion of Themistocles, all of the funerary sculptures were built into the city wall and two large city gates facing north-west were erected in the Kerameikos. The Sacred Way ran through the Sacred Gate, on the southern side, to Eleusis. On the northern side a wide road, the Dromos, ran through the double-arched Dipylon Gate (also known as the Thriasian Gate) and on to the Platonic Academy a few miles away. State graves were built on either side of the Dipylon Gate, for the interment of prominent personages such as notable warriors and statesmen, including Pericles and Cleisthenes.
After the construction of the city wall, the Sacred Way and a forking street known as the Street of the Tombs again became lined with imposing sepulchral monuments belonging to the families of rich Athenians, dating to before the late 4th century BC. The construction of such lavish mausolea was banned by decree in 317 BC, following which only small columns or inscribed square marble blocks were permitted as grave stones. The Roman occupation of Athens led to a resurgence of monument-building, although little is left of them today.
During the Classical period an important public building, the Pompeion, stood inside the walls in the area between the two gates. This served a key function in the procession (pompē, πομπή) in honour of Athena during the Panathenaic Festival. It consisted of a large courtyard surrounded by columns and banquet rooms, where the nobility of Athens would eat the sacrificial meat for the festival. According to ancient Greek sources, a hecatomb (a sacrifice of 100 cows) was carried out for the festival and the people received the meat in the Kerameikos, possibly in the Dipylon courtyard; excavators have found heaps of bones in front of the city wall.
The Pompeion and many other buildings in the vicinity of the Sacred Gate were razed to the ground by the marauding army of the Roman dictator Sulla, during his sacking of Athens in 86 BC; an episode that Plutarch described as a bloodbath. During the 2nd century AD, a storehouse was constructed on the site of the Pompeion, but it was destroyed during the invasion of the Heruli in 267 AD. The ruins became the site of potters' workshops until about 500 AD, when two parallel colonnades were built behind the city gates, overrunning the old city walls. A new Festival Gate was constructed to the east with three entrances leading into the city. This was in turn destroyed in raids by the invading Avars and Slavs at the end of the 6th century, and the Kerameikos fell into obscurity. It was not rediscovered until a Greek worker dug up a stele in April 1863.
Archaeology
Archaeological excavations in the Kerameikos began in 1870 under the auspices of the Greek Archaeological Society. They have continued from 1913 to the present day under the German Archaeological Institute at Athens.
Latest findings in the Kerameikos include the excavation of a 2.1 m tall Kouros, unearthed by the German Archaeological Institute at Athens under the direction of Professor Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier. This Kouros is the larger twin of the one now kept in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and both were made by the same anonymous sculptor called the Dipylon Master.
During the construction of Kerameikos metro station for the expanded Athens Metro, a plague pit and approximately 1,000 tombs from the 4th and 5th centuries BC were discovered. The Greek archaeologist Efi Baziotopoulou-Valavani, who excavated the site, has dated the grave to between 430 and 426 BC. Thucydides described the panic caused by the plague which struck the besieged city in 430 BC. The epidemic lasted for two years and killed an estimated one third of the population. He wrote that bodies were abandoned in temples and streets, to be subsequently collected and hastily buried. The disease reappeared in the winter of 427 BC.
Large areas adjacent to those already excavated remain in to be explored, as they lie under the fabric of modern-day Athens. Expropriation of these areas has been delayed until funding is secured.
Museum
The area is enclosed and visitable through an entrance on the last block of Ermou Street, close to the intersection with Peiraios Street. The Kerameikos Museum is housed there, in a small neoclassical building that houses the most extensive collection of burial-related artifacts in Greece, varying from large-scale marble sculpture to funerary urns, stelae, jewelry, toys etc. The original burial monument sculptures are displayed within the museum, having been replaced by plaster replicas in situ.
The museum incorporates inner and outer courtyards, where the larger sculptures are kept. Down the hill from the museum, visitors can wander among the Outer Kerameikos ruins, the Demosion Sema, the banks of the Eridanos where some water still flows, the remains of the Pompeion and the Dipylon Gate, and walk the first blocks of the Sacred Way towards Eleusis and of the Panathenaic Way towards the Acropolis. The bulk of the area lies about 7–10 meters below modern street level, having in the past been inundated by centuries' worth of sediment accumulation from the floods of the Eridanos.
Metro station
As of spring 2007, Kerameikos is the name given to the metro station which belongs to Line 3 of the Athens Metro, adjacent to the Technopolis of Gazi.
Notes
References
Ursula Knigge: Der Kerameikos von Athen. Führung durch Ausgrabungen und Geschichte. Krene-Verl., Athen 1988.
Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier: Der Kuros vom Heiligen Tor. Überraschende Neufunde archaischer Skulptur im Kerameikos in Athen. Zabern, Mainz 2002. (Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie)
Akten des Internationalen Symposions Die Ausgrabungen im Kerameikos, Bilanz und Perspektiven. Athen, 27.–31. Januar 1999. Zabern, Mainz am Rhein 2001. (Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung, 114)
External links
Kerameikos, Hellenic Ministry of Culture
www.athensinfoguide.com Kerameikos
A Mycenaean Fountain on the Athenian Acropolis by Oscar Broneer
Kerameikos, Ergebnisse Der Ausgrabungen by Wilhelm Kraiker, Karl Kubler
The Kerameikos Cemetery, New York Times
Neighbourhoods in Athens
Ancient cemeteries in Greece
Areas of Athens
Mycenaean sites in Greece
Ancient Greek buildings and structures in Athens
Iron Age sites in Greece
Landmarks in Athens | [
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16930 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabir%20Bedi | Kabir Bedi | Kabir Bedi (born 16 January 1946) is an Indian film actor. His career has spanned three continents covering India, the United States and especially Italy among other European countries in three media: film, television and theatre. He is noted for his role as Emperor Shah Jahan in Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story and the villainous Sanjay Verma in the 1980s blockbuster Khoon Bhari Maang. He is best known in Italy and Europe for playing the pirate Sandokan in the popular Italian TV mini series and for his role as the villainous Gobinda in the 1983 James Bond film Octopussy. Kabir Bedi is based in India and lives in Mumbai.
Early life and education
Bedi was one of three children born into a Punjabi Khatri family that had devoted itself to India's fight for independence from British colonial rule. His father, Baba Pyare Lal Singh Bedi, a Punjabi was an author and philosopher. His mother, Freda Bedi was a British woman born in Derby, England, who became famous as the first Western woman to take ordination in Tibetan Buddhism. He was educated at Sherwood College, Nainital, Uttarakhand, and St. Stephen's College, Delhi.
Career
Kabir Bedi began his career in Indian theatre and then moved on to Hindi films. Bedi remains one of the first international actors from India who started out in Hindi films, worked in Hollywood films and became a star in Europe.
Stage acting
As a stage actor, Kabir has performed Shakespeare's Othello as well as portrayed a historical Indian king, Tughlaq; and a self-destructive alcoholic in The Vultures. In London he also starred in The Far Pavilions, the West End musical adaptation of M. M. Kaye's novel, at the Shaftesbury Theatre.
In 2011 Kabir played Emperor Shah Jahan, in 'Taj', a play written by John Murrell, a Canadian playwright for the Luminato Festival in Toronto. In 2013, this play was recommissioned and went on an 8-week multi-city tour of Canada.
Film career
In the James Bond film Octopussy, he played the villain's aide Gobinda.
Kabir has acted in over 60 Indian films. In the historical epic Taj Mahal: An Eternal Love Story, Kabir starred as the Emperor Shah Jahan. Other starring Hindi film roles include Raj Khosla's Kacche Dhaage, Rakesh Roshan's Khoon Bhari Maang and Farah Khan's Main Hoon Na.
Kabir Bedi shot a movie with Hrithik Roshan (Kites), Govinda (Showman), and Akshay Kumar (Blue). He also starred in Deepa Mehta's film, Kamagata Maru with Amitabh Bachchan and John Abraham. He acted in the Tamil film 'Aravaan', directed by Vasanthabalan.
Kabir played roles in Columbia Pictures' The Beast of War, a film on the Russian war in Afghanistan, directed by Kevin Reynolds, as well as the acclaimed Italian film Andata Ritorno, by Marco Ponti, winner of the David di Donatello Award.
In 2017, he acted in a Telugu historical movie Gautamiputra Satakarni, as Nahapana, an important ruler of the Western Kshatrapas.
Television career
Kabir has appeared on American television, in Hallmark's African epic Forbidden Territory, and Ken Follett's On Wings of Eagles and also Red Eagle. He played Friar Sands in The Lost Empire, for NBC. Kabir also acted in Dynasty, Murder, She Wrote, Magnum, P.I., Hunter, Knight Rider and Highlander: The Series.
In Europe, his greatest success was Sandokan, the saga of a romantic Southeast Asian pirate during British colonial times; an Italian-German-French TV series which broke viewership records across Europe. Kabir recently starred in a prime-time Italian television series, Un Medico in Famiglia, on RAI TV.
For over a year, Kabir starred in The Bold and the Beautiful, the second most-watched television show in the world, seen by over a billion people in 149 countries.
He had his own cinematic talk show on Indian TV, "Director's Cut", a 13-part special series interviewing the country's leading directors. His success on television continued in 2013 with award-winning prime-time shows "Guns and Glory: The Indian Soldier” & “Vandemataram”, for India's news channels – Headlines Today & Aaj Tak.
In the Indian Biblical television series 'Bible Ki Kahaniya', Bedi played both the young and aged Abraham.
Radio career
In 2007 he starred in "Chat", a radio show aired by RAI Radio2, in the role of Sandokan. In 2012, he did a series of Radio One programmes titled, 'Women of Gold' and 'Men of Steel' in honour of industry champions in India. In 2017 he did another series in English for Radio One, 'Ten on Ten' celebrating top ten innovations out of India. He also did the year-end special series, 'Best of 2017'.
Writing
Kabir Bedi is a regular contributor to Indian publications including the Times of India and Tehelka on political and social issues affecting the country. He is also seen debating such topics on Indian national television.
Charity
In February 2017, Bedi was announced as the new 'brand ambassador' for international development organisation, Sightsavers, saying on his appointment, "Today there is immense awareness and attempt towards eye health and care in India and Sightsavers have shown way to people at large in the country with their achievements in the area of eye care."
Awards and achievements
Since 1982 Kabir has been a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (who are responsible for presenting the Oscar awards) and he is a voting member of the Screen Actors Guild.
He has won numerous film, advertising and popularity awards across Europe and India.
By decree of the President of the Italian Republic of 2 June 2010, Kabir Bedi was officially knighted. He received the highest ranking civilian honour of the Italian Republic and was bestowed the title of "Cavaliere" (Knight) of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. He has recently received Honorary Degree from Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India.
Personal life
Bedi married four times and had three children, Pooja, Siddharth (deceased) and Adam. He was married to Protima Bedi, an Odissi dancer. Their daughter Pooja Bedi is a magazine/newspaper columnist and former actress. Their son, Siddharth, who went to Carnegie Mellon University, was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed suicide in 1997 at the age of 26.
As his marriage with Protima began to break down he famously started a relationship with Parveen Babi. They never married. He later married British-born fashion designer Susan Humphreys. Their son, Adam Bedi, is an international model who made his Hindi Film debut with the thriller, Hello? Kaun Hai!. This marriage ended in divorce.
In the early 1990s, Bedi married TV and radio presenter Nikki Bedi. They had no children and divorced in 2005. After that, Bedi has been in a relationship with British-born Parveen Dusanj, whom he married a day before his 70th birthday.
Bedi supports the anti-Government struggle in Myanmar, and is an official ambassador of the Burma Campaign UK. He is also the Brand Ambassador for Rotary International South Asia for their Teach Programme and the Total Literacy Mission in India and South Asia.
Filmography
Films
Television
Reality Shows
Radio
Dubbing roles
Live action films
Voice overs in ads and commercials
Voting memberships
References
External links
Special Feature – "Global Appeal – Kabir Bedi" in The Stage
Images from the 1976 Sandokan miniseries
Candid in-depth interview with Kabir Bedi in 2007
Extensive interview with Filmfare in October 2001
Interviewed by Indian Express in 1999
Kabir Bedi discussing Taj theatre tour 2013
1946 births
English Sikhs
Indian male film actors
Indian male voice actors
Living people
Indian Sikhs
Punjabi people
Indian expatriates in Italy
Delhi University alumni
Indian people of English descent
Male actors from Lahore | [
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16931 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaber | Kaber | Kaber may refer to:
a variant spelling for caber
People
Kaber (Jubilees), a person named in the Book of Jubilees
Place
Kaber, Cumbria | [
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16932 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov%20Ka-25 | Kamov Ka-25 | The Kamov Ka-25 (NATO reporting name "Hormone") is a naval helicopter, developed for the Soviet Navy in the USSR from 1958.
Design and development
In the late 1950s there was an urgent demand for anti-submarine helicopters for deployment on new ships equipped with helicopter platforms entering service with the Soviet Navy. Kamov's compact design was chosen for production in 1958. To speed the development of the new anti-submarine helicopter Kamov designed and built a prototype to prove the cabin and dynamic components layout; designated Ka-20, this demonstrator was not equipped with mission equipment, corrosion protection or shipboard operational equipment. The Ka-20 was displayed at the 1961 Tushino Aviation Day display.
Definitive prototypes of the Ka-25 incorporated mission equipment and corrosion protection for the structure. The rotor system introduced aluminium alloy blades pressurised with nitrogen for crack detection, lubricated hinges, hydraulic powered controls, alcohol de-icing and automatic blade folding. Power was supplied by two free-turbine engines sat atop the cabin, with electrically de-iced inlets, plain lateral exhausts with no infrared countermeasures, driving the main gearbox directly and a cooling fan for the gearbox and hydraulic oil coolers aft of the main gearbox. Construction was of stressed skin duralumin throughout with flush-riveting, as well as some bonding and honeycomb sandwich panels. The 1.5m × 1,25m × 3.94m cabin had a sliding door to port flight deck forward of the cabin and fuel tanks underfloor filled using a pressure refueling nozzle on the port side. A short boom at the rear of the cabin had a central fin and twin toed-in fins at the ends of the tailplane mainly for use during auto-rotation. The undercarriage consisted of two noncastoring mainwheels with sprag brakes attached to the fuselage by parallel 'V' struts with a single angled shock absorber to dissipate landing loads, and two castoring nosewheels on straight shock absorbing legs attached directly to the fuselage either side of the cockpit which folded rearwards to reduce interference with the RADAR, all wheels were fitted with emergency rapid inflation flotation collars. Flying controls all act on the co-axial rotors with pitch, roll and collective similar to a conventional single rotor helicopter. Yaw was through differential collective which has a secondary effect of torque, an automatic mixer box ensured that total lift on the rotors remained constant during yaw maneuvers, to improve handling during deck landings. Optional extras included fold up seats for 12 passengers, rescue hoist, external auxiliary fuel tanks or containers for cameras, flares, smoke floats or beacons.
Variants
Ka-25BSh
(NATO reporting name 'Hormone-A') Variants are used in the anti-submarine warfare role, equipped with radar, dipping sonar and a towed MAD and armed with torpedoes and nuclear or conventional depth-charges.
Ka-25BShZ
Mine-sweeping version, eight built.
Ka-25C
Little-known upgrade.
Ka-25F
Proposed assault version in competition with the Mi-22 and the larger Mi-24. Modified with a glazed nose, cargo compartment with four doors, an under-fuselage turret with a GSh-23L and provision for up to six 9M17 Phalanga Anti-tank missiles or six UB-16 rocket launchers, each with 16 S-5 rockets or bombs.
Ka-25K
(NATO reporting name 'Hormone-B') Over The Horizon targeting version for relaying data to cruise missiles launched from surface warships and submarines. Anti-submarine equipment, Electronic Surveillance Measures and weapons bay removed and larger radar scanner/reflector in a bulged radome under the nose. Also recognisable by a small cylindrical data-link antenna under the rear fuselage.
Ka-25K
Civilian flying crane helicopter with a gondola under the lengthened nose for controlling slung loads up to . Fitted with electrically de-iced rotor blades and optional seats for 12 passengers. A single prototype (SSSR-21110) flown in 1966
Ka-25PS
(NATO reporting name 'Hormone-C') Search and rescue and transport version with no weapons bay, radome as Ka-25BSh. Normal equipment included seats for 12, rescue winch, provision for stretchers and auxiliary tanks. Optional equipment included a homing receiver, Electronic Surveillance Measures, searchlight and loudspeaker. Ka-25PS helicopters were usually painted red and white.
Ka-25T
(NATO reporting name 'Hormone-B'): Possibly misidentified or incorrect designation for Ka-25K OTH targeting relay aircraft.
Ka-25TL
Missile tracking version. Also known as the Ka-25TI and Ka-25IV.
Operators
Current operators
Syrian Navy
Former operators
Bulgarian Navy
Indian Naval Air Arm
Russian Naval Aviation
Soviet Naval Aviation
Ukrainian Navy
Vietnam People's Navy
Yugoslav Air Force
Specifications (Ka-25BSh)
See also
References
Notes
Bibliography
Gunston, Bill. “The Osprey Encyclopaedia of Russian Aircraft 1875–1995”. London, Osprey. 1995.
External links
https://web.archive.org/web/20120303004424/http://www.kamov.net/kamov-navy/kamov-ka-25-2/
Kamov aircraft
Military helicopters
1960s Soviet anti-submarine aircraft
Coaxial rotor helicopters
1960s Soviet helicopters
Single-turbine helicopters
Aircraft first flown in 1963 | [
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16933 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kainite | Kainite | Kainite ( or ) (KMg(SO4)Cl·3H2O) is an evaporite mineral in the class of "Sulfates (selenates, etc.) with additional anions, with H2O" according to the Nickel–Strunz classification. It is a hydrated potassium-magnesium sulfate-chloride, naturally occurring in irregular granular masses or as crystalline coatings in cavities or fissures. This mineral is dull and soft, and is colored white, yellowish, grey, reddish, or blue to violet. Its name is derived from Greek καινος [kainos] ("(hitherto) unknown"), as it was the first mineral discovered that contained both sulfate and chloride as anions. Kainite forms monoclinic crystals.
Properties
Kainite is of bitter taste and soluble in water. On recrystallization picromerite is deposited from the solution.
Genesis and occurrence
Kainite was discovered in the Stassfurt salt mines in today's Saxony-Anhalt, Germany in 1865 by the mine official Schöne and was first described by Carl Friedrich Jacob Zincken.
Kainite is a typical secondary mineral that forms through metamorphosis in marine deposits of potassium carbonate, and is also occasionally formed through resublimation from volcanic vapours. It is often accompanied by anhydrite, carnallite, halite, and kieserite.
Kainite is only found in comparatively few places, among them in salt mines in central and northern Germany, Bad Ischl (Austria), on Pasquasia in Sicily, in Whitby (UK), and in the Carlsbad Potash District in New Mexico, in volcanic deposits in Kamchatka and in Iceland, and in salt lakes in western China. It has also been identified in Gusev Crater on Mars.
Uses
Kainite is used as a source of potassium and magnesium compounds, as a fertilizer, and as gritting salt.
References
Magnesium minerals
Potassium minerals
Halide minerals
Sulfate minerals
Monoclinic minerals
Minerals in space group 12
Evaporite
Potash | [
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16934 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KAIST | KAIST | The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is a national research university located in Daedeok Innopolis, Daejeon, South Korea. KAIST was established by the Korean government in 1971 as the nation's first public, research-oriented science and engineering institution. KAIST is considered to be one of the most prestigious universities in the nation. KAIST has been internationally accredited in business education, and hosting the Secretariat of AAPBS. KAIST has 10,504 full-time students and 1,342 faculty researchers (as of Fall 2019 Semester) and had a total budget of US$765 million in 2013, of which US$459 million was from research contracts.
In 2007, KAIST partnered with international institutions and adopted dual degree programs for its students. Its partner institutions include the Technical University of Denmark, Carnegie Mellon University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Technical University of Berlin, and the Technical University of Munich.
History
The institute was founded in 1971 as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science (KAIS) by a loan of US$6 million (US$38 million 2019) from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and supported by President Park Chung-Hee. The institute's academic scheme was mainly designed by Frederick E. Terman, then vice president of Stanford University, and Chung Geum-mo, a professor at the Polytechnic Institution of Brooklyn. The institute's two main functions were to train advanced scientists and engineers and develop a structure of graduate education in the country. Research studies had begun by 1973 and undergraduates studied for bachelor's degrees by 1984.
In 1981 the government merged the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) to form the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, or KAIST. Due to differing research philosophies, KIST and KAIST split in 1989. In the same year KAIST and the Korea Institute of Technology (KIT) combined and moved from Seoul to the Daedeok Science Town in Daejeon.
The first act of President Suh upon his inauguration in July 2006 was to lay out the KAIST Development Plan. The ‘KAIST Development Five-Year Plan’ was finalized on February 5, 2007 by KAIST Steering Committee. The goals of KAIST set by Suh were to become one of the best science and technology universities in the world, and to become one of the top-10 universities by 2011. In January 2008, the university dropped its full name, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and changed its official name to only KAIST.
Timeline
Academics
Academics
Admission to KAIST is based on overall grades, grades on math and science courses, recommendation letters from teachers, study plan, personal statements, and other data, and does not rely on a standardized test conducted by the university. In 2014, the acceptance rate for local students was 14.9%, and for international students at 13.2%.
Full scholarships are given to all students including international students in the bachelor, master and doctorate courses. Doctoral students are given military-exemption benefits from South Korea's compulsory military service. Up to 80% of courses taught in KAIST are conducted in English.
Undergraduate students can join the school through an “open major system” that allows students to take classes for three terms and then choose a discipline that suits their aptitude, and undergraduates are allowed to change their major anytime. KAIST has also produced many doctorates through the integrated master's and doctoral program and early-completion system. Students must publish papers in internationally renowned academic journals for graduation.
Students
KAIST produced 69,388 alumni from 1975 to 2021, with 19,457 bachelor's, 35,513 master's, and 14,418 doctorate degree holders. As of Spring 2021, 10,793 students were enrolled in KAIST with 3,605 bachelor's, 3,069 master's, 1,354 joint M.S.-Ph.D.'s, and 2,765 doctoral students. More than 70 percent of KAIST undergraduates come from specialized science high schools. 817 international students from 81 countries are studying at KAIST (as of spring semester 2021), making it one of the most ethnically diverse universities in the country.
Organization
KAIST is organized into 6 colleges, 2 schools and 33 departments/divisions.
College of Natural Sciences
Department of Physics
Department of Mathematical Sciences
Department of Chemistry
Graduate School of Nanoscience and Technology
College of Life Science and Bioengineering
Department of Biological Sciences
Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering
College of Engineering
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Aerospace Engineering
School of Electrical Engineering
School of Computing
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department of Bio and Brain Engineering
Department of Industrial Design
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Graduate School of Knowledge Service Engineering
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Department of Nuclear and Quantum Engineering
Department of Information and Communications Engineering
The Cho Chun Shik Graduate School of Green Transportation
Graduate School of EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water, and Sustainability)
Graduate School of AI (GSAI)
College of Liberal Arts and Convergence Science
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Graduate School of Culture Technology
Moon Soul Graduate School of Future Strategy (Korean only)
Graduate School of Science and Technology Policy
College of Business
MS/Ph.D
School of Business and Technology Management
School of Management Engineering
Graduate School of Finance
Graduate School of Information and Media Management
Graduate School of Green Growth
School of Transdisciplinary Studies
KAIST also has three affiliated institutes including the Korea Institute of Advanced Study (KIAS), National NanoFab Center (NNFC), and Korea Science Academy (KSA).
Campus
KAIST has two campuses in Daejeon and one campus in Seoul. The university is mainly located in the Daedeok Science Town in the city of Daejeon, 150 kilometers south of the capital Seoul. Daedeok is also home to some 50 public and private research institutes, universities such as CNU and high-tech venture capital companies.
Most lectures, research activities, and housing services are located in the Daejeon main campus. It has a total of 29 dormitories. Twenty-three dormitories for male students and four dormitories for female students are located on the outskirts of the campus, and two apartments for married students are located outside the campus.
The Seoul campus is the home of the Business Faculty of the university. The graduate schools of finance, management and information & media management are located there. The total area of the Seoul campus is .
The Munji campus, the former campus of Information and Communications University until its merger with KAIST, is located ca. away from the main campus. It has two dormitories, one for undergraduate students and the other for graduate students. The Institute for Basic Science (IBS) Center for Axion and Precision Physics Research is located here doing particle and nuclear physics related to dark matter and the Rare Isotope Science Project has the Superconducting Radio Frequency test facility.
Main library
The KAIST main library was established in 1971 as KAIS library, and it went through a merge and separation process with KIST library. It merged with KIT in March 1990. A contemporary 5 story building was constructed as the main library, and it is being operated with an annex library. The library uses the American LC Classification Schedule.
The library underwent expansion and remodeling, which finished in 2018, to include conference rooms, collaboration rooms, and media rooms.
Event
KAIST's Seokrim Taeulje is a festival held by KAIST for three days every spring semester. The festival preparation committee under the undergraduate student council will be in charge of planning and execution, various food booths and experience booths will be opened, and stage events such as club performances and a song festival will be held. Also called the Cherry Blossom Festival, students eat strawberries on the lawn.
Research
Seven KAIST Institutes (KIs) have been set up: the KI for the BioCentury, the KI for Information Technology Convergence, the KI for the Design of Complex Systems, the KI for Entertainment Engineering, the KI for the NanoCentury, the KI for Eco-Energy, and the KI for Urban Space and Systems. Each KI is operated as an independent research center at the level of a college, receiving support in terms of finance and facilities. In terms of ownership of intellectual property rights, KAIST holds 2,694 domestic patents and 723 international patents so far.
Electric vehicles
Researchers at KAIST have developed the Online Electric Vehicle (OLEV), a technique of powering vehicles through cables underneath the surface of the road via non-contact magnetic charging (a power source is placed underneath the road surface and power is wirelessly picked up on the vehicle itself). In July 2009 the researchers successfully supplied up to 60% power to a bus over a gap of from a power line embedded in the ground using power supply and pick up technology developed in-house.
Autonomous arms
In February 2018 the Korea Times published an article which stated that KAIST was starting an AI weapons research project together with the Korean arms manufacturer Hanwa. The allegations were of developing lethal autonomous weapons with Hanwa. This has led to researchers from 30 countries boycotting KAIST, which has denied existence of the program.
Academic rankings
In 2019 Thomson Reuters named KAIST the 34th most innovative university in the world and the 2nd most innovative university in the Asia Pacific region. In 2022 QS World University Rankings ranked KAIST 41st overall in the world and 12th within Asia, coming 16th in Material Sciences and 16th in Engineering and Technology. In the 2009 THE-QS World University Rankings (in 2010 Times Higher Education World University Rankings and QS World University Rankings parted ways to produce separate rankings) for Engineering & IT, the University was placed 21st in the world and 1st in Korea and was placed 69th overall. KAIST was again recognized as a number one University in Korea by JoongAng Ilbo Review. In the year of 2009, KAIST's department of industrial design has also been listed in the top 30 Design Schools by Business Week. KAIST ranked the best university in Republic of Korea and the 7th university in Asia in the Top 100 Asian Universities list, the first regional ranking issued by THE-QS World Rankings.
QS University Subject Rankings (2017):
13th, materials science
15th, civil engineering and structural engineering
15th, mechanical engineering
15th, chemical engineering
17th, electrical engineering
18th, chemistry
33rd, computer science and information systems
44th, Physics & Astronomy
47th, Mathematics
Times Higher Education ranked KAIST the 3rd best university in the world under the age of 50 years in its 2015 league table.
Notable faculty and staff
Soon-dal Choi, electrical engineer; successfully developed and launched a satellite, KITSAT-3
Dong-ho Cho, electrical engineer; developed online electric vehicle (OLEV), listed on Time Magazine's top fifty inventions of 2010
Jun-ho Choi, discoverer of hSNF5 body protein involved in reproduction of Papilloma virus
Yang-Kyu Choi, developed world's smallest terabyte flash memory
Cho Zang-hee, developed PET Imaging while at Colombia, developed Imaging for MRI/PET/CAT at KAIS, Later KAIST
James D. Cumming, Foreign Guest Professor, published first paper with Cho Zang-hee on MRI Imaging resolution improvement.
Heun Lee, identified mechanism behind hydrogen storage in ice particles
Ji-O Lee, chemist; identified structure of protein causing sepsis
Sang-yup Lee, developed chip to diagnose Wilson's disease
Gi-hyong Gho, mathematician; developed world's first public key crypto system (PKCS) technology
Jong-kyong Jeong, identified cause of Parkinson's disease
Eunseong Kim, physicist; discovered new evidence for the existence of a supersolid
Jin-woo Kim, identified the cause behind senile retinal degeneration disease
Se-jin Kwan, aerospace engineer; successfully developed and tested a moon lander
Chang Hee Nam, physicist; developed attosecond pulse generation and compression technology
Gweng-su Rhim, developed next generation Transparent Resistive Random Access Memory (TRRAM)
Seung-man Yang, developed new photonics crystal-based optofluidic technology
Yoon-tae Young, physicist; first to observe proper function of complexin protein to control neuron communication
Giltsu Choi, photobiologist; identified key genes regulating seed germination in response to light in plants.
Dan Keun Sung, electronic engineer
Notable alumni
Academia
Ryong Ryoo, chemist
Science and technology
Yi So-Yeon, first Korean to fly in space
Tony Kim, founder of ProtoPie
Business
Sung-kyun Na, founder and CEO of Neowiz, Korea's first internet supplier (KAIST graduate school)
Jungju Kim, NEXON CEO
Hae-jin Lee, Next Human Network (NHN Corporation)
Chang-han Kim, PUBG CEO
Entertainment
So-jung Kim, Singer
Jang-won Lee, Singer (Peppertones)
Jae-pyung Shin, Singer (Peppertones)
So-hee Yoon, Actress
Notes and references
The Times-QS World University Rankings 2009 - KAIST 69th overall, 21st in the field of Engineering/Technology
See also
Education in Korea
List of national universities in South Korea
List of universities and colleges in South Korea
List of Korea-related topics
External links
Daejeon
National universities and colleges in South Korea
Engineering universities and colleges in South Korea
1971 establishments in South Korea
Educational institutions established in 1971 | [
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