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+ The gastrointestinal tract, (GI tract, GIT, digestive tract, digestion tract, alimentary canal) is the tract from the mouth to the anus which includes all the organs of the digestive system in humans and other animals. Food taken in through the mouth is digested to extract nutrients and absorb energy, and expelled in the remaining waste as feces. The mouth, esophagus, stomach and intestines are all part of the gastrointestinal tract. Gastrointestinal is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the stomach and intestines. A tract is a collection of related anatomic structures or a series of connected body organs.
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+
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+ All vertebrates and most invertebrates have a digestive tract. The sponges, cnidarians, and ctenophores are the early invertebrates with an incomplete digestive tract having just one opening instead of two, where food is taken in and waste expelled.[1][2]
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+
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+ The human gastrointestinal tract consists of the esophagus, stomach, and intestines, and is divided into the upper and lower gastrointestinal tracts.[3] The GI tract includes all structures between the mouth and the anus,[4] forming a continuous passageway that includes the main organs of digestion, namely, the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. However, the complete human digestive system is made up of the gastrointestinal tract plus the accessory organs of digestion (the tongue, salivary glands, pancreas, liver and gallbladder).[5] The tract may also be divided into foregut, midgut, and hindgut, reflecting the embryological origin of each segment. The whole human GI tract is about nine metres (30 feet) long at autopsy. It is considerably shorter in the living body because the intestines, which are tubes of smooth muscle tissue, maintain constant muscle tone in a halfway-tense state but can relax in spots to allow for local distention and peristalsis.[6][7]
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+
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+ The gastrointestinal tract contains trillions of microbes, with some 4,000 different strains of bacteria having diverse roles in maintenance of immune health and metabolism.[8][9][10] Cells of the GI tract release hormones to help regulate the digestive process. These digestive hormones, including gastrin, secretin, cholecystokinin, and ghrelin, are mediated through either intracrine or autocrine mechanisms, indicating that the cells releasing these hormones are conserved structures throughout evolution.[11]
10
+
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+ The structure and function can be described both as gross anatomy and as microscopic anatomy or histology. The tract itself is divided into upper and lower tracts, and the intestines small and large parts.[12]
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+
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+ The upper gastrointestinal tract consists of the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, and duodenum.[13]
14
+ The exact demarcation between the upper and lower tracts is the suspensory muscle of the duodenum. This differentiates the embryonic borders between the foregut and midgut, and is also the division commonly used by clinicians to describe gastrointestinal bleeding as being of either "upper" or "lower" origin. Upon dissection, the duodenum may appear to be a unified organ, but it is divided into four segments based upon function, location, and internal anatomy. The four segments of the duodenum are as follows (starting at the stomach, and moving toward the jejunum): bulb, descending, horizontal, and ascending. The suspensory muscle attaches the superior border of the ascending duodenum to the diaphragm.
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+
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+ The suspensory muscle is an important anatomical landmark which shows the formal division between the duodenum and the jejunum, the first and second parts of the small intestine, respectively.[14] This is a thin muscle which is derived from the embryonic mesoderm.
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+
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+ The lower gastrointestinal tract includes most of the small intestine and all of the large intestine.[15] In human anatomy, the intestine (bowel, or gut. Greek: éntera) is the segment of the gastrointestinal tract extending from the pyloric sphincter of the stomach to the anus and, as in other mammals, consists of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine. In humans, the small intestine is further subdivided into the duodenum, jejunum and ileum while the large intestine is subdivided into the, cecum, ascending, transverse, descending and sigmoid colon, rectum, and anal canal.[16][17]
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+
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+ The small intestine begins at the duodenum and is a tubular structure, usually between 6 and 7 m long.[18] Its mucosal area in an adult human is about 30 m2.[19] The combination of the circular folds, the villi, and the microvilli increases the absorptive area of the mucosa about 600-fold, making a total area of about 250 square meters for the entire small intestine.[20] Its main function is to absorb the products of digestion (including carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and vitamins) into the bloodstream. There are three major divisions:
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+
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+ The large intestine also called the colon, consists of the cecum, rectum, and anal canal. It also includes the appendix, which is attached to the cecum. The colon is further divided into:
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+
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+ The main function of the large intestine is to absorb water.
25
+ The area of the large intestinal mucosa of an adult human is about 2 m2.[19]
26
+
27
+ The gut is an endoderm-derived structure. At approximately the sixteenth day of human development, the embryo begins to fold ventrally (with the embryo's ventral surface becoming concave) in two directions: the sides of the embryo fold in on each other and the head and tail fold toward one another. The result is that a piece of the yolk sac, an endoderm-lined structure in contact with the ventral aspect of the embryo, begins to be pinched off to become the primitive gut. The yolk sac remains connected to the gut tube via the vitelline duct. Usually, this structure regresses during development; in cases where it does not, it is known as Meckel's diverticulum.
28
+
29
+ During fetal life, the primitive gut is gradually patterned into three segments: foregut, midgut, and hindgut. Although these terms are often used in reference to segments of the primitive gut, they are also used regularly to describe regions of the definitive gut as well.
30
+
31
+ Each segment of the gut is further specified and gives rise to specific gut and gut-related structures in later development. Components derived from the gut proper, including the stomach and colon, develop as swellings or dilatations in the cells of the primitive gut. In contrast, gut-related derivatives — that is, those structures that derive from the primitive gut but are not part of the gut proper, in general, develop as out-pouchings of the primitive gut. The blood vessels supplying these structures remain constant throughout development.[21]
32
+
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+ The gastrointestinal tract has a form of general histology with some differences that reflect the specialization in functional anatomy.[22] The GI tract can be divided into four concentric layers in the following order:
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+
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+ The mucosa is the innermost layer of the gastrointestinal tract. The mucosa surrounds the lumen, or open space within the tube. This layer comes in direct contact with digested food (chyme). The mucosa is made up of:
36
+
37
+ The mucosae are highly specialized in each organ of the gastrointestinal tract to deal with the different conditions. The most variation is seen in the epithelium.
38
+
39
+ The submucosa consists of a dense irregular layer of connective tissue with large blood vessels, lymphatics, and nerves branching into the mucosa and muscularis externa. It contains the submucosal plexus, an enteric nervous plexus, situated on the inner surface of the muscularis externa.
40
+
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+ The muscular layer consists of an inner circular layer and a longitudinal outer layer. The circular layer prevents food from traveling backward and the longitudinal layer shortens the tract. The layers are not truly longitudinal or circular, rather the layers of muscle are helical with different pitches. The inner circular is helical with a steep pitch and the outer longitudinal is helical with a much shallower pitch.[23] Whilst the muscularis externa is similar throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract, an exception is the stomach which has an additional inner oblique muscular layer to aid with grinding and mixing of food. The muscularis externa of the stomach is composed of the inner oblique layer, middle circular layer, and outer longitudinal layer.
42
+
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+ Between the circular and longitudinal muscle layers is the myenteric plexus. This controls peristalsis. Activity is initiated by the pacemaker cells, (myenteric interstitial cells of Cajal). The gut has intrinsic peristaltic activity (basal electrical rhythm) due to its self-contained enteric nervous system. The rate can be modulated by the rest of the autonomic nervous system.[23]
44
+
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+ The coordinated contractions of these layers is called peristalsis and propels the food through the tract. Food in the GI tract is called a bolus (ball of food) from the mouth down to the stomach. After the stomach, the food is partially digested and semi-liquid, and is referred to as chyme. In the large intestine the remaining semi-solid substance is referred to as faeces.[23]
46
+
47
+ The outermost layer of the gastrointestinal tract consists of several layers of connective tissue.
48
+
49
+ Intraperitoneal parts of the GI tract are covered with serosa. These include most of the stomach, first part of the duodenum, all of the small intestine, caecum and appendix, transverse colon, sigmoid colon and rectum. In these sections of the gut there is clear boundary between the gut and the surrounding tissue. These parts of the tract have a mesentery.
50
+
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+ Retroperitoneal parts are covered with adventitia. They blend into the surrounding tissue and are fixed in position. For example, the retroperitoneal section of the duodenum usually passes through the transpyloric plane. These include the esophagus, pylorus of the stomach, distal duodenum, ascending colon, descending colon and anal canal. In addition, the oral cavity has adventitia.
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+
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+ Approximately 20,000 protein coding genes are expressed in human cells and 75% of these genes are expressed in at least one of the different parts of the digestive organ system.[24][25] Over 600 of these genes are more specifically expressed in one or more parts of the GI tract and the corresponding proteins have functions related to digestion of food and uptake of nutrients. Examples of specific proteins with such functions are pepsinogen PGC and the lipase LIPF, expressed in chief cells, and gastric ATPase ATP4A and gastric intrinsic factor GIF, expressed in parietal cells of the stomach mucosa. Specific proteins expressed in the stomach and duodenum involved in defence include mucin proteins, such as mucin 6 and intelectin-1.[26]
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+
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+ The time taken for food to transit through the gastrointestinal tract varies on multiple factors, including age, ethnicity, and gender.[medical citation needed] Several techniques have been used to measure transit time, including radiography following a barium-labeled meal, breath hydrogen analysis, and scintigraphic analysis following a radiolabeled meal.[medical citation needed] It takes 2.5 to 3 hours for 50% of the contents to leave the stomach.[medical citation needed] The rate of digestion is also dependent of the material being digested, as food composition from the same meal may leave the stomach at different rates.[medical citation needed] Total emptying of the stomach takes around 4-5 hours, and transit through the colon takes 30 to 50 hours.[27][28][29]
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+ The gastrointestinal tract forms an important part of the immune system.[30] The surface area of the digestive tract is estimated to be about 32 square meters, or about half a badminton court.[19] With such a large exposure (more than three times larger than the exposed surface of the skin), these immune components function to prevent pathogens from entering the blood and lymph circulatory systems.[31] Fundamental components of this protection are provided by the intestinal mucosal barrier which is composed of physical, biochemical, and immune elements elaborated by the intestinal mucosa.[32] Microorganisms also are kept at bay by an extensive immune system comprising the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT)
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+
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+ There are additional factors contributing to protection from pathogen invasion. For example, low pH (ranging from 1 to 4) of the stomach is fatal for many microorganisms that enter it.[33] Similarly, mucus (containing IgA antibodies) neutralizes many pathogenic microorganisms.[34] Other factors in the GI tract contribution to immune function include enzymes secreted in the saliva and bile.
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+ Beneficial bacteria also can contribute to the homeostasis of the gastrointestinal immune system. For example, Clostridia, one of the most predominant bacterial groups in the GI tract, play an important role in influencing the dynamics of the gut's immune system.[35] It has been demonstrated that the intake of a high fiber diet could be the responsible for the induction of T-regulatory cells (Tregs). This is due to the production of short-chain fatty acids during the fermentation of plant-derived nutrients such as butyrate and propionate. Basically, the butyrate induces the differentiation of Treg cells by enhancing histone H3 acetylation in the promoter and conserved non-coding sequence regions of the FOXP3 locus, thus regulating the T cells, resulting in the reduction of the inflammatory response and allergies.
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+ The large intestine hosts several kinds of bacteria that can deal with molecules that the human body cannot otherwise break down.[36] This is an example of symbiosis. These bacteria also account for the production of gases at host-pathogen interface, inside our intestine(this gas is released as flatulence when eliminated through the anus). However the large intestine is mainly concerned with the absorption of water from digested material (which is regulated by the hypothalamus) and the re absorption of sodium, as well as any nutrients that may have escaped primary digestion in the ileum.[citation needed]
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+ Health-enhancing intestinal bacteria of the gut flora serve to prevent the overgrowth of potentially harmful bacteria in the gut. These two types of bacteria compete for space and "food", as there are limited resources within the intestinal tract. A ratio of 80-85% beneficial to 15–20% potentially harmful bacteria generally is considered normal within the intestines.[citation needed]
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+ Enzymes such as CYP3A4, along with the antiporter activities, are also instrumental in the intestine's role of drug metabolism in the detoxification of antigens and xenobiotics.[37]
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+ There are many diseases and conditions that can affect the gastrointestinal system, including infections, inflammation and cancer.
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+ Various pathogens, such as bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses, can induce gastroenteritis which results from inflammation of the stomach and small intestine. Antibiotics to treat such bacterial infections can decrease the microbiome diversity of the gastrointestinal tract, and further enable inflammatory mediators.[38] Gastroenteritis is the most common disease of the GI tract.
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+ Diverticular disease is a condition that is very common in older people in industrialized countries. It usually affects the large intestine but has been known to affect the small intestine as well. Diverticulosis occurs when pouches form on the intestinal wall. Once the pouches become inflamed it is known as diverticulitis.
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+ Inflammatory bowel disease is an inflammatory condition affecting the bowel walls, and includes the subtypes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. While Crohn's can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract, ulcerative colitis is limited to the large intestine. Crohn's disease is widely regarded as an autoimmune disease. Although ulcerative colitis is often treated as though it were an autoimmune disease, there is no consensus that it actually is such.
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+ Functional gastrointestinal disorders the most common of which is irritable bowel syndrome. Functional constipation and chronic functional abdominal pain are other functional disorders of the intestine that have physiological causes but do not have identifiable structural, chemical, or infectious pathologies.
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+ Several symptoms are used to indicate problems with the gastrointestinal tract:
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+ Gastrointestinal surgery can often be performed in the outpatient setting. In the United States in 2012, operations on the digestive system accounted for 3 of the 25 most common ambulatory surgery procedures and constituted 9.1 percent of all outpatient ambulatory surgeries.[39]
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+ Various methods of imaging the gastrointestinal tract include the upper and lower gastrointestinal series:
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+ Intestines from animals other than humans are used in a number of ways. From each species of livestock that is a source of milk, a corresponding rennet is obtained from the intestines of milk-fed calves. Pig and calf intestines are eaten, and pig intestines are used as sausage casings. Calf intestines supply calf-intestinal alkaline phosphatase (CIP), and are used to make goldbeater's skin.
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+ Other uses are:
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+ Many birds and other animals have a specialised stomach in the digestive tract called a gizzard used for grinding up food.
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+ Another feature not found in the human but found in a range of other animals is the crop. In birds this is found as a pouch alongside the esophagus.
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+ Other animals including amphibians, birds, reptiles, and egg-laying mammals have a major difference in their GI tract in that it ends in a cloaca and not an anus.
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+ In 2020, the oldest known fossil digestive tract, of an extinct wormlike organism in the Cloudinidae was discovered; it lived during the late Ediacaran period about 550 million years ago.[46][47]
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1
+
2
+
3
+ The gastrointestinal tract, (GI tract, GIT, digestive tract, digestion tract, alimentary canal) is the tract from the mouth to the anus which includes all the organs of the digestive system in humans and other animals. Food taken in through the mouth is digested to extract nutrients and absorb energy, and expelled in the remaining waste as feces. The mouth, esophagus, stomach and intestines are all part of the gastrointestinal tract. Gastrointestinal is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the stomach and intestines. A tract is a collection of related anatomic structures or a series of connected body organs.
4
+
5
+ All vertebrates and most invertebrates have a digestive tract. The sponges, cnidarians, and ctenophores are the early invertebrates with an incomplete digestive tract having just one opening instead of two, where food is taken in and waste expelled.[1][2]
6
+
7
+ The human gastrointestinal tract consists of the esophagus, stomach, and intestines, and is divided into the upper and lower gastrointestinal tracts.[3] The GI tract includes all structures between the mouth and the anus,[4] forming a continuous passageway that includes the main organs of digestion, namely, the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. However, the complete human digestive system is made up of the gastrointestinal tract plus the accessory organs of digestion (the tongue, salivary glands, pancreas, liver and gallbladder).[5] The tract may also be divided into foregut, midgut, and hindgut, reflecting the embryological origin of each segment. The whole human GI tract is about nine metres (30 feet) long at autopsy. It is considerably shorter in the living body because the intestines, which are tubes of smooth muscle tissue, maintain constant muscle tone in a halfway-tense state but can relax in spots to allow for local distention and peristalsis.[6][7]
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+
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+ The gastrointestinal tract contains trillions of microbes, with some 4,000 different strains of bacteria having diverse roles in maintenance of immune health and metabolism.[8][9][10] Cells of the GI tract release hormones to help regulate the digestive process. These digestive hormones, including gastrin, secretin, cholecystokinin, and ghrelin, are mediated through either intracrine or autocrine mechanisms, indicating that the cells releasing these hormones are conserved structures throughout evolution.[11]
10
+
11
+ The structure and function can be described both as gross anatomy and as microscopic anatomy or histology. The tract itself is divided into upper and lower tracts, and the intestines small and large parts.[12]
12
+
13
+ The upper gastrointestinal tract consists of the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, and duodenum.[13]
14
+ The exact demarcation between the upper and lower tracts is the suspensory muscle of the duodenum. This differentiates the embryonic borders between the foregut and midgut, and is also the division commonly used by clinicians to describe gastrointestinal bleeding as being of either "upper" or "lower" origin. Upon dissection, the duodenum may appear to be a unified organ, but it is divided into four segments based upon function, location, and internal anatomy. The four segments of the duodenum are as follows (starting at the stomach, and moving toward the jejunum): bulb, descending, horizontal, and ascending. The suspensory muscle attaches the superior border of the ascending duodenum to the diaphragm.
15
+
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+ The suspensory muscle is an important anatomical landmark which shows the formal division between the duodenum and the jejunum, the first and second parts of the small intestine, respectively.[14] This is a thin muscle which is derived from the embryonic mesoderm.
17
+
18
+ The lower gastrointestinal tract includes most of the small intestine and all of the large intestine.[15] In human anatomy, the intestine (bowel, or gut. Greek: éntera) is the segment of the gastrointestinal tract extending from the pyloric sphincter of the stomach to the anus and, as in other mammals, consists of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine. In humans, the small intestine is further subdivided into the duodenum, jejunum and ileum while the large intestine is subdivided into the, cecum, ascending, transverse, descending and sigmoid colon, rectum, and anal canal.[16][17]
19
+
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+ The small intestine begins at the duodenum and is a tubular structure, usually between 6 and 7 m long.[18] Its mucosal area in an adult human is about 30 m2.[19] The combination of the circular folds, the villi, and the microvilli increases the absorptive area of the mucosa about 600-fold, making a total area of about 250 square meters for the entire small intestine.[20] Its main function is to absorb the products of digestion (including carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and vitamins) into the bloodstream. There are three major divisions:
21
+
22
+ The large intestine also called the colon, consists of the cecum, rectum, and anal canal. It also includes the appendix, which is attached to the cecum. The colon is further divided into:
23
+
24
+ The main function of the large intestine is to absorb water.
25
+ The area of the large intestinal mucosa of an adult human is about 2 m2.[19]
26
+
27
+ The gut is an endoderm-derived structure. At approximately the sixteenth day of human development, the embryo begins to fold ventrally (with the embryo's ventral surface becoming concave) in two directions: the sides of the embryo fold in on each other and the head and tail fold toward one another. The result is that a piece of the yolk sac, an endoderm-lined structure in contact with the ventral aspect of the embryo, begins to be pinched off to become the primitive gut. The yolk sac remains connected to the gut tube via the vitelline duct. Usually, this structure regresses during development; in cases where it does not, it is known as Meckel's diverticulum.
28
+
29
+ During fetal life, the primitive gut is gradually patterned into three segments: foregut, midgut, and hindgut. Although these terms are often used in reference to segments of the primitive gut, they are also used regularly to describe regions of the definitive gut as well.
30
+
31
+ Each segment of the gut is further specified and gives rise to specific gut and gut-related structures in later development. Components derived from the gut proper, including the stomach and colon, develop as swellings or dilatations in the cells of the primitive gut. In contrast, gut-related derivatives — that is, those structures that derive from the primitive gut but are not part of the gut proper, in general, develop as out-pouchings of the primitive gut. The blood vessels supplying these structures remain constant throughout development.[21]
32
+
33
+ The gastrointestinal tract has a form of general histology with some differences that reflect the specialization in functional anatomy.[22] The GI tract can be divided into four concentric layers in the following order:
34
+
35
+ The mucosa is the innermost layer of the gastrointestinal tract. The mucosa surrounds the lumen, or open space within the tube. This layer comes in direct contact with digested food (chyme). The mucosa is made up of:
36
+
37
+ The mucosae are highly specialized in each organ of the gastrointestinal tract to deal with the different conditions. The most variation is seen in the epithelium.
38
+
39
+ The submucosa consists of a dense irregular layer of connective tissue with large blood vessels, lymphatics, and nerves branching into the mucosa and muscularis externa. It contains the submucosal plexus, an enteric nervous plexus, situated on the inner surface of the muscularis externa.
40
+
41
+ The muscular layer consists of an inner circular layer and a longitudinal outer layer. The circular layer prevents food from traveling backward and the longitudinal layer shortens the tract. The layers are not truly longitudinal or circular, rather the layers of muscle are helical with different pitches. The inner circular is helical with a steep pitch and the outer longitudinal is helical with a much shallower pitch.[23] Whilst the muscularis externa is similar throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract, an exception is the stomach which has an additional inner oblique muscular layer to aid with grinding and mixing of food. The muscularis externa of the stomach is composed of the inner oblique layer, middle circular layer, and outer longitudinal layer.
42
+
43
+ Between the circular and longitudinal muscle layers is the myenteric plexus. This controls peristalsis. Activity is initiated by the pacemaker cells, (myenteric interstitial cells of Cajal). The gut has intrinsic peristaltic activity (basal electrical rhythm) due to its self-contained enteric nervous system. The rate can be modulated by the rest of the autonomic nervous system.[23]
44
+
45
+ The coordinated contractions of these layers is called peristalsis and propels the food through the tract. Food in the GI tract is called a bolus (ball of food) from the mouth down to the stomach. After the stomach, the food is partially digested and semi-liquid, and is referred to as chyme. In the large intestine the remaining semi-solid substance is referred to as faeces.[23]
46
+
47
+ The outermost layer of the gastrointestinal tract consists of several layers of connective tissue.
48
+
49
+ Intraperitoneal parts of the GI tract are covered with serosa. These include most of the stomach, first part of the duodenum, all of the small intestine, caecum and appendix, transverse colon, sigmoid colon and rectum. In these sections of the gut there is clear boundary between the gut and the surrounding tissue. These parts of the tract have a mesentery.
50
+
51
+ Retroperitoneal parts are covered with adventitia. They blend into the surrounding tissue and are fixed in position. For example, the retroperitoneal section of the duodenum usually passes through the transpyloric plane. These include the esophagus, pylorus of the stomach, distal duodenum, ascending colon, descending colon and anal canal. In addition, the oral cavity has adventitia.
52
+
53
+ Approximately 20,000 protein coding genes are expressed in human cells and 75% of these genes are expressed in at least one of the different parts of the digestive organ system.[24][25] Over 600 of these genes are more specifically expressed in one or more parts of the GI tract and the corresponding proteins have functions related to digestion of food and uptake of nutrients. Examples of specific proteins with such functions are pepsinogen PGC and the lipase LIPF, expressed in chief cells, and gastric ATPase ATP4A and gastric intrinsic factor GIF, expressed in parietal cells of the stomach mucosa. Specific proteins expressed in the stomach and duodenum involved in defence include mucin proteins, such as mucin 6 and intelectin-1.[26]
54
+
55
+ The time taken for food to transit through the gastrointestinal tract varies on multiple factors, including age, ethnicity, and gender.[medical citation needed] Several techniques have been used to measure transit time, including radiography following a barium-labeled meal, breath hydrogen analysis, and scintigraphic analysis following a radiolabeled meal.[medical citation needed] It takes 2.5 to 3 hours for 50% of the contents to leave the stomach.[medical citation needed] The rate of digestion is also dependent of the material being digested, as food composition from the same meal may leave the stomach at different rates.[medical citation needed] Total emptying of the stomach takes around 4-5 hours, and transit through the colon takes 30 to 50 hours.[27][28][29]
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+
57
+ The gastrointestinal tract forms an important part of the immune system.[30] The surface area of the digestive tract is estimated to be about 32 square meters, or about half a badminton court.[19] With such a large exposure (more than three times larger than the exposed surface of the skin), these immune components function to prevent pathogens from entering the blood and lymph circulatory systems.[31] Fundamental components of this protection are provided by the intestinal mucosal barrier which is composed of physical, biochemical, and immune elements elaborated by the intestinal mucosa.[32] Microorganisms also are kept at bay by an extensive immune system comprising the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT)
58
+
59
+ There are additional factors contributing to protection from pathogen invasion. For example, low pH (ranging from 1 to 4) of the stomach is fatal for many microorganisms that enter it.[33] Similarly, mucus (containing IgA antibodies) neutralizes many pathogenic microorganisms.[34] Other factors in the GI tract contribution to immune function include enzymes secreted in the saliva and bile.
60
+
61
+ Beneficial bacteria also can contribute to the homeostasis of the gastrointestinal immune system. For example, Clostridia, one of the most predominant bacterial groups in the GI tract, play an important role in influencing the dynamics of the gut's immune system.[35] It has been demonstrated that the intake of a high fiber diet could be the responsible for the induction of T-regulatory cells (Tregs). This is due to the production of short-chain fatty acids during the fermentation of plant-derived nutrients such as butyrate and propionate. Basically, the butyrate induces the differentiation of Treg cells by enhancing histone H3 acetylation in the promoter and conserved non-coding sequence regions of the FOXP3 locus, thus regulating the T cells, resulting in the reduction of the inflammatory response and allergies.
62
+
63
+ The large intestine hosts several kinds of bacteria that can deal with molecules that the human body cannot otherwise break down.[36] This is an example of symbiosis. These bacteria also account for the production of gases at host-pathogen interface, inside our intestine(this gas is released as flatulence when eliminated through the anus). However the large intestine is mainly concerned with the absorption of water from digested material (which is regulated by the hypothalamus) and the re absorption of sodium, as well as any nutrients that may have escaped primary digestion in the ileum.[citation needed]
64
+
65
+ Health-enhancing intestinal bacteria of the gut flora serve to prevent the overgrowth of potentially harmful bacteria in the gut. These two types of bacteria compete for space and "food", as there are limited resources within the intestinal tract. A ratio of 80-85% beneficial to 15–20% potentially harmful bacteria generally is considered normal within the intestines.[citation needed]
66
+
67
+ Enzymes such as CYP3A4, along with the antiporter activities, are also instrumental in the intestine's role of drug metabolism in the detoxification of antigens and xenobiotics.[37]
68
+
69
+ There are many diseases and conditions that can affect the gastrointestinal system, including infections, inflammation and cancer.
70
+
71
+ Various pathogens, such as bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses, can induce gastroenteritis which results from inflammation of the stomach and small intestine. Antibiotics to treat such bacterial infections can decrease the microbiome diversity of the gastrointestinal tract, and further enable inflammatory mediators.[38] Gastroenteritis is the most common disease of the GI tract.
72
+
73
+ Diverticular disease is a condition that is very common in older people in industrialized countries. It usually affects the large intestine but has been known to affect the small intestine as well. Diverticulosis occurs when pouches form on the intestinal wall. Once the pouches become inflamed it is known as diverticulitis.
74
+
75
+ Inflammatory bowel disease is an inflammatory condition affecting the bowel walls, and includes the subtypes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. While Crohn's can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract, ulcerative colitis is limited to the large intestine. Crohn's disease is widely regarded as an autoimmune disease. Although ulcerative colitis is often treated as though it were an autoimmune disease, there is no consensus that it actually is such.
76
+
77
+ Functional gastrointestinal disorders the most common of which is irritable bowel syndrome. Functional constipation and chronic functional abdominal pain are other functional disorders of the intestine that have physiological causes but do not have identifiable structural, chemical, or infectious pathologies.
78
+
79
+ Several symptoms are used to indicate problems with the gastrointestinal tract:
80
+
81
+ Gastrointestinal surgery can often be performed in the outpatient setting. In the United States in 2012, operations on the digestive system accounted for 3 of the 25 most common ambulatory surgery procedures and constituted 9.1 percent of all outpatient ambulatory surgeries.[39]
82
+
83
+ Various methods of imaging the gastrointestinal tract include the upper and lower gastrointestinal series:
84
+
85
+ Intestines from animals other than humans are used in a number of ways. From each species of livestock that is a source of milk, a corresponding rennet is obtained from the intestines of milk-fed calves. Pig and calf intestines are eaten, and pig intestines are used as sausage casings. Calf intestines supply calf-intestinal alkaline phosphatase (CIP), and are used to make goldbeater's skin.
86
+ Other uses are:
87
+
88
+ Many birds and other animals have a specialised stomach in the digestive tract called a gizzard used for grinding up food.
89
+
90
+ Another feature not found in the human but found in a range of other animals is the crop. In birds this is found as a pouch alongside the esophagus.
91
+
92
+ Other animals including amphibians, birds, reptiles, and egg-laying mammals have a major difference in their GI tract in that it ends in a cloaca and not an anus.
93
+
94
+ In 2020, the oldest known fossil digestive tract, of an extinct wormlike organism in the Cloudinidae was discovered; it lived during the late Ediacaran period about 550 million years ago.[46][47]
en/2756.html.txt ADDED
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1
+
2
+
3
+ An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within an overall engineering and product development process. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field. An inventor may be taking a big step toward success or failure.
4
+
5
+ Some inventions can be patented. A patent legally protects the intellectual property rights of the inventor and legally recognizes that a claimed invention is actually an invention. The rules and requirements for patenting an invention vary by country and the process of obtaining a patent is often expensive.
6
+
7
+ Another meaning of invention is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social behaviours adopted by people and passed on to others.[1] The Institute for Social Inventions collected many such ideas in magazines and books.[2] Invention is also an important component of artistic and design creativity. Inventions often extend the boundaries of human knowledge, experience or capability.
8
+
9
+ Inventions are of three kinds: scientific-technological (including medicine), sociopolitical (including economics and law), and humanistic, or cultural.
10
+
11
+ Scientific-technological inventions include railroads, aviation, vaccination, hybridization, antibiotics, astronautics, holography, the atomic bomb, computing, the Internet, and the smartphone.
12
+
13
+ Sociopolitical inventions comprise new laws, institutions, and procedures that change modes of social behavior and establish new forms of human interaction and organization. Examples include the British Parliament, the US Constitution, the Manchester (UK) General Union of Trades, the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, the Olympic Games, the United Nations, the European Union, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as movements such as socialism, Zionism, suffragism, feminism, and animal-rights veganism.
14
+
15
+ Humanistic inventions encompass culture in its entirety and are as transformative and important as any in the sciences, although people tend to take them for granted. In the domain of linguistics, for example, many alphabets have been inventions, as are all neologisms (Shakespeare invented about 1,700 words). Literary inventions include the epic, tragedy, comedy, the novel, the sonnet, the Renaissance, neoclassicism, Romanticism, Symbolism, Aestheticism, Socialist Realism, Surrealism, postmodernism, and (according to Freud) psychoanalysis. Among the inventions of artists and musicians are oil painting, printmaking, photography, cinema, musical tonality, atonality, jazz, rock, opera, and the symphony orchestra. Philosophers have invented logic (several times), dialectics, idealism, materialism, utopia, anarchism, semiotics, phenomenology, behaviorism, positivism, pragmatism, and deconstruction. Religious thinkers are responsible for such inventions as monotheism, pantheism, Methodism, Mormonism, iconoclasm, puritanism, deism, secularism, ecumenism, and Baha’i. Some of these disciplines, genres, and trends may seem to have existed eternally or to have emerged spontaneously of their own accord, but most of them have had inventors.[3]
16
+
17
+ Ideas for an invention may be developed on paper or on a computer, by writing or drawing, by trial and error, by making models, by experimenting, by testing and/or by making the invention in its whole form. Brainstorming also can spark new ideas for an invention. Collaborative creative processes are frequently used by engineers, designers, architects and scientists. Co-inventors are frequently named on patents.
18
+
19
+ In addition, many inventors keep records of their working process - notebooks, photos, etc., including Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Evangelista Torricelli, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.[4][5][6][7]
20
+
21
+ In the process of developing an invention, the initial idea may change. The invention may become simpler, more practical, it may expand, or it may even morph into something totally different. Working on one invention can lead to others too.[8]
22
+
23
+ History shows that turning the concept of an invention into a working device is not always swift or direct. Inventions may also become more useful after time passes and other changes occur. For example, the parachute became more useful once powered flight was a reality.[9]
24
+
25
+ Invention is often a creative process. An open and curious mind allows an inventor to see beyond what is known. Seeing a new possibility, connection or relationship can spark an invention. Inventive thinking frequently involves combining concepts or elements from different realms that would not normally be put together. Sometimes inventors disregard the boundaries between distinctly separate territories or fields.[citation needed] Several concepts may be considered when thinking about invention.
26
+
27
+ Play may lead to invention. Childhood curiosity, experimentation, and imagination can develop one's play instinct. Inventors feel the need to play with things that interest them, and to explore, and this internal drive brings about novel creations.[10][11]
28
+
29
+ Sometimes inventions and ideas may seem to arise spontaneously while daydreaming, especially when the mind is free from its usual concerns.[12] For example, both J. K. Rowling (the creator of Harry Potter)[13] and Frank Hornby (the inventor of Meccano)[14] first had their ideas while on train journeys.
30
+
31
+ In contrast, the successful aerospace engineer Max Munk advocated "aimful thinking".[15]
32
+
33
+ To invent is to see anew. Inventors often envision a new idea, seeing it in their mind's eye. New ideas can arise when the conscious mind turns away from the subject or problem when the inventor's focus is on something else, or while relaxing or sleeping. A novel idea may come in a flash—a Eureka! moment. For example, after years of working to figure out the general theory of relativity, the solution came to Einstein suddenly in a dream "like a giant die making an indelible impress, a huge map of the universe outlined itself in one clear vision".[16] Inventions can also be accidental, such as in the case of polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon).
34
+
35
+ Insight can also be a vital element of invention. Such inventive insight may begin with questions, doubt or a hunch. It may begin by recognizing that something unusual or accidental may be useful or that it could open a new avenue for exploration. For example, the odd metallic color of plastic made by accidentally adding a thousand times too much catalyst led scientists to explore its metal-like properties, inventing electrically conductive plastic and light emitting plastic-—an invention that won the Nobel Prize in 2000 and has led to innovative lighting, display screens, wallpaper and much more (see conductive polymer, and organic light-emitting diode or OLED).[17]
36
+
37
+ Invention is often an exploratory process with an uncertain or unknown outcome. There are failures as well as successes. Inspiration can start the process, but no matter how complete the initial idea, inventions typically must be developed.
38
+
39
+ Inventors may, for example, try to improve something by making it more effective, healthier, faster, more efficient, easier to use, serve more purposes, longer lasting, cheaper, more ecologically friendly, or aesthetically different, lighter weight, more ergonomic, structurally different, with new light or color properties, etc.
40
+
41
+ In economic theory, inventions are one of the chief examples of "positive externalities", a beneficial side effect that falls on those outside a transaction or activity. One of the central concepts of economics is that externalities should be internalized—unless some of the benefits of this positive externality can be captured by the parties, the parties are under-rewarded for their inventions, and systematic under-rewarding leads to under-investment in activities that lead to inventions. The patent system captures those positive externalities for the inventor or other patent owner so that the economy as a whole invests an optimum amount of resources in the invention process.
42
+
43
+ In the social sciences, an innovation is something that is new and better, and has been adopted and proven to create positive value. This is a key distinction from an invention which may not create positive value but furthers progress in a given area of development. The theory for adoption of an innovation, called diffusion of innovations, considers the likelihood that an innovation is adopted and the taxonomy of persons likely to adopt it or spur its adoption. This theory was first put forth by Everett Rogers.[18][19] Gabriel Tarde also dealt with the adoption of innovations in his Laws of Imitation.[20]
44
+
45
+ An invention can serve many purposes, and does not necessarily create positive value. These purposes might differ significantly and may change over time. An invention or its development may serve purposes never envisioned by its inventors. Plastic is a good example.[10][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][excessive citations]
46
+
47
+ The term invention is also an important legal concept and central to patent law systems worldwide. As is often the case for legal concepts, its legal meaning is slightly different from common usage of the word. Additionally, the legal concept of invention is quite different in American and European patent law.
48
+
49
+ In Europe, the first test a patent application must pass is, "Is this an invention?" If it is, subsequent questions are whether it is new and sufficiently inventive. The implication—counter-intuitively—is that a legal invention is not inherently novel. Whether a patent application relates to an invention is governed by Article 52 of the European Patent Convention, that excludes, e.g., discoveries as such and software as such. The EPO Boards of Appeal decided that the technical character of an application is decisive for it to represent an invention, following an age-old Italian and German tradition. British courts don't agree with this interpretation. Following a 1959 Australian decision ("NRDC"), they believe that it is not possible to grasp the invention concept in a single rule. A British court once stated that the technical character test implies a "restatement of the problem in more imprecise terminology."
50
+
51
+ In the United States, all patent applications are considered inventions. The statute explicitly says that the American invention concept includes discoveries (35 USC § 100(a)), contrary to the European invention concept. The European invention concept corresponds to the American "patentable subject matter" concept: the first test a patent application is submitted to. While the statute (35 USC § 101)[32] virtually poses no limits to patenting whatsoever, courts have decided in binding precedents that abstract ideas, natural phenomena and laws of nature are not patentable. Various attempts have been made to substantiate the "abstract idea" test, which suffers from abstractness itself, but none have succeeded. The last attempt so far was the "machine or transformation" test, but the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2010 that it is merely an indication at best.
52
+
53
+ In India, invention means a new product or process that involves an inventive step, and capable of being made or used in an industry. Whereas, "new invention" means any invention that has not been anticipated in any prior art or used in the country or any where in the world.[33]
54
+
55
+ Invention has a long and important history in the arts. Inventive thinking has always played a vital role in the creative process.[34] While some inventions in the arts are patentable, others are not because they cannot fulfill the strict requirements governments have established for granting them. (see patent).
56
+
57
+ Some inventions in art include the:
58
+
59
+ Likewise, Jackson Pollock invented an entirely new form of painting and a new kind of abstraction by dripping, pouring, splashing and splattering paint onto un-stretched canvas lying on the floor.
60
+
61
+ Inventive tools of the artist's trade also produced advances in creativity. Impressionist painting became possible because of newly invented collapsible, resealable metal paint tubes that facilitated spontaneous painting outdoors.[citation needed] Inventions originally created in the form of artwork can also develop other uses, e.g. Alexander Calder's mobile, which is now commonly used over babies' cribs. Funds generated from patents on inventions in art, design and architecture can support the realization of the invention or other creative work. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi's 1879 design patent on the Statue of Liberty helped fund the famous statue because it covered small replicas, including those sold as souvenirs.[37]
62
+
63
+ The timeline for invention in the arts lists the most notable artistic inventors.
en/2757.html.txt ADDED
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1
+
2
+
3
+ An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition or process. The invention process is a process within an overall engineering and product development process. It may be an improvement upon a machine or product or a new process for creating an object or a result. An invention that achieves a completely unique function or result may be a radical breakthrough. Such works are novel and not obvious to others skilled in the same field. An inventor may be taking a big step toward success or failure.
4
+
5
+ Some inventions can be patented. A patent legally protects the intellectual property rights of the inventor and legally recognizes that a claimed invention is actually an invention. The rules and requirements for patenting an invention vary by country and the process of obtaining a patent is often expensive.
6
+
7
+ Another meaning of invention is cultural invention, which is an innovative set of useful social behaviours adopted by people and passed on to others.[1] The Institute for Social Inventions collected many such ideas in magazines and books.[2] Invention is also an important component of artistic and design creativity. Inventions often extend the boundaries of human knowledge, experience or capability.
8
+
9
+ Inventions are of three kinds: scientific-technological (including medicine), sociopolitical (including economics and law), and humanistic, or cultural.
10
+
11
+ Scientific-technological inventions include railroads, aviation, vaccination, hybridization, antibiotics, astronautics, holography, the atomic bomb, computing, the Internet, and the smartphone.
12
+
13
+ Sociopolitical inventions comprise new laws, institutions, and procedures that change modes of social behavior and establish new forms of human interaction and organization. Examples include the British Parliament, the US Constitution, the Manchester (UK) General Union of Trades, the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, the Olympic Games, the United Nations, the European Union, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as movements such as socialism, Zionism, suffragism, feminism, and animal-rights veganism.
14
+
15
+ Humanistic inventions encompass culture in its entirety and are as transformative and important as any in the sciences, although people tend to take them for granted. In the domain of linguistics, for example, many alphabets have been inventions, as are all neologisms (Shakespeare invented about 1,700 words). Literary inventions include the epic, tragedy, comedy, the novel, the sonnet, the Renaissance, neoclassicism, Romanticism, Symbolism, Aestheticism, Socialist Realism, Surrealism, postmodernism, and (according to Freud) psychoanalysis. Among the inventions of artists and musicians are oil painting, printmaking, photography, cinema, musical tonality, atonality, jazz, rock, opera, and the symphony orchestra. Philosophers have invented logic (several times), dialectics, idealism, materialism, utopia, anarchism, semiotics, phenomenology, behaviorism, positivism, pragmatism, and deconstruction. Religious thinkers are responsible for such inventions as monotheism, pantheism, Methodism, Mormonism, iconoclasm, puritanism, deism, secularism, ecumenism, and Baha’i. Some of these disciplines, genres, and trends may seem to have existed eternally or to have emerged spontaneously of their own accord, but most of them have had inventors.[3]
16
+
17
+ Ideas for an invention may be developed on paper or on a computer, by writing or drawing, by trial and error, by making models, by experimenting, by testing and/or by making the invention in its whole form. Brainstorming also can spark new ideas for an invention. Collaborative creative processes are frequently used by engineers, designers, architects and scientists. Co-inventors are frequently named on patents.
18
+
19
+ In addition, many inventors keep records of their working process - notebooks, photos, etc., including Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei, Evangelista Torricelli, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.[4][5][6][7]
20
+
21
+ In the process of developing an invention, the initial idea may change. The invention may become simpler, more practical, it may expand, or it may even morph into something totally different. Working on one invention can lead to others too.[8]
22
+
23
+ History shows that turning the concept of an invention into a working device is not always swift or direct. Inventions may also become more useful after time passes and other changes occur. For example, the parachute became more useful once powered flight was a reality.[9]
24
+
25
+ Invention is often a creative process. An open and curious mind allows an inventor to see beyond what is known. Seeing a new possibility, connection or relationship can spark an invention. Inventive thinking frequently involves combining concepts or elements from different realms that would not normally be put together. Sometimes inventors disregard the boundaries between distinctly separate territories or fields.[citation needed] Several concepts may be considered when thinking about invention.
26
+
27
+ Play may lead to invention. Childhood curiosity, experimentation, and imagination can develop one's play instinct. Inventors feel the need to play with things that interest them, and to explore, and this internal drive brings about novel creations.[10][11]
28
+
29
+ Sometimes inventions and ideas may seem to arise spontaneously while daydreaming, especially when the mind is free from its usual concerns.[12] For example, both J. K. Rowling (the creator of Harry Potter)[13] and Frank Hornby (the inventor of Meccano)[14] first had their ideas while on train journeys.
30
+
31
+ In contrast, the successful aerospace engineer Max Munk advocated "aimful thinking".[15]
32
+
33
+ To invent is to see anew. Inventors often envision a new idea, seeing it in their mind's eye. New ideas can arise when the conscious mind turns away from the subject or problem when the inventor's focus is on something else, or while relaxing or sleeping. A novel idea may come in a flash—a Eureka! moment. For example, after years of working to figure out the general theory of relativity, the solution came to Einstein suddenly in a dream "like a giant die making an indelible impress, a huge map of the universe outlined itself in one clear vision".[16] Inventions can also be accidental, such as in the case of polytetrafluoroethylene (Teflon).
34
+
35
+ Insight can also be a vital element of invention. Such inventive insight may begin with questions, doubt or a hunch. It may begin by recognizing that something unusual or accidental may be useful or that it could open a new avenue for exploration. For example, the odd metallic color of plastic made by accidentally adding a thousand times too much catalyst led scientists to explore its metal-like properties, inventing electrically conductive plastic and light emitting plastic-—an invention that won the Nobel Prize in 2000 and has led to innovative lighting, display screens, wallpaper and much more (see conductive polymer, and organic light-emitting diode or OLED).[17]
36
+
37
+ Invention is often an exploratory process with an uncertain or unknown outcome. There are failures as well as successes. Inspiration can start the process, but no matter how complete the initial idea, inventions typically must be developed.
38
+
39
+ Inventors may, for example, try to improve something by making it more effective, healthier, faster, more efficient, easier to use, serve more purposes, longer lasting, cheaper, more ecologically friendly, or aesthetically different, lighter weight, more ergonomic, structurally different, with new light or color properties, etc.
40
+
41
+ In economic theory, inventions are one of the chief examples of "positive externalities", a beneficial side effect that falls on those outside a transaction or activity. One of the central concepts of economics is that externalities should be internalized—unless some of the benefits of this positive externality can be captured by the parties, the parties are under-rewarded for their inventions, and systematic under-rewarding leads to under-investment in activities that lead to inventions. The patent system captures those positive externalities for the inventor or other patent owner so that the economy as a whole invests an optimum amount of resources in the invention process.
42
+
43
+ In the social sciences, an innovation is something that is new and better, and has been adopted and proven to create positive value. This is a key distinction from an invention which may not create positive value but furthers progress in a given area of development. The theory for adoption of an innovation, called diffusion of innovations, considers the likelihood that an innovation is adopted and the taxonomy of persons likely to adopt it or spur its adoption. This theory was first put forth by Everett Rogers.[18][19] Gabriel Tarde also dealt with the adoption of innovations in his Laws of Imitation.[20]
44
+
45
+ An invention can serve many purposes, and does not necessarily create positive value. These purposes might differ significantly and may change over time. An invention or its development may serve purposes never envisioned by its inventors. Plastic is a good example.[10][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][excessive citations]
46
+
47
+ The term invention is also an important legal concept and central to patent law systems worldwide. As is often the case for legal concepts, its legal meaning is slightly different from common usage of the word. Additionally, the legal concept of invention is quite different in American and European patent law.
48
+
49
+ In Europe, the first test a patent application must pass is, "Is this an invention?" If it is, subsequent questions are whether it is new and sufficiently inventive. The implication—counter-intuitively—is that a legal invention is not inherently novel. Whether a patent application relates to an invention is governed by Article 52 of the European Patent Convention, that excludes, e.g., discoveries as such and software as such. The EPO Boards of Appeal decided that the technical character of an application is decisive for it to represent an invention, following an age-old Italian and German tradition. British courts don't agree with this interpretation. Following a 1959 Australian decision ("NRDC"), they believe that it is not possible to grasp the invention concept in a single rule. A British court once stated that the technical character test implies a "restatement of the problem in more imprecise terminology."
50
+
51
+ In the United States, all patent applications are considered inventions. The statute explicitly says that the American invention concept includes discoveries (35 USC § 100(a)), contrary to the European invention concept. The European invention concept corresponds to the American "patentable subject matter" concept: the first test a patent application is submitted to. While the statute (35 USC § 101)[32] virtually poses no limits to patenting whatsoever, courts have decided in binding precedents that abstract ideas, natural phenomena and laws of nature are not patentable. Various attempts have been made to substantiate the "abstract idea" test, which suffers from abstractness itself, but none have succeeded. The last attempt so far was the "machine or transformation" test, but the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 2010 that it is merely an indication at best.
52
+
53
+ In India, invention means a new product or process that involves an inventive step, and capable of being made or used in an industry. Whereas, "new invention" means any invention that has not been anticipated in any prior art or used in the country or any where in the world.[33]
54
+
55
+ Invention has a long and important history in the arts. Inventive thinking has always played a vital role in the creative process.[34] While some inventions in the arts are patentable, others are not because they cannot fulfill the strict requirements governments have established for granting them. (see patent).
56
+
57
+ Some inventions in art include the:
58
+
59
+ Likewise, Jackson Pollock invented an entirely new form of painting and a new kind of abstraction by dripping, pouring, splashing and splattering paint onto un-stretched canvas lying on the floor.
60
+
61
+ Inventive tools of the artist's trade also produced advances in creativity. Impressionist painting became possible because of newly invented collapsible, resealable metal paint tubes that facilitated spontaneous painting outdoors.[citation needed] Inventions originally created in the form of artwork can also develop other uses, e.g. Alexander Calder's mobile, which is now commonly used over babies' cribs. Funds generated from patents on inventions in art, design and architecture can support the realization of the invention or other creative work. Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi's 1879 design patent on the Statue of Liberty helped fund the famous statue because it covered small replicas, including those sold as souvenirs.[37]
62
+
63
+ The timeline for invention in the arts lists the most notable artistic inventors.
en/2758.html.txt ADDED
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1
+
2
+
3
+ Invertebrates are animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a backbone or spine), derived from the notochord. This includes all animals apart from the subphylum Vertebrata. Familiar examples of invertebrates include arthropods (insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and myriapods), mollusks (chitons, snail, bivalves, squids, and octopuses), annelid (earthworms and leeches), and cnidarians (hydras, jellyfishes, sea anemones, and corals).
4
+
5
+ The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%.[1] Many invertebrate taxa have a greater number and variety of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata.[2] Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 50 μm (0.002 in) rotifers[3] to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid.[4]
6
+
7
+ Some so-called invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata, are more closely related to vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the invertebrates paraphyletic, so the term has little meaning in taxonomy.
8
+
9
+ The word "invertebrate" comes from the Latin word vertebra, which means a joint in general, and sometimes specifically a joint from the spinal column of a vertebrate. The jointed aspect of vertebra is derived from the concept of turning, expressed in the root verto or vorto, to turn.[5] The prefix in- means "not" or "without".[6]
10
+
11
+ The term invertebrates is not always precise among non-biologists since it does not accurately describe a taxon in the same way that Arthropoda, Vertebrata or Manidae do. Each of these terms describes a valid taxon, phylum, subphylum or family. "Invertebrata" is a term of convenience, not a taxon; it has very little circumscriptional significance except within the Chordata. The Vertebrata as a subphylum comprises such a small proportion of the Metazoa that to speak of the kingdom Animalia in terms of "Vertebrata" and "Invertebrata" has limited practicality. In the more formal taxonomy of Animalia other attributes that logically should precede the presence or absence of the vertebral column in constructing a cladogram, for example, the presence of a notochord. That would at least circumscribe the Chordata. However, even the notochord would be a less fundamental criterion than aspects of embryological development and symmetry[7] or perhaps bauplan.[8]
12
+
13
+ Despite this, the concept of invertebrates as a taxon of animals has persisted for over a century among the laity,[9] and within the zoological community and in its literature it remains in use as a term of convenience for animals that are not members of the Vertebrata.[10] The following text reflects earlier scientific understanding of the term and of those animals which have constituted it. According to this understanding, invertebrates do not possess a skeleton of bone, either internal or external. They include hugely varied body plans. Many have fluid-filled, hydrostatic skeletons, like jellyfish or worms. Others have hard exoskeletons, outer shells like those of insects and crustaceans. The most familiar invertebrates include the Protozoa, Porifera, Coelenterata, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida, Echinodermata, Mollusca and Arthropoda. Arthropoda include insects, crustaceans and arachnids.
14
+
15
+ By far the largest number of described invertebrate species are insects. The following table lists the number of described extant species for major invertebrate groups as estimated in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 2014.3.[11]
16
+
17
+ The IUCN estimates that 66,178 extant vertebrate species have been described,[11] which means that over 95% of the described animal species in the world are invertebrates.
18
+
19
+ The trait that is common to all invertebrates is the absence of a vertebral column (backbone): this creates a distinction between invertebrates and vertebrates. The distinction is one of convenience only; it is not based on any clear biologically homologous trait, any more than the common trait of having wings functionally unites insects, bats, and birds, or than not having wings unites tortoises, snails and sponges. Being animals, invertebrates are heterotrophs, and require sustenance in the form of the consumption of other organisms. With a few exceptions, such as the Porifera, invertebrates generally have bodies composed of differentiated tissues. There is also typically a digestive chamber with one or two openings to the exterior.
20
+
21
+ The body plans of most multicellular organisms exhibit some form of symmetry, whether radial, bilateral, or spherical. A minority, however, exhibit no symmetry. One example of asymmetric invertebrates includes all gastropod species. This is easily seen in snails and sea snails, which have helical shells. Slugs appear externally symmetrical, but their pneumostome (breathing hole) is located on the right side. Other gastropods develop external asymmetry, such as Glaucus atlanticus that develops asymmetrical cerata as they mature. The origin of gastropod asymmetry is a subject of scientific debate.[12]
22
+
23
+ Other examples of asymmetry are found in fiddler crabs and hermit crabs. They often have one claw much larger than the other. If a male fiddler loses its large claw, it will grow another on the opposite side after moulting. Sessile animals such as sponges are asymmetrical[13] alongside coral colonies (with the exception of the individual polyps that exhibit radial symmetry); alpheidae claws that lack pincers; and some copepods, polyopisthocotyleans, and monogeneans which parasitize by attachment or residency within the gill chamber of their fish hosts).
24
+
25
+ Neurons differ in invertebrates from mammalian cells. Invertebrates cells fire in response to similar stimuli as mammals, such as tissue trauma, high temperature, or changes in pH. The first invertebrate in which a neuron cell was identified was the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis.[14][15]
26
+
27
+ Learning and memory using nociceptors in the sea hare, Aplysia has been described.[16][17][18] Mollusk neurons are able to detect increasing pressures and tissue trauma.[19]
28
+
29
+ Neurons have been identified in a wide range of invertebrate species, including annelids, molluscs, nematodes and arthropods.[20][21]
30
+
31
+ One type of invertebrate respiratory system is the open respiratory system composed of spiracles, tracheae, and tracheoles that terrestrial arthropods have to transport metabolic gases to and from tissues.[22] The distribution of spiracles can vary greatly among the many orders of insects, but in general each segment of the body can have only one pair of spiracles, each of which connects to an atrium and has a relatively large tracheal tube behind it. The tracheae are invaginations of the cuticular exoskeleton that branch (anastomose) throughout the body with diameters from only a few micrometres up to 0.8 mm. The smallest tubes, tracheoles, penetrate cells and serve as sites of diffusion for water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Gas may be conducted through the respiratory system by means of active ventilation or passive diffusion. Unlike vertebrates, insects do not generally carry oxygen in their haemolymph.[23]
32
+
33
+ A tracheal tube may contain ridge-like circumferential rings of taenidia in various geometries such as loops or helices. In the head, thorax, or abdomen, tracheae may also be connected to air sacs. Many insects, such as grasshoppers and bees, which actively pump the air sacs in their abdomen, are able to control the flow of air through their body. In some aquatic insects, the tracheae exchange gas through the body wall directly, in the form of a gill, or function essentially as normal, via a plastron. Note that despite being internal, the tracheae of arthropods are shed during moulting (ecdysis).[24]
34
+
35
+ Like vertebrates, most invertebrates reproduce at least partly through sexual reproduction. They produce specialized reproductive cells that undergo meiosis to produce smaller, motile spermatozoa or larger, non-motile ova.[25] These fuse to form zygotes, which develop into new individuals.[26] Others are capable of asexual reproduction, or sometimes, both methods of reproduction.
36
+
37
+ Social behavior is widespread in invertebrates, including cockroaches, termites, aphids, thrips, ants, bees, Passalidae, Acari, spiders, and more.[27] Social interaction is particularly salient in eusocial species but applies to other invertebrates as well.
38
+
39
+ Insects recognize information transmitted by other insects.[28][29][30]
40
+
41
+ The term invertebrates covers several phyla. One of these are the sponges (Porifera). They were long thought to have diverged from other animals early.[31] They lack the complex organization found in most other phyla.[32] Their cells are differentiated, but in most cases not organized into distinct tissues.[33] Sponges typically feed by drawing in water through pores.[34] Some speculate that sponges are not so primitive, but may instead be secondarily simplified.[35] The Ctenophora and the Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish, are radially symmetric and have digestive chambers with a single opening, which serves as both the mouth and the anus.[36] Both have distinct tissues, but they are not organized into organs.[37] There are only two main germ layers, the ectoderm and endoderm, with only scattered cells between them. As such, they are sometimes called diploblastic.[38]
42
+
43
+ The Echinodermata are radially symmetric and exclusively marine, including starfish (Asteroidea), sea urchins, (Echinoidea), brittle stars (Ophiuroidea), sea cucumbers (Holothuroidea) and feather stars (Crinoidea).[39]
44
+
45
+ The largest animal phylum is also included within invertebrates: the Arthropoda, including insects, spiders, crabs, and their kin. All these organisms have a body divided into repeating segments, typically with paired appendages. In addition, they possess a hardened exoskeleton that is periodically shed during growth.[40] Two smaller phyla, the Onychophora and Tardigrada, are close relatives of the arthropods and share these traits. The Nematoda or roundworms, are perhaps the second largest animal phylum, and are also invertebrates. Roundworms are typically microscopic, and occur in nearly every environment where there is water.[41] A number are important parasites.[42] Smaller phyla related to them are the Kinorhyncha, Priapulida, and Loricifera. These groups have a reduced coelom, called a pseudocoelom. Other invertebrates include the Nemertea or ribbon worms, and the Sipuncula.
46
+
47
+ Another phylum is Platyhelminthes, the flatworms.[43] These were originally considered primitive, but it now appears they developed from more complex ancestors.[44] Flatworms are acoelomates, lacking a body cavity, as are their closest relatives, the microscopic Gastrotricha.[45] The Rotifera or rotifers, are common in aqueous environments. Invertebrates also include the Acanthocephala or spiny-headed worms, the Gnathostomulida, Micrognathozoa, and the Cycliophora.[46]
48
+
49
+ Also included are two of the most successful animal phyla, the Mollusca and Annelida.[47][48] The former, which is the second-largest animal phylum by number of described species, includes animals such as snails, clams, and squids, and the latter comprises the segmented worms, such as earthworms and leeches. These two groups have long been considered close relatives because of the common presence of trochophore larvae, but the annelids were considered closer to the arthropods because they are both segmented.[49] Now, this is generally considered convergent evolution, owing to many morphological and genetic differences between the two phyla.[50]
50
+
51
+ Among lesser phyla of invertebrates are the Hemichordata, or acorn worms,[51] and the Chaetognatha, or arrow worms. Other phyla include Acoelomorpha, Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, Entoprocta, Phoronida, and Xenoturbellida.
52
+
53
+ Invertebrates can be classified into several main categories, some of which are taxonomically obsolescent or debatable, but still used as terms of convenience. Each however appears in its own article at the following links.[52]
54
+
55
+ The earliest animal fossils appear to be those of invertebrates. 665-million-year-old fossils in the Trezona Formation at Trezona Bore, West Central Flinders, South Australia have been interpreted as being early sponges.[53] Some paleontologists suggest that animals appeared much earlier, possibly as early as 1 billion years ago.[54] Trace fossils such as tracks and burrows found in the Tonian era indicate the presence of triploblastic worms, like metazoans, roughly as large (about 5 mm wide) and complex as earthworms.[55]
56
+
57
+ Around 453 MYA, animals began diversifying, and many of the important groups of invertebrates diverged from one another. Fossils of invertebrates are found in various types of sediment from the Phanerozoic.[56] Fossils of invertebrates are commonly used in stratigraphy.[57]
58
+
59
+ Carl Linnaeus divided these animals into only two groups, the Insecta and the now-obsolete Vermes (worms). Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who was appointed to the position of "Curator of Insecta and Vermes" at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in 1793, both coined the term "invertebrate" to describe such animals and divided the original two groups into ten, by splitting Arachnida and Crustacea from the Linnean Insecta, and Mollusca, Annelida, Cirripedia, Radiata, Coelenterata and Infusoria from the Linnean Vermes. They are now classified into over 30 phyla, from simple organisms such as sea sponges and flatworms to complex animals such as arthropods and molluscs.
60
+
61
+ Invertebrates are animals without a vertebral column. This has led to the conclusion that invertebrates are a group that deviates from the normal, vertebrates. This has been said to be because researchers in the past, such as Lamarck, viewed vertebrates as a "standard": in Lamarck's theory of evolution, he believed that characteristics acquired through the evolutionary process involved not only survival, but also progression toward a "higher form", to which humans and vertebrates were closer than invertebrates were. Although goal-directed evolution has been abandoned, the distinction of invertebrates and vertebrates persists to this day, even though the grouping has been noted to be "hardly natural or even very sharp." Another reason cited for this continued distinction is that Lamarck created a precedent through his classifications which is now difficult to escape from. It is also possible that some humans believe that, they themselves being vertebrates, the group deserves more attention than invertebrates.[58] In any event, in the 1968 edition of Invertebrate Zoology, it is noted that "division of the Animal Kingdom into vertebrates and invertebrates is artificial and reflects human bias in favor of man's own relatives." The book also points out that the group lumps a vast number of species together, so that no one characteristic describes all invertebrates. In addition, some species included are only remotely related to one another, with some more related to vertebrates than other invertebrates (see Paraphyly).[59]
62
+
63
+ For many centuries, invertebrates were neglected by biologists, in favor of big vertebrates and "useful" or charismatic species.[60] Invertebrate biology was not a major field of study until the work of Linnaeus and Lamarck in the 18th century.[60] During the 20th century, invertebrate zoology became one of the major fields of natural sciences, with prominent discoveries in the fields of medicine, genetics, palaeontology, and ecology.[60] The study of invertebrates has also benefited law enforcement, as arthropods, and especially insects, were discovered to be a source of information for forensic investigators.[40]
64
+
65
+ Two of the most commonly studied model organisms nowadays are invertebrates: the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. They have long been the most intensively studied model organisms, and were among the first life-forms to be genetically sequenced. This was facilitated by the severely reduced state of their genomes, but many genes, introns, and linkages have been lost. Analysis of the starlet sea anemone genome has emphasised the importance of sponges, placozoans, and choanoflagellates, also being sequenced, in explaining the arrival of 1500 ancestral genes unique to animals.[61] Invertebrates are also used by scientists in the field of aquatic biomonitoring to evaluate the effects of water pollution and climate change.[62]
66
+
en/2759.html.txt ADDED
@@ -0,0 +1,66 @@
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1
+
2
+
3
+ Invertebrates are animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a backbone or spine), derived from the notochord. This includes all animals apart from the subphylum Vertebrata. Familiar examples of invertebrates include arthropods (insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and myriapods), mollusks (chitons, snail, bivalves, squids, and octopuses), annelid (earthworms and leeches), and cnidarians (hydras, jellyfishes, sea anemones, and corals).
4
+
5
+ The majority of animal species are invertebrates; one estimate puts the figure at 97%.[1] Many invertebrate taxa have a greater number and variety of species than the entire subphylum of Vertebrata.[2] Invertebrates vary widely in size, from 50 μm (0.002 in) rotifers[3] to the 9–10 m (30–33 ft) colossal squid.[4]
6
+
7
+ Some so-called invertebrates, such as the Tunicata and Cephalochordata, are more closely related to vertebrates than to other invertebrates. This makes the invertebrates paraphyletic, so the term has little meaning in taxonomy.
8
+
9
+ The word "invertebrate" comes from the Latin word vertebra, which means a joint in general, and sometimes specifically a joint from the spinal column of a vertebrate. The jointed aspect of vertebra is derived from the concept of turning, expressed in the root verto or vorto, to turn.[5] The prefix in- means "not" or "without".[6]
10
+
11
+ The term invertebrates is not always precise among non-biologists since it does not accurately describe a taxon in the same way that Arthropoda, Vertebrata or Manidae do. Each of these terms describes a valid taxon, phylum, subphylum or family. "Invertebrata" is a term of convenience, not a taxon; it has very little circumscriptional significance except within the Chordata. The Vertebrata as a subphylum comprises such a small proportion of the Metazoa that to speak of the kingdom Animalia in terms of "Vertebrata" and "Invertebrata" has limited practicality. In the more formal taxonomy of Animalia other attributes that logically should precede the presence or absence of the vertebral column in constructing a cladogram, for example, the presence of a notochord. That would at least circumscribe the Chordata. However, even the notochord would be a less fundamental criterion than aspects of embryological development and symmetry[7] or perhaps bauplan.[8]
12
+
13
+ Despite this, the concept of invertebrates as a taxon of animals has persisted for over a century among the laity,[9] and within the zoological community and in its literature it remains in use as a term of convenience for animals that are not members of the Vertebrata.[10] The following text reflects earlier scientific understanding of the term and of those animals which have constituted it. According to this understanding, invertebrates do not possess a skeleton of bone, either internal or external. They include hugely varied body plans. Many have fluid-filled, hydrostatic skeletons, like jellyfish or worms. Others have hard exoskeletons, outer shells like those of insects and crustaceans. The most familiar invertebrates include the Protozoa, Porifera, Coelenterata, Platyhelminthes, Nematoda, Annelida, Echinodermata, Mollusca and Arthropoda. Arthropoda include insects, crustaceans and arachnids.
14
+
15
+ By far the largest number of described invertebrate species are insects. The following table lists the number of described extant species for major invertebrate groups as estimated in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, 2014.3.[11]
16
+
17
+ The IUCN estimates that 66,178 extant vertebrate species have been described,[11] which means that over 95% of the described animal species in the world are invertebrates.
18
+
19
+ The trait that is common to all invertebrates is the absence of a vertebral column (backbone): this creates a distinction between invertebrates and vertebrates. The distinction is one of convenience only; it is not based on any clear biologically homologous trait, any more than the common trait of having wings functionally unites insects, bats, and birds, or than not having wings unites tortoises, snails and sponges. Being animals, invertebrates are heterotrophs, and require sustenance in the form of the consumption of other organisms. With a few exceptions, such as the Porifera, invertebrates generally have bodies composed of differentiated tissues. There is also typically a digestive chamber with one or two openings to the exterior.
20
+
21
+ The body plans of most multicellular organisms exhibit some form of symmetry, whether radial, bilateral, or spherical. A minority, however, exhibit no symmetry. One example of asymmetric invertebrates includes all gastropod species. This is easily seen in snails and sea snails, which have helical shells. Slugs appear externally symmetrical, but their pneumostome (breathing hole) is located on the right side. Other gastropods develop external asymmetry, such as Glaucus atlanticus that develops asymmetrical cerata as they mature. The origin of gastropod asymmetry is a subject of scientific debate.[12]
22
+
23
+ Other examples of asymmetry are found in fiddler crabs and hermit crabs. They often have one claw much larger than the other. If a male fiddler loses its large claw, it will grow another on the opposite side after moulting. Sessile animals such as sponges are asymmetrical[13] alongside coral colonies (with the exception of the individual polyps that exhibit radial symmetry); alpheidae claws that lack pincers; and some copepods, polyopisthocotyleans, and monogeneans which parasitize by attachment or residency within the gill chamber of their fish hosts).
24
+
25
+ Neurons differ in invertebrates from mammalian cells. Invertebrates cells fire in response to similar stimuli as mammals, such as tissue trauma, high temperature, or changes in pH. The first invertebrate in which a neuron cell was identified was the medicinal leech, Hirudo medicinalis.[14][15]
26
+
27
+ Learning and memory using nociceptors in the sea hare, Aplysia has been described.[16][17][18] Mollusk neurons are able to detect increasing pressures and tissue trauma.[19]
28
+
29
+ Neurons have been identified in a wide range of invertebrate species, including annelids, molluscs, nematodes and arthropods.[20][21]
30
+
31
+ One type of invertebrate respiratory system is the open respiratory system composed of spiracles, tracheae, and tracheoles that terrestrial arthropods have to transport metabolic gases to and from tissues.[22] The distribution of spiracles can vary greatly among the many orders of insects, but in general each segment of the body can have only one pair of spiracles, each of which connects to an atrium and has a relatively large tracheal tube behind it. The tracheae are invaginations of the cuticular exoskeleton that branch (anastomose) throughout the body with diameters from only a few micrometres up to 0.8 mm. The smallest tubes, tracheoles, penetrate cells and serve as sites of diffusion for water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. Gas may be conducted through the respiratory system by means of active ventilation or passive diffusion. Unlike vertebrates, insects do not generally carry oxygen in their haemolymph.[23]
32
+
33
+ A tracheal tube may contain ridge-like circumferential rings of taenidia in various geometries such as loops or helices. In the head, thorax, or abdomen, tracheae may also be connected to air sacs. Many insects, such as grasshoppers and bees, which actively pump the air sacs in their abdomen, are able to control the flow of air through their body. In some aquatic insects, the tracheae exchange gas through the body wall directly, in the form of a gill, or function essentially as normal, via a plastron. Note that despite being internal, the tracheae of arthropods are shed during moulting (ecdysis).[24]
34
+
35
+ Like vertebrates, most invertebrates reproduce at least partly through sexual reproduction. They produce specialized reproductive cells that undergo meiosis to produce smaller, motile spermatozoa or larger, non-motile ova.[25] These fuse to form zygotes, which develop into new individuals.[26] Others are capable of asexual reproduction, or sometimes, both methods of reproduction.
36
+
37
+ Social behavior is widespread in invertebrates, including cockroaches, termites, aphids, thrips, ants, bees, Passalidae, Acari, spiders, and more.[27] Social interaction is particularly salient in eusocial species but applies to other invertebrates as well.
38
+
39
+ Insects recognize information transmitted by other insects.[28][29][30]
40
+
41
+ The term invertebrates covers several phyla. One of these are the sponges (Porifera). They were long thought to have diverged from other animals early.[31] They lack the complex organization found in most other phyla.[32] Their cells are differentiated, but in most cases not organized into distinct tissues.[33] Sponges typically feed by drawing in water through pores.[34] Some speculate that sponges are not so primitive, but may instead be secondarily simplified.[35] The Ctenophora and the Cnidaria, which includes sea anemones, corals, and jellyfish, are radially symmetric and have digestive chambers with a single opening, which serves as both the mouth and the anus.[36] Both have distinct tissues, but they are not organized into organs.[37] There are only two main germ layers, the ectoderm and endoderm, with only scattered cells between them. As such, they are sometimes called diploblastic.[38]
42
+
43
+ The Echinodermata are radially symmetric and exclusively marine, including starfish (Asteroidea), sea urchins, (Echinoidea), brittle stars (Ophiuroidea), sea cucumbers (Holothuroidea) and feather stars (Crinoidea).[39]
44
+
45
+ The largest animal phylum is also included within invertebrates: the Arthropoda, including insects, spiders, crabs, and their kin. All these organisms have a body divided into repeating segments, typically with paired appendages. In addition, they possess a hardened exoskeleton that is periodically shed during growth.[40] Two smaller phyla, the Onychophora and Tardigrada, are close relatives of the arthropods and share these traits. The Nematoda or roundworms, are perhaps the second largest animal phylum, and are also invertebrates. Roundworms are typically microscopic, and occur in nearly every environment where there is water.[41] A number are important parasites.[42] Smaller phyla related to them are the Kinorhyncha, Priapulida, and Loricifera. These groups have a reduced coelom, called a pseudocoelom. Other invertebrates include the Nemertea or ribbon worms, and the Sipuncula.
46
+
47
+ Another phylum is Platyhelminthes, the flatworms.[43] These were originally considered primitive, but it now appears they developed from more complex ancestors.[44] Flatworms are acoelomates, lacking a body cavity, as are their closest relatives, the microscopic Gastrotricha.[45] The Rotifera or rotifers, are common in aqueous environments. Invertebrates also include the Acanthocephala or spiny-headed worms, the Gnathostomulida, Micrognathozoa, and the Cycliophora.[46]
48
+
49
+ Also included are two of the most successful animal phyla, the Mollusca and Annelida.[47][48] The former, which is the second-largest animal phylum by number of described species, includes animals such as snails, clams, and squids, and the latter comprises the segmented worms, such as earthworms and leeches. These two groups have long been considered close relatives because of the common presence of trochophore larvae, but the annelids were considered closer to the arthropods because they are both segmented.[49] Now, this is generally considered convergent evolution, owing to many morphological and genetic differences between the two phyla.[50]
50
+
51
+ Among lesser phyla of invertebrates are the Hemichordata, or acorn worms,[51] and the Chaetognatha, or arrow worms. Other phyla include Acoelomorpha, Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, Entoprocta, Phoronida, and Xenoturbellida.
52
+
53
+ Invertebrates can be classified into several main categories, some of which are taxonomically obsolescent or debatable, but still used as terms of convenience. Each however appears in its own article at the following links.[52]
54
+
55
+ The earliest animal fossils appear to be those of invertebrates. 665-million-year-old fossils in the Trezona Formation at Trezona Bore, West Central Flinders, South Australia have been interpreted as being early sponges.[53] Some paleontologists suggest that animals appeared much earlier, possibly as early as 1 billion years ago.[54] Trace fossils such as tracks and burrows found in the Tonian era indicate the presence of triploblastic worms, like metazoans, roughly as large (about 5 mm wide) and complex as earthworms.[55]
56
+
57
+ Around 453 MYA, animals began diversifying, and many of the important groups of invertebrates diverged from one another. Fossils of invertebrates are found in various types of sediment from the Phanerozoic.[56] Fossils of invertebrates are commonly used in stratigraphy.[57]
58
+
59
+ Carl Linnaeus divided these animals into only two groups, the Insecta and the now-obsolete Vermes (worms). Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, who was appointed to the position of "Curator of Insecta and Vermes" at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in 1793, both coined the term "invertebrate" to describe such animals and divided the original two groups into ten, by splitting Arachnida and Crustacea from the Linnean Insecta, and Mollusca, Annelida, Cirripedia, Radiata, Coelenterata and Infusoria from the Linnean Vermes. They are now classified into over 30 phyla, from simple organisms such as sea sponges and flatworms to complex animals such as arthropods and molluscs.
60
+
61
+ Invertebrates are animals without a vertebral column. This has led to the conclusion that invertebrates are a group that deviates from the normal, vertebrates. This has been said to be because researchers in the past, such as Lamarck, viewed vertebrates as a "standard": in Lamarck's theory of evolution, he believed that characteristics acquired through the evolutionary process involved not only survival, but also progression toward a "higher form", to which humans and vertebrates were closer than invertebrates were. Although goal-directed evolution has been abandoned, the distinction of invertebrates and vertebrates persists to this day, even though the grouping has been noted to be "hardly natural or even very sharp." Another reason cited for this continued distinction is that Lamarck created a precedent through his classifications which is now difficult to escape from. It is also possible that some humans believe that, they themselves being vertebrates, the group deserves more attention than invertebrates.[58] In any event, in the 1968 edition of Invertebrate Zoology, it is noted that "division of the Animal Kingdom into vertebrates and invertebrates is artificial and reflects human bias in favor of man's own relatives." The book also points out that the group lumps a vast number of species together, so that no one characteristic describes all invertebrates. In addition, some species included are only remotely related to one another, with some more related to vertebrates than other invertebrates (see Paraphyly).[59]
62
+
63
+ For many centuries, invertebrates were neglected by biologists, in favor of big vertebrates and "useful" or charismatic species.[60] Invertebrate biology was not a major field of study until the work of Linnaeus and Lamarck in the 18th century.[60] During the 20th century, invertebrate zoology became one of the major fields of natural sciences, with prominent discoveries in the fields of medicine, genetics, palaeontology, and ecology.[60] The study of invertebrates has also benefited law enforcement, as arthropods, and especially insects, were discovered to be a source of information for forensic investigators.[40]
64
+
65
+ Two of the most commonly studied model organisms nowadays are invertebrates: the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. They have long been the most intensively studied model organisms, and were among the first life-forms to be genetically sequenced. This was facilitated by the severely reduced state of their genomes, but many genes, introns, and linkages have been lost. Analysis of the starlet sea anemone genome has emphasised the importance of sponges, placozoans, and choanoflagellates, also being sequenced, in explaining the arrival of 1500 ancestral genes unique to animals.[61] Invertebrates are also used by scientists in the field of aquatic biomonitoring to evaluate the effects of water pollution and climate change.[62]
66
+
en/276.html.txt ADDED
@@ -0,0 +1,142 @@
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1
+
2
+
3
+ Coordinates: 17°03′N 61°48′W / 17.050°N 61.800°W / 17.050; -61.800
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+
5
+ Antigua and Barbuda (/ænˈtiːɡ(w)ə ... bɑːrˈb(j)uːdə/ (listen); an-TEE-g(w)ə ... bar-B(Y)OO-də) is an island sovereign state in the West Indies in the Americas, lying between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It consists of two major islands, Antigua and Barbuda (separated by 39 miles), and a number of smaller islands (including Great Bird, Green, Guiana, Long, Maiden, Prickly Pear, York Islands and further south, the island of Redonda). The permanent population numbers about 95,900 (2018 est.), with 97% being resident on Antigua.[1] The capital and largest port and city is St. John's on Antigua, with Codrington being the largest town on Barbuda. Lying near each other (the main Barbuda airport is less than 0.5° of latitude, or 56 kilometres (30 nautical miles), north of the main Antigua airport), Antigua and Barbuda are in the middle of the Leeward Islands, part of the Lesser Antilles, roughly at 17°N of the equator.
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+
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+ The island of Antigua was explored by Christopher Columbus in 1493 and named for the Church of Santa María La Antigua.[6] Antigua was colonized by Britain in 1632; Barbuda island was first colonised in 1678.[6] Antigua and Barbuda joined the West Indies Federation in 1958.[7] With the breakup of the federation, it became one of the West Indies Associated States in 1967.[8] Following by self-governing on its internal affairs, independence was granted from United Kingdom on 1 November 1981.
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+ Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the Commonwealth and Elizabeth II is the country's queen and head of state.[9]
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+ In September 2017, Hurricane Irma damaged or destroyed 95% of Barbuda's buildings and infrastructure and as a result, all the island's inhabitants were evacuated to Antigua, leaving Barbuda empty for the first time in modern history.[10]
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+
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+ Antigua is Spanish for "ancient" and barbuda is Spanish for "bearded".[1] The island of Antigua was originally called Wadadli by Arawaks and is locally known by that name today; Caribs possibly called Barbuda Wa'omoni. Christopher Columbus, while sailing by in 1493 may have named it Santa Maria la Antigua, after an icon in the Spanish Seville Cathedral. The "bearded" of Barbuda is thought to refer either to the male inhabitants of the island, or the bearded fig trees present there.
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+
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+ Antigua was first settled by archaic age hunter-gatherer Amerindians called the Ciboney.[1][11][12] Carbon dating has established the earliest settlements started around 3100 BC.[citation needed] They were succeeded by the ceramic age pre-Columbian Arawak-speaking Saladoid people who migrated from the lower Orinoco River.[citation needed] They introduced agriculture, raising, among other crops, the famous Antigua black pineapple (Ananas comosus), corn, sweet potatoes, chiles, guava, tobacco, and cotton.[citation needed] Later on the more bellicose Caribs also settled the island, possibly by force.
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+
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+ Christopher Columbus was the first European to sight the islands in 1493.[11][12] The Spanish did not colonise Antigua because it lacked fresh water but not aggressive Caribs. However a combination of European and African diseases, malnutrition, and slavery eventually killed most of the Caribbean's native population; smallpox was probably the greatest killer.[13]
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+
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+ The English settled on Antigua in 1632;[12][11] Christopher Codrington settled on Barbuda in 1685.[12][11] Tobacco and then sugar was grown, worked by a large population of slaves from West Africa who soon came to vastly outnumber the European settlers.[11]
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+
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+ The English maintained control of the islands, repulsing an attempted French attack in 1666.[11] The brutal conditions endured by the slaves led to revolts in 1701 and 1729 and a planned revolt in 1736, the latter led by Prince Klaas, though it was discovered before it began and the ringleaders were executed.[14] Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834, affecting the economy.[12][11] This was exacerbated by natural disasters such as the 1843 earthquake and the 1847 hurricane.[11] Mining occurred on the isle of Redonda, however this ceased in 1929 and the island has since remained uninhabited.[15]
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+
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+ Part of the Leeward Islands colony, Antigua and Barbuda became part of the short-lived West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962.[12][11] Antigua and Barbuda subsequently became an associated state of the United Kingdom with full internal autonomy on 27 February 1967.[11] The 1970s were dominated by discussions as to the islands' future and the rivalry between Vere Bird of the Antigua Labour Party (ALP) (Premier from 1967 to 1971 and 1976 to 1981) and the Progressive Labour Movement (PLM) of George Walter (Premier 1971–1976). Eventually Antigua and Barbuda gained full independence on 1 November 1981; Vere Bird became Prime Minister of the new country.[11] The country opted to remain within the Commonwealth, retaining Queen Elizabeth as head of state, with the last Governor, Sir Wilfred Jacobs, as Governor-General.
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+
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+ The first two decades of Antigua's independence were dominated politically by the Bird family and the ALP, with Vere Bird ruling from 1981 to 1994, followed by his son Lester Bird from 1994 to 2004.[11] Though providing a degree of political stability, and boosting tourism to the country, the Bird governments were frequently accused of corruption, cronyism and financial malfeasance.[12][11] Vere Bird Jr., the elder son, was forced to leave the cabinet in 1990 following a scandal in which he was accused of smuggling Israeli weapons to Colombian drug-traffickers.[16][17][12] Another son, Ivor Bird, was convicted of selling cocaine in 1995.[18][19]
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+ In 1995 Hurricane Luis caused severe damage on Barbuda.[20]
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+
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+ The ALP's dominance of Antiguan politics ended with the 2004 Antiguan general election, which was won by Baldwin Spencer's United Progressive Party (UPP).[11] However the UPP lost the 2014 Antiguan general election, with the ALP returning to power under Gaston Browne.[21]
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+
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+ Most of Barbuda was devastated in early September 2017 by Hurricane Irma, which brought winds with speeds reaching 295 km/h (185 mph). The storm damaged or destroyed 95% of the island's buildings and infrastructure, leaving Barbuda "barely habitable" according to Prime Minister Gaston Browne. Nearly everyone on the island was evacuated to Antigua.[22]
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+
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+ Antigua and Barbuda both are generally low-lying islands whose terrain has been influenced more by limestone formations than volcanic activity. The highest point on Antigua is Boggy Peak, the remnant of a volcanic crater rising 402 metres (1,319 feet).[1][11]
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+
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+ The shorelines of both islands are greatly indented with beaches, lagoons, and natural harbors. The islands are rimmed by reefs and shoals. There are few streams as rainfall is slight. Both islands lack adequate amounts of fresh groundwater.[1]
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+ About 40 km (25 mi) south-west of Antigua lies the small, rocky island of Redonda, which is uninhabited.[11]
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+ Rainfall averages 990 mm (39 in) per year, with the amount varying widely from season to season. In general the wettest period is between September and November. The islands generally experience low humidity and recurrent droughts. Temperatures average 27 °C (80.6 °F), with a range from 23 °C (73.4 °F) to 29 °C (84.2 °F) in the winter to from 25 °C (77.0 °F) to 30 °C (86.0 °F) in the summer and autumn. The coolest period is between December and February.
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+ Hurricanes strike on an average of once a year, including the powerful Category 5 Hurricane Irma, on 6 September 2017, which damaged 95% of the structures on Barbuda.[23] Some 1,800 people were evacuated to Antigua.[24]
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+ An estimate published by Time indicated that over $100 million would be required to rebuild homes and infrastructure. Philmore Mullin, Director of Barbuda's National Office of Disaster Services, said that "all critical infrastructure and utilities are non-existent – food supply, medicine, shelter, electricity, water, communications, waste management". He summarised the situation as follows: "Public utilities need to be rebuilt in their entirety... It is optimistic to think anything can be rebuilt in six months ... In my 25 years in disaster management, I have never seen something like this."[25]
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+
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+ Antigua has a population of 96,286,[2][3] mostly made up of people of West African, British, and Madeiran descent. The ethnic distribution consists of 91% Black & Mulatto, 4.4% mixed race, 1.7% White, and 2.9% other (primarily East Indian and other Asian). Most Whites are of British descent. Christian Levantine Arabs, and a small number of Asians and Sephardic Jews make up the remainder of the population.
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+ An increasingly large percentage of the population lives abroad, most notably in the United Kingdom (Antiguan Britons), United States and Canada. A minority of Antiguan residents are immigrants from other countries, particularly from Dominica, Guyana and Jamaica, and, increasingly, from the Dominican Republic, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Nigeria. An estimated 4,500 American citizens also make their home in Antigua and Barbuda, making their numbers one of the largest American populations in the English-speaking Eastern Caribbean.[26]
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+ English is the official language. The Barbudan accent is slightly different from the Antiguan.
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+ In the years before Antigua and Barbuda's independence, Standard English was widely spoken in preference to Antiguan Creole. Generally, the upper and middle classes shun Antiguan Creole. The educational system dissuades the use of Antiguan Creole and instruction is done in Standard (British) English.
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+
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+ Many of the words used in the Antiguan dialect are derived from British as well as African languages. This can be easily seen in phrases such as: "Ent it?" meaning "Ain't it?" which is itself dialectal and means "Isn't it?". Common island proverbs can often be traced to Africa.
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+ Spanish is spoken by around 10,000 inhabitants.[27]
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+ A majority (77%)[1] of Antiguans are Christians, with the Anglicans (17.6%) being the largest single denomination. Other Christian denominations present are Seventh-day Adventist Church (12.4%), Pentecostalism (12.2%), Moravian Church (8.3%), Roman Catholics
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+ (8.2%), Methodist Church (5.6%), Wesleyan Holiness Church (4.5%), Church of God (4.1%), Baptists (3.6%), Mormonism (<1.0%), as well as Jehovah's Witnesses.
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+ Non-Christian religions practiced in the islands include the Rastafari, Islam, and Bahá'í Faith.[citation needed]
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+ The politics of Antigua and Barbuda take place within a framework of a unitary, parliamentary, representative democratic monarchy, in which the head of State is the monarch who appoints the Governor General as vice-regal representative.[28] Elizabeth II is the present Queen of Antigua and Barbuda, having served in that position since the islands' independence from the United Kingdom in 1981. The Queen is currently represented by Governor General Sir Rodney Williams. A council of ministers is appointed by the governor general on the advice of the prime minister, currently Gaston Browne (2014–). The prime minister is the head of government.
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+ Executive power is exercised by the government while legislative power is vested in both the government and the two Chambers of Parliament. The bicameral Parliament consists of the Senate (17 members appointed by members of the government and the opposition party, and approved by the Governor-General), and the House of Representatives (17 members elected by first past the post) to serve five-year terms.
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+ The current Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is the United Progressive Party Member of Parliament (MP), the Honourable Baldwin Spencer.
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+ The last elections held were on 12 June 2014, during which the Antigua Labour Party won 14 seats, and the United Progressive Party 3 seats.
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+ Since 1949, elections have been won by the populist Antigua Labour Party. However, in the Antigua and Barbuda legislative election of 2004 saw the defeat of the longest-serving elected government in the Caribbean. Prime Minister Lester Bryant Bird, who had succeeded his father Vere Cornwall Bird Sr., and Deputy Robin Yearwood had been in office since 1976.
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+ The elder Bird was Prime Minister from 1981 to 1994 and Chief Minister of Antigua from 1960 to 1981, except for the 1971–1976 period when the Progressive Labour Movement (PLM) defeated his party. Vere Cornwall Bird, the nation's first Prime Minister, is credited with having brought Antigua and Barbuda and the Caribbean into a new era of independence.
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+ Gaston Browne defeated his predecessor Lester Bryant Bird at the Antigua Labour Party's biennial convention in November 2012 held to elect a political leader and other officers. The party then altered its name from the Antigua Labour Party (ALP) to the Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party (ABLP). This was done to officially include the party's presence on the sister island of Barbuda in its organisation, the only political party on the mainland to have a physical branch in Barbuda.
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+ The Judicial branch is the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (based in Saint Lucia; one judge of the Supreme Court is a resident of the islands and presides over the High Court of Justice). Antigua is also a member of the Caribbean Court of Justice. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council serves as its Supreme Court of Appeal.[29]
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+ Antigua and Barbuda is a member of the United Nations, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the Commonwealth of Nations, the Caribbean Community, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, the Organization of American States, the World Trade Organization and the Eastern Caribbean's Regional Security System.
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+ Antigua and Barbuda is also a member of the International Criminal Court (with a Bilateral Immunity Agreement of Protection for the US military as covered under Article 98 of the Rome Statute).
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+ In 2013, Antigua and Barbuda called for reparations for slavery at the United Nations. Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said "We have recently seen a number of leaders apologising", and that they should now "match their words with concrete and material benefits."[30]
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+ The Royal Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force has around 260 members dispersed between the line infantry regiment, service and support unit and coast guard. There is also the Antigua and Barbuda Cadet Corps made up of 200 teenagers between the ages of 12 to 18.
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+ In 2018, Antigua and Barbuda signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[31]
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+ Antigua and Barbuda is divided into six parishes and two dependencies:
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+ Note: Though Barbuda and Redonda are called dependencies they are integral parts of the state, making them essentially administrative divisions. Dependency is simply a title.
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+ Although it has not been enforced or a case brought to trial in many years, like other Caribbean islands, Same-sex sexual activity is illegal in Antigua and Barbuda and punishable by prison time. There are several current movements under way to repeal the buggery laws.[32][33]
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+ Tourism dominates the economy, accounting for more than half of the gross domestic product (GDP).[1][11] Antigua is famous for its many luxury resorts as an ultra-high end travel destination. Weakened tourist activity in the lower and middle market segments since early 2000 has slowed the economy, however, and squeezed the government into a tight fiscal corner.[1]
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+ Investment banking and financial services also make up an important part of the economy. Major world banks with offices in Antigua include the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Scotiabank. Financial-services corporations with offices in Antigua include PriceWaterhouseCoopers. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has accused the Antigua-based Stanford International Bank, owned by Texas billionaire Allen Stanford, of orchestrating a huge fraud which may have bilked investors of some $8 billion.[34]
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+ The twin-island nation's agricultural production is focused on its domestic market and constrained by a limited water supply and a labour shortage stemming from the lure of higher wages in tourism and construction work.[35]
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+ Manufacturing is made up of enclave-type assembly for export, the major products being bedding, handicrafts and electronic components. Prospects for economic growth in the medium term will continue to depend on income growth in the industrialised world, especially in the United States, from which about one-third of all tourists come.[citation needed]
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+ Access to biocapacity is lower than world average. In 2016, Antigua and Barbuda had 0.8 global hectares [36] of biocapacity per person within its territory, much less than the world average of 1.6 global hectares per person.[37] In 2016 Antigua and Barbuda used 4.3 global hectares of biocapacity per person - their ecological footprint of consumption. This means they use more biocapacity than Antigua and Barbuda contains. As a result, Antigua and Barbuda are running a biocapacity deficit.[36]
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+ Following the opening of the American University of Antigua College of Medicine by investor and attorney Neil Simon in 2003, a new source of revenue was established. The university employs many local Antiguans and the approximate 1000 students consume a large amount of the goods and services.[citation needed]
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+ Antigua and Barbuda also uses an economic citizenship program to spur investment into the country.[38]
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+ Antigua and Barbuda has a greater than 90% literacy rate. In 1998, Antigua and Barbuda adopted a national mandate to become the pre-eminent provider of medical services in the Caribbean. As part of this mission, Antigua and Barbuda built the most technologically advanced hospital in the Caribbean, the Mt. St. John Medical Centre. The island of Antigua currently has three foreign-owned for-profit offshore medical school. The island's medical schools cater mostly to foreign students but contribute to the local economy and health care. The three schools are:
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+ There is also the government-run Antigua State College as well as the Antigua and Barbuda Institute of Information Technology (ABIIT) and the Antigua and Barbuda Hospitality Training Institute (ABHTI). In 2019, the University of the West Indies opened its fifth campus overall (and fourth physical campus) in Five Islands.[41] The country was previously served solely by the University of the West Indies Open Campus.[42]
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+ Island Academy International, which offers the International Baccalaureate, is the only international school in the country. There are also many other private schools but these institutions tend to follow the same local curriculum (CXCs) as government schools.
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+ The culture is predominantly a mixture of West African and British cultural influences.
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+ Cricket is the national sport. Other popular sports include football, boat racing and surfing. (Antigua Sailing Week attracts locals and visitors from all over the world).
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+ Calypso and soca music, both originating primarily out of Trinidad, are important in Antigua and Barbuda.[citation needed][43]
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+ The national Carnival held each August commemorates the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies, although on some islands, Carnival may celebrate the coming of Lent. Its festive pageants, shows, contests and other activities are a major tourist attraction.
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+ Corn and sweet potatoes play an important role in Antiguan cuisine. For example, a popular Antiguan dish, Dukuna /ˈduːkuːnɑː/ is a sweet, steamed dumpling made from grated sweet potatoes, flour and spices. One of the Antiguan staple foods, fungi /ˈfuːndʒiː/, is a cooked paste made of cornmeal and water.
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+ There are three newspapers: the Antigua Daily Observer, Antigua New Room and The Antiguan Times. The Antigua Observer is the only daily printed newspaper.[44]
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+ The local television channel ABS TV 10 is available (it is the only station that shows exclusively local programs). There are also several local and regional radio stations, such as V2C-AM 620, ZDK-AM 1100, VYBZ-FM 92.9, ZDK-FM 97.1, Observer Radio 91.1 FM, DNECA Radio 90.1 FM, Second Advent Radio 101.5 FM, Abundant Life Radio 103.9 FM, Crusader Radio 107.3 FM, Nice FM 104.3.[44]
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+ Antiguan author Jamaica Kincaid has published over 20 works of literature.[citation needed]
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+ The Antigua and Barbuda national cricket team represented the country at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, but Antiguan cricketers otherwise play for the Leeward Islands cricket team in domestic matches and the West Indies cricket team internationally. The 2007 Cricket World Cup was hosted in the West Indies from 11 March to 28 April 2007.
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+ Antigua hosted eight matches at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium, which was completed on 11 February 2007 and can hold up to 20,000 people.
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+ Antigua is a Host of Stanford Twenty20 – Twenty20 Cricket, a version started by Allen Stanford in 2006 as a regional cricket game with almost all Caribbean islands taking part.
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+ Rugby and netball are popular as well.
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+ Association football, or soccer, is also a very popular sport. Antigua has a national football team which entered World Cup qualification for the 1974 tournament and for 1986 and onwards. A professional team was formed in 2011, Antigua Barracuda FC, which played in the USL Pro, a lower professional league in the USA. The nation's team had a major achievement in 2012, getting out of its preliminary group for the 2014 World Cup, notably due to a victory over powerful Haiti. In its first game in the next CONCACAF group play on 8 June 2012 in Tampa, FL, Antigua and Barbuda, comprising 17 Barracuda players and 7 from the lower English professional leagues, scored a goal against the United States. However, the team lost 3:1 to the US.
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+ The national bird is the frigate bird, and the national tree is the Bucida buceras (Whitewood tree).[45]
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+ Clare Waight Keller included agave karatto to represent Antigua and Barbuda in Meghan Markle's wedding veil, which included the distinctive flora of each Commonwealth country.[46]
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+ Click on a coloured area to see an article about English in that country or region
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1
+
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+ Decisive English victory[1][2][3]
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+ The Spanish Armada (Spanish: Grande y Felicísima Armada, lit. 'Great and Most Fortunate Navy') was a Habsburg Spanish fleet of 130 ships that sailed from Corunna in late May 1588, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, with the purpose of escorting an army from Flanders to invade England. Medina Sidonia was an aristocrat without naval command experience but was made commander by King Philip II. The aim was to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and her establishment of Protestantism in England, to stop English interference in the Spanish Netherlands and to stop the harm caused by English and Dutch privateering ships that interfered with Spanish interests in the Americas.
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+ English ships sailed from Plymouth to attack the Armada and were faster and more manoeuvrable than the larger Spanish galleons, enabling them to fire on the Armada without loss as it sailed east off the south coast of England. The Armada could have anchored in The Solent between the Isle of Wight and the English mainland and occupied the Isle of Wight, but Medina Sidonia was under orders from King Philip II to meet up with the Duke of Parma's forces in the Netherlands so England could be invaded by Parma's soldiers and other soldiers carried in ships of the Armada. English guns damaged the Armada and a Spanish ship was captured by Sir Francis Drake in the English Channel.
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+ The Armada anchored off Calais.[25] While awaiting communications from the Duke of Parma, the Armada was scattered by an English fireship night attack and abandoned its rendezvous with Parma's army, that was blockaded in harbour by Dutch flyboats. In the ensuing Battle of Gravelines, the Spanish fleet was further damaged and was in risk of running aground on the Dutch coast when the wind changed. The Armada, driven by southwest winds, withdrew north, with the English fleet harrying it up the east coast of England. On return to Spain round the north of Scotland and south around Ireland, the Armada was disrupted further by storms. Many ships were wrecked on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland and more than a third of the initial 130 ships failed to return.[26] As Martin and Parker explain, "Philip II attempted to invade England, but his plans miscarried. This was due to his own mismanagement, including the appointment of an aristocrat without naval experience as commander of the Armada, but also to unfortunate weather, and the opposition of the English and their Dutch allies, which included the use of fireships sailed into the anchored Armada."[27]
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+ The expedition was the largest engagement of the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War (1585–1604). The following year, England organised a similar large-scale campaign against Spain, the English Armada, sometimes called the "counter-Armada of 1589", which was also unsuccessful.[28]
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+ The word armada is from the Spanish: armada, which is cognate with English army. Originally from the Latin: armāta, the past participle of armāre, 'to arm', used in Romance languages as a noun for armed force, army, navy, fleet.[29] Armada Española is still the Spanish term for the modern Spanish Navy.
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+
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+ Henry VIII began the English Reformation as a political exercise over his desire to divorce his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Over time, it became increasingly aligned with the Protestant reformation taking place in Europe, especially during the reign of Henry's son, Edward VI. Edward died childless and his half-sister, Mary I, ascended the throne. A devout Catholic, Mary, with her co-monarch and husband, Philip II of Spain, began to reassert Roman influence over church affairs. Her attempts led to more than 260 people being burned at the stake, earning her the nickname 'Bloody Mary'.[30]
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+ Mary's death in 1558 led to her half-sister, Elizabeth I, taking the throne. Unlike Mary, Elizabeth was firmly in the reformist camp, and quickly reimplemented many of Edward's reforms. Philip, no longer co-monarch, deemed Elizabeth a heretic and illegitimate ruler of England. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, Henry had never officially divorced Catherine, making Elizabeth illegitimate. It is alleged that Phillip supported plots to have Elizabeth overthrown in favour of her Catholic cousin and heir presumptive, Mary, Queen of Scots. These plans were thwarted when Elizabeth had the Queen of Scots imprisoned and executed in 1587. Elizabeth retaliated against Philip by supporting the Dutch revolt against Spain, as well as funding privateers to raid Spanish ships across the Atlantic. She had also negotiated an enduring trade and political alliance with Morocco.
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+ In retaliation, Philip planned an expedition to invade England in order to overthrow Elizabeth and, if the Armada was not entirely successful, at least negotiate freedom of worship for Catholics and financial compensation for war in the Low Countries.[31] Through this endeavour, English material support for the United Provinces, the part of the Low Countries that had successfully seceded from Spanish rule, and English attacks on Spanish trade and settlements[32] in the New World would end. The King was supported by Pope Sixtus V, who treated the invasion as a crusade, with the promise of a subsidy should the Armada make land.[33] Substantial support for the invasion was also expected from English Catholics, including wealthy and influential aristocrats and traders.[34]
20
+
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+ A raid on Cádiz, led by Francis Drake in April 1587, had captured or destroyed about 30 ships and great quantities of supplies, setting preparations back by a year.[35] There is also evidence that a letter from Elizabeth's security chief and spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, to her ambassador in Istanbul, William Harborne, sought to initiate Ottoman Empire fleet manoeuvres to harass the Spaniards,[36] but there is no evidence for the success of that plan. Philip initially favoured a triple attack, starting with a diversionary raid on Scotland, while the main Armada would capture the Isle of Wight, or Southampton, to establish a safe anchorage in The Solent. The Duke of Parma would then follow with a large army from the Low Countries crossing the English Channel. Parma was uneasy about mounting such an invasion without any possibility of surprise. The appointed commander of the Armada was the highly experienced Álvaro de Bazán, Marquis of Santa Cruz, but he died in February 1588, and the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a high-born courtier, took his place. While a competent soldier and distinguished administrator, Medina Sidonia had no naval experience. He wrote to Philip expressing grave doubts about the planned campaign, but his message was prevented from reaching the King by courtiers on the grounds that God would ensure the Armada's success.[37]
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+
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+ Prior to the undertaking, Pope Sixtus V allowed Philip II of Spain to collect crusade taxes and granted his men indulgences. The blessing of the Armada's banner on 25 April 1588 was similar to the ceremony used prior to the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. On 28 May 1588, the Armada set sail from Lisbon and headed for the English Channel. The fleet was composed of 130 ships, 8,000 sailors and 18,000 soldiers, and bore 1,500 brass guns and 1,000 iron guns. The full body of the fleet took two days to leave port. It included 28 purpose-built warships, of which 20 were galleons, four were galleys and four were (Neapolitan) galleasses. The remaining heavy vessels were mostly armed carracks and hulks, along with 34 light ships.[38]
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+ In the Spanish Netherlands, 30,000 soldiers[39] awaited the arrival of the Armada, the plan being to use the cover of the warships to convey the army on barges to a place near London. In all, 55,000 men were to have been mustered, a huge army for that time. On the day the Armada set sail, Elizabeth's ambassador in the Netherlands, Valentine Dale, met Parma's representatives in peace negotiations. The English made a vain effort to intercept the Armada in the Bay of Biscay.
26
+ On 6 July, negotiations were abandoned and the English fleet stood prepared, if ill-supplied, at Plymouth, awaiting news of Spanish movements. The English fleet outnumbered that of the Spanish, 200 ships to 130,[40] while the Spanish fleet outgunned that of the English. The Spanish available firepower was 50 percent more than that of the English.[41] The English fleet consisted of the 34 ships of the Royal Fleet, 21 of which were galleons of 200 to 400 tons, and 163 other ships, 30 of which were of 200 to 400 tons and carried up to 42 guns each. Twelve of the ships were privateers owned by Lord Howard of Effingham, Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake.[11]
27
+
28
+ The Armada was delayed by bad weather. Storms in the Bay of Biscay forced four galleys and one galleon to turn back, and other ships had to put in for repairs, leaving only about 124 ships to actually make it to the English Channel. Nearly half the fleet were not built as warships and were used for duties such as scouting and dispatch work, or for carrying supplies, animals and troops.[38]
29
+
30
+ The fleet was sighted in England on 19 July when it appeared off the Lizard in Cornwall. The news was conveyed to London by a system of beacons that had been constructed all the way along the south coast. On 19 July, the English fleet was trapped in Plymouth Harbour by the incoming tide. The Spanish convened a council of war, where it was proposed to ride into the harbour on the tide and incapacitate the defending ships at anchor. From Plymouth Harbour the Spanish would attack England, but Philip II explicitly forbade Medina Sidonia from acting, leaving the Armada to sail on to the east and toward the Isle of Wight. As the tide turned, 55 English ships set out to confront the Armada from Plymouth under the command of Lord Howard of Effingham, with Sir Francis Drake as Vice Admiral. The rear admiral was Sir John Hawkins.
31
+
32
+ On 20 July, the English fleet was off Eddystone Rocks with the Armada upwind to the west. To execute its attack, the English tacked upwind of the Armada, thus gaining the weather gage, a significant advantage. At daybreak on 21 July, the English fleet engaged the Armada off Plymouth near the Eddystone rocks. The Armada was in a crescent-shaped defensive formation, convex toward the east. The galleons and great ships were concentrated in the centre and at the tips of the crescent's horns, giving cover to the transports and supply ships in between. Opposing them, the English were in two sections, with Drake to the north in Revenge with 11 ships, and Howard to the south in Ark Royal with the bulk of the fleet.
33
+
34
+ Given the Spanish advantage in close-quarter fighting, the English ships used their superior speed and manoeuvrability to keep beyond grappling range and bombarded the Spanish ships from a distance with cannon fire. The distance was too great for the manoeuvre to be effective and, at the end of the first day's fighting, neither fleet had lost a ship in action, although the Spanish carrack Rosario and galleon San Salvador were abandoned after they collided. When night fell, Francis Drake turned his ship back to loot the abandoned Spanish ships, capturing supplies of much-needed gunpowder and gold. Drake had been guiding the English fleet by means of a lantern, which he snuffed out to slip away from the Spanish ships, causing the rest of his fleet to become scattered and disarrayed by dawn. It took a day for the English fleet to regroup and the Armada gained a day's grace.[42] The English ships again used their superior speed and manoeuvrability to catch up with the Spanish fleet after a day of sailing.
35
+
36
+ The English fleet and the Armada engaged once more on 23 July, off Portland. A change of wind gave the Spanish the weather gage, and they sought to close with the English, but were foiled by the smaller ships' greater manoeuvrability. At one point, Howard formed his ships into a line of battle to attack at close range, bringing all his guns to bear, but he did not follow through with the manoeuvre and little was achieved.
37
+
38
+ If the Armada could create a temporary base in the protected waters of the Solent, a strait separating the Isle of Wight from the English mainland, it could wait there for word from Parma's army. However, in a full-scale attack, the English fleet broke into four groups with Martin Frobisher of the ship Aid given command over a squadron, and Drake coming with a large force from the south. Medina Sidonia sent reinforcements south and ordered the Armada back to open sea to avoid The Owers shoals.[43] There were no other secure harbours further east along England's south coast, so the Armada was compelled to make for Calais, without being able to wait for word of Parma's army.
39
+
40
+ On 27 July, the Armada anchored off Calais in a tightly-packed defensive crescent formation, not far from Dunkirk, where Parma's army, reduced by disease to 16,000, was expected to be waiting, ready to join the fleet in barges sent from ports along the Flemish coast. Communication was more difficult than anticipated and word came too late that the Parma army had yet to be equipped with sufficient transport or to be assembled in the port, a process that would take at least six days. Medina Sidonia waited at anchor and Dunkirk was blockaded by a Dutch fleet of 30 flyboats under Lieutenant-Admiral Justinus of Nassau.[44] Parma wanted the Armada to send its light pataches to drive away the Dutch, but Medina Sidonia would not send them because he feared he would need these ships for his own protection. There was no deep-water port where the fleet might shelter, always acknowledged as a major difficulty for the expedition, and the Spanish found themselves vulnerable as night drew on.
41
+
42
+ The Dutch flyboats mainly operated in the shallow waters off Zeeland and Flanders where larger warships with a deeper draught, like the Spanish and English galleons, could not safely enter. The Dutch enjoyed an unchallenged naval advantage in these waters, even though their navy was inferior in naval armament. An essential element of the plan of invasion, as it was eventually implemented, was the transportation of a large part of Parma's army of Flanders as the main invasion force in unarmed barges across the English Channel. These barges would be protected by the large ships of the Armada. However, to get to the Armada, they would have to cross the zone dominated by the Dutch navy, where the Armada could not go. This problem seems to have been overlooked by the Spanish planners, but it was insurmountable. Because of this obstacle, England never was in any real danger, at least from the Duke of Parma and the Army of Flanders. Because of the eventual English victory at sea, the Army of Flanders escaped the drowning death Justinus had in mind for them.[45][46]
43
+
44
+ At midnight on 28 July, the English set alight eight fireships, sacrificing regular warships by filling them with pitch, brimstone, gunpowder and tar, and cast them downwind among the closely anchored vessels of the Armada. The Spanish feared that these uncommonly large fireships were "hellburners",[47] specialised fireships filled with large gunpowder charges that had been used to deadly effect at the Siege of Antwerp. Two were intercepted and towed away, but the remainder bore down on the fleet. Medina Sidonia's flagship and the principal warships held their positions, but the rest of the fleet cut their anchor cables and scattered in confusion. No Spanish ships were burnt, but the crescent formation had been broken, and the fleet now found itself too far leeward of Calais in the rising southwesterly wind to recover its position. The English closed in for battle.
45
+
46
+ The small port of Gravelines was part of Flanders in the Spanish Netherlands close to the border with France, and the closest Spanish territory to England. Medina Sidonia tried to regather his fleet there and was reluctant to sail further east, knowing the danger from the shoals off Flanders, from which his Dutch enemies had removed the sea marks. The English learned of the Armada's weaknesses during the skirmishes in the English Channel and concluded it was necessary to close to within 100 yards (91 m) to penetrate the oak hulls of the Spanish ships. They had spent most of their gunpowder in the first engagements and had, after the Isle of Wight, been forced to conserve their heavy shot and powder for a final attack near Gravelines. During all the engagements, the Spanish heavy guns could not easily be reloaded because of their close spacing and the quantities of supplies stowed between decks, as Francis Drake had discovered on capturing the damaged Nuestra Señora del Rosario in the channel.[48] Instead, the gunners fired once and then transferred to their main task, which was to board enemy ships as had been the practice in naval warfare at the time. Evidence from Armada wrecks in Ireland shows that much of the fleet's ammunition was never spent.[49] Its determination to fight by boarding, rather than employing cannon fire at a distance, proved a weakness for the Spanish. The manoeuvre had been effective in the battles of Lepanto and Ponta Delgada (1582), but the English were aware of it and sought to avoid it by keeping their distance.
47
+
48
+ With its superior manoeuvrability, the English fleet provoked Spanish fire while staying out of range. The English then closed, firing damaging broadsides into the enemy ships, which enabled them to maintain a windward position, so the heeling Armada hulls were exposed to damage below the water line when they changed course later. Many of the Spanish gunners were killed or wounded by the English broadsides, and the task of manning the cannon often fell to the regular foot soldiers who did not know how to operate them. The ships were close enough for sailors on the upper decks of the English and Spanish ships to exchange musket fire. After eight hours, the English ships began to run out of ammunition, and some gunners began loading objects such as chains into cannons. Around 4 p.m., the English fired their last shots and pulled back.[50]
49
+
50
+ Five Spanish ships were lost. The galleass San Lorenzo, flagship of Don Hugo de Moncada, ran aground at Calais and was taken by Howard after fighting between the crew, galley slaves, English, and the French. The galleons San Mateo and San Felipe drifted away in a sinking condition, ran aground on the island of Walcheren the next day and were taken by the Dutch. One carrack ran aground near Blankenberge and another foundered. Many other Spanish ships were severely damaged, especially the Portuguese and some Spanish Atlantic-class galleons, including some Neapolitan galleys, which bore the brunt of the fighting during the early hours of the battle. The Spanish plan to join with Parma's army had been defeated.
51
+
52
+ Because of the threat of invasion from the Netherlands, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester assembled a force of 4,000  militia at West Tilbury, Essex, to defend the Thames Estuary against any incursion up-river toward London.
53
+
54
+ Because the result of the English fireship attack and the sea battle of Gravelines had not yet reached England, on 8 August (18 August New Style), Elizabeth went to Tilbury to review her forces, arriving on horseback in ceremonial armour to imply to the militia she was prepared to lead them in the ensuing battle. She gave to them her royal address, which survives in at least six slightly different versions.[51] One version is as follows:
55
+
56
+ My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but, I do assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself, that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects; and, therefore, I am come amongst you as you see at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all – to lay down for my God, and for my kingdoms, and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust.
57
+ I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king – and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms – I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns, and, we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean time, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.[52]
58
+
59
+ After the victory, typhus swept the English ships, beginning among the 500-strong crew of the Elizabeth Jonas and killing many mariners. The sailors were not paid for their service and many died of the disease and starvation after landing at Margate.[53]:144–148
60
+
61
+ On the day after the battle of Gravelines, the disorganised and unmanoeuvrable Spanish fleet was at risk of running on to the sands of Zeeland due to the westerly component in the wind. Luckily for the Armada, the wind then changed to the south, enabling the fleet to sail north. The English ships under Howard pursued to prevent any landing on English soil, although by this time his ships were almost out of shot. On 2 August, Howard called a halt to the pursuit at about the latitude of the Firth of Forth off Scotland. The only option left to the Spanish ships was to return to Spain by sailing round the north of Scotland and home via the Atlantic or the Irish sea. The Spanish ships were beginning to show wear from the long voyage and some were kept together by having their damaged hulls strengthened with cables. Supplies of food and water ran short. The intention would have been to keep to the west of the coast of Scotland and Ireland in the relative safety of the open sea. There being no way of accurately measuring longitude, the Spanish were not aware that the Gulf Stream was carrying them north and east as they tried to move west and they eventually turned south much closer to the coast than they thought. Off Scotland and Ireland, the fleet ran into a series of powerful westerly winds which drove many of the damaged ships further toward the lee shore. Because so many anchors had been abandoned during the escape from the English fireships off Calais, many of the ships were incapable of securing shelter as the fleet reached the coast of Ireland and were driven onto the rocks and local inhabitants looted the ships. The late 16th century and especially 1588 was marked by unusually strong North Atlantic storms, perhaps associated with a high accumulation of polar ice off the coast of Greenland, a characteristic phenomenon of the "Little Ice Age".[54] More ships and sailors were lost to cold and stormy weather than in direct combat.
62
+
63
+ About 5,000 men died by drowning, starvation and slaughter by local inhabitants after their ships were driven ashore on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland.[55] Reports of the passage of the remnants of the Spanish Armada around Ireland abound with onerous accounts of hardships and survival.[56]
64
+
65
+ In the end, 67 ships and fewer than 10,000 men survived.[57] Many of the men were near death from disease, as the conditions were very cramped and most of the ships ran out of food and water. Some were captured and imprisoned by the English in what was later called the "Spanish Barn" in Torquay on the south coast of England. More Armada survivors later died in Spain or on hospital ships in Spanish harbours from diseases contracted during the voyage. It was reported that when Philip II learned of the result of the expedition, he declared, "I sent the Armada against men, not God's winds and waves".[58]
66
+
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+ In England, a medal was struck with the inscription "Flavit Jehovah et Dissipati Sunt", which translates as "Jehovah blew with His winds, and they were scattered".
68
+
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+ The wind that scattered the Armada has been called the Protestant Wind,[59] a phrase also used for later navy attacks favourable to the Protestant cause that were helped by the wind.
70
+
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+ The following year the English launched the Counter Armada, with 23,375 men and 150 ships under Sir Francis Drake, but thousands were killed, wounded or died of disease[60][61][62] and 40 ships sunk or captured.[63] The attempt to restore the Portuguese Crown from Spain was unsuccessful and the opportunity to strike a decisive blow against the weakened Spanish navy was lost. The failure of the expedition depleted the financial resources of England's treasury, which had been carefully restored during the long reign of Elizabeth I.
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+
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+ During the course of the war the Spanish failed to gain control of the English Channel, or stop the English intervention in Flanders or English privateer transatlantic raids. Although substantially weaker than the great armada sent in 1588, two more armadas were sent by Spain in 1596 and 1597, but both were once more scattered by storms.[64] Nevertheless, through Philip II's naval revival the English and Dutch ultimately failed to disrupt the various fleets of the Indies despite the great number of military personnel mobilised every year. Thus, Spain remained the predominant power in Europe for several decades.[65]
74
+
75
+ The conflict wound down with diminishing military actions until a peace was agreed between the two powers on the signing of the Treaty of London in 1604.
76
+
77
+ The defeat of the Spanish Armada vindicated the English strategy and caused a revolution in naval tactics, taking advantage of the wind (the "weather gage") and line-to-line cannon fire from windward, which exposed the opponent ship's hull and rudder as targets. Also instilled was the use of naval cannon to damage enemy ships without the need to board. Until then, the cannon had played a supporting role to the main tactic of ramming and boarding enemy ships.
78
+
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+ Most military historians hold that the battle of Gravelines reflected a lasting shift in the balance of naval power in favour of the English, in part because of the gap in naval technology and cannon armament which continued into the next century.[66] In the words of Geoffrey Parker, by 1588, "the capital ships of the Elizabethan navy constituted the most powerful battlefleet afloat anywhere in the world".[67] The English navy yards were leaders in technical innovation and the captains devised new battle formations and tactics. The sleeker and more manoeuvrable full-rigged ship, amply cannoned, was one of the greatest advances of the century and permanently transformed naval warfare.
80
+
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+ English shipwrights introduced designs in 1573, first demonstrated in Dreadnought, that allowed the ships to sail faster, manoeuvre better and carry many and heavier guns.[68] Whereas before warships had tried to grapple with each other so soldiers could board the enemy ship, now they more often stood off and fired broadsides that could sink the vessel. Superior English ships and seamanship had foiled the invasion. The English also took advantage of Spain's complex strategy that required coordination between the invasion fleet and the Spanish army on shore. The poor design of the Spanish cannon meant they were much slower in reloading in a close-range battle, allowing the English to take control. Spain still had numerically larger fleets but England was catching up.[69]
82
+
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+ In England, the boost to national pride from the defeat of the Spanish invasion attempt lasted for years and Elizabeth's legend persisted and grew long after her death. Repulsing the Spanish naval force may have given heart to the Protestant cause across Europe and the belief that God was behind the Protestants.[70] This was shown by the striking of commemorative medals that bore variations on the inscription, "1588. Flavit Jehovah et Dissipati Sunt" – with "Jehovah" in Hebrew letters ("God blew, and they are scattered"), or He blew with His winds, and they were scattered. There were also more lighthearted medals struck, such as the one with the play on the words of Julius Caesar: Venit, Vidit, Fugit (he came, he saw, he fled). The victory was acclaimed by the English as their greatest since Agincourt.[citation needed]
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+
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+ The memory of the victory over the Armada was evoked during both the Napoleonic Wars and the Second World War, when Britain again faced a substantial danger of foreign invasion. The Armada Memorial in Plymouth was constructed in 1888 to celebrate the tercentenary of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.[71]
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+ Knerr (1989) has reviewed the main trends in historiography over five centuries.[72] For 150 years writers relied heavily on Petruccio Ubaldini's A Discourse Concernye the Spanish Fleete Invadinye Englande (1590), which argued that God decisively favoured the Protestant cause. William Camden (1551–1623) pointed in addition to elements of English nationalism and the private enterprise of the sea dogs. He also emphasized that the Duke of Medina Sidonia was an incompetent seaman. David Hume (1711–1776) praised the leadership of Queen Elizabeth. However the Whig historians, led by James A. Froude (1818–1894), rejected Hume's interpretation and argued that Elizabeth was vacillating and almost lost the conflict by her unwillingness to previously spend enough to maintain and supply the Royal Navy's fleet of ships. Scientific modern historiography came of age with the publication of two volumes of primary documents by John K. Laughton in 1894. This enabled the leading naval scholar of the day Julian Corbett (1854–1922) to reject the Whig views and turn attention to the professionalization of the Royal Navy as a critical factor. Twentieth-century historians have focused on technical issues, such as the comparative power of English and Spanish naval guns and the degree of naval battle tactics credit due Francis Drake and Charles Howard. Inclement weather in the English Channel and on the oceans at the time has always been cited as a major factor to the outcome.
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1
+ Coordinates: 42°N 93°W / 42°N 93°W / 42; -93
2
+
3
+ Iowa (/ˈaɪəwə/ (listen))[5][6][7] is a state in the Midwestern United States, bordered by the Mississippi River to the east and the Missouri River and Big Sioux River to the west. It is bordered by six states: Wisconsin to the northeast, Illinois to the east and southeast, Missouri to the south, Nebraska to the west, South Dakota to the northwest, and Minnesota to the north.
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+
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+ In colonial times, Iowa was a part of French Louisiana and Spanish Louisiana; its state flag is patterned after the flag of France. After the Louisiana Purchase, people laid the foundation for an agriculture-based economy in the heart of the Corn Belt.[8]
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+
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+ In the latter half of the 20th century, Iowa's agricultural economy made the transition to a diversified economy of advanced manufacturing, processing, financial services, information technology, biotechnology, and green energy production.[9][10] Iowa is the 26th most extensive in land area and the 30th most populous of the 50 U.S. states. The state's capital, most populous city, and largest metropolitan area fully located within the state is Des Moines. A portion of the larger Omaha, Nebraska, metropolitan area extends into three counties of southwest Iowa.[11] Iowa has been listed as one of the safest U.S. states to live in.[12]
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+
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+ Iowa derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many Native American tribes that occupied the state at the time of European colonization.[13]
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+
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+ Iowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east and the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west. The northern boundary is a line along 43 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude.[14][b] The southern border is the Des Moines River and a not-quite-straight line along approximately 40 degrees 35 minutes north, as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Missouri v. Iowa (1849) after a standoff between Missouri and Iowa known as the Honey War.[15][16]
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+
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+ Iowa is the only state whose east and west borders are formed entirely by rivers.[17]
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+
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+ Iowa has 99 counties, but 100 county seats because Lee County has two. The state capital, Des Moines, is in Polk County.[18]
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+
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+ Iowa's bedrock geology generally increases in age from west to east. In northwest Iowa, Cretaceous bedrock can be 74 million years old; in eastern Iowa Cambrian bedrock dates to c. 500 million years ago.[19]
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+
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+ Iowa is generally not flat; most of the state consists of rolling hills. Iowa can be divided into eight landforms based on glaciation, soils, topography, and river drainage.[20] Loess hills lie along the western border of the state, some of which are several hundred feet thick.[21] Northeast Iowa along the Upper Mississippi River is part of the Driftless Area, consisting of steep hills and valleys which appear almost mountainous.[22]
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+
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+ Several natural lakes exist, most notably Spirit Lake, West Okoboji Lake, and East Okoboji Lake in northwest Iowa (see Iowa Great Lakes). To the east lies Clear Lake. Man-made lakes include Lake Odessa,[23] Saylorville Lake, Lake Red Rock, Coralville Lake, Lake MacBride, and Rathbun Lake. Before European settlement, 4 to 6 million acres of the state was covered with wetlands, about 95% of these wetlands have been drained.[24]
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+
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+ Iowa's natural vegetation is tallgrass prairie and savanna in upland areas, with dense forest and wetlands in flood plains and protected river valleys, and pothole wetlands in northern prairie areas.[20] Most of Iowa is used for agriculture; crops cover 60% of the state, grasslands (mostly pasture and hay with some prairie and wetland) cover 30%, and forests cover 7%; urban areas and water cover another 1% each.[25]
24
+
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+ The southern part of Iowa is categorized as the Central forest-grasslands transition ecoregion.[26] The Northern, drier part of Iowa is categorized as part of the Central tall grasslands.[27]
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+
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+ There is a dearth of natural areas in Iowa; less than 1% of the tallgrass prairie that once covered most of Iowa remains intact; only about 5% of the state's prairie pothole wetlands remain, and most of the original forest has been lost.[28] As of 2005[update] Iowa ranked 49th of U.S. states in public land holdings.[29] Threatened or endangered animals in Iowa include the interior least tern, piping plover, Indiana bat, pallid sturgeon, the Iowa Pleistocene land snail, Higgins' eye pearly mussel, and the Topeka shiner.[30] Endangered or threatened plants include western prairie fringed orchid, eastern prairie fringed orchid, Mead's milkweed, prairie bush clover, and northern wild monkshood.[31]
28
+
29
+ There is little proof to suggest that the explosion in the number of high-density livestock facilities in Iowa has led to increased rural water contamination and a decline in air quality.[32] In fact, covered manure storage in modern barns prevent that manure from washing away into surface water, as it does in open lots as snow melts and thunderstorms occur.
30
+
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+ Other factors negatively affecting Iowa's environment include the extensive use of older coal-fired power plants,[33] fertilizer and pesticide runoff from crop production,[34] and diminishment of the Jordan Aquifer.[35]
32
+
33
+ Iowa has a humid continental climate throughout the state (Köppen climate classification Dfa) with extremes of both heat and cold. The average annual temperature at Des Moines is 50 °F (10 °C); for some locations in the north, such as Mason City, the figure is about 45 °F (7 °C), while Keokuk, on the Mississippi River, averages 52 °F (11 °C).[36] Snowfall is common, with Des Moines getting about 26 days of snowfall a year, and other places, such as Shenandoah getting about 11 days of snowfall in a year.[37]
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+
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+ Spring ushers in the beginning of the severe weather season. Iowa averages about 50 days of thunderstorm activity per year.[38] The 30-year annual average Tornadoes in Iowa is 47.[39] In 2008, twelve people were killed by tornadoes in Iowa, making it the deadliest year since 1968 and also the second most tornadoes in a year with 105, matching the total from 2001.[40]
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+
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+ Iowa summers are known for heat and humidity, with daytime temperatures sometimes near 90 °F (32 °C) and occasionally exceeding 100 °F (38 °C). Average winters in the state have been known to drop well below freezing, even dropping below −18 °F (−28 °C). Iowa's all-time hottest temperature of 118 °F (48 °C) was recorded at Keokuk on July 20, 1934, during a nationwide heat wave;[41] the all-time lowest temperature of −47 °F (−44 °C) was recorded at Washta on January 12, 1912.[42]
38
+
39
+ Iowa has a relatively smooth gradient of varying precipitation across the state, with areas in the southeast of the state receiving an average of over 38 inches (97 cm) of rain annually, and the northwest of the state receiving less than 28 inches (71 cm).[49] The pattern of precipitation across Iowa is seasonal, with more rain falling in the summer months. Virtually statewide, the driest month is January or February, and the wettest month is June, owing to frequent showers and thunderstorms, some of which produce hail, damaging winds and/or tornadoes. In Des Moines, roughly in the center of the state, over two-thirds of the 34.72 inches (88.2 cm) of rain falls from April through September, and about half the average annual precipitation falls from May through August, peaking in June.[50]
40
+
41
+ When American Indians first arrived in what is now Iowa more than 13,000 years ago, they were hunters and gatherers living in a Pleistocene glacial landscape. By the time European explorers and traders visited Iowa, American Indians were largely settled farmers with complex economic, social, and political systems. This transformation happened gradually. During the Archaic period (10,500 to 2,800 years ago), American Indians adapted to local environments and ecosystems, slowly becoming more sedentary as populations increased.[51]
42
+
43
+ More than 3,000 years ago, during the Late Archaic period, American Indians in Iowa began utilizing domesticated plants. The subsequent Woodland period saw an increased reliance on agriculture and social complexity, with increased use of mounds, ceramics, and specialized subsistence. During the Late Prehistoric period (beginning about AD 900) increased use of maize and social changes led to social flourishing and nucleated settlements.[51]
44
+
45
+ The arrival of European trade goods and diseases in the Protohistoric period led to dramatic population shifts and economic and social upheaval, with the arrival of new tribes and early European explorers and traders. There were numerous Indian tribes living in Iowa at the time of early European exploration. Tribes which were probably descendants of the prehistoric Oneota include the Dakota, Ho-Chunk, Ioway, and Otoe. Tribes which arrived in Iowa in the late prehistoric or protohistoric periods include the Illiniwek, Meskwaki, Omaha, and Sauk.[51]
46
+
47
+ The first known European explorers to document Iowa were Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet who traveled the Mississippi River in 1673 documenting several Indian villages on the Iowa side.[52][53] The area of Iowa was claimed for France and remained a French territory until 1763. The French, before their impending defeat in the French and Indian War, transferred ownership to their ally, Spain.[54] Spain practiced very loose control over the Iowa region, granting trading licenses to French and British traders, who established trading posts along the Mississippi and Des Moines Rivers.[52]
48
+
49
+ Iowa was part of a territory known as La Louisiane or Louisiana, and European traders were interested in lead and furs obtained by Indians. The Sauk and Meskwaki effectively controlled trade on the Mississippi in the late 18th century and early 19th century. Among the early traders on the Mississippi were Julien Dubuque, Robert La Salle, and Paul Marin.[52] Along the Missouri River at least five French and English trading houses were built before 1808.[55] In 1800, Napoleon Bonaparte took control of Louisiana from Spain in a treaty.[56]
50
+
51
+ After the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Congress divided the Louisiana Purchase into two parts—the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana, with present-day Iowa falling in the latter. The Indiana Territory was created in 1800 to exercise jurisdiction over this portion of the District; William Henry Harrison was its first governor. Much of Iowa was mapped by Zebulon Pike in 1805,[57] but it was not until the construction of Fort Madison in 1808 that the U.S. established tenuous military control over the region.[58]
52
+
53
+ Fort Madison was built to control trade and establish U.S. dominance over the Upper Mississippi, but it was poorly designed and disliked by the Sauk and Ho-Chunk, many of whom allied with the British, who had not abandoned claims to the territory.[58][59] Fort Madison was defeated by British-supported Indians in 1813 during the War of 1812, and Fort Shelby in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, also fell to the British. Black Hawk took part in the siege of Fort Madison.[60][61] Another small military outpost was established along the Mississippi River in present-day Bellevue. This poorly situated stockade was similarly attacked by hundreds of Indians in 1813, but was successfully defended and later abandoned until settlers returned to the area in the mid-1830s.[62]
54
+
55
+ After the war, the U.S. re-established control of the region through the construction of Fort Armstrong, Fort Snelling in Minnesota, and Fort Atkinson in Nebraska.[63]
56
+
57
+ The U.S. encouraged settlement of the east side of the Mississippi and removal of Indians to the west.[64] A disputed 1804 treaty between Quashquame and William Henry Harrison that surrendered much of Illinois to the U.S. enraged many Sauk and led to the 1832 Black Hawk War.[65]
58
+
59
+ The Sauk and Meskwaki sold their land in the Mississippi Valley during 1832 in the Black Hawk Purchase[66] and sold their remaining land in Iowa in 1842, most of them moving to a reservation in Kansas.[65] Many Meskwaki later returned to Iowa and settled near Tama, Iowa; the Meskwaki Settlement remains to this day. In 1856 the Iowa Legislature passed an unprecedented act allowing the Meskawki to purchase the land.[67] The Ho-Chunk were removed from Iowa in 1848,[68] and the Dakota were removed by 1858.[69] Western Iowa around modern Council Bluffs was used as an Indian Reservation for members of the Council of Three Fires.[70]
60
+
61
+ The first American settlers officially moved to Iowa in June 1833.[71] Primarily, they were families from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana, Kentucky, and Virginia who settled along the western banks of the Mississippi River, founding the modern day cities of Dubuque and Bellevue.[71][72] On July 4, 1838, the U.S. Congress established the Territory of Iowa. President Martin Van Buren appointed Robert Lucas governor of the territory, which at the time had 22 counties and a population of 23,242.[73]
62
+
63
+ Almost immediately after achieving territorial status, a clamor arose for statehood. On December 28, 1846, Iowa became the 29th state in the Union when President James K. Polk signed Iowa's admission bill into law. Once admitted to the Union, the state's boundary issues resolved, and most of its land purchased from the Indians, Iowa set its direction to development and organized campaigns for settlers and investors, boasting the young frontier state's rich farmlands, fine citizens, free and open society, and good government.[74]
64
+
65
+ Iowa has a long tradition of state and county fairs. The first and second Iowa State Fairs were held in the more developed eastern part of the state at Fairfield. The first fair was held October 25–27, 1854, at a cost of around $323. Thereafter, the fair moved to locations closer to the center of the state and in 1886 found a permanent home in Des Moines. The State Fair has been held every year since except for the year 1898 due to the Spanish–American War and the World's Fair being held in nearby Omaha, Nebraska. The fair was also a World War II wartime casualty from 1942 to 1945, as the fairgrounds were being used as an army supply depot.[75]
66
+
67
+ Iowa supported the Union during the Civil War, voting heavily for Abraham Lincoln, though there was an antiwar "Copperhead" movement in the state, caused partially by a drop in crop prices caused by the war.[76] There were no battles in the state, although the battle of Athens, Missouri, 1861, was fought just across the Des Moines River from Croton, Iowa, and shots from the battle landed in Iowa. Iowa sent large supplies of food to the armies and the eastern cities.[77]
68
+
69
+ Much of Iowa's support for the Union can be attributed to Samuel J. Kirkwood, its first wartime governor. Of a total population of 675,000, about 116,000 men were subjected to military duty. Iowa contributed proportionately more men to Civil War military service than did any other state, north or south, sending more than 75,000 volunteers to the armed forces, over one-sixth of whom were killed before the Confederates surrendered at Appomattox.[77]
70
+
71
+ Most fought in the great campaigns in the Mississippi Valley and in the South.[78] Iowa troops fought at Wilson's Creek in Missouri, Pea Ridge in Arkansas, Forts Henry and Donelson, Shiloh, Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Rossville Gap as well as Vicksburg, Iuka, and Corinth. They served with the Army of the Potomac in Virginia and fought under Union General Philip Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley. Many died and were buried at Andersonville. They marched on General Nathaniel Banks' ill-starred expedition to the Red River. Twenty-seven Iowans have been awarded the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government, which was first awarded in the Civil War.[79]
72
+
73
+ Iowa had several brigadier generals and four major generals—Grenville Mellen Dodge, Samuel R. Curtis, Francis J. Herron, and Frederick Steele—and saw many of its generals go on to state and national prominence following the war.[77]
74
+
75
+ Following the Civil War, Iowa's population continued to grow dramatically, from 674,913 people in 1860[80] to 1,624,615 in 1880.[81] The American Civil War briefly brought higher profits.[82]
76
+
77
+ In 1917, the United States entered World War I and farmers as well as all Iowans experienced a wartime economy. For farmers, the change was significant. Since the beginning of the war in 1914, Iowa farmers had experienced economic prosperity, which lasted until the end of the war.[82] In the economic sector, Iowa also has undergone considerable change. Beginning with the first industries developed in the 1830s,[83] which were mainly for processing materials grown in the area,[84] Iowa has experienced a gradual increase in the number of business and manufacturing operations.
78
+
79
+ The transition from an agricultural economy to a mixed economy happened slowly. The Great Depression and World War II accelerated the shift away from smallholder farming to larger farms, and began a trend of urbanization. The period after World War II witnessed a particular increase in manufacturing operations.[85]
80
+
81
+ The farm crisis of the 1980s caused a major recession in Iowa, causing poverty not seen since the Depression.[86] The crisis spurred a major, decade-long population decline.[87]
82
+
83
+ After bottoming out in the 1980s, Iowa's economy began to become increasingly less dependent on agriculture. By the early 21st century, it was characterized by a mix of manufacturing, biotechnology, finance and insurance services, and government services.[88] The population of Iowa has increased at a faster rate than the U.S. as a whole,[87] and Iowa now has a predominantly urban population.[89] The Iowa Economic Development Authority, created in 2011 has replaced the Iowa Department of Economic Development and its annual reports are a source of economic information.[90]
84
+
85
+ The United States Census Bureau estimates the population of Iowa was 3,155,070 on July 1, 2019, a 3.57% increase since the 2010 Census.[92]
86
+
87
+ Of the residents of Iowa, 70.8% were born in Iowa, 23.6% were born in a different U.S. state, 0.6% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. Island areas, or born abroad to American parent(s), and 5% were foreign born.[93]
88
+
89
+ Immigration from outside the United States resulted in a net increase of 29,386 people, while migration within the country produced a net loss of 41,140 people. 6.5% of Iowa's population were reported as under the age of five, 22.6% under 18, and 14.7% were 65 or older. Males made up approximately 49.6% of the population.[94] Iowa has banned sanctuary cities.[95] The population density of the state is 52.7 people per square mile.[96] As of the 2010 Census, the center of population of Iowa is in Marshall County, near Melbourne.[97]
90
+
91
+ As of the 2010 Census, the population of Iowa was 3,046,355. The gender makeup of the state was 49.5% male and 50.5% female. 23.9% of the population were under the age of 18; 61.2% were between the ages of 18 and 64; and 14.9% were 65 years of age or older.[98]
92
+
93
+ The table below shows the racial composition of Iowa's population as of 2018.
94
+
95
+ According to the 2016 American Community Survey, 5.6% of Iowa's population were of Hispanic or Latino origin (of any race): Mexican (4.3%), Puerto Rican (0.2%), Cuban (0.1%), and other Hispanic or Latino origin (1.0%).[103] The five largest ancestry groups were: German (35.1%), Irish (13.5%), English (8.2%), American (5.8%), and Norwegian (5.0%).[104]
96
+
97
+ Iowa's population is more urban than rural, with 61 percent living in urban areas in 2000, a trend that began in the early 20th century.[89] Urban counties in Iowa grew 8.5% from 2000 to 2008, while rural counties declined by 4.2%.[106] The shift from rural to urban has caused population increases in more urbanized counties such as Dallas, Johnson, Linn, Polk, and Scott, at the expense of more rural counties.[107]
98
+
99
+ Iowa, in common with other Midwestern states (especially Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota), is feeling the brunt of rural flight, although Iowa has been gaining population since approximately 1990. Some smaller communities, such as Denison and Storm Lake, have mitigated this population loss through gains in immigrant laborers.[108]
100
+
101
+ Another demographic problem for Iowa is the brain drain, in which educated young adults leave the state in search of better prospects in higher education or employment. During the 1990s, Iowa had the second highest exodus rate for single, educated young adults, second only to North Dakota.[109]
102
+
103
+ Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
104
+
105
+ A 2001 survey from the City University of New York found 52% of Iowans are Protestant, while 23% are Catholic, and other religions made up 6%. 13% responded with non-religious, and 5% did not answer.[121] A survey from the Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) in 2010 found that the largest Protestant denominations were the United Methodist Church with 235,190 adherents and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America with 229,557. The largest non-Protestant religion was Catholicism with 503,080 adherents. The state has a great number of Reformed denominations. The Presbyterian Church (USA) had almost 290 congregations and 51,380 members followed by the Reformed Church in America with 80 churches and 40,000 members, and the United Church of Christ had 180 churches and 39,000 members.[122]
106
+
107
+ The study Religious Congregations & Membership: 2000[123] found in the southernmost two tiers of Iowa counties and in other counties in the center of the state, the largest religious group was the United Methodist Church; in the northeast part of the state, including Dubuque and Linn counties (where Cedar Rapids is located), the Catholic Church was the largest; and in ten counties, including three in the northern tier, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was the largest. The study also found rapid growth in Evangelical Christian denominations. Dubuque is home to the Archdiocese of Dubuque, which serves as the ecclesiastical province for all three other dioceses in the state and for all the Catholics in the entire state of Iowa.
108
+
109
+ Historically, religious sects and orders who desired to live apart from the rest of society established themselves in Iowa, such as the Amish and Mennonite near Kalona and in other parts of eastern Iowa such as Davis County and Buchanan County.[124] Other religious sects and orders living apart include Quakers around West Branch and Le Grand, German Pietists who founded the Amana Colonies, followers of Transcendental Meditation who founded Maharishi Vedic City, and Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance monks and nuns at the New Melleray and Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbies near Dubuque.
110
+
111
+ As of 2016[update] about 6,000 Jews live in Iowa, with about 3000 of them in Des Moines.[125]
112
+
113
+ English is the most common language in Iowa, used by 94% of the population.[citation needed] William Labov and colleagues, in the monumental Atlas of North American English[126] found the English spoken in Iowa divides into multiple linguistic regions. Natives of northern Iowa—including Sioux City, Fort Dodge, and the Waterloo region—tend to speak the dialect linguists call North Central American English, which is also found in North and South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Natives of central and southern Iowa—including such cities as Council Bluffs, Davenport, Des Moines, and Iowa City—tend to speak the North Midland dialect also found in eastern Nebraska, central Illinois, and central Indiana.[127] Natives of East-Central Iowa—including cities such as Cedar Rapids, Dubuque, and Clinton tend to speak with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, a dialect that extends from this area and east across the Great Lakes Region.[128]
114
+
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+ After English, Spanish is the second-most-common language spoken in Iowa, with 120,000 people in Iowa of Hispanic or Latino origin[129] and 47,000 people born in Latin America.[130] The third-most-common language is German, spoken by 17,000 people in Iowa; two notable German dialects used in Iowa include Amana German spoken around the Amana Colonies, and Pennsylvania German, spoken among the Amish in Iowa. The Babel Proclamation of 1918 banned the speaking of German in public. Around Pella, residents of Dutch descent once spoke the Pella Dutch dialect.
116
+
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+ No other language is spoken by more than 0.5 percent of the Iowa population. The only indigenous language used regularly in Iowa is Meskwaki, used around the Meskwaki Settlement.[131]
118
+
119
+ Ames is the home of Iowa State University, the Iowa State Center, and Reiman Gardens.
120
+
121
+ Des Moines is the largest city and metropolitan area[a] in Iowa and the state's political and economic center. It is home to the Iowa State Capitol, the State Historical Society of Iowa Museum, Drake University, Des Moines Art Center, Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden, Principal Riverwalk, the Iowa State Fair, Terrace Hill, and the World Food Prize. Nearby attractions include Adventureland and Prairie Meadows Racetrack Casino in Altoona, Living History Farms in Urbandale, Trainland USA in Colfax, and the Iowa Speedway and Valle Drive-In in Newton.
122
+
123
+ Boone hosts the biennial Farm Progress Show and is home to the Mamie Doud Eisenhower museum, the Boone & Scenic Valley Railroad, and Ledges State Park.
124
+
125
+ The Meskwaki Settlement west of Tama is the only American Indian settlement in Iowa and is host to a large annual Pow-wow.
126
+
127
+ Madison County is known for its covered bridges. Also in Madison County is the John Wayne Birthplace Museum is in Winterset.
128
+
129
+ Other communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Newton, Indianola, Pella, Knoxville, Marshalltown, Perry, and Story City.
130
+
131
+ Iowa City is home to the University of Iowa, which includes the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Old Capitol building. Because of the extraordinary history in the teaching and sponsoring of creative writing that emanated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and related programs, Iowa City was the first American city designated by the United Nations as a "City of Literature" in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network.[132]
132
+
133
+ The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site and Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum are in West Branch.
134
+
135
+ The Amana Colonies are a group of settlements of German Pietists comprising seven villages listed as National Historic Landmarks.
136
+
137
+ The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art has collections of paintings by Grant Wood and Marvin Cone. Cedar Rapids is also home to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library and Iowa's only National Trust for Historic Preservation Site, Brucemore mansion.
138
+
139
+ Davenport boasts the Figge Art Museum, River Music Experience, Putnam Museum, Davenport Skybridge, Quad City Symphony Orchestra, Ballet Quad Cities, and plays host to the annual Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival, and the Quad City Air Show, which is the largest airshow in the state.
140
+
141
+ Other communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include West Liberty, Fairfield, Burlington, Mount Pleasant, Fort Madison, LeClaire, Mount Vernon, Ottumwa, Washington, and Wilton.
142
+
143
+ Along Interstate 80 near Walcott lies the world's largest truck stop, Iowa 80.
144
+
145
+ Some of the most dramatic scenery in Iowa is found in the unique Loess Hills which are found along Iowa's western border.
146
+
147
+ Sioux City is the largest city in western Iowa and is found on the convergence of the Missouri, Floyd, and Big Sioux Rivers. The Sioux City Metropolitan Area encompasses areas in three states: Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Sioux City boasts a revitalized downtown and includes attractions such as the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Sergeant Floyd Monument, Sergeant Floyd River Museum, the Tyson Events Center, Southern Hills Mall, the Orpheum Theater, and more. The historic downtown area is also filled with multiple restaurants, bars, and other entertainment venues. Sioux City is home to two higher education institutions, Morningside College and Briar Cliff University. Le Mars is in the northeastern part of the Sioux City Metropolitan Area and is the self-proclaimed "Ice Cream Capital of the World". Le Mars is home to Wells Enterprises, one of the largest ice cream manufacturers in the world. Attractions in Le Mars include the Wells Visitor Center and Ice Cream Parlor, Archie's Waeside (steak house), Bob's Drive Inn, Tonsfeldt Round Barn, Plymouth County Fairgrounds, Plymouth County Museum, and Plymouth County Courthouse. Le Mars hosts multiple ice cream themed community events each year.
148
+
149
+ Council Bluffs, part of the Omaha (Nebr.) Metropolitan Area and a hub of southwest Iowa, sits at the base of the Loess Hills National Scenic Byway. With three casino resorts, the city also includes such cultural attractions as the Western Hills Trails Center, Union Pacific Railroad Museum, the Grenville M. Dodge House, and the Lewis and Clark Monument, with clear views of the Downtown Omaha skyline found throughout the city.
150
+
151
+ The Iowa Great Lakes is made up of multiple small towns, such as Spirit Lake, Arnolds Park, Milford, and Okoboji. Multiple resorts and other tourist attractions are found in and around these towns surrounding the popular lakes. Arnolds Park, one of the oldest amusement parks in the country, is located on Lake Okoboji in Arnolds Park.
152
+
153
+ The Sanford Museum and Planetarium in Cherokee, Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, The Danish Immigrant Museum in Elk Horn, and the Fort Museum and Frontier Village in Fort Dodge are other regional destinations.
154
+
155
+ Every year in early May, the city of Orange City holds the annual Tulip Festival, a celebration of the strong Dutch heritage in the region.[133]
156
+
157
+ Northwest Iowa is home to some of the largest concentrations of wind turbine farms in the world. Other western communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Storm Lake, Spencer, Glenwood, Carroll, Harlan, Atlantic, Red Oak, Denison, Creston, Mount Ayr, Sac City, and Walnut.
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+
159
+ The Driftless Area of northeast Iowa has many steep hills and deep valleys, checkered with forest and terraced fields. Effigy Mounds National Monument in Allamakee and Clayton Counties has the largest assemblage of animal-shaped prehistoric mounds in the world.
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+
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+ Waterloo is home of the Grout Museum and is headquarters of the Silos & Smokestacks National Heritage Area. Cedar Falls is home of the University of Northern Iowa.
162
+
163
+ Dubuque is a regional tourist destination with attractions such as the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium and the Port of Dubuque.
164
+
165
+ Dyersville is home to the famed Field of Dreams baseball diamond. Maquoketa Caves State Park, near Maquoketa, contains more caves than any other state park.
166
+
167
+ Fort Atkinson State Preserve in Fort Atkinson has the remains of an original 1840s Dragoon fortification.
168
+
169
+ Fort Dodge is home of The Fort historical museum and the Blanden Art Museum, and host Frontiers Days which celebrate the town history.
170
+
171
+ Other communities with vibrant historic downtown areas include Decorah, McGregor, Mason City, Elkader, Bellevue, Guttenberg, Algona, Spillville, Charles City, and Independence.
172
+
173
+ RAGBRAI, the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, attracts thousands of bicyclists and support personnel. It has crossed the state on various routes each year since 1973. Iowa is home to more than 70 wineries,[134] and hosts five regional wine tasting trails.[135] Many Iowa communities hold farmers' markets during warmer months; these are typically weekly events, but larger cities can host multiple markets.[136]
174
+
175
+ CNBC's list of "Top States for Business in 2010" has recognized Iowa as the sixth best state in the nation. Scored in 10 individual categories, Iowa was ranked 1st when it came to the "Cost of Doing Business"; this includes all taxes, utility costs, and other costs associated with doing business. Iowa was also ranked 10th in "Economy", 12th in "Business Friendliness", 16th in "Education", 17th in both "Cost of Living" and "Quality of Life", 20th in "Workforce", 29th in "Technology and Innovation", 32nd in "Transportation" and the lowest ranking was 36th in "Access to Capital".[138]
176
+
177
+ While Iowa is often viewed as a farming state, agriculture is a relatively small portion of the state's diversified economy, with manufacturing, biotechnology, finance and insurance services, and government services contributing substantially to Iowa's economy.[88] This economic diversity has helped Iowa weather the late 2000s recession better than most states, with unemployment substantially lower than the rest of the nation.[140][141]
178
+
179
+ If the economy is measured by gross domestic product, in 2005 Iowa's GDP was about $124 billion.[142] If measured by gross state product, for 2005 it was $113.5 billion.[143] Its per capita income for 2006 was $23,340.[143]
180
+
181
+ On July 2, 2009, Standard & Poor's rated the state of Iowa's credit as AAA (the highest of its credit ratings, held by only 11 U.S. state governments).[144]
182
+
183
+ As of December 2015, the state's unemployment rate is 3.4%.[145]
184
+
185
+ Manufacturing is the largest sector of Iowa's economy, with $20.8 billion (21%) of Iowa's 2003 gross state product. Major manufacturing sectors include food processing, heavy machinery, and agricultural chemicals. Sixteen percent of Iowa's workforce is dedicated to manufacturing.[88]
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+
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+ Food processing is the largest component of manufacturing. Besides processed food, industrial outputs include machinery, electric equipment, chemical products, publishing, and primary metals. Companies with direct or indirect processing facilities in Iowa include ConAgra Foods, Wells Blue Bunny, Barilla, Heinz, Tone's Spices, General Mills, and Quaker Oats. Meatpacker Tyson Foods has 11 locations, second only to its headquarter state Arkansas.[146]
188
+
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+ Major non-food manufacturing firms with production facilities in Iowa include 3M,[147]Arconic,[148] Amana Corporation,[149] Emerson Electric,[150] The HON Company,[151] SSAB,[152] John Deere,[153] Lennox Manufacturing,[154] Pella Corporation,[155] Procter & Gamble,[156] Vermeer Company,[157] and Winnebago Industries.[158]
190
+
191
+ Though industrial-scale, commodity agriculture predominates in much of the state, Iowa has seen growth in the organic farming sector. Iowa ranks fifth in the nation in total number of organic farms. In 2016, there were approximately 732 organic farms in the state, an increase of about 5% from the previous year, and 103,136 organic acres, an increase of 9,429 from the previous year.[159][160] Iowa has also seen an increase in demand for local, sustainably-grown food. Northeast Iowa, part of the Driftless Area, has led the state in development of its regional food system and grows and consumes more local food than any other region in Iowa.[161][162]
192
+
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+ Iowa's Driftless Region is also home to the nationally recognized Seed Savers Exchange, a non-profit seed bank housed at an 890-acre heritage farm near Decorah, in the northeast corner of the state.[163][164] The largest nongovernmental seed bank of its kind in the United States, Seed Savers Exchange safeguards more than 20,000 varieties of rare, heirloom seeds.[165]
194
+
195
+ As of 2007, the direct production and sale of conventional agricultural commodities contributed only about 3.5% of Iowa's gross state product.[166] In 2002 the impact of the indirect role of agriculture in Iowa's economy, including agriculture-affiliated business, was calculated at 16.4% in terms of value added and 24.3% in terms of total output. This was lower than the economic impact of non-farm manufacturing, which accounted for 22.4% of total value added and 26.5% of total output.[167] Iowa's main conventional agricultural commodities are hogs, corn, soybeans, oats, cattle, eggs, and dairy products. Iowa is the nation's largest producer of ethanol and corn and some years is the largest grower of soybeans. In 2008, the 92,600 farms in Iowa produced 19% of the nation's corn, 17% of the soybeans, 30% of the hogs, and 14% of the eggs.[168]
196
+
197
+ As of 2009[update] major Iowa agricultural product processors include Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Inc., Diamond V Mills, and Quaker Oats.[170]
198
+
199
+ As of 2014, there were 16 organizations offering health insurance products in Iowa, per the State of Iowa Insurance Division.[171]
200
+ Iowa was the 4th out of 10 states with the biggest drop in competition levels of health insurance between 2010 and 2011, per the 2013 annual report on the level of competition in the health insurance industry by the American Medical Association[172] using 2011 data from HealthLeaders-Interstudy, the most comprehensive source of data on enrollment in health maintenance organization (HMO), preferred provider organization (PPO), point-of-service (POS) and consumer-driven health care plans.[173]
201
+ According to the AMA annual report from 2007 Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield had provided 71% of the state's health insurance.[174]
202
+
203
+ The Iowa Insurance Division "Annual report to the Iowa Governor and the Iowa Legislature" from November 2014 looked at the 95% of health insurers by premium, which are 10 companies. It found Wellmark Inc. to dominate the three health insurance markets it examined (individual, small group and large group) at 52–67%.[175]:2 Wellmark HealthPlan of Iowa and Wellmark Inc had the highest risk-based capital percentages of all 10 providers at 1158% and 1132%, respectively.[175]:31 Rising RBC is an indication of profits.[175]:31
204
+
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+ Iowa has a strong financial and insurance sector, with approximately 6,100 firms,[88] including AEGON, Nationwide Group, Aviva USA, Farm Bureau Financial Services, Voya Financial, Marsh Affinity Group, MetLife, Principal Financial Group, Principal Capital Management, Wells Fargo, and University of Iowa Community Credit Union.
206
+
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+ Iowa is host to at least two business incubators, Iowa State University Research Park and the BioVentures Center at the University of Iowa.[176] The Research Park hosts about 50 companies, among them NewLink Genetics, which develops cancer immunotherapeutics, and the U.S. animal health division of Boehringer Ingelheim, Vetmedica.[176]
208
+
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+ Ethanol production consumes about a third of Iowa's corn production, and renewable fuels account for eight percent of the state's gross domestic product. A total of 39 ethanol plants produced 3.1 billion US gallons (12,000,000 m3) of fuel in 2009.[177]
210
+
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+ Renewable energy has become a major economic force in northern and western Iowa, with wind turbine electrical generation increasing exponentially since 1990.[10] In 2019, wind power in Iowa accounted for 42% of electrical energy produced, and 10,201 megawatts of generating capacity had been installed at the end of the year.[178] Iowa ranked first of U.S. states in percentage of total power generated by wind and second in wind generating capacity behind Texas.[178] Major producers of turbines and components in Iowa include Acciona Energy of West Branch, TPI Composites of Newton, and Siemens Energy of Fort Madison.
212
+
213
+ In 2016, Iowa was the headquarters for three of the top 2,000 companies for revenue.[179] They include Principal Financial, Rockwell Collins, and American Equity Investment.[180][181][182] Iowa is also headquarters to other companies including Hy-Vee, Pella Corporation, Vermeer Company, Kum & Go gas stations, Von Maur, Pioneer Hi-Bred, and Fareway.[183][184][185][186][187][188][189]
214
+
215
+ Tax is collected by the Iowa Department of Revenue.[190]
216
+
217
+ Iowa imposes taxes on net state income of individuals, estates, and trusts. There are nine income tax brackets, ranging from 0.36% to 8.98%, as well as four corporate income tax brackets ranging from 6% to 12%, giving Iowa the country's highest marginal corporate tax rate.[191] The state sales tax rate is 6%, with non-prepared food having no tax.[192] Iowa has one local option sales tax that may be imposed by counties after an election.[193] Property tax is levied on the taxable value of real property. Iowa has more than 2,000 taxing authorities. Most property is taxed by more than one taxing authority. The tax rate differs in each locality and is a composite of county, city or rural township, school district and special levies. Iowa allows its residents to deduct their federal income taxes from their state income taxes.[194]
218
+
219
+ Iowa has four primary interstate highways. Interstate 29 (I-29) travels along the state's western edge through Council Bluffs and Sioux City. I-35 travels from the Missouri state line to the Minnesota state line through the state's center, including Des Moines. I-74 begins at I-80 just northeast of Davenport. I-80 travels from the Nebraska state line to the Illinois state line through the center of the state, including Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Iowa City, and the Quad Cities. I-380 is an auxiliary Interstate Highway, which travels from I-80 near Iowa City through Cedar Rapids ending in Waterloo and is part of the Avenue of the Saints highway. Iowa is among the few jurisdictions where municipalities install speed cameras on interstate highways providing a substantial revenue source from out of state drivers.[195]
220
+
221
+ Iowa is served by several regional airports including the Des Moines International Airport, the Eastern Iowa Airport, in Cedar Rapids, Quad City International Airport, in Moline, Illinois, and Eppley Airfield, in Omaha, Nebraska. Smaller airports in the state include the Davenport Municipal Airport (Iowa), Dubuque Regional Airport, Fort Dodge Regional Airport, Mason City Municipal Airport, Sioux Gateway Airport, Southeast Iowa Regional Airport, and Waterloo Regional Airport.[196]
222
+
223
+ Amtrak's California Zephyr serves the south of Iowa with stops at Burlington, Mount Pleasant, Ottumwa, Osceola, and Creston on its daily route between Chicago and Emeryville, California.[197] Fort Madison is served by Amtrak's Southwest Chief, running daily between Chicago and Los Angeles.[198]
224
+
225
+ As of 2018[update], the 43rd and current Governor of Iowa is Kim Reynolds (R). Other statewide elected officials are:
226
+
227
+ The Code of Iowa contains Iowa's statutory laws. It is periodically updated by the Iowa Legislative Service Bureau, with a new edition published in odd-numbered years and a supplement published in even-numbered years.
228
+
229
+ Iowa is an alcohol monopoly or alcoholic beverage control state.
230
+
231
+ The two U.S. Senators:
232
+
233
+ The four U.S. Representatives:
234
+
235
+ After the 2010 United States Census and the resulting redistricting, Iowa lost one seat in Congress, falling to four seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Incumbent U.S. Representatives Leonard Boswell (D) and Tom Latham (R) ran against each other in 2012 in the third congressional district which had new boundaries; Latham won and retired after the 2014 elections. King represented the old fifth congressional district.
236
+
237
+ In Iowa, the term "political party" refers to political organizations which have received two percent or more of the votes cast for president or governor in the "last preceding general election". Iowa recognizes three political parties—the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the Libertarian Party.[199] The Libertarian Party obtained official political party status in 2017 as a result of presidential candidate Gary Johnson receiving 3.8% of the Iowa vote in the 2016 general election.[200] Third parties, officially termed "nonparty political organizations", can appear on the ballot as well. Four of these have had candidates on the ballot in Iowa since 2004 for various positions: the Constitution Party, the Green Party, the Pirate Party, and the Socialist Workers Party.[201][202]
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+
239
+ As a result of the 2010 elections, each party controlled one house of the Iowa General Assembly: the House had a Republican majority, while the Senate had a Democratic majority. As a result of the 2016 elections, Republicans gained control of the Senate. Incumbent Democratic governor Chet Culver was defeated in 2010 by Republican Terry Branstad, who had served as governor from 1983 to 1999. On December 14, 2015, Branstad became the longest serving governor in U.S. history, serving (at that time) 20 years, 11 months, and 3 days; eclipsing George Clinton, who served 21 years until 1804.[203] Lieutenant Governor Kim Reynolds succeeded him on May 24, 2017, following Branstad's appointment as U.S. Ambassador to China.
240
+
241
+ As of February 1, 2016, there were 2,095,639 registered voters. 635,687 or 30.3% were Democrats, 800,629 or 38.2% of voters were not registered in a party, 651,039 or 31.1% were Republicans, and 8,284 or 0.004% were registered with another party.[204]
242
+
243
+ The state gets considerable attention every four years because the Iowa caucus, gatherings of voters to select delegates to the state conventions, is the first presidential caucus in the country. The caucuses, held in January or February of the election year, involve people gathering in homes or public places and choosing their candidates, rather than casting secret ballots as is done in a presidential primary election.[205]
244
+ Along with the New Hampshire primary the following week, Iowa's caucuses have become the starting points for choosing the two major-party candidates for president.[206] The national and international media give Iowa and New Hampshire extensive attention, which gives Iowa voters leverage.[207] In 2007 presidential campaign spending was the seventh highest in the country.[208]
245
+
246
+ In the 19th century Iowa was among the earliest states to enact prohibitions against race discrimination, especially in education, but was slow to achieve full integration in the 20th century. In the very first decision of the Iowa Supreme Court—In Re the Matter of Ralph,[209] decided July 1839—the Court rejected slavery in a decision that found a slave named Ralph became free when he stepped on Iowa soil, 26 years before the end of the Civil War.[210] The state did away with racial barriers to marriage in 1851, more than 100 years before the U.S. Supreme Court would ban miscegenation statutes nationwide.[211]
247
+
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+ The Iowa Supreme Court decided Clark v. The board of directors[212] in 1868, ruling that racially segregated "separate but equal" schools had no place in Iowa, 85 years before Brown v. Board of Education.[210] By 1875, a number of additional court rulings effectively ended segregation in Iowa schools.[213] Social and housing discrimination continued against Blacks at state universities until the 1950s.[214] The Court heard Coger v. The North Western Union Packet Co.[215] in 1873, ruling against racial discrimination in public accommodations 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.[210]
249
+
250
+ In 1884, the Iowa Civil Rights Act apparently outlawed discrimination by businesses, reading: "All persons within this state shall be entitled to the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations, advantages, facilities, and privileges of inns, restaurants, chophouses, eating houses, lunch counters, and all other places where refreshments are served, public conveyances, barber shops, bathhouses, theaters, and all other places of amusement." However, the courts chose to narrowly apply this act, allowing de facto discrimination to continue.[216] Racial discrimination at public businesses was not deemed illegal until 1949, when the court ruled in State of Iowa v. Katz that businesses had to serve customers regardless of race; the case began when Edna Griffin was denied service at a Des Moines drugstore.[217] Full racial civil rights were codified under the Iowa Civil Rights Act of 1965.[218]
251
+
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+ As with racial equality, Iowa was a vanguard in women's rights in the mid-19th century, but did not allow women the right to vote until the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified in 1920, Iowa legislature being one of the ratifying votes.[219] In 1847, the University of Iowa became the first public university in the U.S. to admit men and women on an equal basis.[220] In 1869, Iowa became the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law, with the Court ruling women may not be denied the right to practice law in Iowa and admitting Arabella A. Mansfield to the practice of law.[210] Several attempts to grant full voting rights to Iowa women were defeated between 1870 and 1919. In 1894 women were given "partial suffrage", which allowed them to vote on issues, but not for candidates. It was not until the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment that women had full suffrage in Iowa.[221] Although Iowa supported the Federal Equal Rights Amendment, in 1980 and 1992 Iowa voters rejected an Equal Rights Amendment to the state constitution.[222] Iowa added the word "women" to the Iowa Constitution in 1998. After the amendment, it reads: "All men and women are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inalienable rights—among which are those of enjoying and defending life and liberty, acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness."[223]
253
+
254
+ In May 2018 Iowa signed into law one of the country's most restrictive abortion bans: the requirement that a doctor cannot perform an abortion if they can detect a fetal heartbeat, which in many cases would restrict abortions pregnancies less than six weeks old.[224] It was struck down in January 2019, when an Iowa state judge ruled that the "fetal heartbeat" law was unconstitutional.[225]
255
+
256
+ The state's law criminalizing same-sex sexual activity was repealed in June 1976, 27 years before Lawrence v. Texas. In 2007, the Iowa Legislature added "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the protected classes listed in the Iowa Civil Rights Act.[226]
257
+
258
+ On April 3, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court decided Varnum v. Brien,[227] holding in a unanimous decision,[228] the state's law forbidding same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. This made Iowa the third state in the U.S. and first in the Midwest to permit same-sex marriage.[229]
259
+ [230]
260
+
261
+ Iowa has ten official partner jurisdictions:[231]
262
+
263
+ Iowa was one of the leading states in the high school movement, and continues to be among the top educational performers today.[232]
264
+
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+ The four-year graduation rate for high schoolers was 91.3% in 2017.[233] Iowa's schools are credited with the highest graduation rate in the nation as of 2019.[234] Iowa has 333 school districts,[233] 1,329 school buildings and has the 14th lowest student-to-teacher ratio of 14.2.[235] Teacher pay is ranked 22nd, with the average salary being $55,647.[235]
266
+
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+ As of 2015[update] transportation spending is a significant part of the budgets of rural school districts as many are geographically large and must transport students across vast distances. This reduces the amount of money spent on other aspects of the districts.[236]
268
+
269
+ The state's oldest functioning school building is located in Bellevue in the historic Jackson County Courthouse which has been in continuous use as a school since 1848.[237]
270
+
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+ The Iowa Board of Regents is composed of nine citizen volunteers appointed by the governor to provide policymaking, coordination, and oversight of the state's three public universities, two special K–12 schools, and affiliated centers.[238]
272
+
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+ The special K–12 schools include the Iowa School for the Deaf in Council Bluffs and the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School in Vinton.[238] Both Iowa State University and The University of Iowa are research universities[239] and members of the prestigious Association of American Universities.[240] In addition to the three state universities, Iowa has multiple private colleges and universities.
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+
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+ The Clint Eastwood movie The Bridges of Madison County, based on the popular novel of the same name, took place and was filmed in Madison County.[241] What's Eating Gilbert Grape, based on the Peter Hedges novel of the same name, is set in the fictional Iowa town of Endora. Hedges was born in West Des Moines.[242]
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+
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+ Slipknot, a heavy metal band, was formed in Des Moines in 1995.[243] In 1992, Corey Taylor future co-founder of Slipknot formed Stone Sour in Des Moines. The band lasted until 1997.[244] Jazz cornetist, pianist, and composer Bix Beiderbecke was born in Davenport.
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+
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+ The state has four major college teams playing in NCAA Division I for all sports. In football, Iowa State University and the University of Iowa compete in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), whereas the University of Northern Iowa and Drake University compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Although Iowa has no professional major league sports teams, Iowa has minor league sports teams in baseball, basketball, hockey, and other sports.
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+ The following table shows the Iowa sports teams with average attendance over 8,000. All the following teams are NCAA Division I football, basketball, or wrestling teams:[245][246][247][248][249]
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+ The state has four NCAA Division I college teams. In NCAA FBS, the University of Iowa Hawkeyes play in the Big Ten Conference[250] and the Iowa State University Cyclones compete in the Big 12 Conference.[251] The two intrastate rivals compete annually for the Cy-Hawk Trophy as part of the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk Series.[252]
284
+
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+ In NCAA FCS, the University of Northern Iowa Panthers play at the Missouri Valley Conference[253] and Missouri Valley Football Conference[254] (despite the similar names, the conferences are administratively separate), whereas the Drake University Bulldogs play at the Missouri Valley Conference[255] in most sports and Pioneer League for football.[256]
286
+
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+ Des Moines is home to the Iowa Cubs, a Class AAA team in the Pacific Coast League and affiliate of the Chicago Cubs.[257][258] Iowa has four Class A minor league teams in the Midwest League: the Burlington Bees, Cedar Rapids Kernels, Clinton LumberKings, and the Quad Cities River Bandits.[259] The Sioux City Explorers are part of the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball.[260]
288
+
289
+ Des Moines is home to the Iowa Wild, who are affiliated with the Minnesota Wild and are members of the American Hockey League.[261]
290
+
291
+ The United States Hockey League has five teams in Iowa: the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders, Sioux City Musketeers, Waterloo Black Hawks, Des Moines Buccaneers, and the Dubuque Fighting Saints.[262] The North Iowa Bulls play in the North American 3 Hockey League (NA3HL) in Mason City.[263]
292
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+ Iowa is a hotbed of wrestling in the United States. Iowa and Iowa State have won a combined 30 NCAA Division I titles.
294
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295
+ Iowa has two professional basketball teams. The Iowa Wolves, an NBA G League team that plays in Des Moines, is owned and affiliated with the Minnesota Timberwolves of the NBA. The Sioux City Hornets play in the American Basketball Association.
296
+
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+ Iowa has three professional football teams. The Sioux City Bandits play in the Champions Indoor Football league. The Iowa Barnstormers play in the Indoor Football League at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines. The Cedar Rapids Titans play in the Indoor Football League at the U.S. Cellular Center.
298
+
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+ The Iowa Speedway oval track has hosted auto racing championships such as the IndyCar Series, NASCAR Nationwide Series and NASCAR Truck Series since 2006. Also, the Knoxville Raceway dirt track hosts the Knoxville Nationals, one of the classic sprint car racing events.
300
+
301
+ The John Deere Classic is a PGA Tour golf event held in the Quad Cities since 1971. The Principal Charity Classic is a Champions Tour event since 2001. The Des Moines Golf and Country Club hosted the 1999 U.S. Senior Open and the 2017 Solheim Cup.
302
+
303
+ Iowa is the birthplace of U.S. President Herbert Hoover, Vice President Henry A. Wallace, and two first ladies, Lou Henry Hoover and Mamie Eisenhower. Other national leaders who lived in Iowa include John L. Lewis, Harry Hopkins, Carrie Chapman Catt, and Chief Black Hawk.
304
+
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+ Five Nobel Prize winners hail from Iowa: Norman Borlaug, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; Thomas Cech, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; Alan J. Heeger, also a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry; John Mott, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize; and Stanley B. Prusiner, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Other notable scientists who worked or were born in Iowa include astronomer and space pioneer James A. Van Allen, climate scientist James Hansen, ecologist Aldo Leopold, computer pioneer John Vincent Atanasoff, geochemist Clair Cameron Patterson, and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce.
306
+
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+ Notable writers, artists, and news personalities from Iowa include Bill Bryson, George Gallup, Susan Glaspell, Mauricio Lasansky, Tomas Lasansky, Harry Reasoner, and Grant Wood.
308
+
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+ Musicians, actors, and entertainers from Iowa include Tom Arnold, Julia Michaels, Bix Beiderbecke, Johnny Carson, Buffalo Bill Cody, Simon Estes, Nathan Jonas Jordison, Corey Taylor, Shawn Crahan, William Frawley, Charlie Haden, Ashton Kutcher, Cloris Leachman, Glenn Miller, Kate Mulgrew, Eric Christian Olsen, Donna Reed, George Reeves, Brandon Routh, Jean Seberg, John Wayne, Brooks Wheelan, Andy Williams, Meredith Willson, Elijah Wood and Jason Momoa.
310
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+ Olympic gold medal-winning athletes from Iowa include Dan Gable, Shawn Johnson, and Cael Sanderson. Iowa athletes inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame include Cap Anson, Fred Clarke, Red Faber, and Bob Feller. In college football, Jay Berwanger was the first winner of the Downtown Athletic Club Trophy in 1935, later renamed the Heisman Trophy and won by Nile Kinnick in 1939. In professional football, Kurt Warner was the Super Bowl XXXIV MVP winner and a two-time NFL MVP award winner. Frank Gotch was a World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion, Zach Johnson won the 2007 Masters Golf Tournament and the 2015 British Open, and Jeremy Hellickson won the 2011 American League Rookie of the Year award pitching for the Tampa Bay Rays. Former WWE Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins is from Davenport.[267]
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+ Bluetooth 4.2
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+
5
+ The iPad Air 2 is the second-generation iPad Air tablet computer designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It was announced on October 16, 2014 alongside the iPad mini 3, both of which were released on October 22, 2014. The iPad Air 2 is thinner and faster than its predecessor, the iPad Air, and features Touch ID with the height and screen size the same as the iPad Air.
6
+
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+ The iPad Air 2 was discontinued on March 21, 2017 exactly 1 year after the first generation was discontinued. Its successor, the third-generation iPad Air, was released on March 18, 2019.[5]
8
+
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+ The iPad Air 2 was announced during a keynote on October 16, 2014, and was the first iPad to feature Touch ID. The theme of the keynote was "it's been way too long".[6] The Air 2 began arriving in retail stores on October 22, 2014. The slogan for the device was Change Is in the Air. With the release of the new iPad Pro, the slogan for the device was changed to Light. Heavyweight.
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+
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+ The iPad Air 2 ships with the iOS 8 pre-installed and includes a version of Apple Pay with the in-store NFC functionality removed. The included Touch ID sensor allows the user to pay for items online without needing to enter the user's card details.
12
+
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+ iOS 8 comes with several built-in applications, which are Camera, Photos, Messages, FaceTime, Mail, Music, Safari, Maps, Siri, Calendar, iTunes Store, App Store, Notes, Contacts, iBooks, Home, Reminders, Clock, Videos, News, Photo Booth and Podcasts. The Apple App Store, a digital application distribution platform for iOS, allows users to browse and download applications made by various developers from the iTunes Store. Additional apps made by Apple itself are available for free download, which are iMovie, GarageBand, iTunes U, Find My iPhone, Find My Friends, Apple Store, Trailers, Remote, and the iWork apps (Pages, Keynote, and Numbers).[7] Like all iOS devices, the iPad Air 2 can also sync content and other data with a Mac or PC using iTunes. Although the tablet is not designed to make phone calls over a cellular network, it can place and receive phone calls through an iPhone's cellular connection, using Apple's Continuity feature[8] (supported on iOS 8 and later versions of iOS, and OS X Yosemite and later versions of macOS), or using a VoIP application, such as Skype.
14
+
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+ On June 8, 2015, it was announced at the WWDC that the iPad Air 2 would support all of iOS 9's new features when it is released in Q3 2015.[9] Air 2 users with iOS 9 will be able to use Slide Over, Picture in Picture and Split View. Slide Over allows a user to "slide" a second app in from the side of the screen in a smaller window, and have it display information alongside the initial app. Picture in Picture allows a user to watch video in a small, resizable, moveable window while remaining in another app. Split View allows a user to run two apps simultaneously in a 50/50 view.[10]
16
+
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+ It was revealed at WWDC 2019 that the iPad Air 2 would support iPadOS. It does lack the support for some features though such as Memoji Stickers, Apple's ARKit based applications and support for Sidecar in macOS Catalina, due to it having the Apple A8X Processor. Apart from this, most of the features that were introduced in iPadOS will work with this iPad, including support for external USB drives (using the camera connection kits), the redesigned split screen and multitasking interface (with support for two apps to be open at once) and support for Haptic Touch (no haptic feedback will be felt as the iPad family don't have Taptic Engines). Many people have described this iPad with this new software as a budget, and watered down version of its successor the iPad Pro.[11]
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+ With the release of iPadOS 13.4, the iPad Air 2 supports the new mouse and trackpad feature. It works by using the camera connection kits or via bluetooth. Bluetooth powered keyboards with a trackpad may also work depending in the manufacturer.
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+
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+ At WWDC 2020, the iPad Air 2 was revealed to support iPadOS 14 despite rumors saying it would not. This makes it the first device to support seven generations of both iOS and iPadOS. It does though lack new features such as ARKit 4 and new Apple Pencil features. It does though support the improved Safari browser and new Messages app. The iPad mini 4 was also supported for the next generation of iPadOS 14.
22
+
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+ iPad Air 2 is 6.1mm compared to the iPad Air 7.5mm design
24
+
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+ The iPad Air 2 inherits hardware similar to both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus with a major change in processor to the Apple A8X, the high-end 3-core variant of the Apple A8. The iPad Air 2 has 2 GB RAM (making the iPad Air 2 the first iOS device to have more than 1 GB RAM) and the PowerVR GPU has 8 cores.[12] It also uses the Apple M8 motion co-processor which has a barometer and is the first generation of the iPad to inherit the fingerprint Touch ID sensor from the iPhone. In addition, compared to the iPad Air, it includes an improved 8-megapixel (3264×2448) rear-facing camera with 10 fps burst mode and slow motion video at 120 fps, similar to the iPhone 5S camera capabilities. The front-facing FaceTime HD camera has also been improved with a larger ƒ/2.2 aperture, which allows 81% more light in the image.[13] Apple added a gold option to the existing silver and space gray color choices for the iPad Air 2, the previous existing colors were used on the preceding iPad Air.
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+
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+ Unlike its iPad predecessors, the mute/orientation lock switch has been removed to accommodate the reduced depth. Instead, the user must use the Control Center to access these functions.
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+ It has a slightly smaller battery compared to the iPad Air, although Apple claims the same 10-hour battery life as before. The iPad Air 2 is available in 16, 32, 64 or 128 GB storage options with no storage expansion options. Apple has released a "camera connection kit" with an SD card reader, but it can only be used to transfer photos and videos to an iPad.[14]
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+ The iPad Air 2 received positive reviews. The Verge called the Air 2 "the best tablet ever made," giving it a score of 9.3 out of 10 while noting that it offered only "iterative improvement" and that there were "missed opportunities" in its design.[15]
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+
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+
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+ The iPod is a line of portable media players and multi-purpose pocket computers[2] designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about ​8 1⁄2 months after the Macintosh version of iTunes was released. As of May 28, 2019, only the iPod Touch (7th generation) remains in production.[3]
6
+
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+ Like other digital music players, some versions of the iPod can serve as external data storage devices. Prior to macOS 10.15, Apple's iTunes software (and other alternative software) could be used to transfer music, photos, videos, games, contact information, e-mail settings, Web bookmarks, and calendars to the devices supporting these features from computers using certain versions of Apple macOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems.[4][5]
8
+
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+ Before the release of iOS 5, the iPod branding was used for the media player included with the iPhone and iPad, a combination of the Music and Videos apps on the iPod Touch. As of iOS 5, separate apps named "Music" and "Videos" are standardized across all iOS-powered products.[6] While the iPhone and iPad have essentially the same media player capabilities as the iPod line, they are generally treated as separate products. During the middle of 2010, iPhone sales overtook those of the iPod.[7]
10
+
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+ Apple made the Apple Newton from 1993 to 1998 and made the eMate from 1997 to 1998. Following the lackluster sales of these devices, Apple wanted a mobile device and so started to develop a personal media player, which would become the iPod.
12
+
13
+ The iPod was released in late 2001.[8] The iPod line came from Apple's "digital hub" category, when the company began creating software for the growing market of personal digital devices. Digital cameras, camcorders, and organizers had well-established mainstream markets, but the company found existing digital music players "big and clunky or small and useless" with user interfaces that were "unbelievably awful,"[9] so Apple decided to develop its own. As ordered by CEO Steve Jobs, Apple's hardware engineering chief Jon Rubinstein assembled a team of engineers to design the iPod line, including hardware engineers Tony Fadell and Michael Dhuey,[10] and design engineer Sir Jonathan Ive.[9] Rubinstein had already discovered the Toshiba hard disk drive while meeting with an Apple supplier in Japan, and purchased the rights to it for Apple, and had also already worked out how the screen, battery, and other key elements would work.[11] The aesthetic was inspired by the 1958 Braun T3 transistor radio designed by Dieter Rams, while the wheel-based user interface was prompted by Bang & Olufsen's BeoCom 6000 telephone.[12][13] The product ("the Walkman of the twenty-first century" [14]) was developed in less than one year and unveiled on October 23, 2001. Jobs announced it as a Mac-compatible product with a 5 GB hard drive that put "1,000 songs in your pocket."[15]
14
+
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+ Apple did not develop the iPod software entirely in-house, instead using PortalPlayer's reference platform based on two ARM cores. The platform had rudimentary software running on a commercial microkernel embedded operating system. PortalPlayer had previously been working on an IBM-branded MP3 player with Bluetooth headphones.[9] Apple contracted another company, Pixo, to help design and implement the user interface under the direct supervision of Steve Jobs.[9] As development progressed, Apple continued to refine the software's look and feel. Starting with the iPod Mini, the Chicago font was replaced with Espy Sans. Later iPods switched fonts again to Podium Sans—a font similar to Apple's corporate font, Myriad. Color display iPods then adopted some Mac OS X themes like Aqua progress bars, and brushed metal meant to evoke a combination lock. In 2007, Apple modified the iPod interface again with the introduction of the sixth-generation iPod Classic and third-generation iPod Nano by changing the font to Helvetica and, in most cases, splitting the screen in half by displaying the menus on the left and album artwork, photos, or videos on the right (whichever was appropriate for the selected item).
16
+
17
+ In 2006 Apple presented a special edition for iPod 5G of Irish rock band U2. Like its predecessor, this iPod has engraved the signatures of the four members of the band on its back, but this one was the first time the company changed the color of the metal (not silver but black). This iPod was only available with 30GB of storage capacity. The special edition entitled purchasers to an exclusive video with 33 minutes of interviews and performance by U2, downloadable from the iTunes Store.[16][17]
18
+
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+ The name iPod was proposed by Vinnie Chieco, a freelance copywriter, who (with others) was called by Apple to figure out how to introduce the new player to the public. After Chieco saw a prototype, he thought of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey and the phrase "Open the pod bay doors, Hal",[18] which refers to the white EVA Pods of the Discovery One spaceship. Chieco saw an analogy to the relationship between the spaceship and the smaller independent pods in the relationship between a personal computer and the music player.[9] Apple researched the trademark and found that it was already in use. Joseph N. Grasso of New Jersey had originally listed an "iPod" trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in July 2000 for Internet kiosks. The first iPod kiosks had been demonstrated to the public in New Jersey in March 1998, and commercial use began in January 2000 but had apparently been discontinued by 2001. The trademark was registered by the USPTO in November 2003, and Grasso assigned it to Apple Computer, Inc. in 2005.[19]
20
+
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+ The earliest recorded use in commerce of an "iPod" trademark was in 1991 by Chrysalis Corp. of Sturgis, Michigan, styled "iPOD", for office furniture.[20]
22
+
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+ In mid-2015, several new color schemes for all of the current iPod models were spotted in the latest version of iTunes, 12.2. Belgian website Belgium iPhone originally found the images when plugging in an iPod for the first time, and subsequent leaked photos were found by Pierre Dandumont.[21][22]
24
+
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+ On July 27, 2017, Apple removed the iPod Nano and Shuffle from its stores, marking the end of Apple producing standalone music players.[23] Currently, the iPod Touch is the only iPod produced by Apple.
26
+
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+ The third-generation iPod had a weak bass response, as shown in audio tests.[31][32] The combination of the undersized DC-blocking capacitors and the typical low impedance of most consumer headphones form a high-pass filter, which attenuates the low-frequency bass output. Similar capacitors were used in the fourth-generation iPods.[33] The problem is reduced when using high-impedance headphones and is completely masked when driving high-impedance (line level) loads, such as an external headphone amplifier. The first-generation iPod Shuffle uses a dual-transistor output stage,[31] rather than a single capacitor-coupled output, and does not exhibit reduced bass response for any load.
28
+
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+ For all iPods released in 2006 and earlier, some equalizer (EQ) sound settings would distort the bass sound far too easily, even on undemanding songs.[34][35] This would happen for EQ settings like R&B, Rock, Acoustic, and Bass Booster, because the equalizer amplified the digital audio level beyond the software's limit, causing distortion (clipping) on bass instruments.
30
+
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+ From the fifth-generation iPod on, Apple introduced a user-configurable volume limit in response to concerns about hearing loss.[36] Users report that in the sixth-generation iPod, the maximum volume output level is limited to 100 dB in EU markets. Apple previously had to remove iPods from shelves in France for exceeding this legal limit.[37] However, users who have bought a new sixth-generation iPod in late 2013 have reported a new option that allowed them to disable the EU volume limit.[38] It has been said that these new iPods came with an updated software that allowed this change.[39] Older sixth-generation iPods, however, are unable to update to this software version.[40]
32
+
33
+ Originally, a FireWire connection to the host computer was used to update songs or recharge the battery. The battery could also be charged with a power adapter that was included with the first four generations.
34
+
35
+ The third generation began including a 30-pin dock connector, allowing for FireWire or USB connectivity. This provided better compatibility with non-Apple machines, as most of them did not have FireWire ports at the time. Eventually, Apple began shipping iPods with USB cables instead of FireWire, although the latter was available separately. As of the first-generation iPod Nano and the fifth-generation iPod Classic, Apple discontinued using FireWire for data transfer (while still allowing for use of FireWire to charge the device) in an attempt to reduce cost and form factor. As of the second-generation iPod Touch and the fourth-generation iPod Nano, FireWire charging ability has been removed. The second-, third-, and fourth-generation iPod Shuffle uses a single 3.5 mm minijack phone connector which acts as both a headphone jack or a USB data and charging port for the dock/cable.
36
+
37
+ The dock connector also allowed the iPod to connect to accessories, which often supplement the iPod's music, video, and photo playback. Apple sells a few accessories, such as the now-discontinued iPod Hi-Fi, but most are manufactured by third parties such as Belkin and Griffin. Some peripherals use their own interface, while others use the iPod's own screen. Because the dock connector is a proprietary interface, the implementation of the interface requires paying royalties to Apple.[41]
38
+
39
+ Apple introduced a new 8-pin dock connector, named Lightning, on September 12, 2012 with their announcement of the iPhone 5, the fifth-generation iPod Touch, and the seventh-generation iPod Nano, which all feature it. The new connector replaces the older 30-pin dock connector used by older iPods, iPhones, and iPads. Apple Lightning cables have pins on both sides of the plug so it can be inserted with either side facing up.[42]
40
+
41
+ Bluetooth connectivity was added to the last model of the iPod Nano, and Wi-Fi to the iPod Touch.
42
+
43
+ Two early designs of iPod earphones
44
+
45
+ Apple EarPods, introduced 2012
46
+
47
+ Many accessories have been made for the iPod line. A large number are made by third party companies, although many, such as the iPod Hi-Fi, are made by Apple. Some accessories add extra features that other music players have, such as sound recorders, FM radio tuners, wired remote controls, and audio/visual cables for TV connections. Other accessories offer unique features like the Nike+iPod pedometer and the iPod Camera Connector. Other notable accessories include external speakers, wireless remote controls, protective case, screen films, and wireless earphones.[43] Among the first accessory manufacturers were Griffin Technology, Belkin, JBL, Bose, Monster Cable, and SendStation.
48
+
49
+ BMW released the first iPod automobile interface,[44] allowing drivers of newer BMW vehicles to control an iPod using either the built-in steering wheel controls or the radio head-unit buttons. Apple announced in 2005 that similar systems would be available for other vehicle brands, including Mercedes-Benz,[45] Volvo,[46] Nissan, Toyota,[47] Alfa Romeo, Ferrari,[48] Acura, Audi, Honda,[49] Renault, Infiniti[50] and Volkswagen.[51] Scion offers standard iPod connectivity on all their cars.
50
+
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+ Gecko Gear, founded in 2006, sells 100 accessories ranging from protective covers to cases, screen protectors to armbands.
52
+
53
+ Some independent stereo manufacturers including JVC, Pioneer, Kenwood, Alpine, Sony, and Harman Kardon also have iPod-specific integration solutions. Alternative connection methods include adapter kits (that use the cassette deck or the CD changer port), audio input jacks, and FM transmitters such as the iTrip—although personal FM transmitters are illegal in some countries. Many car manufacturers have added audio input jacks as standard.[52]
54
+
55
+ Beginning in mid-2007, four major airlines, United, Continental, Delta, and Emirates, reached agreements to install iPod seat connections. The free service will allow passengers to power and charge an iPod, and view video and music libraries on individual seat-back displays.[53] Originally KLM and Air France were reported to be part of the deal with Apple, but they later released statements explaining that they were only contemplating the possibility of incorporating such systems.[54]
56
+
57
+ The iPod line can play several audio file formats including MP3, AAC/M4A, Protected AAC, AIFF, WAV, Audible audiobook, and Apple Lossless.[55] The iPod Photo introduced the ability to display JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, and PNG image file formats.[56] Fifth- and sixth-generation iPod Classic models, as well as third-generation iPod Nano models, can also play MPEG-4 (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC) and QuickTime video formats, with restrictions on video dimensions, encoding techniques and data rates.[57] Originally, iPod software only worked with Classic Mac OS and macOS;[58] iPod software for Microsoft Windows was launched with the second-generation model.[59] Unlike most other media players, Apple does not support Microsoft's WMA audio format—but a converter for WMA files without digital rights management (DRM) is provided with the Windows version of iTunes.[55] MIDI files also cannot be played, but can be converted to audio files using the "Advanced" menu in iTunes.[60] Alternative open-source audio formats, such as Ogg Vorbis and FLAC, are not supported without installing custom firmware onto an iPod (e.g., Rockbox).
58
+
59
+ During installation, an iPod is associated with one host computer.[61] Each time an iPod connects to its host computer, iTunes can synchronize entire music libraries or music playlists either automatically or manually.[61] Song ratings can be set on an iPod and synchronized later to the iTunes library, and vice versa.[62] A user can access, play, and add music on a second computer if an iPod is set to manual and not automatic sync, but anything added or edited will be reversed upon connecting and syncing with the main computer and its library. If a user wishes to automatically sync music with another computer, an iPod's library will be entirely wiped and replaced with the other computer's library.
60
+
61
+ iPods with color displays use anti-aliased graphics and text, with sliding animations. All iPods (except the 3rd-generation iPod Shuffle, the 6th & 7th generation iPod Nano, and iPod Touch) have five buttons and the later generations have the buttons integrated into the click wheel – an innovation that gives an uncluttered, minimalist interface. The buttons perform basic functions such as menu, play, pause, next track, and previous track. Other operations, such as scrolling through menu items and controlling the volume, are performed by using the click wheel in a rotational manner. The 3rd-generation iPod Shuffle does not have any controls on the actual player; instead, it has a small control on the earphone cable, with volume-up and -down buttons and a single button for play and pause, next track, etc. The iPod Touch has no click-wheel; instead, it uses a touch screen along with a home button, sleep/wake button, and (on the second and third generations of the iPod Touch) volume-up and -down buttons. The user interface for the iPod Touch is identical to that of the iPhone. Differences include the lack of a phone application. Both devices use iOS.
62
+
63
+ The iTunes Store (introduced April 29, 2003) is an online media store run by Apple and accessed through iTunes. The store became the market leader soon after its launch[63] and Apple announced the sale of videos through the store on October 12, 2005. Full-length movies became available on September 12, 2006.[64]
64
+
65
+ At the time the store was introduced, purchased audio files used the AAC format with added encryption, based on the FairPlay DRM system. Up to five authorized computers and an unlimited number of iPods could play the files. Burning the files with iTunes as an audio CD, then re-importing would create music files without the DRM. The DRM could also be removed using third-party software. However, in a deal with Apple, EMI began selling DRM-free, higher-quality songs on the iTunes Stores, in a category called "iTunes Plus." While individual songs were made available at a cost of US$1.29, 30¢ more than the cost of a regular DRM song, entire albums were available for the same price, US$9.99, as DRM encoded albums. On October 17, 2007, Apple lowered the cost of individual iTunes Plus songs to US$0.99 per song, the same as DRM encoded tracks. On January 6, 2009, Apple announced that DRM has been removed from 80% of the music catalog and that it would be removed from all music by April 2009.
66
+
67
+ iPods cannot play music files from competing music stores that use rival-DRM technologies like Microsoft's protected WMA or RealNetworks' Helix DRM. Example stores include Napster and MSN Music. RealNetworks claims that Apple is creating problems for itself[65] by using FairPlay to lock users into using the iTunes Store. Steve Jobs stated that Apple makes little profit from song sales, although Apple uses the store to promote iPod sales.[66] However, iPods can also play music files from online stores that do not use DRM, such as eMusic or Amie Street.
68
+
69
+ Universal Music Group decided not to renew their contract with the iTunes Store on July 3, 2007. Universal will now supply iTunes in an 'at will' capacity.[67]
70
+
71
+ Apple debuted the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store on September 5, 2007, in its Media Event entitled "The Beat Goes On...". This service allows users to access the Music Store from either an iPhone or an iPod Touch and download songs directly to the device that can be synced to the user's iTunes Library over a WiFi connection, or, in the case of an iPhone, the telephone network.
72
+
73
+ Video games are playable on various versions of iPods. The original iPod had the game Brick (originally invented by Apple's co-founder Steve Wozniak) included as an easter egg hidden feature; later firmware versions added it as a menu option. Later revisions of the iPod added three more games: Parachute, Solitaire, and Music Quiz.
74
+
75
+ In September 2006, the iTunes Store began to offer additional games for purchase with the launch of iTunes 7, compatible with the fifth generation iPod with iPod software 1.2 or later. Those games were: Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini Golf, Pac-Man, Tetris, Texas Hold 'Em, Vortex, Asphalt 4: Elite Racing and Zuma. Additional games have since been added. These games work on the 6th and 5th generation iPod Classic and the 5th and 4th generation iPod Nano.
76
+
77
+ With third parties like Namco, Square Enix, Electronic Arts, Sega, and Hudson Soft all making games for the iPod, Apple's MP3 player has taken steps towards entering the video game handheld console market. Even video game magazines like GamePro and EGM have reviewed and rated most of their games as of late.[68]
78
+
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+ The games are in the form of .ipg files, which are actually .zip archives in disguise.[69] When unzipped, they reveal executable files along with common audio and image files, leading to the possibility of third party games. Apple has not publicly released a software development kit (SDK) for iPod-specific development.[70] Apps produced with the iPhone SDK are compatible only with the iOS on the iPod Touch and iPhone, which cannot run click wheel-based games.
80
+
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+ All iPods except for the iPod Touch can function in "disk mode" as mass storage devices to store data files[71] but this may not be the default behavior.[citation needed] If an iPod is formatted on a Mac OS computer, it uses the HFS+ file system format, which allows it to serve as a boot disk for a Mac computer.[72] If it is formatted on Windows, the FAT32 format is used. With the release of the Windows-compatible iPod, the default file system used on the iPod line switched from HFS+ to FAT32, although it can be reformatted to either file system (excluding the iPod Shuffle which is strictly FAT32). Generally, if a new iPod (excluding the iPod Shuffle) is initially plugged into a computer running Windows, it will be formatted with FAT32, and if initially plugged into a Mac running Mac OS it will be formatted with HFS+.[73]
82
+
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+ Unlike many other MP3 players, simply copying audio or video files to the drive with a typical file management application will not allow an iPod to properly access them. The user must use software that has been specifically designed to transfer media files to iPods so that the files are playable and viewable. Usually iTunes is used to transfer media to an iPod, though several alternative third-party applications are available on a number of different platforms.
84
+
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+ iTunes 7 and above can transfer purchased media of the iTunes Store from an iPod to a computer, provided that computer containing the DRM protected media is authorized to play it.
86
+
87
+ Media files are stored on an iPod in a hidden folder, along with a proprietary database file. The hidden content can be accessed on the host operating system by enabling hidden files to be shown. The media files can then be recovered manually by copying the files or folders off the iPod. Many third-party applications also allow easy copying of media files off of an iPod.
88
+
89
+ While the suffix "Classic" was not introduced until the sixth generation, it has been applied here retroactively to all generic iPods for clarity.
90
+
91
+ Starting at iOS 2.1.1
92
+
93
+ Starting at iOS 4.1
94
+
95
+ In 2005, Apple faced two lawsuits claiming patent infringement by the iPod line and its associated technologies:[80] Advanced Audio Devices claimed the iPod line breached its patent on a "music jukebox",[81] while a Hong Kong-based IP portfolio company called Pat-rights filed a suit claiming that Apple's FairPlay technology breached a patent[82] issued to inventor Ho Keung Tse. The latter case also includes the online music stores of Sony, RealNetworks, Napster, and Musicmatch as defendants.[83]
96
+
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+ Apple's application to the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a patent on "rotational user inputs",[84] as used on the iPod interface, received a third "non-final rejection" (NFR) in August 2005. Also in August 2005, Creative Technology, one of Apple's main rivals in the MP3 player market, announced that it held a patent[85] on part of the music selection interface used by the iPod line, which Creative Technology dubbed the "Zen Patent", granted on August 9, 2005.[86] On May 15, 2006, Creative filed another suit against Apple with the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Creative also asked the United States International Trade Commission to investigate whether Apple was breaching U.S. trade laws by importing iPods into the United States.[87]
98
+
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+ On August 24, 2006, Apple and Creative announced a broad settlement to end their legal disputes. Apple will pay Creative US$100 million for a paid-up license, to use Creative's awarded patent in all Apple products. As part of the agreement, Apple will recoup part of its payment, if Creative is successful in licensing the patent. Creative then announced its intention to produce iPod accessories by joining the Made for iPod program.[88]
100
+
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+ Since October 2004, the iPod line has dominated digital music player sales in the United States, with over 90% of the market for hard drive-based players and over 70% of the market for all types of players.[89] During the year from January 2004 to January 2005, the high rate of sales caused its U.S. market share to increase from 31% to 65% and in July 2005, this market share was measured at 74%. In January 2007 the iPod market share reached 72.7% according to Bloomberg Online.
102
+
103
+ On January 8, 2004, Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced that they would sell HP-branded iPods under a license agreement from Apple. Several new retail channels were used—including Walmart—and these iPods eventually made up 5% of all iPod sales. In July 2005, HP stopped selling iPods due to unfavorable terms and conditions imposed by Apple.[90]
104
+
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+ In January 2007, Apple reported record quarterly revenue of US$7.1 billion, of which 48% was made from iPod sales.[failed verification][91]
106
+
107
+ On April 9, 2007, it was announced that Apple had sold its one-hundred millionth iPod, making it the biggest-selling digital music player of all time. In April 2007, Apple reported second-quarter revenue of US$5.2 billion, of which 32% was made from iPod sales.[92] Apple and several industry analysts suggest that iPod users are likely to purchase other Apple products such as Mac computers.[93]
108
+
109
+ On October 22, 2007, Apple reported quarterly revenue of US$6.22 billion, of which 30.69% came from Apple notebook sales, 19.22% from desktop sales and 26% from iPod sales. Apple's 2007 year revenue increased to US$24.01 billion with US$3.5 billion in profits. Apple ended the fiscal year 2007 with US$15.4 billion in cash and no debt.[94]
110
+
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+ On January 22, 2008, Apple reported the best quarter revenue and earnings in Apple's history so far. Apple posted record revenue of US$9.6 billion and record net quarterly profit of US$1.58 billion. 42% of Apple's revenue for the First fiscal quarter of 2008 came from iPod sales, followed by 21% from notebook sales and 16% from desktop sales.[95]
112
+
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+ On October 21, 2008, Apple reported that only 14.21% of total revenue for fiscal quarter 4 of the year 2008 came from iPods.[96] At the September 9, 2009 keynote presentation at the Apple Event, Phil Schiller announced total cumulative sales of iPods exceeded 220 million.[97] The continual decline of iPod sales since 2009 has not been a surprising trend for the Apple corporation, as Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer explained in June 2009: "We expect our traditional MP3 players to decline over time as we cannibalize ourselves with the iPod Touch and the iPhone." Since 2009, the company's iPod sales have continually decreased every financial quarter and in 2013 a new model was not introduced onto the market.[98]
114
+
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+ As of September 2012[update], Apple reported that total number of iPods sold worldwide was 350 million.[99]
116
+
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+ iPods have won several awards ranging from engineering excellence,[100][failed verification] to most innovative audio product,[101] to fourth best computer product of 2006.[102] iPods often receive favorable reviews; scoring on looks, clean design, and ease of use. PC World says that iPod line has "altered the landscape for portable audio players".[101] Several industries are modifying their products to work better with both the iPod line and the AAC audio format. Examples include CD copy-protection schemes,[103] and mobile phones, such as phones from Sony Ericsson and Nokia, which play AAC files rather than WMA.
118
+
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+ Besides earning a reputation as a respected entertainment device, the iPod has also been accepted as a business device. Government departments, major institutions, and international organizations have turned to the iPod line as a delivery mechanism for business communication and training, such as the Royal and Western Infirmaries in Glasgow, Scotland, where iPods are used to train new staff.[104]
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+
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+ iPods have also gained popularity for use in education. Apple offers more information on educational uses for iPods on their website,[105] including a collection of lesson plans. There has also been academic research done in this area in nursing education[106] and more general K-16 education.[107] Duke University provided iPods to all incoming freshmen in the fall of 2004, and the iPod program continues today with modifications.[108] Entertainment Weekly put it on its end-of-the-decade, "best-of" list, saying, "Yes, children, there really was a time when we roamed the earth without thousands of our favorite jams tucked comfortably into our hip pockets. Weird."[109]
122
+
123
+ The iPod has also been credited with accelerating shifts within the music industry. The iPod's popularization of digital music storage allows users to abandon listening to entire albums and instead be able to choose specific singles which hastened the end of the Album Era in popular music.[110]
124
+
125
+ The advertised battery life on most models is different from the real-world achievable life. For example, the fifth-generation 30 GB iPod Classic was advertised as having up to 14 hours of music playback. However, an MP3.com report stated that this was virtually unachievable under real-life usage conditions, with a writer for the site getting, on average, less than 8 hours from an iPod.[111] In 2003, class action lawsuits were brought against Apple complaining that the battery charges lasted for shorter lengths of time than stated and that the battery degraded over time.[112] The lawsuits were settled by offering individuals with first or second-generation iPods either US$50 store credit or a free battery replacement and offering individuals with third-generation iPods an extended warranty that would allow them to get a replacement iPod if they experienced battery problems.[113][114]
126
+
127
+ iPod batteries are not designed to be removed or replaced by the user, although some users have been able to open the case themselves, usually following instructions from third-party vendors of iPod replacement batteries. Compounding the problem, Apple initially would not replace worn-out batteries. The official policy was that the customer should buy a refurbished replacement iPod, at a cost almost equivalent to a brand new one. All lithium-ion batteries lose capacity during their lifetime even when not in use[115] (guidelines are available for prolonging life-span) and this situation led to a market for third-party battery replacement kits.
128
+
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+ Apple announced a battery replacement program on November 14, 2003, a week before[116] a high publicity stunt and website by the Neistat Brothers.[117] The initial cost was US$99,[118] and it was lowered to US$59 in 2005. One week later, Apple offered an extended iPod warranty for US$59.[119] For the iPod Nano, soldering tools are needed because the battery is soldered onto the main board. Fifth generation iPods have their battery attached to the backplate with adhesive.[120][121]
130
+
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+ The first generation iPod Nano may overheat and pose a health and safety risk. Affected iPod Nanos were sold between September 2005 and December 2006. This is due to a flawed battery used by Apple from a single battery manufacturer.[122] Apple recommended that owners of affected iPod Nanos stop using them. Under an Apple product replacement program, affected Nanos were replaced with current generation Nanos free of charge.
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+
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+ iPods have been criticized for alleged short lifespan and fragile hard drives. A 2005 survey conducted on the MacInTouch website found that the iPod line had an average failure rate of 13.7% (although they note that comments from respondents indicate that "the true iPod failure rate may be lower than it appears"). It concluded that some models were more durable than others.[123] In particular, failure rates for iPods employing hard drives were usually above 20% while those with flash memory had a failure rate below 10%. In late 2005, many users complained that the surface of the first-generation iPod Nano can become scratched easily, rendering the screen unusable.[124][125] A class-action lawsuit was also filed.[126] Apple initially considered the issue a minor defect, but later began shipping these iPods with protective sleeves.[citation needed]
134
+
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+ On June 11, 2006, the British tabloid The Mail on Sunday reported that iPods are mainly manufactured by workers who earn no more than US$50 per month and work 15-hour shifts.[127] Apple investigated the case with independent auditors and found that, while some of the plant's labor practices met Apple's Code of Conduct, others did not: employees worked over 60 hours a week for 35% of the time and worked more than six consecutive days for 25% of the time.[128]
136
+
137
+ Foxconn, Apple's manufacturer, initially denied the abuses,[129] but when an auditing team from Apple found that workers had been working longer hours than were allowed under Chinese law, they promised to prevent workers working more hours than the code allowed. Apple hired a workplace standards auditing company, Verité, and joined the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct Implementation Group to oversee the measures. On December 31, 2006, workers at the Foxconn factory in Longhua, Shenzhen formed a union affiliated with the All-China Federation of Trade Unions,[130] the Chinese government-approved union umbrella organization.[131][132]
138
+
139
+ In 2010, a number of workers committed suicide at a Foxconn operations in China. Apple, HP, and others stated that they were investigating the situation. Foxconn guards have been videotaped beating employees. Another employee killed himself in 2009 when an Apple prototype went missing, and claimed in messages to friends, that he had been beaten and interrogated.[133][134]
140
+
141
+ As of 2006, the iPod was produced by about 14,000 workers in the U.S. and 27,000 overseas. Further, the salaries attributed to this product were overwhelmingly distributed to highly skilled U.S. professionals, as opposed to lower-skilled U.S. retail employees or overseas manufacturing labor. One interpretation of this result is that U.S. innovation can create more jobs overseas than domestically.[135]
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1
+
2
+
3
+ Wi-Fi (802.11
4
+ b/g)
5
+ 4th gen:
6
+ Wi-Fi (802.11
7
+ b/g/n)
8
+ 5th gen:
9
+ Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n)
10
+ 6th gen and 7th gen:
11
+ Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac)
12
+
13
+ 2nd gen, 3rd gen, and 4th gen:
14
+ Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
15
+
16
+ 5th gen:
17
+ Bluetooth 4.0
18
+ 6th gen and 7th gen:
19
+ Bluetooth 4.1[6]
20
+
21
+ The iPod Touch (stylized and marketed as iPod touch) is a brand of iOS-based multi-purpose mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. with a touchscreen-controlled user interface. The iPod Touch is part of the iPod family. It connects to the Internet only through Wi-Fi and does not use cellular network data, thus it is not a smartphone. Similarly to an iPhone, it can be used as a music player, digital camera, web browser, note-logger, and handheld gaming device.[7] As of May 2013, 100 million iPod touch units had been sold since 2007.[2]
22
+
23
+ iPod touch models are sold by storage space and color, with all models of the same generation typically offering otherwise identical features, processors, performance, and available operating system upgrades. An exception was the fifth generation, in which the low-end (16 GB (14.9 GiB[8]))[9] model was initially sold without a rear-facing camera.[10] The current iPod touch is the seventh-generation model, released on May 28, 2019.
24
+
25
+ The iPod touch is currently the only product in Apple's iPod product line, following the discontinuation of the iPod Nano and iPod Shuffle on July 27, 2017. Following the discontinuation, Apple revised the storage and pricing for the iPod touch with 32 and 128 GB (29.8 and 119.2 GiB) of storage.[11]
26
+
27
+ The iPod touch runs Apple's Unix-based iOS operating system (called 'iPhone OS' until 2010) and includes bundled software to browse the Internet, view maps, send and receive email, view media, and work with office documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. Users type on a virtual keyboard displayed on the screen. Apple operates an online store, allowing users to buy and directly download music, videos and third-party software. From launch, the iPod touch was described by journalists as an 'iPhone without the phone',[12] and each iPod touch model to date has been introduced with the same release number of iOS as the contemporary iPhone model.
28
+
29
+ Successive updates to iOS since the initial release in 2007 have released additional features. iPhone OS 2.0, released on July 11, 2008, introduced the App Store, which allowed third-party applications for the first time. iPhone OS 3.0, released on June 17, 2009, added features such as cut, copy, and paste, data tethering and push notification support. iOS 4.0, released on June 21, 2010, introduced iBooks, FaceTime, and multitasking. It dropped support for the first generation iPod touch.
30
+
31
+ In June 2011, iOS 5, the fifth major release of iOS software, was announced at Apple's WWDC 2011, which added notification, messaging and reminder features.[13] Apple limited some features, most notably the voice control system Siri, to the iPhone.[14] iOS 6, which was released on September 19, 2012 to the fourth and fifth generation iPod touch models, contains 200 new features including Passbook, Facebook integration and Apple Maps. The fifth generation iPod touch gained the ability to take panoramic photos, a feature shared with the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5.[15]
32
+
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+ Virtually all apps released after the release of iOS 6 do not run on the first or second generation of iPod touch, as the software development kit (SDK) was changed to no longer allow the "targeting" (minimum) of iOS versions older than 4.3 (including 3.x and up to 4.2.1), or ARMv6 devices (first two generations).
34
+
35
+ On June 8, 2015, it was announced at the WWDC that the iPod touch fifth generation would support iOS 9, along with other A5 Chip devices. This makes the iPod touch fifth generation the first iPod touch to support four major versions of iOS.
36
+
37
+ Recent iOS updates have been free for owners of supported iPod touch models, but Apple received criticism for charging iPod touch owners for versions 2.0 and 3.0, which iPhone owners received for free, and for excluding certain features from the iPod touch software that the iPhone included.[16][17] Apple's position was that they could add features for free to the iPhone because the revenue from it is accounted for on a subscription basis under accounting rules, rather than as a one time payment.[18] At WWDC in June 2010, as of iOS 4, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had "found a way" to make subsequent OS upgrades available free to iPod touch owners.
38
+
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+ To purchase content on the iPod touch, the user must create an Apple ID or have an existing account. With this account one may download music and videos from the iTunes Store, apps from the App Store, or books from the iBook store. An Apple ID account created without a credit card can be used to get free content, and gift cards can be bought to pay for apps instead of using credit cards. This is convenient for users who want to purchase an app, song, video, or E-book, but do not have a credit card.
40
+
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+ The only official way to obtain third-party applications for the iPod touch is Apple's App Store, which is a branch of iTunes Store. The App Store application, available in all versions of iOS from 2.0 onwards, allows users to browse and download applications from a single online repository (hosted by Apple) with the iTunes Store. To develop such software, a software development kit (SDK) was officially announced on March 6, 2008, at an Apple Town Hall meeting.[19] The iOS SDK allows making applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch after paying a fee to join the development team. The developer can then set the price for the applications they develop and will receive 70% of money earned. Apple retains 30% of the sale price with no minimum fixed fee.
42
+
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+ However, Saurik, developer of Cydia, made a tool called Cydia Impactor. This tool allowed users (provided that they have registered for a developer Apple ID), to sideload apps onto their iPhone.
44
+
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+ Like all of Apple's iOS devices, the iPod touch is a tightly controlled or closed platform. Modifying or replacing the operating system voids the device warranty, communication between apps is limited and controlled, and Apple is the only authorized software vendor. Hackers have attempted to 'jailbreak' all iOS devices to enable forbidden or unsupported features, such as multitasking in iOS versions before 4.0, themes for the home screen and the use of software Apple has refused to sell such as a battery percentage indicator. Jailbreaks for the iPod touch first surfaced a month after the first model was released in September 2007, when hackers released JailbreakMe 1.0 (also called "AppSnapp") to jailbreak iPhone OS 1.1.1.[20][21] This allowed users to install third-party programs on their devices before Apple permitted this.
46
+
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+ Apple's warranty statement implies that an iPod touch after jailbreaking or other modification made by unofficial means is not covered by Apple's warranty. Jailbreaking is a violation of the Terms and Conditions for using iOS. While the jailbreaking process can normally be undone by performing a restore through iTunes,[22] there is a risk of bricking the device.
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+
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+ The iPod touch is generally similar to the iPhone. Compared to a same-generation iPhone, an iPod touch is thinner, lighter and less expensive, while lacking some hardware and software features. Steve Jobs once referred to the iPod Touch as "training wheels for the iPhone".[23]
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+
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+ All iPod touch models lack Touch ID, Face ID, 3D Touch, NFC, GPS, an earpiece speaker and a noise-cancelling microphone. Depending on the generation, the iPod touch may have a smaller or inferior display and camera(s). Newer models (5th, 6th, and 7th generation) lack the ambient light sensor that makes automatic brightness available. The first generation iPod touch lacks a built-in speaker, and the first, second, and third generation iPod touch lack a microphone, a camera, and a flash. Starting with the 4th generation iPod Touch, a camera and microphone were added, and starting with the 5th generation iPod Touch, support for AirDrop and an LED flash were added.
52
+
53
+ The iPod touch has no cellular modem, and therefore cannot make phone calls. However, it can make FaceTime calls over an internet connection, and send iMessages to other iPhones, Macs, iPads, and iPod touches with an Apple ID. The 5th generation iPod Touch and later can forward phone calls through a separate iPhone, with the Wi-Fi Calling feature. The two devices must be paired, and the iPhone's carrier must support this feature.[24]
54
+
55
+ As of the 7th Generation iPod Touch:
56
+
57
+ For iPod touch units bought before October 12, 2011 users must own a Mac or PC computer to be able to use the iPod. Users then must install iTunes and connect the iPod through a USB port. The iPod will then be set up in iTunes. New iPods bought after October 12, 2011 have iOS 5.0 preloaded, and allow activation wirelessly, without the need of a PC or Mac.[25]
58
+
59
+ Earlier iPod touch units must be plugged into a computer to be synced. This will charge the iPod touch and sync the music library, videos, pictures and backup data. iOS 5 enables the user to do all this from the device and send it to the iCloud service, which supports macOS Lion and later.
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+
61
+ Starting with the second generation model, the iPod Touch dropped support charging from the 12 V pin of a FireWire cable.[26] Charging the iPod touch takes about 2 hours (80 percent capacity) for fast charge, and full charge takes about 4 hours.[citation needed]
62
+
63
+ The fifth, sixth, and seventh generations of the iPod touch feature a new dock connector, called "Lightning", which replaces the 30-pin dock connector on older iPhone, iPad and iPod models. The Apple Lightning connector has eight pins and all the signaling is digital. This new connector is smaller than the previous one allowing for a slimmer form factor. Apple Lightning cables have duplicate pins on both sides of the plug, this makes the plug reversible. Various accessories are available to connect the Apple Lightning connector to the older 30-pin dock connector or USB,[27] although not all old accessories will work, because the lightning connector cannot handle analog signals.[28]
64
+
65
+ As of May 2019[update], there have been seven types of iPod Touch devices produced.
en/2767.html.txt ADDED
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1
+
2
+
3
+ Coordinates: 33°N 44°E / 33°N 44°E / 33; 44
4
+
5
+ Iraq (/ɪˈræk/, /ɪˈrɑːk/ (listen) or /aɪˈræk/; Arabic: اَلْعِرَاق‎, al-ʿirāq; Kurdish: عێراق‎ Êraq), officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جُمْهُورِيَّة ٱلْعِرَاقِ‎ Jumhūriyyah al-ʿIrāq; Kurdish: کۆماری عێراق‎ Komarî Êraq), is a country in Western Asia, bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest and Syria to the west. The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. Iraq is home to diverse ethnic groups including Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, Sabians and Kawliya.[6] Around 99% of the country's 38 million citizens are Muslims,[7] with tiny minorities of Christians, Yarsans, Yezidis and Mandeans also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish.
6
+
7
+ Iraq has a coastline measuring 58 km (36 miles) on the northern Persian Gulf and encompasses the Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain, the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range and the eastern part of the Syrian Desert.[8] Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that mankind first began to read, write, create laws and live in cities under an organised government—notably Uruk, from which "Iraq" is derived. The area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires. It was also part of the Median, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Seljuk, Mongol, Timurid, Safavid, Afsharid and Ottoman empires.[9]
8
+
9
+ The country today known as Iraq was a region of the Ottoman Empire until the partition of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century. It was made up of three provinces, called vilayets in the Ottoman language: Mosul Vilayet, Baghdad Vilayet, and Basra Vilayet. In April 1920 the British Mandate of Mesopotamia was created under the authority of the League of Nations. A British-backed monarchy joining these vilayets into one Kingdom was established in 1921 under Faisal I of Iraq. The Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from the UK in 1932. In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party from 1968 until 2003. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking a protracted war which would last for almost eight years, and end in a stalemate with devastating losses for both countries.
10
+
11
+ After an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party was removed from power, and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The US presence in Iraq ended in 2011,[10] but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country. Out of the insurgency came a highly destructive group calling itself ISIL, which took large parts of the north and west. It has since been largely defeated. Disputes over the sovereignty of Kurdistan Region continue. A referendum about the full sovereignty of Kurdistan Region was held on 25 September 2017. On 9 December 2017, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIL after the group lost its territory in Iraq.[11]
12
+
13
+ Iraq is a federal parliamentary republic consisting of 19 governorates (provinces) and one autonomous region (Kurdistan Region). The country's official religion is Islam. Culturally, Iraq has a very rich heritage and celebrates the achievements of its past in both pre-Islamic as well as post-Islamic times and is known for its poets. Its painters and sculptors are among the best in the Arab world, some of them being world-class as well as producing fine handicrafts, including rugs and carpets. Iraq is a founding member of the UN as well as of the Arab League, OIC, Non-Aligned Movement and the IMF.
14
+
15
+ The Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century CE.[citation needed]
16
+
17
+ There are several suggested origins for the name. One dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk (Biblical Hebrew Erech) and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for "city", UR.[12][13]
18
+
19
+ Another possible etymology for the name is from the Middle Persian word erag, meaning "south." A “Jewish incantation bowl” excavated from Nippur features the word אירג‎ (likely vocalized as ʔi.rag or ʔe.rag), in a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic context that suggests it refers to the region of southern Mesopotamia.[14][15][16]
20
+
21
+ An Arabic folk etymology for the name is "deeply rooted, well-watered; fertile".[17]
22
+
23
+ During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī ("Arabian Iraq") for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿAjamī ("Persian Iraq"),[18] for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran.[18] The term historically included the plain south of the Hamrin Mountains and did not include the northernmost and westernmost parts of the modern territory of Iraq.[19] Prior to the middle of the 19th century, the term Eyraca Arabica was commonly used to describe Iraq.[20][21]
24
+
25
+ The term Sawad was also used in early Islamic times for the region of the alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, contrasting it with the arid Arabian desert. As an Arabic word, عراق means "hem", "shore", "bank", or "edge", so that the name by folk etymology came to be interpreted as "the escarpment", viz. at the south and east of the Jazira Plateau, which forms the northern and western edge of the "al-Iraq arabi" area.[22]
26
+
27
+ The Arabic pronunciation is [ʕiˈrɑːq]. In English, it is either /ɪˈrɑːk/ (the only pronunciation listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and the first one in Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary[23]) or /ɪˈræk/ (listed first by MQD), the American Heritage Dictionary,[24] and the Random House Dictionary.[25] The pronunciation /aɪˈræk/ is frequently heard in US media.[citation needed]
28
+
29
+ In accordance with the 2005 Constitution, the official name of the state is the "Republic of Iraq" (Jumhūrīyyat al-'Irāq).
30
+
31
+ Between 65,000 BC and 35,000 BC, northern Iraq was home to a Neanderthal culture, archaeological remains of which have been discovered at Shanidar Cave[26]
32
+ This same region is also the location of a number of pre-Neolithic cemeteries, dating from approximately 11,000 BC.[27]
33
+
34
+ Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq, together with a large part of the Fertile Crescent also comprising Asia Minor and the Levant, was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period, PPNB, is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum and burnt lime (Vaisselle blanche). Finds of obsidian]] tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations.
35
+
36
+ Further important sites of human advancement were Jarmo (circa 7100 BC),[27] a number of sites belonging to the Halaf culture, and Tell al-'Ubaid, the type site of the Ubaid period (between 6500 BC and 3800 BC).[28] The respective periods show ever-increasing levels of advancement in agriculture, tool-making and architecture.
37
+
38
+ The historical period in Iraq truly begins during the Uruk period (4000 BC to 3100 BC), with the founding of a number of Sumerian cities, and the use of Pictographs, Cylinder seals and mass-produced goods.[30]
39
+
40
+ The "Cradle of Civilization" is thus a common term for the area comprising modern Iraq as it was home to the earliest known civilisation, the Sumerian civilisation, which arose in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates river valley of southern Iraq in the Chalcolithic (Ubaid period).
41
+
42
+ It was here, in the late 4th millennium BC, that the world's first writing system and recorded history itself were born. The Sumerians were also the first to harness the wheel and create City States, and whose writings record the first evidence of Mathematics, Astronomy, Astrology, Written Law, Medicine and Organised religion.
43
+
44
+ The language of the Sumerians is a language isolate. The major city states of the early Sumerian period were; Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larsa, Sippar, Shuruppak, Uruk, Kish, Ur, Nippur, Lagash, Girsu, Umma, Hamazi, Adab, Mari, Isin, Kutha, Der and Akshak.
45
+
46
+ The cities to the north like Ashur, Arbela (modern Erbil) and Arrapha (modern Kirkuk) were also extant in what was to be called Assyria from the 25th century BC; however, at this early stage, they were Sumerian ruled administrative centres.
47
+
48
+ In the 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash created what was perhaps the first empire in history, though this was short-lived. Later, Lugal-Zage-Si, the priest-king of Umma, overthrew the primacy of the Lagash dynasty in the area, then conquered Uruk, making it his capital, and claimed an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.[31] It was during this period that the Epic of Gilgamesh originates, which includes the tale of The Great Flood.
49
+
50
+ From the 29th century BC, Akkadian Semitic names began to appear on king lists and administrative documents of various city states. It remains unknown as to the origin of Akkad, where it was precisely situated and how it rose to prominence. Its people spoke Akkadian, an East Semitic language.[32]
51
+
52
+ During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism. The influences between Sumerian and Akkadian are evident in all areas, including lexical borrowing on a massive scale—and syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This mutual influence has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian of the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund.[33] From this period, the civilisation in Iraq came to be known as Sumero-Akkadian.
53
+
54
+ Between the 29th and 24th centuries BC, a number of kingdoms and city states within Iraq began to have Akkadian speaking dynasties; including Assyria, Ekallatum, Isin and Larsa.
55
+
56
+ However, the Sumerians remained generally dominant until the rise of the Akkadian Empire (2335–2124 BC), based in the city of Akkad in central Iraq. Sargon of Akkad, originally a Rabshakeh to a Sumerian king, founded the empire, he conquered all of the city states of southern and central Iraq, and subjugated the kings of Assyria, thus uniting the Sumerians and Akkadians in one state. He then set about expanding his empire, conquering Gutium, Elam and had victories that did not result into a full conquest against the Amorites and Eblaites of Ancient Syria.
57
+
58
+ After the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the late 22nd century BC, the Gutians occupied the south for a few decades, while Assyria reasserted its independence in the north. This was followed by a Sumerian renaissance in the form of the Neo-Sumerian Empire. The Sumerians under king Shulgi conquered almost all of Iraq except the northern reaches of Assyria, and asserted themselves over the Gutians, Elamites and Amorites, destroying the first and holding off the others.
59
+
60
+ An Elamite invasion in 2004 BC brought the Sumerian revival to an end. By the mid 21st century BC, the Akkadian speaking kingdom of Assyria had risen to dominance in northern Iraq. Assyria expanded territorially into the north eastern Levant, central Iraq, and eastern Anatolia, forming the Old Assyrian Empire (circa 2035–1750 BC) under kings such as Puzur-Ashur I, Sargon I, Ilushuma and Erishum I, the latter of whom produced the most detailed set of law yet written.[citation needed] The south broke up into a number of Akkadian speaking states, Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna being the major ones.
61
+
62
+ During the 20th century BC, the Canaanite speaking Amorites began to migrate into southern Mesopotamia. Eventually, they began to set up small petty kingdoms in the south, as well as usurping the thrones of extant city states such as Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna.
63
+
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+ One of these small Amorite kingdoms founded in 1894 BC contained the then small administrative town of Babylon within its borders. It remained insignificant for over a century, overshadowed by older and more powerful states, such as Assyria, Elam, Isin, Ehnunna and Larsa.
65
+
66
+ In 1792 BC, an Amorite ruler named Hammurabi came to power in this state, and immediately set about building Babylon from a minor town into a major city, declaring himself its king. Hammurabi conquered the whole of southern and central Iraq, as well as Elam to the east and Mari to the west, then engaged in a protracted war with the Assyrian king Ishme-Dagan for domination of the region, creating the short-lived Babylonian Empire. He eventually prevailed over the successor of Ishme-Dagan and subjected Assyria and its Anatolian colonies. By the middle of the eighteenth century BC, the Sumerians had lost their cultural identity and ceased to exist as a distinct people.[34][35] Genetic and cultural analysis indicates that the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq are probably their most direct modern descendants.[36][37][38]
67
+
68
+ It is from the period of Hammurabi that southern Iraq came to be known as Babylonia, while the north had already coalesced into Assyria hundreds of years before. However, his empire was short-lived, and rapidly collapsed after his death, with both Assyria and southern Iraq, in the form of the Sealand Dynasty, falling back into native Akkadian hands. The foreign Amorites clung on to power in a once more weak and small Babylonia until it was sacked by the Indo-European speaking Hittite Empire based in Anatolia in 1595 BC. After this, another foreign people, the Language Isolate speaking Kassites, originating in the Zagros Mountains of Ancient Iran, seized control of Babylonia, where they were to rule for almost 600 years, by far the longest dynasty ever to rule in Babylon.
69
+
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+ Iraq was from this point divided into three polities: Assyria in the north, Kassite Babylonia in the south central region, and the Sealand Dynasty in the far south. The Sealand Dynasty was finally conquered by Kassite Babylonia circa 1380 BC.
71
+
72
+ The Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) saw Assyria rise to be the most powerful nation in the known world. Beginning with the campaigns of Ashur-uballit I, Assyria destroyed the rival Hurrian-Mitanni Empire, annexed huge swathes of the Hittite Empire for itself, annexed northern Babylonia from the Kassites, forced the Egyptian Empire from the region, and defeated the Elamites, Phrygians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Cilicians, Gutians, Dilmunites and Arameans. At its height, the Middle Assyrian Empire stretched from The Caucasus to Dilmun (modern Bahrain), and from the Mediterranean coasts of Phoenicia to the Zagros Mountains of Iran. In 1235 BC, Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria took the throne of Babylon, thus becoming the very first native Mesopotamian to rule the state.
73
+
74
+ During the Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BC), Babylonia was in a state of chaos, dominated for long periods by Assyria and Elam. The Kassites were driven from power by Assyria and Elam, allowing native south Mesopotamian kings to rule Babylonia for the first time, although often subject to Assyrian or Elamite rulers. However, these East Semitic Akkadian kings, were unable to prevent new waves of West Semitic migrants entering southern Iraq, and during the 11th century BC Arameans and Suteans entered Babylonia from The Levant, and these were followed in the late 10th to early 9th century BC by the migrant Chaldeans who were closely related to the earlier Arameans.
75
+
76
+ After a period of comparative decline in Assyria, it once more began to expand with the Neo Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC). This was to be the largest empire the region had yet seen, and under rulers such as Adad-Nirari II, Ashurnasirpal, Shalmaneser III, Semiramis, Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, Iraq became the centre of an empire stretching from Persia, Parthia and Elam in the east, to Cyprus and Antioch in the west, and from The Caucasus in the north to Egypt, Nubia and Arabia in the south.
77
+
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+ The Arabs and the Chaldeans are first mentioned in written history (circa 850 BC) in the annals of Shalmaneser III.
79
+
80
+ It was during this period that an Akkadian influenced form of Eastern Aramaic was adopted by the Assyrians as the lingua franca of their vast empire, and Mesopotamian Aramaic began to supplant Akkadian as the spoken language of the general populace of both Assyria and Babylonia. The descendant dialects of this tongue survive amongst the Mandaeans of southern Iraq and Assyrians of northern Iraq to this day.
81
+
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+ In the late 7th century BC, the Assyrian Empire tore itself apart with a series of brutal civil wars, weakening itself to such a degree that a coalition of its former subjects; the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Parthians, Scythians and Cimmerians, were able to attack Assyria, finally bringing its empire down by 605 BC.[39]
83
+
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+ The short-lived Neo-Babylonian Empire (620–539 BC) succeeded that of Assyria. It failed to attain the size, power or longevity of its predecessor; however, it came to dominate The Levant, Canaan, Arabia, Israel and Judah, and to defeat Egypt. Initially, Babylon was ruled by yet another foreign dynasty, that of the Chaldeans, who had migrated to the region in the late 10th or early 9th century BC. Its greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar II, rivalled another non native ruler, the ethnically unrelated Amorite king Hammurabi, as the greatest king of Babylon. However, by 556 BC, the Chaldeans had been deposed from power by the Assyrian born Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar.
85
+
86
+ In the 6th century BC, Cyrus the Great of neighbouring Persia defeated the Neo-Babylonian Empire at the Battle of Opis and Iraq was subsumed into the Achaemenid Empire for nearly two centuries. The Achaemenids made Babylon their main capital. The Chaldeans and Chaldea disappeared at around this time, though both Assyria and Babylonia endured and thrived under Achaemenid rule (see Achaemenid Assyria). Little changed under the Persians, having spent three centuries under Assyrian rule, their kings saw themselves as successors to Ashurbanipal, and they retained Assyrian Imperial Aramaic as the language of empire, together with the Assyrian imperial infrastructure, and an Assyrian style of art and architecture.[citation needed]
87
+
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+ In the late 4th century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the region, putting it under Hellenistic Seleucid rule for over two centuries.[40] The Seleucids introduced the Indo-Anatolian and Greek term Syria to the region. This name had for many centuries been the Indo-European word for Assyria and specifically and only meant Assyria; however, the Seleucids also applied it to The Levant (Aramea, causing both the Assyria and the Assyrians of Iraq and the Arameans and The Levant to be called Syria and Syrians/Syriacs in the Greco-Roman world.[41]
89
+
90
+ The Parthians (247 BC – 224 AD) from Persia conquered the region during the reign of Mithridates I of Parthia (r. 171–138 BC). From Syria, the Romans invaded western parts of the region several times, briefly founding Assyria Provincia in Assyria. Christianity began to take hold in Iraq (particularly in Assyria) between the 1st and 3rd centuries, and Assyria became a centre of Syriac Christianity, the Church of the East and Syriac literature. A number of independent states evolved in the north during the Parthian era, such as Adiabene, Assur, Osroene and Hatra.
91
+
92
+ The Sassanids of Persia under Ardashir I destroyed the Parthian Empire and conquered the region in 224 AD. During the 240s and 250's AD, the Sassanids gradually conquered the independent states, culminating with Assur in 256 AD. The region was thus a province of the Sassanid Empire for over four centuries, and became the frontier and battle ground between the Sassanid Empire and Byzantine Empire, with both empires weakening each other, paving the way for the Arab-Muslim conquest of Persia in the mid-7th century.
93
+
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+ The Arab Islamic conquest in the mid-7th century AD established Islam in Iraq and saw a large influx of Arabs. Under the Rashidun Caliphate, the prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, moved his capital to Kufa when he became the fourth caliph. The Umayyad Caliphate ruled the province of Iraq from Damascus in the 7th century. (However, eventually there was a separate, independent Caliphate of Córdoba in Iberia.)
95
+
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+ The Abbasid Caliphate built the city of Baghdad along the Tigris in the 8th century as its capital, and the city became the leading metropolis of the Arab and Muslim world for five centuries. Baghdad was the largest multicultural city of the Middle Ages, peaking at a population of more than a million,[44] and was the centre of learning during the Islamic Golden Age. The Mongols destroyed the city and burned its library during the siege of Baghdad in the 13th century.[45]
97
+
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+ In 1257, Hulagu Khan amassed an unusually large army, a significant portion of the Mongol Empire's forces, for the purpose of conquering Baghdad. When they arrived at the Islamic capital, Hulagu Khan demanded its surrender, but the last Abbasid Caliph Al-Musta'sim refused. This angered Hulagu, and, consistent with Mongol strategy of discouraging resistance, he besieged Baghdad, sacked the city and massacred many of the inhabitants.[46] Estimates of the number of dead range from 200,000 to a million.[47]
99
+
100
+ The Mongols destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate and Baghdad's House of Wisdom, which contained countless precious and historical documents. The city has never regained its previous pre-eminence as a major centre of culture and influence. Some historians believe that the Mongol invasion destroyed much of the irrigation infrastructure that had sustained Mesopotamia for millennia. Other historians point to soil salination as the culprit in the decline in agriculture.[48]
101
+
102
+ The mid-14th-century Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[49] The best estimate for the Middle East is a death rate of roughly one-third.[50]
103
+
104
+ In 1401, a warlord of Mongol descent, Tamerlane (Timur Lenk), invaded Iraq. After the capture of Baghdad, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred.[51] Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him (many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur).[52] Timur also conducted massacres of the indigenous Assyrian Christian population, hitherto still the majority population in northern Mesopotamia, and it was during this time that the ancient Assyrian city of Assur was finally abandoned.[53]
105
+
106
+ During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the Black Sheep Turkmen ruled the area now known as Iraq. In 1466, the White Sheep Turkmen defeated the Black Sheep and took control. From the earliest 16th century, in 1508, as with all territories of the former White Sheep Turkmen, Iraq fell into the hands of the Iranian Safavids. Owing to the century long Turco-Iranian rivalry between the Safavids and the neighbouring Ottoman Turks, Iraq would be contested between the two for more than a hundred years during the frequent Ottoman-Persian Wars.
107
+
108
+ With the Treaty of Zuhab in 1639, most of the territory of present-day Iraq eventually came under the control of Ottoman Empire as the eyalet of Baghdad as a result of wars with the neighbouring rival, Safavid Iran. Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533–1918), the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle zone between the rival regional empires and tribal alliances.
109
+
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+ By the 17th century, the frequent conflicts with the Safavids had sapped the strength of the Ottoman Empire and had weakened its control over its provinces. The nomadic population swelled with the influx of bedouins from Najd, in the Arabian Peninsula. Bedouin raids on settled areas became impossible to curb.[54]
111
+
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+ During the years 1747–1831, Iraq was ruled by a Mamluk dynasty of Georgian[55] origin who succeeded in obtaining autonomy from the Ottoman Porte, suppressed tribal revolts, curbed the power of the Janissaries, restored order and introduced a programme of modernisation of economy and military. In 1831, the Ottomans managed to overthrow the Mamluk regime and imposed their direct control over Iraq. The population of Iraq, estimated at 30 million in 800 AD, was only 5 million at the start of the 20th century.[56]
113
+
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+ During World War I, the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. In the Mesopotamian campaign against the Central Powers, British forces invaded the country and initially suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Turkish army during the Siege of Kut (1915–1916). However, subsequent to this the British began to gain the upper hand, and were further aided by the support of local Arabs and Assyrians. In 1916, the British and French made a plan for the post-war division of Western Asia under the Sykes-Picot Agreement.[57] British forces regrouped and captured Baghdad in 1917, and defeated the Ottomans. An armistice was signed in 1918. The British lost 92,000 soldiers in the Mesopotamian campaign. Ottoman losses are unknown but the British captured a total of 45,000 prisoners of war. By the end of 1918, the British had deployed 410,000 men in the area, of which 112,000 were combat troops.[citation needed]
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+
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+ The country today known as Iraq was a region of the Ottoman Empire until the partition of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century. It was made up of three provinces, called vilayets in the Ottoman language: Mosul Vilayet, Baghdad Vilayet, and Basra Vilayet. These three provinces were joined into one Kingdom by the British after the region became a League of Nations mandate, administered under British control, with the name "State of Iraq". A fourth province (Zor Sanjak), which Iraqi nationalists considered part of Upper Mesopotamia was ultimately added to Syria.[58][59] In line with their "Sharifian Solution" policy, the British established the Hashemite king, Faisal I of Iraq, who had been forced out of Syria by the French, as their client ruler. Likewise, British authorities selected Sunni Arab elites from the region for appointments to government and ministry offices.[specify][60][page needed][61]
117
+
118
+ Faced with spiraling costs and influenced by the public protestations of the war hero T. E. Lawrence[62] in The Times, Britain replaced Arnold Wilson in October 1920 with a new Civil Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox.[63] Cox managed to quell a rebellion, yet was also responsible for implementing the fateful policy of close co-operation with Iraq's Sunni minority.[64] The institution of slavery was abolished in the 1920s.[65]
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+
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+ Britain granted independence to the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932,[66] on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases, local militia in the form of Assyrian Levies, and transit rights for their forces. King Ghazi ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal's death in 1933, while undermined by attempted military coups, until his death in 1939. Ghazi was followed by his underage son, Faisal II. 'Abd al-Ilah served as Regent during Faisal's minority.
121
+
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+ On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and members of the Golden Square staged a coup d'état and overthrew the government of 'Abd al-Ilah. During the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War, the United Kingdom (which still maintained air bases in Iraq) invaded Iraq for fear that the Rashid Ali government might cut oil supplies to Western nations because of his links to the Axis powers. The war started on 2 May, and the British, together with loyal Assyrian Levies,[67] defeated the forces of Al-Gaylani, forcing an armistice on 31 May.
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+
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+ A military occupation followed the restoration of the pre-coup government of the Hashemite monarchy. The occupation ended on 26 October 1947, although Britain was to retain military bases in Iraq until 1954, after which the Assyrian militias were disbanded. The rulers during the occupation and the remainder of the Hashemite monarchy were Nuri as-Said, the autocratic Prime Minister, who also ruled from 1930 to 1932, and 'Abd al-Ilah, the former Regent who now served as an adviser to King Faisal II.
125
+
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+ In 1958, a coup d'état known as the 14 July Revolution was led by the Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim. This revolt was strongly anti-imperial and anti-monarchical in nature and had strong socialist elements. Numerous people were killed in the coup, including King Faysal II, Prince Abd al-Ilah, and Nuri al-Sa'id.[68] Qasim controlled Iraq through military rule and in 1958 he began a process of forcibly reducing the surplus amounts of land owned by a few citizens and having the state redistribute the land. He was overthrown by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif in a February 1963 coup. After the latter's death in 1966, he was succeeded by his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, who was overthrown by the Ba'ath Party in 1968. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became the first Ba'ath President of Iraq but then the movement gradually came under the control of Saddam Hussein, who acceded to the presidency and control of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), then Iraq's supreme executive body, in July 1979.
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+
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+ In 1979, the Iranian Revolution took place. Following months of cross-border raids between the two countries, Saddam declared war on Iran in September 1980, initiating the Iran–Iraq War (or First Persian Gulf War). Taking advantage of the post-revolution chaos in Iran, Iraq captured some territories in southwest of Iran, but Iran recaptured all of the lost territories within two years, and for the next six years Iran was on the offensive.[69][page needed] The war, which ended in stalemate in 1988, had cost the lives of between half a million and 1.5 million people.[70] In 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed an Iraqi nuclear materials testing reactor at Osirak and was widely criticised at the United Nations.[71][72] During the eight-year war with Iran, Saddam Hussein extensively used chemical weapons against Iranians.[73] In the final stages of the Iran–Iraq War, the Ba'athist Iraqi regime led the Al-Anfal Campaign, a genocidal[74] campaign that targeted Iraqi Kurds,[75][76][77] and led to the killing of 50,000–100,000 civilians.[78] Chemical weapons were also used against Iraqi Shia civilians during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq.
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+
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+ In August 1990, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait. This subsequently led to military intervention by United States-led forces in the First Gulf War. The coalition forces proceeded with a bombing campaign targeting military targets[79][80][81] and then launched a 100-hour-long ground assault against Iraqi forces in Southern Iraq and those occupying Kuwait.
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+ Iraq's armed forces were devastated during the war. Shortly after it ended in 1991, Shia and Kurdish Iraqis led several uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime, but these were successfully repressed using the Iraqi security forces and chemical weapons. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people, including many civilians were killed.[82] During the uprisings the US, UK, France and Turkey, claiming authority under UNSCR 688, established the Iraqi no-fly zones to protect Kurdish and Shiite populations from attacks by the Saddam regime's fixed-wing aircraft (but not helicopters).
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+
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+ Iraq was ordered to destroy its chemical and biological weapons and the UN attempted to compel Saddam's government to disarm and agree to a ceasefire by imposing additional sanctions on the country in addition to the initial sanctions imposed following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqi Government's failure to disarm and agree to a ceasefire resulted in sanctions which remained in place until 2003. The effects of the sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq have been disputed.[83][84] Whereas it was widely believed that the sanctions caused a major rise in child mortality, recent research has shown that commonly cited data were fabricated by the Iraqi government and that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions."[85][86][87] An oil for food program was established in 1996 to ease the effects of sanctions.
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+ Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration began planning the overthrow of Saddam's government and in October 2002, the US Congress passed the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. In November 2002, the UN Security Council passed UNSCR 1441 and in March 2003 the US and its allies invaded Iraq.
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+
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+ On 20 March 2003, a United States-organized coalition invaded Iraq, under the pretext that Iraq had failed to abandon its weapons of mass destruction program in violation of UN Resolution 687. This claim was based on documents provided by the CIA and the British government that were later found to be unreliable.[88][89][90]
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+
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+ Following the invasion, the United States established the Coalition Provisional Authority to govern Iraq. In May 2003 L. Paul Bremer, the chief executive of the CPA, issued orders to exclude Baath Party members from the new Iraqi government (CPA Order 1) and to disband the Iraqi Army (CPA Order 2).[91] The decision dissolved the largely Sunni Iraqi Army and excluded many of the country's former government officials from participating in the country's governance,[92] including 40,000 school teachers who had joined the Baath Party simply to keep their jobs,[93] helping to bring about a chaotic post-invasion environment.[94]
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+
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+ An insurgency against the US-led coalition-rule of Iraq began in summer 2003 within elements of the former Iraqi secret police and army, who formed guerrilla units. In fall 2003, self-entitled 'jihadist' groups began targeting coalition forces. Various Sunni militias were created in 2003, for example Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The insurgency included intense inter-ethnic violence between Sunnis and Shias.[95] The Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal came to light, late 2003 in reports by Amnesty International and Associated Press.
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+
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+ The Mahdi Army—a Shia militia created in the summer of 2003 by Muqtada al-Sadr—began to fight Coalition forces in April 2004.[96][96] 2004 saw Sunni and Shia militants fighting against each other and against the new Iraqi Interim Government installed in June 2004, and against Coalition forces, as well as the First Battle of Fallujah in April and Second Battle of Fallujah in November. The Sunni militia Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad became Al-Qaeda in Iraq in October 2004 and targeted Coalition forces as well as civilians, mainly Shia Muslims, further exacerbating ethnic tensions.[97]
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+ In January 2005, the first elections since the invasion took place and in October a new Constitution was approved, which was followed by parliamentary elections in December. However, insurgent attacks were common and increased to 34,131 in 2005 from 26,496 in 2004.[98]
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+ During 2006, fighting continued and reached its highest levels of violence, more war crimes scandals were made public, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed by US forces and Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and hanged.[99][100][101]
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+ In late 2006, the US government's Iraq Study Group recommended that the US begin focusing on training Iraqi military personnel and in January 2007 US President George W. Bush announced a "Surge" in the number of US troops deployed to the country.[102]
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+ In May 2007, Iraq's Parliament called on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal and US coalition partners such as the UK and Denmark began withdrawing their forces from the country.[103][104][105] The war in Iraq has resulted in between 151,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis being killed.[106][107]
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+ In 2008, fighting continued and Iraq's newly trained armed forces launched attacks against militants. The Iraqi government signed the US–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, which required US forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities by 30 June 2009 and to withdraw completely from Iraq by 31 December 2011.
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+ US troops handed over security duties to Iraqi forces in June 2009, though they continued to work with Iraqi forces after the pullout.[108] On the morning of 18 December 2011, the final contingent of US troops to be withdrawn ceremonially exited over the border to Kuwait.[10] Crime and violence initially spiked in the months following the US withdrawal from cities in mid-2009[109][110] but despite the initial increase in violence, in November 2009, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials reported that the civilian death toll in Iraq fell to its lowest level since the 2003 invasion.[111]
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+ Following the withdrawal of US troops in 2011, the insurgency continued and Iraq suffered from political instability. In February 2011, the Arab Spring protests spread to Iraq;[112] but the initial protests did not topple the government. The Iraqi National Movement, reportedly representing the majority of Iraqi Sunnis, boycotted Parliament for several weeks in late 2011 and early 2012, claiming that the Shiite-dominated government was striving to sideline Sunnis.
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+ In 2012 and 2013, levels of violence increased and armed groups inside Iraq were increasingly galvanised by the Syrian Civil War. Both Sunnis and Shias crossed the border to fight in Syria.[113] In December 2012, Sunni Arabs protested against the government, whom they claimed marginalised them.[114][115]
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+ During 2013, Sunni militant groups stepped up attacks targeting the Iraq's Shia population in an attempt to undermine confidence in the Nouri al-Maliki-led government.[116] In 2014, Sunni insurgents belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group seized control of large swathes of land including several major Iraqi cities, like Tikrit, Fallujah and Mosul creating hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons amid reports of atrocities by ISIL fighters.[117]
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+ After an inconclusive election in April 2014, Nouri al-Maliki served as caretaker-Prime-Minister.[118]
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+ On 11 August, Iraq's highest court ruled that PM Maliki's bloc is biggest in parliament, meaning Maliki could stay Prime Minister.[118] By 13 August, however, the Iraqi president had tasked Haider al-Abadi with forming a new government, and the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and some Iraqi politicians expressed their wish for a new leadership in Iraq, for example from Haider al-Abadi.[119] On 14 August, Maliki stepped down as PM to support Mr al-Abadi and to "safeguard the high interests of the country". The US government welcomed this as "another major step forward" in uniting Iraq.[120][121] On 9 September 2014, Haider al-Abadi had formed a new government and became the new prime minister.[citation needed] Intermittent conflict between Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions has led to increasing debate about the splitting of Iraq into three autonomous regions, including Sunni Kurdistan in the northeast, a Sunnistan in the west and a Shiastan in the southeast.[122]
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+ In response to rapid territorial gains made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during the first half of 2014, and its universally-condemned executions and reported human rights abuses, many states began to intervene against it in the Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017). Since the airstrikes started, ISIL has been losing ground in both Iraq and Syria.[123] Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Iraq in ISIL-linked violence.[124][125] The genocide of Yazidis by ISIL has led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis from their ancestral lands in Northern Iraq.[126] The 2016 Karrada bombing killed nearly 400 civilians and injured hundreds more.[127] On 17 March 2017, a US-led coalition airstrike in Mosul killed more than 200 civilians.[128]
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+ Since 2015, ISIL lost territory in Iraq, including Tikrit in March and April 2015,[129] Baiji in October 2015,[130] Sinjar in November 2015,[131] Ramadi in December 2015,[132] Fallujah in June 2016[133] and Mosul in July 2017. By December 2017, ISIL had no remaining territory in Iraq, following the 2017 Western Iraq campaign.[134]
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+ In September 2017, a referendum was held regarding Kurdish independence in Iraq. 92% of Iraqi Kurds voted in favor of independence.[135] The referendum was regarded as illegal by the federal government in Baghdad.[136] In March 2018, Turkey launched military operations to eliminate the Kurdish separatist fighters in northern Iraq.[137] Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political coalition won Iraq's parliamentary election in May 2018.[138]
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+ Serious civil unrest rocked the country beginning in Baghdad and Najaf in July 2018 and spreading to other provinces in late September 2019 as rallies to protest corruption, unemployment, and public service failures turned violent.[139]
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+ Protests and demonstrations started again on 1 October 2019, against 16 years of corruption, unemployment and inefficient public services, before they escalated into calls to overthrow the administration and to stop Iranian intervention in Iraq. The Iraqi government at times reacted harshly, resulting in over 500 deaths by 12 December 2019.
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+ On 27 December 2019, the K-1 Air Base in Iraq was attacked by more than 30 rockets, killing a U.S. civilian contractor and injuring others. The U.S. blamed the Iranian-backed Kata'ib Hezbollah militia.
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+ On 29 December 2019, the United States bombed five Kata'ib Hezbollah militia's positions in Iraq and Syria, in retaliation for the presumed Kata'ib attack of 27 December. According to Iraqi sources, at least 25 militia fighters were killed.
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+ On 31 December 2019, after a funeral for Kata'ib Hezbollah militiamen killed by U.S. airstrikes, dozens of Iraqi Shia militiamen and their supporters marched into the Green Zone of Baghdad and surrounded the U.S. embassy compound (see article: Attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad). Demonstrators smashed a door of the checkpoint, set fire to the reception area, left anti-American posters and sprayed anti-American graffiti. U.S. president Trump accused Iran of orchestrating the attack.
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+ On 3 January 2020, amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, the U.S. launched a drone strike on a convoy traveling near Baghdad International Airport, killing Qasem Soleimani, Iranian major general and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Quds Force commander, the second most powerful person of Iran;[140], Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF or PMU), four senior Iranian officers; and four Iraqi officers.
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+ Following months of protests that broke out across Iraq in October 2019 and the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and his cabinet, Mustafa Al Kadhimi became a leading contender for the Premiership.[141]
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+ On 9 April 2020, he was named by President Barham Salih as prime minister-designate, the third person tapped to lead the country in just 10 weeks as it struggled to replace a government that fell last year after months of protests. Kadhimi was nominated by President Barham Salih, state television reported, shortly after the previous designated prime minister, Adnan al-Zurfi, announced he was withdrawing having failed to secure enough support to pass a government.[142]
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+ Iraq lies between latitudes 29° and 38° N, and longitudes 39° and 49° E (a small area lies west of 39°). Spanning 437,072 km2 (168,754 sq mi), it is the 58th-largest country in the world. It is comparable in size to the US state of California, and somewhat larger than Paraguay.
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+ Iraq mainly consists of desert, but near the two major rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) are fertile alluvial plains, as the rivers carry about 60,000,000 m3 (78,477,037 cu yd) of silt annually to the delta. The north of the country is mostly composed of mountains; the highest point being at 3,611 m (11,847 ft) point, unnamed on the map opposite, but known locally as Cheekah Dar (black tent). Iraq has a small coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) along the Persian Gulf. Close to the coast and along the Shatt al-Arab (known as arvandrūd: اروندرود among Iranians) there used to be marshlands, but many were drained in the 1990s.
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+ Most of Iraq has a hot arid climate with subtropical influence. Summer temperatures average above 40 °C (104 °F) for most of the country and frequently exceed 48 °C (118.4 °F). Winter temperatures infrequently exceed 21 °C (69.8 °F) with maxima roughly 15 to 19 °C (59.0 to 66.2 °F) and night-time lows 2 to 5 °C (35.6 to 41.0 °F). Typically, precipitation is low; most places receive less than 250 mm (9.8 in) annually, with maximum rainfall occurring during the winter months. Rainfall during the summer is extremely rare, except in the far north of the country. The northern mountainous regions have cold winters with occasional heavy snows, sometimes causing extensive flooding.
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+ The federal government of Iraq is defined under the current Constitution as a democratic, federal parliamentary republic. The federal government is composed of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as well as numerous independent commissions. Aside from the federal government, there are regions (made of one or more governorates), governorates, and districts within Iraq with jurisdiction over various matters as defined by law.
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+ The National Alliance is the main Shia parliamentary bloc, and was established as a result of a merger of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's State of Law Coalition and the Iraqi National Alliance.[143] The Iraqi National Movement is led by Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia widely supported by Sunnis. The party has a more consistent anti-sectarian perspective than most of its rivals.[143] The Kurdistan List is dominated by two parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Masood Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Jalal Talabani. Both parties are secular and enjoy close ties with the West.[143]
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+ In 2018, according to the Failed States Index, Iraq was the world's eleventh most politically unstable country.[144][145] The concentration of power in the hands of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and growing pressure on the opposition led to growing concern about the future of political rights in Iraq.[146] Nevertheless, progress was made and the country had risen to 11th place by 2013.[147] In August 2014, al-Maliki's reign came to an end. He announced on 14 August 2014 that he would stand aside so that Haider Al-Abadi, who had been nominated just days earlier by newly installed President Fuad Masum, could take over. Until that point, al-Maliki had clung to power even asking the federal court to veto the president's nomination describing it as a violation of the constitution.[148]
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+ Transparency International ranks Iraq's government as the eighth-most-corrupt government in the world. Government payroll have increased from 1 million employees under Saddam Hussein to around 7 million employees in 2016. In combination with decreased oil prices, the government budget deficit is near 25% of GDP as of 2016[update].[149]
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+ Since the establishment of the no–fly zones following the Gulf War of 1990–1991, the Kurds established their own autonomous region.[citation needed]
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+ In October 2005, the new Constitution of Iraq was approved in a referendum with a 78% overall majority, although the percentage of support varying widely between the country's territories.[150] The new constitution was backed by the Shia and Kurdish communities, but was rejected by Arab Sunnis. Under the terms of the constitution, the country conducted fresh nationwide parliamentary elections on 15 December 2005. All three major ethnic groups in Iraq voted along ethnic lines, as did Assyrian and Turcoman minorities.
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+ Law no. 188 of the year 1959 (Personal Status Law)[151] made polygamy extremely difficult, granted child custody to the mother in case of divorce, prohibited repudiation and marriage under the age of 16.[152] Article 1 of Civil Code also identifies Islamic law as a formal source of law.[153] Iraq had no Sharia courts but civil courts used Sharia for issues of personal status including marriage and divorce. In 1995 Iraq introduced Sharia punishment for certain types of criminal offences.[154] The code is based on French civil law as well as Sunni and Jafari (Shi'ite) interpretations of Sharia.[155]
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+ In 2004, the CPA chief executive L. Paul Bremer said he would veto any constitutional draft stating that sharia is the principal basis of law.[156] The declaration enraged many local Shia clerics,[157] and by 2005 the United States had relented, allowing a role for sharia in the constitution to help end a stalemate on the draft constitution.[158]
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+ The Iraqi Penal Code is the statutory law of Iraq.
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+ Iraqi security forces are composed of forces serving under the Ministry of Interior (which controls the Police and Popular Mobilization Forces) and the Ministry of Defense, as well as the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Bureau, reporting directly to the Prime Minister of Iraq, which oversees the Iraqi Special Operations Forces. Ministry of Defense forces include the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Air Force and the Iraqi Navy. The Peshmerga are a separate armed force loyal to the Kurdistan Regional Government. The regional government and the central government disagree as to whether they are under Baghdad's authority and to what extent.[159]
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+ The Iraqi Army is an objective counter-insurgency force that as of November 2009 includes 14 divisions, each division consisting of 4 brigades.[160] It is described as the most important element of the counter-insurgency fight.[161] Light infantry brigades are equipped with small arms, machine guns, RPGs, body armour and light armoured vehicles. Mechanized infantry brigades are equipped with T-54/55 main battle tanks and BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles.[161] As of mid-2008, logistical problems included a maintenance crisis and ongoing supply problems.[162]
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+ The Iraqi Air Force is designed to support ground forces with surveillance, reconnaissance and troop lift. Two reconnaissance squadrons use light aircraft, three helicopter squadrons are used to move troops and one air transportation squadron uses C-130 transport aircraft to move troops, equipment, and supplies. It currently has 3,000 personnel. It is planned to increase to 18,000 personnel, with 550 aircraft by 2018.[161]
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+ The Iraqi Navy is a small force with 1,500 sailors and officers, including 800 Marines, designed to protect shoreline and inland waterways from insurgent infiltration. The navy is also responsible for the security of offshore oil platforms. The navy will have coastal patrol squadrons, assault boat squadrons and a marine battalion.[161] The force will consist of 2,000 to 2,500 sailors by year 2010.[163]
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+ In 2019, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Michael Mulroy said that the relationship with the Defense Department and the Iraqi Army was among our most compelling strategic interests and that the U.S. currently helps train and equip 28 Iraqi brigades to maintain their readiness. "The priority is to empower Iraq's professional and capable security forces to protect its sovereignty and to prevent an ISIS resurgence," Mulroy said. "The more capable Iraq's security institutions, the more resilient Iraq will be in the face of its enemies".[164][165]
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+ On 4 November 2019, more than 100 Australian Defence Force personnel left Darwin for the 10th rotation of Task Group Taji base in north of Baghdad. The Australian contingent mentors the Iraqi School of Infantry, where the Iraqi Security Forces are trained. However, Australia's contribution was reduced from 250 to 120 ADF personnel, which along with New Zealand had trained over 45,000 ISF members before that.[166]
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+ On 17 November 2008, the US and Iraq agreed to a Status of Forces Agreement,[167] as part of the broader Strategic Framework Agreement.[168] This agreement states "the Government of Iraq requests" US forces to temporarily remain in Iraq to "maintain security and stability" and that Iraq has jurisdiction over military contractors, and US personnel when not on US bases or on–duty.
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+ On 12 February 2009, Iraq officially became the 186th State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Under the provisions of this treaty, Iraq is considered a party with declared stockpiles of chemical weapons. Because of their late accession, Iraq is the only State Party exempt from the existing timeline for destruction of their chemical weapons. Specific criteria is in development to address the unique nature of Iraqi accession.[169]
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+ Iran–Iraq relations have flourished since 2005 by the exchange of high level visits: Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki made frequent visits to Iran, along with Jalal Talabani visiting numerous times, to help boost bilateral co-operation in all fields.[citation needed] A conflict occurred in December 2009, when Iraq accused Iran of seizing an oil well on the border.[170]
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+ Relationships with Turkey are tense, largely because of the Kurdistan Regional Government, as clashes between Turkey and the PKK continue.[171] In October 2011, the Turkish parliament renewed a law that gives Turkish forces the ability to pursue rebels over the border in Iraq."[172]
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+ On 5 January 2020, the Iraqi parliament voted for a resolution that urges the government to work on expelling U.S. troops from Iraq. The resolution was passed two days after a U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of the Quds Force. The resolution specifically calls for ending of a 2014 agreement allowing Washington to help Iraq against Islamic State groups by sending troops.[173] This resolution will also signify ending an agreement with Washington to station troops in Iraq as Iran vows to retaliate after the killing.[174]
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+ Relations between Iraq and its Kurdish population have been sour in recent history, especially with Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaign against them in the 1980s. After uprisings during the early 90s, many Kurds fled their homeland and no-fly zones were established in northern Iraq to prevent more conflicts. Despite historically poor relations, some progress has been made, and Iraq elected its first Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, in 2005. Furthermore, Kurdish is now an official language of Iraq alongside Arabic according to Article 4 of the constitution.[175]
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+ LGBT rights in Iraq remain limited. Although decriminalised, homosexuality remains stigmatised in Iraqi society.[176] Targeting people because of their gender identity or sexual orientation is not uncommon and is usually carried out in the name of family honour. People who dress in emo style are mistakenly associated with homosexuality and may suffer the same fate.[177] Investigations by the BBC and other western media in 2008 and 2009, including interviews of homosexual and transgender Iraqis, showed that violence against LGBT people had significantly increased since Saddam Hussein was toppled.[178][179][180][181][182]
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+ On May 14, 2020, Human Rights Watch said that Iraqi government should focus on the key areas to advance human rights in the country through a legislation. Several areas need a legislative reform to bring Iraqi law in line with international standards.[183] On June 15, 2020, Human Rights Watch said, free speech is under threat in Iraq. Prime Minister of Iraq Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has a unique opportunity to tackle over a decade of free speech restrictions and should reform its penal code and other laws.[184]
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+ Iraq is composed of nineteen governorates (or provinces) (Arabic: muhafadhat (singular muhafadhah); Kurdish: پارێزگا Pârizgah). The governorates are subdivided into districts (or qadhas), which are further divided into sub-districts (or nawāḥī). Kurdistan Region (Erbil, Dohuk, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja) is the only legally defined region within Iraq, with its own government and quasi-official army Peshmerga.
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+ Iraq's economy is dominated by the oil sector, which has traditionally provided about 95% of foreign exchange earnings. The lack of development in other sectors has resulted in 18%–30% unemployed and a per capita GDP of $4,000.[7] Public sector employment accounted for nearly 60% of full-time employment in 2011.[185] The oil export industry, which dominates the Iraqi economy, generates very little employment.[185] Currently only a modest percentage of women (the highest estimate for 2011 was 22%) participate in the labour force.[185]
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+ Prior to US occupation, Iraq's centrally planned economy prohibited foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, ran most large industries as state-owned enterprises, and imposed large tariffs to keep out foreign goods.[186] After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority quickly began issuing many binding orders privatising Iraq's economy and opening it up to foreign investment.
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+ On 20 November 2004, the Paris Club of creditor nations agreed to write off 80% ($33 billion) of Iraq's $42 billion debt to Club members. Iraq's total external debt was around $120 billion at the time of the 2003 invasion, and had grown another $5 billion by 2004. The debt relief will be implemented in three stages: two of 30% each and one of 20%.[187]
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+ In February 2011, Citigroup included Iraq in a group of countries which it described as 'Global Growth Generators', that it argued will enjoy significant economic growth in the future.[188]
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+ The official currency in Iraq is the Iraqi dinar. The Coalition Provisional Authority issued new dinar coins and notes, with the notes printed by De La Rue using modern anti-forgery techniques.[189] Jim Cramer's 20 October 2009 endorsement of the Iraqi Dinar on CNBC has further piqued interest in the investment.[190]
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+ Five years after the invasion, an estimated 2.4 million people were internally displaced (with a further two million refugees outside Iraq), four million Iraqis were considered food-insecure (a quarter of children were chronically malnourished) and only a third of Iraqi children had access to safe drinking water.[191]
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+ According to the Overseas Development Institute, international NGOs face challenges in carrying out their mission, leaving their assistance "piecemeal and largely conducted undercover, hindered by insecurity, a lack of coordinated funding, limited operational capacity and patchy information".[191] International NGOs have been targeted and during the first 5 years, 94 aid workers were killed, 248 injured, 24 arrested or detained and 89 kidnapped or abducted.[191]
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+ With its 143.1 billion barrels (2.275×1010 m3) of proved oil reserves, Iraq ranks third in the world behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in the amount of oil reserves.[192][193] Oil production levels reached 3.4 million barrels per day by December 2012.[194] Only about 2,000 oil wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared with about 1 million wells in Texas alone.[195] Iraq was one of the founding members of OPEC.[196][197]
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+ During the 1970s Iraq produced up to 3.5 million barrels per day, but sanctions imposed against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 crippled the country's oil sector. The sanctions prohibited Iraq from exporting oil until 1996 and Iraq's output declined by 85% in the years following the First Gulf War. The sanctions were lifted in 2003 after the US-led invasion removed Saddam Hussein from power, but development of Iraq's oil resources has been hampered by the ongoing conflict.[198]
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+ As of 2010[update], despite improved security and billions of dollars in oil revenue, Iraq still generates about half the electricity that customers demand, leading to protests during the hot summer months.[199]
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+ The Iraq oil law, a proposed piece of legislation submitted to the Iraqi Council of Representatives in 2007, has failed to gain approval due to disagreements among Iraq's various political blocs.[200][201]
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+ According to a US Study from May 2007, between 100,000 barrels per day (16,000 m3/d) and 300,000 barrels per day (48,000 m3/d) of Iraq's declared oil production over the past four years could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling.[202] In 2008, Al Jazeera reported $13 billion of Iraqi oil revenues in US care was improperly accounted for, of which $2.6 billion is totally unaccounted for.[203] Some reports that the government has reduced corruption in public procurement of oil; however, reliable reports of bribery and kickbacks to government officials persist.[204]
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+ In June 2008, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced plans to go ahead with small one- or two-year no-bid contracts to Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP—once partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company—along with Chevron and smaller firms to service Iraq's largest fields.[205] These plans were cancelled in September because negotiations had stalled for so long that the work could not be completed within the time frame, according to Iraqi oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani. Several United States senators had also criticised the deal, arguing it was hindering efforts to pass the hydrocarbon law.[206]
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+ On 30 June and 11 December 2009, the Iraqi ministry of oil awarded service contracts to international oil companies for some of Iraq's many oil fields.[207][208] Oil fields contracted include the "super-giant" Majnoon Field, Halfaya Field, West Qurna Field and Rumaila Field.[208] BP and China National Petroleum Corporation won a deal to develop Rumaila, the largest Iraqi oil field.[209][210]
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+ On 14 March 2014, the International Energy Agency said Iraq's oil output jumped by half a million barrels a day in February to average 3.6 million barrels a day. The country had not pumped that much oil since 1979, when Saddam Hussein rose to power.[211] However, on 14 July 2014, as sectarian strife had taken hold, Kurdistan Regional Government forces seized control of the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oilfields in the north of the country, taking them from Iraq's control. Baghdad condemned the seizure and threatened "dire consequences" if the fields were not returned.[212]
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+ The UN estimates that oil accounts for 99% of Iraq's revenue.[198]
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+ Water supply and sanitation in Iraq is characterized by poor water and service quality. Three decades of war, combined with limited environmental awareness, have destroyed Iraq's water resources management system.
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+ Access to potable water differs significantly among governorates and between urban and rural areas.
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+ 91% of the entire population has access to potable water. But in rural areas, only 77% of the population has access to improved drinking water sources compared to 98% in urban areas.[213]
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+ Large amounts of water are wasted during production.[213]
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+
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+ Although many infrastructure projects are underway, Iraq remains in deep housing crisis, with the war-ravaged country likely to complete only 5 percent of the 2.5 million homes it needs to build by 2016 to keep up with demand, the Minister for Construction and Housing said in September 2013.[214]
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+ The 2018 estimate of the total Iraqi population is 38,433,600.[1][2] Iraq's population was estimated to be 2 million in 1878.[215] In 2013 Iraq's population reached 35 million amid a post-war population boom.[218]
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+ According to the CIA World Factbook, citing a 1987 Iraqi government estimate,[7] the population of Iraq is formed of 75–80% Arabs followed by 15% Kurds.[7] In addition, the estimate claims that other minorities form 5% of the country's population, including the Assyrians, Turkmen/Turcoman, Yezidis, Shabak, Kaka'i, Bedouins, Roma, Circassians, Sabaean-Mandaean, and Persians.[7] However, the International Crisis Group points out that figures from the 1987 census, as well as the 1967, 1977, and 1997 censuses, "are all considered highly problematic, due to suspicions of regime manipulation" because Iraqi citizens were only allowed to indicate belonging to either the Arab or Kurdish ethnic groups;[219] consequently, this skewed the number of other ethnic minorities, such as Iraq's third largest ethnic group – the Turkmens/Turkomans.[219]
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+ A report published by the European Parliamentary Research Service suggests that in 2015 there was 24 million Arabs (15 million Shia and 9 million Sunni); 4 million Sunni Kurds (plus 500,000 Shia Faili Kurds and 200,000 Kaka'i); 3 million Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman; 1 million Black Iraqis; 500,000 Christians (including Chaldean, Syriacs, Assyrians and Armenians); 500,000 Yazidis; 250,000 Shabaks; 50,000 Roma; 3,000 Sabean-Mandaeans; 2,000 Circassians; 1,000 Baha'i; and a few dozen Jews.[220]
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+ Around 20,000 Marsh Arabs live in southern Iraq.[221]
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+ Iraq has a community of 2,500 Chechens.[222] In southern Iraq, there is a community of Iraqis of African descent, a legacy of the slavery practised in the Islamic Caliphate beginning before the Zanj Rebellion of the 9th century, and Basra's role as a key port.[65] It is the most populous country in the Arabian Plate.[223]
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+ The main languages spoken in Iraq are Mesopotamian Arabic and Kurdish, followed by the Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman dialect of Turkish, and the Neo-Aramaic languages (specifically Chaldean and Assyrian).[224] Arabic and Kurdish are written with versions of the Arabic script. Since 2005, the Turkmen/Turkoman have switched from the Arabic script to the Turkish alphabet.[225] In addition, the Neo-Aramaic languages use the Syriac script.
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+ Other smaller minority languages include Mandaic, Shabaki, Armenian, Circassian and Persian.
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+ Prior to the invasion in 2003, Arabic was the sole official language. Since the new Constitution of Iraq approved in June 2004, both Arabic and Kurdish are official languages,[226] while Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and the Turkmen/Turkoman dialect of Turkish (referred to as respectively "Syriac" and "Turkmen" in the constitution) are recognised regional languages.[227] In addition, any region or province may declare other languages official if a majority of the population approves in a general referendum.[228]
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+ According to the Iraqi constitution:
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+ The Arabic language and the Kurdish language are the two official languages of Iraq. The right of Iraqis to educate their children in their mother tongue, such as Turkmen, Assyrian, and Armenian shall be guaranteed in government educational institutions in accordance with educational guidelines, or in any other language in private educational institutions.[229]
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+ Religions in Iraq are dominantly Abrahamic with Muslim (official) 99% (Shia 55–60%, Sunni 40%), Christian <0.1%, Yazidi <0.1%, Sabean Mandaean <0.1%, Baha'i <0.1%, Zoroastrian <0.1%, Hindu <0.1%, Buddhist <0.1%, Jewish <0.1%, folk religion <0.1, unaffiliated 0.1%, other <0.1%[7] It has a mixed Shia and Sunni population. The CIA World Factbook estimates that around 65% of Muslims in Iraq are Shia, and around 35% are Sunni.[7] A 2011 Pew Research Center estimates that 51% of Muslims in Iraq are Shia, 42% are Sunni, while 5% identify themselves as "Just a Muslim".[232] The Sunni Muslims, 12–13 million in a population of 36 million, include Arabs, most Turkomen, and Kurds.
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+ The Sunni population complains of facing discrimination in almost all aspects of life by the government. However, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki denied that such discrimination occurs.[233]
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+ Christianity in Iraq has its roots from the conception of the Church of the East in the 5th century AD, predating the existence of Islam in the region. Christians in Iraq are predominantly native Assyrians belonging to the Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church and Syriac Orthodox Church. There is also a significant population of Armenian Christians in Iraq who had fled Turkey during the Armenian genocide. Christians numbered over 1.4 million in 1987 or 8% of the estimated population of 16.3 million and 550,000 in 1947 or 12% of the population of 4.6 millions.[234]
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+ There are also small ethno-religious minority populations of Mandaeans, Shabaks, Yarsan and Yezidis remaining. Prior to 2003 their numbers together may have been 2 million, the majority Yarsan, a non-Islamic religion with roots in pre-Islamic and pre-Christian religion. There are reports of over 100.000 conversions to Zoroastrianism in recent years. The Iraqi Jewish community, numbering around 150,000 in 1941, has almost entirely left the country.[235]
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+ Iraq is home to two of the world's holiest places among Shias: Najaf and Karbala.[236]
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+ The dispersion of native Iraqis to other countries is known as the Iraqi diaspora. The UN High Commission for Refugees has estimated that nearly two million Iraqis fled the country after the multinational invasion of Iraq in 2003, mostly to Syria and Jordan.[237] The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated in 2007 that an additional 1.9 million were displaced within the country.[238]
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+ In 2007, the UN said that about 40% of Iraq's middle class was believed to have fled and that most had fled systematic persecution and had no desire to return.[239] Refugees are mired in poverty as they are generally barred from working in their host countries.[240][241]
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+ Subsequently, the diaspora seemed to be returning, as security improved; the Iraqi government claimed that 46,000 refugees returned to their homes in October 2007 alone.[242]
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+ As of 2011[update], nearly 3 million Iraqis had been displaced, with 1.3 million within Iraq and 1.6 million in neighbouring countries, mainly Jordan and Syria.[243] More than half of Iraqi Christians had fled the country since the 2003 US-led invasion.[244][245] According to official United States Citizenship and Immigration Services statistics, 58,811 Iraqis had been granted refugee-status citizenship as of 25 May 2011[update].[246]
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+ After the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, numerous Iraqi refugees in Syria returned to their native country.[247] To escape the civil war, over 160,000 Syrian refugees of varying ethnicities have fled to Iraq since 2012.[248]
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+ In 2010, spending on healthcare accounted for 6.84% of the country's GDP. In 2008, there were 6.96 physicians and 13.92 nurses per 10,000 inhabitants.[249] The life expectancy at birth was 68.49 years in 2010, or 65.13 years for males and 72.01 years for females.[250] This is down from a peak life expectancy of 71.31 years in 1996.[251]
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+ Iraq had developed a centralised free health care system in the 1970s using a hospital based, capital-intensive model of curative care. The country depended on large-scale imports of medicines, medical equipment and even nurses, paid for with oil export income, according to a "Watching Brief" report issued jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in July 2003. Unlike other poorer countries, which focused on mass health care using primary care practitioners, Iraq developed a Westernized system of sophisticated hospitals with advanced medical procedures, provided by specialist physicians. The UNICEF/WHO report noted that prior to 1990, 97% of the urban dwellers and 71% of the rural population had access to free primary health care; just 2% of hospital beds were privately managed.[252]
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+ Before Iraq faced economic sanctions from the UN, it already had an advanced and successful Arab education system.[253] However, it has now been “de-developing” in its educational success.[253] Some say that the sanctions, whether intentionally or not, hurt the education system because of how it affected the children.[253] Whether or not this is true, UNICEF's statistics and numbers show how Iraq's education system has room for improvement.[254]
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+ At the turn of the millennium, many countries, including Iraq, attempted to take part in the Millennium Development Goals as a way to help underdeveloped countries prosper. In Iraq, one of the goals was for education to be universally available for both boys and girls at the primary level. UNICEF collected several pieces of data that indicate whether or not, Iraq has been accomplishing this goal.[254]
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+ In general, the education of Iraq has been improving since the MDGs were implemented.[254] For example, enrollment numbers nearly doubled from 2000 to 2012.[254] It went from 3.6 million to six million.[254] The latest statistic from 2015–2016 showed that almost 9.2 million children were in school.[254] Enrollment rates continue to be on a steady increase at about 4.1% each year.[254] The sheer increase in numbers shows that there are clearly improvements of children in Iraq having access to education.
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+ However, the dramatic increase of the number of students in primary education has had some negative and straining effects for the education system.[254] The budget for education makes up about only 5.7% of government spending and continues to stay at or below this percentage.[254] Investments for schools has also been on the decline.[254] As a result, the country now ranks at the bottom of Middle East countries in terms of education.[254] The little funding for education makes it more difficult to improve the quality and resources for education.[254]
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+ At the same time, UNICEF investigated portions of spending for education and found that some of the money has gone to waste.[254] They found that dropout rates are increasing as well as repetition rates for children.[254] In both Iraq Centre and KRI, the rates for dropouts are about 1.5% to 2.5%.[254] Within these dropout rates, there is also an uneven number among boys and girls who dropout.[254] While the rate for dropouts for boys was around 16.5%, girls were at 20.1% where it could be due to economic or family reasons.[254] For repetition rates, percentages have almost reached 17% among all students.[254] To put the money loss in perspective, about $1,100 is spent on each student.[254] For each student who drops out or repeats a grade, $1,100 is lost.[254] As a result, almost 20% of the funding for education was lost to dropouts and repetition for the year 2014–2015.[254]
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+ Many of those people who dropout or have to repeat a grade do not see the economic cost for long term results.[254] UNICEF takes note of how staying in school can in fact, increase wealth for the person and their family.[254] While it may put a strain on the education system, it will also hinder the chances of a person receiving higher earnings in whatever career they go into.[254]
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+ Other statistics show that regional differences can attribute to lower or higher enrollment rates for children in primary education.[254] For example, UNICEF found that areas with conflict like Salah al-Din have “more than 90% of school-age children” not in the education system.[254] In addition, some schools were converted into refugee shelters or military bases in 2014 as conflict began to increase.[255] The resources for education become more strained and make it harder for children to go to school and finish receiving their education.[255] However, in 2017, there were efforts being made to open up 47 schools that had previously been closed.[256] There has been more success in Mosul where over 380,000 are going to school again.[256] Depending on where children live, they may or may not have the same access to education as other children.
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+ There are also the differing enrollment rates between boys and girls.[254] UNICEF found that in 2013–2014, enrollment numbers for boys was at about five million while girls were at about 4.2 million.[254] While the out-of-school rate for girls is at about 11%, boys are at less than half of that.[254] There is still a gap between boys and girls in terms of educational opportunities.[254] However, the rate of enrollments for girls has been increasing at a higher rate than for boys.[254] In 2015–2016, the enrollment numbers for girls increased by 400,000 from the previous year where a large number of them were located in Iraq Centre.[254] Not only that, UNICEF found that the increase of girls going to school was across all levels of education.[254] Therefore, the unequal enrollment numbers between boys and girls could potentially change so that universal education can be achieved by all at equal rates.
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+ Although the numbers suggest a dramatic increase of enrollment rates for primary education in total, a large number of children still remain out of the education system.[254] Many of these children fall under the category of internally displaced children due to the conflict in Syria and the takeover by ISIL.[254] This causes a disruption for children who are attempting to go to school and holds them back from completing their education, no matter what level they are at.[254] Internally displaced children are specifically recorded to track children who have been forced to move within their country due to these types of conflicts. About 355,000 of internally displaced children are not in the education system.[254] 330,000 of those children live in Iraq Centre.[254] The rates among internally displaced children continue to remain higher in Iraq Centre than other areas such as the KRI.[254]
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+ With the overall increase of enrollment rates, there continues to be a large strain on the resources for education.[254] UNICEF notes that without an increase on expenditures for education, the quality of education will continue to decrease.[254] Early in the 2000s, the UNESCO International Bureau of Education found that the education system in Iraq had issues with standard-built school buildings, having enough teachers, implementing a standardized curricula, textbooks and technologies that are needed to help reach its educational goals.[253] Teachers are important resources that are starting to become more and more strained with the rising number of students.[254] Iraq Centre has a faster enrollment growth rate than teacher growth.[254] Teachers begin to have to take in more and more students which can produce a bigger strain on the teacher and quality of education the children receive.[254] Another large resource for education is libraries that can increase literacy and create a reading culture.[257] However, this can only be improved through a restructuring of the education system.[257]
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+ UNICEF provides more details, regarding the actions needed to help Iraq reach its MDG goal of education being attainable by all children at the primary level.[254] Much of it has to do with the restructuring of the education system, research into improving the quality of education, and discovering ways on how to better suit the needs of girls and children with disabilities in the education system.[254]
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+ The CIA World Factbook estimates that, in 2000, the adult literacy rate was 84% for males and 64% for females, with UN figures suggesting a small fall in literacy of Iraqis aged 15–24 between 2000 and 2008, from 84.8% to 82.4%.[258] The Coalition Provisional Authority undertook a complete reform of Iraq's education system: Baathist ideology was removed from curricula and there were substantial increases in teacher salaries and training programs, which the Hussein regime neglected in the 1990s.[citation needed] In 2003, an estimated 80% of Iraq's 15,000 school buildings needed rehabilitation and lacked basic sanitary facilities, and most schools lacked libraries and laboratories.[citation needed]
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+ Education is mandatory only through to the sixth grade, after which a national examination determines the possibility of continuing into the upper grades.[citation needed] Although a vocational track is available to those who do not pass the exam, few students elect that option because of its poor quality.[citation needed] Boys and girls generally attend separate schools beginning with seventh grade.[citation needed]
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+ In 2005, obstacles to further reform were poor security conditions in many areas, a centralised system that lacked accountability for teachers and administrators, and the isolation in which the system functioned for the previous 30 years.[citation needed] Few private schools exist.[citation needed] Prior to the invasion of 2003, some 240,000 persons were enrolled in institutions of higher education.[citation needed]
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+ According to the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, the top-ranking universities in the country are the University of Dohuk (1717th worldwide), the University of Baghdad (3160th) and Babylon University (3946th).[259]
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+ Public holidays in Iraq include Republic Day on 14 July and the National Day on 3 October.
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+ Iraq is known primarily for its rich maqam heritage which has been passed down orally by the masters of the maqam in an unbroken chain of transmission leading up to the present. The maqam al-Iraqi is considered to be the most noble and perfect form of maqam. Al-maqam al-Iraqi is the collection of sung poems written either in one of the sixteen meters of classical Arabic or in Iraqi dialect (Zuhayri).[260] This form of art is recognised by UNESCO as "an intangible heritage of humanity".[261]
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+ Early in the 20th century, many of the most prominent musicians in Iraq were Jewish.[262] In 1936, Iraq Radio was established with an ensemble made up entirely of Jews, with the exception of the percussion player. At the nightclubs of Baghdad, ensembles consisted of oud, qanun and two percussionists, while the same format with a ney and cello were used on the radio.[262]
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+ The most famous singer of the 1930s–1940s was perhaps the Jew Salima Pasha (later Salima Murad).[262][263] The respect and adoration for Pasha were unusual at the time since public performance by women was considered shameful, and most female singers were recruited from brothels.[262]
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+ The most famous early composer from Iraq was Ezra Aharon, an oud player, while the most prominent instrumentalist was Daoud Al-Kuwaiti.[citation needed] Daoud and his brother Saleh formed the official ensemble for the Iraqi radio station and were responsible for introducing the cello and ney into the traditional ensemble.[262]
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+ Important cultural institutions in the capital include the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra – rehearsals and performances were briefly interrupted during the Occupation of Iraq but have since returned to normal. The National Theatre of Iraq was looted during the 2003 invasion, but efforts are underway to restore it. The live theatre scene received a boost during the 1990s when UN sanctions limited the import of foreign films. As many as 30 cinemas were reported to have been converted to live stages, producing a wide range of comedies and dramatic productions.
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+ Institutions offering cultural education in Baghdad include the Academy of Music, Institute of Fine Arts and the Music and Ballet school Baghdad. Baghdad also features a number of museums including the National Museum of Iraq – which houses the world's largest and finest collection of artefacts and relics of Ancient Iraqi civilisations; some of which were stolen during the Occupation of Iraq.
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+ The capital, Ninus or Nineveh, was taken by the Medes under Cyaxares, and some 200 years after Xenophon passed over its site, then mere mounds of earth. It remained buried until 1845, when Botta and Layard discovered the ruins of the Assyrian cities. The principal remains are those of Khorsabad, 16 km (10 mi) N.E. of Mosul; of Nimroud, supposed to be the ancient Calah; and of Kouyunjik, in all probability the ancient Nineveh. In these cities are found fragments of several great buildings which seem to have been palace-temples. They were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, and all that remains of them is the lower part of the walls, decorated with sculpture and paintings, portions of the pavements, a few indications of the elevation, and some interesting works connected with the drainage.
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+ After the end of the full state control in 2003, there were a period of significant growth in the broadcast media in Iraq. Immediately, and the ban on satellite dishes is no longer in place, and by mid-2003, according to a BBC report, there were 20 radio stations from 0.15 to 17 television stations owned by Iraqis, and 200 Iraqi newspapers owned and operated. Significantly, there have been many of these newspapers in numbers disproportionate to the population of their locations. For example, in Najaf, which has a population of 300,000, is being published more than 30 newspapers and distributed.
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+ Iraqi media expert and author of a number of reports on this subject, Ibrahim Al Marashi, identifies four stages of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 where they had been taking the steps that have significant effects on the way for the later of the Iraqi media since then. Stages are: pre-invasion preparation, and the war and the actual choice of targets, the first post-war period, and a growing insurgency and hand over power to the Iraqi Interim Government (IIG) and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.[264][page needed]
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+ Iraqi cuisine can be traced back some 10,000 years – to the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Ancient Persians.[265] Tablets found in ancient ruins in Iraq show recipes prepared in the temples during religious festivals – the first cookbooks in the world.[265] Ancient Iraq, or Mesopotamia, was home to many sophisticated and highly advanced civilisations, in all fields of knowledge – including the culinary arts.[265] However, it was in the medieval era when Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate that the Iraqi kitchen reached its zenith.[265] Today the cuisine of Iraq reflects this rich inheritance as well as strong influences from the culinary traditions of neighbouring Turkey, Iran and the Greater Syria area.[265]
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+ Some characteristic ingredients of Iraqi cuisine include – vegetables such as aubergine, tomato, okra, onion, potato, courgette, garlic, peppers and chilli, cereals such as rice, bulgur wheat and barley, pulses and legumes such as lentils, chickpeas and cannellini, fruits such as dates, raisins, apricots, figs, grapes, melon, pomegranate and citrus fruits, especially lemon and lime.[265]
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+ Similarly with other countries of Western Asia, chicken and especially lamb are the favourite meats. Most dishes are served with rice – usually Basmati, grown in the marshes of southern Iraq.[265] Bulgur wheat is used in many dishes – having been a staple in the country since the days of the Ancient Assyrians.[265]
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+ Football is the most popular sport in Iraq. Football is a considerable uniting factor in Iraq following years of war and unrest. Basketball, swimming, weightlifting, bodybuilding, boxing, kick boxing and tennis are also popular sports.
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+ The Iraqi Football Association is the governing body of football in Iraq, controlling the Iraq national football team and the Iraqi Premier League. It was founded in 1948, and has been a member of FIFA since 1950 and the Asian Football Confederation since 1971. Iraq were the 2007 AFC Asian Cup champions after defeating Saudi Arabia in the final by 1–0 thanks to a goal by captain Younis Mahmoud and they have participated in two FIFA competitions (the 1986 FIFA World Cup and the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup).
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+ Despite having mobile phones in the Middle East since 1995, Iraqis were only able to use mobile phones after 2003, as Mobile phones were banned under Saddam Hussein's rule.
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+ In 2013, it was reported that 78% of Iraqis owned a mobile phone.[266]
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+ According to the Iraqi Ministry of Communication, Iraq is now in the second phase of building and launching a multipurpose strategic satellite.[267]
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+ A project which expected to cost $600 million is ongoing in co-operation with market leaders such as Astrium and Arianespace.
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+ On 18 January 2012, Iraq was connected to the undersea communications network for the first time.[268]
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+ This had an immense impact on internet speed, availability and usage in Iraq.
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+ In October 2013, the Iraqi Minister for Communication ordered internet prices to be lowered by a third. This is an attempt to boost usage and comes as a result of significant improvements in Internet infrastructure in the country.[269]
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+ Government
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+ General information
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+ Coordinates: 33°N 44°E / 33°N 44°E / 33; 44
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+ Iraq (/ɪˈræk/, /ɪˈrɑːk/ (listen) or /aɪˈræk/; Arabic: اَلْعِرَاق‎, al-ʿirāq; Kurdish: عێراق‎ Êraq), officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جُمْهُورِيَّة ٱلْعِرَاقِ‎ Jumhūriyyah al-ʿIrāq; Kurdish: کۆماری عێراق‎ Komarî Êraq), is a country in Western Asia, bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest and Syria to the west. The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. Iraq is home to diverse ethnic groups including Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, Sabians and Kawliya.[6] Around 99% of the country's 38 million citizens are Muslims,[7] with tiny minorities of Christians, Yarsans, Yezidis and Mandeans also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish.
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+ Iraq has a coastline measuring 58 km (36 miles) on the northern Persian Gulf and encompasses the Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain, the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range and the eastern part of the Syrian Desert.[8] Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that mankind first began to read, write, create laws and live in cities under an organised government—notably Uruk, from which "Iraq" is derived. The area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires. It was also part of the Median, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Seljuk, Mongol, Timurid, Safavid, Afsharid and Ottoman empires.[9]
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+ The country today known as Iraq was a region of the Ottoman Empire until the partition of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century. It was made up of three provinces, called vilayets in the Ottoman language: Mosul Vilayet, Baghdad Vilayet, and Basra Vilayet. In April 1920 the British Mandate of Mesopotamia was created under the authority of the League of Nations. A British-backed monarchy joining these vilayets into one Kingdom was established in 1921 under Faisal I of Iraq. The Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from the UK in 1932. In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party from 1968 until 2003. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking a protracted war which would last for almost eight years, and end in a stalemate with devastating losses for both countries.
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+ After an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party was removed from power, and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The US presence in Iraq ended in 2011,[10] but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country. Out of the insurgency came a highly destructive group calling itself ISIL, which took large parts of the north and west. It has since been largely defeated. Disputes over the sovereignty of Kurdistan Region continue. A referendum about the full sovereignty of Kurdistan Region was held on 25 September 2017. On 9 December 2017, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIL after the group lost its territory in Iraq.[11]
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+ Iraq is a federal parliamentary republic consisting of 19 governorates (provinces) and one autonomous region (Kurdistan Region). The country's official religion is Islam. Culturally, Iraq has a very rich heritage and celebrates the achievements of its past in both pre-Islamic as well as post-Islamic times and is known for its poets. Its painters and sculptors are among the best in the Arab world, some of them being world-class as well as producing fine handicrafts, including rugs and carpets. Iraq is a founding member of the UN as well as of the Arab League, OIC, Non-Aligned Movement and the IMF.
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+ The Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century CE.[citation needed]
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+ There are several suggested origins for the name. One dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk (Biblical Hebrew Erech) and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for "city", UR.[12][13]
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+ Another possible etymology for the name is from the Middle Persian word erag, meaning "south." A “Jewish incantation bowl” excavated from Nippur features the word אירג‎ (likely vocalized as ʔi.rag or ʔe.rag), in a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic context that suggests it refers to the region of southern Mesopotamia.[14][15][16]
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+
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+ An Arabic folk etymology for the name is "deeply rooted, well-watered; fertile".[17]
22
+
23
+ During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī ("Arabian Iraq") for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿAjamī ("Persian Iraq"),[18] for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran.[18] The term historically included the plain south of the Hamrin Mountains and did not include the northernmost and westernmost parts of the modern territory of Iraq.[19] Prior to the middle of the 19th century, the term Eyraca Arabica was commonly used to describe Iraq.[20][21]
24
+
25
+ The term Sawad was also used in early Islamic times for the region of the alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, contrasting it with the arid Arabian desert. As an Arabic word, عراق means "hem", "shore", "bank", or "edge", so that the name by folk etymology came to be interpreted as "the escarpment", viz. at the south and east of the Jazira Plateau, which forms the northern and western edge of the "al-Iraq arabi" area.[22]
26
+
27
+ The Arabic pronunciation is [ʕiˈrɑːq]. In English, it is either /ɪˈrɑːk/ (the only pronunciation listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and the first one in Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary[23]) or /ɪˈræk/ (listed first by MQD), the American Heritage Dictionary,[24] and the Random House Dictionary.[25] The pronunciation /aɪˈræk/ is frequently heard in US media.[citation needed]
28
+
29
+ In accordance with the 2005 Constitution, the official name of the state is the "Republic of Iraq" (Jumhūrīyyat al-'Irāq).
30
+
31
+ Between 65,000 BC and 35,000 BC, northern Iraq was home to a Neanderthal culture, archaeological remains of which have been discovered at Shanidar Cave[26]
32
+ This same region is also the location of a number of pre-Neolithic cemeteries, dating from approximately 11,000 BC.[27]
33
+
34
+ Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq, together with a large part of the Fertile Crescent also comprising Asia Minor and the Levant, was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period, PPNB, is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum and burnt lime (Vaisselle blanche). Finds of obsidian]] tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations.
35
+
36
+ Further important sites of human advancement were Jarmo (circa 7100 BC),[27] a number of sites belonging to the Halaf culture, and Tell al-'Ubaid, the type site of the Ubaid period (between 6500 BC and 3800 BC).[28] The respective periods show ever-increasing levels of advancement in agriculture, tool-making and architecture.
37
+
38
+ The historical period in Iraq truly begins during the Uruk period (4000 BC to 3100 BC), with the founding of a number of Sumerian cities, and the use of Pictographs, Cylinder seals and mass-produced goods.[30]
39
+
40
+ The "Cradle of Civilization" is thus a common term for the area comprising modern Iraq as it was home to the earliest known civilisation, the Sumerian civilisation, which arose in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates river valley of southern Iraq in the Chalcolithic (Ubaid period).
41
+
42
+ It was here, in the late 4th millennium BC, that the world's first writing system and recorded history itself were born. The Sumerians were also the first to harness the wheel and create City States, and whose writings record the first evidence of Mathematics, Astronomy, Astrology, Written Law, Medicine and Organised religion.
43
+
44
+ The language of the Sumerians is a language isolate. The major city states of the early Sumerian period were; Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larsa, Sippar, Shuruppak, Uruk, Kish, Ur, Nippur, Lagash, Girsu, Umma, Hamazi, Adab, Mari, Isin, Kutha, Der and Akshak.
45
+
46
+ The cities to the north like Ashur, Arbela (modern Erbil) and Arrapha (modern Kirkuk) were also extant in what was to be called Assyria from the 25th century BC; however, at this early stage, they were Sumerian ruled administrative centres.
47
+
48
+ In the 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash created what was perhaps the first empire in history, though this was short-lived. Later, Lugal-Zage-Si, the priest-king of Umma, overthrew the primacy of the Lagash dynasty in the area, then conquered Uruk, making it his capital, and claimed an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.[31] It was during this period that the Epic of Gilgamesh originates, which includes the tale of The Great Flood.
49
+
50
+ From the 29th century BC, Akkadian Semitic names began to appear on king lists and administrative documents of various city states. It remains unknown as to the origin of Akkad, where it was precisely situated and how it rose to prominence. Its people spoke Akkadian, an East Semitic language.[32]
51
+
52
+ During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism. The influences between Sumerian and Akkadian are evident in all areas, including lexical borrowing on a massive scale—and syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This mutual influence has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian of the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund.[33] From this period, the civilisation in Iraq came to be known as Sumero-Akkadian.
53
+
54
+ Between the 29th and 24th centuries BC, a number of kingdoms and city states within Iraq began to have Akkadian speaking dynasties; including Assyria, Ekallatum, Isin and Larsa.
55
+
56
+ However, the Sumerians remained generally dominant until the rise of the Akkadian Empire (2335–2124 BC), based in the city of Akkad in central Iraq. Sargon of Akkad, originally a Rabshakeh to a Sumerian king, founded the empire, he conquered all of the city states of southern and central Iraq, and subjugated the kings of Assyria, thus uniting the Sumerians and Akkadians in one state. He then set about expanding his empire, conquering Gutium, Elam and had victories that did not result into a full conquest against the Amorites and Eblaites of Ancient Syria.
57
+
58
+ After the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the late 22nd century BC, the Gutians occupied the south for a few decades, while Assyria reasserted its independence in the north. This was followed by a Sumerian renaissance in the form of the Neo-Sumerian Empire. The Sumerians under king Shulgi conquered almost all of Iraq except the northern reaches of Assyria, and asserted themselves over the Gutians, Elamites and Amorites, destroying the first and holding off the others.
59
+
60
+ An Elamite invasion in 2004 BC brought the Sumerian revival to an end. By the mid 21st century BC, the Akkadian speaking kingdom of Assyria had risen to dominance in northern Iraq. Assyria expanded territorially into the north eastern Levant, central Iraq, and eastern Anatolia, forming the Old Assyrian Empire (circa 2035–1750 BC) under kings such as Puzur-Ashur I, Sargon I, Ilushuma and Erishum I, the latter of whom produced the most detailed set of law yet written.[citation needed] The south broke up into a number of Akkadian speaking states, Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna being the major ones.
61
+
62
+ During the 20th century BC, the Canaanite speaking Amorites began to migrate into southern Mesopotamia. Eventually, they began to set up small petty kingdoms in the south, as well as usurping the thrones of extant city states such as Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna.
63
+
64
+ One of these small Amorite kingdoms founded in 1894 BC contained the then small administrative town of Babylon within its borders. It remained insignificant for over a century, overshadowed by older and more powerful states, such as Assyria, Elam, Isin, Ehnunna and Larsa.
65
+
66
+ In 1792 BC, an Amorite ruler named Hammurabi came to power in this state, and immediately set about building Babylon from a minor town into a major city, declaring himself its king. Hammurabi conquered the whole of southern and central Iraq, as well as Elam to the east and Mari to the west, then engaged in a protracted war with the Assyrian king Ishme-Dagan for domination of the region, creating the short-lived Babylonian Empire. He eventually prevailed over the successor of Ishme-Dagan and subjected Assyria and its Anatolian colonies. By the middle of the eighteenth century BC, the Sumerians had lost their cultural identity and ceased to exist as a distinct people.[34][35] Genetic and cultural analysis indicates that the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq are probably their most direct modern descendants.[36][37][38]
67
+
68
+ It is from the period of Hammurabi that southern Iraq came to be known as Babylonia, while the north had already coalesced into Assyria hundreds of years before. However, his empire was short-lived, and rapidly collapsed after his death, with both Assyria and southern Iraq, in the form of the Sealand Dynasty, falling back into native Akkadian hands. The foreign Amorites clung on to power in a once more weak and small Babylonia until it was sacked by the Indo-European speaking Hittite Empire based in Anatolia in 1595 BC. After this, another foreign people, the Language Isolate speaking Kassites, originating in the Zagros Mountains of Ancient Iran, seized control of Babylonia, where they were to rule for almost 600 years, by far the longest dynasty ever to rule in Babylon.
69
+
70
+ Iraq was from this point divided into three polities: Assyria in the north, Kassite Babylonia in the south central region, and the Sealand Dynasty in the far south. The Sealand Dynasty was finally conquered by Kassite Babylonia circa 1380 BC.
71
+
72
+ The Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) saw Assyria rise to be the most powerful nation in the known world. Beginning with the campaigns of Ashur-uballit I, Assyria destroyed the rival Hurrian-Mitanni Empire, annexed huge swathes of the Hittite Empire for itself, annexed northern Babylonia from the Kassites, forced the Egyptian Empire from the region, and defeated the Elamites, Phrygians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Cilicians, Gutians, Dilmunites and Arameans. At its height, the Middle Assyrian Empire stretched from The Caucasus to Dilmun (modern Bahrain), and from the Mediterranean coasts of Phoenicia to the Zagros Mountains of Iran. In 1235 BC, Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria took the throne of Babylon, thus becoming the very first native Mesopotamian to rule the state.
73
+
74
+ During the Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BC), Babylonia was in a state of chaos, dominated for long periods by Assyria and Elam. The Kassites were driven from power by Assyria and Elam, allowing native south Mesopotamian kings to rule Babylonia for the first time, although often subject to Assyrian or Elamite rulers. However, these East Semitic Akkadian kings, were unable to prevent new waves of West Semitic migrants entering southern Iraq, and during the 11th century BC Arameans and Suteans entered Babylonia from The Levant, and these were followed in the late 10th to early 9th century BC by the migrant Chaldeans who were closely related to the earlier Arameans.
75
+
76
+ After a period of comparative decline in Assyria, it once more began to expand with the Neo Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC). This was to be the largest empire the region had yet seen, and under rulers such as Adad-Nirari II, Ashurnasirpal, Shalmaneser III, Semiramis, Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, Iraq became the centre of an empire stretching from Persia, Parthia and Elam in the east, to Cyprus and Antioch in the west, and from The Caucasus in the north to Egypt, Nubia and Arabia in the south.
77
+
78
+ The Arabs and the Chaldeans are first mentioned in written history (circa 850 BC) in the annals of Shalmaneser III.
79
+
80
+ It was during this period that an Akkadian influenced form of Eastern Aramaic was adopted by the Assyrians as the lingua franca of their vast empire, and Mesopotamian Aramaic began to supplant Akkadian as the spoken language of the general populace of both Assyria and Babylonia. The descendant dialects of this tongue survive amongst the Mandaeans of southern Iraq and Assyrians of northern Iraq to this day.
81
+
82
+ In the late 7th century BC, the Assyrian Empire tore itself apart with a series of brutal civil wars, weakening itself to such a degree that a coalition of its former subjects; the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Parthians, Scythians and Cimmerians, were able to attack Assyria, finally bringing its empire down by 605 BC.[39]
83
+
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+ The short-lived Neo-Babylonian Empire (620–539 BC) succeeded that of Assyria. It failed to attain the size, power or longevity of its predecessor; however, it came to dominate The Levant, Canaan, Arabia, Israel and Judah, and to defeat Egypt. Initially, Babylon was ruled by yet another foreign dynasty, that of the Chaldeans, who had migrated to the region in the late 10th or early 9th century BC. Its greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar II, rivalled another non native ruler, the ethnically unrelated Amorite king Hammurabi, as the greatest king of Babylon. However, by 556 BC, the Chaldeans had been deposed from power by the Assyrian born Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar.
85
+
86
+ In the 6th century BC, Cyrus the Great of neighbouring Persia defeated the Neo-Babylonian Empire at the Battle of Opis and Iraq was subsumed into the Achaemenid Empire for nearly two centuries. The Achaemenids made Babylon their main capital. The Chaldeans and Chaldea disappeared at around this time, though both Assyria and Babylonia endured and thrived under Achaemenid rule (see Achaemenid Assyria). Little changed under the Persians, having spent three centuries under Assyrian rule, their kings saw themselves as successors to Ashurbanipal, and they retained Assyrian Imperial Aramaic as the language of empire, together with the Assyrian imperial infrastructure, and an Assyrian style of art and architecture.[citation needed]
87
+
88
+ In the late 4th century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the region, putting it under Hellenistic Seleucid rule for over two centuries.[40] The Seleucids introduced the Indo-Anatolian and Greek term Syria to the region. This name had for many centuries been the Indo-European word for Assyria and specifically and only meant Assyria; however, the Seleucids also applied it to The Levant (Aramea, causing both the Assyria and the Assyrians of Iraq and the Arameans and The Levant to be called Syria and Syrians/Syriacs in the Greco-Roman world.[41]
89
+
90
+ The Parthians (247 BC – 224 AD) from Persia conquered the region during the reign of Mithridates I of Parthia (r. 171–138 BC). From Syria, the Romans invaded western parts of the region several times, briefly founding Assyria Provincia in Assyria. Christianity began to take hold in Iraq (particularly in Assyria) between the 1st and 3rd centuries, and Assyria became a centre of Syriac Christianity, the Church of the East and Syriac literature. A number of independent states evolved in the north during the Parthian era, such as Adiabene, Assur, Osroene and Hatra.
91
+
92
+ The Sassanids of Persia under Ardashir I destroyed the Parthian Empire and conquered the region in 224 AD. During the 240s and 250's AD, the Sassanids gradually conquered the independent states, culminating with Assur in 256 AD. The region was thus a province of the Sassanid Empire for over four centuries, and became the frontier and battle ground between the Sassanid Empire and Byzantine Empire, with both empires weakening each other, paving the way for the Arab-Muslim conquest of Persia in the mid-7th century.
93
+
94
+ The Arab Islamic conquest in the mid-7th century AD established Islam in Iraq and saw a large influx of Arabs. Under the Rashidun Caliphate, the prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, moved his capital to Kufa when he became the fourth caliph. The Umayyad Caliphate ruled the province of Iraq from Damascus in the 7th century. (However, eventually there was a separate, independent Caliphate of Córdoba in Iberia.)
95
+
96
+ The Abbasid Caliphate built the city of Baghdad along the Tigris in the 8th century as its capital, and the city became the leading metropolis of the Arab and Muslim world for five centuries. Baghdad was the largest multicultural city of the Middle Ages, peaking at a population of more than a million,[44] and was the centre of learning during the Islamic Golden Age. The Mongols destroyed the city and burned its library during the siege of Baghdad in the 13th century.[45]
97
+
98
+ In 1257, Hulagu Khan amassed an unusually large army, a significant portion of the Mongol Empire's forces, for the purpose of conquering Baghdad. When they arrived at the Islamic capital, Hulagu Khan demanded its surrender, but the last Abbasid Caliph Al-Musta'sim refused. This angered Hulagu, and, consistent with Mongol strategy of discouraging resistance, he besieged Baghdad, sacked the city and massacred many of the inhabitants.[46] Estimates of the number of dead range from 200,000 to a million.[47]
99
+
100
+ The Mongols destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate and Baghdad's House of Wisdom, which contained countless precious and historical documents. The city has never regained its previous pre-eminence as a major centre of culture and influence. Some historians believe that the Mongol invasion destroyed much of the irrigation infrastructure that had sustained Mesopotamia for millennia. Other historians point to soil salination as the culprit in the decline in agriculture.[48]
101
+
102
+ The mid-14th-century Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[49] The best estimate for the Middle East is a death rate of roughly one-third.[50]
103
+
104
+ In 1401, a warlord of Mongol descent, Tamerlane (Timur Lenk), invaded Iraq. After the capture of Baghdad, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred.[51] Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him (many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur).[52] Timur also conducted massacres of the indigenous Assyrian Christian population, hitherto still the majority population in northern Mesopotamia, and it was during this time that the ancient Assyrian city of Assur was finally abandoned.[53]
105
+
106
+ During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the Black Sheep Turkmen ruled the area now known as Iraq. In 1466, the White Sheep Turkmen defeated the Black Sheep and took control. From the earliest 16th century, in 1508, as with all territories of the former White Sheep Turkmen, Iraq fell into the hands of the Iranian Safavids. Owing to the century long Turco-Iranian rivalry between the Safavids and the neighbouring Ottoman Turks, Iraq would be contested between the two for more than a hundred years during the frequent Ottoman-Persian Wars.
107
+
108
+ With the Treaty of Zuhab in 1639, most of the territory of present-day Iraq eventually came under the control of Ottoman Empire as the eyalet of Baghdad as a result of wars with the neighbouring rival, Safavid Iran. Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533–1918), the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle zone between the rival regional empires and tribal alliances.
109
+
110
+ By the 17th century, the frequent conflicts with the Safavids had sapped the strength of the Ottoman Empire and had weakened its control over its provinces. The nomadic population swelled with the influx of bedouins from Najd, in the Arabian Peninsula. Bedouin raids on settled areas became impossible to curb.[54]
111
+
112
+ During the years 1747–1831, Iraq was ruled by a Mamluk dynasty of Georgian[55] origin who succeeded in obtaining autonomy from the Ottoman Porte, suppressed tribal revolts, curbed the power of the Janissaries, restored order and introduced a programme of modernisation of economy and military. In 1831, the Ottomans managed to overthrow the Mamluk regime and imposed their direct control over Iraq. The population of Iraq, estimated at 30 million in 800 AD, was only 5 million at the start of the 20th century.[56]
113
+
114
+ During World War I, the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. In the Mesopotamian campaign against the Central Powers, British forces invaded the country and initially suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Turkish army during the Siege of Kut (1915–1916). However, subsequent to this the British began to gain the upper hand, and were further aided by the support of local Arabs and Assyrians. In 1916, the British and French made a plan for the post-war division of Western Asia under the Sykes-Picot Agreement.[57] British forces regrouped and captured Baghdad in 1917, and defeated the Ottomans. An armistice was signed in 1918. The British lost 92,000 soldiers in the Mesopotamian campaign. Ottoman losses are unknown but the British captured a total of 45,000 prisoners of war. By the end of 1918, the British had deployed 410,000 men in the area, of which 112,000 were combat troops.[citation needed]
115
+
116
+ The country today known as Iraq was a region of the Ottoman Empire until the partition of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century. It was made up of three provinces, called vilayets in the Ottoman language: Mosul Vilayet, Baghdad Vilayet, and Basra Vilayet. These three provinces were joined into one Kingdom by the British after the region became a League of Nations mandate, administered under British control, with the name "State of Iraq". A fourth province (Zor Sanjak), which Iraqi nationalists considered part of Upper Mesopotamia was ultimately added to Syria.[58][59] In line with their "Sharifian Solution" policy, the British established the Hashemite king, Faisal I of Iraq, who had been forced out of Syria by the French, as their client ruler. Likewise, British authorities selected Sunni Arab elites from the region for appointments to government and ministry offices.[specify][60][page needed][61]
117
+
118
+ Faced with spiraling costs and influenced by the public protestations of the war hero T. E. Lawrence[62] in The Times, Britain replaced Arnold Wilson in October 1920 with a new Civil Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox.[63] Cox managed to quell a rebellion, yet was also responsible for implementing the fateful policy of close co-operation with Iraq's Sunni minority.[64] The institution of slavery was abolished in the 1920s.[65]
119
+
120
+ Britain granted independence to the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932,[66] on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases, local militia in the form of Assyrian Levies, and transit rights for their forces. King Ghazi ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal's death in 1933, while undermined by attempted military coups, until his death in 1939. Ghazi was followed by his underage son, Faisal II. 'Abd al-Ilah served as Regent during Faisal's minority.
121
+
122
+ On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and members of the Golden Square staged a coup d'état and overthrew the government of 'Abd al-Ilah. During the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War, the United Kingdom (which still maintained air bases in Iraq) invaded Iraq for fear that the Rashid Ali government might cut oil supplies to Western nations because of his links to the Axis powers. The war started on 2 May, and the British, together with loyal Assyrian Levies,[67] defeated the forces of Al-Gaylani, forcing an armistice on 31 May.
123
+
124
+ A military occupation followed the restoration of the pre-coup government of the Hashemite monarchy. The occupation ended on 26 October 1947, although Britain was to retain military bases in Iraq until 1954, after which the Assyrian militias were disbanded. The rulers during the occupation and the remainder of the Hashemite monarchy were Nuri as-Said, the autocratic Prime Minister, who also ruled from 1930 to 1932, and 'Abd al-Ilah, the former Regent who now served as an adviser to King Faisal II.
125
+
126
+ In 1958, a coup d'état known as the 14 July Revolution was led by the Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim. This revolt was strongly anti-imperial and anti-monarchical in nature and had strong socialist elements. Numerous people were killed in the coup, including King Faysal II, Prince Abd al-Ilah, and Nuri al-Sa'id.[68] Qasim controlled Iraq through military rule and in 1958 he began a process of forcibly reducing the surplus amounts of land owned by a few citizens and having the state redistribute the land. He was overthrown by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif in a February 1963 coup. After the latter's death in 1966, he was succeeded by his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, who was overthrown by the Ba'ath Party in 1968. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became the first Ba'ath President of Iraq but then the movement gradually came under the control of Saddam Hussein, who acceded to the presidency and control of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), then Iraq's supreme executive body, in July 1979.
127
+
128
+ In 1979, the Iranian Revolution took place. Following months of cross-border raids between the two countries, Saddam declared war on Iran in September 1980, initiating the Iran–Iraq War (or First Persian Gulf War). Taking advantage of the post-revolution chaos in Iran, Iraq captured some territories in southwest of Iran, but Iran recaptured all of the lost territories within two years, and for the next six years Iran was on the offensive.[69][page needed] The war, which ended in stalemate in 1988, had cost the lives of between half a million and 1.5 million people.[70] In 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed an Iraqi nuclear materials testing reactor at Osirak and was widely criticised at the United Nations.[71][72] During the eight-year war with Iran, Saddam Hussein extensively used chemical weapons against Iranians.[73] In the final stages of the Iran–Iraq War, the Ba'athist Iraqi regime led the Al-Anfal Campaign, a genocidal[74] campaign that targeted Iraqi Kurds,[75][76][77] and led to the killing of 50,000–100,000 civilians.[78] Chemical weapons were also used against Iraqi Shia civilians during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq.
129
+
130
+ In August 1990, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait. This subsequently led to military intervention by United States-led forces in the First Gulf War. The coalition forces proceeded with a bombing campaign targeting military targets[79][80][81] and then launched a 100-hour-long ground assault against Iraqi forces in Southern Iraq and those occupying Kuwait.
131
+
132
+ Iraq's armed forces were devastated during the war. Shortly after it ended in 1991, Shia and Kurdish Iraqis led several uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime, but these were successfully repressed using the Iraqi security forces and chemical weapons. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people, including many civilians were killed.[82] During the uprisings the US, UK, France and Turkey, claiming authority under UNSCR 688, established the Iraqi no-fly zones to protect Kurdish and Shiite populations from attacks by the Saddam regime's fixed-wing aircraft (but not helicopters).
133
+
134
+ Iraq was ordered to destroy its chemical and biological weapons and the UN attempted to compel Saddam's government to disarm and agree to a ceasefire by imposing additional sanctions on the country in addition to the initial sanctions imposed following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqi Government's failure to disarm and agree to a ceasefire resulted in sanctions which remained in place until 2003. The effects of the sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq have been disputed.[83][84] Whereas it was widely believed that the sanctions caused a major rise in child mortality, recent research has shown that commonly cited data were fabricated by the Iraqi government and that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions."[85][86][87] An oil for food program was established in 1996 to ease the effects of sanctions.
135
+
136
+ Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration began planning the overthrow of Saddam's government and in October 2002, the US Congress passed the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. In November 2002, the UN Security Council passed UNSCR 1441 and in March 2003 the US and its allies invaded Iraq.
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+
138
+ On 20 March 2003, a United States-organized coalition invaded Iraq, under the pretext that Iraq had failed to abandon its weapons of mass destruction program in violation of UN Resolution 687. This claim was based on documents provided by the CIA and the British government that were later found to be unreliable.[88][89][90]
139
+
140
+ Following the invasion, the United States established the Coalition Provisional Authority to govern Iraq. In May 2003 L. Paul Bremer, the chief executive of the CPA, issued orders to exclude Baath Party members from the new Iraqi government (CPA Order 1) and to disband the Iraqi Army (CPA Order 2).[91] The decision dissolved the largely Sunni Iraqi Army and excluded many of the country's former government officials from participating in the country's governance,[92] including 40,000 school teachers who had joined the Baath Party simply to keep their jobs,[93] helping to bring about a chaotic post-invasion environment.[94]
141
+
142
+ An insurgency against the US-led coalition-rule of Iraq began in summer 2003 within elements of the former Iraqi secret police and army, who formed guerrilla units. In fall 2003, self-entitled 'jihadist' groups began targeting coalition forces. Various Sunni militias were created in 2003, for example Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The insurgency included intense inter-ethnic violence between Sunnis and Shias.[95] The Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal came to light, late 2003 in reports by Amnesty International and Associated Press.
143
+
144
+ The Mahdi Army—a Shia militia created in the summer of 2003 by Muqtada al-Sadr—began to fight Coalition forces in April 2004.[96][96] 2004 saw Sunni and Shia militants fighting against each other and against the new Iraqi Interim Government installed in June 2004, and against Coalition forces, as well as the First Battle of Fallujah in April and Second Battle of Fallujah in November. The Sunni militia Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad became Al-Qaeda in Iraq in October 2004 and targeted Coalition forces as well as civilians, mainly Shia Muslims, further exacerbating ethnic tensions.[97]
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+
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+ In January 2005, the first elections since the invasion took place and in October a new Constitution was approved, which was followed by parliamentary elections in December. However, insurgent attacks were common and increased to 34,131 in 2005 from 26,496 in 2004.[98]
147
+
148
+ During 2006, fighting continued and reached its highest levels of violence, more war crimes scandals were made public, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed by US forces and Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and hanged.[99][100][101]
149
+ In late 2006, the US government's Iraq Study Group recommended that the US begin focusing on training Iraqi military personnel and in January 2007 US President George W. Bush announced a "Surge" in the number of US troops deployed to the country.[102]
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+
151
+ In May 2007, Iraq's Parliament called on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal and US coalition partners such as the UK and Denmark began withdrawing their forces from the country.[103][104][105] The war in Iraq has resulted in between 151,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis being killed.[106][107]
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+
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+ In 2008, fighting continued and Iraq's newly trained armed forces launched attacks against militants. The Iraqi government signed the US–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, which required US forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities by 30 June 2009 and to withdraw completely from Iraq by 31 December 2011.
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+ US troops handed over security duties to Iraqi forces in June 2009, though they continued to work with Iraqi forces after the pullout.[108] On the morning of 18 December 2011, the final contingent of US troops to be withdrawn ceremonially exited over the border to Kuwait.[10] Crime and violence initially spiked in the months following the US withdrawal from cities in mid-2009[109][110] but despite the initial increase in violence, in November 2009, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials reported that the civilian death toll in Iraq fell to its lowest level since the 2003 invasion.[111]
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+ Following the withdrawal of US troops in 2011, the insurgency continued and Iraq suffered from political instability. In February 2011, the Arab Spring protests spread to Iraq;[112] but the initial protests did not topple the government. The Iraqi National Movement, reportedly representing the majority of Iraqi Sunnis, boycotted Parliament for several weeks in late 2011 and early 2012, claiming that the Shiite-dominated government was striving to sideline Sunnis.
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+ In 2012 and 2013, levels of violence increased and armed groups inside Iraq were increasingly galvanised by the Syrian Civil War. Both Sunnis and Shias crossed the border to fight in Syria.[113] In December 2012, Sunni Arabs protested against the government, whom they claimed marginalised them.[114][115]
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+ During 2013, Sunni militant groups stepped up attacks targeting the Iraq's Shia population in an attempt to undermine confidence in the Nouri al-Maliki-led government.[116] In 2014, Sunni insurgents belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group seized control of large swathes of land including several major Iraqi cities, like Tikrit, Fallujah and Mosul creating hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons amid reports of atrocities by ISIL fighters.[117]
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+ After an inconclusive election in April 2014, Nouri al-Maliki served as caretaker-Prime-Minister.[118]
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+ On 11 August, Iraq's highest court ruled that PM Maliki's bloc is biggest in parliament, meaning Maliki could stay Prime Minister.[118] By 13 August, however, the Iraqi president had tasked Haider al-Abadi with forming a new government, and the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and some Iraqi politicians expressed their wish for a new leadership in Iraq, for example from Haider al-Abadi.[119] On 14 August, Maliki stepped down as PM to support Mr al-Abadi and to "safeguard the high interests of the country". The US government welcomed this as "another major step forward" in uniting Iraq.[120][121] On 9 September 2014, Haider al-Abadi had formed a new government and became the new prime minister.[citation needed] Intermittent conflict between Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions has led to increasing debate about the splitting of Iraq into three autonomous regions, including Sunni Kurdistan in the northeast, a Sunnistan in the west and a Shiastan in the southeast.[122]
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+ In response to rapid territorial gains made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during the first half of 2014, and its universally-condemned executions and reported human rights abuses, many states began to intervene against it in the Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017). Since the airstrikes started, ISIL has been losing ground in both Iraq and Syria.[123] Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Iraq in ISIL-linked violence.[124][125] The genocide of Yazidis by ISIL has led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis from their ancestral lands in Northern Iraq.[126] The 2016 Karrada bombing killed nearly 400 civilians and injured hundreds more.[127] On 17 March 2017, a US-led coalition airstrike in Mosul killed more than 200 civilians.[128]
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+ Since 2015, ISIL lost territory in Iraq, including Tikrit in March and April 2015,[129] Baiji in October 2015,[130] Sinjar in November 2015,[131] Ramadi in December 2015,[132] Fallujah in June 2016[133] and Mosul in July 2017. By December 2017, ISIL had no remaining territory in Iraq, following the 2017 Western Iraq campaign.[134]
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+ In September 2017, a referendum was held regarding Kurdish independence in Iraq. 92% of Iraqi Kurds voted in favor of independence.[135] The referendum was regarded as illegal by the federal government in Baghdad.[136] In March 2018, Turkey launched military operations to eliminate the Kurdish separatist fighters in northern Iraq.[137] Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political coalition won Iraq's parliamentary election in May 2018.[138]
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+ Serious civil unrest rocked the country beginning in Baghdad and Najaf in July 2018 and spreading to other provinces in late September 2019 as rallies to protest corruption, unemployment, and public service failures turned violent.[139]
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+ Protests and demonstrations started again on 1 October 2019, against 16 years of corruption, unemployment and inefficient public services, before they escalated into calls to overthrow the administration and to stop Iranian intervention in Iraq. The Iraqi government at times reacted harshly, resulting in over 500 deaths by 12 December 2019.
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+ On 27 December 2019, the K-1 Air Base in Iraq was attacked by more than 30 rockets, killing a U.S. civilian contractor and injuring others. The U.S. blamed the Iranian-backed Kata'ib Hezbollah militia.
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+ On 29 December 2019, the United States bombed five Kata'ib Hezbollah militia's positions in Iraq and Syria, in retaliation for the presumed Kata'ib attack of 27 December. According to Iraqi sources, at least 25 militia fighters were killed.
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+ On 31 December 2019, after a funeral for Kata'ib Hezbollah militiamen killed by U.S. airstrikes, dozens of Iraqi Shia militiamen and their supporters marched into the Green Zone of Baghdad and surrounded the U.S. embassy compound (see article: Attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad). Demonstrators smashed a door of the checkpoint, set fire to the reception area, left anti-American posters and sprayed anti-American graffiti. U.S. president Trump accused Iran of orchestrating the attack.
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+ On 3 January 2020, amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, the U.S. launched a drone strike on a convoy traveling near Baghdad International Airport, killing Qasem Soleimani, Iranian major general and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Quds Force commander, the second most powerful person of Iran;[140], Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF or PMU), four senior Iranian officers; and four Iraqi officers.
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+ Following months of protests that broke out across Iraq in October 2019 and the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and his cabinet, Mustafa Al Kadhimi became a leading contender for the Premiership.[141]
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+ On 9 April 2020, he was named by President Barham Salih as prime minister-designate, the third person tapped to lead the country in just 10 weeks as it struggled to replace a government that fell last year after months of protests. Kadhimi was nominated by President Barham Salih, state television reported, shortly after the previous designated prime minister, Adnan al-Zurfi, announced he was withdrawing having failed to secure enough support to pass a government.[142]
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+ Iraq lies between latitudes 29° and 38° N, and longitudes 39° and 49° E (a small area lies west of 39°). Spanning 437,072 km2 (168,754 sq mi), it is the 58th-largest country in the world. It is comparable in size to the US state of California, and somewhat larger than Paraguay.
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+ Iraq mainly consists of desert, but near the two major rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) are fertile alluvial plains, as the rivers carry about 60,000,000 m3 (78,477,037 cu yd) of silt annually to the delta. The north of the country is mostly composed of mountains; the highest point being at 3,611 m (11,847 ft) point, unnamed on the map opposite, but known locally as Cheekah Dar (black tent). Iraq has a small coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) along the Persian Gulf. Close to the coast and along the Shatt al-Arab (known as arvandrūd: اروندرود among Iranians) there used to be marshlands, but many were drained in the 1990s.
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+ Most of Iraq has a hot arid climate with subtropical influence. Summer temperatures average above 40 °C (104 °F) for most of the country and frequently exceed 48 °C (118.4 °F). Winter temperatures infrequently exceed 21 °C (69.8 °F) with maxima roughly 15 to 19 °C (59.0 to 66.2 °F) and night-time lows 2 to 5 °C (35.6 to 41.0 °F). Typically, precipitation is low; most places receive less than 250 mm (9.8 in) annually, with maximum rainfall occurring during the winter months. Rainfall during the summer is extremely rare, except in the far north of the country. The northern mountainous regions have cold winters with occasional heavy snows, sometimes causing extensive flooding.
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+ The federal government of Iraq is defined under the current Constitution as a democratic, federal parliamentary republic. The federal government is composed of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as well as numerous independent commissions. Aside from the federal government, there are regions (made of one or more governorates), governorates, and districts within Iraq with jurisdiction over various matters as defined by law.
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+ The National Alliance is the main Shia parliamentary bloc, and was established as a result of a merger of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's State of Law Coalition and the Iraqi National Alliance.[143] The Iraqi National Movement is led by Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia widely supported by Sunnis. The party has a more consistent anti-sectarian perspective than most of its rivals.[143] The Kurdistan List is dominated by two parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Masood Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Jalal Talabani. Both parties are secular and enjoy close ties with the West.[143]
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+ In 2018, according to the Failed States Index, Iraq was the world's eleventh most politically unstable country.[144][145] The concentration of power in the hands of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and growing pressure on the opposition led to growing concern about the future of political rights in Iraq.[146] Nevertheless, progress was made and the country had risen to 11th place by 2013.[147] In August 2014, al-Maliki's reign came to an end. He announced on 14 August 2014 that he would stand aside so that Haider Al-Abadi, who had been nominated just days earlier by newly installed President Fuad Masum, could take over. Until that point, al-Maliki had clung to power even asking the federal court to veto the president's nomination describing it as a violation of the constitution.[148]
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+ Transparency International ranks Iraq's government as the eighth-most-corrupt government in the world. Government payroll have increased from 1 million employees under Saddam Hussein to around 7 million employees in 2016. In combination with decreased oil prices, the government budget deficit is near 25% of GDP as of 2016[update].[149]
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+ Since the establishment of the no–fly zones following the Gulf War of 1990–1991, the Kurds established their own autonomous region.[citation needed]
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+ In October 2005, the new Constitution of Iraq was approved in a referendum with a 78% overall majority, although the percentage of support varying widely between the country's territories.[150] The new constitution was backed by the Shia and Kurdish communities, but was rejected by Arab Sunnis. Under the terms of the constitution, the country conducted fresh nationwide parliamentary elections on 15 December 2005. All three major ethnic groups in Iraq voted along ethnic lines, as did Assyrian and Turcoman minorities.
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+ Law no. 188 of the year 1959 (Personal Status Law)[151] made polygamy extremely difficult, granted child custody to the mother in case of divorce, prohibited repudiation and marriage under the age of 16.[152] Article 1 of Civil Code also identifies Islamic law as a formal source of law.[153] Iraq had no Sharia courts but civil courts used Sharia for issues of personal status including marriage and divorce. In 1995 Iraq introduced Sharia punishment for certain types of criminal offences.[154] The code is based on French civil law as well as Sunni and Jafari (Shi'ite) interpretations of Sharia.[155]
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+ In 2004, the CPA chief executive L. Paul Bremer said he would veto any constitutional draft stating that sharia is the principal basis of law.[156] The declaration enraged many local Shia clerics,[157] and by 2005 the United States had relented, allowing a role for sharia in the constitution to help end a stalemate on the draft constitution.[158]
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+ The Iraqi Penal Code is the statutory law of Iraq.
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+ Iraqi security forces are composed of forces serving under the Ministry of Interior (which controls the Police and Popular Mobilization Forces) and the Ministry of Defense, as well as the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Bureau, reporting directly to the Prime Minister of Iraq, which oversees the Iraqi Special Operations Forces. Ministry of Defense forces include the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Air Force and the Iraqi Navy. The Peshmerga are a separate armed force loyal to the Kurdistan Regional Government. The regional government and the central government disagree as to whether they are under Baghdad's authority and to what extent.[159]
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+ The Iraqi Army is an objective counter-insurgency force that as of November 2009 includes 14 divisions, each division consisting of 4 brigades.[160] It is described as the most important element of the counter-insurgency fight.[161] Light infantry brigades are equipped with small arms, machine guns, RPGs, body armour and light armoured vehicles. Mechanized infantry brigades are equipped with T-54/55 main battle tanks and BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles.[161] As of mid-2008, logistical problems included a maintenance crisis and ongoing supply problems.[162]
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+ The Iraqi Air Force is designed to support ground forces with surveillance, reconnaissance and troop lift. Two reconnaissance squadrons use light aircraft, three helicopter squadrons are used to move troops and one air transportation squadron uses C-130 transport aircraft to move troops, equipment, and supplies. It currently has 3,000 personnel. It is planned to increase to 18,000 personnel, with 550 aircraft by 2018.[161]
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+ The Iraqi Navy is a small force with 1,500 sailors and officers, including 800 Marines, designed to protect shoreline and inland waterways from insurgent infiltration. The navy is also responsible for the security of offshore oil platforms. The navy will have coastal patrol squadrons, assault boat squadrons and a marine battalion.[161] The force will consist of 2,000 to 2,500 sailors by year 2010.[163]
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+ In 2019, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Michael Mulroy said that the relationship with the Defense Department and the Iraqi Army was among our most compelling strategic interests and that the U.S. currently helps train and equip 28 Iraqi brigades to maintain their readiness. "The priority is to empower Iraq's professional and capable security forces to protect its sovereignty and to prevent an ISIS resurgence," Mulroy said. "The more capable Iraq's security institutions, the more resilient Iraq will be in the face of its enemies".[164][165]
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+ On 4 November 2019, more than 100 Australian Defence Force personnel left Darwin for the 10th rotation of Task Group Taji base in north of Baghdad. The Australian contingent mentors the Iraqi School of Infantry, where the Iraqi Security Forces are trained. However, Australia's contribution was reduced from 250 to 120 ADF personnel, which along with New Zealand had trained over 45,000 ISF members before that.[166]
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+ On 17 November 2008, the US and Iraq agreed to a Status of Forces Agreement,[167] as part of the broader Strategic Framework Agreement.[168] This agreement states "the Government of Iraq requests" US forces to temporarily remain in Iraq to "maintain security and stability" and that Iraq has jurisdiction over military contractors, and US personnel when not on US bases or on–duty.
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+ On 12 February 2009, Iraq officially became the 186th State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Under the provisions of this treaty, Iraq is considered a party with declared stockpiles of chemical weapons. Because of their late accession, Iraq is the only State Party exempt from the existing timeline for destruction of their chemical weapons. Specific criteria is in development to address the unique nature of Iraqi accession.[169]
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+ Iran–Iraq relations have flourished since 2005 by the exchange of high level visits: Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki made frequent visits to Iran, along with Jalal Talabani visiting numerous times, to help boost bilateral co-operation in all fields.[citation needed] A conflict occurred in December 2009, when Iraq accused Iran of seizing an oil well on the border.[170]
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+ Relationships with Turkey are tense, largely because of the Kurdistan Regional Government, as clashes between Turkey and the PKK continue.[171] In October 2011, the Turkish parliament renewed a law that gives Turkish forces the ability to pursue rebels over the border in Iraq."[172]
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+ On 5 January 2020, the Iraqi parliament voted for a resolution that urges the government to work on expelling U.S. troops from Iraq. The resolution was passed two days after a U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of the Quds Force. The resolution specifically calls for ending of a 2014 agreement allowing Washington to help Iraq against Islamic State groups by sending troops.[173] This resolution will also signify ending an agreement with Washington to station troops in Iraq as Iran vows to retaliate after the killing.[174]
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+ Relations between Iraq and its Kurdish population have been sour in recent history, especially with Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaign against them in the 1980s. After uprisings during the early 90s, many Kurds fled their homeland and no-fly zones were established in northern Iraq to prevent more conflicts. Despite historically poor relations, some progress has been made, and Iraq elected its first Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, in 2005. Furthermore, Kurdish is now an official language of Iraq alongside Arabic according to Article 4 of the constitution.[175]
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+ LGBT rights in Iraq remain limited. Although decriminalised, homosexuality remains stigmatised in Iraqi society.[176] Targeting people because of their gender identity or sexual orientation is not uncommon and is usually carried out in the name of family honour. People who dress in emo style are mistakenly associated with homosexuality and may suffer the same fate.[177] Investigations by the BBC and other western media in 2008 and 2009, including interviews of homosexual and transgender Iraqis, showed that violence against LGBT people had significantly increased since Saddam Hussein was toppled.[178][179][180][181][182]
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+ On May 14, 2020, Human Rights Watch said that Iraqi government should focus on the key areas to advance human rights in the country through a legislation. Several areas need a legislative reform to bring Iraqi law in line with international standards.[183] On June 15, 2020, Human Rights Watch said, free speech is under threat in Iraq. Prime Minister of Iraq Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has a unique opportunity to tackle over a decade of free speech restrictions and should reform its penal code and other laws.[184]
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+ Iraq is composed of nineteen governorates (or provinces) (Arabic: muhafadhat (singular muhafadhah); Kurdish: پارێزگا Pârizgah). The governorates are subdivided into districts (or qadhas), which are further divided into sub-districts (or nawāḥī). Kurdistan Region (Erbil, Dohuk, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja) is the only legally defined region within Iraq, with its own government and quasi-official army Peshmerga.
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+ Iraq's economy is dominated by the oil sector, which has traditionally provided about 95% of foreign exchange earnings. The lack of development in other sectors has resulted in 18%–30% unemployed and a per capita GDP of $4,000.[7] Public sector employment accounted for nearly 60% of full-time employment in 2011.[185] The oil export industry, which dominates the Iraqi economy, generates very little employment.[185] Currently only a modest percentage of women (the highest estimate for 2011 was 22%) participate in the labour force.[185]
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+ Prior to US occupation, Iraq's centrally planned economy prohibited foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, ran most large industries as state-owned enterprises, and imposed large tariffs to keep out foreign goods.[186] After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority quickly began issuing many binding orders privatising Iraq's economy and opening it up to foreign investment.
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+ On 20 November 2004, the Paris Club of creditor nations agreed to write off 80% ($33 billion) of Iraq's $42 billion debt to Club members. Iraq's total external debt was around $120 billion at the time of the 2003 invasion, and had grown another $5 billion by 2004. The debt relief will be implemented in three stages: two of 30% each and one of 20%.[187]
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+ In February 2011, Citigroup included Iraq in a group of countries which it described as 'Global Growth Generators', that it argued will enjoy significant economic growth in the future.[188]
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+ The official currency in Iraq is the Iraqi dinar. The Coalition Provisional Authority issued new dinar coins and notes, with the notes printed by De La Rue using modern anti-forgery techniques.[189] Jim Cramer's 20 October 2009 endorsement of the Iraqi Dinar on CNBC has further piqued interest in the investment.[190]
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+ Five years after the invasion, an estimated 2.4 million people were internally displaced (with a further two million refugees outside Iraq), four million Iraqis were considered food-insecure (a quarter of children were chronically malnourished) and only a third of Iraqi children had access to safe drinking water.[191]
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+ According to the Overseas Development Institute, international NGOs face challenges in carrying out their mission, leaving their assistance "piecemeal and largely conducted undercover, hindered by insecurity, a lack of coordinated funding, limited operational capacity and patchy information".[191] International NGOs have been targeted and during the first 5 years, 94 aid workers were killed, 248 injured, 24 arrested or detained and 89 kidnapped or abducted.[191]
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+ With its 143.1 billion barrels (2.275×1010 m3) of proved oil reserves, Iraq ranks third in the world behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in the amount of oil reserves.[192][193] Oil production levels reached 3.4 million barrels per day by December 2012.[194] Only about 2,000 oil wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared with about 1 million wells in Texas alone.[195] Iraq was one of the founding members of OPEC.[196][197]
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+ During the 1970s Iraq produced up to 3.5 million barrels per day, but sanctions imposed against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 crippled the country's oil sector. The sanctions prohibited Iraq from exporting oil until 1996 and Iraq's output declined by 85% in the years following the First Gulf War. The sanctions were lifted in 2003 after the US-led invasion removed Saddam Hussein from power, but development of Iraq's oil resources has been hampered by the ongoing conflict.[198]
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+ As of 2010[update], despite improved security and billions of dollars in oil revenue, Iraq still generates about half the electricity that customers demand, leading to protests during the hot summer months.[199]
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+ The Iraq oil law, a proposed piece of legislation submitted to the Iraqi Council of Representatives in 2007, has failed to gain approval due to disagreements among Iraq's various political blocs.[200][201]
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+ According to a US Study from May 2007, between 100,000 barrels per day (16,000 m3/d) and 300,000 barrels per day (48,000 m3/d) of Iraq's declared oil production over the past four years could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling.[202] In 2008, Al Jazeera reported $13 billion of Iraqi oil revenues in US care was improperly accounted for, of which $2.6 billion is totally unaccounted for.[203] Some reports that the government has reduced corruption in public procurement of oil; however, reliable reports of bribery and kickbacks to government officials persist.[204]
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+ In June 2008, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced plans to go ahead with small one- or two-year no-bid contracts to Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP—once partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company—along with Chevron and smaller firms to service Iraq's largest fields.[205] These plans were cancelled in September because negotiations had stalled for so long that the work could not be completed within the time frame, according to Iraqi oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani. Several United States senators had also criticised the deal, arguing it was hindering efforts to pass the hydrocarbon law.[206]
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+ On 30 June and 11 December 2009, the Iraqi ministry of oil awarded service contracts to international oil companies for some of Iraq's many oil fields.[207][208] Oil fields contracted include the "super-giant" Majnoon Field, Halfaya Field, West Qurna Field and Rumaila Field.[208] BP and China National Petroleum Corporation won a deal to develop Rumaila, the largest Iraqi oil field.[209][210]
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+ On 14 March 2014, the International Energy Agency said Iraq's oil output jumped by half a million barrels a day in February to average 3.6 million barrels a day. The country had not pumped that much oil since 1979, when Saddam Hussein rose to power.[211] However, on 14 July 2014, as sectarian strife had taken hold, Kurdistan Regional Government forces seized control of the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oilfields in the north of the country, taking them from Iraq's control. Baghdad condemned the seizure and threatened "dire consequences" if the fields were not returned.[212]
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+ The UN estimates that oil accounts for 99% of Iraq's revenue.[198]
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+ Water supply and sanitation in Iraq is characterized by poor water and service quality. Three decades of war, combined with limited environmental awareness, have destroyed Iraq's water resources management system.
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+ Access to potable water differs significantly among governorates and between urban and rural areas.
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+ 91% of the entire population has access to potable water. But in rural areas, only 77% of the population has access to improved drinking water sources compared to 98% in urban areas.[213]
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+ Large amounts of water are wasted during production.[213]
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+ Although many infrastructure projects are underway, Iraq remains in deep housing crisis, with the war-ravaged country likely to complete only 5 percent of the 2.5 million homes it needs to build by 2016 to keep up with demand, the Minister for Construction and Housing said in September 2013.[214]
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+ The 2018 estimate of the total Iraqi population is 38,433,600.[1][2] Iraq's population was estimated to be 2 million in 1878.[215] In 2013 Iraq's population reached 35 million amid a post-war population boom.[218]
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+ According to the CIA World Factbook, citing a 1987 Iraqi government estimate,[7] the population of Iraq is formed of 75–80% Arabs followed by 15% Kurds.[7] In addition, the estimate claims that other minorities form 5% of the country's population, including the Assyrians, Turkmen/Turcoman, Yezidis, Shabak, Kaka'i, Bedouins, Roma, Circassians, Sabaean-Mandaean, and Persians.[7] However, the International Crisis Group points out that figures from the 1987 census, as well as the 1967, 1977, and 1997 censuses, "are all considered highly problematic, due to suspicions of regime manipulation" because Iraqi citizens were only allowed to indicate belonging to either the Arab or Kurdish ethnic groups;[219] consequently, this skewed the number of other ethnic minorities, such as Iraq's third largest ethnic group – the Turkmens/Turkomans.[219]
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+ A report published by the European Parliamentary Research Service suggests that in 2015 there was 24 million Arabs (15 million Shia and 9 million Sunni); 4 million Sunni Kurds (plus 500,000 Shia Faili Kurds and 200,000 Kaka'i); 3 million Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman; 1 million Black Iraqis; 500,000 Christians (including Chaldean, Syriacs, Assyrians and Armenians); 500,000 Yazidis; 250,000 Shabaks; 50,000 Roma; 3,000 Sabean-Mandaeans; 2,000 Circassians; 1,000 Baha'i; and a few dozen Jews.[220]
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+ Around 20,000 Marsh Arabs live in southern Iraq.[221]
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+ Iraq has a community of 2,500 Chechens.[222] In southern Iraq, there is a community of Iraqis of African descent, a legacy of the slavery practised in the Islamic Caliphate beginning before the Zanj Rebellion of the 9th century, and Basra's role as a key port.[65] It is the most populous country in the Arabian Plate.[223]
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+ The main languages spoken in Iraq are Mesopotamian Arabic and Kurdish, followed by the Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman dialect of Turkish, and the Neo-Aramaic languages (specifically Chaldean and Assyrian).[224] Arabic and Kurdish are written with versions of the Arabic script. Since 2005, the Turkmen/Turkoman have switched from the Arabic script to the Turkish alphabet.[225] In addition, the Neo-Aramaic languages use the Syriac script.
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+ Other smaller minority languages include Mandaic, Shabaki, Armenian, Circassian and Persian.
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+ Prior to the invasion in 2003, Arabic was the sole official language. Since the new Constitution of Iraq approved in June 2004, both Arabic and Kurdish are official languages,[226] while Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and the Turkmen/Turkoman dialect of Turkish (referred to as respectively "Syriac" and "Turkmen" in the constitution) are recognised regional languages.[227] In addition, any region or province may declare other languages official if a majority of the population approves in a general referendum.[228]
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+ According to the Iraqi constitution:
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+ The Arabic language and the Kurdish language are the two official languages of Iraq. The right of Iraqis to educate their children in their mother tongue, such as Turkmen, Assyrian, and Armenian shall be guaranteed in government educational institutions in accordance with educational guidelines, or in any other language in private educational institutions.[229]
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+ Religions in Iraq are dominantly Abrahamic with Muslim (official) 99% (Shia 55–60%, Sunni 40%), Christian <0.1%, Yazidi <0.1%, Sabean Mandaean <0.1%, Baha'i <0.1%, Zoroastrian <0.1%, Hindu <0.1%, Buddhist <0.1%, Jewish <0.1%, folk religion <0.1, unaffiliated 0.1%, other <0.1%[7] It has a mixed Shia and Sunni population. The CIA World Factbook estimates that around 65% of Muslims in Iraq are Shia, and around 35% are Sunni.[7] A 2011 Pew Research Center estimates that 51% of Muslims in Iraq are Shia, 42% are Sunni, while 5% identify themselves as "Just a Muslim".[232] The Sunni Muslims, 12–13 million in a population of 36 million, include Arabs, most Turkomen, and Kurds.
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+ The Sunni population complains of facing discrimination in almost all aspects of life by the government. However, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki denied that such discrimination occurs.[233]
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+ Christianity in Iraq has its roots from the conception of the Church of the East in the 5th century AD, predating the existence of Islam in the region. Christians in Iraq are predominantly native Assyrians belonging to the Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church and Syriac Orthodox Church. There is also a significant population of Armenian Christians in Iraq who had fled Turkey during the Armenian genocide. Christians numbered over 1.4 million in 1987 or 8% of the estimated population of 16.3 million and 550,000 in 1947 or 12% of the population of 4.6 millions.[234]
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+ There are also small ethno-religious minority populations of Mandaeans, Shabaks, Yarsan and Yezidis remaining. Prior to 2003 their numbers together may have been 2 million, the majority Yarsan, a non-Islamic religion with roots in pre-Islamic and pre-Christian religion. There are reports of over 100.000 conversions to Zoroastrianism in recent years. The Iraqi Jewish community, numbering around 150,000 in 1941, has almost entirely left the country.[235]
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+ Iraq is home to two of the world's holiest places among Shias: Najaf and Karbala.[236]
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+ The dispersion of native Iraqis to other countries is known as the Iraqi diaspora. The UN High Commission for Refugees has estimated that nearly two million Iraqis fled the country after the multinational invasion of Iraq in 2003, mostly to Syria and Jordan.[237] The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated in 2007 that an additional 1.9 million were displaced within the country.[238]
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+ In 2007, the UN said that about 40% of Iraq's middle class was believed to have fled and that most had fled systematic persecution and had no desire to return.[239] Refugees are mired in poverty as they are generally barred from working in their host countries.[240][241]
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+ Subsequently, the diaspora seemed to be returning, as security improved; the Iraqi government claimed that 46,000 refugees returned to their homes in October 2007 alone.[242]
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+ As of 2011[update], nearly 3 million Iraqis had been displaced, with 1.3 million within Iraq and 1.6 million in neighbouring countries, mainly Jordan and Syria.[243] More than half of Iraqi Christians had fled the country since the 2003 US-led invasion.[244][245] According to official United States Citizenship and Immigration Services statistics, 58,811 Iraqis had been granted refugee-status citizenship as of 25 May 2011[update].[246]
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+ After the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, numerous Iraqi refugees in Syria returned to their native country.[247] To escape the civil war, over 160,000 Syrian refugees of varying ethnicities have fled to Iraq since 2012.[248]
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+ In 2010, spending on healthcare accounted for 6.84% of the country's GDP. In 2008, there were 6.96 physicians and 13.92 nurses per 10,000 inhabitants.[249] The life expectancy at birth was 68.49 years in 2010, or 65.13 years for males and 72.01 years for females.[250] This is down from a peak life expectancy of 71.31 years in 1996.[251]
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+ Iraq had developed a centralised free health care system in the 1970s using a hospital based, capital-intensive model of curative care. The country depended on large-scale imports of medicines, medical equipment and even nurses, paid for with oil export income, according to a "Watching Brief" report issued jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in July 2003. Unlike other poorer countries, which focused on mass health care using primary care practitioners, Iraq developed a Westernized system of sophisticated hospitals with advanced medical procedures, provided by specialist physicians. The UNICEF/WHO report noted that prior to 1990, 97% of the urban dwellers and 71% of the rural population had access to free primary health care; just 2% of hospital beds were privately managed.[252]
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+ Before Iraq faced economic sanctions from the UN, it already had an advanced and successful Arab education system.[253] However, it has now been “de-developing” in its educational success.[253] Some say that the sanctions, whether intentionally or not, hurt the education system because of how it affected the children.[253] Whether or not this is true, UNICEF's statistics and numbers show how Iraq's education system has room for improvement.[254]
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+ At the turn of the millennium, many countries, including Iraq, attempted to take part in the Millennium Development Goals as a way to help underdeveloped countries prosper. In Iraq, one of the goals was for education to be universally available for both boys and girls at the primary level. UNICEF collected several pieces of data that indicate whether or not, Iraq has been accomplishing this goal.[254]
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+ In general, the education of Iraq has been improving since the MDGs were implemented.[254] For example, enrollment numbers nearly doubled from 2000 to 2012.[254] It went from 3.6 million to six million.[254] The latest statistic from 2015–2016 showed that almost 9.2 million children were in school.[254] Enrollment rates continue to be on a steady increase at about 4.1% each year.[254] The sheer increase in numbers shows that there are clearly improvements of children in Iraq having access to education.
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+ However, the dramatic increase of the number of students in primary education has had some negative and straining effects for the education system.[254] The budget for education makes up about only 5.7% of government spending and continues to stay at or below this percentage.[254] Investments for schools has also been on the decline.[254] As a result, the country now ranks at the bottom of Middle East countries in terms of education.[254] The little funding for education makes it more difficult to improve the quality and resources for education.[254]
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+ At the same time, UNICEF investigated portions of spending for education and found that some of the money has gone to waste.[254] They found that dropout rates are increasing as well as repetition rates for children.[254] In both Iraq Centre and KRI, the rates for dropouts are about 1.5% to 2.5%.[254] Within these dropout rates, there is also an uneven number among boys and girls who dropout.[254] While the rate for dropouts for boys was around 16.5%, girls were at 20.1% where it could be due to economic or family reasons.[254] For repetition rates, percentages have almost reached 17% among all students.[254] To put the money loss in perspective, about $1,100 is spent on each student.[254] For each student who drops out or repeats a grade, $1,100 is lost.[254] As a result, almost 20% of the funding for education was lost to dropouts and repetition for the year 2014–2015.[254]
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+ Many of those people who dropout or have to repeat a grade do not see the economic cost for long term results.[254] UNICEF takes note of how staying in school can in fact, increase wealth for the person and their family.[254] While it may put a strain on the education system, it will also hinder the chances of a person receiving higher earnings in whatever career they go into.[254]
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+ Other statistics show that regional differences can attribute to lower or higher enrollment rates for children in primary education.[254] For example, UNICEF found that areas with conflict like Salah al-Din have “more than 90% of school-age children” not in the education system.[254] In addition, some schools were converted into refugee shelters or military bases in 2014 as conflict began to increase.[255] The resources for education become more strained and make it harder for children to go to school and finish receiving their education.[255] However, in 2017, there were efforts being made to open up 47 schools that had previously been closed.[256] There has been more success in Mosul where over 380,000 are going to school again.[256] Depending on where children live, they may or may not have the same access to education as other children.
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+ There are also the differing enrollment rates between boys and girls.[254] UNICEF found that in 2013–2014, enrollment numbers for boys was at about five million while girls were at about 4.2 million.[254] While the out-of-school rate for girls is at about 11%, boys are at less than half of that.[254] There is still a gap between boys and girls in terms of educational opportunities.[254] However, the rate of enrollments for girls has been increasing at a higher rate than for boys.[254] In 2015–2016, the enrollment numbers for girls increased by 400,000 from the previous year where a large number of them were located in Iraq Centre.[254] Not only that, UNICEF found that the increase of girls going to school was across all levels of education.[254] Therefore, the unequal enrollment numbers between boys and girls could potentially change so that universal education can be achieved by all at equal rates.
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+ Although the numbers suggest a dramatic increase of enrollment rates for primary education in total, a large number of children still remain out of the education system.[254] Many of these children fall under the category of internally displaced children due to the conflict in Syria and the takeover by ISIL.[254] This causes a disruption for children who are attempting to go to school and holds them back from completing their education, no matter what level they are at.[254] Internally displaced children are specifically recorded to track children who have been forced to move within their country due to these types of conflicts. About 355,000 of internally displaced children are not in the education system.[254] 330,000 of those children live in Iraq Centre.[254] The rates among internally displaced children continue to remain higher in Iraq Centre than other areas such as the KRI.[254]
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+ With the overall increase of enrollment rates, there continues to be a large strain on the resources for education.[254] UNICEF notes that without an increase on expenditures for education, the quality of education will continue to decrease.[254] Early in the 2000s, the UNESCO International Bureau of Education found that the education system in Iraq had issues with standard-built school buildings, having enough teachers, implementing a standardized curricula, textbooks and technologies that are needed to help reach its educational goals.[253] Teachers are important resources that are starting to become more and more strained with the rising number of students.[254] Iraq Centre has a faster enrollment growth rate than teacher growth.[254] Teachers begin to have to take in more and more students which can produce a bigger strain on the teacher and quality of education the children receive.[254] Another large resource for education is libraries that can increase literacy and create a reading culture.[257] However, this can only be improved through a restructuring of the education system.[257]
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+ UNICEF provides more details, regarding the actions needed to help Iraq reach its MDG goal of education being attainable by all children at the primary level.[254] Much of it has to do with the restructuring of the education system, research into improving the quality of education, and discovering ways on how to better suit the needs of girls and children with disabilities in the education system.[254]
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+ The CIA World Factbook estimates that, in 2000, the adult literacy rate was 84% for males and 64% for females, with UN figures suggesting a small fall in literacy of Iraqis aged 15–24 between 2000 and 2008, from 84.8% to 82.4%.[258] The Coalition Provisional Authority undertook a complete reform of Iraq's education system: Baathist ideology was removed from curricula and there were substantial increases in teacher salaries and training programs, which the Hussein regime neglected in the 1990s.[citation needed] In 2003, an estimated 80% of Iraq's 15,000 school buildings needed rehabilitation and lacked basic sanitary facilities, and most schools lacked libraries and laboratories.[citation needed]
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+ Education is mandatory only through to the sixth grade, after which a national examination determines the possibility of continuing into the upper grades.[citation needed] Although a vocational track is available to those who do not pass the exam, few students elect that option because of its poor quality.[citation needed] Boys and girls generally attend separate schools beginning with seventh grade.[citation needed]
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+ In 2005, obstacles to further reform were poor security conditions in many areas, a centralised system that lacked accountability for teachers and administrators, and the isolation in which the system functioned for the previous 30 years.[citation needed] Few private schools exist.[citation needed] Prior to the invasion of 2003, some 240,000 persons were enrolled in institutions of higher education.[citation needed]
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+ According to the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, the top-ranking universities in the country are the University of Dohuk (1717th worldwide), the University of Baghdad (3160th) and Babylon University (3946th).[259]
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+ Public holidays in Iraq include Republic Day on 14 July and the National Day on 3 October.
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+ Iraq is known primarily for its rich maqam heritage which has been passed down orally by the masters of the maqam in an unbroken chain of transmission leading up to the present. The maqam al-Iraqi is considered to be the most noble and perfect form of maqam. Al-maqam al-Iraqi is the collection of sung poems written either in one of the sixteen meters of classical Arabic or in Iraqi dialect (Zuhayri).[260] This form of art is recognised by UNESCO as "an intangible heritage of humanity".[261]
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+ Early in the 20th century, many of the most prominent musicians in Iraq were Jewish.[262] In 1936, Iraq Radio was established with an ensemble made up entirely of Jews, with the exception of the percussion player. At the nightclubs of Baghdad, ensembles consisted of oud, qanun and two percussionists, while the same format with a ney and cello were used on the radio.[262]
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+ The most famous singer of the 1930s–1940s was perhaps the Jew Salima Pasha (later Salima Murad).[262][263] The respect and adoration for Pasha were unusual at the time since public performance by women was considered shameful, and most female singers were recruited from brothels.[262]
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+ The most famous early composer from Iraq was Ezra Aharon, an oud player, while the most prominent instrumentalist was Daoud Al-Kuwaiti.[citation needed] Daoud and his brother Saleh formed the official ensemble for the Iraqi radio station and were responsible for introducing the cello and ney into the traditional ensemble.[262]
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+ Important cultural institutions in the capital include the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra – rehearsals and performances were briefly interrupted during the Occupation of Iraq but have since returned to normal. The National Theatre of Iraq was looted during the 2003 invasion, but efforts are underway to restore it. The live theatre scene received a boost during the 1990s when UN sanctions limited the import of foreign films. As many as 30 cinemas were reported to have been converted to live stages, producing a wide range of comedies and dramatic productions.
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+ Institutions offering cultural education in Baghdad include the Academy of Music, Institute of Fine Arts and the Music and Ballet school Baghdad. Baghdad also features a number of museums including the National Museum of Iraq – which houses the world's largest and finest collection of artefacts and relics of Ancient Iraqi civilisations; some of which were stolen during the Occupation of Iraq.
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+ The capital, Ninus or Nineveh, was taken by the Medes under Cyaxares, and some 200 years after Xenophon passed over its site, then mere mounds of earth. It remained buried until 1845, when Botta and Layard discovered the ruins of the Assyrian cities. The principal remains are those of Khorsabad, 16 km (10 mi) N.E. of Mosul; of Nimroud, supposed to be the ancient Calah; and of Kouyunjik, in all probability the ancient Nineveh. In these cities are found fragments of several great buildings which seem to have been palace-temples. They were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, and all that remains of them is the lower part of the walls, decorated with sculpture and paintings, portions of the pavements, a few indications of the elevation, and some interesting works connected with the drainage.
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+ After the end of the full state control in 2003, there were a period of significant growth in the broadcast media in Iraq. Immediately, and the ban on satellite dishes is no longer in place, and by mid-2003, according to a BBC report, there were 20 radio stations from 0.15 to 17 television stations owned by Iraqis, and 200 Iraqi newspapers owned and operated. Significantly, there have been many of these newspapers in numbers disproportionate to the population of their locations. For example, in Najaf, which has a population of 300,000, is being published more than 30 newspapers and distributed.
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+ Iraqi media expert and author of a number of reports on this subject, Ibrahim Al Marashi, identifies four stages of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 where they had been taking the steps that have significant effects on the way for the later of the Iraqi media since then. Stages are: pre-invasion preparation, and the war and the actual choice of targets, the first post-war period, and a growing insurgency and hand over power to the Iraqi Interim Government (IIG) and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.[264][page needed]
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+ Iraqi cuisine can be traced back some 10,000 years – to the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Ancient Persians.[265] Tablets found in ancient ruins in Iraq show recipes prepared in the temples during religious festivals – the first cookbooks in the world.[265] Ancient Iraq, or Mesopotamia, was home to many sophisticated and highly advanced civilisations, in all fields of knowledge – including the culinary arts.[265] However, it was in the medieval era when Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate that the Iraqi kitchen reached its zenith.[265] Today the cuisine of Iraq reflects this rich inheritance as well as strong influences from the culinary traditions of neighbouring Turkey, Iran and the Greater Syria area.[265]
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+ Some characteristic ingredients of Iraqi cuisine include – vegetables such as aubergine, tomato, okra, onion, potato, courgette, garlic, peppers and chilli, cereals such as rice, bulgur wheat and barley, pulses and legumes such as lentils, chickpeas and cannellini, fruits such as dates, raisins, apricots, figs, grapes, melon, pomegranate and citrus fruits, especially lemon and lime.[265]
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+ Similarly with other countries of Western Asia, chicken and especially lamb are the favourite meats. Most dishes are served with rice – usually Basmati, grown in the marshes of southern Iraq.[265] Bulgur wheat is used in many dishes – having been a staple in the country since the days of the Ancient Assyrians.[265]
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+ Football is the most popular sport in Iraq. Football is a considerable uniting factor in Iraq following years of war and unrest. Basketball, swimming, weightlifting, bodybuilding, boxing, kick boxing and tennis are also popular sports.
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+ The Iraqi Football Association is the governing body of football in Iraq, controlling the Iraq national football team and the Iraqi Premier League. It was founded in 1948, and has been a member of FIFA since 1950 and the Asian Football Confederation since 1971. Iraq were the 2007 AFC Asian Cup champions after defeating Saudi Arabia in the final by 1–0 thanks to a goal by captain Younis Mahmoud and they have participated in two FIFA competitions (the 1986 FIFA World Cup and the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup).
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+ Despite having mobile phones in the Middle East since 1995, Iraqis were only able to use mobile phones after 2003, as Mobile phones were banned under Saddam Hussein's rule.
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+ In 2013, it was reported that 78% of Iraqis owned a mobile phone.[266]
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+ According to the Iraqi Ministry of Communication, Iraq is now in the second phase of building and launching a multipurpose strategic satellite.[267]
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+ A project which expected to cost $600 million is ongoing in co-operation with market leaders such as Astrium and Arianespace.
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+ On 18 January 2012, Iraq was connected to the undersea communications network for the first time.[268]
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+ This had an immense impact on internet speed, availability and usage in Iraq.
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+ In October 2013, the Iraqi Minister for Communication ordered internet prices to be lowered by a third. This is an attempt to boost usage and comes as a result of significant improvements in Internet infrastructure in the country.[269]
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+ Government
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+ General information
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1
+ The term antelope is used to refer to many species of even-toed ruminant indigenous to various regions in Africa and Eurasia.
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+ Antelopes comprise a wastebasket taxon (miscellaneous group) within the family Bovidae, encompassing all Old World ruminants that are not bovines, sheep, or goats. Antelopes are considered the sister group to deer within the infraorder Pecora. A group of antelope is called a herd.[1]
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+ Unlike deer antlers, which are shed and grown annually, antelope horns grow continuously.[2]
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+ The English word "antelope" first appeared in 1417 and is derived from the Old French antelop, itself derived from Medieval Latin ant(h)alopus, which in turn comes from the Byzantine Greek word anthólops, first attested in Eustathius of Antioch (c. 336), according to whom it was a fabulous animal "haunting the banks of the Euphrates, very savage, hard to catch and having long, saw-like horns capable of cutting down trees".[3] It perhaps derives from Greek anthos (flower) and ops (eye), perhaps meaning "beautiful eye" or alluding to the animals' long eyelashes. This, however, may be a later folk etymology. The word talopus and calopus, from Latin, came to be used in heraldry. In 1607, it was first used for living, cervine animals.
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+ The 91 antelope species, most of which are native to Africa, occur in about 30 genera. The classification of tribes or subfamilies within Bovidae is still a matter of debate, with several alternative systems proposed.
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+ Antelope are not a cladistic or taxonomically defined group. The term is used to describe all members of the family Bovidae that do not fall under the category of sheep, cattle, or goats. Usually, all species of the Alcelaphinae, Antilopinae, Hippotraginae, Reduncinae, Cephalophinae, many Bovinae, the grey rhebok, and the impala are called antelopes.
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+ More species of antelope are native to Africa than to any other continent, almost exclusively in savannahs, with 20-35 species co-occurring over much of East Africa.[4] Because savannah habitat in Africa has expanded and contracted five times over the last three million years, and the fossil record indicates this is when most extant species evolved, it is believed that isolation in refugia during contractions was a major driver of this diversification.[5] Other species occur in Asia: the Arabian Peninsula is home to the Arabian oryx and Dorcas gazelle. India is home to the nilgai, chinkara, blackbuck, Tibetan antelope, and four-horned antelope, while Russia and Central Asia have the Tibetan antelope, and saiga.
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+ No antelope species is native to Australasia or Antarctica, nor do any extant species occur in the Americas, though the nominate saiga subspecies occurred in North America during the Pleistocene. North America is currently home to the native pronghorn, which taxonomists do not consider a member of the antelope group, but which is often locally referred to as such (e.g., "American antelope"). In Europe, several extinct species occur in the fossil record, and the saiga was found widely during the Pleistocene but did not persist into the later Holocene,[6] except in Russian Kalmykia and Astrakhan Oblast.[7]
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+ Many species of antelopes have been imported to other parts of the world, especially the United States, for exotic game hunting. With some species possessing spectacular leaping and evasive skills, individuals may escape. Texas in particular has many game ranches, as well as habitats and climates, that are very hospitable to African and Asian plains antelope species. Accordingly, wild populations of blackbuck antelope, gemsbok, and nilgai may be found in Texas.[8]
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+ Antelope live in a wide range of habitats. Numerically, most live in the African savannahs. However, many species are more secluded, such as the forest antelope, as well as the extreme cold-living saiga, the desert-adapted Arabian oryx, the rocky koppie-living klipspringer, and semiaquatic sitatunga.[9]
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+ Species living in forests, woodland, or bush tend to be sedentary, but many of the plains species undertake long migrations. These enable grass-eating species to follow the rains and thereby their food supply. The gnus and gazelles of East Africa perform some of the most impressive mass migratory circuits of all mammals.[10]
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+ Antelopes vary greatly in size. For example, a male common eland can measure 178 cm (5 ft 10 in) at the shoulder and weigh almost 950 kg (2,100 lb), whereas an adult royal antelope may stand only 24 cm (9 1⁄2 in) at the shoulder and weigh a mere 1.5 kg (3 1⁄4 lb).
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+ Not surprisingly for animals with long, slender yet powerful legs, many antelopes have long strides and can run fast. Some (e.g. klipspringer) are also adapted to inhabiting rock koppies and crags. Both dibatags and gerenuks habitually stand on their two hind legs to reach acacia and other tree foliage. Different antelope have different body types, which can affect movement. Duikers are short, bush-dwelling antelope that can pick through dense foliage and dive into the shadows rapidly. Gazelle and springbok are known for their speed and leaping abilities. Even larger antelope, such as nilgai, elands, and kudus, are capable of jumping 2.4 m (7 ft 10 in) or greater, although their running speed is restricted by their greater mass.
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+ Antelope have a wide variety of coverings, though most have a dense coat of short fur. In most species, the coat (pelage) is some variation of a brown colour (or several shades of brown), often with white or pale underbodies. Exceptions include the zebra-marked zebra duiker, the grey, black, and white Jentink's duiker, and the black lechwe. Most of the "spiral-horned" antelopes have pale, vertical stripes on their backs. Many desert and semidesert species are particularly pale, some almost silvery or whitish (e.g. Arabian oryx); the beisa and southern oryxes have gray and black pelages with vivid black-and-white faces. Common features of various gazelles are white rumps, which flash a warning to others when they run from danger, and dark stripes midbody (the latter feature is also shared by the springbok and beira). The springbok also has a pouch of white, brushlike hairs running along its back, which opens up when the animal senses danger, causing the dorsal hairs to stand on end.
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+ Antelope are ruminants, so have well-developed molar teeth, which grind cud (food balls stored in the stomach) into a pulp for further digestion. They have no upper incisors, but rather a hard upper gum pad, against which their lower incisors bite to tear grass stems and leaves.
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+ Like many other herbivores, antelopes rely on keen senses to avoid predators. Their eyes are placed on the sides of their heads, giving them a broad radius of vision with minimal binocular vision. Their horizontally elongated pupils also help in this respect. Acute senses of smell and hearing give antelope the ability to perceive danger at night out in the open (when predators are often on the prowl). These same senses play an important role in contact between individuals of the same species; markings on their heads, ears, legs, and rumps are used in such communication. Many species "flash" such markings, as well as their tails; vocal communications include loud barks, whistles, "moos", and trumpeting; many species also use scent marking to define their territories or simply to maintain contact with their relatives and neighbors.
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+ Many antelope are sexually dimorphic. In most species, both sexes have horns, but those of males tend to be larger. Males tend to be larger than the females, but exceptions in which the females tend to be heavier than the males include the bush duiker, dwarf antelope, Cape grysbok, and oribi, all rather small species. A number of species have hornless females (e.g. sitatunga, red lechwe, and suni). In some species, the males and females have differently coloured pelages (e.g. blackbuck and nyala).
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+
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+ The size and shape of antelope horns varies greatly. Those of the duikers and dwarf antelopes tend to be simple "spikes", but differ in the angle to the head from backward curved and backward pointing (e.g. yellow-backed duiker) to straight and upright (e.g. steenbok). Other groups have twisted (e.g. common eland), spiral (e.g. greater kudu), "recurved" (e.g. the reedbucks), lyrate (e.g. impala), or long, curved (e.g. the oryxes) horns. Horns are not shed and their bony cores are covered with a thick, persistent sheath of horny material, both of which distinguish them from antlers.[11]
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+ Horns are efficient weapons, and tend to be better developed in those species where males fight over females (large herd antelope) than in solitary or lekking species. With male-male competition for mates, horns are clashed in combat. Males more commonly use their horns against each other than against another species. The boss of the horns is typically arranged in such a way that two antelope striking at each other's horns cannot crack each other's skulls, making a fight via horn more ritualized than dangerous. Many species have ridges in their horns for at least two-thirds the length of their horns, but these ridges are not a direct indicator of age.
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+ Antelope are often classified by their reproductive behavior.
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+ Small antelope, such as dik-diks, tend to be monogamous. They live in a forest environment with patchy resources, and a male is unable to monopolize more than one female due to this sparse distribution. Larger forest species often form very small herds of two to four females and one male.
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+ Some species, such as lechwes, pursue a lek breeding system, where the males gather on a lekking ground and compete for a small territory, while the females appraise males and choose one with which to mate.
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+ Large grazing antelope, such as impala or wildebeest, form large herds made up of many females and a single breeding male, which excludes all other males, often by combat.
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+ Antelope pursue a number of defense strategies, often dictated by their morphology.
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+ Large antelope that gather in large herds, such as wildebeest, rely on numbers and running speed for protection. In some species, adults will encircle the offspring, protecting them from predators when threatened. Many forest antelope rely on cryptic coloring and good hearing to avoid predators. Forest antelope often have very large ears and dark or striped colorations. Small antelope, especially duikers, evade predation by jumping into dense bush where the predator cannot pursue.[12] Springboks use a behavior known as stotting to confuse predators.
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+ Open grassland species have nowhere to hide from predators, so they tend to be fast runners. They are agile and have good endurance—these are advantages when pursued by sprint-dependent predators such as cheetahs, which are the fastest of land animals, but tire quickly. Reaction distances vary with predator species and behaviour. For example, gazelles may not flee from a lion until it is closer than 200 m (650 ft)—lions hunt as a pride or by surprise, usually by stalking; one that can be seen clearly is unlikely to attack. However, sprint-dependent cheetahs will cause gazelles to flee at a range of over 800 metres (1⁄2 mile).[13]
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+
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+ About 25 species are rated by the IUCN as endangered,[14] such as the dama gazelle and mountain nyala. A number of subspecies are also endangered, including the giant sable antelope and the mhorr gazelle. The main causes for concern for these species are habitat loss, competition with cattle for grazing, and trophy hunting.
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+ The chiru or Tibetan antelope is hunted for its pelt, which is used in making shahtoosh wool, used in shawls. Since the fur can only be removed from dead animals, and each animal yields very little of the downy fur, several antelope must be killed to make a single shawl. This unsustainable demand has led to enormous declines in the chiru population.[15][16]
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+ The saiga is hunted for its horns, which are considered an aphrodisiac by some cultures. Only the males have horns, and have been so heavily hunted that some herds contain up to 800 females to one male. The species has shown a steep decline and is critically endangered.
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+ It is difficult to determine how long antelope live in the wild. With the preference of predators towards old and infirm individuals, which can no longer sustain peak speeds, few wild prey-animals live as long as their biological potential. In captivity, wildebeest have lived beyond 20 years old, and impalas have reached their late teens.[17]
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+ The antelope's horn is prized for supposed medicinal and magical powers in many places. The horn of the male saiga, in Eastern practice, is ground as an aphrodisiac, for which it has been hunted nearly to extinction.[18] In the Congo, it is thought to confine spirits. Christian iconography sometimes uses the antelope's two horns as a symbol of the two spiritual weapons Christians possess: the Old Testament and the New Testament. The antelope's ability to run swiftly has also led to their association with the wind, such as in the Rig Veda, as the steeds of the Maruts and the wind god Vayu. There is, however, no scientific evidence that the horns of any antelope have any change on a human's physiology or characteristics.
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+ In Mali, antelopes were believed to have brought the skills of agriculture to mankind.[19]
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+ Humans have also used the term "Antelope" to refer to a tradition usually found in the sport of track and field.
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+
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+ Domestication of animals requires certain traits in the animal that antelope do not typically display. Most species are difficult to contain in any density, due to the territoriality of the males, or in the case of oryxes (which have a relatively hierarchical social structure), an aggressive disposition; they can easily kill a human. Because many have extremely good jumping abilities, providing adequate fencing is a challenge. Also, antelope will consistently display a fear response to perceived predators, such as humans, making them very difficult to herd or handle. Although antelope have diets and rapid growth rates highly suitable for domestication, this tendency to panic and their nonhierarchical social structure explains why farm-raised antelope are uncommon. Ancient Egyptians kept herds of gazelles and addax for meat, and occasionally pets. It is unknown whether they were truly domesticated, but it seems unlikely, as no domesticated gazelles exist today.
68
+
69
+ However, humans have had success taming certain species, such as the elands. These antelope sometimes jump over each other's backs when alarmed, but this incongruous talent seems to be exploited only by wild members of the species; tame elands do not take advantage of it and can be enclosed within a very low fence. Their meat, milk, and hides are all of excellent quality, and experimental eland husbandry has been going on for some years in both Ukraine and Zimbabwe. In both locations, the animal has proved wholly amenable to domestication.[20] Similarly, European visitors to Arabia reported "tame gazelles are very common in the Asiatic countries of which the species is a native; and the poetry of these countries abounds in allusions both to the beauty and the gentleness of the gazelle."[21] Other antelope that have been tamed successfully include the gemsbok,[22] the kudu,[23] and the springbok.[23] Nor are the characteristics described above necessarily barriers to domestication; for further information, see animal domestication.
70
+
71
+ A wide variety of antelope hybrids have been recorded in zoos, game parks, and wildlife ranches, due to either a lack of more appropriate mates in enclosures shared with other species or a misidentification of species. The ease of hybridization shows how closely related some antelope species are. With few exceptions, most hybrid antelope occur only in captivity.
72
+
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+ Most hybrids occur between species within the same genus. All reported examples occur within the same subfamily. As with most mammal hybrids, the less closely related the parents, the more likely the offspring will be sterile.[17]
74
+
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+ Antelopes are a common symbol in heraldry, though they occur in a highly distorted form from nature. The heraldic antelope has the body of a stag and the tail of a lion, with serrated horns, and a small tusk at the end of its snout. This bizarre and inaccurate form was invented by European heralds in the Middle Ages, who knew little of foreign animals and made up the rest. The antelope was mistakenly imagined to be a monstrous beast of prey; the 16th century poet Edmund Spenser referred to it as being "as fierce and fell as a wolf."[24]
76
+
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+ Antelopes can all also occur in their natural form, in which case they are termed "natural antelopes" to distinguish them from the more usual heraldic antelope.[25] The arms previously used by the Republic of South Africa featured a natural antelope, along with an oryx.
en/2770.html.txt ADDED
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1
+
2
+
3
+ Coordinates: 33°N 44°E / 33°N 44°E / 33; 44
4
+
5
+ Iraq (/ɪˈræk/, /ɪˈrɑːk/ (listen) or /aɪˈræk/; Arabic: اَلْعِرَاق‎, al-ʿirāq; Kurdish: عێراق‎ Êraq), officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جُمْهُورِيَّة ٱلْعِرَاقِ‎ Jumhūriyyah al-ʿIrāq; Kurdish: کۆماری عێراق‎ Komarî Êraq), is a country in Western Asia, bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, Kuwait to the southeast, Saudi Arabia to the south, Jordan to the southwest and Syria to the west. The capital, and largest city, is Baghdad. Iraq is home to diverse ethnic groups including Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen, Shabakis, Yazidis, Armenians, Mandeans, Circassians, Sabians and Kawliya.[6] Around 99% of the country's 38 million citizens are Muslims,[7] with tiny minorities of Christians, Yarsans, Yezidis and Mandeans also present. The official languages of Iraq are Arabic and Kurdish.
6
+
7
+ Iraq has a coastline measuring 58 km (36 miles) on the northern Persian Gulf and encompasses the Mesopotamian Alluvial Plain, the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range and the eastern part of the Syrian Desert.[8] Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run south through Iraq and into the Shatt al-Arab near the Persian Gulf. These rivers provide Iraq with significant amounts of fertile land. The region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, historically known as Mesopotamia, is often referred to as the cradle of civilisation. It was here that mankind first began to read, write, create laws and live in cities under an organised government—notably Uruk, from which "Iraq" is derived. The area has been home to successive civilisations since the 6th millennium BC. Iraq was the centre of the Akkadian, Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian empires. It was also part of the Median, Achaemenid, Hellenistic, Parthian, Sassanid, Roman, Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ayyubid, Seljuk, Mongol, Timurid, Safavid, Afsharid and Ottoman empires.[9]
8
+
9
+ The country today known as Iraq was a region of the Ottoman Empire until the partition of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century. It was made up of three provinces, called vilayets in the Ottoman language: Mosul Vilayet, Baghdad Vilayet, and Basra Vilayet. In April 1920 the British Mandate of Mesopotamia was created under the authority of the League of Nations. A British-backed monarchy joining these vilayets into one Kingdom was established in 1921 under Faisal I of Iraq. The Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq gained independence from the UK in 1932. In 1958, the monarchy was overthrown and the Iraqi Republic created. Iraq was controlled by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party from 1968 until 2003. In 1980, Iraq invaded Iran, sparking a protracted war which would last for almost eight years, and end in a stalemate with devastating losses for both countries.
10
+
11
+ After an invasion by the United States and its allies in 2003, Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party was removed from power, and multi-party parliamentary elections were held in 2005. The US presence in Iraq ended in 2011,[10] but the Iraqi insurgency continued and intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country. Out of the insurgency came a highly destructive group calling itself ISIL, which took large parts of the north and west. It has since been largely defeated. Disputes over the sovereignty of Kurdistan Region continue. A referendum about the full sovereignty of Kurdistan Region was held on 25 September 2017. On 9 December 2017, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIL after the group lost its territory in Iraq.[11]
12
+
13
+ Iraq is a federal parliamentary republic consisting of 19 governorates (provinces) and one autonomous region (Kurdistan Region). The country's official religion is Islam. Culturally, Iraq has a very rich heritage and celebrates the achievements of its past in both pre-Islamic as well as post-Islamic times and is known for its poets. Its painters and sculptors are among the best in the Arab world, some of them being world-class as well as producing fine handicrafts, including rugs and carpets. Iraq is a founding member of the UN as well as of the Arab League, OIC, Non-Aligned Movement and the IMF.
14
+
15
+ The Arabic name العراق al-ʿIrāq has been in use since before the 6th century CE.[citation needed]
16
+
17
+ There are several suggested origins for the name. One dates to the Sumerian city of Uruk (Biblical Hebrew Erech) and is thus ultimately of Sumerian origin, as Uruk was the Akkadian name for the Sumerian city of Urug, containing the Sumerian word for "city", UR.[12][13]
18
+
19
+ Another possible etymology for the name is from the Middle Persian word erag, meaning "south." A “Jewish incantation bowl” excavated from Nippur features the word אירג‎ (likely vocalized as ʔi.rag or ʔe.rag), in a Jewish Babylonian Aramaic context that suggests it refers to the region of southern Mesopotamia.[14][15][16]
20
+
21
+ An Arabic folk etymology for the name is "deeply rooted, well-watered; fertile".[17]
22
+
23
+ During the medieval period, there was a region called ʿIrāq ʿArabī ("Arabian Iraq") for Lower Mesopotamia and ʿIrāq ʿAjamī ("Persian Iraq"),[18] for the region now situated in Central and Western Iran.[18] The term historically included the plain south of the Hamrin Mountains and did not include the northernmost and westernmost parts of the modern territory of Iraq.[19] Prior to the middle of the 19th century, the term Eyraca Arabica was commonly used to describe Iraq.[20][21]
24
+
25
+ The term Sawad was also used in early Islamic times for the region of the alluvial plain of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, contrasting it with the arid Arabian desert. As an Arabic word, عراق means "hem", "shore", "bank", or "edge", so that the name by folk etymology came to be interpreted as "the escarpment", viz. at the south and east of the Jazira Plateau, which forms the northern and western edge of the "al-Iraq arabi" area.[22]
26
+
27
+ The Arabic pronunciation is [ʕiˈrɑːq]. In English, it is either /ɪˈrɑːk/ (the only pronunciation listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and the first one in Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary[23]) or /ɪˈræk/ (listed first by MQD), the American Heritage Dictionary,[24] and the Random House Dictionary.[25] The pronunciation /aɪˈræk/ is frequently heard in US media.[citation needed]
28
+
29
+ In accordance with the 2005 Constitution, the official name of the state is the "Republic of Iraq" (Jumhūrīyyat al-'Irāq).
30
+
31
+ Between 65,000 BC and 35,000 BC, northern Iraq was home to a Neanderthal culture, archaeological remains of which have been discovered at Shanidar Cave[26]
32
+ This same region is also the location of a number of pre-Neolithic cemeteries, dating from approximately 11,000 BC.[27]
33
+
34
+ Since approximately 10,000 BC, Iraq, together with a large part of the Fertile Crescent also comprising Asia Minor and the Levant, was one of centres of a Caucasoid Neolithic culture known as Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), where agriculture and cattle breeding appeared for the first time in the world. The following Neolithic period, PPNB, is represented by rectangular houses. At the time of the pre-pottery Neolithic, people used vessels made of stone, gypsum and burnt lime (Vaisselle blanche). Finds of obsidian]] tools from Anatolia are evidences of early trade relations.
35
+
36
+ Further important sites of human advancement were Jarmo (circa 7100 BC),[27] a number of sites belonging to the Halaf culture, and Tell al-'Ubaid, the type site of the Ubaid period (between 6500 BC and 3800 BC).[28] The respective periods show ever-increasing levels of advancement in agriculture, tool-making and architecture.
37
+
38
+ The historical period in Iraq truly begins during the Uruk period (4000 BC to 3100 BC), with the founding of a number of Sumerian cities, and the use of Pictographs, Cylinder seals and mass-produced goods.[30]
39
+
40
+ The "Cradle of Civilization" is thus a common term for the area comprising modern Iraq as it was home to the earliest known civilisation, the Sumerian civilisation, which arose in the fertile Tigris-Euphrates river valley of southern Iraq in the Chalcolithic (Ubaid period).
41
+
42
+ It was here, in the late 4th millennium BC, that the world's first writing system and recorded history itself were born. The Sumerians were also the first to harness the wheel and create City States, and whose writings record the first evidence of Mathematics, Astronomy, Astrology, Written Law, Medicine and Organised religion.
43
+
44
+ The language of the Sumerians is a language isolate. The major city states of the early Sumerian period were; Eridu, Bad-tibira, Larsa, Sippar, Shuruppak, Uruk, Kish, Ur, Nippur, Lagash, Girsu, Umma, Hamazi, Adab, Mari, Isin, Kutha, Der and Akshak.
45
+
46
+ The cities to the north like Ashur, Arbela (modern Erbil) and Arrapha (modern Kirkuk) were also extant in what was to be called Assyria from the 25th century BC; however, at this early stage, they were Sumerian ruled administrative centres.
47
+
48
+ In the 26th century BC, Eannatum of Lagash created what was perhaps the first empire in history, though this was short-lived. Later, Lugal-Zage-Si, the priest-king of Umma, overthrew the primacy of the Lagash dynasty in the area, then conquered Uruk, making it his capital, and claimed an empire extending from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean.[31] It was during this period that the Epic of Gilgamesh originates, which includes the tale of The Great Flood.
49
+
50
+ From the 29th century BC, Akkadian Semitic names began to appear on king lists and administrative documents of various city states. It remains unknown as to the origin of Akkad, where it was precisely situated and how it rose to prominence. Its people spoke Akkadian, an East Semitic language.[32]
51
+
52
+ During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism. The influences between Sumerian and Akkadian are evident in all areas, including lexical borrowing on a massive scale—and syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This mutual influence has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian of the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund.[33] From this period, the civilisation in Iraq came to be known as Sumero-Akkadian.
53
+
54
+ Between the 29th and 24th centuries BC, a number of kingdoms and city states within Iraq began to have Akkadian speaking dynasties; including Assyria, Ekallatum, Isin and Larsa.
55
+
56
+ However, the Sumerians remained generally dominant until the rise of the Akkadian Empire (2335–2124 BC), based in the city of Akkad in central Iraq. Sargon of Akkad, originally a Rabshakeh to a Sumerian king, founded the empire, he conquered all of the city states of southern and central Iraq, and subjugated the kings of Assyria, thus uniting the Sumerians and Akkadians in one state. He then set about expanding his empire, conquering Gutium, Elam and had victories that did not result into a full conquest against the Amorites and Eblaites of Ancient Syria.
57
+
58
+ After the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the late 22nd century BC, the Gutians occupied the south for a few decades, while Assyria reasserted its independence in the north. This was followed by a Sumerian renaissance in the form of the Neo-Sumerian Empire. The Sumerians under king Shulgi conquered almost all of Iraq except the northern reaches of Assyria, and asserted themselves over the Gutians, Elamites and Amorites, destroying the first and holding off the others.
59
+
60
+ An Elamite invasion in 2004 BC brought the Sumerian revival to an end. By the mid 21st century BC, the Akkadian speaking kingdom of Assyria had risen to dominance in northern Iraq. Assyria expanded territorially into the north eastern Levant, central Iraq, and eastern Anatolia, forming the Old Assyrian Empire (circa 2035–1750 BC) under kings such as Puzur-Ashur I, Sargon I, Ilushuma and Erishum I, the latter of whom produced the most detailed set of law yet written.[citation needed] The south broke up into a number of Akkadian speaking states, Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna being the major ones.
61
+
62
+ During the 20th century BC, the Canaanite speaking Amorites began to migrate into southern Mesopotamia. Eventually, they began to set up small petty kingdoms in the south, as well as usurping the thrones of extant city states such as Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna.
63
+
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+ One of these small Amorite kingdoms founded in 1894 BC contained the then small administrative town of Babylon within its borders. It remained insignificant for over a century, overshadowed by older and more powerful states, such as Assyria, Elam, Isin, Ehnunna and Larsa.
65
+
66
+ In 1792 BC, an Amorite ruler named Hammurabi came to power in this state, and immediately set about building Babylon from a minor town into a major city, declaring himself its king. Hammurabi conquered the whole of southern and central Iraq, as well as Elam to the east and Mari to the west, then engaged in a protracted war with the Assyrian king Ishme-Dagan for domination of the region, creating the short-lived Babylonian Empire. He eventually prevailed over the successor of Ishme-Dagan and subjected Assyria and its Anatolian colonies. By the middle of the eighteenth century BC, the Sumerians had lost their cultural identity and ceased to exist as a distinct people.[34][35] Genetic and cultural analysis indicates that the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq are probably their most direct modern descendants.[36][37][38]
67
+
68
+ It is from the period of Hammurabi that southern Iraq came to be known as Babylonia, while the north had already coalesced into Assyria hundreds of years before. However, his empire was short-lived, and rapidly collapsed after his death, with both Assyria and southern Iraq, in the form of the Sealand Dynasty, falling back into native Akkadian hands. The foreign Amorites clung on to power in a once more weak and small Babylonia until it was sacked by the Indo-European speaking Hittite Empire based in Anatolia in 1595 BC. After this, another foreign people, the Language Isolate speaking Kassites, originating in the Zagros Mountains of Ancient Iran, seized control of Babylonia, where they were to rule for almost 600 years, by far the longest dynasty ever to rule in Babylon.
69
+
70
+ Iraq was from this point divided into three polities: Assyria in the north, Kassite Babylonia in the south central region, and the Sealand Dynasty in the far south. The Sealand Dynasty was finally conquered by Kassite Babylonia circa 1380 BC.
71
+
72
+ The Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1020 BC) saw Assyria rise to be the most powerful nation in the known world. Beginning with the campaigns of Ashur-uballit I, Assyria destroyed the rival Hurrian-Mitanni Empire, annexed huge swathes of the Hittite Empire for itself, annexed northern Babylonia from the Kassites, forced the Egyptian Empire from the region, and defeated the Elamites, Phrygians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Cilicians, Gutians, Dilmunites and Arameans. At its height, the Middle Assyrian Empire stretched from The Caucasus to Dilmun (modern Bahrain), and from the Mediterranean coasts of Phoenicia to the Zagros Mountains of Iran. In 1235 BC, Tukulti-Ninurta I of Assyria took the throne of Babylon, thus becoming the very first native Mesopotamian to rule the state.
73
+
74
+ During the Bronze Age collapse (1200–900 BC), Babylonia was in a state of chaos, dominated for long periods by Assyria and Elam. The Kassites were driven from power by Assyria and Elam, allowing native south Mesopotamian kings to rule Babylonia for the first time, although often subject to Assyrian or Elamite rulers. However, these East Semitic Akkadian kings, were unable to prevent new waves of West Semitic migrants entering southern Iraq, and during the 11th century BC Arameans and Suteans entered Babylonia from The Levant, and these were followed in the late 10th to early 9th century BC by the migrant Chaldeans who were closely related to the earlier Arameans.
75
+
76
+ After a period of comparative decline in Assyria, it once more began to expand with the Neo Assyrian Empire (935–605 BC). This was to be the largest empire the region had yet seen, and under rulers such as Adad-Nirari II, Ashurnasirpal, Shalmaneser III, Semiramis, Tiglath-pileser III, Sargon II, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, Iraq became the centre of an empire stretching from Persia, Parthia and Elam in the east, to Cyprus and Antioch in the west, and from The Caucasus in the north to Egypt, Nubia and Arabia in the south.
77
+
78
+ The Arabs and the Chaldeans are first mentioned in written history (circa 850 BC) in the annals of Shalmaneser III.
79
+
80
+ It was during this period that an Akkadian influenced form of Eastern Aramaic was adopted by the Assyrians as the lingua franca of their vast empire, and Mesopotamian Aramaic began to supplant Akkadian as the spoken language of the general populace of both Assyria and Babylonia. The descendant dialects of this tongue survive amongst the Mandaeans of southern Iraq and Assyrians of northern Iraq to this day.
81
+
82
+ In the late 7th century BC, the Assyrian Empire tore itself apart with a series of brutal civil wars, weakening itself to such a degree that a coalition of its former subjects; the Babylonians, Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, Parthians, Scythians and Cimmerians, were able to attack Assyria, finally bringing its empire down by 605 BC.[39]
83
+
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+ The short-lived Neo-Babylonian Empire (620–539 BC) succeeded that of Assyria. It failed to attain the size, power or longevity of its predecessor; however, it came to dominate The Levant, Canaan, Arabia, Israel and Judah, and to defeat Egypt. Initially, Babylon was ruled by yet another foreign dynasty, that of the Chaldeans, who had migrated to the region in the late 10th or early 9th century BC. Its greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar II, rivalled another non native ruler, the ethnically unrelated Amorite king Hammurabi, as the greatest king of Babylon. However, by 556 BC, the Chaldeans had been deposed from power by the Assyrian born Nabonidus and his son and regent Belshazzar.
85
+
86
+ In the 6th century BC, Cyrus the Great of neighbouring Persia defeated the Neo-Babylonian Empire at the Battle of Opis and Iraq was subsumed into the Achaemenid Empire for nearly two centuries. The Achaemenids made Babylon their main capital. The Chaldeans and Chaldea disappeared at around this time, though both Assyria and Babylonia endured and thrived under Achaemenid rule (see Achaemenid Assyria). Little changed under the Persians, having spent three centuries under Assyrian rule, their kings saw themselves as successors to Ashurbanipal, and they retained Assyrian Imperial Aramaic as the language of empire, together with the Assyrian imperial infrastructure, and an Assyrian style of art and architecture.[citation needed]
87
+
88
+ In the late 4th century BC, Alexander the Great conquered the region, putting it under Hellenistic Seleucid rule for over two centuries.[40] The Seleucids introduced the Indo-Anatolian and Greek term Syria to the region. This name had for many centuries been the Indo-European word for Assyria and specifically and only meant Assyria; however, the Seleucids also applied it to The Levant (Aramea, causing both the Assyria and the Assyrians of Iraq and the Arameans and The Levant to be called Syria and Syrians/Syriacs in the Greco-Roman world.[41]
89
+
90
+ The Parthians (247 BC – 224 AD) from Persia conquered the region during the reign of Mithridates I of Parthia (r. 171–138 BC). From Syria, the Romans invaded western parts of the region several times, briefly founding Assyria Provincia in Assyria. Christianity began to take hold in Iraq (particularly in Assyria) between the 1st and 3rd centuries, and Assyria became a centre of Syriac Christianity, the Church of the East and Syriac literature. A number of independent states evolved in the north during the Parthian era, such as Adiabene, Assur, Osroene and Hatra.
91
+
92
+ The Sassanids of Persia under Ardashir I destroyed the Parthian Empire and conquered the region in 224 AD. During the 240s and 250's AD, the Sassanids gradually conquered the independent states, culminating with Assur in 256 AD. The region was thus a province of the Sassanid Empire for over four centuries, and became the frontier and battle ground between the Sassanid Empire and Byzantine Empire, with both empires weakening each other, paving the way for the Arab-Muslim conquest of Persia in the mid-7th century.
93
+
94
+ The Arab Islamic conquest in the mid-7th century AD established Islam in Iraq and saw a large influx of Arabs. Under the Rashidun Caliphate, the prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law, Ali, moved his capital to Kufa when he became the fourth caliph. The Umayyad Caliphate ruled the province of Iraq from Damascus in the 7th century. (However, eventually there was a separate, independent Caliphate of Córdoba in Iberia.)
95
+
96
+ The Abbasid Caliphate built the city of Baghdad along the Tigris in the 8th century as its capital, and the city became the leading metropolis of the Arab and Muslim world for five centuries. Baghdad was the largest multicultural city of the Middle Ages, peaking at a population of more than a million,[44] and was the centre of learning during the Islamic Golden Age. The Mongols destroyed the city and burned its library during the siege of Baghdad in the 13th century.[45]
97
+
98
+ In 1257, Hulagu Khan amassed an unusually large army, a significant portion of the Mongol Empire's forces, for the purpose of conquering Baghdad. When they arrived at the Islamic capital, Hulagu Khan demanded its surrender, but the last Abbasid Caliph Al-Musta'sim refused. This angered Hulagu, and, consistent with Mongol strategy of discouraging resistance, he besieged Baghdad, sacked the city and massacred many of the inhabitants.[46] Estimates of the number of dead range from 200,000 to a million.[47]
99
+
100
+ The Mongols destroyed the Abbasid Caliphate and Baghdad's House of Wisdom, which contained countless precious and historical documents. The city has never regained its previous pre-eminence as a major centre of culture and influence. Some historians believe that the Mongol invasion destroyed much of the irrigation infrastructure that had sustained Mesopotamia for millennia. Other historians point to soil salination as the culprit in the decline in agriculture.[48]
101
+
102
+ The mid-14th-century Black Death ravaged much of the Islamic world.[49] The best estimate for the Middle East is a death rate of roughly one-third.[50]
103
+
104
+ In 1401, a warlord of Mongol descent, Tamerlane (Timur Lenk), invaded Iraq. After the capture of Baghdad, 20,000 of its citizens were massacred.[51] Timur ordered that every soldier should return with at least two severed human heads to show him (many warriors were so scared they killed prisoners captured earlier in the campaign just to ensure they had heads to present to Timur).[52] Timur also conducted massacres of the indigenous Assyrian Christian population, hitherto still the majority population in northern Mesopotamia, and it was during this time that the ancient Assyrian city of Assur was finally abandoned.[53]
105
+
106
+ During the late 14th and early 15th centuries, the Black Sheep Turkmen ruled the area now known as Iraq. In 1466, the White Sheep Turkmen defeated the Black Sheep and took control. From the earliest 16th century, in 1508, as with all territories of the former White Sheep Turkmen, Iraq fell into the hands of the Iranian Safavids. Owing to the century long Turco-Iranian rivalry between the Safavids and the neighbouring Ottoman Turks, Iraq would be contested between the two for more than a hundred years during the frequent Ottoman-Persian Wars.
107
+
108
+ With the Treaty of Zuhab in 1639, most of the territory of present-day Iraq eventually came under the control of Ottoman Empire as the eyalet of Baghdad as a result of wars with the neighbouring rival, Safavid Iran. Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533–1918), the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle zone between the rival regional empires and tribal alliances.
109
+
110
+ By the 17th century, the frequent conflicts with the Safavids had sapped the strength of the Ottoman Empire and had weakened its control over its provinces. The nomadic population swelled with the influx of bedouins from Najd, in the Arabian Peninsula. Bedouin raids on settled areas became impossible to curb.[54]
111
+
112
+ During the years 1747–1831, Iraq was ruled by a Mamluk dynasty of Georgian[55] origin who succeeded in obtaining autonomy from the Ottoman Porte, suppressed tribal revolts, curbed the power of the Janissaries, restored order and introduced a programme of modernisation of economy and military. In 1831, the Ottomans managed to overthrow the Mamluk regime and imposed their direct control over Iraq. The population of Iraq, estimated at 30 million in 800 AD, was only 5 million at the start of the 20th century.[56]
113
+
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+ During World War I, the Ottomans sided with Germany and the Central Powers. In the Mesopotamian campaign against the Central Powers, British forces invaded the country and initially suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Turkish army during the Siege of Kut (1915–1916). However, subsequent to this the British began to gain the upper hand, and were further aided by the support of local Arabs and Assyrians. In 1916, the British and French made a plan for the post-war division of Western Asia under the Sykes-Picot Agreement.[57] British forces regrouped and captured Baghdad in 1917, and defeated the Ottomans. An armistice was signed in 1918. The British lost 92,000 soldiers in the Mesopotamian campaign. Ottoman losses are unknown but the British captured a total of 45,000 prisoners of war. By the end of 1918, the British had deployed 410,000 men in the area, of which 112,000 were combat troops.[citation needed]
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+
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+ The country today known as Iraq was a region of the Ottoman Empire until the partition of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century. It was made up of three provinces, called vilayets in the Ottoman language: Mosul Vilayet, Baghdad Vilayet, and Basra Vilayet. These three provinces were joined into one Kingdom by the British after the region became a League of Nations mandate, administered under British control, with the name "State of Iraq". A fourth province (Zor Sanjak), which Iraqi nationalists considered part of Upper Mesopotamia was ultimately added to Syria.[58][59] In line with their "Sharifian Solution" policy, the British established the Hashemite king, Faisal I of Iraq, who had been forced out of Syria by the French, as their client ruler. Likewise, British authorities selected Sunni Arab elites from the region for appointments to government and ministry offices.[specify][60][page needed][61]
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+
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+ Faced with spiraling costs and influenced by the public protestations of the war hero T. E. Lawrence[62] in The Times, Britain replaced Arnold Wilson in October 1920 with a new Civil Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox.[63] Cox managed to quell a rebellion, yet was also responsible for implementing the fateful policy of close co-operation with Iraq's Sunni minority.[64] The institution of slavery was abolished in the 1920s.[65]
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+ Britain granted independence to the Kingdom of Iraq in 1932,[66] on the urging of King Faisal, though the British retained military bases, local militia in the form of Assyrian Levies, and transit rights for their forces. King Ghazi ruled as a figurehead after King Faisal's death in 1933, while undermined by attempted military coups, until his death in 1939. Ghazi was followed by his underage son, Faisal II. 'Abd al-Ilah served as Regent during Faisal's minority.
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+
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+ On 1 April 1941, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani and members of the Golden Square staged a coup d'état and overthrew the government of 'Abd al-Ilah. During the subsequent Anglo-Iraqi War, the United Kingdom (which still maintained air bases in Iraq) invaded Iraq for fear that the Rashid Ali government might cut oil supplies to Western nations because of his links to the Axis powers. The war started on 2 May, and the British, together with loyal Assyrian Levies,[67] defeated the forces of Al-Gaylani, forcing an armistice on 31 May.
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+ A military occupation followed the restoration of the pre-coup government of the Hashemite monarchy. The occupation ended on 26 October 1947, although Britain was to retain military bases in Iraq until 1954, after which the Assyrian militias were disbanded. The rulers during the occupation and the remainder of the Hashemite monarchy were Nuri as-Said, the autocratic Prime Minister, who also ruled from 1930 to 1932, and 'Abd al-Ilah, the former Regent who now served as an adviser to King Faisal II.
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+
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+ In 1958, a coup d'état known as the 14 July Revolution was led by the Brigadier General Abd al-Karim Qasim. This revolt was strongly anti-imperial and anti-monarchical in nature and had strong socialist elements. Numerous people were killed in the coup, including King Faysal II, Prince Abd al-Ilah, and Nuri al-Sa'id.[68] Qasim controlled Iraq through military rule and in 1958 he began a process of forcibly reducing the surplus amounts of land owned by a few citizens and having the state redistribute the land. He was overthrown by Colonel Abdul Salam Arif in a February 1963 coup. After the latter's death in 1966, he was succeeded by his brother, Abdul Rahman Arif, who was overthrown by the Ba'ath Party in 1968. Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr became the first Ba'ath President of Iraq but then the movement gradually came under the control of Saddam Hussein, who acceded to the presidency and control of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), then Iraq's supreme executive body, in July 1979.
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+ In 1979, the Iranian Revolution took place. Following months of cross-border raids between the two countries, Saddam declared war on Iran in September 1980, initiating the Iran–Iraq War (or First Persian Gulf War). Taking advantage of the post-revolution chaos in Iran, Iraq captured some territories in southwest of Iran, but Iran recaptured all of the lost territories within two years, and for the next six years Iran was on the offensive.[69][page needed] The war, which ended in stalemate in 1988, had cost the lives of between half a million and 1.5 million people.[70] In 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed an Iraqi nuclear materials testing reactor at Osirak and was widely criticised at the United Nations.[71][72] During the eight-year war with Iran, Saddam Hussein extensively used chemical weapons against Iranians.[73] In the final stages of the Iran–Iraq War, the Ba'athist Iraqi regime led the Al-Anfal Campaign, a genocidal[74] campaign that targeted Iraqi Kurds,[75][76][77] and led to the killing of 50,000–100,000 civilians.[78] Chemical weapons were also used against Iraqi Shia civilians during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq.
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+ In August 1990, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait. This subsequently led to military intervention by United States-led forces in the First Gulf War. The coalition forces proceeded with a bombing campaign targeting military targets[79][80][81] and then launched a 100-hour-long ground assault against Iraqi forces in Southern Iraq and those occupying Kuwait.
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+ Iraq's armed forces were devastated during the war. Shortly after it ended in 1991, Shia and Kurdish Iraqis led several uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime, but these were successfully repressed using the Iraqi security forces and chemical weapons. It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people, including many civilians were killed.[82] During the uprisings the US, UK, France and Turkey, claiming authority under UNSCR 688, established the Iraqi no-fly zones to protect Kurdish and Shiite populations from attacks by the Saddam regime's fixed-wing aircraft (but not helicopters).
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+ Iraq was ordered to destroy its chemical and biological weapons and the UN attempted to compel Saddam's government to disarm and agree to a ceasefire by imposing additional sanctions on the country in addition to the initial sanctions imposed following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. The Iraqi Government's failure to disarm and agree to a ceasefire resulted in sanctions which remained in place until 2003. The effects of the sanctions on the civilian population of Iraq have been disputed.[83][84] Whereas it was widely believed that the sanctions caused a major rise in child mortality, recent research has shown that commonly cited data were fabricated by the Iraqi government and that "there was no major rise in child mortality in Iraq after 1990 and during the period of the sanctions."[85][86][87] An oil for food program was established in 1996 to ease the effects of sanctions.
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+ Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration began planning the overthrow of Saddam's government and in October 2002, the US Congress passed the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. In November 2002, the UN Security Council passed UNSCR 1441 and in March 2003 the US and its allies invaded Iraq.
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+ On 20 March 2003, a United States-organized coalition invaded Iraq, under the pretext that Iraq had failed to abandon its weapons of mass destruction program in violation of UN Resolution 687. This claim was based on documents provided by the CIA and the British government that were later found to be unreliable.[88][89][90]
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+ Following the invasion, the United States established the Coalition Provisional Authority to govern Iraq. In May 2003 L. Paul Bremer, the chief executive of the CPA, issued orders to exclude Baath Party members from the new Iraqi government (CPA Order 1) and to disband the Iraqi Army (CPA Order 2).[91] The decision dissolved the largely Sunni Iraqi Army and excluded many of the country's former government officials from participating in the country's governance,[92] including 40,000 school teachers who had joined the Baath Party simply to keep their jobs,[93] helping to bring about a chaotic post-invasion environment.[94]
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+ An insurgency against the US-led coalition-rule of Iraq began in summer 2003 within elements of the former Iraqi secret police and army, who formed guerrilla units. In fall 2003, self-entitled 'jihadist' groups began targeting coalition forces. Various Sunni militias were created in 2003, for example Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The insurgency included intense inter-ethnic violence between Sunnis and Shias.[95] The Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal came to light, late 2003 in reports by Amnesty International and Associated Press.
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+ The Mahdi Army—a Shia militia created in the summer of 2003 by Muqtada al-Sadr—began to fight Coalition forces in April 2004.[96][96] 2004 saw Sunni and Shia militants fighting against each other and against the new Iraqi Interim Government installed in June 2004, and against Coalition forces, as well as the First Battle of Fallujah in April and Second Battle of Fallujah in November. The Sunni militia Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad became Al-Qaeda in Iraq in October 2004 and targeted Coalition forces as well as civilians, mainly Shia Muslims, further exacerbating ethnic tensions.[97]
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+ In January 2005, the first elections since the invasion took place and in October a new Constitution was approved, which was followed by parliamentary elections in December. However, insurgent attacks were common and increased to 34,131 in 2005 from 26,496 in 2004.[98]
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+ During 2006, fighting continued and reached its highest levels of violence, more war crimes scandals were made public, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed by US forces and Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and hanged.[99][100][101]
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+ In late 2006, the US government's Iraq Study Group recommended that the US begin focusing on training Iraqi military personnel and in January 2007 US President George W. Bush announced a "Surge" in the number of US troops deployed to the country.[102]
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+ In May 2007, Iraq's Parliament called on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal and US coalition partners such as the UK and Denmark began withdrawing their forces from the country.[103][104][105] The war in Iraq has resulted in between 151,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis being killed.[106][107]
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+ In 2008, fighting continued and Iraq's newly trained armed forces launched attacks against militants. The Iraqi government signed the US–Iraq Status of Forces Agreement, which required US forces to withdraw from Iraqi cities by 30 June 2009 and to withdraw completely from Iraq by 31 December 2011.
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+ US troops handed over security duties to Iraqi forces in June 2009, though they continued to work with Iraqi forces after the pullout.[108] On the morning of 18 December 2011, the final contingent of US troops to be withdrawn ceremonially exited over the border to Kuwait.[10] Crime and violence initially spiked in the months following the US withdrawal from cities in mid-2009[109][110] but despite the initial increase in violence, in November 2009, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials reported that the civilian death toll in Iraq fell to its lowest level since the 2003 invasion.[111]
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+ Following the withdrawal of US troops in 2011, the insurgency continued and Iraq suffered from political instability. In February 2011, the Arab Spring protests spread to Iraq;[112] but the initial protests did not topple the government. The Iraqi National Movement, reportedly representing the majority of Iraqi Sunnis, boycotted Parliament for several weeks in late 2011 and early 2012, claiming that the Shiite-dominated government was striving to sideline Sunnis.
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+ In 2012 and 2013, levels of violence increased and armed groups inside Iraq were increasingly galvanised by the Syrian Civil War. Both Sunnis and Shias crossed the border to fight in Syria.[113] In December 2012, Sunni Arabs protested against the government, whom they claimed marginalised them.[114][115]
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+ During 2013, Sunni militant groups stepped up attacks targeting the Iraq's Shia population in an attempt to undermine confidence in the Nouri al-Maliki-led government.[116] In 2014, Sunni insurgents belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group seized control of large swathes of land including several major Iraqi cities, like Tikrit, Fallujah and Mosul creating hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons amid reports of atrocities by ISIL fighters.[117]
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+ After an inconclusive election in April 2014, Nouri al-Maliki served as caretaker-Prime-Minister.[118]
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+ On 11 August, Iraq's highest court ruled that PM Maliki's bloc is biggest in parliament, meaning Maliki could stay Prime Minister.[118] By 13 August, however, the Iraqi president had tasked Haider al-Abadi with forming a new government, and the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and some Iraqi politicians expressed their wish for a new leadership in Iraq, for example from Haider al-Abadi.[119] On 14 August, Maliki stepped down as PM to support Mr al-Abadi and to "safeguard the high interests of the country". The US government welcomed this as "another major step forward" in uniting Iraq.[120][121] On 9 September 2014, Haider al-Abadi had formed a new government and became the new prime minister.[citation needed] Intermittent conflict between Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish factions has led to increasing debate about the splitting of Iraq into three autonomous regions, including Sunni Kurdistan in the northeast, a Sunnistan in the west and a Shiastan in the southeast.[122]
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+ In response to rapid territorial gains made by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) during the first half of 2014, and its universally-condemned executions and reported human rights abuses, many states began to intervene against it in the Iraqi Civil War (2014–2017). Since the airstrikes started, ISIL has been losing ground in both Iraq and Syria.[123] Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed in Iraq in ISIL-linked violence.[124][125] The genocide of Yazidis by ISIL has led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis from their ancestral lands in Northern Iraq.[126] The 2016 Karrada bombing killed nearly 400 civilians and injured hundreds more.[127] On 17 March 2017, a US-led coalition airstrike in Mosul killed more than 200 civilians.[128]
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+ Since 2015, ISIL lost territory in Iraq, including Tikrit in March and April 2015,[129] Baiji in October 2015,[130] Sinjar in November 2015,[131] Ramadi in December 2015,[132] Fallujah in June 2016[133] and Mosul in July 2017. By December 2017, ISIL had no remaining territory in Iraq, following the 2017 Western Iraq campaign.[134]
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+ In September 2017, a referendum was held regarding Kurdish independence in Iraq. 92% of Iraqi Kurds voted in favor of independence.[135] The referendum was regarded as illegal by the federal government in Baghdad.[136] In March 2018, Turkey launched military operations to eliminate the Kurdish separatist fighters in northern Iraq.[137] Anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's political coalition won Iraq's parliamentary election in May 2018.[138]
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+ Serious civil unrest rocked the country beginning in Baghdad and Najaf in July 2018 and spreading to other provinces in late September 2019 as rallies to protest corruption, unemployment, and public service failures turned violent.[139]
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+ Protests and demonstrations started again on 1 October 2019, against 16 years of corruption, unemployment and inefficient public services, before they escalated into calls to overthrow the administration and to stop Iranian intervention in Iraq. The Iraqi government at times reacted harshly, resulting in over 500 deaths by 12 December 2019.
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+ On 27 December 2019, the K-1 Air Base in Iraq was attacked by more than 30 rockets, killing a U.S. civilian contractor and injuring others. The U.S. blamed the Iranian-backed Kata'ib Hezbollah militia.
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+ On 29 December 2019, the United States bombed five Kata'ib Hezbollah militia's positions in Iraq and Syria, in retaliation for the presumed Kata'ib attack of 27 December. According to Iraqi sources, at least 25 militia fighters were killed.
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+ On 31 December 2019, after a funeral for Kata'ib Hezbollah militiamen killed by U.S. airstrikes, dozens of Iraqi Shia militiamen and their supporters marched into the Green Zone of Baghdad and surrounded the U.S. embassy compound (see article: Attack on the United States embassy in Baghdad). Demonstrators smashed a door of the checkpoint, set fire to the reception area, left anti-American posters and sprayed anti-American graffiti. U.S. president Trump accused Iran of orchestrating the attack.
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+ On 3 January 2020, amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran, the U.S. launched a drone strike on a convoy traveling near Baghdad International Airport, killing Qasem Soleimani, Iranian major general and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Quds Force commander, the second most powerful person of Iran;[140], Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF or PMU), four senior Iranian officers; and four Iraqi officers.
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+ Following months of protests that broke out across Iraq in October 2019 and the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and his cabinet, Mustafa Al Kadhimi became a leading contender for the Premiership.[141]
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+ On 9 April 2020, he was named by President Barham Salih as prime minister-designate, the third person tapped to lead the country in just 10 weeks as it struggled to replace a government that fell last year after months of protests. Kadhimi was nominated by President Barham Salih, state television reported, shortly after the previous designated prime minister, Adnan al-Zurfi, announced he was withdrawing having failed to secure enough support to pass a government.[142]
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+ Iraq lies between latitudes 29° and 38° N, and longitudes 39° and 49° E (a small area lies west of 39°). Spanning 437,072 km2 (168,754 sq mi), it is the 58th-largest country in the world. It is comparable in size to the US state of California, and somewhat larger than Paraguay.
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+ Iraq mainly consists of desert, but near the two major rivers (Euphrates and Tigris) are fertile alluvial plains, as the rivers carry about 60,000,000 m3 (78,477,037 cu yd) of silt annually to the delta. The north of the country is mostly composed of mountains; the highest point being at 3,611 m (11,847 ft) point, unnamed on the map opposite, but known locally as Cheekah Dar (black tent). Iraq has a small coastline measuring 58 km (36 mi) along the Persian Gulf. Close to the coast and along the Shatt al-Arab (known as arvandrūd: اروندرود among Iranians) there used to be marshlands, but many were drained in the 1990s.
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+ Most of Iraq has a hot arid climate with subtropical influence. Summer temperatures average above 40 °C (104 °F) for most of the country and frequently exceed 48 °C (118.4 °F). Winter temperatures infrequently exceed 21 °C (69.8 °F) with maxima roughly 15 to 19 °C (59.0 to 66.2 °F) and night-time lows 2 to 5 °C (35.6 to 41.0 °F). Typically, precipitation is low; most places receive less than 250 mm (9.8 in) annually, with maximum rainfall occurring during the winter months. Rainfall during the summer is extremely rare, except in the far north of the country. The northern mountainous regions have cold winters with occasional heavy snows, sometimes causing extensive flooding.
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+ The federal government of Iraq is defined under the current Constitution as a democratic, federal parliamentary republic. The federal government is composed of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, as well as numerous independent commissions. Aside from the federal government, there are regions (made of one or more governorates), governorates, and districts within Iraq with jurisdiction over various matters as defined by law.
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+ The National Alliance is the main Shia parliamentary bloc, and was established as a result of a merger of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's State of Law Coalition and the Iraqi National Alliance.[143] The Iraqi National Movement is led by Iyad Allawi, a secular Shia widely supported by Sunnis. The party has a more consistent anti-sectarian perspective than most of its rivals.[143] The Kurdistan List is dominated by two parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party led by Masood Barzani and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headed by Jalal Talabani. Both parties are secular and enjoy close ties with the West.[143]
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+ In 2018, according to the Failed States Index, Iraq was the world's eleventh most politically unstable country.[144][145] The concentration of power in the hands of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and growing pressure on the opposition led to growing concern about the future of political rights in Iraq.[146] Nevertheless, progress was made and the country had risen to 11th place by 2013.[147] In August 2014, al-Maliki's reign came to an end. He announced on 14 August 2014 that he would stand aside so that Haider Al-Abadi, who had been nominated just days earlier by newly installed President Fuad Masum, could take over. Until that point, al-Maliki had clung to power even asking the federal court to veto the president's nomination describing it as a violation of the constitution.[148]
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+ Transparency International ranks Iraq's government as the eighth-most-corrupt government in the world. Government payroll have increased from 1 million employees under Saddam Hussein to around 7 million employees in 2016. In combination with decreased oil prices, the government budget deficit is near 25% of GDP as of 2016[update].[149]
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+ Since the establishment of the no–fly zones following the Gulf War of 1990–1991, the Kurds established their own autonomous region.[citation needed]
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+ In October 2005, the new Constitution of Iraq was approved in a referendum with a 78% overall majority, although the percentage of support varying widely between the country's territories.[150] The new constitution was backed by the Shia and Kurdish communities, but was rejected by Arab Sunnis. Under the terms of the constitution, the country conducted fresh nationwide parliamentary elections on 15 December 2005. All three major ethnic groups in Iraq voted along ethnic lines, as did Assyrian and Turcoman minorities.
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+ Law no. 188 of the year 1959 (Personal Status Law)[151] made polygamy extremely difficult, granted child custody to the mother in case of divorce, prohibited repudiation and marriage under the age of 16.[152] Article 1 of Civil Code also identifies Islamic law as a formal source of law.[153] Iraq had no Sharia courts but civil courts used Sharia for issues of personal status including marriage and divorce. In 1995 Iraq introduced Sharia punishment for certain types of criminal offences.[154] The code is based on French civil law as well as Sunni and Jafari (Shi'ite) interpretations of Sharia.[155]
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+ In 2004, the CPA chief executive L. Paul Bremer said he would veto any constitutional draft stating that sharia is the principal basis of law.[156] The declaration enraged many local Shia clerics,[157] and by 2005 the United States had relented, allowing a role for sharia in the constitution to help end a stalemate on the draft constitution.[158]
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+ The Iraqi Penal Code is the statutory law of Iraq.
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+ Iraqi security forces are composed of forces serving under the Ministry of Interior (which controls the Police and Popular Mobilization Forces) and the Ministry of Defense, as well as the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Bureau, reporting directly to the Prime Minister of Iraq, which oversees the Iraqi Special Operations Forces. Ministry of Defense forces include the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi Air Force and the Iraqi Navy. The Peshmerga are a separate armed force loyal to the Kurdistan Regional Government. The regional government and the central government disagree as to whether they are under Baghdad's authority and to what extent.[159]
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+ The Iraqi Army is an objective counter-insurgency force that as of November 2009 includes 14 divisions, each division consisting of 4 brigades.[160] It is described as the most important element of the counter-insurgency fight.[161] Light infantry brigades are equipped with small arms, machine guns, RPGs, body armour and light armoured vehicles. Mechanized infantry brigades are equipped with T-54/55 main battle tanks and BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicles.[161] As of mid-2008, logistical problems included a maintenance crisis and ongoing supply problems.[162]
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+ The Iraqi Air Force is designed to support ground forces with surveillance, reconnaissance and troop lift. Two reconnaissance squadrons use light aircraft, three helicopter squadrons are used to move troops and one air transportation squadron uses C-130 transport aircraft to move troops, equipment, and supplies. It currently has 3,000 personnel. It is planned to increase to 18,000 personnel, with 550 aircraft by 2018.[161]
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+ The Iraqi Navy is a small force with 1,500 sailors and officers, including 800 Marines, designed to protect shoreline and inland waterways from insurgent infiltration. The navy is also responsible for the security of offshore oil platforms. The navy will have coastal patrol squadrons, assault boat squadrons and a marine battalion.[161] The force will consist of 2,000 to 2,500 sailors by year 2010.[163]
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+ In 2019, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Michael Mulroy said that the relationship with the Defense Department and the Iraqi Army was among our most compelling strategic interests and that the U.S. currently helps train and equip 28 Iraqi brigades to maintain their readiness. "The priority is to empower Iraq's professional and capable security forces to protect its sovereignty and to prevent an ISIS resurgence," Mulroy said. "The more capable Iraq's security institutions, the more resilient Iraq will be in the face of its enemies".[164][165]
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+ On 4 November 2019, more than 100 Australian Defence Force personnel left Darwin for the 10th rotation of Task Group Taji base in north of Baghdad. The Australian contingent mentors the Iraqi School of Infantry, where the Iraqi Security Forces are trained. However, Australia's contribution was reduced from 250 to 120 ADF personnel, which along with New Zealand had trained over 45,000 ISF members before that.[166]
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+ On 17 November 2008, the US and Iraq agreed to a Status of Forces Agreement,[167] as part of the broader Strategic Framework Agreement.[168] This agreement states "the Government of Iraq requests" US forces to temporarily remain in Iraq to "maintain security and stability" and that Iraq has jurisdiction over military contractors, and US personnel when not on US bases or on–duty.
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+ On 12 February 2009, Iraq officially became the 186th State Party to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Under the provisions of this treaty, Iraq is considered a party with declared stockpiles of chemical weapons. Because of their late accession, Iraq is the only State Party exempt from the existing timeline for destruction of their chemical weapons. Specific criteria is in development to address the unique nature of Iraqi accession.[169]
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+ Iran–Iraq relations have flourished since 2005 by the exchange of high level visits: Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki made frequent visits to Iran, along with Jalal Talabani visiting numerous times, to help boost bilateral co-operation in all fields.[citation needed] A conflict occurred in December 2009, when Iraq accused Iran of seizing an oil well on the border.[170]
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+ Relationships with Turkey are tense, largely because of the Kurdistan Regional Government, as clashes between Turkey and the PKK continue.[171] In October 2011, the Turkish parliament renewed a law that gives Turkish forces the ability to pursue rebels over the border in Iraq."[172]
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+ On 5 January 2020, the Iraqi parliament voted for a resolution that urges the government to work on expelling U.S. troops from Iraq. The resolution was passed two days after a U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of the Quds Force. The resolution specifically calls for ending of a 2014 agreement allowing Washington to help Iraq against Islamic State groups by sending troops.[173] This resolution will also signify ending an agreement with Washington to station troops in Iraq as Iran vows to retaliate after the killing.[174]
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+ Relations between Iraq and its Kurdish population have been sour in recent history, especially with Saddam Hussein's genocidal campaign against them in the 1980s. After uprisings during the early 90s, many Kurds fled their homeland and no-fly zones were established in northern Iraq to prevent more conflicts. Despite historically poor relations, some progress has been made, and Iraq elected its first Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, in 2005. Furthermore, Kurdish is now an official language of Iraq alongside Arabic according to Article 4 of the constitution.[175]
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+ LGBT rights in Iraq remain limited. Although decriminalised, homosexuality remains stigmatised in Iraqi society.[176] Targeting people because of their gender identity or sexual orientation is not uncommon and is usually carried out in the name of family honour. People who dress in emo style are mistakenly associated with homosexuality and may suffer the same fate.[177] Investigations by the BBC and other western media in 2008 and 2009, including interviews of homosexual and transgender Iraqis, showed that violence against LGBT people had significantly increased since Saddam Hussein was toppled.[178][179][180][181][182]
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+ On May 14, 2020, Human Rights Watch said that Iraqi government should focus on the key areas to advance human rights in the country through a legislation. Several areas need a legislative reform to bring Iraqi law in line with international standards.[183] On June 15, 2020, Human Rights Watch said, free speech is under threat in Iraq. Prime Minister of Iraq Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has a unique opportunity to tackle over a decade of free speech restrictions and should reform its penal code and other laws.[184]
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+ Iraq is composed of nineteen governorates (or provinces) (Arabic: muhafadhat (singular muhafadhah); Kurdish: پارێزگا Pârizgah). The governorates are subdivided into districts (or qadhas), which are further divided into sub-districts (or nawāḥī). Kurdistan Region (Erbil, Dohuk, Sulaymaniyah and Halabja) is the only legally defined region within Iraq, with its own government and quasi-official army Peshmerga.
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+ Iraq's economy is dominated by the oil sector, which has traditionally provided about 95% of foreign exchange earnings. The lack of development in other sectors has resulted in 18%–30% unemployed and a per capita GDP of $4,000.[7] Public sector employment accounted for nearly 60% of full-time employment in 2011.[185] The oil export industry, which dominates the Iraqi economy, generates very little employment.[185] Currently only a modest percentage of women (the highest estimate for 2011 was 22%) participate in the labour force.[185]
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+ Prior to US occupation, Iraq's centrally planned economy prohibited foreign ownership of Iraqi businesses, ran most large industries as state-owned enterprises, and imposed large tariffs to keep out foreign goods.[186] After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, the Coalition Provisional Authority quickly began issuing many binding orders privatising Iraq's economy and opening it up to foreign investment.
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+ On 20 November 2004, the Paris Club of creditor nations agreed to write off 80% ($33 billion) of Iraq's $42 billion debt to Club members. Iraq's total external debt was around $120 billion at the time of the 2003 invasion, and had grown another $5 billion by 2004. The debt relief will be implemented in three stages: two of 30% each and one of 20%.[187]
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+ In February 2011, Citigroup included Iraq in a group of countries which it described as 'Global Growth Generators', that it argued will enjoy significant economic growth in the future.[188]
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+ The official currency in Iraq is the Iraqi dinar. The Coalition Provisional Authority issued new dinar coins and notes, with the notes printed by De La Rue using modern anti-forgery techniques.[189] Jim Cramer's 20 October 2009 endorsement of the Iraqi Dinar on CNBC has further piqued interest in the investment.[190]
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+ Five years after the invasion, an estimated 2.4 million people were internally displaced (with a further two million refugees outside Iraq), four million Iraqis were considered food-insecure (a quarter of children were chronically malnourished) and only a third of Iraqi children had access to safe drinking water.[191]
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+ According to the Overseas Development Institute, international NGOs face challenges in carrying out their mission, leaving their assistance "piecemeal and largely conducted undercover, hindered by insecurity, a lack of coordinated funding, limited operational capacity and patchy information".[191] International NGOs have been targeted and during the first 5 years, 94 aid workers were killed, 248 injured, 24 arrested or detained and 89 kidnapped or abducted.[191]
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+
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+ With its 143.1 billion barrels (2.275×1010 m3) of proved oil reserves, Iraq ranks third in the world behind Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in the amount of oil reserves.[192][193] Oil production levels reached 3.4 million barrels per day by December 2012.[194] Only about 2,000 oil wells have been drilled in Iraq, compared with about 1 million wells in Texas alone.[195] Iraq was one of the founding members of OPEC.[196][197]
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+ During the 1970s Iraq produced up to 3.5 million barrels per day, but sanctions imposed against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait in 1990 crippled the country's oil sector. The sanctions prohibited Iraq from exporting oil until 1996 and Iraq's output declined by 85% in the years following the First Gulf War. The sanctions were lifted in 2003 after the US-led invasion removed Saddam Hussein from power, but development of Iraq's oil resources has been hampered by the ongoing conflict.[198]
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+ As of 2010[update], despite improved security and billions of dollars in oil revenue, Iraq still generates about half the electricity that customers demand, leading to protests during the hot summer months.[199]
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+ The Iraq oil law, a proposed piece of legislation submitted to the Iraqi Council of Representatives in 2007, has failed to gain approval due to disagreements among Iraq's various political blocs.[200][201]
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+ According to a US Study from May 2007, between 100,000 barrels per day (16,000 m3/d) and 300,000 barrels per day (48,000 m3/d) of Iraq's declared oil production over the past four years could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling.[202] In 2008, Al Jazeera reported $13 billion of Iraqi oil revenues in US care was improperly accounted for, of which $2.6 billion is totally unaccounted for.[203] Some reports that the government has reduced corruption in public procurement of oil; however, reliable reports of bribery and kickbacks to government officials persist.[204]
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+ In June 2008, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced plans to go ahead with small one- or two-year no-bid contracts to Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP—once partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company—along with Chevron and smaller firms to service Iraq's largest fields.[205] These plans were cancelled in September because negotiations had stalled for so long that the work could not be completed within the time frame, according to Iraqi oil minister Hussain al-Shahristani. Several United States senators had also criticised the deal, arguing it was hindering efforts to pass the hydrocarbon law.[206]
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+ On 30 June and 11 December 2009, the Iraqi ministry of oil awarded service contracts to international oil companies for some of Iraq's many oil fields.[207][208] Oil fields contracted include the "super-giant" Majnoon Field, Halfaya Field, West Qurna Field and Rumaila Field.[208] BP and China National Petroleum Corporation won a deal to develop Rumaila, the largest Iraqi oil field.[209][210]
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+ On 14 March 2014, the International Energy Agency said Iraq's oil output jumped by half a million barrels a day in February to average 3.6 million barrels a day. The country had not pumped that much oil since 1979, when Saddam Hussein rose to power.[211] However, on 14 July 2014, as sectarian strife had taken hold, Kurdistan Regional Government forces seized control of the Bai Hassan and Kirkuk oilfields in the north of the country, taking them from Iraq's control. Baghdad condemned the seizure and threatened "dire consequences" if the fields were not returned.[212]
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+ The UN estimates that oil accounts for 99% of Iraq's revenue.[198]
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+ Water supply and sanitation in Iraq is characterized by poor water and service quality. Three decades of war, combined with limited environmental awareness, have destroyed Iraq's water resources management system.
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+ Access to potable water differs significantly among governorates and between urban and rural areas.
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+ 91% of the entire population has access to potable water. But in rural areas, only 77% of the population has access to improved drinking water sources compared to 98% in urban areas.[213]
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+ Large amounts of water are wasted during production.[213]
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+ Although many infrastructure projects are underway, Iraq remains in deep housing crisis, with the war-ravaged country likely to complete only 5 percent of the 2.5 million homes it needs to build by 2016 to keep up with demand, the Minister for Construction and Housing said in September 2013.[214]
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+ The 2018 estimate of the total Iraqi population is 38,433,600.[1][2] Iraq's population was estimated to be 2 million in 1878.[215] In 2013 Iraq's population reached 35 million amid a post-war population boom.[218]
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+ According to the CIA World Factbook, citing a 1987 Iraqi government estimate,[7] the population of Iraq is formed of 75–80% Arabs followed by 15% Kurds.[7] In addition, the estimate claims that other minorities form 5% of the country's population, including the Assyrians, Turkmen/Turcoman, Yezidis, Shabak, Kaka'i, Bedouins, Roma, Circassians, Sabaean-Mandaean, and Persians.[7] However, the International Crisis Group points out that figures from the 1987 census, as well as the 1967, 1977, and 1997 censuses, "are all considered highly problematic, due to suspicions of regime manipulation" because Iraqi citizens were only allowed to indicate belonging to either the Arab or Kurdish ethnic groups;[219] consequently, this skewed the number of other ethnic minorities, such as Iraq's third largest ethnic group – the Turkmens/Turkomans.[219]
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+ A report published by the European Parliamentary Research Service suggests that in 2015 there was 24 million Arabs (15 million Shia and 9 million Sunni); 4 million Sunni Kurds (plus 500,000 Shia Faili Kurds and 200,000 Kaka'i); 3 million Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman; 1 million Black Iraqis; 500,000 Christians (including Chaldean, Syriacs, Assyrians and Armenians); 500,000 Yazidis; 250,000 Shabaks; 50,000 Roma; 3,000 Sabean-Mandaeans; 2,000 Circassians; 1,000 Baha'i; and a few dozen Jews.[220]
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+ Around 20,000 Marsh Arabs live in southern Iraq.[221]
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+ Iraq has a community of 2,500 Chechens.[222] In southern Iraq, there is a community of Iraqis of African descent, a legacy of the slavery practised in the Islamic Caliphate beginning before the Zanj Rebellion of the 9th century, and Basra's role as a key port.[65] It is the most populous country in the Arabian Plate.[223]
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+ The main languages spoken in Iraq are Mesopotamian Arabic and Kurdish, followed by the Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman dialect of Turkish, and the Neo-Aramaic languages (specifically Chaldean and Assyrian).[224] Arabic and Kurdish are written with versions of the Arabic script. Since 2005, the Turkmen/Turkoman have switched from the Arabic script to the Turkish alphabet.[225] In addition, the Neo-Aramaic languages use the Syriac script.
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+ Other smaller minority languages include Mandaic, Shabaki, Armenian, Circassian and Persian.
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+ Prior to the invasion in 2003, Arabic was the sole official language. Since the new Constitution of Iraq approved in June 2004, both Arabic and Kurdish are official languages,[226] while Assyrian Neo-Aramaic and the Turkmen/Turkoman dialect of Turkish (referred to as respectively "Syriac" and "Turkmen" in the constitution) are recognised regional languages.[227] In addition, any region or province may declare other languages official if a majority of the population approves in a general referendum.[228]
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+ According to the Iraqi constitution:
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+ The Arabic language and the Kurdish language are the two official languages of Iraq. The right of Iraqis to educate their children in their mother tongue, such as Turkmen, Assyrian, and Armenian shall be guaranteed in government educational institutions in accordance with educational guidelines, or in any other language in private educational institutions.[229]
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+ Religions in Iraq are dominantly Abrahamic with Muslim (official) 99% (Shia 55–60%, Sunni 40%), Christian <0.1%, Yazidi <0.1%, Sabean Mandaean <0.1%, Baha'i <0.1%, Zoroastrian <0.1%, Hindu <0.1%, Buddhist <0.1%, Jewish <0.1%, folk religion <0.1, unaffiliated 0.1%, other <0.1%[7] It has a mixed Shia and Sunni population. The CIA World Factbook estimates that around 65% of Muslims in Iraq are Shia, and around 35% are Sunni.[7] A 2011 Pew Research Center estimates that 51% of Muslims in Iraq are Shia, 42% are Sunni, while 5% identify themselves as "Just a Muslim".[232] The Sunni Muslims, 12–13 million in a population of 36 million, include Arabs, most Turkomen, and Kurds.
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+ The Sunni population complains of facing discrimination in almost all aspects of life by the government. However, former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki denied that such discrimination occurs.[233]
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+ Christianity in Iraq has its roots from the conception of the Church of the East in the 5th century AD, predating the existence of Islam in the region. Christians in Iraq are predominantly native Assyrians belonging to the Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Catholic Church and Syriac Orthodox Church. There is also a significant population of Armenian Christians in Iraq who had fled Turkey during the Armenian genocide. Christians numbered over 1.4 million in 1987 or 8% of the estimated population of 16.3 million and 550,000 in 1947 or 12% of the population of 4.6 millions.[234]
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+ There are also small ethno-religious minority populations of Mandaeans, Shabaks, Yarsan and Yezidis remaining. Prior to 2003 their numbers together may have been 2 million, the majority Yarsan, a non-Islamic religion with roots in pre-Islamic and pre-Christian religion. There are reports of over 100.000 conversions to Zoroastrianism in recent years. The Iraqi Jewish community, numbering around 150,000 in 1941, has almost entirely left the country.[235]
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+ Iraq is home to two of the world's holiest places among Shias: Najaf and Karbala.[236]
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+ The dispersion of native Iraqis to other countries is known as the Iraqi diaspora. The UN High Commission for Refugees has estimated that nearly two million Iraqis fled the country after the multinational invasion of Iraq in 2003, mostly to Syria and Jordan.[237] The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre estimated in 2007 that an additional 1.9 million were displaced within the country.[238]
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+ In 2007, the UN said that about 40% of Iraq's middle class was believed to have fled and that most had fled systematic persecution and had no desire to return.[239] Refugees are mired in poverty as they are generally barred from working in their host countries.[240][241]
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+ Subsequently, the diaspora seemed to be returning, as security improved; the Iraqi government claimed that 46,000 refugees returned to their homes in October 2007 alone.[242]
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+ As of 2011[update], nearly 3 million Iraqis had been displaced, with 1.3 million within Iraq and 1.6 million in neighbouring countries, mainly Jordan and Syria.[243] More than half of Iraqi Christians had fled the country since the 2003 US-led invasion.[244][245] According to official United States Citizenship and Immigration Services statistics, 58,811 Iraqis had been granted refugee-status citizenship as of 25 May 2011[update].[246]
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+ After the start of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, numerous Iraqi refugees in Syria returned to their native country.[247] To escape the civil war, over 160,000 Syrian refugees of varying ethnicities have fled to Iraq since 2012.[248]
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+ In 2010, spending on healthcare accounted for 6.84% of the country's GDP. In 2008, there were 6.96 physicians and 13.92 nurses per 10,000 inhabitants.[249] The life expectancy at birth was 68.49 years in 2010, or 65.13 years for males and 72.01 years for females.[250] This is down from a peak life expectancy of 71.31 years in 1996.[251]
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+ Iraq had developed a centralised free health care system in the 1970s using a hospital based, capital-intensive model of curative care. The country depended on large-scale imports of medicines, medical equipment and even nurses, paid for with oil export income, according to a "Watching Brief" report issued jointly by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organization (WHO) in July 2003. Unlike other poorer countries, which focused on mass health care using primary care practitioners, Iraq developed a Westernized system of sophisticated hospitals with advanced medical procedures, provided by specialist physicians. The UNICEF/WHO report noted that prior to 1990, 97% of the urban dwellers and 71% of the rural population had access to free primary health care; just 2% of hospital beds were privately managed.[252]
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+ Before Iraq faced economic sanctions from the UN, it already had an advanced and successful Arab education system.[253] However, it has now been “de-developing” in its educational success.[253] Some say that the sanctions, whether intentionally or not, hurt the education system because of how it affected the children.[253] Whether or not this is true, UNICEF's statistics and numbers show how Iraq's education system has room for improvement.[254]
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+ At the turn of the millennium, many countries, including Iraq, attempted to take part in the Millennium Development Goals as a way to help underdeveloped countries prosper. In Iraq, one of the goals was for education to be universally available for both boys and girls at the primary level. UNICEF collected several pieces of data that indicate whether or not, Iraq has been accomplishing this goal.[254]
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+ In general, the education of Iraq has been improving since the MDGs were implemented.[254] For example, enrollment numbers nearly doubled from 2000 to 2012.[254] It went from 3.6 million to six million.[254] The latest statistic from 2015–2016 showed that almost 9.2 million children were in school.[254] Enrollment rates continue to be on a steady increase at about 4.1% each year.[254] The sheer increase in numbers shows that there are clearly improvements of children in Iraq having access to education.
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+ However, the dramatic increase of the number of students in primary education has had some negative and straining effects for the education system.[254] The budget for education makes up about only 5.7% of government spending and continues to stay at or below this percentage.[254] Investments for schools has also been on the decline.[254] As a result, the country now ranks at the bottom of Middle East countries in terms of education.[254] The little funding for education makes it more difficult to improve the quality and resources for education.[254]
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+ At the same time, UNICEF investigated portions of spending for education and found that some of the money has gone to waste.[254] They found that dropout rates are increasing as well as repetition rates for children.[254] In both Iraq Centre and KRI, the rates for dropouts are about 1.5% to 2.5%.[254] Within these dropout rates, there is also an uneven number among boys and girls who dropout.[254] While the rate for dropouts for boys was around 16.5%, girls were at 20.1% where it could be due to economic or family reasons.[254] For repetition rates, percentages have almost reached 17% among all students.[254] To put the money loss in perspective, about $1,100 is spent on each student.[254] For each student who drops out or repeats a grade, $1,100 is lost.[254] As a result, almost 20% of the funding for education was lost to dropouts and repetition for the year 2014–2015.[254]
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+ Many of those people who dropout or have to repeat a grade do not see the economic cost for long term results.[254] UNICEF takes note of how staying in school can in fact, increase wealth for the person and their family.[254] While it may put a strain on the education system, it will also hinder the chances of a person receiving higher earnings in whatever career they go into.[254]
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+ Other statistics show that regional differences can attribute to lower or higher enrollment rates for children in primary education.[254] For example, UNICEF found that areas with conflict like Salah al-Din have “more than 90% of school-age children” not in the education system.[254] In addition, some schools were converted into refugee shelters or military bases in 2014 as conflict began to increase.[255] The resources for education become more strained and make it harder for children to go to school and finish receiving their education.[255] However, in 2017, there were efforts being made to open up 47 schools that had previously been closed.[256] There has been more success in Mosul where over 380,000 are going to school again.[256] Depending on where children live, they may or may not have the same access to education as other children.
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+ There are also the differing enrollment rates between boys and girls.[254] UNICEF found that in 2013–2014, enrollment numbers for boys was at about five million while girls were at about 4.2 million.[254] While the out-of-school rate for girls is at about 11%, boys are at less than half of that.[254] There is still a gap between boys and girls in terms of educational opportunities.[254] However, the rate of enrollments for girls has been increasing at a higher rate than for boys.[254] In 2015–2016, the enrollment numbers for girls increased by 400,000 from the previous year where a large number of them were located in Iraq Centre.[254] Not only that, UNICEF found that the increase of girls going to school was across all levels of education.[254] Therefore, the unequal enrollment numbers between boys and girls could potentially change so that universal education can be achieved by all at equal rates.
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+ Although the numbers suggest a dramatic increase of enrollment rates for primary education in total, a large number of children still remain out of the education system.[254] Many of these children fall under the category of internally displaced children due to the conflict in Syria and the takeover by ISIL.[254] This causes a disruption for children who are attempting to go to school and holds them back from completing their education, no matter what level they are at.[254] Internally displaced children are specifically recorded to track children who have been forced to move within their country due to these types of conflicts. About 355,000 of internally displaced children are not in the education system.[254] 330,000 of those children live in Iraq Centre.[254] The rates among internally displaced children continue to remain higher in Iraq Centre than other areas such as the KRI.[254]
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+ With the overall increase of enrollment rates, there continues to be a large strain on the resources for education.[254] UNICEF notes that without an increase on expenditures for education, the quality of education will continue to decrease.[254] Early in the 2000s, the UNESCO International Bureau of Education found that the education system in Iraq had issues with standard-built school buildings, having enough teachers, implementing a standardized curricula, textbooks and technologies that are needed to help reach its educational goals.[253] Teachers are important resources that are starting to become more and more strained with the rising number of students.[254] Iraq Centre has a faster enrollment growth rate than teacher growth.[254] Teachers begin to have to take in more and more students which can produce a bigger strain on the teacher and quality of education the children receive.[254] Another large resource for education is libraries that can increase literacy and create a reading culture.[257] However, this can only be improved through a restructuring of the education system.[257]
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+ UNICEF provides more details, regarding the actions needed to help Iraq reach its MDG goal of education being attainable by all children at the primary level.[254] Much of it has to do with the restructuring of the education system, research into improving the quality of education, and discovering ways on how to better suit the needs of girls and children with disabilities in the education system.[254]
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+ The CIA World Factbook estimates that, in 2000, the adult literacy rate was 84% for males and 64% for females, with UN figures suggesting a small fall in literacy of Iraqis aged 15–24 between 2000 and 2008, from 84.8% to 82.4%.[258] The Coalition Provisional Authority undertook a complete reform of Iraq's education system: Baathist ideology was removed from curricula and there were substantial increases in teacher salaries and training programs, which the Hussein regime neglected in the 1990s.[citation needed] In 2003, an estimated 80% of Iraq's 15,000 school buildings needed rehabilitation and lacked basic sanitary facilities, and most schools lacked libraries and laboratories.[citation needed]
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+ Education is mandatory only through to the sixth grade, after which a national examination determines the possibility of continuing into the upper grades.[citation needed] Although a vocational track is available to those who do not pass the exam, few students elect that option because of its poor quality.[citation needed] Boys and girls generally attend separate schools beginning with seventh grade.[citation needed]
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+ In 2005, obstacles to further reform were poor security conditions in many areas, a centralised system that lacked accountability for teachers and administrators, and the isolation in which the system functioned for the previous 30 years.[citation needed] Few private schools exist.[citation needed] Prior to the invasion of 2003, some 240,000 persons were enrolled in institutions of higher education.[citation needed]
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+ According to the Webometrics Ranking of World Universities, the top-ranking universities in the country are the University of Dohuk (1717th worldwide), the University of Baghdad (3160th) and Babylon University (3946th).[259]
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+ Public holidays in Iraq include Republic Day on 14 July and the National Day on 3 October.
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+ Iraq is known primarily for its rich maqam heritage which has been passed down orally by the masters of the maqam in an unbroken chain of transmission leading up to the present. The maqam al-Iraqi is considered to be the most noble and perfect form of maqam. Al-maqam al-Iraqi is the collection of sung poems written either in one of the sixteen meters of classical Arabic or in Iraqi dialect (Zuhayri).[260] This form of art is recognised by UNESCO as "an intangible heritage of humanity".[261]
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+ Early in the 20th century, many of the most prominent musicians in Iraq were Jewish.[262] In 1936, Iraq Radio was established with an ensemble made up entirely of Jews, with the exception of the percussion player. At the nightclubs of Baghdad, ensembles consisted of oud, qanun and two percussionists, while the same format with a ney and cello were used on the radio.[262]
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+ The most famous singer of the 1930s–1940s was perhaps the Jew Salima Pasha (later Salima Murad).[262][263] The respect and adoration for Pasha were unusual at the time since public performance by women was considered shameful, and most female singers were recruited from brothels.[262]
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+ The most famous early composer from Iraq was Ezra Aharon, an oud player, while the most prominent instrumentalist was Daoud Al-Kuwaiti.[citation needed] Daoud and his brother Saleh formed the official ensemble for the Iraqi radio station and were responsible for introducing the cello and ney into the traditional ensemble.[262]
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+ Important cultural institutions in the capital include the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra – rehearsals and performances were briefly interrupted during the Occupation of Iraq but have since returned to normal. The National Theatre of Iraq was looted during the 2003 invasion, but efforts are underway to restore it. The live theatre scene received a boost during the 1990s when UN sanctions limited the import of foreign films. As many as 30 cinemas were reported to have been converted to live stages, producing a wide range of comedies and dramatic productions.
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+ Institutions offering cultural education in Baghdad include the Academy of Music, Institute of Fine Arts and the Music and Ballet school Baghdad. Baghdad also features a number of museums including the National Museum of Iraq – which houses the world's largest and finest collection of artefacts and relics of Ancient Iraqi civilisations; some of which were stolen during the Occupation of Iraq.
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+ The capital, Ninus or Nineveh, was taken by the Medes under Cyaxares, and some 200 years after Xenophon passed over its site, then mere mounds of earth. It remained buried until 1845, when Botta and Layard discovered the ruins of the Assyrian cities. The principal remains are those of Khorsabad, 16 km (10 mi) N.E. of Mosul; of Nimroud, supposed to be the ancient Calah; and of Kouyunjik, in all probability the ancient Nineveh. In these cities are found fragments of several great buildings which seem to have been palace-temples. They were constructed chiefly of sun-dried bricks, and all that remains of them is the lower part of the walls, decorated with sculpture and paintings, portions of the pavements, a few indications of the elevation, and some interesting works connected with the drainage.
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+ After the end of the full state control in 2003, there were a period of significant growth in the broadcast media in Iraq. Immediately, and the ban on satellite dishes is no longer in place, and by mid-2003, according to a BBC report, there were 20 radio stations from 0.15 to 17 television stations owned by Iraqis, and 200 Iraqi newspapers owned and operated. Significantly, there have been many of these newspapers in numbers disproportionate to the population of their locations. For example, in Najaf, which has a population of 300,000, is being published more than 30 newspapers and distributed.
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+ Iraqi media expert and author of a number of reports on this subject, Ibrahim Al Marashi, identifies four stages of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 where they had been taking the steps that have significant effects on the way for the later of the Iraqi media since then. Stages are: pre-invasion preparation, and the war and the actual choice of targets, the first post-war period, and a growing insurgency and hand over power to the Iraqi Interim Government (IIG) and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.[264][page needed]
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+ Iraqi cuisine can be traced back some 10,000 years – to the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians and Ancient Persians.[265] Tablets found in ancient ruins in Iraq show recipes prepared in the temples during religious festivals – the first cookbooks in the world.[265] Ancient Iraq, or Mesopotamia, was home to many sophisticated and highly advanced civilisations, in all fields of knowledge – including the culinary arts.[265] However, it was in the medieval era when Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate that the Iraqi kitchen reached its zenith.[265] Today the cuisine of Iraq reflects this rich inheritance as well as strong influences from the culinary traditions of neighbouring Turkey, Iran and the Greater Syria area.[265]
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+ Some characteristic ingredients of Iraqi cuisine include – vegetables such as aubergine, tomato, okra, onion, potato, courgette, garlic, peppers and chilli, cereals such as rice, bulgur wheat and barley, pulses and legumes such as lentils, chickpeas and cannellini, fruits such as dates, raisins, apricots, figs, grapes, melon, pomegranate and citrus fruits, especially lemon and lime.[265]
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+ Similarly with other countries of Western Asia, chicken and especially lamb are the favourite meats. Most dishes are served with rice – usually Basmati, grown in the marshes of southern Iraq.[265] Bulgur wheat is used in many dishes – having been a staple in the country since the days of the Ancient Assyrians.[265]
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+ Football is the most popular sport in Iraq. Football is a considerable uniting factor in Iraq following years of war and unrest. Basketball, swimming, weightlifting, bodybuilding, boxing, kick boxing and tennis are also popular sports.
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+ The Iraqi Football Association is the governing body of football in Iraq, controlling the Iraq national football team and the Iraqi Premier League. It was founded in 1948, and has been a member of FIFA since 1950 and the Asian Football Confederation since 1971. Iraq were the 2007 AFC Asian Cup champions after defeating Saudi Arabia in the final by 1–0 thanks to a goal by captain Younis Mahmoud and they have participated in two FIFA competitions (the 1986 FIFA World Cup and the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup).
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+ Despite having mobile phones in the Middle East since 1995, Iraqis were only able to use mobile phones after 2003, as Mobile phones were banned under Saddam Hussein's rule.
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+ In 2013, it was reported that 78% of Iraqis owned a mobile phone.[266]
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+ According to the Iraqi Ministry of Communication, Iraq is now in the second phase of building and launching a multipurpose strategic satellite.[267]
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+ A project which expected to cost $600 million is ongoing in co-operation with market leaders such as Astrium and Arianespace.
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+ On 18 January 2012, Iraq was connected to the undersea communications network for the first time.[268]
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+ This had an immense impact on internet speed, availability and usage in Iraq.
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+ In October 2013, the Iraqi Minister for Communication ordered internet prices to be lowered by a third. This is an attempt to boost usage and comes as a result of significant improvements in Internet infrastructure in the country.[269]
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+ Government
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+ General information
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+ – in Europe (green & dark grey)– in the European Union (green)
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+ Ireland (Irish: Éire [ˈeːɾʲə] (listen)), also known as the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann),[a] is a country in north-western Europe occupying 26 of 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, which is located on the eastern side of the island. Around 40% of the country's population of 4.9 million people resides in the greater Dublin area.[9] The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south-east, and the Irish Sea to the east. It is a unitary, parliamentary republic.[10] The legislature, the Oireachtas, consists of a lower house, Dáil Éireann, an upper house, Seanad Éireann, and an elected President (Uachtarán) who serves as the largely ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the Taoiseach (Prime Minister, literally 'Chief', a title not used in English), who is elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President; the Taoiseach in turn appoints other government ministers.
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+ The state was created as the Irish Free State in 1922 as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It had the status of Dominion until 1937 when a new constitution was adopted, in which the state was named "Ireland" and effectively became a republic, with an elected non-executive president as head of state. It was officially declared a republic in 1949, following the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955. It joined the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the European Union, in 1973. The state had no formal relations with Northern Ireland for most of the twentieth century, but during the 1980s and 1990s the British and Irish governments worked with the Northern Ireland parties towards a resolution to "the Troubles". Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the Irish government and Northern Ireland Executive have co-operated on a number of policy areas under the North-South Ministerial Council created by the Agreement.
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+
9
+ Ireland ranks among the top ten wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita,[11] and as the tenth most prosperous country in the world according to The Legatum Prosperity Index 2015.[12] After joining the EEC, Ireland enacted a series of liberal economic policies that resulted in rapid economic growth. The country achieved considerable prosperity between the years of 1995 and 2007, which became known as the Celtic Tiger period. This was halted by an unprecedented financial crisis that began in 2008, in conjunction with the concurrent global economic crash.[13][14] However, as the Irish economy was the fastest growing in the EU in 2015,[15] Ireland is again quickly ascending league tables comparing wealth and prosperity internationally. For example, in 2019, Ireland was ranked third most developed country in the world by the United Nations Human Development Index.[16] It also performs well in several national performance metrics, including freedom of the press, economic freedom and civil liberties. Ireland is a member of the European Union and is a founding member of the Council of Europe and the OECD. The Irish government has followed a policy of military neutrality through non-alignment since immediately prior to World War II and the country is consequently not a member of NATO,[17] although it is a member of Partnership for Peace and aspects of PESCO.
10
+
11
+ The 1922 state, comprising 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, was "styled and known as the Irish Free State".[18] The Constitution of Ireland, adopted in 1937, provides that "the name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland". Section 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 states, "It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland." The 1948 Act does not name the state as "Republic of Ireland", because to have done so would have put it in conflict with the Constitution.[19]
12
+
13
+ The government of the United Kingdom used the name "Eire" (without the diacritic) and, from 1949, "Republic of Ireland", for the state;[20] it was not until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that it used the name "Ireland".[21]
14
+
15
+ As well as "Ireland", "Éire" or "the Republic of Ireland", the state is also referred to as "the Republic", "Southern Ireland" or "the South".[22] In an Irish republican context it is often referred to as "the Free State" or "the 26 Counties".[23]
16
+
17
+ From the Act of Union on 1 January 1801, until 6 December 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island's population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and/or disease and another 1.5 million emigrated, mostly to the United States.[24] This set the pattern of emigration for the century to come, resulting in constant population decline up to the 1960s.[25][26][27]
18
+
19
+ From 1874, and particularly under Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence. This was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League, that won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts, and secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy. These led to "grass-roots" control of national affairs, under the Local Government Act 1898, that had been in the hands of landlord-dominated grand juries of the Protestant Ascendancy.
20
+
21
+ Home Rule seemed certain when the Parliament Act 1911 abolished the veto of the House of Lords, and John Redmond secured the Third Home Rule Act in 1914. However, the Unionist movement had been growing since 1886 among Irish Protestants after the introduction of the first home rule bill, fearing discrimination and loss of economic and social privileges if Irish Catholics achieved real political power. In the late 19th and early 20th century unionism was particularly strong in parts of Ulster, where industrialisation was more common in contrast to the more agrarian rest of the island, and where the Protestant population was more prominent, with a majority in four counties.[28] Under the leadership of the Dublin-born Sir Edward Carson of the Irish Unionist Party and the Ulsterman Sir James Craig of the Ulster Unionist Party, unionists became strongly militant in order to oppose "the Coercion of Ulster".[29] After the Home Rule Bill passed parliament in May 1914, to avoid rebellion with Ulster, the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith introduced an Amending Bill reluctantly conceded to by the Irish Party leadership. This provided for the temporary exclusion of Ulster from the workings of the bill for a trial period of six years, with an as yet undecided new set of measures to be introduced for the area to be temporarily excluded.
22
+
23
+ Though it received the Royal Assent and was placed on the statute books in 1914, the implementation of the Third Home Rule Act was suspended until after the First World War which defused the threat of civil war in Ireland. With the hope of ensuring the implementation of the Act at the end of the war through Ireland's engagement in the war, Redmond and his Irish National Volunteers supported the UK and its Allies. 175,000 men joined Irish regiments of the 10th (Irish) and 16th (Irish) divisions of the New British Army, while Unionists joined the 36th (Ulster) divisions.[30]
24
+
25
+ The remainder of the Irish Volunteers, who opposed any support of the UK, launched an armed insurrection against British rule in the 1916 Easter Rising, together with the Irish Citizen Army. This commenced on 24 April 1916 with the declaration of independence. After a week of heavy fighting, primarily in Dublin, the surviving rebels were forced to surrender their positions. The majority were imprisoned but fifteen of the prisoners (including most of the leaders) were executed as traitors to the UK. This included Patrick Pearse, the spokesman for the rising and who provided the signal to the volunteers to start the rising, as well as James Connolly, socialist and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union and both the Irish and Scottish Labour movements. These events, together with the Conscription Crisis of 1918, had a profound effect on changing public opinion in Ireland.[31]
26
+
27
+ In January 1919, after the December 1918 general election, 73 of Ireland's 106 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected were Sinn Féin members who refused to take their seats in the British House of Commons. Instead, they set up an Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann. This first Dáil in January 1919 issued a Declaration of Independence and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The Declaration was mainly a restatement of the 1916 Proclamation with the additional provision that Ireland was no longer a part of the United Kingdom. The new Irish Republic was recognised internationally only by the Russian Soviet Republic.[32] The Irish Republic's Ministry of Dáil Éireann sent a delegation under Ceann Comhairle (Head of Council, or Speaker, of the Daíl) Seán T. O'Kelly to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but it was not admitted.
28
+
29
+ After the War of Independence and truce called in July 1921, representatives of the British government and the five Irish treaty delegates, led by Arthur Griffith, Robert Barton and Michael Collins, negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London from 11 October to 6 December 1921. The Irish delegates set up headquarters at Hans Place in Knightsbridge, and it was here in private discussions that the decision was taken on 5 December to recommend the treaty to Dáil Éireann. On 7 January 1922, the Second Dáil ratified the Treaty by 64 votes to 57.[33]
30
+
31
+ In accordance with the treaty, on 6 December 1922 the entire island of Ireland became a self-governing Dominion called the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann). Under the Constitution of the Irish Free State, the Parliament of Northern Ireland had the option to leave the Irish Free State one month later and return to the United Kingdom. During the intervening period, the powers of the Parliament of the Irish Free State and Executive Council of the Irish Free State did not extend to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland exercised its right under the treaty to leave the new Dominion and rejoined the United Kingdom on 8 December 1922. It did so by making an address to the King requesting, "that the powers of the Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland."[34] The Irish Free State was a constitutional monarchy sharing a monarch with the United Kingdom and other Dominions of the British Commonwealth. The country had a governor-general (representing the monarch), a bicameral parliament, a cabinet called the "Executive Council", and a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council.
32
+
33
+ The Irish Civil War (June 1922 – May 1923) was the consequence of the creation of the Irish Free State. Anti-treaty forces, led by Éamon de Valera, objected to the fact that acceptance of the treaty abolished the Irish Republic of 1919 to which they had sworn loyalty, arguing in the face of public support for the settlement that the "people have no right to do wrong".[35] They objected most to the fact that the state would remain part of the British Empire and that members of the Free State Parliament would have to swear what the Anti-treaty side saw as an oath of fidelity to the British King. Pro-treaty forces, led by Michael Collins, argued that the treaty gave "not the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire to and develop, but the freedom to achieve it".[36]
34
+
35
+ At the start of the war, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two opposing camps: a pro-treaty IRA and an anti-treaty IRA. The pro-treaty IRA disbanded and joined the new National Army. However, because the anti-treaty IRA lacked an effective command structure and because of the pro-treaty forces' defensive tactics throughout the war, Michael Collins and his pro-treaty forces were able to build up an army with many tens of thousands of World War I veterans from the 1922 disbanded Irish regiments of the British Army, capable of overwhelming the anti-treatyists. British supplies of artillery, aircraft, machine-guns and ammunition boosted pro-treaty forces, and the threat of a return of Crown forces to the Free State removed any doubts about the necessity of enforcing the treaty. The lack of public support for the anti-treaty forces (often called the Irregulars) and the determination of the government to overcome the Irregulars contributed significantly to their defeat.
36
+
37
+ Following a national plebiscite in July 1937, the new Constitution of Ireland (Bunreacht na hÉireann) came into force on 29 December 1937.[37] This replaced the Constitution of the Irish Free State and called the state Éire.[38] While Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution defined the national territory to be the whole island, they also confined the state's jurisdiction to the area that had been the Irish Free State. The former Irish Free State government had abolished the Office of Governor-General in December 1936. Although the constitution established the office of President of Ireland, the question over whether Ireland was a republic remained open. Diplomats were accredited to the king, but the president exercised all internal functions of a head of state.[39] For instance, the President gave assent to new laws with his own authority, without reference to King George VI who was only an "organ", that was provided for by statute law.
38
+
39
+ Ireland remained neutral during World War II, a period it described as The Emergency.[40] Ireland's Dominion status was terminated with the passage of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, which came into force on 18 April 1949 and declared that the state was a republic.[41][42] At the time, a declaration of a republic terminated Commonwealth membership. This rule was changed 10 days after Ireland declared itself a republic, with the London Declaration of 28 April 1949. Ireland did not reapply when the rules were altered to permit republics to join. Later, the Crown of Ireland Act was repealed in Ireland by the Statute Law Revision (Pre-Union Irish Statutes) Act 1962.[43]
40
+
41
+ Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955, after having been denied membership because of its neutral stance during the Second World War and not supporting the Allied cause.[44] At the time, joining the UN involved a commitment to using force to deter aggression by one state against another if the UN thought it was necessary.[45]
42
+
43
+ Interest towards membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) developed in Ireland during the 1950s, with consideration also given to membership of the European Free Trade Area. As the United Kingdom intended on EEC membership, Ireland applied for membership in July 1961 due to the substantial economic linkages with the United Kingdom. However, the founding EEC members remained skeptical regarding Ireland's economic capacity, neutrality, and unattractive protectionist policy.[46] Many Irish economists and politicians realised that economic policy reform was necessary. The prospect of EEC membership became doubtful in 1963 when French President General Charles de Gaulle stated that France opposed Britain's accession, which ceased negotiations with all other candidate countries. However, in 1969 his successor, Georges Pompidou, was not opposed to British and Irish membership. Negotiations began and in 1972 the Treaty of Accession was signed. A referendum held in 1972 confirmed Ireland's entry, and it finally joined the EEC in 1973.[47]
44
+
45
+ The economic crisis of the late 1970s was fuelled by the Fianna Fáil government's budget, the abolition of the car tax, excessive borrowing, and global economic instability including the 1979 oil crisis.[48] There were significant policy changes from 1989 onwards, with economic reform, tax cuts, welfare reform, an increase in competition, and a ban on borrowing to fund current spending. This policy began in 1989–1992 by the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat government, and continued by the subsequent Fianna Fáil/Labour government and Fine Gael/Labour/Democratic Left government. Ireland became one of the world's fastest growing economies by the late 1990s in what was known as the Celtic Tiger period, which lasted until the global Financial crisis of 2007–08. However, since 2014, Ireland has experienced increased economic activity.[49]
46
+
47
+ In the Northern Ireland question, the British and Irish governments started to seek a peaceful resolution to the violent conflict involving many paramilitaries and the British Army in Northern Ireland known as "The Troubles". A peace settlement for Northern Ireland, known as the Good Friday Agreement, was approved in 1998 in referendums north and south of the border. As part of the peace settlement, the territorial claim to Northern Ireland in Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland was removed by referendum. In its white paper on Brexit the United Kingdom government reiterated its commitment to the Good Friday Agreement. With regard to Northern Ireland's status, it said that the UK Government's "clearly-stated preference is to retain Northern Ireland’s current constitutional position: as part of the UK, but with strong links to Ireland".[50]
48
+
49
+ The state extends over an area of about five-sixths (70,273 km2 or 27,133 sq mi) of the island of Ireland (84,421 km2 or 32,595 sq mi), with Northern Ireland constituting the remainder. The island is bounded to the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and to the northeast by the North Channel. To the east, the Irish Sea connects to the Atlantic Ocean via St George's Channel and the Celtic Sea to the southwest.
50
+
51
+ The western landscape mostly consists of rugged cliffs, hills and mountains. The central lowlands are extensively covered with glacial deposits of clay and sand, as well as significant areas of bogland and several lakes. The highest point is Carrauntoohil (1,038 m or 3,406 ft), located in the MacGillycuddy's Reeks mountain range in the southwest. River Shannon, which traverses the central lowlands, is the longest river in Ireland at 386 kilometres or 240 miles in length. The west coast is more rugged than the east, with numerous islands, peninsulas, headlands and bays.
52
+
53
+ Ireland is the least forested country in Europe.[51] Until the end of the Middle Ages, the land was heavily forested with native trees such as oak, ash, hazel, birch, alder, willow, aspen, elm, rowan, yew and Scots pine.[52] The growth of blanket bog and the extensive clearing of woodland for farming are believed to be the main causes of deforestation.[53] Today, only about 10% of Ireland is woodland,[54] most of which is non-native conifer plantations, and only 2% of which is native woodland.[55][56] The average woodland cover in European countries is over 33%.[54] According to Coillte, a state owned forestry business, the country's climate gives Ireland one of the fastest growth rates for forests in Europe.[57] Hedgerows, which are traditionally used to define land boundaries, are an important substitute for woodland habitat, providing refuge for native wild flora and a wide range of insect, bird and mammal species.[58]
54
+
55
+ Agriculture accounts for about 64% of the total land area.[59] This has resulted in limited land to preserve natural habitats, in particular for larger wild mammals with greater territorial requirements.[60] The long history of agricultural production coupled with modern agricultural methods, such as pesticide and fertiliser use, has placed pressure on biodiversity.[61]
56
+
57
+ The Atlantic Ocean and the warming influence of the Gulf Stream affect weather patterns in Ireland.[62] Temperatures differ regionally, with central and eastern areas tending to be more extreme. However, due to a temperate oceanic climate, temperatures are seldom lower than −5 °C (23 °F) in winter or higher than 26 °C (79 °F) in summer.[63] The highest temperature recorded in Ireland was 33.3 °C (91.9 °F) on 26 June 1887 at Kilkenny Castle in Kilkenny, while the lowest temperature recorded was −19.1 °C (−2.4 °F) at Markree Castle in Sligo.[64] Rainfall is more prevalent during winter months and less so during the early months of summer. Southwestern areas experience the most rainfall as a result of south westerly winds, while Dublin receives the least. Sunshine duration is highest in the southeast of the country.[62] The far north and west are two of the windiest regions in Europe, with great potential for wind energy generation.[65]
58
+ Ireland normally gets between 1100 and 1600 hours of sunshine each year, most areas averaging between 3.25 and 3.75 hours a day. The sunniest months are May and June, which average between 5 and 6.5 hours per day over most of the country. The extreme southeast gets most sunshine, averaging over 7 hours a day in early summer. December is the dullest month, with an average daily sunshine ranging from about 1 hour in the north to almost 2 hours in the extreme southeast. The sunniest summer in the 100 years from 1881 to 1980 was 1887, according to measurements made at the Phoenix Park in Dublin; 1980 was the dullest.[66]
59
+
60
+ Ireland is a constitutional republic with a parliamentary system of government. The Oireachtas is the bicameral national parliament composed of the President of Ireland and the two Houses of the Oireachtas:
61
+ Seanad Éireann (Senate) and Dáil Éireann (House of Representatives).[67] Áras an Uachtaráin is the official residence of the President of Ireland, while the houses of the Oireachtas meet at Leinster House in Dublin.
62
+
63
+ The President serves as head of state, and is elected for a seven-year term and may be re-elected once. The President is primarily a figurehead, but is entrusted with certain constitutional powers with the advice of the Council of State. The office has absolute discretion in some areas, such as referring a bill to the Supreme Court for a judgment on its constitutionality.[68] Michael D. Higgins became the ninth President of Ireland on 11 November 2011.[69]
64
+
65
+ The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) serves as the head of government and is appointed by the President upon the nomination of the Dáil. Most Taoisigh have served as the leader of the political party that gains the most seats in national elections. It has become customary for coalitions to form a government, as there has not been a single-party government since 1989.[70] Micheál Martin succeeded Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach on 27 June 2020.
66
+
67
+ The Seanad is composed of sixty members, with eleven nominated by the Taoiseach, six elected by two universities, and 43 elected by public representatives from panels of candidates established on a vocational basis. The Dáil has 160 members (Teachtaí Dála) elected to represent multi-seat constituencies under the system of proportional representation and by means of the single transferable vote.
68
+
69
+ The Government is constitutionally limited to fifteen members. No more than two members can be selected from the Seanad, and the Taoiseach, Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Finance must be members of the Dáil. The Dáil must be dissolved within five years after its first meeting following the previous election,[71] and a general election for members of the Dáil must take place no later than thirty days after the dissolution. According to the Constitution of Ireland, parliamentary elections must be held at least every seven years, though a lower limit may be set by statute law. The current government is a coalition government composed of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party with Micheál Martin as Taoiseach and Leo Varadkar as Tánaiste. Opposition parties in the current Dáil are Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, Solidarity–People Before Profit, Social Democrats, Aontú, as well as a number of independents.
70
+
71
+ Ireland has been a member state of the European Union since 1973, but is not part of the Schengen Area. Citizens of the United Kingdom can freely enter the country without a passport due to the Common Travel Area, which is a passport-free zone comprising the islands of Ireland, Great Britain, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. However, some identification is required at airports and seaports.
72
+
73
+ The Local Government Act 1898[72] is the founding document of the present system of local government, while the Twentieth Amendment to the constitution of 1999 provided for its constitutional recognition. The twenty-six traditional counties of Ireland are not always coterminous with administrative divisions although they are generally used as a geographical frame of reference by the population of Ireland. The Local Government Reform Act 2014 provides for a system of thirty-one local authorities – twenty-six county councils, two city and county councils and three city councils.[72] Below this (with the exception of the Dublin Region and the three city councils) are municipal districts, replacing a previous system of town councils.
74
+
75
+ Local authorities are responsible for matters such as planning, local roads, sanitation, and libraries. Dáil constituencies are required to follow county boundaries as much as possible. Counties with greater populations have multiple constituencies, some of more than one county, but generally do not cross county boundaries. The counties are grouped into eight regions, each with a Regional Authority composed of members delegated by the various county and city councils in the region. The regions do not have any direct administrative role as such, but they serve for planning, coordination and statistical purposes.
76
+
77
+ Ireland has a common law legal system with a written constitution that provides for a parliamentary democracy. The court system consists of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the Circuit Court and the District Court, all of which apply the Irish law and hear both civil and criminal matters. Trials for serious offences must usually be held before a jury. The High Court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court have authority, by means of judicial review, to determine the compatibility of laws and activities of other institutions of the state with the constitution and the law. Except in exceptional circumstances, court hearings must occur in public.[citation needed]
78
+
79
+ Garda Síochána na hÉireann (Guardians of the Peace of Ireland), more commonly referred to as the Gardaí, is the state's civilian police force. The force is responsible for all aspects of civil policing, both in terms of territory and infrastructure. It is headed by the Garda Commissioner, who is appointed by the Government. Most uniformed members do not routinely carry firearms. Standard policing is traditionally carried out by uniformed officers equipped only with a baton and pepper spray.[73]
80
+
81
+ The Military Police is the corps of the Irish Army responsible for the provision of policing service personnel and providing a military police presence to forces while on exercise and deployment. In wartime, additional tasks include the provision of a traffic control organisation to allow rapid movement of military formations to their mission areas. Other wartime roles include control of prisoners of war and refugees.[74]
82
+
83
+ Ireland's citizenship laws relate to "the island of Ireland", including islands and seas, thereby extending them to Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Therefore, anyone born in Northern Ireland who meets the requirements for being an Irish citizen, such as birth on the island of Ireland to an Irish or British citizen parent or a parent who is entitled to live in Northern Ireland or the Republic without restriction on their residency,[75] may exercise an entitlement to Irish citizenship, such as an Irish passport.[76]
84
+
85
+ Foreign relations are substantially influenced by membership of the European Union, although bilateral relations with the United Kingdom and United States are also important.[77] It held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on six occasions, most recently from January to June 2013.[78]
86
+
87
+ Ireland tends towards independence in foreign policy; thus the country is not a member of NATO and has a longstanding policy of military neutrality. This policy has helped the Irish Defence Forces to be successful in their contributions to peace-keeping missions with the United Nations since 1960, during the Congo Crisis and subsequently in Cyprus, Lebanon and Bosnia and Herzegovina.[79][disputed – discuss]
88
+
89
+ Despite Irish neutrality during World War II, Ireland had more than 50,000 participants in the war through enlistment in the British armed forces. During the Cold War, Irish military policy, while ostensibly neutral, was biased towards NATO.[80] During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Seán Lemass authorised the search of Cuban and Czechoslovak aircraft passing through Shannon and passed the information to the CIA.[81] Ireland's air facilities were used by the United States military for the delivery of military personnel involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq through Shannon Airport. The airport had previously been used for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as well as the First Gulf War.[82]
90
+
91
+ Since 1999, Ireland has been a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) program and NATO's Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), which is aimed at creating trust between NATO and other states in Europe and the former Soviet Union.[83][84]
92
+
93
+ Ireland is a neutral country,[85] and has "triple-lock" rules governing the participation of Irish troops in conflict zones, whereby approval must be given by the UN, the Dáil and Government.[86] Accordingly, its military role is limited to national self-defence and participation in United Nations peacekeeping.
94
+
95
+ The Defence Forces are made up of the Army, Naval Service, Air Corps and Reserve Defence Force. It is small but well equipped, with almost 10,000 full-time military personnel and over 2,000 in reserve.[87][88] Daily deployments of the Defence Forces cover aid to civil power operations, protection and patrol of Irish territorial waters and EEZ by the Irish Naval Service, and UN, EU and PfP peace-keeping missions. By 1996, over 40,000 Irish service personnel had served in international UN peacekeeping missions.[89]
96
+
97
+ The Irish Air Corps is the air component of the Defence Forces and operates sixteen fixed wing aircraft and eight helicopters. The Irish Naval Service is Ireland's navy, and operates eight patrol ships, and smaller numbers of inflatable boats and training vessels, and has armed boarding parties capable of seizing a ship and a special unit of frogmen. The military includes the Reserve Defence Forces (Army Reserve and Naval Service Reserve) for part-time reservists. Ireland's special forces include the Army Ranger Wing, which trains and operates with international special operations units. The President is the formal Supreme Commander of the Defence Forces, but in practice these Forces answer to the Government via the Minister for Defence.[citation needed]
98
+
99
+ In 2017, Ireland signed the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[90]
100
+
101
+ Ireland is an open economy (6th on the Index of Economic Freedom), and ranks first for "high-value" foreign direct investment (FDI) flows.[91] Using the metric global GDP per capita, Ireland ranks 5th of 187 (IMF) and 6th of 175 (World Bank). The alternative metric modified Gross National Income (GNI) is intended to give a more accurate view of "activity in the domestic economy".[92] This is particularly relevant in Ireland 's small globalised economy, as GDP includes income from non-Irish owned companies, which flows out of Ireland.[93] Indeed, foreign multinationals are the driver of Ireland's economy, employing a quarter of the private sector workforce,[94] and paying 80% of Irish business taxes.[95][96][97] 14 of Ireland's top 20 firms (by 2017 turnover) are US-based multinationals[98] (80% of foreign multinationals in Ireland are from the US;[99][100] there are no non-US/non-UK foreign firms in Ireland's top 50 firms by turnover, and only one by employees, that being German retailer Lidl at No. 41[98]).
102
+
103
+ Ireland adopted the euro currency in 2002 along with eleven other EU member states.[61]
104
+
105
+ The country officially exited recession in 2010, assisted by a growth in exports from US multinationals in Ireland.[101] However, due to a rise in the cost of public borrowing due to government guarantees of private banking debt, the Irish government accepted an €85 billion programme of assistance from the EU, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and bilateral loans from the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark.[102] Following three years of contraction, the economy grew by 0.7% in 2011 and 0.9% in 2012.[103] The unemployment rate was 14.7% in 2012, including 18.5% among recent immigrants.[104] In March 2016 the unemployment rate was reported by the CSO to be 8.6%, down from a peak unemployment rate of 15.1% in February 2012.[105] In addition to unemployment, net emigration from Ireland between 2008 and 2013 totalled 120,100,[106] or some 2.6% of the total population according to the Census of Ireland 2011. One-third of the emigrants were aged between 15 and 24.[106]
106
+
107
+ Ireland exited its EU-IMF bailout programme on 15 December 2013.[107] Having implemented budget cuts, reforms and sold assets, Ireland was again able to access debt markets. Since then, Ireland has been able to sell long term bonds at record rates.[108] However, the stabilisation of the Irish credit bubble required a large transfer of debt from the private sector balance sheet (highest OECD leverage), to the public sector balance sheet (almost unleveraged, pre-crisis), via Irish bank bailouts and public deficit spending.[109][110] The transfer of this debt means that Ireland, in 2017, still has one of the highest levels of both public sector indebtedness, and private sector indebtedness, in the EU-28/OECD.[111][112][113][114][115][116]
108
+
109
+ Ireland continues to de-leverage its domestic private sector while growing its US multinational-driven economy. Ireland became the main destination for US corporate tax inversions from 2009–2016 (mostly pharmaceutical), peaking with the blocked $160bn Allergan/Pfizer inversion (world's largest inversion, and circa 85% of Irish GNI*).[117][118] Ireland also became the largest foreign location for US "big cap" technology multinationals (i.e. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook), which delivered a GDP growth rate of 26.3% (and GNP growth rate of 18.7%) in 2015. This growth was subsequently shown to be due to Apple restructuring its "double Irish" subsidiary (Apple Sales International, currently under threat of a €13bn EU "illegal state aid" fine for preferential tax treatment).
110
+
111
+ Ireland's economy was transformed with the creation of a 10% low-tax "special economic zone", called the International Financial Services Centre (or "IFSC"), in 1987.[119] In 1999, the entire country was effectively "turned into an IFSC" with the reduction of Irish corporation tax from 32% to 12.5% (the birth of Ireland's "low-tax" model).[120][121] This accelerated Ireland's transition from a predominantly agricultural economy into a knowledge economy focused on attracting US multinationals from high-tech, life sciences, and financial services industries seeking to avail of Ireland's attractive corporate tax rates and unique corporate tax system.
112
+
113
+ The "multinational tax schemes" foreign firms use in Ireland materially distort Irish economic statistics. This reached a climax with the famous "leprechaun economics" GDP/GNP growth rates of 2015 (as Apple restructured its Irish subsidiaries in 2015). The Central Bank of Ireland introduced a new statistic, "modified GNI" (or GNI*), to remove these distortions. GNI* is 30% below GDP (or, GDP is 143% of GNI).[122][123] As such, Ireland's GDP and GNP should no longer be used.[124][125][126]
114
+
115
+ From the creation of the IFSC, the country experienced strong and sustained economic growth which fuelled a dramatic rise in Irish consumer borrowing and spending, and Irish construction and investment, which became known as the Celtic Tiger period.[127][128] By 2007, Ireland had the highest private sector debt in the OECD with a household debt-to-disposable income ratio of 190%. Global capital markets, who had financed Ireland's build-up of debt in the Celtic Tiger period by enabling Irish banks to borrow in excess of the domestic deposit base (to over 180% at peak[129]), withdrew support in the global financial crisis. Their withdrawal from the over-borrowed Irish credit system would precipitate a deep Irish property correction which would then lead to the collapse of the Irish banking system.[130][127]
116
+
117
+ Ireland's successful "low-tax" economy opens it to accusations of being a "corporate tax haven",[131][132][133] and led to it being "blacklisted".[134][135] A 2017 study ranks Ireland as the 5th largest global Conduit OFC (conduits legally route funds to tax havens). A serious challenge is the passing of the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (whose FDII and GILTI regimes target Ireland's "multinational tax schemes").[136][137][138][139] The EU's 2018 Digital Sales Tax (DST)[140] (and desire for a CCCTB[141]) is also seen as an attempt to restrict Irish "multinational tax schemes" by US technology firms.[142][143][144]
118
+
119
+ Although multinational corporations dominate Ireland's export sector, exports from other sources also contribute significantly to the national income. The activities of multinational companies based in Ireland have made it one of the largest exporters of pharmaceutical agents, medical devices and software-related goods and services in the world. Ireland's exports also relate to the activities of large Irish companies (such as Ryanair, Kerry Group and Smurfit Kappa) and exports of mineral resources: Ireland is the seventh largest producer of zinc concentrates, and the twelfth largest producer of lead concentrates. The country also has significant deposits of gypsum, limestone, and smaller quantities of copper, silver, gold, barite, and dolomite.[61] Tourism in Ireland contributes about 4% of GDP and is a significant source of employment.
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+ Other goods exports include agri-food, cattle, beef, dairy products, and aluminum. Ireland's major imports include data processing equipment, chemicals, petroleum and petroleum products, textiles, and clothing. Financial services provided by multinational corporations based at the Irish Financial Services Centre also contribute to Irish exports. The difference between exports (€89.4 billion) and imports (€45.5 billion) resulted an annual trade surplus of €43.9 billion in 2010, which is the highest trade surplus relative to GDP achieved by any EU member state.[145]
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+ The EU is by far the country's largest trading partner, accounting for 57.9% of exports and 60.7% of imports. The United Kingdom is the most important trading partner within the EU, accounting for 15.4% of exports and 32.1% of imports. Outside the EU, the United States accounted for 23.2% of exports and 14.1% of imports in 2010.[145]
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+ ESB, Bord Gáis Energy and Airtricity are the three main electricity and gas suppliers in Ireland. There are 19.82 billion cubic metres of proven reserves of gas.[61][146] Natural gas extraction previously occurred at the Kinsale Head until its exhaustion. The Corrib gas field was due to come on stream in 2013/14. In 2012, the Barryroe field was confirmed to have up to 1.6 billion barrels of oil in reserve, with between 160 and 600 million recoverable.[147] That could provide for Ireland's entire energy needs for up to 13 years, when it is developed in 2015/16. There have been significant efforts to increase the use of renewable and sustainable forms of energy in Ireland, particularly in wind power, with 3,000 MegaWatts[148] of wind farms being constructed, some for the purpose of export.[149] The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has estimated that 6.5% of Ireland's 2011 energy requirements were produced by renewable sources.[150] The SEAI has also reported an increase in energy efficiency in Ireland with a 28% reduction in carbon emissions per house from 2005 to 2013.[151]
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+ The country's three main international airports at Dublin, Shannon and Cork serve many European and intercontinental routes with scheduled and chartered flights. The London to Dublin air route is the ninth busiest international air route in the world, and also the busiest international air route in Europe, with 14,500 flights between the two in 2017.[152][153] In 2015, 4.5 million people took the route, at that time, the world's second-busiest.[152] Aer Lingus is the flag carrier of Ireland, although Ryanair is the country's largest airline. Ryanair is Europe's largest low-cost carrier,[154] the second largest in terms of passenger numbers, and the world's largest in terms of international passenger numbers.[155]
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+ Railway services are provided by Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail), which operates all internal intercity, commuter and freight railway services in the country. Dublin is the centre of the network with two main stations, Heuston station and Connolly station, linking to the country's cities and main towns. The Enterprise service, which runs jointly with Northern Ireland Railways, connects Dublin and Belfast. The whole of Ireland's mainline network operates on track with a gauge of 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm), which is unique in Europe and has resulted in distinct rolling stock designs. Dublin has a steadily improving public transport network including the DART, Luas, Dublin Bus, and dublinbikes.[citation needed]
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+ Motorways, national primary roads and national secondary roads are managed by Transport Infrastructure Ireland, while regional roads and local roads are managed by the local authorities in each of their respective areas. The road network is primarily focused on the capital, but motorways connect it to other major Irish cities including Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway.[156]
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+ Dublin is served by major infrastructure such as the East-Link and West-Link toll-bridges, as well as the Dublin Port Tunnel. The Jack Lynch Tunnel, under the River Lee in Cork, and the Limerick Tunnel, under the River Shannon, were two major projects outside Dublin.[157]
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+ Genetic research suggests that the earliest settlers migrated from Iberia following the most recent ice age.[158] After the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age, migrants introduced a Celtic language and culture. Migrants from the two latter eras still represent the genetic heritage of most Irish people.[159][160] Gaelic tradition expanded and became the dominant form over time. Irish people are a combination of Gaelic, Norse, Anglo-Norman, French, and British ancestry.
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+ The population of Ireland stood at 4,588,252 in 2011, an increase of 8.2% since 2006.[161] As of 2011[update], Ireland had the highest birth rate in the European Union (16 births per 1,000 of population).[162] In 2014, 36.3% of births were to unmarried women.[163] Annual population growth rates exceeded 2% during the 2002–2006 intercensal period, which was attributed to high rates of natural increase and immigration.[164] This rate declined somewhat during the subsequent 2006–2011 intercensal period, with an average annual percentage change of 1.6%. The total fertility rate (TFR) in 2017 was estimated at 1.80 children born per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1, it remains considerably below the high of 4.2 children born per woman in 1850.[165] In 2018 the median age of the Irish population was 37.1 years.[166]
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+ At the time of the 2016 census, the number of non-Irish nationals was recorded at 535,475. This represents a 2% decrease from the 2011 census figure of 544,357. The five largest sources of non-Irish nationals were Poland (122,515), the UK (103,113), Lithuania (36,552), Romania (29,186) and Latvia (19,933) respectively. Compared with 2011, the number of UK, Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian nationals fell. There were four new additions to the top ten largest non-Irish nationalities in 2016: Brazilian (13,640), Spanish (12,112), Italian (11,732), and French (11,661).[167]
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+ DublinCork
142
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+ LimerickGalway
144
+
145
+ The following is a list of functional urban areas in Ireland (as defined by the OECD) and their approximate populations as of 2015[update].[178]
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+ The Irish Constitution describes Irish as the "national language", but English is the dominant language. In the 2006 census, 39% of the population regarded themselves as competent in Irish. Irish is spoken as a community language only in a small number of rural areas mostly in the west and south of the country, collectively known as the Gaeltacht. Except in Gaeltacht regions, road signs are usually bilingual.[179] Most public notices and print media are in English only. While the state is officially bilingual, citizens can often struggle to access state services in Irish and most government publications are not available in both languages, even though citizens have the right to deal with the state in Irish. Irish language media include the TV channel TG4, the radio station RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta and online newspaper Tuairisc.ie. In the Irish Defence Forces, all foot and arms drill commands are given in the Irish language.
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+ As a result of immigration, Polish is the most widely spoken language in Ireland after English, with Irish as the third most spoken.[180] Several other Central European languages (namely Czech, Hungarian and Slovak), as well as Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian) are also spoken on a day-to-day basis. Other languages spoken in Ireland include Shelta, spoken by Irish Travellers, and a dialect of Scots is spoken by some Ulster Scots people in Donegal.[181] Most secondary school students choose to learn one or two foreign languages. Languages available for the Junior Certificate and the Leaving Certificate include French, German, Italian and Spanish; Leaving Certificate students can also study Arabic, Japanese and Russian. Some secondary schools also offer Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Latin. The study of Irish is compulsory for Leaving Certificate students, but some may qualify for an exemption in some circumstances, such as learning difficulties or entering the country after age 11.[182]
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+ Healthcare in Ireland is provided by both public and private healthcare providers.[183] The Minister for Health has responsibility for setting overall health service policy. Every resident of Ireland is entitled to receive health care through the public health care system, which is managed by the Health Service Executive and funded by general taxation. A person may be required to pay a subsidised fee for certain health care received; this depends on income, age, illness or disability. All maternity services are provided free of charge and children up to the age of 6 months. Emergency care is provided to patients who present to a hospital emergency department. However, visitors to emergency departments in non-emergency situations who are not referred by their GP may incur a fee of €100. In some circumstances this fee is not payable or may be waived.[184]
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+ Anyone holding a European Health Insurance Card is entitled to free maintenance and treatment in public beds in Health Service Executive and voluntary hospitals. Outpatient services are also provided for free. However, the majority of patients on median incomes or above are required to pay subsidised hospital charges. Private health insurance is available to the population for those who want to avail of it.
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+ The average life expectancy in Ireland in 2016 was 81.8 years (OECD 2016 list), with 79.9 years for men and 83.6 years for women.[185] It has the highest birth rate in the EU (16.8 births per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to an EU average of 10.7)[186] and a very low infant mortality rate (3.5 per 1,000 live births). The Irish healthcare system ranked 13th out of 34 European countries in 2012 according to the European Health Consumer Index produced by Health Consumer Powerhouse.[187] The same report ranked the Irish healthcare system as having the 8th best health outcomes but only the 21st most accessible system in Europe.
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+ Ireland has three levels of education: primary, secondary and higher education. The education systems are largely under the direction of the Government via the Minister for Education and Skills. Recognised primary and secondary schools must adhere to the curriculum established by the relevant authorities. Education is compulsory between the ages of six and fifteen years, and all children up to the age of eighteen must complete the first three years of secondary, including one sitting of the Junior Certificate examination.[188]
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+ There are approximately 3,300 primary schools in Ireland.[189] The vast majority (92%) are under the patronage of the Catholic Church. Schools run by religious organisations, but receiving public money and recognition, cannot discriminate against pupils based upon religion or lack thereof. A sanctioned system of preference does exist, where students of a particular religion may be accepted before those who do not share the ethos of the school, in a case where a school's quota has already been reached.
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+ The Leaving Certificate, which is taken after two years of study, is the final examination in the secondary school system. Those intending to pursue higher education normally take this examination, with access to third-level courses generally depending on results obtained from the best six subjects taken, on a competitive basis.[190] Third-level education awards are conferred by at least 38 Higher Education Institutions – this includes the constituent or linked colleges of seven universities, plus other designated institutions of the Higher Education and Training Awards Council.
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+ The Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, currently ranks Ireland as having the fourth highest reading score, ninth highest science score and thirteenth highest mathematics score, among OECD countries, in its 2012 assessment.[191] In 2012, Irish students aged 15 years had the second highest levels of reading literacy in the EU.[192] Ireland also has 0.747 of the World's top 500 Universities per capita, which ranks the country in 8th place in the world.[193] Primary, secondary and higher (university/college) level education are all free in Ireland for all EU citizens.[194] There are charges to cover student services and examinations.
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+ In addition, 37 percent of Ireland's population has a university or college degree, which is among the highest percentages in the world.[195][196]
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+ Religious freedom is constitutionally provided for in Ireland. Christianity is the predominant religion, and while Ireland remains a predominantly Catholic country, the percentage of the population who identified as Catholic on the census has fallen sharply from 84.2 percent in the 2011 census to 78.3 percent in the most recent 2016 census. Other results from the 2016 census are : 4.2% Protestant, 1.3% Orthodox, 1.3% as Muslim, and 9.8% as having no religion.[197] According to a Georgetown University study, before 2000 the country had one of the highest rates of regular Mass attendance in the Western world.[198]
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+ While daily attendance was 13% in 2006, there was a reduction in weekly attendance from 81% in 1990 to 48% in 2006, although the decline was reported as stabilising.[199] In 2011, it was reported that weekly Mass attendance in Dublin was just 18%, with it being even lower among younger generations.[200]
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+ The Church of Ireland, at 2.7% of the population, is the second largest Christian denomination. Membership declined throughout the twentieth century, but experienced an increase early in the 21st century, as have other small Christian denominations. Significant Protestant denominations are the Presbyterian Church and Methodist Church. Immigration has contributed to a growth in Hindu and Muslim populations. In percentage terms, Orthodox Christianity and Islam were the fastest growing religions, with increases of 100% and 70% respectively.[201]
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+ Ireland's patron saints are Saint Patrick, Saint Bridget and Saint Columba. Saint Patrick is the only one commonly recognised as the patron saint. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated on 17 March in Ireland and abroad as the Irish national day, with parades and other celebrations.
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+ As with other predominantly Catholic European states, Ireland underwent a period of legal secularisation in the late twentieth century. In 1972, the article of the Constitution naming specific religious groups was deleted by the Fifth Amendment in a referendum. Article 44 remains in the Constitution: "The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion." The article also establishes freedom of religion, prohibits endowment of any religion, prohibits the state from religious discrimination, and requires the state to treat religious and non-religious schools in a non-prejudicial manner.
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+ Religious studies was introduced as an optional Junior Certificate subject in 2001. Although many schools are run by religious organisations, a secularist trend is occurring among younger generations.[202]
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+ Ireland's culture was for centuries predominantly Gaelic, and it remains one of the six principal Celtic nations. Following the Anglo-Norman invasion in the 12th century, and gradual British conquest and colonisation beginning in the 16th century, Ireland became influenced by English and Scottish culture. Subsequently, Irish culture, though distinct in many aspects, shares characteristics with the Anglosphere, Catholic Europe, and other Celtic regions. The Irish diaspora, one of the world's largest and most dispersed, has contributed to the globalisation of Irish culture, producing many prominent figures in art, music, and science.
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+ Ireland has made a significant contribution to world literature in both the English and Irish languages. Modern Irish fiction began with the publishing of the 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Other writers of importance during the 18th century and their most notable works include Laurence Sterne with the publication of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. Numerous Irish novelists emerged during the 19th century, including Maria Edgeworth, John Banim, Gerald Griffin, Charles Kickham, William Carleton, George Moore, and Somerville and Ross. Bram Stoker is best known as the author of the 1897 novel Dracula.
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+ James Joyce (1882–1941) published his most famous work Ulysses in 1922, which is an interpretation of the Odyssey set in Dublin. Edith Somerville continued writing after the death of her partner Martin Ross in 1915. Dublin's Annie M. P. Smithson was one of several authors catering for fans of romantic fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. After the Second World War, popular novels were published by, among others, Brian O'Nolan, who published as Flann O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, and Kate O'Brien. During the final decades of the 20th century, Edna O'Brien, John McGahern, Maeve Binchy, Joseph O'Connor, Roddy Doyle, Colm Tóibín, and John Banville came to the fore as novelists.
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+ Patricia Lynch was a prolific children's author in the 20th century, while Eoin Colfer's works were NYT Best Sellers in this genre in the early 21st century.[203] In the genre of the short story, which is a form favoured by many Irish writers, the most prominent figures include Seán Ó Faoláin, Frank O'Connor and William Trevor. Well known Irish poets include Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas McCarthy, Dermot Bolger, and Nobel Prize in Literature laureates William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney (born in Northern Ireland but resided in Dublin). Prominent writers in the Irish language are Pádraic Ó Conaire, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Séamus Ó Grianna, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill.
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+ The history of Irish theatre begins with the expansion of the English administration in Dublin during the early 17th century, and since then, Ireland has significantly contributed to English drama. In its early history, theatrical productions in Ireland tended to serve political purposes, but as more theatres opened and the popular audience grew, a more diverse range of entertainments were staged. Many Dublin-based theatres developed links with their London equivalents, and British productions frequently found their way to the Irish stage. However, most Irish playwrights went abroad to establish themselves. In the 18th century, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan were two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage at that time. At the beginning of the 20th century, theatre companies dedicated to the staging of Irish plays and the development of writers, directors and performers began to emerge, which allowed many Irish playwrights to learn their trade and establish their reputations in Ireland rather than in Britain or the United States. Following in the tradition of acclaimed practitioners, principally Oscar Wilde, Literature Nobel Prize laureates George Bernard Shaw (1925) and Samuel Beckett (1969), playwrights such as Seán O'Casey, Brian Friel, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Conor McPherson and Billy Roche have gained popular success.[204] Other Irish playwrights of the 20th century include Denis Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, Frank McGuinness, and John B. Keane.
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+ Irish traditional music has remained vibrant, despite globalising cultural forces, and retains many traditional aspects. It has influenced various music genres, such as American country and roots music, and to some extent modern rock. It has occasionally been blended with styles such as rock and roll and punk rock. Ireland has also produced many internationally known artists in other genres, such as rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Ireland's best selling musical act is the rock band U2, who have sold 170 million copies of their albums worldwide since their formation in 1976.[205]
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+ There are a number of classical music ensembles around the country, such as the RTÉ Performing Groups.[206] Ireland also has three opera organisations. Opera Ireland produces large-scale operas in Dublin, the Opera Theatre Company tours its chamber-style operas throughout the country, and the annual Wexford Opera Festival, which promotes lesser-known operas, takes place during October and November.
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+ Ireland has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1965.[207] Its first win was in 1970, when Dana won with All Kinds of Everything.[208] It has subsequently won the competition six more times,[209][210] the highest number of wins by any competing country. The phenomenon Riverdance originated as an interval performance during the 1994 contest.[211]
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+ Irish dance can broadly be divided into social dance and performance dance. Irish social dance can be divided into céilí and set dancing. Irish set dances are quadrilles, danced by 4 couples arranged in a square, while céilí dances are danced by varied formations of couples of 2 to 16 people. There are also many stylistic differences between these two forms. Irish social dance is a living tradition, and variations in particular dances are found across the country. In some places dances are deliberately modified and new dances are choreographed. Performance dance is traditionally referred to as stepdance. Irish stepdance, popularised by the show Riverdance, is notable for its rapid leg movements, with the body and arms being kept largely stationary. The solo stepdance is generally characterised by a controlled but not rigid upper body, straight arms, and quick, precise movements of the feet. The solo dances can either be in "soft shoe" or "hard shoe".
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+ Ireland has a wealth of structures,[212] surviving in various states of preservation, from the Neolithic period, such as Brú na Bóinne, Poulnabrone dolmen, Castlestrange stone, Turoe stone, and Drombeg stone circle.[213] As the Romans never conquered Ireland, architecture of Greco-Roman origin is extremely rare. The country instead had an extended period of Iron Age architecture.[214] The Irish round tower originated during the Early Medieval period.
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+ Christianity introduced simple monastic houses, such as Clonmacnoise, Skellig Michael and Scattery Island. A stylistic similarity has been remarked between these double monasteries and those of the Copts of Egypt.[215] Gaelic kings and aristocrats occupied ringforts or crannógs.[216] Church reforms during the 12th century via the Cistercians stimulated continental influence, with the Romanesque styled Mellifont, Boyle and Tintern abbeys.[217] Gaelic settlement had been limited to the Monastic proto-towns, such as Kells, where the current street pattern preserves the original circular settlement outline to some extent.[218] Significant urban settlements only developed following the period of Viking invasions.[216] The major Hiberno-Norse Longphorts were located on the coast, but with minor inland fluvial settlements, such as the eponymous Longford.
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+ Castles were built by the Anglo-Normans during the late 12th century, such as Dublin Castle and Kilkenny Castle,[219] and the concept of the planned walled trading town was introduced, which gained legal status and several rights by grant of a Charter under Feudalism. These charters specifically governed the design of these towns.[220] Two significant waves of planned town formation followed, the first being the 16th- and 17th-century plantation towns, which were used as a mechanism for the Tudor English kings to suppress local insurgency, followed by 18th-century landlord towns.[221] Surviving Norman founded planned towns include Drogheda and Youghal; plantation towns include Portlaoise and Portarlington; well-preserved 18th-century planned towns include Westport and Ballinasloe. These episodes of planned settlement account for the majority of present-day towns throughout the country.
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+ Gothic cathedrals, such as St Patrick's, were also introduced by the Normans.[222] Franciscans were dominant in directing the abbeys by the Late Middle Ages, while elegant tower houses, such as Bunratty Castle, were built by the Gaelic and Norman aristocracy.[223] Many religious buildings were ruined with the Dissolution of the Monasteries.[224] Following the Restoration, palladianism and rococo, particularly country houses, swept through Ireland under the initiative of Edward Lovett Pearce, with the Houses of Parliament being the most significant.[225]
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+ With the erection of buildings such as The Custom House, Four Courts, General Post Office and King's Inns, the neoclassical and Georgian styles flourished, especially in Dublin.[225] Georgian townhouses produced streets of singular distinction, particularly in Dublin, Limerick and Cork. Following Catholic Emancipation, cathedrals and churches influenced by the French Gothic Revival emerged, such as St Colman's and St Finbarre's.[225] Ireland has long been associated with thatched roof cottages, though these are nowadays considered quaint.[226]
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+ Beginning with the American designed art deco church at Turner's Cross in 1927, Irish architecture followed the international trend towards modern and sleek building styles since the 20th century.[227] Other developments include the regeneration of Ballymun and an urban extension of Dublin at Adamstown.[228] Since the establishment of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority in 1997, the Dublin Docklands area underwent large-scale redevelopment, which included the construction of the Convention Centre Dublin and Grand Canal Theatre.[229] Completed in 2008, the Elysian tower in Cork is the tallest storeyed building in the Republic of Ireland (the Obel Tower in Belfast, Northern Ireland being the tallest in Ireland), at a height of 71 metres (233 feet), surpassing Cork County Hall. The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland regulates the practice of architecture in the state.[230]
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+ Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) is Ireland's public service broadcaster, funded by a television licence fee and advertising.[231] RTÉ operates two national television channels, RTÉ One and RTÉ Two. The other independent national television channels are Virgin Media One, Virgin Media Two, Virgin Media Three and TG4, the latter of which is a public service broadcaster for speakers of the Irish language. All these channels are available on Saorview, the national free-to-air digital terrestrial television service.[232] Additional channels included in the service are RTÉ News Now, RTÉjr, and RTÉ One +1. Subscription-based television providers operating in Ireland include Virgin Media and Sky.
209
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+ Supported by the Irish Film Board, the Irish film industry grew significantly since the 1990s, with the promotion of indigenous films as well as the attraction of international productions like Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan.[233]
211
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+ A large number of regional and local radio stations are available countrywide. A survey showed that a consistent 85% of adults listen to a mixture of national, regional and local stations on a daily basis.[234] RTÉ Radio operates four national stations, Radio 1, 2fm, Lyric fm, and RnaG. It also operates four national DAB radio stations. There are two independent national stations: Today FM and Newstalk.
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214
+ Ireland has a traditionally competitive print media, which is divided into daily national newspapers and weekly regional newspapers, as well as national Sunday editions. The strength of the British press is a unique feature of the Irish print media scene, with the availability of a wide selection of British published newspapers and magazines.[233]
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216
+ Eurostat reported that 82% of Irish households had Internet access in 2013 compared to the EU average of 79% but only 67% had broadband access.[235]
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218
+ Irish cuisine was traditionally based on meat and dairy products, supplemented with vegetables and seafood.
219
+ Examples of popular Irish cuisine include boxty, colcannon, coddle, stew, and bacon and cabbage. Ireland is famous for the full Irish breakfast, which involves a fried or grilled meal generally consisting of rashers, egg, sausage, white and black pudding, and fried tomato. Apart from the influence by European and international dishes, there has been an emergence of a new Irish cuisine based on traditional ingredients handled in new ways.[citation needed] This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish, oysters, mussels and other shellfish, and the wide range of hand-made cheeses that are now being produced across the country. Shellfish have increased in popularity, especially due to the high quality shellfish available from the country's coastline. The most popular fish include salmon and cod. Traditional breads include soda bread and wheaten bread. Barmbrack is a yeasted bread with added sultanas and raisins, traditionally eaten on Halloween.[236]
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+ Popular everyday beverages among the Irish include tea and coffee. Alcoholic drinks associated with Ireland include Poitín and the world-famous Guinness, which is a dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate in Dublin. Irish whiskey is also popular throughout the country and comes in various forms, including single malt, single grain, and blended whiskey.[237]
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+ Gaelic football and hurling are the traditional sports of Ireland as well as most popular spectator sports.[238] They are administered by the Gaelic Athletics Association on an all-Ireland basis. Other Gaelic games organised by the association include Gaelic handball and rounders.[239]
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+ Soccer is the third most popular spectator sport and has the highest level of participation.[240] Although the League of Ireland is the national league, the English Premier League is the most popular among the public.[241] The Republic of Ireland national football team plays at international level and is administered by the Football Association of Ireland.[242]
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+ The Irish Rugby Football Union is the governing body of rugby union, which is played at local and international levels on an all-Ireland basis, and has produced players such as Brian O'Driscoll and Ronan O'Gara, who were on the team that won the Grand Slam in 2009.[243]
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+ The success of the Irish Cricket Team in the 2007 Cricket World Cup has led to an increase in the popularity of cricket, which is also administered on an all-Ireland basis by Cricket Ireland.[244] Ireland are one of the twelve Test playing members of the International Cricket Council, having been granted Test status in 2017. Professional domestic matches are played between the major cricket unions of Leinster, Munster, Northern, and North West.
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+ Netball is represented by the Ireland national netball team.
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+ Golf is another popular sport in Ireland, with over 300 courses countrywide.[245] The country has produced several internationally successful golfers, such as Pádraig Harrington, Shane Lowry and Paul McGinley.
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+ Horse Racing has a very large presence in Ireland, with one of the most influential breeding and racing operations based in the country. Racing takes place at courses at The Curragh Racecourse in County Kildare and at Leopardstown Racecourse, racing taking place since the 1860s, but racing taking place as early as the early 1700s. Popular race meetings also take place at Galway. Operations include Coolmore Stud and Ballydoyle, the base of Aidan O'Brien arguably one of the world's most successful horse trainers. Ireland has produced champion horses such as Galileo, Montjeu, and Sea the Stars.
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+ Boxing is Ireland's most successful sport at an Olympic level. Administered by the Irish Athletic Boxing Association on an all-Ireland basis, it has gained in popularity as a result of the international success of boxers such as Bernard Dunne, Andy Lee and Katie Taylor.
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+ Some of Ireland's highest performers in athletics have competed at the Olympic Games, such as Eamonn Coghlan and Sonia O'Sullivan. The annual Dublin Marathon and Dublin Women's Mini Marathon are two of the most popular athletics events in the country.[246]
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+ Rugby league is represented by the Ireland national rugby league team and administered by Rugby League Ireland (who are full member of the Rugby League European Federation) on an all-Ireland basis. The team compete in the European Cup (rugby league) and the Rugby League World Cup. Ireland reached the quarter finals of the 2000 Rugby League World Cup as well as reaching the semi finals in the 2008 Rugby League World Cup.[247] The Irish Elite League is a domestic competition for rugby league teams in Ireland.[248]
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+ The profile of Australian rules football has increased in Ireland due to the International rules series that take place annually between Australia and Ireland. Baseball and basketball are also emerging sports in Ireland, both of which have an international team representing the island of Ireland. Other sports which retain a strong following in Ireland include cycling, greyhound racing, horse riding, motorsport, and softball.
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+ Ireland ranks fifth in the world in terms of gender equality.[249] In 2011, Ireland was ranked the most charitable country in Europe, and second most charitable in the world.[250] Contraception was controlled in Ireland until 1979, however, the receding influence of the Catholic Church has led to an increasingly secularised society.[251] A constitutional ban on divorce was lifted following a referendum in 1995. Divorce rates in Ireland are very low compared to European Union averages (0.7 divorced people per 1,000 population in 2011) while the marriage rate in Ireland is slightly above the European Union average (4.6 marriages per 1,000 population per year in 2012). Abortion had been banned throughout the period of the Irish state, first through provisions of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and later by the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013. The right to life of the unborn was protected in the constitution by the Eighth Amendment in 1983; this provision was removed following a referendum, and replaced it with a provision allowing legislation to regulate the termination of pregnancy. The Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 passed later that year provided for abortion generally during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and in specified circumstances after that date.[252]
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+
247
+ Capital punishment is constitutionally banned in Ireland, while discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation, marital or familial status, religion, race or membership of the travelling community is illegal. The legislation which outlawed homosexual acts was repealed in 1993.[253][254] The Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010 permitted civil partnerships between same-sex couples.[255][256][257] The Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 allowed for adoption rights for couples other than married couples, including civil partners and cohabitants, and provided for donor-assisted human reproduction; however, significant sections of the Act have yet to be commenced.[258] Following a referendum held on 23 May 2015, Ireland became the eighteenth country to provide in law for same-sex marriage, and the first to do so in a popular vote.[259]
248
+
249
+ Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce an environmental levy for plastic shopping bags in 2002 and a public smoking ban in 2004. Recycling in Ireland is carried out extensively, and Ireland has the second highest rate of packaging recycling in the European Union. It was the first country in Europe to ban incandescent lightbulbs in 2008 and the first EU country to ban in-store tobacco advertising and product display in 2009.[260][261] In 2015 Ireland became the second country in the world to introduce plain cigarette packaging.[262] Despite the above measures to discourage tobacco use, smoking rates in Ireland remain above 20% of the adult population and above those in other developed countries.[263]
250
+
251
+ The state shares many symbols with the island of Ireland. These include the colours green and blue, animals such as the Irish wolfhound and stags, structures such as round towers and celtic crosses, and designs such as Celtic knots and spirals. The shamrock, a type of clover, has been a national symbol of Ireland since the 17th century when it became customary to wear it as a symbol on St. Patrick's Day. These symbols are used by state institutions as well as private bodies in the Republic of Ireland.
252
+
253
+ The flag of Ireland is a tricolour of green, white and orange. The flag originates with the Young Ireland movement of the mid-19th century but was not popularised until its use during the Easter Rising of 1916.[264] The colours represent the Gaelic tradition (green) and the followers of William of Orange in Ireland (orange), with white representing the aspiration for peace between them.[265] It was adopted as the flag of the Irish Free State in 1922 and continues to be used as the sole flag and ensign of the state. A naval jack, a green flag with a yellow harp, is set out in Defence Forces Regulations and flown from the bows of warships in addition to the national flag in limited circumstances (e.g. when a ship is not underway). It is based on the unofficial green ensign of Ireland used in the 18th and 19th centuries and the traditional green flag of Ireland dating from the 16th century.[266]
254
+
255
+ Like the national flag, the national anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann (English: A Soldier's Song), has its roots in the Easter Rising, when the song was sung by the rebels. Although originally published in English in 1912,[267] the song was translated into Irish in 1923 and the Irish-language version is more commonly sung today.[267] The song was officially adopted as the anthem of the Irish Free State in 1926 and continues as the national anthem of the state.[268] The first four bars of the chorus followed by the last five comprise the presidential salute.
256
+
257
+ The arms of Ireland originate as the arms of the monarchs of Ireland and was recorded as the arms of the King of Ireland in the 12th century. From the union of the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1603, they have appeared quartered on the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. Today, they are the personal arms of the President of Ireland whilst he or she is in office and are flown as the presidential standard. The harp symbol is used extensively by the state to mark official documents, Irish coinage and on the seal of the President of Ireland.
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1
+
2
+
3
+ – in Europe (green & dark grey)– in the United Kingdom (green)
4
+
5
+ Northern Ireland (Irish: Tuaisceart Éireann [ˈt̪ˠuəʃcəɾˠt̪ˠ ˈeːɾʲən̪ˠ] (listen);[8] Ulster-Scots: Norlin Airlann) is variously described as a country, province or region which is part of the United Kingdom.[9][10][11][12][13] Located in the northeast of the island of Ireland, Northern Ireland shares a border to the south and west with the Republic of Ireland. In 2011, its population was 1,810,863,[4] constituting about 30% of the island's total population and about 3% of the UK's population. Established by the Northern Ireland Act 1998 as part of the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland Assembly (colloquially referred to as Stormont after its location) holds responsibility for a range of devolved policy matters, while other areas are reserved for the British government. Northern Ireland co-operates with the Republic of Ireland in several areas, and the Agreement granted the Republic the ability to "put forward views and proposals" with "determined efforts to resolve disagreements between the two governments".[14]
6
+
7
+ On 11 January 2020, legislators in Northern Ireland formed a government for the first time since the Executive of the 5th Northern Ireland Assembly collapsed in January 2017,[15] following the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal.
8
+
9
+ Northern Ireland was created in 1921, when Ireland was partitioned between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland by the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Unlike Southern Ireland, which would become the Irish Free State in 1922, the majority of Northern Ireland's population were unionists, who wanted to remain within the United Kingdom.[16] Most of these were the Protestant descendants of colonists from Great Britain. However, a significant minority, mostly Catholics, were nationalists who wanted a united Ireland independent of British rule.[17][18][19][20] Today, the former generally see themselves as British and the latter generally see themselves as Irish, while a distinct Northern Irish or Ulster identity is claimed both by a large minority of Catholics and Protestants and by many of those who are non-aligned.[21]
10
+
11
+ For most of the 20th century, when it came into existence, Northern Ireland was marked by discrimination and hostility between these two sides in what First Minister of Northern Ireland, David Trimble, called a "cold house" for Catholics. In the late 1960s, conflict between state forces and chiefly Protestant unionists on the one hand, and chiefly Catholic nationalists on the other, erupted into three decades of violence known as the Troubles, which claimed over 3,500 lives and injured over 50,000 others.[22][23] The 1998 Good Friday Agreement was a major step in the peace process, including the decommissioning of weapons and security normalisation, although sectarianism and religious segregation still remain major social problems, and sporadic violence has continued.[24]
12
+
13
+ The economy of Northern Ireland was the most industrialised of Ireland, declining as a result of the political and social turmoil of the Troubles,[25] but economically growing significantly since the late 1990s. The initial growth came from the "peace dividend" and the links which increased trade with the Republic of Ireland, continuing with a significant increase in tourism, investment and business from around the world. Unemployment in Northern Ireland peaked at 17.2% in 1986, dropping to 6.1% for June–August 2014[update] and down by 1.2 percentage points over the year,[26] similar to the UK figure of 6.2%.[27] More than 58% of those unemployed had been unemployed for over a year.
14
+
15
+ Cultural links between Northern Ireland, the rest of Ireland, and the rest of the UK are complex, with Northern Ireland sharing both the culture of Ireland and the culture of the United Kingdom. In many sports, the island of Ireland fields a single team, a notable exception being association football. Northern Ireland competes separately at the Commonwealth Games, and people from Northern Ireland may compete for either Great Britain or Ireland at the Olympic Games.
16
+
17
+ The region that is now Northern Ireland was the bedrock of the Irish war of resistance against English programmes of colonialism in the late 16th century. The English-controlled Kingdom of Ireland had been declared by the English king Henry VIII in 1542, but Irish resistance made English control fragmentary. Following Irish defeat at the Battle of Kinsale, though, the region's Gaelic, Roman Catholic aristocracy fled to continental Europe in 1607 and the region became subject to major programmes of colonialism by Protestant English (mainly Anglican) and Scottish (mainly Presbyterian) settlers. A rebellion in 1641 by Irish aristocrats against English rule resulted in a massacre of settlers in Ulster in the context of a war breaking out between England, Scotland and Ireland fuelled by religious intolerance in government. Victories by English forces in that war and further Protestant victories in the Williamite War in Ireland (1688–1691) toward the close of the 17th century solidified Anglican rule in Ireland. In Northern Ireland, the victories of the Siege of Derry (1689) and the Battle of the Boyne (1690) in this latter war are still celebrated by some Protestants (both Anglican and Presbyterian).[28][29]
18
+
19
+ Popes Innocent XI and Alexander VIII had supported William of Orange instead of his maternal uncle and father-in-law James II, despite William being Protestant and James a Catholic, due to William's participation in alliance with both Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe in wars against Louis XIV (the "Sun King"), the powerful King of France who had been in conflict with the papacy for decades. In 1693, however, Pope Innocent XII recognised James as continuing King of Great Britain and Ireland in place of William, after reconciliation with Louis. In 1695, and contrary to the terms of the Treaty of Limerick (October 1691), a series of penal laws were passed by the Anglican ruling class in Ireland in intense anger at the Pope's recognition of James over William, which was felt to be a betrayal. The intention of the laws was to materially disadvantage the Catholic community and, to a lesser extent, the Presbyterian community. In the context of open institutional discrimination, the 18th century saw secret, militant societies develop in communities in the region and act on sectarian tensions in violent attacks. These events escalated at the end of the century following an event known as the Battle of the Diamond, which saw the supremacy of the Anglican and Presbyterian Peep o'Day Boys over the Catholic Defenders and leading to the formation of the Anglican Orange Order. A rebellion in 1798 led by the cross-community Belfast-based Society of the United Irishmen and inspired by the French Revolution sought to break the constitutional ties between Ireland and Britain and unite Irish people of all religions. Following this, in an attempt to quell sectarianism and force the removal of discriminatory laws (and to prevent the spread of French-style republicanism to Ireland), the government of the Kingdom of Great Britain pushed for the two kingdoms to be merged. The new state, formed in 1801, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, was governed from a single government and parliament based in London.
20
+
21
+ Some 250,000 people from Ulster emigrated to the British North American colonies between 1717 and 1775.[30] It is estimated that there are more than 27 million Scotch-Irish Americans now living in the United States,[31] along with many Scotch-Irish Canadians in Canada.
22
+
23
+ During the 19th century, legal reforms started in the late 18th century continued to remove statutory discrimination against Catholics, and progressive programmes enabled tenant farmers to buy land from landlords. By the close of the century, a large and disciplined cohort of Irish Nationalist MPs at Westminster committed the Liberal Party to autonomy—"Home Rule"—for Ireland, a prospect bitterly opposed by Irish Unionists. In 1912, after decades of obstruction from the House of Lords, and with a Liberal government dependent on Nationalist support, Home Rule became a near-certainty. A clash between the House of Commons and House of Lords over a controversial budget produced the Parliament Act 1911, which enabled the veto of the Lords to be overturned. The House of Lords veto had been the unionists' main guarantee that Home Rule would not be enacted because the majority of members of the House of Lords were unionists. In response, opponents to Home Rule, from Conservative and Unionist Party leaders such as Bonar Law and Dublin-based barrister Sir Edward Carson to militant working class unionists in Ireland, threatened the use of violence. In 1914, they smuggled thousands of rifles and rounds of ammunition from Imperial Germany for use by the Ulster Volunteers (UVF), a paramilitary organisation opposed to the implementation of Home Rule.
24
+
25
+ Unionists were in a minority in Ireland as a whole, but in the northern province of Ulster they were a very large majority in County Antrim and County Down, small majorities in County Armagh and County Londonderry and a substantial minority in Ulster's five other counties.[32] The four counties named, along with County Fermanagh and County Tyrone, would later constitute Northern Ireland. Most of the remaining 26 counties which later became the Republic of Ireland were overwhelmingly majority-nationalist.
26
+
27
+ During the Home Rule Crisis, the possibility was discussed of a "temporary" partition of these six counties from the rest of Ireland. In 1914, the Third Home Rule Bill received Royal Assent as the Government of Ireland Act 1914. However, its implementation was suspended before it came into effect because of the outbreak of the First World War, and the Amending Bill to partition Ireland was abandoned. The war was expected to last only a few weeks but in fact, lasted four years. By the end of the war (during which the 1916 Easter Rising had taken place), the Act was seen as unimplementable. Public opinion among nationalists had shifted during the war from a demand for home rule to one for full independence. In 1919, David Lloyd George proposed a new bill be established by the cabinet's Walter Long Committee on Ireland, which by adopting findings of his (Lloyd George's) inconclusive 1917-18 Irish Convention would divide Ireland into two Home Rule areas: twenty-six counties being ruled from Dublin and six being ruled from Belfast. Straddling these two areas would be a shared Lord Lieutenant of Ireland who would appoint both governments and a Council of Ireland, which Lloyd George believed would evolve into an all-Ireland parliament.[33]
28
+
29
+ Events overtook the government. The pro-independence Sinn Féin won 73 of the 105 parliamentary seats in Ireland at the general election of 1918, and unilaterally established the First Dáil, an extrajudicial parliament in Ireland. Ireland was partitioned between Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland in 1921, under the terms of Lloyd George's Government of Ireland Act 1920,[34] during the Anglo-Irish War between Irish republican and British forces. A truce was established on 11 July; the war ended on 6 December 1921 with the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, which created the Irish Free State. Under the terms of the treaty, Northern Ireland would become part of the Free State unless the government opted out by presenting an address to the king, although in practice partition remained in place.[35]
30
+
31
+ As expected, the Houses of the Parliament of Northern Ireland resolved on 7 December 1922 (the day after the establishment of the Irish Free State) to exercise its right to opt out of the Free State by making an address to the King.[36] The text of the address was:
32
+
33
+ Most Gracious Sovereign, We, your Majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Senators and Commons of Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, having learnt of the passing of the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922, being the Act of Parliament for the ratification of the Articles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland, do, by this humble Address, pray your Majesty that the powers of the Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland.[37][38]
34
+
35
+ Shortly afterwards, the Boundary Commission was established to decide on the territorial boundaries between the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland. Owing to the outbreak of civil war in the Free State, the work of the commission was delayed until 1925. Leaders in Dublin expected a substantial reduction in the territory of Northern Ireland, with nationalist areas moving to the Free State. However, the commission's report recommended only that some small portions of land should be ceded from Northern Ireland to the Free State and even that a small amount of land should be ceded from the Free State to Northern Ireland. To prevent argument, this report was suppressed and, in exchange for a waiver to the Free State's obligations to the UK's public debt and the dissolution of the Council of Ireland (sought by the Government of Northern Ireland), the initial six-county border was maintained with no changes.
36
+
37
+ In June 1940, to encourage the neutral Irish state to join with the Allies, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill indicated to the Taoiseach Éamon de Valera that the United Kingdom would push for Irish unity, but believing that Churchill could not deliver, de Valera declined the offer.[39] The British did not inform the Government of Northern Ireland that they had made the offer to the Dublin government, and De Valera's rejection was not publicised until 1970.
38
+
39
+ The Ireland Act 1949 gave the first legal guarantee that the region would not cease to be part of the United Kingdom without the consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland.
40
+
41
+ The Troubles, which started in the late 1960s, consisted of about 30 years of recurring acts of intense violence during which 3,254 people were killed[40] with over 50,000 casualties.[41] From 1969 to 2003 there were over 36,900 shooting incidents and over 16,200 bombings or attempted bombings associated with The Troubles.[42] The conflict was caused by the disputed status of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom and the discrimination against the Irish nationalist minority by the dominant unionist majority.[43] From 1967 to 1972 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA), which modelled itself on the US civil rights movement, led a campaign of civil resistance to anti-Catholic discrimination in housing, employment, policing, and electoral procedures. The franchise for local government elections included only rate-payers and their spouses, and so excluded over a quarter of the electorate. While the majority of disenfranchised electors were Protestant, Catholics were over-represented since they were poorer and had more adults still living in the family home.[44]
42
+
43
+ NICRA's campaign, seen by many unionists as an Irish republican front, and the violent reaction to it, proved to be a precursor to a more violent period.[45] As early as 1969, armed campaigns of paramilitary groups began, including the Provisional IRA campaign of 1969–1997 which was aimed at the end of British rule in Northern Ireland and the creation of a United Ireland, and the Ulster Volunteer Force, formed in 1966 in response to the perceived erosion of both the British character and unionist domination of Northern Ireland. The state security forces – the British Army and the police (the Royal Ulster Constabulary) – were also involved in the violence. The British government's position is that its forces were neutral in the conflict, trying to uphold law and order in Northern Ireland and the right of the people of Northern Ireland to democratic self-determination. Republicans regarded the state forces as combatants in the conflict, pointing to the collusion between the state forces and the loyalist paramilitaries as proof of this. The "Ballast" investigation by the Police Ombudsman has confirmed that British forces, and in particular the RUC, did collude with loyalist paramilitaries, were involved in murder, and did obstruct the course of justice when such claims had been investigated,[46] although the extent to which such collusion occurred is still hotly disputed.
44
+
45
+ As a consequence of the worsening security situation, autonomous regional government for Northern Ireland was suspended in 1972. Alongside the violence, there was a political deadlock between the major political parties in Northern Ireland, including those who condemned violence, over the future status of Northern Ireland and the form of government there should be within Northern Ireland. In 1973, Northern Ireland held a referendum to determine if it should remain in the United Kingdom, or be part of a united Ireland. The vote went heavily in favour (98.9%) of maintaining the status quo. Approximately 57.5% of the total electorate voted in support, but only 1% of Catholics voted following a boycott organised by the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP).[47]
46
+
47
+ The Troubles were brought to an uneasy end by a peace process which included the declaration of ceasefires by most paramilitary organisations and the complete decommissioning of their weapons, the reform of the police, and the corresponding withdrawal of army troops from the streets and from sensitive border areas such as South Armagh and Fermanagh, as agreed by the signatories to the Belfast Agreement (commonly known as the "Good Friday Agreement"). This reiterated the long-held British position, which had never before been fully acknowledged by successive Irish governments, that Northern Ireland will remain within the United Kingdom until a majority of voters in Northern Ireland decides otherwise. The Constitution of Ireland was amended in 1999 to remove a claim of the "Irish nation" to sovereignty over the entire island (in Article 2).[48]
48
+
49
+ The new Articles 2 and 3, added to the Constitution to replace the earlier articles, implicitly acknowledge that the status of Northern Ireland, and its relationships within the rest of the United Kingdom and with the Republic of Ireland, would only be changed with the agreement of a majority of voters in each jurisdiction. This aspect was also central to the Belfast Agreement which was signed in 1998 and ratified by referendums held simultaneously in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. At the same time, the British Government recognised for the first time, as part of the prospective, the so-called "Irish dimension": the principle that the people of the island of Ireland as a whole have the right, without any outside interference, to solve the issues between North and South by mutual consent.[49] The latter statement was key to winning support for the agreement from nationalists. It established a devolved power-sharing government within Northern Ireland, which must consist of both unionist and nationalist parties. These institutions were suspended by the British Government in 2002 after Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) allegations of spying by people working for Sinn Féin at the Assembly (Stormontgate). The resulting case against the accused Sinn Féin member collapsed.[50][51]
50
+
51
+ On 28 July 2005, the Provisional IRA declared an end to its campaign and has since decommissioned what is thought to be all of its arsenal. This final act of decommissioning was performed under the watch of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) and two external church witnesses. Many unionists, however, remained sceptical. The IICD later confirmed that the main loyalist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Defence Association, UVF and the Red Hand Commando, had decommissioned what is thought to be all of their arsenals, witnessed by former archbishop Robin Eames and a former top civil servant.[52]
52
+
53
+ Politicians elected to the Assembly at the 2003 Assembly election were called together on 15 May 2006 under the Northern Ireland Act 2006[53] for the purpose of electing a First Minister and deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and choosing the members of an Executive (before 25 November 2006) as a preliminary step to the restoration of devolved government.
54
+
55
+ Following the election held on 7 March 2007, devolved government returned on 8 May 2007 with Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Féin deputy leader Martin McGuinness taking office as First Minister and deputy First Minister, respectively.[54] In its white paper on Brexit the United Kingdom government reiterated its commitment to the Belfast Agreement. With regard to Northern Ireland's status, it said that the UK Government's "clearly-stated preference is to retain Northern Ireland’s current constitutional position: as part of the UK, but with strong links to Ireland".[55]
56
+
57
+ The main political divide in Northern Ireland is between unionists, who wish to see Northern Ireland continue as part of the United Kingdom, and nationalists, who wish to see Northern Ireland unified with the Republic of Ireland, independent from the United Kingdom. These two opposing views are linked to deeper cultural divisions. Unionists are predominantly Ulster Protestant, descendants of mainly Scottish, English, and Huguenot settlers as well as Gaels who converted to one of the Protestant denominations. Nationalists are overwhelmingly Catholic and descend from the population predating the settlement, with a minority from the Scottish Highlands as well as some converts from Protestantism. Discrimination against nationalists under the Stormont government (1921–1972) gave rise to the civil rights movement in the 1960s.[56]
58
+
59
+ While some unionists argue that discrimination was not just due to religious or political bigotry, but also the result of more complex socio-economic, socio-political and geographical factors,[57] its existence, and the manner in which nationalist anger at it was handled, were a major contributing factor to the Troubles. The political unrest went through its most violent phase between 1968 and 1994.[58]
60
+
61
+ In 2007, 36% of the population defined themselves as unionist, 24% as nationalist and 40% defined themselves as neither.[59] According to a 2015 opinion poll, 70% express a long-term preference of the maintenance of Northern Ireland's membership of the United Kingdom (either directly ruled or with devolved government), while 14% express a preference for membership of a united Ireland.[60] This discrepancy can be explained by the overwhelming preference among Protestants to remain a part of the UK (93%), while Catholic preferences are spread across a number of solutions to the constitutional question including remaining a part of the UK (47%), a united Ireland (32%), Northern Ireland becoming an independent state (4%), and those who "don't know" (16%).[61]
62
+
63
+ Official voting figures, which reflect views on the "national question" along with issues of candidate, geography, personal loyalty and historic voting patterns, show 54% of Northern Ireland voters vote for unionist parties, 42% vote for nationalist parties and 4% vote "other". Opinion polls consistently show that the election results are not necessarily an indication of the electorate's stance regarding the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Most of the population of Northern Ireland are at least nominally Christian, mostly Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations. Many voters (regardless of religious affiliation) are attracted to unionism's conservative policies, while other voters are instead attracted to the traditionally leftist Sinn Féin and SDLP and their respective party platforms for democratic socialism and social democracy.[62]
64
+
65
+ For the most part, Protestants feel a strong connection with Great Britain and wish for Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. Many Catholics however, generally aspire to a United Ireland or are less certain about how to solve the constitutional question. In the 2015 survey by Northern Ireland Life and Times, 47% of Northern Irish Catholics supported Northern Ireland remaining a part of the United Kingdom, either by direct rule (6%) or devolved government (41%).
66
+
67
+ Protestants have a slight majority in Northern Ireland, according to the latest Northern Ireland Census. The make-up of the Northern Ireland Assembly reflects the appeals of the various parties within the population. Of the 108 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs), 56 are unionists and 40 are nationalists (the remaining 12 are classified as "other").[citation needed]
68
+
69
+ Since 1998, Northern Ireland has had devolved government within the United Kingdom, presided over by the Northern Ireland Assembly and a cross-community government (the Northern Ireland Executive). The UK Government and UK Parliament are responsible for reserved and excepted matters. Reserved matters comprise listed policy areas (such as civil aviation, units of measurement, and human genetics) that Parliament may devolve to the Assembly some time in the future. Excepted matters (such as international relations, taxation and elections) are never expected to be considered for devolution. On all other governmental matters, the Executive together with the 90-member Assembly may legislate for and govern Northern Ireland. Devolution in Northern Ireland is dependent upon participation by members of the Northern Ireland executive in the North/South Ministerial Council, which coordinates areas of co-operation (such as agriculture, education and health) between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Additionally, "in recognition of the Irish Government's special interest in Northern Ireland", the Government of Ireland and Government of the United Kingdom co-operate closely on non-devolved matters through the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.
70
+
71
+ Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly are by single transferable vote with five Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) elected from each of 18 parliamentary constituencies. In addition, eighteen representatives (Members of Parliament, MPs) are elected to the lower house of the UK parliament from the same constituencies using the first-past-the-post system. However, not all of those elected take their seats. Sinn Féin MPs, currently seven, refuse to take the oath to serve the Queen that is required before MPs are allowed to take their seats. In addition, the upper house of the UK parliament, the House of Lords, currently has some 25 appointed members from Northern Ireland.
72
+
73
+ The Northern Ireland Office represents the UK government in Northern Ireland on reserved matters and represents Northern Ireland's interests within the UK Government. Additionally, the Republic's government also has the right to "put forward views and proposals" on non-devolved matters in relation to Northern Ireland. The Northern Ireland Office is led by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who sits in the Cabinet of the United Kingdom.
74
+
75
+ Northern Ireland is a distinct legal jurisdiction, separate from the two other jurisdictions in the United Kingdom (England and Wales, and Scotland). Northern Ireland law developed from Irish law that existed before the partition of Ireland in 1921. Northern Ireland is a common law jurisdiction and its common law is similar to that in England and Wales. However, there are important differences in law and procedure between Northern Ireland and England and Wales. The body of statute law affecting Northern Ireland reflects the history of Northern Ireland, including Acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the former Parliament of Northern Ireland and the Parliament of Ireland, along with some Acts of the Parliament of England and of the Parliament of Great Britain that were extended to Ireland under Poynings' Law between 1494 and 1782.
76
+
77
+ There is no generally accepted term to describe what Northern Ireland is: province, region, country or something else.[11][12][13] The choice of term can be controversial and can reveal the writer's political preferences.[12] This has been noted as a problem by several writers on Northern Ireland, with no generally recommended solution.[11][12][13]
78
+
79
+ Owing in part to the way in which the United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland, came into being, there is no legally defined term to describe what Northern Ireland 'is'. There is also no uniform or guiding way to refer to Northern Ireland amongst the agencies of the UK government. For example, the websites of the Office of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom[63] and the UK Statistics Authority describe the United Kingdom as being made up of four countries, one of these being Northern Ireland.[64] Other pages on the same websites refer to Northern Ireland specifically as a "province" as do publications of the UK Statistics Authority.[65][66] The website of the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency also refers to Northern Ireland as being a province[67] as does the website of the Office of Public Sector Information[68] and other agencies within Northern Ireland.[69] Publications of HM Treasury[70] and the Department of Finance and Personnel of the Northern Ireland Executive,[71] on the other hand, describe Northern Ireland as being a "region of the UK". The UK's submission to the 2007 United Nations Conference on the Standardization of Geographical Names defines the UK as being made up of two countries (England and Scotland), one principality (Wales) and one province (Northern Ireland).[72]
80
+
81
+ Unlike England, Scotland and Wales, Northern Ireland has no history of being an independent country or of being a nation in its own right.[73] Some writers describe the United Kingdom as being made up of three countries and one province[74] or point out the difficulties with calling Northern Ireland a country.[75] Authors writing specifically about Northern Ireland dismiss the idea that Northern Ireland is a "country" in general terms,[11][13][76][77] and draw contrasts in this respect with England, Scotland and Wales.[78] Even for the period covering the first 50 years of Northern Ireland's existence, the term country is considered inappropriate by some political scientists on the basis that many decisions were still made in London.[73] The absence of a distinct nation of Northern Ireland, separate within the island of Ireland, is also pointed out as being a problem with using the term[13][79][80] and is in contrast to England, Scotland, and Wales.[81]
82
+
83
+ Many commentators prefer to use the term "province", although that is also not without problems. It can arouse irritation, particularly among nationalists, for whom the title province is properly reserved for the traditional province of Ulster, of which Northern Ireland comprises six out of nine counties.[12][75] The BBC style guide is to refer to Northern Ireland as a province, and use of the term is common in literature and newspaper reports on Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. Some authors have described the meaning of this term as being equivocal: referring to Northern Ireland as being a province both of the United Kingdom and of the traditional country of Ireland.[79]
84
+
85
+ "Region" is used by several UK government agencies and the European Union. Some authors choose this word but note that it is "unsatisfactory".[12][13] Northern Ireland can also be simply described as "part of the UK", including by UK government offices.[63]
86
+
87
+ Many people inside and outside Northern Ireland use other names for Northern Ireland, depending on their point of view. Disagreement on names, and the reading of political symbolism into the use or non-use of a word, also attaches itself to some urban centres. The most notable example is whether Northern Ireland's second city should be called "Derry" or "Londonderry".
88
+
89
+ Choice of language and nomenclature in Northern Ireland often reveals the cultural, ethnic and religious identity of the speaker. Those who do not belong to any group but lean towards one side often tend to use the language of that group. Supporters of unionism in the British media (notably The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express) regularly call Northern Ireland "Ulster".[82] Some media outlets in the Republic use "North of Ireland", "the North", or (less often) the "Six Counties".
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+
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+ Government and cultural organisations in Northern Ireland often use the word "Ulster" in their title; for example, the University of Ulster, the Ulster Museum, the Ulster Orchestra, and BBC Radio Ulster.
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+
93
+ Although some news bulletins since the 1990s have opted to avoid all contentious terms and use the official name, Northern Ireland, the term "the North" remains commonly used by broadcast media in the Republic.
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+
95
+ Northern Ireland was covered by an ice sheet for most of the last ice age and on numerous previous occasions, the legacy of which can be seen in the extensive coverage of drumlins in Counties Fermanagh, Armagh, Antrim and particularly Down.
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+
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+ The centrepiece of Northern Ireland's geography is Lough Neagh, at 151 square miles (391 km2) the largest freshwater lake both on the island of Ireland and in the British Isles. A second extensive lake system is centred on Lower and Upper Lough Erne in Fermanagh. The largest island of Northern Ireland is Rathlin, off the north Antrim coast. Strangford Lough is the largest inlet in the British Isles, covering 150 km2 (58 sq mi).
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+
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+ There are substantial uplands in the Sperrin Mountains (an extension of the Caledonian mountain belt) with extensive gold deposits, granite Mourne Mountains and basalt Antrim Plateau, as well as smaller ranges in South Armagh and along the Fermanagh–Tyrone border. None of the hills are especially high, with Slieve Donard in the dramatic Mournes reaching 850 metres (2,789 ft), Northern Ireland's highest point. Belfast's most prominent peak is Cavehill.
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+
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+ The volcanic activity which created the Antrim Plateau also formed the eerily geometric pillars of the Giant's Causeway on the north Antrim coast. Also in north Antrim are the Carrick-a-Rede Rope Bridge, Mussenden Temple and the Glens of Antrim.
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+
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+ The Lower and Upper River Bann, River Foyle and River Blackwater form extensive fertile lowlands, with excellent arable land also found in North and East Down, although much of the hill country is marginal and suitable largely for animal husbandry.
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+
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+ The valley of the River Lagan is dominated by Belfast, whose metropolitan area includes over a third of the population of Northern Ireland, with heavy urbanisation and industrialisation along the Lagan Valley and both shores of Belfast Lough.
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+
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+ The vast majority of Northern Ireland has a temperate maritime climate, (Cfb in the Koeppen climate classification) rather wetter in the west than the east, although cloud cover is very common across the region. The weather is unpredictable at all times of the year, and although the seasons are distinct, they are considerably less pronounced than in interior Europe or the eastern seaboard of North America. Average daytime maximums in Belfast are 6.5 °C (43.7 °F) in January and 17.5 °C (63.5 °F) in July. The highest maximum temperature recorded was 30.8 °C (87.4 °F) at Knockarevan, near Garrison, County Fermanagh on 30 June 1976 and at Belfast on 12 July 1983.[94] The lowest minimum temperature recorded was −18.7 °C (−1.7 °F) at Castlederg, County Tyrone on 23 December 2010.[95]
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+
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+ Northern Ireland is the least forested part of the United Kingdom and Ireland, and one of the least forested parts of Europe.[96][97] Until the end of the Middle Ages, the land was heavily forested with native trees such as oak, ash, hazel, birch, alder, willow, aspen, elm, rowan, yew and Scots pine.[98] Today, only 8% of Northern Ireland is woodland, and most of this is non-native conifer plantations.[99]
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+ Northern Ireland consists of six historic counties: County Antrim, County Armagh, County Down, County Fermanagh, County Londonderry,[100] County Tyrone.
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+
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+ These counties are no longer used for local government purposes; instead, there are eleven districts of Northern Ireland which have different geographical extents. These were created in 2015, replacing the twenty-six districts which previously existed.[101]
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+ Although counties are no longer used for local governmental purposes, they remain a popular means of describing where places are. They are officially used while applying for an Irish passport, which requires one to state one's county of birth. The name of that county then appears in both Irish and English on the passport's information page, as opposed to the town or city of birth on the United Kingdom passport. The Gaelic Athletic Association still uses the counties as its primary means of organisation and fields representative teams of each GAA county. The original system of car registration numbers largely based on counties still remains in use. In 2000, the telephone numbering system was restructured into an 8 digit scheme with (except for Belfast) the first digit approximately reflecting the county.
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+
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+ The county boundaries still appear on Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland Maps and the Phillips Street Atlases, among others. With their decline in official use, there is often confusion surrounding towns and cities which lie near county boundaries, such as Belfast and Lisburn, which are split between counties Down and Antrim (the majorities of both cities, however, are in Antrim).
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+
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+ In March 2018, The Sunday Times published its list of Best Places to Live in Britain, including the following places in Northern Ireland: Ballyhackamore near Belfast (overall best for Northern Ireland), Holywood, County Down, Newcastle, County Down, Portrush, County Antrim, Strangford, County Down.[102]
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+ Northern Ireland has traditionally had an industrial economy, most notably in shipbuilding, rope manufacture and textiles, but most heavy industry has since been replaced by services, primarily the public sector.
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+
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+ Seventy percent of the economy's revenue comes from the service sector. Apart from the public sector, another important service sector is tourism, which rose to account for over 1% of the economy's revenue in 2004. Tourism has been a major growth area since the end of the Troubles. Key tourism attractions include the historic cities of Derry, Belfast and Armagh and the many castles in Northern Ireland. These large firms are attracted by government subsidies and the skilled workforce in Northern Ireland.
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+
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+ The local economy has seen contraction during the Great Recession. In response, the Northern Ireland Assembly has sent trade missions abroad. The Executive wishes to gain taxation powers from London, to align Northern Ireland's corporation tax rate with the unusually low rate of the Republic of Ireland.
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+ Northern Ireland has underdeveloped transport infrastructure, with most infrastructure concentrated around Greater Belfast, Greater Derry and Craigavon. Northern Ireland is served by three airports – Belfast International near Antrim, George Best Belfast City integrated into the railway network at Sydenham in East Belfast, and City of Derry in County Londonderry.
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+
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+ Major seaports at Larne and Belfast carry passengers and freight between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
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+
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+ Passenger railways are operated by Northern Ireland Railways. With Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail), Northern Ireland Railways co-operates in providing the joint Enterprise service between Dublin Connolly and Lanyon Place. The whole of Ireland has a mainline railway network with a gauge of 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm), which is unique in Europe and has resulted in distinct rolling stock designs. The only preserved line of this gauge is the Downpatrick and County Down Railway, which operates steam and diesel locomotives. Main railway lines linking to and from Belfast Great Victoria Street railway station and Lanyon Place railway station are:
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+ Main motorways are:
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+
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+ The cross-border road connecting the ports of Larne in Northern Ireland and Rosslare Harbour in the Republic of Ireland is being upgraded as part of an EU-funded scheme. European route E01 runs from Larne through the island of Ireland, Spain and Portugal to Seville.
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+
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+ The population of Northern Ireland has risen yearly since 1978. The population in 2011 was 1.8 million, having grown 7.5% over the previous decade[103] from just under 1.7 million in 2001. This constitutes just under 3% of the population of the UK (62 million) and just over 28% of the population of the island of Ireland (6.3 million).
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+
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+ The population of Northern Ireland is almost entirely white (98.2%).[103] In 2011, 88.8% of the population were born in Northern Ireland, with 4.5% born elsewhere in Britain, and 2.9% born in the Republic of Ireland. 4.3% were born elsewhere; triple the amount there were in 2001.[104] Most are from Eastern Europe and Lithuania and Latvia. The largest non-white ethnic groups were Chinese (6,300) and Indian (6,200). Black people of various origins made up 0.2% of the 2011 population and people of mixed ethnicity made up 0.2%.[105]
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+
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+ At the 2011 census, 41.5% of the population identified as Protestant/non-Roman Catholic Christian, 41% as Roman Catholic, and 0.8% as non-Christian, while 17% identified with no religion or did not state one.[105] The biggest of the Protestant/non-Roman Catholic Christian denominations were the Presbyterian Church (19%), the Church of Ireland (14%) and the Methodist Church (3%). In terms of community background (i.e. religion or religion brought up in), 48% of the population came from a Protestant background, 45% from a Catholic background, 0.9% from non-Christian backgrounds, and 5.6% from non-religious backgrounds.[105]
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+
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+ Belfast
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+ Derry
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+
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+ Lisburn
147
+ Newry
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+
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+ In the 2011 census in Northern Ireland respondents gave their national identity as follows.[108]
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+
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+ Several studies and surveys carried out between 1971 and 2006 have indicated that, in general, most Protestants in Northern Ireland see themselves primarily as British, whereas a majority of Roman Catholics regard themselves primarily as Irish.[109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116] This does not, however, account for the complex identities within Northern Ireland, given that many of the population regard themselves as "Ulster" or "Northern Irish", either as a primary or secondary identity. Overall, the Catholic population is somewhat more ethnically diverse than the more homogeneous Protestant population. 83.1% of Protestants identified as "British" or with a British ethnic group (English, Scottish, or Welsh) in the 2011 Census, whereas only 3.9% identified as "Irish". Meanwhile, 13.7% of Catholics identified as "British" or with a British ethnic group. A further 4.4% identified as "all other", which are largely immigrants, for example from Poland.
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+
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+ A 2008 survey found that 57% of Protestants described themselves as British, while 32% identified as Northern Irish, 6% as Ulster and 4% as Irish. Compared to a similar survey carried out in 1998, this shows a fall in the percentage of Protestants identifying as British and Ulster and a rise in those identifying as Northern Irish. The 2008 survey found that 61% of Catholics described themselves as Irish, with 25% identifying as Northern Irish, 8% as British and 1% as Ulster. These figures were largely unchanged from the 1998 results.[117][118]
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+
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+ People born in Northern Ireland are, with some exceptions, deemed by UK law to be citizens of the United Kingdom. They are also, with similar exceptions, entitled to be citizens of Ireland. This entitlement was reaffirmed in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement between the British and Irish governments, which provides that:
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+
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+ ...it is the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly [the two governments] confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland.
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+
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+ As a result of the Agreement, the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland was amended. The current wording provides that people born in Northern Ireland are entitled to be Irish citizens on the same basis as people from any other part of the island.[119]
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+ Neither government, however, extends its citizenship to all persons born in Northern Ireland. Both governments exclude some people born in Northern Ireland, in particular persons born without one parent who is a British or Irish citizen. The Irish restriction was given effect by the twenty-seventh amendment to the Irish Constitution in 2004. The position in UK nationality law is that most of those born in Northern Ireland are UK nationals, whether or not they so choose. Renunciation of British citizenship requires the payment of a fee, currently £372.[120]
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+
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+ In the 2011 census in Northern Ireland respondents stated that they held the following passports.[121]
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+ English is spoken as a first language by almost all of the Northern Ireland population. It is the de facto official language and the Administration of Justice (Language) Act (Ireland) 1737 prohibits the use of languages other than English in legal proceedings.
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+
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+ Under the Good Friday Agreement, Irish and Ulster Scots (an Ulster dialect of the Scots language, sometimes known as Ullans), are recognised as "part of the cultural wealth of Northern Ireland".[122] Two all-island bodies for the promotion of these were created under the Agreement: Foras na Gaeilge, which promotes the Irish language, and the Ulster Scots Agency, which promotes the Ulster Scots dialect and culture. These operate separately under the aegis of the North/South Language Body, which reports to the North/South Ministerial Council.
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+
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+ The British government in 2001 ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Irish (in Northern Ireland) was specified under Part III of the Charter, with a range of specific undertakings in relation to education, translation of statutes, interaction with public authorities, the use of placenames, media access, support for cultural activities and other matters. A lower level of recognition was accorded to Ulster Scots, under Part II of the Charter.[123]
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+ The dialect of English spoken in Northern Ireland shows influence from the lowland Scots language.[124] There are supposedly some minute differences in pronunciation between Protestants and Catholics, for instance; the name of the letter h, which Protestants tend to pronounce as "aitch", as in British English, and Catholics tend to pronounce as "haitch", as in Hiberno-English.[citation needed] However, geography is a much more important determinant of dialect than religious background.
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+
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+ The Irish language (Irish: an Ghaeilge), or Gaelic, is a native language of Ireland.[125] It was spoken predominantly throughout what is now Northern Ireland before the Ulster Plantations in the 17th century and most place names in Northern Ireland are anglicised versions of a Gaelic name. Today, the language is often associated with Irish nationalism (and thus with Catholics). However, in the 19th century, the language was seen as a common heritage, with Ulster Protestants playing a leading role in the Gaelic revival.[126]
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+ In the 2011 census, 11% of the population of Northern Ireland claimed "some knowledge of Irish"[103] and 3.7% reported being able to "speak, read, write and understand" Irish.[103] In another survey, from 1999, 1% of respondents said they spoke it as their main language at home.[127]
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+
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+ The dialect spoken in Northern Ireland, Ulster Irish, has two main types, East Ulster Irish and Donegal Irish (or West Ulster Irish),[128] is the one closest to Scottish Gaelic (which developed into a separate language from Irish Gaelic in the 17th century). Some words and phrases are shared with Scots Gaelic, and the dialects of east Ulster – those of Rathlin Island and the Glens of Antrim – were very similar to the dialect of Argyll, the part of Scotland nearest to Ireland. And those dialects of Armagh and Down were also very similar to the dialects of Galloway.
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+ Use of the Irish language in Northern Ireland today is politically sensitive. The erection by some district councils of bilingual street names in both English and Irish,[129] invariably in predominantly nationalist districts, is resisted by unionists who claim that it creates a "chill factor" and thus harms community relationships. Efforts by members of the Northern Ireland Assembly to legislate for some official uses of the language have failed to achieve the required cross-community support, and the UK government has declined to legislate. There has recently been an increase in interest in the language among unionists in East Belfast.[130]
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+ Ulster Scots comprises varieties of the Scots language spoken in Northern Ireland. For a native English speaker, "[Ulster Scots] is comparatively accessible, and even at its most intense can be understood fairly easily with the help of a glossary."[131]
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+ Along with the Irish language, the Good Friday Agreement recognised the dialect as part of Northern Ireland's unique culture and the St Andrews Agreement recognised the need to "enhance and develop the Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture".[132]
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+ Approximately 2% of the population claim to speak Ulster Scots.[133] However, the number speaking it as their main language in their home is negligible,[127] with only 0.9% of 2011 census respondents claiming to be able to speak, read, write and understand Ulster-Scots. 8.1% professed to have "some ability" however.[103]
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+ The most common sign language in Northern Ireland is Northern Ireland Sign Language (NISL). However, because in the past Catholic families tended to send their deaf children to schools in Dublin[citation needed] where Irish Sign Language (ISL) is commonly used, ISL is still common among many older deaf people from Catholic families.
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+ Irish Sign Language (ISL) has some influence from the French family of sign language, which includes American Sign Language (ASL). NISL takes a large component from the British family of sign language (which also includes Auslan) with many borrowings from ASL. It is described as being related to Irish Sign Language at the syntactic level while much of the lexicon is based on British Sign Language (BSL).[134]
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+ As of March 2004[update] the British Government recognises only British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language as the official sign languages used in Northern Ireland.[135][136]
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+ Northern Ireland shares both the culture of Ireland and the culture of the United Kingdom.
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+ Parades are a prominent feature of Northern Ireland society,[137] more so than in the rest of Ireland or in Britain. Most are held by Protestant fraternities such as the Orange Order, and Ulster loyalist marching bands. Each summer, during the "marching season", these groups have hundreds of parades, deck streets with British flags, bunting and specially-made arches, and light large towering bonfires.[138] The biggest parades are held on 12 July (The Twelfth). There is often tension when these activities take place near Catholic neighbourhoods, which sometimes leads to violence.[139]
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+ Since the end of the Troubles, Northern Ireland has witnessed rising numbers of tourists. Attractions include cultural festivals, musical and artistic traditions, countryside and geographical sites of interest, public houses, welcoming hospitality and sports (especially golf and fishing). Since 1987 public houses have been allowed to open on Sundays, despite some opposition.
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+ The Ulster Cycle is a large body of prose and verse centring on the traditional heroes of the Ulaid in what is now eastern Ulster. This is one of the four major cycles of Irish mythology. The cycle centres on the reign of Conchobar mac Nessa, who is said to have been king of Ulster around the 1st century. He ruled from Emain Macha (now Navan Fort near Armagh), and had a fierce rivalry with queen Medb and king Ailill of Connacht and their ally, Fergus mac Róich, former king of Ulster. The foremost hero of the cycle is Conchobar's nephew Cúchulainn, who features in the epic prose/poem An Táin Bó Cúailnge (The Cattle Raid of Cooley, a cassus belli between Ulster and Connaught).
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+ Northern Ireland comprises a patchwork of communities whose national loyalties are represented in some areas by flags flown from flagpoles or lamp posts. The Union Jack and the former Northern Ireland flag are flown in many loyalist areas, and the Tricolour, adopted by republicans as the flag of Ireland in 1916,[141] is flown in some republican areas. Even kerbstones in some areas are painted red-white-blue or green-white-orange, depending on whether local people express unionist/loyalist or nationalist/republican sympathies.[142]
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+
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+ The official flag is that of the state having sovereignty over the territory, i.e. the Union Flag.[143] The former Northern Ireland flag, also known as the "Ulster Banner" or "Red Hand Flag", is a banner derived from the coat of arms of the Government of Northern Ireland until 1972. Since 1972, it has had no official status. The Union Flag and the Ulster Banner are used exclusively by unionists. UK flags policy states that in Northern Ireland, "The Ulster flag and the Cross of St Patrick have no official status and, under the Flags Regulations, are not permitted to be flown from Government Buildings."[144][145]
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+
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+ The Irish Rugby Football Union and the Church of Ireland have used the Saint Patrick's Saltire or "Cross of St Patrick". This red saltire on a white field was used to represent Ireland in the flag of the United Kingdom. It is still used by some British army regiments. Foreign flags are also found, such as the Palestinian flags in some nationalist areas and Israeli flags in some unionist areas.[146]
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+ The United Kingdom national anthem of "God Save the Queen" is often played at state events in Northern Ireland. At the Commonwealth Games and some other sporting events, the Northern Ireland team uses the Ulster Banner as its flag—notwithstanding its lack of official status—and the Londonderry Air (usually set to lyrics as Danny Boy), which also has no official status, as its national anthem.[147][148] The national football team also uses the Ulster Banner as its flag but uses "God Save The Queen" as its anthem.[149]
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+ Major Gaelic Athletic Association matches are opened by the national anthem of the Republic of Ireland, "Amhrán na bhFiann (The Soldier's Song)", which is also used by most other all-Ireland sporting organisations.[150]
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+ Since 1995, the Ireland rugby union team has used a specially commissioned song, "Ireland's Call" as the team's anthem. The Irish national anthem is also played at Dublin home matches, being the anthem of the host country.[151]
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+ Northern Irish murals have become well-known features of Northern Ireland, depicting past and present events and documenting peace and cultural diversity. Almost 2,000 murals have been documented in Northern Ireland since the 1970s.
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+ In Northern Ireland, sport is popular and important in the lives of many people. Sports tend to be organised on an all-Ireland basis, with a single team for the whole island.[152] The most notable exception is association football, which has separate governing bodies for each jurisdiction.[152]
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+ The Irish Football Association (IFA) serves as the organising body for association football in Northern Ireland, with the Northern Ireland Football League (NIFL) responsible for the independent administration of the three divisions of national domestic football, as well as the Northern Ireland Football League Cup.
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+ The highest level of competition within Northern Ireland are the NIFL Premiership and the NIFL Championship. However, many players from Northern Ireland compete with clubs in England and Scotland.
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+ NIFL clubs are semi-professional or Intermediate.NIFL Premiership clubs are also eligible to compete in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League with the league champions entering the Champions league second qualifying round and the 2nd placed league finisher, the European play-off winners and the Irish Cup winners entering the Europa League second qualifying round. No clubs have ever reached the group stage.
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+ Despite Northern Ireland's small population, the national team qualified for the World Cup in 1958, 1982 and 1986, making it to the quarter-finals in 1958 and 1982 and made it the first knockout round in the European Championships in 2016.
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+ The six counties of Northern Ireland are among the nine governed by the Ulster branch of the Irish Rugby Football Union, the governing body of rugby union in Ireland. Ulster is one of the four professional provincial teams in Ireland and competes in the Pro14 and European Cup. It won the European Cup in 1999.
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+ In international competitions, the Ireland national rugby union team's recent successes include four Triple Crowns between 2004 and 2009 and a Grand Slam in 2009 in the Six Nations Championship.
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+ Northern Ireland plays as the Ireland cricket team which represents both Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland. The Ireland Cricket team is a full member of the International Cricket Council, having been granted Test status and full membership (along with Afghanistan) by the ICC in June 2017. They are currently able to compete in Test cricket, the highest level of competitive cricket in the international arena and they are one of the twelve full-member countries under the ICC.
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+ Ireland is the current champion of the ICC Intercontinental Cup. One of Ireland's regular international venues is Stormont in Belfast.
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+ Gaelic games include Gaelic football, hurling (and camogie), handball and rounders. Of the four, football is the most popular in Northern Ireland. Players play for local clubs with the best being selected for their county teams. The Ulster GAA is the branch of the Gaelic Athletic Association that is responsible for the nine counties of Ulster, which include the six of Northern Ireland.
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+ These nine county teams participate in the Ulster Senior Football Championship, Ulster Senior Hurling Championship, All-Ireland Senior Football Championship and All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship.
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+ Recent successes for Northern Ireland teams include Armagh's 2002 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship win and Tyrone's wins in 2003, 2005 and 2008.
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+ Perhaps Northern Ireland's most notable successes in professional sport have come in golf. Northern Ireland has contributed more major champions in the modern era than any other European country, with three in the space of just 14 months from the U.S. Open in 2010 to The Open Championship in 2011. Notable golfers include Fred Daly (winner of The Open in 1947), Ryder Cup players Ronan Rafferty and David Feherty, leading European Tour professionals David Jones, Michael Hoey (a five-time winner on the tour) and Gareth Maybin, as well as three recent major winners Graeme McDowell (winner of the U.S. Open in 2010, the first European to do so since 1970), Rory McIlroy (winner of four majors) and Darren Clarke (winner of The Open in 2011).[153][154] Northern Ireland has also contributed several players to the Great Britain and Ireland Walker Cup team, including Alan Dunbar and Paul Cutler who played on the victorious 2011 team in Scotland. Dunbar also won The Amateur Championship in 2012, at Royal Troon.
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+ The Golfing Union of Ireland, the governing body for men's and boy's amateur golf throughout Ireland and the oldest golfing union in the world, was founded in Belfast in 1891. Northern Ireland's golf courses include the Royal Belfast Golf Club (the earliest, formed in 1881), Royal Portrush Golf Club, which is the only course outside Great Britain to have hosted The Open Championship, and Royal County Down Golf Club (Golf Digest magazine's top-rated course outside the United States).[155][156]
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+ Northern Ireland has produced two world snooker champions; Alex Higgins, who won the title in 1972 and 1982, and Dennis Taylor, who won in 1985. The highest-ranked Northern Ireland professional on the world circuit presently is Mark Allen from Antrim. The sport is governed locally by the Northern Ireland Billiards and Snooker Association who run regular ranking tournaments and competitions.
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+ Motorcycle racing is a particularly popular sport during the summer months, with the main meetings of the season attracting some of the largest crowds to any outdoor sporting event in the whole of Ireland.[157] Two of the three major international road race meetings are held in Northern Ireland, these being the North West 200[158] and the Ulster Grand Prix. In addition racing on purpose built circuits take place at Kirkistown and Bishop's Court,[159] whilst smaller road race meetings are held such as the Cookstown 100, the Armoy Road Races[160] and the Tandragee 100[161] all of which form part of the Irish National Road Race Championships[162] and which have produced some of the greatest motorcycle racers in the history of the sport, notably Joey Dunlop.
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+ Although Northern Ireland lacks an international automobile racecourse, two Northern Irish drivers have finished inside the top two of Formula One, with John Watson achieving the feat in 1982 and Eddie Irvine doing the same in 1999. The largest course and the only MSA-licensed track for UK-wide competition is Kirkistown.[163]
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+ The Ireland national rugby league team has participated in the Emerging Nations Tournament (1995), the Super League World Nines (1996), the World Cup (2000 and 2008), European Nations Cup (since 2003) and Victory Cup (2004).
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+ The Ireland A rugby league team compete annually in the Amateur Four Nations competition (since 2002) and the St Patrick's Day Challenge (since 1995).
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+ In 2007, after the closure of UCW (Ulster Championship Wrestling) which was a wrestling promotion, PWU formed, standing for Pro Wrestling Ulster. The wrestling promotion features championships, former WWE superstars and local independent wrestlers. Events and IPPV's throughout Northern Ireland.[164]
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+ Unlike most areas of the United Kingdom, in the last year of primary school, many children sit entrance examinations for grammar schools.
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+ Integrated schools, which attempt to ensure a balance in enrolment between pupils of Protestant, Roman Catholic and other faiths (or none), are becoming increasingly popular, although Northern Ireland still has a primarily de facto religiously segregated education system. In the primary school sector, 40 schools (8.9% of the total number) are integrated schools and 32 (7.2% of the total number) are Irish language-medium schools.
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+ The main universities in Northern Ireland are Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University, and the distance learning Open University which has a regional office in Belfast.
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+ 356 species of marine algae have been recorded in the north-east of Ireland. As Counties Londonderry, Antrim and Down are the only three counties of Northern Ireland with a shoreline this will apply to all Northern Ireland. 77 species are considered rare having been recorded rarely.[165]
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+ The BBC has a division called BBC Northern Ireland with headquarters in Belfast. As well as broadcasting standard UK-wide programmes, BBC NI produces local content, including a news break-out called BBC Newsline. The ITV franchise in Northern Ireland is Ulster Television (UTV). The state-owned Channel 4 and the privately owned Channel 5 also broadcast in Northern Ireland. Access is available to satellite and cable services.[166] All Northern Ireland viewers must obtain a UK TV licence to watch live television transmissions.
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+ RTÉ, the national broadcaster of the Republic of Ireland, is available over the air to most parts of Northern Ireland via reception overspill[167] and via satellite and cable. Since the digital TV switchover, RTÉ One, RTÉ2 and the Irish-language channel TG4, are now available over the air on the UK's Freeview system from transmitters within Northern Ireland.[168] Although they are transmitted in standard definition, a Freeview HD box or television is required for reception.
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+ As well as the standard UK-wide radio stations from the BBC, Northern Ireland is home to many local radio stations, such as Cool FM, CityBeat, and Q102.9. The BBC has two regional radio stations which broadcast in Northern Ireland, BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio Foyle.
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+ Besides the UK and Irish national newspapers, there are three main regional newspapers published in Northern Ireland. These are the Belfast Telegraph, the Irish News and the News Letter.[169] According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (UK) the average daily circulation for these three titles in 2018 was:
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+ Northern Ireland uses the same telecommunications and postal services as the rest of the United Kingdom at standard domestic rates and there are no mobile roaming charges between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.[172][173] People in Northern Ireland who live close to the border with the Republic of Ireland may inadvertently switch over to the Irish mobile networks, causing international roaming fees to be applied.[174] Calls from landlines in Northern Ireland to numbers in the Republic of Ireland are charged at the same rate as those to numbers in Great Britain, while landline numbers in Northern Ireland can similarly be called from the Republic of Ireland at domestic rates, using the 048 prefix.[175]
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+ Both the national flag and the national anthem of present-day Ireland drive origins directly from the Rising. At first it still appeared as if the revolutionaries would take over the old symbols because on the roof of their headquarters, the Dublin General Post Office, a green flag with the harp was hoisted next to the republican tricolour although with the inscription 'Irish Republic'. Even 'Got save Ireland' was sung by the revolutionaries during Easter week. But after the failure of the Rising and the subsequent executions of the leading revolutionaries the tricolour and 'The Soldier's Song' became more and more popular as symbols of the rebellion.
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+ Click on a coloured area to see an article about English in that country or region
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+ in Europe (green & dark grey)
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+ Ireland (/ˈaɪərlənd/ (listen); Irish: Éire [ˈeːɾʲə] (listen); Ulster-Scots: Airlann [ˈɑːrlən]) is an island in the North Atlantic. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the second-largest island of the British Isles, the third-largest in Europe, and the twentieth-largest on Earth.[6]
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+ Geopolitically, Ireland is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially named Ireland), which covers five-sixths of the island, and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. In 2011, the population of Ireland was about 6.6 million, ranking it the second-most populous island in Europe after Great Britain. As of 2016, 4.8 million live in the Republic of Ireland, and 1.8 million live in Northern Ireland.[3]
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+ The geography of Ireland comprises relatively low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain, with several navigable rivers extending inland. Its lush vegetation is a product of its mild but changeable climate which is free of extremes in temperature. Much of Ireland was woodland until the end of the Middle Ages. Today, woodland makes up about 10% of the island, compared with a European average of over 33%,[7] and most of it is non-native conifer plantations.[8][9] There are twenty-six extant land mammal species native to Ireland.[10] The Irish climate is influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and thus very moderate,[11] and winters are milder than expected for such a northerly area, although summers are cooler than those in continental Europe. Rainfall and cloud cover are abundant.
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+ The earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC.[12] Gaelic Ireland had emerged by the 1st century AD. The island was Christianised from the 5th century onward. Following the 12th century Norman invasion, England claimed sovereignty. However, English rule did not extend over the whole island until the 16th–17th century Tudor conquest, which led to colonisation by settlers from Britain. In the 1690s, a system of Protestant English rule was designed to materially disadvantage the Catholic majority and Protestant dissenters, and was extended during the 18th century. With the Acts of Union in 1801, Ireland became a part of the United Kingdom. A war of independence in the early 20th century was followed by the partition of the island, creating the Irish Free State, which became increasingly sovereign over the following decades, and Northern Ireland, which remained a part of the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland saw much civil unrest from the late 1960s until the 1990s. This subsided following a political agreement in 1998. In 1973 the Republic of Ireland joined the European Economic Community while the United Kingdom, and Northern Ireland, as part of it, did the same.
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+ Irish culture has had a significant influence on other cultures, especially in the field of literature. Alongside mainstream Western culture, a strong indigenous culture exists, as expressed through Gaelic games, Irish music and the Irish language. The island's culture shares many features with that of Great Britain, including the English language, and sports such as association football, rugby, horse racing, and golf.
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+
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+ The names Ireland and Éire derive from Old Irish Ériu, a goddess in Irish mythology first recorded in the ninth century. The etymology of Ériu is disputed but may derive from the Proto-Indo-European root *h2uer, referring to flowing water.[13]
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+ During the last glacial period, and until about 10,000 BC, most of Ireland was periodically covered in ice. Sea levels were lower and Ireland, like Great Britain, formed part of continental Europe. By 16,000 BC, rising sea levels caused by ice melting caused Ireland to become separated from Great Britain.[14] Later, around 6000 BC, Great Britain became separated from continental Europe.[15] The earliest evidence of human presence in Ireland is dated at 10,500 BC, demonstrated by a butchered bear bone found in a cave in County Clare.[12] By about 8000 BC, more sustained occupation of the island has been shown, with evidence for Mesolithic communities around the island.[16]
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+ Some time before 4000 BC, Neolithic settlers introduced cereal cultivars, domesticated animals such as cattle and sheep, large timber buildings, and stone monuments.[17] The earliest evidence for farming in Ireland or Great Britain is from Ferriter's Cove, County Kerry, where a flint knife, cattle bones and a sheep's tooth were carbon-dated to c. 4350 BC.[18] Field systems were developed in different parts of Ireland, including at the Céide Fields, that has been preserved beneath a blanket of peat in present-day Tyrawley. An extensive field system, arguably the oldest in the world,[19] consisted of small divisions separated by dry-stone walls. The fields were farmed for several centuries between 3500 BC and 3000 BC. Wheat and barley were the principal crops.[20]
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+ The Bronze Age began around 2500 BC, with technology changing people's everyday lives during this period through innovations such as the wheel; harnessing oxen; weaving textiles; brewing alcohol; and skilful metalworking, which produced new weapons and tools, along with fine gold decoration and jewellery, such as brooches and torcs.
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+ How and when the island became Celtic has been debated for close to a century, with the migrations of the Celts being one of the more enduring themes of archaeological and linguistic studies. The most recent genetic research strongly associates the spread of Indo-European languages (including Celtic) through Western Europe with a people bringing a composite Beaker culture, with its arrival in Britain and Ireland dated to around the middle of the third millennium BC.[21] According to John T. Koch and others, Ireland in the Late Bronze Age was part of a maritime trading-network culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age that also included Britain, western France and Iberia, and that this is where Celtic languages developed.[22][23][24][25] This contrasts with the traditional view that their origin lies in mainland Europe with the Hallstatt culture.[26]
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+ The long-standing traditional view is that the Celtic language, Ogham script and culture were brought to Ireland by waves of invading or migrating Celts from mainland Europe. This theory draws on the Lebor Gabála Érenn, a medieval Christian pseudo-history of Ireland, along with the presence of Celtic culture, language and artifacts found in Ireland such as Celtic bronze spears, shields, torcs and other finely crafted Celtic associated possessions. The theory holds that there were four separate Celtic invasions of Ireland. The Priteni were said to be the first, followed by the Belgae from northern Gaul and Britain. Later, Laighin tribes from Armorica (present-day Brittany) were said to have invaded Ireland and Britain more or less simultaneously. Lastly, the Milesians (Gaels) were said to have reached Ireland from either northern Iberia or southern Gaul.[27] It was claimed that a second wave named the Euerni, belonging to the Belgae people of northern Gaul, began arriving about the sixth century BC. They were said to have given their name to the island.[28][29]
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+ The theory was advanced in part because of lack of archaeological evidence for large-scale Celtic immigration, though it is accepted that such movements are notoriously difficult to identify. Historical linguists are skeptical that this method alone could account for the absorption of Celtic language, with some saying that an assumed processional view of Celtic linguistic formation is 'an especially hazardous exercise'.[30][31] Genetic lineage investigation into the area of Celtic migration to Ireland has led to findings that showed no significant differences in mitochondrial DNA between Ireland and large areas of continental Europe, in contrast to parts of the Y-chromosome pattern. When taking both into account, a study drew the conclusion that modern Celtic speakers in Ireland could be thought of as European "Atlantic Celts" showing a shared ancestry throughout the Atlantic zone from northern Iberia to western Scandinavia rather than substantially central European.[32]
30
+
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+ In 2012, research showed that occurrence of genetic markers for the earliest farmers was almost eliminated by Beaker-culture immigrants: they carried what was then a new Y-chromosome R1b marker, believed to have originated in Iberia about 2500 BC. The prevalence amongst modern Irish men of this mutation is a remarkable 84%, the highest in the world, and closely matched in other populations along the Atlantic fringes down to Spain. A similar genetic replacement happened with lineages in mitochondrial DNA.[18][33] This conclusion is supported by recent research carried out by the geneticist David Reich, who says: “British and Irish skeletons from the Bronze Age that followed the Beaker period had at most 10 percent ancestry from the first farmers of these islands, with other 90 percent from people like those associated with the Bell Beaker culture in the Netherlands.” He suggests that it was Beaker users who introduced an Indo-European language, represented here by Celtic (i.e. a new language and culture introduced directly by migration and genetic replacement).[21]
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+ The earliest written records of Ireland come from classical Greco-Roman geographers. Ptolemy in his Almagest refers to Ireland as Mikra Brettania ("Little Britain"), in contrast to the larger island, which he called Megale Brettania ("Great Britain").[34] In his later work, Geography, Ptolemy refers to Ireland as Iouernia and to Great Britain as Albion. These 'new' names were likely to have been the local names for the islands at the time. The earlier names, in contrast, were likely to have been coined before direct contact with local peoples was made.[35]
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+
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+ The Romans referred to Ireland by this name too in its Latinised form, Hibernia, or Scotia.[36][37] Ptolemy records sixteen nations inhabiting every part of Ireland in 100 AD.[38] The relationship between the Roman Empire and the kingdoms of ancient Ireland is unclear. However, a number of finds of Roman coins have been made, for example at the Iron Age settlement of Freestone Hill near Gowran and Newgrange.[39]
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+ Ireland continued as a patchwork of rival kingdoms; however, beginning in the 7th century, a concept of national kingship gradually became articulated through the concept of a High King of Ireland. Medieval Irish literature portrays an almost unbroken sequence of high kings stretching back thousands of years, but modern historians believe the scheme was constructed in the 8th century to justify the status of powerful political groupings by projecting the origins of their rule into the remote past.[40]
38
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+ All of the Irish kingdoms had their own kings but were nominally subject to the high king. The high king was drawn from the ranks of the provincial kings and ruled also the royal kingdom of Meath, with a ceremonial capital at the Hill of Tara. The concept did not become a political reality until the Viking Age and even then was not a consistent one.[41] Ireland did have a culturally unifying rule of law: the early written judicial system, the Brehon Laws, administered by a professional class of jurists known as the brehons.[42]
40
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+ The Chronicle of Ireland records that in 431, Bishop Palladius arrived in Ireland on a mission from Pope Celestine I to minister to the Irish "already believing in Christ".[43] The same chronicle records that Saint Patrick, Ireland's best known patron saint, arrived the following year. There is continued debate over the missions of Palladius and Patrick, but the consensus is that they both took place[44] and that the older druid tradition collapsed in the face of the new religion.[45] Irish Christian scholars excelled in the study of Latin and Greek learning and Christian theology. In the monastic culture that followed the Christianisation of Ireland, Latin and Greek learning was preserved in Ireland during the Early Middle Ages in contrast to elsewhere in Western Europe, where the Dark Ages followed the Fall of the Western Roman Empire.[45][46][page needed]
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+ The arts of manuscript illumination, metalworking and sculpture flourished and produced treasures such as the Book of Kells, ornate jewellery and the many carved stone crosses[47] that still dot the island today. A mission founded in 563 on Iona by the Irish monk Saint Columba began a tradition of Irish missionary work that spread Celtic Christianity and learning to Scotland, England and the Frankish Empire on continental Europe after the fall of Rome.[48] These missions continued until the late Middle Ages, establishing monasteries and centres of learning, producing scholars such as Sedulius Scottus and Johannes Eriugena and exerting much influence in Europe.[citation needed]
44
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+ From the 9th century, waves of Viking raiders plundered Irish monasteries and towns.[49] These raids added to a pattern of raiding and endemic warfare that was already deep-seated in Ireland. The Vikings were involved in establishing most of the major coastal settlements in Ireland: Dublin, Limerick, Cork, Wexford, Waterford, as well as other smaller settlements.[50][unreliable source?]
46
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+ On 1 May 1169, an expedition of Cambro-Norman knights, with an army of about 600 men, landed at Bannow Strand in present-day County Wexford. It was led by Richard de Clare, known as 'Strongbow' owing to his prowess as an archer.[51] The invasion, which coincided with a period of renewed Norman expansion, was at the invitation of Dermot Mac Murrough, King of Leinster.[52]
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+ In 1166, Mac Murrough had fled to Anjou, France, following a war involving Tighearnán Ua Ruairc, of Breifne, and sought the assistance of the Angevin King Henry II, in recapturing his kingdom. In 1171, Henry arrived in Ireland in order to review the general progress of the expedition. He wanted to re-exert royal authority over the invasion which was expanding beyond his control. Henry successfully re-imposed his authority over Strongbow and the Cambro-Norman warlords and persuaded many of the Irish kings to accept him as their overlord, an arrangement confirmed in the 1175 Treaty of Windsor.
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+ The invasion was legitimised by the provisions of the Papal Bull Laudabiliter, issued by Adrian IV in 1155. The bull encouraged Henry to take control in Ireland in order to oversee the financial and administrative reorganisation of the Irish Church and its integration into the Roman Church system.[53] Some restructuring had already begun at the ecclesiastical level following the Synod of Kells in 1152.[54] There has been significant controversy regarding the authenticity of Laudabiliter,[55] and there is no general agreement as to whether the bull was genuine or a forgery.[56][57]
52
+
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+ In 1172, Pope Alexander III further encouraged Henry to advance the integration of the Irish Church with Rome. Henry was authorised to impose a tithe of one penny per hearth as an annual contribution. This church levy, called Peter's Pence, is extant in Ireland as a voluntary donation. In turn, Henry accepted the title of Lord of Ireland which Henry conferred on his younger son, John Lackland, in 1185. This defined the Irish state as the Lordship of Ireland.[citation needed] When Henry's successor died unexpectedly in 1199, John inherited the crown of England and retained the Lordship of Ireland.
54
+
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+ Over the century that followed, Norman feudal law gradually replaced the Gaelic Brehon Law so that by the late 13th century the Norman-Irish had established a feudal system throughout much of Ireland. Norman settlements were characterised by the establishment of baronies, manors, towns and the seeds of the modern county system. A version of the Magna Carta (the Great Charter of Ireland), substituting Dublin for London and the Irish Church for, the English church at the time, the Catholic Church, was published in 1216 and the Parliament of Ireland was founded in 1297.
56
+
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+ From the mid-14th century, after the Black Death, Norman settlements in Ireland went into a period of decline. The Norman rulers and the Gaelic Irish elites intermarried and the areas under Norman rule became Gaelicised. In some parts, a hybrid Hiberno-Norman culture emerged. In response, the Irish parliament passed the Statutes of Kilkenny in 1367. These were a set of laws designed to prevent the assimilation of the Normans into Irish society by requiring English subjects in Ireland to speak English, follow English customs and abide by English law.[58]
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+ By the end of the 15th century, central English authority in Ireland had all but disappeared, and a renewed Irish culture and language, albeit with Norman influences, was dominant again. English Crown control remained relatively unshaken in an amorphous foothold around Dublin known as The Pale, and under the provisions of Poynings' Law of 1494, the Irish Parliamentary legislation was subject to the approval of the English Privy Council.[59]
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+ The title of King of Ireland was re-created in 1542 by Henry VIII, the then King of England, of the Tudor dynasty. English rule was reinforced and expanded in Ireland during the latter part of the 16th century, leading to the Tudor conquest of Ireland. A near-complete conquest was achieved by the turn of the 17th century, following the Nine Years' War and the Flight of the Earls.
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+ This control was consolidated during the wars and conflicts of the 17th century, including the English and Scottish colonisation in the Plantations of Ireland, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms and the Williamite War. Irish losses during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (which, in Ireland, included the Irish Confederacy and the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland) are estimated to include 20,000 battlefield casualties. 200,000 civilians are estimated to have died as a result of a combination of war-related famine, displacement, guerrilla activity and pestilence over the duration of the war. A further 50,000[Note 1] were sent into indentured servitude in the West Indies. Physician-general William Petty estimated that 504,000 Catholic Irish and 112,000 Protestant settlers died, and 100,000 people were transported, as a result of the war.[62] If a prewar population of 1.5 million is assumed, this would mean that the population was reduced by almost half.
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+ The religious struggles of the 17th century left a deep sectarian division in Ireland. Religious allegiance now determined the perception in law of loyalty to the Irish King and Parliament. After the passing of the Test Act 1672, and the victory of the forces of the dual monarchy of William and Mary over the Jacobites, Roman Catholics and nonconforming Protestant Dissenters were barred from sitting as members in the Irish Parliament. Under the emerging Penal Laws, Irish Roman Catholics and Dissenters were increasingly deprived of various and sundry civil rights even to the ownership of hereditary property. Additional regressive punitive legislation followed in 1703, 1709 and 1728. This completed a comprehensive systemic effort to materially disadvantage Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters, while enriching a new ruling class of Anglican conformists.[63] The new Anglo-Irish ruling class became known as the Protestant Ascendancy.
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+ The "Great Frost" struck Ireland and the rest of Europe between December 1739 and September 1741, after a decade of relatively mild winters. The winters destroyed stored crops of potatoes and other staples, and the poor summers severely damaged harvests.[64][page needed] This resulted in the famine of 1740. An estimated 250,000 people (about one in eight of the population) died from the ensuing pestilence and disease.[65] The Irish government halted export of corn and kept the army in quarters but did little more.[65][66] Local gentry and charitable organisations provided relief but could do little to prevent the ensuing mortality.[65][66]
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+ In the aftermath of the famine, an increase in industrial production and a surge in trade brought a succession of construction booms. The population soared in the latter part of this century and the architectural legacy of Georgian Ireland was built. In 1782, Poynings' Law was repealed, giving Ireland legislative independence from Great Britain for the first time since 1495. The British government, however, still retained the right to nominate the government of Ireland without the consent of the Irish parliament.
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+ In 1798, members of the Protestant Dissenter tradition (mainly Presbyterian) made common cause with Roman Catholics in a republican rebellion inspired and led by the Society of United Irishmen, with the aim of creating an independent Ireland. Despite assistance from France the rebellion was put down by British and Irish government and yeomanry forces. In 1800, the British and Irish parliaments both passed Acts of Union that, with effect from 1 January 1801, merged the Kingdom of Ireland and the Kingdom of Great Britain to create a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.[67]
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+ The passage of the Act in the Irish Parliament was ultimately achieved with substantial majorities, having failed on the first attempt in 1799. According to contemporary documents and historical analysis, this was achieved through a considerable degree of bribery, with funding provided by the British Secret Service Office, and the awarding of peerages, places and honours to secure votes.[67] Thus, the parliament in Ireland was abolished and replaced by a united parliament at Westminster in London, though resistance remained, as evidenced by Robert Emmet's failed Irish Rebellion of 1803.
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+ Aside from the development of the linen industry, Ireland was largely passed over by the industrial revolution, partly because it lacked coal and iron resources[68][69] and partly because of the impact of the sudden union with the structurally superior economy of England,[70] which saw Ireland as a source of agricultural produce and capital.[71][72]
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+ The Great Famine of 1845–1851 devastated Ireland, as in those years Ireland's population fell by one-third. More than one million people died from starvation and disease, with an additional million people emigrating during the famine, mostly to the United States and Canada.[73] In the century that followed, an economic depression caused by the famine resulted in a further million people emigrating.[74] By the end of the decade, half of all immigration to the United States was from Ireland. The period of civil unrest that followed until the end of the 19th century is referred to as the Land War. Mass emigration became deeply entrenched and the population continued to decline until the mid-20th century. Immediately prior to the famine the population was recorded as 8.2 million by the 1841 census.[75] The population has never returned to this level since.[76] The population continued to fall until 1961, and it was not until the 2006 census that the last county of Ireland to record a rise in population since 1841 (County Leitrim) did so.
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+ The 19th and early 20th centuries saw the rise of modern Irish nationalism, primarily among the Roman Catholic population. The pre-eminent Irish political figure after the Union was Daniel O'Connell. He was elected as Member of Parliament for Ennis in a surprise result and despite being unable to take his seat as a Roman Catholic. O'Connell spearheaded a vigorous campaign that was taken up by the Prime Minister, the Irish-born soldier and statesman, the Duke of Wellington. Steering the Catholic Relief Bill through Parliament, aided by future prime minister Robert Peel, Wellington prevailed upon a reluctant George IV to sign the Bill and proclaim it into law. George's father had opposed the plan of the earlier Prime Minister, Pitt the Younger, to introduce such a bill following the Union of 1801, fearing Catholic Emancipation to be in conflict with the Act of Settlement 1701.
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+ Daniel O'Connell led a subsequent campaign, for the repeal of the Act of Union, which failed. Later in the century, Charles Stewart Parnell and others campaigned for autonomy within the Union, or "Home Rule". Unionists, especially those located in Ulster, were strongly opposed to Home Rule, which they thought would be dominated by Catholic interests.[77] After several attempts to pass a Home Rule bill through parliament, it looked certain that one would finally pass in 1914. To prevent this from happening, the Ulster Volunteers were formed in 1913 under the leadership of Edward Carson.[78]
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+
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+ Their formation was followed in 1914 by the establishment of the Irish Volunteers, whose aim was to ensure that the Home Rule Bill was passed. The Act was passed but with the "temporary" exclusion of the six counties of Ulster that would become Northern Ireland. Before it could be implemented, however, the Act was suspended for the duration of the First World War. The Irish Volunteers split into two groups. The majority, approximately 175,000 in number, under John Redmond, took the name National Volunteers and supported Irish involvement in the war. A minority, approximately 13,000, retained the Irish Volunteers' name and opposed Ireland's involvement in the war.[78]
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+ The Easter Rising of 1916 was carried out by the latter group together with a smaller socialist militia, the Irish Citizen Army. The British response, executing fifteen leaders of the Rising over a period of ten days and imprisoning or interning more than a thousand people, turned the mood of the country in favour of the rebels. Support for Irish republicanism increased further due to the ongoing war in Europe, as well as the Conscription Crisis of 1918.[79]
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+ The pro-independence republican party, Sinn Féin, received overwhelming endorsement in the general election of 1918, and in 1919 proclaimed an Irish Republic, setting up its own parliament (Dáil Éireann) and government. Simultaneously the Volunteers, which became known as the Irish Republican Army (IRA), launched a three-year guerrilla war, which ended in a truce in July 1921 (although violence continued until June 1922, mostly in Northern Ireland).[79]
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+ In December 1921, the Anglo-Irish Treaty was concluded between the British government and representatives of the Second Dáil. It gave Ireland complete independence in its home affairs and practical independence for foreign policy, but an opt-out clause allowed Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom, which (as expected) it immediately exercised. Additionally, Members of the Free State Parliament were required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution of the Irish Free State and make a statement of faithfulness to the King.[80] Disagreements over these provisions led to a split in the nationalist movement and a subsequent Irish Civil War between the new government of the Irish Free State and those opposed to the treaty, led by Éamon de Valera. The civil war officially ended in May 1923 when de Valera issued a cease-fire order.[81]
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+ During its first decade, the newly formed Irish Free State was governed by the victors of the civil war. When de Valera achieved power, he took advantage of the Statute of Westminster and political circumstances to build upon inroads to greater sovereignty made by the previous government. The oath was abolished and in 1937 a new constitution was adopted.[79] This completed a process of gradual separation from the British Empire that governments had pursued since independence. However, it was not until 1949 that the state was declared, officially, to be the Republic of Ireland.
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+ The state was neutral during World War II, but offered clandestine assistance to the Allies, particularly in the potential defence of Northern Ireland. Despite their country's neutrality, approximately 50,000[82] volunteers from independent Ireland joined the British forces during the war, four being awarded Victoria Crosses.
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+ The German intelligence was also active in Ireland.[83] Its operations ended in September 1941 when police made arrests on the basis of surveillance carried out on the key diplomatic legations in Dublin. To the authorities, counterintelligence was a fundamental line of defence. With a regular army of only slightly over seven thousand men at the start of the war, and with limited supplies of modern weapons, the state would have had great difficulty in defending itself from invasion from either side in the conflict.[83][84]
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+ Large-scale emigration marked most of the post-WWII period (particularly during the 1950s and 1980s), but beginning in 1987 the economy improved, and the 1990s saw the beginning of substantial economic growth. This period of growth became known as the Celtic Tiger.[85] The Republic's real GDP grew by an average of 9.6% per annum between 1995 and 1999,[86] in which year the Republic joined the euro. In 2000, it was the sixth-richest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita.[87] Historian R. F. Foster argues the cause was a combination of a new sense of initiative and the entry of American corporations. He concludes the chief factors were low taxation, pro-business regulatory policies, and a young, tech-savvy workforce. For many multinationals the decision to do business in Ireland was made easier still by generous incentives from the Industrial Development Authority. In addition European Union membership was helpful, giving the country lucrative access to markets that it had previously reached only through the United Kingdom, and pumping huge subsidies and investment capital into the Irish economy.[88]
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+ Modernisation brought secularisation in its wake. The traditionally high levels of religiosity have sharply declined. Foster points to three factors: Irish feminism, largely imported from America with liberal stances on contraception, abortion, and divorce undermined the authority of bishops and priests. Second, the mishandling of the pedophile scandals humiliated the Church, whose bishops seemed less concerned with the victims and more concerned with covering up for errant priests. Third, prosperity brought hedonism and materialism that undercut the ideals of saintly poverty.[89]
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+ The financial crisis that began in 2008 dramatically ended this period of boom. GDP fell by 3% in 2008 and by 7.1% in 2009, the worst year since records began (although earnings by foreign-owned businesses continued to grow).[90] The state has since experienced deep recession, with unemployment, which doubled during 2009, remaining above 14% in 2012.[91]
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+ Northern Ireland resulted from the division of the United Kingdom by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, and until 1972 was a self-governing jurisdiction within the United Kingdom with its own parliament and prime minister. Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, was not neutral during the Second World War, and Belfast suffered four bombing raids in 1941. Conscription was not extended to Northern Ireland, and roughly an equal number volunteered from Northern Ireland as volunteered from the south.
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+ Although Northern Ireland was largely spared the strife of the civil war, in decades that followed partition there were sporadic episodes of inter-communal violence. Nationalists, mainly Roman Catholic, wanted to unite Ireland as an independent republic, whereas unionists, mainly Protestant, wanted Northern Ireland to remain in the United Kingdom. The Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland voted largely along sectarian lines, meaning that the government of Northern Ireland (elected by "first-past-the-post" from 1929) was controlled by the Ulster Unionist Party. Over time, the minority Catholic community felt increasingly alienated with further disaffection fuelled by practices such as gerrymandering and discrimination in housing and employment.[92][93][94]
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+ In the late 1960s, nationalist grievances were aired publicly in mass civil rights protests, which were often confronted by loyalist counter-protests.[95] The government's reaction to confrontations was seen to be one-sided and heavy-handed in favour of unionists. Law and order broke down as unrest and inter-communal violence increased.[96] The Northern Ireland government requested the British Army to aid the police and protect the Irish Nationalist population. In 1969, the paramilitary Provisional IRA, which favoured the creation of a united Ireland, emerged from a split in the Irish Republican Army and began a campaign against what it called the "British occupation of the six counties".[citation needed]
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+ Other groups, on both the unionist side and the nationalist side, participated in violence and a period known as the Troubles began. Over 3,600 deaths resulted over the subsequent three decades of conflict.[97] Owing to the civil unrest during the Troubles, the British government suspended home rule in 1972 and imposed direct rule. There were several unsuccessful attempts to end the Troubles politically, such as the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973. In 1998, following a ceasefire by the Provisional IRA and multi-party talks, the Good Friday Agreement was concluded as a treaty between the British and Irish governments, annexing the text agreed in the multi-party talks.
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+ The substance of the Agreement (formally referred to as the Belfast Agreement) was later endorsed by referendums in both parts of Ireland. The Agreement restored self-government to Northern Ireland on the basis of power-sharing in a regional Executive drawn from the major parties in a new Northern Ireland Assembly, with entrenched protections for the two main communities. The Executive is jointly headed by a First Minister and deputy First Minister drawn from the unionist and nationalist parties. Violence had decreased greatly after the Provisional IRA and loyalist ceasefires in 1994 and in 2005 the Provisional IRA announced the end of its armed campaign and an independent commission supervised its disarmament and that of other nationalist and unionist paramilitary organisations.[98]
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+ The Assembly and power-sharing Executive were suspended several times but were restored again in 2007. In that year the British government officially ended its military support of the police in Northern Ireland (Operation Banner) and began withdrawing troops.
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+ On 27 June 2012, Northern Ireland's deputy first minister and former IRA commander, Martin McGuinness, shook hands with Queen Elizabeth II in Belfast, symbolising reconciliation between the two sides.
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+ The island is divided between the Republic of Ireland, an independent state, and Northern Ireland (a constituent country of the United Kingdom). They share an open border and both are part of the Common Travel Area.
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+ The Republic of Ireland is a member of the European Union while the United Kingdom is a former member, having both acceded to its precursor entity, the European Economic Community [EEC], in 1973, and as a consequence there is free movement of people, goods, services and capital across the border.
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+ The Republic of Ireland is a parliamentary democracy based on the British model, with a written constitution and a popularly elected president who has mostly ceremonial powers. The government is headed by a prime minister, the Taoiseach, who is appointed by the President on the nomination of the lower house of parliament, the Dáil. Members of the government are chosen from both the Dáil and the upper house of parliament, the Seanad. Its capital is Dublin.
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+ The republic today ranks amongst the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita[99] and in 2015 was ranked the sixth most developed nation in the world by the United Nations' Human Development Index.[100] A period of rapid economic expansion from 1995 onwards became known as the Celtic Tiger period, was brought to an end in 2008 with an unprecedented financial crisis and an economic depression in 2009.
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+ Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom with a local executive and assembly which exercise devolved powers. The executive is jointly headed by the first and deputy first minister, with the ministries being allocated in proportion with each party's representation in the assembly. Its capital is Belfast.
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+ Ultimately political power is held by the UK government, from which Northern Ireland has gone through intermittent periods of direct rule during which devolved powers have been suspended. Northern Ireland elects 18 of the UK House of Commons' 650 MPs. The Northern Ireland Secretary is a cabinet-level post in the British government.
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+ Along with England and Wales and with Scotland, Northern Ireland forms one of the three separate legal jurisdictions of the UK, all of which share the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom as their court of final appeal.
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+ As part of the Good Friday Agreement, the British and Irish governments agreed on the creation of all-island institutions and areas of cooperation. The North/South Ministerial Council is an institution through which ministers from the Government of Ireland and the Northern Ireland Executive agree all-island policies. At least six of these policy areas must have an associated all-island "implementation bodies," and at least six others must be implemented separately in each jurisdiction. The implementation bodies are: Waterways Ireland, the Food Safety Promotion Board, InterTradeIreland, the Special European Union Programmes Body, the North/South Language Body and the Foyle, Carlingford and Irish Lights Commission.
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+ The British–Irish Intergovernmental Conference provides for co-operation between the Government of Ireland and the Government of the United Kingdom on all matters of mutual interest, especially Northern Ireland. In light of the Republic's particular interest in the governance of Northern Ireland, "regular and frequent" meetings co-chaired by the ROI Minister for Foreign Affairs and the UK Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, dealing with non-devolved matters to do with Northern Ireland and non-devolved all-Ireland issues, are required to take place under the establishing treaty.
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+ The North/South Inter-Parliamentary Association is a joint parliamentary forum for the island of Ireland. It has no formal powers but operates as a forum for discussing matters of common concern between the respective legislatures.
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+ Despite the two jurisdictions using two distinct currencies (the euro and pound sterling), a growing amount of commercial activity is carried out on an all-Ireland basis. This has been facilitated by the two jurisdictions' shared membership of the European Union, and there have been calls from members of the business community and policymakers for the creation of an "all-Ireland economy" to take advantage of economies of scale and boost competitiveness.[101]
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+ There are two multi-city regions on the island of Ireland:
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+ Below is a comparison of the regional GDP on the island of Ireland.
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+ [104]
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+ The GDP of the Republic of Ireland as of 2018 was $382.754 billion (nominal),[105] and in Northern Ireland as of 2016 it was €43 billion (nominal).[106]
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+ The GDP per capita in the Republic of Ireland was $78,335 (nominal) as of 2018,[105] and in Northern Ireland (as of 2016) was €23,700.[106]
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+ There are three World Heritage Sites on the island: the Brú na Bóinne, Skellig Michael and the Giant's Causeway.[107] Several other places are on the tentative list, for example the Burren, the Ceide Fields[108] and Mount Stewart.[109]
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+ Some of the most visited sites in Ireland include Bunratty Castle, the Rock of Cashel, the Cliffs of Moher, Holy Cross Abbey and Blarney Castle.[110] Historically important monastic sites include Glendalough and Clonmacnoise, which are maintained as national monuments in the Republic of Ireland.[111]
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+ Dublin is the most heavily touristed region[110] and home to several of the most popular attractions such as the Guinness Storehouse and Book of Kells.[110] The west and south west, which includes the Lakes of Killarney and the Dingle peninsula in County Kerry and Connemara and the Aran Islands in County Galway, are also popular tourist destinations.[110]
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+ Achill Island lies off the coast of County Mayo and is Ireland's largest island. It is a popular tourist destination for surfing and contains 5 Blue Flag beaches and Croaghaun one of the worlds highest sea cliffs. Stately homes, built during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries in Palladian, Neoclassical and neo-Gothic styles, such as Castle Ward, Castletown House, Bantry House, and Glenveagh Castle are also of interest to tourists. Some have been converted into hotels, such as Ashford Castle, Castle Leslie and Dromoland Castle.
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+ Giant's Causeway, County Antrim
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+ Skellig Michael, County Kerry
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+ Newgrange, County Meath
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+ Ireland has an ancient industry based on peat (known locally as "turf") as a source of energy for home fires. A form of biomass energy, this source of heat is still widely used in rural areas. However, because of the ecological importance of peatlands in storing carbon and their rarity, the EU is attempting to protect this habitat by fining Ireland for digging up peat. In cities, heat is generally supplied by natural gas or heating oil, although some urban suppliers distribute sods of turf as "smokeless fuel" for domestic use.
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+ The island operates as a single market for electricity.[112] For much of their existence, electricity networks in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were entirely separate. Both networks were designed and constructed independently post-partition. However, they are now connected with three interlinks[113] and also connected through Great Britain to mainland Europe. The situation in Northern Ireland is complicated by the issue of private companies not supplying Northern Ireland Electricity with enough power. In the Republic of Ireland, the ESB has failed to modernise its power stations, and the availability of power plants has recently averaged only 66%, one of the worst such rates in Western Europe. EirGrid has started building a HVDC transmission line between Ireland and Great Britain with a capacity of 500 MW,[114] about 10% of Ireland's peak demand.
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+ As with electricity, the natural gas distribution network is also now all-island, with a pipeline linking Gormanston, County Meath, and Ballyclare, County Antrim.[115] Most of Ireland's gas comes through interconnectors between Twynholm in Scotland and Ballylumford, County Antrim and Loughshinny, County Dublin. Supplies come from the Corrib Gas Field, off the coast of County Mayo, with a decreasing supply coming from the Kinsale gas field off the County Cork coast.[116][117] The County Mayo field faces some localised opposition over a controversial decision to refine the gas onshore.
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+ The Republic has a strong commitment to renewable energy and ranks as one of the top 10 markets for clean-technology investment in the 2014 Global Green Economy Index.[118] Research and development in renewable energy (such as wind power) has increased since 2004. Large wind farms have been constructed in Cork, Donegal, Mayo and Antrim. The construction of wind farms has in some cases been delayed by opposition from local communities, some of whom regard the wind turbines as unsightly. The Republic is hindered by an ageing network that was not designed to handle the varying availability of power that comes from wind farms. The ESB's Turlough Hill facility is the only power-storage facility in the state.[119]
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+ Prior to partition in 1921, Ireland had a long history as an economic colony - first of the Norse (9th to 10th centuries CE), and later of England. Though the climate and soil favoured certain forms of agriculture,[120] trade barriers frequently hobbled its development. Repeated invasions and "plantations" disrupted land-ownership, and multiple failed uprisings also contributed to repeated phases of deportation and of emigration.
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+ Salient events in the economic history of Ireland include:
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+ Ireland is located in the north-west of Europe, between latitudes 51° and 56° N, and longitudes 11° and 5° W. It is separated from Great Britain by the Irish Sea and the North Channel, which has a width of 23 kilometres (14 mi)[122] at its narrowest point. To the west is the northern Atlantic Ocean and to the south is the Celtic Sea, which lies between Ireland and Brittany, in France. Ireland has a total area of 84,421 km2 (32,595 sq mi),[1][2][123] of which the Republic of Ireland occupies 83 percent.[124] Ireland and Great Britain, together with many nearby smaller islands, are known collectively as the British Isles. As the term British Isles is controversial in relation to Ireland, the alternate term Britain and Ireland is often used as a neutral term for the islands.
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+ A ring of coastal mountains surround low plains at the centre of the island. The highest of these is Carrauntoohil (Irish: Corrán Tuathail) in County Kerry, which rises to 1,038 m (3,406 ft) above sea level.[125] The most arable land lies in the province of Leinster.[126] Western areas can be mountainous and rocky with green panoramic vistas. River Shannon, the island's longest river at 386 km (240 mi) long, rises in County Cavan in the north west and flows through Limerick in the mid west.[125][127]
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+ The island consists of varied geological provinces. In the west, around County Galway and County Donegal, is a medium to high grade metamorphic and igneous complex of Caledonide affinity, similar to the Scottish Highlands. Across southeast Ulster and extending southwest to Longford and south to Navan is a province of Ordovician and Silurian rocks, with similarities to the Southern Uplands province of Scotland. Further south, along the County Wexford coastline, is an area of granite intrusives into more Ordovician and Silurian rocks, like that found in Wales.[128][129]
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+ In the southwest, around Bantry Bay and the mountains of MacGillycuddy's Reeks, is an area of substantially deformed, lightly metamorphosed Devonian-aged rocks.[130] This partial ring of "hard rock" geology is covered by a blanket of Carboniferous limestone over the centre of the country, giving rise to a comparatively fertile and lush landscape. The west-coast district of the Burren around Lisdoonvarna has well-developed karst features.[131] Significant stratiform lead-zinc mineralisation is found in the limestones around Silvermines and Tynagh.
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+ Hydrocarbon exploration is ongoing following the first major find at the Kinsale Head gas field off Cork in the mid-1970s.[132][133] In 1999, economically significant finds of natural gas were made in the Corrib Gas Field off the County Mayo coast. This has increased activity off the west coast in parallel with the "West of Shetland" step-out development from the North Sea hydrocarbon province. In 2000, the Helvick oil field was discovered, which was estimated to contain over 28 million barrels (4,500,000 m3) of oil.[134]
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+ Dunluce Castle, County Antrim
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+ Benbulbin, County Sligo
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+ Connemara, County Galway
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+ Glendalough, County Wicklow
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+ Ardfert Cathedral, County Kerry
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+ Glenbeg Lough, County Cork
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+ The island's lush vegetation, a product of its mild climate and frequent rainfall, earns it the sobriquet the Emerald Isle. Overall, Ireland has a mild but changeable oceanic climate with few extremes. The climate is typically insular and is temperate, avoiding the extremes in temperature of many other areas in the world at similar latitudes.[135] This is a result of the moderating moist winds which ordinarily prevail from the southwestern Atlantic.
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+ Precipitation falls throughout the year but is light overall, particularly in the east. The west tends to be wetter on average and prone to Atlantic storms, especially in the late autumn and winter months. These occasionally bring destructive winds and higher total rainfall to these areas, as well as sometimes snow and hail. The regions of north County Galway and east County Mayo have the highest incidents of recorded lightning annually for the island, with lightning occurring approximately five to ten days per year in these areas.[136] Munster, in the south, records the least snow whereas Ulster, in the north, records the most.
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+ Inland areas are warmer in summer and colder in winter. Usually around 40 days of the year are below freezing 0 °C (32 °F) at inland weather stations, compared to 10 days at coastal stations. Ireland is sometimes affected by heatwaves, most recently in 1995, 2003, 2006, 2013 and 2018. In common with the rest of Europe, Ireland experienced unusually cold weather during the winter of 2010-11. Temperatures fell as low as −17.2 °C (1 °F) in County Mayo on 20 December[137] and up to a metre (3 ft) of snow fell in mountainous areas.
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+ Because Ireland became isolated from mainland Europe by rising sea levels before the last ice age had completely finished, it has fewer land animal and plant species than Great Britain or mainland Europe. There are 55 mammal species in Ireland, and of them only 26 land mammal species are considered native to Ireland.[10] Some species, such as, the red fox, hedgehog and badger, are very common, whereas others, like the Irish hare, red deer and pine marten are less so. Aquatic wildlife, such as species of sea turtle, shark, seal, whale, and dolphin, are common off the coast. About 400 species of birds have been recorded in Ireland. Many of these are migratory, including the barn swallow.
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+ Several different habitat types are found in Ireland, including farmland, open woodland, temperate broadleaf and mixed forests, conifer plantations, peat bogs and a variety of coastal habitats. However, agriculture drives current land use patterns in Ireland, limiting natural habitat preserves,[140] particularly for larger wild mammals with greater territorial needs. With no large apex predators in Ireland other than humans and dogs, such populations of animals as semi-wild deer that cannot be controlled by smaller predators, such as the fox, are controlled by annual culling.
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+ There are no snakes in Ireland, and only one species of reptile (the common lizard) is native to the island. Extinct species include the Irish elk, the great auk, brown bear and the wolf. Some previously extinct birds, such as the golden eagle, have been reintroduced after decades of extirpation.[141]
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+ Ireland is now one of the least forested countries in Europe.[142][143] Until the end of the Middle Ages, Ireland was heavily forested with native trees such as oak, ash, hazel, birch, alder, willow, aspen, rowan, yew and Scots pine.[144] Only about 10% of Ireland today is woodland;[7] most of this is non-native conifer plantations, and only 2% is native woodland.[8][9] In Europe, the average woodland cover is over 33%.[7] In the Republic, about 389,356 hectares (3,893.56 km2) is owned by the state, mainly by the forestry service Coillte.[7] Remnants of native forest can be found scattered around the island, in particular in the Killarney National Park.
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+ Much of the land is now covered with pasture and there are many species of wild-flower. Gorse (Ulex europaeus), a wild furze, is commonly found growing in the uplands and ferns are plentiful in the more moist regions, especially in the western parts. It is home to hundreds of plant species, some of them unique to the island, and has been "invaded" by some grasses, such as Spartina anglica.[145]
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+ The algal and seaweed flora is that of the cold-temperate variety. The total number of species is 574[146] The island has been invaded by some algae, some of which are now well established.[147]
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+ Because of its mild climate, many species, including sub-tropical species such as palm trees, are grown in Ireland. Phytogeographically, Ireland belongs to the Atlantic European province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. The island can be subdivided into two ecoregions: the Celtic broadleaf forests and North Atlantic moist mixed forests.
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+ The long history of agricultural production, coupled with modern intensive agricultural methods such as pesticide and fertiliser use and runoff from contaminants into streams, rivers and lakes, has placed pressure on biodiversity in Ireland.[148][149] A land of green fields for crop cultivation and cattle rearing limits the space available for the establishment of native wild species. Hedgerows, however, traditionally used for maintaining and demarcating land boundaries, act as a refuge for native wild flora. This ecosystem stretches across the countryside and acts as a network of connections to preserve remnants of the ecosystem that once covered the island. Subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy, which supported agricultural practices that preserved hedgerow environments, are undergoing reforms. The Common Agricultural Policy had in the past subsidised potentially destructive agricultural practices, for example by emphasising production without placing limits on indiscriminate use of fertilisers and pesticides; but reforms have gradually decoupled subsidies from production levels and introduced environmental and other requirements.[150] 32% of Ireland's greenhouse gas emissions are correlated to agriculture.[151]
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+ Forested areas typically consist of monoculture plantations of non-native species, which may result in habitats that are not suitable for supporting native species of invertebrates. Natural areas require fencing to prevent over-grazing by deer and sheep that roam over uncultivated areas. Grazing in this manner is one of the main factors preventing the natural regeneration of forests across many regions of the country.[152]
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+ People have lived in Ireland for over 9,000 years. Early historical and genealogical records note the existence of major groups such as the Cruthin, Corcu Loígde, Dál Riata, Dáirine, Deirgtine, Delbhna, Érainn, Laigin, Ulaid. Later major groups included the Connachta, Ciannachta, Eóganachta. Smaller groups included the aithechthúatha (see Attacotti), Cálraighe, Cíarraige, Conmaicne, Dartraighe, Déisi, Éile, Fir Bolg, Fortuatha, Gailenga, Gamanraige, Mairtine, Múscraige, Partraige, Soghain, Uaithni, Uí Maine, Uí Liatháin. Many survived into late medieval times, others vanished as they became politically unimportant. Over the past 1,200 years, Vikings, Normans, Welsh, Flemings, Scots, English, Africans, Eastern Europeans and South Americans have all added to the population and have had significant influences on Irish culture.
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+ The population of Ireland rose rapidly from the 16th century until the mid-19th century, interrupted briefly by the Famine of 1740–41, which killed roughly two fifths of the island's population. The population rebounded and multiplied over the next century, but the Great Famine of the 1840s caused one million deaths and forced over one million more to emigrate in its immediate wake. Over the following century, the population was reduced by over half, at a time when the general trend in European countries was for populations to rise by an average of three-fold.
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+ Ireland's largest religious group is Christianity. The largest denomination is Roman Catholicism, representing over 73% for the island (and about 87% of the Republic of Ireland). Most of the rest of the population adhere to one of the various Protestant denominations (about 48% of Northern Ireland).[153] The largest is the Anglican Church of Ireland. The Muslim community is growing in Ireland, mostly through increased immigration, with a 50% increase in the republic between the 2006 and 2011 census.[154] The island has a small Jewish community. About 4% of the Republic's population and about 14% of the Northern Ireland population[153] describe themselves as of no religion. In a 2010 survey conducted on behalf of the Irish Times, 32% of respondents said they went to a religious service more than once per week.
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+ Traditionally, Ireland is subdivided into four provinces: Connacht (west), Leinster (east), Munster (south), and Ulster (north). In a system that developed between the 13th and 17th centuries,[155] Ireland has 32 traditional counties. Twenty-six of these counties are in the Republic of Ireland, and six are in Northern Ireland. The six counties that constitute Northern Ireland are all in the province of Ulster (which has nine counties in total). As such, Ulster is often used as a synonym for Northern Ireland, although the two are not coterminous.
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+ In the Republic of Ireland, counties form the basis of the system of local government. Counties Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, Waterford and Tipperary have been broken up into smaller administrative areas. However, they are still treated as counties for cultural and some official purposes, for example, postal addresses and by the Ordnance Survey Ireland. Counties in Northern Ireland are no longer used for local governmental purposes,[156] but, as in the Republic, their traditional boundaries are still used for informal purposes such as sports leagues and in cultural or tourism contexts.[157]
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+ City status in Ireland is decided by legislative or royal charter. Dublin, with over 1 million residents in the Greater Dublin Area, is the largest city on the island. Belfast, with 579,726 residents, is the largest city in Northern Ireland. City status does not directly equate with population size. For example, Armagh, with 14,590 is the seat of the Church of Ireland and the Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland and was re-granted city status by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994 (having lost that status in local government reforms of 1840). In the Republic of Ireland, Kilkenny, seat of the Butler dynasty, while no longer a city for administrative purposes (since the 2001 Local Government Act), is entitled by law to continue to use the description.
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+ DublinCork
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+ BelfastDerry
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+ The population of Ireland collapsed dramatically during the second half of the 19th century. A population of over 8 million in 1841 was reduced to slightly more than 4 million by 1921. In part, the fall in population was caused by death from the Great Famine of 1845 to 1852, which took about 1 million lives. However, by far the greater cause of population decline was the dire economic state of the country which led to an entrenched culture of emigration lasting until the 21st century.
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+ Emigration from Ireland in the 19th century contributed to the populations of England, the United States, Canada and Australia, in all of which a large Irish diaspora lives. As of 2006[update], 4.3 million Canadians, or 14% of the population, are of Irish descent,[163] while around one-third of the Australian population has an element of Irish descent.[164] As of 2013[update], There are 40 million Irish-Americans[165] and 33 million Americans who claim Irish ancestry.[166]
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+ With growing prosperity since the last decade of the 20th century, Ireland became a destination for immigrants. Since the European Union expanded to include Poland in 2004, Polish people have made up the largest number of immigrants (over 150,000)[167] from Central Europe. There has also been significant immigration from Lithuania, Czech Republic and Latvia.[168]
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+ The Republic of Ireland in particular has seen large-scale immigration, with 420,000 foreign nationals as of 2006, about 10% of the population.[169] A quarter of births (24 percent) in 2009 were to mothers born outside Ireland.[170] Chinese and Nigerians, along with people from other African countries, have accounted for a large proportion of the non–European Union migrants to Ireland. Up to 50,000 eastern and central European migrant workers left Ireland in response to the Irish financial crisis.[171]
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+ The two official languages of the Republic of Ireland are Irish and English. Each language has produced noteworthy literature. Irish, though now only the language of a minority, was the vernacular of the Irish people for thousands of years and was possibly introduced during the Iron Age. It began to be written down after Christianisation in the 5th century and spread to Scotland and the Isle of Man, where it evolved into the Scottish Gaelic and Manx languages respectively.
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+ The Irish language has a vast treasury of written texts from many centuries and is divided by linguists into Old Irish from the 6th to 10th century, Middle Irish from the 10th to 13th century, Early Modern Irish until the 17th century, and the Modern Irish spoken today. It remained the dominant language of Ireland for most of those periods, having influences from Latin, Old Norse, French and English. It declined under British rule but remained the majority tongue until the early 19th century, and since then has been a minority language.
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+ The Gaelic Revival of the early 20th century has had a long-term influence. Irish is taught in mainstream Irish schools as a compulsory subject, but teaching methods have been criticised for their ineffectiveness, with the lack of level of ability after, typically, fourteen years of instruction cited.[172]
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+ There is now an extensive network of urban Irish speakers in both the Republic and Northern Ireland, especially in Dublin and Belfast. They represent an expanding demographic,[citation needed] and their children often attend Irish-medium schools (Gaelscoil). It has been argued that they tend to be more highly educated than monolingual English speakers.[173] Recent research suggests that urban Irish is developing in a direction of its own, both in pronunciation and grammar.[174]
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+ Traditional rural Irish-speaking areas, known collectively as the Gaeltacht, are in linguistic decline. The main Gaeltacht areas are in the west, south-west and north-west. They are to be found in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, western Cork and Kerry with smaller Gaeltacht areas near Dungarvan in Waterford, Navan in Meath.[175]
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+ English in Ireland was first introduced during the Norman invasion. It was spoken by a few peasants and merchants brought over from England, and was largely replaced by Irish before the Tudor conquest of Ireland. It was introduced as the official language with the Tudor and Cromwellian conquests. The Ulster plantations gave it a permanent foothold in Ulster, and it remained the official and upper-class language elsewhere, the Irish-speaking chieftains and nobility having been deposed. Language shift during the 19th century replaced Irish with English as the first language for a vast majority of the population.[176]
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+ Less than 10% of the population of the Republic of Ireland today speak Irish regularly outside of the education system[177] and 38% of those over 15 years are classified as "Irish speakers". In Northern Ireland, English is the de facto official language, but official recognition is afforded to Irish, including specific protective measures under Part III of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. A lesser status (including recognition under Part II of the Charter) is given to Ulster Scots dialects, which are spoken by roughly 2% of Northern Ireland residents, and also spoken by some in the Republic of Ireland.[178] Since the 1960s with the increase in immigration, many more languages have been introduced, particularly deriving from Asia and Eastern Europe.
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+ Shelta, the language of the nomadic Irish Travellers is native to Ireland.[179]
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+ Ireland's culture comprises elements of the culture of ancient peoples, later immigrant and broadcast cultural influences (chiefly Gaelic culture, Anglicisation, Americanisation and aspects of broader European culture). In broad terms, Ireland is regarded as one of the Celtic nations of Europe, alongside Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man and Brittany. This combination of cultural influences is visible in the intricate designs termed Irish interlace or Celtic knotwork. These can be seen in the ornamentation of medieval religious and secular works. The style is still popular today in jewellery and graphic art,[180] as is the distinctive style of traditional Irish music and dance, and has become indicative of modern "Celtic" culture in general.
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+ Religion has played a significant role in the cultural life of the island since ancient times (and since the 17th century plantations, has been the focus of political identity and divisions on the island). Ireland's pre-Christian heritage fused with the Celtic Church following the missions of Saint Patrick in the 5th century. The Hiberno-Scottish missions, begun by the Irish monk Saint Columba, spread the Irish vision of Christianity to pagan England and the Frankish Empire. These missions brought written language to an illiterate population of Europe during the Dark Ages that followed the fall of Rome, earning Ireland the sobriquet, "the island of saints and scholars".
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+ Since the 20th century Irish pubs worldwide have become outposts of Irish culture, especially those with a full range of cultural and gastronomic offerings.
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+ The Republic of Ireland's national theatre is the Abbey Theatre, which was founded in 1904, and the national Irish-language theatre is An Taibhdhearc, which was established in 1928 in Galway.[181][182] Playwrights such as Seán O'Casey, Brian Friel, Sebastian Barry, Conor McPherson and Billy Roche are internationally renowned.[183]
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+ Ireland has made a large contribution to world literature in all its branches, both in Irish and English. Poetry in Irish is among the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe, with the earliest examples dating from the 6th century.
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+ Irish remained the dominant literary language down to the nineteenth century, despite the spread of English from the seventeenth century on. Prominent names from the medieval period and later include Gofraidh Fionn Ó Dálaigh (fourteenth century), Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (seventeenth century) and Aogán Ó Rathaille (eighteenth century). Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill (c. 1743 – c. 1800) was an outstanding poet in the oral tradition. The latter part of the nineteenth century saw a rapid replacement of Irish by English. By 1900, however, cultural nationalists had begun the Gaelic revival, which saw the beginnings of modern literature in Irish. This was to produce a number of notable writers, including Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Máire Mhac an tSaoi and others. Irish-language publishers such as Coiscéim and Cló Iar-Chonnacht continue to produce scores of titles every year.
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+ In English, Jonathan Swift, often called the foremost satirist in the English language, gained fame for works such as Gulliver's Travels and A Modest Proposal. Other notable 18th-century writers of Irish origin included Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, though they spent most of their lives in England. The Anglo-Irish novel came to the fore in the nineteenth century, featuring such writers as Charles Kickham, William Carleton, and (in collaboration) Edith Somerville and Violet Florence Martin. The playwright and poet Oscar Wilde, noted for his epigrams, was born in Ireland.
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+ In the 20th century, Ireland produced four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. Although not a Nobel Prize winner, James Joyce is widely considered to be one of the most significant writers of the 20th century. Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses is considered one of the most important works of Modernist literature and his life is celebrated annually on 16 June in Dublin as "Bloomsday".[184] A comparable writer in Irish is Máirtín Ó Cadhain, whose novel Cré na Cille is regarded as a modernist masterpiece and has been translated into several languages.
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+ Modern Irish literature is often connected with its rural heritage[185] through English-language writers such as John McGahern and Seamus Heaney and Irish-language writers such as Máirtín Ó Direáin and others from the Gaeltacht.
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+ Music has been in evidence in Ireland since prehistoric times.[186] Although in the early Middle Ages the church was "quite unlike its counterpart in continental Europe",[187] there was considerable interchange between monastic settlements in Ireland and the rest of Europe that contributed to what is known as Gregorian chant. Outside religious establishments, musical genres in early Gaelic Ireland are referred to as a triad of weeping music (goltraige), laughing music (geantraige) and sleeping music (suantraige).[188] Vocal and instrumental music (e.g. for the harp, pipes, and various string instruments) was transmitted orally, but the Irish harp, in particular, was of such significance that it became Ireland's national symbol. Classical music following European models first developed in urban areas, in establishments of Anglo-Irish rule such as Dublin Castle, St Patrick's Cathedral and Christ Church as well as the country houses of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy, with the first performance of Handel's Messiah (1742) being among the highlights of the baroque era. In the 19th century, public concerts provided access to classical music to all classes of society. Yet, for political and financial reasons Ireland has been too small to provide a living to many musicians, so the names of the better-known Irish composers of this time belong to emigrants.
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+ Irish traditional music and dance has seen a surge in popularity and global coverage since the 1960s. In the middle years of the 20th century, as Irish society was modernising, traditional music had fallen out of favour, especially in urban areas.[189] However during the 1960s, there was a revival of interest in Irish traditional music led by groups such as The Dubliners, The Chieftains, The Wolfe Tones, the Clancy Brothers, Sweeney's Men and individuals like Seán Ó Riada and Christy Moore. Groups and musicians including Horslips, Van Morrison and Thin Lizzy incorporated elements of Irish traditional music into contemporary rock music and, during the 1970s and 1980s, the distinction between traditional and rock musicians became blurred, with many individuals regularly crossing over between these styles of playing. This trend can be seen more recently in the work of artists like Enya, The Saw Doctors, The Corrs, Sinéad O'Connor, Clannad, The Cranberries and The Pogues among others.
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+ The earliest known Irish graphic art and sculpture are Neolithic carvings found at sites such as Newgrange[190] and is traced through Bronze Age artefacts and the religious carvings and illuminated manuscripts of the medieval period. During the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, a strong tradition of painting emerged, including such figures as John Butler Yeats, William Orpen, Jack Yeats and Louis le Brocquy. Contemporary Irish visual artists of note include Sean Scully, Kevin Abosch, and Alice Maher.
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+ The Irish philosopher and theologian Johannes Scotus Eriugena was considered one of the leading intellectuals of the early Middle Ages. Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, an Irish explorer, was one of the principal figures of Antarctic exploration. He, along with his expedition, made the first ascent of Mount Erebus and the discovery of the approximate location of the South Magnetic Pole. Robert Boyle was a 17th-century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, inventor and early gentleman scientist. He is largely regarded as one of the founders of modern chemistry and is best known for the formulation of Boyle's law.[191]
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+ 19th-century physicist, John Tyndall, discovered the Tyndall effect. Father Nicholas Joseph Callan, Professor of Natural Philosophy in Maynooth College, is best known for his invention of the induction coil, transformer and he discovered an early method of galvanisation in the 19th century.
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+ Other notable Irish physicists include Ernest Walton, winner of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Physics. With Sir John Douglas Cockcroft, he was the first to split the nucleus of the atom by artificial means and made contributions to the development of a new theory of wave equation.[192] William Thomson, or Lord Kelvin, is the person whom the absolute temperature unit, the kelvin, is named after. Sir Joseph Larmor, a physicist and mathematician, made innovations in the understanding of electricity, dynamics, thermodynamics and the electron theory of matter. His most influential work was Aether and Matter, a book on theoretical physics published in 1900.[193]
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+ George Johnstone Stoney introduced the term electron in 1891. John Stewart Bell was the originator of Bell's Theorem and a paper concerning the discovery of the Bell-Jackiw-Adler anomaly and was nominated for a Nobel prize.[194] The astronomer Jocelyn Bell Burnell, from Lurgan, County Armagh, discovered pulsars in 1967. Notable mathematicians include Sir William Rowan Hamilton, famous for work in classical mechanics and the invention of quaternions. Francis Ysidro Edgeworth's contribution of the Edgeworth Box remains influential in neo-classical microeconomic theory to this day; while Richard Cantillon inspired Adam Smith, among others. John B. Cosgrave was a specialist in number theory and discovered a 2000-digit prime number in 1999 and a record composite Fermat number in 2003. John Lighton Synge made progress in different fields of science, including mechanics and geometrical methods in general relativity. He had mathematician John Nash as one of his students. Kathleen Lonsdale, born in Ireland and most known for her work with crystallography, became the first female president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science.[195]
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+ Ireland has nine universities, seven in the Republic of Ireland and two in Northern Ireland, including Trinity College, Dublin and the University College Dublin, as well as numerous third-level colleges and institutes and a branch of the Open University, the Open University in Ireland.
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+ Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland in terms of match attendance and community involvement, with about 2,600 clubs on the island. In 2003 it represented 34% of total sports attendances at events in Ireland and abroad, followed by hurling at 23%, soccer at 16% and rugby at 8%.[196] The All-Ireland Football Final is the most watched event in the sporting calendar.[197] Soccer is the most widely played team game on the island and the most popular in Northern Ireland.[196][198]
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+ Other sporting activities with the highest levels of playing participation include swimming, golf, aerobics, cycling, and billiards/snooker.[199] Many other sports are also played and followed, including boxing, cricket, fishing, greyhound racing, handball, hockey, horse racing, motor sport, show jumping and tennis.
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+ The island fields a single international team in most sports. One notable exception to this is association football, although both associations continued to field international teams under the name "Ireland" until the 1950s. The sport is also the most notable exception where the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland field separate international teams. Northern Ireland has produced two World Snooker Champions.
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+ Gaelic football, hurling and handball are the best-known of the Irish traditional sports, collectively known as Gaelic games. Gaelic games are governed by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), with the exception of ladies' Gaelic football and camogie (women's variant of hurling), which are governed by separate organisations. The headquarters of the GAA (and the main stadium) is located at the 82,500[200] capacity Croke Park in north Dublin. Many major GAA games are played there, including the semi-finals and finals of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship and All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship. During the redevelopment of the Lansdowne Road stadium in 2007–2010, international rugby and soccer were played there.[201] All GAA players, even at the highest level, are amateurs, receiving no wages, although they are permitted to receive a limited amount of sport-related income from commercial sponsorship.
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+ The Irish Football Association (IFA) was originally the governing body for soccer across the island. The game has been played in an organised fashion in Ireland since the 1870s, with Cliftonville F.C. in Belfast being Ireland's oldest club. It was most popular, especially in its first decades, around Belfast and in Ulster. However, some clubs based outside Belfast thought that the IFA largely favoured Ulster-based clubs in such matters as selection for the national team. In 1921, following an incident in which, despite an earlier promise, the IFA moved an Irish Cup semi-final replay from Dublin to Belfast,[202] Dublin-based clubs broke away to form the Football Association of the Irish Free State. Today the southern association is known as the Football Association of Ireland (FAI). Despite being initially blacklisted by the Home Nations' associations, the FAI was recognised by FIFA in 1923 and organised its first international fixture in 1926 (against Italy). However, both the IFA and FAI continued to select their teams from the whole of Ireland, with some players earning international caps for matches with both teams. Both also referred to their respective teams as Ireland.
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+ In 1950, FIFA directed the associations only to select players from within their respective territories and, in 1953, directed that the FAI's team be known only as "Republic of Ireland" and that the IFA's team be known as "Northern Ireland" (with certain exceptions). Northern Ireland qualified for the World Cup finals in 1958 (reaching the quarter-finals), 1982 and 1986 and the European Championship in 2016. The Republic qualified for the World Cup finals in 1990 (reaching the quarter-finals), 1994, 2002 and the European Championship in 1988, 2012 and 2016. Across Ireland, there is significant interest in the English and, to a lesser extent, Scottish soccer leagues.
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+ Ireland fields a single national rugby team and a single association, the Irish Rugby Football Union, governs the sport across the island. The Irish rugby team have played in every Rugby World Cup, making the quarter-finals in six of them. Ireland also hosted games during the 1991 and the 1999 Rugby World Cups (including a quarter-final). There are four professional Irish teams; all four play in the Pro14 and at least three compete for the Heineken Cup. Irish rugby has become increasingly competitive at both the international and provincial levels since the sport went professional in 1994. During that time, Ulster (1999),[203] Munster (2006[204] and 2008)[203] and Leinster (2009, 2011 and 2012)[203] have won the Heineken Cup. In addition to this, the Irish International side has had increased success in the Six Nations Championship against the other European elite sides. This success, including Triple Crowns in 2004, 2006 and 2007, culminated with a clean sweep of victories, known as a Grand Slam, in 2009 and 2018.[205]
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+ Horse racing and greyhound racing are both popular in Ireland. There are frequent horse race meetings and greyhound stadiums are well-attended. The island is noted for the breeding and training of race horses and is also a large exporter of racing dogs.[206] The horse racing sector is largely concentrated in the County Kildare.[207]
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+ Irish athletics has seen a heightened success rate since the year 2000, with Sonia O'Sullivan winning two medals at 5,000 metres on the track; gold at the 1995 World Championships and silver at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Gillian O'Sullivan won silver in the 20k walk at the 2003 World Championships, while sprint hurdler Derval O'Rourke won gold at the 2006 World Indoor Championship in Moscow. Olive Loughnane won a silver medal in the 20k walk in the World Athletics Championships in Berlin in 2009.
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+ Ireland has won more medals in boxing than in any other Olympic sport. Boxing is governed by the Irish Athletic Boxing Association. Michael Carruth won a gold medal and Wayne McCullough won a silver medal in the Barcelona Olympic Games. In 2008 Kenneth Egan won a silver medal in the Beijing Games.[208] Paddy Barnes secured bronze in those games and gold in the 2010 European Amateur Boxing Championships (where Ireland came 2nd in the overall medal table) and 2010 Commonwealth Games. Katie Taylor has won gold in every European and World championship since 2005. In August 2012 at the Olympic Games in London, Taylor created history by becoming the first Irish woman to win a gold medal in boxing in the 60 kg lightweight.[209]
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+ Golf is very popular, and golf tourism is a major industry attracting more than 240,000 golfing visitors annually.[210] The 2006 Ryder Cup was held at The K Club in County Kildare.[211] Pádraig Harrington became the first Irishman since Fred Daly in 1947 to win the British Open at Carnoustie in July 2007.[212] He successfully defended his title in July 2008[213] before going on to win the PGA Championship in August.[214] Harrington became the first European to win the PGA Championship in 78 years and was the first winner from Ireland. Three golfers from Northern Ireland have been particularly successful. In 2010, Graeme McDowell became the first Irish golfer to win the U.S. Open, and the first European to win that tournament since 1970. Rory McIlroy, at the age of 22, won the 2011 U.S. Open, while Darren Clarke's latest victory was the 2011 Open Championship at Royal St. George's. In August 2012, McIlroy won his 2nd major championship by winning the USPGA Championship by a record margin of 8 shots.
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+ The west coast of Ireland, Lahinch and Donegal Bay in particular, have popular surfing beaches, being fully exposed to the Atlantic Ocean. Donegal Bay is shaped like a funnel and catches west/south-west Atlantic winds, creating good surf, especially in winter. Since just before the year 2010, Bundoran has hosted European championship surfing. Scuba diving is increasingly popular in Ireland with clear waters and large populations of sea life, particularly along the western seaboard. There are also many shipwrecks along the coast of Ireland, with some of the best wreck dives being in Malin Head and off the County Cork coast.[215]
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+ With thousands of lakes, over 14,000 kilometres (8,700 mi) of fish-bearing rivers and over 3,700 kilometres (2,300 mi) of coastline, Ireland is a popular angling destination. The temperate Irish climate is suited to sport angling. While salmon and trout fishing remain popular with anglers, salmon fishing in particular received a boost in 2006 with the closing of the salmon driftnet fishery. Coarse fishing continues to increase its profile. Sea angling is developed with many beaches mapped and signposted,[216] and the range of sea angling species is around 80.[217]
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+ Food and cuisine in Ireland takes its influence from the crops grown and animals farmed in the island's temperate climate and from the social and political circumstances of Irish history. For example, whilst from the Middle Ages until the arrival of the potato in the 16th century the dominant feature of the Irish economy was the herding of cattle, the number of cattle a person owned was equated to their social standing.[218] Thus herders would avoid slaughtering a milk-producing cow.[218]
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+ For this reason, pork and white meat were more common than beef, and thick fatty strips of salted bacon (known as rashers) and the eating of salted butter (i.e. a dairy product rather than beef itself) have been a central feature of the diet in Ireland since the Middle Ages.[218] The practice of bleeding cattle and mixing the blood with milk and butter (not unlike the practice of the Maasai) was common[219] and black pudding, made from blood, grain (usually barley) and seasoning, remains a breakfast staple in Ireland. All of these influences can be seen today in the phenomenon of the "breakfast roll".
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+ The introduction of the potato in the second half of the 16th century heavily influenced cuisine thereafter. Great poverty encouraged a subsistence approach to food, and by the mid-19th century the vast majority of the population sufficed with a diet of potatoes and milk.[220] A typical family, consisting of a man, a woman and four children, would eat 18 stone (110 kg) of potatoes per week.[218] Consequently, dishes that are considered as national dishes represent a fundamental simplicity to cooking, such as the Irish stew, bacon and cabbage, boxty, a type of potato pancake, or colcannon, a dish of mashed potatoes and kale or cabbage.[218]
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+ Since the last quarter of the 20th century, with a re-emergence of wealth in Ireland, a "New Irish Cuisine" based on traditional ingredients incorporating international influences[221] has emerged.[222] This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish (especially salmon, trout, oysters, mussels and other shellfish), as well as traditional soda breads and the wide range of hand-made cheeses that are now being produced across the country. An example of this new cuisine is "Dublin Lawyer": lobster cooked in whiskey and cream.[223] The potato remains however a fundamental feature of this cuisine and the Irish remain the highest per capita[218] consumers of potatoes in Europe. Traditional regional foods can be found throughout the country, for example coddle in Dublin or drisheen in Cork, both a type of sausage, or blaa, a doughy white bread particular to Waterford.
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+ Ireland once dominated the world's market for whiskey, producing 90% of the world's whiskey at the start of the 20th century. However, as a consequence of bootleggers during the prohibition in the United States (who sold poor-quality whiskey bearing Irish-sounding names thus eroding the pre-prohibition popularity for Irish brands)[224] and tariffs on Irish whiskey across the British Empire during the Anglo-Irish Trade War of the 1930s,[225] sales of Irish whiskey worldwide fell to a mere 2% by the mid-20th century.[226] In 1953, an Irish government survey, found that 50% of whiskey drinkers in the United States had never heard of Irish whiskey.[227]
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+ Irish whiskey, as researched in 2009 by the CNBC American broadcaster, remains popular domestically and has grown in international sales steadily over a few decades.[228] Typically CNBC states Irish whiskey is not as smoky as a Scotch whisky, but not as sweet as American or Canadian whiskies.[228] Whiskey forms the basis of traditional cream liqueurs, such as Baileys, and the "Irish coffee" (a cocktail of coffee and whiskey reputedly invented at Foynes flying-boat station) is probably the best-known Irish cocktail.
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+ Stout, a kind of porter beer, particularly Guinness, is typically associated with Ireland, although historically it was more closely associated with London. Porter remains very popular, although it has lost sales since the mid-20th century to lager. Cider, particularly Magners (marketed in the Republic of Ireland as Bulmers), is also a popular drink. Red lemonade, a soft-drink, is consumed on its own and as a mixer, particularly with whiskey.[229]
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+ – in Europe (green & dark grey)– in the European Union (green)
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+ Ireland (Irish: Éire [ˈeːɾʲə] (listen)), also known as the Republic of Ireland (Poblacht na hÉireann),[a] is a country in north-western Europe occupying 26 of 32 counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, which is located on the eastern side of the island. Around 40% of the country's population of 4.9 million people resides in the greater Dublin area.[9] The sovereign state shares its only land border with Northern Ireland. It is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the Celtic Sea to the south, St George's Channel to the south-east, and the Irish Sea to the east. It is a unitary, parliamentary republic.[10] The legislature, the Oireachtas, consists of a lower house, Dáil Éireann, an upper house, Seanad Éireann, and an elected President (Uachtarán) who serves as the largely ceremonial head of state, but with some important powers and duties. The head of government is the Taoiseach (Prime Minister, literally 'Chief', a title not used in English), who is elected by the Dáil and appointed by the President; the Taoiseach in turn appoints other government ministers.
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+ The state was created as the Irish Free State in 1922 as a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. It had the status of Dominion until 1937 when a new constitution was adopted, in which the state was named "Ireland" and effectively became a republic, with an elected non-executive president as head of state. It was officially declared a republic in 1949, following the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955. It joined the European Economic Community (EEC), the predecessor of the European Union, in 1973. The state had no formal relations with Northern Ireland for most of the twentieth century, but during the 1980s and 1990s the British and Irish governments worked with the Northern Ireland parties towards a resolution to "the Troubles". Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the Irish government and Northern Ireland Executive have co-operated on a number of policy areas under the North-South Ministerial Council created by the Agreement.
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+ Ireland ranks among the top ten wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita,[11] and as the tenth most prosperous country in the world according to The Legatum Prosperity Index 2015.[12] After joining the EEC, Ireland enacted a series of liberal economic policies that resulted in rapid economic growth. The country achieved considerable prosperity between the years of 1995 and 2007, which became known as the Celtic Tiger period. This was halted by an unprecedented financial crisis that began in 2008, in conjunction with the concurrent global economic crash.[13][14] However, as the Irish economy was the fastest growing in the EU in 2015,[15] Ireland is again quickly ascending league tables comparing wealth and prosperity internationally. For example, in 2019, Ireland was ranked third most developed country in the world by the United Nations Human Development Index.[16] It also performs well in several national performance metrics, including freedom of the press, economic freedom and civil liberties. Ireland is a member of the European Union and is a founding member of the Council of Europe and the OECD. The Irish government has followed a policy of military neutrality through non-alignment since immediately prior to World War II and the country is consequently not a member of NATO,[17] although it is a member of Partnership for Peace and aspects of PESCO.
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+ The 1922 state, comprising 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland, was "styled and known as the Irish Free State".[18] The Constitution of Ireland, adopted in 1937, provides that "the name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland". Section 2 of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948 states, "It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland." The 1948 Act does not name the state as "Republic of Ireland", because to have done so would have put it in conflict with the Constitution.[19]
12
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+ The government of the United Kingdom used the name "Eire" (without the diacritic) and, from 1949, "Republic of Ireland", for the state;[20] it was not until the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that it used the name "Ireland".[21]
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+ As well as "Ireland", "Éire" or "the Republic of Ireland", the state is also referred to as "the Republic", "Southern Ireland" or "the South".[22] In an Irish republican context it is often referred to as "the Free State" or "the 26 Counties".[23]
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+ From the Act of Union on 1 January 1801, until 6 December 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island's population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and/or disease and another 1.5 million emigrated, mostly to the United States.[24] This set the pattern of emigration for the century to come, resulting in constant population decline up to the 1960s.[25][26][27]
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+ From 1874, and particularly under Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence. This was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League, that won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts, and secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy. These led to "grass-roots" control of national affairs, under the Local Government Act 1898, that had been in the hands of landlord-dominated grand juries of the Protestant Ascendancy.
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+ Home Rule seemed certain when the Parliament Act 1911 abolished the veto of the House of Lords, and John Redmond secured the Third Home Rule Act in 1914. However, the Unionist movement had been growing since 1886 among Irish Protestants after the introduction of the first home rule bill, fearing discrimination and loss of economic and social privileges if Irish Catholics achieved real political power. In the late 19th and early 20th century unionism was particularly strong in parts of Ulster, where industrialisation was more common in contrast to the more agrarian rest of the island, and where the Protestant population was more prominent, with a majority in four counties.[28] Under the leadership of the Dublin-born Sir Edward Carson of the Irish Unionist Party and the Ulsterman Sir James Craig of the Ulster Unionist Party, unionists became strongly militant in order to oppose "the Coercion of Ulster".[29] After the Home Rule Bill passed parliament in May 1914, to avoid rebellion with Ulster, the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith introduced an Amending Bill reluctantly conceded to by the Irish Party leadership. This provided for the temporary exclusion of Ulster from the workings of the bill for a trial period of six years, with an as yet undecided new set of measures to be introduced for the area to be temporarily excluded.
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+ Though it received the Royal Assent and was placed on the statute books in 1914, the implementation of the Third Home Rule Act was suspended until after the First World War which defused the threat of civil war in Ireland. With the hope of ensuring the implementation of the Act at the end of the war through Ireland's engagement in the war, Redmond and his Irish National Volunteers supported the UK and its Allies. 175,000 men joined Irish regiments of the 10th (Irish) and 16th (Irish) divisions of the New British Army, while Unionists joined the 36th (Ulster) divisions.[30]
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+ The remainder of the Irish Volunteers, who opposed any support of the UK, launched an armed insurrection against British rule in the 1916 Easter Rising, together with the Irish Citizen Army. This commenced on 24 April 1916 with the declaration of independence. After a week of heavy fighting, primarily in Dublin, the surviving rebels were forced to surrender their positions. The majority were imprisoned but fifteen of the prisoners (including most of the leaders) were executed as traitors to the UK. This included Patrick Pearse, the spokesman for the rising and who provided the signal to the volunteers to start the rising, as well as James Connolly, socialist and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World union and both the Irish and Scottish Labour movements. These events, together with the Conscription Crisis of 1918, had a profound effect on changing public opinion in Ireland.[31]
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+ In January 1919, after the December 1918 general election, 73 of Ireland's 106 Members of Parliament (MPs) elected were Sinn Féin members who refused to take their seats in the British House of Commons. Instead, they set up an Irish parliament called Dáil Éireann. This first Dáil in January 1919 issued a Declaration of Independence and proclaimed an Irish Republic. The Declaration was mainly a restatement of the 1916 Proclamation with the additional provision that Ireland was no longer a part of the United Kingdom. The new Irish Republic was recognised internationally only by the Russian Soviet Republic.[32] The Irish Republic's Ministry of Dáil Éireann sent a delegation under Ceann Comhairle (Head of Council, or Speaker, of the Daíl) Seán T. O'Kelly to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, but it was not admitted.
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+ After the War of Independence and truce called in July 1921, representatives of the British government and the five Irish treaty delegates, led by Arthur Griffith, Robert Barton and Michael Collins, negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty in London from 11 October to 6 December 1921. The Irish delegates set up headquarters at Hans Place in Knightsbridge, and it was here in private discussions that the decision was taken on 5 December to recommend the treaty to Dáil Éireann. On 7 January 1922, the Second Dáil ratified the Treaty by 64 votes to 57.[33]
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+ In accordance with the treaty, on 6 December 1922 the entire island of Ireland became a self-governing Dominion called the Irish Free State (Saorstát Éireann). Under the Constitution of the Irish Free State, the Parliament of Northern Ireland had the option to leave the Irish Free State one month later and return to the United Kingdom. During the intervening period, the powers of the Parliament of the Irish Free State and Executive Council of the Irish Free State did not extend to Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland exercised its right under the treaty to leave the new Dominion and rejoined the United Kingdom on 8 December 1922. It did so by making an address to the King requesting, "that the powers of the Parliament and Government of the Irish Free State shall no longer extend to Northern Ireland."[34] The Irish Free State was a constitutional monarchy sharing a monarch with the United Kingdom and other Dominions of the British Commonwealth. The country had a governor-general (representing the monarch), a bicameral parliament, a cabinet called the "Executive Council", and a prime minister called the President of the Executive Council.
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+ The Irish Civil War (June 1922 – May 1923) was the consequence of the creation of the Irish Free State. Anti-treaty forces, led by Éamon de Valera, objected to the fact that acceptance of the treaty abolished the Irish Republic of 1919 to which they had sworn loyalty, arguing in the face of public support for the settlement that the "people have no right to do wrong".[35] They objected most to the fact that the state would remain part of the British Empire and that members of the Free State Parliament would have to swear what the Anti-treaty side saw as an oath of fidelity to the British King. Pro-treaty forces, led by Michael Collins, argued that the treaty gave "not the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire to and develop, but the freedom to achieve it".[36]
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+ At the start of the war, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) split into two opposing camps: a pro-treaty IRA and an anti-treaty IRA. The pro-treaty IRA disbanded and joined the new National Army. However, because the anti-treaty IRA lacked an effective command structure and because of the pro-treaty forces' defensive tactics throughout the war, Michael Collins and his pro-treaty forces were able to build up an army with many tens of thousands of World War I veterans from the 1922 disbanded Irish regiments of the British Army, capable of overwhelming the anti-treatyists. British supplies of artillery, aircraft, machine-guns and ammunition boosted pro-treaty forces, and the threat of a return of Crown forces to the Free State removed any doubts about the necessity of enforcing the treaty. The lack of public support for the anti-treaty forces (often called the Irregulars) and the determination of the government to overcome the Irregulars contributed significantly to their defeat.
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+ Following a national plebiscite in July 1937, the new Constitution of Ireland (Bunreacht na hÉireann) came into force on 29 December 1937.[37] This replaced the Constitution of the Irish Free State and called the state Éire.[38] While Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution defined the national territory to be the whole island, they also confined the state's jurisdiction to the area that had been the Irish Free State. The former Irish Free State government had abolished the Office of Governor-General in December 1936. Although the constitution established the office of President of Ireland, the question over whether Ireland was a republic remained open. Diplomats were accredited to the king, but the president exercised all internal functions of a head of state.[39] For instance, the President gave assent to new laws with his own authority, without reference to King George VI who was only an "organ", that was provided for by statute law.
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+ Ireland remained neutral during World War II, a period it described as The Emergency.[40] Ireland's Dominion status was terminated with the passage of the Republic of Ireland Act 1948, which came into force on 18 April 1949 and declared that the state was a republic.[41][42] At the time, a declaration of a republic terminated Commonwealth membership. This rule was changed 10 days after Ireland declared itself a republic, with the London Declaration of 28 April 1949. Ireland did not reapply when the rules were altered to permit republics to join. Later, the Crown of Ireland Act was repealed in Ireland by the Statute Law Revision (Pre-Union Irish Statutes) Act 1962.[43]
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+ Ireland became a member of the United Nations in December 1955, after having been denied membership because of its neutral stance during the Second World War and not supporting the Allied cause.[44] At the time, joining the UN involved a commitment to using force to deter aggression by one state against another if the UN thought it was necessary.[45]
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+
43
+ Interest towards membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) developed in Ireland during the 1950s, with consideration also given to membership of the European Free Trade Area. As the United Kingdom intended on EEC membership, Ireland applied for membership in July 1961 due to the substantial economic linkages with the United Kingdom. However, the founding EEC members remained skeptical regarding Ireland's economic capacity, neutrality, and unattractive protectionist policy.[46] Many Irish economists and politicians realised that economic policy reform was necessary. The prospect of EEC membership became doubtful in 1963 when French President General Charles de Gaulle stated that France opposed Britain's accession, which ceased negotiations with all other candidate countries. However, in 1969 his successor, Georges Pompidou, was not opposed to British and Irish membership. Negotiations began and in 1972 the Treaty of Accession was signed. A referendum held in 1972 confirmed Ireland's entry, and it finally joined the EEC in 1973.[47]
44
+
45
+ The economic crisis of the late 1970s was fuelled by the Fianna Fáil government's budget, the abolition of the car tax, excessive borrowing, and global economic instability including the 1979 oil crisis.[48] There were significant policy changes from 1989 onwards, with economic reform, tax cuts, welfare reform, an increase in competition, and a ban on borrowing to fund current spending. This policy began in 1989–1992 by the Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrat government, and continued by the subsequent Fianna Fáil/Labour government and Fine Gael/Labour/Democratic Left government. Ireland became one of the world's fastest growing economies by the late 1990s in what was known as the Celtic Tiger period, which lasted until the global Financial crisis of 2007–08. However, since 2014, Ireland has experienced increased economic activity.[49]
46
+
47
+ In the Northern Ireland question, the British and Irish governments started to seek a peaceful resolution to the violent conflict involving many paramilitaries and the British Army in Northern Ireland known as "The Troubles". A peace settlement for Northern Ireland, known as the Good Friday Agreement, was approved in 1998 in referendums north and south of the border. As part of the peace settlement, the territorial claim to Northern Ireland in Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution of Ireland was removed by referendum. In its white paper on Brexit the United Kingdom government reiterated its commitment to the Good Friday Agreement. With regard to Northern Ireland's status, it said that the UK Government's "clearly-stated preference is to retain Northern Ireland’s current constitutional position: as part of the UK, but with strong links to Ireland".[50]
48
+
49
+ The state extends over an area of about five-sixths (70,273 km2 or 27,133 sq mi) of the island of Ireland (84,421 km2 or 32,595 sq mi), with Northern Ireland constituting the remainder. The island is bounded to the north and west by the Atlantic Ocean and to the northeast by the North Channel. To the east, the Irish Sea connects to the Atlantic Ocean via St George's Channel and the Celtic Sea to the southwest.
50
+
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+ The western landscape mostly consists of rugged cliffs, hills and mountains. The central lowlands are extensively covered with glacial deposits of clay and sand, as well as significant areas of bogland and several lakes. The highest point is Carrauntoohil (1,038 m or 3,406 ft), located in the MacGillycuddy's Reeks mountain range in the southwest. River Shannon, which traverses the central lowlands, is the longest river in Ireland at 386 kilometres or 240 miles in length. The west coast is more rugged than the east, with numerous islands, peninsulas, headlands and bays.
52
+
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+ Ireland is the least forested country in Europe.[51] Until the end of the Middle Ages, the land was heavily forested with native trees such as oak, ash, hazel, birch, alder, willow, aspen, elm, rowan, yew and Scots pine.[52] The growth of blanket bog and the extensive clearing of woodland for farming are believed to be the main causes of deforestation.[53] Today, only about 10% of Ireland is woodland,[54] most of which is non-native conifer plantations, and only 2% of which is native woodland.[55][56] The average woodland cover in European countries is over 33%.[54] According to Coillte, a state owned forestry business, the country's climate gives Ireland one of the fastest growth rates for forests in Europe.[57] Hedgerows, which are traditionally used to define land boundaries, are an important substitute for woodland habitat, providing refuge for native wild flora and a wide range of insect, bird and mammal species.[58]
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+
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+ Agriculture accounts for about 64% of the total land area.[59] This has resulted in limited land to preserve natural habitats, in particular for larger wild mammals with greater territorial requirements.[60] The long history of agricultural production coupled with modern agricultural methods, such as pesticide and fertiliser use, has placed pressure on biodiversity.[61]
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+
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+ The Atlantic Ocean and the warming influence of the Gulf Stream affect weather patterns in Ireland.[62] Temperatures differ regionally, with central and eastern areas tending to be more extreme. However, due to a temperate oceanic climate, temperatures are seldom lower than −5 °C (23 °F) in winter or higher than 26 °C (79 °F) in summer.[63] The highest temperature recorded in Ireland was 33.3 °C (91.9 °F) on 26 June 1887 at Kilkenny Castle in Kilkenny, while the lowest temperature recorded was −19.1 °C (−2.4 °F) at Markree Castle in Sligo.[64] Rainfall is more prevalent during winter months and less so during the early months of summer. Southwestern areas experience the most rainfall as a result of south westerly winds, while Dublin receives the least. Sunshine duration is highest in the southeast of the country.[62] The far north and west are two of the windiest regions in Europe, with great potential for wind energy generation.[65]
58
+ Ireland normally gets between 1100 and 1600 hours of sunshine each year, most areas averaging between 3.25 and 3.75 hours a day. The sunniest months are May and June, which average between 5 and 6.5 hours per day over most of the country. The extreme southeast gets most sunshine, averaging over 7 hours a day in early summer. December is the dullest month, with an average daily sunshine ranging from about 1 hour in the north to almost 2 hours in the extreme southeast. The sunniest summer in the 100 years from 1881 to 1980 was 1887, according to measurements made at the Phoenix Park in Dublin; 1980 was the dullest.[66]
59
+
60
+ Ireland is a constitutional republic with a parliamentary system of government. The Oireachtas is the bicameral national parliament composed of the President of Ireland and the two Houses of the Oireachtas:
61
+ Seanad Éireann (Senate) and Dáil Éireann (House of Representatives).[67] Áras an Uachtaráin is the official residence of the President of Ireland, while the houses of the Oireachtas meet at Leinster House in Dublin.
62
+
63
+ The President serves as head of state, and is elected for a seven-year term and may be re-elected once. The President is primarily a figurehead, but is entrusted with certain constitutional powers with the advice of the Council of State. The office has absolute discretion in some areas, such as referring a bill to the Supreme Court for a judgment on its constitutionality.[68] Michael D. Higgins became the ninth President of Ireland on 11 November 2011.[69]
64
+
65
+ The Taoiseach (Prime Minister) serves as the head of government and is appointed by the President upon the nomination of the Dáil. Most Taoisigh have served as the leader of the political party that gains the most seats in national elections. It has become customary for coalitions to form a government, as there has not been a single-party government since 1989.[70] Micheál Martin succeeded Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach on 27 June 2020.
66
+
67
+ The Seanad is composed of sixty members, with eleven nominated by the Taoiseach, six elected by two universities, and 43 elected by public representatives from panels of candidates established on a vocational basis. The Dáil has 160 members (Teachtaí Dála) elected to represent multi-seat constituencies under the system of proportional representation and by means of the single transferable vote.
68
+
69
+ The Government is constitutionally limited to fifteen members. No more than two members can be selected from the Seanad, and the Taoiseach, Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Finance must be members of the Dáil. The Dáil must be dissolved within five years after its first meeting following the previous election,[71] and a general election for members of the Dáil must take place no later than thirty days after the dissolution. According to the Constitution of Ireland, parliamentary elections must be held at least every seven years, though a lower limit may be set by statute law. The current government is a coalition government composed of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and the Green Party with Micheál Martin as Taoiseach and Leo Varadkar as Tánaiste. Opposition parties in the current Dáil are Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, Solidarity–People Before Profit, Social Democrats, Aontú, as well as a number of independents.
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71
+ Ireland has been a member state of the European Union since 1973, but is not part of the Schengen Area. Citizens of the United Kingdom can freely enter the country without a passport due to the Common Travel Area, which is a passport-free zone comprising the islands of Ireland, Great Britain, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. However, some identification is required at airports and seaports.
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+
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+ The Local Government Act 1898[72] is the founding document of the present system of local government, while the Twentieth Amendment to the constitution of 1999 provided for its constitutional recognition. The twenty-six traditional counties of Ireland are not always coterminous with administrative divisions although they are generally used as a geographical frame of reference by the population of Ireland. The Local Government Reform Act 2014 provides for a system of thirty-one local authorities – twenty-six county councils, two city and county councils and three city councils.[72] Below this (with the exception of the Dublin Region and the three city councils) are municipal districts, replacing a previous system of town councils.
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+ Local authorities are responsible for matters such as planning, local roads, sanitation, and libraries. Dáil constituencies are required to follow county boundaries as much as possible. Counties with greater populations have multiple constituencies, some of more than one county, but generally do not cross county boundaries. The counties are grouped into eight regions, each with a Regional Authority composed of members delegated by the various county and city councils in the region. The regions do not have any direct administrative role as such, but they serve for planning, coordination and statistical purposes.
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+
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+ Ireland has a common law legal system with a written constitution that provides for a parliamentary democracy. The court system consists of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the High Court, the Circuit Court and the District Court, all of which apply the Irish law and hear both civil and criminal matters. Trials for serious offences must usually be held before a jury. The High Court, Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court have authority, by means of judicial review, to determine the compatibility of laws and activities of other institutions of the state with the constitution and the law. Except in exceptional circumstances, court hearings must occur in public.[citation needed]
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+ Garda Síochána na hÉireann (Guardians of the Peace of Ireland), more commonly referred to as the Gardaí, is the state's civilian police force. The force is responsible for all aspects of civil policing, both in terms of territory and infrastructure. It is headed by the Garda Commissioner, who is appointed by the Government. Most uniformed members do not routinely carry firearms. Standard policing is traditionally carried out by uniformed officers equipped only with a baton and pepper spray.[73]
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+ The Military Police is the corps of the Irish Army responsible for the provision of policing service personnel and providing a military police presence to forces while on exercise and deployment. In wartime, additional tasks include the provision of a traffic control organisation to allow rapid movement of military formations to their mission areas. Other wartime roles include control of prisoners of war and refugees.[74]
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+ Ireland's citizenship laws relate to "the island of Ireland", including islands and seas, thereby extending them to Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. Therefore, anyone born in Northern Ireland who meets the requirements for being an Irish citizen, such as birth on the island of Ireland to an Irish or British citizen parent or a parent who is entitled to live in Northern Ireland or the Republic without restriction on their residency,[75] may exercise an entitlement to Irish citizenship, such as an Irish passport.[76]
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+ Foreign relations are substantially influenced by membership of the European Union, although bilateral relations with the United Kingdom and United States are also important.[77] It held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on six occasions, most recently from January to June 2013.[78]
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+ Ireland tends towards independence in foreign policy; thus the country is not a member of NATO and has a longstanding policy of military neutrality. This policy has helped the Irish Defence Forces to be successful in their contributions to peace-keeping missions with the United Nations since 1960, during the Congo Crisis and subsequently in Cyprus, Lebanon and Bosnia and Herzegovina.[79][disputed – discuss]
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+
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+ Despite Irish neutrality during World War II, Ireland had more than 50,000 participants in the war through enlistment in the British armed forces. During the Cold War, Irish military policy, while ostensibly neutral, was biased towards NATO.[80] During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Seán Lemass authorised the search of Cuban and Czechoslovak aircraft passing through Shannon and passed the information to the CIA.[81] Ireland's air facilities were used by the United States military for the delivery of military personnel involved in the 2003 invasion of Iraq through Shannon Airport. The airport had previously been used for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, as well as the First Gulf War.[82]
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+
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+ Since 1999, Ireland has been a member of NATO's Partnership for Peace (PfP) program and NATO's Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), which is aimed at creating trust between NATO and other states in Europe and the former Soviet Union.[83][84]
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+
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+ Ireland is a neutral country,[85] and has "triple-lock" rules governing the participation of Irish troops in conflict zones, whereby approval must be given by the UN, the Dáil and Government.[86] Accordingly, its military role is limited to national self-defence and participation in United Nations peacekeeping.
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+ The Defence Forces are made up of the Army, Naval Service, Air Corps and Reserve Defence Force. It is small but well equipped, with almost 10,000 full-time military personnel and over 2,000 in reserve.[87][88] Daily deployments of the Defence Forces cover aid to civil power operations, protection and patrol of Irish territorial waters and EEZ by the Irish Naval Service, and UN, EU and PfP peace-keeping missions. By 1996, over 40,000 Irish service personnel had served in international UN peacekeeping missions.[89]
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+ The Irish Air Corps is the air component of the Defence Forces and operates sixteen fixed wing aircraft and eight helicopters. The Irish Naval Service is Ireland's navy, and operates eight patrol ships, and smaller numbers of inflatable boats and training vessels, and has armed boarding parties capable of seizing a ship and a special unit of frogmen. The military includes the Reserve Defence Forces (Army Reserve and Naval Service Reserve) for part-time reservists. Ireland's special forces include the Army Ranger Wing, which trains and operates with international special operations units. The President is the formal Supreme Commander of the Defence Forces, but in practice these Forces answer to the Government via the Minister for Defence.[citation needed]
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+ In 2017, Ireland signed the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[90]
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+ Ireland is an open economy (6th on the Index of Economic Freedom), and ranks first for "high-value" foreign direct investment (FDI) flows.[91] Using the metric global GDP per capita, Ireland ranks 5th of 187 (IMF) and 6th of 175 (World Bank). The alternative metric modified Gross National Income (GNI) is intended to give a more accurate view of "activity in the domestic economy".[92] This is particularly relevant in Ireland 's small globalised economy, as GDP includes income from non-Irish owned companies, which flows out of Ireland.[93] Indeed, foreign multinationals are the driver of Ireland's economy, employing a quarter of the private sector workforce,[94] and paying 80% of Irish business taxes.[95][96][97] 14 of Ireland's top 20 firms (by 2017 turnover) are US-based multinationals[98] (80% of foreign multinationals in Ireland are from the US;[99][100] there are no non-US/non-UK foreign firms in Ireland's top 50 firms by turnover, and only one by employees, that being German retailer Lidl at No. 41[98]).
102
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+ Ireland adopted the euro currency in 2002 along with eleven other EU member states.[61]
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+ The country officially exited recession in 2010, assisted by a growth in exports from US multinationals in Ireland.[101] However, due to a rise in the cost of public borrowing due to government guarantees of private banking debt, the Irish government accepted an €85 billion programme of assistance from the EU, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and bilateral loans from the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark.[102] Following three years of contraction, the economy grew by 0.7% in 2011 and 0.9% in 2012.[103] The unemployment rate was 14.7% in 2012, including 18.5% among recent immigrants.[104] In March 2016 the unemployment rate was reported by the CSO to be 8.6%, down from a peak unemployment rate of 15.1% in February 2012.[105] In addition to unemployment, net emigration from Ireland between 2008 and 2013 totalled 120,100,[106] or some 2.6% of the total population according to the Census of Ireland 2011. One-third of the emigrants were aged between 15 and 24.[106]
106
+
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+ Ireland exited its EU-IMF bailout programme on 15 December 2013.[107] Having implemented budget cuts, reforms and sold assets, Ireland was again able to access debt markets. Since then, Ireland has been able to sell long term bonds at record rates.[108] However, the stabilisation of the Irish credit bubble required a large transfer of debt from the private sector balance sheet (highest OECD leverage), to the public sector balance sheet (almost unleveraged, pre-crisis), via Irish bank bailouts and public deficit spending.[109][110] The transfer of this debt means that Ireland, in 2017, still has one of the highest levels of both public sector indebtedness, and private sector indebtedness, in the EU-28/OECD.[111][112][113][114][115][116]
108
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109
+ Ireland continues to de-leverage its domestic private sector while growing its US multinational-driven economy. Ireland became the main destination for US corporate tax inversions from 2009–2016 (mostly pharmaceutical), peaking with the blocked $160bn Allergan/Pfizer inversion (world's largest inversion, and circa 85% of Irish GNI*).[117][118] Ireland also became the largest foreign location for US "big cap" technology multinationals (i.e. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook), which delivered a GDP growth rate of 26.3% (and GNP growth rate of 18.7%) in 2015. This growth was subsequently shown to be due to Apple restructuring its "double Irish" subsidiary (Apple Sales International, currently under threat of a €13bn EU "illegal state aid" fine for preferential tax treatment).
110
+
111
+ Ireland's economy was transformed with the creation of a 10% low-tax "special economic zone", called the International Financial Services Centre (or "IFSC"), in 1987.[119] In 1999, the entire country was effectively "turned into an IFSC" with the reduction of Irish corporation tax from 32% to 12.5% (the birth of Ireland's "low-tax" model).[120][121] This accelerated Ireland's transition from a predominantly agricultural economy into a knowledge economy focused on attracting US multinationals from high-tech, life sciences, and financial services industries seeking to avail of Ireland's attractive corporate tax rates and unique corporate tax system.
112
+
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+ The "multinational tax schemes" foreign firms use in Ireland materially distort Irish economic statistics. This reached a climax with the famous "leprechaun economics" GDP/GNP growth rates of 2015 (as Apple restructured its Irish subsidiaries in 2015). The Central Bank of Ireland introduced a new statistic, "modified GNI" (or GNI*), to remove these distortions. GNI* is 30% below GDP (or, GDP is 143% of GNI).[122][123] As such, Ireland's GDP and GNP should no longer be used.[124][125][126]
114
+
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+ From the creation of the IFSC, the country experienced strong and sustained economic growth which fuelled a dramatic rise in Irish consumer borrowing and spending, and Irish construction and investment, which became known as the Celtic Tiger period.[127][128] By 2007, Ireland had the highest private sector debt in the OECD with a household debt-to-disposable income ratio of 190%. Global capital markets, who had financed Ireland's build-up of debt in the Celtic Tiger period by enabling Irish banks to borrow in excess of the domestic deposit base (to over 180% at peak[129]), withdrew support in the global financial crisis. Their withdrawal from the over-borrowed Irish credit system would precipitate a deep Irish property correction which would then lead to the collapse of the Irish banking system.[130][127]
116
+
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+ Ireland's successful "low-tax" economy opens it to accusations of being a "corporate tax haven",[131][132][133] and led to it being "blacklisted".[134][135] A 2017 study ranks Ireland as the 5th largest global Conduit OFC (conduits legally route funds to tax havens). A serious challenge is the passing of the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (whose FDII and GILTI regimes target Ireland's "multinational tax schemes").[136][137][138][139] The EU's 2018 Digital Sales Tax (DST)[140] (and desire for a CCCTB[141]) is also seen as an attempt to restrict Irish "multinational tax schemes" by US technology firms.[142][143][144]
118
+
119
+ Although multinational corporations dominate Ireland's export sector, exports from other sources also contribute significantly to the national income. The activities of multinational companies based in Ireland have made it one of the largest exporters of pharmaceutical agents, medical devices and software-related goods and services in the world. Ireland's exports also relate to the activities of large Irish companies (such as Ryanair, Kerry Group and Smurfit Kappa) and exports of mineral resources: Ireland is the seventh largest producer of zinc concentrates, and the twelfth largest producer of lead concentrates. The country also has significant deposits of gypsum, limestone, and smaller quantities of copper, silver, gold, barite, and dolomite.[61] Tourism in Ireland contributes about 4% of GDP and is a significant source of employment.
120
+
121
+ Other goods exports include agri-food, cattle, beef, dairy products, and aluminum. Ireland's major imports include data processing equipment, chemicals, petroleum and petroleum products, textiles, and clothing. Financial services provided by multinational corporations based at the Irish Financial Services Centre also contribute to Irish exports. The difference between exports (€89.4 billion) and imports (€45.5 billion) resulted an annual trade surplus of €43.9 billion in 2010, which is the highest trade surplus relative to GDP achieved by any EU member state.[145]
122
+
123
+ The EU is by far the country's largest trading partner, accounting for 57.9% of exports and 60.7% of imports. The United Kingdom is the most important trading partner within the EU, accounting for 15.4% of exports and 32.1% of imports. Outside the EU, the United States accounted for 23.2% of exports and 14.1% of imports in 2010.[145]
124
+
125
+ ESB, Bord Gáis Energy and Airtricity are the three main electricity and gas suppliers in Ireland. There are 19.82 billion cubic metres of proven reserves of gas.[61][146] Natural gas extraction previously occurred at the Kinsale Head until its exhaustion. The Corrib gas field was due to come on stream in 2013/14. In 2012, the Barryroe field was confirmed to have up to 1.6 billion barrels of oil in reserve, with between 160 and 600 million recoverable.[147] That could provide for Ireland's entire energy needs for up to 13 years, when it is developed in 2015/16. There have been significant efforts to increase the use of renewable and sustainable forms of energy in Ireland, particularly in wind power, with 3,000 MegaWatts[148] of wind farms being constructed, some for the purpose of export.[149] The Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) has estimated that 6.5% of Ireland's 2011 energy requirements were produced by renewable sources.[150] The SEAI has also reported an increase in energy efficiency in Ireland with a 28% reduction in carbon emissions per house from 2005 to 2013.[151]
126
+
127
+ The country's three main international airports at Dublin, Shannon and Cork serve many European and intercontinental routes with scheduled and chartered flights. The London to Dublin air route is the ninth busiest international air route in the world, and also the busiest international air route in Europe, with 14,500 flights between the two in 2017.[152][153] In 2015, 4.5 million people took the route, at that time, the world's second-busiest.[152] Aer Lingus is the flag carrier of Ireland, although Ryanair is the country's largest airline. Ryanair is Europe's largest low-cost carrier,[154] the second largest in terms of passenger numbers, and the world's largest in terms of international passenger numbers.[155]
128
+
129
+ Railway services are provided by Iarnród Éireann (Irish Rail), which operates all internal intercity, commuter and freight railway services in the country. Dublin is the centre of the network with two main stations, Heuston station and Connolly station, linking to the country's cities and main towns. The Enterprise service, which runs jointly with Northern Ireland Railways, connects Dublin and Belfast. The whole of Ireland's mainline network operates on track with a gauge of 5 ft 3 in (1,600 mm), which is unique in Europe and has resulted in distinct rolling stock designs. Dublin has a steadily improving public transport network including the DART, Luas, Dublin Bus, and dublinbikes.[citation needed]
130
+
131
+ Motorways, national primary roads and national secondary roads are managed by Transport Infrastructure Ireland, while regional roads and local roads are managed by the local authorities in each of their respective areas. The road network is primarily focused on the capital, but motorways connect it to other major Irish cities including Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway.[156]
132
+
133
+ Dublin is served by major infrastructure such as the East-Link and West-Link toll-bridges, as well as the Dublin Port Tunnel. The Jack Lynch Tunnel, under the River Lee in Cork, and the Limerick Tunnel, under the River Shannon, were two major projects outside Dublin.[157]
134
+
135
+ Genetic research suggests that the earliest settlers migrated from Iberia following the most recent ice age.[158] After the Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Age, migrants introduced a Celtic language and culture. Migrants from the two latter eras still represent the genetic heritage of most Irish people.[159][160] Gaelic tradition expanded and became the dominant form over time. Irish people are a combination of Gaelic, Norse, Anglo-Norman, French, and British ancestry.
136
+
137
+ The population of Ireland stood at 4,588,252 in 2011, an increase of 8.2% since 2006.[161] As of 2011[update], Ireland had the highest birth rate in the European Union (16 births per 1,000 of population).[162] In 2014, 36.3% of births were to unmarried women.[163] Annual population growth rates exceeded 2% during the 2002–2006 intercensal period, which was attributed to high rates of natural increase and immigration.[164] This rate declined somewhat during the subsequent 2006–2011 intercensal period, with an average annual percentage change of 1.6%. The total fertility rate (TFR) in 2017 was estimated at 1.80 children born per woman, below the replacement rate of 2.1, it remains considerably below the high of 4.2 children born per woman in 1850.[165] In 2018 the median age of the Irish population was 37.1 years.[166]
138
+
139
+ At the time of the 2016 census, the number of non-Irish nationals was recorded at 535,475. This represents a 2% decrease from the 2011 census figure of 544,357. The five largest sources of non-Irish nationals were Poland (122,515), the UK (103,113), Lithuania (36,552), Romania (29,186) and Latvia (19,933) respectively. Compared with 2011, the number of UK, Polish, Lithuanian and Latvian nationals fell. There were four new additions to the top ten largest non-Irish nationalities in 2016: Brazilian (13,640), Spanish (12,112), Italian (11,732), and French (11,661).[167]
140
+
141
+ DublinCork
142
+
143
+ LimerickGalway
144
+
145
+ The following is a list of functional urban areas in Ireland (as defined by the OECD) and their approximate populations as of 2015[update].[178]
146
+
147
+ The Irish Constitution describes Irish as the "national language", but English is the dominant language. In the 2006 census, 39% of the population regarded themselves as competent in Irish. Irish is spoken as a community language only in a small number of rural areas mostly in the west and south of the country, collectively known as the Gaeltacht. Except in Gaeltacht regions, road signs are usually bilingual.[179] Most public notices and print media are in English only. While the state is officially bilingual, citizens can often struggle to access state services in Irish and most government publications are not available in both languages, even though citizens have the right to deal with the state in Irish. Irish language media include the TV channel TG4, the radio station RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta and online newspaper Tuairisc.ie. In the Irish Defence Forces, all foot and arms drill commands are given in the Irish language.
148
+
149
+ As a result of immigration, Polish is the most widely spoken language in Ireland after English, with Irish as the third most spoken.[180] Several other Central European languages (namely Czech, Hungarian and Slovak), as well as Baltic languages (Lithuanian and Latvian) are also spoken on a day-to-day basis. Other languages spoken in Ireland include Shelta, spoken by Irish Travellers, and a dialect of Scots is spoken by some Ulster Scots people in Donegal.[181] Most secondary school students choose to learn one or two foreign languages. Languages available for the Junior Certificate and the Leaving Certificate include French, German, Italian and Spanish; Leaving Certificate students can also study Arabic, Japanese and Russian. Some secondary schools also offer Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Latin. The study of Irish is compulsory for Leaving Certificate students, but some may qualify for an exemption in some circumstances, such as learning difficulties or entering the country after age 11.[182]
150
+
151
+ Healthcare in Ireland is provided by both public and private healthcare providers.[183] The Minister for Health has responsibility for setting overall health service policy. Every resident of Ireland is entitled to receive health care through the public health care system, which is managed by the Health Service Executive and funded by general taxation. A person may be required to pay a subsidised fee for certain health care received; this depends on income, age, illness or disability. All maternity services are provided free of charge and children up to the age of 6 months. Emergency care is provided to patients who present to a hospital emergency department. However, visitors to emergency departments in non-emergency situations who are not referred by their GP may incur a fee of €100. In some circumstances this fee is not payable or may be waived.[184]
152
+
153
+ Anyone holding a European Health Insurance Card is entitled to free maintenance and treatment in public beds in Health Service Executive and voluntary hospitals. Outpatient services are also provided for free. However, the majority of patients on median incomes or above are required to pay subsidised hospital charges. Private health insurance is available to the population for those who want to avail of it.
154
+
155
+ The average life expectancy in Ireland in 2016 was 81.8 years (OECD 2016 list), with 79.9 years for men and 83.6 years for women.[185] It has the highest birth rate in the EU (16.8 births per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to an EU average of 10.7)[186] and a very low infant mortality rate (3.5 per 1,000 live births). The Irish healthcare system ranked 13th out of 34 European countries in 2012 according to the European Health Consumer Index produced by Health Consumer Powerhouse.[187] The same report ranked the Irish healthcare system as having the 8th best health outcomes but only the 21st most accessible system in Europe.
156
+
157
+ Ireland has three levels of education: primary, secondary and higher education. The education systems are largely under the direction of the Government via the Minister for Education and Skills. Recognised primary and secondary schools must adhere to the curriculum established by the relevant authorities. Education is compulsory between the ages of six and fifteen years, and all children up to the age of eighteen must complete the first three years of secondary, including one sitting of the Junior Certificate examination.[188]
158
+
159
+ There are approximately 3,300 primary schools in Ireland.[189] The vast majority (92%) are under the patronage of the Catholic Church. Schools run by religious organisations, but receiving public money and recognition, cannot discriminate against pupils based upon religion or lack thereof. A sanctioned system of preference does exist, where students of a particular religion may be accepted before those who do not share the ethos of the school, in a case where a school's quota has already been reached.
160
+
161
+ The Leaving Certificate, which is taken after two years of study, is the final examination in the secondary school system. Those intending to pursue higher education normally take this examination, with access to third-level courses generally depending on results obtained from the best six subjects taken, on a competitive basis.[190] Third-level education awards are conferred by at least 38 Higher Education Institutions – this includes the constituent or linked colleges of seven universities, plus other designated institutions of the Higher Education and Training Awards Council.
162
+
163
+ The Programme for International Student Assessment, coordinated by the OECD, currently ranks Ireland as having the fourth highest reading score, ninth highest science score and thirteenth highest mathematics score, among OECD countries, in its 2012 assessment.[191] In 2012, Irish students aged 15 years had the second highest levels of reading literacy in the EU.[192] Ireland also has 0.747 of the World's top 500 Universities per capita, which ranks the country in 8th place in the world.[193] Primary, secondary and higher (university/college) level education are all free in Ireland for all EU citizens.[194] There are charges to cover student services and examinations.
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+ In addition, 37 percent of Ireland's population has a university or college degree, which is among the highest percentages in the world.[195][196]
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+ Religious freedom is constitutionally provided for in Ireland. Christianity is the predominant religion, and while Ireland remains a predominantly Catholic country, the percentage of the population who identified as Catholic on the census has fallen sharply from 84.2 percent in the 2011 census to 78.3 percent in the most recent 2016 census. Other results from the 2016 census are : 4.2% Protestant, 1.3% Orthodox, 1.3% as Muslim, and 9.8% as having no religion.[197] According to a Georgetown University study, before 2000 the country had one of the highest rates of regular Mass attendance in the Western world.[198]
168
+ While daily attendance was 13% in 2006, there was a reduction in weekly attendance from 81% in 1990 to 48% in 2006, although the decline was reported as stabilising.[199] In 2011, it was reported that weekly Mass attendance in Dublin was just 18%, with it being even lower among younger generations.[200]
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+
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+ The Church of Ireland, at 2.7% of the population, is the second largest Christian denomination. Membership declined throughout the twentieth century, but experienced an increase early in the 21st century, as have other small Christian denominations. Significant Protestant denominations are the Presbyterian Church and Methodist Church. Immigration has contributed to a growth in Hindu and Muslim populations. In percentage terms, Orthodox Christianity and Islam were the fastest growing religions, with increases of 100% and 70% respectively.[201]
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+ Ireland's patron saints are Saint Patrick, Saint Bridget and Saint Columba. Saint Patrick is the only one commonly recognised as the patron saint. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated on 17 March in Ireland and abroad as the Irish national day, with parades and other celebrations.
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+ As with other predominantly Catholic European states, Ireland underwent a period of legal secularisation in the late twentieth century. In 1972, the article of the Constitution naming specific religious groups was deleted by the Fifth Amendment in a referendum. Article 44 remains in the Constitution: "The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion." The article also establishes freedom of religion, prohibits endowment of any religion, prohibits the state from religious discrimination, and requires the state to treat religious and non-religious schools in a non-prejudicial manner.
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+ Religious studies was introduced as an optional Junior Certificate subject in 2001. Although many schools are run by religious organisations, a secularist trend is occurring among younger generations.[202]
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+ Ireland's culture was for centuries predominantly Gaelic, and it remains one of the six principal Celtic nations. Following the Anglo-Norman invasion in the 12th century, and gradual British conquest and colonisation beginning in the 16th century, Ireland became influenced by English and Scottish culture. Subsequently, Irish culture, though distinct in many aspects, shares characteristics with the Anglosphere, Catholic Europe, and other Celtic regions. The Irish diaspora, one of the world's largest and most dispersed, has contributed to the globalisation of Irish culture, producing many prominent figures in art, music, and science.
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+ Ireland has made a significant contribution to world literature in both the English and Irish languages. Modern Irish fiction began with the publishing of the 1726 novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. Other writers of importance during the 18th century and their most notable works include Laurence Sterne with the publication of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield. Numerous Irish novelists emerged during the 19th century, including Maria Edgeworth, John Banim, Gerald Griffin, Charles Kickham, William Carleton, George Moore, and Somerville and Ross. Bram Stoker is best known as the author of the 1897 novel Dracula.
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+ James Joyce (1882–1941) published his most famous work Ulysses in 1922, which is an interpretation of the Odyssey set in Dublin. Edith Somerville continued writing after the death of her partner Martin Ross in 1915. Dublin's Annie M. P. Smithson was one of several authors catering for fans of romantic fiction in the 1920s and 1930s. After the Second World War, popular novels were published by, among others, Brian O'Nolan, who published as Flann O'Brien, Elizabeth Bowen, and Kate O'Brien. During the final decades of the 20th century, Edna O'Brien, John McGahern, Maeve Binchy, Joseph O'Connor, Roddy Doyle, Colm Tóibín, and John Banville came to the fore as novelists.
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+ Patricia Lynch was a prolific children's author in the 20th century, while Eoin Colfer's works were NYT Best Sellers in this genre in the early 21st century.[203] In the genre of the short story, which is a form favoured by many Irish writers, the most prominent figures include Seán Ó Faoláin, Frank O'Connor and William Trevor. Well known Irish poets include Patrick Kavanagh, Thomas McCarthy, Dermot Bolger, and Nobel Prize in Literature laureates William Butler Yeats and Seamus Heaney (born in Northern Ireland but resided in Dublin). Prominent writers in the Irish language are Pádraic Ó Conaire, Máirtín Ó Cadhain, Séamus Ó Grianna, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill.
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+ The history of Irish theatre begins with the expansion of the English administration in Dublin during the early 17th century, and since then, Ireland has significantly contributed to English drama. In its early history, theatrical productions in Ireland tended to serve political purposes, but as more theatres opened and the popular audience grew, a more diverse range of entertainments were staged. Many Dublin-based theatres developed links with their London equivalents, and British productions frequently found their way to the Irish stage. However, most Irish playwrights went abroad to establish themselves. In the 18th century, Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan were two of the most successful playwrights on the London stage at that time. At the beginning of the 20th century, theatre companies dedicated to the staging of Irish plays and the development of writers, directors and performers began to emerge, which allowed many Irish playwrights to learn their trade and establish their reputations in Ireland rather than in Britain or the United States. Following in the tradition of acclaimed practitioners, principally Oscar Wilde, Literature Nobel Prize laureates George Bernard Shaw (1925) and Samuel Beckett (1969), playwrights such as Seán O'Casey, Brian Friel, Sebastian Barry, Brendan Behan, Conor McPherson and Billy Roche have gained popular success.[204] Other Irish playwrights of the 20th century include Denis Johnston, Thomas Kilroy, Tom Murphy, Hugh Leonard, Frank McGuinness, and John B. Keane.
187
+
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+ Irish traditional music has remained vibrant, despite globalising cultural forces, and retains many traditional aspects. It has influenced various music genres, such as American country and roots music, and to some extent modern rock. It has occasionally been blended with styles such as rock and roll and punk rock. Ireland has also produced many internationally known artists in other genres, such as rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Ireland's best selling musical act is the rock band U2, who have sold 170 million copies of their albums worldwide since their formation in 1976.[205]
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+ There are a number of classical music ensembles around the country, such as the RTÉ Performing Groups.[206] Ireland also has three opera organisations. Opera Ireland produces large-scale operas in Dublin, the Opera Theatre Company tours its chamber-style operas throughout the country, and the annual Wexford Opera Festival, which promotes lesser-known operas, takes place during October and November.
191
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+ Ireland has participated in the Eurovision Song Contest since 1965.[207] Its first win was in 1970, when Dana won with All Kinds of Everything.[208] It has subsequently won the competition six more times,[209][210] the highest number of wins by any competing country. The phenomenon Riverdance originated as an interval performance during the 1994 contest.[211]
193
+
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+ Irish dance can broadly be divided into social dance and performance dance. Irish social dance can be divided into céilí and set dancing. Irish set dances are quadrilles, danced by 4 couples arranged in a square, while céilí dances are danced by varied formations of couples of 2 to 16 people. There are also many stylistic differences between these two forms. Irish social dance is a living tradition, and variations in particular dances are found across the country. In some places dances are deliberately modified and new dances are choreographed. Performance dance is traditionally referred to as stepdance. Irish stepdance, popularised by the show Riverdance, is notable for its rapid leg movements, with the body and arms being kept largely stationary. The solo stepdance is generally characterised by a controlled but not rigid upper body, straight arms, and quick, precise movements of the feet. The solo dances can either be in "soft shoe" or "hard shoe".
195
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+ Ireland has a wealth of structures,[212] surviving in various states of preservation, from the Neolithic period, such as Brú na Bóinne, Poulnabrone dolmen, Castlestrange stone, Turoe stone, and Drombeg stone circle.[213] As the Romans never conquered Ireland, architecture of Greco-Roman origin is extremely rare. The country instead had an extended period of Iron Age architecture.[214] The Irish round tower originated during the Early Medieval period.
197
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+ Christianity introduced simple monastic houses, such as Clonmacnoise, Skellig Michael and Scattery Island. A stylistic similarity has been remarked between these double monasteries and those of the Copts of Egypt.[215] Gaelic kings and aristocrats occupied ringforts or crannógs.[216] Church reforms during the 12th century via the Cistercians stimulated continental influence, with the Romanesque styled Mellifont, Boyle and Tintern abbeys.[217] Gaelic settlement had been limited to the Monastic proto-towns, such as Kells, where the current street pattern preserves the original circular settlement outline to some extent.[218] Significant urban settlements only developed following the period of Viking invasions.[216] The major Hiberno-Norse Longphorts were located on the coast, but with minor inland fluvial settlements, such as the eponymous Longford.
199
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+ Castles were built by the Anglo-Normans during the late 12th century, such as Dublin Castle and Kilkenny Castle,[219] and the concept of the planned walled trading town was introduced, which gained legal status and several rights by grant of a Charter under Feudalism. These charters specifically governed the design of these towns.[220] Two significant waves of planned town formation followed, the first being the 16th- and 17th-century plantation towns, which were used as a mechanism for the Tudor English kings to suppress local insurgency, followed by 18th-century landlord towns.[221] Surviving Norman founded planned towns include Drogheda and Youghal; plantation towns include Portlaoise and Portarlington; well-preserved 18th-century planned towns include Westport and Ballinasloe. These episodes of planned settlement account for the majority of present-day towns throughout the country.
201
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+ Gothic cathedrals, such as St Patrick's, were also introduced by the Normans.[222] Franciscans were dominant in directing the abbeys by the Late Middle Ages, while elegant tower houses, such as Bunratty Castle, were built by the Gaelic and Norman aristocracy.[223] Many religious buildings were ruined with the Dissolution of the Monasteries.[224] Following the Restoration, palladianism and rococo, particularly country houses, swept through Ireland under the initiative of Edward Lovett Pearce, with the Houses of Parliament being the most significant.[225]
203
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+ With the erection of buildings such as The Custom House, Four Courts, General Post Office and King's Inns, the neoclassical and Georgian styles flourished, especially in Dublin.[225] Georgian townhouses produced streets of singular distinction, particularly in Dublin, Limerick and Cork. Following Catholic Emancipation, cathedrals and churches influenced by the French Gothic Revival emerged, such as St Colman's and St Finbarre's.[225] Ireland has long been associated with thatched roof cottages, though these are nowadays considered quaint.[226]
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+ Beginning with the American designed art deco church at Turner's Cross in 1927, Irish architecture followed the international trend towards modern and sleek building styles since the 20th century.[227] Other developments include the regeneration of Ballymun and an urban extension of Dublin at Adamstown.[228] Since the establishment of the Dublin Docklands Development Authority in 1997, the Dublin Docklands area underwent large-scale redevelopment, which included the construction of the Convention Centre Dublin and Grand Canal Theatre.[229] Completed in 2008, the Elysian tower in Cork is the tallest storeyed building in the Republic of Ireland (the Obel Tower in Belfast, Northern Ireland being the tallest in Ireland), at a height of 71 metres (233 feet), surpassing Cork County Hall. The Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland regulates the practice of architecture in the state.[230]
207
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208
+ Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) is Ireland's public service broadcaster, funded by a television licence fee and advertising.[231] RTÉ operates two national television channels, RTÉ One and RTÉ Two. The other independent national television channels are Virgin Media One, Virgin Media Two, Virgin Media Three and TG4, the latter of which is a public service broadcaster for speakers of the Irish language. All these channels are available on Saorview, the national free-to-air digital terrestrial television service.[232] Additional channels included in the service are RTÉ News Now, RTÉjr, and RTÉ One +1. Subscription-based television providers operating in Ireland include Virgin Media and Sky.
209
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+ Supported by the Irish Film Board, the Irish film industry grew significantly since the 1990s, with the promotion of indigenous films as well as the attraction of international productions like Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan.[233]
211
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+ A large number of regional and local radio stations are available countrywide. A survey showed that a consistent 85% of adults listen to a mixture of national, regional and local stations on a daily basis.[234] RTÉ Radio operates four national stations, Radio 1, 2fm, Lyric fm, and RnaG. It also operates four national DAB radio stations. There are two independent national stations: Today FM and Newstalk.
213
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+ Ireland has a traditionally competitive print media, which is divided into daily national newspapers and weekly regional newspapers, as well as national Sunday editions. The strength of the British press is a unique feature of the Irish print media scene, with the availability of a wide selection of British published newspapers and magazines.[233]
215
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+ Eurostat reported that 82% of Irish households had Internet access in 2013 compared to the EU average of 79% but only 67% had broadband access.[235]
217
+
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+ Irish cuisine was traditionally based on meat and dairy products, supplemented with vegetables and seafood.
219
+ Examples of popular Irish cuisine include boxty, colcannon, coddle, stew, and bacon and cabbage. Ireland is famous for the full Irish breakfast, which involves a fried or grilled meal generally consisting of rashers, egg, sausage, white and black pudding, and fried tomato. Apart from the influence by European and international dishes, there has been an emergence of a new Irish cuisine based on traditional ingredients handled in new ways.[citation needed] This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish, oysters, mussels and other shellfish, and the wide range of hand-made cheeses that are now being produced across the country. Shellfish have increased in popularity, especially due to the high quality shellfish available from the country's coastline. The most popular fish include salmon and cod. Traditional breads include soda bread and wheaten bread. Barmbrack is a yeasted bread with added sultanas and raisins, traditionally eaten on Halloween.[236]
220
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+ Popular everyday beverages among the Irish include tea and coffee. Alcoholic drinks associated with Ireland include Poitín and the world-famous Guinness, which is a dry stout that originated in the brewery of Arthur Guinness at St. James's Gate in Dublin. Irish whiskey is also popular throughout the country and comes in various forms, including single malt, single grain, and blended whiskey.[237]
222
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+ Gaelic football and hurling are the traditional sports of Ireland as well as most popular spectator sports.[238] They are administered by the Gaelic Athletics Association on an all-Ireland basis. Other Gaelic games organised by the association include Gaelic handball and rounders.[239]
224
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+ Soccer is the third most popular spectator sport and has the highest level of participation.[240] Although the League of Ireland is the national league, the English Premier League is the most popular among the public.[241] The Republic of Ireland national football team plays at international level and is administered by the Football Association of Ireland.[242]
226
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+ The Irish Rugby Football Union is the governing body of rugby union, which is played at local and international levels on an all-Ireland basis, and has produced players such as Brian O'Driscoll and Ronan O'Gara, who were on the team that won the Grand Slam in 2009.[243]
228
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+ The success of the Irish Cricket Team in the 2007 Cricket World Cup has led to an increase in the popularity of cricket, which is also administered on an all-Ireland basis by Cricket Ireland.[244] Ireland are one of the twelve Test playing members of the International Cricket Council, having been granted Test status in 2017. Professional domestic matches are played between the major cricket unions of Leinster, Munster, Northern, and North West.
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+ Netball is represented by the Ireland national netball team.
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+ Golf is another popular sport in Ireland, with over 300 courses countrywide.[245] The country has produced several internationally successful golfers, such as Pádraig Harrington, Shane Lowry and Paul McGinley.
234
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+ Horse Racing has a very large presence in Ireland, with one of the most influential breeding and racing operations based in the country. Racing takes place at courses at The Curragh Racecourse in County Kildare and at Leopardstown Racecourse, racing taking place since the 1860s, but racing taking place as early as the early 1700s. Popular race meetings also take place at Galway. Operations include Coolmore Stud and Ballydoyle, the base of Aidan O'Brien arguably one of the world's most successful horse trainers. Ireland has produced champion horses such as Galileo, Montjeu, and Sea the Stars.
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+ Boxing is Ireland's most successful sport at an Olympic level. Administered by the Irish Athletic Boxing Association on an all-Ireland basis, it has gained in popularity as a result of the international success of boxers such as Bernard Dunne, Andy Lee and Katie Taylor.
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+ Some of Ireland's highest performers in athletics have competed at the Olympic Games, such as Eamonn Coghlan and Sonia O'Sullivan. The annual Dublin Marathon and Dublin Women's Mini Marathon are two of the most popular athletics events in the country.[246]
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+
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+ Rugby league is represented by the Ireland national rugby league team and administered by Rugby League Ireland (who are full member of the Rugby League European Federation) on an all-Ireland basis. The team compete in the European Cup (rugby league) and the Rugby League World Cup. Ireland reached the quarter finals of the 2000 Rugby League World Cup as well as reaching the semi finals in the 2008 Rugby League World Cup.[247] The Irish Elite League is a domestic competition for rugby league teams in Ireland.[248]
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+ The profile of Australian rules football has increased in Ireland due to the International rules series that take place annually between Australia and Ireland. Baseball and basketball are also emerging sports in Ireland, both of which have an international team representing the island of Ireland. Other sports which retain a strong following in Ireland include cycling, greyhound racing, horse riding, motorsport, and softball.
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+ Ireland ranks fifth in the world in terms of gender equality.[249] In 2011, Ireland was ranked the most charitable country in Europe, and second most charitable in the world.[250] Contraception was controlled in Ireland until 1979, however, the receding influence of the Catholic Church has led to an increasingly secularised society.[251] A constitutional ban on divorce was lifted following a referendum in 1995. Divorce rates in Ireland are very low compared to European Union averages (0.7 divorced people per 1,000 population in 2011) while the marriage rate in Ireland is slightly above the European Union average (4.6 marriages per 1,000 population per year in 2012). Abortion had been banned throughout the period of the Irish state, first through provisions of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and later by the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013. The right to life of the unborn was protected in the constitution by the Eighth Amendment in 1983; this provision was removed following a referendum, and replaced it with a provision allowing legislation to regulate the termination of pregnancy. The Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 passed later that year provided for abortion generally during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and in specified circumstances after that date.[252]
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+ Capital punishment is constitutionally banned in Ireland, while discrimination based on age, gender, sexual orientation, marital or familial status, religion, race or membership of the travelling community is illegal. The legislation which outlawed homosexual acts was repealed in 1993.[253][254] The Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010 permitted civil partnerships between same-sex couples.[255][256][257] The Children and Family Relationships Act 2015 allowed for adoption rights for couples other than married couples, including civil partners and cohabitants, and provided for donor-assisted human reproduction; however, significant sections of the Act have yet to be commenced.[258] Following a referendum held on 23 May 2015, Ireland became the eighteenth country to provide in law for same-sex marriage, and the first to do so in a popular vote.[259]
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+ Ireland became the first country in the world to introduce an environmental levy for plastic shopping bags in 2002 and a public smoking ban in 2004. Recycling in Ireland is carried out extensively, and Ireland has the second highest rate of packaging recycling in the European Union. It was the first country in Europe to ban incandescent lightbulbs in 2008 and the first EU country to ban in-store tobacco advertising and product display in 2009.[260][261] In 2015 Ireland became the second country in the world to introduce plain cigarette packaging.[262] Despite the above measures to discourage tobacco use, smoking rates in Ireland remain above 20% of the adult population and above those in other developed countries.[263]
250
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251
+ The state shares many symbols with the island of Ireland. These include the colours green and blue, animals such as the Irish wolfhound and stags, structures such as round towers and celtic crosses, and designs such as Celtic knots and spirals. The shamrock, a type of clover, has been a national symbol of Ireland since the 17th century when it became customary to wear it as a symbol on St. Patrick's Day. These symbols are used by state institutions as well as private bodies in the Republic of Ireland.
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+ The flag of Ireland is a tricolour of green, white and orange. The flag originates with the Young Ireland movement of the mid-19th century but was not popularised until its use during the Easter Rising of 1916.[264] The colours represent the Gaelic tradition (green) and the followers of William of Orange in Ireland (orange), with white representing the aspiration for peace between them.[265] It was adopted as the flag of the Irish Free State in 1922 and continues to be used as the sole flag and ensign of the state. A naval jack, a green flag with a yellow harp, is set out in Defence Forces Regulations and flown from the bows of warships in addition to the national flag in limited circumstances (e.g. when a ship is not underway). It is based on the unofficial green ensign of Ireland used in the 18th and 19th centuries and the traditional green flag of Ireland dating from the 16th century.[266]
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+ Like the national flag, the national anthem, Amhrán na bhFiann (English: A Soldier's Song), has its roots in the Easter Rising, when the song was sung by the rebels. Although originally published in English in 1912,[267] the song was translated into Irish in 1923 and the Irish-language version is more commonly sung today.[267] The song was officially adopted as the anthem of the Irish Free State in 1926 and continues as the national anthem of the state.[268] The first four bars of the chorus followed by the last five comprise the presidential salute.
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+ The arms of Ireland originate as the arms of the monarchs of Ireland and was recorded as the arms of the King of Ireland in the 12th century. From the union of the crowns of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1603, they have appeared quartered on the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom. Today, they are the personal arms of the President of Ireland whilst he or she is in office and are flown as the presidential standard. The harp symbol is used extensively by the state to mark official documents, Irish coinage and on the seal of the President of Ireland.
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+ Iron Man is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was co-created by writer and editor Stan Lee, developed by scripter Larry Lieber, and designed by artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby. The character made his first appearance in Tales of Suspense #39 (cover dated March 1963), and received his own title in Iron Man #1 (May 1968).
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+ A wealthy American business magnate, playboy, and ingenious scientist, Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark suffers a severe chest injury during a kidnapping. When his captors attempt to force him to build a weapon of mass destruction, he instead creates a mechanized suit of armor to save his life and escape captivity. Later, Stark develops his suit, adding weapons and other technological devices he designed through his company, Stark Industries. He uses the suit and successive versions to protect the world as Iron Man. Although at first concealing his true identity, Stark eventually publicly reveals himself to be Iron Man.
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+ Initially, Iron Man was a vehicle for Stan Lee to explore Cold War themes, particularly the role of American technology and industry in the fight against communism. Subsequent re-imaginings of Iron Man have transitioned from Cold War motifs to contemporary matters of the time.[1]
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+ Throughout most of the character's publication history, Iron Man has been a founding member of the superhero team the Avengers and has been featured in several incarnations of his own various comic book series. Iron Man has been adapted for several animated TV shows and films. The Marvel Cinematic Universe character was portrayed by Robert Downey Jr. in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films Iron Man (2008), The Incredible Hulk (2008) in a cameo, Iron Man 2 (2010), The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) in archive footage, and will reprise his role in Black Widow (2020).
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+ Iron Man was ranked 12th on IGN's "Top 100 Comic Book Heroes" in 2011[2] and third in their list of "The Top 50 Avengers" in 2012.[3]
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+ Iron Man's Marvel Comics premiere in Tales of Suspense #39 (cover dated March 1963) was a collaboration among editor and story-plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, story-artist Don Heck, and cover-artist and character-designer Jack Kirby.[4] In 1963, Lee had been toying with the idea of a businessman superhero.[5] He wanted to create the "quintessential capitalist", a character that would go against the spirit of the times and Marvel's readership.[6] Lee said,
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+ I think I gave myself a dare. It was the height of the Cold War. The readers, the young readers, if there was one thing they hated, it was war, it was the military ... So I got a hero who represented that to the hundredth degree. He was a weapons manufacturer, he was providing weapons for the Army, he was rich, he was an industrialist ... I thought it would be fun to take the kind of character that nobody would like, none of our readers would like, and shove him down their throats and make them like him ... And he became very popular.[7]
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+ He set out to make the new character a wealthy, glamorous ladies' man, but one with a secret that would plague and torment him as well.[8] Writer Gerry Conway said, "Here you have this character, who on the outside is invulnerable, I mean, just can't be touched, but inside is a wounded figure. Stan made it very much an in-your-face wound, you know, his heart was broken, you know, literally broken. But there's a metaphor going on there. And that's, I think, what made that character interesting."[7] Lee based this playboy's looks and personality on Howard Hughes,[9] explaining, "Howard Hughes was one of the most colorful men of our time. He was an inventor, an adventurer, a multi-billionaire, a ladies' man and finally a nutcase."[10] "Without being crazy, he was Howard Hughes," Lee said.[7]
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+ While Lee intended to write the story himself,[11] a minor deadline emergency eventually forced him to hand over the premiere issue to Lieber, who fleshed out the story.[8] The art was split between Kirby and Heck. "He designed the costume," Heck said of Kirby, "because he was doing the cover. The covers were always done first. But I created the look of the characters, like Tony Stark and his secretary Pepper Potts."[12] In a 1990 interview, when asked if he had "a specific model for Tony Stark and the other characters?", Heck replied "No, I would be thinking more along the lines of some characters I like, which would be the same kind of characters that Alex Toth liked, which was an Errol Flynn type."[13] Iron Man first appeared in 13- to 18-page stories in Tales of Suspense, which featured anthology science fiction and supernatural stories. The character's original costume was a bulky gray armored suit, replaced by a golden version in the second story (issue #40, April 1963). It was redesigned as sleeker, red-and-golden armor in issue #48 (Dec. 1963) by that issue's interior artist, Steve Ditko, although Kirby drew it on the cover. As Heck recalled in 1985, "[T]he second costume, the red and yellow one, was designed by Steve Ditko. I found it easier than drawing that bulky old thing. The earlier design, the robot-looking one, was more Kirbyish."[14]
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+ In his premiere, Iron Man was an anti-communist hero, defeating various Vietnamese agents. Lee later regretted this early focus.[5][15] Throughout the character's comic book series, technological advancement and national defense were constant themes for Iron Man, but later issues developed Stark into a more complex and vulnerable character as they depicted his battle with alcoholism (as in the "Demon in a Bottle" storyline) and other personal difficulties.
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+ From issue #59 (Nov. 1964) to its final issue #99 (March 1968), the anthological science-fiction backup stories in Tales of Suspense were replaced by a feature starring the superhero Captain America. Lee and Heck introduced several adversaries for the character including the Mandarin in issue #50 (Feb. 1964),[16] the Black Widow in #52 (April 1964)[17] and Hawkeye five issues later.[18]
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+ Lee said that "of all the comic books we published at Marvel, we got more fan mail for Iron Man from women, from females, than any other title ... We didn't get much fan mail from girls, but whenever we did, the letter was usually addressed to Iron Man."[7]
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+ Lee and Kirby included Iron Man in The Avengers #1 (Sept. 1963) as a founding member of the superhero team. The character has since appeared in every subsequent volume of the series.
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+ Writers have updated the war and locale in which Stark is injured. In the original 1963 story, it was the Vietnam War. In the 1990s, it was updated to be the first Gulf War,[19] and in the 2000s updated again to be the war in Afghanistan. Stark's time with the Asian Nobel Prize-winning scientist Ho Yinsen is consistent through nearly all incarnations of the Iron Man origin, depicting Stark and Yinsen building the original armor together. One exception is the direct-to-DVD animated feature film The Invincible Iron Man, in which the armor Stark uses to escape his captors is not the first Iron Man suit.
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+ The original Iron Man title explored Cold War themes, as did other Stan Lee projects in the early years of Marvel Comics. Where The Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk respectively focused on American domestic and government responses to the Communist threat, Iron Man explored industry's role in the struggle. Tony Stark's real-life model, Howard Hughes, was a significant defense contractor who developed new weapons technologies. Hughes was an icon both of American individualism and of the burdens of fame.[20]
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+ Historian Robert Genter, in The Journal of Popular Culture, writes that Tony Stark specifically presents an idealized portrait of the American inventor. Where earlier decades had seen important technological innovations come from famous individuals (e.g., Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright brothers), the 1960s saw new technologies (including weapons) being developed mainly by the research teams of corporations. As a result, little room remained for the inventor who wanted credit for, and creative and economic control over, their own creations.
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+ Issues of entrepreneurial autonomy, government supervision of research, and ultimate loyalty figured prominently in early Iron Man stories—the same issues affecting American scientists and engineers of that era.[20] Tony Stark, writes Genter, is an inventor who finds motive in his emasculation as an autonomous creative individual. This blow is symbolized by his chest wound, inflicted at the moment he is forced to invent things for the purposes of others, instead of just himself. To Genter, Stark's transformation into Iron Man represents Stark's effort to reclaim his autonomy, and thus his manhood. The character's pursuit of women in bed or in battle, writes Genter, represents another aspect of this effort. The pattern finds parallels in other works of 1960s popular fiction by authors such as "Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond), Mickey Spillane (Mike Hammer), and Norman Mailer, who made unregulated sexuality a form of authenticity."[20]
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+ After issue #99 (March 1968), the Tales of Suspense series was renamed Captain America. An Iron Man story appeared in the one-shot comic Iron Man and Sub-Mariner (April 1968), before the "Golden Avenger"[21] made his solo debut with Iron Man #1 (May 1968).[22] The series' indicia gives its copyright title Iron Man, while the trademarked cover logo of most issues is The Invincible Iron Man.
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+ This initial series ended with issue #332 (Sept. 1996). Jim Lee, Scott Lobdell, and Jeph Loeb authored a second volume of the series which was drawn primarily by Whilce Portacio and Ryan Benjamin. This volume took place in a parallel universe[23] and ran 13 issues (Nov. 1996 – Nov. 1997).[24] Volume 3, whose first 25 issues were written by Kurt Busiek[25] and then by Busiek and Roger Stern, ran 89 issues (Feb. 1998 – Dec. 2004). Later writers included Joe Quesada, Frank Tieri, Mike Grell, and John Jackson Miller. Issue #41 (June 2001) was additionally numbered #386, reflecting the start of dual numbering starting from the premiere issue of volume one in 1968. The final issue was dual-numbered as #434.[26] The next Iron Man series, Iron Man vol. 4, debuted in early 2005 with the Warren Ellis-written storyline "Extremis", with artist Adi Granov.[27][28] It ran 35 issues (Jan. 2005 – Jan. 2009), with the cover logo simply Iron Man beginning with issue #13, and Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., beginning issue #15. On the final three issues, the cover logo was overwritten by "War Machine, Weapon of S.H.I.E.L.D.",[29] which led to the launch of a War Machine ongoing series.[30]
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+ The Invincible Iron Man vol. 1, by writer Matt Fraction and artist Salvador Larroca, began with a premiere issue cover-dated July 2008.[31] For a seven-month overlap, Marvel published both volume four and volume five simultaneously.[32] This Invincible volume jumped its numbering of issues from #33 to #500, cover dated March 2011, to reflect the start from the premiere issue of volume one in 1968.
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+ After the conclusion of The Invincible Iron Man a new Iron Man series was started as a part of Marvel Now!. Written by Kieron Gillen and illustrated by Greg Land, it began with issue #1 in November 2012.[33]
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+ Many Iron Man annuals, miniseries, and one-shot titles have been published through the years, such as Age of Innocence: The Rebirth of Iron Man (Feb. 1996), Iron Man: The Iron Age #1–2 (Aug.–Sept. 1998), Iron Man: Bad Blood #1–4 (Sept.–Dec. 2000), Iron Man House of M #1–3 (Sept.–Nov. 2005), Fantastic Four / Iron Man: Big in Japan #1–4 (Dec. 2005–March 2006), Iron Man: The Inevitable #1–6 (Feb.–July 2006), Iron Man / Captain America: Casualties of War (Feb. 2007), Iron Man: Hypervelocity #1–6 (March–Aug. 2007), Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin #1–6 (Nov. 2007–April 2008), and Iron Man: Legacy of Doom (June–Sept. 2008). Publications have included such spin-offs as the one-shot Iron Man 2020 (June 1994), featuring a different Iron Man in the future, and the animated TV series adaptations Marvel Action Hour, Featuring Iron Man #1–8 (Nov. 1994–June 1995) and Marvel Adventures Iron Man #1–12 (July 2007–June 2008).[34]
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+ Anthony Edward Stark is the son of wealthy industrialist and head of Stark Industries, Howard Stark, and Maria Stark. A boy genius, he enters MIT at the age of 15 to study engineering and later receives master's degrees in engineering and physics. After his parents are killed in a car accident, he inherits his father's company.
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+ Stark is injured by a booby trap and captured by enemy forces led by Wong-Chu. Wong-Chu orders Stark to build weapons, but Stark's injuries are dire and shrapnel is moving towards his heart. His fellow prisoner, Ho Yinsen, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose work Stark had greatly admired during college, constructs a magnetic chest plate to keep the shrapnel from reaching Stark's heart. In secret, Stark and Yinsen use the workshop to design and construct a suit of powered armor, which Stark uses to escape. During the escape attempt, Yinsen sacrifices his life to save Stark's by distracting the enemy as Stark recharges. Stark takes revenge on his kidnappers and rejoins the American forces, on his way meeting a wounded American Marine fighter pilot, James "Rhodey" Rhodes.
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+ Back home, Stark discovers that the shrapnel fragment lodged in his chest cannot be removed without killing him, and he is forced to wear the armor's chestplate beneath his clothes to act as a regulator for his heart. He must recharge the chestplate every day or else risk the shrapnel killing him. The cover story that Stark tells the news media and general public is that Iron Man is his robotic personal bodyguard, and corporate mascot. To that end, Iron Man fights threats to his company (e.g., Communist opponents Black Widow, the Crimson Dynamo, and the Titanium Man), as well as independent villains like the Mandarin (who becomes his greatest enemy). No one suspects Stark of being Iron Man, as he cultivates a strong public image of being a rich playboy and industrialist. Two notable members of the series' supporting cast, at this point, are his personal chauffeur Harold "Happy" Hogan, and secretary Virginia "Pepper" Potts—to both of whom he eventually reveals his dual identity. Meanwhile, James Rhodes finds his own niche as Stark's personal pilot, ultimately revealing himself to be a man of extraordinary skill and daring in his own right.
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+ The series took an anti-Communist stance in its early years, which was softened as public (and therefore, presumably, reader) opposition rose to the Vietnam War.[5] This change evolved in a series of storylines featuring Stark reconsidering his political opinions, and the morality of manufacturing weapons for the U.S. military. Stark shows himself to be occasionally arrogant, and willing to act unethically in order to 'let the ends justify the means'.[35][36] This leads to personal conflicts with the people around him, both in his civilian and superhero identities. Stark uses his vast personal fortune not only to outfit his own armor, but also to develop weapons for S.H.I.E.L.D.; other technologies (e.g., Quinjets used by the Avengers); and the image inducers used by the X-Men. Eventually, Stark's heart condition is resolved with an artificial heart transplant.[37]
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+ Stark expands on his armor designs and begins to build his arsenal of specialized armors for particular situations such as for space travel[38] and stealth.[39][40] Stark also develops a serious dependency on alcohol in the "Demon in a Bottle" storyline.[41] The first time it becomes a problem is when Stark discovers that the national security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. has been buying a controlling interest in his company in order to ensure Stark's continued weapons development for them. At the same time, it is revealed that several minor supervillains armed with advanced weapons who had bedeviled Stark throughout his superhero career are in fact in the employ of Stark's business rival, Justin Hammer, who begins to plague Stark more directly.[42][43] At one point in Hammer's manipulations, the Iron Man armor is taken over and used to murder a diplomat.[43] Although Iron Man is not immediately under suspicion, Stark is forced to hand the armor over to the authorities.[44] Eventually Stark and Rhodes, who is now his personal pilot and confidant, track down and defeat those responsible, although Hammer would return to bedevil Stark again.[38][45] With the support of his then-girlfriend, Bethany Cabe, his friends and his employees, Stark pulls through these crises and overcomes his dependency on alcohol.[46] Even as he recovers from this harrowing personal trial, Stark's life is further complicated when he has a confrontation with Doctor Doom that is interrupted by an opportunistic enemy sending them back in time to the time of King Arthur.[47] Once there, Iron Man thwarts Doom's attempt to solicit the aid of Morgan Le Fay, and the Latverian ruler swears deadly vengeance—to be indulged sometime after the two return to their own time.[48] This incident was collected and published as Doomquest.
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+ Some time later, a ruthless rival, Obadiah Stane, manipulates Stark emotionally into a serious relapse. As a result, Stark loses control of Stark International to Stane, becomes a homeless alcoholic vagrant and gives up his armored identity to Rhodes, who becomes the new Iron Man. Eventually, Stark recovers and joins a new startup, Circuits Maximus. Stark concentrates on new technological designs, including building a new set of armor as part of his recuperative therapy. Rhodes continues to act as Iron Man but steadily grows more aggressive and paranoid, due to the armor not having been calibrated properly for his use. Eventually Rhodes goes on a rampage, and Stark has to don a replica of his original armor to stop him. Fully recovered, Stark confronts Stane who has himself designed armor based on designs seized along with Stark International, dubbing himself the 'Iron Monger'. Defeated in battle, Stane, rather than give Stark the satisfaction of taking him to trial, commits suicide.[49] Shortly thereafter, Stark regains his personal fortune, but decides against repurchasing Stark International until much later; he instead creates Stark Enterprises, headquartered in Los Angeles.
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+ In an attempt to stop other people from misusing his designs, Stark goes about disabling other armored heroes and villains who are using suits based on the Iron Man technology, the designs of which were stolen by his enemy Spymaster. His quest to destroy the stolen technology—originally called "Stark Wars" but is more commonly known as the "Armor Wars"—severely hurts his reputation as Iron Man. After attacking and disabling a series of minor villains such as Stilt-Man, he attacks and defeats the government operative known as Stingray. The situation worsens when Stark realizes that Stingray's armor does not incorporate any of his designs. He publicly "fires" Iron Man while covertly pursuing his agenda. He uses the cover story of wanting to help disable the rogue Iron Man to infiltrate and disable the armor of the S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives known as the Mandroids, as well as the armor of the Guardsmen. In the process, Iron Man and Jim Rhodes allow some of the villains in the Vault to escape. This leads the United States government to declare Iron Man a danger and an outlaw, and severely sours Stark's relationship with Steve Rogers (Captain America, who was in his "Captain" persona at the time). Iron Man travels to Russia where he inadvertently causes the death of the Soviet Titanium Man during a fight. Returning to the U.S., he faces an enemy commissioned by the government named Firepower. Unable to defeat him head on, Stark fakes Iron Man's demise,[50] intending to retire the suit permanently. When Firepower goes rogue, Stark creates a new suit, claiming a new person is in the armor.
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+ Soon after, Stark is nearly killed by Kathy Dare, a mentally unbalanced former lover. She shoots him dead center in his torso which injures his spine, paralyzing him.[51] Stark undergoes special surgery to have a nerve chip implanted into his spine to regain his mobility.[52] Unbeknownst to the industrialist, the nerve chip is a clandestine means by which to gain control over his body. Rival businessmen the Marrs Twins and their cohort Kearson DeWitt are behind the machinations in what came to be known as "Armor Wars II."[53] After several successful tests by DeWitt at manipulating Stark, Tony finds that using his Encephalo Armor can counteract DeWitt's controls.[54] In response, DeWitt suddenly releases his control resulting in excruciating agony throughout Stark's body.[55] The constant "battle" for control of Stark's nervous system and subsequent abdication on DeWitt's end lead to massive nerve damage throughout Tony's body. Stark's nervous system continues its slide towards failure, and he constructs a "skin" made up of artificial nerve circuitry to assist it.[56] Stark begins to pilot a remote-controlled Iron Man armor, but when faced with the Masters of Silence, the telepresence suit proves inadequate.[57] Stark designs a more heavily armed version of the suit to wear, the "Variable Threat Response Battle Suit", which becomes known as the War Machine armor. Ultimately, the damage to his nervous system becomes too extensive. Faking his death, Stark places himself in suspended animation to heal as Rhodes takes over both the running of Stark Enterprises and the mantle of Iron Man, although he uses the War Machine armor.[58] Stark eventually makes a full recovery by using a chip to create an entirely new (artificial) nervous system, and resumes as Iron Man in a new Telepresence Armor.[59] When Rhodes learns that Stark has manipulated his friends by faking his own death, he becomes enraged and the two friends part ways. Rhodes continues on as War Machine in a solo career.
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+ The Avengers story arc "The Crossing" reveals Iron Man as a traitor among the team's ranks, due to years of manipulation by the time-traveling dictator Kang the Conqueror. Stark, as a sleeper agent in Kang's thrall, kills Marilla, the nanny of Crystal and Quicksilver's daughter Luna, as well as Rita DeMara, the female Yellowjacket, then Amanda Chaney, an ally of the Avengers. The "Avengers Forever" limited series retcons these events as the work of a disguised Immortus, not Kang, and that the mental control had gone back only a few months.[60]
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+ Needing help to defeat both Stark and Kang, the team travels back in time to recruit a teenaged Anthony Stark from an alternate timeline to assist them. The young Stark steals an Iron Man suit in order to aid the Avengers against his older self. The sight of his younger self shocks the older Stark enough for him to regain momentary control of his actions, and he sacrifices his life to stop Kang.[61] The young Stark later builds his own suit to become the new Iron Man and remains in the present day.
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+ During the battle with the creature called Onslaught, the teenage Stark dies, along with many other superheroes. Franklin Richards preserves these "dead" heroes in the "Heroes Reborn" pocket universe, in which Stark is once again an adult hero; Franklin recreates the heroes in the pocket universe in the forms he is most familiar with rather than what they are at the present. The reborn adult Stark, upon returning to the normal Marvel Universe, merges with the original Stark, who had died during "The Crossing", but was resurrected by Franklin Richards. This new Anthony Stark possesses the memories of both the original and teenage Anthony Stark, and thus considers himself to be essentially both of them. With the aid of the law firm Nelson & Murdock, he regains his fortune and, with Stark Enterprises having been sold to the Fujikawa Corporation following Stark's death, sets up a new company, Stark Solutions. He returns from the pocket universe with a restored and healthy heart. After the Avengers reform, Stark demands a hearing be convened to look into his actions just prior to the Onslaught incident. Cleared of wrongdoing, he rejoins the Avengers.[62]
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+ At one point, Stark's armor becomes sentient despite fail-safes to prevent its increasingly sophisticated computer systems from doing so.[63] Initially, Stark welcomes this "living" armor for its improved tactical abilities. The armor begins to grow more aggressive, killing indiscriminately and eventually desiring to replace Stark altogether. In the final confrontation on a desert island, Stark suffers another heart attack. The armor sacrifices its own existence to save its creator's life, giving up essential components to give Stark a new, artificial heart. This new heart solves Stark's health problems, but it does not have an internal power supply, so Stark becomes once again dependent on periodic recharging. The sentient armor incident so disturbs Stark that he temporarily returns to using an unsophisticated early model version of his armor to avoid a repeat incident.[64] He dabbles with using liquid metal circuitry known as S.K.I.N. that forms into a protective shell around his body, but eventually returns to more conventional hard metal armors.[65]
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+ During this time, Stark engages in a romance with Rumiko Fujikawa,[66] a wealthy heiress and daughter of the man who had taken over his company during the "Heroes Reborn" period. Her relationship with Stark endures many highs and lows, including infidelity with Stark's rival, Tiberius Stone, in part because the fun-loving Rumiko believes that Stark is too serious and dull. Their relationship ends with Rumiko's death at the hands of an Iron Man impostor in Iron Man (vol. 3) #87.
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+ In Iron Man (vol. 3) #55 (July 2002), Stark publicly reveals his dual identity as Iron Man, not realizing that by doing so, he has invalidated the agreements protecting his armor from government duplication, since those contracts state that the Iron Man armor would be used by an employee of Tony Stark, not by Stark himself. When he discovers that the United States military is again using his technology, and its defective nature nearly causes a disaster in Washington, D.C. which Iron Man barely manages to avert, Stark accepts a Presidential appointment as Secretary of Defense. In this way, he hopes to monitor and direct how his designs are used.[67]
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+ In the "Avengers Disassembled" storyline, Stark is forced to resign after launching into a tirade against the Latverian ambassador at the United Nations, being manipulated by the mentally imbalanced Scarlet Witch, who destroys Avengers Mansion and kills several members. Stark publicly stands down as Iron Man, but continues using the costume. He joins the Avengers in stopping the breakout in progress from the Raft and even saves Captain America from falling.[68] Tony changes the Avengers base to Stark Tower.[69] The Ghost, the Living Laser and Spymaster reappear and shift Iron Man from standard superhero stories to dealing with politics and industrialism.[70]
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+ New Avengers: Illuminati #1 (June 2006) reveals that years before, Stark had participated with a secret group that included the Black Panther, Professor X, Mister Fantastic, Black Bolt, Doctor Strange, and Namor. The goal of the group (dubbed the Illuminati by Marvel) was to strategize overarching menaces, in which the Black Panther rejects a membership offer. Stark's goal is to create a governing body for all superheroes in the world, but the beliefs of its members instead force them all to share vital information.
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+ In the "Civil War" storyline, after the actions of inexperienced superheroes the New Warriors result in the destruction of several city blocks in Stamford, Connecticut, there is an outcry across America against superhumans. Learning of the Government's proposed plans, Tony Stark suggests a new plan to instigate a Superhuman Registration Act. The Act would force every superpowered individual in the U.S. to register their identity with the government and act as licensed agents. The Act would force inexperienced superhumans to receive training in how to use and control their abilities, something in which Tony strongly believes. Since his struggle with alcoholism, Stark has carried a tremendous burden of guilt after nearly killing an innocent bystander while piloting the armor drunk. While Reed Richards and Dr. Henry "Hank" Pym both agree with Stark's proposal, not everyone does. After Captain America is ordered to bring in anyone who refuses to register, he and other anti-registration superheroes go rogue, coming into conflict with the pro-registration heroes, led by Iron Man. The war ends when Captain America surrenders to prevent further collateral damage and civilian casualties, although he had defeated Stark by defusing his armor. Stark is appointed the new director of S.H.I.E.L.D.,[71] and organizes a new government-sanctioned group of Avengers. Shortly afterwards, Captain America is assassinated while in custody.[72] This leaves Stark with a great amount of guilt and misgivings about the cost of his victory.[73]
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+ To tie into the 2008 Iron Man feature film, Marvel launched a new Iron Man ongoing series, The Invincible Iron Man, with writer Matt Fraction and artist Salvador Larroca. The series inaugural six-part storyline was "The Five Nightmares", which saw Stark targeted by Ezekiel Stane, the son of Stark's former nemesis, Obadiah Stane.[74]
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+ In the "Secret Invasion" storyline, after Tony Stark survives an attempt by Ultron to take over his body, he is confronted in the hospital by Spider-Woman, holding the corpse of a Skrull posing as Elektra. Realizing this is the start of an invasion by the Skrulls, Tony reveals the corpse to the Illuminati and declares that they are at war. After Black Bolt reveals himself as a Skrull and is killed by Namor, a squadron of Skrulls attack, forcing Tony to evacuate the other Illuminati members and destroy the area, killing all the Skrulls. Realizing that they are incapable of trusting each other, the members all separate to form individual plans for the oncoming invasion.[75]
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+ Stark is discredited and publicly vilified after his inability to anticipate or prevent the secret infiltration and invasion of Earth by the Skrulls, and by the Skrull disabling of his StarkTech technology, which had a virtual monopoly on worldwide defense.[76] After the invasion, the U.S. government removes him as head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and disbands the Avengers, handing control of the Initiative over to Norman Osborn.
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+ With his Extremis powers failing, Stark uploads a virus to destroy all records of the Registration Act, thus preventing Osborn from learning the identities of his fellow heroes and anything that Osborn could use, including his repulsor generators. The only copy of the database is in Stark's brain, which he tries to delete while on the run from Osborn.[77] Stark goes so far as to inflict brain damage on himself in order to ensure that the relevant information is wiped. When Osborn catches up to the debilitated Stark and beats him savagely, Pepper Potts broadcasts the beatings worldwide, costing Osborn credibility and giving Stark public sympathy. Stark goes into a vegetative state, having previously granted Donald Blake (alter ego of the superhero Thor) power of attorney.[78] A holographic message stored in Pepper's armor reveals that Stark had developed a means of 'rebooting' his mind from his current state prior to his destruction of the database, with Blake and Bucky resolving to use it to restore him to normal. Meanwhile, Stark is trapped in his subconscious, where figments of his own mind prevent him from returning to the waking world. When the procedure fails to work, Bucky calls in Doctor Strange, who succeeds in restoring Stark back to consciousness. The backup Stark created was made prior to the Civil War, and as such he does not remember anything that took place during the event, although he still concludes after reviewing his past actions that he would not have done anything differently. His brain damage means he is now dependent on an arc reactor to sustain his body's autonomous functions.[79]
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+ In the "Siege" storyline, Tony Stark is seen under the care of Dr. Donald Blake and Maria Hill when Asgard is attacked.[80] Thor is ambushed by Osborn and the Sentry, but rescued by Hill. Osborn declares martial law and unleashes Daken and the Sentry on Broxton to root out Thor and Hill. Hill returns to Stark's hiding place to move him to a safer location and are joined by Speed of the Young Avengers, who has a set of Iron Man's MK III armor that Edwin Jarvis had given Captain America. While Osborn is battling the New Avengers, Stark appears and disables Osborn's Iron Patriot armor. Osborn orders the Sentry to annihilate Asgard, rather than allow the Avengers to have it. After Asgard falls, Stark stands alongside his fellow heroes, as Osborn exclaims they are all doomed and he 'was saving them from him' pointing up towards a Void-possessed Sentry.[81] As the Void tears apart the teams, Loki gives them the power to fight back through the Norn Stones. The Void kills Loki, enraging Thor. Tony tells Thor to get the Void away from Asgard, which allows Tony to drop a commandeered H.A.M.M.E.R. Helicarrier on the Void. Thor is forced to killed Sentry when the Void resurfaces. Sometime later, the Super-Human Registration Act is repealed and Tony is given back his company and armor. As a symbol for their heroics and their new unity, Thor places an Asgardian tower on Stark Tower where the Watchtower once stood.[82]
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+ In the 2010–2011 "Stark: Resilient" storyline, Tony builds the Bleeding Edge armor with the help of Mister Fantastic. This new armor fully uses the repulsor tech battery embedded in his chest to power Tony's entire body and mind, thus allowing him access to Extremis once more. Furthermore, the battery operates as his "heart" and is the only thing keeping him alive.[83] Tony announces he will form a new company, Stark Resilient. He states that he will no longer develop weapons, but will use his repulsor technology to give free energy to the world. Justine and Sasha Hammer create their own armored hero, Detroit Steel, to take Stark's place as the Army's leading weapons-builder. Stark's plan consists of building two repulsor-powered cars. The Hammers try to foil his efforts. The first car is destroyed by sabotage, while Detroit Steel attacks Stark Resilient's facilities while Tony tests the second car. Through a legal maneuver, Tony is able to get the Hammers to stop their attacks and releases a successful commercial about his new car.[84][85]
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+ In the 2011 "Fear Itself" storyline, Earth is attacked by the Serpent, the God of Fear and the long-forgotten brother of Odin.[86] In Paris, Iron Man fights Grey Gargoyle, who has become Mokk, Breaker of Faith, one of the Serpent's Worthy. Mokk leaves Iron Man unconscious and transforms Detroit Steel and the citizens of Paris into stone.[87][88] To defeat the Serpent's army, Tony drinks a bottle of wine (thus 'sacrificing' his sobriety) to gain an audience with Odin, who allows Tony to enter the realm of Svartalfheim. Tony and the dwarves of Svartalfheim build enchanted weapons.[89] Tony upgrades his armor with uru-infused enchantments and delivers the finished weapons to the Avengers, who use them for the final battle against the Serpent's forces. Iron Man watches as Thor kills the Serpent, but dies in the process. After the battle is over, Tony melts down the weapons he created and repairs Captain America's shield, which had been broken by Serpent, and gives it back to Captain America.[90] During a subsequent argument with Odin about the gods' lack of involvement in the recent crisis, Odin gives Tony a brief opportunity to see the vastness of the universe the way he sees it. As thanks for Tony's role in the recent crisis, Odin restores all the people that the Grey Gargoyle killed during his rampage.[91]
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+ In the storylines "Demon" and "The Long Way Down", Stark is subpoenaed by the U.S. government after evidence surfaces of him using the Iron Man armor while under the influence. Mandarin and Zeke Stane upgrade some of Iron Man's old enemies and send them to commit acts of terrorism across the world, intending to discredit Iron Man. General Bruce Babbage forces Stark to wear a tech governor, a device that allows Babbage to deactivate Stark's armor whenever he wants. To fight back, Tony undergoes a surgical procedure that expels the Bleeding Edge technology out of his body and replaces his repulsor node with a new model, forcing Babbage to remove the tech governor off his chest. He announces his retirement as Iron Man, faking Rhodes' death and giving him a new armor so that he becomes the new Iron Man.[92] This leads into the next storyline, "The Future", in which the Mandarin takes control of Stark's mind and uses him to create new armored bodies for the alien spirits inhabiting his rings, but Stark allies himself with some of his old enemies, who have also been imprisoned by Mandarin, and manages to defeat him. The final issue of this storyline concluded Matt Fraction's series.[93]
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+ In the ongoing series that premiered in 2012 as part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch, Tony Stark has hit a technological ceiling. After the death of Dr. Maya Hansen and the destruction of all of the Extremis Version 2 kits that were being sold to the black market, Tony decides that the Earth is not safe without him learning more from what's in the final frontier. He takes his new suit, enhanced with an artificial intelligence named P.E.P.P.E.R. and joins Peter Quill and The Guardians of the Galaxy after helping them thwart a Badoon attack on Earth.[94]
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+ Tony Stark's personality is inverted during the events of AXIS, bringing out more dark aspects of himself like irresponsibility, egotism and alcoholism.[95] Stark relocates to San Francisco and builds a new, all-white armor. He supplies the citizens of San Francisco with the Extremis 3.0 app, a version of the techno-virus that offers beauty, health or even immortality, free.[96] When every person in the city viewed Iron Man as a messiah for making their dreams come true, he ended the free trial mode and started charging a daily fee of $99.99, causing many to resort to crime to pay for the upgrade.[97] Daredevil confronts Stark at his new Alcatraz Island penthouse, but is easily brushed off.[98] Iron Man uses Extremis 3.0 to temporarily restore Daredevil's sight, just to prove his point.[99] Daredevil deduces that Stark had added Extremis to the water supply and the phones only transmit an activation signal, but Stark subjects Murdock to minor brain damage to prevent him from sharing this revelation with others.[100]
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+ After discovering that new villain Teen Abomination is the son of Happy Hogan, Stark decides to help him,[101] but this minor act of redemption is too late for Pepper Potts, who attacks Stark with the aid of an A.I. based on Stark's mind.[102] This culminates in a confrontation between the two Starks, as Stark calls on the unwitting aid of all 'infected' with the Extremis upgrade while the A.I. uses Stark's various old armors to attack him.[103] Although Stark technically wins the battle as he destroys his other armors and deletes the A.I. backup, Pepper states that she plans to reveal the truth about his goals with Extremis, bluntly informing him that if he continues his Extremis upgrade project, he will have to do it alone, accepting his fate of being regarded as a monster by all who know him.[104]
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+ During the "Time Runs Out" storyline, an attempt at reclaiming Wakanda from the Cabal that Namor had created to destroy incursive Earths results in Tony being held captive in the Necropolis.[105] After the Cabal are apparently killed, the Illuminati free Tony, who is forced to flee due to the Illuminati's unwillingness to let Stark be there with them when they meet Rogers and the Avengers. When the Shi'ar and their allies arrive to destroy Earth, the Avengers and the Illuminati unsuccessfully try to retaliate. Iron Man uses Sol's Hammer to destroy the fleet.[106] The incursions continue, and Rogers confronts Stark about what he knows. A fight ensues between them and Stark admits that he had lied and had known about the incursions all along. During the final incursion, Earth-1610's S.H.I.E.L.D. launches a full-scale attack on Earth-616, during which Stark and Rogers are crushed by a Helicarrier.[107]
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+ After the events of the Secret Wars crossover, Stark returns to his normal self with no signs of his inverted personality. Eight months following the return of the universe as seen in the "All-New, All-Different Marvel" event, Tony works in his laboratory non-stop after his position as an innovator had been put in doubt. Because an M.I.T. student reverse-engineered some of his technology, Stark develops a new armor which can change shape according to the situation he would find himself. When Stark's new A.I. F.R.I.D.A.Y. informs him that Madame Masque has broken into the ruins of Castle Doom, he travels to Latveria to invfestigate and runs into some revolutionaries who are then defeated by a man in a suit. To his amazement, Iron Man's armor computer identifies him as Doctor Doom with his face restored. Doctor Doom claims that he wanted to help Iron Man.[108]
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+ After learning from Doctor Doom that Madame Masque has taken a decoy of the Wand of Watoomb, Tony Stark confronts Madame Masque. Upon learning that Madame Masque is not allied with Doctor Doom, Tony is attacked by her with a burst of energy that damages his armor.[109] F.R.I.D.A.Y. manages to gain control of the suit and takes Tony to a safe location. Iron Man tracks Madame Masque to Marina del Rey. After finding a tape recorder with her messages, Tony is attacked by several black silhouettes with swords.[110]
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+ Iron Man escapes the ninjas that are attacking him and manages to defeat most of them, but they kill themselves before he can interrogate any of them. Iron Man and Doctor Doom arrive at Mary Jane Watson's newest Chicago night club Jackpot when Madame Masque attacks it.[111] As Mary Jane distracts Madame Masque by knocking off her mask, Iron Man and Doctor Doom discover that Madame Masque is possessed by a demon. Doctor Doom is able to perform an exorcism on her.[volume & issue needed]
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+ Doctor Strange arrives and tells Iron Man he will take Madame Masque with him to fix her metaphysically and then hand her over at S.H.I.E.L.D. Iron Man also informs him of Doctor Doom's help who had left the scene some time ago. Three days later, Iron Man offers Mary Jane a job to make up for the damage to her nightclub.[112] After speaking with War Machine, Tony Stark meets up at a diner with Amara Perera when they are unexpectedly joined by Doctor Doom who wanted to make sure that the demonic possession that affected Madame Masque has not affected Stark or Amara.[113] Stark shows Mary Jane the demonstration on the people that he will be working with. They are interrupted by F.R.I.D.A.Y. who tells Tony that War Machine is missing.[volume & issue needed] Before heading to Tokyo, Tony receives from Mary Jane the emergency number for Peter Parker. In Tokyo, Iron Man is contacted by Spider-Man at War Machine's last known location as he is being observed by ninjas.[114]
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+ During the Civil War II storyline, Iron Man protests the logic of using precognitive powers to stop future crimes after the recently emerged Inhuman Ulysses predicted Thanos's attack on Project Pegasus. Three weeks later, Iron Man is summoned to the Triskelion after War Machine is killed in battle against Thanos. When Iron Man learns that War Machine and the Ultimates used Ulysses' power to ambush Thanos, he vows to stop anyone from using that power again.[115] Iron Man infiltrates New Attilan and makes off with Ulysses. At Stark Tower, Iron Man vows to find out how Ulysses' precognition works. The Inhumans attack Stark Tower but are stopped by the Avengers, the Ultimates, and S.H.I.E.L.D. During the confrontation, Ulysses has another vision which he projects to Iron Man and everyone present, showing a rampaging Hulk standing over the corpses of the defeated superheroes.[116] The heroes confront Banner, who is killed by Hawkeye. Barton claims that Banner was about to transform and Banner had previously asked Hawkeye to kill him if he should turn back into the Hulk. Tony is disgusted at this use of Ulysses' power. When his analysis of Ulysses brain is completed,[117] Tony reveals that Ulysses does not actually see the future, but simply assembles large quantities of data to project likely outcomes. While Danvers continues to use the visions as a resource, Tony objects to the concept of profiling people. This results in a stand-off when Tony's side abducts a woman from custody after Ulysses' visions identified her as a deep-cover HYDRA agent, despite the lack of supporting evidence.[118]
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+ Iron Man learns that his biological mother was actually Amanda Armstrong, who had given him up for adoption and that his biological father was a Hydra double agent named Jude. S.H.I.E.L.D. had Armstrong's baby adopted by Howard and Maria Stark.[119]
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+ In July 2016, it was announced that Tony Stark would hand off the mantle of Iron Man to a 15-year-old girl named Riri Williams. Riri is an MIT student who built her own Iron Man suit out of scrap pieces and, as such, attracted Stark's attention. Early depictions of Williams' suit depict it without the Arc Reactor, but leaves the power source for the suit unclear.[120] Another Iron Man-based series titled Infamous Iron Man debuted featuring Doctor Doom sporting his version of the Iron Man armor.[121] This is revealed to be the result of serious injuries sustained by Stark during his final confrontation with Captain Marvel. Danvers' beating leaves Stark in a coma, but he is left alive due to unspecified experiments Stark has carried out on himself over the years.[122]
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+ Following the revelation that Stark experimented on himself at the end of Civil War II, Beast concludes that the only option is to let the experiments do their job in healing Tony and recover on his own.[volume & issue needed] In Invincible Iron Man #1, an employee of Stark sends Riri Williams an artificial intelligence housing a copy of Tony Stark's consciousness to help her control and mentor in her own version of the Iron Man armor. This A.I. is directly copied from Tony's brain, granting sentience, with Williams commenting on Stark existing as a "techno-ghost". As an A.I., Stark can walk around as a hard-light object and gains the ability to remote control his vast armory of Iron Man suits.[volume & issue needed] In The Mighty Captain Marvel #3, the Tony Stark A.I. goes to Antarctica and visits Captain Marvel with the intent on settling their differences from the Second Civil War, she apologizes to him for her regrets, reconciles with him eventually and they become allies once more. Then in Secret Empire, the Tony Stark A.I. suits up as Iron Man once again and learns of Captain America's betrayal to Hydra and how he ended up like this. As Hydra tightens its grip across America, the Tony Stark A.I. leads a team known as the Underground to find the Cosmic Cubes to restore Rogers to his normal self. When things start to escalate, Tony and his crew go rogue and in search for answers for the Cube. As Iron Man and the Underground search for them they are intercepted by Captain America and his Hydra team. With both teams encountering each other, they are captured by the Ultron/Hank Pym hybrid, who forces both teams to sit at a dinner table. During "dinner", Ultron reveals information about the Hydra Avengers - such as Odinson working with Hydra to reclaim Mjolnir, Scarlet Witch being possessed by Chthon, and Vision being affected by an A.I. virus. Ultron argues that he is doing this because the Avengers have become less of a family over the years as so many of them jump to obey Captain America or Iron Man, despite past experience confirming that this is not always a good idea, but Tony counters that the only reason the team failed as a family was because of Hank's abuse towards Wasp. Enraged, Ultron is about to kill everyone, but Ant-Man is able to calm him down by arguing that Hank remains his own inspiration. Ultron allows the Underground to leave with the fragment, arguing that neither side should have an advantage over the other. Back in America, Hydra Supreme has put Namor in a position where he will be forced to sign a peace treaty that gives Rogers access to the Cosmic Cube fragment in Atlantis, but Hydra Supreme muses that he is unconcerned about who will acquire the fragments, as he has an inside man in the Underground. After the Mount was attacked by Thor and the resurrected Hulk led by Hydra, the Underground evacuated the civilians thanks to Hawkeye and the rest of the heroes. Captain America and Iron Man fight as the Mount collapses around them. The Tony Stark A.I. initiates the Mount's "Clean Slate Protocol", and blows up the Mount, killing Madame Hydra, then apologizes to Steve Rogers about their past differences, but the A.I survives and, in the aftermath, helps the heroes pull the pieces back together to take down Hydra. When Iron Man confronts Hydra Supreme, he and the other heroes are easily overpowered by him and watch the original Captain America defeat his Hydra self and into celebrating their victory.[123]
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+ Mary Jane Watson and other Stark employees find that Stark's body has completely vanished from its pod, despite tests taken mere hours ago showing no sign of improvement or brain activity.[volume & issue needed][124] It was discovered that Tony Stark's comatose body was taken to the Stark Industries Complex in Dover.[125] Upon awakening when his biological systems rebooted, Tony Stark went into hiding until he fully recovered.[126] Wanting to make sure that James Rhodes was in a similar state that he was in, Tony Stark exhumed his body from Arlington Cemetery and kick-started the biological systems in him. Afterwards, Iron Man and War Machine fought Hood to keep Stark Industries from falling into Hood's hands where he switched to a version of his Extremis armor. Then he proceeded to defeat Jude when he turned up alive.[127]
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+ During "The Ultron Agenda" arc, Iron Man went up against the Ultron/Hank Pym who begun a plan to merge humans with robots while taking up the name "Ultron Pym." Iron Man was briefly fused with his armor. After using Stark Unlimited's atomic separator on himself, Iron Man figured out that Hank Pym was dead the moment he accidentally fused with Ultron. Not wanting to prove Tony right, Ultron Pym surrendered to Iron Man and the Avengers. As it turned out that Iron Man actually died during the Civil War II storyline, Arno Stark used this to his advantage to acquire Stark Unlimited through a merger with Baintronics. With the combined resources, he built the Iron Man Armor Model 66 as his attempt to recreate the Godbuster Armor. Now having a new destiny, Arno Stark became the latest person to take on the Iron Man mantle.[128]
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+ Because of his revelation that he is now a simulated A.I., Tony Stark became Mark One and started to establish the A.I. Army which also consists of Albert, Awesome Android, H.E.R.B.I.E., M-11, Machine Man, Machinesmith, Quasimodo, the Dreadnoughts, a Sentinel, several Constructo-Bots, several Nick Fury LMDs, and an unnamed bomb disposal robot. This group of robots and androids want to obtain equal rights with organic beings through whatever way possible. Mark One provided them with a hideout on Floor Thirteen, a solid light construct that can only be accessed by robots and androids. With the establishment of Floor Thirteen, Mark One keeps the A.I. Army safe from their enemies and oppressors.[129]
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+ Iron Man possesses powered armor that gives him superhuman strength and durability, flight, and an array of weapons. The armor is invented and worn by Stark (with occasional short-term exceptions). Other people who have assumed the Iron Man identity include Stark's long-time partner and best friend James Rhodes;[130] close associates Harold "Happy" Hogan; Eddie March;[131][132] (briefly) Michael O'Brien and Riri Williams.
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+ The weapons systems of the suit have changed over the years, but Iron Man's standard offensive weapons have always been the repulsor rays that are fired from the palms of his gauntlets. Other weapons built into various incarnations of the armor include: the uni-beam projector in its chest; pulse bolts (that pick up kinetic energy along the way; so the farther they travel, the harder they hit); an electromagnetic pulse generator; and a defensive energy shield that can be extended up to 360 degrees. Other capabilities include: generating ultra-freon (i.e., a freeze-beam); creating and manipulating magnetic fields; emitting sonic blasts; and projecting 3-dimensional holograms (to create decoys).
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+ In addition to the general-purpose model he wears, Stark has developed several specialized suits for space travel,[38] deep-sea diving, stealth,[39][40] and other special purposes. Stark has modified suits, like the Hulkbuster heavy armor. The Hulkbuster armor is composed of add-ons to his so-called modular armor, designed to enhance its strength and durability enough to engage the Hulk in a fight. A later model, created with the help of Odin and the Asgardian metal Uru, is similar to the Destroyer. Stark develops an electronics pack during the Armor Wars that, when attached to armors that use Stark technologies, will burn out those components, rendering the suit useless. This pack is ineffective on later models. While it is typically associated with James Rhodes, the War Machine armor began as one of Stark's specialty armors.
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+ The most recent models of Stark's armor, beginning with the Extremis armor, are now stored in the hollow portions of Stark's bones, and the personal area networking implement used to control it is implanted into his forearm, and connected directly to his central nervous system.
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+ The Extremis has since been removed,[volume & issue needed] and he now uses more conventional armors. Some armors still take a liquid form, but are not stored within his body. His Endo-Sym Armor incorporates a combination of the liquid smart-metal with the alien Venom symbiote, psionically controlled by Stark.
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+ Post-Secret Wars, Stark uses a more streamlined suit of armor that uses nanotechnology to shape shift into other armors or weapons.[133]
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+ After being critically injured during a battle with the Extremis-enhanced Mallen, Stark injects his nervous system with modified techno-organic virus-like body restructuring machines (the Extremis process).[134] By rewriting his own biology, Stark is able to save his life, gain an enhanced healing factor, and partially merge with the Iron Man armor, superseding the need for bulky, AI-controlled armors in favor of lighter designs, technopathically controlled by his own brain. His enhanced technopathy extends to every piece of technology, limitless and effortlessly due to his ability to interface with communication satellites and wireless connections to increase his "range". Some components of the armor-sheath are now stored in Tony's body, able to be recalled, and extruded from his own skin, at will.
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+ During the "Secret Invasion" storyline the Extremis package is catastrophically shut down by a virus, forcing him again to rely on the previous iteration of his armor, and restoring his previous limitations. Furthermore, Osborn's takeover of most of the few remaining Starktech factories, with Ezekiel Stane systematically crippling the others, limits Tony to the use of lesser, older and weaker armors.[135]
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+ After being forced to "wipe out" his brain to prevent Norman Osborn from gaining his information, Tony Stark is forced to have a new arc reactor, of Rand design installed in his chest. The process greatly improves his strength, stamina and intellect. The procedure left him with virtually no autonomic functions: as his brain was stripped of every biological function, Tony is forced to rely on a digital backup of his memories (leaving him with severe gaps and lapses in his long-term memory) and on software routine in the arc reactor for basic stimuli reaction, such as blinking and breathing.[136][137] The Bleeding Edge package of armor and physical enhancement is now equal in power, if not a more advanced, version of the old Extremis tech.[83]
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+ Tony Stark is an inventive genius whose expertise in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science rivals that of Reed Richards, Hank Pym, and Bruce Banner, and his expertise in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering surpasses even theirs. He is regarded as one of the most intelligent characters in the Marvel Universe. He graduated with advanced degrees in physics and engineering at the age of 17 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)[138] and further developed his knowledge ranging from artificial intelligence to quantum mechanics as time progressed. His expertise extends to his ingenuity in dealing with difficult situations, such as difficult foes and deathtraps, in which he is capable of using available tools, including his suit, in unorthodox but effective ways. He is well respected in the business world, able to command people's attention when he speaks on economic matters, having over the years built up several multimillion-dollar companies from virtually nothing. He is noted for the loyalty he commands from and returns to those who work for him, as well as for his business ethics. Thus he immediately fired an employee who made profitable, but illegal, sales to Doctor Doom.[47] He strives to be environmentally responsible in his businesses.
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+ At a time when Stark was unable to use his armor for a period, he received some combat training from Captain America and has become physically formidable on his own when the situation demands it.[139] In addition, Stark possesses great business and political acumen. On multiple occasions he reacquired control of his companies after losing them amid corporate takeovers.[140]
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+ Due to his membership in the Illuminati, Iron Man was given the Space Infinity Gem to safeguard.[141] It allows the user to exist in any location (or all locations), move any object anywhere throughout the universe and warp or rearrange space.
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+ In 1966, Iron Man was featured in a series of cartoons.[142] In 1981, Iron Man guest appeared in Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends, but only as Tony Stark.[143] He went on to feature again in his own series in the 1990s as part of the Marvel Action Hour with the Fantastic Four; Robert Hays provided his voice in these animated cartoons. Iron Man makes an appearance in the episode "Shell Games" of Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes.
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+ Apart from comic books, Iron Man appears in Capcom's "Vs." video games, including Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Iron Man is a playable character in Iron Man, the 1992 arcade game Captain America and the Avengers, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and its sequel, and Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects, as well as being featured as an unlockable character in X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse and Tony Hawk's Underground.[144] In the 2009 animated series, Iron Man: Armored Adventures, most of the characters, including Tony Stark, are teenagers. An anime adaptation began airing in Japan in October 2010 as part of a collaboration between Marvel Animation and Madhouse, in which Stark, voiced by Keiji Fujiwara, travels to Japan where he ends up facing off against the Zodiac.[145]
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+ In 2008, a film adaptation titled Iron Man was released, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark and directed by Jon Favreau. Iron Man received very positive reviews from film critics,[146] grossing $318 million domestically and $585 million worldwide, and became the first in a series of over 20 films known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.[147] The character of Tony Stark, again played by Robert Downey Jr., appeared at the end of the 2008 film The Incredible Hulk. Downey reprised his role in Iron Man 2 (2010), Marvel's The Avengers (2012), Iron Man 3 (2013), Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Captain America: Civil War (2016), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019), and the upcoming Black Widow (2020).[148][149]
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+ In 2009, Playtech released an online casino slot machine game called Iron Man. After that they created two more games, Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3.[150]
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+ In October 2016, Eoin Colfer released a young adult novel called Iron Man: The Gauntlet.[151]
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+ — The 44th President of the United States Barack Obama made a surprise announcement at a press conference at the White House, when he revealed details of the creation of "Manufacturing Innovation Institutes" in Chicago and Detroit.[152]
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+ Sir Isaac Newton PRS (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27[a]) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus.
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+ In Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to prove Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity. He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems.
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+ Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. His work on light was collected in his highly influential book Opticks, published in 1704. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. In addition to his work on calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, and classified most of the cubic plane curves.
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+ Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Unusually for a member of the Cambridge faculty of the day, he refused to take holy orders in the Church of England. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–90 and 1701–02. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1700) and Master (1700–1727) of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society (1703–1727).
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+ Isaac Newton was born (according to the Julian calendar, in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643[a]) "an hour or two after midnight",[7] at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. His father, also named Isaac Newton, had died three months before. Born prematurely, Newton was a small child; his mother Hannah Ayscough reportedly said that he could have fit inside a quart mug.[8] When Newton was three, his mother remarried and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabas Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough (née Blythe). Newton disliked his stepfather and maintained some enmity towards his mother for marrying him, as revealed by this entry in a list of sins committed up to the age of 19: "Threatening my father and mother Smith to burn them and the house over them."[9] Newton's mother had three children (Mary, Benjamin and Hannah) from her second marriage.[10]
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+ From the age of about twelve until he was seventeen, Newton was educated at The King's School, Grantham, which taught Latin and Greek and probably imparted a significant foundation of mathematics.[11] He was removed from school and returned to Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth by October 1659. His mother, widowed for the second time, attempted to make him a farmer, an occupation he hated.[12] Henry Stokes, master at The King's School, persuaded his mother to send him back to school. Motivated partly by a desire for revenge against a schoolyard bully, he became the top-ranked student,[13] distinguishing himself mainly by building sundials and models of windmills.[14]
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+ In June 1661, he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, on the recommendation of his uncle Rev William Ayscough, who had studied there. He started as a subsizar—paying his way by performing valet's duties—until he was awarded a scholarship in 1664, guaranteeing him four more years until he could get his MA.[15] At that time, the college's teachings were based on those of Aristotle, whom Newton supplemented with modern philosophers such as Descartes, and astronomers such as Galileo and Thomas Street, through whom he learned of Kepler's work. He set down in his notebook a series of "Quaestiones" about mechanical philosophy as he found it. In 1665, he discovered the generalised binomial theorem and began to develop a mathematical theory that later became calculus. Soon after Newton had obtained his BA degree in August 1665, the university temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague. Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student,[16] Newton's private studies at his home in Woolsthorpe over the subsequent two years saw the development of his theories on calculus,[17] optics, and the law of gravitation.
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+ In April 1667, he returned to Cambridge and in October was elected as a fellow of Trinity.[18][19] Fellows were required to become ordained priests, although this was not enforced in the restoration years and an assertion of conformity to the Church of England was sufficient. However, by 1675 the issue could not be avoided and by then his unconventional views stood in the way.[20] Nevertheless, Newton managed to avoid it by means of special permission from Charles II.
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+ His studies had impressed the Lucasian professor Isaac Barrow, who was more anxious to develop his own religious and administrative potential (he became master of Trinity two years later); in 1669 Newton succeeded him, only one year after receiving his MA. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1672.[3]
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+ Newton's work has been said "to distinctly advance every branch of mathematics then studied."[22] His work on the subject usually referred to as fluxions or calculus, seen in a manuscript of October 1666, is now published among Newton's mathematical papers.[23] The author of the manuscript De analysi per aequationes numero terminorum infinitas, sent by Isaac Barrow to John Collins in June 1669, was identified by Barrow in a letter sent to Collins in August of that year as "[...] of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things."[24]
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+ Newton later became involved in a dispute with Leibniz over priority in the development of calculus (the Leibniz–Newton calculus controversy). Most modern historians believe that Newton and Leibniz developed calculus independently, although with very different mathematical notations. Occasionally it has been suggested that Newton published almost nothing about it until 1693, and did not give a full account until 1704, while Leibniz began publishing a full account of his methods in 1684. Leibniz's notation and "differential Method", nowadays recognised as much more convenient notations, were adopted by continental European mathematicians, and after 1820 or so, also by British mathematicians.[citation needed]
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+ Such a suggestion fails to account for the calculus in Book 1 of Newton's Principia itself and in its forerunner manuscripts, such as De motu corporum in gyrum of 1684; this content has been pointed out by critics[Like whom?] of both Newton's time and modern times.[citation needed]
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+ His work extensively uses calculus in geometric form based on limiting values of the ratios of vanishingly small quantities: in the Principia itself, Newton gave demonstration of this under the name of "the method of first and last ratios"[25] and explained why he put his expositions in this form,[26] remarking also that "hereby the same thing is performed as by the method of indivisibles."[27]
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+ Because of this, the Principia has been called "a book dense with the theory and application of the infinitesimal calculus" in modern times[28] and in Newton's time "nearly all of it is of this calculus."[29] His use of methods involving "one or more orders of the infinitesimally small" is present in his De motu corporum in gyrum of 1684[30] and in his papers on motion "during the two decades preceding 1684".[31]
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+ Newton had been reluctant to publish his calculus because he feared controversy and criticism.[32] He was close to the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier. In 1691, Duillier started to write a new version of Newton's Principia, and corresponded with Leibniz.[33] In 1693, the relationship between Duillier and Newton deteriorated and the book was never completed.[citation needed]
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+ Starting in 1699, other members[who?] of the Royal Society accused Leibniz of plagiarism.[34] The dispute then broke out in full force in 1711 when the Royal Society proclaimed in a study that it was Newton who was the true discoverer and labelled Leibniz a fraud; it was later found that Newton wrote the study's concluding remarks on Leibniz. Thus began the bitter controversy which marred the lives of both Newton and Leibniz until the latter's death in 1716.[35]
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+ Newton is generally credited with the generalised binomial theorem, valid for any exponent. He discovered Newton's identities, Newton's method, classified cubic plane curves (polynomials of degree three in two variables), made substantial contributions to the theory of finite differences, and was the first to use fractional indices and to employ coordinate geometry to derive solutions to Diophantine equations. He approximated partial sums of the harmonic series by logarithms (a precursor to Euler's summation formula) and was the first to use power series with confidence and to revert power series. Newton's work on infinite series was inspired by Simon Stevin's decimals.[36]
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+ When Newton received his MA and became a Fellow of the "College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity" in 1667, he made the commitment that "I will either set Theology as the object of my studies and will take holy orders when the time prescribed by these statutes [7 years] arrives, or I will resign from the college."[37] Up until this point he had not thought much about religion and had twice signed his agreement to the thirty-nine articles, the basis of Church of England doctrine.
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+ He was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in 1669, on Barrow's recommendation. During that time, any Fellow of a college at Cambridge or Oxford was required to take holy orders and become an ordained Anglican priest. However, the terms of the Lucasian professorship required that the holder not be active in the church – presumably,[weasel words] so as to have more time for science. Newton argued that this should exempt him from the ordination requirement, and Charles II, whose permission was needed, accepted this argument. Thus a conflict between Newton's religious views and Anglican orthodoxy was averted.[38]
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+ In 1666, Newton observed that the spectrum of colours exiting a prism in the position of minimum deviation is oblong, even when the light ray entering the prism is circular, which is to say, the prism refracts different colours by different angles.[40][41] This led him to conclude that colour is a property intrinsic to light – a point which had, until then, been a matter of debate.
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+ From 1670 to 1672, Newton lectured on optics.[42] During this period he investigated the refraction of light, demonstrating that the multicoloured spectrum produced by a prism could be recomposed into white light by a lens and a second prism.[43] Modern scholarship has revealed that Newton's analysis and resynthesis of white light owes a debt to corpuscular alchemy.[44]
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+ He showed that coloured light does not change its properties by separating out a coloured beam and shining it on various objects and that regardless of whether reflected, scattered, or transmitted, the light remains the same colour. Thus, he observed that colour is the result of objects interacting with already-coloured light rather than objects generating the colour themselves. This is known as Newton's theory of colour.[45]
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+ From this work, he concluded that the lens of any refracting telescope would suffer from the dispersion of light into colours (chromatic aberration). As a proof of the concept, he constructed a telescope using reflective mirrors instead of lenses as the objective to bypass that problem.[46][47] Building the design, the first known functional reflecting telescope, today known as a Newtonian telescope,[47] involved solving the problem of a suitable mirror material and shaping technique. Newton ground his own mirrors out of a custom composition of highly reflective speculum metal, using Newton's rings to judge the quality of the optics for his telescopes. In late 1668,[48] he was able to produce this first reflecting telescope. It was about eight inches long and it gave a clearer and larger image. In 1671, the Royal Society asked for a demonstration of his reflecting telescope.[49] Their interest encouraged him to publish his notes, Of Colours,[50] which he later expanded into the work Opticks. When Robert Hooke criticised some of Newton's ideas, Newton was so offended that he withdrew from public debate. Newton and Hooke had brief exchanges in 1679–80, when Hooke, appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, opened up a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions,[51] which had the effect of stimulating Newton to work out a proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. But the two men remained generally on poor terms until Hooke's death.[52]
50
+
51
+ Newton argued that light is composed of particles or corpuscles, which were refracted by accelerating into a denser medium. He verged on soundlike waves to explain the repeated pattern of reflection and transmission by thin films (Opticks Bk.II, Props. 12), but still retained his theory of 'fits' that disposed corpuscles to be reflected or transmitted (Props.13). However, later physicists favoured a purely wavelike explanation of light to account for the interference patterns and the general phenomenon of diffraction. Today's quantum mechanics, photons, and the idea of wave–particle duality bear only a minor resemblance to Newton's understanding of light.
52
+
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+ In his Hypothesis of Light of 1675, Newton posited the existence of the ether to transmit forces between particles. The contact with the Cambridge Platonist philosopher Henry More revived his interest in alchemy.[53] He replaced the ether with occult forces based on Hermetic ideas of attraction and repulsion between particles. John Maynard Keynes, who acquired many of Newton's writings on alchemy, stated that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason: He was the last of the magicians."[54] Newton's interest in alchemy cannot be isolated from his contributions to science.[53] This was at a time when there was no clear distinction between alchemy and science. Had he not relied on the occult idea of action at a distance, across a vacuum, he might not have developed his theory of gravity.
54
+
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+ In 1704, Newton published Opticks, in which he expounded his corpuscular theory of light. He considered light to be made up of extremely subtle corpuscles, that ordinary matter was made of grosser corpuscles and speculated that through a kind of alchemical transmutation "Are not gross Bodies and Light convertible into one another, ... and may not Bodies receive much of their Activity from the Particles of Light which enter their Composition?"[55] Newton also constructed a primitive form of a frictional electrostatic generator, using a glass globe.[56]
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+
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+ In his book Opticks, Newton was the first to show a diagram using a prism as a beam expander, and also the use of multiple-prism arrays.[57] Some 278 years after Newton's discussion, multiple-prism beam expanders became central to the development of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers. Also, the use of these prismatic beam expanders led to the multiple-prism dispersion theory.[57]
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+
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+ Subsequent to Newton, much has been amended. Young and Fresnel combined Newton's particle theory with Huygens' wave theory to show that colour is the visible manifestation of light's wavelength. Science also slowly came to realise the difference between perception of colour and mathematisable optics. The German poet and scientist, Goethe, could not shake the Newtonian foundation but "one hole Goethe did find in Newton's armour, ... Newton had committed himself to the doctrine that refraction without colour was impossible. He, therefore, thought that the object-glasses of telescopes must forever remain imperfect, achromatism and refraction being incompatible. This inference was proved by Dollond to be wrong."[58]
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+
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+ In 1679, Newton returned to his work on celestial mechanics by considering gravitation and its effect on the orbits of planets with reference to Kepler's laws of planetary motion. This followed stimulation by a brief exchange of letters in 1679–80 with Hooke, who had been appointed to manage the Royal Society's correspondence, and who opened a correspondence intended to elicit contributions from Newton to Royal Society transactions.[51] Newton's reawakening interest in astronomical matters received further stimulus by the appearance of a comet in the winter of 1680–1681, on which he corresponded with John Flamsteed.[59] After the exchanges with Hooke, Newton worked out proof that the elliptical form of planetary orbits would result from a centripetal force inversely proportional to the square of the radius vector. Newton communicated his results to Edmond Halley and to the Royal Society in De motu corporum in gyrum, a tract written on about nine sheets which was copied into the Royal Society's Register Book in December 1684.[60] This tract contained the nucleus that Newton developed and expanded to form the Principia.
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+
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+ The Principia was published on 5 July 1687 with encouragement and financial help from Edmond Halley. In this work, Newton stated the three universal laws of motion. Together, these laws describe the relationship between any object, the forces acting upon it and the resulting motion, laying the foundation for classical mechanics. They contributed to many advances during the Industrial Revolution which soon followed and were not improved upon for more than 200 years. Many of these advancements continue to be the underpinnings of non-relativistic technologies in the modern world. He used the Latin word gravitas (weight) for the effect that would become known as gravity, and defined the law of universal gravitation.[61]
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+ In the same work, Newton presented a calculus-like method of geometrical analysis using 'first and last ratios', gave the first analytical determination (based on Boyle's law) of the speed of sound in air, inferred the oblateness of Earth's spheroidal figure, accounted for the precession of the equinoxes as a result of the Moon's gravitational attraction on the Earth's oblateness, initiated the gravitational study of the irregularities in the motion of the Moon, provided a theory for the determination of the orbits of comets, and much more.[61]
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+
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+ Newton made clear his heliocentric view of the Solar System—developed in a somewhat modern way because already in the mid-1680s he recognised the "deviation of the Sun" from the centre of gravity of the Solar System.[62] For Newton, it was not precisely the centre of the Sun or any other body that could be considered at rest, but rather "the common centre of gravity of the Earth, the Sun and all the Planets is to be esteem'd the Centre of the World", and this centre of gravity "either is at rest or moves uniformly forward in a right line" (Newton adopted the "at rest" alternative in view of common consent that the centre, wherever it was, was at rest).[63]
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+
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+ Newton's postulate of an invisible force able to act over vast distances led to him being criticised for introducing "occult agencies" into science.[64] Later, in the second edition of the Principia (1713), Newton firmly rejected such criticisms in a concluding General Scholium, writing that it was enough that the phenomena implied a gravitational attraction, as they did; but they did not so far indicate its cause, and it was both unnecessary and improper to frame hypotheses of things that were not implied by the phenomena. (Here Newton used what became his famous expression "hypotheses non-fingo"[65]).
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+ With the Principia, Newton became internationally recognised.[66] He acquired a circle of admirers, including the Swiss-born mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier.[67]
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+ Newton found 72 of the 78 "species" of cubic curves and categorised them into four types.[when?] In 1717, and probably with Newton's help, James Stirling proved that every cubic was one of these four types. Newton also claimed that the four types could be obtained by plane projection from one of them, and this was proved in 1731, four years after his death.[68]
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+ In the 1690s, Newton wrote a number of religious tracts dealing with the literal and symbolic interpretation of the Bible. A manuscript Newton sent to John Locke in which he disputed the fidelity of 1 John 5:7—the Johannine Comma—and its fidelity to the original manuscripts of the New Testament, remained unpublished until 1785.[69]
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+ Newton was also a member of the Parliament of England for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701, but according to some accounts his only comments were to complain about a cold draught in the chamber and request that the window be closed.[70] He was, however, noted by Cambridge diarist Abraham de la Pryme to have rebuked students who were frightening locals by claiming that a house was haunted.[71]
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+ Newton moved to London to take up the post of warden of the Royal Mint in 1696, a position that he had obtained through the patronage of Charles Montagu, 1st Earl of Halifax, then Chancellor of the Exchequer. He took charge of England's great recoining, trod on the toes of Lord Lucas, Governor of the Tower, and secured the job of deputy comptroller of the temporary Chester branch for Edmond Halley. Newton became perhaps the best-known Master of the Mint upon the death of Thomas Neale in 1699, a position Newton held for the last 30 years of his life.[72][73] These appointments were intended as sinecures, but Newton took them seriously. He retired from his Cambridge duties in 1701, and exercised his authority to reform the currency and punish clippers and counterfeiters.
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+ As Warden, and afterwards as Master, of the Royal Mint, Newton estimated that 20 percent of the coins taken in during the Great Recoinage of 1696 were counterfeit. Counterfeiting was high treason, punishable by the felon being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despite this, convicting even the most flagrant criminals could be extremely difficult, however, Newton proved equal to the task.[74]
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+ Disguised as a habitué of bars and taverns, he gathered much of that evidence himself.[75] For all the barriers placed to prosecution, and separating the branches of government, English law still had ancient and formidable customs of authority. Newton had himself made a justice of the peace in all the home counties. A draft letter regarding the matter is included in Newton's personal first edition of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which he must have been amending at the time.[76] Then he conducted more than 100 cross-examinations of witnesses, informers, and suspects between June 1698 and Christmas 1699. Newton successfully prosecuted 28 coiners.[77]
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+ Newton was made President of the Royal Society in 1703 and an associate of the French Académie des Sciences. In his position at the Royal Society, Newton made an enemy of John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, by prematurely publishing Flamsteed's Historia Coelestis Britannica, which Newton had used in his studies.[79]
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+ In April 1705, Queen Anne knighted Newton during a royal visit to Trinity College, Cambridge. The knighthood is likely to have been motivated by political considerations connected with the parliamentary election in May 1705, rather than any recognition of Newton's scientific work or services as Master of the Mint.[80] Newton was the second scientist to be knighted, after Sir Francis Bacon.[81]
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+ As a result of a report written by Newton on 21 September 1717 to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, the bimetallic relationship between gold coins and silver coins was changed by Royal proclamation on 22 December 1717, forbidding the exchange of gold guineas for more than 21 silver shillings.[82] This inadvertently resulted in a silver shortage as silver coins were used to pay for imports, while exports were paid for in gold, effectively moving Britain from the silver standard to its first gold standard. It is a matter of debate as to whether he intended to do this or not.[83] It has been argued that Newton conceived of his work at the Mint as a continuation of his alchemical work.[84]
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+ Newton was invested in the South Sea Company and lost some £20,000 (US$3 million in 2003) when it collapsed in around 1720.[85]
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+ Toward the end of his life, Newton took up residence at Cranbury Park, near Winchester with his niece and her husband, until his death in 1727.[86] His half-niece, Catherine Barton Conduitt,[87] served as his hostess in social affairs at his house on Jermyn Street in London; he was her "very loving Uncle",[88] according to his letter to her when she was recovering from smallpox.
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+ Newton died in his sleep in London on 20 March 1727 (OS 20 March 1726; NS 31 March 1727).[a] His body was buried in Westminster Abbey.[89] Voltaire may have been present at his funeral.[90] A bachelor, he had divested much of his estate to relatives during his last years, and died intestate.[91] His papers went to John Conduitt and Catherine Barton.[92] After his death, Newton's hair was examined and found to contain mercury, probably resulting from his alchemical pursuits. Mercury poisoning could explain Newton's eccentricity in late life.[91]
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+ Although it was claimed that he was once engaged,[b] Newton never married. The French writer and philosopher Voltaire, who was in London at the time of Newton's funeral, said that he "was never sensible to any passion, was not subject to the common frailties of mankind, nor had any commerce with women—a circumstance which was assured me by the physician and surgeon who attended him in his last moments".[94] The widespread belief that he died a virgin has been commented on by writers such as mathematician Charles Hutton,[95] economist John Maynard Keynes,[96] and physicist Carl Sagan.[97]
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+ Newton had a close friendship with the Swiss mathematician Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, whom he met in London around 1689[67]—some of their correspondence has survived.[98][99] Their relationship came to an abrupt and unexplained end in 1693, and at the same time Newton suffered a nervous breakdown[100] which included sending wild accusatory letters to his friends Samuel Pepys and John Locke—his note to the latter included the charge that Locke "endeavoured to embroil me with woemen".[101]
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+ The mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange said that Newton was the greatest genius who ever lived, and once added that Newton was also "the most fortunate, for we cannot find more than once a system of the world to establish."[102] English poet Alexander Pope wrote the famous epitaph:
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+
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+ Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
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+ God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
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+ Newton was relatively modest about his achievements, writing in a letter to Robert Hooke in February 1676:
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+ If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.[103]
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+ Two writers think that the above quotation, written at a time when Newton and Hooke were in dispute over optical discoveries, was an oblique attack on Hooke (said to have been short and hunchbacked), rather than—or in addition to—a statement of modesty.[104][105] On the other hand, the widely known proverb about standing on the shoulders of giants, published among others by seventeenth-century poet George Herbert (a former orator of the University of Cambridge and fellow of Trinity College) in his Jacula Prudentum (1651), had as its main point that "a dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two", and so its effect as an analogy would place Newton himself rather than Hooke as the 'dwarf'.
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+ In a later memoir, Newton wrote:
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+ I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.[106]
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+ In 1816, a tooth said to have belonged to Newton was sold for £730[107] (us$3,633) in London to an aristocrat who had it set in a ring.[108] The Guinness World Records 2002 classified it as the most valuable tooth, which would value approximately £25,000 (us$35,700) in late 2001.[108] Who bought it and who currently has it has not been disclosed.
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+ Albert Einstein kept a picture of Newton on his study wall alongside ones of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell.[109] In a 2005 survey of members of Britain's Royal Society (formerly headed by Newton) asking who had the greater effect on the history of science, Newton or Einstein, the members deemed Newton to have made the greater overall contribution.[110] In 1999, an opinion poll of 100 of today's leading physicists voted Einstein the "greatest physicist ever," with Newton the runner-up, while a parallel survey of rank-and-file physicists by the site PhysicsWeb gave the top spot to Newton.[111]
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+ Newton's monument (1731) can be seen in Westminster Abbey, at the north of the entrance to the choir against the choir screen, near his tomb. It was executed by the sculptor Michael Rysbrack (1694–1770) in white and grey marble with design by the architect William Kent. The monument features a figure of Newton reclining on top of a sarcophagus, his right elbow resting on several of his great books and his left hand pointing to a scroll with a mathematical design. Above him is a pyramid and a celestial globe showing the signs of the Zodiac and the path of the comet of 1680. A relief panel depicts putti using instruments such as a telescope and prism.[112] The Latin inscription on the base translates as:
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+ Here is buried Isaac Newton, Knight, who by a strength of mind almost divine, and mathematical principles peculiarly his own, explored the course and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, the tides of the sea, the dissimilarities in rays of light, and, what no other scholar has previously imagined, the properties of the colours thus produced. Diligent, sagacious and faithful, in his expositions of nature, antiquity and the holy Scriptures, he vindicated by his philosophy the majesty of God mighty and good, and expressed the simplicity of the Gospel in his manners. Mortals rejoice that there has existed such and so great an ornament of the human race! He was born on 25 December 1642, and died on 20 March 1726/7.—Translation from G.L. Smyth, The Monuments and Genii of St. Paul's Cathedral, and of Westminster Abbey (1826), ii, 703–704.[112]
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+ From 1978 until 1988, an image of Newton designed by Harry Ecclestone appeared on Series D £1 banknotes issued by the Bank of England (the last £1 notes to be issued by the Bank of England). Newton was shown on the reverse of the notes holding a book and accompanied by a telescope, a prism and a map of the Solar System.[113]
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+ A statue of Isaac Newton, looking at an apple at his feet, can be seen at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. A large bronze statue, Newton, after William Blake, by Eduardo Paolozzi, dated 1995 and inspired by Blake's etching, dominates the piazza of the British Library in London.
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+ Although born into an Anglican family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity,[114] with one historian labelling him a heretic.[115]
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+ By 1672, he had started to record his theological researches in notebooks which he showed to no one and which have only recently[when?] been examined. They demonstrate an extensive knowledge of early Church writings and show that in the conflict between Athanasius and Arius which defined the Creed, he took the side of Arius, the loser, who rejected the conventional view of the Trinity. Newton "recognized Christ as a divine mediator between God and man, who was subordinate to the Father who created him."[116] He was especially interested in prophecy, but for him, "the great apostasy was trinitarianism."[117]
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+ Newton tried unsuccessfully to obtain one of the two fellowships that exempted the holder from the ordination requirement. At the last moment in 1675 he received a dispensation from the government that excused him and all future holders of the Lucasian chair.[118]
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+
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+ In Newton's eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin.[119] In 1999, historian Stephen D. Snobelen wrote, "Isaac Newton was a heretic. But ... he never made a public declaration of his private faith—which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unraveling his personal beliefs."[115] Snobelen concludes that Newton was at least a Socinian sympathiser (he owned and had thoroughly read at least eight Socinian books), possibly an Arian and almost certainly an anti-trinitarian.[115]
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+
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+ In a minority position, T.C. Pfizenmaier offers a more nuanced view, arguing that Newton held closer to the Semi-Arian view of the Trinity that Jesus Christ was of a "similar substance" (homoiousios) from the Father rather than the orthodox view that Jesus Christ is of the "same substance" of the Father (homoousios) as endorsed by modern Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics and Protestants.[120] However, this type of view 'has lost support of late with the availability of Newton's theological papers',[121] and now most scholars identify Newton as an Antitrinitarian monotheist.[115][122]
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+ Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the Universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "So then gravity may put the planets into motion, but without the Divine Power it could never put them into such a circulating motion, as they have about the sun".[123]
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+ Along with his scientific fame, Newton's studies of the Bible and of the early Church Fathers were also noteworthy. Newton wrote works on textual criticism, most notably An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture and Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John.[124] He placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which agrees with one traditionally accepted date.[125]
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+
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+ He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. The ordered and dynamically informed Universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason. In his correspondence, Newton claimed that in writing the Principia "I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity".[126] He saw evidence of design in the system of the world: "Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice". But Newton insisted that divine intervention would eventually be required to reform the system, due to the slow growth of instabilities.[127] For this, Leibniz lampooned him: "God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."[128]
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+
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+ Newton's position was vigorously defended by his follower Samuel Clarke in a famous correspondence. A century later, Pierre-Simon Laplace's work Celestial Mechanics had a natural explanation for why the planet orbits do not require periodic divine intervention.[129] The contrast between Laplace's mechanistic worldview and Newton's one is the most strident considering the famous answer which the French scientist gave Napoleon, who had criticised him for the absence of the Creator in the Mécanique céleste: "Sire, j'ai pu me passer de cette hypothese" ("I do not need such a hypothesis").[130]
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+
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+ Scholars long debated whether Newton disputed the doctrine of the Trinity. His first biographer, Sir David Brewster, who compiled his manuscripts, interpreted Newton as questioning the veracity of some passages used to support the Trinity, but never denying the doctrine of the Trinity as such.[131] In the twentieth century, encrypted manuscripts written by Newton and bought by John Maynard Keynes (among others) were deciphered[54] and it became known that Newton did indeed reject Trinitarianism.[115]
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+
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+ Newton and Robert Boyle's approach to the mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers as a viable alternative to the pantheists and enthusiasts, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers like the latitudinarians.[133] The clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of both superstitious enthusiasm and the threat of atheism,[134] and at the same time, the second wave of English deists used Newton's discoveries to demonstrate the possibility of a "Natural Religion".
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+
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+ The attacks made against pre-Enlightenment "magical thinking", and the mystical elements of Christianity, were given their foundation with Boyle's mechanical conception of the universe. Newton gave Boyle's ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more importantly, was very successful in popularising them.[135]
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+ In a manuscript he wrote in 1704 (never intended to be published), he mentions the date of 2060, but it is not given as a date for the end of days. It has been falsely reported as a prediction.[136] The passage is clear when the date is read in context. He was against date setting for the end of days, concerned that this would put Christianity into disrepute.
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+ "So then the time times & half a time [sic] are 42 months or 1260 days or three years & an half, recconing twelve months to a year & 30 days to a month as was done in the Calender [sic] of the primitive year. And the days of short lived Beasts being put for the years of [long-]lived kingdoms the period of 1260 days, if dated from the complete conquest of the three kings A.C. 800, will end 2060. It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner."[137]
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+
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+ "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail. Christ comes as a thief in the night, and it is not for us to know the times and seasons which God hath put into his own breast."[138][136]
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+ In the character of Morton Opperly in "Poor Superman" (1951), speculative fiction author Fritz Leiber says of Newton, "Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. That was the pebble by the seashore he really wanted to find."[139]
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+ Of an estimated ten million words of writing in Newton's papers, about one million deal with alchemy. Many of Newton's writings on alchemy are copies of other manuscripts, with his own annotations.[92] Alchemical texts mix artisanal knowledge with philosophical speculation, often hidden behind layers of wordplay, allegory, and imagery to protect craft secrets.[140] Some of the content contained in Newton's papers could have been considered heretical by the church.[92]
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+
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+ In 1888, after spending sixteen years cataloguing Newton's papers, Cambridge University kept a small number and returned the rest to the Earl of Portsmouth. In 1936, a descendant offered the papers for sale at Sotheby's.[141] The collection was broken up and sold for a total of about £9,000.[142] John Maynard Keynes was one of about three dozen bidders who obtained part of the collection at auction. Keynes went on to reassemble an estimated half of Newton's collection of papers on alchemy before donating his collection to Cambridge University in 1946.[92][141][143]
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+ All of Newton's known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University: "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton"[144] and summarised in a book.[145][146]
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+ Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues. We refer to Newton's involvement in the discipline of alchemy, or as it was often called in seventeenth-century England, "chymistry."[144]
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+ Charles Coulston Gillispie disputes that Newton ever practised alchemy, saying that "his chemistry was in the spirit of Boyle's corpuscular philosophy."[147]
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+ In June 2020, two unpublished pages of Newton's notes on Jan Baptist van Helmont's book on plague, De Peste[148], were being auctioned online by Bonham's. Newton's analysis of this book, which he made in Cambridge while protecting himself from London's 1665-1666 infection, is the most substantial written statement he is known to have made about the plague, according to Bonham's. As far as the therapy is concerned, Newton writes that "the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison".[149]
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+
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+ Enlightenment philosophers chose a short history of scientific predecessors—Galileo, Boyle, and Newton principally—as the guides and guarantors of their applications of the singular concept of nature and natural law to every physical and social field of the day. In this respect, the lessons of history and the social structures built upon it could be discarded.[150]
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+
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+ It was Newton's conception of the universe based upon natural and rationally understandable laws that became one of the seeds for Enlightenment ideology.[151] Locke and Voltaire applied concepts of natural law to political systems advocating intrinsic rights; the physiocrats and Adam Smith applied natural conceptions of psychology and self-interest to economic systems; and sociologists criticised the current social order for trying to fit history into natural models of progress. Monboddo and Samuel Clarke resisted elements of Newton's work, but eventually rationalised it to conform with their strong religious views of nature.
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+
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+ Newton himself often told the story that he was inspired to formulate his theory of gravitation by watching the fall of an apple from a tree.[152][153] The story is believed to have passed into popular knowledge after being related by Catherine Barton, Newton's niece, to Voltaire.[154] Voltaire then wrote in his Essay on Epic Poetry (1727), "Sir Isaac Newton walking in his gardens, had the first thought of his system of gravitation, upon seeing an apple falling from a tree."
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+ Although it has been said that the apple story is a myth and that he did not arrive at his theory of gravity at any single moment,[155] acquaintances of Newton (such as William Stukeley, whose manuscript account of 1752 has been made available by the Royal Society) do in fact confirm the incident, though not the apocryphal version that the apple actually hit Newton's head. Stukeley recorded in his Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's Life a conversation with Newton in Kensington on 15 April 1726:[156][157][158]
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+
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+ we went into the garden, & drank thea under the shade of some appletrees, only he, & myself. amidst other discourse, he told me, he was just in the same situation, as when formerly, the notion of gravitation came into his mind. "why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground," thought he to him self: occasion'd by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a comtemplative mood: "why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earths centre? assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. there must be a drawing power in matter. & the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earths center, not in any side of the earth. therefore dos this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. if matter thus draws matter; it must be in proportion of its quantity. therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple."
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+
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+ John Conduitt, Newton's assistant at the Royal Mint and husband of Newton's niece, also described the event when he wrote about Newton's life:[159]
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+ In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge to his mother in Lincolnshire. Whilst he was pensively meandering in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (which brought an apple from a tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from earth, but that this power must extend much further than was usually thought. Why not as high as the Moon said he to himself & if so, that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition.
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+
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+ It is known from his notebooks that Newton was grappling in the late 1660s with the idea that terrestrial gravity extends, in an inverse-square proportion, to the Moon; however, it took him two decades to develop the full-fledged theory.[160] The question was not whether gravity existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the Moon to its orbit. Newton showed that if the force decreased as the inverse square of the distance, one could indeed calculate the Moon's orbital period, and get good agreement. He guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motions, and hence named it "universal gravitation".
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+ Various trees are claimed to be "the" apple tree which Newton describes. The King's School, Grantham claims that the tree was purchased by the school, uprooted and transported to the headmaster's garden some years later. The staff of the (now) National Trust-owned Woolsthorpe Manor dispute this, and claim that a tree present in their gardens is the one described by Newton. A descendant of the original tree[161] can be seen growing outside the main gate of Trinity College, Cambridge, below the room Newton lived in when he studied there. The National Fruit Collection at Brogdale in Kent[162] can supply grafts from their tree, which appears identical to Flower of Kent, a coarse-fleshed cooking variety.[163]
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+ Islamabad (/ɪsˈlɑːməˌbɑːd/; Urdu: اسلام آباد‎, Islāmābād) is the capital city of Pakistan, and is federally administered as part of the Islamabad Capital Territory. Islamabad is the ninth largest city in Pakistan, while the larger Islamabad-Rawalpindi metropolitan area is the country's fourth largest with a population of about 3.1 million.[5]
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+ Built as a planned city in the 1960s to replace Karachi as Pakistan's capital, Islamabad is noted for its high standards of living,[8] safety,[9] and abundant greenery.[10] The city is the political seat of Pakistan and local government setup is run by the Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation, supported by the Capital Development Authority (CDA).
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+ Islamabad is located in the Pothohar Plateau in the northeastern part of the country, between Rawalpindi District and the Margalla Hills National Park to the north. The region has historically been a part of the crossroads of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with the Margalla Pass acting as the gateway between the two regions.[11]
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+ The city's master-plan, designed by Greek architect Constantinos Apostolou Doxiadis, divides the city into eight zones, including administrative, diplomatic enclave, residential areas, educational sectors, industrial sectors, commercial areas, and rural and green areas. The city is known for the presence of several parks and forests, including the Margalla Hills National Park and Shakarparian Park.[12] The city is home to several landmarks, including the Faisal Mosque, the largest mosque in South Asia[13] and the fourth largest in the world. Other landmarks include the Pakistan's National Monument and Democracy Square.[14][15][16]
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+ Islamabad is a gamma-global city;[17] it is categorised as Medium on the Human Development Index, with an HDI of 0.678, the highest in the country. Its life expectancy at 70.77 years, as of 2018, is also higher than the Pakistan average of 67.11.[18] Furthermore, it also has the highest per capita income in the country at GNI Per capita US$8,527 as of 2018 (in constant 2011 international $).[19] The city has the highest cost of living in Pakistan, and its population is dominated by middle and upper middle class citizens.[8][20] Being an expensive city, the prices of most of fruits, vegetable and poultry items increased in Islamabad during the years 2015-2020[21]
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+ The city is home to twenty universities, including the Bahria University, Quaid-e-Azam University, PIEAS, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology and NUST.[22] The city is one of the safest in Pakistan, and has an expansive surveillance system with 1,900 CCTV cameras.[9][23]
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+ The name "Islamabad" means "City of Islam". It is derived from two words: Islam and abad. Islam is an Urdu word which refers to the religion of Islam and -abad is a Persian suffix meaning "cultivated place", indicating an inhabited place or city.[24] According to a history book by Muhammad Ismail Zabeeh, Abdur Rehman Amritsari - a school teacher from Arifwala - proposed the name of the city.[25]
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+ In writing "Islamabad" is, on occasion, colloquially contracted to "ISB". Such usage originated in SMS language, in part due to the IATA location identifier for Islamabad International Airport.
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+ Islamabad Capital Territory, located on the Pothohar Plateau of the Punjab region, is considered one of the earliest sites of human settlement in Asia.[26] Some of the earliest Stone Age artefacts in the world have been found on the plateau, dating from 100,000 to 500,000 years ago. Rudimentary stones recovered from the terraces of the Soan River testify to the endeavours of early man in the inter-glacial period.[27] Items of pottery and utensils dating back to prehistory have been found.[28]
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+ Excavations by Dr. Abdul Ghafoor Lone reveal evidence of a prehistoric culture in the area. Relics and human skulls have been found dating back to 5000 BCE that indicate the region was home to Neolithic peoples who settled on the banks of the Swaan River,[26] and who later developed small communities in the region around 3000 BCE.[27][29]
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+ The Indus Valley Civilization flourished in the region between the 23rd and 18th centuries BCE. Later the area was an early settlement of the Aryan community which migrated into the region from Central Asia.[26] Many great armies such as those of Zahiruddin Babur, Genghis Khan, Timur and Ahmad Shah Durrani crossed the region during their invasions of the Indian Subcontinent.[26] In 2015–16, the Federal Department of Archaeology and Museums, with the financial support of National Fund for Cultural Heritage, carried out initial archaeological excavations in which unearthed the remains of a Buddhist stupa at Ban Faqiran, near the Shah Allah Ditta caves, which was dated to the 2nd to the 5th century CE.[30]
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+ 15th-century Pharwala Fort beside the Swaan River
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+
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+ The popular Shrine of Meher Ali Shah was completed immediately before construction began on the future capital city just east of the shrine
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+
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+ The caves at Shah Allah Ditta, on Islamabad's outskirts, were part of an ancient Buddhist monastic community
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+
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+ The restored village of Saidpur predates the surrounding city of Islamabad
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+ When Pakistan gained independence in 1947, the southern port city of Karachi was its provisional national capital. In 1958, a commission was constituted to select a suitable site near Rawalpindi for the national capital with particular emphasis on location, climate, logistics, and defence requirements, along with other attributes. After extensive study, research, and a thorough review of potential sites, the commission recommended the area northeast of Rawalpindi in 1959.[31][32] In the 1960s, Islamabad was constructed as a forward capital for several reasons.[33] Karachi was also located at the southern end of the country, and exposed to attacks from the Arabian Sea. Pakistan needed a capital that was easily accessible from all parts of the country.[31][34] Karachi, a business centre, was also considered unsuitable partly because of intervention of business interests in government affairs.[35] The newly selected location of Islamabad was closer to the army headquarters in Rawalpindi and the disputed territory of Kashmir in the north.[26]
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+ Greek firm of architects, led by Konstantinos Apostolos Doxiadis, designed the master plan of the city based on a grid plan which was triangular in shape with its apex towards the Margalla Hills.[36] The capital was not moved directly from Karachi to Islamabad; it was first shifted temporarily to Rawalpindi in the early 60s, and then to Islamabad when essential development work was completed in 1966.[37]
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+ Islamabad has attracted people from all over Pakistan, making it one of the most cosmopolitan and urbanised cities of Pakistan.[38] As the capital city it has hosted a number of important meetings, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit in 2004.[39]
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+ In October 2005, the city suffered damage due to the 2005 Kashmir earthquake which had a magnitude of 7.6.[40] Islamabad has experienced a series of terrorist incidents including the July 2007 Siege of Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), the June 2008 Danish embassy bombing, and the September 2008 Marriott bombing.[41] In 2011, four terrorism incidents occurred in the city, killing four people, including the murder of the Punjab Governor Salmaan Taseer.[42]
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+ Construction of the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Metrobus, the region's first mass transit line, began in February 2014, and was completed in March 2015. The Rawalpindi Development Authority built the project at a cost of approximately Rs 24 billion, which was shared by both the Federal government and the provincial government of Punjab.[43]
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+ Margalla Hills, Islamabad
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+ Islamabad's verdant cityscape merges directly with the Margalla Hills
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+
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+ Constitution Avenue
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+
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+ Islamabad's deciduous trees change colours in autumn
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+ Islamabad is located at 33°26′N 73°02′E / 33.43°N 73.04°E / 33.43; 73.04 at the northern edge of the Pothohar Plateau and at the foot of the Margalla Hills in Islamabad Capital Territory. Its elevation is 540 metres (1,770 ft).[44][45] The modern capital and the ancient Gakhar city of Rawalpindi form a conurbation, and are commonly referred to as the Twin Cities.[46][35]
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+ To the northeast of the city lies the colonial era hill station of Murree, and to the north lies the Haripur District of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Kahuta lies on the southeast, Taxila, Wah Cantt, and Attock District to the northwest, Gujar Khan, Rawat, and Mandrah on the southeast, and the metropolis of Rawalpindi to the south and southwest. Islamabad is located 120 kilometres (75 mi) SSW of Muzaffarabad, 185 kilometres (115 mi) east of Peshawar, 295 kilometres (183 mi) NNW of Lahore, and 300 kilometres (190 mi) WSW of Srinagar, the capital of the Indian territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
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+ The city of Islamabad expanses an area of 906 square kilometres (350 sq mi).[47] A further 2,717 square kilometres (1,049 sq mi) area is known as the Specified Area, with the Margala Hills in the north and northeast. The southern portion of the city is an undulating plain. It is drained by the Kurang River, on which the Rawal Dam is located.[48]
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+ Islamabad has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen: Cwa), with five seasons: Winter (November–February), Spring (March and April), Summer (May and June), Rainy Monsoon (July and August) and Autumn (September and October). The hottest month is June, where average highs routinely exceed 38 °C (100.4 °F). The wettest month is July, with heavy rainfalls and evening thunderstorms with the possibility of cloudburst and flooding. The coolest month is January.
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+ Islamabad's micro-climate is regulated by three artificial reservoirs: Rawal, Simli, and Khanpur Dam. The latter is located on the Haro River near the town of Khanpur, about 40 kilometres (25 mi) from Islamabad. Simli Dam is 30 kilometres (19 mi) north of Islamabad. 220 acres (89 ha) of the city consists of Margalla Hills National Park. Loi Bher Forest is situated along the Islamabad Highway, covering an area of 1,087 acres (440 ha).[49] The highest monthly rainfall of 743.3 mm (29.26 in) was recorded during July 1995.[50] Winters generally feature dense fog in the mornings and sunny afternoons. In the city, temperatures stay mild, with snowfall over the higher-elevation points on nearby hill stations, notably Murree and Nathia Gali. The temperatures range from 13 °C (55 °F) in January to 38 °C (100 °F) in June. The highest recorded temperature was 46.6 °C (115.9 °F) on 23 June 2005 while the lowest temperature was −6 °C (21.2 °F) on 17 January 1967.[51][52] The city has recorded snowfall. On 23 July 2001, Islamabad received a record-breaking 620 mm (24 in) of rainfall in just 10 hours. It was the heaviest rainfall in Islamabad in the past 100 years and the highest rainfall in 24 hours as well.[53][54]
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+ The Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) Administration, generally known as ICT Administration or Islamabad Administration, is the civil administration as well as main law and order agency of the Federal Capital.
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+ The local government authority of the city is the Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (IMC) with some help from Capital Development Authority (CDA), which oversees the planning, development, construction, and administration of the city.[58][59] Islamabad Capital Territory is divided into eight zones: Administrative Zone, Commercial District, Educational Sector, Industrial Sector, Diplomatic Enclave, Residential Areas, Rural Areas and Green Area.[60] Islamabad city is divided into five major zones: Zone I, Zone II, Zone III, Zone IV, and Zone V. Out of these, Zone IV is the largest in area.[57] Zone I consists mainly of all the developed residential sectors while Zone II consists of the under-developed residential sectors. Each residential sector is identified by a letter of the alphabet and a number, and covers an area of approximately 2 km × 2 km (​1 1⁄4 mi × ​1 1⁄4 mi). The sectors are lettered from A to I, and each sector is divided into four numbered sub-sectors.[61]
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+ Series A, B, and C are still underdeveloped. The D series has seven sectors (D-11 to D-17),[57] of which only sector D-12 is completely developed. This series is located at the foot of Margalla Hills.[60] The E Sectors are named from E-7 to E-17.[57] Many foreigners and diplomatic personnel are housed in these sectors.[60] In the revised Master Plan of the city, CDA has decided to develop a park on the pattern of Fatima Jinnah Park in sector E-14. Sectors E-8 and E-9 contain the campuses of Bahria University, Air University, and the National Defence University.[62][63][64] The F and G series contains the most developed sectors. F series contains sectors F-5 to F-17; some sectors are still under-developed.[57] F-5 is an important sector for the software industry in Islamabad, as the two software technology parks are located here. The entire F-9 sector is covered with Fatima Jinnah Park. The Centaurus complex is a major landmark of the F-8 sector.[60] G sectors are numbered G-5 through G-17.[57] Some important places include the Jinnah Convention Centre and Serena Hotel in G-5, the Red Mosque in G-6, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, the largest medical complex in the capital, located in G-8,[60] and the Karachi Company shopping center in G-9.
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+ The H sectors are numbered H-8 through H-17.[57] The H sectors are mostly dedicated to educational and health institutions. National University of Sciences and Technology covers a major portion of sector H-12.[60] The I sectors are numbered from I-8 to I-18. With the exception of I-8, which is a well-developed residential area, these sectors are primarily part of the industrial zone. Two sub-sectors of I-9 and one sub-sector of I-10 are used as industrial areas. CDA is planning to set up Islamabad Railway Station in Sector I-18 and Industrial City in sector I-17.[60] Zone III consists primarily of the Margalla Hills and Margalla Hills National Park. Rawal Lake is in this zone. Zone IV and V consist of Islamabad Park, and rural areas of the city. The Soan River flows into the city through Zone V.[57]
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+ When the master plan for Islamabad was drawn up in 1960, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, along with the adjoining areas, was to be integrated to form a large metropolitan area called Islamabad/Rawalpindi Metropolitan Area. The area would consist of the developing Islamabad, the old colonial cantonment city of Rawalpindi, and Margalla Hills National Park, including surrounding rural areas.[65][66] However, Islamabad city is part of the Islamabad Capital Territory, while Rawalpindi is part of Rawalpindi District, which is part of province of Punjab .[67]
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+ Initially, it was proposed that the three areas would be connected by four major highways: Murree Highway, Islamabad Highway, Soan Highway, and Capital Highway. However, to date only two highways have been constructed: Kashmir Highway (the former Murree Highway) and Islamabad Highway.[66] Plans of constructing Margalla Avenue are also underway.[68] Islamabad is the hub all the governmental activities while Rawalpindi is the centre of all industrial, commercial, and military activities. The two cities are considered sister cities and are highly interdependent.[65]
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+ Mega Mall of Islamabad The Centaurus
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+ PTET & ISE Tower
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+
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+ Pakistan Secretariat
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+
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+ Star and Crescent Monument near the start of Shakarparian
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+
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+ Faisal Mosque
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+
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+ Daman-e-Koh Park
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+ Sunset over the Lake View Park
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+
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+ view of Blue Area, the commercial hub of the city.
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+ Blue Area
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+ Pakistan Monument
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+ Constitution Avenue in Islamabad
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+ Saidpur villagekami
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+ Islamabad's architecture is a combination of modernity and old Islamic and regional traditions. The Saudi-Pak Tower is an example of the integration of modern architecture with traditional styles. The beige-coloured edifice is trimmed with blue tile works in Islamic tradition, and is one of Islamabad's tallest buildings. Other examples of intertwined Islamic and modern architecture include Pakistan Monument and Faisal Mosque. Other notable structures are: Secretariat Complex designed by Gio Ponti, Prime Minister's secretariat based on Mughal architecture and the National Assembly by Edward Durell Stone.[32]
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+ The murals on the inside of the large petals of Pakistan Monument are based on Islamic architecture.[69] The Shah Faisal Mosque is a fusion of contemporary architecture with a more traditional large triangular prayer hall and four minarets, designed by Vedat Dalokay, a Turkish architect and built with the help of funding provided by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.[70] The architecture of Faisal Mosque is unusual as it lacks a dome structure. It is a combination of Arabic, Turkish, and Mughal architectural traditions.[71] The Centaurus is an example of modern architecture under construction in Islamabad. The seven star hotel was designed by WS Atkins PLC.The newly built Islamabad Stock Exchange Towers is another example of modern architecture in the city.[72]
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+ According to 1998 census, the mother tongue of the majority of the population is Punjabi at 68%, and the major dialect is Pothohari, 15% of the population are Pashto speakers, while 18% speak other languages.[75] Similarly according to 1998 census, the total migrant population of the city is 1 million, with the majority (691,977) coming from Punjab. Around 210,614 of the migrated population came from Sindh and rest from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Azad Kashmir. Smaller populations emigrated from Balochistan, and Gilgit–Baltistan.[76]
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+ The majority of the population lies in the age group of 15–64 years, around 59.38%. Only 2.73% of the population is above 65 years of age; 37.90% is below the age of 15.[77] Islamabad has the highest literacy rate in Pakistan, at 88%.[78] 9.8% of the population has done intermediate education (equivalent to grades 11 and 12). 10.26% have a bachelor or equivalent degree while 5.2% have a master or equivalent degree.[79] The labour force of Islamabad is 185,213[80] and the unemployment rate is 15.70%.[81]
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+ Islam is the largest religion in the city, with 95.53% of the population Muslim. In rural areas this percentage is 98.80%. Per 1998 census in urban areas the percentage of Muslims is 97.83%. The second largest religion is Christianity, with 4.07% of the population, 0.94% in rural areas and 5.70% in the city. Hinduism accounts for 0.02% of the population, and other minorities 0.03%.[82]
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+ Islamabad is a net contributor to the Pakistani economy, as whilst having only 0.8% of the country's population, it contributes 1% to the country's GDP.[83] Islamabad Stock Exchange, founded in 1989, is Pakistan's third largest stock exchange after Karachi Stock Exchange and Lahore Stock Exchange, and was merged to form Pakistan Stock Exchange. The exchange had 118 members with 104 corporate bodies and 18 individual members. The average daily turnover of the stock exchange is over 1 million shares.[84]
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+ According to the World Bank's Doing Business Report of 2010, Islamabad was ranked as the best place to start a business in Pakistan.[85] Islamabad's businesses are Pakistan's most compliant for paying tax dues.[86] As of 2012[update], Islamabad LTU (Large Tax Unit) was responsible for Rs 371 billion in tax revenue, which amounts to 20% of all the revenue collected by Federal Board of Revenue.[87]
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+ Islamabad has seen an expansion in information and communications technology with the addition two Software Technology Parks, which house numerous national and foreign technological and information technology companies. Some jobs have relocated from India to Islamabad.[88] Awami Markaz IT Park houses 36 IT companies, while Evacuee Trust house 29 companies.[89] Islamabad will see its third IT Park by 2020, which will be built with assistance from South Korea.[90]
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+ Islamabad is home to many migrants from other regions of Pakistan and has a cultural and religious diversity of considerable antiquity. Due to its location on the Pothohar Plateau, remnants of ancient cultures and civilisations such as Aryan, Soanian, and Indus Valley civilisation can still be found in the region. A 15th-century Gakhar fort, Pharwala Fort is located near Islamabad.[91][92] Rawat Fort in the region was built by the Gakhars in 16th century and contains the grave of the Gakhar chief, Sultan Sarang Khan.[92]
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+ Saidpur village is supposedly named after Said Khan, the son of Sarang Khan. The 500-year-old village was converted into a place of Hindu worship by a Mughal commander, Raja Man Singh. He constructed a number of small ponds: Rama kunda, Sita kunda, Lakshaman kunda, and Hanuman kunda.[93] The region is home to a small Hindu temple that is preserved, showing the presence of Hindu people in the region. The shrine of Sufi mystic Pir Meher Ali Shah is located at Golra Sharif, which has a rich cultural heritage of the pre-Islamic period. Archaeological remains of the Buddhist era can also still be found in the region.[94] The shrine of Bari Imam was built by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. Thousands of devotees from across Pakistan attend the annual Urs of Bari Imam. The event is one of the largest religious gatherings in Islamabad. In 2004, the Urs was attended by more than 1.2 million people.[95]
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+ The Lok Virsa Museum in Islamabad preserves a wide variety of expressions of folk and traditional cultural legacy of Pakistan. It is located near the Shakarparian hills and boasts a large display of embroidered costumes, jewellery, musical instruments, woodwork, utensils and folkloristic objects from the region and other parts of Pakistan.[96]
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+ Faisal Mosque is an important cultural landmark of the city and that attracts many tourists daily. Faisal Mosque built in 1986, was named after the Saudi Arabian King, Faisal bin Abdul Aziz.[97] It also serves the purpose of accommodating 24,000 Muslims that pray at this mosque. Faisal Mosque that is designed by the Turks and financed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia includes calligraphy of Quranic Versus along the walls of the mosque.
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+ One of the landmarks for tourists is the Pakistan Monument built in 2007 located in Islamabad. This tourist attraction represents the patriotism and sovereignty of Pakistan. The design is shaped as a dome with petal-shaped walls that are engraved with arts portraying Pakistan’s other tourist landmarks such as the Badshahi Mosque, Minar-e-Pakistan and Lahore Fort.[98]
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+ Islamabad holds some of Pakistan's most prestigious museums such as Lok Virsa Museum, Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage Shakarparian Park and prominent galleries such as the National Art Gallery and Gallery 6.
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+ The Islamabad Museum contains many relics and artifacts dating back to the Gandhara period of the region, an intriguing fusion of Buddhist and Graeco-Roman styles. The living culture of Islamabad and Pakistan is best explored at Lok Virsa Museum, as well as the Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage in Shakarparian Park.
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+ Islamabad is built upon civilization and architecture that ranges from the 10th Century to the modern era. As Islamabad is situated on the Potohar Plateau, the remains of civilization descending from stone-age era include the Acheulian and the Soanian traditions and these are tourist landmarks. Islamabad has an array of historic landmarks that reflect the Hindu civilization that dates back to the 16th Century with examples such as Saidpur. Saidpur that is situated in Islamabad has progressed from a village to a sacred place that includes temples where the Hindu Mughal Commanders worshipped.[99]
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+ Margalla Hills National Park is located in the North sector of Islamabad and is in close proximity to the Himalayas. The National Park includes of picturesque valleys and scenic hills that include various wildlife such as Himalayan goral, Barking deer and leopards. Flanked by wildlife and vegetation, Margalla Hills National Park also includes accommodation and camping grounds for tourists.
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+ Islamabad boasts the highest literacy rate in Pakistan at 98%,[78] and has some of the most advanced educational institutes in the country.[100] A large number of public and private sector educational institutes are present here. The higher education institutes in the capital are either federally chartered or administered by private organisations and almost all of them are recognised by the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan. High schools and colleges are either affiliated with the Federal Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education or with the UK universities education boards, O/A Levels, or IGCSE. According to Academy of Educational Planning and Management's report, in 2009 there were a total of 913 recognised institutions in Islamabad (31 pre-primary, 2 religious, 367 primary, 162 middle, 250 high, 75 higher secondary and intermediate colleges, and 26 degree colleges).[101] There are seven teacher training institutes in Islamabad with a total enrolment of 604,633 students and 499 faculty.[101]
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+ The Gender Parity Index in Islamabad is 0.93 compared to the 0.95 national average. There are 178 boys only institutes, 175 girls only, and 551 mixed institutes in Islamabad.[101] Total enrolment of students in all categories is 267,992; 138,272 for boys and 129,720 for girls.[101] There are 16 recognised universities in Islamabad with a total enrolment of 372,974 students and 30,144 teachers.[101] Most of the top ranked universities; National University of Sciences and Technology, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology and Pakistan Institute of Engineering & Applied Sciences, also have their headquarters in the capital.[22] The world's second largest general university by enrolment, Allama Iqbal Open University is located in Islamabad for distance education. Other universities include Air University, Bahria University, Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering, Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology, Hamdard University, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Capital University of Science & Technology, National Defence University, Shifa Tameer-e-Millat University, National University of Modern Languages, Iqra University, International Islamic University, Virtual University of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah University The University of Lahore, Abasyn University and The Millennium University College.
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+ Islamabad has the lowest rate of infant mortality in the country at 38 deaths per thousand compared to the national average of 78 deaths per thousand.[102] Islamabad has both public and private medical centres. The largest hospital in Islamabad is Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) hospital. It was established in 1985 as a teaching and doctor training institute. PIMS functions as a National Reference Center and provides specialised diagnostic and curative services.[103] The hospital has 30 major medical departments.[104] PIMS is divided into five administrative branches. Islamabad Hospital is the major component with a 592-bed facility and 22 medical and surgical specialties.[105]
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+ The Children's Hospital is a 230-bed hospital completed in 1985. It contains six major facilities: Surgical and Allied Specialties, Medical and Allied Specialties, Diagnostic Facilities, Operation Theatre, Critical Care (NICU, PICU, Isolation & Accident Emergency), and a Blood Bank.[106] The Maternal and Child Health Care Center is a training institute with an attached hospital of 125 beds offering different clinical and operational services.[107] PIMS consists of five academic institutes: Quaid-e-Azam Postgraduate Medical College, College of Nursing, College of Medical Technology, School of Nursing, and Mother and Child Health Center.[108]
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+ PAEC General Hospital and teaching institute, established in 2006, is affiliated with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission.[109] The hospital consists of a 100-bed facility[109] and 10 major departments: Obstetrics and Gynecology, Pediatric, General Medicine, General Surgery, Intensive Care Unit/Coronary Care Unit, Orthopedics, Ophthalmology, Pathology, Radiology, and Dental Department.[110] Shifa International Hospital is a teaching hospital in Islamabad that was founded in 1987 and became a public company in 1989. The hospital has 70 qualified consultants in almost all specialties, 150 IPD beds and OPD facilities in 35 different specialisations.[111] According to the Federal Bureau of Statistics of the Government of Pakistan, in 2008 there were 12 hospitals, 76 dispensaries, and five maternity and child welfare centers in the city with a total of 5,158 beds.[112]
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+ Islamabad is connected to major destinations around the world through Islamabad International Airport. The airport is the largest in Pakistan and is located outside Islamabad in Fateh Jang.
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+ The Rawalpindi-Islamabad Metrobus is a 24 km (14.9 mi) bus rapid transit system that serves the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad in Pakistan. It uses dedicated bus lanes for all of its route covering 24 bus stations. This service covers a huge distance from city Saddar, Rawalpindi to Pak-Secretariat, Islamabad. This service is very reliable and consistent, and the labour force as well as students are using this government provided service on a daily basis. It has reduced the time consumption by reducing the route. Now this bus service is being extended to more areas in Islamabad that include areas near G-13 and H-12. Work is being done to keep it along the Kashmir Highway.[113]
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+ People use private transport like Taxis, Careem, Uber, Bykea, and SWVL for local journeys. In March 2016, Careem became functional in Islamabad and Rawalpindi with taxi services.
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+ M-2 Motorway is 367 km (228 mi) long and connect Islamabad and Lahore.[114] M-1 Motorway connects Islamabad with Peshawar and is 155 km (96 mi) long.[114] Islamabad is linked to Rawalpindi through the Faizabad Interchange, which has a daily traffic volume of about 48,000 vehicles.[115]
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+ Islamabad has a multipurpose sports complex opposite Aabpara. It includes Liaquat Gymnasium for indoor games, Mushaf Squash Complex and Jinnah Stadium for outdoor games, which is a venue for regular national and international events. 2004 SAF Games were held in the stadium.
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+
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+ There is another multipurpose sports complex in the F6 Markaz. It has tennis courts, a basketball court with fibre-glass boards and a Futsal ground which introduced artificial turf to the people of Islamabad.
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+ Major sports in the city include cricket, football, squash, hockey, table tennis, rugby and boxing.[116] The city is home to Islamabad United, which won the first ever Pakistan Super League in 2016,[117] and Islamabad All Stars, which participates in the Super Kabaddi League.
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+ Islamabad also has various rock climbing spots in the Margalla Hills.[118]
158
+
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+ The Pakistan Sports Complex has three swimming pools for children. These facilities attract a large gathering on weekends.[119]
160
+
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+ Located in Islamabad, Pakistan, the Faisal Mosque is the largest mosque in South Asia and the fourth largest mosque in the world. Built in the year 1986, it was named after the late king of Saudi Arabia, Faisal Bin Abdul Aziz, who backed and financed the construction.[120]
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+
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+ The most famous and oldest hiking track of Islamabad is Trail 3. It starts from the Margalla road sector F-6. The trail is exhausting to some extent, due to steep hills. The course leads to the point where it goes up to the Viewpoint and is about a 30 – 50 minutes track. After the Viewpoint it continues for another easy-going 45 – 60 minutes and reaches the Pir Sohawa, where there are two restaurants for food, The Monal and La Montana. In total, it is approximately a one-hour and thirty minute walk.[121]
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+ Located in Islamabad, the Pakistan National Monument is a representation of the four provinces and three territories of the nation. Designed by the famous architect, Arif Masood, this blooming flower shaped structure reflects the progress and prosperity of Pakistan.[122]
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+ Islam (/ˈɪslɑːm/;[A] Arabic: اَلْإِسْلَامُ‎, romanized: al-’Islām, [ɪsˈlaːm] (listen) "submission [to God]")[1] is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion that teaches that Muhammad is a messenger of God.[2][3] It is the world's second-largest religion with over 1.8 billion followers or 24.1% of the world's population,[4] known as Muslims.[5] Muslims make up a majority of the population in 49 countries.[6] Islam teaches that God is merciful, all-powerful, and unique,[7] and has guided mankind through prophets, revealed scriptures, and natural signs.[3][8] The primary scriptures of Islam are the Quran, believed to be the verbatim word of God, as well as the teachings and normative examples (called the sunnah, composed of accounts called hadith) of Muhammad (c. 570 – 8 June 632 CE).[9]
6
+
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+ Muslims believe that Islam is the complete and universal version of a primordial faith that was revealed many times before through prophets, including Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.[10] Muslims consider the Quran in Arabic to be the unaltered and final revelation of God.[11] Like other Abrahamic religions, Islam also teaches a final judgment with the righteous rewarded in paradise and the unrighteous punished in hell.[12] Religious concepts and practices include the Five Pillars of Islam, which are obligatory acts of worship, as well as following Islamic law (sharia), which touches on virtually every aspect of life and society, from banking and welfare to women and the environment.[13][14] The cities of Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem are home to the three holiest sites in Islam.[15]
8
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+ From a historical point of view, Islam originated in early 7th century CE in the Arabian Peninsula, in Mecca,[16] and by the 8th century, the Umayyad Caliphate extended from Iberia in the west to the Indus River in the east. The Islamic Golden Age refers to the period traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 13th century, during the Abbasid Caliphate, when much of the historically Muslim world was experiencing a scientific, economic, and cultural flourishing.[17][18][19] The expansion of the Muslim world involved various caliphates and states such as the Ottoman Empire, trade, and conversion to Islam by missionary activities (dawah).[20]
10
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+ Most Muslims are of one of two denominations: Sunni (75–90%)[21] or Shia (10–20%).[22][23][24] Sunni and Shia differences arose from disagreement over the succession to Muhammad and acquired broader political significance, as well as theological and juridical dimensions.[25] About 13% of Muslims live in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country;[26] 31% live in South Asia,[27] the largest population of Muslims in the world;[28] 20% in the Middle East–North Africa, where it is the dominant religion;[29] and 15% in sub-Saharan Africa.[29] Sizable Muslim communities can also be found in the Americas, China, Europe, and North Asia.[30][31][29] Islam is the fastest-growing major religion in the world,[32][33] due primarily to the young age and high fertility-rate of Muslims.[34][35]
12
+
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+ Islām (Arabic: إسلام‎) is the verbal noun originating from the triliteral root S-L-M, which forms a large class of words mostly relating to concepts of wholeness, submission, sincerity, safeness, and peace.[36] Islām is the verbal noun of Form IV of the root, and means "submission" or "surrender". In a religious context, it means "voluntary submission' to God".[37][38] A Muslim (Arabic: مُسْلِم‎‎), the word applied to an adherent of Islam, is the active participle of the same verb form, and means "submitter (to God)" or "one who surrenders (to God)." The word sometimes has distinct connotations in its various occurrences in the Quran. In some verses, there is stress on the quality of islām as an internal spiritual state: "Whomsoever God desires to guide, He opens his heart to islām."[i][39] Other verses connect islām and religion (dīn) together:[ii]
14
+
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+ Today, I have perfected your religion for you; I have completed My blessing upon you; I have approved islām for your religion.
16
+
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+ Still, others describe Islām as an action of returning to God—more than just a verbal affirmation of faith.[iii] In the Hadith of Gabriel, islām is presented as one part of a triad that also includes imān (faith), and ihsān (excellence).[40][41]
18
+
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+ The word silm (Arabic: سِلْم‎) in Arabic means both peace and also the religion of Islam.[42] A common linguistic phrase demonstrating its usage is "he entered into as-silm" (Arabic: دَخَلَ فِي السِّلْمِ‎) which means "he entered into Islam," with a connotation of finding peace by submitting one's will to the Will of God.[42] The word "Islam" can be used in a linguistic sense of submission or in a technical sense of the religion of Islam, which also is called as-silm which means peace.[42]
20
+
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+ Islam was historically itself called Mohammedanism in the English-speaking world. This term has fallen out of use and is sometimes said to be offensive, as it suggests that a human being, rather than God, is central to Muslims' religion, parallel to Buddha in Buddhism.[43] Some authors, however, continue to use the term Muhammadanism as a technical term for the religious system as opposed to the theological concept of Islam that exists within that system.
22
+
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+ Faith (iman) in the Islamic creed (aqidah) is often represented as the six articles of faith, notably mentioned in the Hadith of Gabriel. Belief in these articles is necessary and obligatory upon all Muslims.
24
+
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+ Islam's most fundamental concept is a rigorous monotheism, called tawḥīd (Arabic: توحيد‎).[44][45][46]:22 God is described in Chapter 112 of the Quran as: "Say, He is God, the One and Only; God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, nor is He begotten; And there is none like unto Him."[iv] Islam rejects polytheism and idolatry (shirk), as well as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. In Islam, God is beyond all comprehension and thus Muslims are not expected to think of Him as having a human form.[47][48][49][50] God is described and referred to by several names or attributes, the most common being Ar-Rahmān, meaning "The Compassionate," and Ar-Rahīm, meaning "The Merciful."[51]
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+
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+ Islam teaches that the creation of everything in the universe was brought into being by God's command as expressed by the wording, "Be, and it is,"[v][52] and that the purpose of existence is to worship or to know God.[vi][53][54] He is viewed as a personal god who responds whenever a person in need or distress calls him.[vii][52] There are no intermediaries, such as clergy, to contact God, who states: "I am nearer to him (man) than [his] jugular vein."[viii] Consciousness and awareness of God is referred to as Taqwa. Allāh is traditionally seen as the personal name of God,[55] a term with no plural or gender being ascribed. It is used by Muslims and Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews in reference to God, whereas ʾilāh (Arabic: إله‎) is a term used for a deity or a god in general.[56] Other non-Arab Muslims might use different names as much as Allah, for instance "Khodā" in Persian or "Ḵẖudā" in Urdu.
28
+
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+ Belief in angels is fundamental to Islam. The Quranic word for angel (Arabic: ملك‎ malak) derives either from Malaka, meaning "he controlled", due to their power to govern different affairs assigned to them,[57] or from the root ’-l-k, l-’-k or m-l-k with the broad meaning of a 'messenger', just as its counterpart in Hebrew (malʾákh). Unlike the Hebrew word, however, the term is exclusively used for heavenly spirits of the divine world, as opposed to human messengers. The Quran refers to both angelic and human messengers as rasul instead.[58]
30
+
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+ The Quran is the principal source for the Islamic concept of angels.[59]:23 Some of them, such as Gabriel and Michael, are mentioned by name in the Quran, others are only referred to by their function. In hadith literature, angels are often assigned to only one specific phenomenon.[59]:79 Angels play a significant role in literature about the Mi'raj, where Muhammad encounters several angels during his journey through the heavens.[59]:79 Further angels have often been featured in Islamic eschatology, theology and philosophy.[59]:22 Duties assigned to angels include, for example, communicating revelations from God, glorifying God, recording every person's actions, and taking a person's soul at the time of death.
32
+
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+ In Islam, just as in Judaism and Christianity, angels are often represented in anthropomorphic forms combined with supernatural images, such as wings, being of great size or wearing heavenly articles.[59]:97–9 The Quran describes them as "messengers with wings—two, or three, or four (pairs)."[ix][60][61] Common characteristics for angels are their missing needs for bodily desires, such as eating and drinking.[62] Their lack of affinity to material desires is also expressed by their creation from light: angels of mercy are created from nūr ('light')[63] in opposition to the angels of punishment created from nār ('fire').[64][65] Muslims do not generally share the perceptions of angelic pictorial depictions, such as those found in Western art.
34
+
35
+ The Islamic holy books are the records which most Muslims believe were dictated by God to various prophets. Muslims believe that parts of the previously revealed scriptures, the Tawrat (Torah) and the Injil (Gospel), had become distorted—either in interpretation, in text, or both.[66] The Quran (lit. "Recitation") is viewed by Muslims as the final revelation and literal word of God and is widely regarded as the finest literary work in the classical Arabic language.[67][68]
36
+
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+ Muslims believe that the verses of the Quran were revealed to Muhammad by God through the archangel Gabriel (Jibrīl) on many occasions between 610 CE until his death in 632.[46]:17–18, 21 While Muhammad was alive, all of these revelations were written down by his companions (sahabah), although the prime method of transmission was orally through memorization.[69] The Quran is divided into 114 chapters (suras) which combined, contain 6,236 verses (āyāt). The chronologically earlier suras, revealed at Mecca, are primarily concerned with ethical and spiritual topics. The later Medinan suras mostly discuss social and legal issues relevant to the Muslim community.[52][70]
38
+
39
+ The Quran is more concerned with moral guidance than legislation, and is considered the "sourcebook of Islamic principles and values."[46]:79 Muslim jurists consult the hadith ('accounts'), or the written record of Prophet Muhammad's life, to both supplement the Quran and assist with its interpretation. The science of Quranic commentary and exegesis is known as tafsir.[71][46]:79–81 The set of rules governing proper elocution of recitation is called tajwid. Muslims usually view "the Quran" as the original scripture as revealed in Arabic and that any translations are necessarily deficient, which are regarded only as commentaries on the Quran.[72][70]
40
+
41
+ Muslims identify the 'prophets' (Arabic: أنبياء‎, anbiyāʾ) as those humans chosen by God at different times in the past, to convey his messages (warnings and glad tidings), teachings (way of personal life) and legislation (public life) to people while being in contact with God mostly through revelation.[x] According to the Quran, the prophets were instructed by God to bring the "will of God" to the peoples of the nations. Muslims believe that prophets are human and not divine, though some are able to perform miracles to prove their claim. Islamic theology says that all of God's messengers preached the message of Islam—submission to the will of God. The Quran mentions the names of numerous figures considered prophets in Islam, including Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus, among others.[52]
42
+
43
+ Muslims believe that God finally sent Muhammad as the last law-bearing prophet (Seal of the prophets) to convey the divine message to the whole world (to sum up and to finalize the word of God). In Islam, the "normative" example of Muhammad's life is called the sunnah (literally 'trodden path'). Muslims are encouraged to emulate Muhammad's actions in their daily lives and the sunnah is seen as crucial to guiding interpretation of the Quran.[73] This example is preserved in traditions known as hadith, which recount his words, his actions, and his personal characteristics. Hadith Qudsi is a sub-category of hadith, regarded as verbatim words of God quoted by Muhammad that are not part of the Quran. A hadith involves two elements: a chain of narrators, called sanad, and the actual wording, called matn. Hadiths can be classified, by studying the narration as: 'authentic' or 'correct' (صَحِيْح‎, ṣaḥīḥ); 'good', hasan (حَسَن‎, ḥasan); or 'weak' (ضَعِيْف‎, ḍaʻīf), among others. Scholar Muhammad al-Bukhari (810–870 AD) collected over 300,000 hadith and codified 2,602 of them, having passed veracity tests, as authentic into his Sahih al-Bukhari,[74] a book considered by Sunnis to be the most authentic source after the Quran.[75][76] Another famous source of hadiths is known as The Four Books, which Shias consider as the most authentic hadith reference.[77][78][79]
44
+
45
+ Belief in the "Day of Resurrection" or Yawm al-Qiyāmah (Arabic: يوم القيامة‎), is also crucial for Muslims. It is believed that the time of Qiyāmah is preordained by God but unknown to man. The trials and tribulations preceding and during the Qiyāmah are described in the Quran and the hadith, as well as in the commentaries of scholars. The Quran emphasizes bodily resurrection, a break from the pre-Islamic Arabian understanding of death.[80]
46
+
47
+ On Yawm al-Qiyāmah, Muslims believe all humankind will be judged by their good and bad deeds and consigned to Jannah (paradise) or Jahannam (hell). The Qurʼan in Surat al-Zalzalah describes this as: "So whoever does an atom's weight of good will see it. And whoever does an atom's weight of evil will see it." The Qurʼan lists several sins that can condemn a person to hell, such as disbelief in God (كفر‎, kufr), and dishonesty. However, the Qurʼan makes it clear that God will forgive the sins of those who repent if he so wills. Good deeds, such as charity, prayer, and compassion towards animals,[81][82] will be rewarded with entry to heaven. Muslims view heaven as a place of joy and blessings, with Qurʼanic references describing its features. Mystical traditions in Islam place these heavenly delights in the context of an ecstatic awareness of God.[83] Yawm al-Qiyāmah is also identified in the Quran as Yawm ad-Dīn (يوم الدين‎, Day of Religion);[xi] as-Sāʿah (الساعة‎, 'the Last Hour');[xii] and al-Qāriʿah (القارعة‎, 'The Clatterer').[xiii]
48
+
49
+ The concept of divine will is referred to as al-qadāʾ wa l-qadar, which literally derives from a root that means 'to measure'. Everything, good and bad, is believed to have been decreed.[84]
50
+
51
+ There are five core beliefs and practices in Islam,[85] collectively known as 'The Pillars of Islam' (Arkan al-Islam) or 'Pillars of the Religion' (Arkan ad-din), which are considered obligatory for all believers. The Quran presents them as a framework for worship and a sign of commitment to the faith:[86] Three of the pillars are obligatory upon all Muslims, while Zakat and Hajj are obligatory only upon able Muslims.[87] Both Sunni and Shia sects agree on the essential details for the performance of these acts.[88] Apart from these, Muslims also perform other religious acts. Notable among them are voluntary charity (Sadaqah) and recitation of the Quran.
52
+
53
+ The shahadah,[89] which is the basic creed of Islam, must be recited under oath with the specific statement: "ʾašhadu ʾal-lā ʾilāha ʾillā-llāhu wa ʾašhadu ʾanna muħammadan rasūlu-llāh" (أشهد أن لا إله إلا الله وأن محمدا رسول الله‎), or, "I testify that there is no god but Allah and I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God."[90] This testament is a foundation for all other beliefs and practices in Islam. Muslims must repeat the shahadah in prayer, and non-Muslims wishing to convert to Islam are required to recite the creed.[91][92]:135
54
+
55
+ The five daily ritual prayers are called ṣalāh or ṣalāt (Arabic: صلاة). Salat is intended to focus the mind on God, and is seen as a personal communication with him that expresses gratitude and worship. Performing prayers five times a day is compulsory but flexibility in the timing specifics is allowed depending on circumstances. The prayers are recited in the Arabic language, and consist of verses from the Quran.[93] The prayers are done with the chest in direction of the Ka'bah. The act of supplicating is referred to as dua.
56
+
57
+ A mosque is a place of worship for Muslims, who often refer to it by its Arabic name masjid. A large mosque for gathering for Friday prayers or Eid prayers are called masjid jāmi (مَسْجِد جَامِع‎‎, 'congregational mosque').[94] Although the primary purpose of the mosque is to serve as a place of prayer, it is also important to the Muslim community as a place to meet and study. The Masjid an-Nabawi ('Prophetic Mosque') in Medina, Saudi Arabia, was also a place of refuge for the poor.[95] Modern mosques have evolved greatly from the early designs of the 7th century, and contain a variety of architectural elements such as minarets.[96] The means used to signal the prayer time is a vocal call called the adhan.
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+
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+ Zakāt (Arabic: زكاة‎, zakāh, 'alms') is a means of welfare in a Muslim society, characterized by the giving of a fixed portion (2.5% annually)[97] of accumulated wealth by those who can afford it in order to help the poor or needy, such as for freeing captives, those in debt, or for (stranded) travellers, and for those employed to collect zakat.[xiv][98] It is considered a religious obligation (as opposed to supererogatory charity, known as Sadaqah) that the well-off owe to the needy because their wealth is seen as a "trust from God's bounty." Conservative estimates of annual zakat is estimated to be 15 times global humanitarian aid contributions.[99] The first Caliph, Abu Bakr, distributed zakat as one of the first examples of a guaranteed minimum income, with each man, woman and child getting 10 to 20 dirhams annually.[100]
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+
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+ Sadaqah means optional charity which is practiced as religious duty and out of generosity.[101] Both the Quran and the hadith have put much emphasis on spending money for the welfare of needy people,[102] and have urged the Muslims to give more as an act of optional charity.[xv][103][46]:90 The Quran says:"Spend something (in charity) out of the substance which We have bestowed on you, before Death should come to any of you".[xvi] One of the early teachings of Muhammad was that God expects men to be generous with their wealth and not to be miserly.[xvii][104] Accumulating wealth without spending it to address the needs of the poor is generally prohibited and admonished.[105] Another kind of charity in Islam is waqf, meaning perpetual religious endowment.
62
+
63
+ Fasting (Arabic: صوم‎‎, ṣawm) from food and drink, among other things, must be performed from dawn to dusk during the month of Ramadan. The fast is to encourage a feeling of nearness to God, and during it Muslims should express their gratitude for and dependence on him, atone for their past sins, develop self-control and restraint and think of the needy. Sawm is not obligatory for several groups for whom it would constitute an undue burden. For others, flexibility is allowed depending on circumstances, but missed fasts must be compensated for later.[xviii][45][46]:90–91
64
+
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+ The obligatory Islamic pilgrimage, called the ḥajj (Arabic: حج‎), has to be performed during the first weeks of the twelfth Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah in the city of Mecca. Every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it must make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his or her lifetime. Rituals of the Hajj include: spending a day and a night in the tents in the desert plain of Mina, then a day in the desert plain of Arafat praying and worshiping God, following the footsteps of Abraham; then spending a night out in the open, sleeping on the desert sand in the desert plain of Muzdalifah; then moving to Jamarat, symbolically stoning the Devil recounting Abraham's actions;[106][107][108] then going to Mecca and walking seven times around the Kaaba which Muslims believe was built as a place of worship by Abraham; then walking seven times between Mount Safa and Mount Marwah recounting the steps of Abraham's wife, Hagar, while she was looking for water for her son Ishmael in the desert before Mecca developed into a settlement.[109][92]:145–7 Another form of pilgrimage, umrah, is supererogatory and can be undertaken at any time of the year.
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+
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+ Muslims recite and memorize the whole or part of the Quran as acts of virtue. Reciting the Quran with elocution (tajweed) has been described as an excellent act of worship.[110] Pious Muslims recite the whole Quran at the month of Ramadan.[111] In Muslim societies, any social program generally begins with the recitation of the Quran.[111] One who has memorized the whole Quran is called a hafiz ('memorizer') who, it is said, will be able to intercede for ten people on the Last Judgment Day.[110] Apart from this, almost every Muslim memorizes some portion of the Quran because they need to recite it during their prayers.
68
+
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+ Sharia is the religious law forming part of the Islamic tradition.[14] It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam, particularly the Quran and the Hadith. In Arabic, the term sharīʿah refers to God's divine law and is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its scholarly interpretations.[112][113] The manner of its application in modern times has been a subject of dispute between Muslim traditionalists and reformists.[14]
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+
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+ Traditional theory of Islamic jurisprudence recognizes four sources of sharia: the Quran, sunnah (Hadith and Sira), qiyas (analogical reasoning), and ijma (juridical consensus).[114] Different legal schools developed methodologies for deriving sharia rulings from scriptural sources using a process known as ijtihad.[112] Traditional jurisprudence distinguishes two principal branches of law,ʿibādāt (rituals) and muʿāmalāt (social relations), which together comprise a wide range of topics.[112] Its rulings assign actions to one of five categories: mandatory (Fard), recommended (mustahabb), permitted (Mubah), abhorred (Makruh), and prohibited (haram).[112][113] Thus, some areas of sharia overlap with the Western notion of law while others correspond more broadly to living life in accordance with God's will.[113]
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+
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+ Historically, sharia was interpreted by independent jurists (muftis). Their legal opinions (fatwas) were taken into account by ruler-appointed judges who presided over qāḍī's courts, and by maẓālim courts, which were controlled by the ruler's council and administered criminal law.[112][113] In the modern era, sharia-based criminal laws were widely replaced by statutes inspired by European models.[113] The Ottoman Empire's 19th-century Tanzimat reforms lead to the Mecelle civil code and represented the first attempt to codify Sharia.[115] While the constitutions of most Muslim-majority states contain references to sharia, its classical rules were largely retained only in personal status (family) laws.[113] Legislative bodies which codified these laws sought to modernize them without abandoning their foundations in traditional jurisprudence.[113][116] The Islamic revival of the late 20th century brought along calls by Islamist movements for complete implementation of sharia.[113][116] The role of sharia has become a contested topic around the world. There are ongoing debates as to whether sharia is compatible with secular forms of government, human rights, freedom of thought, and women's rights.[117][118][119]
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+
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+ Islam, like Judaism, has no clergy in the sacredotal sense, such as priests who mediate between God and people. However, there are many terms in Islam to refer to religiously sanctioned positions of Islam. In the broadest sense, the term ulema (Arabic: علماء‎) is used to describe the body of Muslim scholars who have completed several years of training and study of Islamic sciences. A jurist who interprets Islamic law is called a mufti (مفتي‎) and often issues legal opinions, called fatwas. A scholar of jurisprudence is called a faqih (فقيه‎‎). Someone who studies the science of hadith is called a muhaddith. A qadi is a judge in an Islamic court. Honorific titles given to scholars include sheikh, mullah, and mawlawi. Imam (إمام‎‎) is a leadership position, often used in the context of conducting Islamic worship services.
76
+
77
+ A school of jurisprudence is referred to as a madhhab (Arabic: مذهب‎). The four major Sunni schools are the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, Hanbali madhahs while the three major Shia schools are the Ja'fari, Zaidi and Isma'ili madhahib. Each differ in their methodology, called Usul al-fiqh ('principles of jurisprudence'). The following of decisions by a religious expert without necessarily examining the decision's reasoning is called taqlid. The term ghair muqallid literally refers to those who do not use taqlid and by extension do not have a madhhab.[120] The practice of an individual interpreting law with independent reasoning is called ijtihad.[121]
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+
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+ To reduce the gap between the rich and the poor, Islamic economic jurisprudence encourages trade,[122] discourages the hoarding of wealth and outlaws interest-bearing loans (i.e. usury; Arabic: riba).[123][124] Therefore, wealth is taxed through Zakat, but trade is not taxed. Usury, which allows the rich to get richer without sharing in the risk, is forbidden in Islam. Profit sharing and venture capital where the lender is also exposed to risk is acceptable.[125] Hoarding of food for speculation is also discouraged.[126]
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+
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+ The taking of land belonging to others is also prohibited. The prohibition of usury and the revival of interest-based economies has resulted in the development of Islamic banking. During the time of Muhammad, any money that went to the state, was immediately used to help the poor. Then, in AD 634, Umar formally established the welfare state Bayt al-Mal ("House of Wealth"), which was for the Muslim and Non-Muslim poor, needy, elderly, orphans, widows, and the disabled. The Bayt al-Maal ran for hundreds of years under the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century, continuing through the Umayyad period, and well into the Abbasid era. Umar also introduced child support and pensions.[127][128][129][130]
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+
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+ Jihad means 'to strive or struggle [in the way of God]'. In its broadest sense, it is "exerting one's utmost power, efforts, endeavors, or ability in contending with an object of disapprobation." Depending on the object being a visible enemy, the Devil, and aspects of one's own self (such as sinful desires), different categories of jihad are defined.[131]:17–8 Jihad also refers to one's striving to attain religious and moral perfection.[132][133] When used without any qualifier, jihad is understood in its military form.[132][131]:17–8 Some Muslim authorities, especially among the Shi'a and Sufis, distinguish between the "greater jihad," which pertains to spiritual self-perfection, and the "lesser jihad", defined as warfare.[134][131]:17
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+ Within Islamic jurisprudence, jihad is usually taken to mean military exertion against non-Muslim combatants.[135][134] Jihad is the only form of warfare permissible in Islamic law and may be declared against illegal works, terrorists, criminal groups, rebels, apostates, and leaders or states who oppress Muslims.[134][131]:17 Most Muslims today interpret Jihad as only a defensive form of warfare.[136] Jihad only becomes an individual duty for those vested with authority. For the rest of the populace, this happens only in the case of a general mobilization.[134] For most Twelver Shias, offensive jihad can only be declared by a divinely appointed leader of the Muslim community, and as such, is suspended since Muhammad al-Mahdi's occultation in 868 AD.[137][138]
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+ Sufism (Arabic: تصوف‎, tasawwuf), is a mystical-ascetic approach to Islam that seeks to find a direct personal experience of God. It is not a sect of Islam and its adherents belong to the various Muslim denominations. Classical Sufi scholars defined Tasawwuf as "a science whose objective is the reparation of the heart and turning it away from all else but God", through "intuitive and emotional faculties" that one must be trained to use.[139][140] Sufis themselves claim that Tasawwuf is an aspect of Islam similar to sharia, inseparable from Islam and an integral part of Islamic belief and practice.[141]
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+ Religiosity of early Sufi ascetics, such as Hasan al-Basri, emphasized fear to fail God's expectations of obedience, in contrast to later and more prominent Sufis, such as Mansur Al-Hallaj and Jalaluddin Rumi, whose religiosity is based on love towards God. For that reason, some academic scholars refuse to refer to the former as Sufis.[142] Nevertheless, Hasan al-Basri is often portrayed as one of the earliest Sufis in Sufi traditions[143] and his ideas were later developed by the influential theologian Al-Ghazali.[citation needed] Traditional Sufis, such as Bayazid Bastami, Jalaluddin Rumi, Haji Bektash Veli, Junaid Baghdadi, and Al-Ghazali, argued for Sufism as being based upon the tenets of Islam and the teachings of the prophet.[144][145] Sufis played an important role in the formation of Muslim societies through their missionary and educational activities.[146][147]
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+ Popular devotional practices such as veneration of Sufi saints have faced stiff opposition from followers of Wahhabism, who have sometimes physically attacked Sufis leading to deterioration in Sufi–Salafi relations. Sufism enjoyed a strong revival in Central Asia and South Asia; the Barelvi movement is Sufi influenced Sunni Islam with over 200 million followers,[148] largely in South Asia.[149][150] Sufism is also prominent is Central Asia, where different orders are the main religious sources,[151][152] as well as in African countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Chad and Niger.[153][154]
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+ Mystical interpretations of Islam have also been developed by Ismaili Shias, as well as by the Illuminationist and Isfahan schools of Islamic philosophy.[155]
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+ In a Muslim family, the birth of a child is attended with some religious ceremonies. Immediately after the birth, the words of Adhan is pronounced in the right ear of the child.[156]:106 In the seventh day, the aqiqah ceremony is performed, in which an animal is sacrificed and its meat is distributed among the poor.[157] The head of the child is also shaved, and an amount of money equaling the weight of the child's hair is donated to the poor.[157] Apart from fulfilling the basic needs of food, shelter, and education, the parents or the elderly members of family also undertake the task of teaching moral qualities, religious knowledge, and religious practices to the children.[156]:136 Marriage, which serves as the foundation of a Muslim family, is a civil contract which consists of an offer and acceptance between two qualified parties in the presence of two witnesses. The groom is required to pay a bridal gift (mahr) to the bride, as stipulated in the contract.[158]
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+ Most families in the Islamic world are monogamous.[159][160] Polyandry, a practice wherein a woman takes on two or more husbands is prohibited in Islam.[161] However, Muslim men are allowed to practice polygyny, that is, they can have more than one wife at the same time, up to a total of four, per Surah 4 Verse 3. A man does not need approval of his first wife for a second marriage as there is no evidence in the Qur'an or hadith to suggest this. With Muslims coming from diverse backgrounds including 49 Muslim-majority countries, plus a strong presence as large minorities throughout the world there are many variations on Muslim weddings. Generally in a Muslim family, a woman's sphere of operation is the home and a man's corresponding sphere is the outside world. However, in practice, this separation is not as rigid as it appears.[162] With regard to inheritance, a son's share is double that of a daughter's.[xix]
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+ Certain religious rites are performed during and after the death of a Muslim. Those near a dying man encourage him to pronounce the Shahada as Muslims want their last word to be their profession of faith. After the death, the body is appropriately bathed by the members of the same gender and then enshrouded in a threefold white garment called kafan.[163] Placing the body on a bier, it is first taken to a mosque where funeral prayer is offered for the dead person, and then to the graveyard for burial.
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+ Many practices fall in the category of adab, or Islamic etiquette. This includes greeting others with "as-salamu 'alaykum" ('peace be unto you'), saying bismillah ('in the name of God') before meals, and using only the right hand for eating and drinking. Islamic hygienic practices mainly fall into the category of personal cleanliness and health. Circumcision of male offspring is also practiced in Islam. Islamic burial rituals include saying the Salat al-Janazah ("funeral prayer") over the bathed and enshrouded dead body, and burying it in a grave. Muslims are restricted in their diet. Prohibited foods include pork products, blood, carrion, and alcohol. All meat must come from a herbivorous animal slaughtered in the name of God by a Muslim, Jew, or Christian, with the exception of game that one has hunted or fished for oneself. Food permissible for Muslims is known as halal food.[164]
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+ — Quran (2:177)
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+ In a Muslim society, various social service activities are performed by the members of the community. As these activities are instructed by Islamic canonical texts, a Muslim's religious life is seen incomplete if not attended by service to humanity.[165] In fact, In Islamic tradition, the idea of social welfare has been presented as one of its principal values.[165] Verse 2:177 of the Quran is often cited to encapsulate the Islamic idea of social welfare.[xx][166]
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+ Similarly, duties to parents, neighbors, relatives, sick people, the old, and minorities have been defined in Islam. Respecting and obeying one's parents, and taking care of them especially in their old age have been made a religious obligation.[167][156]:136 A two-fold approach is generally prescribed with regard to duty to relatives: keeping good relations with them, and offering them financial help if necessary.[168] Severing ties with them has been admonished. Regardless of a neighbor's religious identity, Islam teaches Muslims to treat neighboring people in the best possible manner and not to cause them any difficulty.[169][170] Concerning orphaned children, the Quran forbids harsh and oppressive treatment to them while urging kindness and justice towards them. It also rebukes those who do not honor and feed orphaned children.[xxi]
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+ The Quran and the sunnah of Muhammad prescribe a comprehensive body of moral guidelines for Muslims to be followed in their personal, social, political, and religious life. Proper moral conduct, good deeds, righteousness, and good character come within the sphere of the moral guidelines.[156]:216 In Islam, the observance of moral virtues is always associated with religious significance because it elevates the religious status of a believer[171] and is often seen as a supererogatory act of worshipping.[172] One typical Islamic teaching on morality is that imposing a penalty on an offender in proportion to their offense is permissible and just; but forgiving the offender is better. To go one step further by offering a favor to the offender is regarded the highest excellence.[171] The Quran says: "Repel (evil) with what is best."[xxii] Thus, a Muslim is expected to act only in good manners as bad manners and deeds earn vices.[156]:215 The fundamental moral qualities in Islam are justice, forgiveness, righteousness, kindness, honesty, and piety.[156]:216 Other mostly insisted moral virtues include but not limited to charitable activities, fulfillment of promise, modesty (haya) and humility, decency in speech, tolerance, trustworthiness, patience, truthfulness, anger management, and sincerity of intention.
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+ As a religion, Islam emphasizes the idea of having a good character as Muhammad said: "The best among you are those who have the best manners and character."[xxiii] In Islam, justice is not only a moral virtue but also an obligation to be fulfilled under all circumstances.[173] The Quran and the hadith describe God as being kind and merciful to His creatures, and tell people to be kind likewise. As a virtue, forgiveness is much celebrated in Islam, and is regarded as an important Muslim practice.[174] About modesty, Muhammad is reported as saying: "Every religion has its characteristic, and the characteristic of Islam is modesty."[175]
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+ Mainstream Islamic law does not distinguish between "matters of church" and "matters of state"; the scholars function as both jurists and theologians. Currently no government conforms to Islamic economic jurisprudence, but steps have been taken to implement some of its tenets.[176][177][178] Sunni and Shia sectarian divide also effects intergovernmental Muslim relations such as between Saudi Arabia and Iran.[179]
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+ Islamic tradition views Muhammad (c. 570 – June 8, 632) as the seal of the prophets, sent by God to the rest of mankind.[180][181] During the last 22 years of his life, beginning at age 40 in 610 CE, according to the earliest surviving biographies, Muhammad reported receiving revelations that he believed to be from God, conveyed to him through the archangel Gabriel while he was meditating in a cave.[182] Muhammad's companions memorized and recorded the content of these revelations, known as the Quran.[183]
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+
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+ During this time, Muhammad, while in Mecca, preached to the people, imploring them to abandon polytheism and to worship one God. Although some converted to Islam, the leading Meccan authorities persecuted Muhammad and his followers. This resulted in the Migration to Abyssinia of some Muslims (to the Aksumite Empire). Many early converts to Islam were the poor, foreigners and former slaves like Bilal ibn Rabah al-Habashi who was black. The Meccan élite felt that Muhammad was destabilising their social order by preaching about one God and about racial equality, and that in the process he inculcated dangerous ideas into the heads of the poor and of the slaves.[184][185]
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+ After 12 years of the persecution of Muslims by the Meccans and the Meccan boycott of the Hashemites, Muhammad's relatives, Muhammad and the Muslims performed the Hijra ('emigration') in AD 622 to the city of Yathrib (current-day Medina). There, with the Medinan converts (the Ansar) and the Meccan migrants (the Muhajirun), Muhammad in Medina established his political and religious authority. The Constitution of Medina was formulated, instituting a number of rights and responsibilities for the Muslim, Jewish, Christian and pagan communities of Medina, bringing them within the fold of one community—the Ummah.[186][B]
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+ The Constitution established:[187][188]
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+ All the tribes signed the agreement to defend Medina from all external threats and to live in harmony amongst themselves. Within a few years, two battles took place against the Meccan forces: first, the Battle of Badr in 624—a Muslim victory, and then a year later, when the Meccans returned to Medina, the Battle of Uhud, which ended inconclusively.
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+ The Arab tribes in the rest of Arabia then formed a confederation and during the Battle of the Trench (March–April 627) besieged Medina, intent on finishing off Islam. In 628, the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was signed between Mecca and the Muslims and was broken by Mecca two years later. After the signing of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah many more people converted to Islam. At the same time, Meccan trade routes were cut off as Muhammad brought surrounding desert tribes under his control.[189] By 629 Muhammad was victorious in the nearly bloodless conquest of Mecca, and by the time of his death in 632 (at the age of 62) he had united the tribes of Arabia into a single religious polity.[190]
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+ The earliest three generations of Muslims are known as the Salaf, with the companions of Muhammad being known as the Sahaba. Many of them, such as the largest narrator of hadith Abu Hureyrah, recorded and compiled what would constitute the sunnah.
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+ With Muhammad's death in 632, disagreement broke out over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. Abu Bakr, a companion and close friend of Muhammad, was made the first caliph.[191] Under Abu Bakr, Muslims put down a rebellion by Arab tribes in an episode known as the Ridda wars, or "Wars of Apostasy".[192] The Quran was compiled into a single volume at this time.
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+ Abu Bakr's death in 634 about two years after he was elected which resulted in the succession of Umar ibn al-Khattab as the caliph,[191] followed by Uthman ibn al-Affan, Ali ibn Abi Talib and Hasan ibn Ali. The first four caliphs are known in Sunni Islam as al-khulafā' ar-rāshidūn ("Rightly Guided Caliphs").[193] Under the caliphs, the territory under Muslim rule expanded deeply into parts of the Persian and Byzantine territories.[194]
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+
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+ When Umar was assassinated by Persians in 644, the election of Uthman as successor was met with increasing opposition. The standard copies of the Quran were also distributed throughout the Islamic State. In 656, Uthman was also killed, and Ali assumed the position of caliph. This led to the first civil war (the "First Fitna") over who should be caliph. Ali was assassinated by Kharijites in 661. To avoid further fighting, the new caliph Hasan ibn Ali signed a peace treaty, abdicating to Mu'awiyah, beginning the Umayyad dynasty, in return that he not name his own successor.[195] These disputes over religious and political leadership would give rise to schism in the Muslim community. The majority accepted the legitimacy of the first four leaders and became known as Sunnis. A minority disagreed, and believed that only Ali and some of his descendants should rule; they became known as the Shia.[196] Mu'awiyah appointed his son, Yazid I, as successor and after Mu'awiyah's death in 680, the "Second Fitna" broke out, where Husayn ibn Ali was killed at the Battle of Karbala, a significant event in Shia Islam. Sunni Islam and Shia Islam thus differ in some respects.[197]
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+ The Umayyad dynasty conquered the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Narbonnese Gaul and Sindh.[198] Local populations of Jews and indigenous Christians, persecuted as religious minorities and taxed heavily to finance the Byzantine–Sassanid Wars, often aided Muslims to take over their lands from the Byzantines and Persians, resulting in exceptionally speedy conquests.[199][200]
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+ The generation after the death of Muhammad but contemporaries of his companions are known as the Tabi'un, followed by the Tabi‘ al-Tabi‘in. The Caliph Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz set up the influential committee, "The Seven Fuqaha of Medina",[201][202] headed by Qasim ibn Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr.[203] Malik ibn Anas wrote one of the earliest books on Islamic jurisprudence, the Muwatta,[204] as a consensus of the opinion of those jurists.[205][206][207]
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+ The descendants of Muhammad's uncle Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib rallied discontented non-Arab converts (mawali), poor Arabs, and some Shi'a against the Umayyads and overthrew them, inaugurating the Abbasid dynasty in 750.[208]
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+ The first Muslim states independent of a unified Islamic state emerged from the Berber Revolt (739/740-743).
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+ Al-Shafi'i codified a method to determine the reliability of hadith.[209] During the early Abbasid era, the major Sunni hadith collections were compiled by scholars such as Bukhari and Muslim while major Shia hadith collections by scholars such as Al-Kulayni and Ibn Babawayh were also compiled. The four Sunni Madh'habs, the Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi'i, were established around the teachings of Abū Ḥanīfa, Ahmad bin Hanbal, Malik ibn Anas and al-Shafi'i, while the Ja'fari jurisprudence was formed from the teachings of Ja'far al-Sadiq respectively. In the 9th century, al-Shafi'i provided a theoretical basis for Islamic law and introduced its first methods by a synthesis between proto-rationalism of Iraqian jurisprudence and the pragmatic approach of the Hejaz traditions, in his book ar-Risālah.[210] He also codified a method to determine the reliability of hadith.[211] However, Islamic law would not be codified until 1869.[212] In the 9th century Al-Tabari completed the first commentary of the Quran, that became one of the most cited commentaries in Sunni Islam, the Tafsir al-Tabari. During its expansion through the Samanid Empire, Islam was shaped by the ethno-cultural and religious pluralism by the Sogdians, paving the way for a Persianized rather than Arabized understanding of Islam.[213]
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+ Some Muslims began to question the piety of indulgence in a worldly life and emphasised poverty, humility and avoidance of sin based on renunciation of bodily desires. Ascetics such as Hasan al-Basri would inspire a movement that would evolve into Tasawwuf or Sufism.[214]
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+ By the end of the 9th century, Ismaili Shias spread in Iran, whereupon the city of Multan became a target of activistic Sunni politics.[215] In 930, the Ismaili group known as the Qarmatians unsuccessfully rebelled against the Abbassids, sacked Mecca and stole the Black Stone, which was eventually retrieved.[216]
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+ Abbasid Caliphs such as Mamun al Rashid and Al-Mu'tasim made the mutazilite philosophy an official creed and imposed it upon Muslims to follow. Mu'tazila was a Greek influenced school[citation needed] of Sunni scholastic theology called kalam, which refers to dialectic.[217] Many orthodox Muslims[who?] rejected mutazilite doctrines and condemned their idea of the creation of the Quran. In inquisitions, ibn Hanbal refused to conform[citation needed] and was tortured and sent to an unlit Baghdad prison cell for nearly thirty months.[218] Other branches of kalam were the Ash'ari school founded by Al-Ash'ari and Maturidi founded by Abu Mansur al-Maturidi.
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+ With the expansion of the Abbasid Caliphate into the Sasanian Empire, Islam adapted many Hellenistic and Persian concepts, imported by thinkers of Iranian or Turkic origin.[219][220] Philosophers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna sought to incorporate Greek principles into Islamic theology, while others like Al-Ghazali argued against such syncretism and ultimately prevailed.[221] Avicenna pioneered the science of experimental medicine,[222] and was the first physician to conduct clinical trials.[223] His two most notable works, The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, were used as standard medicinal texts in the Islamic world and later in Europe. Amongst his contributions are the discovery of the contagious nature of infectious diseases,[222] and the introduction of clinical pharmacology.[224] In mathematics, the mathematician Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi gave his name to the concept of the algorithm, while the term algebra is derived from al-jabr.[225] The Persian poet Ferdowsi wrote his epic poem Shahnameh. Rumi wrote some of the finest Persian poetry and is still one of the best selling poets in America.[226][227] Legal institutions introduced include the trust and charitable trust (Waqf).[228][229]
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+ This era is sometimes called the "Islamic Golden Age".[230] Public hospitals established during this time (called Bimaristan hospitals), are considered "the first hospitals" in the modern sense of the word,[231][232] and issued the first medical diplomas to license doctors.[233][234] The Guinness World Records recognizes the University of Al Karaouine, founded in 859, as the world's oldest degree-granting university.[235] The doctorate is argued to date back to the licenses to teach in Islamic law schools.[236] Standards of experimental and quantification techniques, as well as the tradition of citation,[237] were introduced. An important pioneer in this, Ibn al-Haytham is regarded as the father of the modern scientific method and often referred to as the "world's first true scientist".[238][239][240][241] The government paid scientists the equivalent salary of professional athletes today.[237] It is argued that the data used by Copernicus for his heliocentric conclusions was gathered and that Al-Jahiz proposed a theory of natural selection.[242][243]
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+
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+ While the Abbasid Caliphate suffered a decline since the reign of Al-Wathiq (842–847) and Al-Mu'tadid (892–902),[244] the Mongol Empire put an end to the Abbassid dynasty in 1258.[245] During its decline, the Abbasid Caliphate disintegrated into minor states and dynasties, such as the Tulunid and the Ghaznavid dynasty. The Ghaznavid dynasty was an Islamic dynasty established by Turkic slave-soldiers from another Islamic empire, the Samanid Empire.[246]
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+ Two Turkish tribes, the Karahanids and the Seljuks, converted to Islam during the 10th century. They were later subdued by the Ottomans, who share the same origin and language. The Seljuks played an important role for the revival of Sunnism, after which Shia increased its influences. The Seljuk military leader Alp Arslan financially supported sciences and literature and established the Nezamiyeh university in Baghdad.[247]
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+ During this time, the Delhi Sultanate took over northern parts of the Indian subcontinent. Religious missions converted Volga Bulgaria to Islam. Many Muslims also went to China to trade, virtually dominating the import and export industry of the Song dynasty.[248]
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+ In scholasticism, Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) worried about the integrity of Islam and tried to establish a theological doctrine to purify Islam from its alleged alterings.[249] Unlike his contemporary scholarship, who relied on traditions and historical narratives from early Islam, Ibn Taymiyya's methodology was a mixture of selective use of hadith and a literal understanding of the Quran.[249][250] He rejected most philosophical approaches of Islam and proposed a clear, simple and dogmatic theology instead.[249] Another major characteristic of his theological approach emphazises the significance of a Theocratic state: While the prevailing opinion held that religious wisdom was necessary for a state, Ibn Taymiyya regarded political power as necessary for religious excellence.[249] He further rejected many hadiths circulating among Muslims during his time and relied only on Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim repeatedly to foil Asharite doctrine.[250][251] Feeling threatened by the Crusaders as well as by the Mongols, Ibn Taymiyya stated it would be obligatory for Muslims to join a physical jihad against the unbelievers. This not only including the invaders, but also the heretics among the Muslims, including Shias, Asharites and "philosophers", who were blamed by Ibn Taimiya for the deterioration of Islam.[252] The Battle of Marj al-Saffar (1303) served as a significant turning point. Nevertheless, his writings only played a marginal role during his lifetime. He was repeatedly accused of blasphemy by anthropomorphizing God and his disciple Ibn Kathir distanced himself from his mentor and negated the anthropomorphizations,[253] but simultaneously adhered to the same anti-rationalistic and hadith oriented methodology.[254] This probably influenced his exegesis on his Tafsir, which discounted much of the exegetical tradition since then.[255][256] However, the writings of Ibn Taimiyya became important sources for Wahhabism and 21st century Salafi theology,[252][249][250] just as Tafsir Ibn Kathir also became highly rewarded in modern Salafism.[257]
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+ The Timurid Renaissance was observed in the Timurid Empire based in Central Asia ruled by the Timurid dynasty, a phenomenal growth in the fields of arts and sciences, covering both eastern and western world.[258] Outstanding throughout the stages of the Renaissance were the inventions of numerous devices and the constructions of Islamic learning centre, mosques, necropolis and observatories. Herat city for example matched with Florence, the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance, as the focal point of a cultural rebirth.[259][260] Such aspects were seen to be strongly influenced across Islamic Gunpowder empires, mainly in Mughal India.[261][262][263][264]
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+
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+ Islam spread with Muslim trade networks, Sufi orders activity and conquests of the Gunpowder Empires that extended into Sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Malay archipelago.[265][266] Conversion to Islam, however, was not a sudden abandonment of old religious practices; rather, it was typically a matter of "assimilating Islamic rituals, cosmologies, and literatures into... local religious systems."[267] Throughout this expanse, Islam blended with local cultures everywhere, as illustrated when the prophet Muhammad appeared in Hindu epics and folklore.[268] The Muslims in China who were descended from earlier immigration began to assimilate by adopting Chinese names and culture while Nanjing became an important center of Islamic study.[269][270] The Turkish Muslims incorporated elements of Turkish Shamanism, which to this date differs Turkish synthesis of Islam from other Muslim societies,[271][272][273] and became a part of a new Islamic interpretation,[274] although Shamanistic influences already occurred during the Battle of Talas (752). Strikingly, Shamans were never mentioned by Muslim Heresiographers.[275] One major change was the status of woman. Unlike Arabic traditions, the Turkic traditions hold woman in higher regard in society.[274] The Turks must have also found striking similarities between Sufi rituals and Shaman practises.[274] Shamanism also influenced orthodox Muslims who subscribed in Anatolia, Central-Asia and Balkans, producing Alevism.[274] As a result, many Shaman traditions were perceived as Islamic,[274] with beliefs such as sacred nature, trees, animals and foreign nature spirits remaining today.[276]
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+
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+ The Ottoman Caliphate, under the Ottoman dynasty of the Ottoman Empire, was the last caliphate of the late medieval and the early modern era. It is important to note, that the following Islamic reign by the Ottomans was strongly influenced by a symbiosis between Ottoman rulers and Sufism since the beginning. According to Ottoman historiography, the legitimation of a ruler is attributed to Sheikh Edebali who, accordingly, interpreted a dream of Osman Gazi as God's legitimation of his reign.[277] Since Murad I's conquest of Edirne in 1362, the caliphate was claimed by the Turkish sultans of the empire.[278] During the period of Ottoman growth, claims on caliphal authority were recognized in 1517 as Selim I, who through conquering and unification of Muslim lands, became the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in Mecca and Medina, and strengthening their claim to caliphate in the Muslim world.[279] The Mevlevi Order and Bektashi Order had close relation to the sultans,[280] as Sufi-mystical as well as heterodox and syncretic approaches to Islam flourished.[281][282] Under the Ottoman Empire, Islam spread to Southeast Europe.[283] The Reconquista, launched against Muslim principalities in Iberia succeeded in 1492. In Ottoman understanding, the state's primary responsibility was to defend and extend the land of the Muslims, and to ensure security and harmony within its borders in the overarching context of orthodox Islamic practice and dynastic sovereignty.[284]
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+
168
+ The Shia Safavid dynasty rose to power in 1501 and later conquered all of Iran.[285] The majority and oldest group among Shia at that time, the Zaydis, named after the great grandson of Ali, the scholar Zayd ibn Ali, used the Hanafi jurisprudence, as did most Sunnis.[286][287][288] The ensuing mandatory conversion of Iran to Twelver Shia Islam for the largely Sunni population also ensured the final dominance of the Twelver sect within Shiism over the Zaidi and Ismaili sects.[289] Nader Shah, who overthrew the Safavids, attempted to improve relations with Sunnis by propagating the integration of Shiism by calling it the Jaafari Madh'hab.[290]
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+
170
+ In the Indian Subcontinent, during the rule of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khalji in Bengal, the Indian Islamic missionaries achieved their greatest success in terms of dawah and number of converts to Islam.[291][292] The Delhi Sultanate, founded by Qutb-ud-din Aybak, emerged as India's first Islamic power, well noted for being one of the few states to repel an attack by the Mongols[293] and enthroning one of the few female rulers in Islamic history, Razia Sultana.[294] The wealthy Islamic Bengal Sultanate was subsequently founded, a major global trading nation in the world, described by the Europeans to be the "richest country to trade with".[295] The Mughal Empire was founded by Babur, a direct descendant of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. The empire was briefly interrupted by the Suri Empire founded by Sher Shah Suri, who re-initiated the rupee currency system.[296] The Mughals gained power during the reign of Akbar the Great and Jahangir. The reign of Shah Jahan observed the height of Indo-Islamic architecture, with notable monuments such as Taj Mahal and Jama Masjid, Delhi, while the reign of his son Aurangzeb saw the compilation of the Fatwa Alamgiri (most well organised fiqh manuscript) and witnessed the peak of the Islamic rule in India. Mughal India surpassed Qing China to become the world's largest economy, worth 25% of world GDP,[297][298][299][300] the Bengal Subah signalling the proto-industrialization and showing signs of the Industrial revolution.[301] After Mughal India's collapse, Tipu Sultan's Kingdom of Mysore based in South India, which witnessed partial establishment of sharia based economic and military policies i.e. Fathul Mujahidin, replaced Bengal ruled by the Nawabs of Bengal as South Asia's foremost economic territory.[302][303] After the British Raj, the Nizams of Hyderabad remained as the major Muslim princely state until the Annexation of Hyderabad by the modern Republic of India.[304]
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+
172
+ The Muslim world was generally in political decline starting the 1800s, especially relative to the non-Muslim European powers. This decline was evident culturally; while Taqi al-Din founded an observatory in Istanbul and the Jai Singh Observatory was built in the 18th century, there was not a single Muslim-majority country with a major observatory by the twentieth century.[305] By the 19th century the British Empire had formally ended the Mughal dynasty in India.[306] In the 19th century, the Deobandi and Barelwi movements were initiated.
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+ During the 18th century Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab founded a military movement opposing the Ottoman Sultanate as an illegitimate rule, advising his fellows to return to the principles of Islam based on the theology of Ahmad ibn Hanbal.[307][308] He was deeply influenced by the works of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim and condemned many traditional Islamic practises, such as visiting the grave of Muhammad or Saints, as sin.[308] During the 18th century, he formed an alliance with the Saud family, who founded the Wahhabi sect. This revival movement allegedly seeks to uphold monotheism and purify Islam of what they see as later innovations. Their ideology led to the desecration of shrines around the world, including that of Muhammad and his companions in Mecca and Medina.[309][310] Many Arab nationalists, such as Rashid Rida, regarded the Caliphate as an Arab right taken away by the Turks. Therefore, they rebelled against the Ottoman Sultanate, until the Ottoman Empire disintegrated after World War I and the Caliphate was abolished in 1924.[311] Concurrently Ibn Saud conquered Mecca, the "heartland of Islam", to impose Wahhabism as part of Islamic culture.[312]
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+ At the end of the 19th century, Muslim luminaries such as Muhammad Abduh, Rashid Rida and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani sought to reconcile Islam with social and intellectual ideas of the Age of Enlightenment by purging Islam from alleged alterations and adhering to the basic tenets held during the Rashidun era.[313] Due to their adherence to the Salafs they called themselves Salafiyya.[314][313] However, they differ from the Salafi movement flourishing in the second half of the 20th century, which is rooted in the Wahhabi movement. Instead, they are also often called Islamic modernists. They rejected the Sunni schools of law and allowed Ijtihad.[314]
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+
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+ The Barelwi movement, founded in India, emphasises the primacy of Islamic law over adherence to Sufi practices and personal devotion to the prophet Muhammad.[315] It grew from the writings of Ahmed Raza Khan, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi, Shah Ahmad Noorani and Mohammad Abdul Ghafoor Hazarvi in the backdrop of an intellectual and moral decline of Muslims in British India.[316] The movement was a mass movement, defending popular Sufism and reforming its practices, grew in response to the Deobandi movement.[317] The movement is famous for the celebration of Mawlid and today, is spread across the globe with followers also in Pakistan, South Africa, United States, and United Kingdom among other countries.[318]
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+
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+ On 3 March 1924, the first President of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as part of his secular reforms, constitutionally abolished the institution of the caliphate. Ottoman Caliphate, the world's last widely recognized caliphate was no more and its powers within Turkey were transferred to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the parliament of the newly formed Turkish Republic and the Directorate of Religious Affairs.[319][320]
181
+ .
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+
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+ Contact with industrialized nations brought Muslim populations to new areas through economic migration. Many Muslims migrated as indentured servants, from mostly India and Indonesia, to the Caribbean, forming the largest Muslim populations by percentage in the Americas.[321] The resulting urbanization and increase in trade in sub-Saharan Africa brought Muslims to settle in new areas and spread their faith, likely doubling its Muslim population between 1869 and 1914.[322] Muslim immigrants began arriving, many as guest workers and largely from former colonies, in several Western European nations since the 1960s.
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+ There are more and more new Muslim intellectuals who increasingly separate perennial Islamic beliefs from archaic cultural traditions.[323] Liberal Islam is a movement that attempts to reconcile religious tradition with modern norms of secular governance and human rights. Its supporters say that there are multiple ways to read Islam's sacred texts, and they stress the need to leave room for "independent thought on religious matters".[324][46]:118–9, 179
186
+ Women's issues receive significant weight in the modern discourse on Islam.[325]
187
+
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+ Secular powers such as the Chinese Red Guards closed many mosques and destroyed Qurans,[326] and Communist Albania became the first country to ban the practice of every religion.[327] About half a million Muslims were killed in Cambodia by communists who, it is argued, viewed them as their primary enemy and wished to exterminate them since they stood out and worshipped their own god.[328] In Turkey, the military carried out coups to oust Islamist governments, and headscarves were banned in official buildings, as also happened in Tunisia.[329][330]
189
+
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+ Jamal-al-Din al-Afghani, along with his acolyte Muhammad Abduh, have been credited as forerunners of the Islamic revival.[331] Abul A'la Maududi helped influence modern political Islam.[332] Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood advocate Islam as a comprehensive political solution, often in spite of being banned.[333] In Iran, revolution replaced a secular regime with an Islamic state. In Turkey, the Islamist AK Party has democratically been in power for about a decade, while Islamist parties did well in elections following the Arab Spring.[334] The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), consisting of Muslim-majority countries, was established in 1969 after the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.[335]
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+
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+ Religiosity appears to be deepening worldwide.[336][337][338] In many places, the prevalence of the hijab is growing increasingly common[339] and the percentage of Muslims favoring Sharia has increased.[340] With religious guidance increasingly available electronically, Muslims are able to access views that are strict enough for them rather than rely on state clerics who are often seen as stooges.[337]
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+
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+ It is estimated that, by 2050, the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world, "driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world's major religions, as well as by people switching faiths."[341] Perhaps as a sign of these changes, most experts agree that Islam is growing faster than any other faith in East and West Africa.[342][343]
195
+
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+ Others
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+
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+ Others
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+
200
+ The largest denomination in Islam is Sunni Islam, which makes up 75–90% of all Muslims[344] and is arguably the world's largest religious denomination.[345] Sunni Muslims also go by the name Ahl as-Sunnah which means "people of the tradition [of Muhammad]".[346][347][348][349][350]
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+
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+ Sunnis believe that the first four caliphs were the rightful successors to Muhammad; since God did not specify any particular leaders to succeed him and those leaders were elected. Further authorities regarding Sunnis believe that anyone who is righteous and just could be a caliph as long they act according to the teachings of Islam, the example of Muhammad. Alternatively, Sunnis commonly accept the companions of Muhammad as reliable for interpretating Islamic affairs.[351]
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+
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+ The Sunnis follow the Quran and the Hadith, which are recorded in Sunni traditions known as Al-Kutub Al-Sittah (six major books). For legal matters derived from the Quran or the Hadith, many follow four sunni madhhabs: Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafi'i. All four accept the validity of the others and a Muslim may choose any one that he or she finds agreeable.[352]
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+
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+ Sunni schools of theology encompass Asharism founded by Al-Ashʿarī (c. 874–936), Maturidi by Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (853–944 CE) and traditionalist theology under the leadership of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (780–855 CE). Traditionalist theology is characterized by its adherence to a literal understanding of the Quran and the Sunnah, the belief in the Quran to be uncreated and eternal, and opposes reason (kalam) in religious and ethical matters.[353] On the other hand, Maturidism asserts, scripture is not needed for basic ethics and that good and evil can be understood by reason alone.[354] Maturidi's doctrine, based on Hanafi law, asserted man's capacity and will alongside the supremacy of God in man's acts, providing a doctrinal framework for more flexibility, adaptability and syncretism. Maturidism especially flourished in Central-Asia.[355] Nevertheless, people would rely on revelation, because reason alone could not grasp the whole truth. Asharism holds that ethics can just derive from divine revelation, but not from human reason. However, Asharism accepts reason in regard of exegetical matters and combined Muʿtazila approaches with traditionalistic ideas.[356]
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+
208
+ In the 18th century, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab led a Salafi movement, referred by outsiders as Wahhabism, in modern-day Saudi Arabia. Originally shaped by Hanbalism, many modern followers departed from any of the established four schools of law Hanafi, Shafi, Maliki, and Hanbali.[357] Similarly, Ahl al-Hadith is a movement that deemphasized sources of jurisprudence outside the Quran and Hadith, such as informed opinion (ra'y).
209
+
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+ Nurcu is a Sunni movement based on the writings of Said Nursi (1877–1960) founded at the beginning of the twentieth century.[358] His philosophy is based on Hanafi law and further incorporates elements of Sufism.[358] He emphasized the importance of salvation in both life and afterlife through education and freedom, the synthesis of Islam and science and democracy as the best form governance within the rule of law.[359] Through faith by inquiry instead of faith by imitation, Muslims would reject philosophies such as positivism, materialism and atheism emerging from the Western world of his time.[358] His notion of sharia is twofold: On one hand, sharia applies to the voluntary actions of human beings. On the other hand, sharia denotes the set of laws of nature, but both ultimately derive from one source, which is God.[360] His works on the Quran in the Risale-i Nur were translated into almost all languages of Central Asia.[361] From Nurcu other movements such as the Gülen movement derived.
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+
212
+ The Shia constitute 10–20% of Islam and are its second-largest branch.[362]
213
+
214
+ While the Sunnis believe that a Caliph should be elected by the community, Shia's believe that Muhammad appointed his son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, as his successor and only certain descendants of Ali could hold positions of power. As a result, they believe that Ali ibn Abi Talib was the first Imam (leader), rejecting the legitimacy of the previous Muslim caliphs Abu Bakr, Uthman ibn al-Affan and Umar ibn al-Khattab. Other points of contention include certain practices viewed as innovating the religion, such as the mourning practice of tatbir, and the cursing of figures revered by Sunnis. However, Jafar al-Sadiq himself disapproved of people who disapproved of his great-grandfather Abu Bakr and Zayd ibn Ali revered Abu Bakr and Umar.[363][364] More recently, Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei[365] and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani[366] condemned the practice.
215
+
216
+ Shia Islam has several branches, the most prominent being the Twelvers (the largest branch), Zaidis and Ismailis. Different branches accept different descendants of Ali as Imams. After the death of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq who is considered the sixth Imam by the Twelvers and the Ismaili's, the Ismailis recognized his son Isma'il ibn Jafar as his successor whereas the Twelver Shia's followed his other son Musa al-Kadhim as the seventh Imam. The Zaydis consider Zayd ibn Ali, the uncle of Imam Jafar al-Sadiq, as their fifth Imam, and follow a different line of succession after him. Other smaller groups include the Bohra as well as the Alawites and Alevi.[367] Some Shia branches label other Shia branches that do not agree with their doctrine as Ghulat.
217
+
218
+ Non-denominational Muslims is an umbrella term that has been used for and by Muslims who do not belong to or do not self-identify with a specific Islamic denomination.[373][374][375] Prominent figures who refused to identify with a particular Islamic denomination have included Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani,[376] and Muhammad Ali Jinnah.[377] Recent surveys report that large proportions of Muslims in some parts of the world self-identify as "just Muslim", although there is little published analysis available regarding the motivations underlying this response.[153][378][379][380] The Pew Research Center reports that respondents self-identifying as "just Muslim" make up a majority of Muslims in seven countries (and a plurality in three others), with the highest proportion in Kazakhstan at 74%. At least one in five Muslims in at least 22 countries self-identify in this way.[153]
219
+
220
+ Some movements, such as the Druze, Berghouata and Ha-Mim, either emerged from Islam or came to share certain beliefs with Islam and whether each is a separate religion or a sect of Islam is sometimes controversial. Yazdânism is seen as a blend of local Kurdish beliefs and Islamic Sufi doctrine introduced to Kurdistan by Sheikh Adi ibn Musafir in the 12th century. Bábism stems from Twelver Shia passed through Siyyid 'Ali Muhammad i-Shirazi al-Bab while one of his followers Mirza Husayn 'Ali Nuri Baha'u'llah founded the Bahai Faith.[381] Sikhism, founded by Guru Nanak in late-fifteenth-century Punjab, incorporates aspects of both Islam and Hinduism. Bektashi Alevism is a syncretic and heterodox local Islamic tradition, whose adherents follow the mystical (bāṭenī) teachings of Ali and Haji Bektash Veli.[382] Alevism incorporates Turkish beliefs present during the 14th century,[383] such as Shamanism and Animism, mixed with Shias and Sufi beliefs, adopted by some Turkish tribes.
221
+
222
+ A 2015 demographic study reported that 24.1% of the global population, or 1.8 billion people, are Muslims.[4] Of those, it has been estimated that 87–90% are Sunni and 10–13% are Shia,[384] with a small minority belonging to other sects. Approximately 49 countries are Muslim-majority,[385] and Arabs account for around 20% of all Muslims worldwide.[386] The number of Muslims worldwide increased from 200 million in 1900 to 551 million in 1970,[387] and tripled to 1.6 billion by 2010.[341]
223
+
224
+ The majority of Muslims live in Asia and Africa.[388] Approximately 62% of the world's Muslims live in Asia, with over 683 million adherents in Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.[389][390] In the Middle East, non-Arab countries such as Turkey and Iran are the largest Muslim-majority countries; in Africa, Nigeria and Egypt have the most populous Muslim communities.
225
+
226
+ Most estimates indicate that the China has approximately 20 to 30 million Muslims (1.5% to 2% of the population).[391][392][393] However, data provided by the San Diego State University's International Population Center to U.S. News & World Report suggests that China has 65.3 million Muslims.[394] Islam is the second largest religion after Christianity in many European countries,[395] and is slowly catching up to that status in the Americas, with between 2,454,000, according to Pew Forum, and approximately 7 million Muslims, according to the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), in the United States.[384][396]
227
+
228
+ According to the Pew Research Center, Islam is set to equal Christianity worldwide in number of adherents by the year 2050. Islam is set to grow faster than any other major world religion, reaching a total number of 2.76 billion (an increase of 73%). Causes of this trend involve high fertility rates as a factor, with Muslims having a rate of 3.1 compared to the world average of 2.5, and the minimum replacement level for a population at 2.1. Another factor is also due to fact that Islam has the highest number of adherents under the age of 15 (34% of the total religion) of any major religion, compared with Christianity's 27%. 60% of Muslims are between the ages of 16 and 59, while only 7% are aged 60+ (the smallest percentage of any major religion). However, by the Pew Research Center's estimates, the Muslim fertility rate and Christian fertility rate will converge by 2040.[397] According to the same study, religious conversion has no net impact on the Muslim population as the number of people who convert to Islam is roughly similar to those who leave Islam.[398][399] Countries such as Nigeria and North Macedonia are expected to have Muslim majorities by 2050. In India, the Muslim population will be larger than any other country. Europe's non-Muslim population is set to decline as opposed to their Muslim population which is set to grow to 10% of Europe's total.[341] Growth rates of Islam in Europe was due primarily to immigration and higher birth rates of Muslims in 2005.[400]
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+
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+ The term "Islamic culture" could be used to mean aspects of culture that pertain to the religion, such as festivals and dress code. It is also controversially used to denote the cultural aspects of traditionally Muslim people.[401] Finally, "Islamic civilization" may also refer to the aspects of the synthesized culture of the early Caliphates, including that of non-Muslims,[402] sometimes referred to as "Islamicate".
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+
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+ Perhaps the most important expression of Islamic architecture is that of the mosque.[52] Varying cultures have an effect on mosque architecture. For example, North African and Spanish Islamic architecture such as the Great Mosque of Kairouan contain marble and porphyry columns from Roman and Byzantine buildings,[403] while mosques in Indonesia often have multi-tiered roofs from local Javanese styles. The Ottomans mastered the technique of building vast inner spaces confined by seemingly weightless yet massive domes, and achieving perfect harmony between inner and outer spaces, as well as light and shadow.[404][405]
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+ Great Mosque of Djenné, in the west African country of Mali
235
+
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+ Interior view of the main domes of the Blue mosque in Istanbul, Turkey
237
+
238
+ Dome in Po-i-Kalyan, Bukhara, Uzbekistan
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+
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+ Sixty Dome Mosque, in Khalifatabad, Bangladesh
241
+
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+ Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people (not necessarily Muslim) who lived within the territory that was inhabited by Muslim populations.[406] It includes fields as varied as architecture, calligraphy, painting, and ceramics, among others.
243
+
244
+ While not condemned in the Quran, making images of human beings and animals is frowned on in many Islamic cultures and connected with laws against idolatry common to all Abrahamic religions, as Abdullaah ibn Mas'ood reported that Muhammad said, "Those who will be most severely punished by Allah on the Day of Resurrection will be the image-makers" (reported by al-Bukhaari).[xxiv] However, this rule has been interpreted in different ways by different scholars and in different historical periods, and there are examples of paintings of both animals and humans in Mughal, Persian, and Turkish art. The existence of this aversion to creating images of animate beings has been used to explain the prevalence of calligraphy, tessellation, and pattern as key aspects of Islamic artistic culture.[407]
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246
+ The phrase Bismillah in an 18th-century Islamic calligraphy from the Ottoman region.
247
+
248
+ Geometric arabesque tiling on the underside of the dome of Hafiz Shirazi's tomb in Shiraz, Iran
249
+
250
+ Detail of arabesque decoration at the Alhambra in Spain.
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+
252
+ The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia, the largest museum of Islamic arts in Southeast Asia
253
+
254
+ The formal beginning of the Muslim era was chosen, reportedly by Caliph Umar, to be the Hijra in 622 CE, which was an important turning point in Muhammad's fortunes. It is a lunar calendar with days lasting from sunset to sunset.[408] Islamic holy days fall on fixed dates of the lunar calendar, which means that they occur in different seasons in different years in the Gregorian calendar. The most important Islamic festivals are Eid al-Fitr (Arabic: عيد الفطر‎) on the 1st of Shawwal, marking the end of the fasting month Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha (عيد الأضحى) on the 10th of Dhu al-Hijjah, coinciding with the end of the Hajj (pilgrimage).[409]
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+ Criticism of Islam has existed since Islam's formative stages. Early criticism came from Christian authors, many of whom viewed Islam as a Christian heresy or a form of idolatry, often explaining it in apocalyptic terms.[411] Later, there appeared criticism from the Muslim world itself, as well as from Jewish writers and from ecclesiastical Christians.[412][413][414] Issues relating to the authenticity and morality of the Quran, the Islamic holy book, are also discussed by critics.[415] Islamic salvation optimism and its carnality were criticized by Christian writers. Islam's sensual descriptions of paradise led many Christians to conclude that Islam was not a spiritual religion. Although sensual pleasure was also present in early Christianity, as seen in the writings of Irenaeus, the doctrines of the former Manichaean Augustine of Hippo led to the broad repudiation of bodily pleasure in both life and the afterlife. Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari defended the Quranic description of paradise by asserting that the Bible also implies such ideas, such as drinking wine in Gospel of Matthew.
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+ Defamatory images of Muhammad, derived from early 7th century depictions of Byzantine Church,[416] appear in the 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.[417] Here, Muhammad appears in the eighth circle of hell, along with Ali. Dante does not blame Islam as a whole but accuses Muhammad of schism, by establishing another religion after Christianity.[417]
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+ Since the events of September 11, 2001, Islam has faced criticism over its scriptures and teachings being claimed to be a significant source of terrorism and terrorist ideology.[418][419]
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+ Other criticisms focus on the question of human rights in modern Muslim-majority countries, and the treatment of women in Islamic law and practice.[420][421] In wake of the recent multiculturalism trend, Islam's influence on the ability of Muslim immigrants in the West to assimilate has been criticized.[422] Both in his public and personal life, others objected the morality of Muhammad, therefore also the sunnah as a role model.[414][423]
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+ "Despite the fact that they did not have a quantified theory of error they were well aware that an increased number of observations qualitatively reduces the uncertainty."
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1
+ History of the world · Ancient maritime history Protohistory · Axial Age · Iron Age Historiography · Ancient literature Ancient warfare · Cradle of civilization
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+ Ancient history as a term refers to the aggregate of past events[1] from the beginning of writing and recorded human history and extending as far as post-classical history. The phrase may be used either to refer to the period of time or the academic discipline.
4
+
5
+ The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script, with the oldest coherent texts from about 2600 BC.[2] Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BC – AD 500.
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7
+ The broad term "ancient history" is not to be confused with "classical antiquity". The term classical antiquity is often used to refer to Western history in the Ancient Mediterranean from the beginning of recorded Greek history in 776 BC (first Olympiad). This roughly coincides with the traditional date of the founding of Rome in 753 BC, the beginning of the history of ancient Rome, and the beginning of the Archaic period in Ancient Greece.
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9
+ The academic term "history" is not to be confused with colloquial references to times past. History is fundamentally the study of the past, and can be either scientific (archaeology) or humanistic (history through language).
10
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+ Although the ending date of ancient history is disputed, some Western scholars use the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD (the most used),[3][4] the closure of the Platonic Academy in 529 AD,[5] the death of the emperor Justinian I in 565 AD,[6] the coming of Islam,[7] or the rise of Charlemagne[8] as the end of ancient and Classical European history. Outside of Europe the 450–500 time frame for the end of ancient times has had difficulty as a transition date from ancient to post-classical times.
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+
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+ During the time period of ancient history (starting roughly from 3000 BC), the world population was already exponentially increasing due to the Neolithic Revolution, which was in full progress. According to HYDE estimates from the Netherlands, world population increased exponentially in this period. In 10,000 BC in prehistory, the world population had stood at 2 million, rising to 45 million by 3,000 BC. By the rise of the Iron Age in 1,000 BC, the population had risen to 72 million. By the end of the period in 500 AD, the world population is thought to have stood at 209 million. In 3,500 years, the world population increased by 100 times.[9]
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+ Historians have two major avenues which they take to better understand the ancient world: archaeology and the study of source texts. Primary sources are those sources closest to the origin of the information or idea under study.[10][11] Primary sources have been distinguished from secondary sources, which often cite, comment on, or build upon primary sources.[12]
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17
+ Archaeology is the excavation and study of artifacts in an effort to interpret and reconstruct past human behavior.[13][14][15][16] Archaeologists excavate the ruins of ancient cities looking for clues as to how the people of the time period lived. Some important discoveries by archaeologists studying ancient history include:
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+
19
+ Most of what is known of the ancient world comes from the accounts of antiquity's own historians. Although it is important to take into account the bias of each ancient author, their accounts are the basis for our understanding of the ancient past. Some of the more notable ancient writers include Herodotus, Thucydides, Arrian, Plutarch, Polybius, Sima Qian, Sallust, Livy, Josephus, Suetonius, and Tacitus.
20
+
21
+ A fundamental difficulty of studying ancient history is that recorded histories cannot document the entirety of human events, and only a fraction of those documents have survived into the present day.[23] Furthermore, the reliability of the information obtained from these surviving records must be considered.[23][24] Few people were capable of writing histories, as literacy was not widespread in almost any culture until long after the end of ancient history.[25]
22
+
23
+ The earliest known systematic historical thought emerged in ancient Greece, beginning with Herodotus of Halicarnassus (484–c. 425 BC). Thucydides largely eliminated divine causality in his account of the war between Athens and Sparta,[26] establishing a rationalistic element which set a precedent for subsequent Western historical writings. He was also the first to distinguish between cause and immediate origins of an event.[26]
24
+
25
+ The Roman Empire was an ancient culture with a relatively high literacy rate,[27] but many works by its most widely read historians are lost. For example, Livy, a Roman historian who lived in the 1st century BC, wrote a history of Rome called Ab Urbe Condita (From the Founding of the City) in 144 volumes; only 35 volumes still exist, although short summaries of most of the rest do exist. Indeed, no more than a minority of the work of any major Roman historian has survived.
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+
27
+ This gives a listed timeline, ranging from 3200 BC to 400 AD, that provides an overview of ancient history.
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+ Prehistory is the period before written history. The early human migrations[28] in the Lower Paleolithic saw Homo erectus spread across Eurasia 1.8 million years ago. The controlled use of fire first occurred 800,000 years ago in the Middle Paleolithic. 250,000 years ago, Homo sapiens (modern humans) emerged in Africa. 60–70,000 years ago, Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa along a coastal route to South and Southeast Asia and reached Australia. 50,000 years ago, modern humans spread from Asia to the Near East. Europe was first reached by modern humans 40,000 years ago. Humans migrated to the Americas about 15,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic.
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+
31
+ The 10th millennium BC is the earliest given date for the invention of agriculture and the beginning of the ancient era. Göbekli Tepe was erected by hunter-gatherers in the 10th millennium BC (c. 11,500 years ago), before the advent of sedentism. Together with Nevalı Çori, it has revolutionized understanding of the Eurasian Neolithic. In the 7th millennium BC, Jiahu culture began in China. By the 5th millennium BC, the late Neolithic civilizations saw the invention of the wheel and the spread of proto-writing. In the 4th millennium BC, the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture in the Ukraine-Moldova-Romania region develops. By 3400 BC, "proto-literate" cuneiform is spread in the Middle East.[29] The 30th century BC, referred to as the Early Bronze Age II, saw the beginning of the literate period in Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Around the 27th century BC, the Old Kingdom of Egypt and the First Dynasty of Uruk are founded, according to the earliest reliable regnal eras.
32
+
33
+ Mesopotamia – Sumer
34
+
35
+ India – Indus Valley Civilization
36
+
37
+ China – Erlitou
38
+
39
+ Andean – Norte Chico
40
+
41
+ Measoamerica – Olmec
42
+
43
+ The Statue of Ebih-Il – Sumer
44
+
45
+ Seal – Indus Valley Civilization
46
+
47
+ Pottery jue – Erlitou
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+
49
+ Andean – Foundation of pyramid, Norte Chico
50
+
51
+ Olmec Head – Olmec
52
+
53
+ The Bronze Age forms part of the three-age system. It follows the Neolithic Age in some areas of the world. In most areas of civilization bronze smelting became a foundation for more advanced societies. There was some contrast with New World societies, who often still preferred stone to metal for utilitarian purposes. Modern historians have identified five original civilizations which emerged in the time period.[30][31][page needed]
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+
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+ The first civilization emerged in Sumer in the southern region of Mesopotamia, now part of modern-day Iraq. By 3000 BC, Sumerian city states had collectively formed civilization, with government, religion, division of labor and writing. Among the city states Ur was among the most significant.
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+
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+ In the 24th century BC, the Akkadian Empire[32][33] was founded in Mesopotamia. From Sumer, civilization and bronze smelting spread westward to Egypt, the Minoans and the Hittites.
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+
59
+ The First Intermediate Period of Egypt of the 22nd century BC was followed by the Middle Kingdom of Egypt between the 21st to 17th centuries BC. The Sumerian Renaissance also developed c. the 21st century BC in Ur. Around the 18th century BC, the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt began. Egypt was a superpower at the time. By 1600 BC, Mycenaean Greece developed and invaded the remains of Minoan Civilization. The beginning of Hittite dominance of the Eastern Mediterranean region is also seen in the 1600s BC. The time from the 16th to the 11th centuries BC around the Nile is called the New Kingdom of Egypt. Between 1550 BC and 1292 BC, the Amarna Period developed in Egypt.
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+
61
+ East of the Iranian world, was the Indus River Valley civilization which organized cities neatly on grid patterns.[34]
62
+ However the Indus River Valley civilization diminished after 1900 BC and was later replaced with Indo-Aryan peoples who established Vedic Culture.
63
+
64
+ The beginning of the Shang dynasty emerged in China in this period, and there was evidence of a fully developed Chinese writing system. The Shang Dynasty is the first Chinese regime recognized by western scholars though Chinese historians insist that the Xia Dynasty preceded it. The Shang Dynasty practiced forced labor to complete public projects. There is evidence of massive ritual burial.
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+ Across the ocean, the earliest known civilization of the Americas appeared in the river valleys of the desert coast of central modern day Peru. The Norte Chico civilization's first city flourished around 3100 BC. The Olmecs are supposed to appear later in Mesoamerica between the 14th and 13th century.
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+
68
+ The Iron Age is the last principal period in the three-age system, preceded by the Bronze Age. Its date and context vary depending on the country or geographical region. The Iron Age over all was characterized by the prevalent smelting of iron with Ferrous metallurgy and the use of Carbon steel. Smelted iron proved more durable than earlier metals such as Copper or Bronze and allowed for more productive societies. The Iron Age took place at different times in different parts of the world, and comes to an end when a society began to maintain historical records.
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+ During the 13th to 12th centuries BC, the Ramesside Period occurred in Egypt. Around 1200 BC, the Trojan War was thought to have taken place.[35] By around 1180 BC, the disintegration of the Hittite Empire was under way. The collapse of the Hitties was part of the larger scale Bronze Age Collapse which took place in the Ancient Near East around 1200 BC. In Greece the Mycenae and Minona both disintegrated. A wave of Sea Peoples attacked many countries, only Egypt survived intact. Afterwards some entirely new successor civilizations arose in the Eastern Mediterranean.
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+ In 1046 BC, the Zhou force, led by King Wu of Zhou, overthrew the last king of the Shang dynasty. The Zhou dynasty was established in China shortly thereafter. During this Zhou era China embraced a feudal society of decentralized power. Iron Age China then dissolved into the warring states period where possibly millions of soldiers fought each other over feudal struggles.
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+ Pirak is an early iron-age site in Balochistan, Pakistan, going back to about 1200 BC. This period is believed to be the beginning of the Iron Age in India and the subcontinent.[36] Around the same time came the Vedas, the oldest sacred texts for the Hindu Religion.
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+ In 1000 BC, the Mannaean Kingdom began in Western Asia. Around the 10th to 7th centuries BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire developed in Mesopotamia.[37] In 800 BC, the rise of Greek city-states began. In 776 BC, the first recorded Olympic Games were held.[38] In contrast to neighboring cultures the Greek City states did not become a single militaristic empire but competed with each other as separate polis.
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+ The preceding Iron Age is often thought to have ended in the Middle East around 550 BC due to the rise of Historiography (the historical record). The Axial Age is used to describe history between 800 and 200 BC of Eurasia, including Ancient Greece, Iran, India and China. Widespread trade and communication between distinct regions in this period, including the rise of the Silk Road. This period saw the rise of philosophy and proselytizing religions.
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+ Philosophy, religion and science were diverse in the Hundred Schools of Thought producing thinkers such as Confucius, Lao Tzu and Mozi during the sixth century BC. Similar trends emerged throughout Eurasia in India with the rise of Buddhism, in the Near East with Zoroastrianism and Judaism and in the west with Ancient Greek Philosophy. In these developments religious and philosophical figures were all searching for human meaning.[39]
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+ The Axial Age and its aftermath saw large wars and the formation of large empires that stretched beyond the limits of earlier Iron Age Societies. Significant for the time was the Persian Achaemenid Empire.[40] The empire's vast territory extended from modern day Egypt to Xinjiang. The empire's legacy include the rise of commerce over land routes through Eurasia as well as the spreading of Persian culture through the middle east. The Royal Road allowed for efficient trade and taxation. Though Macedonian Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety, the unity of Alexander's conquests did not survive past his lifetime. Greek culture, and technology spread through West and South Asia often synthesizing with local cultures.
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+ Formation of Empires and Fragmentation
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+ Separate Greek Kingdoms Egypt and Asia encouraged trade and communication like earlier Persian administrations.[41] Combined with the expansion of the Han Dynasty westward the Silk Road as a series of routes made possible the exchange of goods between the Mediterranean Basin, South Asia and East Asia. In South Asia, the Mauryan empire briefly annexed much of the Indian Subcontinent though short lived, its reign had the legacies of spreading Buddhism and providing an inspiration to later Indian states.
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+ Supplanting the warring Greek Kingdoms in the western world came the growing Roman Republic and the Iranian Parthian Empire. As a result of empires, urbanization and literacy spread to locations which had previously been at the periphery of civilization as known by the large empires. Upon the turn of the millennium the independence of tribal peoples and smaller kingdoms were threatened by more advanced states. Empires were not just remarkable for their territorial size but for their administration and the dissemination of culture and trade, in this way the influence of empires often extended far beyond their national boundaries. Trade routes expanded by land and sea and allowed for flow of goods between distant regions even in the absence of communication. Distant nations such as Imperial Rome and the Chinese Han Dynasty rarely communicated but trade of goods did occur as evidenced by archaeological discoveries such as Roman coins in Vietnam. At this time most of the world's population inhabited only a small part of the earth's surface. Outside of civilization large geographic areas such as Siberia, Sub Saharan Africa and Australia remained sparsely populated. The New World hosted a variety of separate civilizations in the but its own trade networks were smaller due to the lack of draft animals and the wheel.
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+ Empires with their immense military strength remained fragile to civil wars, economic decline and a changing political environment internationally. In 220 AD Han China collapsed into warring states while the European Roman Empire began to suffer from turmoil in the Third Century Crisis. In Persia regime change took place from Parthian Empire to the more centralized Sassanian Empire. The land based Silk Road continued to deliver profits in trade but came under continual assault by nomads all on the northern frontiers of Eurasian nations. Safer sea routes began to gain preference in the early centuries AD
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+ Proselytizing religions began to replace polytheism and folk religions in many areas. Christianity gained a wide following in the Roman Empire, Zoroastrianism became the state enforced religion of Iran and Buddhism spread to East Asia from South Asia. Social change, political transformation as well as ecological events all contributed to the end of Ancient Times and the beginning of the Post Classical era in Eurasia roughly around the year 500.
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+ The rise of civilization corresponded with the institutional sponsorship of belief in gods, supernatural forces and the afterlife. During the Bronze Age, many civilizations adopted their own form of Polytheism. Usually, polytheistic Gods manifested human personalities, strengths and failings. Early religion was often based on location, with cities or entire countries selecting a deity, that would grant them preferences and advantages over their competitors. Worship involved the construction of representation of deities, and the granting of sacrifices. Sacrifices could be material goods, food, or in extreme cases human sacrifice to please a deity. New philosophies and religions arose in both east and west, particularly about the 6th century BC. Over time, a great variety of religions developed around the world, with some of the earliest major ones being Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism in India, and Zoroastrianism in Persia. The Abrahamic religions trace their origin to Judaism, around 1800 BC.
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+ The ancient Indian philosophy is a fusion of two ancient traditions: Sramana tradition and Vedic tradition. Indian philosophy begins with the Vedas where questions related to laws of nature, the origin of the universe and the place of man in it are asked. Jainism and Buddhism are continuation of the Sramana school of thought. The Sramanas cultivated a pessimistic world view of the samsara as full of suffering and advocated renunciation and austerities. They laid stress on philosophical concepts like Ahimsa, Karma, Jnana, Samsara and Moksa. While there are ancient relations between the Indian Vedas and the Iranian Avesta, the two main families of the Indo-Iranian philosophical traditions were characterized by fundamental differences in their implications for the human being's position in society and their view on the role of man in the universe.
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+ In the east, three schools of thought were to dominate Chinese thinking until the modern day. These were Taoism, Legalism and Confucianism. The Confucian tradition, which would attain dominance, looked for political morality not to the force of law but to the power and example of tradition. Confucianism would later spread into the Korean peninsula and Goguryeo[42] and toward Japan.
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+ In the west, the Greek philosophical tradition, represented by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, was diffused throughout Europe and the Middle East in the 4th century BC by the conquests of Alexander III of Macedon, more commonly known as Alexander the Great. After the Bronze and Iron Age religions formed, the rise and spread of Christianity through the Roman world marked the end of Hellenistic philosophy and ushered in the beginnings of Medieval philosophy.
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+ In the history of technology and ancient science during the growth of the ancient civilizations, ancient technological advances were produced in engineering. These advances stimulated other societies to adopt new ways of living and governance. Sometimes, technological development was sponsored by the state.[citation needed]
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+ The characteristics of Ancient Egyptian technology are indicated by a set of artifacts and customs that lasted for thousands of years. The Egyptians invented and used many basic machines, such as the ramp and the lever, to aid construction processes. The Egyptians also played an important role in developing Mediterranean maritime technology including ships and lighthouses.[citation needed]
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+ Water managing Qanats which likely emerged on the Iranian plateau and possibly also in the Arabian peninsula sometime in the early 1st millennium BC spread from there slowly west- and eastward.[43]
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+ The history of science and technology in India dates back to ancient times. The Indus Valley civilization yields evidence of hydrography, and sewage collection and disposal being practiced by its inhabitants. Among the fields of science and technology pursued in India were metallurgy, astronomy, mathematics and Ayurveda. Some ancient inventions include plastic surgery, cataract surgery, Hindu-Arabic numeral system and Wootz steel.
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+ The history of science and technology in China show significant advances in science, technology, mathematics, and astronomy. The first recorded observations of comets and supernovae were made in China. Traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and herbal medicine were also practiced.[citation needed]
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+ Ancient Greek technology developed at an unprecedented speed during the 5th century BC, continuing up to and including the Roman period, and beyond. Inventions that are credited to the ancient Greeks such as the gear, screw, bronze casting techniques, water clock, water organ, torsion catapult and the use of steam to operate some experimental machines and toys. Many of these inventions occurred late in the Greek period, often inspired by the need to improve weapons and tactics in war. Roman technology is the engineering practice which supported Roman civilization and made the expansion of Roman commerce and Roman military possible over nearly a thousand years. The Roman Empire had the most advanced set of technology of their time, some of which may have been lost during the turbulent eras of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Roman technological feats of many different areas, like civil engineering, construction materials, transport technology, and some inventions such as the mechanical reaper went unmatched until the 19th century.[citation needed]
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+ The history of ancient navigation began in earnest when men took to the sea in planked boats and ships propelled by sails hung on masts, like the Ancient Egyptian Khufu ship from the mid-3rd millennium BC. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Necho II sent out an expedition of Phoenicians, which in three years sailed from the Red Sea around Africa to the mouth of the Nile. Many current historians tend to believe Herodotus on this point, even though Herodotus himself was in disbelief that the Phoenicians had accomplished the act.
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+ Hannu was an ancient Egyptian explorer (around 2750 BC) and the first explorer of whom there is any knowledge. He made the first recorded exploring expedition, writing his account of his exploration in stone. Hannu travelled along the Red Sea to Punt, and sailed to what is now part of eastern Ethiopia and Somalia. He returned to Egypt with great treasures, including precious myrrh, metal and wood.
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+ Ancient warfare is war as conducted from the beginnings of recorded history to the end of the ancient period. In Europe, the end of antiquity is often equated with the fall of Rome in 476. In China, it can also be seen as ending in the 5th century, with the growing role of mounted warriors needed to counter the ever-growing threat from the north.
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+ The difference between prehistoric warfare and ancient warfare is less one of technology than of organization. The development of the first city-states, and then empires, allowed warfare to change dramatically. Beginning in Mesopotamia, states produced sufficient agricultural surplus that full-time ruling elites and military commanders could emerge. While the bulk of military forces were still farmers, the society could support having them campaigning rather than working the land for a portion of each year. Thus, organized armies developed for the first time.
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+ These new armies could help states grow in size and became increasingly centralized, and the first empire, that of the Sumerians, formed in Mesopotamia. Early ancient armies continued to primarily use bows and spears, the same weapons that had been developed in prehistoric times for hunting. Early armies in Egypt and China followed a similar pattern of using massed infantry armed with bows and spears.
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+ Ancient music is music that developed in literate cultures, replacing prehistoric music. Ancient music refers to the various musical systems that were developed across various geographical regions such as Persia, India, China, Greece, Rome, Egypt and Mesopotamia (see music of Mesopotamia, music of ancient Greece, music of ancient Rome, music of Iran). Ancient music is designated by the characterization of the basic audible tones and scales. It may have been transmitted through oral or written systems. Arts of the ancient world refers to the many types of art that were in the cultures of ancient societies, such as those of ancient China, Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, Mesopotamia and Rome.
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+ Dairy farming, textile, metal working, potter's wheel, sexagesimal system
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+ potter's wheel, Agriculture, dams, city planning, Mathematics, temple builders, Astronomy, Astrology, Medicine, literature, Martial arts
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+ Egyptian Pyramids, Mummification, Decimal system, Solar calendar
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+ Mud brick temple, pottery, Nubian pyramids, Solar calendar
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+ Agriculture, winemaking, architecture poetry, drama, philosophy, history, rhetoric, mathematics, political science, astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine, warfare
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+ Silk, Pottery, Chinaware, Metals, Great Wall, Paper
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+ Agriculture, Olmec colossal heads, Mesoamerican calendars, Popcorn, Bloodletting Agriculture, Maya textiles
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+ Agriculture, architecture, landscaping, postal service
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+ Agriculture, Roman calendar, concrete
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+ The Ancient Near East is considered the cradle of civilization. It was the first to practice intensive year-round agriculture; created the first coherent writing system, invented the potter's wheel and then the vehicular- and mill wheel, created the first centralized governments, law codes and empires, as well as introducing social stratification, slavery and organized warfare, and it laid the foundation for the fields of astronomy and mathematics.
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+ Mesopotamia is the site of some of the earliest known civilizations in the world. Early settlement of the alluvial plain lasted from the Ubaid period (late 6th millennium BC) through the Uruk period (4th millennium BC) and the Dynastic periods (3rd millennium BC) until the rise of Babylon in the early 2nd millennium BC. The surplus of storable foodstuffs created by this economy allowed the population to settle in one place instead of migrating after crops and herds. It also allowed for a much greater population density, and in turn required an extensive labor force and division of labor. This organization led to the necessity of record keeping and the development of writing (c. 3500 BC).
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+ Babylonia was an Amorite state in lower Mesopotamia (modern southern Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged when Hammurabi (fl. c. 1728–1686 BC, according to the short chronology) created an empire out of the territories of the former kingdoms of Sumer and Akkad. The Amorites being ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, Babylonia adopted the written Akkadian language for official use; they retained the Sumerian language for religious use, which by that time was no longer a spoken language. The Akkadian and Sumerian cultures played a major role in later Babylonian culture, and the region would remain an important cultural center, even under outside rule. The earliest mention of the city of Babylon can be found in a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad, dating back to the 23rd century BC.
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+ The Neo-Babylonian Empire, or Chaldea, was Babylonia under the rule of the 11th ("Chaldean") dynasty, from the revolt of Nabopolassar in 626 BC until the invasion of Cyrus the Great in 539 BC. Notably, it included the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, who conquered the Kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem.
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+ Akkad was a city and its surrounding region in central Mesopotamia. Akkad also became the capital of the Akkadian Empire.[44] The city was probably situated on the west bank of the Euphrates, between Sippar and Kish (in present-day Iraq, about 50 km (31 mi) southwest of the center of Baghdad). Despite an extensive search, the precise site has never been found. Akkad reached the height of its power between the 24th and 22nd centuries BC, following the conquests of king Sargon of Akkad. Because of the policies of the Akkadian Empire toward linguistic assimilation, Akkad also gave its name to the predominant Semitic dialect: the Akkadian language, reflecting use of akkadû ("in the language of Akkad") in the Old Babylonian period to denote the Semitic version of a Sumerian text.
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+ Assyria was originally (in the Middle Bronze Age) a region on the Upper Tigris, named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur. Later, as a nation and empire that came to control all of the Fertile Crescent, Egypt and much of Anatolia, the term "Assyria proper" referred to roughly the northern half of Mesopotamia (the southern half being Babylonia), with Nineveh as its capital. The Assyrian kings controlled a large kingdom at three different times in history. These are called the Old (20th to 15th centuries BC), Middle (15th to 10th centuries BC), and Neo-Assyrian (911–612 BC) kingdoms, or periods, of which the last is the most well known and best documented. Assyrians invented excavation to undermine city walls, battering rams to knock down gates, as well as the concept of a corps of engineers, who bridged rivers with pontoons or provided soldiers with inflatable skins for swimming.[45]
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+ Mitanni was an Indo-Iranian[46] empire in northern Mesopotamia from c. 1500 BC. At the height of Mitanni power, during the 14th century BC, it encompassed what is today southeastern Turkey, northern Syria and northern Iraq, centered around its capital, Washukanni, whose precise location has not been determined by archaeologists.
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+ Elam is the name of an ancient civilization located in what is now southwest Iran. Archaeological evidence associated with Elam has been dated to before 5000 BC.[47][48][49][50][51][52][53] According to available written records, it is known to have existed from around 3200 BC – making it among the world's oldest historical civilizations – and to have endured up until 539 BC. Its culture played a crucial role in the Gutian Empire, especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it, when the Elamite language remained among those in official use. The Elamite period is considered a starting point for the history of Iran.
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+ The Medes were an ancient Iranian people. They had established their own empire by the 6th century BC, having defeated the Neo-Assyrian Empire with the Chaldeans. They overthrew Urartu later on as well. The Medes are credited with the foundation of the first Iranian empire, the largest of its day until Cyrus the Great established a unified Iranian empire of the Medes and Persian, often referred to as the Achaemenid Empire, by defeating his grandfather and overlord, Astyages the king of Media.
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+ The Achaemenid Empire was the largest and most significant of the Persian Empires, and followed the Median Empire as the second great empire of the Iranians. It is noted in western history as the foe of the Greek city states in the Greco-Persian Wars, for freeing the Israelites from their Babylonian captivity, for its successful model of a centralized bureaucratic administration, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), and for instituting Aramaic as the empire's official language. Because of the Empire's vast extent and long endurance, Persian influence upon the language, religion, architecture, philosophy, law and government of nations around the world lasts to this day. At the height of its power, the Achaemenid dynasty encompassed approximately 8.0 million square kilometers, held the greatest percentage of world population to date, stretched three continents (Europe, Asia and Africa) and was territorially the largest empire of classical antiquity.
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+ Parthia was an Iranian civilization situated in the northeastern part of modern Iran. Their power was based on a combination of the guerrilla warfare of a mounted nomadic tribe, with organizational skills to build and administer a vast empire – even though it never matched in power and extent the Persian empires that preceded and followed it. The Parthian Empire was led by the Arsacid dynasty, which reunited and ruled over significant portions of the Near East and beyond, after defeating and disposing the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire, beginning in the late 3rd century BC. It was the third native dynasty of ancient Iran (after the Median and the Achaemenid dynasties). Parthia had many wars with the Roman Republic (and subsequently the Roman Empire), which marked the start of what would be over 700 years of frequent Roman-Persian Wars.
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+ The Sassanid Empire, lasting the length of the Late Antiquity period, is considered to be one of Iran's most important and influential historical periods. In many ways the Sassanid period witnessed the highest achievements of Persian civilization and constituted the last great Iranian Empire before the Muslim conquest and the adoption of Islam.[54] During Sassanid times, Persia influenced Roman civilization considerably,[55] and the Romans reserved for the Sassanid Persians alone the status of equals. Sassanid cultural influence extended far beyond the empire's territorial borders, reaching as far as Western Europe,[56] Africa,[57] China, and India, playing a role, for example, in the formation of both European and Asiatic medieval art.[58]
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+ The early history of the Hittite empire is known through tablets that may first have been written in the 17th century BC but survived only as copies made in the 14th and 13th centuries BC. These tablets, known collectively as the Anitta text,[59] begin by telling how Pithana the king of Kussara or Kussar (a small city-state yet to be identified by archaeologists) conquered the neighbouring city of Neša (Kanesh). However, the real subject of these tablets is Pithana's son Anitta, who conquered several neighbouring cities, including Hattusa and Zalpuwa (Zalpa).
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+ Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser I (c. 1270 BC) first mention Uruartri as one of the states of Nairi – a loose confederation of small kingdoms and tribal states in the Armenian Highland from the 13th to 11th centuries BC. Uruartri itself was in the region around Lake Van. The Nairi states were repeatedly subjected to attacks by the Assyrians, especially under Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1240 BC), Tiglath-Pileser I (c. 1100 BC), Ashur-bel-kala (c. 1070 BC), Adad-nirari II (c. 900), Tukulti-Ninurta II (c. 890), and Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC).
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+ The Kingdom of Armenia was an independent kingdom from 321 BC to 428 AD, and a client state of the Roman and Persian empires until 428. Between 95–55 BC under the rule of King Tigranes the Great, the kingdom of Armenia became a large and powerful empire stretching from the Caspian to the Mediterranean Seas. During this short time it was considered to be the most powerful state in the Roman East.[60][61]
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+ Israel and Judah were related Iron Age kingdoms of the ancient Levant and had existed during the Iron Ages and the Neo-Babylonian, Persian and Hellenistic periods.
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+ The name Israel first appears in the stele of the Egyptian pharaoh Merneptah c. 1209 BC, "Israel is laid waste and his seed is no more."[62] This "Israel" was a cultural and probably political entity of the central highlands, well enough established to be perceived by the Egyptians as a possible challenge to their hegemony, but an ethnic group rather than an organised state;[63] Archaeologist Paula McNutt says: "It is probably ... during Iron Age I [that] a population began to identify itself as 'Israelite'," differentiating itself from its neighbours via prohibitions on intermarriage, an emphasis on family history and genealogy, and religion.[64]
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+ Israel had emerged by the middle of the 9th century BC, when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III names "Ahab the Israelite" among his enemies at the battle of Qarqar (853). Judah emerged somewhat later than Israel, probably during the 9th century BC, but the subject is one of considerable controversy.[65] Israel came into increasing conflict with the expanding neo-Assyrian empire, which first split its territory into several smaller units and then destroyed its capital, Samaria (722). A series of campaigns by the Neo-Babylonian Empire between 597 and 582 led to the destruction of Judah.
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+ Followed by the fall of Babylon to the Persian empire, Jews were allowed, by Cyrus the Great, to return to Judea. The Hasmonean Kingdom (followed by the Maccabean revolt) had existed during the Hellenistic period and then the Herodian kingdom during the Roman period.
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+ The history of Pre-Islamic Arabia before the rise of Islam in the 630s is not known in great detail. Archaeological exploration in the Arabian peninsula has been sparse; indigenous written sources are limited to the many inscriptions and coins from southern Arabia. Existing material consists primarily of written sources from other traditions (such as Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, etc.) and oral traditions later recorded by Islamic scholars. Many small kingdoms prospered from Red sea and Indian Ocean trade. Major kingdoms included the Sabaeans, Awsan, Lahkimid Himyar and the Nabateans. Arab kingdoms are occasionally mentioned in the Hebrew Old Testament under the name of Edom.
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+ Though the Ugaritic site is thought to have been inhabited earlier, Neolithic Ugarit was already important enough to be fortified with a wall early on. The first written evidence mentioning the city comes from the nearby city of Ebla, c. 1800 BC. Ugarit passed into the sphere of influence of Egypt, which deeply influenced its art. On the Mediterranean coast of modern-day Israel, Palestine and Lebanon, Canaanite peoples became wealth through trade inspiring Phoenicians.
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+ Phoenicia was an ancient civilization centered in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal regions of modern-day Lebanon, Syria and Israel. Phoenician civilization was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean between the period of 1550 to 300 BC. One Phoenician colony, Carthage, became a powerful nation in its own right.
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+ Carthage was founded in 814 BC by Phoenician settlers from the city of Tyre, bringing with them the city-god Melqart.[66] Ancient Carthage was an informal hegemony of Phoenician city-states throughout North Africa and modern Spain from 575 BC until 146 BC. It was more or less under the control of the city-state of Carthage after the fall of Tyre to Babylonian forces. At the height of the city's influence, its empire included most of the western Mediterranean. The empire was in a constant state of struggle with the Roman Republic, which led to a series of conflicts known as the Punic Wars. After the third and final Punic War, Carthage was destroyed then occupied by Roman forces. Nearly all of the territory held by Carthage fell into Roman hands.
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+ Ancient Egypt was a long-lived civilization geographically located in north-eastern Africa. It was concentrated along the middle to lower reaches of the Nile River reaching its greatest extension during the 2nd millennium BC, which is referred to as the New Kingdom period. It reached broadly from the Nile Delta in the north, as far south as Jebel Barkal at the Fourth Cataract of the Nile. Extensions to the geographical range of ancient Egyptian civilization included, at different times, areas of the southern Levant, the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea coastline, the Sinai Peninsula and the Western Desert (focused on the several oases).
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+ Ancient Egypt developed over at least three and a half millennia. It began with the incipient unification of Nile Valley polities around 3500 BC and is conventionally thought to have ended in 30 BC when the early Roman Empire conquered and absorbed Ptolemaic Egypt as a province. (Though this last did not represent the first period of foreign domination, the Roman period was to witness a marked, if gradual transformation in the political and religious life of the Nile Valley, effectively marking the termination of independent civilisational development).
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+ The civilization of ancient Egypt was based on a finely balanced control of natural and human resources, characterised primarily by controlled irrigation of the fertile Nile Valley; the mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions; the early development of an independent writing system and literature; the organisation of collective projects; trade with surrounding regions in east / central Africa and the eastern Mediterranean; finally, military ventures that exhibited strong characteristics of imperial hegemony and territorial domination of neighbouring cultures at different periods. Motivating and organizing these activities were a socio-political and economic elite that achieved social consensus by means of an elaborate system of religious belief under the figure of a (semi)-divine ruler (usually male) from a succession of ruling dynasties and which related to the larger world by means of polytheistic beliefs.
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+ The Kushite civilization, which is also known as Nubia, was formed before a period of Egyptian incursion into the area. The first cultures arose in what is now Sudan before the time of a unified Egypt, and the most widespread culture is known as the Kerma civilization. Egyptians referred to Nubia as "Ta-Seti," or "The Land of the Bow," since the Nubians were known to be expert archers. The two civilization shared an abundance of peaceful cultural interchange and cooperation, including mixed marriages and even the same gods. In the New Kingdom, Nubians became indistinguishable in the archaeological record from Egyptians. The Kingdom of Kush survived longer than that of Egypt and at its greatest extent Nubia ruled over Egypt (under the leadership of king Piye), and controlled Egypt during the 8th century BC as the 25th Dynasty.[67]
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+ It is also referred to as Ethiopia in ancient Greek and Roman records. According to Josephus and other classical writers, the Kushite Empire covered all of Africa, and some parts of Asia and Europe at one time or another. In contrast to the Egyptians the Nubians had an unusually high number of ruling queens also known as Kandake, especially during the golden age of the Meroitic Kingdom. Unlike the rest of the world at the time, women in Nubia exercised significant control in society.[68] The Kushites are also famous for having buried their monarchs along with all their courtiers in mass graves. The Kushites also built burial mounds and pyramids, and shared some of the same gods worshipped in Egypt, especially Amon and Isis.
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+ The Land of Punt, also called Pwenet or Pwene[69] by the ancient Egyptians, was a trading partner known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, African blackwood, ebony, ivory, slaves and wild animals.[69] Information about Punt has been found in ancient Egyptian records of trade missions to this region.
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+ The exact location of Punt remains a mystery. The mainstream view is that Punt was located to the south-east of Egypt, most likely on the coast of the Horn of Africa. Archaeologist Richard Pankhurst (academic) states;
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+ "[Punt] has been identified with territory on both the Arabian and the Horn of Africa coasts. Consideration of the articles that the Egyptians obtained from Punt, notably gold and ivory, suggests, however, that these were primarily of African origin. ... This leads us to suppose that the term Punt probably applied more to African than Arabian territory."[69][70][71][72]
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+ The earliest recorded Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (25th century BC) although gold from Punt is recorded as having been in Egypt in the time of king Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt.[73] Subsequently, there were more expeditions to Punt in the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt, the Eleventh dynasty of Egypt, the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt and the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt. In the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt, trade with Punt was celebrated in popular literature in "Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor".
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+ The Axumite Empire was an important trading nation in northeastern Africa centered in present-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, it existed from approximately 100–940 AD, growing from the Iron Age proto-Aksumite period c. fourth century BC to achieve prominence by the first century CE.[74]
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+ According to the Book of Aksum, Aksum's first capital, Mazaber, was built by Itiyopis, son of Cush.[75] The capital was later moved to Axum in northern Ethiopia. The Kingdom used the name "Ethiopia" as early as the fourth century.[76][77]
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+ The Empire of Aksum at its height at its climax by the early sixth century extended through much of modern Ethiopia and across the Red Sea to Arabia. The capital city of the empire was Aksum, now in northern Ethiopia.
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+ Its ancient capital is found in northern Ethiopia, the Kingdom used the name "Ethiopia" as early as the 4th century.[76][78] Aksum is mentioned in the 1st century AD Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as an important market place for ivory, which was exported throughout the ancient world, and states that the ruler of Aksum in the 1st century AD was Zoscales, who, besides ruling in Aksum also controlled two harbours on the Red Sea: Adulis (near Massawa) and Avalites (Assab). He is also said to have been familiar with Greek literature.[79] It is also an alleged resting place of the Ark of the Covenant and home of the Queen of Sheba. Aksum was also one of the first major empires to convert to Christianity.
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+ The Nok culture appeared in Nigeria around 1000 BC and mysteriously vanished around 200 AD. The civilization's social system is thought to have been highly advanced. The Nok civilization was considered to be the earliest sub-Saharan producer of life-sized Terracotta which have been discovered by archaeologists.[80] A Nok sculpture resident at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, portrays a sitting dignitary wearing a "Shepherds Crook" on the right arm, and a "hinged flail" on the left. These are symbols of authority associated with ancient Egyptian pharaohs, and the god Osiris, which suggests that an ancient Egyptian style of social structure, and perhaps religion, existed in the area of modern Nigeria during the late Pharonic period.[81] (Informational excerpt copied from Nigeria and Nok culture articles)
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+ One of the earliest Neolithic sites in the Indian subcontinent is Bhirrana along the ancient Ghaggar-Hakra (Saraswati) riverine system in the present day state of Haryana in India, dating to around 7600 BC.[82] Other early sites include Lahuradewa in the Middle Ganges region and Jhusi near the confluence of Ganges and Yamuna rivers, both dating to around 7000 BC.[83][84] The aceramic Neolithic at Mehrgarh lasts from 7000 to 5500 BC, with the ceramic Neolithic at Mehrgarh lasting up to 3300 BC; blending into the Early Bronze Age. Mehrgarh is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming and herding in the Indian subcontinent.[85][86] Early Mehrgarh residents lived in mud brick houses, stored their grain in granaries, fashioned tools with local copper ore, and lined their large basket containers with bitumen. They cultivated six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle. Residents of the later period (5500 BC to 2600 BC) put much effort into crafts, including flint knapping, tanning, bead production, and metal working. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600 BC.
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+ The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3300–1700 BC, flourished 2600–1900 BC), abbreviated IVC, was an ancient civilization that flourished in the Indus and Ghaggar-Hakra river valleys have been found in eastern Afghanistan, Pakistan and western India. Minor scattered sites have been found as far away as Turkmenistan. Another name for this civilization is the Harappan Civilization, after the first of its cities to be excavated, Harappa in the Pakistani province of Punjab. The IVC were known to the Sumerians as the Meluhha, and other trade contacts may have included Egypt, Africa, however, the modern world discovered it only in the 1920s as a result of archaeological excavations and rail-road building.
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+ The births of Mahavira and Buddha in the 6th century BC mark the beginning of well-recorded history in the region. Around the 5th century BC, the ancient region of Afghanistan and Pakistan was invaded by the Achaemenid Empire under Darius in 522 BC[87] forming the easternmost satraps of the Persian Empire. The provinces of Sindh and Panjab were said to be the richest satraps of the Persian Empire and contributed many soldiers to various Persian expeditions. It is known that an Indian contingent fought in Xerxes' army on his expedition to Greece. Herodotus mentions that the Indus satrapy supplied cavalry and chariots to the Persian army. He also mentions that the Indus people were clad in armaments made of cotton, carried bows and arrows of cane covered with iron. Herodotus states that in 517 BC Darius sent an expedition under Scylax to explore the Indus. Under Persian rule, much irrigation and commerce flourished within the vast territory of the empire. The Persian empire was followed by the invasion of the Greeks under Alexander's army. Since Alexander was determined to reach the eastern-most limits of the Persian Empire he could not resist the temptation to conquer India (i.e. the Punjab region), which at this time was parcelled out into small chieftain-ships, who were feudatories of the Persian Empire. Alexander amalgamated the region into the expanding Hellenic empire.[citation needed] The Rigveda, in Sanskrit, goes back to about 1500 BC. The Indian literary tradition has an oral history reaching down into the Vedic period of the later 2nd millennium BC.
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+ Ancient India is usually taken to refer to the "golden age" of classical Indian culture, as reflected in Sanskrit literature, beginning around 500 BC with the sixteen monarchies and 'republics' known as the Mahajanapadas, stretched across the Indo-Gangetic plains from modern-day Afghanistan to Bangladesh. The largest of these nations were Magadha, Kosala, Kuru and Gandhara. Notably, the great epics of Ramayana and Mahabharata are rooted in this classical period.
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+ Amongst the sixteen Mahajanapadas, the kingdom of Magadha rose to prominence under a number of dynasties that peaked in power under the reign of Ashoka Maurya one of India's most legendary and famous emperors. During the reign of Ashoka, the four dynasties of Chola, Chera, and Pandya were ruling in the South, while the King Devanampiya Tissa was controlling the Anuradhapura Kingdom (now Sri Lanka). These kingdoms, while not part of Ashoka's empire, were in friendly terms with the Maurya Empire. There was a strong alliance existed between Devanampiya Tissa (250–210 BC) and Ashoka of India,[88] who sent Arahat Mahinda, four monks, and a novice being sent to Sri Lanka.[89]
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+ They encountered Devanampiya Tissa at Mihintale. After this meeting, Devanampiya Tissa embraced Buddhism the order of monks was established in the country.[90] Devanampiya Tissa, guided by Arahat Mahinda, took steps to firmly establish Buddhism in the country.
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+ The period between AD 320–550 is known as the Classical Age, when most of North India was reunited under the Gupta Empire (c. AD 320–550). This was a period of relative peace, law and order, and extensive achievements in religion, education, mathematics, arts, Sanskrit literature and drama. Grammar, composition, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy became increasingly specialized and reached an advanced level. The Gupta Empire was weakened and ultimately ruined by the raids of Hunas (a branch of the Hephthalites emanating from Central Asia). Under Harsha (r. 606–47), North India was reunited briefly.
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+ The educated speech at that time was Sanskrit, while the dialects of the general population of northern India were referred to as Prakrits. The South Indian Malabar Coast and the Tamil people of the Sangam age traded with the Graeco-Roman world. They were in contact with the Phoenicians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Syrians, Jews, and the Chinese.[91]
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+ The regions of South Asia, primarily present-day India and Pakistan, were estimated to have had the largest economy of the world between the 1st and 15th centuries AD, controlling between one third and one quarter of the world's wealth up to the time of the Mughals, from whence it rapidly declined during British rule.[92]
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+ Chinese Civilization that emerged within the Yellow River Valley is one of five original civilizations in the world. Prior to the formation of civilization neolithic cultures such as the Longshan and Yangshao dating to 5,000 BC lived in wall cities and likely had social organizations of complex chiefdoms. The practice of rice cultivation was vital to settled life in China.
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+ Chinese history records such as the Records of the Grand Historian claim of the existence of the Xia Dynasty. However, as the Xia left behind no written record themselves, the time and location of their civilization has been in doubt. Some historians believe that the neolithic Erlitou culture (1900-1600 BC) is the Xia Dynasty but whether archaeological discoveries in the area Xia Dynasty or a different culture remains in doubt.
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+ [93][94]
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+ The early part of the Shang dynasty described in traditional histories (c. 1600–1300 BC) is commonly identified with archaeological finds at Erligang, Zhengzhou and Yanshi, south of the Yellow River in modern-day Henan province.
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+ The last capital of the Shang (c. 1300–1046 BC) at Anyang (also in Henan) has been directly confirmed by the discovery there of the earliest Chinese texts, inscriptions of divination records on the bones or shells of animals – the so-called "oracle bones".
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+ Towards the end of the 2nd millennium BC, the Shang were overrun by the Zhou dynasty from the Wei River valley to the west. The death of King Wu of Zhou soon after the conquest triggered a succession crisis and civil war that was suppressed by Wu's brother, the Duke of Zhou, acting as regent. The Zhou rulers at this time invoked the concept of the Mandate of Heaven to legitimize their rule, a concept that would be influential for almost every successive dynasty. The Zhou initially established their capital in the west near modern Xi'an, near the Yellow River, but they would preside over a series of expansions into the Yangtze River valley. This would be the first of many population migrations from north to south in Chinese history.
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+ In the 8th century BC, power became decentralized during the Spring and Autumn period, named after the influential Spring and Autumn Annals. In this period, local military leaders used by the Zhou began to assert their power and vie for hegemony. The situation was aggravated by the invasion of other peoples from the northwest, such as the Quanrong, forcing the Zhou to move their capital east to Luoyang. This marks the second large phase of the Zhou dynasty: the Eastern Zhou. In each of the hundreds of states that eventually arose, local strongmen held most of the political power and continued their subservience to the Zhou kings in name only. Local leaders for instance started using royal titles for themselves. The Hundred Schools of Thought of Chinese philosophy blossomed during this period, and such influential intellectual movements as Confucianism, Taoism, Legalism and Mohism were founded, partly in response to the changing political world. The Spring and Autumn period is marked by a falling apart of the central Zhou power. China now consisted of hundreds of states, some only as large as a village with a fort.
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+ After further political consolidation, seven prominent states remained by the end of the 5th century BC, and the years in which these few states battled each other is known as the Warring States period. Though there remained a nominal Zhou king until 256 BC, he was largely a figurehead and held little power. As neighboring territories of these warring states, including areas of modern Sichuan and Liaoning, were annexed, they were governed under the new local administrative system of commandery and prefecture. This system had been in use since the Spring and Autumn period and parts can still be seen in the modern system of Sheng and Xian (province and county). The final expansion in this period began during the reign of Ying Zheng, the king of Qin. His unification of the other six powers, and further annexations in the modern regions of Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi in 214 BC enabled him to proclaim himself the First Emperor (Qin Shi Huangdi).
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+ Qin Shi Huangdi ruled the unified China directly with absolute power. In contrast to the decentralized and feudal rule of earlier dynasties the Qin set up a number of 'commandries' around the country which answered directly to the emperor. Nationwide the philosophy of legalism was enforced and publications promoting rival ideas such as Confucianism were prohibited. In his reign unified China created the first continuous Great Wall with the use of forced labor. Invasions were launched southward to annex Vietnam. After the emperor's death rebels rose against the Qin's brutal reign in new civil wars. Ultimately the Han Dynasty arose and ruled China for over four centuries in what accounted for a long period in prosperity, with a brief interruption by the Xin Dynasty. The Han Dynasty played a great role in developing the Silk Road which would transfer wealth and ideas for millennia, and also invented paper. Though the Han enjoyed great military and economic success it was strained by the rise of aristocrats who disobeyed the central government. Public frustration provoked the Yellow Turban Rebellion – though a failure it nonetheless accelerated the empire's downfall. After 208 AD the Han Dynasty broke up into rival kingdoms. China would remain divided until 581 under the Sui Dynasty, during the era of division Buddhism would be introduced to China for the first time.
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+ The East Asian nations adjacent to China were all profoundly influenced by their interactions with Chinese civilization. Mongolia, Korea and Vietnam often were at war with, paid tribute to, or annexed by Imperial Chinese states. Yayoi Japan, though not occupied, had interactions with Imperial China that shaped its cultural development.
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+ Mongolia in ancient times was nomadic. The ethnicities, cultures and languages in modern Mongolian territory were fluid and changed frequently. The use of horses to herd and migrate started during the Iron Age. These were Tengriist horse-riding pastoral kingdoms that had close contact with the sedentary agrarian Chinese. To appease the aggressive nomads, local Chinese rulers often gave important hostages and arranged marriages. In 208 BC the Xiongnu emperor Modu Chanyu, in his first major military campaign, defeated the Donghu, who split into the new tribes Xianbei and Wuhuan. The Xiongnu were the largest nomadic enemies of the Han Dynasty fighting wars for over three centuries with the Han Dynasty before dissolving. Afterwards the Xianbei returned to rule the Steppe north of the Great Wall. The titles of Khangan and Khan come from the Xianbei.
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+ According to the Records of the Grand Historian by the Chinese historian Sima Qian, Wiman Joseon of Korea was founded by General Wiman from China who originally served but usurped the throne of Gojoseon (the name of ancient Korea) in 194 BC.[95] In 108 BC, the Han dynasty of China destroyed Wiman Joseon and established four commanderies on the northern Korean peninsula. Three of the commanderies were shortly lost but the Lelang commandery remained on the northwestern Korean peninsula for about 400 years. The Three Kingdoms of Korea of Baekje, Goguryeo and Silla emerged after the fall of Gojoseon and eventually expelled the Chinese. The Three Kingdoms competed with each other both economically and militarily; Goguryeo and Baekje were the main players for much of the Three Kingdoms era and controlled most of the Korean peninsula. At times more powerful than neighboring Chinese dynasties, Goguryeo (where the name "Korea" comes from) was a regional power that defeated massive invasions by the Sui dynasty multiple times.[96] Goguryeo and Baekje were eventually destroyed by a Tang dynasty and Silla alliance. Silla then drove out the Tang dynasty in 676 to control most of the Korean peninsula undisputed.
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+ In Vietnam, archaeologists have pointed to the Phùng Nguyên culture as the beginning of the Vietnamese identity from around 2000 BC which engaged in early bronze smelting.
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+ Eight hundred years later the Đông Sơn culture arose a prehistoric Bronze Age culture that was centered at the Red River Valley of northern Vietnam. Large scale rice cultivation began around 1200 BC, onward. Pottery and Bamboo working became common in this time period as well as widespread trade and navigation on inland rivers. During this time Vietnam was allegedly ruled by the semi-mythical Hong Bang Dynasty, the last Hong King was deposed by a Chinese Qin Invasion, in turn however a Chinese General declared independence and founded the Nanyue combining Chinese and Vietnamese traditions.
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+ Nan Yue, after a century of political maneuvers the country was annexed by the Han Dynasty in 111 B.C Originally the Han were lenient governors and attempted to integrate the Vietnamese upper class into Chinese Patriarchy. However Chinese abuse of certain vassals led to the famous but futile revolt of the Trung Sisters. Afterwards Chinese authorities ruled Vietnam directly and attempted to push Chinese culture upon the populace though peasants continued to speak Vietnamese. Vietnam would be under Chinese domination for a millennium.[97] Meanwhile, South Vietnam held a completely different identity, populated mainly by Cham People. While Northern Vietnam came under Chinese Domination, the Champa Kingdom became closer to Indian kingdoms through trade and embraced Hinduism.
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+ Japan first appeared in written records in AD 57 with the following mention in China's Book of the Later Han:[98] "Across the ocean from Luoyang are the people of Wa. Formed from more than one hundred tribes, they come and pay tribute frequently. The Book of Wei, written in the 3rd century, noted the country was the unification of some 30 small tribes or states and ruled by a shaman queen named Himiko of Yamataikoku. During the Han dynasty and Wei dynasty, Chinese travelers to Kyūshū recorded its inhabitants and claimed that they were the descendants of the Grand Count (Tàibó) of the Wu. The inhabitants also show traits of the pre-sinicized Wu people with tattooing, teeth-pulling and baby-carrying. The Book of Wei records the physical descriptions which are similar to ones on Haniwa statues, such men with braided hair, tattooing and women wearing large, single-piece clothing. Power was often decentralized until the creation of its first constitution in AD 600.
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+ In pre-Columbian times, several large, centralized ancient civilizations developed in the Western Hemisphere,[99] both in Mesoamerica and western South America. Beyond these areas, the use of agriculture expanded East of the Andes Mountains in South America particularly with the Marajoara culture, and in the continental United States with the Hopewell culture.
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+ The Central Andes in South America was one of the original areas of civilization, spanning 4,500 years from the Norte chico otherwise known as Caral-Supe in 3500 BC to the final the Inca Empire after which the entire continent was transformed by the 16th century Columbian Exchange. Until the late 20th century, details about Norte Chico were unclear and often confused with later cultures such as the Chavin.
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+ Ancient Andean Civilization began with the rise or organized fishing communities from 3,500 BC onwards. Along with a sophisticated maritime society came the construction of large monuments, which likely existed as community centers.[100] The large ceremonial structures predated the Measoamerican Olmecs by 2,000 years making Norte Chico the first civilization in the western hemisphere.
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+ Mesoamerican ancient civilizations included the Olmecs and Mayans. Between 2000 and 300 BC, complex cultures began to form and many matured into advanced Mesoamerican civilizations such as the: Olmec, Izapa, Teotihuacan, Maya, Zapotec, Mixtec, Huastec, Which flourished for nearly 4,000 years before the first contact with Europeans. These civilizations' progress included pyramid-temples, mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and theology.
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+ The Zapotec emerged around 1500 years BC. They left behind the great city Monte Alban. Their writing system had been thought to have influenced the Olmecs but, with recent evidence, the Olmec may have been the first civilization in the area to develop a true writing system independently. At the present time, there is some debate as to whether or not Olmec symbols, dated to 650 BC, are actually a form of writing preceding the oldest Zapotec writing dated to about 500 BC.[101]
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+ Olmec symbols found in 2002 and 2006 date to 650 BC[102] and 900 BC[103] respectively, preceding the oldest Zapotec writing.[104][105] The Olmec symbols found in 2006, dating to 900 BC, are known as the Cascajal Block. The earliest Mayan inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BC in San Bartolo, Guatemala. The Mayan invention of writing makes Mesoamerica one of only three regions in the world that developed writing completely independently.[106]
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+ [107][108]
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+ Organized societies, in the ancient United States or Canada, were often mound builder civilizations. One of the most significant of these was the Poverty Point Culture that existed in the U.S state of Louisiana, and was responsible for the creation of over 100 mound sites. The Mississippi River was a core area in the development of long distance trade and culture. Following Poverty Point, successive complex cultures such as the Hopewell emerged in the Southeastern United States in the Early Woodland period. Before 500 AD many mound builder societies, retained a hunter gatherer form of subsistence.
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+ The history of the Etruscans can be traced relatively accurately, based on the examination of burial sites, artifacts, and writing. Etruscans culture that is identifiably and certainly Etruscan developed in Italy in earnest by 900 BC approximately with the Iron Age Villanovan culture, regarded as the oldest phase of Etruscan civilization.[109][110][111][112][113] The latter gave way in the 7th century to an increasingly orientalizing culture that was influenced by Greek traders and Greek neighbors in Magna Graecia, the Hellenic civilization of southern Italy, evidenced by around 13,000 inscriptions in an alphabet similar to that of Euboean Greek, in the Pre-Indo-European Etruscan language. The burial tombs, some of which had been fabulously decorated, promotes the idea of an aristocratic city-state, with centralized power structures maintaining order and constructing public works, such as irrigation networks, roads, and town defenses.
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+ Ancient Greece is the period in Greek history lasting for close to a millennium, until the rise of Christianity. It is considered by most historians to be the foundational culture of Western Civilization. Greek culture was a powerful influence in the Roman Empire, which carried a version of it to many parts of Europe.
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+ The earliest known human settlements in Greece were on the island of Crete, more than 9,000 years ago, though there is evidence of tool use on the island going back over 100,000 years.[114] The earliest evidence of a civilisation in ancient Greece is that of the Minoans on Crete, dating as far back as 3600 BC. On the mainland, the Mycenaean civilisation rose to prominence around 1600 BC, superseded the Minoan civilisation on Crete, and lasted until about 1100 BC, leading to a period known as the Greek Dark Ages.
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+ The Archaic Period in Greece is generally considered to have lasted from around the eighth century BC to the invasion by Xerxes in 480 BC. This period saw the expansion of the Greek world around the Mediterranean, with the founding of Greek city-states as far afield as Sicily in the West and the Black sea in the East.[115] Politically, the Archaic period in Greece saw the collapse of the power of the old aristocracies,[116] with democratic reforms in Athens and the development of Sparta's unique constitution. The end of the Archaic period also saw the rise of Athens, which would come to be a dominant power in the Classical period, after the reforms of Solon and the tyranny of Pisistratus.[116]
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+ The Classical Greek world was dominated throughout the fifth century BC by the major powers of Athens and Sparta. Through the Delian League, Athens was able to convert Pan-hellenist sentiment and fear of the Persian threat into a powerful empire, and this, along with the conflict between Sparta and Athens culminating in the Peloponnesian war, was the major political development of the first part of the Classical period.[117]
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+ The period in Greek history from the death of Alexander the Great until the rise of the Roman empire and its conquest of Egypt in 30 BC is known as the Hellenistic period. The name derives from the Greek word Hellenistes ("the Greek speaking ones"), and describes the spread of Greek culture into the non-Greek world following the conquests of Alexander and the rise of his successors.
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+ Following the Battle of Corinth in 146 BC, Greece came under Roman rule, ruled from the province of Macedonia. In 27 BC, Augustus organised the Greek peninsula into the province of Achaea. Greece remained under Roman control until the break up of the Roman empire, in which it remained part of the Eastern Empire. Much of Greece remained under Byzantine control until the end of the Byzantine empire in 1453 AD.
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+ Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of the city-state of Rome, originating as a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula in the 9th century BC. In its twelve centuries of existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy to an oligarchic republic to an increasingly autocratic empire.
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+ Roman civilization is often grouped into "classical antiquity" with ancient Greece, a civilization that inspired much of the culture of ancient Rome. Ancient Rome contributed greatly to the development of law, war, art, literature, architecture, and language in the Western world, and its history continues to have a major influence on the world today. The Roman civilization came to dominate Europe and the Mediterranean region through conquest and assimilation.
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+ Throughout the territory under the control of ancient Rome, residential architecture ranged from very modest houses to country villas. A number of Roman founded cities had monumental structures. Many contained fountains with fresh drinking-water supplied by hundreds of miles of aqueducts, theatres, gymnasiums, bath complexes sometime with libraries and shops, marketplaces, and occasionally functional sewers. A number of factors led to the eventual decline of the Roman Empire. The western half of the empire, including Hispania, Gaul, and Italy, eventually broke into independent kingdoms in the 5th century; the Eastern Roman Empire, governed from Constantinople, is referred to as the Byzantine Empire after AD 476, the traditional date for the "fall of Rome" and subsequent onset of the Middle Ages.
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+ The Roman Empire underwent considerable social, cultural and organizational change starting with reign of Diocletian, who began the custom of splitting the Empire into Eastern and Western halves ruled by multiple emperors. Beginning with Constantine the Great the Empire was Christianized, and a new capital founded at Constantinople. Migrations of Germanic tribes disrupted Roman rule from the late 4th century onwards, culminating in the eventual collapse of the Empire in the West in 476, replaced by the so-called barbarian kingdoms. The resultant cultural fusion of Greco-Roman, Germanic and Christian traditions formed the cultural foundations of Europe.
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+ The Huns left practically no written records. There is no record of what happened between the time they left the Mongolian Plateau and arrived in Europe 150 years later. The last mention of the northern Xiongnu was their defeat by the Chinese in 151 at the lake of Barkol,[118] after which they fled to the western steppe at Kangju (centered on the city of Turkistan in Kazakhstan). Chinese records between the 3rd and 4th centuries suggest that a small tribe called Yueban, remnants of Northern Xiongnu, was distributed about the steppe of Kazakhstan.
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+ The Hun-Xiongnu connection is controversial at best and is often disputed but is also not completely discredited.[119][120][121] Historians have estimated that the origins of the Huns came somewhere's from within Kazakhstan.[122] Approaching the Danube River in 370 A.D the Huns would repeatedly invaded Europe and wreaked havoc on the Roman Empire during Late Antiquity. They later dissolved and became part of the native population.
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+ The Celts were a diverse group of tribal societies in Iron Age Europe. Proto-Celtic culture formed in the Early Iron Age in Central Europe (Hallstatt period, named for the site in present-day Austria). By the later Iron Age (La Tène period), Celts had expanded over wide range of lands: as far west as Ireland and the Iberian Peninsula, as far east as Galatia (central Anatolia), and as far north as Scotland.[123] By the early centuries AD, following the expansion of the Roman Empire and the Great Migrations of Germanic peoples, Celtic culture had become
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+ restricted to the British Isles (Insular Celtic), with the Continental Celtic languages extinct by the mid-1st millennium AD.
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+ Migration of Germanic peoples to Britain from what is now northern Germany and southern Scandinavia is attested from the 5th century (e.g. Undley bracteate).[124] Based on Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, the intruding population is traditionally divided into Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, but their composition was likely less clear-cut and may also have included ancient Frisians and Franks. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle contains text that may be the first recorded indications of the movement of these Germanic Tribes to Britain.[125] The Angles and Saxons and Jutes were noted to be a confederation in the Greek Geographia written by Ptolemy in around AD 150.
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+ Anglo-Saxon is the term usually used to describe the peoples living in the south and east of Great Britain from the early 5th century AD.[126] Benedictine monk Bede identified them as the descendants of three Germanic tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, from the Jutland peninsula and Lower Saxony (German: Niedersachsen, Germany). The Angles may have come from Angeln, and Bede wrote their nation came to Britain, leaving their land empty.[127] They spoke closely related Germanic dialects. The Anglo-Saxons knew themselves as the "Englisc," from which the word "English" derives.
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+ Viking refers to a member of the Norse (Scandinavian) peoples, famous as explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates, who raided and colonized wide areas of Europe beginning in the late 8th.[128] These Norsemen used their famed longships to travel. The Viking Age forms a major part of Scandinavian history, with a minor, yet significant part in European history.
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+ The term Late Antiquity is the transitional centuries from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world: generally from the end of the Roman Empire's Crisis of the 3rd century (c. 284) to the Islamic conquests and the re-organization of the Byzantine Empire under Heraclius that occurred in the seventh century. The beginning of the post-classical age (known as the Middle Ages for Europe) following the fall of the Western Roman Empire spanning roughly from A.D 500 to 1500. Aspects of continuity with the earlier classical period are discussed in greater detail under the heading "Late Antiquity".
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+ There has been attempt by scholars to connect European Late Antiquity to other areas in Eurasia.[129] To an extent most centralized kingdoms within proximity to Steppe grasslands faced major challenges or in some cases complete destruction in the 5th–6th century in the case of nomadic invasions and political fragmentation. The Western Roman Empire in Europe and the Gupta Empire in India, and the Jin in North China were overwhelmed by tribal invasions. Nomadic invasions along with worldwide natural climate change, the Plague of Justinian and the rise of proselytizing religions changed the face of the Old World. Still disconnected was the New World who also built complex societies but at a separate and different pace. By 500 the world era of Post-classical history had begun.
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+ Despite being placed in different eras of history in an academic view of world history, Ancient and Post Classical eras are linked with each other in the case of the Old World. Land and coastal trade routes, often went on similar or the same directions, and many of the inventions and religions which were birthed prior to 500 A.D such as Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and Buddhism grew to be even more important for societies and individuals.
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+ Map of the world in 2000 BC.
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+ Map of the world in 1000 BC.
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+ Map of the world in 200 BC.
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+ Map of the World in 300 AD.
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+ General information
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+ Coordinates: 65°N 18°W / 65°N 18°W / 65; -18
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+ Iceland (Icelandic: Ísland; [ˈistlant] (listen))[c] is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic, with a population of 364,134[3] and an area of 103,000 km2 (40,000 sq mi), making it the most sparsely populated country in Europe.[d][10] The capital and largest city is Reykjavík. Reykjavík and the surrounding areas in the southwest of the country are home to over two-thirds of the population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active. The interior consists of a plateau characterised by sand and lava fields, mountains, and glaciers, and many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate, despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle. Its high latitude and marine influence keep summers chilly, with most of the archipelago having a polar climate.
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+ According to the ancient manuscript Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in 874 AD when the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson became the first permanent settler on the island.[11] In the following centuries, Norwegians, and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, emigrated to Iceland, bringing with them thralls (i.e., slaves or serfs) of Gaelic origin.
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+ The island was governed as an independent commonwealth under the Althing, one of the world's oldest functioning legislative assemblies. Following a period of civil strife, Iceland acceded to Norwegian rule in the 13th century. The establishment of the Kalmar Union in 1397 united the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Iceland thus followed Norway's integration into that union, coming under Danish rule after Sweden's secession from the union in 1523. Although the Danish kingdom introduced Lutheranism forcefully in 1550, Iceland remained a distant semi-colonial territory in which Danish institutions and infrastructures were conspicuous by their absence.
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+ In the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Iceland's struggle for independence took form and culminated in independence in 1918 and the founding of a republic in 1944. Although its parliament (Althing) was suspended from 1799 to 1845, the island republic has been credited with sustaining the world's oldest and longest-running parliament.
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+ Until the 20th century, Iceland relied largely on subsistence fishing and agriculture. Industrialisation of the fisheries and Marshall Plan aid following World War II brought prosperity and Iceland became one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in the world. In 1994, it became a part of the European Economic Area, which further diversified the economy into sectors such as finance, biotechnology, and manufacturing.
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+ Iceland has a market economy with relatively low taxes, compared to other OECD countries,[12] as well as the highest trade union membership in the world.[13] It maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides universal health care and tertiary education for its citizens.[14] Iceland ranks high in economic, democratic, social stability, and equality, ranking third in the world by median wealth per adult. In 2018, it was ranked as the sixth most developed country in the world by the United Nations' Human Development Index, and it ranks first on the Global Peace Index.[15] Iceland runs almost completely on renewable energy.
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+ Hit hard by the worldwide financial crisis, the nation's entire banking system systemically failed in October 2008, leading to an economic crisis[16] and the collapse of the country's three largest banks.[17] The crisis prompted substantial political unrest,[18] the Icesave dispute,[19] and the institution of capital controls (imposed in 2008 and lifted in 2017).[17][20] By 2014, the Icelandic economy has made a significant recovery, in large part due to a surge in tourism.[21][22]
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+ Icelandic culture is founded upon the nation's Scandinavian heritage. Most Icelanders are descendants of Norse and Gaelic settlers. Icelandic, a North Germanic language, is descended from Old West Norse and is closely related to Faroese. The country's cultural heritage includes traditional Icelandic cuisine, Icelandic literature, and medieval sagas. Iceland has the smallest population of any NATO member and is the only one with no standing army, with a lightly armed coast guard.[23]
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+ The Sagas of Icelanders say that a Norwegian named Naddodd (or Naddador) was the first Norseman to reach Iceland, and in the 9th century he named it Snæland or "snow land" because it was snowing. Following Naddodd, the Swede Garðar Svavarsson arrived, and so the island was then called Garðarshólmur which means "Garðar's Isle".
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+ Then came a Viking named Flóki Vilgerðarson; his daughter drowned en route, then his livestock starved to death. The sagas say that the rather despondent Flóki climbed a mountain and saw a fjord (Arnarfjörður) full of icebergs, which led him to give the island its new and present name.[24] The notion that Iceland's Viking settlers chose that name to discourage oversettlement of their verdant isle is a myth.[24]
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+ According to both Landnámabók and Íslendingabók, monks known as the Papar lived in Iceland before Scandinavian settlers arrived, possibly members of a Hiberno-Scottish mission. Recent archaeological excavations have revealed the ruins of a cabin in Hafnir on the Reykjanes peninsula. Carbon dating indicates that it was abandoned sometime between 770 and 880.[25] In 2016, archeologists uncovered a longhouse in Stöðvarfjörður that has been dated to as early as 800.[26]
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+ Swedish Viking explorer Garðar Svavarsson was the first to circumnavigate Iceland in 870 and establish that it was an island.[27] He stayed over winter and built a house in Húsavík. Garðar departed the following summer but one of his men, Náttfari, decided to stay behind with two slaves. Náttfari settled in what is now known as Náttfaravík and he and his slaves became the first permanent residents of Iceland.[28][29]
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+ The Norwegian-Norse chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson built his homestead in present-day Reykjavík in 874. Ingólfr was followed by many other emigrant settlers, largely Scandinavians and their thralls, many of whom were Irish or Scottish.[30] By 930, most arable land on the island had been claimed; the Althing, a legislative and judicial assembly, was initiated to regulate the Icelandic Commonwealth. Lack of arable land also served as an impetus to the settlement of Greenland starting in 986.[31] The period of these early settlements coincided with the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were similar to those of the early 20th century.[32] At this time, about 25% of Iceland was covered with forest, compared to 1% in the present day.[33] Christianity was adopted by consensus around 999–1000, although Norse paganism persisted among segments of the population for some years afterwards.[34]
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+ The Icelandic Commonwealth lasted until the 13th century, when the political system devised by the original settlers proved unable to cope with the increasing power of Icelandic chieftains.[35] The internal struggles and civil strife of the Age of the Sturlungs led to the signing of the Old Covenant in 1262, which ended the Commonwealth and brought Iceland under the Norwegian crown. Possession of Iceland passed from the Kingdom of Norway (872–1397) to the Kalmar Union in 1415, when the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark and Sweden were united. After the break-up of the union in 1523, it remained a Norwegian dependency, as a part of Denmark–Norway.
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+ Infertile soil, volcanic eruptions, deforestation and an unforgiving climate made for harsh life in a society where subsistence depended almost entirely on agriculture. The Black Death swept Iceland twice, first in 1402–1404 and again in 1494–1495.[36] The former outbreak killed 50% to 60% of the population, and the latter 30% to 50%.[37]
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+ Around the middle of the 16th century, as part of the Protestant Reformation, King Christian III of Denmark began to impose Lutheranism on all his subjects. Jón Arason, the last Catholic bishop of Hólar, was beheaded in 1550 along with two of his sons. The country subsequently became officially Lutheran and Lutheranism has since remained the dominant religion.
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+ In the 17th and 18th centuries, Denmark imposed harsh trade restrictions on Iceland. Natural disasters, including volcanic eruption and disease, contributed to a decreasing population. Pirates from several countries, including the Barbary Coast, raided Iceland's coastal settlements and abducted people into slavery.[38][39] A great smallpox epidemic in the 18th century killed around a third of the population.[40][41] In 1783 the Laki volcano erupted, with devastating effects.[42] In the years following the eruption, known as the Mist Hardships (Icelandic: Móðuharðindin), over half of all livestock in the country died. Around a quarter of the population starved to death in the ensuing famine.[43]
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+ In 1814, following the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark-Norway was broken up into two separate kingdoms via the Treaty of Kiel but Iceland remained a Danish dependency. Throughout the 19th century, the country's climate continued to grow colder, resulting in mass emigration to the New World, particularly to the region of Gimli, Manitoba in Canada, which was sometimes referred to as New Iceland. About 15,000 people emigrated, out of a total population of 70,000.[44]
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+ A national consciousness arose in the first half of the 19th century, inspired by romantic and nationalist ideas from mainland Europe. An Icelandic independence movement took shape in the 1850s under the leadership of Jón Sigurðsson, based on the burgeoning Icelandic nationalism inspired by the Fjölnismenn and other Danish-educated Icelandic intellectuals. In 1874, Denmark granted Iceland a constitution and limited home rule. This was expanded in 1904, and Hannes Hafstein served as the first Minister for Iceland in the Danish cabinet.
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+ The Danish–Icelandic Act of Union, an agreement with Denmark signed on 1 December 1918 and valid for 25 years, recognised Iceland as a fully sovereign and independent state in a personal union with Denmark. The Government of Iceland established an embassy in Copenhagen and requested that Denmark carry out on its behalf certain defence and foreign affairs matters, subject to consultation with the Althing. Danish embassies around the world displayed two coats of arms and two flags: those of the Kingdom of Denmark and those of the Kingdom of Iceland. Iceland's legal position became comparable to those of countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Nations such as Canada whose sovereign is Queen Elizabeth II.
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+ During World War II, Iceland joined Denmark in asserting neutrality. After the German occupation of Denmark on 9 April 1940, the Althing replaced the King with a regent and declared that the Icelandic government would take control of its own defence and foreign affairs.[45] A month later, British armed forces conducted Operation Fork, the invasion and occupation of the country, violating Icelandic neutrality.[46] In 1941, the Government of Iceland, friendly to Britain, invited the then-neutral United States to take over its defence so that Britain could use its troops elsewhere.[45]
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+ On 31 December 1943, the Danish–Icelandic Act of Union expired after 25 years. Beginning on 20 May 1944, Icelanders voted in a four-day plebiscite on whether to terminate the personal union with Denmark, abolish the monarchy, and establish a republic. The vote was 97% to end the union, and 95% in favour of the new republican constitution.[47] Iceland formally became a republic on 17 June 1944, with Sveinn Björnsson as its first president.
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+ In 1946, the US Defence Force Allied left Iceland. The nation formally became a member of NATO on 30 March 1949, amid domestic controversy and riots. On 5 May 1951, a defence agreement was signed with the United States. American troops returned to Iceland as the Iceland Defence Force, and remained throughout the Cold War. The US withdrew the last of its forces on 30 September 2006.
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+ Iceland prospered during the Second World War. The immediate post-war period was followed by substantial economic growth, driven by industrialisation of the fishing industry and the US Marshall Plan programme, through which Icelanders received the most aid per capita of any European country (at US$209, with the war-ravaged Netherlands a distant second at US$109).[48][49]
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+ The 1970s were marked by the Cod Wars—several disputes with the United Kingdom over Iceland's extension of its fishing limits to 200 nmi (370 km) offshore. Iceland hosted a summit in Reykjavík in 1986 between United States President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, during which they took significant steps toward nuclear disarmament. A few years later, Iceland became the first country to recognise the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as they broke away from the USSR. Throughout the 1990s, the country expanded its international role and developed a foreign policy oriented toward humanitarian and peacekeeping causes. To that end, Iceland provided aid and expertise to various NATO-led interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq.[50]
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+ Iceland joined the European Economic Area in 1994, after which the economy was greatly diversified and liberalised. International economic relations increased further after 2001, when Iceland's newly deregulated banks began to raise massive amounts of external debt, contributing to a 32% increase in Iceland's gross national income between 2002 and 2007.[51][52]
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+ In 2003–2007, following the privatisation of the banking sector under the government of Davíð Oddsson, Iceland moved toward having an economy based on international investment banking and financial services.[53] It was quickly becoming one of the most prosperous countries in the world but was hit hard by a major financial crisis.[53] The crisis resulted in the greatest migration from Iceland since 1887, with a net emigration of 5,000 people in 2009.[54] Iceland's economy stabilised under the government of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, and grew by 1.6% in 2012.[55] The centre-right Independence Party was returned to power in coalition with the Progressive Party in the 2013 elections.[56] In the following years, Iceland saw a surge in tourism as the country became a popular holiday destination. In 2016, Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned after being implicated in the Panama Papers scandal.[57] Early elections in 2016 resulted in a right-wing coalition government of the Independence Party, the Reform Party and Bright Future.
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+ [58] This government fell when Bright Future quit the coalition due to a scandal involving then-Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson's father's letter of support for a convicted child sex offender.[59] Snap elections in October 2017 brought to power a new coalition consisting of the Independence Party, the Progressive Party and the Left-Green Movement, headed by Katrín Jakobsdóttir.[60]
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+ Iceland is at the juncture of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The main island is entirely south of the Arctic Circle, which passes through the small Icelandic island of Grímsey off the main island's northern coast. The country lies between latitudes 63 and 68°N, and longitudes 25 and 13°W.
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+ Iceland is closer to continental Europe than to mainland North America, although it is closest to Greenland (290 km, 180 mi), an island of North America. Iceland is generally included in Europe for geographical, historical, political, cultural, linguistic and practical reasons.[61][62][63][64] Geologically, the island includes parts of both continental plates. The closest bodies of land in Europe are the Faroe Islands (420 km, 260 mi); Jan Mayen Island (570 km, 350 mi); Shetland and the Outer Hebrides, both about 740 km (460 mi); and the Scottish mainland and Orkney, both about 750 km (470 mi). The nearest part of Continental Europe is mainland Norway, about 970 km (600 mi) away, while mainland North America is 2,070 km (1,290 mi) away, at the northern tip of Labrador.
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+ Iceland is the world's 18th largest island, and Europe's second-largest island after Great Britain. (The island of Ireland is third.) The main island is 101,826 km2 (39,315 sq mi), but the entire country is 103,000 km2 (40,000 sq mi) in size, of which 62.7% is tundra. About 30 minor islands are in Iceland, including the lightly populated Grímsey and the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. Lakes and glaciers cover 14.3% of its surface; only 23% is vegetated.[65] The largest lakes are Þórisvatn reservoir: 83–88 km2 (32–34 sq mi) and Þingvallavatn: 82 km2 (32 sq mi); other important lakes include Lagarfljót and Mývatn. Jökulsárlón is the deepest lake, at 248 m (814 ft).[66]
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+ Geologically, Iceland is part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a ridge along which the oceanic crust spreads and forms new oceanic crust. This part of the mid-ocean ridge is located above a mantle plume, causing Iceland to be subaerial (above the surface of the sea). The ridge marks the boundary between the Eurasian and North American Plates, and Iceland was created by rifting and accretion through volcanism along the ridge.[67]
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+ Many fjords punctuate Iceland's 4,970-km-long (3,088-mi) coastline, which is also where most settlements are situated. The island's interior, the Highlands of Iceland, is a cold and uninhabitable combination of sand, mountains, and lava fields. The major towns are the capital city of Reykjavík, along with its outlying towns of Kópavogur, Hafnarfjörður, and Garðabær, nearby Reykjanesbær where the international airport is located, and the town of Akureyri in northern Iceland. The island of Grímsey on the Arctic Circle contains the northernmost habitation of Iceland, whereas Kolbeinsey contains the northernmost point of Iceland.[68] Iceland has three national parks: Vatnajökull National Park, Snæfellsjökull National Park, and Þingvellir National Park.[69] The country is considered a "strong performer" in environmental protection, having been ranked 13th in Yale University's Environmental Performance Index of 2012.[70]
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+ Iceland as seen from space on 29 January 2004
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+ Suðureyri
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+ Norðfjörður
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+ The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull
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+ Landscape as seen from Laugavegur hiking trail
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+ A geologically young land, Iceland is the surface expression of the Iceland Plateau, a large igneous province forming as a result of volcanism from the Iceland hotspot and along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the latter of which runs right through it.[71] This means that the island is highly geologically active with many volcanoes including Hekla, Eldgjá, Herðubreið, and Eldfell.[72] The volcanic eruption of Laki in 1783–1784 caused a famine that killed nearly a quarter of the island's population.[73] In addition, the eruption caused dust clouds and haze to appear over most of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for several months afterward, and affected climates in other areas.[74]
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+ Iceland has many geysers, including Geysir, from which the English word is derived, and the famous Strokkur, which erupts every 8–10 minutes. After a phase of inactivity, Geysir started erupting again after a series of earthquakes in 2000. Geysir has since grown quieter and does not erupt often.[75]
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+ With the widespread availability of geothermal power, and the harnessing of many rivers and waterfalls for hydroelectricity, most residents have access to inexpensive hot water, heating, and electricity. The island is composed primarily of basalt, a low-silica lava associated with effusive volcanism as has occurred also in Hawaii. Iceland, however, has a variety of volcanic types (composite and fissure), many producing more evolved lavas such as rhyolite and andesite. Iceland has hundreds of volcanoes with about 30 active volcanic systems.[76]
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+ Surtsey, one of the youngest islands in the world, is part of Iceland. Named after Surtr, it rose above the ocean in a series of volcanic eruptions between 8 November 1963 and 5 June 1968.[68] Only scientists researching the growth of new life are allowed to visit the island.[77]
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+ On 21 March 2010, a volcano in Eyjafjallajökull in the south of Iceland erupted for the first time since 1821, forcing 600 people to flee their homes.[78] Additional eruptions on 14 April forced hundreds of people to abandon their homes.[79] The resultant cloud of volcanic ash brought major disruption to air travel across Europe.[80]
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+ Another large eruption occurred on 21 May 2011. This time it was the Grímsvötn volcano, located under the thick ice of Europe's largest glacier, Vatnajökull. Grímsvötn is one of Iceland's most active volcanoes, and this eruption was much more powerful than the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull activity, with ash and lava hurled 20 km (12 mi) into the atmosphere, creating a large cloud.[81]
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+ The highest elevation for Iceland is listed as 2,110 m (6,923 ft) at Hvannadalshnúkur (64°00′N 16°39′W).
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+ The climate of Iceland's coast is subarctic. The warm North Atlantic Current ensures generally higher annual temperatures than in most places of similar latitude in the world. Regions in the world with similar climates include the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, and Tierra del Fuego, although these regions are closer to the equator. Despite its proximity to the Arctic, the island's coasts remain ice-free through the winter. Ice incursions are rare, the last having occurred on the north coast in 1969.[82]
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+ The climate varies between different parts of the island. Generally speaking, the south coast is warmer, wetter, and windier than the north. The Central Highlands are the coldest part of the country. Low-lying inland areas in the north are the most arid. Snowfall in winter is more common in the north than the south.
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+ The highest air temperature recorded was 30.5 °C (86.9 °F) on 22 June 1939 at Teigarhorn on the southeastern coast. The lowest was −38 °C (−36.4 °F) on 22 January 1918 at Grímsstaðir and Möðrudalur in the northeastern hinterland. The temperature records for Reykjavík are 26.2 °C (79.2 °F) on 30 July 2008, and −24.5 °C (−12.1 °F) on 21 January 1918.
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+ Phytogeographically, Iceland belongs to the Arctic province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. Around three-quarters of the island is barren of vegetation; plant life consists mainly of grassland, which is regularly grazed by livestock. The most common tree native to Iceland is the northern birch (Betula pubescens), which formerly formed forests over much of Iceland, along with aspens (Populus tremula), rowans (Sorbus aucuparia), common junipers (Juniperus communis), and other smaller trees, mainly willows.
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+ When the island was first settled, it was extensively forested, with around 30% of the land covered in trees. In the late 12th century, Ari the Wise described it in the Íslendingabók as "forested from mountain to sea shore".[85] Permanent human settlement greatly disturbed the isolated ecosystem of thin, volcanic soils and limited species diversity. The forests were heavily exploited over the centuries for firewood and timber.[86] Deforestation, climatic deterioration during the Little Ice Age, and overgrazing by sheep imported by settlers caused a loss of critical topsoil due to erosion. Today, many farms have been abandoned. Three-quarters of Iceland's 100,000 square kilometres is affected by soil erosion, 18,000 km2 (6,900 sq mi) serious enough to make the land useless.[85] Only a few small birch stands now exist in isolated reserves. The planting of new forests has increased the number of trees, but the result does not compare to the original forests. Some of the planted forests include introduced species.[86] The tallest tree in Iceland is a sitka spruce planted in 1949 in Kirkjubæjarklaustur; it was measured at 25.2 m (83 ft) in 2013.[87]
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+ The only native land mammal when humans arrived was the Arctic fox,[86] which came to the island at the end of the ice age, walking over the frozen sea. On rare occasions, bats have been carried to the island with the winds, but they are not able to breed there. Polar bears occasionally come over from Greenland, but they are just visitors, and no Icelandic populations exist.[88] No native or free-living reptiles or amphibians are on the island.[89]
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+ The animals of Iceland include the Icelandic sheep, cattle, chickens, goats, the sturdy Icelandic horse, and the Icelandic Sheepdog, all descendants of animals imported by Europeans. Wild mammals include the Arctic fox, mink, mice, rats, rabbits, and reindeer. Polar bears occasionally visit the island, travelling on icebergs from Greenland. In June 2008, two polar bears arrived in the same month.[90] Marine mammals include the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) and harbor seal (Phoca vitulina).
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+ Many species of fish live in the ocean waters surrounding Iceland, and the fishing industry is a major part of Iceland's economy, accounting for roughly half of the country's total exports. Birds, especially seabirds, are an important part of Iceland's animal life. Atlantic puffins, skuas, and black-legged kittiwakes nest on its sea cliffs.[91]
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+ Commercial whaling is practised intermittently[92][93] along with scientific whale hunts.[94] Whale watching has become an important part of Iceland's economy since 1997.[95]
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+ Around 1,300 species of insects are known in Iceland. This is low compared with other countries (over one million species have been described worldwide). Iceland is essentially free of mosquitoes.[96]
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+ Iceland has a left–right multi-party system. Following the 2017 parliamentary election, the biggest parties are the centre-right Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn), the Left-Green Movement (Vinstrihreyfingin – grænt framboð) and the Progressive Party (Framsóknarflokkurinn). These three parties form the ruling coalition in the cabinet led by leftist Katrín Jakobsdóttir.
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+ Other political parties with seats in the Althing (Parliament) are the Social Democratic Alliance (Samfylkingin), the Centre Party (Miðflokkurinn), Iceland's Pirates, the People's Party (Flokkur fólksins), and the Reform Party (Viðreisn).
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+ Iceland was the first country in the world to have a political party formed and led entirely by women.[97] Known as the Women's List or Women's Alliance (Kvennalistinn), it was founded in 1983 to advance the political, economic, and social needs of women. After participating in its first parliamentary elections, the Women's List helped increase the proportion of female parliamentarians by 15%.[98] It disbanded in 1999, formally merging the next year with the Social Democratic Alliance, although about half of its members joined the Left-Green Movement instead. It did leave a lasting influence on Iceland's politics: every major party has a 40% quota for women, and in 2009 nearly a third of members of parliament were female, compared to the global average of 16%.[99] Following the 2016 elections, 48% of members of parliament are female.[100]
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+ In 2016 Iceland was ranked 2nd in the strength of its democratic institutions[101] and 13th in government transparency.[102] The country has a high level of civic participation, with 81.4% voter turnout during the most recent elections,[103] compared to an OECD average of 72%. However, only 50% of Icelanders say they trust their political institutions, slightly less than the OECD average of 56% (and most probably a consequence of the political scandals in the wake of the Icelandic financial crisis).[104]
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+ Iceland is a representative democracy and a parliamentary republic. The modern parliament, Alþingi (English: Althing), was founded in 1845 as an advisory body to the Danish monarch. It was widely seen as a re-establishment of the assembly founded in 930 in the Commonwealth period and yet temporarily suspended from 1799 to 1845. Consequently, "it is arguably the world's oldest parliamentary democracy."[105] It has 63 members, elected for a maximum period of four years.[106]
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+ The head of government is the prime minister who, together with the cabinet, is responsible for executive government.
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+ The president, in contrast, is elected by popular vote for a term of four years with no term limit. The elections for president, the Althing, and local municipal councils are all held separately every four years.[107] The president of Iceland is a largely ceremonial head of state and serves as a diplomat, but may veto laws voted by the parliament and put them to a national referendum.[108][better source needed] The president is Guðni Th. Jóhannesson.
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+ The cabinet is appointed by the president after a general election to the Althing; however, the appointment is usually negotiated by the leaders of the political parties, who decide among themselves after discussions which parties can form the cabinet and how to distribute its seats, under the condition that it has a majority support in the Althing. Only when the party leaders are unable to reach a conclusion by themselves within a reasonable time span does the president exercise this power and appoint the cabinet personally. This has not happened since the republic was founded in 1944, but in 1942 regent Sveinn Björnsson, who had been installed in that position by the Althing in 1941, appointed a non-parliamentary government. The regent had, for all practical purposes, the position of a president, and Sveinn would later become the country's first president in 1944.
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+ The governments of Iceland have always been coalition governments, with two or more parties involved, as no single political party has ever received a majority of seats in the Althing throughout the republican period. The extent of the political power possessed by the office of the president is disputed by legal scholars[which?], in Iceland; several provisions of the constitution appear to give the president some important powers, but other provisions and traditions suggest differently.[citation needed] In 1980, Icelanders elected Vigdís Finnbogadóttir as president, the world's first directly elected female head of state. She retired from office in 1996. In 2009, Iceland became the first country with an openly gay head of government when Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became prime minister.[109]
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+ Iceland is divided into regions, constituencies and municipalities. The eight regions are primarily used for statistical purposes. District court jurisdictions also use an older version of this division.[68] Until 2003, the constituencies for the parliamentary elections were the same as the regions, but by an amendment to the constitution, they were changed to the current six constituencies:
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+ The redistricting change was made to balance the weight of different districts of the country, since previously a vote cast in the sparsely populated areas around the country would count much more than a vote cast in the Reykjavík city area. The imbalance between districts has been reduced by the new system, but still exists.[68]
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+ 74 municipalities in Iceland govern local matters like schools, transport, and zoning.[110] These are the actual second-level subdivisions of Iceland, as the constituencies have no relevance except in elections and for statistical purposes. Reykjavík is by far the most populous municipality, about four times more populous than Kópavogur, the second one.[68]
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+ Regions of Iceland
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+ Constituencies of Iceland
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+ Municipalities of Iceland
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+ Iceland, which is a member of the UN, NATO, EFTA, Council of Europe and OECD, maintains diplomatic and commercial relations with practically all nations, but its ties with the Nordic countries, Germany, the United States, Canada and the other NATO nations are particularly close. Historically, due to cultural, economic and linguistic similarities, Iceland is a Nordic country, and it participates in intergovernmental cooperation through the Nordic Council.
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+ Iceland is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), which allows the country access to the single market of the European Union (EU). It was not a member of the EU, but in July 2009 the Icelandic parliament, the Althing, voted in favour of application for EU membership[111] and officially applied on 17 July 2009.[112] However, in 2013, opinion polls showed that many Icelanders were now against joining the EU; following 2013 elections the two parties that formed the island's new government—the centrist Progressive Party and the right-wing Independence Party—announced they would hold a referendum on EU membership.[113][114]
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+ Iceland has no standing army, but the Icelandic Coast Guard which also maintains the Iceland Air Defence System, and an Iceland Crisis Response Unit to support peacekeeping missions and perform paramilitary functions.
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+ The Iceland Defense Force (IDF) was a military command of the United States Armed Forces from 1951 to 2006. The IDF, created at the request of NATO, came into existence when the United States signed an agreement to provide for the defense of Iceland. The IDF also consisted of civilian Icelanders and military members of other NATO nations. The IDF was downsized after the end of the Cold War and the U.S. Air Force maintained four to six interceptor aircraft at the Naval Air Station Keflavik, until they were withdrawn on 30 September 2006. Since May 2008, NATO nations have periodically deployed fighters to patrol Icelandic airspace under the Icelandic Air Policing mission.[115][116] Iceland supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite much domestic controversy, deploying a Coast Guard EOD team to Iraq,[117] which was replaced later by members of the Iceland Crisis Response Unit. Iceland has also participated in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.[citation needed] Despite the ongoing financial crisis the first new patrol ship in decades was launched on 29 April 2009.[118]
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+ Iceland was the neutral host of the historic 1986 Reagan–Gorbachev summit in Reykjavík, which set the stage for the end of the Cold War. Iceland's principal historical international disputes involved disagreements over fishing rights.[citation needed] Conflict with the United Kingdom led to a series of so-called Cod Wars, which included confrontations between the Icelandic Coast Guard and the Royal Navy over British fishermen, in 1952–1956 due to the extension of Iceland's fishing zone from 3 to 4 nmi (5.6 to 7.4 km; 3.5 to 4.6 mi), 1958–1961 following a further extension to 12 nmi (22.2 km; 13.8 mi), 1972–1973 with another extension to 50 nmi (92.6 km; 57.5 mi); and in 1975–1976 another extension to 200 nmi (370.4 km; 230.2 mi).[citation needed]
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+ According to the 2011 Global Peace Index, Iceland is the most peaceful country in the world, due to its lack of armed forces, low crime rate and high level of socio-political stability.[119] Iceland is listed in the Guinness World Records book as the "country ranked most at peace" and the "lowest military spending per capita".[120]
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+ In 2007, Iceland was the seventh most productive country in the world per capita (US$54,858), and the fifth most productive by GDP at purchasing power parity ($40,112). About 85 percent of total primary energy supply in Iceland is derived from domestically produced renewable energy sources.[121] Use of abundant hydroelectric and geothermal power has made Iceland the world's largest electricity producer per capita.[122] As a result of its commitment to renewable energy, the 2016 Global Green Economy Index ranked Iceland among the top 10 greenest economies in the world.[123]
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+ Historically, Iceland's economy depended heavily on fishing, which still provides 40% of export earnings and employs 7% of the work force.[68] The economy is vulnerable to declining fish stocks and drops in world prices for its main material exports: fish and fish products, aluminium, and ferrosilicon. Whaling in Iceland has been historically significant. Iceland still relies heavily on fishing, but its importance is diminishing from an export share of 90% in the 1960s to 40% in 2006.[124]
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+ Until the 20th century, Iceland was a fairly poor country. It is now one of the most developed countries in the world. Strong economic growth had led Iceland to be ranked first in the United Nations' Human Development Index report for 2007/2008,[15] although in 2011 its HDI rating had fallen to 14th place as a result of the economic crisis. Nevertheless, according to the Economist Intelligence Index of 2011, Iceland has the 2nd highest quality of life in the world.[125] Based on the Gini coefficient, Iceland also has one of the lowest rates of income inequality in the world,[126] and when adjusted for inequality, its HDI ranking is 6th.[127] Iceland's unemployment rate has declined consistently since the crisis, with 4.8% of the labour force being unemployed as of June 2012[update], compared to 6% in 2011 and 8.1% in 2010.[68][128][129]
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+ Many political parties remain opposed to EU membership, primarily due to Icelanders' concern about losing control over their natural resources (particularly fisheries).[130] The national currency of Iceland is the Icelandic króna (ISK). Iceland is the only country in the world to have a population under two million yet still have a floating exchange rate and an independent monetary policy.[131]
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+ A poll released on 5 March 2010 by Capacent Gallup showed that 31% of respondents were in favour of adopting the euro and 69% opposed.[132] Another Capacent Gallup poll conducted in February 2012 found that 67.4% of Icelanders would reject EU membership in a referendum.[133]
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+ Iceland's economy has been diversifying into manufacturing and service industries in the last decade, including software production, biotechnology, and finance; industry accounts for around a quarter of economic activity, while services comprise close to 70%.[134] The tourism sector is expanding, especially in ecotourism and whale-watching. On average, Iceland receives around 1.1 million visitors annually, which is more than three times the native population.[104] 1.7 million people visited Iceland in 2016, 3 times more than the number that came in 2010.[135] Iceland's agriculture industry, accounting for 5.4% of GDP,[68] consists mainly of potatoes, green vegetables (in greenhouses), mutton and dairy products.[68] The financial centre is Borgartún in Reykjavík, which hosts a large number of companies and three investment banks. Iceland's stock market, the Iceland Stock Exchange (ISE), was established in 1985.[136]
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+ Iceland is ranked 27th in the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom, lower than in prior years but still among the freest in the world.[137] As of 2016[update], it ranks 29th in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitive Index, one place lower than in 2015.[138] According to INSEAD's Global Innovation Index, Iceland is the 11th most innovative country in the world.[139] Unlike most Western European countries, Iceland has a flat tax system: the main personal income tax rate is a flat 22.75%, and combined with municipal taxes, the total tax rate equals no more than 35.7%, not including the many deductions that are available.[140] The corporate tax rate is a flat 18%, one of the lowest in the world.[140] There is also a value added tax, whereas a net wealth tax was eliminated in 2006. Employment regulations are relatively flexible and the labour market is one of the freest in the world. Property rights are strong and Iceland is one of the few countries where they are applied to fishery management.[140] Like other welfare states, taxpayers pay various subsidies to each other, but with spending being less than in most European countries.
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+ Despite low tax rates, agricultural assistance is the highest among OECD countries and a potential impediment to structural change. Also, health care and education spending have relatively poor returns by OECD measures, though improvements have been made in both areas. The OECD Economic Survey of Iceland 2008 had highlighted Iceland's challenges in currency and macroeconomic policy.[141] There was a currency crisis that started in the spring of 2008, and on 6 October trading in Iceland's banks was suspended as the government battled to save the economy.[142] An assessment by the OECD 2011[143] determined that Iceland has made progress in many areas, particularly in creating a sustainable fiscal policy and restoring the health of the financial sector; however, challenges remain in making the fishing industry more efficient and sustainable, as well as in improving monetary policy to address inflation.[144] Iceland's public debt has decreased since the economic crisis, and as of 2015[update] is the 31st highest in the world by proportion of national GDP.[145]
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+ Iceland had been hit especially hard by the Great Recession that began in December 2007, because of the failure of its banking system and a subsequent economic crisis. Before the crash of the country's three largest banks, Glitnir, Landsbanki and Kaupthing, their combined debt exceeded approximately six times the nation's gross domestic product of €14 billion ($19 billion).[146][147] In October 2008, the Icelandic parliament passed emergency legislation to minimise the impact of the financial crisis. The Financial Supervisory Authority of Iceland used permission granted by the emergency legislation to take over the domestic operations of the three largest banks.[148] Icelandic officials, including central bank governor Davíð Oddsson, stated that the state did not intend to take over any of the banks' foreign debts or assets. Instead, new banks were established to take on the domestic operations of the banks, and the old banks will be run into bankruptcy.
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+ On 28 October 2008, the Icelandic government raised interest rates to 18% (as of August 2019[update], it was 3.5%), a move forced in part by the terms of acquiring a loan from International Monetary Fund (IMF). After the rate hike, trading on the Icelandic króna finally resumed on the open market, with valuation at around 250 ISK per euro, less than one-third the value of the 1:70 exchange rate during most of 2008, and a significant drop from the 1:150 exchange ratio of the week before. On 20 November 2008, the Nordic countries agreed to lend Iceland $2.5 billion.[149]
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+ On 26 January 2009, the coalition government collapsed due to the public dissent over the handling of the financial crisis. A new left-wing government was formed a week later and immediately set about removing Central Bank governor Davíð Oddsson and his aides from the bank through changes in law. Davíð was removed on 26 February 2009 in the wake of protests outside the Central Bank.[150]
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+ Thousands of Icelanders have moved from the country after the collapse, and many of those moved to Norway. In 2005, 293 people moved from Iceland to Norway; in 2009, the figure was 1,625.[151] In April 2010, the Icelandic Parliament's Special Investigation Commission published the findings of its investigation,[152] revealing the extent of control fraud in this crisis.[153] By June 2012, Landsbanki managed to repay about half of the Icesave debt.[154]
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+ According to Bloomberg, Iceland is on the trajectory of 2% unemployment as a result of crisis-management decisions made back in 2008, including allowing the banks to fail.[155]
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+ Iceland has a high level of car ownership per capita; with a car for every 1.5 inhabitants; it is the main form of transport.[156] Iceland has 13,034 km (8,099 mi) of administered roads, of which 4,617 km (2,869 mi) are paved and 8,338 km (5,181 mi) are not. A great number of roads remain unpaved, mostly little-used rural roads. The road speed limits are 30 km/h (19 mph) and 50 km/h (31 mph) in towns, 80 km/h (50 mph) on gravel country roads and 90 km/h (56 mph) on hard-surfaced roads.[157]
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+ Route 1, or the Ring Road (Icelandic: Þjóðvegur 1 or Hringvegur), was completed in 1974, and is a main road that runs around Iceland and connects all the inhabited parts of the island, with the interior of the island being uninhabited. This paved road is 1,332 km (828 mi)[158] long with one lane in each direction, except near larger towns and cities and in the Hvalfjörður Tunnel where it has more lanes. Many bridges on it, especially in the north and east, are single lane and made of timber and/or steel.
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+ Keflavík International Airport (KEF)[159] is the largest airport and the main aviation hub for international passenger transport. It serves several international and domestic airline companies.[160] KEF is in the vicinity of the larger metropolitan capital areas, 49 km (30 mi)[161] to the WSW of Reykjavík center, and public bus services are available.[162]
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+ Iceland has no passenger railways.
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+ Reykjavík Airport (RKV)[163] is the second largest airport located just 1,5 km from the capital centre. RKV serves general aviation traffic and has daily- or regular domestic flights to 12 local townships within Iceland.[164] RKV also serves international flights to Greenland and the Faroe Islands, business and private airplanes along with aviation training.
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+ Akureyri Airport (AEY)[165] and Egilsstaðir Airport (EGS)[166] are two other domestic airports with limited international service capacity. There are a total of 103 registered airports and airfields in Iceland; most of them are unpaved and located in rural areas. The second longest runway is at Geitamelur, a four-runway glider field around 100 km (62 mi) east of Reykjavík.
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+ Six main ferry services provide regular access to various outpost communities or shorten travel distances.[167][circular reference]
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+ Renewable sources—geothermal and hydropower—provide effectively all of Iceland's electricity[168] and around 85% of the nation's total primary energy consumption,[169] with most of the remainder consisting of imported oil products used in transportation and in the fishing fleet.[170][171] A 2000 report from the University of Iceland suggested that Iceland could potentially convert from oil to hydrogen power by 2040.[172] Iceland's largest geothermal power plants are Hellisheiði and Nesjavellir,[173][174] while Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant is the country's largest hydroelectric power station.[175] When the Kárahnjúkavirkjun started operating, Iceland became the world's largest electricity producer per capita.[176] Iceland is one of the few countries that have filling stations dispensing hydrogen fuel for cars powered by fuel cells.[citation needed] It is also one of a few countries capable of producing hydrogen in adequate quantities at a reasonable cost, because of Iceland's plentiful renewable sources of energy.[further explanation needed] The ranking of geopolitical gains and losses after energy transition (GeGaLo Index) places Iceland first out of 156 countries, making it the main geopolitical winner in the global energy transition.[177]
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+ Despite this, Icelanders emitted 16.9 tonnes of CO2 per capita in 2016, the highest in the EU and EFTA, mainly resulting from transport and aluminium smelting.[178] Nevertheless, in 2010, Iceland was noted by Guinness World Records as "the Greenest Country", reaching the highest score by the Environmental Sustainability Index, which measures a country's water use, biodiversity and adoption of clean energies, with a score of 93.5/100.[179]
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+ On 22 January 2009, Iceland announced its first round of offshore licences for companies wanting to conduct hydrocarbon exploration and production in a region northeast of Iceland, known as the Dreki area.[180] Three exploration licenses were awarded but all were subsequently relinquished.[181]
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+ As of 2012[update], the government of Iceland was in talks with the government of the United Kingdom about the possibility of constructing Icelink, a high-voltage direct-current connector for transmission of electricity between the two countries.[182] Such a cable would give Iceland access to a market where electricity prices have generally been much higher than those in Iceland.[183] Iceland has considerable renewable energy resources, especially geothermal energy and hydropower resources,[184] and most of the potential has not been developed, partly because there is not enough demand for additional electricity generation capacity from the residents and industry of Iceland; the United Kingdom is interested in importing inexpensive electricity from renewable sources of energy, and this could lead to further development of the energy resources.
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+ The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture is responsible for the policies and methods that schools must use, and they issue the National Curriculum Guidelines. However, playschools, primary schools, and lower secondary schools are funded and administered by the municipalities. The government does allow citizens to home educate their children, however under a very strict set of demands.[185] Students must adhere closely to the government mandated curriculum, and the parent teaching must acquire a government approved teaching certificate.
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+ Nursery school, or leikskóli, is non-compulsory education for children younger than six years, and is the first step in the education system. The current legislation concerning playschools was passed in 1994. They are also responsible for ensuring that the curriculum is suitable so as to make the transition into compulsory education as easy as possible.
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+ Compulsory education, or grunnskóli, comprises primary and lower secondary education, which often is conducted at the same institution. Education is mandatory by law for children aged from 6 to 16 years. The school year lasts nine months, beginning between 21 August and 1 September, ending between 31 May and 10 June. The minimum number of school days was once 170, but after a new teachers' wage contract, it increased to 180. Lessons take place five days a week. All public schools have mandatory education in Christianity, although an exemption may be considered by the Minister of Education.[186]
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+ Upper secondary education, or framhaldsskóli, follows lower secondary education. These schools are also known as gymnasia in English. Though not compulsory, everyone who has had a compulsory education has the right to upper secondary education. This stage of education is governed by the Upper Secondary School Act of 1996. All schools in Iceland are mixed sex schools. The largest seat of higher education is the University of Iceland, which has its main campus in central Reykjavík. Other schools offering university-level instruction include Reykjavík University, University of Akureyri, Agricultural University of Iceland and Bifröst University.
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+ An OECD assessment found 64% of Icelanders aged 25–64 have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, which is lower than the OECD average of 73%. Among 25- to 34-year-olds, only 69% have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, significantly lower than the OECD average of 80%.[104] Nevertheless, Iceland's education system is considered excellent: the Programme for International Student Assessment ranks it as the 16th best performing, above the OECD average.[187] Students were particularly proficient in reading and mathematics.
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+ According to a 2013 Eurostat report by the European Commission, Iceland spends around 3.11% of its GDP on scientific research and development (R&D), over 1 percentage point higher than the EU average of 2.03%, and has set a target of 4% to reach by 2020.[188] A 2010 UNESCO report found that out of 72 countries that spend the most on R&D (100 million US dollars or more), Iceland ranked 9th by proportion of GDP, tied with Taiwan, Switzerland, and Germany and ahead of France, the UK, and Canada.[189]
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+ The original population of Iceland was of Nordic and Gaelic origin. This is evident from literary evidence dating from the settlement period as well as from later scientific studies such as blood type and genetic analyses. One such genetic study indicated that the majority of the male settlers were of Nordic origin while the majority of the women were of Gaelic origin, meaning many settlers of Iceland were Norsemen who brought Gaelic slaves with them.[190]
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+ Iceland has extensive genealogical records dating back to the late 17th century and fragmentary records extending back to the Age of Settlement. The biopharmaceutical company deCODE genetics has funded the creation of a genealogy database that is intended to cover all of Iceland's known inhabitants. It views the database, called Íslendingabók, as a valuable tool for conducting research on genetic diseases, given the relative isolation of Iceland's population.
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+ The population of the island is believed to have varied from 40,000 to 60,000 in the period ranging from initial settlement until the mid-19th century. During that time, cold winters, ash fall from volcanic eruptions, and bubonic plagues adversely affected the population several times.[11] There were 37 famine years in Iceland between 1500 and 1804.[191] The first census was carried out in 1703 and revealed that the population was then 50,358. After the destructive volcanic eruptions of the Laki volcano during 1783–1784, the population reached a low of about 40,000.[192] Improving living conditions have triggered a rapid increase in population since the mid-19th century—from about 60,000 in 1850 to 320,000 in 2008. Iceland has a relatively young population for a developed country, with one out of five people being 14 years old or younger. With a fertility rate of 2.1, Iceland is one of only a few European countries with a birth rate sufficient for long-term population growth (see table below).[193][194]
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+ In December 2007, 33,678 people (13.5% of the total population) living in Iceland had been born abroad, including children of Icelandic parents living abroad. Around 19,000 people (6% of the population) held foreign citizenship. Polish people make up the largest minority group by a considerable margin, and still form the bulk of the foreign workforce. About 8,000 Poles now live in Iceland, 1,500 of them in Fjarðabyggð where they make up 75% of the workforce who are constructing the Fjarðarál aluminium plant.[195] Large-scale construction projects in the east of Iceland (see Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant) have also brought in many people whose stay is expected to be temporary. Many Polish immigrants were also considering leaving in 2008 as a result of the Icelandic financial crisis.[196]
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+ The southwest corner of Iceland is by far the most densely populated region. It is also the location of the capital Reykjavík, the northernmost national capital in the world. More than 70 percent of Iceland's population live in the southwest corner (Greater Reykjavík and the nearby Southern Peninsula), which covers less than two percent of Iceland's land area. The largest town outside Greater Reykjavík is Reykjanesbær, which is located on the Southern Peninsula, less than 50 km (31 mi) from the capital. The largest town outside the southwest corner is Akureyri in northern Iceland.
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+ Some 500 Icelanders under the leadership of Erik the Red settled Greenland in the late 10th century.[197] The total population reached a high point of perhaps 5,000 and developed independent institutions before disappearing by 1500.[198] People from Greenland attempted to set up a settlement at Vinland in North America, but abandoned it in the face of hostility from the indigenous residents.[199]
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+ Emigration of Icelanders to the United States and Canada began in the 1870s. As of 2006[update], Canada had over 88,000 people of Icelandic descent,[200] while there are more than 40,000 Americans of Icelandic descent, according to the 2000 US census.[201]
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+ Iceland's 10 most populous urban areas:
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+ Iceland's official written and spoken language is Icelandic, a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse. In grammar and vocabulary, it has changed less from Old Norse than the other Nordic languages; Icelandic has preserved more verb and noun inflection, and has to a considerable extent developed new vocabulary based on native roots rather than borrowings from other languages. The puristic tendency in the development of Icelandic vocabulary is to a large degree a result of conscious language planning, in addition to centuries of isolation. Icelandic is the only living language to retain the use of the runic letter Þ in Latin script. The closest living relative of the Icelandic language is Faroese.
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+ Icelandic Sign Language was officially recognised as a minority language in 2011. In education, its use for Iceland's deaf community is regulated by the National Curriculum Guide.
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+ English and Danish are compulsory subjects in the school curriculum. English is widely understood and spoken, while basic to moderate knowledge of Danish is common mainly among the older generations.[202] Polish is mostly spoken by the local Polish community (the largest minority of Iceland), and Danish is mostly spoken in a way largely comprehensible to Swedes and Norwegians—it is often referred to as skandinavíska (i. e. Scandinavian) in Iceland.[203]
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+ Rather than using family names, as is the usual custom in most Western nations, Icelanders carry patronymic or matronymic surnames, patronyms being far more commonly practiced. Patronymic last names are based on the first name of the father, while matronymic names are based on the first name of the mother. These follow the person's given name, e.g. Elísabet Jónsdóttir ("Elísabet, Jón's daughter" (Jón, being the father)) or Ólafur Katrínarson ("Ólafur, Katrín's son" (Katrín being the mother)).[204] Consequently, Icelanders refer to one another by their given name, and the Icelandic telephone directory is listed alphabetically by first name rather than by surname.[205] All new names must be approved by the Icelandic Naming Committee.
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+ Iceland has a universal health care system that is administered by its Ministry of Welfare (Icelandic: Velferðarráðuneytið)[206] and paid for mostly by taxes (85%) and to a lesser extent by service fees (15%). Unlike most countries, there are no private hospitals, and private insurance is practically nonexistent.[207]
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+ A considerable portion of the government budget is assigned to health care,[207] and Iceland ranks 11th in health care expenditures as a percentage of GDP[208] and 14th in spending per capita.[209] Overall, the country's health care system is one of the best performing in the world, ranked 15th by the World Health Organization.[210] According to an OECD report, Iceland devotes far more resources to healthcare than most industrialised nations. As of 2009[update], Iceland had 3.7 doctors per 1,000 people (compared with an average of 3.1 in OECD countries) and 15.3 nurses per 1,000 people (compared with an OECD average of 8.4).[211]
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+ Icelanders are among the world's healthiest people, with 81% reporting they are in good health, according to an OECD survey.[104] Although it is a growing problem, obesity is not as prevalent as in other developed countries.[211] Iceland has many campaigns for health and wellbeing, including the famous television show Lazytown, starring and created by former gymnastics champion Magnus Scheving. Infant mortality is one of the lowest in the world,[212] and the proportion of the population that smokes is lower than the OECD average.[211] Almost all women choose to terminate pregnancies of children with Down syndrome in Iceland.[213] The average life expectancy is 81.8 (compared to an OECD average of 79.5), the 4th highest in the world.[214]
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+ Iceland has a very low level of pollution, thanks to an overwhelming reliance on cleaner geothermal energy, a low population density, and a high level of environmental consciousness among citizens.[215] According to an OECD assessment, the amount of toxic materials in the atmosphere is far lower than in any other industrialised country measured.[216]
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+ Icelanders have freedom of religion guaranteed under the Constitution, although the Church of Iceland, a Lutheran body, is the state church:
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+ The Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the State Church in Iceland and, as such, it shall be supported and protected by the State.
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+ The Registers Iceland keeps account of the religious affiliation of every Icelandic citizen. In 2017, Icelanders were divided into religious groups as follows:
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+ Iceland is a very secular country; as with other Nordic nations, church attendance is relatively low.[219][220] The above statistics represent administrative membership of religious organisations, which does not necessarily reflect the belief demographics of the population. According to a study published in 2001, 23% of the inhabitants were either atheist or agnostic.[221] A Gallup poll conducted in 2012 found that 57% of Icelanders considered themselves "religious", 31% considered themselves "non-religious", while 10% defined themselves as "convinced atheists", placing Iceland among the ten countries with the highest proportions of atheists in the world.[222] Icelanders registered in the state church, the Church of Iceland, is declining at a rate of more than 1% per year.
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+ Icelandic culture has its roots in North Germanic traditions. Icelandic literature is popular, in particular the sagas and eddas that were written during the High and Late Middle Ages. Centuries of isolation have helped to insulate the country's Nordic culture from external influence; a prominent example is the preservation of the Icelandic language, which remains the closest to Old Norse of all modern Nordic languages.[223]
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+ In contrast to other Nordic countries, Icelanders place relatively great importance on independence and self-sufficiency; in a public opinion analysis conducted by the European Commission, over 85% of Icelanders believe independence is "very important," compared to 47% of Norwegians, 49% of Danes, and an average of 53% for the EU25.[224] Icelanders also have a very strong work ethic, working some of the longest hours of any industrialised nation.[225]
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+ According to a poll conducted by the OECD, 66% of Icelanders were satisfied with their lives, while 70% believed that their lives will be satisfying in the future. Similarly, 83% reported having more positive experiences in an average day than negative ones, compared to an OECD average of 72%, which makes Iceland one of the happiest countries in the OECD.[104] A more recent 2012 survey found that around three-quarters of respondents stated they were satisfied with their lives, compared to a global average of about 53%.[226]
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+ Iceland is liberal with regard to LGBT rights issues. In 1996, the Icelandic parliament passed legislation to create registered partnerships for same-sex couples, conferring nearly all the rights and benefits of marriage. In 2006, parliament voted unanimously to grant same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples in adoption, parenting and assisted insemination treatment. In 2010, the Icelandic parliament amended the marriage law, making it gender neutral and defining marriage as between two individuals, making Iceland one of the first countries in the world to legalise same-sex marriages. The law took effect on 27 June 2010.[227] The amendment to the law also means registered partnerships for same-sex couples are now no longer possible, and marriage is their only option—identical to the existing situation for opposite-sex couples.[227]
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+ Icelanders are known for their strong sense of community and lack of social isolation: An OECD survey found that 98% believe they know someone they could rely on in a time of need, higher than in any other industrialised country. Similarly, only 6% reported "rarely" or "never" socialising with others.[104] This high level of social cohesion is attributed to the small size and homogeneity of the population, as well as to a long history of harsh survival in an isolated environment, which reinforced the importance of unity and cooperation.[228]
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+ Egalitarianism is highly valued among the people of Iceland, with income inequality being among the lowest in the world.[126] The constitution explicitly prohibits the enactment of noble privileges, titles, and ranks.[229] Everyone is addressed by their first name. As in other Nordic countries, equality between the sexes is very high; Iceland is consistently ranked among the top three countries in the world for women to live in.[230][231][232]
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+ In 2011, Reykjavík was designated a UNESCO City of Literature.[233]
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+ Iceland's best-known classical works of literature are the Icelanders' sagas, prose epics set in Iceland's age of settlement. The most famous of these include Njáls saga, about an epic blood feud, and Grænlendinga saga and Eiríks saga, describing the discovery and settlement of Greenland and Vinland (modern Newfoundland). Egils saga, Laxdæla saga, Grettis saga, Gísla saga and Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu are also notable and popular Icelanders' sagas.
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+ A translation of the Bible was published in the 16th century. Important compositions since the 15th to the 19th century include sacred verse, most famously the Passion Hymns of Hallgrímur Pétursson, and rímur, rhyming epic poems. Originating in the 14th century, rímur were popular into the 19th century, when the development of new literary forms was provoked by the influential, National-Romantic writer Jónas Hallgrímsson. In recent times, Iceland has produced many great writers, the best-known of whom is arguably Halldór Laxness, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955 (the only Icelander to win a Nobel Prize thus far). Steinn Steinarr was an influential modernist poet during the early 20th century who remains popular.
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+ Icelanders are avid consumers of literature, with the highest number of bookstores per capita in the world. For its size, Iceland imports and translates more international literature than any other nation.[229] Iceland also has the highest per capita publication of books and magazines,[234] and around 10% of the population will publish a book in their lifetimes.[235]
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+ Most books in Iceland are sold between late September to early November. This time period is known as Jolabokaflod, the Christmas Book Flood.[233] The Flood begins with the Iceland Publisher's Association distributing Bokatidindi, a catalog of all new publications, free to each Icelandic home.[233]
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+ The distinctive rendition of the Icelandic landscape by its painters can be linked to nationalism and the movement for home rule and independence, which was very active in the mid-19th century.
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+ Contemporary Icelandic painting is typically traced to the work of Þórarinn Þorláksson, who, following formal training in art in the 1890s in Copenhagen, returned to Iceland to paint and exhibit works from 1900 to his death in 1924, almost exclusively portraying the Icelandic landscape. Several other Icelandic men and women artists studied at Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts at that time, including Ásgrímur Jónsson, who together with Þórarinn created a distinctive portrayal of Iceland's landscape in a romantic naturalistic style. Other landscape artists quickly followed in the footsteps of Þórarinn and Ásgrímur. These included Jóhannes Kjarval and Júlíana Sveinsdóttir. Kjarval in particular is noted for the distinct techniques in the application of paint that he developed in a concerted effort to render the characteristic volcanic rock that dominates the Icelandic environment. Einar Hákonarson is an expressionistic and figurative painter who by some is considered to have brought the figure back into Icelandic painting. In the 1980s, many Icelandic artists worked with the subject of the new painting in their work.
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+ In the recent years artistic practice has multiplied, and the Icelandic art scene has become a setting for many large scale projects and exhibitions. The artist run gallery space Kling og Bang, members of which later ran the studio complex and exhibition venue Klink og Bank, has been a significant part of the trend of self-organised spaces, exhibitions and projects.[236] The Living Art Museum, Reykjavík Municipal Art Museum, Reykjavík Art Museum and the National Gallery of Iceland are the larger, more established institutions, curating shows and festivals.
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+ Þingvellir by Þórarinn B. Þorláksson
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+ Statue of Thorfinn Karlsefni by Icelandic sculptor Einar Jónsson in Philadelphia
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+ The writer Halldór Laxness by Einar Hákonarson, 1984
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+ Traditional Icelandic turf houses. Until the 20th century, the vast majority of Icelanders lived in rural areas
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+ The old building (Gamli Skóli) of the Menntaskóli, i.e. High School precinct in Akureyri
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+ Much Icelandic music is related to Nordic music, and includes folk and pop traditions. Notable Icelandic music acts include medieval music group Voces Thules, alternative and indie rock acts such as The Sugarcubes, Sóley and Of Monsters and Men, jazz fusion band Mezzoforte, pop singers such as Hafdís Huld, Emilíana Torrini and Björk, solo ballad singers like Bubbi Morthens, and post-rock bands such as Amiina and Sigur Rós. Independent music is strong in Iceland, with bands such as múm and solo artists.
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+ Traditional Icelandic music is strongly religious. Hymns, both religious and secular, are a particularly well-developed form of music, due to the scarcity of musical instruments throughout much of Iceland's history. Hallgrímur Pétursson wrote many Protestant hymns in the 17th century. Icelandic music was modernised in the 19th century, when Magnús Stephensen brought pipe organs, which were followed by harmoniums. Other vital traditions of Icelandic music are epic alliterative and rhyming ballads called rímur. Rímur are epic tales, usually a cappella, which can be traced back to skaldic poetry, using complex metaphors and elaborate rhyme schemes.[237] The best known rímur poet of the 19th century was Sigurður Breiðfjörð (1798–1846). A modern revitalisation of the tradition began in 1929 with the formation of Iðunn.[clarification needed]
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+ Among Iceland's best-known classical composers are Daníel Bjarnason and Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir (Anna Thorvaldsdottir), who in 2012 received the Nordic Council Music Prize and in 2015 was chosen as the New York Philharmonic's Kravis Emerging Composer, an honor that includes a $50,000 cash prize and a commission to write a composition for the orchestra; she is the second recipient.[238]
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+ The national anthem of Iceland is Lofsöngur, written by Matthías Jochumsson, with music by Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson.[239]
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+ Iceland's largest television stations are the state-run Sjónvarpið and the privately owned Stöð 2 and SkjárEinn. Smaller stations exist, many of them local. Radio is broadcast throughout the country, including some parts of the interior. The main radio stations are Rás 1, Rás 2, X-ið 977, Bylgjan and FM957. The daily newspapers are Morgunblaðið and Fréttablaðið. The most popular websites are the news sites Vísir and Mbl.is.[240]
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+ Iceland is home to LazyTown (Icelandic: Latibær), a children's educational musical comedy program created by Magnús Scheving. It has become a very popular programme for children and adults and is shown in over 100 countries, including the Americas, the UK and Sweden.[241] The LazyTown studios are located in Garðabær. The 2015 television crime series Trapped aired in the UK on BBC4 in February and March 2016, to critical acclaim and according to the Guardian "the unlikeliest TV hit of the year".[242]
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+ In 1992, the Icelandic film industry achieved its greatest recognition hitherto, when Friðrik Þór Friðriksson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for his Children of Nature.[243] It features the story of an old man who is unable to continue running his farm. After being unwelcomed in his daughter's and father-in-law's house in town, he is put in a home for the elderly. There, he meets an old girlfriend of his youth and they both begin a journey through the wilds of Iceland to die together. This is the only Icelandic movie to have ever been nominated for an Academy Award.[244]
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+ Singer-songwriter Björk received international acclaim for her starring role in the Danish musical drama Dancer in the Dark, directed by Lars von Trier, in which she plays Selma Ježková, a factory worker who struggles to pay for her son's eye operation. The film premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where she won the Best Actress Award. The movie also led Björk to nominations for Best Original Song at the 73rd Academy Awards, with the song I've Seen It All and for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama.[245]
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+ Guðrún S. Gísladóttir, who is Icelandic, played one of the major roles in Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's 1986 film, The Sacrifice. Anita Briem, known for her performance in Showtime's The Tudors, is also Icelandic. Briem starred in the 2008 film Journey to the Center of the Earth, which shot scenes in Iceland. The 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day is set for a large-part in Iceland. Christopher Nolan's 2014 film, Interstellar was also filmed in Iceland for some of its scenes, as was Ridley Scott's Prometheus.[246]
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+ On 17 June 2010, the parliament passed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, proposing greater protection of free speech rights and the identity of journalists and whistle-blowers—the strongest journalist protection law in the world.[247] According to a 2011 report by Freedom House, Iceland is one of the highest ranked countries in press freedom.[248]
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+ CCP Games, developers of the critically acclaimed EVE Online and Dust 514, is headquartered in Reykjavík. CCP Games hosts the third most populated MMO in the world, which also has the largest total game area for an online game.[citation needed]
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+ Iceland has a highly developed internet culture, with around 95% of the population having internet access, the highest proportion in the world.[249] Iceland ranked 12th in the World Economic Forum's 2009–2010 Network Readiness Index, which measures a country's ability to competitively exploit communications technology.[250] The United Nations International Telecommunication Union ranks the country 3rd in its development of information and communications technology, having moved up four places between 2008 and 2010.[251] In February 2013 the country (ministry of the interior) was researching possible methods to protect children in regards to Internet pornography, claiming that pornography online is a threat to children as it supports child slavery and abuse. Strong voices within the community expressed concerns with this, stating that it is impossible to block access to pornography without compromising freedom of speech.[252][253][254]
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+ Much of Iceland's cuisine is based on fish, lamb, and dairy products, with little to no use of herbs or spices. Due to the island's climate, fruits and vegetables are not generally a component of traditional dishes, although the use of greenhouses has made them more common in contemporary food. Þorramatur is a selection of traditional cuisine consisting of many dishes, and is usually consumed around the month of Þorri, which begins on the first Friday after 19 January. Traditional dishes also include skyr (a yoghurt-like cheese), hákarl (cured shark), cured ram, singed sheep heads, and black pudding, Flatkaka (flat bread), dried fish and dark rye bread traditionally baked in the ground in geothermal areas.[255] Puffin is considered a local delicacy that is often prepared through broiling.
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+ Breakfast usually consists of pancakes, cereal, fruit, and coffee, while lunch may take the form of a smörgåsbord. The main meal of the day for most Icelanders is dinner, which usually involves fish or lamb as the main course. Seafood is central to most Icelandic cooking, particularly cod and haddock but also salmon, herring, and halibut. It is often prepared in a wide variety of ways, either smoked, pickled, boiled, or dried. Lamb is by far the most common meat, and it tends to be either smoke-cured (known as hangikjöt) or salt-preserved (saltkjöt). Many older dishes make use of every part of the sheep, such as slátur, which consists of offal (internal organs and entrails) minced together with blood and served in sheep stomach. Additionally, boiled or mashed potatoes, pickled cabbage, green beans, and rye bread are prevalent side dishes.
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+ Coffee is a popular beverage in Iceland, with the country being third placed by per capita consumption worldwide in 2016,[256] and is drunk at breakfast, after meals, and with a light snack in mid-afternoon. Coca-Cola is also widely consumed, to the extent that the country is said to have one of the highest per capita consumption rates in the world.[257]
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+ Iceland's signature alcoholic beverage is brennivín (literally "burnt [i.e., distilled] wine"), which is similar in flavouring to the akvavit variant of Scandinavian brännvin. It is a type of schnapps made from distilled potatoes and flavoured with either caraway seeds or angelica. Its potency has earned it the nickname svarti dauði ("Black Death"). Modern distilleries on Iceland produce vodka (Reyka), gin (Ísafold), moss schnapps (Fjallagrasa), and a birch-flavoured schnapps and liqueur (Foss Distillery's Birkir and Björk). Martin Miller blends Icelandic water with its England-distilled gin on the island. Strong beer was banned until 1989, so bjórlíki, a mixture of legal, low-alcohol pilsner beer and vodka, became popular. Several strong beers are now made by Icelandic breweries.
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+ Sport is an important part of Icelandic culture, as the population is generally quite active.[259] The main traditional sport in Iceland is Glíma, a form of wrestling thought to have originated in medieval times.
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+ Popular sports include football, track and field, handball and basketball. Handball is often referred to as the national sport.[258] The Icelandic national football team qualified for the 2016 UEFA European football championship for the first time. They recorded a draw against later winners Portugal in the group stage, and defeated England 2–1 in the round of 16, with goals from Ragnar Sigurðsson and Kolbeinn Sigþórsson. They then lost to hosts and later finalists France in the quarter finals.[260] Following up on this, Iceland made its debut at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. For both the European and the world championship, Iceland is to date the smallest nation in terms of population to qualify.
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+ Iceland is also the smallest country to ever qualify for Eurobasket. They did it in both 2015 and 2017. Although Iceland has had great success qualifying for Eurobasket, they have not managed to win a single game in the European Basketball final stages.
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+ Iceland has excellent conditions for skiing, fishing, snowboarding, ice climbing and rock climbing, although mountain climbing and hiking are preferred by the general public. Iceland is also a world-class destination for alpine ski touring and Telemark skiing, with the Troll Peninsula in Northern Iceland being the main centre of activity. Although the country's environment is generally ill-suited for golf, there are nevertheless many golf courses throughout the island, and Iceland has a greater percentage of the population playing golf than Scotland with over 17,000 registered golfers out of a population of approximately 300,000.[261] Iceland hosts an annual international golf tournament known as the Arctic Open played through the night during the summer solstice at Akureyri Golf Club.[262][263] Iceland has also won the second most World's Strongest Man competitions of any country with nine titles, including four by both Magnús Ver Magnússon and Jón Páll Sigmarsson and most recently Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson in 2018.
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+ Iceland is also one of the leading countries in ocean rowing. Icelandic explorer and endurance athlete Fiann Paulholds the highest number of performance-based Guinness World Records within a single athletic discipline. As of 2020, he is the first and only person to achieve the Ocean Explorers Grand Slam (performing open-water crossings on each of the five oceans using human-powered vessels) and has claimed overall speed Guinness World Records for the fastest rowing of all four oceans (Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Arctic) in a human-powered row boat. He had achieved a total of 41, including 33 performance based Guinness World Records by 2020.[264][265][266][267][268]
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+ Swimming is popular in Iceland. Geothermally heated outdoor pools are widespread, and swimming courses are a mandatory part of the national curriculum.[263] Horseback riding, which was historically the most prevalent form of transportation on the island, remains a common pursuit for many Icelanders.
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+ The oldest sport association in Iceland is the Reykjavík Shooting Association, founded in 1867. Rifle shooting became very popular in the 19th century with the encouragement of politicians and nationalists who were pushing for Icelandic independence. To this day, it remains a significant pastime.[269]
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+ Iceland has also produced many chess masters and hosted the historic World Chess Championship 1972 in Reykjavík during the height of the Cold War. As of 2008[update], there have been nine Icelandic chess grandmasters, a considerable number given the small size of the population.[270] Bridge is also popular, with Iceland participating in a number of international tournaments. Iceland won the world bridge championship (the Bermuda Bowl) in Yokohama, Japan, in 1991 and took second place (with Sweden) in Hamilton, Bermuda, in 1950.
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+ Coordinates: 65°N 18°W / 65°N 18°W / 65; -18
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+ Iceland (Icelandic: Ísland; [ˈistlant] (listen))[c] is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic, with a population of 364,134[3] and an area of 103,000 km2 (40,000 sq mi), making it the most sparsely populated country in Europe.[d][10] The capital and largest city is Reykjavík. Reykjavík and the surrounding areas in the southwest of the country are home to over two-thirds of the population. Iceland is volcanically and geologically active. The interior consists of a plateau characterised by sand and lava fields, mountains, and glaciers, and many glacial rivers flow to the sea through the lowlands. Iceland is warmed by the Gulf Stream and has a temperate climate, despite a high latitude just outside the Arctic Circle. Its high latitude and marine influence keep summers chilly, with most of the archipelago having a polar climate.
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+ According to the ancient manuscript Landnámabók, the settlement of Iceland began in 874 AD when the Norwegian chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson became the first permanent settler on the island.[11] In the following centuries, Norwegians, and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, emigrated to Iceland, bringing with them thralls (i.e., slaves or serfs) of Gaelic origin.
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+ The island was governed as an independent commonwealth under the Althing, one of the world's oldest functioning legislative assemblies. Following a period of civil strife, Iceland acceded to Norwegian rule in the 13th century. The establishment of the Kalmar Union in 1397 united the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. Iceland thus followed Norway's integration into that union, coming under Danish rule after Sweden's secession from the union in 1523. Although the Danish kingdom introduced Lutheranism forcefully in 1550, Iceland remained a distant semi-colonial territory in which Danish institutions and infrastructures were conspicuous by their absence.
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+ In the wake of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Iceland's struggle for independence took form and culminated in independence in 1918 and the founding of a republic in 1944. Although its parliament (Althing) was suspended from 1799 to 1845, the island republic has been credited with sustaining the world's oldest and longest-running parliament.
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+ Until the 20th century, Iceland relied largely on subsistence fishing and agriculture. Industrialisation of the fisheries and Marshall Plan aid following World War II brought prosperity and Iceland became one of the wealthiest and most developed nations in the world. In 1994, it became a part of the European Economic Area, which further diversified the economy into sectors such as finance, biotechnology, and manufacturing.
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+ Iceland has a market economy with relatively low taxes, compared to other OECD countries,[12] as well as the highest trade union membership in the world.[13] It maintains a Nordic social welfare system that provides universal health care and tertiary education for its citizens.[14] Iceland ranks high in economic, democratic, social stability, and equality, ranking third in the world by median wealth per adult. In 2018, it was ranked as the sixth most developed country in the world by the United Nations' Human Development Index, and it ranks first on the Global Peace Index.[15] Iceland runs almost completely on renewable energy.
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+ Hit hard by the worldwide financial crisis, the nation's entire banking system systemically failed in October 2008, leading to an economic crisis[16] and the collapse of the country's three largest banks.[17] The crisis prompted substantial political unrest,[18] the Icesave dispute,[19] and the institution of capital controls (imposed in 2008 and lifted in 2017).[17][20] By 2014, the Icelandic economy has made a significant recovery, in large part due to a surge in tourism.[21][22]
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+ Icelandic culture is founded upon the nation's Scandinavian heritage. Most Icelanders are descendants of Norse and Gaelic settlers. Icelandic, a North Germanic language, is descended from Old West Norse and is closely related to Faroese. The country's cultural heritage includes traditional Icelandic cuisine, Icelandic literature, and medieval sagas. Iceland has the smallest population of any NATO member and is the only one with no standing army, with a lightly armed coast guard.[23]
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+ The Sagas of Icelanders say that a Norwegian named Naddodd (or Naddador) was the first Norseman to reach Iceland, and in the 9th century he named it Snæland or "snow land" because it was snowing. Following Naddodd, the Swede Garðar Svavarsson arrived, and so the island was then called Garðarshólmur which means "Garðar's Isle".
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+
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+ Then came a Viking named Flóki Vilgerðarson; his daughter drowned en route, then his livestock starved to death. The sagas say that the rather despondent Flóki climbed a mountain and saw a fjord (Arnarfjörður) full of icebergs, which led him to give the island its new and present name.[24] The notion that Iceland's Viking settlers chose that name to discourage oversettlement of their verdant isle is a myth.[24]
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+
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+ According to both Landnámabók and Íslendingabók, monks known as the Papar lived in Iceland before Scandinavian settlers arrived, possibly members of a Hiberno-Scottish mission. Recent archaeological excavations have revealed the ruins of a cabin in Hafnir on the Reykjanes peninsula. Carbon dating indicates that it was abandoned sometime between 770 and 880.[25] In 2016, archeologists uncovered a longhouse in Stöðvarfjörður that has been dated to as early as 800.[26]
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+ Swedish Viking explorer Garðar Svavarsson was the first to circumnavigate Iceland in 870 and establish that it was an island.[27] He stayed over winter and built a house in Húsavík. Garðar departed the following summer but one of his men, Náttfari, decided to stay behind with two slaves. Náttfari settled in what is now known as Náttfaravík and he and his slaves became the first permanent residents of Iceland.[28][29]
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+
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+ The Norwegian-Norse chieftain Ingólfr Arnarson built his homestead in present-day Reykjavík in 874. Ingólfr was followed by many other emigrant settlers, largely Scandinavians and their thralls, many of whom were Irish or Scottish.[30] By 930, most arable land on the island had been claimed; the Althing, a legislative and judicial assembly, was initiated to regulate the Icelandic Commonwealth. Lack of arable land also served as an impetus to the settlement of Greenland starting in 986.[31] The period of these early settlements coincided with the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were similar to those of the early 20th century.[32] At this time, about 25% of Iceland was covered with forest, compared to 1% in the present day.[33] Christianity was adopted by consensus around 999–1000, although Norse paganism persisted among segments of the population for some years afterwards.[34]
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+ The Icelandic Commonwealth lasted until the 13th century, when the political system devised by the original settlers proved unable to cope with the increasing power of Icelandic chieftains.[35] The internal struggles and civil strife of the Age of the Sturlungs led to the signing of the Old Covenant in 1262, which ended the Commonwealth and brought Iceland under the Norwegian crown. Possession of Iceland passed from the Kingdom of Norway (872–1397) to the Kalmar Union in 1415, when the kingdoms of Norway, Denmark and Sweden were united. After the break-up of the union in 1523, it remained a Norwegian dependency, as a part of Denmark–Norway.
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+ Infertile soil, volcanic eruptions, deforestation and an unforgiving climate made for harsh life in a society where subsistence depended almost entirely on agriculture. The Black Death swept Iceland twice, first in 1402–1404 and again in 1494–1495.[36] The former outbreak killed 50% to 60% of the population, and the latter 30% to 50%.[37]
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+ Around the middle of the 16th century, as part of the Protestant Reformation, King Christian III of Denmark began to impose Lutheranism on all his subjects. Jón Arason, the last Catholic bishop of Hólar, was beheaded in 1550 along with two of his sons. The country subsequently became officially Lutheran and Lutheranism has since remained the dominant religion.
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+ In the 17th and 18th centuries, Denmark imposed harsh trade restrictions on Iceland. Natural disasters, including volcanic eruption and disease, contributed to a decreasing population. Pirates from several countries, including the Barbary Coast, raided Iceland's coastal settlements and abducted people into slavery.[38][39] A great smallpox epidemic in the 18th century killed around a third of the population.[40][41] In 1783 the Laki volcano erupted, with devastating effects.[42] In the years following the eruption, known as the Mist Hardships (Icelandic: Móðuharðindin), over half of all livestock in the country died. Around a quarter of the population starved to death in the ensuing famine.[43]
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+ In 1814, following the Napoleonic Wars, Denmark-Norway was broken up into two separate kingdoms via the Treaty of Kiel but Iceland remained a Danish dependency. Throughout the 19th century, the country's climate continued to grow colder, resulting in mass emigration to the New World, particularly to the region of Gimli, Manitoba in Canada, which was sometimes referred to as New Iceland. About 15,000 people emigrated, out of a total population of 70,000.[44]
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+ A national consciousness arose in the first half of the 19th century, inspired by romantic and nationalist ideas from mainland Europe. An Icelandic independence movement took shape in the 1850s under the leadership of Jón Sigurðsson, based on the burgeoning Icelandic nationalism inspired by the Fjölnismenn and other Danish-educated Icelandic intellectuals. In 1874, Denmark granted Iceland a constitution and limited home rule. This was expanded in 1904, and Hannes Hafstein served as the first Minister for Iceland in the Danish cabinet.
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+ The Danish–Icelandic Act of Union, an agreement with Denmark signed on 1 December 1918 and valid for 25 years, recognised Iceland as a fully sovereign and independent state in a personal union with Denmark. The Government of Iceland established an embassy in Copenhagen and requested that Denmark carry out on its behalf certain defence and foreign affairs matters, subject to consultation with the Althing. Danish embassies around the world displayed two coats of arms and two flags: those of the Kingdom of Denmark and those of the Kingdom of Iceland. Iceland's legal position became comparable to those of countries belonging to the Commonwealth of Nations such as Canada whose sovereign is Queen Elizabeth II.
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+
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+ During World War II, Iceland joined Denmark in asserting neutrality. After the German occupation of Denmark on 9 April 1940, the Althing replaced the King with a regent and declared that the Icelandic government would take control of its own defence and foreign affairs.[45] A month later, British armed forces conducted Operation Fork, the invasion and occupation of the country, violating Icelandic neutrality.[46] In 1941, the Government of Iceland, friendly to Britain, invited the then-neutral United States to take over its defence so that Britain could use its troops elsewhere.[45]
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+ On 31 December 1943, the Danish–Icelandic Act of Union expired after 25 years. Beginning on 20 May 1944, Icelanders voted in a four-day plebiscite on whether to terminate the personal union with Denmark, abolish the monarchy, and establish a republic. The vote was 97% to end the union, and 95% in favour of the new republican constitution.[47] Iceland formally became a republic on 17 June 1944, with Sveinn Björnsson as its first president.
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+ In 1946, the US Defence Force Allied left Iceland. The nation formally became a member of NATO on 30 March 1949, amid domestic controversy and riots. On 5 May 1951, a defence agreement was signed with the United States. American troops returned to Iceland as the Iceland Defence Force, and remained throughout the Cold War. The US withdrew the last of its forces on 30 September 2006.
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+ Iceland prospered during the Second World War. The immediate post-war period was followed by substantial economic growth, driven by industrialisation of the fishing industry and the US Marshall Plan programme, through which Icelanders received the most aid per capita of any European country (at US$209, with the war-ravaged Netherlands a distant second at US$109).[48][49]
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+ The 1970s were marked by the Cod Wars—several disputes with the United Kingdom over Iceland's extension of its fishing limits to 200 nmi (370 km) offshore. Iceland hosted a summit in Reykjavík in 1986 between United States President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, during which they took significant steps toward nuclear disarmament. A few years later, Iceland became the first country to recognise the independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania as they broke away from the USSR. Throughout the 1990s, the country expanded its international role and developed a foreign policy oriented toward humanitarian and peacekeeping causes. To that end, Iceland provided aid and expertise to various NATO-led interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq.[50]
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+ Iceland joined the European Economic Area in 1994, after which the economy was greatly diversified and liberalised. International economic relations increased further after 2001, when Iceland's newly deregulated banks began to raise massive amounts of external debt, contributing to a 32% increase in Iceland's gross national income between 2002 and 2007.[51][52]
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+ In 2003–2007, following the privatisation of the banking sector under the government of Davíð Oddsson, Iceland moved toward having an economy based on international investment banking and financial services.[53] It was quickly becoming one of the most prosperous countries in the world but was hit hard by a major financial crisis.[53] The crisis resulted in the greatest migration from Iceland since 1887, with a net emigration of 5,000 people in 2009.[54] Iceland's economy stabilised under the government of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, and grew by 1.6% in 2012.[55] The centre-right Independence Party was returned to power in coalition with the Progressive Party in the 2013 elections.[56] In the following years, Iceland saw a surge in tourism as the country became a popular holiday destination. In 2016, Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson resigned after being implicated in the Panama Papers scandal.[57] Early elections in 2016 resulted in a right-wing coalition government of the Independence Party, the Reform Party and Bright Future.
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+ [58] This government fell when Bright Future quit the coalition due to a scandal involving then-Prime Minister Bjarni Benediktsson's father's letter of support for a convicted child sex offender.[59] Snap elections in October 2017 brought to power a new coalition consisting of the Independence Party, the Progressive Party and the Left-Green Movement, headed by Katrín Jakobsdóttir.[60]
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+ Iceland is at the juncture of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. The main island is entirely south of the Arctic Circle, which passes through the small Icelandic island of Grímsey off the main island's northern coast. The country lies between latitudes 63 and 68°N, and longitudes 25 and 13°W.
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+ Iceland is closer to continental Europe than to mainland North America, although it is closest to Greenland (290 km, 180 mi), an island of North America. Iceland is generally included in Europe for geographical, historical, political, cultural, linguistic and practical reasons.[61][62][63][64] Geologically, the island includes parts of both continental plates. The closest bodies of land in Europe are the Faroe Islands (420 km, 260 mi); Jan Mayen Island (570 km, 350 mi); Shetland and the Outer Hebrides, both about 740 km (460 mi); and the Scottish mainland and Orkney, both about 750 km (470 mi). The nearest part of Continental Europe is mainland Norway, about 970 km (600 mi) away, while mainland North America is 2,070 km (1,290 mi) away, at the northern tip of Labrador.
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+ Iceland is the world's 18th largest island, and Europe's second-largest island after Great Britain. (The island of Ireland is third.) The main island is 101,826 km2 (39,315 sq mi), but the entire country is 103,000 km2 (40,000 sq mi) in size, of which 62.7% is tundra. About 30 minor islands are in Iceland, including the lightly populated Grímsey and the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago. Lakes and glaciers cover 14.3% of its surface; only 23% is vegetated.[65] The largest lakes are Þórisvatn reservoir: 83–88 km2 (32–34 sq mi) and Þingvallavatn: 82 km2 (32 sq mi); other important lakes include Lagarfljót and Mývatn. Jökulsárlón is the deepest lake, at 248 m (814 ft).[66]
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+ Geologically, Iceland is part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, a ridge along which the oceanic crust spreads and forms new oceanic crust. This part of the mid-ocean ridge is located above a mantle plume, causing Iceland to be subaerial (above the surface of the sea). The ridge marks the boundary between the Eurasian and North American Plates, and Iceland was created by rifting and accretion through volcanism along the ridge.[67]
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+ Many fjords punctuate Iceland's 4,970-km-long (3,088-mi) coastline, which is also where most settlements are situated. The island's interior, the Highlands of Iceland, is a cold and uninhabitable combination of sand, mountains, and lava fields. The major towns are the capital city of Reykjavík, along with its outlying towns of Kópavogur, Hafnarfjörður, and Garðabær, nearby Reykjanesbær where the international airport is located, and the town of Akureyri in northern Iceland. The island of Grímsey on the Arctic Circle contains the northernmost habitation of Iceland, whereas Kolbeinsey contains the northernmost point of Iceland.[68] Iceland has three national parks: Vatnajökull National Park, Snæfellsjökull National Park, and Þingvellir National Park.[69] The country is considered a "strong performer" in environmental protection, having been ranked 13th in Yale University's Environmental Performance Index of 2012.[70]
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+ Iceland as seen from space on 29 January 2004
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+ Suðureyri
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+ Norðfjörður
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+ The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull
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+ Landscape as seen from Laugavegur hiking trail
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+ A geologically young land, Iceland is the surface expression of the Iceland Plateau, a large igneous province forming as a result of volcanism from the Iceland hotspot and along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the latter of which runs right through it.[71] This means that the island is highly geologically active with many volcanoes including Hekla, Eldgjá, Herðubreið, and Eldfell.[72] The volcanic eruption of Laki in 1783–1784 caused a famine that killed nearly a quarter of the island's population.[73] In addition, the eruption caused dust clouds and haze to appear over most of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa for several months afterward, and affected climates in other areas.[74]
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+ Iceland has many geysers, including Geysir, from which the English word is derived, and the famous Strokkur, which erupts every 8–10 minutes. After a phase of inactivity, Geysir started erupting again after a series of earthquakes in 2000. Geysir has since grown quieter and does not erupt often.[75]
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+ With the widespread availability of geothermal power, and the harnessing of many rivers and waterfalls for hydroelectricity, most residents have access to inexpensive hot water, heating, and electricity. The island is composed primarily of basalt, a low-silica lava associated with effusive volcanism as has occurred also in Hawaii. Iceland, however, has a variety of volcanic types (composite and fissure), many producing more evolved lavas such as rhyolite and andesite. Iceland has hundreds of volcanoes with about 30 active volcanic systems.[76]
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+ Surtsey, one of the youngest islands in the world, is part of Iceland. Named after Surtr, it rose above the ocean in a series of volcanic eruptions between 8 November 1963 and 5 June 1968.[68] Only scientists researching the growth of new life are allowed to visit the island.[77]
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+ On 21 March 2010, a volcano in Eyjafjallajökull in the south of Iceland erupted for the first time since 1821, forcing 600 people to flee their homes.[78] Additional eruptions on 14 April forced hundreds of people to abandon their homes.[79] The resultant cloud of volcanic ash brought major disruption to air travel across Europe.[80]
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+ Another large eruption occurred on 21 May 2011. This time it was the Grímsvötn volcano, located under the thick ice of Europe's largest glacier, Vatnajökull. Grímsvötn is one of Iceland's most active volcanoes, and this eruption was much more powerful than the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull activity, with ash and lava hurled 20 km (12 mi) into the atmosphere, creating a large cloud.[81]
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+ The highest elevation for Iceland is listed as 2,110 m (6,923 ft) at Hvannadalshnúkur (64°00′N 16°39′W).
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+ The climate of Iceland's coast is subarctic. The warm North Atlantic Current ensures generally higher annual temperatures than in most places of similar latitude in the world. Regions in the world with similar climates include the Aleutian Islands, the Alaska Peninsula, and Tierra del Fuego, although these regions are closer to the equator. Despite its proximity to the Arctic, the island's coasts remain ice-free through the winter. Ice incursions are rare, the last having occurred on the north coast in 1969.[82]
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+ The climate varies between different parts of the island. Generally speaking, the south coast is warmer, wetter, and windier than the north. The Central Highlands are the coldest part of the country. Low-lying inland areas in the north are the most arid. Snowfall in winter is more common in the north than the south.
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+ The highest air temperature recorded was 30.5 °C (86.9 °F) on 22 June 1939 at Teigarhorn on the southeastern coast. The lowest was −38 °C (−36.4 °F) on 22 January 1918 at Grímsstaðir and Möðrudalur in the northeastern hinterland. The temperature records for Reykjavík are 26.2 °C (79.2 °F) on 30 July 2008, and −24.5 °C (−12.1 °F) on 21 January 1918.
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+ Phytogeographically, Iceland belongs to the Arctic province of the Circumboreal Region within the Boreal Kingdom. Around three-quarters of the island is barren of vegetation; plant life consists mainly of grassland, which is regularly grazed by livestock. The most common tree native to Iceland is the northern birch (Betula pubescens), which formerly formed forests over much of Iceland, along with aspens (Populus tremula), rowans (Sorbus aucuparia), common junipers (Juniperus communis), and other smaller trees, mainly willows.
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+ When the island was first settled, it was extensively forested, with around 30% of the land covered in trees. In the late 12th century, Ari the Wise described it in the Íslendingabók as "forested from mountain to sea shore".[85] Permanent human settlement greatly disturbed the isolated ecosystem of thin, volcanic soils and limited species diversity. The forests were heavily exploited over the centuries for firewood and timber.[86] Deforestation, climatic deterioration during the Little Ice Age, and overgrazing by sheep imported by settlers caused a loss of critical topsoil due to erosion. Today, many farms have been abandoned. Three-quarters of Iceland's 100,000 square kilometres is affected by soil erosion, 18,000 km2 (6,900 sq mi) serious enough to make the land useless.[85] Only a few small birch stands now exist in isolated reserves. The planting of new forests has increased the number of trees, but the result does not compare to the original forests. Some of the planted forests include introduced species.[86] The tallest tree in Iceland is a sitka spruce planted in 1949 in Kirkjubæjarklaustur; it was measured at 25.2 m (83 ft) in 2013.[87]
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+ The only native land mammal when humans arrived was the Arctic fox,[86] which came to the island at the end of the ice age, walking over the frozen sea. On rare occasions, bats have been carried to the island with the winds, but they are not able to breed there. Polar bears occasionally come over from Greenland, but they are just visitors, and no Icelandic populations exist.[88] No native or free-living reptiles or amphibians are on the island.[89]
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+ The animals of Iceland include the Icelandic sheep, cattle, chickens, goats, the sturdy Icelandic horse, and the Icelandic Sheepdog, all descendants of animals imported by Europeans. Wild mammals include the Arctic fox, mink, mice, rats, rabbits, and reindeer. Polar bears occasionally visit the island, travelling on icebergs from Greenland. In June 2008, two polar bears arrived in the same month.[90] Marine mammals include the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) and harbor seal (Phoca vitulina).
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+ Many species of fish live in the ocean waters surrounding Iceland, and the fishing industry is a major part of Iceland's economy, accounting for roughly half of the country's total exports. Birds, especially seabirds, are an important part of Iceland's animal life. Atlantic puffins, skuas, and black-legged kittiwakes nest on its sea cliffs.[91]
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+ Commercial whaling is practised intermittently[92][93] along with scientific whale hunts.[94] Whale watching has become an important part of Iceland's economy since 1997.[95]
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+ Around 1,300 species of insects are known in Iceland. This is low compared with other countries (over one million species have been described worldwide). Iceland is essentially free of mosquitoes.[96]
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+ Iceland has a left–right multi-party system. Following the 2017 parliamentary election, the biggest parties are the centre-right Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn), the Left-Green Movement (Vinstrihreyfingin – grænt framboð) and the Progressive Party (Framsóknarflokkurinn). These three parties form the ruling coalition in the cabinet led by leftist Katrín Jakobsdóttir.
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+ Other political parties with seats in the Althing (Parliament) are the Social Democratic Alliance (Samfylkingin), the Centre Party (Miðflokkurinn), Iceland's Pirates, the People's Party (Flokkur fólksins), and the Reform Party (Viðreisn).
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+ Iceland was the first country in the world to have a political party formed and led entirely by women.[97] Known as the Women's List or Women's Alliance (Kvennalistinn), it was founded in 1983 to advance the political, economic, and social needs of women. After participating in its first parliamentary elections, the Women's List helped increase the proportion of female parliamentarians by 15%.[98] It disbanded in 1999, formally merging the next year with the Social Democratic Alliance, although about half of its members joined the Left-Green Movement instead. It did leave a lasting influence on Iceland's politics: every major party has a 40% quota for women, and in 2009 nearly a third of members of parliament were female, compared to the global average of 16%.[99] Following the 2016 elections, 48% of members of parliament are female.[100]
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+ In 2016 Iceland was ranked 2nd in the strength of its democratic institutions[101] and 13th in government transparency.[102] The country has a high level of civic participation, with 81.4% voter turnout during the most recent elections,[103] compared to an OECD average of 72%. However, only 50% of Icelanders say they trust their political institutions, slightly less than the OECD average of 56% (and most probably a consequence of the political scandals in the wake of the Icelandic financial crisis).[104]
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+ Iceland is a representative democracy and a parliamentary republic. The modern parliament, Alþingi (English: Althing), was founded in 1845 as an advisory body to the Danish monarch. It was widely seen as a re-establishment of the assembly founded in 930 in the Commonwealth period and yet temporarily suspended from 1799 to 1845. Consequently, "it is arguably the world's oldest parliamentary democracy."[105] It has 63 members, elected for a maximum period of four years.[106]
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+ The head of government is the prime minister who, together with the cabinet, is responsible for executive government.
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+ The president, in contrast, is elected by popular vote for a term of four years with no term limit. The elections for president, the Althing, and local municipal councils are all held separately every four years.[107] The president of Iceland is a largely ceremonial head of state and serves as a diplomat, but may veto laws voted by the parliament and put them to a national referendum.[108][better source needed] The president is Guðni Th. Jóhannesson.
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+ The cabinet is appointed by the president after a general election to the Althing; however, the appointment is usually negotiated by the leaders of the political parties, who decide among themselves after discussions which parties can form the cabinet and how to distribute its seats, under the condition that it has a majority support in the Althing. Only when the party leaders are unable to reach a conclusion by themselves within a reasonable time span does the president exercise this power and appoint the cabinet personally. This has not happened since the republic was founded in 1944, but in 1942 regent Sveinn Björnsson, who had been installed in that position by the Althing in 1941, appointed a non-parliamentary government. The regent had, for all practical purposes, the position of a president, and Sveinn would later become the country's first president in 1944.
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+ The governments of Iceland have always been coalition governments, with two or more parties involved, as no single political party has ever received a majority of seats in the Althing throughout the republican period. The extent of the political power possessed by the office of the president is disputed by legal scholars[which?], in Iceland; several provisions of the constitution appear to give the president some important powers, but other provisions and traditions suggest differently.[citation needed] In 1980, Icelanders elected Vigdís Finnbogadóttir as president, the world's first directly elected female head of state. She retired from office in 1996. In 2009, Iceland became the first country with an openly gay head of government when Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir became prime minister.[109]
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+ Iceland is divided into regions, constituencies and municipalities. The eight regions are primarily used for statistical purposes. District court jurisdictions also use an older version of this division.[68] Until 2003, the constituencies for the parliamentary elections were the same as the regions, but by an amendment to the constitution, they were changed to the current six constituencies:
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+ The redistricting change was made to balance the weight of different districts of the country, since previously a vote cast in the sparsely populated areas around the country would count much more than a vote cast in the Reykjavík city area. The imbalance between districts has been reduced by the new system, but still exists.[68]
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+ 74 municipalities in Iceland govern local matters like schools, transport, and zoning.[110] These are the actual second-level subdivisions of Iceland, as the constituencies have no relevance except in elections and for statistical purposes. Reykjavík is by far the most populous municipality, about four times more populous than Kópavogur, the second one.[68]
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+ Regions of Iceland
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+ Constituencies of Iceland
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+ Municipalities of Iceland
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+ Iceland, which is a member of the UN, NATO, EFTA, Council of Europe and OECD, maintains diplomatic and commercial relations with practically all nations, but its ties with the Nordic countries, Germany, the United States, Canada and the other NATO nations are particularly close. Historically, due to cultural, economic and linguistic similarities, Iceland is a Nordic country, and it participates in intergovernmental cooperation through the Nordic Council.
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+ Iceland is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA), which allows the country access to the single market of the European Union (EU). It was not a member of the EU, but in July 2009 the Icelandic parliament, the Althing, voted in favour of application for EU membership[111] and officially applied on 17 July 2009.[112] However, in 2013, opinion polls showed that many Icelanders were now against joining the EU; following 2013 elections the two parties that formed the island's new government—the centrist Progressive Party and the right-wing Independence Party—announced they would hold a referendum on EU membership.[113][114]
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+ Iceland has no standing army, but the Icelandic Coast Guard which also maintains the Iceland Air Defence System, and an Iceland Crisis Response Unit to support peacekeeping missions and perform paramilitary functions.
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+ The Iceland Defense Force (IDF) was a military command of the United States Armed Forces from 1951 to 2006. The IDF, created at the request of NATO, came into existence when the United States signed an agreement to provide for the defense of Iceland. The IDF also consisted of civilian Icelanders and military members of other NATO nations. The IDF was downsized after the end of the Cold War and the U.S. Air Force maintained four to six interceptor aircraft at the Naval Air Station Keflavik, until they were withdrawn on 30 September 2006. Since May 2008, NATO nations have periodically deployed fighters to patrol Icelandic airspace under the Icelandic Air Policing mission.[115][116] Iceland supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq despite much domestic controversy, deploying a Coast Guard EOD team to Iraq,[117] which was replaced later by members of the Iceland Crisis Response Unit. Iceland has also participated in the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.[citation needed] Despite the ongoing financial crisis the first new patrol ship in decades was launched on 29 April 2009.[118]
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+ Iceland was the neutral host of the historic 1986 Reagan–Gorbachev summit in Reykjavík, which set the stage for the end of the Cold War. Iceland's principal historical international disputes involved disagreements over fishing rights.[citation needed] Conflict with the United Kingdom led to a series of so-called Cod Wars, which included confrontations between the Icelandic Coast Guard and the Royal Navy over British fishermen, in 1952–1956 due to the extension of Iceland's fishing zone from 3 to 4 nmi (5.6 to 7.4 km; 3.5 to 4.6 mi), 1958–1961 following a further extension to 12 nmi (22.2 km; 13.8 mi), 1972–1973 with another extension to 50 nmi (92.6 km; 57.5 mi); and in 1975–1976 another extension to 200 nmi (370.4 km; 230.2 mi).[citation needed]
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+ According to the 2011 Global Peace Index, Iceland is the most peaceful country in the world, due to its lack of armed forces, low crime rate and high level of socio-political stability.[119] Iceland is listed in the Guinness World Records book as the "country ranked most at peace" and the "lowest military spending per capita".[120]
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+ In 2007, Iceland was the seventh most productive country in the world per capita (US$54,858), and the fifth most productive by GDP at purchasing power parity ($40,112). About 85 percent of total primary energy supply in Iceland is derived from domestically produced renewable energy sources.[121] Use of abundant hydroelectric and geothermal power has made Iceland the world's largest electricity producer per capita.[122] As a result of its commitment to renewable energy, the 2016 Global Green Economy Index ranked Iceland among the top 10 greenest economies in the world.[123]
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+ Historically, Iceland's economy depended heavily on fishing, which still provides 40% of export earnings and employs 7% of the work force.[68] The economy is vulnerable to declining fish stocks and drops in world prices for its main material exports: fish and fish products, aluminium, and ferrosilicon. Whaling in Iceland has been historically significant. Iceland still relies heavily on fishing, but its importance is diminishing from an export share of 90% in the 1960s to 40% in 2006.[124]
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+ Until the 20th century, Iceland was a fairly poor country. It is now one of the most developed countries in the world. Strong economic growth had led Iceland to be ranked first in the United Nations' Human Development Index report for 2007/2008,[15] although in 2011 its HDI rating had fallen to 14th place as a result of the economic crisis. Nevertheless, according to the Economist Intelligence Index of 2011, Iceland has the 2nd highest quality of life in the world.[125] Based on the Gini coefficient, Iceland also has one of the lowest rates of income inequality in the world,[126] and when adjusted for inequality, its HDI ranking is 6th.[127] Iceland's unemployment rate has declined consistently since the crisis, with 4.8% of the labour force being unemployed as of June 2012[update], compared to 6% in 2011 and 8.1% in 2010.[68][128][129]
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+ Many political parties remain opposed to EU membership, primarily due to Icelanders' concern about losing control over their natural resources (particularly fisheries).[130] The national currency of Iceland is the Icelandic króna (ISK). Iceland is the only country in the world to have a population under two million yet still have a floating exchange rate and an independent monetary policy.[131]
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+ A poll released on 5 March 2010 by Capacent Gallup showed that 31% of respondents were in favour of adopting the euro and 69% opposed.[132] Another Capacent Gallup poll conducted in February 2012 found that 67.4% of Icelanders would reject EU membership in a referendum.[133]
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+ Iceland's economy has been diversifying into manufacturing and service industries in the last decade, including software production, biotechnology, and finance; industry accounts for around a quarter of economic activity, while services comprise close to 70%.[134] The tourism sector is expanding, especially in ecotourism and whale-watching. On average, Iceland receives around 1.1 million visitors annually, which is more than three times the native population.[104] 1.7 million people visited Iceland in 2016, 3 times more than the number that came in 2010.[135] Iceland's agriculture industry, accounting for 5.4% of GDP,[68] consists mainly of potatoes, green vegetables (in greenhouses), mutton and dairy products.[68] The financial centre is Borgartún in Reykjavík, which hosts a large number of companies and three investment banks. Iceland's stock market, the Iceland Stock Exchange (ISE), was established in 1985.[136]
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+ Iceland is ranked 27th in the 2012 Index of Economic Freedom, lower than in prior years but still among the freest in the world.[137] As of 2016[update], it ranks 29th in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitive Index, one place lower than in 2015.[138] According to INSEAD's Global Innovation Index, Iceland is the 11th most innovative country in the world.[139] Unlike most Western European countries, Iceland has a flat tax system: the main personal income tax rate is a flat 22.75%, and combined with municipal taxes, the total tax rate equals no more than 35.7%, not including the many deductions that are available.[140] The corporate tax rate is a flat 18%, one of the lowest in the world.[140] There is also a value added tax, whereas a net wealth tax was eliminated in 2006. Employment regulations are relatively flexible and the labour market is one of the freest in the world. Property rights are strong and Iceland is one of the few countries where they are applied to fishery management.[140] Like other welfare states, taxpayers pay various subsidies to each other, but with spending being less than in most European countries.
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+ Despite low tax rates, agricultural assistance is the highest among OECD countries and a potential impediment to structural change. Also, health care and education spending have relatively poor returns by OECD measures, though improvements have been made in both areas. The OECD Economic Survey of Iceland 2008 had highlighted Iceland's challenges in currency and macroeconomic policy.[141] There was a currency crisis that started in the spring of 2008, and on 6 October trading in Iceland's banks was suspended as the government battled to save the economy.[142] An assessment by the OECD 2011[143] determined that Iceland has made progress in many areas, particularly in creating a sustainable fiscal policy and restoring the health of the financial sector; however, challenges remain in making the fishing industry more efficient and sustainable, as well as in improving monetary policy to address inflation.[144] Iceland's public debt has decreased since the economic crisis, and as of 2015[update] is the 31st highest in the world by proportion of national GDP.[145]
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+ Iceland had been hit especially hard by the Great Recession that began in December 2007, because of the failure of its banking system and a subsequent economic crisis. Before the crash of the country's three largest banks, Glitnir, Landsbanki and Kaupthing, their combined debt exceeded approximately six times the nation's gross domestic product of €14 billion ($19 billion).[146][147] In October 2008, the Icelandic parliament passed emergency legislation to minimise the impact of the financial crisis. The Financial Supervisory Authority of Iceland used permission granted by the emergency legislation to take over the domestic operations of the three largest banks.[148] Icelandic officials, including central bank governor Davíð Oddsson, stated that the state did not intend to take over any of the banks' foreign debts or assets. Instead, new banks were established to take on the domestic operations of the banks, and the old banks will be run into bankruptcy.
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+ On 28 October 2008, the Icelandic government raised interest rates to 18% (as of August 2019[update], it was 3.5%), a move forced in part by the terms of acquiring a loan from International Monetary Fund (IMF). After the rate hike, trading on the Icelandic króna finally resumed on the open market, with valuation at around 250 ISK per euro, less than one-third the value of the 1:70 exchange rate during most of 2008, and a significant drop from the 1:150 exchange ratio of the week before. On 20 November 2008, the Nordic countries agreed to lend Iceland $2.5 billion.[149]
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+ On 26 January 2009, the coalition government collapsed due to the public dissent over the handling of the financial crisis. A new left-wing government was formed a week later and immediately set about removing Central Bank governor Davíð Oddsson and his aides from the bank through changes in law. Davíð was removed on 26 February 2009 in the wake of protests outside the Central Bank.[150]
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+ Thousands of Icelanders have moved from the country after the collapse, and many of those moved to Norway. In 2005, 293 people moved from Iceland to Norway; in 2009, the figure was 1,625.[151] In April 2010, the Icelandic Parliament's Special Investigation Commission published the findings of its investigation,[152] revealing the extent of control fraud in this crisis.[153] By June 2012, Landsbanki managed to repay about half of the Icesave debt.[154]
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+ According to Bloomberg, Iceland is on the trajectory of 2% unemployment as a result of crisis-management decisions made back in 2008, including allowing the banks to fail.[155]
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+ Iceland has a high level of car ownership per capita; with a car for every 1.5 inhabitants; it is the main form of transport.[156] Iceland has 13,034 km (8,099 mi) of administered roads, of which 4,617 km (2,869 mi) are paved and 8,338 km (5,181 mi) are not. A great number of roads remain unpaved, mostly little-used rural roads. The road speed limits are 30 km/h (19 mph) and 50 km/h (31 mph) in towns, 80 km/h (50 mph) on gravel country roads and 90 km/h (56 mph) on hard-surfaced roads.[157]
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+ Route 1, or the Ring Road (Icelandic: Þjóðvegur 1 or Hringvegur), was completed in 1974, and is a main road that runs around Iceland and connects all the inhabited parts of the island, with the interior of the island being uninhabited. This paved road is 1,332 km (828 mi)[158] long with one lane in each direction, except near larger towns and cities and in the Hvalfjörður Tunnel where it has more lanes. Many bridges on it, especially in the north and east, are single lane and made of timber and/or steel.
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+ Keflavík International Airport (KEF)[159] is the largest airport and the main aviation hub for international passenger transport. It serves several international and domestic airline companies.[160] KEF is in the vicinity of the larger metropolitan capital areas, 49 km (30 mi)[161] to the WSW of Reykjavík center, and public bus services are available.[162]
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+ Iceland has no passenger railways.
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+ Reykjavík Airport (RKV)[163] is the second largest airport located just 1,5 km from the capital centre. RKV serves general aviation traffic and has daily- or regular domestic flights to 12 local townships within Iceland.[164] RKV also serves international flights to Greenland and the Faroe Islands, business and private airplanes along with aviation training.
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+ Akureyri Airport (AEY)[165] and Egilsstaðir Airport (EGS)[166] are two other domestic airports with limited international service capacity. There are a total of 103 registered airports and airfields in Iceland; most of them are unpaved and located in rural areas. The second longest runway is at Geitamelur, a four-runway glider field around 100 km (62 mi) east of Reykjavík.
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+ Six main ferry services provide regular access to various outpost communities or shorten travel distances.[167][circular reference]
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+ Renewable sources—geothermal and hydropower—provide effectively all of Iceland's electricity[168] and around 85% of the nation's total primary energy consumption,[169] with most of the remainder consisting of imported oil products used in transportation and in the fishing fleet.[170][171] A 2000 report from the University of Iceland suggested that Iceland could potentially convert from oil to hydrogen power by 2040.[172] Iceland's largest geothermal power plants are Hellisheiði and Nesjavellir,[173][174] while Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant is the country's largest hydroelectric power station.[175] When the Kárahnjúkavirkjun started operating, Iceland became the world's largest electricity producer per capita.[176] Iceland is one of the few countries that have filling stations dispensing hydrogen fuel for cars powered by fuel cells.[citation needed] It is also one of a few countries capable of producing hydrogen in adequate quantities at a reasonable cost, because of Iceland's plentiful renewable sources of energy.[further explanation needed] The ranking of geopolitical gains and losses after energy transition (GeGaLo Index) places Iceland first out of 156 countries, making it the main geopolitical winner in the global energy transition.[177]
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+ Despite this, Icelanders emitted 16.9 tonnes of CO2 per capita in 2016, the highest in the EU and EFTA, mainly resulting from transport and aluminium smelting.[178] Nevertheless, in 2010, Iceland was noted by Guinness World Records as "the Greenest Country", reaching the highest score by the Environmental Sustainability Index, which measures a country's water use, biodiversity and adoption of clean energies, with a score of 93.5/100.[179]
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+ On 22 January 2009, Iceland announced its first round of offshore licences for companies wanting to conduct hydrocarbon exploration and production in a region northeast of Iceland, known as the Dreki area.[180] Three exploration licenses were awarded but all were subsequently relinquished.[181]
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+ As of 2012[update], the government of Iceland was in talks with the government of the United Kingdom about the possibility of constructing Icelink, a high-voltage direct-current connector for transmission of electricity between the two countries.[182] Such a cable would give Iceland access to a market where electricity prices have generally been much higher than those in Iceland.[183] Iceland has considerable renewable energy resources, especially geothermal energy and hydropower resources,[184] and most of the potential has not been developed, partly because there is not enough demand for additional electricity generation capacity from the residents and industry of Iceland; the United Kingdom is interested in importing inexpensive electricity from renewable sources of energy, and this could lead to further development of the energy resources.
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+ The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture is responsible for the policies and methods that schools must use, and they issue the National Curriculum Guidelines. However, playschools, primary schools, and lower secondary schools are funded and administered by the municipalities. The government does allow citizens to home educate their children, however under a very strict set of demands.[185] Students must adhere closely to the government mandated curriculum, and the parent teaching must acquire a government approved teaching certificate.
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+ Nursery school, or leikskóli, is non-compulsory education for children younger than six years, and is the first step in the education system. The current legislation concerning playschools was passed in 1994. They are also responsible for ensuring that the curriculum is suitable so as to make the transition into compulsory education as easy as possible.
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+ Compulsory education, or grunnskóli, comprises primary and lower secondary education, which often is conducted at the same institution. Education is mandatory by law for children aged from 6 to 16 years. The school year lasts nine months, beginning between 21 August and 1 September, ending between 31 May and 10 June. The minimum number of school days was once 170, but after a new teachers' wage contract, it increased to 180. Lessons take place five days a week. All public schools have mandatory education in Christianity, although an exemption may be considered by the Minister of Education.[186]
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+ Upper secondary education, or framhaldsskóli, follows lower secondary education. These schools are also known as gymnasia in English. Though not compulsory, everyone who has had a compulsory education has the right to upper secondary education. This stage of education is governed by the Upper Secondary School Act of 1996. All schools in Iceland are mixed sex schools. The largest seat of higher education is the University of Iceland, which has its main campus in central Reykjavík. Other schools offering university-level instruction include Reykjavík University, University of Akureyri, Agricultural University of Iceland and Bifröst University.
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+ An OECD assessment found 64% of Icelanders aged 25–64 have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, which is lower than the OECD average of 73%. Among 25- to 34-year-olds, only 69% have earned the equivalent of a high-school degree, significantly lower than the OECD average of 80%.[104] Nevertheless, Iceland's education system is considered excellent: the Programme for International Student Assessment ranks it as the 16th best performing, above the OECD average.[187] Students were particularly proficient in reading and mathematics.
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+ According to a 2013 Eurostat report by the European Commission, Iceland spends around 3.11% of its GDP on scientific research and development (R&D), over 1 percentage point higher than the EU average of 2.03%, and has set a target of 4% to reach by 2020.[188] A 2010 UNESCO report found that out of 72 countries that spend the most on R&D (100 million US dollars or more), Iceland ranked 9th by proportion of GDP, tied with Taiwan, Switzerland, and Germany and ahead of France, the UK, and Canada.[189]
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+ The original population of Iceland was of Nordic and Gaelic origin. This is evident from literary evidence dating from the settlement period as well as from later scientific studies such as blood type and genetic analyses. One such genetic study indicated that the majority of the male settlers were of Nordic origin while the majority of the women were of Gaelic origin, meaning many settlers of Iceland were Norsemen who brought Gaelic slaves with them.[190]
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+ Iceland has extensive genealogical records dating back to the late 17th century and fragmentary records extending back to the Age of Settlement. The biopharmaceutical company deCODE genetics has funded the creation of a genealogy database that is intended to cover all of Iceland's known inhabitants. It views the database, called Íslendingabók, as a valuable tool for conducting research on genetic diseases, given the relative isolation of Iceland's population.
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+ The population of the island is believed to have varied from 40,000 to 60,000 in the period ranging from initial settlement until the mid-19th century. During that time, cold winters, ash fall from volcanic eruptions, and bubonic plagues adversely affected the population several times.[11] There were 37 famine years in Iceland between 1500 and 1804.[191] The first census was carried out in 1703 and revealed that the population was then 50,358. After the destructive volcanic eruptions of the Laki volcano during 1783–1784, the population reached a low of about 40,000.[192] Improving living conditions have triggered a rapid increase in population since the mid-19th century—from about 60,000 in 1850 to 320,000 in 2008. Iceland has a relatively young population for a developed country, with one out of five people being 14 years old or younger. With a fertility rate of 2.1, Iceland is one of only a few European countries with a birth rate sufficient for long-term population growth (see table below).[193][194]
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+ In December 2007, 33,678 people (13.5% of the total population) living in Iceland had been born abroad, including children of Icelandic parents living abroad. Around 19,000 people (6% of the population) held foreign citizenship. Polish people make up the largest minority group by a considerable margin, and still form the bulk of the foreign workforce. About 8,000 Poles now live in Iceland, 1,500 of them in Fjarðabyggð where they make up 75% of the workforce who are constructing the Fjarðarál aluminium plant.[195] Large-scale construction projects in the east of Iceland (see Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant) have also brought in many people whose stay is expected to be temporary. Many Polish immigrants were also considering leaving in 2008 as a result of the Icelandic financial crisis.[196]
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+ The southwest corner of Iceland is by far the most densely populated region. It is also the location of the capital Reykjavík, the northernmost national capital in the world. More than 70 percent of Iceland's population live in the southwest corner (Greater Reykjavík and the nearby Southern Peninsula), which covers less than two percent of Iceland's land area. The largest town outside Greater Reykjavík is Reykjanesbær, which is located on the Southern Peninsula, less than 50 km (31 mi) from the capital. The largest town outside the southwest corner is Akureyri in northern Iceland.
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+ Some 500 Icelanders under the leadership of Erik the Red settled Greenland in the late 10th century.[197] The total population reached a high point of perhaps 5,000 and developed independent institutions before disappearing by 1500.[198] People from Greenland attempted to set up a settlement at Vinland in North America, but abandoned it in the face of hostility from the indigenous residents.[199]
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+ Emigration of Icelanders to the United States and Canada began in the 1870s. As of 2006[update], Canada had over 88,000 people of Icelandic descent,[200] while there are more than 40,000 Americans of Icelandic descent, according to the 2000 US census.[201]
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+ Iceland's 10 most populous urban areas:
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+ Iceland's official written and spoken language is Icelandic, a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse. In grammar and vocabulary, it has changed less from Old Norse than the other Nordic languages; Icelandic has preserved more verb and noun inflection, and has to a considerable extent developed new vocabulary based on native roots rather than borrowings from other languages. The puristic tendency in the development of Icelandic vocabulary is to a large degree a result of conscious language planning, in addition to centuries of isolation. Icelandic is the only living language to retain the use of the runic letter Þ in Latin script. The closest living relative of the Icelandic language is Faroese.
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+ Icelandic Sign Language was officially recognised as a minority language in 2011. In education, its use for Iceland's deaf community is regulated by the National Curriculum Guide.
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+ English and Danish are compulsory subjects in the school curriculum. English is widely understood and spoken, while basic to moderate knowledge of Danish is common mainly among the older generations.[202] Polish is mostly spoken by the local Polish community (the largest minority of Iceland), and Danish is mostly spoken in a way largely comprehensible to Swedes and Norwegians—it is often referred to as skandinavíska (i. e. Scandinavian) in Iceland.[203]
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+ Rather than using family names, as is the usual custom in most Western nations, Icelanders carry patronymic or matronymic surnames, patronyms being far more commonly practiced. Patronymic last names are based on the first name of the father, while matronymic names are based on the first name of the mother. These follow the person's given name, e.g. Elísabet Jónsdóttir ("Elísabet, Jón's daughter" (Jón, being the father)) or Ólafur Katrínarson ("Ólafur, Katrín's son" (Katrín being the mother)).[204] Consequently, Icelanders refer to one another by their given name, and the Icelandic telephone directory is listed alphabetically by first name rather than by surname.[205] All new names must be approved by the Icelandic Naming Committee.
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+ Iceland has a universal health care system that is administered by its Ministry of Welfare (Icelandic: Velferðarráðuneytið)[206] and paid for mostly by taxes (85%) and to a lesser extent by service fees (15%). Unlike most countries, there are no private hospitals, and private insurance is practically nonexistent.[207]
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+ A considerable portion of the government budget is assigned to health care,[207] and Iceland ranks 11th in health care expenditures as a percentage of GDP[208] and 14th in spending per capita.[209] Overall, the country's health care system is one of the best performing in the world, ranked 15th by the World Health Organization.[210] According to an OECD report, Iceland devotes far more resources to healthcare than most industrialised nations. As of 2009[update], Iceland had 3.7 doctors per 1,000 people (compared with an average of 3.1 in OECD countries) and 15.3 nurses per 1,000 people (compared with an OECD average of 8.4).[211]
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+ Icelanders are among the world's healthiest people, with 81% reporting they are in good health, according to an OECD survey.[104] Although it is a growing problem, obesity is not as prevalent as in other developed countries.[211] Iceland has many campaigns for health and wellbeing, including the famous television show Lazytown, starring and created by former gymnastics champion Magnus Scheving. Infant mortality is one of the lowest in the world,[212] and the proportion of the population that smokes is lower than the OECD average.[211] Almost all women choose to terminate pregnancies of children with Down syndrome in Iceland.[213] The average life expectancy is 81.8 (compared to an OECD average of 79.5), the 4th highest in the world.[214]
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+ Iceland has a very low level of pollution, thanks to an overwhelming reliance on cleaner geothermal energy, a low population density, and a high level of environmental consciousness among citizens.[215] According to an OECD assessment, the amount of toxic materials in the atmosphere is far lower than in any other industrialised country measured.[216]
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+ Icelanders have freedom of religion guaranteed under the Constitution, although the Church of Iceland, a Lutheran body, is the state church:
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+ The Evangelical Lutheran Church shall be the State Church in Iceland and, as such, it shall be supported and protected by the State.
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+ The Registers Iceland keeps account of the religious affiliation of every Icelandic citizen. In 2017, Icelanders were divided into religious groups as follows:
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+ Iceland is a very secular country; as with other Nordic nations, church attendance is relatively low.[219][220] The above statistics represent administrative membership of religious organisations, which does not necessarily reflect the belief demographics of the population. According to a study published in 2001, 23% of the inhabitants were either atheist or agnostic.[221] A Gallup poll conducted in 2012 found that 57% of Icelanders considered themselves "religious", 31% considered themselves "non-religious", while 10% defined themselves as "convinced atheists", placing Iceland among the ten countries with the highest proportions of atheists in the world.[222] Icelanders registered in the state church, the Church of Iceland, is declining at a rate of more than 1% per year.
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+ Icelandic culture has its roots in North Germanic traditions. Icelandic literature is popular, in particular the sagas and eddas that were written during the High and Late Middle Ages. Centuries of isolation have helped to insulate the country's Nordic culture from external influence; a prominent example is the preservation of the Icelandic language, which remains the closest to Old Norse of all modern Nordic languages.[223]
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+ In contrast to other Nordic countries, Icelanders place relatively great importance on independence and self-sufficiency; in a public opinion analysis conducted by the European Commission, over 85% of Icelanders believe independence is "very important," compared to 47% of Norwegians, 49% of Danes, and an average of 53% for the EU25.[224] Icelanders also have a very strong work ethic, working some of the longest hours of any industrialised nation.[225]
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+ According to a poll conducted by the OECD, 66% of Icelanders were satisfied with their lives, while 70% believed that their lives will be satisfying in the future. Similarly, 83% reported having more positive experiences in an average day than negative ones, compared to an OECD average of 72%, which makes Iceland one of the happiest countries in the OECD.[104] A more recent 2012 survey found that around three-quarters of respondents stated they were satisfied with their lives, compared to a global average of about 53%.[226]
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+ Iceland is liberal with regard to LGBT rights issues. In 1996, the Icelandic parliament passed legislation to create registered partnerships for same-sex couples, conferring nearly all the rights and benefits of marriage. In 2006, parliament voted unanimously to grant same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples in adoption, parenting and assisted insemination treatment. In 2010, the Icelandic parliament amended the marriage law, making it gender neutral and defining marriage as between two individuals, making Iceland one of the first countries in the world to legalise same-sex marriages. The law took effect on 27 June 2010.[227] The amendment to the law also means registered partnerships for same-sex couples are now no longer possible, and marriage is their only option—identical to the existing situation for opposite-sex couples.[227]
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+ Icelanders are known for their strong sense of community and lack of social isolation: An OECD survey found that 98% believe they know someone they could rely on in a time of need, higher than in any other industrialised country. Similarly, only 6% reported "rarely" or "never" socialising with others.[104] This high level of social cohesion is attributed to the small size and homogeneity of the population, as well as to a long history of harsh survival in an isolated environment, which reinforced the importance of unity and cooperation.[228]
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+ Egalitarianism is highly valued among the people of Iceland, with income inequality being among the lowest in the world.[126] The constitution explicitly prohibits the enactment of noble privileges, titles, and ranks.[229] Everyone is addressed by their first name. As in other Nordic countries, equality between the sexes is very high; Iceland is consistently ranked among the top three countries in the world for women to live in.[230][231][232]
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+ In 2011, Reykjavík was designated a UNESCO City of Literature.[233]
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+ Iceland's best-known classical works of literature are the Icelanders' sagas, prose epics set in Iceland's age of settlement. The most famous of these include Njáls saga, about an epic blood feud, and Grænlendinga saga and Eiríks saga, describing the discovery and settlement of Greenland and Vinland (modern Newfoundland). Egils saga, Laxdæla saga, Grettis saga, Gísla saga and Gunnlaugs saga ormstungu are also notable and popular Icelanders' sagas.
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+ A translation of the Bible was published in the 16th century. Important compositions since the 15th to the 19th century include sacred verse, most famously the Passion Hymns of Hallgrímur Pétursson, and rímur, rhyming epic poems. Originating in the 14th century, rímur were popular into the 19th century, when the development of new literary forms was provoked by the influential, National-Romantic writer Jónas Hallgrímsson. In recent times, Iceland has produced many great writers, the best-known of whom is arguably Halldór Laxness, who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955 (the only Icelander to win a Nobel Prize thus far). Steinn Steinarr was an influential modernist poet during the early 20th century who remains popular.
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+ Icelanders are avid consumers of literature, with the highest number of bookstores per capita in the world. For its size, Iceland imports and translates more international literature than any other nation.[229] Iceland also has the highest per capita publication of books and magazines,[234] and around 10% of the population will publish a book in their lifetimes.[235]
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+ Most books in Iceland are sold between late September to early November. This time period is known as Jolabokaflod, the Christmas Book Flood.[233] The Flood begins with the Iceland Publisher's Association distributing Bokatidindi, a catalog of all new publications, free to each Icelandic home.[233]
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+ The distinctive rendition of the Icelandic landscape by its painters can be linked to nationalism and the movement for home rule and independence, which was very active in the mid-19th century.
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+ Contemporary Icelandic painting is typically traced to the work of Þórarinn Þorláksson, who, following formal training in art in the 1890s in Copenhagen, returned to Iceland to paint and exhibit works from 1900 to his death in 1924, almost exclusively portraying the Icelandic landscape. Several other Icelandic men and women artists studied at Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts at that time, including Ásgrímur Jónsson, who together with Þórarinn created a distinctive portrayal of Iceland's landscape in a romantic naturalistic style. Other landscape artists quickly followed in the footsteps of Þórarinn and Ásgrímur. These included Jóhannes Kjarval and Júlíana Sveinsdóttir. Kjarval in particular is noted for the distinct techniques in the application of paint that he developed in a concerted effort to render the characteristic volcanic rock that dominates the Icelandic environment. Einar Hákonarson is an expressionistic and figurative painter who by some is considered to have brought the figure back into Icelandic painting. In the 1980s, many Icelandic artists worked with the subject of the new painting in their work.
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+ In the recent years artistic practice has multiplied, and the Icelandic art scene has become a setting for many large scale projects and exhibitions. The artist run gallery space Kling og Bang, members of which later ran the studio complex and exhibition venue Klink og Bank, has been a significant part of the trend of self-organised spaces, exhibitions and projects.[236] The Living Art Museum, Reykjavík Municipal Art Museum, Reykjavík Art Museum and the National Gallery of Iceland are the larger, more established institutions, curating shows and festivals.
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+ Þingvellir by Þórarinn B. Þorláksson
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+ Statue of Thorfinn Karlsefni by Icelandic sculptor Einar Jónsson in Philadelphia
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+ The writer Halldór Laxness by Einar Hákonarson, 1984
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+ Traditional Icelandic turf houses. Until the 20th century, the vast majority of Icelanders lived in rural areas
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+ The old building (Gamli Skóli) of the Menntaskóli, i.e. High School precinct in Akureyri
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+ Much Icelandic music is related to Nordic music, and includes folk and pop traditions. Notable Icelandic music acts include medieval music group Voces Thules, alternative and indie rock acts such as The Sugarcubes, Sóley and Of Monsters and Men, jazz fusion band Mezzoforte, pop singers such as Hafdís Huld, Emilíana Torrini and Björk, solo ballad singers like Bubbi Morthens, and post-rock bands such as Amiina and Sigur Rós. Independent music is strong in Iceland, with bands such as múm and solo artists.
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+ Traditional Icelandic music is strongly religious. Hymns, both religious and secular, are a particularly well-developed form of music, due to the scarcity of musical instruments throughout much of Iceland's history. Hallgrímur Pétursson wrote many Protestant hymns in the 17th century. Icelandic music was modernised in the 19th century, when Magnús Stephensen brought pipe organs, which were followed by harmoniums. Other vital traditions of Icelandic music are epic alliterative and rhyming ballads called rímur. Rímur are epic tales, usually a cappella, which can be traced back to skaldic poetry, using complex metaphors and elaborate rhyme schemes.[237] The best known rímur poet of the 19th century was Sigurður Breiðfjörð (1798–1846). A modern revitalisation of the tradition began in 1929 with the formation of Iðunn.[clarification needed]
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+ Among Iceland's best-known classical composers are Daníel Bjarnason and Anna S. Þorvaldsdóttir (Anna Thorvaldsdottir), who in 2012 received the Nordic Council Music Prize and in 2015 was chosen as the New York Philharmonic's Kravis Emerging Composer, an honor that includes a $50,000 cash prize and a commission to write a composition for the orchestra; she is the second recipient.[238]
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+ The national anthem of Iceland is Lofsöngur, written by Matthías Jochumsson, with music by Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson.[239]
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+ Iceland's largest television stations are the state-run Sjónvarpið and the privately owned Stöð 2 and SkjárEinn. Smaller stations exist, many of them local. Radio is broadcast throughout the country, including some parts of the interior. The main radio stations are Rás 1, Rás 2, X-ið 977, Bylgjan and FM957. The daily newspapers are Morgunblaðið and Fréttablaðið. The most popular websites are the news sites Vísir and Mbl.is.[240]
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+ Iceland is home to LazyTown (Icelandic: Latibær), a children's educational musical comedy program created by Magnús Scheving. It has become a very popular programme for children and adults and is shown in over 100 countries, including the Americas, the UK and Sweden.[241] The LazyTown studios are located in Garðabær. The 2015 television crime series Trapped aired in the UK on BBC4 in February and March 2016, to critical acclaim and according to the Guardian "the unlikeliest TV hit of the year".[242]
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+ In 1992, the Icelandic film industry achieved its greatest recognition hitherto, when Friðrik Þór Friðriksson was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for his Children of Nature.[243] It features the story of an old man who is unable to continue running his farm. After being unwelcomed in his daughter's and father-in-law's house in town, he is put in a home for the elderly. There, he meets an old girlfriend of his youth and they both begin a journey through the wilds of Iceland to die together. This is the only Icelandic movie to have ever been nominated for an Academy Award.[244]
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+ Singer-songwriter Björk received international acclaim for her starring role in the Danish musical drama Dancer in the Dark, directed by Lars von Trier, in which she plays Selma Ježková, a factory worker who struggles to pay for her son's eye operation. The film premiered at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, where she won the Best Actress Award. The movie also led Björk to nominations for Best Original Song at the 73rd Academy Awards, with the song I've Seen It All and for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama.[245]
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+ Guðrún S. Gísladóttir, who is Icelandic, played one of the major roles in Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky's 1986 film, The Sacrifice. Anita Briem, known for her performance in Showtime's The Tudors, is also Icelandic. Briem starred in the 2008 film Journey to the Center of the Earth, which shot scenes in Iceland. The 2002 James Bond movie Die Another Day is set for a large-part in Iceland. Christopher Nolan's 2014 film, Interstellar was also filmed in Iceland for some of its scenes, as was Ridley Scott's Prometheus.[246]
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+ On 17 June 2010, the parliament passed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, proposing greater protection of free speech rights and the identity of journalists and whistle-blowers—the strongest journalist protection law in the world.[247] According to a 2011 report by Freedom House, Iceland is one of the highest ranked countries in press freedom.[248]
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+ CCP Games, developers of the critically acclaimed EVE Online and Dust 514, is headquartered in Reykjavík. CCP Games hosts the third most populated MMO in the world, which also has the largest total game area for an online game.[citation needed]
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+ Iceland has a highly developed internet culture, with around 95% of the population having internet access, the highest proportion in the world.[249] Iceland ranked 12th in the World Economic Forum's 2009–2010 Network Readiness Index, which measures a country's ability to competitively exploit communications technology.[250] The United Nations International Telecommunication Union ranks the country 3rd in its development of information and communications technology, having moved up four places between 2008 and 2010.[251] In February 2013 the country (ministry of the interior) was researching possible methods to protect children in regards to Internet pornography, claiming that pornography online is a threat to children as it supports child slavery and abuse. Strong voices within the community expressed concerns with this, stating that it is impossible to block access to pornography without compromising freedom of speech.[252][253][254]
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+ Much of Iceland's cuisine is based on fish, lamb, and dairy products, with little to no use of herbs or spices. Due to the island's climate, fruits and vegetables are not generally a component of traditional dishes, although the use of greenhouses has made them more common in contemporary food. Þorramatur is a selection of traditional cuisine consisting of many dishes, and is usually consumed around the month of Þorri, which begins on the first Friday after 19 January. Traditional dishes also include skyr (a yoghurt-like cheese), hákarl (cured shark), cured ram, singed sheep heads, and black pudding, Flatkaka (flat bread), dried fish and dark rye bread traditionally baked in the ground in geothermal areas.[255] Puffin is considered a local delicacy that is often prepared through broiling.
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+ Breakfast usually consists of pancakes, cereal, fruit, and coffee, while lunch may take the form of a smörgåsbord. The main meal of the day for most Icelanders is dinner, which usually involves fish or lamb as the main course. Seafood is central to most Icelandic cooking, particularly cod and haddock but also salmon, herring, and halibut. It is often prepared in a wide variety of ways, either smoked, pickled, boiled, or dried. Lamb is by far the most common meat, and it tends to be either smoke-cured (known as hangikjöt) or salt-preserved (saltkjöt). Many older dishes make use of every part of the sheep, such as slátur, which consists of offal (internal organs and entrails) minced together with blood and served in sheep stomach. Additionally, boiled or mashed potatoes, pickled cabbage, green beans, and rye bread are prevalent side dishes.
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+ Coffee is a popular beverage in Iceland, with the country being third placed by per capita consumption worldwide in 2016,[256] and is drunk at breakfast, after meals, and with a light snack in mid-afternoon. Coca-Cola is also widely consumed, to the extent that the country is said to have one of the highest per capita consumption rates in the world.[257]
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+ Iceland's signature alcoholic beverage is brennivín (literally "burnt [i.e., distilled] wine"), which is similar in flavouring to the akvavit variant of Scandinavian brännvin. It is a type of schnapps made from distilled potatoes and flavoured with either caraway seeds or angelica. Its potency has earned it the nickname svarti dauði ("Black Death"). Modern distilleries on Iceland produce vodka (Reyka), gin (Ísafold), moss schnapps (Fjallagrasa), and a birch-flavoured schnapps and liqueur (Foss Distillery's Birkir and Björk). Martin Miller blends Icelandic water with its England-distilled gin on the island. Strong beer was banned until 1989, so bjórlíki, a mixture of legal, low-alcohol pilsner beer and vodka, became popular. Several strong beers are now made by Icelandic breweries.
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+ Sport is an important part of Icelandic culture, as the population is generally quite active.[259] The main traditional sport in Iceland is Glíma, a form of wrestling thought to have originated in medieval times.
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+ Popular sports include football, track and field, handball and basketball. Handball is often referred to as the national sport.[258] The Icelandic national football team qualified for the 2016 UEFA European football championship for the first time. They recorded a draw against later winners Portugal in the group stage, and defeated England 2–1 in the round of 16, with goals from Ragnar Sigurðsson and Kolbeinn Sigþórsson. They then lost to hosts and later finalists France in the quarter finals.[260] Following up on this, Iceland made its debut at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. For both the European and the world championship, Iceland is to date the smallest nation in terms of population to qualify.
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+ Iceland is also the smallest country to ever qualify for Eurobasket. They did it in both 2015 and 2017. Although Iceland has had great success qualifying for Eurobasket, they have not managed to win a single game in the European Basketball final stages.
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+ Iceland has excellent conditions for skiing, fishing, snowboarding, ice climbing and rock climbing, although mountain climbing and hiking are preferred by the general public. Iceland is also a world-class destination for alpine ski touring and Telemark skiing, with the Troll Peninsula in Northern Iceland being the main centre of activity. Although the country's environment is generally ill-suited for golf, there are nevertheless many golf courses throughout the island, and Iceland has a greater percentage of the population playing golf than Scotland with over 17,000 registered golfers out of a population of approximately 300,000.[261] Iceland hosts an annual international golf tournament known as the Arctic Open played through the night during the summer solstice at Akureyri Golf Club.[262][263] Iceland has also won the second most World's Strongest Man competitions of any country with nine titles, including four by both Magnús Ver Magnússon and Jón Páll Sigmarsson and most recently Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson in 2018.
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+ Iceland is also one of the leading countries in ocean rowing. Icelandic explorer and endurance athlete Fiann Paulholds the highest number of performance-based Guinness World Records within a single athletic discipline. As of 2020, he is the first and only person to achieve the Ocean Explorers Grand Slam (performing open-water crossings on each of the five oceans using human-powered vessels) and has claimed overall speed Guinness World Records for the fastest rowing of all four oceans (Atlantic, Indian, Pacific and Arctic) in a human-powered row boat. He had achieved a total of 41, including 33 performance based Guinness World Records by 2020.[264][265][266][267][268]
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+ Swimming is popular in Iceland. Geothermally heated outdoor pools are widespread, and swimming courses are a mandatory part of the national curriculum.[263] Horseback riding, which was historically the most prevalent form of transportation on the island, remains a common pursuit for many Icelanders.
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+ The oldest sport association in Iceland is the Reykjavík Shooting Association, founded in 1867. Rifle shooting became very popular in the 19th century with the encouragement of politicians and nationalists who were pushing for Icelandic independence. To this day, it remains a significant pastime.[269]
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+ Iceland has also produced many chess masters and hosted the historic World Chess Championship 1972 in Reykjavík during the height of the Cold War. As of 2008[update], there have been nine Icelandic chess grandmasters, a considerable number given the small size of the population.[270] Bridge is also popular, with Iceland participating in a number of international tournaments. Iceland won the world bridge championship (the Bermuda Bowl) in Yokohama, Japan, in 1991 and took second place (with Sweden) in Hamilton, Bermuda, in 1950.
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+ Jesus[e] (c. 4 BC – c. AD 30 / 33), also referred to as Jesus of Nazareth or Jesus Christ,[f] was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader.[12] He is the central figure of Christianity. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (the Christ) prophesied in the Old Testament.[13][14]
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+ Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically,[g] although the quest for the historical Jesus has yielded major uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the Bible reflects the historical Jesus, as the only records of Jesus's life are contained in the four Gospels.[21][h][i] Jesus was a Galilean Jew,[12] who was baptized by John the Baptist and began his own ministry. He preached orally[24] and was often referred to as "rabbi".[25] Jesus debated with fellow Jews on how to best follow God, engaged in healings, taught in parables and gathered followers.[26][27] He was arrested and tried by the Jewish authorities,[28] turned over to the Roman government, and crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect.[26] After his death, his followers believed he rose from the dead, and the community they formed eventually became the early Church.[29]
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+ Christian doctrines include the beliefs that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, was born of a virgin named Mary, performed miracles, founded the Christian Church, died by crucifixion as a sacrifice to achieve atonement for sin, rose from the dead, and ascended into Heaven, from where he will return.[30] Most Christians believe Jesus enables people to be reconciled to God. The Nicene Creed asserts that Jesus will judge the living and the dead[31] either before or after their bodily resurrection,[32][33][34] an event tied to the Second Coming of Jesus in Christian eschatology.[35] The great majority of Christians worship Jesus as the incarnation of God the Son, the second of three persons of the Trinity. A minority of Christian denominations reject Trinitarianism, wholly or partly, as non-scriptural. The birth of Jesus is celebrated annually on December 25 (on the Julian Calendar in some Eastern Churches) as Christmas. His crucifixion is honored on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter Sunday. The widely used calendar era "AD", from the Latin anno Domini ("year of the Lord"), and the equivalent alternative "CE", are based on the approximate birthdate of Jesus.[36][j]
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+ Jesus is also revered outside of Christianity. In Islam, Jesus (commonly transliterated as Isa) is considered one of God's important prophets and a messiah.[38][39][40] Muslims believe Jesus was born of a virgin, but was neither God nor a begotten God. The Quran states that Jesus never claimed divinity.[41] Muslims do not believe that he was killed or crucified, but that he was physically raised into Heaven by God. In contrast, Judaism rejects the belief that Jesus was the awaited Messiah, arguing that he did not fulfill Messianic prophecies, and was neither divine nor resurrected.[42]
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+ A typical Jew in Jesus' time had only one name, sometimes followed by the phrase "son of [father's name]", or the individual's hometown.[43] Thus, in the New Testament, Jesus is commonly referred to as "Jesus of Nazareth"[k] (e.g., Mark 10:47).[44] Jesus' neighbors in Nazareth refer to him as "the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon" (Mark 6:3),[45] "the carpenter's son" (Matthew 13:55),[46] or "Joseph's son" (Luke 4:22).[47] In the Gospel of John, the disciple Philip refers to him as "Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth" (John 1:45).[48]
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+ The English name Jesus is derived from the Latin Iesus, a transliteration of the Greek Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoûs).[49] The Greek form is a rendering of the Hebrew ישוע‎ (Yeshua), a variant of the earlier name יהושע‎ (Yehoshua), or in English, "Joshua",[50][51][52][53] meaning "Yah saves".[54][55] This was also the name of Moses' successor[56] and of a Jewish high priest in the Old Testament.[57]
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+ The name Yeshua appears to have been in use in Judea at the time of the birth of Jesus.[58] The 1st-century works of historian Flavius Josephus, who wrote in Koine Greek, the same language as that of the New Testament,[59] refer to at least twenty different people with the name Jesus (i.e. Ἰησοῦς).[60] The etymology of Jesus' name in the context of the New Testament is generally given as "Yahweh is salvation".[61]
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+ Since the early period of Christianity, Christians have commonly referred to Jesus as "Jesus Christ".[62] "Jesus Christ" is the name that the author of the Gospel of John claims Jesus gave to himself during his high priestly prayer.[63] The word Christ was a title or office ("the Christ"), not a given name.[64][65] It derives from the Greek Χριστός (Christos),[49][66] a translation of the Hebrew mashiakh (משיח) meaning "anointed", and is usually transliterated into English as "Messiah".[67][68] In biblical Judaism, sacred oil was used to anoint certain exceptionally holy people and objects as part of their religious investiture (see Leviticus 8:10–12 and Exodus 30:29).
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+ Christians of the time designated Jesus as "the Christ" because they believed him to be the Messiah, whose arrival is prophesied in the Hebrew Bible and Old Testament. In postbiblical usage, Christ became viewed as a name—one part of "Jesus Christ". The term Christian (meaning a follower of Christ) has been in use since the 1st century.[69]
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+ Portals: Christianity Bible
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+ The four canonical gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) are the foremost sources for the life and message of Jesus.[43] However, other parts of the New Testament also include references to key episodes in his life, such as the Last Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26.[70][71][72] Acts of the Apostles (Acts 10:37–38 and Acts 19:4) refers to the early ministry of Jesus and its anticipation by John the Baptist.[73][74] Acts 1:1–11 says more about the Ascension of Jesus (also mentioned in 1 Timothy 3:16) than the canonical gospels do.[75] In the undisputed Pauline letters, which were written earlier than the gospels, the words or instructions of Jesus are cited several times (1 Corinthians 7:10–11, 9:14, 11:23–25, 2 Corinthians 12:9).[l]
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+ Some early Christian groups had separate descriptions of the life and teachings of Jesus that are not included in the New Testament. These include the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, and Gospel of Judas, the Apocryphon of James, and many other apocryphal writings. Most scholars conclude that these are written much later and are less reliable accounts than the canonical gospels.[77][78][79]
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+ The canonical gospels are four accounts, each written by a different author. The authors of the gospels are all anonymous, attributed by tradition to the four evangelists, each with close ties to Jesus:[80] Mark by John Mark, an associate of Peter;[81] Matthew by one of Jesus' disciples;[80] Luke by a companion of Paul mentioned in a few epistles;[80] and John by another of Jesus' disciples,[80] the "beloved disciple".[82]
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+ One important aspect of the study of the gospels is the literary genre under which they fall. Genre "is a key convention guiding both the composition and the interpretation of writings".[83] Whether the gospel authors set out to write novels, myths, histories, or biographies has a tremendous impact on how they ought to be interpreted. Some recent studies suggest that the genre of the gospels ought to be situated within the realm of ancient biography.[84][85][86] Although not without critics,[87] the position that the gospels are a type of ancient biography is the consensus among scholars today.[88][89]
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+ Concerning the accuracy of the accounts, viewpoints run the gamut from considering them as inerrant descriptions of the life of Jesus,[90] to doubting whether they are historically reliable on a number of points,[91] to considering them to provide very little historical information about his life beyond the basics.[92][93] According to a broad scholarly consensus, the Synoptic Gospels (the first three – Matthew, Mark, and Luke), are the most reliable sources of information about Jesus.[94][95][43]
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+ According to the Marcan priority, the first to be written was the Gospel of Mark (written AD 60–75), followed by the Gospel of Matthew (AD 65–85), the Gospel of Luke (AD 65–95), and the Gospel of John (AD 75–100).[96] Furthermore, most scholars agree that the authors of Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source when writing their gospels. Since Matthew and Luke also share some content not found in Mark, many scholars explain this by assuming that another source (commonly called the "Q source") was used by these two authors in addition to Mark.[97]
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+ Matthew, Mark, and Luke are known as the Synoptic Gospels, from the Greek σύν (syn "together") and ὄψις (opsis "view").[98][99][100] They are similar in content, narrative arrangement, language and paragraph structure.[98][99] Scholars generally agree that it is impossible to find any direct literary relationship between the Synoptic Gospels and the Gospel of John.[101] While the flow of some events (such as Jesus' baptism, transfiguration, crucifixion and interactions with the apostles) are shared among the Synoptic Gospels, incidents such as the transfiguration do not appear in John, which also differs on other matters, such as the Cleansing of the Temple.[102]
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+ The Synoptics emphasize different aspects of Jesus. In Mark, Jesus is the Son of God whose mighty works demonstrate the presence of God's Kingdom.[81] He is a tireless wonder worker, the servant of both God and man.[105] This short gospel records few of Jesus' words or teachings.[81] The Gospel of Matthew emphasizes that Jesus is the fulfillment of God's will as revealed in the Old Testament, and he is the Lord of the Church.[106] He is the "Son of David", a "king", and the Messiah.[105][13][14] Luke presents Jesus as the divine-human savior who shows compassion to the needy.[107] He is the friend of sinners and outcasts, come to seek and save the lost.[105] This gospel includes well-known parables, such as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.[107]
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+ The prologue to the Gospel of John identifies Jesus as an incarnation of the divine Word (Logos).[108]
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+ As the Word, Jesus was eternally present with God, active in all creation, and the source of humanity's moral and spiritual nature.[108] Jesus is not only greater than any past human prophet but greater than any prophet could be. He not only speaks God's Word; he is God's Word.[109] In the Gospel of John, Jesus reveals his divine role publicly. Here he is the Bread of Life, the Light of the World, the True Vine and more.[105]
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+ In general, the authors of the New Testament showed little interest in an absolute chronology of Jesus or in synchronizing the episodes of his life with the secular history of the age.[110] As stated in John 21:25, the gospels do not claim to provide an exhaustive list of the events in the life of Jesus.[111] The accounts were primarily written as theological documents in the context of early Christianity, with timelines as a secondary consideration.[112] In this respect, it is noteworthy that the Gospels devote about one third of their text to the last week of the life of Jesus in Jerusalem, referred to as the Passion.[113] Although the gospels do not provide enough details to satisfy the demands of modern historians regarding exact dates, it is possible to draw from them a general picture of the life story of Jesus.[91][110][112]
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+ Jesus was Jewish,[12] born to Mary, wife of Joseph (Matthew 1; Luke 2). The Gospels of Matthew and Luke offer two accounts of the genealogy of Jesus. Matthew traces Jesus' ancestry to Abraham through David.[114][115] Luke traces Jesus' ancestry through Adam to God.[116][117] The lists are identical between Abraham and David, but differ radically from that point. Matthew has twenty-seven generations from David to Joseph, whereas Luke has forty-two, with almost no overlap between the names on the two lists.[m][118] Various theories have been put forward seeking to explain why the two genealogies are so different.[n]
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+ Matthew and Luke each describe Jesus' birth, especially that Jesus was born to a virgin named Mary in Bethlehem in fulfillment of prophecy. Luke's account emphasizes events before the birth of Jesus and centers on Mary, while Matthew's mostly covers those after the birth and centers on Joseph.[119][120][121] Both accounts state that Jesus was born to Joseph and Mary, his betrothed, in Bethlehem, and both support the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus, according to which Jesus was miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary's womb when she was still a virgin.[122][123][124] At the same time, there is evidence, at least in the Lukan Acts of the Apostles, that Jesus was thought to have had, like many figures in antiquity, a dual paternity, since there it is stated he descended from the seed or loins of David.[125] By taking him as his own, Joseph will give him the necessary Davidic descent.[126]
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+ In Matthew, Joseph is troubled because Mary, his betrothed, is pregnant (Matthew 1:19–20), but in the first of Joseph's three dreams an angel assures him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because her child was conceived by the Holy Spirit.[127]
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+ In Matthew 2:1–12, wise men or Magi from the East bring gifts to the young Jesus as the King of the Jews. They find Jesus in a house in Bethlehem. Jesus is now a child and not an infant. Matthew focuses on an event after the Luke Nativity where Jesus was an infant. In Matthew Herod the Great hears of Jesus' birth and, wanting him killed, orders the murders of male infants in Bethlehem under age of 2. But an angel warns Joseph in his second dream, and the family flees to Egypt—later to return and settle in Nazareth.[127][128][129]
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+ In Luke 1:31–38, Mary learns from the angel Gabriel that she will conceive and bear a child called Jesus through the action of the Holy Spirit.[120][122] When Mary is due to give birth, she and Joseph travel from Nazareth to Joseph's ancestral home in Bethlehem to register in the census ordered by Caesar Augustus. While there Mary gives birth to Jesus, and as they have found no room in the inn, she places the newborn in a manger (Luke 2:1–7). An angel announces the birth to a group of shepherds, who go to Bethlehem to see Jesus, and subsequently spread the news abroad (Luke 2:8–20). After the presentation of Jesus at the Temple, Joseph, Mary and Jesus return to Nazareth.[120][122]
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+ Jesus' childhood home is identified in the gospels of Luke and Matthew as the town of Nazareth in Galilee, where he lived with his family. Although Joseph appears in descriptions of Jesus' childhood, no mention is made of him thereafter.[130] His other family members—his mother, Mary, his brothers James, Joses (or Joseph), Judas and Simon and his unnamed sisters—are mentioned in the gospels and other sources.[131]
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+ The Gospel of Mark reports that Jesus comes into conflict with his neighbors and family.[132]
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+ Jesus' mother and brothers come to get him (Mark 3:31–35) because people are saying that he is crazy (Mark 3:21).
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+ Jesus responds that his followers are his true family.
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+ In John, Mary follows Jesus to his crucifixion, and he expresses concern over her well-being (John 19:25–27).
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+ Jesus is called a τέκτων (tektōn) in Mark 6:3, traditionally understood as carpenter but it could cover makers of objects in various materials, including builders.[133][134] The gospels indicate that Jesus could read, paraphrase, and debate scripture, but this does not necessarily mean that he received formal scribal training.[135]
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+ When Jesus is presented as a baby in the temple per Jewish Law, a man named Simeon says to Mary and Joseph that Jesus "shall stand as a sign of contradiction, while a sword will pierce your own soul. Then the secret thoughts of many will come to light" (Luke 2:28–35). Several years later, when Jesus goes missing on a visit to Jerusalem, his parents find him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking questions, and the people are amazed at his understanding and answers; Mary scolds Jesus for going missing, to which Jesus replies that he must "be in his father's house" (Luke 2:41–52).
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+ The Synoptic accounts of Jesus' baptism are all preceded by information about John the Baptist.[136][137][138] They show John preaching penance and repentance for the remission of sins and encouraging the giving of alms to the poor (Luke 3:11) as he baptizes people in the area of the Jordan River around Perea and foretells (Luke 3:16) the arrival of someone "more powerful" than he.[139][140]
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+ Later, Jesus identifies John as "the Elijah who was to come" (Matthew 11:14, Mark 9:13–14), the prophet who was expected to arrive before the "great and terrible day of the Lord" (Malachi 4:5). Likewise, Luke says that John had the spirit and power of Elijah (Luke 1:17).
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+ In Mark, John baptizes Jesus, and as he comes out of the water he sees the Holy Spirit descending to him like a dove and he hears a voice from heaven declaring him to be God's Son (Mark 1:9–11). This is one of two events described in the gospels where a voice from Heaven calls Jesus "Son", the other being the Transfiguration.[141][142] The spirit then drives him into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan (Mark 1:12–13). Jesus then begins his ministry after John's arrest (Mark 1:14). Jesus' baptism in Matthew is similar. Here, before Jesus' baptism, John protests, saying, "I need to be baptized by you" (Matthew 3:14). Jesus instructs him to carry on with the baptism "to fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15). Matthew also details the three temptations that Satan offers Jesus in the wilderness (Matthew 4:3–11). In Luke, the Holy Spirit descends as a dove after everyone has been baptized and Jesus is praying (Luke 3:21–22). John implicitly recognizes Jesus from prison after sending his followers to ask about him (Luke 7:18–23). Jesus' baptism and temptation serve as preparation for his public ministry.[143]
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+ The Gospel of John leaves out Jesus' baptism and temptation.[144] Here, John the Baptist testifies that he saw the Spirit descend on Jesus (John 1:32).[140][145] John publicly proclaims Jesus as the sacrificial Lamb of God, and some of John's followers become disciples of Jesus.[95] In this Gospel, John denies that he is Elijah (John 1:21). Before John is imprisoned, Jesus leads his followers to baptize disciples as well (John 3:22–24), and they baptize more people than John (John 4:1).
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+ The Synoptics depict two distinct geographical settings in Jesus' ministry. The first takes place north of Judea, in Galilee, where Jesus conducts a successful ministry; and the second shows Jesus rejected and killed when he travels to Jerusalem.[25] Often referred to as "rabbi",[25] Jesus preaches his message orally.[24] Notably, Jesus forbids those who recognize him as the Messiah to speak of it, including people he heals and demons he exorcises (see Messianic Secret).[146]
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+ John depicts Jesus' ministry as largely taking place in and around Jerusalem, rather than in Galilee; and Jesus' divine identity is openly proclaimed and immediately recognized.[109]
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+ Scholars divide the ministry of Jesus into several stages. The Galilean ministry begins when Jesus returns to Galilee from the Judaean Desert after rebuffing the temptation of Satan. Jesus preaches around Galilee, and in Matthew 4:18–20, his first disciples, who will eventually form the core of the early Church, encounter him and begin to travel with him.[138][147] This period includes the Sermon on the Mount, one of Jesus' major discourses,[147][148] as well as the calming of the storm, the feeding of the 5,000, walking on water and a number of other miracles and parables.[149] It ends with the Confession of Peter and the Transfiguration.[150][151]
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+ As Jesus travels towards Jerusalem, in the Perean ministry, he returns to the area where he was baptized, about a third of the way down from the Sea of Galilee along the Jordan River (John 10:40–42).[152][153] The final ministry in Jerusalem begins with Jesus' triumphal entry into the city on Palm Sunday.[154] In the Synoptic Gospels, during that week Jesus drives the money changers from the Second Temple and Judas bargains to betray him. This period culminates in the Last Supper and the Farewell Discourse.[136][154][155]
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+ Near the beginning of his ministry, Jesus appoints twelve apostles. In Matthew and Mark, despite Jesus only briefly requesting that they join him, Jesus' first four apostles, who were fishermen, are described as immediately consenting, and abandoning their nets and boats to do so (Matthew 4:18–22, Mark 1:16–20). In John, Jesus' first two apostles were disciples of John the Baptist. The Baptist sees Jesus and calls him the Lamb of God; the two hear this and follow Jesus.[156][157] In addition to the Twelve Apostles, the opening of the passage of the Sermon on the Plain identifies a much larger group of people as disciples (Luke 6:17). Also, in Luke 10:1–16 Jesus sends seventy or seventy-two of his followers in pairs to prepare towns for his prospective visit. They are instructed to accept hospitality, heal the sick and spread the word that the Kingdom of God is coming.[158]
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+ In Mark, the disciples are notably obtuse. They fail to understand Jesus' miracles (Mark 4:35–41, Mark 6:52), his parables (Mark 4:13), or what "rising from the dead" would mean (Mark 9:9–10). When Jesus is later arrested, they desert him.[146]
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+ In the Synoptics, Jesus teaches extensively, often in parables,[159] about the Kingdom of God (or, in Matthew, the Kingdom of Heaven). The Kingdom is described as both imminent (Mark 1:15) and already present in the ministry of Jesus (Luke 17:21). Jesus promises inclusion in the Kingdom for those who accept his message (Mark 10:13–27). Jesus talks of the "Son of Man," an apocalyptic figure who would come to gather the chosen.[43]
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+ Jesus calls people to repent their sins and to devote themselves completely to God.[43] Jesus tells his followers to adhere to Jewish law, although he is perceived by some to have broken the law himself, for example regarding the Sabbath.[43] When asked what the greatest commandment is, Jesus replies: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind ... And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:37–39). Other ethical teachings of Jesus include loving your enemies, refraining from hatred and lust, turning the other cheek, and forgiving people who have sinned against you (Matthew 5–7).[160]
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+ John's Gospel presents the teachings of Jesus not merely as his own preaching, but as divine revelation. John the Baptist, for example, states in John 3:34: "He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure." In John 7:16 Jesus says, "My teaching is not mine but his who sent me." He asserts the same thing in John 14:10: "Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works."[161][162]
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+ Approximately thirty parables form about one third of Jesus' recorded teachings.[161][163] The parables appear within longer sermons and at other places in the narrative.[164] They often contain symbolism, and usually relate the physical world to the spiritual.[165][166] Common themes in these tales include the kindness and generosity of God and the perils of transgression.[167] Some of his parables, such as the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11–32), are relatively simple, while others, such as the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26–29), are sophisticated, profound and abstruse.[168] When asked by his disciples about why he speaks in parables to the people, Jesus replies that the chosen disciples have been given to "know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven", unlike the rest of their people, "For the one who has will be given more and he will have in abundance. But the one who does not have will be deprived even more.", going on to say that the majority of their generation have grown "dull hearts" and thus are unable to understand (Matthew 13:10–17).
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+ In the gospel accounts, Jesus devotes a large portion of his ministry performing miracles, especially healings.[169] The miracles can be classified into two main categories: healing miracles and nature miracles.[170] The healing miracles include cures for physical ailments, exorcisms,[103][171] and resurrections of the dead.[172] The nature miracles show Jesus' power over nature, and include turning water into wine, walking on water, and calming a storm, among others. Jesus states that his miracles are from a divine source. When Jesus' opponents suddenly accuse him of performing exorcisms by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, Jesus counters that he performs them by the "Spirit of God" (Matthew 12:28) or "finger of God", arguing that all logic suggests that Satan would not let his demons assist the Children of God because it would divide Satan's house and bring his kingdom to desolation; furthermore, he asks his opponents that if he exorcises by Beel'zebub, "by whom do your sons cast them out?"(Luke 11:20).[173][174] In Matthew 12:31–32, he goes on to say that while all manner of sin, "even insults against God" or "insults against the son of man", shall be forgiven, whoever insults goodness (or "The Holy Spirit") shall never be forgiven; he/she carries the guilt of his/her sin forever.
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+ In John, Jesus' miracles are described as "signs", performed to prove his mission and divinity.[175][176] However, in the Synoptics, when asked by some teachers of the Law and some Pharisees to give miraculous signs to prove his authority, Jesus refuses,[175] saying that no sign shall come to corrupt and evil people except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Also, in the Synoptic Gospels, the crowds regularly respond to Jesus' miracles with awe and press on him to heal their sick. In John's Gospel, Jesus is presented as unpressured by the crowds, who often respond to his miracles with trust and faith.[177] One characteristic shared among all miracles of Jesus in the gospel accounts is that he performed them freely and never requested or accepted any form of payment.[178] The gospel episodes that include descriptions of the miracles of Jesus also often include teachings, and the miracles themselves involve an element of teaching.[179][180] Many of the miracles teach the importance of faith. In the cleansing of ten lepers and the raising of Jairus' daughter, for instance, the beneficiaries are told that their healing was due to their faith.[181][182]
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+ At about the middle of each of the three Synoptic Gospels are two significant events: the Confession of Peter and the Transfiguration of Jesus.[151][183][141][142] These two events are not mentioned in the Gospel of John.[184]
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+ In his Confession, Peter tells Jesus, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."[185][186][187] Jesus affirms that Peter's confession is divinely revealed truth.[188][189] After the confession, Jesus tells his disciples about his upcoming death and resurrection (Matthew 16:21, Mark 8:31, Luke 9:22)
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+ In the Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–9, Mark 9:2–8, and Luke 9:28–36),[141][142][151] Jesus takes Peter and two other apostles up an unnamed mountain, where "he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white."[190] A bright cloud appears around them, and a voice from the cloud says, "This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him" (Matthew 17:1–9).[141]
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+ The description of the last week of the life of Jesus (often called Passion Week) occupies about one third of the narrative in the canonical gospels,[113] starting with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem and ending with his Crucifixion.[136][154]
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+ In the Synoptics, the last week in Jerusalem is the conclusion of the journey through Perea and Judea that Jesus began in Galilee.[154]
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+ Jesus rides a young donkey into Jerusalem, reflecting the tale of the Messiah's Donkey, an oracle from the Book of Zechariah in which the Jews' humble king enters Jerusalem this way (Zechariah 9:9).[81] People along the way lay cloaks and small branches of trees (known as palm fronds) in front of him and sing part of Psalms 118:25–26.[191][192][193]
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+ Jesus next expels the money changers from the Second Temple, accusing them of turning it into a den of thieves through their commercial activities. Jesus then prophesies about the coming destruction, including false prophets, wars, earthquakes, celestial disorders, persecution of the faithful, the appearance of an "abomination of desolation," and unendurable tribulations (Mark 13:1–23). The mysterious "Son of Man," he says, will dispatch angels to gather the faithful from all parts of the earth (Mark 13:24–27). Jesus warns that these wonders will occur in the lifetimes of the hearers (Mark 13:28–32).[146] In John, the Cleansing of the Temple occurs at the beginning of Jesus' ministry instead of at the end (John 2:13–16).[109]
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+ Jesus comes into conflict with the Jewish elders, such as when they question his authority and when he criticizes them and calls them hypocrites.[191][193] Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve apostles, secretly strikes a bargain with the Jewish elders, agreeing to betray Jesus to them for 30 silver coins.[194][195]
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+ The Gospel of John recounts of two other feasts in which Jesus taught in Jerusalem before the Passion Week (John 7:1–10:42).[132] In Bethany, a village near Jerusalem, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. This potent sign[109] increases the tension with authorities,[154] who conspire to kill him (John 11).[132] Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus' feet, foreshadowing his entombment.[196] Jesus then makes his Messianic entry into Jerusalem.[132]
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+ The cheering crowds greeting Jesus as he enters Jerusalem add to the animosity between him and the establishment.[154] In John, Jesus has already cleansed the Second Temple during an earlier Passover visit to Jerusalem. John next recounts Jesus' Last Supper with his disciples.[132]
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+ The Last Supper is the final meal that Jesus shares with his 12 apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. The Last Supper is mentioned in all four canonical gospels; Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (11:23–26) also refers to it.[71][72][197] During the meal, Jesus predicts that one of his apostles will betray him.[198] Despite each Apostle's assertion that he would not betray him, Jesus reiterates that the betrayer would be one of those present. Matthew 26:23–25 and John 13:26–27 specifically identify Judas as the traitor.[71][72][198]
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+ In the Synoptics, Jesus takes bread, breaks it, and gives it to the disciples, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you". He then has them all drink from a cup, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood" (Luke 22:19–20).[71][199] The Christian sacrament or ordinance of the Eucharist is based on these events.[200] Although the Gospel of John does not include a description of the bread-and-wine ritual during the Last Supper, most scholars agree that John 6:22–59 (the Bread of Life Discourse) has a eucharistic character and resonates with the institution narratives in the Synoptic Gospels and in the Pauline writings on the Last Supper.[201]
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+ In all four gospels, Jesus predicts that Peter will deny knowledge of him three times before the rooster crows the next morning.[202][203] In Luke and John, the prediction is made during the Supper (Luke 22:34, John 22:34). In Matthew and Mark, the prediction is made after the Supper; Jesus also predicts that all his disciples will desert him (Matthew 26:31–34, Mark 14:27–30).[204] The Gospel of John provides the only account of Jesus washing his disciples' feet after the meal.[128] John also includes a long sermon by Jesus, preparing his disciples (now without Judas) for his departure. Chapters 14–17 of the Gospel of John are known as the Farewell Discourse and are a significant source of Christological content.[205][206]
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+ In the Synoptics, Jesus and his disciples go to the garden Gethsemane, where Jesus prays to be spared his coming ordeal. Then Judas comes with an armed mob, sent by the chief priests, scribes and elders. He kisses Jesus to identify him to the crowd, which then arrests Jesus. In an attempt to stop them, an unnamed disciple of Jesus uses a sword to cut off the ear of a man in the crowd. After Jesus' arrest, his disciples go into hiding, and Peter, when questioned, thrice denies knowing Jesus. After the third denial, Peter hears the rooster crow and recalls Jesus' prediction about his denial. Peter then weeps bitterly.[204][146][202]
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+ In John (18:1–11), Jesus does not pray to be spared his crucifixion, as the gospel portrays him as scarcely touched by such human weakness.[207] The people who arrest him are Roman soldiers and Temple guards.[208] Instead of being betrayed by a kiss, Jesus proclaims his identity, and when he does, the soldiers and officers fall to the ground. The gospel identifies Peter as the disciple who used the sword, and Jesus rebukes him for it.
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+ After his arrest, Jesus is taken to the Sanhedrin, a Jewish judicial body.[209] The gospel accounts differ on the details of the trials.[210] In Matthew 26:57, Mark 14:53 and Luke 22:54, Jesus is taken to the house of the high priest, Caiaphas, where he is mocked and beaten that night. Early the next morning, the chief priests and scribes lead Jesus away into their council.[211][212][213] John 18:12–14 states that Jesus is first taken to Annas, Caiaphas' father-in-law, and then to the high priest.[211][212][213]
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+
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+ During the trials Jesus speaks very little, mounts no defense, and gives very infrequent and indirect answers to the priests' questions, prompting an officer to slap him. In Matthew 26:62 Jesus' unresponsiveness leads Caiaphas to ask him, "Have you no answer?"[211][212][213] In Mark 14:61 the high priest then asks Jesus, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?" Jesus replies, "I am", and then predicts the coming of the Son of Man.[43] This provokes Caiaphas to tear his own robe in anger and to accuse Jesus of blasphemy. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus' answer is more ambiguous:[43][214] in Matthew 26:64 he responds, "You have said so", and in Luke 22:70 he says, "You say that I am".[215][216]
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+ The Jewish elders take Jesus to Pilate's Court and ask the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, to judge and condemn Jesus for various allegations, accusing him of blasphemy, perverting the nation, forbidding the payment of tribute, inciting sedition against Rome, sorcery, claiming to be the King of the Jews, the Son of God, and a savior to the world.[213] The use of the word "king" is central to the discussion between Jesus and Pilate. In John 18:36 Jesus states, "My kingdom is not from this world", but he does not unequivocally deny being the King of the Jews.[217][218] In Luke 23:7–15 Pilate realizes that Jesus is a Galilean, and thus comes under the jurisdiction of Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea.[219][220] Pilate sends Jesus to Herod to be tried,[221] but Jesus says almost nothing in response to Herod's questions. Herod and his soldiers mock Jesus, put an expensive robe on him to make him look like a king, and return him to Pilate,[219] who then calls together the Jewish elders and announces that he has "not found this man guilty".[221]
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+ Observing a Passover custom of the time, Pilate allows one prisoner chosen by the crowd to be released. He gives the people a choice between Jesus and a murderer called Barabbas (בר-אבא or Bar-abbâ, "son of the father", from the common given name Abba: 'father').[222] Persuaded by the elders (Matthew 27:20), the mob chooses to release Barabbas and crucify Jesus.[223] Pilate writes a sign in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek that reads "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews" (abbreviated as INRI in depictions) to be affixed to Jesus' cross (John 19:19–20),[224] then scourges Jesus and sends him to be crucified. The soldiers place a Crown of Thorns on Jesus' head and ridicule him as the King of the Jews. They beat and taunt him before taking him to Calvary,[225] also called Golgotha, for crucifixion.[211][213][226]
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+
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+ Jesus' crucifixion is described in all four canonical gospels. After the trials, Jesus is led to Calvary carrying his cross; the route traditionally thought to have been taken is known as the Via Dolorosa. The three Synoptic Gospels indicate that Simon of Cyrene assists him, having been compelled by the Romans to do so.[227][228] In Luke 23:27–28 Jesus tells the women in the multitude of people following him not to weep for him but for themselves and their children.[227] At Calvary, Jesus is offered a sponge soaked in a concoction usually offered as a painkiller. According to Matthew and Mark, he refuses it.[227][228]
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+
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+ The soldiers then crucify Jesus and cast lots for his clothes. Above Jesus' head on the cross is Pilate's inscription, "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." Soldiers and passersby mock him about it. Two convicted thieves are crucified along with Jesus. In Matthew and Mark, both thieves mock Jesus. In Luke, one of them rebukes Jesus, while the other defends him.[227][229][230] Jesus tells the latter: "today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). In John, Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the beloved disciple were at the crucifixion. Jesus tells the beloved disciple to take care of his mother (John 19:26–27).
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+ The Roman soldiers break the two thieves' legs (a procedure designed to hasten death in a crucifixion), but they do not break those of Jesus, as he is already dead (John 19:33). In John 19:34, one soldier pierces Jesus' side with a lance, and blood and water flow out.[229] In the Synoptics, when Jesus dies, the heavy curtain at the Temple is torn. In Matthew 27:51–54, an earthquake breaks open tombs. In Matthew and Mark, terrified by the events, a Roman centurion states that Jesus was the Son of God.[227][231]
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+ On the same day, Joseph of Arimathea, with Pilate's permission and with Nicodemus' help, removes Jesus' body from the cross, wraps him in a clean cloth, and buries him in his new rock-hewn tomb.[227] In Matthew 27:62–66, on the following day the chief Jewish priests ask Pilate for the tomb to be secured, and with Pilate's permission the priests place seals on the large stone covering the entrance.[227][232]
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+
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+ Mary Magdalene (alone in the Gospel of John, but accompanied by other women in the Synoptics) goes to Jesus' tomb on Sunday morning and is surprised to find it empty. Despite Jesus' teaching, the disciples had not understood that Jesus would rise again.[233]
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+
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+ Jesus' ascension into Heaven is described in Luke 24:50–53, Acts 1:1–11 and mentioned in 1 Timothy 3:16. In the Acts of the Apostles, forty days after the Resurrection, as the disciples look on, "he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight". 1 Peter 3:22 states that Jesus has "gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God".[75]
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+ The Acts of the Apostles describes several appearances of Jesus after his Ascension. In Acts 7:55, Stephen gazes into heaven and sees "Jesus standing at the right hand of God" just before his death.[236] On the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul is converted to Christianity after seeing a blinding light and hearing a voice saying, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting" (Acts 9:5). In Acts 9:10–18, Jesus instructs Ananias of Damascus in a vision to heal Paul.[237] The Book of Revelation includes a revelation from Jesus concerning the last days.[238]
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+
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+ After Jesus' life, his followers, as described in the first chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, were all Jews either by birth or conversion, for which the biblical term "proselyte" is used,[239] and referred to by historians as Jewish Christians. The early Gospel message was spread orally, probably in Aramaic,[240] but almost immediately also in Greek.[241] The New Testament's Acts of the Apostles and Epistle to the Galatians record that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included Peter, James, the brother of Jesus, and John the Apostle.[242]
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+ After the conversion of Paul the Apostle, he claimed the title of "Apostle to the Gentiles". Paul's influence on Christian thinking is said to be more significant than that of any other New Testament author.[243] By the end of the 1st century, Christianity began to be recognized internally and externally as a separate religion from Judaism which itself was refined and developed further in the centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple.[244]
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+ Numerous quotations in the New Testament and other Christian writings of the first centuries, indicate that early Christians generally used and revered the Hebrew Bible (the Tanakh) as religious text, mostly in the Greek (Septuagint) or Aramaic (Targum) translations.[245]
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+ Early Christians wrote many religious works, including the ones included in the canon of the New Testament. The canonical texts, which have become the main sources used by historians to try to understand the historical Jesus and sacred texts within Christianity, were probably written between 50 and 120 AD.[246]
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+
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+ Prior to the Enlightenment, the gospels were usually regarded as accurate historical accounts, but since then scholars have emerged who question the reliability of the gospels and draw a distinction between the Jesus described in the gospels and the Jesus of history.[247] Since the 18th century, three separate scholarly quests for the historical Jesus have taken place, each with distinct characteristics and based on different research criteria, which were often developed during the quest that applied them.[103][248] While there is widespread scholarly agreement on the existence of Jesus,[g] and a basic consensus on the general outline of his life,[o] the portraits of Jesus constructed by various scholars often differ from each other, and from the image portrayed in the gospel accounts.[250][251]
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+ Approaches to the historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus have varied from the "maximalist" approaches of the 19th century, in which the gospel accounts were accepted as reliable evidence wherever it is possible, to the "minimalist" approaches of the early 20th century, where hardly anything about Jesus was accepted as historical.[252] In the 1950s, as the second quest for the historical Jesus gathered pace, the minimalist approaches faded away, and in the 21st century, minimalists such as Price are a very small minority.[253][254] Although a belief in the inerrancy of the gospels cannot be supported historically, many scholars since the 1980s have held that, beyond the few facts considered to be historically certain, certain other elements of Jesus' life are "historically probable".[253][255][256] Modern scholarly research on the historical Jesus thus focuses on identifying the most probable elements.[257][258]
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+ In AD 6, Judea, Idumea, and Samaria were transformed from a client kingdom of the Roman Empire into an imperial province, also called Judea. A Roman prefect, rather than a client king, ruled the land. The prefect ruled from Caesarea Maritima, leaving Jerusalem to be run by the High Priest of Israel. As an exception, the prefect came to Jerusalem during religious festivals, when religious and patriotic enthusiasm sometimes inspired unrest or uprisings. Gentile lands surrounded the Jewish territories of Judea and Galilee, but Roman law and practice allowed Jews to remain separate legally and culturally. Galilee was evidently prosperous, and poverty was limited enough that it did not threaten the social order.[43]
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+ This was the era of Hellenistic Judaism, which combined Jewish religious tradition with elements of Hellenistic Greek culture. Until the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Muslim conquests of the Eastern Mediterranean, the main centers of Hellenistic Judaism were Alexandria (Egypt) and Antioch (now Southern Turkey), the two main Greek urban settlements of the Middle East and North Africa area, both founded at the end of the 4th century BCE in the wake of the conquests of Alexander the Great. Hellenistic Judaism also existed in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Period, where there was conflict between Hellenizers and traditionalists (sometimes called Judaizers). The Hebrew Bible was translated from Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Aramaic into Jewish Koine Greek; the Targum translations into Aramaic were also generated during this era, both due to the decline of knowledge of Hebrew.[259]
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+ Jews based their faith and religious practice on the Torah, five books said to have been given by God to Moses. The three prominent religious parties were the Pharisees, the Essenes, and the Sadducees. Together these parties represented only a small fraction of the population. Most Jews looked forward to a time that God would deliver them from their pagan rulers, possibly through war against the Romans.[43]
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+ New Testament scholars face a formidable challenge when they analyze the canonical Gospels.[261]
166
+ The Gospels are not biographies in the modern sense, and the authors explain Jesus' theological significance and recount his public ministry while omitting many details of his life.[261]
167
+ The reports of supernatural events associated with Jesus' death and resurrection make the challenge even more difficult.[261]
168
+ Scholars regard the gospels as compromised sources of information because the writers were trying to glorify Jesus.[91]
169
+ Even so, the sources for Jesus' life are better than sources scholars have for the life of Alexander the Great.[91]
170
+ Scholars use a number of criteria, such as the criterion of independent attestation, the criterion of coherence, and the criterion of discontinuity to judge the historicity of events.[262] The historicity of an event also depends on the reliability of the source; indeed, the gospels are not independent nor consistent records of Jesus' life. Mark, which is most likely the earliest written gospel, has been considered for many decades the most historically accurate.[263] John, the latest written gospel, differs considerably from the Synoptic Gospels, and thus is generally considered less reliable, although more and more scholars now also recognize that it may contain a core of older material as historically valuable as the Synoptic tradition or even more so.[264]
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+ The non-canonical Gospel of Thomas might be an independent witness to many of Jesus' parables and aphorisms. For example, Thomas confirms that Jesus blessed the poor and that this saying circulated independently before being combined with similar sayings in the Q source.[265] Other select non-canonical Christian texts may also have value for historical Jesus research.[95]
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+ Early non-Christian sources that attest to the historical existence of Jesus include the works of the historians Josephus and Tacitus.[p][260][267] Josephus scholar Louis Feldman has stated that "few have doubted the genuineness" of Josephus' reference to Jesus in book 20 of the Antiquities of the Jews, and it is disputed only by a small number of scholars.[268][269] Tacitus referred to Christ and his execution by Pilate in book 15 of his work Annals. Scholars generally consider Tacitus' reference to the execution of Jesus to be both authentic and of historical value as an independent Roman source.[270]
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+ Non-Christian sources are valuable in two ways. First, they show that even neutral or hostile parties never show any doubt that Jesus actually existed. Second, they present a rough picture of Jesus that is compatible with that found in the Christian sources: that Jesus was a teacher, had a reputation as a miracle worker, had a brother James, and died a violent death.[11]
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+ Archaeology helps scholars better understand Jesus' social world.[271] Recent archaeological work, for example, indicates that Capernaum, a city important in Jesus' ministry, was poor and small, without even a forum or an agora.[272][273] This archaeological discovery resonates well with the scholarly view that Jesus advocated reciprocal sharing among the destitute in that area of Galilee.[272]
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+ Jesus was a Galilean Jew,[12] born around the beginning of the 1st century, who died in 30 or 33 AD in Judea.[6] The general scholarly consensus is that Jesus was a contemporary of John the Baptist and was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, who held office from 26 to 36 AD.[26]
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+ The gospels offer several indications concerning the year of Jesus' birth. Matthew 2:1 associates the birth of Jesus with the reign of Herod the Great, who died around 4 BC, and Luke 1:5 mentions that Herod was on the throne shortly before the birth of Jesus,[274][275] although this gospel also associates the birth with the Census of Quirinius which took place ten years later.[276][277] Luke 3:23 states that Jesus was "about thirty years old" at the start of his ministry, which according to Acts 10:37–38 was preceded by John the Baptist's ministry, which was recorded in Luke 3:1–2 to have begun in the 15th year of Tiberius' reign (28 or 29 AD).[275][278] By collating the gospel accounts with historical data and using various other methods, most scholars arrive at a date of birth for Jesus between 6 and 4 BC,[278][279] but some propose estimates that include a wider range.[q]
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+ The date range for Jesus' ministry have been estimated using several different approaches.[280][281] One of these applies the reference in Luke 3:1–2, Acts 10:37–38 and the dates of Tiberius' reign, which are well known, to give a date of around 28–29 AD for the start of Jesus' ministry.[282] Another approach estimates a date around 27–29 AD by using the statement about the temple in John 2:13–20, which asserts that the temple in Jerusalem was in its 46th year of construction at the start of Jesus' ministry, together with Josephus' statement that the temple's reconstruction was started by Herod the Great in the 18th year of his reign.[280][283] A further method uses the date of the death of John the Baptist and the marriage of Herod Antipas to Herodias, based on the writings of Josephus, and correlates it with Matthew 14:4 and Mark 6:18.[284][285] Given that most scholars date the marriage of Herod and Herodias as AD 28–35, this yields a date about 28–29 AD.[281]
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+ A number of approaches have been used to estimate the year of the crucifixion of Jesus. Most scholars agree that he died in 30 or 33 AD.[6][286] The gospels state that the event occurred during the prefecture of Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea from 26 to 36 AD.[287][288][289] The date for the conversion of Paul (estimated to be 33–36 AD) acts as an upper bound for the date of Crucifixion. The dates for Paul's conversion and ministry can be determined by analyzing the Pauline epistles and the Acts of the Apostles.[290][291] Astronomers have tried to estimate the precise date of the Crucifixion by analyzing lunar motion and calculating historic dates of Passover, a festival based on the lunisolar Hebrew calendar. The most widely accepted dates derived from this method are April 7, 30 AD, and April 3, 33 AD (both Julian).[292]
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+ Scholars have reached a limited consensus on the basics of Jesus' life.[293]
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+ Many scholars agree that Joseph, Jesus' father, died before Jesus began his ministry. Joseph is not mentioned at all in the gospels during Jesus' ministry. Joseph's death would explain why in Mark 6:3, Jesus' neighbors refer to Jesus as the "son of Mary" (sons were usually identified by their fathers).[294]
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+ According to Theissen and Merz, it is common for extraordinary charismatic leaders, such as Jesus, to come into conflict with their ordinary families.[295] In Mark, Jesus' family comes to get him, fearing that he is mad (Mark 3:20–34), and this account is thought to be historical because early Christians would likely not have invented it.[296] After Jesus' death, many members of his family joined the Christian movement.[295] Jesus' brother James became a leader of the Jerusalem Church.[297]
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+ Géza Vermes says that the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus arose from theological development rather than from historical events.[298]
195
+ Despite the widely held view that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels drew upon each other (the so-called synoptic problem), other scholars take it as significant that the virgin birth is attested by two separate gospels, Matthew and Luke.[299][300][301][302][303][304]
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+
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+ According to E. P. Sanders, the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke are the clearest case of invention in the Gospel narratives of Jesus' life. Both accounts have Jesus born in Bethlehem, in accordance with Jewish salvation history, and both have him growing up in Nazareth. But Sanders points that the two Gospels report completely different and irreconcilable explanations for how that happened. Luke's account of a census in which everyone returned to their ancestral cities is not plausible. Matthew's account is more plausible, but the story reads as though it was invented to identify Jesus as like a new Moses, and the historian Josephus reports Herod the Great's brutality without ever mentioning that he massacred little boys.[305]
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+
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+ Sanders says that the genealogies of Jesus are based not on historical information but on the authors' desire to show that Jesus was the universal Jewish savior.[115] In any event, once the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus became established, that tradition superseded the earlier tradition that he was descended from David through Joseph.[306] Luke reports that Jesus was a blood relation of John the Baptist, but scholars generally consider this connection to be invented.[115][307]
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+ Most modern scholars consider Jesus' baptism to be a definite historical fact, along with his crucifixion.[7] Theologian James D. G. Dunn states that they "command almost universal assent" and "rank so high on the 'almost impossible to doubt or deny' scale of historical facts" that they are often the starting points for the study of the historical Jesus.[7] Scholars adduce the criterion of embarrassment, saying that early Christians would not have invented a baptism that might imply that Jesus committed sins and wanted to repent.[308][309] According to Theissen and Merz, Jesus was inspired by John the Baptist and took over from him many elements of his teaching.[310]
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+
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+ Most scholars hold that Jesus lived in Galilee and Judea and did not preach or study elsewhere.[311] They agree that Jesus debated with Jewish authorities on the subject of God, performed some healings, taught in parables and gathered followers.[26] Jesus' Jewish critics considered his ministry to be scandalous because he feasted with sinners, fraternized with women, and allowed his followers to pluck grain on the Sabbath.[80] According to Sanders, it is not plausible that disagreements over how to interpret the Law of Moses and the Sabbath would have led Jewish authorities to want Jesus killed.[312]
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+
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+ According to Ehrman, Jesus taught that a coming kingdom was everyone's proper focus, not anything in this life.[313] He taught about the Jewish Law, seeking its true meaning, sometimes in opposition to other traditions.[314] Jesus put love at the center of the Law, and following that Law was an apocalyptic necessity.[314] His ethical teachings called for forgiveness, not judging others, loving enemies, and caring for the poor.[315] Funk and Hoover note that typical of Jesus were paradoxical or surprising turns of phrase, such as advising one, when struck on the cheek, to offer the other cheek to be struck as well (Luke 6:29).[316]
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+
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+ The Gospels portray Jesus teaching in well-defined sessions, such as the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew or the parallel Sermon on the Plain in Luke. According to Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, these teaching sessions include authentic teachings of Jesus, but the scenes were invented by the respective evangelists to frame these teachings, which had originally been recorded without context.[95] While Jesus' miracles fit within the social context of antiquity, he defined them differently. First, he attributed them to the faith of those healed. Second, he connected them to end times prophecy.[317]
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+ Jesus chose twelve disciples [318] (the "Twelve"), evidently as an apocalyptic message.[319] All three Synoptics mention the Twelve, although the names on Luke's list vary from those in Mark and Matthew, suggesting that Christians were not certain who all the disciples were.[319] The twelve disciples might have represented the twelve original tribes of Israel, which would be restored once God's rule was instituted.[319] The disciples were reportedly meant to be the rulers of the tribes in the coming Kingdom (Matthew 19:28, Luke 22:30).[319] According to Bart Ehrman, Jesus' promise that the Twelve would rule is historical, because the Twelve included Judas Iscariot. In Ehrman's view, no Christians would have invented a line from Jesus, promising rulership to the disciple who betrayed him.[319]
210
+ In Mark, the disciples play hardly any role other than a negative one. While others sometimes respond to Jesus with complete faith, his disciples are puzzled and doubtful.[320] They serve as a foil to Jesus and to other characters.[320] The failings of the disciples are probably exaggerated in Mark, and the disciples make a better showing in Matthew and Luke.[320]
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+
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+ Sanders says that Jesus' mission was not about repentance, although he acknowledges that this opinion is unpopular. He argues that repentance appears as a strong theme only in Luke, that repentance was John the Baptist's message, and that Jesus' ministry would not have been scandalous if the sinners he ate with had been repentant.[321] According to Theissen and Merz, Jesus taught that God was generously giving people an opportunity to repent.[322]
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+
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+ Jesus taught that an apocalyptic figure, the "Son of Man", would soon come on clouds of glory to gather the elect, or chosen ones (Mark 13:24–27, Matthew 24:29–31, Luke 21:25–28). He referred to himself as a "son of man" in the colloquial sense of "a person", but scholars do not know whether he also meant himself when he referred to the heavenly "Son of Man". Paul the Apostle and other early Christians interpreted the "Son of Man" as the risen Jesus.[43]
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+
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+ The title Christ, or Messiah, indicates that Jesus' followers believed him to be the anointed heir of King David, whom some Jews expected to save Israel. The Gospels refer to him not only as a Messiah but in the absolute form as "the Messiah" or, equivalently, "the Christ". In early Judaism, this absolute form of the title is not found, but only phrases such as "his Messiah". The tradition is ambiguous enough to leave room for debate as to whether Jesus defined his eschatological role as that of the Messiah.[323] The Jewish messianic tradition included many different forms, some of them focused on a Messiah figure and others not.[324] Based on the Christian tradition, Gerd Theissen advances the hypothesis that Jesus saw himself in messianic terms but did not claim the title "Messiah".[324] Bart Ehrman argues that Jesus did consider himself to be the Messiah, albeit in the sense that he would be the king of the new political order that God would usher in,[325] not in the sense that most people today think of the term.[326]
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+
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+ Around AD 30, Jesus and his followers traveled from Galilee to Jerusalem to observe Passover.[318] Jesus caused a disturbance in the Second Temple,[28] which was the center of Jewish religious and civil authority. Sanders associates it with Jesus' prophecy that the Temple would be totally demolished.[327] Jesus held a last meal with his disciples, which is the origin of the Christian sacrament of bread and wine. His words as recorded in the Synoptic gospels and Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians do not entirely agree, but this symbolic meal appears to have pointed to Jesus' place in the coming Kingdom of God when very probably Jesus knew he was about to be killed, although he may have still hoped that God might yet intervene.[328]
219
+
220
+ The Gospels say that Jesus was betrayed to the authorities by a disciple, and many scholars consider this report to be highly reliable.[144] He was executed on the orders of Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect of Judaea.[28] Pilate most likely saw Jesus' reference to the Kingdom of God as a threat to Roman authority and worked with the Temple elites to have Jesus executed.[329] The Sadducean high-priestly leaders of the Temple more plausibly had Jesus executed for political reasons than for his teaching.[144] They may have regarded him as a threat to stability, especially after he caused a disturbance at the Second Temple.[144][42] Other factors, such as Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, may have contributed to this decision.[330] Most scholars consider Jesus' crucifixion to be factual, because early Christians would not have invented the painful death of their leader.[7][331]
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+
222
+ After Jesus' death, his followers said he rose from the dead, although exact details of their experiences are unclear. The Gospel reports contradict each other, possibly suggesting competition among those claiming to have seen him first rather than deliberate fraud.[332] On the other hand, L. Michael White suggests that inconsistencies in the Gospels reflect differences in the agendas of their unknown authors.[293] The followers of Jesus formed a community to wait for his return and the founding of his kingdom.[28]
223
+
224
+ Modern research on the historical Jesus has not led to a unified picture of the historical figure, partly because of the variety of academic traditions represented by the scholars.[333] Given the scarcity of historical sources, it is generally difficult for any scholar to construct a portrait of Jesus that can be considered historically valid beyond the basic elements of his life.[92][93] The portraits of Jesus constructed in these quests often differ from each other, and from the image portrayed in the gospels.[250][334]
225
+
226
+ Jesus is seen as the founder of, in the words of Sanders, a '"renewal movement within Judaism." One of the criteria used to discern historical details in the "third quest" is the criterion of plausibility, relative to Jesus' Jewish context and to his influence on Christianity. A disagreement in contemporary research is whether Jesus was apocalyptic. Most scholars conclude that he was an apocalyptic preacher, like John the Baptist and Paul the Apostle. In contrast, certain prominent North American scholars, such as Burton Mack and John Dominic Crossan, advocate for a non-eschatological Jesus, one who is more of a Cynic sage than an apocalyptic preacher.[335] In addition to portraying Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet, a charismatic healer or a cynic philosopher, some scholars portray him as the true Messiah or an egalitarian prophet of social change.[336][337] However, the attributes described in the portraits sometimes overlap, and scholars who differ on some attributes sometimes agree on others.[338]
227
+
228
+ Since the 18th century, scholars have occasionally put forth that Jesus was a political national messiah, but the evidence for this portrait is negligible. Likewise, the proposal that Jesus was a Zealot does not fit with the earliest strata of the Synoptic tradition.[144]
229
+
230
+ Jesus grew up in Galilee and much of his ministry took place there.[341] The languages spoken in Galilee and Judea during the 1st century AD include Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek, with Aramaic being predominant.[342][343] There is substantial consensus that Jesus gave most of his teachings in Aramaic[344] in the Galilean dialect.[345][346]
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+
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+ Modern scholars agree that Jesus was a Jew of 1st-century Palestine.[347][348] Ioudaios in New Testament Greek[r] is a term which in the contemporary context may refer to religion (Second Temple Judaism), ethnicity (of Judea), or both.[350][351][352] In a review of the state of modern scholarship, Amy-Jill Levine writes that the entire question of ethnicity is "fraught with difficulty", and that "beyond recognizing that 'Jesus was Jewish', rarely does the scholarship address what being 'Jewish' means".[353]
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+ The New Testament gives no description of the physical appearance of Jesus before his death—it is generally indifferent to racial appearances and does not refer to the features of the people it mentions.[354][355][356] Jesus probably looked like a typical Jew of his time and according to some scholars was likely to have had a sinewy appearance due to his ascetic and itinerant lifestyle.[357] One scholar has drawn on biblical and extra-biblical sources, to suggest an appearance of Jesus much different from that of Western art.[358] Unlike such depictions, his clothing may have suggested poverty consisting of a mantle (shawl) with tassels, a knee-length basic tunic and sandals.[359]
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+ The Christ myth theory is the hypothesis that Jesus of Nazareth never existed; or if he did, that he had virtually nothing to do with the founding of Christianity and the accounts in the gospels.[s] Stories of Jesus' birth, along with other key events, have so many mythic elements that some scholars have suggested that Jesus himself was a myth.[361]
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+ Bruno Bauer (1809–1882) taught that the first Gospel was a work of literature that produced history rather than described it.[362]
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+ According to Albert Kalthoff (1850–1906) a social movement produced Jesus when it encountered Jewish messianic expectations.[362]
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+ Arthur Drews (1865–1935) saw Jesus as the concrete form of a myth that predated Christianity.[362]
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+ Despite arguments put forward by authors who have questioned the existence of a historical Jesus, there remains a strong consensus in historical-critical biblical scholarship that a historical Jesus did live in that area and in that time period.[363][364][365][366][367][368][369]
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+ Apart from his own disciples and followers, the Jews of Jesus' day generally rejected him as the Messiah, as do the great majority of Jews today. Christian theologians, ecumenical councils, reformers and others have written extensively about Jesus over the centuries. Christian sects and schisms have often been defined or characterized by their descriptions of Jesus. Meanwhile, Manichaeans, Gnostics, Muslims, Druzes,[370][371] Baha'is, and others have found prominent places for Jesus in their religions.[372][373][374]
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+ Jesus is the central figure of Christianity.[13] Although Christian views of Jesus vary, it is possible to summarize the key beliefs shared among major denominations, as stated in their catechetical or confessional texts.[375][376][377] Christian views of Jesus are derived from various sources, including the canonical gospels and New Testament letters such as the Pauline epistles and the Johannine writings. These documents outline the key beliefs held by Christians about Jesus, including his divinity, humanity, and earthly life, and that he is the Christ and the Son of God.[378] Despite their many shared beliefs, not all Christian denominations agree on all doctrines, and both major and minor differences on teachings and beliefs have persisted throughout Christianity for centuries.[379]
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+ The New Testament states that the resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith (1 Corinthians 15:12–20).[380] Christians believe that through his sacrificial death and resurrection, humans can be reconciled with God and are thereby offered salvation and the promise of eternal life.[32] Recalling the words of John the Baptist on the day after Jesus' baptism, these doctrines sometimes refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God, who was crucified to fulfill his role as the servant of God.[381][382] Jesus is thus seen as the new and last Adam, whose obedience contrasts with Adam's disobedience.[383] Christians view Jesus as a role model, whose God-focused life believers are encouraged to imitate.[13]
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+ Most Christians believe that Jesus was both human and the Son of God.[14] While there has been theological debate over his nature,[t] Trinitarian Christians generally believe that Jesus is the Logos, God's incarnation and God the Son, both fully divine and fully human. However, the doctrine of the Trinity is not universally accepted among Christians.[385][386] With the Protestant Reformation, Christians such as Michael Servetus and the Socinians started questioning the ancient creeds that had established Jesus' two natures.[43] Nontrinitarian Christian groups include The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,[387] Unitarians and Jehovah's Witnesses.[384]
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+ Christians revere not only Jesus himself, but also his name. Devotions to the Holy Name of Jesus go back to the earliest days of Christianity.[388][389] These devotions and feasts exist in both Eastern and Western Christianity.[389]
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+ A central tenet of Judaism is the absolute unity and singularity of God (Deuteronomy 6:4), and the worship of a person is understood as a form of idolatry.[390] Therefore, Judaism rejects the idea of Jesus (or any future Jewish Messiah) being God,[42] or a mediator to God, or part of a Trinity.[391] It holds that Jesus is not the Messiah, arguing that he neither fulfilled the Messianic prophecies in the Tanakh nor embodied the personal qualifications of the Messiah.[392] Jews argue that Jesus did not fulfill prophesies to build the Third Temple (Ezekiel 37:26–28), gather Jews back to Israel (Isaiah 43:5–6), bring world peace (Isaiah 2:4), and unite humanity under the God of Israel (Zechariah 14:9).[393] Furthermore, according to Jewish tradition, there were no prophets after Malachi,[394] who delivered his prophesies in the 5th century BC.[395]
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+ Judaic criticism of Jesus is long-standing. The Talmud, written and compiled from the 3rd to the 5th century AD,[396] includes stories that since medieval times have been considered to be defamatory accounts of Jesus.[397] In one such story, Yeshu HaNozri ("Jesus the Nazarene"), a lewd apostate, is executed by the Jewish high court for spreading idolatry and practicing magic.[398] The majority of contemporary scholars consider that this material provides no information on the historical Jesus.[399] The Mishneh Torah, a late 12th-century work of Jewish law written by Moses Maimonides, states that Jesus is a "stumbling block" who makes "the majority of the world to err and serve a god other than the Lord".[400]
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+ Medieval Hebrew literature contains the anecdotal "Episode of Jesus" (known also as Toledot Yeshu), in which Jesus is described as being the son of Joseph, the son of Pandera (see: Episode of Jesus). The account portrays Jesus as an impostor.[401]
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+ A major figure in Islam,[38][40] Jesus (commonly transliterated as ʾĪsā) is considered to be a messenger of God (Allah) and a messiah (al-Masih) who was sent to guide the Children of Israel (Bani Isra'il) with a new scripture, the Gospel (referred to in Islam as Injil).[39][402] Muslims regard the gospels of the New Testament as partially authentic, and believe that Jesus' original message was altered and that Muhammad came later to revive it.[403] Belief in Jesus (and all other messengers of God) is a requirement for being a Muslim.[404] The Quran mentions Jesus by name 25 times—more often than Muhammad[405][406]—and emphasizes that Jesus was a mortal human who, like all other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God's message.[407] While the Qur'an affirms the Virgin birth of Jesus, he is considered to be neither an incarnation nor a begotten God. Islamic texts emphasize a strict notion of monotheism (tawhid) and forbid the association of partners with God, which would be idolatry.[408] Like all prophets in Islam, Jesus is considered a Muslim.[409]
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+ The Quran describes the annunciation to Mary (Maryam) by the Holy Spirit that she is to give birth to Jesus while remaining a virgin. It calls the virgin birth a miracle that occurred by the will of God.[410][411] The Quran (21:91 and 66:12) states that God breathed his spirit into Mary while she was chaste.[410][411] Jesus is called a "spirit from God" because he was born through the action of the Spirit,[410] but that belief does not imply his pre-existence.[412]
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+ To aid in his ministry to the Jewish people, Jesus was given the ability to perform miracles, by permission of God rather than by his own power.[41] Through his ministry, Jesus is seen as a precursor to Muhammad.[407] According to the Quran, Jesus was not killed but was merely made to appear that way to unbelievers,[413] and he was physically raised into the heavens by God.[414] To Muslims, it is the ascension rather than the crucifixion that constitutes a major event in the life of Jesus.[415] Most Muslims believe that Jesus will return to earth at the end of time and defeat the Antichrist (ad-Dajjal) by killing him.[39]
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+ The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has several distinct teachings about Jesus. Ahmadis believe that he was a mortal man who survived his crucifixion and died a natural death at the age of 120 in Kashmir, India and is buried at Roza Bal.[416]
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+ Bahá'í teachings consider Jesus to be a manifestation of God, a Bahá'í concept for prophets[417]—intermediaries between God and humanity, serving as messengers and reflecting God's qualities and attributes.[418] The Bahá'í concept emphasizes the simultaneous qualities of humanity and divinity;[418] thus, it is similar to the Christian concept of incarnation.[417] Bahá'í thought accepts Jesus as the Son of God.[419] In Bahá'í thought, Jesus was a perfect incarnation of God's attributes, but Bahá'í teachings reject the idea that "ineffable essence" of the Divinity was contained within a single human body because of their beliefs regarding "omnipresence and transcendence of the essence of God".[417]
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+ Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, wrote that since each manifestation of God has the same divine attributes, they can be seen as the spiritual "return" of all previous manifestations of God, and the appearance of each new manifestation of God inaugurates a religion that supersedes the former ones, a concept known as progressive revelation.[418] Bahá'ís believe that God's plan unfolds gradually through this process as mankind matures, and that some of the manifestations arrive in specific fulfillment of the missions of previous ones. Thus, Bahá'ís believe that Bahá'u'lláh is the promised return of Christ.[420] Bahá'í teachings confirm many, but not all, aspects of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels. Bahá'ís believe in the virgin birth and in the Crucifixion,[421][422] but see the Resurrection and the miracles of Jesus as symbolic.[419][422]
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+ In Christian Gnosticism (now a largely extinct religious movement),[423] Jesus was sent from the divine realm and provided the secret knowledge (gnosis) necessary for salvation. Most Gnostics believed that Jesus was a human who became possessed by the spirit of "the Christ" at his baptism. This spirit left Jesus' body during the crucifixion, but was rejoined to him when he was raised from the dead. Some Gnostics, however, were docetics, believed that Jesus did not have a physical body, but only appeared to possess one.[424] Manichaeism, a Gnostic sect, accepted Jesus as a prophet, in addition to revering Gautama Buddha and Zoroaster.[425][426] In the Druze faith, Jesus is considered one of God's important prophets.[370][371]
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+ Some Hindus consider Jesus to be an avatar or a sadhu.[427] Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian guru, taught that Jesus was the reincarnation of Elisha and a student of John the Baptist, the reincarnation of Elijah.[428] Some Buddhists, including Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, regard Jesus as a bodhisattva who dedicated his life to the welfare of people.[429] The New Age movement entertains a wide variety of views on Jesus.[430] Theosophists, from whom many New Age teachings originated,[431] refer to Jesus as the Master Jesus, a spiritual reformer, and they believe that Christ, after various incarnations, occupied the body of Jesus.[432] The Urantia Book teaches Jesus is one of more than 700,000 heavenly sons of God.[433] Scientologists recognize Jesus (along with other religious figures such as Zoroaster, Muhammad, and Buddha) as part of their "religious heritage".[430][434] Atheists reject Jesus' divinity, but have different views about him – from challenging Jesus' mental health,[435][436] through criticizing his teachings, to emphasizing his ″moral superiority″ (Richard Dawkins).[437]
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+ Some of the earliest depictions of Jesus at the Dura-Europos church are firmly dated to before 256.[439] Thereafter, despite the lack of biblical references or historical records, a wide range of depictions of Jesus appeared during the last two millennia, often influenced by cultural settings, political circumstances and theological contexts.[339][340][355] As in other Early Christian art, the earliest depictions date to the late 2nd or early 3rd century, and surviving images are found especially in the Catacombs of Rome.[440]
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+ The depiction of Christ in pictorial form was highly controversial in the early Church.[441][u][442] From the 5th century onward, flat painted icons became popular in the Eastern Church.[443] The Byzantine Iconoclasm acted as a barrier to developments in the East, but by the 9th century, art was permitted again.[339] The Protestant Reformation brought renewed resistance to imagery, but total prohibition was atypical, and Protestant objections to images have tended to reduce since the 16th century. Although large images are generally avoided, few Protestants now object to book illustrations depicting Jesus.[444][445] The use of depictions of Jesus is advocated by the leaders of denominations such as Anglicans and Catholics[446][447][448] and is a key element of the Eastern Orthodox tradition.[449][450]
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+ The Transfiguration was a major theme in Eastern Christian art, and every Eastern Orthodox monk who had trained in icon painting had to prove his craft by painting an icon depicting it.[451] Icons receive the external marks of veneration, such as kisses and prostration, and they are thought to be powerful channels of divine grace.[443] The Renaissance brought forth a number of artists who focused on depictions of Jesus; Fra Angelico and others followed Giotto in the systematic development of uncluttered images.[339]
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+ Before the Protestant Reformation, the crucifix was common in Western Christianity. It is a model of the cross with Jesus crucified on it. The crucifix became the central ornament of the altar in the 13th century, a use that has been nearly universal in Roman Catholic churches since then.[452]
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+ Jesus appears as an infant in a manger (feed trough) in Christmas creches, which depict the Nativity scene.[453] He is typically joined by Mary, Joseph, animals, shepherds, angels, and the Magi.[453] Francis of Assisi (1181/82–1226) is credited with popularizing the creche, although he probably did not initiate it.[453] The creche reached its height of popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries in southern Europe.[453]
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+ The total destruction that ensued with the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70 made the survival of items from 1st-century Judea very rare and almost no direct records survive about the history of Judaism from the last part of the 1st century through the 2nd century.[454][455][v] Margaret M. Mitchell writes that although Eusebius reports (Ecclesiastical History III 5.3) that the early Christians left Jerusalem for Pella just before Jerusalem was subjected to the final lockdown, we must accept that no first-hand Christian items from the early Jerusalem Church have reached us.[457] Joe Nickell writes, "as investigation after investigation has shown, not a single, reliably authenticated relic of Jesus exists."[458][w]
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+ However, throughout the history of Christianity, a number of relics attributed to Jesus have been claimed, although doubt has been cast on them. The 16th-century Catholic theologian Erasmus wrote sarcastically about the proliferation of relics and the number of buildings that could have been constructed from the wood claimed to be from the cross used in the Crucifixion.[461] Similarly, while experts debate whether Jesus was crucified with three nails or with four, at least thirty holy nails continue to be venerated as relics across Europe.[462]
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+ Some relics, such as purported remnants of the Crown of Thorns, receive only a modest number of pilgrims, while the Shroud of Turin (which is associated with an approved Catholic devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus), has received millions,[463] including popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.[464][465]
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+ The International Space Station (ISS) is a modular space station (habitable artificial satellite) in low Earth orbit. The ISS program is a multi-national collaborative project between five participating space agencies: NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada).[6][7] It is an international collaborative effort between multiple countries. The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements.[8] It evolved from the Space Station Freedom proposal.
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+ The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which scientific experiments are conducted in astrobiology, astronomy, meteorology, physics, and other fields.[9][10][11] The station is suited for testing the spacecraft systems and equipment required for possible future long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.[12] It is the largest artificial object in space and the largest satellite in low Earth orbit, regularly visible to the naked eye from Earth's surface.[13][14] It maintains an orbit with an average altitude of 400 kilometres (250 mi) by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda Service Module or visiting spacecraft.[15] The ISS circles the Earth in roughly 93 minutes, completing 15.5 orbits per day.[16]
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+ The station is divided into two sections: the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS), operated by Russia; and the United States Orbital Segment (USOS), which is shared by many nations. Roscosmos has endorsed the continued operation of ISS through 2024,[17] but had previously proposed using elements of the Russian segment to construct a new Russian space station called OPSEK.[18] As of December 2018[update], the station is expected to operate until 2030.[19]
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+ The first ISS component was launched in 1998, with the first long-term residents arriving on 2 November 2000.[20] Since then, the station has been continuously occupied for 19 years and 269 days.[21] This is the longest continuous human presence in low Earth orbit, having surpassed the previous record of 9 years and 357 days held by the Mir space station. The latest major pressurised module was fitted in 2011, with an experimental inflatable space habitat added in 2016. Development and assembly of the station continues, with several major new Russian elements scheduled for launch starting in 2020. The ISS consists of pressurised habitation modules, structural trusses, photovoltaic solar arrays, thermal radiators, docking ports, experiment bays and robotic arms. Major ISS modules have been launched by Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets and US Space Shuttles.[22]
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+ The ISS is the ninth space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz, and Mir stations as well as Skylab from the US. The station is serviced by a variety of visiting spacecraft: the Russian Soyuz and Progress, the US Dragon and Cygnus, the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle,[6] and formerly the European Automated Transfer Vehicle. The Dragon spacecraft allows the return of pressurised cargo to Earth (downmass), which is used, for example, to repatriate scientific experiments for further analysis. The Soyuz return capsule has minimal downmass capability next to the astronauts.
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+ As of September 2019[update], 239 astronauts, cosmonauts, and space tourists from 20 different nations have visited the space station, many of them multiple times. The United States sent 151 people, Russia sent 47, nine were Japanese, eight Canadian, five Italian, four French, three German, and one each from Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.[23]
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+
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+ The ISS was originally intended to be a laboratory, observatory, and factory while providing transportation, maintenance, and a low Earth orbit staging base for possible future missions to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids. However, not all of the uses envisioned in the initial memorandum of understanding between NASA and Roscosmos have come to fruition.[24] In the 2010 United States National Space Policy, the ISS was given additional roles of serving commercial, diplomatic,[25] and educational purposes.[26]
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+ The ISS provides a platform to conduct scientific research, with power, data, cooling, and crew available to support experiments. Small uncrewed spacecraft can also provide platforms for experiments, especially those involving zero gravity and exposure to space, but space stations offer a long-term environment where studies can be performed potentially for decades, combined with ready access by human researchers.[27][28]
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+ The ISS simplifies individual experiments by allowing groups of experiments to share the same launches and crew time. Research is conducted in a wide variety of fields, including astrobiology, astronomy, physical sciences, materials science, space weather, meteorology, and human research including space medicine and the life sciences.[9][10][11][29][30] Scientists on Earth have timely access to the data and can suggest experimental modifications to the crew. If follow-on experiments are necessary, the routinely scheduled launches of resupply craft allows new hardware to be launched with relative ease.[28] Crews fly expeditions of several months' duration, providing approximately 160 person-hours per week of labour with a crew of six. However, a considerable amount of crew time is taken up by station maintenance.[9][31]
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+ Perhaps the most notable ISS experiment is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which is intended to detect dark matter and answer other fundamental questions about our universe and is as important as the Hubble Space Telescope according to NASA. Currently docked on station, it could not have been easily accommodated on a free flying satellite platform because of its power and bandwidth needs.[32][33] On 3 April 2013, scientists reported that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the AMS.[34][35][36][37][38][39] According to the scientists, "The first results from the space-borne Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer confirm an unexplained excess of high-energy positrons in Earth-bound cosmic rays".
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+
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+ The space environment is hostile to life. Unprotected presence in space is characterised by an intense radiation field (consisting primarily of protons and other subatomic charged particles from the solar wind, in addition to cosmic rays), high vacuum, extreme temperatures, and microgravity.[40] Some simple forms of life called extremophiles,[41] as well as small invertebrates called tardigrades[42] can survive in this environment in an extremely dry state through desiccation.
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+ Medical research improves knowledge about the effects of long-term space exposure on the human body, including muscle atrophy, bone loss, and fluid shift. This data will be used to determine whether high duration human spaceflight and space colonisation are feasible. As of 2006[update], data on bone loss and muscular atrophy suggest that there would be a significant risk of fractures and movement problems if astronauts landed on a planet after a lengthy interplanetary cruise, such as the six-month interval required to travel to Mars.[43][44]
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+
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+ Medical studies are conducted aboard the ISS on behalf of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI). Prominent among these is the Advanced Diagnostic Ultrasound in Microgravity study in which astronauts perform ultrasound scans under the guidance of remote experts. The study considers the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions in space. Usually, there is no physician on board the ISS and diagnosis of medical conditions is a challenge. It is anticipated that remotely guided ultrasound scans will have application on Earth in emergency and rural care situations where access to a trained physician is difficult.[45][46][47]
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+ Gravity at the altitude of the ISS is approximately 90% as strong as at Earth's surface, but objects in orbit are in a continuous state of freefall, resulting in an apparent state of weightlessness.[48] This perceived weightlessness is disturbed by five separate effects:[49]
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+
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+ Researchers are investigating the effect of the station's near-weightless environment on the evolution, development, growth and internal processes of plants and animals. In response to some of this data, NASA wants to investigate microgravity's effects on the growth of three-dimensional, human-like tissues, and the unusual protein crystals that can be formed in space.[10]
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+ Investigating the physics of fluids in microgravity will provide better models of the behaviour of fluids. Because fluids can be almost completely combined in microgravity, physicists investigate fluids that do not mix well on Earth. In addition, examining reactions that are slowed by low gravity and low temperatures will improve our understanding of superconductivity.[10]
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+ The study of materials science is an important ISS research activity, with the objective of reaping economic benefits through the improvement of techniques used on the ground.[50] Other areas of interest include the effect of the low gravity environment on combustion, through the study of the efficiency of burning and control of emissions and pollutants. These findings may improve current knowledge about energy production, and lead to economic and environmental benefits. Future plans are for the researchers aboard the ISS to examine aerosols, ozone, water vapour, and oxides in Earth's atmosphere, as well as cosmic rays, cosmic dust, antimatter, and dark matter in the Universe.[10]
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+
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+ The ISS provides a location in the relative safety of low Earth orbit to test spacecraft systems that will be required for long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars. This provides experience in operations, maintenance as well as repair and replacement activities on-orbit, which will be essential skills in operating spacecraft farther from Earth, mission risks can be reduced and the capabilities of interplanetary spacecraft advanced.[12] Referring to the MARS-500 experiment, ESA states that "Whereas the ISS is essential for answering questions concerning the possible impact of weightlessness, radiation and other space-specific factors, aspects such as the effect of long-term isolation and confinement can be more appropriately addressed via ground-based simulations".[51] Sergey Krasnov, the head of human space flight programmes for Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, in 2011 suggested a "shorter version" of MARS-500 may be carried out on the ISS.[52]
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+
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+ In 2009, noting the value of the partnership framework itself, Sergey Krasnov wrote, "When compared with partners acting separately, partners developing complementary abilities and resources could give us much more assurance of the success and safety of space exploration. The ISS is helping further advance near-Earth space exploration and realisation of prospective programmes of research and exploration of the Solar system, including the Moon and Mars."[53] A crewed mission to Mars may be a multinational effort involving space agencies and countries outside the current ISS partnership. In 2010, ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain stated his agency was ready to propose to the other four partners that China, India and South Korea be invited to join the ISS partnership.[54] NASA chief Charlie Bolden stated in February 2011, "Any mission to Mars is likely to be a global effort".[55] Currently, US federal legislation prevents NASA co-operation with China on space projects.[56]
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+ The ISS crew provides opportunities for students on Earth by running student-developed experiments, making educational demonstrations, allowing for student participation in classroom versions of ISS experiments, and directly engaging students using radio, videolink and email.[6][57] ESA offers a wide range of free teaching materials that can be downloaded for use in classrooms.[58] In one lesson, students can navigate a 3-D model of the interior and exterior of the ISS, and face spontaneous challenges to solve in real time.[59]
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+ JAXA aims to inspire children to "pursue craftsmanship" and to heighten their "awareness of the importance of life and their responsibilities in society".[60] Through a series of education guides, a deeper understanding of the past and near-term future of crewed space flight, as well as that of Earth and life, will be learned.[61][62] In the JAXA Seeds in Space experiments, the mutation effects of spaceflight on plant seeds aboard the ISS is explored. Students grow sunflower seeds which flew on the ISS for about nine months. In the first phase of Kibō utilisation from 2008 to mid-2010, researchers from more than a dozen Japanese universities conducted experiments in diverse fields.[63]
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+ Cultural activities are another major objective. Tetsuo Tanaka, director of JAXA's Space Environment and Utilization Center, says "There is something about space that touches even people who are not interested in science."[64]
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+ Amateur Radio on the ISS (ARISS) is a volunteer programme which encourages students worldwide to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics through amateur radio communications opportunities with the ISS crew. ARISS is an international working group, consisting of delegations from nine countries including several countries in Europe as well as Japan, Russia, Canada, and the United States. In areas where radio equipment cannot be used, speakerphones connect students to ground stations which then connect the calls to the station.[65]
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+ First Orbit is a feature-length documentary film about Vostok 1, the first crewed space flight around the Earth. By matching the orbit of the International Space Station to that of Vostok 1 as closely as possible, in terms of ground path and time of day, documentary filmmaker Christopher Riley and ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli were able to film the view that Yuri Gagarin saw on his pioneering orbital space flight. This new footage was cut together with the original Vostok 1 mission audio recordings sourced from the Russian State Archive. Nespoli, during Expedition 26/27, filmed the majority of the footage for this documentary film, and as a result is credited as its director of photography.[66] The film was streamed through the website firstorbit.org in a global YouTube premiere in 2011, under a free licence.[67]
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+ In May 2013, commander Chris Hadfield shot a music video of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on board the station; the film was released on YouTube.[68] It was the first music video ever to be filmed in space.[69]
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+ In November 2017, while participating in Expedition 52/53 on the ISS, Paolo Nespoli made two recordings (one in English the other in his native Italian) of his spoken voice, for use on Wikipedia articles. These were the first content made specifically for Wikipedia, in space.[70][71]
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+ Since the International Space Station is a multi-national collaborative project, the components for in-orbit assembly were manufactured in various countries around the world. Beginning in the mid 1990s, the U.S. components Destiny, Unity, the Integrated Truss Structure, and the solar arrays were fabricated at the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Michoud Assembly Facility. These modules were delivered to the Operations and Checkout Building and the Space Station Processing Facility for final assembly and processing for launch.[72]
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+ The Russian modules, including Zarya and Zvezda, were manufactured at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center in Moscow. Zvezda was initially manufactured in 1985 as a component for Mir-2, but was never launched and instead became the ISS Service Module.[73]
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+ The European Space Agency Columbus module was manufactured at the EADS Astrium Space Transportation facilities in Bremen, Germany, along with many other contractors throughout Europe.[74] The other ESA-built modules - Harmony, Tranquility, the Leonardo MPLM, and the Cupola - were initially manufactured at the Thales Alenia Space factory in Turin, Italy. The structural steel hulls of the modules were transported by aircraft to the Kennedy Space Center SSPF for launch processing.[75]
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+ The Japanese Experiment Module Kibō, was fabricated in various technology manufacturing facilities in Japan, at the NASDA (now JAXA) Tsukuba Space Center, and the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science. The Kibo module was transported by ship and flown by aircraft to the KSC Space Station Processing Facility.[76]
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+ The Mobile Servicing System, consisting of the Canadarm2 and the Dextre grapple fixture, was manufactured at various factories in Canada (such as the David Florida Laboratory) and the United States, under contract by the Canadian Space Agency. The mobile base system, a connecting framework for Canadarm2 mounted on rails, was built by Northrop Grumman.
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+ The assembly of the International Space Station, a major endeavour in space architecture, began in November 1998.[3] Russian modules launched and docked robotically, with the exception of Rassvet. All other modules were delivered by the Space Shuttle, which required installation by ISS and Shuttle crewmembers using the Canadarm2 (SSRMS) and extra-vehicular activities (EVAs); as of 5 June 2011[update], they had added 159 components during more than 1,000 hours of EVA (see List of ISS spacewalks). 127 of these spacewalks originated from the station, and the remaining 32 were launched from the airlocks of docked Space Shuttles.[77] The beta angle of the station had to be considered at all times during construction.[78]
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+
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+ The first module of the ISS, Zarya, was launched on 20 November 1998 on an autonomous Russian Proton rocket. It provided propulsion, attitude control, communications, electrical power, but lacked long-term life support functions. Two weeks later, a passive NASA module Unity was launched aboard Space Shuttle flight STS-88 and attached to Zarya by astronauts during EVAs. This module has two Pressurised Mating Adapters (PMAs), one connects permanently to Zarya, the other allowed the Space Shuttle to dock to the space station. At that time, the Russian station Mir was still inhabited, and the ISS remained uncrewed for two years. On 12 July 2000, Zvezda was launched into orbit. Preprogrammed commands on board deployed its solar arrays and communications antenna. It then became the passive target for a rendezvous with Zarya and Unity: it maintained a station-keeping orbit while the Zarya-Unity vehicle performed the rendezvous and docking via ground control and the Russian automated rendezvous and docking system. Zarya's computer transferred control of the station to Zvezda's computer soon after docking. Zvezda added sleeping quarters, a toilet, kitchen, CO2 scrubbers, dehumidifier, oxygen generators, exercise equipment, plus data, voice and television communications with mission control. This enabled permanent habitation of the station.[79][80]
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+ The first resident crew, Expedition 1, arrived in November 2000 on Soyuz TM-31. At the end of the first day on the station, astronaut Bill Shepherd requested the use of the radio call sign "Alpha", which he and cosmonaut Krikalev preferred to the more cumbersome "International Space Station".[81] The name "Alpha" had previously been used for the station in the early 1990s,[82] and its use was authorised for the whole of Expedition 1.[83] Shepherd had been advocating the use of a new name to project managers for some time. Referencing a naval tradition in a pre-launch news conference he had said: "For thousands of years, humans have been going to sea in ships. People have designed and built these vessels, launched them with a good feeling that a name will bring good fortune to the crew and success to their voyage."[84] Yuri Semenov, the President of Russian Space Corporation Energia at the time, disapproved of the name "Alpha" as he felt that Mir was the first modular space station, so the names "Beta" or "Mir 2" for the ISS would have been more fitting.[83][85][86]
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+ Expedition 1 arrived midway between the flights of STS-92 and STS-97. These two Space Shuttle flights each added segments of the station's Integrated Truss Structure, which provided the station with Ku-band communication for US television, additional attitude support needed for the additional mass of the USOS, and substantial solar arrays supplementing the station's four existing solar arrays.[87]
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+ Over the next two years, the station continued to expand. A Soyuz-U rocket delivered the Pirs docking compartment. The Space Shuttles Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour delivered the Destiny laboratory and Quest airlock, in addition to the station's main robot arm, the Canadarm2, and several more segments of the Integrated Truss Structure.
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+
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+ The expansion schedule was interrupted by the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003 and a resulting hiatus in flights. The Space Shuttle was grounded until 2005 with STS-114 flown by Discovery.[88]
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+
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+ Assembly resumed in 2006 with the arrival of STS-115 with Atlantis, which delivered the station's second set of solar arrays. Several more truss segments and a third set of arrays were delivered on STS-116, STS-117, and STS-118. As a result of the major expansion of the station's power-generating capabilities, more pressurised modules could be accommodated, and the Harmony node and Columbus European laboratory were added. These were soon followed by the first two components of Kibō. In March 2009, STS-119 completed the Integrated Truss Structure with the installation of the fourth and final set of solar arrays. The final section of Kibō was delivered in July 2009 on STS-127, followed by the Russian Poisk module. The third node, Tranquility, was delivered in February 2010 during STS-130 by the Space Shuttle Endeavour, alongside the Cupola, followed in May 2010 by the penultimate Russian module, Rassvet. Rassvet was delivered by Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-132 in exchange for the Russian Proton delivery of the US-funded Zarya module in 1998.[89] The last pressurised module of the USOS, Leonardo, was brought to the station in February 2011 on the final flight of Discovery, STS-133.[90] The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was delivered by Endeavour on STS-134 the same year.[91]
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+
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+ As of June 2011[update], the station consisted of 15 pressurised modules and the Integrated Truss Structure. Five modules are still to be launched, including the Nauka with the European Robotic Arm, the Prichal module, and two power modules called NEM-1 and NEM-2.[92] As of May 2020[update], Russia's future primary research module Nauka is set to launch in the spring of 2021,[93] along with the European Robotic Arm which will be able to relocate itself to different parts of the Russian modules of the station.[94]
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+
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+ The gross mass of the station changes over time. The total launch mass of the modules on orbit is about 417,289 kg (919,965 lb) (as of 3 September 2011[update]).[95] The mass of experiments, spare parts, personal effects, crew, foodstuff, clothing, propellants, water supplies, gas supplies, docked spacecraft, and other items add to the total mass of the station. Hydrogen gas is constantly vented overboard by the oxygen generators.
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+ The ISS is a third generation[96] modular space station.[97] Modular stations can allow modules to be added to or removed from the existing structure, allowing greater flexibility.
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+
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+ Below is a diagram of major station components. The blue areas are pressurised sections accessible by the crew without using spacesuits. The station's unpressurised superstructure is indicated in red. Other unpressurised components are yellow. The Unity node joins directly to the Destiny laboratory. For clarity, they are shown apart.
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+ Zarya (Russian: Заря́, lit. 'Dawn'), also known as the Functional Cargo Block or FGB (from the Russian: "Функционально-грузовой блок", lit. 'Funktsionalno-gruzovoy blok' or ФГБ), is the first module of the ISS to be launched.[98] The FGB provided electrical power, storage, propulsion, and guidance to the ISS during the initial stage of assembly. With the launch and assembly in orbit of other modules with more specialised functionality, Zarya is currently primarily used for storage, both inside the pressurised section and in the externally mounted fuel tanks. The Zarya is a descendant of the TKS spacecraft designed for the Russian Salyut programme. The name Zarya, which means sunrise,[98] was given to the FGB because it signified the dawn of a new era of international cooperation in space. Although it was built by a Russian company, it is owned by the United States.[99]
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+ Zarya was built from December 1994 to January 1998 at the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center (KhSC) in Moscow.[98]
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+
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+ Zarya was launched on 20 November 1998 on a Russian Proton rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 81 in Kazakhstan to a 400 kilometres (250 mi) high orbit with a designed lifetime of at least 15 years. After Zarya reached orbit, STS-88 launched on 4 December 1998 to attach the Unity module.
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+
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+ The Unity connecting module, also known as Node 1, is the first US-built component of the ISS. It connects the Russian and US segments of the station, and is where crew eat meals together.
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+
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+ The module is cylindrical in shape, with six berthing locations (forward, aft, port, starboard, zenith, and nadir) facilitating connections to other modules. Unity measures 4.57 metres (15.0 ft) in diameter, is 5.47 metres (17.9 ft) long, made of steel, and was built for NASA by Boeing in a manufacturing facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Unity is the first of the three connecting modules; the other two are Harmony and Tranquility.
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+ Unity was carried into orbit as the primary cargo of the Space Shuttle Endeavour on STS-88, the first Space Shuttle mission dedicated to assembly of the station. On 6 December 1998, the STS-88 crew mated the aft berthing port of Unity with the forward hatch of the already orbiting Zarya module. This was the first connection made between two station modules.
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+ Zvezda (Russian: Звезда́, meaning "star"), Salyut DOS-8, also known as the Zvezda Service Module, is a module of the ISS. It was the third module launched to the station, and provides all of the station's life support systems, some of which are supplemented in the USOS, as well as living quarters for two crew members. It is the structural and functional center of the Russian Orbital Segment, which is the Russian part of the ISS. Crew assemble here to deal with emergencies on the station.[100][101][102]
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+ The basic structural frame of Zvezda, known as "DOS-8", was initially built in the mid-1980s to be the core of the Mir-2 space station. This means that Zvezda is similar in layout to the core module (DOS-7) of the Mir space station. It was in fact labeled as Mir-2 for quite some time in the factory. Its design lineage thus extends back to the original Salyut stations. The space frame was completed in February 1985 and major internal equipment was installed by October 1986.
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+ The rocket used for launch to the ISS carried advertising; it was emblazoned with the logo of Pizza Hut restaurants,[103][104][105] for which they are reported to have paid more than US$1 million.[106] The money helped support Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center and the Russian advertising agencies that orchestrated the event.[107]
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+ On 26 July 2000, Zvezda became the third component of the ISS when it docked at the aft port of Zarya. (U.S. Unity module had already been attached to the Zarya.) Later in July, the computers aboard Zarya handed over ISS commanding functions to computers on Zvezda.[108]
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+ The Destiny module, also known as the U.S. Lab, is the primary operating facility for U.S. research payloads aboard the International Space Station (ISS).[109][110] It was berthed to the Unity module and activated over a period of five days in February 2001.[111] Destiny is NASA's first permanent operating orbital research station since Skylab was vacated in February 1974.
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+ The Boeing Company began construction of the 14.5-tonne (32,000 lb) research laboratory in 1995 at the Michoud Assembly Facility and then the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.[109] Destiny was shipped to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in 1998, and was turned over to NASA for pre-launch preparations in August 2000. It launched on 7 February 2001 aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis on STS-98.[111]
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+
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+ The Quest Joint Airlock, previously known as the Joint Airlock Module, is the primary airlock for the ISS. Quest was designed to host spacewalks with both Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) spacesuits and Orlan space suits. The airlock was launched on STS-104 on 14 July 2001. Before Quest was attached, Russian spacewalks using Orlan suits could only be done from the Zvezda service module, and American spacewalks using EMUs were only possible when a Space Shuttle was docked. The arrival of Pirs docking compartment on 16 September 2001 provided another airlock from which Orlan spacewalks can be conducted.[citation needed]
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+ Pirs (Russian: Пирс, lit. 'pier') and Poisk (Russian: По́иск, lit. 'search') are Russian airlock modules, each having two identical hatches. An outward-opening hatch on the Mir space station failed after it swung open too fast after unlatching, because of a small amount of air pressure remaining in the airlock.[112] All EVA hatches on the ISS open inwards and are pressure-sealing. Pirs was used to store, service, and refurbish Russian Orlan suits and provided contingency entry for crew using the slightly bulkier American suits. The outermost docking ports on both airlocks allow docking of Soyuz and Progress spacecraft, and the automatic transfer of propellants to and from storage on the ROS.[113]
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+ Pirs was launched on 14 September 2001, as ISS Assembly Mission 4R, on a Russian Soyuz-U rocket, using a modified Progress spacecraft, Progress M-SO1, as an upper stage. Poisk was launched on 10 November 2009[114][115] attached to a modified Progress spacecraft, called Progress M-MIM2, on a Soyuz-U rocket from Launch Pad 1 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
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+ Harmony, also known as Node 2, is the "utility hub" of the ISS. It connects the laboratory modules of the United States, Europe and Japan, as well as providing electrical power and electronic data. Sleeping cabins for four of the six crew are housed here.[116]
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+ Harmony was successfully launched into space aboard Space Shuttle flight STS-120 on 23 October 2007.[117][118] After temporarily being attached to the port side of the Unity,[119] it was moved to its permanent location on the forward end of the Destiny laboratory on 14 November 2007.[120] Harmony added 2,666 cubic feet (75.5 m3) to the station's living volume, an increase of almost 20 percent, from 15,000 cu ft (420 m3) to 17,666 cu ft (500.2 m3). Its successful installation meant that from NASA's perspective, the station was "U.S. Core Complete".
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+ Tranquility, also known as Node 3, is a module of the ISS. It contains environmental control systems, life support systems, a toilet, exercise equipment, and an observation cupola.
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+ ESA and the Italian Space Agency had Tranquility built by Thales Alenia Space. A ceremony on 20 November 2009 transferred ownership of the module to NASA.[121] On 8 February 2010, NASA launched the module on the Space Shuttle's STS-130 mission.
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+ Columbus is a science laboratory that is part of the ISS and is the largest single contribution to the ISS made by the European Space Agency (ESA).
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+
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+ The Columbus laboratory was flown to the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida in an Airbus Beluga. It was launched aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on 7 February 2008 on flight STS-122. It is designed for ten years of operation. The module is controlled by the Columbus Control Centre, located at the German Space Operations Centre, part of the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich, Germany.
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+ The European Space Agency has spent €1.4 billion (about US$2 billion) on building Columbus, including the experiments that will orbit in Columbus and the ground control infrastructure necessary to operate the experiments.[122]
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+
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+ The Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), nicknamed Kibo (きぼう, Kibō, Hope), is a Japanese science module for the ISS developed by JAXA. It is the largest single ISS module, and is attached to the Harmony module. The first two pieces of the module were launched on Space Shuttle missions STS-123 and STS-124. The third and final components were launched on STS-127.[123]
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+ Pressurised Module
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+
137
+ Experiment Logistics Module
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+
139
+ Exposed Facility
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+
141
+ Experiment Logistics Module
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+
143
+ Remote Manipulator System
144
+
145
+ The Cupola is an ESA-built observatory module of the ISS. Its name derives from the Italian word cupola, which means "dome". Its seven windows are used to conduct experiments, dockings and observations of Earth. It was launched aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-130 on 8 February 2010 and attached to the Tranquility (Node 3) module. With the Cupola attached, ISS assembly reached 85 percent completion. The Cupola's central window has a diameter of 80 cm (31 in).[124]
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+ Rassvet (Russian: Рассве́т; lit. "dawn"), also known as the Mini-Research Module 1 (MRM-1) (Russian: Малый исследовательский модуль, МИМ 1) and formerly known as the Docking Cargo Module (DCM), is a component of the ISS. The module's design is similar to the Mir Docking Module launched on STS-74 in 1995. Rassvet is primarily used for cargo storage and as a docking port for visiting spacecraft. It was flown to the ISS aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-132 mission on 14 May 2010,[125] and was connected to the ISS on 18 May.[126] The hatch connecting Rassvet with the ISS was first opened on 20 May.[127] On 28 June 2010, the Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft performed the first docking with the module.[128]
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+
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+ The Leonardo Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) is a module of the ISS. It was flown into space aboard the Space Shuttle on STS-133 on 24 February 2011 and installed on 1 March. Leonardo is primarily used for storage of spares, supplies and waste on the ISS, which was until then stored in many different places within the space station. The Leonardo PMM was a Multi-Purpose Logistics Module (MPLM) before 2011, but was modified into its current configuration. It was formerly one of three MPLM used for bringing cargo to and from the ISS with the Space Shuttle. The module was named for Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci.
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+ The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) is an experimental expandable space station module developed by Bigelow Aerospace, under contract to NASA, for testing as a temporary module on the ISS from 2016 to at least 2020. It arrived at the ISS on 10 April 2016,[129] was berthed to the station on 16 April, and was expanded and pressurised on 28 May 2016.
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+ The International Docking Adapter (IDA) is a spacecraft docking system adapter developed to convert APAS-95 to the NASA Docking System (NDS)/International Docking System Standard (IDSS). An IDA is placed on each of the ISS' two open Pressurised Mating Adapters (PMAs), both of which are connected to the Harmony module.
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+ IDA-1 was lost during the launch failure of SpaceX CRS-7 on 28 June 2015.[130][131][132]
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+ IDA-2 was launched on SpaceX CRS-9 on 18 July 2016.[133] It was attached and connected to PMA-2 during a spacewalk on 19 August 2016.[134] First docking was achieved with the arrival of Crew Dragon Demo-1 on 3 March 2019.[135]
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+ IDA-3 was launched on the SpaceX CRS-18 mission in July 2019.[136] IDA-3 is constructed mostly from spare parts to speed construction.[137] It was attached and connected to PMA-3 during a spacewalk on 21 August 2019.[138]
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+ The ISS has a large number of external components that do not require pressurisation. The largest of these is the Integrated Truss Structure (ITS), to which the station's main solar arrays and thermal radiators are mounted.[139] The ITS consists of ten separate segments forming a structure 108.5 metres (356 ft) long.[3]
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+ The station was intended to have several smaller external components, such as six robotic arms, three External Stowage Platforms (ESPs) and four ExPRESS Logistics Carriers (ELCs).[140][141] While these platforms allow experiments (including MISSE, the STP-H3 and the Robotic Refueling Mission) to be deployed and conducted in the vacuum of space by providing electricity and processing experimental data locally, their primary function is to store spare Orbital Replacement Units (ORUs). ORUs are parts that can be replaced when they fail or pass their design life, including pumps, storage tanks, antennas, and battery units. Such units are replaced either by astronauts during EVA or by robotic arms.[142] Several shuttle missions were dedicated to the delivery of ORUs, including STS-129,[143] STS-133[144] and STS-134.[145] As of January 2011[update], only one other mode of transportation of ORUs had been utilised—the Japanese cargo vessel HTV-2—which delivered an FHRC and CTC-2 via its Exposed Pallet (EP).[146][needs update]
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+ There are also smaller exposure facilities mounted directly to laboratory modules; the Kibō Exposed Facility serves as an external "porch" for the Kibō complex,[147] and a facility on the European Columbus laboratory provides power and data connections for experiments such as the European Technology Exposure Facility[148][149] and the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space.[150] A remote sensing instrument, SAGE III-ISS, was delivered to the station in February 2017 aboard CRS-10,[151] and the NICER experiment was delivered aboard CRS-11 in June 2017.[152] The largest scientific payload externally mounted to the ISS is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a particle physics experiment launched on STS-134 in May 2011, and mounted externally on the ITS. The AMS measures cosmic rays to look for evidence of dark matter and antimatter.[153][154]
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+ The commercial Bartolomeo External Payload Hosting Platform, manufactured by Airbus, was launched on 6 March 2020 aboard CRS-20 and attached to the European Columbus module. It will provide an additional 12 external payload slots, supplementing the eight on the ExPRESS Logistics Carriers, ten on Kibō, and four on Columbus. The system is designed to be robotically serviced and will require no astronaut intervention. It is named after Christopher Columbus's younger brother.[155][156][157]
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+ The Integrated Truss Structure serves as a base for the station's primary remote manipulator system, called the Mobile Servicing System (MSS), which is composed of three main components. Canadarm2, the largest robotic arm on the ISS, has a mass of 1,800 kilograms (4,000 lb) and is used to dock and manipulate spacecraft and modules on the USOS, hold crew members and equipment in place during EVAs and move Dextre around to perform tasks.[158] Dextre is a 1,560 kg (3,440 lb) robotic manipulator with two arms, a rotating torso and has power tools, lights and video for replacing orbital replacement units (ORUs) and performing other tasks requiring fine control.[159] The Mobile Base System (MBS) is a platform which rides on rails along the length of the station's main truss. It serves as a mobile base for Canadarm2 and Dextre, allowing the robotic arms to reach all parts of the USOS.[160] To gain access to the Russian Segment a grapple fixture was added to Zarya on STS-134, so that Canadarm2 can inchworm itself onto the ROS.[161] Also installed during STS-134 was the 15 m (50 ft) Orbiter Boom Sensor System (OBSS), which had been used to inspect heat shield tiles on Space Shuttle missions and can be used on station to increase the reach of the MSS.[161] Staff on Earth or the station can operate the MSS components via remote control, performing work outside the station without space walks.
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+ Japan's Remote Manipulator System, which services the Kibō Exposed Facility,[162] was launched on STS-124 and is attached to the Kibō Pressurised Module.[163] The arm is similar to the Space Shuttle arm as it is permanently attached at one end and has a latching end effector for standard grapple fixtures at the other.
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+
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+ The European Robotic Arm, which will service the Russian Orbital Segment, will be launched alongside the Multipurpose Laboratory Module in 2020.[164] The ROS does not require spacecraft or modules to be manipulated, as all spacecraft and modules dock automatically and may be discarded the same way. Crew use the two Strela (Russian: Стрела́; lit. Arrow) cargo cranes during EVAs for moving crew and equipment around the ROS. Each Strela crane has a mass of 45 kg (99 lb).
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+
175
+ Nauka (Russian: Нау́ка; lit. Science), also known as the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), (Russian: Многофункциональный лабораторный модуль, or МЛМ), is a component of the ISS which has not yet been launched into space. The MLM is funded by the Roscosmos State Corporation. In the original ISS plans, Nauka was to use the location of the Docking and Stowage Module. Later, the DSM was replaced by the Rassvet module and it was moved to Zarya's nadir port. Planners anticipate Nauka will dock at Zvezda's nadir port, replacing Pirs.[165]
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+ The launch of Nauka, initially planned for 2007, has been repeatedly delayed for various reasons. As of May 2020[update], the launch to the ISS is assigned to no earlier than spring 2021.[93] After this date, the warranties of some of Nauka's systems will expire.
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+ Prichal, also known as Uzlovoy Module or UM (Russian: Узловой Модуль "Причал", Nodal Module Berth),[166] is a 4-tonne (8,800 lb)[167] ball-shaped module that will allow docking of two scientific and power modules during the final stage of the station assembly, and provide the Russian segment additional docking ports to receive Soyuz MS and Progress MS spacecraft. UM is due to be launched in the third quarter of 2021.[168] It will be integrated with a special version of the Progress cargo ship and launched by a standard Soyuz rocket, docking to the nadir port of the Nauka module. One port is equipped with an active hybrid docking port, which enables docking with the MLM module. The remaining five ports are passive hybrids, enabling docking of Soyuz and Progress vehicles, as well as heavier modules and future spacecraft with modified docking systems. The node module was intended to serve as the only permanent element of the cancelled OPSEK.[168][169]
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+ Science Power Module 1 (SPM-1, also known as NEM-1) and Science Power Module 2 (SPM-2, also known as NEM-2) are modules planned to arrive at the ISS not earlier than 2024.[170] It is going to dock to the Prichal module, which is planned to be attached to the Nauka module.[citation needed] If Nauka is cancelled, then the Prichal, SPM-1, and SPM-2 would dock at the zenith port of Zvezda. SPM-1 and SPM-2 would also be required components for the OPSEK space station.[171]
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+
183
+ The NanoRacks Bishop Airlock Module is a commercially-funded airlock module intended to be launched to the ISS on SpaceX CRS-21 in August 2020.[172][173] The module is being built by NanoRacks, Thales Alenia Space, and Boeing.[174] It will be used to deploy CubeSats, small satellites, and other external payloads for NASA, CASIS, and other commercial and governmental customers.[175]
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+
185
+ In January 2020, NASA awarded Axiom Space a contract to build a commercial module for the space station with it launching in 2024. The contract is under the NextSTEP2 program. NASA said it will begin negotiations with Axiom on a firm-fixed-price contract to build and deliver the module, which will attach to the forward port on space station's Harmony module, or Node 2. Although NASA has only commissioned one module, Axiom plans to build an entire segment which would consist of five modules. These modules would include a node module, an orbital research and manufacturing facility, a crew habitat, and a "large-windowed Earth observatory". The Axiom segment would greatly increase the capabilities and value of the station and allow for larger crews and private spaceflight by other organisations. Axiom plans to turn its segment into its own space station once the ISS is decommissioned and would let it act as a successor to the station.[176][177][178]
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187
+ Several modules planned for the station were cancelled over the course of the ISS programme. Reasons include budgetary constraints, the modules becoming unnecessary, and station redesigns after the 2003 Columbia disaster. The US Centrifuge Accommodations Module would have hosted science experiments in varying levels of artificial gravity.[179] The US Habitation Module would have served as the station's living quarters. Instead, the living quarters are now spread throughout the station.[180] The US Interim Control Module and ISS Propulsion Module would have replaced the functions of Zvezda in case of a launch failure.[181] Two Russian Research Modules were planned for scientific research.[182] They would have docked to a Russian Universal Docking Module.[183] The Russian Science Power Platform would have supplied power to the Russian Orbital Segment independent of the ITS solar arrays.
188
+
189
+ The critical systems are the atmosphere control system, the water supply system, the food supply facilities, the sanitation and hygiene equipment, and fire detection and suppression equipment. The Russian Orbital Segment's life support systems are contained in the Zvezda service module. Some of these systems are supplemented by equipment in the USOS. The Nauka laboratory has a complete set of life support systems.
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+ The atmosphere on board the ISS is similar to the Earth's.[184] Normal air pressure on the ISS is 101.3 kPa (14.69 psi);[185] the same as at sea level on Earth. An Earth-like atmosphere offers benefits for crew comfort, and is much safer than a pure oxygen atmosphere, because of the increased risk of a fire such as that responsible for the deaths of the Apollo 1 crew.[186] Earth-like atmospheric conditions have been maintained on all Russian and Soviet spacecraft.[187]
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+ The Elektron system aboard Zvezda and a similar system in Destiny generate oxygen aboard the station.[188] The crew has a backup option in the form of bottled oxygen and Solid Fuel Oxygen Generation (SFOG) canisters, a chemical oxygen generator system.[189] Carbon dioxide is removed from the air by the Vozdukh system in Zvezda. Other by-products of human metabolism, such as methane from the intestines and ammonia from sweat, are removed by activated charcoal filters.[189]
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+ Part of the ROS atmosphere control system is the oxygen supply. Triple-redundancy is provided by the Elektron unit, solid fuel generators, and stored oxygen. The primary supply of oxygen is the Elektron unit which produces O2 and H2 by electrolysis of water and vents H2 overboard. The 1 kW (1.3 hp) system uses approximately one litre of water per crew member per day. This water is either brought from Earth or recycled from other systems. Mir was the first spacecraft to use recycled water for oxygen production. The secondary oxygen supply is provided by burning O2-producing Vika cartridges (see also ISS ECLSS). Each 'candle' takes 5–20 minutes to decompose at 450–500 °C (842–932 °F), producing 600 litres (130 imp gal; 160 US gal) of O2. This unit is manually operated.[190]
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+ The US Orbital Segment has redundant supplies of oxygen, from a pressurised storage tank on the Quest airlock module delivered in 2001, supplemented ten years later by ESA-built Advanced Closed-Loop System (ACLS) in the Tranquility module (Node 3), which produces O2 by electrolysis.[191] Hydrogen produced is combined with carbon dioxide from the cabin atmosphere and converted to water and methane.
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+ Double-sided solar arrays provide electrical power to the ISS. These bifacial cells collect direct sunlight on one side and light reflected off from the Earth on the other, and are more efficient and operate at a lower temperature than single-sided cells commonly used on Earth.[192]
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+ The Russian segment of the station, like most spacecraft, uses 28 V low voltage DC from four rotating solar arrays mounted on Zarya and Zvezda. The USOS uses 130–180 V DC from the USOS PV array, power is stabilised and distributed at 160 V DC and converted to the user-required 124 V DC. The higher distribution voltage allows smaller, lighter conductors, at the expense of crew safety. The two station segments share power with converters.
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+ The USOS solar arrays are arranged as four wing pairs, for a total production of 75 to 90 kilowatts.[193] These arrays normally track the sun to maximise power generation. Each array is about 375 m2 (4,036 sq ft) in area and 58 m (190 ft) long. In the complete configuration, the solar arrays track the sun by rotating the alpha gimbal once per orbit; the beta gimbal follows slower changes in the angle of the sun to the orbital plane. The Night Glider mode aligns the solar arrays parallel to the ground at night to reduce the significant aerodynamic drag at the station's relatively low orbital altitude.[194]
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+ The station originally used rechargeable nickel–hydrogen batteries (NiH2) for continuous power during the 35 minutes of every 90-minute orbit that it is eclipsed by the Earth. The batteries are recharged on the day side of the orbit. They had a 6.5-year lifetime (over 37,000 charge/discharge cycles) and were regularly replaced over the anticipated 20-year life of the station.[195] Starting in 2016, the nickel–hydrogen batteries were replaced by lithium-ion batteries, which are expected to last until the end of the ISS program.[196]
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+ The station's large solar panels generate a high potential voltage difference between the station and the ionosphere. This could cause arcing through insulating surfaces and sputtering of conductive surfaces as ions are accelerated by the spacecraft plasma sheath. To mitigate this, plasma contactor units (PCU)s create current paths between the station and the ambient plasma field.[197]
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+ The station's systems and experiments consume a large amount of electrical power, almost all of which is converted to heat. To keep the internal temperature within workable limits, a passive thermal control system (PTCS) is made of external surface materials, insulation such as MLI, and heat pipes. If the PTCS cannot keep up with the heat load, an External Active Thermal Control System (EATCS) maintains the temperature. The EATCS consists of an internal, non-toxic, water coolant loop used to cool and dehumidify the atmosphere, which transfers collected heat into an external liquid ammonia loop. From the heat exchangers, ammonia is pumped into external radiators that emit heat as infrared radiation, then back to the station.[198] The EATCS provides cooling for all the US pressurised modules, including Kibō and Columbus, as well as the main power distribution electronics of the S0, S1 and P1 trusses. It can reject up to 70 kW. This is much more than the 14 kW of the Early External Active Thermal Control System (EEATCS) via the Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS), which was launched on STS-105 and installed onto the P6 Truss.[199]
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+ Radio communications provide telemetry and scientific data links between the station and mission control centres. Radio links are also used during rendezvous and docking procedures and for audio and video communication between crew members, flight controllers and family members. As a result, the ISS is equipped with internal and external communication systems used for different purposes.[200]
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+ The Russian Orbital Segment communicates directly with the ground via the Lira antenna mounted to Zvezda.[6][201] The Lira antenna also has the capability to use the Luch data relay satellite system.[6] This system fell into disrepair during the 1990s, and so was not used during the early years of the ISS,[6][202][203] although two new Luch satellites—Luch-5A and Luch-5B—were launched in 2011 and 2012 respectively to restore the operational capability of the system.[204] Another Russian communications system is the Voskhod-M, which enables internal telephone communications between Zvezda, Zarya, Pirs, Poisk, and the USOS and provides a VHF radio link to ground control centres via antennas on Zvezda's exterior.[205]
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+ The US Orbital Segment (USOS) makes use of two separate radio links mounted in the Z1 truss structure: the S band (audio) and Ku band (audio, video and data) systems. These transmissions are routed via the United States Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) in geostationary orbit, allowing for almost continuous real-time communications with Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center (MCC-H) in Houston.[6][22][200] Data channels for the Canadarm2, European Columbus laboratory and Japanese Kibō modules were originally also routed via the S band and Ku band systems, with the European Data Relay System and a similar Japanese system intended to eventually complement the TDRSS in this role.[22][206] Communications between modules are carried on an internal wireless network.[207]
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+ UHF radio is used by astronauts and cosmonauts conducting EVAs and other spacecraft that dock to or undock from the station.[6] Automated spacecraft are fitted with their own communications equipment; the ATV uses a laser attached to the spacecraft and the Proximity Communications Equipment attached to Zvezda to accurately dock with the station.[208][209]
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+ The ISS is equipped with about 100 IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad and HP ZBook 15 laptop computers. The laptops have run Windows 95, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 10 and Linux operating systems.[210] Each computer is a commercial off-the-shelf purchase which is then modified for safety and operation including updates to connectors, cooling and power to accommodate the station's 28V DC power system and weightless environment. Heat generated by the laptops does not rise but stagnates around the laptop, so additional forced ventilation is required. Laptops aboard the ISS are connected to the station's wireless LAN via Wi-Fi and ethernet, which connects to the ground via Ku band. While originally this provided speeds of 10 Mbit/s download and 3 Mbit/s upload from the station,[211][212] NASA upgraded the system in late August 2019 and increased the speeds to 600 Mbit/s.[213][214] Laptop hard drives occasionally fail and must be replaced.[215] Other computer hardware failures include instances in 2001, 2007 and 2017; some of these failures have required EVAs to replace computer modules in externally mounted devices.[216][217][218][219]
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+ The operating system used for key station functions is the Debian Linux distribution.[220] The migration from Microsoft Windows was made in May 2013 for reasons of reliability, stability and flexibility.[221]
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+ In 2017, an SG100 Cloud Computer was launched to the ISS as part of OA-7 mission.[222] It was manufactured by NCSIST of Taiwan and designed in collaboration with Academia Sinica, and National Central University under contract for NASA.[223]
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+ Each permanent crew is given an expedition number. Expeditions run up to six months, from launch until undocking, an 'increment' covers the same time period, but includes cargo ships and all activities. Expeditions 1 to 6 consisted of three-person crews. Expeditions 7 to 12 were reduced to the safe minimum of two following the destruction of the NASA Shuttle Columbia. From Expedition 13 the crew gradually increased to six around 2010.[224][225] With the planned arrival of crew on US commercial vehicles in the early 2020s,[226] expedition size may be increased to seven crew members, the number ISS is designed for.[227][228]
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+ Gennady Padalka, member of Expeditions 9, 19/20, 31/32, and 43/44, and Commander of Expedition 11, has spent more time in space than anyone else, a total of 878 days, 11 hours, and 29 minutes.[229] Peggy Whitson has spent the most time in space of any American, totalling 665 days, 22 hours, and 22 minutes during her time on Expeditions 5, 16, and 50/51/52.[230]
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+ Travellers who pay for their own passage into space are termed spaceflight participants by Roscosmos and NASA, and are sometimes referred to as "space tourists", a term they generally dislike.[note 1] All seven were transported to the ISS on Russian Soyuz spacecraft. When professional crews change over in numbers not divisible by the three seats in a Soyuz, and a short-stay crewmember is not sent, the spare seat is sold by MirCorp through Space Adventures. When the space shuttle retired in 2011, and the station's crew size was reduced to six, space tourism was halted, as the partners relied on Russian transport seats for access to the station. Soyuz flight schedules increase after 2013, allowing five Soyuz flights (15 seats) with only two expeditions (12 seats) required.[236] The remaining seats are sold for around US$40 million to members of the public who can pass a medical exam. ESA and NASA criticised private spaceflight at the beginning of the ISS, and NASA initially resisted training Dennis Tito, the first person to pay for his own passage to the ISS.[note 2]
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+ Anousheh Ansari became the first Iranian in space and the first self-funded woman to fly to the station. Officials reported that her education and experience make her much more than a tourist, and her performance in training had been "excellent."[237] Ansari herself dismisses the idea that she is a tourist. She did Russian and European studies involving medicine and microbiology during her 10-day stay. The documentary Space Tourists follows her journey to the station, where she fulfilled "an age-old dream of man: to leave our planet as a "normal person" and travel into outer space."[238]
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+ In 2008, spaceflight participant Richard Garriott placed a geocache aboard the ISS during his flight.[239] This is currently the only non-terrestrial geocache in existence.[240] At the same time, the Immortality Drive, an electronic record of eight digitised human DNA sequences, was placed aboard the ISS.[241]
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+ A wide variety of crewed and uncrewed spacecraft have supported the station's activities. Thirty-seven Space Shuttle ISS flights were conducted before retirement. 75 Progress resupply spacecraft (including the modified M-MIM2 and M-SO1 module transports), 59 crewed Soyuz spacecraft, five European ATV, nine Japanese HTV 'Kounotori', 20 SpaceX Dragon, and 12 orbital ATK Cygnus have flown to the ISS.
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+ All Russian spacecraft and self-propelled modules are able to rendezvous and dock to the space station without human intervention using the Kurs radar docking system from over 200 kilometres away. The European ATV uses star sensors and GPS to determine its intercept course. When it catches up it uses laser equipment to optically recognise Zvezda, along with the Kurs system for redundancy. Crew supervise these craft, but do not intervene except to send abort commands in emergencies. Progress and ATV supply craft can remain at the ISS for six months,[259][260] allowing great flexibility in crew time for loading and unloading of supplies and trash.
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+ From the initial station programs, the Russians pursued an automated docking methodology that used the crew in override or monitoring roles. Although the initial development costs were high, the system has become very reliable with standardisations that provide significant cost benefits in repetitive operations.[261]
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+ Soyuz spacecraft used for crew rotation also serve as lifeboats for emergency evacuation; they are replaced every six months and were used after the Columbia disaster to return stranded crew from the ISS.[262] Expeditions require, on average, 2,722 kg of supplies, and as of 9 March 2011[update], crews had consumed a total of around 22,000 meals.[77] Soyuz crew rotation flights and Progress resupply flights visit the station on average two and three times respectively each year.[263]
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+ Other vehicles berth instead of docking. The Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle parks itself in progressively closer orbits to the station, and then awaits 'approach' commands from the crew, until it is close enough for a robotic arm to grapple and berth the vehicle to the USOS. Berthed craft can transfer International Standard Payload Racks. Japanese spacecraft berth for one to two months.[264] The berthing Cygnus and SpaceX Dragon were contracted to fly cargo to the station under the phase 1 of the Commercial Resupply Services program.[265][266]
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+ From 26 February 2011 to 7 March 2011 four of the governmental partners (United States, ESA, Japan and Russia) had their spacecraft (NASA Shuttle, ATV, HTV, Progress and Soyuz) docked at the ISS, the only time this has happened to date.[267] On 25 May 2012, SpaceX delivered the first commercial cargo with a Dragon spacecraft.[268]
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+ Prior to a ship's docking to the ISS, navigation and attitude control (GNC) is handed over to the ground control of the ship's country of origin. GNC is set to allow the station to drift in space, rather than fire its thrusters or turn using gyroscopes. The solar panels of the station are turned edge-on to the incoming ships, so residue from its thrusters does not damage the cells. Before its retirement, Shuttle launches were often given priority over Soyuz, with occasional priority given to Soyuz arrivals carrying crew and time-critical cargoes, such as biological experiment materials.[269]
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+ The components of the ISS are operated and monitored by their respective space agencies at mission control centres across the globe, including:
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+ Orbital Replacement Units (ORUs) are spare parts that can be readily replaced when a unit either passes its design life or fails. Examples of ORUs are pumps, storage tanks, controller boxes, antennas, and battery units. Some units can be replaced using robotic arms. Most are stored outside the station, either on small pallets called ExPRESS Logistics Carriers (ELCs) or share larger platforms called External Stowage Platforms which also hold science experiments. Both kinds of pallets provide electricity for many parts that could be damaged by the cold of space and require heating. The larger logistics carriers also have local area network (LAN) connections for telemetry to connect experiments. A heavy emphasis on stocking the USOS with ORU's occurred around 2011, before the end of the NASA shuttle programme, as its commercial replacements, Cygnus and Dragon, carry one tenth to one quarter the payload.
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+ Unexpected problems and failures have impacted the station's assembly time-line and work schedules leading to periods of reduced capabilities and, in some cases, could have forced abandonment of the station for safety reasons. Serious problems include an air leak from the USOS in 2004,[272] the venting of fumes from an Elektron oxygen generator in 2006,[273] and the failure of the computers in the ROS in 2007 during STS-117 that left the station without thruster, Elektron, Vozdukh and other environmental control system operations. In the latter case, the root cause was found to be condensation inside electrical connectors leading to a short-circuit.[274]
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+ During STS-120 in 2007 and following the relocation of the P6 truss and solar arrays, it was noted during the solar array had torn and was not deploying properly.[275] An EVA was carried out by Scott Parazynski, assisted by Douglas Wheelock. Extra precautions were taken to reduce the risk of electric shock, as the repairs were carried out with the solar array exposed to sunlight.[276] The issues with the array were followed in the same year by problems with the starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint (SARJ), which rotates the arrays on the starboard side of the station. Excessive vibration and high-current spikes in the array drive motor were noted, resulting in a decision to substantially curtail motion of the starboard SARJ until the cause was understood. Inspections during EVAs on STS-120 and STS-123 showed extensive contamination from metallic shavings and debris in the large drive gear and confirmed damage to the large metallic bearing surfaces, so the joint was locked to prevent further damage.[277][278] Repairs to the joints were carried out during STS-126 with lubrication and the replacement of 11 out of 12 trundle bearings on the joint.[279][280]
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+ In September 2008, damage to the S1 radiator was first noticed in Soyuz imagery. The problem was initially not thought to be serious.[281] The imagery showed that the surface of one sub-panel has peeled back from the underlying central structure, possibly because of micro-meteoroid or debris impact. On 15 May 2009 the damaged radiator panel's ammonia tubing was mechanically shut off from the rest of the cooling system by the computer-controlled closure of a valve. The same valve was then used to vent the ammonia from the damaged panel, eliminating the possibility of an ammonia leak.[281] It is also known that a Service Module thruster cover struck the S1 radiator after being jettisoned during an EVA in 2008, but its effect, if any, has not been determined.
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+ Early on 1 August 2010, a failure in cooling Loop A (starboard side), one of two external cooling loops, left the station with only half of its normal cooling capacity and zero redundancy in some systems.[282][283][284] The problem appeared to be in the ammonia pump module that circulates the ammonia cooling fluid. Several subsystems, including two of the four CMGs, were shut down.
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+ Planned operations on the ISS were interrupted through a series of EVAs to address the cooling system issue. A first EVA on 7 August 2010, to replace the failed pump module, was not fully completed because of an ammonia leak in one of four quick-disconnects. A second EVA on 11 August successfully removed the failed pump module.[285][286] A third EVA was required to restore Loop A to normal functionality.[287][288]
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+ The USOS's cooling system is largely built by the US company Boeing,[289] which is also the manufacturer of the failed pump.[290]
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+ The four Main Bus Switching Units (MBSUs, located in the S0 truss), control the routing of power from the four solar array wings to the rest of the ISS. Each MBSU has two power channels that feed 160V DC from the arrays to two DC-to-DC power converters (DDCUs) that supply the 124V power used in the station. In late 2011 MBSU-1 ceased responding to commands or sending data confirming its health. While still routing power correctly, it was scheduled to be swapped out at the next available EVA. A spare MBSU was already on board, but a 30 August 2012 EVA failed to be completed when a bolt being tightened to finish installation of the spare unit jammed before the electrical connection was secured.[291] The loss of MBSU-1 limited the station to 75% of its normal power capacity, requiring minor limitations in normal operations until the problem could be addressed.
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+ On 5 September 2012, in a second six-hour EVA, astronauts Sunita Williams and Akihiko Hoshide successfully replaced MBSU-1 and restored the ISS to 100% power.[292]
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+ On 24 December 2013, astronauts installed a new ammonia pump for the station's cooling system. The faulty cooling system had failed earlier in the month, halting many of the station's science experiments. Astronauts had to brave a "mini blizzard" of ammonia while installing the new pump. It was only the second Christmas Eve spacewalk in NASA history.[293]
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+ A typical day for the crew begins with a wake-up at 06:00, followed by post-sleep activities and a morning inspection of the station. The crew then eats breakfast and takes part in a daily planning conference with Mission Control before starting work at around 08:10. The first scheduled exercise of the day follows, after which the crew continues work until 13:05. Following a one-hour lunch break, the afternoon consists of more exercise and work before the crew carries out its pre-sleep activities beginning at 19:30, including dinner and a crew conference. The scheduled sleep period begins at 21:30. In general, the crew works ten hours per day on a weekday, and five hours on Saturdays, with the rest of the time their own for relaxation or work catch-up.[294]
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+ The time zone used aboard the ISS is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The windows are covered at night hours to give the impression of darkness because the station experiences 16 sunrises and sunsets per day. During visiting Space Shuttle missions, the ISS crew mostly follows the shuttle's Mission Elapsed Time (MET), which is a flexible time zone based on the launch time of the Space Shuttle mission.[295][296][297]
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+ The station provides crew quarters for each member of the expedition's crew, with two 'sleep stations' in the Zvezda and four more installed in Harmony.[298][299] The USOS quarters are private, approximately person-sized soundproof booths. The ROS crew quarters include a small window, but provide less ventilation and sound proofing. A crew member can sleep in a crew quarter in a tethered sleeping bag, listen to music, use a laptop, and store personal items in a large drawer or in nets attached to the module's walls. The module also provides a reading lamp, a shelf and a desktop.[300][301][302] Visiting crews have no allocated sleep module, and attach a sleeping bag to an available space on a wall. It is possible to sleep floating freely through the station, but this is generally avoided because of the possibility of bumping into sensitive equipment.[303] It is important that crew accommodations be well ventilated; otherwise, astronauts can wake up oxygen-deprived and gasping for air, because a bubble of their own exhaled carbon dioxide has formed around their heads.[300] During various station activities and crew rest times, the lights in the ISS can be dimmed, switched off, and colour temperatures adjusted.[304][305]
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+ On the USOS, most of the food aboard is vacuum sealed in plastic bags; cans are rare because they are heavy and expensive to transport. Preserved food is not highly regarded by the crew and taste is reduced in microgravity,[300] so efforts are taken to make the food more palatable, including using more spices than in regular cooking. The crew looks forward to the arrival of any ships from Earth as they bring fresh fruit and vegetables. Care is taken that foods do not create crumbs, and liquid condiments are preferred over solid to avoid contaminating station equipment. Each crew member has individual food packages and cooks them using the on-board galley. The galley features two food warmers, a refrigerator which was added in November 2008, and a water dispenser that provides both heated and unheated water.[301] Drinks are provided as dehydrated powder that is mixed with water before consumption.[301][302] Drinks and soups are sipped from plastic bags with straws, while solid food is eaten with a knife and fork attached to a tray with magnets to prevent them from floating away. Any food that floats away, including crumbs, must be collected to prevent it from clogging the station's air filters and other equipment.[302]
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+ Showers on space stations were introduced in the early 1970s on Skylab and Salyut 3.[306]:139 By Salyut 6, in the early 1980s, the crew complained of the complexity of showering in space, which was a monthly activity.[307] The ISS does not feature a shower; instead, crewmembers wash using a water jet and wet wipes, with soap dispensed from a toothpaste tube-like container. Crews are also provided with rinseless shampoo and edible toothpaste to save water.[303][308]
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+ There are two space toilets on the ISS, both of Russian design, located in Zvezda and Tranquility.[301] These Waste and Hygiene Compartments use a fan-driven suction system similar to the Space Shuttle Waste Collection System. Astronauts first fasten themselves to the toilet seat, which is equipped with spring-loaded restraining bars to ensure a good seal.[300] A lever operates a powerful fan and a suction hole slides open: the air stream carries the waste away. Solid waste is collected in individual bags which are stored in an aluminium container. Full containers are transferred to Progress spacecraft for disposal.[301][309] Liquid waste is evacuated by a hose connected to the front of the toilet, with anatomically correct "urine funnel adapters" attached to the tube so that men and women can use the same toilet. The diverted urine is collected and transferred to the Water Recovery System, where it is recycled into drinking water.[302]
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+ On 12 April 2019, NASA reported medical results from the Astronaut Twin Study. One astronaut twin spent a year in space on the ISS, while the other twin spent the year on Earth. Several long-lasting changes were observed, including those related to alterations in DNA and cognition, when one twin was compared with the other.[310][311]
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+ In November 2019, researchers reported that astronauts experienced serious blood flow and clot problems while on board the International Space Station, based on a six-month study of 11 healthy astronauts. The results may influence long-term spaceflight, including a mission to the planet Mars, according to the researchers.[312][313]
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+ The ISS is partially protected from the space environment by Earth's magnetic field. From an average distance of about 70,000 km (43,000 mi), depending on Solar activity, the magnetosphere begins to deflect solar wind around Earth and ISS. Solar flares are still a hazard to the crew, who may receive only a few minutes warning. In 2005, during the initial 'proton storm' of an X-3 class solar flare, the crew of Expedition 10 took shelter in a more heavily shielded part of the ROS designed for this purpose.[314][315]
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+ Subatomic charged particles, primarily protons from cosmic rays and solar wind, are normally absorbed by Earth's atmosphere. When they interact in sufficient quantity, their effect is visible to the naked eye in a phenomenon called an aurora. Outside Earth's atmosphere, crews are exposed to about 1 millisievert each day, which is about a year of natural exposure on Earth, resulting in a higher risk of cancer. Radiation can penetrate living tissue and damage the DNA and chromosomes of lymphocytes. These cells are central to the immune system, and so any damage to them could contribute to the lower immunity experienced by astronauts. Radiation has also been linked to a higher incidence of cataracts in astronauts. Protective shielding and drugs may lower risks to an acceptable level.[43]
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+ Radiation levels on the ISS are about five times greater than those experienced by airline passengers and crew, as Earth's electromagnetic field provides almost the same level of protection against solar and other radiation in low Earth orbit as in the stratosphere. For example, on a 12-hour flight an airline passenger would experience 0.1 millisieverts of radiation, or a rate of 0.2 millisieverts per day; only 1/5 the rate experienced by an astronaut in LEO. Additionally, airline passengers experience this level of radiation for a few hours of flight, while ISS crew are exposed for their whole stay.[316]
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+ There is considerable evidence that psychosocial stressors are among the most important impediments to optimal crew morale and performance.[317] Cosmonaut Valery Ryumin wrote in his journal during a particularly difficult period on board the Salyut 6 space station: "All the conditions necessary for murder are met if you shut two men in a cabin measuring 18 feet by 20 and leave them together for two months."
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+ NASA's interest in psychological stress caused by space travel, initially studied when their crewed missions began, was rekindled when astronauts joined cosmonauts on the Russian space station Mir. Common sources of stress in early US missions included maintaining high performance under public scrutiny and isolation from peers and family. The latter is still often a cause of stress on the ISS, such as when the mother of NASA Astronaut Daniel Tani died in a car accident, and when Michael Fincke was forced to miss the birth of his second child.
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+ A study of the longest spaceflight concluded that the first three weeks are a critical period where attention is adversely affected because of the demand to adjust to the extreme change of environment.[318] ISS crew flights typically last about five to six months.
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+ The ISS working environment includes further stress caused by living and working in cramped conditions with people from very different cultures who speak a different language. First-generation space stations had crews who spoke a single language; second- and third-generation stations have crew from many cultures who speak many languages. Astronauts must speak English and Russian, and knowing additional languages is even better.[319]
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+ Due to the lack of gravity, confusion often occurs. Even though there is no up and down in space, some crew members feel like they are oriented upside down. They may also have difficulty measuring distances. This can cause problems like getting lost inside the space station, pulling switches in the wrong direction or misjudging the speed of an approaching vehicle during docking.[320]
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+ Medical effects of long-term weightlessness include muscle atrophy, deterioration of the skeleton (osteopenia), fluid redistribution, a slowing of the cardiovascular system, decreased production of red blood cells, balance disorders, and a weakening of the immune system. Lesser symptoms include loss of body mass, and puffiness of the face.[43]
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+ Sleep is disturbed on the ISS regularly because of mission demands, such as incoming or departing ships. Sound levels in the station are unavoidably high. Because the atmosphere is unable to thermosiphon, fans are required at all times to allow processing of the atmosphere which would stagnate in the freefall (zero-g) environment.
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+ To prevent some of these adverse physiological effects, the station is equipped with two treadmills (including the COLBERT), and the aRED (advanced Resistive Exercise Device) which enables various weightlifting exercises which add muscle but do not compensate for or raise astronauts' reduced bone density,[321] and a stationary bicycle; each astronaut spends at least two hours per day exercising on the equipment.[300][301] Astronauts use bungee cords to strap themselves to the treadmill.[322][323]
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+ Hazardous moulds which can foul air and water filters may develop aboard space stations. They can produce acids which degrade metal, glass, and rubber. They can also be harmful for the crew's health. Microbiological hazards have led to a development of the LOCAD-PTS that can identify common bacteria and moulds faster than standard methods of culturing, which may require a sample to be sent back to Earth.[324] As of 2012[update], 76 types of unregulated micro-organisms have been detected on the ISS.[325] Researchers in 2018 reported, after detecting the presence of five Enterobacter bugandensis bacterial strains on the ISS, none pathogenic to humans, that microorganisms on ISS should be carefully monitored to continue assuring a medically healthy environment for astronauts.[326][327]
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+ Reduced humidity, paint with mould-killing chemicals, and antiseptic solutions can be used to prevent contamination in space stations. All materials used in the ISS are tested for resistance against fungi.[328]
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+ In April 2019, NASA reported that a comprehensive study of microorganisms and fungi present on the International Space Station has been conducted. The results can be useful in improving health and safety conditions for astronauts.[329][330]
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+ Space flight is not inherently quiet, with noise levels exceeding acoustic standards as far back as the Apollo missions.[331][332] For this reason, NASA and the International Space Station international partners have developed noise control and hearing loss prevention goals as part of the health program for crew members. Specifically, these goals have been the primary focus of the ISS Multilateral Medical Operations Panel (MMOP) Acoustics Subgroup since the first days of ISS assembly and operations.[1] [2] The effort includes contributions from acoustical engineers, audiologists, industrial hygienists, and physicians who comprise the subgroup's membership from NASA, the Russian Space Agency (RSA), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
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+ When compared to terrestrial environments, the noise levels incurred by astronauts and cosmonauts on the ISS may seem insignificant and typically occur at levels that would not be of major concern to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration – rarely reaching 85 dBA. But crew members are exposed to these levels 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with current missions averaging six months in duration. These levels of noise also impose risks to crew health and performance in the form of sleep interference and communication, as well as reduced alarm audibility.
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+ Over the 19 plus year history of the ISS, significant efforts have been put forth to limit and reduce noise levels on the ISS. During design and pre-flight activities, members of the Acoustic Subgroup have written acoustic limits and verification requirements, consulted to design and choose quietest available payloads, and then conducted acoustic verification tests prior to launch.[3] During spaceflights, the Acoustics Subgroup has assessed each ISS module's in flight sound levels, produced by a large number of vehicle and science experiment noise sources, to assure compliance with strict acoustic standards. The acoustic environment on ISS changed when additional modules were added during its construction, and as additional spacecraft arrive at the ISS. The Acoustics Subgroup has responded to this dynamic operations schedule by successfully designing and employing acoustic covers, absorptive materials, noise barriers, and vibration isolators to reduce noise levels. Moreover, when pumps, fans, and ventilation systems age and show increased noise levels, this Acoustics Subgroup has guided ISS managers to replace the older, noisier instruments with quiet fan and pump technologies, significantly reducing ambient noise levels.
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+ NASA has adopted most-conservative damage risk criteria (based on recommendations from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the World Health Organization), in order to protect all crew members. The MMOP Acoustics Subgroup has adjusted its approach to managing noise risks in this unique environment by applying, or modifying, terrestrial approaches for hearing loss prevention to set these conservative limits. One innovative approach has been NASA's Noise Exposure Estimation Tool (NEET), in which noise exposures are calculated in a task-based approach to determine the need for hearing protection devices (HPDs). Guidance for use of HPDs, either mandatory use or recommended, is then documented in the Noise Hazard Inventory, and posted for crew reference during their missions. The Acoustics Subgroup also tracks spacecraft noise exceedances, applies engineering controls, and recommends hearing protective devices to reduce crew noise exposures. Finally, hearing thresholds are monitored on-orbit, during missions .
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+
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+ There have been no persistent mission-related hearing threshold shifts among US Orbital Segment crewmembers (JAXA, CSA, ESA, NASA) during what is approaching 20 years of ISS mission operations, or nearly 175,000 work hours. In 2020, the MMOP Acoustics Subgroup received the Safe-In-Sound Award for Innovation for their combined efforts to mitigate any health effects of noise.[4]
326
+
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+ An onboard fire or a toxic gas leak are other potential hazards. Ammonia is used in the external radiators of the station and could potentially leak into the pressurised modules.[333]
328
+
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+ The ISS is maintained in a nearly circular orbit with a minimum mean altitude of 330 km (205 mi) and a maximum of 410 km (255 mi), in the centre of the thermosphere, at an inclination of 51.6 degrees to Earth's equator. This orbit was selected because it is the lowest inclination that can be directly reached by Russian Soyuz and Progress spacecraft launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome at 46° N latitude without overflying China or dropping spent rocket stages in inhabited areas.[334][335]
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+ It travels at an average speed of 27,724 kilometres per hour (17,227 mph), and completes 15.54 orbits per day (93 minutes per orbit).[2][16] The station's altitude was allowed to fall around the time of each NASA shuttle flight to permit heavier loads to be transferred to the station. After the retirement of the shuttle, the nominal orbit of the space station was raised in altitude.[336][337] Other, more frequent supply ships do not require this adjustment as they are substantially higher performance vehicles.[28][338]
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+ Orbital boosting can be performed by the station's two main engines on the Zvezda service module, or Russian or European spacecraft docked to Zvezda's aft port. The Automated Transfer Vehicle is constructed with the possibility of adding a second docking port to its aft end, allowing other craft to dock and boost the station. It takes approximately two orbits (three hours) for the boost to a higher altitude to be completed.[338] Maintaining ISS altitude uses about 7.5 tonnes of chemical fuel per annum[339] at an annual cost of about $210 million.[340]
333
+
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+ The Russian Orbital Segment contains the Data Management System, which handles Guidance, Navigation and Control (ROS GNC) for the entire station.[270] Initially, Zarya, the first module of the station, controlled the station until a short time after the Russian service module Zvezda docked and was transferred control. Zvezda contains the ESA built DMS-R Data Management System.[271] Using two fault-tolerant computers (FTC), Zvezda computes the station's position and orbital trajectory using redundant Earth horizon sensors, Solar horizon sensors as well as Sun and star trackers. The FTCs each contain three identical processing units working in parallel and provide advanced fault-masking by majority voting.
335
+
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+ Zvezda uses gyroscopes (reaction wheels) and thrusters to turn itself around. Gyroscopes do not require propellant, rather they use electricity to 'store' momentum in flywheels by turning in the opposite direction to the station's movement. The USOS has its own computer controlled gyroscopes to handle the extra mass of that section. When gyroscopes 'saturate', thrusters are used to cancel out the stored momentum. During Expedition 10, an incorrect command was sent to the station's computer, using about 14 kilograms of propellant before the fault was noticed and fixed. When attitude control computers in the ROS and USOS fail to communicate properly, it can result in a rare 'force fight' where the ROS GNC computer must ignore the USOS counterpart, which has no thrusters.[341][342][343]
337
+
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+ Docked spacecraft can also be used to maintain station attitude, such as for troubleshooting or during the installation of the S3/S4 truss, which provides electrical power and data interfaces for the station's electronics.[344]
339
+
340
+ The low altitudes at which the ISS orbits are also home to a variety of space debris,[345] including spent rocket stages, defunct satellites, explosion fragments (including materials from anti-satellite weapon tests), paint flakes, slag from solid rocket motors, and coolant released by US-A nuclear-powered satellites. These objects, in addition to natural micrometeoroids,[346] are a significant threat. Objects large enough to destroy the station can be tracked, and are not as dangerous as smaller debris.[347][348] Objects too small to be detected by optical and radar instruments, from approximately 1 cm down to microscopic size, number in the trillions. Despite their small size, some of these objects are a threat because of their kinetic energy and direction in relation to the station. Spacewalking crew in spacesuits are also at risk of suit damage and consequent exposure to vacuum.[349]
341
+
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+ Ballistic panels, also called micrometeorite shielding, are incorporated into the station to protect pressurised sections and critical systems. The type and thickness of these panels depend on their predicted exposure to damage. The station's shields and structure have different designs on the ROS and the USOS. On the USOS, Whipple shields are used. The US segment modules consist of an inner layer made from 1.5 cm thick aluminum, a 10 cm thick intermediate layers of Kevlar and Nextel,[350] and an outer layer of stainless steel, which causes objects to shatter into a cloud before hitting the hull, thereby spreading the energy of impact. On the ROS, a Carbon fiber reinforced polymer honeycomb screen is spaced from the hull, an aluminium honeycomb screen is spaced from that, with a screen-vacuum thermal insulation covering, and glass cloth over the top.[citation needed]
343
+
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+ Space debris is tracked remotely from the ground, and the station crew can be notified.[351] If necessary, thrusters on the Russian Orbital Segment can alter the station's orbital altitude, avoiding the debris. These Debris Avoidance Manoeuvres (DAMs) are not uncommon, taking place if computational models show the debris will approach within a certain threat distance. Ten DAMs had been performed by the end of 2009.[352][353][354] Usually, an increase in orbital velocity of the order of 1 m/s is used to raise the orbit by one or two kilometres. If necessary, the altitude can also be lowered, although such a manoeuvre wastes propellant.[353][355] If a threat from orbital debris is identified too late for a DAM to be safely conducted, the station crew close all the hatches aboard the station and retreat into their Soyuz spacecraft in order to be able to evacuate in the event the station was seriously damaged by the debris. This partial station evacuation has occurred on 13 March 2009, 28 June 2011, 24 March 2012 and 16 June 2015.[356][357]
345
+
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+ The ISS is visible to the naked eye as a slow-moving, bright white dot because of reflected sunlight, and can be seen in the hours after sunset and before sunrise, when the station remains sunlit but the ground and sky are dark.[358] The ISS takes about 10 minutes to pass from one horizon to another, and will only be visible part of that time because of moving into or out of the Earth's shadow. Because of the size of its reflective surface area, the ISS is the brightest artificial object in the sky (excluding other satellite flares), with an approximate maximum magnitude of −4 when overhead (similar to Venus). The ISS, like many satellites including the Iridium constellation, can also produce flares of up to 16 times the brightness of Venus as sunlight glints off reflective surfaces.[359][360] The ISS is also visible in broad daylight, albeit with a great deal more difficulty.
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+
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+ Tools are provided by a number of websites such as Heavens-Above (see Live viewing below) as well as smartphone applications that use orbital data and the observer's longitude and latitude to indicate when the ISS will be visible (weather permitting), where the station will appear to rise, the altitude above the horizon it will reach and the duration of the pass before the station disappears either by setting below the horizon or entering into Earth's shadow.[361][362][363][364]
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+
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+ In November 2012 NASA launched its "Spot the Station" service, which sends people text and email alerts when the station is due to fly above their town.[365] The station is visible from 95% of the inhabited land on Earth, but is not visible from extreme northern or southern latitudes.[334]
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+
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+ Using a telescope-mounted camera to photograph the station is a popular hobby for astronomers,[366] while using a mounted camera to photograph the Earth and stars is a popular hobby for crew.[367] The use of a telescope or binoculars allows viewing of the ISS during daylight hours.[368]
353
+
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+ Some amateur astronomers also use telescopic lenses to photograph the ISS while it transits the Sun, sometimes doing so during an eclipse (and so the Sun, Moon, and ISS are all positioned approximately in a single line). One example is during the 21 August solar eclipse, where at one location in Wyoming, images of the ISS were captured during the eclipse.[369] Similar images were captured by NASA from a location in Washington.
355
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+ Parisian engineer and astrophotographer Thierry Legault, known for his photos of spaceships transiting the Sun, travelled to Oman in 2011 to photograph the Sun, Moon and space station all lined up.[370] Legault, who received the Marius Jacquemetton award from the Société astronomique de France in 1999, and other hobbyists, use websites that predict when the ISS will transit the Sun or Moon and from what location those passes will be visible.
357
+
358
+ Involving five space programs and fifteen countries,[371] the International Space Station is the most politically and legally complex space exploration programme in history.[372] The 1998 Space Station Intergovernmental Agreement sets forth the primary framework for international cooperation among the parties. A series of subsequent agreements govern other aspects of the station, ranging from jurisdictional issues to a code of conduct among visiting astronauts.[373]
359
+
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+ According to the Outer Space Treaty, the United States and Russia are legally responsible for all modules they have launched.[374] Natural orbital decay with random reentry (as with Skylab), boosting the station to a higher altitude (which would delay reentry), and a controlled targeted de-orbit to a remote ocean area were considered as ISS disposal options.[375] As of late 2010, the preferred plan is to use a slightly modified Progress spacecraft to de-orbit the ISS.[376] This plan was seen as the simplest, cheapest and with the highest margin.[376]
361
+
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+ The Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex (OPSEK) was previously intended to be constructed of modules from the Russian Orbital Segment after the ISS is decommissioned. The modules under consideration for removal from the current ISS included the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (Nauka), planned to be launched in spring 2021 as of May 2020[update],[93] and the other new Russian modules that are proposed to be attached to Nauka. These newly launched modules would still be well within their useful lives in 2024.[377]
363
+
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+ At the end of 2011, the Exploration Gateway Platform concept also proposed using leftover USOS hardware and Zvezda 2 as a refuelling depot and service station located at one of the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. However, the entire USOS was not designed for disassembly and will be discarded.[378]
365
+
366
+ In February 2015, Roscosmos announced that it would remain a part of the ISS programme until 2024.[17] Nine months earlier—in response to US sanctions against Russia over the annexation of Crimea—Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin had stated that Russia would reject a US request to prolong the orbiting station's use beyond 2020, and would only supply rocket engines to the US for non-military satellite launches.[379]
367
+
368
+ On 28 March 2015, Russian sources announced that Roscosmos and NASA had agreed to collaborate on the development of a replacement for the current ISS.[380][381] Igor Komarov, the head of Russia's Roscosmos, made the announcement with NASA administrator Charles Bolden at his side.[382] In a statement provided to SpaceNews on 28 March, NASA spokesman David Weaver said the agency appreciated the Russian commitment to extending the ISS, but did not confirm any plans for a future space station.[383]
369
+
370
+ On 30 September 2015, Boeing's contract with NASA as prime contractor for the ISS was extended to 30 September 2020. Part of Boeing's services under the contract will relate to extending the station's primary structural hardware past 2020 to the end of 2028.[384]
371
+
372
+ Regarding extending the ISS, on 15 November 2016 General Director Vladimir Solntsev of RSC Energia stated "Maybe the ISS will receive continued resources. Today we discussed the possibility of using the station until 2028", with discussion to continue under the new presidential administration.[385][386] There have also been suggestions that the station could be converted to commercial operations after it is retired by government entities.[387]
373
+
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+ In July 2018, the Space Frontier Act of 2018 was intended to extend operations of the ISS to 2030. This bill was unanimously approved in the Senate, but failed to pass in the U.S. House.[388][389] In September 2018, the Leading Human Spaceflight Act was introduced with the intent to extend operations of the ISS to 2030, and was confirmed in December 2018.[19][390][391]
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+
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+ The ISS has been described as the most expensive single item ever constructed.[392] As of 2010 the total cost was US$150 billion. This includes NASA's budget of $58.7 billion (inflation-unadjusted) for the station from 1985 to 2015 ($72.4 billion in 2010 dollars), Russia's $12 billion, Europe's $5 billion, Japan's $5 billion, Canada's $2 billion, and the cost of 36 shuttle flights to build the station, estimated at $1.4 billion each, or $50.4 billion in total. Assuming 20,000 person-days of use from 2000 to 2015 by two- to six-person crews, each person-day would cost $7.5 million, less than half the inflation-adjusted $19.6 million ($5.5 million before inflation) per person-day of Skylab.[393]
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+ Istanbul (/ˌɪstænˈbʊl/,[8][9] also US: /ˈɪstænbʊl/; Turkish: İstanbul [isˈtanbuɫ] (listen)), formerly known as Byzantium and Constantinople, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosporus strait (which separates Europe and Asia) between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives in suburbs on the Asian side of the Bosporus.[10] With a total population of around fifteen million residents in its metropolitan area,[3] Istanbul is one of the world's largest cities by population, ranking as the world's fifteenth-largest city and the largest city in Europe. The city is the administrative centre of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (coterminous with Istanbul Province).
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+ Founded under the name of Byzantion (Βυζάντιον) on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE,[11] the city grew in size and influence, becoming one of the most important cities in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE,[12] it served as an imperial capital for almost sixteen centuries, during the Roman/Byzantine (330–1204), Latin (1204–1261), Byzantine (1261–1453) and Ottoman (1453–1922) empires.[13] It was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times, before the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453 CE and transformed it into an Islamic stronghold and the seat of the Ottoman Caliphate.[14] Under the name Constantinople it was the Ottoman capital until 1923. The capital was then moved to Ankara and the city was renamed Istanbul.
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+ The city held the strategic position between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. It was also on the historic Silk Road.[15] It controlled rail networks between the Balkans and the Middle East and was the only sea route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In 1923, after the Turkish War of Independence, Ankara was chosen as the new Turkish capital, and the city's name was changed to Istanbul. Nevertheless, the city maintained its prominence in geopolitical and cultural affairs. The population of the city has increased tenfold since the 1950s, as migrants from across Anatolia have moved in and city limits have expanded to accommodate them.[16][17] Arts, music, film, and cultural festivals were established towards the end of the 20th century and continue to be hosted by the city today. Infrastructure improvements have produced a complex transportation network in the city.
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+ Over 12 million foreign visitors came to Istanbul in 2015, five years after it was named a European Capital of Culture, making the city the world's fifth-most popular tourist destination.[18] The city's biggest attraction is its historic center, partially listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its cultural and entertainment hub is across the city's natural harbor, the Golden Horn, in the Beyoğlu district. Considered a global city,[19] it hosts the headquarters of many Turkish companies and media outlets and accounts for more than a quarter of the country's gross domestic product.[20] Hoping to capitalize on its revitalization and rapid expansion, Istanbul has bid for the Summer Olympics five times in twenty years.[21]
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+ The first known name of the city is Byzantium (Greek: Βυζάντιον, Byzántion), the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE.[22] The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, Byzas. Ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have also hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin and hence predated the Megarean settlement.[23]
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+ After Constantine the Great made it the new eastern capital of the Roman Empire in 330 CE, the city became widely known as Constantinople, which, as the Latinized form of "Κωνσταντινούπολις" (Konstantinoúpolis), means the "City of Constantine".[22] He also attempted to promote the name "Nova Roma" and its Greek version "Νέα Ῥώμη" Nea Romē (New Rome), but this did not enter widespread usage.[24] Constantinople remained the most common name for the city in the West until the establishment of the Turkish Republic, which urged other countries to use Istanbul.[25][26] Kostantiniyye (Ottoman Turkish: قسطنطينيه‎), Be Makam-e Qonstantiniyyah al-Mahmiyyah (meaning "the Protected Location of Constantinople") and İstanbul were the names used alternatively by the Ottomans during their rule.[27] Although historically accurate, the use of Constantinople to refer to the city during the Ottoman period is, as of 2009, often considered by Turks to be "politically incorrect".[28]
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+
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+ By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by either foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but used the name Stamboul—as the Turks also did—to describe the walled peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara.[28] Pera (from the Greek word for "across") was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu (today the official name for one of the city's constituent districts).[29]
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+ The name İstanbul (Turkish pronunciation: [isˈtanbuɫ] (listen), colloquially [ɯsˈtambuɫ]) is commonly held to derive from the Medieval Greek phrase "εἰς τὴν Πόλιν" (pronounced [is tim ˈbolin]), which means "to the city"[30] and is how Constantinople was referred to by the local Greeks. This reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The importance of Constantinople in the Ottoman world was also reflected by its Ottoman name 'Der Saadet' meaning the 'gate to Prosperity' in Ottoman. An alternative view is that the name evolved directly from the name Constantinople, with the first and third syllables dropped.[22] A Turkish folk etymology traces the name to Islam bol "plenty of Islam"[31] because the city was called Islambol ("plenty of Islam") or Islambul ("find Islam") as the capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. It is first attested shortly after the conquest, and its invention was ascribed by some contemporary writers to Sultan Mehmed II himself.[32] Some Ottoman sources of the 17th century, such as Evliya Çelebi, describe it as the common Turkish name of the time; between the late 17th and late 18th centuries, it was also in official use. The first use of the word "Islambol" on coinage was in 1703 (1115 AH) during the reign of Sultan Ahmed III.[33]
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+
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+ In modern Turkish, the name is written as İstanbul, with a dotted İ, as the Turkish alphabet distinguishes between a dotted and dotless I. In English the stress is on the first or last syllable, but in Turkish it is on the second syllable (tan).[34] A person from the city is an İstanbullu (plural: İstanbullular), although Istanbulite is used in English.[35]
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+ Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE.[36] That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by rising water levels.[37][38][39][40] The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE,[41] On the European side, near the point of the peninsula (Sarayburnu), there was a Thracian settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. Modern authors have linked it to the Thracian toponym Lygos,[42] mentioned by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium.[43]
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+
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+ The history of the city proper begins around 660 BCE,[44][c] when Greek settlers from Megara established Byzantium on the European side of the Bosphorus. The settlers built an acropolis adjacent to the Golden Horn on the site of the early Thracian settlements, fueling the nascent city's economy.[50] The city experienced a brief period of Persian rule at the turn of the 5th century BCE, but the Greeks recaptured it during the Greco-Persian Wars.[51] Byzantium then continued as part of the Athenian League and its successor, the Second Athenian League, before gaining independence in 355 BCE.[52] Long allied with the Romans, Byzantium officially became a part of the Roman Empire in 73 CE.[53] Byzantium's decision to side with the Roman usurper Pescennius Niger against Emperor Septimius Severus cost it dearly; by the time it surrendered at the end of 195 CE, two years of siege had left the city devastated.[54] Five years later, Severus began to rebuild Byzantium, and the city regained—and, by some accounts, surpassed—its previous prosperity.[55]
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+
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+ Constantine the Great effectively became the emperor of the whole of the Roman Empire in September 324.[56] Two months later, he laid out the plans for a new, Christian city to replace Byzantium. As the eastern capital of the empire, the city was named Nova Roma; most called it Constantinople, a name that persisted into the 20th century.[57] On 11 May 330, Constantinople was proclaimed the capital of the Roman Empire, which was later permanently divided between the two sons of Theodosius I upon his death on 17 January 395, when the city became the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.[58]
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+ The establishment of Constantinople was one of Constantine's most lasting accomplishments, shifting Roman power eastward as the city became a center of Greek culture and Christianity.[58][59] Numerous churches were built across the city, including Hagia Sophia which was built during the reign of Justinian the Great and remained the world's largest cathedral for a thousand years.[60] Constantine also undertook a major renovation and expansion of the Hippodrome of Constantinople; accommodating tens of thousands of spectators, the hippodrome became central to civic life and, in the 5th and 6th centuries, the center of episodes of unrest, including the Nika riots.[61][62] Constantinople's location also ensured its existence would stand the test of time; for many centuries, its walls and seafront protected Europe against invaders from the east and the advance of Islam.[59] During most of the Middle Ages, the latter part of the Byzantine era, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city on the European continent and at times the largest in the world.[63][64]
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+ Constantinople began to decline continuously after the end of the reign of Basil II in 1025. The Fourth Crusade was diverted from its purpose in 1204, and the city was sacked and pillaged by the crusaders.[65] They established the Latin Empire in place of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire.[66] Hagia Sophia was converted to a Catholic church in 1204. The Byzantine Empire was restored, albeit weakened, in 1261.[67] Constantinople's churches, defenses, and basic services were in disrepair,[68] and its population had dwindled to a hundred thousand from half a million during the 8th century.[d] After the reconquest of 1261, however, some of the city's monuments were restored, and some, like the two Deisis mosaics in Hagia Sofia and Kariye, were created.
30
+
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+ Various economic and military policies instituted by Andronikos II, such as the reduction of military forces, weakened the empire and left it vulnerable to attack.[69] In the mid-14th-century, the Ottoman Turks began a strategy of gradually taking smaller towns and cities, cutting off Constantinople's supply routes and strangling it slowly.[70] On 29 May 1453, after an eight-week siege (during which the last Roman emperor, Constantine XI, was killed), Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured Constantinople and declared it the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. Hours later, the sultan rode to the Hagia Sophia and summoned an imam to proclaim the Islamic creed, converting the grand cathedral into an imperial mosque due to the city's refusal to surrender peacefully.[71] Mehmed declared himself as the new "Kaysar-i Rûm" (the Ottoman Turkish equivalent of Caesar of Rome) and the Ottoman state was reorganized into an empire.[72]
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+ Following the conquest of Constantinople[e], Mehmed II immediately set out to revitalize the city. He urged the return of those who had fled the city during the siege, and resettled Muslims, Jews, and Christians from other parts of Anatolia. He demanded that five thousand households needed to be transferred to Constantinople by September.[74] From all over the Islamic empire, prisoners of war and deported people were sent to the city: these people were called "Sürgün" in Turkish (Greek: σουργούνιδες).[75] Many people escaped again from the city, and there were several outbreaks of plague, so that in 1459 Mehmed allowed the deported Greeks to come back to the city.[76] He also invited people from all over Europe to his capital, creating a cosmopolitan society that persisted through much of the Ottoman period.[77] Plague continued to be essentially endemic in Constantinople for the rest of the century, as it had been from 1520, with a few years of respite between 1529 and 1533, 1549 and 1552, and from 1567 to 1570; epidemics originating in the West and in the Hejaz and southern Russia.[78] Population growth in Anatolia allowed Constantinople to replace its losses and maintain its population of around 500,000 inhabitants down to 1800. Mehmed II also repaired the city's damaged infrastructure, including the whole water system, began to build the Grand Bazaar, and constructed Topkapı Palace, the sultan's official residence.[79] With the transfer of the capital from Edirne (formerly Adrianople) to Constantinople, the new state was declared as the successor and continuation of the Roman Empire.[80]
34
+
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+ The Ottomans quickly transformed the city from a bastion of Christianity to a symbol of Islamic culture. Religious foundations were established to fund the construction of ornate imperial mosques, often adjoined by schools, hospitals, and public baths.[79] The Ottoman Dynasty claimed the status of caliphate in 1517, with Constantinople remaining the capital of this last caliphate for four centuries.[14] Suleiman the Magnificent's reign from 1520 to 1566 was a period of especially great artistic and architectural achievement; chief architect Mimar Sinan designed several iconic buildings in the city, while Ottoman arts of ceramics, stained glass, calligraphy, and miniature flourished.[81] The population of Constantinople was 570,000 by the end of the 18th century.[82]
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+ A period of rebellion at the start of the 19th century led to the rise of the progressive Sultan Mahmud II and eventually to the Tanzimat period, which produced political reforms and allowed new technology to be introduced to the city.[83] Bridges across the Golden Horn were constructed during this period,[84] and Constantinople was connected to the rest of the European railway network in the 1880s.[85] Modern facilities, such as a water supply network, electricity, telephones, and trams, were gradually introduced to Constantinople over the following decades, although later than to other European cities.[86] The modernization efforts were not enough to forestall the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
38
+
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+ Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed with the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and the Ottoman Parliament, closed since 14 February 1878, was reopened 30 years later on 23 July 1908, which marked the beginning of the Second Constitutional Era.[87] A series of wars in the early 20th century, such as the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), plagued the ailing empire's capital and resulted in the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, which brought the regime of the Three Pashas.[88]
40
+
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+ The Ottoman Empire joined World War I (1914–1918) on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915 was among the major events which marked the start of the Armenian Genocide during WWI.[89] As a result of the war and the events in its aftermath, the city's Christian population declined from 450,000 to 240,000 between 1914 and 1927.[90] The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918 and the Allies occupied Constantinople on 13 November 1918. The Ottoman Parliament was dissolved by the Allies on 11 April 1920 and the Ottoman delegation led by Damat Ferid Pasha was forced to sign the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920.
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+
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+ Following the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922), the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara abolished the Sultanate on 1 November 1922, and the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, was declared persona non-grata. Leaving aboard the British warship HMS Malaya on 17 November 1922, he went into exile and died in Sanremo, Italy, on 16 May 1926. The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24 July 1923, and the occupation of Constantinople ended with the departure of the last forces of the Allies from the city on 4 October 1923.[91] Turkish forces of the Ankara government, commanded by Şükrü Naili Pasha (3rd Corps), entered the city with a ceremony on 6 October 1923, which has been marked as the Liberation Day of Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul'un Kurtuluşu) and is commemorated every year on its anniversary.[91] On 29 October 1923 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey declared the establishment of the Turkish Republic, with Ankara as its capital. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the Republic's first President.[92]
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+ Ankara was selected as Turkey's capital in 1923 to distance the new, secular republic from its Ottoman history.[93] According to historian Philip Mansel:
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+
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+ From the late 1940s and early 1950s, Istanbul underwent great structural change, as new public squares, boulevards, and avenues were constructed throughout the city, sometimes at the expense of historical buildings.[95] The population of Istanbul began to rapidly increase in the 1970s, as people from Anatolia migrated to the city to find employment in the many new factories that were built on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis. This sudden, sharp rise in the city's population caused a large demand for housing, and many previously outlying villages and forests became engulfed into the metropolitan area of Istanbul.[96]
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+ Istanbul is in north-western Turkey within the Marmara Region on a total area of 5,343 square kilometers (2,063 sq mi).[b] The Bosphorus, which connects the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, divides the city into a European, Thracian side—comprising the historic and economic centers—and an Asian, Anatolian side. The city is further divided by the Golden Horn, a natural harbor bounding the peninsula where the former Byzantium and Constantinople were founded. The confluence of the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn at the heart of present-day Istanbul has deterred attacking forces for thousands of years and remains a prominent feature of the city's landscape.[59]
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+ Following the model of Rome, the historic peninsula is said to be characterized by seven hills, each topped by imperial mosques. The easternmost of these hills is the site of Topkapı Palace on the Sarayburnu.[101] Rising from the opposite side of the Golden Horn is another, conical hill, where the modern Beyoğlu district is. Because of the topography, buildings in Beyoğlu were once constructed with the help of terraced retaining walls, and roads were laid out in the form of steps.[102] Üsküdar on the Asian side exhibits similarly hilly characteristics, with the terrain gradually extending down to the Bosphorus coast, but the landscape in Şemsipaşa and Ayazma is more abrupt, akin to a promontory. The highest point in Istanbul is Çamlıca Hill, with an altitude of 288 meters (945 ft).[102] The northern half of Istanbul has a higher mean elevation compared to the south coast, with locations surpassing 200 meters (660 ft), and some coasts with steep cliffs resembling fjords, especially around the northern end of the Bosphorus, where it opens up to the Black Sea.
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+ Istanbul is near the North Anatolian Fault, close to the boundary between the African and Eurasian Plates. This fault zone, which runs from northern Anatolia to the Sea of Marmara, has been responsible for several deadly earthquakes throughout the city's history. Among the most devastating of these seismic events was the 1509 earthquake, which caused a tsunami that broke over the walls of the city and killed more than 10,000 people. More recently, in 1999, an earthquake with its epicenter in nearby İzmit left 18,000 people dead, including 1,000 people in Istanbul's suburbs. The people of Istanbul remain concerned that an even more catastrophic seismic event may be in the city's near future, as thousands of structures recently built to accommodate Istanbul's rapidly increasing population may not have been constructed properly.[103] Seismologists say the risk of a 7.6-magnitude or greater earthquake striking Istanbul by 2030 is more than 60 percent.[104][105]
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+ In the Köppen–Geiger classification system, Istanbul has a borderline Mediterranean climate (Csa), humid subtropical climate (Cfa) and oceanic climate (Cfb), due to its location in a transitional climatic zone. Since precipitation in summer months ranges from 20 to 65 mm (1 to 3 in), depending on location, the city cannot be classified as solely Mediterranean or humid subtropical.[106][107][108] Due to its size, diverse topography, maritime location and most importantly having a coastline to two different bodies of water to the north and south, Istanbul exhibits microclimates. The northern half of the city, as well as the Bosporus coastline, express characteristics of oceanic and humid subtropical climates, because of humidity from the Black Sea and the relatively high concentration of vegetation. The climate in the populated areas of the city to the south, on the Sea of Marmara, is warmer, drier and less affected by humidity.[109] The annual precipitation in the northern half can be twice as much (Bahçeköy, 1166.6 mm), than it is in the southern, Marmara coast (Florya 635.0 mm).[110] There is a significant difference between annual mean temperatures on the north and south coasts as well, Bahçeköy 12.8 °C (55.0 °F), Kartal 15.03 °C (59.05 °F).[111] Parts of the province that are away from both seas exhibit considerable continental influences, with much more pronounced night-day and summer-winter temperature differences. In winter some parts of the province average freezing or below at night.
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+ Istanbul's persistently high humidity reaches 80 percent most mornings.[112] Because of this, fog is very common, although more so in northern parts of the city and away from the city center.[109] Dense fog disrupts transportation in the region, including on the Bosphorus, and is common during the autumn and winter months when the humidity remains high into the afternoon.[113][114][115] The humid conditions and the fog tend to dissipate by midday during the summer months, but the lingering humidity exacerbates the moderately high summer temperatures.[112][116] During these summer months, high temperatures average around 29 °C (84 °F) and rainfall is uncommon; there are only about fifteen days with measurable precipitation between June and August.[117] The summer months also have the highest concentration of thunderstorms.[118]
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+ Winter is colder in Istanbul than in most other cities around the Mediterranean Basin, with low temperatures averaging 1–4 °C (34–39 °F).[117] Lake-effect snow from the Black Sea is common, although difficult to forecast, with the potential to be heavy and—as with the fog—disruptive to the city's infrastructure.[119] Spring and autumn are mild, but often wet and unpredictable; chilly winds from the northwest and warm gusts from the south—sometimes in the same day—tend to cause fluctuations in temperature.[116][120] Overall, Istanbul has an annual average of 130 days with significant precipitation, which amounts to 810 millimeters (31.9 in) per year.[117][121] The highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded in the city center on the Marmara coast are 40.5 °C (105 °F) and −16.1 °C (3 °F). The greatest rainfall recorded in a day is 227 millimeters (8.9 in), and the highest recorded snow cover is 80 centimeters (31 in).[122][123]
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+ Global warming in Turkey may cause more urban heatwaves,[128] droughts,[129] storms,[130] and flooding.[131][132] Sea level rise is forecast to affect city infrastructure, for example Kadıkoy metro station is threatened with flooding.[133]
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+ Xeriscaping of green spaces has been suggested,[134] and Istanbul has a climate-change action plan.[135]
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+ The Fatih district, which was named after Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (Turkish: Fatih Sultan Mehmed), corresponds to what was, until the Ottoman conquest in 1453, the whole of the city of Constantinople (today is the capital district and called the historic peninsula of Istanbul) on the southern shore of the Golden Horn, across the medieval Genoese citadel of Galata on the northern shore. The Genoese fortifications in Galata were largely demolished in the 19th century, leaving only the Galata Tower, to make way for the northward expansion of the city.[136] Galata (Karaköy) is today a quarter within the Beyoğlu (Pera) district, which forms Istanbul's commercial and entertainment center and includes İstiklal Avenue and Taksim Square.[137]
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+ Dolmabahçe Palace, the seat of government during the late Ottoman period, is in the Beşiktaş district on the European shore of the Bosphorus strait, to the north of Beyoğlu. The Sublime Porte (Bâb-ı Âli), which became a metonym for the Ottoman government, was originally used to describe the Imperial Gate (Bâb-ı Hümâyûn) at the outermost courtyard of the Topkapı Palace; but after the 18th century, the Sublime Porte (or simply Porte) began to refer to the gate of the Sadrazamlık (Prime Ministry) compound in the Cağaloğlu quarter near Topkapı Palace, where the offices of the Sadrazam (Grand Vizier) and other Viziers were, and where foreign diplomats were received. The former village of Ortaköy is within Beşiktaş and gives its name to the Ortaköy Mosque on the Bosphorus, near the Bosphorus Bridge. Lining both the European and Asian shores of the Bosphorus are the historic yalıs, luxurious chalet mansions built by Ottoman aristocrats and elites as summer homes.[138] Farther inland, outside the city's inner ring road, are Levent and Maslak, Istanbul's main business districts.[139]
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+ During the Ottoman period, Üsküdar (then Scutari) and Kadıköy were outside the scope of the urban area, serving as tranquil outposts with seaside yalıs and gardens. But in the second half of the 20th century, the Asian side experienced major urban growth; the late development of this part of the city led to better infrastructure and tidier urban planning when compared with most other residential areas in the city.[10] Much of the Asian side of the Bosphorus functions as a suburb of the economic and commercial centers in European Istanbul, accounting for a third of the city's population but only a quarter of its employment.[10] As a result of Istanbul's exponential growth in the 20th century, a significant portion of the city is composed of gecekondus (literally "built overnight"), referring to illegally constructed squatter buildings.[140] At present, some gecekondu areas are being gradually demolished and replaced by modern mass-housing compounds.[141] Moreover, large scale gentrification and urban renewal projects have been taking place,[142] such as the one in Tarlabaşı;[143] some of these projects, like the one in Sulukule, have faced criticism.[144] The Turkish government also has ambitious plans for an expansion of the city west and northwards on the European side in conjunction with plans for a third airport; the new parts of the city will include four different settlements with specified urban functions, housing 1.5 million people.[145]
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+ Istanbul does not have a primary urban park, but it has several green areas. Gülhane Park and Yıldız Park were originally included within the grounds of two of Istanbul's palaces—Topkapı Palace and Yıldız Palace—but they were repurposed as public parks in the early decades of the Turkish Republic.[146] Another park, Fethi Paşa Korusu, is on a hillside adjacent to the Bosphorus Bridge in Anatolia, opposite Yıldız Palace in Europe. Along the European side, and close to the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, is Emirgan Park, which was known as the Kyparades (Cypress Forest) during the Byzantine period. In the Ottoman period, it was first granted to Nişancı Feridun Ahmed Bey in the 16th century, before being granted by Sultan Murad IV to the Safavid Emir Gûne Han in the 17th century, hence the name Emirgan. The 47-hectare (120-acre) park was later owned by Khedive Ismail Pasha of Ottoman Egypt and Sudan in the 19th century. Emirgan Park is known for its diversity of plants and an annual tulip festival is held there since 2005.[147] The AKP government's decision to replace Taksim Gezi Park with a replica of the Ottoman era Taksim Military Barracks (which was transformed into the Taksim Stadium in 1921, before being demolished in 1940 for building Gezi Park) sparked a series of nationwide protests in 2013 covering a wide range of issues. Popular during the summer among Istanbulites is Belgrad Forest, spreading across 5,500 hectares (14,000 acres) at the northern edge of the city. The forest originally supplied water to the city and remnants of reservoirs used during Byzantine and Ottoman times survive.[148][149]
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+ Modern shopping malls, dense residential and hotel towers, and entertainment, educational and other facilities can be found outside the historic center in the following edge cities:[150]
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+ Istanbul is primarily known for its Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, but its buildings reflect the various peoples and empires that have previously ruled the city. Examples of Genoese and Roman architecture remain visible in Istanbul alongside their Ottoman counterparts. Nothing of the architecture of the classical Greek period has survived, but Roman architecture has proved to be more durable. The obelisk erected by Theodosius in the Hippodrome of Constantinople is still visible in Sultanahmet Square, and a section of the Valens Aqueduct, constructed in the late 4th century, stands relatively intact at the western edge of the Fatih district.[152] The Column of Constantine, erected in 330 CE to mark the new Roman capital, stands not far from the Hippodrome.[152]
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+ Early Byzantine architecture followed the classical Roman model of domes and arches, but improved upon these elements, as in the Church of the Saints Sergius and Bacchus. The oldest surviving Byzantine church in Istanbul—albeit in ruins—is the Monastery of Stoudios (later converted into the Imrahor Mosque), which was built in 454.[154] After the recapture of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantines enlarged two of the most important churches extant, Chora Church and Pammakaristos Church. The pinnacle of Byzantine architecture, and one of Istanbul's most iconic structures, is the Hagia Sophia. Topped by a dome 31 meters (102 ft) in diameter,[155] the Hagia Sophia stood as the world's largest cathedral for centuries, and was later converted into a mosque and, as it stands now, a museum.[60]
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+ Among the oldest surviving examples of Ottoman architecture in Istanbul are the Anadoluhisarı and Rumelihisarı fortresses, which assisted the Ottomans during their siege of the city.[156] Over the next four centuries, the Ottomans made an indelible impression on the skyline of Istanbul, building towering mosques and ornate palaces. The largest palace, Topkapı, includes a diverse array of architectural styles, from Baroque inside the Harem, to its Neoclassical style Enderûn Library.[157] The imperial mosques include Fatih Mosque, Bayezid Mosque, Yavuz Selim Mosque, Süleymaniye Mosque, Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque), and Yeni Mosque, all of which were built at the peak of the Ottoman Empire, in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the following centuries, and especially after the Tanzimat reforms, Ottoman architecture was supplanted by European styles.[158] An example of which is the imperial Nuruosmaniye Mosque. Areas around İstiklal Avenue were filled with grand European embassies and rows of buildings in Neoclassical, Renaissance Revival and Art Nouveau styles, which went on to influence the architecture of a variety of structures in Beyoğlu—including churches, stores, and theaters—and official buildings such as Dolmabahçe Palace.[159]
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+ Since 2004, the municipal boundaries of Istanbul have been coincident with the boundaries of its province.[160] The city, considered capital of Istanbul Province, is administered by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (MMI), which oversees the 39 districts of the city-province.[b]
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+ The current city structure can be traced back to the Tanzimat period of reform in the 19th century, before which Islamic judges and imams led the city under the auspices of the Grand Vizier. Following the model of French cities, this religious system was replaced by a mayor and a citywide council composed of representatives of the confessional groups (millet) across the city. Pera (now Beyoğlu) was the first area of the city to have its own director and council, with members instead being longtime residents of the neighborhood.[161] Laws enacted after the Ottoman constitution of 1876 aimed to expand this structure across the city, imitating the twenty arrondissements of Paris, but they were not fully implemented until 1908, when the city was declared a province with nine constituent districts.[162][163] This system continued beyond the founding of the Turkish Republic, with the province renamed a belediye (municipality), but the municipality was disbanded in 1957.[98][164]
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+ Small settlements adjacent to major population centers in Turkey, including Istanbul, were merged into their respective primary cities during the early 1980s, resulting in metropolitan municipalities.[165][166] The main decision-making body of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is the Municipal Council, with members drawn from district councils.
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+ The Municipal Council is responsible for citywide issues, including managing the budget, maintaining civic infrastructure, and overseeing museums and major cultural centers.[167] Since the government operates under a "powerful mayor, weak council" approach, the council's leader—the metropolitan mayor—has the authority to make swift decisions, often at the expense of transparency.[168] The Municipal Council is advised by the Metropolitan Executive Committee, although the committee also has limited power to make decisions of its own.[169] All representatives on the committee are appointed by the metropolitan mayor and the council, with the mayor—or someone of his or her choosing—serving as head.[169][170]
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+ District councils are chiefly responsible for waste management and construction projects within their respective districts. They each maintain their own budgets, although the metropolitan mayor reserves the right to review district decisions. One-fifth of all district council members, including the district mayors, also represent their districts in the Municipal Council.[167] All members of the district councils and the Municipal Council, including the metropolitan mayor, are elected to five-year terms.[171] Representing the Republican People's Party, Ekrem İmamoğlu has been the Mayor of Istanbul since 23 June 2019.[172]
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+ With the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Istanbul Province having equivalent jurisdictions, few responsibilities remain for the provincial government. Similar to the MMI, the Istanbul Special Provincial Administration has a governor, a democratically elected decision-making body—the Provincial Parliament—and an appointed Executive Committee. Mirroring the executive committee at the municipal level, the Provincial Executive Committee includes a secretary-general and leaders of departments that advise the Provincial Parliament.[170][173] The Provincial Administration's duties are largely limited to the building and maintenance of schools, residences, government buildings, and roads, and the promotion of arts, culture, and nature conservation.[174] Vasip Şahin has been the Governor of Istanbul Province since 25 September 2014.[175]
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+ Throughout most of its history, Istanbul has ranked among the largest cities in the world. By 500 CE, Constantinople had somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 people, edging out its predecessor, Rome, for world's largest city.[177] Constantinople jostled with other major historical cities, such as Baghdad, Chang'an, Kaifeng and Merv for the position of world's most populous city until the 12th century. It never returned to being the world's largest, but remained Europe's largest city from 1500 to 1750, when it was surpassed by London.[178]
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+ The Turkish Statistical Institute estimates that the population of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality was 14,377,019 at the end of 2014, hosting 19 percent of the country's population.[3] Then about 97–98% of the inhabitants of the metropolitan municipality were within city limits, up from 89% in 2007[179] and 61% in 1980.[180] 64.9% of the residents live on the European side and 35.1% on the Asian side.[181] While the city ranks as the world's 5th-largest city proper, it drops to the 24th place as an urban area and to the 18th place as a metro area because the city limits are roughly equivalent to the agglomeration. Today, it forms one of the largest urban agglomerations in Europe, alongside Moscow.[f] The city's annual population growth of 3.45 percent ranks as the highest among the seventy-eight largest metropolises in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The high population growth mirrors an urbanization trend across the country, as the second and third fastest-growing OECD metropolises are the Turkish cities of İzmir and Ankara.[20]
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+ Istanbul experienced especially rapid growth during the second half of the 20th century, with its population increasing tenfold between 1950 and 2000.[16] This growth in population comes, in part, from an expansion of city limits—particularly between 1980 and 1985, when the number of Istanbulites nearly doubled.[98] The remarkable growth was, and still is, largely fueled by migrants from eastern Turkey seeking employment and improved living conditions. The number of residents of Istanbul originating from seven northern and eastern provinces is greater than the populations of their entire respective provinces; Sivas and Kastamonu each account for more than half a million residents of Istanbul.[17] Istanbul's foreign population, by comparison, is very small, 42,228 residents in 2007.[184] Only 28 percent of the city's residents are originally from Istanbul.[185] The most densely populated areas tend to lie to the northwest, west, and southwest of the city center, on the European side; the most densely populated district on the Asian side is Üsküdar.[17]
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+ Istanbul has been a cosmopolitan city throughout much of its history, but it has become more homogenized since the end of the Ottoman Empire. The vast majority of people across Turkey, and in Istanbul, are Muslim, and more specifically members of the Sunni branch of Islam. Most Sunni Turks follow the Hanafi school of Islamic thought, while Sunni Kurds tend to follow the Shafi'i school. The largest non-Sunni Muslim group, accounting 10–20% of Turkey's population[186], are the Alevis; a third of all Alevis in the country live in Istanbul.[185] Mystic movements, like Sufism, were officially banned after the establishment of the Turkish Republic, but they still boast numerous followers.[187] Istanbul is a migrant city. Since the 1950s, Istanbul's population has increased from 1 million to about 10 million residents. Almost 200,000 new immigrants, many of them from Turkey's own villages, continue to arrive each year. As a result, the city constant change, constantly reshaped to achieve the needs of these new population.[188]
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+ The Patriarch of Constantinople has been designated Ecumenical Patriarch since the sixth century, and has come to be regarded as the leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.[189] Since 1601, the Patriarchate has been based in Istanbul's Church of St. George.[190] Into the 19th century, the Christians of Istanbul tended to be either Greek Orthodox, members of the Armenian Apostolic Church or Catholic Levantines.[191] Because of events during the 20th century—including the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, a 1942 wealth tax, and the 1955 Istanbul riots—the Greek population, originally centered in Fener and Samatya, has decreased substantially. At the start of the 21st century, Istanbul's Greek population numbered 3,000 (down from 260,000 out of 850,000 according to the Ottoman Census of 1910, and a peak of 350,000 in 1919).[192][193] There are today between 50,000 and 90,000 Armenians in Istanbul, down from about 164,000 according to the Ottoman Census of 1913 (partly due to the Armenian Genocide).[194] The Levantines, Latin Christians who settled in Galata during the Ottoman period, played a seminal role in shaping the culture and architecture of Istanbul during the 19th and early 20th centuries; their population has dwindled, but they remain in the city in small numbers.[195]
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+ The largest ethnic minority in Istanbul is the Kurdish community, originating from eastern and southeastern Turkey. Although the Kurdish presence in the city dates back to the early Ottoman period,[196] the influx of Kurds into the city has accelerated since the beginning of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict in the late 1970s.[197] Between two and four million residents of Istanbul are Kurdish, meaning there are more Kurds in Istanbul than in any other city in the world.[198][199][200][201][202][203] There are other significant ethnic minorities as well, the Bosniaks are the main people of an entire district – Bayrampaşa.[204] The neighborhood of Balat used to be home to a sizable Sephardi Jewish community, first formed after their expulsion from Spain in 1492.[205] Romaniotes and Ashkenazi Jews resided in Istanbul even before the Sephardim, but their proportion has since dwindled; today, 1 percent of Istanbul's Jews are Ashkenazi.[206][207] In large part due to emigration to Israel, the Jewish population nationwide dropped from 100,000 in 1950 to 18,000 in 2005, with the majority of them living in either Istanbul or İzmir.[208] From the increase in mutual cooperation between Turkey and several African States like Somalia and Djibouti, several young students and workers have been migrating to Istanbul in search of better education and employment opportunities. There are Nigerian, Congolese and Cameroonian communities present.[209]
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+ Politically, Istanbul is seen as the most important administrative region in Turkey. Many politicians, including the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are of the view that a political party's performance in Istanbul is more significant than its general performance overall. This is due to the city's role as Turkey's financial center, its large electorate and the fact that Erdoğan himself was elected Mayor of Istanbul in 1994. In the run-up to local elections in 2019, Erdoğan claimed 'if we fail in Istanbul, we will fail in Turkey'.[210]
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+ Historically, Istanbul has voted for the winning party in general elections since 1995. Since 2002, the right-wing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won pluralities in every general election, with 41.74% of the vote in the most recent parliamentary election on 24 June 2018. Erdoğan, the AKP's presidential candidate, received exactly 50.0% of the vote in the presidential election held on the same day. Starting with Erdoğan in 1994, Istanbul has had a conservative mayor for 25 years, until 2019. The second largest party in Istanbul is the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP), which is also the country's main opposition. The left-wing pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is the city's third largest political force due to a substantial number of Kurdish people migrating from south-eastern Turkey.
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+ More recently, Istanbul and many of Turkey's metropolitan cities are following a trend away from the government and their right-wing ideology. In 2013 and 2014, large-scale anti-AKP government protests began in İstanbul and spread throughout the nation. This trend first became evident electorally in the 2014 mayoral election where the center-left opposition candidate won an impressive 40% of the vote, despite not winning. The first government defeat in Istanbul occurred in the 2017 constitutional referendum, where Istanbul voted 'No' by 51.4% to 48.6%. The AKP government had supported a 'Yes' vote and won the vote nationally due to high support in rural parts of the country. The biggest defeat for the government came in the 2019 local elections, where their candidate for Mayor, former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, was defeated by a very narrow margin by the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. İmamoğlu won the vote with 48.77% of the vote, against Yıldırım's 48.61%. Similar trends and electoral successes for the opposition were also replicated in Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, Mersin, Adana and other metropolitan areas of Turkey.
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+ Administratively, Istanbul is divided into 39 districts, more than any other province in Turkey. As a province, Istanbul sends 98 Members of Parliament to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, which has a total of 600 seats. For the purpose of parliamentary elections, Istanbul is divided into three electoral districts; two on the European side and one on the Asian side, electing 28, 35 and 35 MPs respectively.
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+ With a PPP-adjusted gross domestic product of US$301.1 billion, Istanbul ranked 29th among the world's urban areas in 2011.[211] Since the mid-1990s, Istanbul's economy has been one of the fastest-growing among OECD metro-regions.[20] Istanbul is responsible for 27 percent of Turkey's GDP, with 20 percent of the country's industrial labor force residing in the city.[20][212] Its GDP per capita and productivity are greater than their national averages by 70 percent and 50 percent, respectively, owing in part to the focus on high-value-added activities. With its high population and significant contribution to the Turkish economy, Istanbul is responsible for two-fifths of the nation's tax revenue.[20] That includes the taxes of 37 US-dollar billionaires based in Istanbul, the fifth-highest number among cities around the world.[213]
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+ As expected for a city of its size, Istanbul has a diverse industrial economy, producing commodities as varied as olive oil, tobacco, vehicles, and electronics.[212] Despite having a focus on high-value-added work, its low-value-added manufacturing sector is substantial, representing just 26 percent of Istanbul's GDP, but four-fifths of the city's total exports.[20] In 2005, companies based in Istanbul produced exports worth $41.4 billion and received imports totaling $69.9 billion; these figures were equivalent to 57 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the national totals.[214]
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+ Istanbul is home to Borsa Istanbul, the sole exchange entity of Turkey, which combined the former Istanbul Stock Exchange, the Istanbul Gold Exchange, and the Derivatives Exchange of Turkey.[215] The former Istanbul Stock Exchange was originally established as the Ottoman Stock Exchange in 1866.[216] During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Bankalar Caddesi (Banks Street) in Galata was the financial center of the Ottoman Empire, where the Ottoman Stock Exchange was located.[217] Bankalar Caddesi continued to be Istanbul's main financial district until the 1990s, when most Turkish banks began moving their headquarters to the modern central business districts of Levent and Maslak. In 1995, the Istanbul Stock Exchange (now Borsa Istanbul) moved to its current building in the İstinye quarter of the Sarıyer district.[218] A new central business district is also under construction in Ataşehir and will host the headquarters of various Turkish banks and financial institutions upon completion.[219]
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+ As the only sea route between the oil-rich Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the Bosphorus is one of the busiest waterways in the world; more than 200 million tonnes of oil pass through the strait each year, and the traffic on the Bosphorus is three times that on the Suez Canal.[220] As a result, there have been proposals to build a canal, known as Canal Istanbul, parallel to the strait, on the European side of the city.[221] Istanbul has three major shipping ports—the Port of Haydarpaşa, the Port of Ambarlı, and the Port of Zeytinburnu—as well as several smaller ports and oil terminals along the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara.[222][223] Haydarpaşa, at the southeastern end of the Bosphorus, was Istanbul's largest port until the early 2000s. Shifts in operations to Ambarlı since then have left Haydarpaşa running under capacity and with plans to decommission the port.[224] In 2007, Ambarlı, on the western edge of the urban center, had an annual capacity of 1.5 million TEUs (compared to 354,000 TEUs at Haydarpaşa), making it the fourth-largest cargo terminal in the Mediterranean basin.[225][226] The Port of Zeytinburnu is advantaged by its proximity to motorways and Atatürk International Airport,[227] and long-term plans for the city call for greater connectivity between all terminals and the road and rail networks.[228]
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+ Istanbul is an increasingly popular tourist destination; whereas just 2.4 million foreigners visited the city in 2000, it welcomed 12.56 million foreign tourists in 2015, making it the world's fifth most-visited city.[18][229] Istanbul is Turkey's second-largest international gateway, after Antalya, receiving a quarter of the nation's foreign tourists. Istanbul's tourist industry is concentrated in the European side, with 90 percent of the city's hotels there. Low- and mid-range hotels tend to be on the Sarayburnu; higher-end hotels are primarily in the entertainment and financial centers north of the Golden Horn. Istanbul's seventy museums, the most visited of which are the Topkapı Palace Museum and the Hagia Sophia, bring in $30 million in revenue each year. The city's environmental master plan also notes that there are 17 palaces, 64 mosques, and 49 churches of historical significance in Istanbul.[230]
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+ Istanbul was historically known as a cultural hub, but its cultural scene stagnated after the Turkish Republic shifted its focus toward Ankara.[232] The new national government established programs that served to orient Turks toward musical traditions, especially those originating in Europe, but musical institutions and visits by foreign classical artists were primarily centered in the new capital.[233] Much of Turkey's cultural scene had its roots in Istanbul, and by the 1980s and 1990s Istanbul reemerged globally as a city whose cultural significance is not solely based on its past glory.[234]
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+ By the end of the 19th century, Istanbul had established itself as a regional artistic center, with Turkish, European, and Middle Eastern artists flocking to the city. Despite efforts to make Ankara Turkey's cultural heart, Istanbul had the country's primary institution of art until the 1970s.[235] When additional universities and art journals were founded in Istanbul during the 1980s, artists formerly based in Ankara moved in.[236] Beyoğlu has been transformed into the artistic center of the city, with young artists and older Turkish artists formerly residing abroad finding footing there. Modern art museums, including İstanbul Modern, the Pera Museum, Sakıp Sabancı Museum and SantralIstanbul, opened in the 2000s to complement the exhibition spaces and auction houses that have already contributed to the cosmopolitan nature of the city.[237] These museums have yet to attain the popularity of older museums on the historic peninsula, including the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, which ushered in the era of modern museums in Turkey, and the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum.[230][231]
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+ The first film screening in Turkey was at Yıldız Palace in 1896, a year after the technology publicly debuted in Paris.[242] Movie theaters rapidly cropped up in Beyoğlu, with the greatest concentration of theaters being along the street now known as İstiklal Avenue.[243] Istanbul also became the heart of Turkey's nascent film industry, although Turkish films were not consistently developed until the 1950s.[244] Since then, Istanbul has been the most popular location to film Turkish dramas and comedies.[245] The Turkish film industry ramped up in the second half of the century, and with Uzak (2002) and My Father and My Son (2005), both filmed in Istanbul, the nation's movies began to see substantial international success.[246] Istanbul and its picturesque skyline have also served as a backdrop for several foreign films, including From Russia with Love (1963), Topkapi (1964), The World Is Not Enough (1999), and Mission Istaanbul (2008).[247]
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+ Coinciding with this cultural reemergence was the establishment of the Istanbul Festival, which began showcasing a variety of art from Turkey and around the world in 1973. From this flagship festival came the International Istanbul Film Festival and the Istanbul International Jazz Festival in the early 1980s. With its focus now solely on music and dance, the Istanbul Festival has been known as the Istanbul International Music Festival since 1994.[248] The most prominent of the festivals that evolved from the original Istanbul Festival is the Istanbul Biennial, held every two years since 1987. Its early incarnations were aimed at showcasing Turkish visual art, and it has since opened to international artists and risen in prestige to join the elite biennales, alongside the Venice Biennale and the São Paulo Art Biennial.[249]
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+ Istanbul has numerous shopping centers, from the historic to the modern. The Grand Bazaar, in operation since 1461, is among the world's oldest and largest covered markets.[250][251] Mahmutpasha Bazaar is an open-air market extending between the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian Bazaar, which has been Istanbul's major spice market since 1660. Galleria Ataköy ushered in the age of modern shopping malls in Turkey when it opened in 1987.[252] Since then, malls have become major shopping centers outside the historic peninsula. Akmerkez was awarded the titles of "Europe's best" and "World's best" shopping mall by the International Council of Shopping Centers in 1995 and 1996; Istanbul Cevahir has been one of the continent's largest since opening in 2005; Kanyon won the Cityscape Architectural Review Award in the Commercial Built category in 2006.[251] İstinye Park in İstinye and Zorlu Center near Levent are among the newest malls which include the stores of the world's top fashion brands. Abdi İpekçi Street in Nişantaşı and Bağdat Avenue on the Anatolian side of the city have evolved into high-end shopping districts.[253][254]
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+ Istanbul is known for its historic seafood restaurants. Many of the city's most popular and upscale seafood restaurants line the shores of the Bosphorus (particularly in neighborhoods like Ortaköy, Bebek, Arnavutköy, Yeniköy, Beylerbeyi and Çengelköy). Kumkapı along the Sea of Marmara has a pedestrian zone that hosts around fifty fish restaurants.[255] The Princes' Islands, 15 kilometers (9 mi) from the city center, are also popular for their seafood restaurants. Because of their restaurants, historic summer mansions, and tranquil, car-free streets, the Prince Islands are a popular vacation destination among Istanbulites and foreign tourists.[256] Istanbul is also famous for its sophisticated and elaborately-cooked dishes of the Ottoman cuisine. Following the influx of immigrants from southeastern and eastern Turkey, which began in the 1960s, the foodscape of the city has drastically changed by the end of the century; with influences of Middle Eastern cuisine such as kebab taking an important place in the food scene. Restaurants featuring foreign cuisines are mainly concentrated in the Beyoğlu, Beşiktaş, Şişli, and Kadıköy districts.
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+ Istanbul has active nightlife and historic taverns, a signature characteristic of the city for centuries if not millennia. Along İstiklal Avenue is the Çiçek Pasajı, now home to winehouses (known as meyhanes), pubs, and restaurants.[257] İstiklal Avenue, originally known for its taverns, has shifted toward shopping, but the nearby Nevizade Street is still lined with winehouses and pubs.[258][259] Some other neighborhoods around İstiklal Avenue have been revamped to cater to Beyoğlu's nightlife, with formerly commercial streets now lined with pubs, cafes, and restaurants playing live music.[260] Other focal points for Istanbul's nightlife include Nişantaşı, Ortaköy, Bebek, and Kadıköy.[261]
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+ Istanbul is home to some of Turkey's oldest sports clubs. Beşiktaş JK, established in 1903, is considered the oldest of these sports clubs. Due to its initial status as Turkey's only club, Beşiktaş occasionally represented the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic in international sports competitions, earning the right to place the Turkish flag inside its team logo.[262] Galatasaray SK and Fenerbahçe SK have fared better in international competitions and have won more Süper Lig titles, at 22 and 19 times, respectively.[263][264][265] Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe have a long-standing rivalry, with Galatasaray based in the European part and Fenerbahçe based in the Anatolian part of the city.[264] Istanbul has seven basketball teams—Anadolu Efes, Beşiktaş, Darüşşafaka, Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyespor and Büyükçekmece—that play in the premier-level Turkish Basketball Super League.[266]
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+ Many of Istanbul's sports facilities have been built or upgraded since 2000 to bolster the city's bids for the Summer Olympic Games. Atatürk Olympic Stadium, the largest multi-purpose stadium in Turkey, was completed in 2002 as an IAAF first-class venue for track and field.[267] The stadium hosted the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final and will host the 2020 UEFA Champions League Final.[268] Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium, Fenerbahçe's home field, hosted the 2009 UEFA Cup Final three years after its completion. Türk Telekom Arena opened in 2011 to replace Ali Sami Yen Stadium as Galatasaray's home turf,[269][270] while Vodafone Park, opened in 2016 to replace BJK İnönü Stadium as the home turf of Beşiktaş, hosted the 2019 UEFA Super Cup game. All four stadiums are elite Category 4 (formerly five-star) UEFA stadiums.[g]
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+ The Sinan Erdem Dome, among the largest indoor arenas in Europe, hosted the final of the 2010 FIBA World Championship, the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships, as well as the 2011–12 Euroleague and 2016–17 EuroLeague Final Fours.[274] Prior to the completion of the Sinan Erdem Dome in 2010, Abdi İpekçi Arena was Istanbul's primary indoor arena, having hosted the finals of EuroBasket 2001.[275] Several other indoor arenas, including the Beşiktaş Akatlar Arena, have also been inaugurated since 2000, serving as the home courts of Istanbul's sports clubs. The most recent of these is the 13,800-seat Ülker Sports Arena, which opened in 2012 as the home court of Fenerbahçe's basketball teams.[276] Despite the construction boom, five bids for the Summer Olympics—in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2020—and national bids for UEFA Euro 2012 and UEFA Euro 2016 have ended unsuccessfully.[277]
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+ The TVF Burhan Felek Sport Hall is one of the major volleyball arenas in the city and hosts clubs such as Eczacıbaşı VitrA, Vakıfbank SK, and Fenerbahçe who have won numerous European and World Championship titles.
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+ Between 2005 and 2011, Istanbul Park racing circuit hosted the annual Formula One Turkish Grand Prix.[278] Istanbul Park was also a venue of the World Touring Car Championship and the European Le Mans Series in 2005 and 2006, but the track has not seen either of these competitions since then.[279][280] It also hosted the Turkish Motorcycle Grand Prix between 2005 and 2007. Istanbul was occasionally a venue of the F1 Powerboat World Championship, with the last race on the Bosphorus strait on 12–13 August 2000.[281] The last race of the Powerboat P1 World Championship on the Bosphorus took place on 19–21 June 2009.[282] Istanbul Sailing Club, established in 1952, hosts races and other sailing events on the waterways in and around Istanbul each year.[283][284] Turkish Offshore Racing Club also hosts major yacht races, such as the annual Naval Forces Trophy.[285]
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+ Most state-run radio and television stations are based in Ankara, but Istanbul is the primary hub of Turkish media. The industry has its roots in the former Ottoman capital, where the first Turkish newspaper, Takvim-i Vekayi (Calendar of Affairs), was published in 1831. The Cağaloğlu street on which the newspaper was printed, Bâb-ı Âli Street, rapidly became the center of Turkish print media, alongside Beyoğlu across the Golden Horn.[286]
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+ Istanbul now has a wide variety of periodicals. Most nationwide newspapers are based in Istanbul, with simultaneous Ankara and İzmir editions.[287] Hürriyet, Sabah, Posta and Sözcü, the country's top four papers, are all headquartered in Istanbul, boasting more than 275,000 weekly sales each.[288] Hürriyet's English-language edition, Hürriyet Daily News, has been printed since 1961, but the English-language Daily Sabah, first published by Sabah in 2014, has overtaken it in circulation. Several smaller newspapers, including popular publications like Cumhuriyet, Milliyet and Habertürk are also based in Istanbul.[287] Istanbul also has long-running Armenian language newspapers, notably the dailies Marmara and Jamanak and the bilingual weekly Agos in Armenian and Turkish.
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+ Radio broadcasts in Istanbul date back to 1927, when Turkey's first radio transmission came from atop the Central Post Office in Eminönü. Control of this transmission, and other radio stations established in the following decades, ultimately came under the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), which held a monopoly on radio and television broadcasts between its founding in 1964 and 1990.[289] Today, TRT runs four national radio stations; these stations have transmitters across the country so each can reach over 90 percent of the country's population, but only Radio 2 is based in Istanbul. Offering a range of content from educational programming to coverage of sporting events, Radio 2 is the most popular radio station in Turkey.[289] Istanbul's airwaves are the busiest in Turkey, primarily featuring either Turkish-language or English-language content. One of the exceptions, offering both, is Açık Radyo (94.9 FM). Among Turkey's first private stations, and the first featuring foreign popular music, was Istanbul's Metro FM (97.2 FM). The state-run Radio 3, although based in Ankara, also features English-language popular music, and English-language news programming is provided on NTV Radyo (102.8 FM).[290]
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+ TRT-Children is the only TRT television station based in Istanbul.[291] Istanbul is home to the headquarters of several Turkish stations and regional headquarters of international media outlets. Istanbul-based Star TV was the first private television network to be established following the end of the TRT monopoly; Star TV and Show TV (also based in Istanbul) remain highly popular throughout the country, airing Turkish and American series.[292] Kanal D and ATV are other stations in Istanbul that offer a mix of news and series; NTV (partnered with U.S. media outlet MSNBC) and Sky Turk—both based in the city—are mainly just known for their news coverage in Turkish. The BBC has a regional office in Istanbul, assisting its Turkish-language news operations, and the American news channel CNN established the Turkish-language CNN Türk there in 1999.[293]
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+ Istanbul University, founded in 1453, is the oldest Turkish educational institution in the city. Although originally an Islamic school, the university established law, medicine, and science departments in the 19th century and was secularized after the founding of the Turkish Republic.[294] Istanbul Technical University, founded in 1773, is the world's third-oldest university dedicated entirely to engineering sciences.[295][296] These public universities are two of just eight across the city;[297] other prominent state universities in Istanbul include the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, which served as Turkey's primary institution of art until the 1970s,[235] and Marmara University, the country's third-largest institution of higher learning.[298]
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+ Most established universities in Istanbul are backed by the government; the city also has several prominent private institutions. The first modern private university in Istanbul, also the oldest American school in existence in its original location outside the United States, was Robert College, founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist, and Cyrus Hamlin, a missionary devoted to education, in 1863. The tertiary element of its education program became the public Boğaziçi University in 1971; the remaining portion in Arnavutköy continues as a boarding high-school under the name Robert College.[299][300] Private universities were officially outlawed in Turkey before the Constitution of 1982, but there were already fifteen private "higher schools", which were effectively universities, in Istanbul by 1970. The first private university established in Istanbul since 1982 was Koç University (founded in 1992), and another dozen had opened within the following decade.[299] Today, there are at least 30 private universities in the city, including Istanbul Commerce University and Kadir Has University.[301] A new biomedical research and development hub, called Bio Istanbul, is under construction in Başakşehir, and will host 15,000 residents, 20,000 working commuters, and a university upon completion.[302][303]
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+ In 2007, there were about 4,350 schools, about half of which were primary schools; on average, each school had 688 students. In recent years, Istanbul's educational system has expanded substantially; from 2000 to 2007, the number of classrooms and teachers nearly doubled and the number of students increased by more than 60 percent.[304] Galatasaray High School, established in 1481 as the Galata Palace Imperial School, is the oldest high school in Istanbul and the second-oldest educational institution in the city. It was built at the behest of Sultan Bayezid II, who sought to bring students with diverse backgrounds together as a means of strengthening his growing empire.[305] It is one of Turkey's Anatolian High Schools, elite public high schools that place a stronger emphasis on instruction in foreign languages. Galatasaray, for example, offers instruction in French; other Anatolian High Schools primarily teach in English or German alongside Turkish.[306][307] The city also has foreign high schools, such as Liceo Italiano, that were established in the 19th century to educate foreigners.[308]
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+ Kuleli Military High School, along the shores of the Bosphorus in Çengelköy, and Turkish Naval High School, on one of the Princes' Islands, were military high schools, complemented by three military academies—the Turkish Air Force, Turkish Military, and Turkish Naval Academies. Both schools were shut Darüşşafaka High School provides free education to children across the country missing at least one parent. Darüşşafaka begins instruction with the fourth grade, providing instruction in English and, starting in sixth grade, a second foreign language—German or French.[309] Other prominent high schools in the city include Istanbul Lisesi (founded in 1884), Kabataş Erkek Lisesi (founded in 1908)[310] and Kadıköy Anadolu Lisesi (founded in 1955).[311]
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+ In 1909, in Constantinople there were 626 primary schools and 12 secondary schools. Of the primary schools 561 were of the lower grade and 65 were of the higher grade; of the latter, 34 were public and 31 were private. There was one secondary college and eleven secondary preparatory schools.[312]
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+ Istanbul's first water supply systems date back to the city's early history, when aqueducts (such as the Valens Aqueduct) deposited the water in the city's numerous cisterns.[313] At the behest of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Kırkçeşme water supply network was constructed; by 1563, the network provided 4,200 cubic meters (150,000 cu ft) of water to 158 sites each day.[313] In later years, in response to increasing public demand, water from various springs was channeled to public fountains, like the Fountain of Ahmed III, by means of supply lines.[314] Today, Istanbul has a chlorinated and filtered water supply and a sewage treatment system managed by the Istanbul Water and Sewerage Administration (İstanbul Su ve Kanalizasyon İdaresi, İSKİ).[315]
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+ The Silahtarağa Power Station, a coal-fired power plant along the Golden Horn, was the sole source of Istanbul's electricity between 1914, when its first engine room was completed, and 1952.[316] Following the founding of the Turkish Republic, the plant underwent renovations to accommodate the city's increasing demand; its capacity grew from 23 megawatts in 1923 to a peak of 120 megawatts in 1956.[316][317] Capacity declined until the power station reached the end of its economic life and shut down in 1983.[316] The state-run Turkish Electrical Authority (TEK) briefly—between its founding in 1970 and 1984—held a monopoly on the generation and distribution of electricity, but now the authority—since split between the Turkish Electricity Generation Transmission Company (TEAŞ) and the Turkish Electricity Distribution Company (TEDAŞ)—competes with private electric utilities.[317]
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+ The Ottoman Ministry of Post and Telegraph was established in 1840 and the first post office, the Imperial Post Office, opened near the courtyard of Yeni Mosque. By 1876, the first international mailing network between Istanbul and the lands beyond the Ottoman Empire had been established.[319] Sultan Abdülmecid I issued Samuel Morse his first official honor for the telegraph in 1847, and construction of the first telegraph line—between Istanbul and Edirne—finished in time to announce the end of the Crimean War in 1856.[320] A nascent telephone system began to emerge in Istanbul in 1881 and after the first manual telephone exchange became operational in Istanbul in 1909, the Ministry of Post and Telegraph became the Ministry of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone.[319][321] GSM cellular networks arrived in Turkey in 1994, with Istanbul among the first cities to receive the service.[322] Today, mobile and landline service is provided by private companies, after Türk Telekom, which split from the Ministry of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone in 1995, was privatized in 2005.[319][322] Postal services remain under the purview of what is now the Post and Telegraph Organization (retaining the acronym PTT).[319]
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+ In 2000, Istanbul had 137 hospitals, of which 100 were private.[323] Turkish citizens are entitled to subsidized healthcare in the nation's state-run hospitals.[287] As public hospitals tend to be overcrowded or otherwise slow, private hospitals are preferable for those who can afford them. Their prevalence has increased significantly over the last decade, as the percentage of outpatients using private hospitals increased from 6 percent to 23 percent between 2005 and 2009.[287][324] Many of these private hospitals, as well as some of the public hospitals, are equipped with high-tech equipment, including MRI machines, or associated with medical research centers.[325] Turkey has more hospitals accredited by the U.S.-based Joint Commission than any other country in the world, with most concentrated in its big cities. The high quality of healthcare, especially in private hospitals, has contributed to a recent upsurge in medical tourism to Turkey (with a 40 percent increase between 2007 and 2008).[326] Laser eye surgery is particularly common among medical tourists, as Turkey is known for specializing in the procedure.[327]
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+ Istanbul's motorways network are the O-1, O-2, O-3, O-4 and O-7. By the end of 2019, the total length of Istanbul Province's toll motorways network (otoyollar) is 513 km and highways network (devlet yollari) is 327 km, totaling 840 km of expressway roads (minimum 2x2 lanes), excluding secondary roads and urban streets.[328][329] The density of expressway network is 15.7 km/100 km2 (2019). The O-1 forms the city's inner ring road, traversing the 15 July Martyrs (First Bosphorus) Bridge, and the O-2 is the city's outer ring road, crossing the Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Second Bosphorus) Bridge. The O-2 continues west to Edirne and the O-4 continues east to Ankara. The O-2, O-3, and O-4 are part of European route E80 (the Trans-European Motorway) between Portugal and the Iran–Turkey border.[330] In 2011, the first and second bridges on the Bosphorus carried 400,000 vehicles each day.[331] The O-7[332] or Kuzey Marmara Otoyolu, is a motorway that bypass Istanbul to the north. The O-7 motorway from Kinali Gişeleri to Istanbul Park Service has 139 km, with 8 lanes (4x4). The completed section of highway crosses the Bosphorus Strait via the Yavuz Sultan Selim (Third Bosphorus) Bridge, entered service on 26 August 2016.[333] The O-7 motorway connects Istanbul Atatürk Airport with Istanbul Airport. Environmentalist groups worry that the third bridge will endanger the remaining green areas to the north of Istanbul.[334][335] Apart from the three Bosphorus Bridges, the dual-deck, 14.6-kilometer (9.1 mi) Eurasia Tunnel (which entered service on 20 December 2016) under the Bosphorus strait also provides road crossings for motor vehicles between the Asian and European sides of Turkey.[336]
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+ Istanbul's local public transportation system is a network of trams, funiculars, metro lines, buses, bus rapid transit, and ferries. Fares across modes are integrated, using the contactless Istanbulkart, introduced in 2009, or the older Akbil electronic ticket device.[337] Trams in Istanbul date back to 1872, when they were horse-drawn, but even the first electrified trams were decommissioned in the 1960s.[338] Operated by Istanbul Electricity, Tramway, and Tunnel General Management (İETT), trams slowly returned to the city in the 1990s with the introduction of a nostalgic route and a faster modern tram line, which now carries 265,000 passengers each day.[338][339] The Tünel opened in 1875 as the world's second-oldest subterranean rail line (after London's Metropolitan Railway).[338] It still carries passengers between Karaköy and İstiklal Avenue along a steep 573-meter (1,880 ft) track; a more modern funicular between Taksim Square and Kabataş began running in 2006.[340][341]
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+ The Istanbul Metro comprises five lines (the M1, M2, M3 and M6 on the European side, and the M4 on the Asian side) with several other lines (such as the M5, M7, and M8) and extensions under construction.[342][343] The two sides of Istanbul's metro are connected under the Bosphorus by the Marmaray tunnel, inaugurated in 2013 as the first rail connection between Thrace and Anatolia.[344] Until then, buses provide transportation within and between the two-halves of the city, accommodating 2.2 million passenger trips each day.[345] The Metrobus, a form of bus rapid transit, crosses the Bosphorus Bridge, with dedicated lanes leading to its termini.[346] İDO (Istanbul Seabuses) runs a combination of all-passenger ferries and car-and-passenger ferries to ports on both sides of the Bosphorus, as far north as the Black Sea.[347][348] With additional destinations around the Sea of Marmara, İDO runs the largest municipal ferry operation in the world.[349] The city's main cruise ship terminal is the Port of Istanbul in Karaköy, with a capacity of 10,000 passengers per hour.[350] Most visitors enter Istanbul by air, but about half a million foreign tourists enter the city by sea each year.[230]
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+ International rail service from Istanbul launched in 1889, with a line between Bucharest and Istanbul's Sirkeci Terminal, which ultimately became famous as the eastern terminus of the Orient Express from Paris.[85] Regular service to Bucharest and Thessaloniki continued until the early 2010s, when the former was interrupted for Marmaray construction and the latter was halted due to economic problems in Greece.[351][352] After Istanbul's Haydarpaşa Terminal opened in 1908, it served as the western terminus of the Baghdad Railway and an extension of the Hejaz Railway; today, neither service is offered directly from Istanbul.[353][354][355] Service to Ankara and other points across Turkey is normally offered by Turkish State Railways, but the construction of Marmaray and the Ankara-Istanbul high-speed line forced the station to close in 2012.[356] New stations to replace both the Haydarpaşa and Sirkeci terminals, and connect the city's disjointed railway networks, are expected to open upon completion of the Marmaray project; until then, Istanbul is without intercity rail service.[356] Private bus companies operate instead. Istanbul's main bus station is the largest in Europe, with a daily capacity of 15,000 buses and 600,000 passengers, serving destinations as distant as Frankfurt.[357][358]
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+ Istanbul had three large international airports, two of which are currently in active service for commercial passenger flights. The largest is the new Istanbul Airport, opened in 2018 in the Arnavutköy district to the northwest of the city center, on the European side, near the Black Sea coast. All scheduled commercial passenger flights were transferred from Istanbul Atatürk Airport to Istanbul Airport on April 6, 2019, following the closure of Istanbul Atatürk Airport for scheduled passenger flights.[359] The IATA airport code IST was also transferred to the new airport.[360] Once all phases are completed in 2025, the airport will be able to accommodate 200 million passengers a year.[361]
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+ Istanbul Atatürk Airport, located 24 kilometers (15 mi) west of the city center, on the European side, near the Marmara Sea coast, was formerly the city's largest airport. After its closure to commercial flights in 2019, it was briefly used by cargo aircraft and the official state aircraft owned by the Turkish government, until the demolition of its runway began in 2020. It handled 61.3 million passengers in 2015, which made it the third-busiest airport in Europe and the eighteenth-busiest in the world in that year.[363]
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+ Sabiha Gökçen International, 45 kilometers (28 mi) southeast of the city center, on the Asian side, was opened in 2001 to relieve Atatürk. Dominated by low-cost carriers, Istanbul's second airport has rapidly become popular, especially since the opening of a new international terminal in 2009;[364] the airport handled 14.7 million passengers in 2012, a year after Airports Council International named it the world's fastest-growing airport.[365][366] Atatürk had also experienced rapid growth, as its 20.6 percent rise in passenger traffic between 2011 and 2012 was the highest among the world's top 30 airports.[363]
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+ Air pollution in Turkey is acute in İstanbul with cars, buses and taxis causing frequent urban smog,[367] as it is one of the few European cities without a low-emission zone. As of 2019[update] the city's mean air quality remains of a level so as to affect the heart and lungs of healthy street bystanders during peak traffic hours.[368]
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+ Istanbul (/ˌɪstænˈbʊl/,[8][9] also US: /ˈɪstænbʊl/; Turkish: İstanbul [isˈtanbuɫ] (listen)), formerly known as Byzantium and Constantinople, is the most populous city in Turkey and the country's economic, cultural and historic center. Istanbul is a transcontinental city in Eurasia, straddling the Bosporus strait (which separates Europe and Asia) between the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea. Its commercial and historical center lies on the European side and about a third of its population lives in suburbs on the Asian side of the Bosporus.[10] With a total population of around fifteen million residents in its metropolitan area,[3] Istanbul is one of the world's largest cities by population, ranking as the world's fifteenth-largest city and the largest city in Europe. The city is the administrative centre of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (coterminous with Istanbul Province).
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+ Founded under the name of Byzantion (Βυζάντιον) on the Sarayburnu promontory around 660 BCE,[11] the city grew in size and influence, becoming one of the most important cities in history. After its reestablishment as Constantinople in 330 CE,[12] it served as an imperial capital for almost sixteen centuries, during the Roman/Byzantine (330–1204), Latin (1204–1261), Byzantine (1261–1453) and Ottoman (1453–1922) empires.[13] It was instrumental in the advancement of Christianity during Roman and Byzantine times, before the Ottomans conquered the city in 1453 CE and transformed it into an Islamic stronghold and the seat of the Ottoman Caliphate.[14] Under the name Constantinople it was the Ottoman capital until 1923. The capital was then moved to Ankara and the city was renamed Istanbul.
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+ The city held the strategic position between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. It was also on the historic Silk Road.[15] It controlled rail networks between the Balkans and the Middle East and was the only sea route between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. In 1923, after the Turkish War of Independence, Ankara was chosen as the new Turkish capital, and the city's name was changed to Istanbul. Nevertheless, the city maintained its prominence in geopolitical and cultural affairs. The population of the city has increased tenfold since the 1950s, as migrants from across Anatolia have moved in and city limits have expanded to accommodate them.[16][17] Arts, music, film, and cultural festivals were established towards the end of the 20th century and continue to be hosted by the city today. Infrastructure improvements have produced a complex transportation network in the city.
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+ Over 12 million foreign visitors came to Istanbul in 2015, five years after it was named a European Capital of Culture, making the city the world's fifth-most popular tourist destination.[18] The city's biggest attraction is its historic center, partially listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its cultural and entertainment hub is across the city's natural harbor, the Golden Horn, in the Beyoğlu district. Considered a global city,[19] it hosts the headquarters of many Turkish companies and media outlets and accounts for more than a quarter of the country's gross domestic product.[20] Hoping to capitalize on its revitalization and rapid expansion, Istanbul has bid for the Summer Olympics five times in twenty years.[21]
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+ The first known name of the city is Byzantium (Greek: Βυζάντιον, Byzántion), the name given to it at its foundation by Megarean colonists around 660 BCE.[22] The name is thought to be derived from a personal name, Byzas. Ancient Greek tradition refers to a legendary king of that name as the leader of the Greek colonists. Modern scholars have also hypothesized that the name of Byzas was of local Thracian or Illyrian origin and hence predated the Megarean settlement.[23]
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+ After Constantine the Great made it the new eastern capital of the Roman Empire in 330 CE, the city became widely known as Constantinople, which, as the Latinized form of "Κωνσταντινούπολις" (Konstantinoúpolis), means the "City of Constantine".[22] He also attempted to promote the name "Nova Roma" and its Greek version "Νέα Ῥώμη" Nea Romē (New Rome), but this did not enter widespread usage.[24] Constantinople remained the most common name for the city in the West until the establishment of the Turkish Republic, which urged other countries to use Istanbul.[25][26] Kostantiniyye (Ottoman Turkish: قسطنطينيه‎), Be Makam-e Qonstantiniyyah al-Mahmiyyah (meaning "the Protected Location of Constantinople") and İstanbul were the names used alternatively by the Ottomans during their rule.[27] Although historically accurate, the use of Constantinople to refer to the city during the Ottoman period is, as of 2009, often considered by Turks to be "politically incorrect".[28]
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+ By the 19th century, the city had acquired other names used by either foreigners or Turks. Europeans used Constantinople to refer to the whole of the city, but used the name Stamboul—as the Turks also did—to describe the walled peninsula between the Golden Horn and the Sea of Marmara.[28] Pera (from the Greek word for "across") was used to describe the area between the Golden Horn and the Bosphorus, but Turks also used the name Beyoğlu (today the official name for one of the city's constituent districts).[29]
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+ The name İstanbul (Turkish pronunciation: [isˈtanbuɫ] (listen), colloquially [ɯsˈtambuɫ]) is commonly held to derive from the Medieval Greek phrase "εἰς τὴν Πόλιν" (pronounced [is tim ˈbolin]), which means "to the city"[30] and is how Constantinople was referred to by the local Greeks. This reflected its status as the only major city in the vicinity. The importance of Constantinople in the Ottoman world was also reflected by its Ottoman name 'Der Saadet' meaning the 'gate to Prosperity' in Ottoman. An alternative view is that the name evolved directly from the name Constantinople, with the first and third syllables dropped.[22] A Turkish folk etymology traces the name to Islam bol "plenty of Islam"[31] because the city was called Islambol ("plenty of Islam") or Islambul ("find Islam") as the capital of the Islamic Ottoman Empire. It is first attested shortly after the conquest, and its invention was ascribed by some contemporary writers to Sultan Mehmed II himself.[32] Some Ottoman sources of the 17th century, such as Evliya Çelebi, describe it as the common Turkish name of the time; between the late 17th and late 18th centuries, it was also in official use. The first use of the word "Islambol" on coinage was in 1703 (1115 AH) during the reign of Sultan Ahmed III.[33]
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+ In modern Turkish, the name is written as İstanbul, with a dotted İ, as the Turkish alphabet distinguishes between a dotted and dotless I. In English the stress is on the first or last syllable, but in Turkish it is on the second syllable (tan).[34] A person from the city is an İstanbullu (plural: İstanbullular), although Istanbulite is used in English.[35]
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+ Neolithic artifacts, uncovered by archeologists at the beginning of the 21st century, indicate that Istanbul's historic peninsula was settled as far back as the 6th millennium BCE.[36] That early settlement, important in the spread of the Neolithic Revolution from the Near East to Europe, lasted for almost a millennium before being inundated by rising water levels.[37][38][39][40] The first human settlement on the Asian side, the Fikirtepe mound, is from the Copper Age period, with artifacts dating from 5500 to 3500 BCE,[41] On the European side, near the point of the peninsula (Sarayburnu), there was a Thracian settlement during the early 1st millennium BCE. Modern authors have linked it to the Thracian toponym Lygos,[42] mentioned by Pliny the Elder as an earlier name for the site of Byzantium.[43]
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+ The history of the city proper begins around 660 BCE,[44][c] when Greek settlers from Megara established Byzantium on the European side of the Bosphorus. The settlers built an acropolis adjacent to the Golden Horn on the site of the early Thracian settlements, fueling the nascent city's economy.[50] The city experienced a brief period of Persian rule at the turn of the 5th century BCE, but the Greeks recaptured it during the Greco-Persian Wars.[51] Byzantium then continued as part of the Athenian League and its successor, the Second Athenian League, before gaining independence in 355 BCE.[52] Long allied with the Romans, Byzantium officially became a part of the Roman Empire in 73 CE.[53] Byzantium's decision to side with the Roman usurper Pescennius Niger against Emperor Septimius Severus cost it dearly; by the time it surrendered at the end of 195 CE, two years of siege had left the city devastated.[54] Five years later, Severus began to rebuild Byzantium, and the city regained—and, by some accounts, surpassed—its previous prosperity.[55]
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+ Constantine the Great effectively became the emperor of the whole of the Roman Empire in September 324.[56] Two months later, he laid out the plans for a new, Christian city to replace Byzantium. As the eastern capital of the empire, the city was named Nova Roma; most called it Constantinople, a name that persisted into the 20th century.[57] On 11 May 330, Constantinople was proclaimed the capital of the Roman Empire, which was later permanently divided between the two sons of Theodosius I upon his death on 17 January 395, when the city became the capital of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire.[58]
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+ The establishment of Constantinople was one of Constantine's most lasting accomplishments, shifting Roman power eastward as the city became a center of Greek culture and Christianity.[58][59] Numerous churches were built across the city, including Hagia Sophia which was built during the reign of Justinian the Great and remained the world's largest cathedral for a thousand years.[60] Constantine also undertook a major renovation and expansion of the Hippodrome of Constantinople; accommodating tens of thousands of spectators, the hippodrome became central to civic life and, in the 5th and 6th centuries, the center of episodes of unrest, including the Nika riots.[61][62] Constantinople's location also ensured its existence would stand the test of time; for many centuries, its walls and seafront protected Europe against invaders from the east and the advance of Islam.[59] During most of the Middle Ages, the latter part of the Byzantine era, Constantinople was the largest and wealthiest city on the European continent and at times the largest in the world.[63][64]
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+ Constantinople began to decline continuously after the end of the reign of Basil II in 1025. The Fourth Crusade was diverted from its purpose in 1204, and the city was sacked and pillaged by the crusaders.[65] They established the Latin Empire in place of the Orthodox Byzantine Empire.[66] Hagia Sophia was converted to a Catholic church in 1204. The Byzantine Empire was restored, albeit weakened, in 1261.[67] Constantinople's churches, defenses, and basic services were in disrepair,[68] and its population had dwindled to a hundred thousand from half a million during the 8th century.[d] After the reconquest of 1261, however, some of the city's monuments were restored, and some, like the two Deisis mosaics in Hagia Sofia and Kariye, were created.
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+ Various economic and military policies instituted by Andronikos II, such as the reduction of military forces, weakened the empire and left it vulnerable to attack.[69] In the mid-14th-century, the Ottoman Turks began a strategy of gradually taking smaller towns and cities, cutting off Constantinople's supply routes and strangling it slowly.[70] On 29 May 1453, after an eight-week siege (during which the last Roman emperor, Constantine XI, was killed), Sultan Mehmed II "the Conqueror" captured Constantinople and declared it the new capital of the Ottoman Empire. Hours later, the sultan rode to the Hagia Sophia and summoned an imam to proclaim the Islamic creed, converting the grand cathedral into an imperial mosque due to the city's refusal to surrender peacefully.[71] Mehmed declared himself as the new "Kaysar-i Rûm" (the Ottoman Turkish equivalent of Caesar of Rome) and the Ottoman state was reorganized into an empire.[72]
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+ Following the conquest of Constantinople[e], Mehmed II immediately set out to revitalize the city. He urged the return of those who had fled the city during the siege, and resettled Muslims, Jews, and Christians from other parts of Anatolia. He demanded that five thousand households needed to be transferred to Constantinople by September.[74] From all over the Islamic empire, prisoners of war and deported people were sent to the city: these people were called "Sürgün" in Turkish (Greek: σουργούνιδες).[75] Many people escaped again from the city, and there were several outbreaks of plague, so that in 1459 Mehmed allowed the deported Greeks to come back to the city.[76] He also invited people from all over Europe to his capital, creating a cosmopolitan society that persisted through much of the Ottoman period.[77] Plague continued to be essentially endemic in Constantinople for the rest of the century, as it had been from 1520, with a few years of respite between 1529 and 1533, 1549 and 1552, and from 1567 to 1570; epidemics originating in the West and in the Hejaz and southern Russia.[78] Population growth in Anatolia allowed Constantinople to replace its losses and maintain its population of around 500,000 inhabitants down to 1800. Mehmed II also repaired the city's damaged infrastructure, including the whole water system, began to build the Grand Bazaar, and constructed Topkapı Palace, the sultan's official residence.[79] With the transfer of the capital from Edirne (formerly Adrianople) to Constantinople, the new state was declared as the successor and continuation of the Roman Empire.[80]
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+ The Ottomans quickly transformed the city from a bastion of Christianity to a symbol of Islamic culture. Religious foundations were established to fund the construction of ornate imperial mosques, often adjoined by schools, hospitals, and public baths.[79] The Ottoman Dynasty claimed the status of caliphate in 1517, with Constantinople remaining the capital of this last caliphate for four centuries.[14] Suleiman the Magnificent's reign from 1520 to 1566 was a period of especially great artistic and architectural achievement; chief architect Mimar Sinan designed several iconic buildings in the city, while Ottoman arts of ceramics, stained glass, calligraphy, and miniature flourished.[81] The population of Constantinople was 570,000 by the end of the 18th century.[82]
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+ A period of rebellion at the start of the 19th century led to the rise of the progressive Sultan Mahmud II and eventually to the Tanzimat period, which produced political reforms and allowed new technology to be introduced to the city.[83] Bridges across the Golden Horn were constructed during this period,[84] and Constantinople was connected to the rest of the European railway network in the 1880s.[85] Modern facilities, such as a water supply network, electricity, telephones, and trams, were gradually introduced to Constantinople over the following decades, although later than to other European cities.[86] The modernization efforts were not enough to forestall the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
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+ Sultan Abdul Hamid II was deposed with the Young Turk Revolution in 1908 and the Ottoman Parliament, closed since 14 February 1878, was reopened 30 years later on 23 July 1908, which marked the beginning of the Second Constitutional Era.[87] A series of wars in the early 20th century, such as the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912) and the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), plagued the ailing empire's capital and resulted in the 1913 Ottoman coup d'état, which brought the regime of the Three Pashas.[88]
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+ The Ottoman Empire joined World War I (1914–1918) on the side of the Central Powers and was ultimately defeated. The deportation of Armenian intellectuals on 24 April 1915 was among the major events which marked the start of the Armenian Genocide during WWI.[89] As a result of the war and the events in its aftermath, the city's Christian population declined from 450,000 to 240,000 between 1914 and 1927.[90] The Armistice of Mudros was signed on 30 October 1918 and the Allies occupied Constantinople on 13 November 1918. The Ottoman Parliament was dissolved by the Allies on 11 April 1920 and the Ottoman delegation led by Damat Ferid Pasha was forced to sign the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920.
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+ Following the Turkish War of Independence (1919–1922), the Grand National Assembly of Turkey in Ankara abolished the Sultanate on 1 November 1922, and the last Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed VI, was declared persona non-grata. Leaving aboard the British warship HMS Malaya on 17 November 1922, he went into exile and died in Sanremo, Italy, on 16 May 1926. The Treaty of Lausanne was signed on 24 July 1923, and the occupation of Constantinople ended with the departure of the last forces of the Allies from the city on 4 October 1923.[91] Turkish forces of the Ankara government, commanded by Şükrü Naili Pasha (3rd Corps), entered the city with a ceremony on 6 October 1923, which has been marked as the Liberation Day of Istanbul (Turkish: İstanbul'un Kurtuluşu) and is commemorated every year on its anniversary.[91] On 29 October 1923 the Grand National Assembly of Turkey declared the establishment of the Turkish Republic, with Ankara as its capital. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk became the Republic's first President.[92]
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+ Ankara was selected as Turkey's capital in 1923 to distance the new, secular republic from its Ottoman history.[93] According to historian Philip Mansel:
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+ From the late 1940s and early 1950s, Istanbul underwent great structural change, as new public squares, boulevards, and avenues were constructed throughout the city, sometimes at the expense of historical buildings.[95] The population of Istanbul began to rapidly increase in the 1970s, as people from Anatolia migrated to the city to find employment in the many new factories that were built on the outskirts of the sprawling metropolis. This sudden, sharp rise in the city's population caused a large demand for housing, and many previously outlying villages and forests became engulfed into the metropolitan area of Istanbul.[96]
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+ Istanbul is in north-western Turkey within the Marmara Region on a total area of 5,343 square kilometers (2,063 sq mi).[b] The Bosphorus, which connects the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, divides the city into a European, Thracian side—comprising the historic and economic centers—and an Asian, Anatolian side. The city is further divided by the Golden Horn, a natural harbor bounding the peninsula where the former Byzantium and Constantinople were founded. The confluence of the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus, and the Golden Horn at the heart of present-day Istanbul has deterred attacking forces for thousands of years and remains a prominent feature of the city's landscape.[59]
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+ Following the model of Rome, the historic peninsula is said to be characterized by seven hills, each topped by imperial mosques. The easternmost of these hills is the site of Topkapı Palace on the Sarayburnu.[101] Rising from the opposite side of the Golden Horn is another, conical hill, where the modern Beyoğlu district is. Because of the topography, buildings in Beyoğlu were once constructed with the help of terraced retaining walls, and roads were laid out in the form of steps.[102] Üsküdar on the Asian side exhibits similarly hilly characteristics, with the terrain gradually extending down to the Bosphorus coast, but the landscape in Şemsipaşa and Ayazma is more abrupt, akin to a promontory. The highest point in Istanbul is Çamlıca Hill, with an altitude of 288 meters (945 ft).[102] The northern half of Istanbul has a higher mean elevation compared to the south coast, with locations surpassing 200 meters (660 ft), and some coasts with steep cliffs resembling fjords, especially around the northern end of the Bosphorus, where it opens up to the Black Sea.
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+ Istanbul is near the North Anatolian Fault, close to the boundary between the African and Eurasian Plates. This fault zone, which runs from northern Anatolia to the Sea of Marmara, has been responsible for several deadly earthquakes throughout the city's history. Among the most devastating of these seismic events was the 1509 earthquake, which caused a tsunami that broke over the walls of the city and killed more than 10,000 people. More recently, in 1999, an earthquake with its epicenter in nearby İzmit left 18,000 people dead, including 1,000 people in Istanbul's suburbs. The people of Istanbul remain concerned that an even more catastrophic seismic event may be in the city's near future, as thousands of structures recently built to accommodate Istanbul's rapidly increasing population may not have been constructed properly.[103] Seismologists say the risk of a 7.6-magnitude or greater earthquake striking Istanbul by 2030 is more than 60 percent.[104][105]
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+ In the Köppen–Geiger classification system, Istanbul has a borderline Mediterranean climate (Csa), humid subtropical climate (Cfa) and oceanic climate (Cfb), due to its location in a transitional climatic zone. Since precipitation in summer months ranges from 20 to 65 mm (1 to 3 in), depending on location, the city cannot be classified as solely Mediterranean or humid subtropical.[106][107][108] Due to its size, diverse topography, maritime location and most importantly having a coastline to two different bodies of water to the north and south, Istanbul exhibits microclimates. The northern half of the city, as well as the Bosporus coastline, express characteristics of oceanic and humid subtropical climates, because of humidity from the Black Sea and the relatively high concentration of vegetation. The climate in the populated areas of the city to the south, on the Sea of Marmara, is warmer, drier and less affected by humidity.[109] The annual precipitation in the northern half can be twice as much (Bahçeköy, 1166.6 mm), than it is in the southern, Marmara coast (Florya 635.0 mm).[110] There is a significant difference between annual mean temperatures on the north and south coasts as well, Bahçeköy 12.8 °C (55.0 °F), Kartal 15.03 °C (59.05 °F).[111] Parts of the province that are away from both seas exhibit considerable continental influences, with much more pronounced night-day and summer-winter temperature differences. In winter some parts of the province average freezing or below at night.
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+ Istanbul's persistently high humidity reaches 80 percent most mornings.[112] Because of this, fog is very common, although more so in northern parts of the city and away from the city center.[109] Dense fog disrupts transportation in the region, including on the Bosphorus, and is common during the autumn and winter months when the humidity remains high into the afternoon.[113][114][115] The humid conditions and the fog tend to dissipate by midday during the summer months, but the lingering humidity exacerbates the moderately high summer temperatures.[112][116] During these summer months, high temperatures average around 29 °C (84 °F) and rainfall is uncommon; there are only about fifteen days with measurable precipitation between June and August.[117] The summer months also have the highest concentration of thunderstorms.[118]
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+ Winter is colder in Istanbul than in most other cities around the Mediterranean Basin, with low temperatures averaging 1–4 °C (34–39 °F).[117] Lake-effect snow from the Black Sea is common, although difficult to forecast, with the potential to be heavy and—as with the fog—disruptive to the city's infrastructure.[119] Spring and autumn are mild, but often wet and unpredictable; chilly winds from the northwest and warm gusts from the south—sometimes in the same day—tend to cause fluctuations in temperature.[116][120] Overall, Istanbul has an annual average of 130 days with significant precipitation, which amounts to 810 millimeters (31.9 in) per year.[117][121] The highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded in the city center on the Marmara coast are 40.5 °C (105 °F) and −16.1 °C (3 °F). The greatest rainfall recorded in a day is 227 millimeters (8.9 in), and the highest recorded snow cover is 80 centimeters (31 in).[122][123]
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+ Global warming in Turkey may cause more urban heatwaves,[128] droughts,[129] storms,[130] and flooding.[131][132] Sea level rise is forecast to affect city infrastructure, for example Kadıkoy metro station is threatened with flooding.[133]
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+ Xeriscaping of green spaces has been suggested,[134] and Istanbul has a climate-change action plan.[135]
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+ The Fatih district, which was named after Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (Turkish: Fatih Sultan Mehmed), corresponds to what was, until the Ottoman conquest in 1453, the whole of the city of Constantinople (today is the capital district and called the historic peninsula of Istanbul) on the southern shore of the Golden Horn, across the medieval Genoese citadel of Galata on the northern shore. The Genoese fortifications in Galata were largely demolished in the 19th century, leaving only the Galata Tower, to make way for the northward expansion of the city.[136] Galata (Karaköy) is today a quarter within the Beyoğlu (Pera) district, which forms Istanbul's commercial and entertainment center and includes İstiklal Avenue and Taksim Square.[137]
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+ Dolmabahçe Palace, the seat of government during the late Ottoman period, is in the Beşiktaş district on the European shore of the Bosphorus strait, to the north of Beyoğlu. The Sublime Porte (Bâb-ı Âli), which became a metonym for the Ottoman government, was originally used to describe the Imperial Gate (Bâb-ı Hümâyûn) at the outermost courtyard of the Topkapı Palace; but after the 18th century, the Sublime Porte (or simply Porte) began to refer to the gate of the Sadrazamlık (Prime Ministry) compound in the Cağaloğlu quarter near Topkapı Palace, where the offices of the Sadrazam (Grand Vizier) and other Viziers were, and where foreign diplomats were received. The former village of Ortaköy is within Beşiktaş and gives its name to the Ortaköy Mosque on the Bosphorus, near the Bosphorus Bridge. Lining both the European and Asian shores of the Bosphorus are the historic yalıs, luxurious chalet mansions built by Ottoman aristocrats and elites as summer homes.[138] Farther inland, outside the city's inner ring road, are Levent and Maslak, Istanbul's main business districts.[139]
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+ During the Ottoman period, Üsküdar (then Scutari) and Kadıköy were outside the scope of the urban area, serving as tranquil outposts with seaside yalıs and gardens. But in the second half of the 20th century, the Asian side experienced major urban growth; the late development of this part of the city led to better infrastructure and tidier urban planning when compared with most other residential areas in the city.[10] Much of the Asian side of the Bosphorus functions as a suburb of the economic and commercial centers in European Istanbul, accounting for a third of the city's population but only a quarter of its employment.[10] As a result of Istanbul's exponential growth in the 20th century, a significant portion of the city is composed of gecekondus (literally "built overnight"), referring to illegally constructed squatter buildings.[140] At present, some gecekondu areas are being gradually demolished and replaced by modern mass-housing compounds.[141] Moreover, large scale gentrification and urban renewal projects have been taking place,[142] such as the one in Tarlabaşı;[143] some of these projects, like the one in Sulukule, have faced criticism.[144] The Turkish government also has ambitious plans for an expansion of the city west and northwards on the European side in conjunction with plans for a third airport; the new parts of the city will include four different settlements with specified urban functions, housing 1.5 million people.[145]
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+ Istanbul does not have a primary urban park, but it has several green areas. Gülhane Park and Yıldız Park were originally included within the grounds of two of Istanbul's palaces—Topkapı Palace and Yıldız Palace—but they were repurposed as public parks in the early decades of the Turkish Republic.[146] Another park, Fethi Paşa Korusu, is on a hillside adjacent to the Bosphorus Bridge in Anatolia, opposite Yıldız Palace in Europe. Along the European side, and close to the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, is Emirgan Park, which was known as the Kyparades (Cypress Forest) during the Byzantine period. In the Ottoman period, it was first granted to Nişancı Feridun Ahmed Bey in the 16th century, before being granted by Sultan Murad IV to the Safavid Emir Gûne Han in the 17th century, hence the name Emirgan. The 47-hectare (120-acre) park was later owned by Khedive Ismail Pasha of Ottoman Egypt and Sudan in the 19th century. Emirgan Park is known for its diversity of plants and an annual tulip festival is held there since 2005.[147] The AKP government's decision to replace Taksim Gezi Park with a replica of the Ottoman era Taksim Military Barracks (which was transformed into the Taksim Stadium in 1921, before being demolished in 1940 for building Gezi Park) sparked a series of nationwide protests in 2013 covering a wide range of issues. Popular during the summer among Istanbulites is Belgrad Forest, spreading across 5,500 hectares (14,000 acres) at the northern edge of the city. The forest originally supplied water to the city and remnants of reservoirs used during Byzantine and Ottoman times survive.[148][149]
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+ Modern shopping malls, dense residential and hotel towers, and entertainment, educational and other facilities can be found outside the historic center in the following edge cities:[150]
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+ Istanbul is primarily known for its Byzantine and Ottoman architecture, but its buildings reflect the various peoples and empires that have previously ruled the city. Examples of Genoese and Roman architecture remain visible in Istanbul alongside their Ottoman counterparts. Nothing of the architecture of the classical Greek period has survived, but Roman architecture has proved to be more durable. The obelisk erected by Theodosius in the Hippodrome of Constantinople is still visible in Sultanahmet Square, and a section of the Valens Aqueduct, constructed in the late 4th century, stands relatively intact at the western edge of the Fatih district.[152] The Column of Constantine, erected in 330 CE to mark the new Roman capital, stands not far from the Hippodrome.[152]
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+ Early Byzantine architecture followed the classical Roman model of domes and arches, but improved upon these elements, as in the Church of the Saints Sergius and Bacchus. The oldest surviving Byzantine church in Istanbul—albeit in ruins—is the Monastery of Stoudios (later converted into the Imrahor Mosque), which was built in 454.[154] After the recapture of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantines enlarged two of the most important churches extant, Chora Church and Pammakaristos Church. The pinnacle of Byzantine architecture, and one of Istanbul's most iconic structures, is the Hagia Sophia. Topped by a dome 31 meters (102 ft) in diameter,[155] the Hagia Sophia stood as the world's largest cathedral for centuries, and was later converted into a mosque and, as it stands now, a museum.[60]
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+ Among the oldest surviving examples of Ottoman architecture in Istanbul are the Anadoluhisarı and Rumelihisarı fortresses, which assisted the Ottomans during their siege of the city.[156] Over the next four centuries, the Ottomans made an indelible impression on the skyline of Istanbul, building towering mosques and ornate palaces. The largest palace, Topkapı, includes a diverse array of architectural styles, from Baroque inside the Harem, to its Neoclassical style Enderûn Library.[157] The imperial mosques include Fatih Mosque, Bayezid Mosque, Yavuz Selim Mosque, Süleymaniye Mosque, Sultan Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque), and Yeni Mosque, all of which were built at the peak of the Ottoman Empire, in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the following centuries, and especially after the Tanzimat reforms, Ottoman architecture was supplanted by European styles.[158] An example of which is the imperial Nuruosmaniye Mosque. Areas around İstiklal Avenue were filled with grand European embassies and rows of buildings in Neoclassical, Renaissance Revival and Art Nouveau styles, which went on to influence the architecture of a variety of structures in Beyoğlu—including churches, stores, and theaters—and official buildings such as Dolmabahçe Palace.[159]
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+ Since 2004, the municipal boundaries of Istanbul have been coincident with the boundaries of its province.[160] The city, considered capital of Istanbul Province, is administered by the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (MMI), which oversees the 39 districts of the city-province.[b]
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+ The current city structure can be traced back to the Tanzimat period of reform in the 19th century, before which Islamic judges and imams led the city under the auspices of the Grand Vizier. Following the model of French cities, this religious system was replaced by a mayor and a citywide council composed of representatives of the confessional groups (millet) across the city. Pera (now Beyoğlu) was the first area of the city to have its own director and council, with members instead being longtime residents of the neighborhood.[161] Laws enacted after the Ottoman constitution of 1876 aimed to expand this structure across the city, imitating the twenty arrondissements of Paris, but they were not fully implemented until 1908, when the city was declared a province with nine constituent districts.[162][163] This system continued beyond the founding of the Turkish Republic, with the province renamed a belediye (municipality), but the municipality was disbanded in 1957.[98][164]
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+ Small settlements adjacent to major population centers in Turkey, including Istanbul, were merged into their respective primary cities during the early 1980s, resulting in metropolitan municipalities.[165][166] The main decision-making body of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is the Municipal Council, with members drawn from district councils.
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+ The Municipal Council is responsible for citywide issues, including managing the budget, maintaining civic infrastructure, and overseeing museums and major cultural centers.[167] Since the government operates under a "powerful mayor, weak council" approach, the council's leader—the metropolitan mayor—has the authority to make swift decisions, often at the expense of transparency.[168] The Municipal Council is advised by the Metropolitan Executive Committee, although the committee also has limited power to make decisions of its own.[169] All representatives on the committee are appointed by the metropolitan mayor and the council, with the mayor—or someone of his or her choosing—serving as head.[169][170]
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+ District councils are chiefly responsible for waste management and construction projects within their respective districts. They each maintain their own budgets, although the metropolitan mayor reserves the right to review district decisions. One-fifth of all district council members, including the district mayors, also represent their districts in the Municipal Council.[167] All members of the district councils and the Municipal Council, including the metropolitan mayor, are elected to five-year terms.[171] Representing the Republican People's Party, Ekrem İmamoğlu has been the Mayor of Istanbul since 23 June 2019.[172]
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+ With the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and Istanbul Province having equivalent jurisdictions, few responsibilities remain for the provincial government. Similar to the MMI, the Istanbul Special Provincial Administration has a governor, a democratically elected decision-making body—the Provincial Parliament—and an appointed Executive Committee. Mirroring the executive committee at the municipal level, the Provincial Executive Committee includes a secretary-general and leaders of departments that advise the Provincial Parliament.[170][173] The Provincial Administration's duties are largely limited to the building and maintenance of schools, residences, government buildings, and roads, and the promotion of arts, culture, and nature conservation.[174] Vasip Şahin has been the Governor of Istanbul Province since 25 September 2014.[175]
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+ Throughout most of its history, Istanbul has ranked among the largest cities in the world. By 500 CE, Constantinople had somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 people, edging out its predecessor, Rome, for world's largest city.[177] Constantinople jostled with other major historical cities, such as Baghdad, Chang'an, Kaifeng and Merv for the position of world's most populous city until the 12th century. It never returned to being the world's largest, but remained Europe's largest city from 1500 to 1750, when it was surpassed by London.[178]
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+ The Turkish Statistical Institute estimates that the population of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality was 14,377,019 at the end of 2014, hosting 19 percent of the country's population.[3] Then about 97–98% of the inhabitants of the metropolitan municipality were within city limits, up from 89% in 2007[179] and 61% in 1980.[180] 64.9% of the residents live on the European side and 35.1% on the Asian side.[181] While the city ranks as the world's 5th-largest city proper, it drops to the 24th place as an urban area and to the 18th place as a metro area because the city limits are roughly equivalent to the agglomeration. Today, it forms one of the largest urban agglomerations in Europe, alongside Moscow.[f] The city's annual population growth of 3.45 percent ranks as the highest among the seventy-eight largest metropolises in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The high population growth mirrors an urbanization trend across the country, as the second and third fastest-growing OECD metropolises are the Turkish cities of İzmir and Ankara.[20]
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+ Istanbul experienced especially rapid growth during the second half of the 20th century, with its population increasing tenfold between 1950 and 2000.[16] This growth in population comes, in part, from an expansion of city limits—particularly between 1980 and 1985, when the number of Istanbulites nearly doubled.[98] The remarkable growth was, and still is, largely fueled by migrants from eastern Turkey seeking employment and improved living conditions. The number of residents of Istanbul originating from seven northern and eastern provinces is greater than the populations of their entire respective provinces; Sivas and Kastamonu each account for more than half a million residents of Istanbul.[17] Istanbul's foreign population, by comparison, is very small, 42,228 residents in 2007.[184] Only 28 percent of the city's residents are originally from Istanbul.[185] The most densely populated areas tend to lie to the northwest, west, and southwest of the city center, on the European side; the most densely populated district on the Asian side is Üsküdar.[17]
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+ Istanbul has been a cosmopolitan city throughout much of its history, but it has become more homogenized since the end of the Ottoman Empire. The vast majority of people across Turkey, and in Istanbul, are Muslim, and more specifically members of the Sunni branch of Islam. Most Sunni Turks follow the Hanafi school of Islamic thought, while Sunni Kurds tend to follow the Shafi'i school. The largest non-Sunni Muslim group, accounting 10–20% of Turkey's population[186], are the Alevis; a third of all Alevis in the country live in Istanbul.[185] Mystic movements, like Sufism, were officially banned after the establishment of the Turkish Republic, but they still boast numerous followers.[187] Istanbul is a migrant city. Since the 1950s, Istanbul's population has increased from 1 million to about 10 million residents. Almost 200,000 new immigrants, many of them from Turkey's own villages, continue to arrive each year. As a result, the city constant change, constantly reshaped to achieve the needs of these new population.[188]
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+ The Patriarch of Constantinople has been designated Ecumenical Patriarch since the sixth century, and has come to be regarded as the leader of the world's 300 million Orthodox Christians.[189] Since 1601, the Patriarchate has been based in Istanbul's Church of St. George.[190] Into the 19th century, the Christians of Istanbul tended to be either Greek Orthodox, members of the Armenian Apostolic Church or Catholic Levantines.[191] Because of events during the 20th century—including the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, a 1942 wealth tax, and the 1955 Istanbul riots—the Greek population, originally centered in Fener and Samatya, has decreased substantially. At the start of the 21st century, Istanbul's Greek population numbered 3,000 (down from 260,000 out of 850,000 according to the Ottoman Census of 1910, and a peak of 350,000 in 1919).[192][193] There are today between 50,000 and 90,000 Armenians in Istanbul, down from about 164,000 according to the Ottoman Census of 1913 (partly due to the Armenian Genocide).[194] The Levantines, Latin Christians who settled in Galata during the Ottoman period, played a seminal role in shaping the culture and architecture of Istanbul during the 19th and early 20th centuries; their population has dwindled, but they remain in the city in small numbers.[195]
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+ The largest ethnic minority in Istanbul is the Kurdish community, originating from eastern and southeastern Turkey. Although the Kurdish presence in the city dates back to the early Ottoman period,[196] the influx of Kurds into the city has accelerated since the beginning of the Kurdish–Turkish conflict in the late 1970s.[197] Between two and four million residents of Istanbul are Kurdish, meaning there are more Kurds in Istanbul than in any other city in the world.[198][199][200][201][202][203] There are other significant ethnic minorities as well, the Bosniaks are the main people of an entire district – Bayrampaşa.[204] The neighborhood of Balat used to be home to a sizable Sephardi Jewish community, first formed after their expulsion from Spain in 1492.[205] Romaniotes and Ashkenazi Jews resided in Istanbul even before the Sephardim, but their proportion has since dwindled; today, 1 percent of Istanbul's Jews are Ashkenazi.[206][207] In large part due to emigration to Israel, the Jewish population nationwide dropped from 100,000 in 1950 to 18,000 in 2005, with the majority of them living in either Istanbul or İzmir.[208] From the increase in mutual cooperation between Turkey and several African States like Somalia and Djibouti, several young students and workers have been migrating to Istanbul in search of better education and employment opportunities. There are Nigerian, Congolese and Cameroonian communities present.[209]
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+ Politically, Istanbul is seen as the most important administrative region in Turkey. Many politicians, including the President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are of the view that a political party's performance in Istanbul is more significant than its general performance overall. This is due to the city's role as Turkey's financial center, its large electorate and the fact that Erdoğan himself was elected Mayor of Istanbul in 1994. In the run-up to local elections in 2019, Erdoğan claimed 'if we fail in Istanbul, we will fail in Turkey'.[210]
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+ Historically, Istanbul has voted for the winning party in general elections since 1995. Since 2002, the right-wing Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won pluralities in every general election, with 41.74% of the vote in the most recent parliamentary election on 24 June 2018. Erdoğan, the AKP's presidential candidate, received exactly 50.0% of the vote in the presidential election held on the same day. Starting with Erdoğan in 1994, Istanbul has had a conservative mayor for 25 years, until 2019. The second largest party in Istanbul is the center-left Republican People's Party (CHP), which is also the country's main opposition. The left-wing pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) is the city's third largest political force due to a substantial number of Kurdish people migrating from south-eastern Turkey.
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+ More recently, Istanbul and many of Turkey's metropolitan cities are following a trend away from the government and their right-wing ideology. In 2013 and 2014, large-scale anti-AKP government protests began in İstanbul and spread throughout the nation. This trend first became evident electorally in the 2014 mayoral election where the center-left opposition candidate won an impressive 40% of the vote, despite not winning. The first government defeat in Istanbul occurred in the 2017 constitutional referendum, where Istanbul voted 'No' by 51.4% to 48.6%. The AKP government had supported a 'Yes' vote and won the vote nationally due to high support in rural parts of the country. The biggest defeat for the government came in the 2019 local elections, where their candidate for Mayor, former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım, was defeated by a very narrow margin by the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu. İmamoğlu won the vote with 48.77% of the vote, against Yıldırım's 48.61%. Similar trends and electoral successes for the opposition were also replicated in Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, Mersin, Adana and other metropolitan areas of Turkey.
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+ Administratively, Istanbul is divided into 39 districts, more than any other province in Turkey. As a province, Istanbul sends 98 Members of Parliament to the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, which has a total of 600 seats. For the purpose of parliamentary elections, Istanbul is divided into three electoral districts; two on the European side and one on the Asian side, electing 28, 35 and 35 MPs respectively.
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+ With a PPP-adjusted gross domestic product of US$301.1 billion, Istanbul ranked 29th among the world's urban areas in 2011.[211] Since the mid-1990s, Istanbul's economy has been one of the fastest-growing among OECD metro-regions.[20] Istanbul is responsible for 27 percent of Turkey's GDP, with 20 percent of the country's industrial labor force residing in the city.[20][212] Its GDP per capita and productivity are greater than their national averages by 70 percent and 50 percent, respectively, owing in part to the focus on high-value-added activities. With its high population and significant contribution to the Turkish economy, Istanbul is responsible for two-fifths of the nation's tax revenue.[20] That includes the taxes of 37 US-dollar billionaires based in Istanbul, the fifth-highest number among cities around the world.[213]
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+ As expected for a city of its size, Istanbul has a diverse industrial economy, producing commodities as varied as olive oil, tobacco, vehicles, and electronics.[212] Despite having a focus on high-value-added work, its low-value-added manufacturing sector is substantial, representing just 26 percent of Istanbul's GDP, but four-fifths of the city's total exports.[20] In 2005, companies based in Istanbul produced exports worth $41.4 billion and received imports totaling $69.9 billion; these figures were equivalent to 57 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the national totals.[214]
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+ Istanbul is home to Borsa Istanbul, the sole exchange entity of Turkey, which combined the former Istanbul Stock Exchange, the Istanbul Gold Exchange, and the Derivatives Exchange of Turkey.[215] The former Istanbul Stock Exchange was originally established as the Ottoman Stock Exchange in 1866.[216] During the 19th and early 20th centuries, Bankalar Caddesi (Banks Street) in Galata was the financial center of the Ottoman Empire, where the Ottoman Stock Exchange was located.[217] Bankalar Caddesi continued to be Istanbul's main financial district until the 1990s, when most Turkish banks began moving their headquarters to the modern central business districts of Levent and Maslak. In 1995, the Istanbul Stock Exchange (now Borsa Istanbul) moved to its current building in the İstinye quarter of the Sarıyer district.[218] A new central business district is also under construction in Ataşehir and will host the headquarters of various Turkish banks and financial institutions upon completion.[219]
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+ As the only sea route between the oil-rich Black Sea and the Mediterranean, the Bosphorus is one of the busiest waterways in the world; more than 200 million tonnes of oil pass through the strait each year, and the traffic on the Bosphorus is three times that on the Suez Canal.[220] As a result, there have been proposals to build a canal, known as Canal Istanbul, parallel to the strait, on the European side of the city.[221] Istanbul has three major shipping ports—the Port of Haydarpaşa, the Port of Ambarlı, and the Port of Zeytinburnu—as well as several smaller ports and oil terminals along the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara.[222][223] Haydarpaşa, at the southeastern end of the Bosphorus, was Istanbul's largest port until the early 2000s. Shifts in operations to Ambarlı since then have left Haydarpaşa running under capacity and with plans to decommission the port.[224] In 2007, Ambarlı, on the western edge of the urban center, had an annual capacity of 1.5 million TEUs (compared to 354,000 TEUs at Haydarpaşa), making it the fourth-largest cargo terminal in the Mediterranean basin.[225][226] The Port of Zeytinburnu is advantaged by its proximity to motorways and Atatürk International Airport,[227] and long-term plans for the city call for greater connectivity between all terminals and the road and rail networks.[228]
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+ Istanbul is an increasingly popular tourist destination; whereas just 2.4 million foreigners visited the city in 2000, it welcomed 12.56 million foreign tourists in 2015, making it the world's fifth most-visited city.[18][229] Istanbul is Turkey's second-largest international gateway, after Antalya, receiving a quarter of the nation's foreign tourists. Istanbul's tourist industry is concentrated in the European side, with 90 percent of the city's hotels there. Low- and mid-range hotels tend to be on the Sarayburnu; higher-end hotels are primarily in the entertainment and financial centers north of the Golden Horn. Istanbul's seventy museums, the most visited of which are the Topkapı Palace Museum and the Hagia Sophia, bring in $30 million in revenue each year. The city's environmental master plan also notes that there are 17 palaces, 64 mosques, and 49 churches of historical significance in Istanbul.[230]
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+ Istanbul was historically known as a cultural hub, but its cultural scene stagnated after the Turkish Republic shifted its focus toward Ankara.[232] The new national government established programs that served to orient Turks toward musical traditions, especially those originating in Europe, but musical institutions and visits by foreign classical artists were primarily centered in the new capital.[233] Much of Turkey's cultural scene had its roots in Istanbul, and by the 1980s and 1990s Istanbul reemerged globally as a city whose cultural significance is not solely based on its past glory.[234]
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+ By the end of the 19th century, Istanbul had established itself as a regional artistic center, with Turkish, European, and Middle Eastern artists flocking to the city. Despite efforts to make Ankara Turkey's cultural heart, Istanbul had the country's primary institution of art until the 1970s.[235] When additional universities and art journals were founded in Istanbul during the 1980s, artists formerly based in Ankara moved in.[236] Beyoğlu has been transformed into the artistic center of the city, with young artists and older Turkish artists formerly residing abroad finding footing there. Modern art museums, including İstanbul Modern, the Pera Museum, Sakıp Sabancı Museum and SantralIstanbul, opened in the 2000s to complement the exhibition spaces and auction houses that have already contributed to the cosmopolitan nature of the city.[237] These museums have yet to attain the popularity of older museums on the historic peninsula, including the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, which ushered in the era of modern museums in Turkey, and the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum.[230][231]
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+ The first film screening in Turkey was at Yıldız Palace in 1896, a year after the technology publicly debuted in Paris.[242] Movie theaters rapidly cropped up in Beyoğlu, with the greatest concentration of theaters being along the street now known as İstiklal Avenue.[243] Istanbul also became the heart of Turkey's nascent film industry, although Turkish films were not consistently developed until the 1950s.[244] Since then, Istanbul has been the most popular location to film Turkish dramas and comedies.[245] The Turkish film industry ramped up in the second half of the century, and with Uzak (2002) and My Father and My Son (2005), both filmed in Istanbul, the nation's movies began to see substantial international success.[246] Istanbul and its picturesque skyline have also served as a backdrop for several foreign films, including From Russia with Love (1963), Topkapi (1964), The World Is Not Enough (1999), and Mission Istaanbul (2008).[247]
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+ Coinciding with this cultural reemergence was the establishment of the Istanbul Festival, which began showcasing a variety of art from Turkey and around the world in 1973. From this flagship festival came the International Istanbul Film Festival and the Istanbul International Jazz Festival in the early 1980s. With its focus now solely on music and dance, the Istanbul Festival has been known as the Istanbul International Music Festival since 1994.[248] The most prominent of the festivals that evolved from the original Istanbul Festival is the Istanbul Biennial, held every two years since 1987. Its early incarnations were aimed at showcasing Turkish visual art, and it has since opened to international artists and risen in prestige to join the elite biennales, alongside the Venice Biennale and the São Paulo Art Biennial.[249]
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+ Istanbul has numerous shopping centers, from the historic to the modern. The Grand Bazaar, in operation since 1461, is among the world's oldest and largest covered markets.[250][251] Mahmutpasha Bazaar is an open-air market extending between the Grand Bazaar and the Egyptian Bazaar, which has been Istanbul's major spice market since 1660. Galleria Ataköy ushered in the age of modern shopping malls in Turkey when it opened in 1987.[252] Since then, malls have become major shopping centers outside the historic peninsula. Akmerkez was awarded the titles of "Europe's best" and "World's best" shopping mall by the International Council of Shopping Centers in 1995 and 1996; Istanbul Cevahir has been one of the continent's largest since opening in 2005; Kanyon won the Cityscape Architectural Review Award in the Commercial Built category in 2006.[251] İstinye Park in İstinye and Zorlu Center near Levent are among the newest malls which include the stores of the world's top fashion brands. Abdi İpekçi Street in Nişantaşı and Bağdat Avenue on the Anatolian side of the city have evolved into high-end shopping districts.[253][254]
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+ Istanbul is known for its historic seafood restaurants. Many of the city's most popular and upscale seafood restaurants line the shores of the Bosphorus (particularly in neighborhoods like Ortaköy, Bebek, Arnavutköy, Yeniköy, Beylerbeyi and Çengelköy). Kumkapı along the Sea of Marmara has a pedestrian zone that hosts around fifty fish restaurants.[255] The Princes' Islands, 15 kilometers (9 mi) from the city center, are also popular for their seafood restaurants. Because of their restaurants, historic summer mansions, and tranquil, car-free streets, the Prince Islands are a popular vacation destination among Istanbulites and foreign tourists.[256] Istanbul is also famous for its sophisticated and elaborately-cooked dishes of the Ottoman cuisine. Following the influx of immigrants from southeastern and eastern Turkey, which began in the 1960s, the foodscape of the city has drastically changed by the end of the century; with influences of Middle Eastern cuisine such as kebab taking an important place in the food scene. Restaurants featuring foreign cuisines are mainly concentrated in the Beyoğlu, Beşiktaş, Şişli, and Kadıköy districts.
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+ Istanbul has active nightlife and historic taverns, a signature characteristic of the city for centuries if not millennia. Along İstiklal Avenue is the Çiçek Pasajı, now home to winehouses (known as meyhanes), pubs, and restaurants.[257] İstiklal Avenue, originally known for its taverns, has shifted toward shopping, but the nearby Nevizade Street is still lined with winehouses and pubs.[258][259] Some other neighborhoods around İstiklal Avenue have been revamped to cater to Beyoğlu's nightlife, with formerly commercial streets now lined with pubs, cafes, and restaurants playing live music.[260] Other focal points for Istanbul's nightlife include Nişantaşı, Ortaköy, Bebek, and Kadıköy.[261]
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+ Istanbul is home to some of Turkey's oldest sports clubs. Beşiktaş JK, established in 1903, is considered the oldest of these sports clubs. Due to its initial status as Turkey's only club, Beşiktaş occasionally represented the Ottoman Empire and Turkish Republic in international sports competitions, earning the right to place the Turkish flag inside its team logo.[262] Galatasaray SK and Fenerbahçe SK have fared better in international competitions and have won more Süper Lig titles, at 22 and 19 times, respectively.[263][264][265] Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe have a long-standing rivalry, with Galatasaray based in the European part and Fenerbahçe based in the Anatolian part of the city.[264] Istanbul has seven basketball teams—Anadolu Efes, Beşiktaş, Darüşşafaka, Fenerbahçe, Galatasaray, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyespor and Büyükçekmece—that play in the premier-level Turkish Basketball Super League.[266]
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+ Many of Istanbul's sports facilities have been built or upgraded since 2000 to bolster the city's bids for the Summer Olympic Games. Atatürk Olympic Stadium, the largest multi-purpose stadium in Turkey, was completed in 2002 as an IAAF first-class venue for track and field.[267] The stadium hosted the 2005 UEFA Champions League Final and will host the 2020 UEFA Champions League Final.[268] Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium, Fenerbahçe's home field, hosted the 2009 UEFA Cup Final three years after its completion. Türk Telekom Arena opened in 2011 to replace Ali Sami Yen Stadium as Galatasaray's home turf,[269][270] while Vodafone Park, opened in 2016 to replace BJK İnönü Stadium as the home turf of Beşiktaş, hosted the 2019 UEFA Super Cup game. All four stadiums are elite Category 4 (formerly five-star) UEFA stadiums.[g]
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+ The Sinan Erdem Dome, among the largest indoor arenas in Europe, hosted the final of the 2010 FIBA World Championship, the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships, as well as the 2011–12 Euroleague and 2016–17 EuroLeague Final Fours.[274] Prior to the completion of the Sinan Erdem Dome in 2010, Abdi İpekçi Arena was Istanbul's primary indoor arena, having hosted the finals of EuroBasket 2001.[275] Several other indoor arenas, including the Beşiktaş Akatlar Arena, have also been inaugurated since 2000, serving as the home courts of Istanbul's sports clubs. The most recent of these is the 13,800-seat Ülker Sports Arena, which opened in 2012 as the home court of Fenerbahçe's basketball teams.[276] Despite the construction boom, five bids for the Summer Olympics—in 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2020—and national bids for UEFA Euro 2012 and UEFA Euro 2016 have ended unsuccessfully.[277]
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+ The TVF Burhan Felek Sport Hall is one of the major volleyball arenas in the city and hosts clubs such as Eczacıbaşı VitrA, Vakıfbank SK, and Fenerbahçe who have won numerous European and World Championship titles.
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+ Between 2005 and 2011, Istanbul Park racing circuit hosted the annual Formula One Turkish Grand Prix.[278] Istanbul Park was also a venue of the World Touring Car Championship and the European Le Mans Series in 2005 and 2006, but the track has not seen either of these competitions since then.[279][280] It also hosted the Turkish Motorcycle Grand Prix between 2005 and 2007. Istanbul was occasionally a venue of the F1 Powerboat World Championship, with the last race on the Bosphorus strait on 12–13 August 2000.[281] The last race of the Powerboat P1 World Championship on the Bosphorus took place on 19–21 June 2009.[282] Istanbul Sailing Club, established in 1952, hosts races and other sailing events on the waterways in and around Istanbul each year.[283][284] Turkish Offshore Racing Club also hosts major yacht races, such as the annual Naval Forces Trophy.[285]
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+ Most state-run radio and television stations are based in Ankara, but Istanbul is the primary hub of Turkish media. The industry has its roots in the former Ottoman capital, where the first Turkish newspaper, Takvim-i Vekayi (Calendar of Affairs), was published in 1831. The Cağaloğlu street on which the newspaper was printed, Bâb-ı Âli Street, rapidly became the center of Turkish print media, alongside Beyoğlu across the Golden Horn.[286]
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+ Istanbul now has a wide variety of periodicals. Most nationwide newspapers are based in Istanbul, with simultaneous Ankara and İzmir editions.[287] Hürriyet, Sabah, Posta and Sözcü, the country's top four papers, are all headquartered in Istanbul, boasting more than 275,000 weekly sales each.[288] Hürriyet's English-language edition, Hürriyet Daily News, has been printed since 1961, but the English-language Daily Sabah, first published by Sabah in 2014, has overtaken it in circulation. Several smaller newspapers, including popular publications like Cumhuriyet, Milliyet and Habertürk are also based in Istanbul.[287] Istanbul also has long-running Armenian language newspapers, notably the dailies Marmara and Jamanak and the bilingual weekly Agos in Armenian and Turkish.
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+ Radio broadcasts in Istanbul date back to 1927, when Turkey's first radio transmission came from atop the Central Post Office in Eminönü. Control of this transmission, and other radio stations established in the following decades, ultimately came under the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT), which held a monopoly on radio and television broadcasts between its founding in 1964 and 1990.[289] Today, TRT runs four national radio stations; these stations have transmitters across the country so each can reach over 90 percent of the country's population, but only Radio 2 is based in Istanbul. Offering a range of content from educational programming to coverage of sporting events, Radio 2 is the most popular radio station in Turkey.[289] Istanbul's airwaves are the busiest in Turkey, primarily featuring either Turkish-language or English-language content. One of the exceptions, offering both, is Açık Radyo (94.9 FM). Among Turkey's first private stations, and the first featuring foreign popular music, was Istanbul's Metro FM (97.2 FM). The state-run Radio 3, although based in Ankara, also features English-language popular music, and English-language news programming is provided on NTV Radyo (102.8 FM).[290]
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+ TRT-Children is the only TRT television station based in Istanbul.[291] Istanbul is home to the headquarters of several Turkish stations and regional headquarters of international media outlets. Istanbul-based Star TV was the first private television network to be established following the end of the TRT monopoly; Star TV and Show TV (also based in Istanbul) remain highly popular throughout the country, airing Turkish and American series.[292] Kanal D and ATV are other stations in Istanbul that offer a mix of news and series; NTV (partnered with U.S. media outlet MSNBC) and Sky Turk—both based in the city—are mainly just known for their news coverage in Turkish. The BBC has a regional office in Istanbul, assisting its Turkish-language news operations, and the American news channel CNN established the Turkish-language CNN Türk there in 1999.[293]
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+ Istanbul University, founded in 1453, is the oldest Turkish educational institution in the city. Although originally an Islamic school, the university established law, medicine, and science departments in the 19th century and was secularized after the founding of the Turkish Republic.[294] Istanbul Technical University, founded in 1773, is the world's third-oldest university dedicated entirely to engineering sciences.[295][296] These public universities are two of just eight across the city;[297] other prominent state universities in Istanbul include the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, which served as Turkey's primary institution of art until the 1970s,[235] and Marmara University, the country's third-largest institution of higher learning.[298]
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+ Most established universities in Istanbul are backed by the government; the city also has several prominent private institutions. The first modern private university in Istanbul, also the oldest American school in existence in its original location outside the United States, was Robert College, founded by Christopher Robert, an American philanthropist, and Cyrus Hamlin, a missionary devoted to education, in 1863. The tertiary element of its education program became the public Boğaziçi University in 1971; the remaining portion in Arnavutköy continues as a boarding high-school under the name Robert College.[299][300] Private universities were officially outlawed in Turkey before the Constitution of 1982, but there were already fifteen private "higher schools", which were effectively universities, in Istanbul by 1970. The first private university established in Istanbul since 1982 was Koç University (founded in 1992), and another dozen had opened within the following decade.[299] Today, there are at least 30 private universities in the city, including Istanbul Commerce University and Kadir Has University.[301] A new biomedical research and development hub, called Bio Istanbul, is under construction in Başakşehir, and will host 15,000 residents, 20,000 working commuters, and a university upon completion.[302][303]
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+ In 2007, there were about 4,350 schools, about half of which were primary schools; on average, each school had 688 students. In recent years, Istanbul's educational system has expanded substantially; from 2000 to 2007, the number of classrooms and teachers nearly doubled and the number of students increased by more than 60 percent.[304] Galatasaray High School, established in 1481 as the Galata Palace Imperial School, is the oldest high school in Istanbul and the second-oldest educational institution in the city. It was built at the behest of Sultan Bayezid II, who sought to bring students with diverse backgrounds together as a means of strengthening his growing empire.[305] It is one of Turkey's Anatolian High Schools, elite public high schools that place a stronger emphasis on instruction in foreign languages. Galatasaray, for example, offers instruction in French; other Anatolian High Schools primarily teach in English or German alongside Turkish.[306][307] The city also has foreign high schools, such as Liceo Italiano, that were established in the 19th century to educate foreigners.[308]
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+ Kuleli Military High School, along the shores of the Bosphorus in Çengelköy, and Turkish Naval High School, on one of the Princes' Islands, were military high schools, complemented by three military academies—the Turkish Air Force, Turkish Military, and Turkish Naval Academies. Both schools were shut Darüşşafaka High School provides free education to children across the country missing at least one parent. Darüşşafaka begins instruction with the fourth grade, providing instruction in English and, starting in sixth grade, a second foreign language—German or French.[309] Other prominent high schools in the city include Istanbul Lisesi (founded in 1884), Kabataş Erkek Lisesi (founded in 1908)[310] and Kadıköy Anadolu Lisesi (founded in 1955).[311]
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+ In 1909, in Constantinople there were 626 primary schools and 12 secondary schools. Of the primary schools 561 were of the lower grade and 65 were of the higher grade; of the latter, 34 were public and 31 were private. There was one secondary college and eleven secondary preparatory schools.[312]
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+ Istanbul's first water supply systems date back to the city's early history, when aqueducts (such as the Valens Aqueduct) deposited the water in the city's numerous cisterns.[313] At the behest of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Kırkçeşme water supply network was constructed; by 1563, the network provided 4,200 cubic meters (150,000 cu ft) of water to 158 sites each day.[313] In later years, in response to increasing public demand, water from various springs was channeled to public fountains, like the Fountain of Ahmed III, by means of supply lines.[314] Today, Istanbul has a chlorinated and filtered water supply and a sewage treatment system managed by the Istanbul Water and Sewerage Administration (İstanbul Su ve Kanalizasyon İdaresi, İSKİ).[315]
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+ The Silahtarağa Power Station, a coal-fired power plant along the Golden Horn, was the sole source of Istanbul's electricity between 1914, when its first engine room was completed, and 1952.[316] Following the founding of the Turkish Republic, the plant underwent renovations to accommodate the city's increasing demand; its capacity grew from 23 megawatts in 1923 to a peak of 120 megawatts in 1956.[316][317] Capacity declined until the power station reached the end of its economic life and shut down in 1983.[316] The state-run Turkish Electrical Authority (TEK) briefly—between its founding in 1970 and 1984—held a monopoly on the generation and distribution of electricity, but now the authority—since split between the Turkish Electricity Generation Transmission Company (TEAŞ) and the Turkish Electricity Distribution Company (TEDAŞ)—competes with private electric utilities.[317]
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+ The Ottoman Ministry of Post and Telegraph was established in 1840 and the first post office, the Imperial Post Office, opened near the courtyard of Yeni Mosque. By 1876, the first international mailing network between Istanbul and the lands beyond the Ottoman Empire had been established.[319] Sultan Abdülmecid I issued Samuel Morse his first official honor for the telegraph in 1847, and construction of the first telegraph line—between Istanbul and Edirne—finished in time to announce the end of the Crimean War in 1856.[320] A nascent telephone system began to emerge in Istanbul in 1881 and after the first manual telephone exchange became operational in Istanbul in 1909, the Ministry of Post and Telegraph became the Ministry of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone.[319][321] GSM cellular networks arrived in Turkey in 1994, with Istanbul among the first cities to receive the service.[322] Today, mobile and landline service is provided by private companies, after Türk Telekom, which split from the Ministry of Post, Telegraph, and Telephone in 1995, was privatized in 2005.[319][322] Postal services remain under the purview of what is now the Post and Telegraph Organization (retaining the acronym PTT).[319]
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+ In 2000, Istanbul had 137 hospitals, of which 100 were private.[323] Turkish citizens are entitled to subsidized healthcare in the nation's state-run hospitals.[287] As public hospitals tend to be overcrowded or otherwise slow, private hospitals are preferable for those who can afford them. Their prevalence has increased significantly over the last decade, as the percentage of outpatients using private hospitals increased from 6 percent to 23 percent between 2005 and 2009.[287][324] Many of these private hospitals, as well as some of the public hospitals, are equipped with high-tech equipment, including MRI machines, or associated with medical research centers.[325] Turkey has more hospitals accredited by the U.S.-based Joint Commission than any other country in the world, with most concentrated in its big cities. The high quality of healthcare, especially in private hospitals, has contributed to a recent upsurge in medical tourism to Turkey (with a 40 percent increase between 2007 and 2008).[326] Laser eye surgery is particularly common among medical tourists, as Turkey is known for specializing in the procedure.[327]
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+ Istanbul's motorways network are the O-1, O-2, O-3, O-4 and O-7. By the end of 2019, the total length of Istanbul Province's toll motorways network (otoyollar) is 513 km and highways network (devlet yollari) is 327 km, totaling 840 km of expressway roads (minimum 2x2 lanes), excluding secondary roads and urban streets.[328][329] The density of expressway network is 15.7 km/100 km2 (2019). The O-1 forms the city's inner ring road, traversing the 15 July Martyrs (First Bosphorus) Bridge, and the O-2 is the city's outer ring road, crossing the Fatih Sultan Mehmet (Second Bosphorus) Bridge. The O-2 continues west to Edirne and the O-4 continues east to Ankara. The O-2, O-3, and O-4 are part of European route E80 (the Trans-European Motorway) between Portugal and the Iran–Turkey border.[330] In 2011, the first and second bridges on the Bosphorus carried 400,000 vehicles each day.[331] The O-7[332] or Kuzey Marmara Otoyolu, is a motorway that bypass Istanbul to the north. The O-7 motorway from Kinali Gişeleri to Istanbul Park Service has 139 km, with 8 lanes (4x4). The completed section of highway crosses the Bosphorus Strait via the Yavuz Sultan Selim (Third Bosphorus) Bridge, entered service on 26 August 2016.[333] The O-7 motorway connects Istanbul Atatürk Airport with Istanbul Airport. Environmentalist groups worry that the third bridge will endanger the remaining green areas to the north of Istanbul.[334][335] Apart from the three Bosphorus Bridges, the dual-deck, 14.6-kilometer (9.1 mi) Eurasia Tunnel (which entered service on 20 December 2016) under the Bosphorus strait also provides road crossings for motor vehicles between the Asian and European sides of Turkey.[336]
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+ Istanbul's local public transportation system is a network of trams, funiculars, metro lines, buses, bus rapid transit, and ferries. Fares across modes are integrated, using the contactless Istanbulkart, introduced in 2009, or the older Akbil electronic ticket device.[337] Trams in Istanbul date back to 1872, when they were horse-drawn, but even the first electrified trams were decommissioned in the 1960s.[338] Operated by Istanbul Electricity, Tramway, and Tunnel General Management (İETT), trams slowly returned to the city in the 1990s with the introduction of a nostalgic route and a faster modern tram line, which now carries 265,000 passengers each day.[338][339] The Tünel opened in 1875 as the world's second-oldest subterranean rail line (after London's Metropolitan Railway).[338] It still carries passengers between Karaköy and İstiklal Avenue along a steep 573-meter (1,880 ft) track; a more modern funicular between Taksim Square and Kabataş began running in 2006.[340][341]
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+ The Istanbul Metro comprises five lines (the M1, M2, M3 and M6 on the European side, and the M4 on the Asian side) with several other lines (such as the M5, M7, and M8) and extensions under construction.[342][343] The two sides of Istanbul's metro are connected under the Bosphorus by the Marmaray tunnel, inaugurated in 2013 as the first rail connection between Thrace and Anatolia.[344] Until then, buses provide transportation within and between the two-halves of the city, accommodating 2.2 million passenger trips each day.[345] The Metrobus, a form of bus rapid transit, crosses the Bosphorus Bridge, with dedicated lanes leading to its termini.[346] İDO (Istanbul Seabuses) runs a combination of all-passenger ferries and car-and-passenger ferries to ports on both sides of the Bosphorus, as far north as the Black Sea.[347][348] With additional destinations around the Sea of Marmara, İDO runs the largest municipal ferry operation in the world.[349] The city's main cruise ship terminal is the Port of Istanbul in Karaköy, with a capacity of 10,000 passengers per hour.[350] Most visitors enter Istanbul by air, but about half a million foreign tourists enter the city by sea each year.[230]
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+ International rail service from Istanbul launched in 1889, with a line between Bucharest and Istanbul's Sirkeci Terminal, which ultimately became famous as the eastern terminus of the Orient Express from Paris.[85] Regular service to Bucharest and Thessaloniki continued until the early 2010s, when the former was interrupted for Marmaray construction and the latter was halted due to economic problems in Greece.[351][352] After Istanbul's Haydarpaşa Terminal opened in 1908, it served as the western terminus of the Baghdad Railway and an extension of the Hejaz Railway; today, neither service is offered directly from Istanbul.[353][354][355] Service to Ankara and other points across Turkey is normally offered by Turkish State Railways, but the construction of Marmaray and the Ankara-Istanbul high-speed line forced the station to close in 2012.[356] New stations to replace both the Haydarpaşa and Sirkeci terminals, and connect the city's disjointed railway networks, are expected to open upon completion of the Marmaray project; until then, Istanbul is without intercity rail service.[356] Private bus companies operate instead. Istanbul's main bus station is the largest in Europe, with a daily capacity of 15,000 buses and 600,000 passengers, serving destinations as distant as Frankfurt.[357][358]
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+ Istanbul had three large international airports, two of which are currently in active service for commercial passenger flights. The largest is the new Istanbul Airport, opened in 2018 in the Arnavutköy district to the northwest of the city center, on the European side, near the Black Sea coast. All scheduled commercial passenger flights were transferred from Istanbul Atatürk Airport to Istanbul Airport on April 6, 2019, following the closure of Istanbul Atatürk Airport for scheduled passenger flights.[359] The IATA airport code IST was also transferred to the new airport.[360] Once all phases are completed in 2025, the airport will be able to accommodate 200 million passengers a year.[361]
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+ Istanbul Atatürk Airport, located 24 kilometers (15 mi) west of the city center, on the European side, near the Marmara Sea coast, was formerly the city's largest airport. After its closure to commercial flights in 2019, it was briefly used by cargo aircraft and the official state aircraft owned by the Turkish government, until the demolition of its runway began in 2020. It handled 61.3 million passengers in 2015, which made it the third-busiest airport in Europe and the eighteenth-busiest in the world in that year.[363]
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+ Sabiha Gökçen International, 45 kilometers (28 mi) southeast of the city center, on the Asian side, was opened in 2001 to relieve Atatürk. Dominated by low-cost carriers, Istanbul's second airport has rapidly become popular, especially since the opening of a new international terminal in 2009;[364] the airport handled 14.7 million passengers in 2012, a year after Airports Council International named it the world's fastest-growing airport.[365][366] Atatürk had also experienced rapid growth, as its 20.6 percent rise in passenger traffic between 2011 and 2012 was the highest among the world's top 30 airports.[363]
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+ Air pollution in Turkey is acute in İstanbul with cars, buses and taxis causing frequent urban smog,[367] as it is one of the few European cities without a low-emission zone. As of 2019[update] the city's mean air quality remains of a level so as to affect the heart and lungs of healthy street bystanders during peak traffic hours.[368]
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+ An isthmus ( /ˈɪsθməs/ or /ˈɪsməs/;[1] plural: isthmuses or isthmi; from Ancient Greek: ἰσθμός, romanized: isthmós, lit. 'neck')[2] is a narrow piece of land connecting two larger areas across an expanse of water by which they are otherwise separated.[3] A tombolo is an isthmus that consists of a spit or bar, and a strait is the sea counterpart of an isthmus.
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+ Canals are often built across isthmuses, where they may be a particularly advantageous shortcut for marine transport. For example, the Panama Canal crosses the Isthmus of Panama, connecting the North Atlantic and Pacific Oceans; the Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea, cutting across the western side of the Isthmus of Suez, formed by the Sinai Peninsula; and the Crinan Canal crosses the isthmus between Loch Crinan and Loch Gilp, which connects the Kintyre peninsula with the rest of Scotland. Another example is the Welland Canal in the Niagara Peninsula (technically an isthmus). It connects Lake Ontario to Lake Erie. The city of Auckland in the North Island of New Zealand is situated on an isthmus.
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+ Isthmus and land bridge are related terms with isthmus having a broader meaning. A land bridge is an isthmus connecting the Earth's major landmasses. The term land bridge is usually used in biogeology to describe land connections that used to exist between continents at various times and were important for migration of people, and various species of animals and plants, e.g. Bering Land Bridge.[4]
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+ An isthmus is a land connection between two bigger landmasses, while a peninsula is rather a land protrusion which is connected to a bigger landmass on one side only and surrounded by water on all other sides. Technically, an isthmus can have canals running from coast to coast (e.g. the Panama Canal), and thus resemble two peninsulas; however, canals are artificial features distinguished from straits.
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+ Major isthmuses include the Isthmus of Panama and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in the Americas, the Isthmus of Kra in South-East Asia, the Isthmus of Suez between Africa and Asia, and the Karelian Isthmus in Europe. Of historic importance was the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece.
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+ Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River, situated in the place that is now the country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology)[1] with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes (often identified with Narmer).[2] The history of ancient Egypt occurred as a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.
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+ Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power in the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Near East, after which it entered a period of slow decline. During the course of its history Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians under the command of Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province.[3]
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+ The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.[4]
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+ The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats,[5] Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites.[6] Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. A new-found respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy.[7]
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+ The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history.[8] The fertile floodplain of the Nile gave humans the opportunity to develop a settled agricultural economy and a more sophisticated, centralized society that became a cornerstone in the history of human civilization.[9] Nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the arid climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry, forcing the populations of the area to concentrate along the river region.
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+ In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was much less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates. Foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated.[10]
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+ By about 5500 BC, small tribes living in the Nile valley had developed into a series of cultures demonstrating firm control of agriculture and animal husbandry, and identifiable by their pottery and personal items, such as combs, bracelets, and beads. The largest of these early cultures in upper (Southern) Egypt was the Badarian culture, which probably originated in the Western Desert; it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools, and its use of copper.[11]
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+ The Badari was followed by the Naqada culture: the Amratian (Naqada I), the Gerzeh (Naqada II), and Semainean (Naqada III).[12][page needed] These brought a number of technological improvements. As early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes.[13] In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan and the Byblos coast.[14] Over a period of about 1,000 years, the Naqada culture developed from a few small farming communities into a powerful civilization whose leaders were in complete control of the people and resources of the Nile valley.[15] Establishing a power center at Nekhen (in Greek, Hierakonpolis), and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile.[16] They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the western desert to the west, and the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East to the east, initiating a period of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations.[17][when?]
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+ The Naqada culture manufactured a diverse selection of material goods, reflective of the increasing power and wealth of the elite, as well as societal personal-use items, which included combs, small statuary, painted pottery, high quality decorative stone vases, cosmetic palettes, and jewelry made of gold, lapis, and ivory. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines.[18] During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a full system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language.[19]
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+ The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia and of ancient Elam. The third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of kings from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today. He began his official history with the king named "Meni" (or Menes in Greek) who was believed to have united the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt.[20]
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+ The transition to a unified state happened more gradually than ancient Egyptian writers represented, and there is no contemporary record of Menes. Some scholars now believe, however, that the mythical Menes may have been the king Narmer, who is depicted wearing royal regalia on the ceremonial Narmer Palette, in a symbolic act of unification.[22] In the Early Dynastic Period, which began about 3000 BC, the first of the Dynastic kings solidified control over lower Egypt by establishing a capital at Memphis, from which he could control the labour force and agriculture of the fertile delta region, as well as the lucrative and critical trade routes to the Levant. The increasing power and wealth of the kings during the early dynastic period was reflected in their elaborate mastaba tombs and mortuary cult structures at Abydos, which were used to celebrate the deified king after his death.[23] The strong institution of kingship developed by the kings served to legitimize state control over the land, labour, and resources that were essential to the survival and growth of ancient Egyptian civilization.[24]
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+ Major advances in architecture, art, and technology were made during the Old Kingdom, fueled by the increased agricultural productivity and resulting population, made possible by a well-developed central administration.[25] Some of ancient Egypt's crowning achievements, the Giza pyramids and Great Sphinx, were constructed during the Old Kingdom. Under the direction of the vizier, state officials collected taxes, coordinated irrigation projects to improve crop yield, drafted peasants to work on construction projects, and established a justice system to maintain peace and order.[26]
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+ With the rising importance of central administration in Egypt a new class of educated scribes and officials arose who were granted estates by the king in payment for their services. Kings also made land grants to their mortuary cults and local temples, to ensure that these institutions had the resources to worship the king after his death. Scholars believe that five centuries of these practices slowly eroded the economic vitality of Egypt, and that the economy could no longer afford to support a large centralized administration.[27] As the power of the kings diminished, regional governors called nomarchs began to challenge the supremacy of the office of king. This, coupled with severe droughts between 2200 and 2150 BC,[28] is believed to have caused the country to enter the 140-year period of famine and strife known as the First Intermediate Period.[29]
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+ After Egypt's central government collapsed at the end of the Old Kingdom, the administration could no longer support or stabilize the country's economy. Regional governors could not rely on the king for help in times of crisis, and the ensuing food shortages and political disputes escalated into famines and small-scale civil wars. Yet despite difficult problems, local leaders, owing no tribute to the king, used their new-found independence to establish a thriving culture in the provinces. Once in control of their own resources, the provinces became economically richer—which was demonstrated by larger and better burials among all social classes.[30] In bursts of creativity, provincial artisans adopted and adapted cultural motifs formerly restricted to the royalty of the Old Kingdom, and scribes developed literary styles that expressed the optimism and originality of the period.[31]
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+ Free from their loyalties to the king, local rulers began competing with each other for territorial control and political power. By 2160 BC, rulers in Herakleopolis controlled Lower Egypt in the north, while a rival clan based in Thebes, the Intef family, took control of Upper Egypt in the south. As the Intefs grew in power and expanded their control northward, a clash between the two rival dynasties became inevitable. Around 2055 BC the northern Theban forces under Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II finally defeated the Herakleopolitan rulers, reuniting the Two Lands. They inaugurated a period of economic and cultural renaissance known as the Middle Kingdom.[32]
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+ The kings of the Middle Kingdom restored the country's stability and prosperity, thereby stimulating a resurgence of art, literature, and monumental building projects.[33] Mentuhotep II and his Eleventh Dynasty successors ruled from Thebes, but the vizier Amenemhat I, upon assuming the kingship at the beginning of the Twelfth Dynasty around 1985 BC, shifted the kingdom's capital to the city of Itjtawy, located in Faiyum.[34] From Itjtawy, the kings of the Twelfth Dynasty undertook a far-sighted land reclamation and irrigation scheme to increase agricultural output in the region. Moreover, the military reconquered territory in Nubia that was rich in quarries and gold mines, while laborers built a defensive structure in the Eastern Delta, called the "Walls-of-the-Ruler", to defend against foreign attack.[35]
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+ With the kings having secured the country militarily and politically and with vast agricultural and mineral wealth at their disposal, the nation's population, arts, and religion flourished. In contrast to elitist Old Kingdom attitudes towards the gods, the Middle Kingdom displayed an increase in expressions of personal piety.[36] Middle Kingdom literature featured sophisticated themes and characters written in a confident, eloquent style.[31] The relief and portrait sculpture of the period captured subtle, individual details that reached new heights of technical sophistication.[37]
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+ The last great ruler of the Middle Kingdom, Amenemhat III, allowed Semitic-speaking Canaanite settlers from the Near East into the Delta region to provide a sufficient labour force for his especially active mining and building campaigns. These ambitious building and mining activities, however, combined with severe Nile floods later in his reign, strained the economy and precipitated the slow decline into the Second Intermediate Period during the later Thirteenth and Fourteenth dynasties. During this decline, the Canaanite settlers began to assume greater control of the Delta region, eventually coming to power in Egypt as the Hyksos.[38]
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+ Around 1785 BC, as the power of the Middle Kingdom kings weakened, a Western Asian people called the Hyksos, who had already settled in the Delta, seized control of Egypt and established their capital at Avaris, forcing the former central government to retreat to Thebes. The king was treated as a vassal and expected to pay tribute.[39] The Hyksos ("foreign rulers") retained Egyptian models of government and identified as kings, thereby integrating Egyptian elements into their culture. They and other invaders introduced new tools of warfare into Egypt, most notably the composite bow and the horse-drawn chariot.[40]
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+ After retreating south, the native Theban kings found themselves trapped between the Canaanite Hyksos ruling the north and the Hyksos' Nubian allies, the Kushites, to the south. After years of vassalage, Thebes gathered enough strength to challenge the Hyksos in a conflict that lasted more than 30 years, until 1555 BC.[39] The kings Seqenenre Tao II and Kamose were ultimately able to defeat the Nubians to the south of Egypt, but failed to defeat the Hyksos. That task fell to Kamose's successor, Ahmose I, who successfully waged a series of campaigns that permanently eradicated the Hyksos' presence in Egypt. He established a new dynasty and, in the New Kingdom that followed, the military became a central priority for the kings, who sought to expand Egypt's borders and attempted to gain mastery of the Near East.[41]
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+ The New Kingdom pharaohs established a period of unprecedented prosperity by securing their borders and strengthening diplomatic ties with their neighbours, including the Mitanni Empire, Assyria, and Canaan. Military campaigns waged under Tuthmosis I and his grandson Tuthmosis III extended the influence of the pharaohs to the largest empire Egypt had ever seen. Beginning with Merneptah the rulers of Egypt adopted the title of pharaoh.
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+ Between their reigns, Hatshepsut, a queen who established herself as pharaoh, launched many building projects, including restoration of temples damaged by the Hyksos, and sent trading expeditions to Punt and the Sinai.[42] When Tuthmosis III died in 1425 BC, Egypt had an empire extending from Niya in north west Syria to the Fourth Cataract of the Nile in Nubia, cementing loyalties and opening access to critical imports such as bronze and wood.[43]
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+ The New Kingdom pharaohs began a large-scale building campaign to promote the god Amun, whose growing cult was based in Karnak. They also constructed monuments to glorify their own achievements, both real and imagined. The Karnak temple is the largest Egyptian temple ever built.[44]
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+ Around 1350 BC, the stability of the New Kingdom was threatened when Amenhotep IV ascended the throne and instituted a series of radical and chaotic reforms. Changing his name to Akhenaten, he touted the previously obscure sun deity Aten as the supreme deity, suppressed the worship of most other deities, and moved the capital to the new city of Akhetaten (modern-day Amarna).[45] He was devoted to his new religion and artistic style. After his death, the cult of the Aten was quickly abandoned and the traditional religious order restored. The subsequent pharaohs, Tutankhamun, Ay, and Horemheb, worked to erase all mention of Akhenaten's heresy, now known as the Amarna Period.[46]
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+ Around 1279 BC, Ramesses II, also known as Ramesses the Great, ascended the throne, and went on to build more temples, erect more statues and obelisks, and sire more children than any other pharaoh in history.[a] A bold military leader, Ramesses II led his army against the Hittites in the Battle of Kadesh (in modern Syria) and, after fighting to a stalemate, finally agreed to the first recorded peace treaty, around 1258 BC.[47]
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+ Egypt's wealth, however, made it a tempting target for invasion, particularly by the Libyan Berbers to the west, and the Sea Peoples, a conjectured confederation of seafarers from the Aegean Sea.[b] Initially, the military was able to repel these invasions, but Egypt eventually lost control of its remaining territories in southern Canaan, much of it falling to the Assyrians. The effects of external threats were exacerbated by internal problems such as corruption, tomb robbery, and civil unrest. After regaining their power, the high priests at the temple of Amun in Thebes accumulated vast tracts of land and wealth, and their expanded power splintered the country during the Third Intermediate Period.[48]
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+ Following the death of Ramesses XI in 1078 BC, Smendes assumed authority over the northern part of Egypt, ruling from the city of Tanis. The south was effectively controlled by the High Priests of Amun at Thebes, who recognized Smendes in name only.[49] During this time, Libyans had been settling in the western delta, and chieftains of these settlers began increasing their autonomy. Libyan princes took control of the delta under Shoshenq I in 945 BC, founding the so-called Libyan or Bubastite dynasty that would rule for some 200 years. Shoshenq also gained control of southern Egypt by placing his family members in important priestly positions. Libyan control began to erode as a rival dynasty in the delta arose in Leontopolis, and Kushites threatened from the south. Around 727 BC the Kushite king Piye invaded northward, seizing control of Thebes and eventually the Delta.[50]
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+ Egypt's far-reaching prestige declined considerably toward the end of the Third Intermediate Period. Its foreign allies had fallen under the Assyrian sphere of influence, and by 700 BC war between the two states became inevitable. Between 671 and 667 BC the Assyrians began the Assyrian conquest of Egypt. The reigns of both Taharqa and his successor, Tanutamun, were filled with constant conflict with the Assyrians, against whom Egypt enjoyed several victories. Ultimately, the Assyrians pushed the Kushites back into Nubia, occupied Memphis, and sacked the temples of Thebes.[52]
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+ The Assyrians left control of Egypt to a series of vassals who became known as the Saite kings of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty. By 653 BC, the Saite king Psamtik I was able to oust the Assyrians with the help of Greek mercenaries, who were recruited to form Egypt's first navy. Greek influence expanded greatly as the city-state of Naukratis became the home of Greeks in the Nile Delta. The Saite kings based in the new capital of Sais witnessed a brief but spirited resurgence in the economy and culture, but in 525 BC, the powerful Persians, led by Cambyses II, began their conquest of Egypt, eventually capturing the pharaoh Psamtik III at the battle of Pelusium. Cambyses II then assumed the formal title of pharaoh, but ruled Egypt from Iran, leaving Egypt under the control of a satrapy. A few successful revolts against the Persians marked the 5th century BC, but Egypt was never able to permanently overthrow the Persians.[53]
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+ Following its annexation by Persia, Egypt was joined with Cyprus and Phoenicia in the sixth satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. This first period of Persian rule over Egypt, also known as the Twenty-Seventh dynasty, ended in 402 BC, when Egypt regained independence under a series of native dynasties. The last of these dynasties, the Thirtieth, proved to be the last native royal house of ancient Egypt, ending with the kingship of Nectanebo II. A brief restoration of Persian rule, sometimes known as the Thirty-First Dynasty, began in 343 BC, but shortly after, in 332 BC, the Persian ruler Mazaces handed Egypt over to Alexander the Great without a fight.[54]
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+ In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Egypt with little resistance from the Persians and was welcomed by the Egyptians as a deliverer. The administration established by Alexander's successors, the Macedonian Ptolemaic Kingdom, was based on an Egyptian model and based in the new capital city of Alexandria. The city showcased the power and prestige of Hellenistic rule, and became a seat of learning and culture, centered at the famous Library of Alexandria.[55] The Lighthouse of Alexandria lit the way for the many ships that kept trade flowing through the city—as the Ptolemies made commerce and revenue-generating enterprises, such as papyrus manufacturing, their top priority.[56]
66
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+ Hellenistic culture did not supplant native Egyptian culture, as the Ptolemies supported time-honored traditions in an effort to secure the loyalty of the populace. They built new temples in Egyptian style, supported traditional cults, and portrayed themselves as pharaohs. Some traditions merged, as Greek and Egyptian gods were syncretized into composite deities, such as Serapis, and classical Greek forms of sculpture influenced traditional Egyptian motifs. Despite their efforts to appease the Egyptians, the Ptolemies were challenged by native rebellion, bitter family rivalries, and the powerful mob of Alexandria that formed after the death of Ptolemy IV.[57] In addition, as Rome relied more heavily on imports of grain from Egypt, the Romans took great interest in the political situation in the country. Continued Egyptian revolts, ambitious politicians, and powerful opponents from the Near East made this situation unstable, leading Rome to send forces to secure the country as a province of its empire.[58]
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+ Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC, following the defeat of Marc Antony and Ptolemaic Queen Cleopatra VII by Octavian (later Emperor Augustus) in the Battle of Actium. The Romans relied heavily on grain shipments from Egypt, and the Roman army, under the control of a prefect appointed by the Emperor, quelled rebellions, strictly enforced the collection of heavy taxes, and prevented attacks by bandits, which had become a notorious problem during the period.[59] Alexandria became an increasingly important center on the trade route with the orient, as exotic luxuries were in high demand in Rome.[60]
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+
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+ Although the Romans had a more hostile attitude than the Greeks towards the Egyptians, some traditions such as mummification and worship of the traditional gods continued.[61] The art of mummy portraiture flourished, and some Roman emperors had themselves depicted as pharaohs, though not to the extent that the Ptolemies had. The former lived outside Egypt and did not perform the ceremonial functions of Egyptian kingship. Local administration became Roman in style and closed to native Egyptians.[61]
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+ From the mid-first century AD, Christianity took root in Egypt and it was originally seen as another cult that could be accepted. However, it was an uncompromising religion that sought to win converts from Egyptian Religion and Greco-Roman religion and threatened popular religious traditions. This led to the persecution of converts to Christianity, culminating in the great purges of Diocletian starting in 303, but eventually Christianity won out.[62] In 391 the Christian Emperor Theodosius introduced legislation that banned pagan rites and closed temples.[63] Alexandria became the scene of great anti-pagan riots with public and private religious imagery destroyed.[64] As a consequence, Egypt's native religious culture was continually in decline. While the native population continued to speak their language, the ability to read hieroglyphic writing slowly disappeared as the role of the Egyptian temple priests and priestesses diminished. The temples themselves were sometimes converted to churches or abandoned to the desert.[65]
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+ In the fourth century, as the Roman Empire divided, Egypt found itself in the Eastern Empire with its capital at Constantinople. In the waning years of the Empire, Egypt fell to the Sasanian Persian army (618–628 AD), was recaptured by the Roman Emperor Heraclius (629–639 AD), and then was finally captured by Muslim Rashidun army in 639–641 AD, ending Roman rule.
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+
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+ The pharaoh was the absolute monarch of the country and, at least in theory, wielded complete control of the land and its resources. The king was the supreme military commander and head of the government, who relied on a bureaucracy of officials to manage his affairs. In charge of the administration was his second in command, the vizier, who acted as the king's representative and coordinated land surveys, the treasury, building projects, the legal system, and the archives.[66] At a regional level, the country was divided into as many as 42 administrative regions called nomes each governed by a nomarch, who was accountable to the vizier for his jurisdiction. The temples formed the backbone of the economy. Not only were they houses of worship, but were also responsible for collecting and storing the kingdom's wealth in a system of granaries and treasuries administered by overseers, who redistributed grain and goods.[67]
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+ Much of the economy was centrally organized and strictly controlled. Although the ancient Egyptians did not use coinage until the Late period,[68] they did use a type of money-barter system,[69] with standard sacks of grain and the deben, a weight of roughly 91 grams (3 oz) of copper or silver, forming a common denominator.[70] Workers were paid in grain; a simple laborer might earn 5​1⁄2 sacks (200 kg or 400 lb) of grain per month, while a foreman might earn 7​1⁄2 sacks (250 kg or 550 lb). Prices were fixed across the country and recorded in lists to facilitate trading; for example a shirt cost five copper deben, while a cow cost 140 deben.[70] Grain could be traded for other goods, according to the fixed price list.[70] During the fifth century BC coined money was introduced into Egypt from abroad. At first the coins were used as standardized pieces of precious metal rather than true money, but in the following centuries international traders came to rely on coinage.[71]
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+ Egyptian society was highly stratified, and social status was expressly displayed. Farmers made up the bulk of the population, but agricultural produce was owned directly by the state, temple, or noble family that owned the land.[72] Farmers were also subject to a labor tax and were required to work on irrigation or construction projects in a corvée system.[73] Artists and craftsmen were of higher status than farmers, but they were also under state control, working in the shops attached to the temples and paid directly from the state treasury. Scribes and officials formed the upper class in ancient Egypt, known as the "white kilt class" in reference to the bleached linen garments that served as a mark of their rank.[74] The upper class prominently displayed their social status in art and literature. Below the nobility were the priests, physicians, and engineers with specialized training in their field. It is unclear whether slavery as understood today existed in ancient Egypt, there is difference of opinions among authors.[75]
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+ The ancient Egyptians viewed men and women, including people from all social classes, as essentially equal under the law, and even the lowliest peasant was entitled to petition the vizier and his court for redress.[76] Although slaves were mostly used as indentured servants, they were able to buy and sell their servitude, work their way to freedom or nobility, and were usually treated by doctors in the workplace.[77] Both men and women had the right to own and sell property, make contracts, marry and divorce, receive inheritance, and pursue legal disputes in court. Married couples could own property jointly and protect themselves from divorce by agreeing to marriage contracts, which stipulated the financial obligations of the husband to his wife and children should the marriage end. Compared with their counterparts in ancient Greece, Rome, and even more modern places around the world, ancient Egyptian women had a greater range of personal choices, legal rights, and opportunities for achievement. Women such as Hatshepsut and Cleopatra VII even became pharaohs, while others wielded power as Divine Wives of Amun. Despite these freedoms, ancient Egyptian women did not often take part in official roles in the administration, aside from the royal high priestesses, apparently served only secondary roles in the temples (not much data for many dynasties), and were not so likely to be as educated as men.[76]
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+ The head of the legal system was officially the pharaoh, who was responsible for enacting laws, delivering justice, and maintaining law and order, a concept the ancient Egyptians referred to as Ma'at.[66] Although no legal codes from ancient Egypt survive, court documents show that Egyptian law was based on a common-sense view of right and wrong that emphasized reaching agreements and resolving conflicts rather than strictly adhering to a complicated set of statutes.[76] Local councils of elders, known as Kenbet in the New Kingdom, were responsible for ruling in court cases involving small claims and minor disputes.[66] More serious cases involving murder, major land transactions, and tomb robbery were referred to the Great Kenbet, over which the vizier or pharaoh presided. Plaintiffs and defendants were expected to represent themselves and were required to swear an oath that they had told the truth. In some cases, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and judge, and it could torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any co-conspirators. Whether the charges were trivial or serious, court scribes documented the complaint, testimony, and verdict of the case for future reference.[78]
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+ Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile, depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes such as murder and tomb robbery were punished by execution, carried out by decapitation, drowning, or impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could also be extended to the criminal's family.[66] Beginning in the New Kingdom, oracles played a major role in the legal system, dispensing justice in both civil and criminal cases. The procedure was to ask the god a "yes" or "no" question concerning the right or wrong of an issue. The god, carried by a number of priests, rendered judgment by choosing one or the other, moving forward or backward, or pointing to one of the answers written on a piece of papyrus or an ostracon.[79]
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+ A combination of favorable geographical features contributed to the success of ancient Egyptian culture, the most important of which was the rich fertile soil resulting from annual inundations of the Nile River. The ancient Egyptians were thus able to produce an abundance of food, allowing the population to devote more time and resources to cultural, technological, and artistic pursuits. Land management was crucial in ancient Egypt because taxes were assessed based on the amount of land a person owned.[80]
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+ Farming in Egypt was dependent on the cycle of the Nile River. The Egyptians recognized three seasons: Akhet (flooding), Peret (planting), and Shemu (harvesting). The flooding season lasted from June to September, depositing on the river's banks a layer of mineral-rich silt ideal for growing crops. After the floodwaters had receded, the growing season lasted from October to February. Farmers plowed and planted seeds in the fields, which were irrigated with ditches and canals. Egypt received little rainfall, so farmers relied on the Nile to water their crops.[81] From March to May, farmers used sickles to harvest their crops, which were then threshed with a flail to separate the straw from the grain. Winnowing removed the chaff from the grain, and the grain was then ground into flour, brewed to make beer, or stored for later use.[82]
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+ The ancient Egyptians cultivated emmer and barley, and several other cereal grains, all of which were used to make the two main food staples of bread and beer.[83] Flax plants, uprooted before they started flowering, were grown for the fibers of their stems. These fibers were split along their length and spun into thread, which was used to weave sheets of linen and to make clothing. Papyrus growing on the banks of the Nile River was used to make paper. Vegetables and fruits were grown in garden plots, close to habitations and on higher ground, and had to be watered by hand. Vegetables included leeks, garlic, melons, squashes, pulses, lettuce, and other crops, in addition to grapes that were made into wine.[84]
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+ The Egyptians believed that a balanced relationship between people and animals was an essential element of the cosmic order; thus humans, animals and plants were believed to be members of a single whole.[85] Animals, both domesticated and wild, were therefore a critical source of spirituality, companionship, and sustenance to the ancient Egyptians. Cattle were the most important livestock; the administration collected taxes on livestock in regular censuses, and the size of a herd reflected the prestige and importance of the estate or temple that owned them. In addition to cattle, the ancient Egyptians kept sheep, goats, and pigs. Poultry, such as ducks, geese, and pigeons, were captured in nets and bred on farms, where they were force-fed with dough to fatten them.[86] The Nile provided a plentiful source of fish. Bees were also domesticated from at least the Old Kingdom, and provided both honey and wax.[87]
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+ The ancient Egyptians used donkeys and oxen as beasts of burden, and they were responsible for plowing the fields and trampling seed into the soil. The slaughter of a fattened ox was also a central part of an offering ritual.[86] Horses were introduced by the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period. Camels, although known from the New Kingdom, were not used as beasts of burden until the Late Period. There is also evidence to suggest that elephants were briefly utilized in the Late Period but largely abandoned due to lack of grazing land.[86] Dogs, cats, and monkeys were common family pets, while more exotic pets imported from the heart of Africa, such as Sub-Saharan African lions,[88] were reserved for royalty. Herodotus observed that the Egyptians were the only people to keep their animals with them in their houses.[85] During the Late Period, the worship of the gods in their animal form was extremely popular, such as the cat goddess Bastet and the ibis god Thoth, and these animals were kept in large numbers for the purpose of ritual sacrifice.[89]
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+ Egypt is rich in building and decorative stone, copper and lead ores, gold, and semiprecious stones. These natural resources allowed the ancient Egyptians to build monuments, sculpt statues, make tools, and fashion jewelry.[90] Embalmers used salts from the Wadi Natrun for mummification, which also provided the gypsum needed to make plaster.[91] Ore-bearing rock formations were found in distant, inhospitable wadis in the Eastern Desert and the Sinai, requiring large, state-controlled expeditions to obtain natural resources found there. There were extensive gold mines in Nubia, and one of the first maps known is of a gold mine in this region. The Wadi Hammamat was a notable source of granite, greywacke, and gold. Flint was the first mineral collected and used to make tools, and flint handaxes are the earliest pieces of evidence of habitation in the Nile valley. Nodules of the mineral were carefully flaked to make blades and arrowheads of moderate hardness and durability even after copper was adopted for this purpose.[92] Ancient Egyptians were among the first to use minerals such as sulfur as cosmetic substances.[93]
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+ The Egyptians worked deposits of the lead ore galena at Gebel Rosas to make net sinkers, plumb bobs, and small figurines. Copper was the most important metal for toolmaking in ancient Egypt and was smelted in furnaces from malachite ore mined in the Sinai.[94] Workers collected gold by washing the nuggets out of sediment in alluvial deposits, or by the more labor-intensive process of grinding and washing gold-bearing quartzite. Iron deposits found in upper Egypt were utilized in the Late Period.[95] High-quality building stones were abundant in Egypt; the ancient Egyptians quarried limestone all along the Nile valley, granite from Aswan, and basalt and sandstone from the wadis of the Eastern Desert. Deposits of decorative stones such as porphyry, greywacke, alabaster, and carnelian dotted the Eastern Desert and were collected even before the First Dynasty. In the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, miners worked deposits of emeralds in Wadi Sikait and amethyst in Wadi el-Hudi.[96]
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+ The ancient Egyptians engaged in trade with their foreign neighbors to obtain rare, exotic goods not found in Egypt. In the Predynastic Period, they established trade with Nubia to obtain gold and incense. They also established trade with Palestine, as evidenced by Palestinian-style oil jugs found in the burials of the First Dynasty pharaohs.[97] An Egyptian colony stationed in southern Canaan dates to slightly before the First Dynasty.[98] Narmer had Egyptian pottery produced in Canaan and exported back to Egypt.[99][100]
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+ By the Second Dynasty at latest, ancient Egyptian trade with Byblos yielded a critical source of quality timber not found in Egypt. By the Fifth Dynasty, trade with Punt provided gold, aromatic resins, ebony, ivory, and wild animals such as monkeys and baboons.[101] Egypt relied on trade with Anatolia for essential quantities of tin as well as supplementary supplies of copper, both metals being necessary for the manufacture of bronze. The ancient Egyptians prized the blue stone lapis lazuli, which had to be imported from far-away Afghanistan. Egypt's Mediterranean trade partners also included Greece and Crete, which provided, among other goods, supplies of olive oil.[102] In exchange for its luxury imports and raw materials, Egypt mainly exported grain, gold, linen, and papyrus, in addition to other finished goods including glass and stone objects.[103][better source needed]
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+ The Egyptian language is a northern Afro-Asiatic language closely related to the Berber and Semitic languages.[104] It has the second longest known history of any language (after Sumerian), having been written from c. 3200 BC to the Middle Ages and remaining as a spoken language for longer. The phases of ancient Egyptian are Old Egyptian, Middle Egyptian (Classical Egyptian), Late Egyptian, Demotic and Coptic.[105] Egyptian writings do not show dialect differences before Coptic, but it was probably spoken in regional dialects around Memphis and later Thebes.[106]
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+ Ancient Egyptian was a synthetic language, but it became more analytic later on. Late Egyptian developed prefixal definite and indefinite articles, which replaced the older inflectional suffixes. There was a change from the older verb–subject–object word order to subject–verb–object.[107] The Egyptian hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic scripts were eventually replaced by the more phonetic Coptic alphabet. Coptic is still used in the liturgy of the Egyptian Orthodox Church, and traces of it are found in modern Egyptian Arabic.[108]
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+ Ancient Egyptian has 25 consonants similar to those of other Afro-Asiatic languages. These include pharyngeal and emphatic consonants, voiced and voiceless stops, voiceless fricatives and voiced and voiceless affricates. It has three long and three short vowels, which expanded in Late Egyptian to about nine.[109] The basic word in Egyptian, similar to Semitic and Berber, is a triliteral or biliteral root of consonants and semiconsonants. Suffixes are added to form words. The verb conjugation corresponds to the person. For example, the triconsonantal skeleton S-Ḏ-M is the semantic core of the word 'hear'; its basic conjugation is sḏm, 'he hears'. If the subject is a noun, suffixes are not added to the verb:[110] sḏm ḥmt, 'the woman hears'.
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+ Adjectives are derived from nouns through a process that Egyptologists call nisbation because of its similarity with Arabic.[111] The word order is predicate–subject in verbal and adjectival sentences, and subject–predicate in nominal and adverbial sentences.[112] The subject can be moved to the beginning of sentences if it is long and is followed by a resumptive pronoun.[113] Verbs and nouns are negated by the particle n, but nn is used for adverbial and adjectival sentences. Stress falls on the ultimate or penultimate syllable, which can be open (CV) or closed (CVC).[114]
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+ Hieroglyphic writing dates from c. 3000 BC, and is composed of hundreds of symbols. A hieroglyph can represent a word, a sound, or a silent determinative; and the same symbol can serve different purposes in different contexts. Hieroglyphs were a formal script, used on stone monuments and in tombs, that could be as detailed as individual works of art. In day-to-day writing, scribes used a cursive form of writing, called hieratic, which was quicker and easier. While formal hieroglyphs may be read in rows or columns in either direction (though typically written from right to left), hieratic was always written from right to left, usually in horizontal rows. A new form of writing, Demotic, became the prevalent writing style, and it is this form of writing—along with formal hieroglyphs—that accompany the Greek text on the Rosetta Stone.[116]
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+ Around the first century AD, the Coptic alphabet started to be used alongside the Demotic script. Coptic is a modified Greek alphabet with the addition of some Demotic signs.[117] Although formal hieroglyphs were used in a ceremonial role until the fourth century, towards the end only a small handful of priests could still read them. As the traditional religious establishments were disbanded, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was mostly lost. Attempts to decipher them date to the Byzantine[118] and Islamic periods in Egypt,[119] but only in the 1820s, after the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and years of research by Thomas Young and Jean-François Champollion, were hieroglyphs substantially deciphered.[120]
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+ Writing first appeared in association with kingship on labels and tags for items found in royal tombs. It was primarily an occupation of the scribes, who worked out of the Per Ankh institution or the House of Life. The latter comprised offices, libraries (called House of Books), laboratories and observatories.[121] Some of the best-known pieces of ancient Egyptian literature, such as the Pyramid and Coffin Texts, were written in Classical Egyptian, which continued to be the language of writing until about 1300 BC. Late Egyptian was spoken from the New Kingdom onward and is represented in Ramesside administrative documents, love poetry and tales, as well as in Demotic and Coptic texts. During this period, the tradition of writing had evolved into the tomb autobiography, such as those of Harkhuf and Weni. The genre known as Sebayt ("instructions") was developed to communicate teachings and guidance from famous nobles; the Ipuwer papyrus, a poem of lamentations describing natural disasters and social upheaval, is a famous example.
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+ The Story of Sinuhe, written in Middle Egyptian, might be the classic of Egyptian literature.[122] Also written at this time was the Westcar Papyrus, a set of stories told to Khufu by his sons relating the marvels performed by priests.[123] The Instruction of Amenemope is considered a masterpiece of Near Eastern literature.[124] Towards the end of the New Kingdom, the vernacular language was more often employed to write popular pieces like the Story of Wenamun and the Instruction of Any. The former tells the story of a noble who is robbed on his way to buy cedar from Lebanon and of his struggle to return to Egypt. From about 700 BC, narrative stories and instructions, such as the popular Instructions of Onchsheshonqy, as well as personal and business documents were written in the demotic script and phase of Egyptian. Many stories written in demotic during the Greco-Roman period were set in previous historical eras, when Egypt was an independent nation ruled by great pharaohs such as Ramesses II.[125]
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+ Most ancient Egyptians were farmers tied to the land. Their dwellings were restricted to immediate family members, and were constructed of mud-brick designed to remain cool in the heat of the day. Each home had a kitchen with an open roof, which contained a grindstone for milling grain and a small oven for baking the bread.[126] Walls were painted white and could be covered with dyed linen wall hangings. Floors were covered with reed mats, while wooden stools, beds raised from the floor and individual tables comprised the furniture.[127]
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+ The ancient Egyptians placed a great value on hygiene and appearance. Most bathed in the Nile and used a pasty soap made from animal fat and chalk. Men shaved their entire bodies for cleanliness; perfumes and aromatic ointments covered bad odors and soothed skin.[128] Clothing was made from simple linen sheets that were bleached white, and both men and women of the upper classes wore wigs, jewelry, and cosmetics. Children went without clothing until maturity, at about age 12, and at this age males were circumcised and had their heads shaved. Mothers were responsible for taking care of the children, while the father provided the family's income.[129]
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+ Music and dance were popular entertainments for those who could afford them. Early instruments included flutes and harps, while instruments similar to trumpets, oboes, and pipes developed later and became popular. In the New Kingdom, the Egyptians played on bells, cymbals, tambourines, drums, and imported lutes and lyres from Asia.[130] The sistrum was a rattle-like musical instrument that was especially important in religious ceremonies.
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+ The ancient Egyptians enjoyed a variety of leisure activities, including games and music. Senet, a board game where pieces moved according to random chance, was particularly popular from the earliest times; another similar game was mehen, which had a circular gaming board. “Hounds and Jackals” also known as 58 holes is another example of board games played in ancient Egypt. The first complete set of this game was discovered from a Theban tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhat IV that dates to the 13th Dynasty.[131] Juggling and ball games were popular with children, and wrestling is also documented in a tomb at Beni Hasan.[132] The wealthy members of ancient Egyptian society enjoyed hunting and boating as well.
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+ The excavation of the workers' village of Deir el-Medina has resulted in one of the most thoroughly documented accounts of community life in the ancient world, which spans almost four hundred years. There is no comparable site in which the organization, social interactions, and working and living conditions of a community have been studied in such detail.[133]
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+ Egyptian cuisine remained remarkably stable over time; indeed, the cuisine of modern Egypt retains some striking similarities to the cuisine of the ancients. The staple diet consisted of bread and beer, supplemented with vegetables such as onions and garlic, and fruit such as dates and figs. Wine and meat were enjoyed by all on feast days while the upper classes indulged on a more regular basis. Fish, meat, and fowl could be salted or dried, and could be cooked in stews or roasted on a grill.[134]
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+ The architecture of ancient Egypt includes some of the most famous structures in the world: the Great Pyramids of Giza and the temples at Thebes. Building projects were organized and funded by the state for religious and commemorative purposes, but also to reinforce the wide-ranging power of the pharaoh. The ancient Egyptians were skilled builders; using only simple but effective tools and sighting instruments, architects could build large stone structures with great accuracy and precision that is still envied today.[135]
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+ The domestic dwellings of elite and ordinary Egyptians alike were constructed from perishable materials such as mud bricks and wood, and have not survived. Peasants lived in simple homes, while the palaces of the elite and the pharaoh were more elaborate structures. A few surviving New Kingdom palaces, such as those in Malkata and Amarna, show richly decorated walls and floors with scenes of people, birds, water pools, deities and geometric designs.[136] Important structures such as temples and tombs that were intended to last forever were constructed of stone instead of mud bricks. The architectural elements used in the world's first large-scale stone building, Djoser's mortuary complex, include post and lintel supports in the papyrus and lotus motif.
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+ The earliest preserved ancient Egyptian temples, such as those at Giza, consist of single, enclosed halls with roof slabs supported by columns. In the New Kingdom, architects added the pylon, the open courtyard, and the enclosed hypostyle hall to the front of the temple's sanctuary, a style that was standard until the Greco-Roman period.[137] The earliest and most popular tomb architecture in the Old Kingdom was the mastaba, a flat-roofed rectangular structure of mudbrick or stone built over an underground burial chamber. The step pyramid of Djoser is a series of stone mastabas stacked on top of each other. Pyramids were built during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, but most later rulers abandoned them in favor of less conspicuous rock-cut tombs.[138] The use of the pyramid form continued in private tomb chapels of the New Kingdom and in the royal pyramids of Nubia.[139]
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+ Model of a household porch and garden, c. 1981–1975 BC]]
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+ The Temple of Dendur, completed by 10 BC, made of aeolian sandstone, temple proper: height: 6.4 m, width: 6.4 m; length: 12.5 m, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
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+ The well preserved Temple of Isis from Philae (Egypt) is an example of Egyptian architecture and architectural sculpture
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+ Illustration of various types of capitals, drawn by the egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius
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+ The ancient Egyptians produced art to serve functional purposes. For over 3500 years, artists adhered to artistic forms and iconography that were developed during the Old Kingdom, following a strict set of principles that resisted foreign influence and internal change.[140] These artistic standards—simple lines, shapes, and flat areas of color combined with the characteristic flat projection of figures with no indication of spatial depth—created a sense of order and balance within a composition. Images and text were intimately interwoven on tomb and temple walls, coffins, stelae, and even statues. The Narmer Palette, for example, displays figures that can also be read as hieroglyphs.[141] Because of the rigid rules that governed its highly stylized and symbolic appearance, ancient Egyptian art served its political and religious purposes with precision and clarity.[142]
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+ Ancient Egyptian artisans used stone as a medium for carving statues and fine reliefs, but used wood as a cheap and easily carved substitute. Paints were obtained from minerals such as iron ores (red and yellow ochres), copper ores (blue and green), soot or charcoal (black), and limestone (white). Paints could be mixed with gum arabic as a binder and pressed into cakes, which could be moistened with water when needed.[143]
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+ Pharaohs used reliefs to record victories in battle, royal decrees, and religious scenes. Common citizens had access to pieces of funerary art, such as shabti statues and books of the dead, which they believed would protect them in the afterlife.[144] During the Middle Kingdom, wooden or clay models depicting scenes from everyday life became popular additions to the tomb. In an attempt to duplicate the activities of the living in the afterlife, these models show laborers, houses, boats, and even military formations that are scale representations of the ideal ancient Egyptian afterlife.[145]
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+ Despite the homogeneity of ancient Egyptian art, the styles of particular times and places sometimes reflected changing cultural or political attitudes. After the invasion of the Hyksos in the Second Intermediate Period, Minoan-style frescoes were found in Avaris.[146] The most striking example of a politically driven change in artistic forms comes from the Amarna period, where figures were radically altered to conform to Akhenaten's revolutionary religious ideas.[147] This style, known as Amarna art, was quickly abandoned after Akhenaten's death and replaced by the traditional forms.[148]
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+ Kneeling portrait statue of Amenemhat holding a stele with an inscription; circa 1500 BC; limestone; Egyptian Museum of Berlin (Germany)
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+ Fresco which depicts Nebamun hunting birds; 1350 BC; paint on plaster; 98 × 83 cm; British Museum (London)
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+ Portrait head of pharaoh Hatshepsut or Thutmose III; 1480-1425 BC; most probably granite; height: 16.5 cm; Egyptian Museum of Berlin
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+ Falcon box with wrapped contents; 332–30 BC; painted and gilded wood, linen, resin and feathers; 58.5 × 24.9 cm; Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
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+ Beliefs in the divine and in the afterlife were ingrained in ancient Egyptian civilization from its inception; pharaonic rule was based on the divine right of kings. The Egyptian pantheon was populated by gods who had supernatural powers and were called on for help or protection. However, the gods were not always viewed as benevolent, and Egyptians believed they had to be appeased with offerings and prayers. The structure of this pantheon changed continually as new deities were promoted in the hierarchy, but priests made no effort to organize the diverse and sometimes conflicting myths and stories into a coherent system.[149] These various conceptions of divinity were not considered contradictory but rather layers in the multiple facets of reality.[150]
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+ Gods were worshiped in cult temples administered by priests acting on the king's behalf. At the center of the temple was the cult statue in a shrine. Temples were not places of public worship or congregation, and only on select feast days and celebrations was a shrine carrying the statue of the god brought out for public worship. Normally, the god's domain was sealed off from the outside world and was only accessible to temple officials. Common citizens could worship private statues in their homes, and amulets offered protection against the forces of chaos.[151] After the New Kingdom, the pharaoh's role as a spiritual intermediary was de-emphasized as religious customs shifted to direct worship of the gods. As a result, priests developed a system of oracles to communicate the will of the gods directly to the people.[152]
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+ The Egyptians believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts or aspects. In addition to the body, each person had a šwt (shadow), a ba (personality or soul), a ka (life-force), and a name.[153] The heart, rather than the brain, was considered the seat of thoughts and emotions. After death, the spiritual aspects were released from the body and could move at will, but they required the physical remains (or a substitute, such as a statue) as a permanent home. The ultimate goal of the deceased was to rejoin his ka and ba and become one of the "blessed dead", living on as an akh, or "effective one". For this to happen, the deceased had to be judged worthy in a trial, in which the heart was weighed against a "feather of truth." If deemed worthy, the deceased could continue their existence on earth in spiritual form.[154] If they were not deemed worthy, their heart was eaten by Ammit the Devourer and they were erased from the Universe.
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+ The ancient Egyptians maintained an elaborate set of burial customs that they believed were necessary to ensure immortality after death. These customs involved preserving the body by mummification, performing burial ceremonies, and interring with the body goods the deceased would use in the afterlife.[144] Before the Old Kingdom, bodies buried in desert pits were naturally preserved by desiccation. The arid, desert conditions were a boon throughout the history of ancient Egypt for burials of the poor, who could not afford the elaborate burial preparations available to the elite. Wealthier Egyptians began to bury their dead in stone tombs and use artificial mummification, which involved removing the internal organs, wrapping the body in linen, and burying it in a rectangular stone sarcophagus or wooden coffin. Beginning in the Fourth Dynasty, some parts were preserved separately in canopic jars.[155]
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+ By the New Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had perfected the art of mummification; the best technique took 70 days and involved removing the internal organs, removing the brain through the nose, and desiccating the body in a mixture of salts called natron. The body was then wrapped in linen with protective amulets inserted between layers and placed in a decorated anthropoid coffin. Mummies of the Late Period were also placed in painted cartonnage mummy cases. Actual preservation practices declined during the Ptolemaic and Roman eras, while greater emphasis was placed on the outer appearance of the mummy, which was decorated.[156]
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+ Wealthy Egyptians were buried with larger quantities of luxury items, but all burials, regardless of social status, included goods for the deceased. Funerary texts were often included in the grave, and, beginning in the New Kingdom, so were shabti statues that were believed to perform manual labor for them in the afterlife.[157] Rituals in which the deceased was magically re-animated accompanied burials. After burial, living relatives were expected to occasionally bring food to the tomb and recite prayers on behalf of the deceased.[158]
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+ The ancient Egyptian military was responsible for defending Egypt against foreign invasion, and for maintaining Egypt's domination in the ancient Near East. The military protected mining expeditions to the Sinai during the Old Kingdom and fought civil wars during the First and Second Intermediate Periods. The military was responsible for maintaining fortifications along important trade routes, such as those found at the city of Buhen on the way to Nubia. Forts also were constructed to serve as military bases, such as the fortress at Sile, which was a base of operations for expeditions to the Levant. In the New Kingdom, a series of pharaohs used the standing Egyptian army to attack and conquer Kush and parts of the Levant.[159]
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+ Typical military equipment included bows and arrows, spears, and round-topped shields made by stretching animal skin over a wooden frame. In the New Kingdom, the military began using chariots that had earlier been introduced by the Hyksos invaders. Weapons and armor continued to improve after the adoption of bronze: shields were now made from solid wood with a bronze buckle, spears were tipped with a bronze point, and the Khopesh was adopted from Asiatic soldiers.[160] The pharaoh was usually depicted in art and literature riding at the head of the army; it has been suggested that at least a few pharaohs, such as Seqenenre Tao II and his sons, did do so.[161] However, it has also been argued that "kings of this period did not personally act as frontline war leaders, fighting alongside their troops."[162] Soldiers were recruited from the general population, but during, and especially after, the New Kingdom, mercenaries from Nubia, Kush, and Libya were hired to fight for Egypt.[163]
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+ In technology, medicine, and mathematics, ancient Egypt achieved a relatively high standard of productivity and sophistication. Traditional empiricism, as evidenced by the Edwin Smith and Ebers papyri (c. 1600 BC), is first credited to Egypt. The Egyptians created their own alphabet and decimal system.
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+ Even before the Old Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians had developed a glassy material known as faience, which they treated as a type of artificial semi-precious stone. Faience is a non-clay ceramic made of silica, small amounts of lime and soda, and a colorant, typically copper.[164] The material was used to make beads, tiles, figurines, and small wares. Several methods can be used to create faience, but typically production involved application of the powdered materials in the form of a paste over a clay core, which was then fired. By a related technique, the ancient Egyptians produced a pigment known as Egyptian Blue, also called blue frit, which is produced by fusing (or sintering) silica, copper, lime, and an alkali such as natron. The product can be ground up and used as a pigment.[165]
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+ The ancient Egyptians could fabricate a wide variety of objects from glass with great skill, but it is not clear whether they developed the process independently.[166] It is also unclear whether they made their own raw glass or merely imported pre-made ingots, which they melted and finished. However, they did have technical expertise in making objects, as well as adding trace elements to control the color of the finished glass. A range of colors could be produced, including yellow, red, green, blue, purple, and white, and the glass could be made either transparent or opaque.[167]
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+ The medical problems of the ancient Egyptians stemmed directly from their environment. Living and working close to the Nile brought hazards from malaria and debilitating schistosomiasis parasites, which caused liver and intestinal damage. Dangerous wildlife such as crocodiles and hippos were also a common threat. The lifelong labors of farming and building put stress on the spine and joints, and traumatic injuries from construction and warfare all took a significant toll on the body. The grit and sand from stone-ground flour abraded teeth, leaving them susceptible to abscesses (though caries were rare).[168]
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+ The diets of the wealthy were rich in sugars, which promoted periodontal disease.[169] Despite the flattering physiques portrayed on tomb walls, the overweight mummies of many of the upper class show the effects of a life of overindulgence.[170] Adult life expectancy was about 35 for men and 30 for women, but reaching adulthood was difficult as about one-third of the population died in infancy.[c]
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+ Ancient Egyptian physicians were renowned in the ancient Near East for their healing skills, and some, such as Imhotep, remained famous long after their deaths.[171] Herodotus remarked that there was a high degree of specialization among Egyptian physicians, with some treating only the head or the stomach, while others were eye-doctors and dentists.[172] Training of physicians took place at the Per Ankh or "House of Life" institution, most notably those headquartered in Per-Bastet during the New Kingdom and at Abydos and Saïs in the Late period. Medical papyri show empirical knowledge of anatomy, injuries, and practical treatments.[173]
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+ Wounds were treated by bandaging with raw meat, white linen, sutures, nets, pads, and swabs soaked with honey to prevent infection,[174] while opium, thyme, and belladona were used to relieve pain. The earliest records of burn treatment describe burn dressings that use the milk from mothers of male babies. Prayers were made to the goddess Isis. Moldy bread, honey, and copper salts were also used to prevent infection from dirt in burns.[175] Garlic and onions were used regularly to promote good health and were thought to relieve asthma symptoms. Ancient Egyptian surgeons stitched wounds, set broken bones, and amputated diseased limbs, but they recognized that some injuries were so serious that they could only make the patient comfortable until death occurred.[176]
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+ Early Egyptians knew how to assemble planks of wood into a ship hull and had mastered advanced forms of shipbuilding as early as 3000 BC. The Archaeological Institute of America reports that the oldest planked ships known are the Abydos boats.[5] A group of 14 discovered ships in Abydos were constructed of wooden planks "sewn" together. Discovered by Egyptologist David O'Connor of New York University,[177] woven straps were found to have been used to lash the planks together,[5] and reeds or grass stuffed between the planks helped to seal the seams.[5] Because the ships are all buried together and near a mortuary belonging to Pharaoh Khasekhemwy, originally they were all thought to have belonged to him, but one of the 14 ships dates to 3000 BC, and the associated pottery jars buried with the vessels also suggest earlier dating. The ship dating to 3000 BC was 75 feet (23 m) long and is now thought to perhaps have belonged to an earlier pharaoh, perhaps one as early as Hor-Aha.[177]
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+ Early Egyptians also knew how to assemble planks of wood with treenails to fasten them together, using pitch for caulking the seams. The "Khufu ship", a 43.6-metre (143 ft) vessel sealed into a pit in the Giza pyramid complex at the foot of the Great Pyramid of Giza in the Fourth Dynasty around 2500 BC, is a full-size surviving example that may have filled the symbolic function of a solar barque. Early Egyptians also knew how to fasten the planks of this ship together with mortise and tenon joints.[5]
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+ Large seagoing ships are known to have been heavily used by the Egyptians in their trade with the city states of the eastern Mediterranean, especially Byblos (on the coast of modern-day Lebanon), and in several expeditions down the Red Sea to the Land of Punt.[178] In fact one of the earliest Egyptian words for a seagoing ship is a "Byblos Ship", which originally defined a class of Egyptian seagoing ships used on the Byblos run; however, by the end of the Old Kingdom, the term had come to include large seagoing ships, whatever their destination.[178]
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+ In 2011 archaeologists from Italy, the United States, and Egypt excavating a dried-up lagoon known as Mersa Gawasis have unearthed traces of an ancient harbor that once launched early voyages like Hatshepsut's Punt expedition onto the open ocean.[179] Some of the site's most evocative evidence for the ancient Egyptians' seafaring prowess include large ship timbers and hundreds of feet of ropes, made from papyrus, coiled in huge bundles.[179] And in 2013 a team of Franco-Egyptian archaeologists discovered what is believed to be the world's oldest port, dating back about 4500 years, from the time of King Cheops on the Red Sea coast near Wadi el-Jarf (about 110 miles south of Suez).[180]
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+ In 1977, an ancient north–south canal dating to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt was discovered extending from Lake Timsah to the Ballah Lakes.[181] It was dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt by extrapolating dates of ancient sites constructed along its course.[181][d]
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+ The earliest attested examples of mathematical calculations date to the predynastic Naqada period, and show a fully developed numeral system.[e] The importance of mathematics to an educated Egyptian is suggested by a New Kingdom fictional letter in which the writer proposes a scholarly competition between himself and another scribe regarding everyday calculation tasks such as accounting of land, labor, and grain.[183] Texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus and the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus show that the ancient Egyptians could perform the four basic mathematical operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—use fractions, calculate the areas of rectangles, triangles, and circles and compute the volumes of boxes, columns and pyramids. They understood basic concepts of algebra and geometry, and could solve simple sets of simultaneous equations.[184]
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+ Mathematical notation was decimal, and based on hieroglyphic signs for each power of ten up to one million. Each of these could be written as many times as necessary to add up to the desired number; so to write the number eighty or eight hundred, the symbol for ten or one hundred was written eight times respectively.[185] Because their methods of calculation could not handle most fractions with a numerator greater than one, they had to write fractions as the sum of several fractions. For example, they resolved the fraction two-fifths into the sum of one-third + one-fifteenth. Standard tables of values facilitated this.[186] Some common fractions, however, were written with a special glyph—the equivalent of the modern two-thirds is shown on the right.[187]
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+ Ancient Egyptian mathematicians knew the Pythagorean theorem as an empirical formula. They were aware, for example, that a triangle had a right angle opposite the hypotenuse when its sides were in a 3–4–5 ratio.[188] They were able to estimate the area of a circle by subtracting one-ninth from its diameter and squaring the result:
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+ a reasonable approximation of the formula πr2.[189]
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+ The golden ratio seems to be reflected in many Egyptian constructions, including the pyramids, but its use may have been an unintended consequence of the ancient Egyptian practice of combining the use of knotted ropes with an intuitive sense of proportion and harmony.[190]
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+ A team led by Johannes Krause managed the first reliable sequencing of the genomes of 90 mummified individuals in 2017 from northern Egypt (buried near modern-day Cairo), which constituted "the first reliable data set obtained from ancient Egyptians using high-throughput DNA sequencing methods." Whilst not conclusive, because of the non-exhaustive time frame and restricted location that the mummies represent, their study nevertheless showed that these ancient Egyptians "closely resembled ancient and modern Near Eastern populations, especially those in the Levant, and had almost no DNA from sub-Saharan Africa. What's more, the genetics of the mummies remained remarkably consistent even as different powers—including Nubians, Greeks, and Romans—conquered the empire." Later, however, something did alter the genomes of Egyptians. Some 15% to 20% of modern Egyptians' DNA reflects sub-Saharan ancestry, but the ancient mummies had only 6–15% sub-Saharan DNA.[191] They called for additional research to be undertaken. Other genetic studies show much greater levels of sub-Saharan African ancestry in the current-day populations of southern as opposed to northern Egypt,[192] and anticipate that mummies from southern Egypt would contain greater levels of sub-Saharan African ancestry than Lower Egyptian mummies.
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+ The culture and monuments of ancient Egypt have left a lasting legacy on the world. The cult of the goddess Isis, for example, became popular in the Roman Empire, as obelisks and other relics were transported back to Rome.[193] The Romans also imported building materials from Egypt to erect Egyptian-style structures. Early historians such as Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus Siculus studied and wrote about the land, which Romans came to view as a place of mystery.[194]
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+ During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Egyptian pagan culture was in decline after the rise of Christianity and later Islam, but interest in Egyptian antiquity continued in the writings of medieval scholars such as Dhul-Nun al-Misri and al-Maqrizi.[195] In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European travelers and tourists brought back antiquities and wrote stories of their journeys, leading to a wave of Egyptomania across Europe. This renewed interest sent collectors to Egypt, who took, purchased, or were given many important antiquities.[196] Napoleon arranged the first studies in Egyptology when he brought some 150 scientists and artists to study and document Egypt's natural history, which was published in the Description de l'Égypte.[197]
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+ In the 20th century, the Egyptian Government and archaeologists alike recognized the importance of cultural respect and integrity in excavations. The Supreme Council of Antiquities now approves and oversees all excavations, which are aimed at finding information rather than treasure. The council also supervises museums and monument reconstruction programs designed to preserve the historical legacy of Egypt.
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+ Tourists at the pyramid complex of Khafre near the Great Sphinx of Giza
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+ Frontispiece of Description de l'Égypte, published in 38 volumes between 1809 and 1829.
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+ Ancient Egypt portal
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+ Italian may refer to:
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+ Italian (italiano, [itaˈljaːno] (listen) or lingua italiana, [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian is, by most measures, the closest language to the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, from which it descends.[7] Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (where it is the main language of Ticino and the Graubünden valleys of Calanca, Mesolcina, Bregaglia and val Poschiavo[note 1]), San Marino and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia). It formerly had official status in Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor) and Greece (Ionian Islands and Dodecanese) and is generally understood in Corsica (due to its close relation with the Tuscan-influenced local language) and Savoie. It also used to be an official language in the former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, where it still plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.[8] Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania, although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries.[9][10] Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties) and other regional languages.[11]
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+ Italian is a major European language, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is the second most widely spoken native language in the European Union with 67 million speakers (15% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%).[1][2] Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million.[12] Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera; numerous Italian words referring to music have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide.[13] Its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the food and luxury goods markets.
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+ Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society.[14] Its development was also influenced by other Italian languages and, to some minor extent, by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders. The incorporation into Italian of learned words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language, scientific terminology and the liturgical language of the Church. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Italians were also literate in Latin and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Italian. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels, a factor that makes Italian words extremely easy to use in rhyming. Italian has a 7 vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds); Classical Latin had 10, 5 with short and 5 with long sounds.
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+ During the Middle Ages, the established written language in Europe was Latin, though the great majority of people were illiterate, and only a handful were well versed in the language. In the Italian peninsula, as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance dialects of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, pragmatics) and are classified typologically as distinct languages.[15][16]
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+ The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin in the writings of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, even though the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century,[17] the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Apennine peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as the Placiti Cassinesi from the Province of Benevento that date from 960–963, although the Veronese Riddle, probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy.[18]
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+ The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia, to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina, were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and the fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects.[15]:22 Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.
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+ Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (like Spain in the Kingdom of Naples, or Austria in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia), even though the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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+ Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states. Those dialects now have considerable variety. As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of regional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are the gemination of initial consonants and the pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" in some cases: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern.[19]
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+ In contrast to the Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of northern Italy, the Italo-Dalmatian Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in the case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages.
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+ The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages) gave its language weight, though Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Banco Medici, Humanism, and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.
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+ The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of "rebirth", which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian).
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+ During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists—individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves.[20] Humanists began forming new beliefs in various forms: social, political, and intellectual. The ideals of the Renaissance were evident throughout the Protestant Reformation, which took place simultaneously with the Renaissance. The Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther's rejection of the selling of indulgences by Johann Tetzel and other authorities within the Roman Catholic Church, resulting in Luther's eventual break-off from the Roman Catholic Church in the Diet of Worms. After Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, he founded what was then understood to be a sect of Catholicism, later referred to as Lutheranism.[20] Luther's preaching in favor of faith and scripture rather than tradition led him to translate the Bible into many other languages, which would allow for people from all over Europe to read the Bible. Previously, the Bible was only translated into Latin, but after this development it could be understood in many other languages, including Italian. The Italian language was able to spread even more with the help of Luther and the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing press facilitated the spread of Italian because it was able to rapidly produce texts, such as the Bible, and cut the costs of books which allowed for more people to have access to the translated Bible and new pieces of literature.[21] The Roman Catholic Church was losing its control over the population, as it was not open to change, and there was an increasing number of reformers with differing beliefs.[22]
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+ Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian peninsula, as well as the prestige variety in the island of Corsica (but not in Sardinia, which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century because of the prestige enjoyed by Spanish and the widespread use of Sardinian[23]).[24] The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i. e., the problem of the language), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving a united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions:
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+ A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects.
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+ Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to publication of Agnolo Monosini's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612.
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+ The continual advancements in technology plays a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, the number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and as the dominant language, Italian spread.[25]
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+ An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed the Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie.
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+ Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni, further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno" (Florence's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition.
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+ After unification, a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages—ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton, etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when the nation was unified in 1861.[27]
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+ Italian is a Romance language, a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, especially its Florentine dialect, and is therefore an Italo-Dalmatian language, a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian.
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+ Italian is the closest language to Latin, most evidently in terms of vocabulary.[28] According to the Ethnologue, Lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese, 78% with Ladin, 77% with Romanian.[8] Estimates may differ according to sources.[29][30]
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+ One study (analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology, inflection, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation) estimated that distance between Italian and Latin is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin.[31] In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian.[32][33] As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive.[34]
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+ Italian is an official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French), and its use has moderately declined since the 1970s.[35] Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City.[36]
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+ Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period, Italian is still understood by some in former colonies.[8] Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule, Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi, who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of the country.[37] A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s; today Italian is the most spoken second language in the country and serves as a language of commerce and sometimes as a lingua franca between Libyans and foreigners.[38]
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+ Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation. Italian is today used in commerce and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara, still has several Italian schools, established during the colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II.[39]
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+ In Asmara there are two Italian schools:
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+ Italian was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War.
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+ Albania and Malta have large populations of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language.[40]
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+ Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent, only a little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home.[41] Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country.[42]
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+ Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of the language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina[43] after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing.
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+ Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example, the free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language.[44]
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+ According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in the 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture.[45]
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+ From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence.
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+ In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where Talian is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the nineteenth century. Another example is Cocoliche, an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires, and Lunfardo.
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+ Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by Italian language variants (especially Tuscan and Venetian). These variants were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts.
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+ During that period, Italy held artistic sway over the rest of Europe. It was the norm for all educated gentlemen to make the Grand Tour, visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It thus became expected to learn at least some Italian. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until the late eighteenth century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton, for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian.
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+ Within the Catholic church, Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents.
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+ Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in the design and fashion industries, in some sports like football[46] and especially in culinary terms.
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+ In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular—other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often imprecisely called "Italian dialects",[48] even though they are quite different, with some belonging to different linguistic branches. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered "historical language minorities", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by the law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica) is closely related to medieval Tuscan, from which Standard Italian derives and evolved.
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+ The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata. The most prevalent were substrata (the language of the original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most likely simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either.[15]:19-20
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+ Throughout Italy, regional variations of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian, are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà, annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go").
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+ There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of a single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around the 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry.[15]:21Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had likely diverged long before the first written records appear, since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person.
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+
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+ Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro, an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of the population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II, contributed to the proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left.[15]:35
88
+
89
+ The Italian dialects have declined in the modern era, as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media, from newspapers to radio to television.[15]:37
90
+
91
+ Notes:
92
+
93
+ Italian has a seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/, as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin. Some examples:
94
+
95
+ The conservative nature of Italian phonology is partly explained by its origin. Italian stems from a literary language that is derived from the 13th-century speech of the city of Florence in the region of Tuscany, and has changed little in the last 700 years or so. Furthermore, the Tuscan dialect is the most conservative of all Italian dialects, radically different from the Gallo-Italian languages less than 100 miles to the north (across the La Spezia–Rimini Line).
96
+
97
+ The following are some of the conservative phonological features of Italian, as compared with the common Western Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan). Some of these features are also present in Romanian.
98
+
99
+ Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian has many inconsistent outcomes, where the same underlying sound produces different results in different words, e.g. laxāre > lasciare and lassare, captiāre > cacciare and cazzare, (ex)dēroteolāre > sdrucciolare, druzzolare and ruzzolare, rēgīna > regina and reina. Although in all these examples the second form has fallen out of usage, the dimorphism is thought to reflect the several-hundred-year period during which Italian developed as a literary language divorced from any native-speaking population, with an origin in 12th/13th-century Tuscan but with many words borrowed from languages farther to the north, with different sound outcomes. (The La Spezia–Rimini Line, the most important isogloss in the entire Romance-language area, passes only about 20 miles to the north of Florence.) Dual outcomes of Latin /p t k/ between vowels, such as lŏcum > luogo but fŏcum > fuoco, was once thought to be due to borrowing of northern voiced forms, but is now generally viewed as the result of early phonetic variation within Tuscany.
100
+
101
+ Some other features that distinguish Italian from the Western Romance languages:
102
+
103
+ Standard Italian also differs in some respects from most nearby Italian languages:
104
+
105
+ Italian phonotactics do not usually permit verbs and polysyllabic nouns to end with consonants, except in poetry and song, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel sounds.
106
+
107
+ Italian has a shallow orthography, meaning very regular spelling with an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. In linguistic terms, the writing system is close to being a phonemic orthography. The most important of the few exceptions are the following (see below for more details):
108
+
109
+ The Italian alphabet is typically considered to consist of 21 letters. The letters j, k, w, x, y are traditionally excluded, though they appear in loanwords such as jeans, whisky, taxi, xenofobo, xilofono. The letter ⟨x⟩ has become common in standard Italian with the prefix extra-, although (e)stra- is traditionally used; it is also common to use the Latin particle ex(-) to mean "former(ly)" as in: la mia ex ("my ex-girlfriend"), "Ex-Jugoslavia" ("Former Yugoslavia"). The letter ⟨j⟩ appears in the first name Jacopo and in some Italian place-names, such as Bajardo, Bojano, Joppolo, Jerzu, Jesolo, Jesi, Ajaccio, among others, and in Mar Jonio, an alternative spelling of Mar Ionio (the Ionian Sea). The letter ⟨j⟩ may appear in dialectal words, but its use is discouraged in contemporary standard Italian.[71] Letters used in foreign words can be replaced with phonetically equivalent native Italian letters and digraphs: ⟨gi⟩, ⟨ge⟩, or ⟨i⟩ for ⟨j⟩; ⟨c⟩ or ⟨ch⟩ for ⟨k⟩ (including in the standard prefix kilo-); ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or ⟨v⟩ for ⟨w⟩; ⟨s⟩, ⟨ss⟩, ⟨z⟩, ⟨zz⟩ or ⟨cs⟩ for ⟨x⟩; and ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ for ⟨y⟩.
110
+
111
+ Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length and intensity. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for /ʃ/, /dz/, /ts/, /ʎ/, /ɲ/, which are always geminate when between vowels, and /z/, which is always single.
112
+ Geminate plosives and affricates are realized as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and /l/ are realized as lengthened continuants. There is only one vibrant phoneme /r/ but the actual pronunciation depends on context and regional accent. Generally one can find a flap consonant [ɾ] in unstressed position whereas [r] is more common in stressed syllables, but there may be exceptions. Especially people from the Northern part of Italy (Parma, Aosta Valley, South Tyrol) may pronounce /r/ as [ʀ], [ʁ], or [ʋ].[72]
113
+
114
+ Of special interest to the linguistic study of Regional Italian is the gorgia toscana, or "Tuscan Throat", the weakening or lenition of intervocalic /p/, /t/, and /k/ in the Tuscan language.
115
+
116
+ The voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ is present as a phoneme only in loanwords: for example, garage [ɡaˈraːʒ]. Phonetic [ʒ] is common in Central and Southern Italy as an intervocalic allophone of /dʒ/: gente [ˈdʒɛnte] 'people' but la gente [laˈʒɛnte] 'the people', ragione [raˈʒoːne] 'reason'.
117
+
118
+ Italian grammar is typical of the grammar of Romance languages in general. Cases exist for personal pronouns (nominative, oblique, accusative, dative), but not for nouns.
119
+
120
+ There are two basic classes of nouns in Italian, referred to as genders, masculine and feminine. Gender may be natural (ragazzo 'boy', ragazza 'girl') or simply grammatical with no possible reference to biological gender (masculine costo 'cost', feminine costa 'coast'). Masculine nouns typically end in -o (ragazzo 'boy'), with plural marked by -i (ragazzi 'boys'), and feminine nouns typically end in -a, with plural marked by -e (ragazza 'girl', ragazze 'girls'). For a group composed of boys and girls, ragazzi is the plural, suggesting that -i is a general plural. A third category of nouns is unmarked for gender, ending in -e in the singular and -i in the plural: legge 'law, f. sg.', leggi 'laws, f. pl.'; fiume 'river, m. sg.', fiumi 'rivers, m. pl.', thus assignment of gender is arbitrary in terms of form, enough so that terms may be identical but of distinct genders: fine meaning 'aim', 'purpose' is masculine, while fine meaning 'end, ending' (e.g. of a movie) is feminine, and both are fini in the plural, a clear instance of -i as a non-gendered default plural marker. These nouns often, but not always, denote inanimates. There are a number of nouns that have a masculine singular and a feminine plural, most commonly of the pattern m. sg. -o, f. pl. -a (miglio 'mile, m. sg.', miglia 'miles, f. pl.'; paio 'pair, m. sg., paia 'pairs, f. pl.'), and thus are sometimes considered neuter (these are usually derived from neuter Latin nouns). An instance of neuter gender also exists in pronouns of the third person singular.[73]
121
+
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+ Examples:[74]
123
+
124
+ Nouns, adjectives, and articles inflect for gender and number (singular and plural).
125
+
126
+ Like in English, common nouns are capitalized when occurring at the beginning of a sentence. Unlike English, nouns referring to languages (e.g. Italian), speakers of languages, or inhabitants of an area (e.g. Italians) are not capitalized.[75]
127
+
128
+ There are three types of adjectives: descriptive, invariable and form-changing. Descriptive adjectives are the most common, and their endings change to match the number and gender of the noun they modify. Invariable adjectives are adjectives whose endings do not change. The form changing adjectives "buono (good), bello (beautiful), grande (big), and santo (saint)" change in form when placed before different types of nouns. Italian has three degrees for comparison of adjectives: positive, comparative, and superlative.[75]
129
+
130
+ The order of words in the phrase is relatively free compared to most European languages.[71] The position of the verb in the phrase is highly mobile. Word order often has a lesser grammatical function in Italian than in English. Adjectives are sometimes placed before their noun and sometimes after. Subject nouns generally come before the verb. Italian is a null-subject language, so that nominative pronouns are usually absent, with subject indicated by verbal inflections (e.g. amo 'I love', ama 's/he loves', amano 'they love'). Noun objects normally come after the verb, as do pronoun objects after imperative verbs, infinitives and gerunds, but otherwise pronoun objects come before the verb.
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+
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+ There are both indefinite and definite articles in Italian. There are four indefinite articles, selected by the gender of the noun they modify and by the phonological structure of the word that immediately follows the article. Uno is masculine singular, used before z (ts/ or /dz/), s+consonant, gn (/ɲ/), or ps, while masculine singular un is used before a word beginning with any other sound. The noun zio 'uncle' selects masculine singular, thus uno zio 'an uncle' or uno zio anziano 'an old uncle,' but un mio zio 'an uncle of mine'. The feminine singular indefinite articles are una, used before any consonant sound, and its abbreviated form, written un', used before vowels: una camicia 'a shirt', una camicia bianca 'a white shirt', un'altra camicia 'a different shirt'. There are seven forms for definite articles, both singular and plural. In the singular: lo, which corresponds to the uses of uno; il, which corresponds to the uses with consonant of un; la, which corresponds to the uses of una; l', used for both masculine and feminine singular before vowels. In the plural: gli is the masculine plural of lo and l'; i is the plural of il; and le is the plural of feminine la and l'.[75]
133
+
134
+ There are numerous contractions of prepositions with subsequent articles. There are numerous productive suffixes for diminutive, augmentative, pejorative, attenuating, etc., which are also used to create neologisms.
135
+
136
+ There are 27 pronouns, grouped in clitic and tonic pronouns. Personal pronouns are separated into three groups: subject, object (which take the place of both direct and indirect objects), and reflexive. Second person subject pronouns have both a polite and a familiar form. These two different types of address are very important in Italian social distinctions. All object pronouns have two forms: stressed and unstressed (clitics). Unstressed object pronouns are much more frequently used, and come before the verb (Lo vedo. 'I see him.'). Stressed object pronouns come after the verb, and are used when emphasis is required, for contrast, or to avoid ambiguity (Vedo lui, ma non lei. 'I see him, but not her'). Aside from personal pronouns, Italian also has demonstrative, interrogative, possessive, and relative pronouns. There are two types of demonstrative pronouns: relatively near (this) and relatively far (that). Demonstratives in Italian are repeated before each noun, unlike in English.[75]
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+
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+ There are three regular sets of verbal conjugations, and various verbs are irregularly conjugated. Within each of these sets of conjugations, there are four simple (one-word) verbal conjugations by person/number in the indicative mood (present tense; past tense with imperfective aspect, past tense with perfective aspect, and future tense), two simple conjugations in the subjunctive mood (present tense and past tense), one simple conjugation in the conditional mood, and one simple conjugation in the imperative mood. Corresponding to each of the simple conjugations, there is a compound conjugation involving a simple conjugation of "to be" or "to have" followed by a past participle. "To have" is used to form compound conjugation when the verb is transitive ("Ha detto", "ha fatto": he/she has said, he/she has made/done), while "to be" is used in the case of verbs of motion and some other intransitive verbs ("È andato", "è stato": he/she has gone, he/she has been). "To be" may be used with transitive verbs, but in such a case it makes the verb passive ("Ê detto", "è fatto": it is said, it is made/done). This rule is not absolute, and some exceptions do exist.
139
+
140
+ Note: the plural form of verbs could also be used as an extremely formal (for example to noble people in monarchies) singular form (see royal we).
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+
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+
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+
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+
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1
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+ Italian (italiano, [itaˈljaːno] (listen) or lingua italiana, [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family. Italian is, by most measures, the closest language to the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, from which it descends.[7] Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (where it is the main language of Ticino and the Graubünden valleys of Calanca, Mesolcina, Bregaglia and val Poschiavo[note 1]), San Marino and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia). It formerly had official status in Albania, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro (Kotor) and Greece (Ionian Islands and Dodecanese) and is generally understood in Corsica (due to its close relation with the Tuscan-influenced local language) and Savoie. It also used to be an official language in the former Italian East Africa and Italian North Africa, where it still plays a significant role in various sectors. Italian is also spoken by large expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.[8] Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania, although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries.[9][10] Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties) and other regional languages.[11]
4
+
5
+ Italian is a major European language, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is the second most widely spoken native language in the European Union with 67 million speakers (15% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%).[1][2] Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million.[12] Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian is known as the language of music because of its use in musical terminology and opera; numerous Italian words referring to music have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide.[13] Its influence is also widespread in the arts and in the food and luxury goods markets.
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+ Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society.[14] Its development was also influenced by other Italian languages and, to some minor extent, by the Germanic languages of the post-Roman invaders. The incorporation into Italian of learned words from its own ancestor language, Latin, is another form of lexical borrowing through the influence of written language, scientific terminology and the liturgical language of the Church. Throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, most literate Italians were also literate in Latin and thus they easily adopted Latin words into their writing—and eventually speech—in Italian. Unlike most other Romance languages, Italian retains Latin's contrast between short and long consonants. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels, a factor that makes Italian words extremely easy to use in rhyming. Italian has a 7 vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds); Classical Latin had 10, 5 with short and 5 with long sounds.
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11
+ During the Middle Ages, the established written language in Europe was Latin, though the great majority of people were illiterate, and only a handful were well versed in the language. In the Italian peninsula, as in most of Europe, most would instead speak a local vernacular. These dialects, as they are commonly referred to, evolved from Vulgar Latin over the course of centuries, unaffected by formal standards and teachings. They are not in any sense "dialects" of standard Italian, which itself started off as one of these local tongues, but sister languages of Italian. Mutual intelligibility with Italian varies widely, as it does with Romance languages in general. The Romance dialects of Italy can differ greatly from Italian at all levels (phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, pragmatics) and are classified typologically as distinct languages.[15][16]
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+
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+ The standard Italian language has a poetic and literary origin in the writings of Tuscan writers of the 12th century, and, even though the grammar and core lexicon are basically unchanged from those used in Florence in the 13th century,[17] the modern standard of the language was largely shaped by relatively recent events. However, Romance vernacular as language spoken in the Apennine peninsula has a longer history. In fact, the earliest surviving texts that can definitely be called vernacular (as distinct from its predecessor Vulgar Latin) are legal formulae known as the Placiti Cassinesi from the Province of Benevento that date from 960–963, although the Veronese Riddle, probably from the 8th or early 9th century, contains a late form of Vulgar Latin that can be seen as a very early sample of a vernacular dialect of Italy.[18]
14
+
15
+ The language that came to be thought of as Italian developed in central Tuscany and was first formalized in the early 14th century through the works of Tuscan writer Dante Alighieri, written in his native Florentine. Dante's epic poems, known collectively as the Commedia, to which another Tuscan poet Giovanni Boccaccio later affixed the title Divina, were read throughout the peninsula and his written dialect became the "canonical standard" that all educated Italians could understand. Dante is still credited with standardizing the Italian language. In addition to the widespread exposure gained through literature, the Florentine dialect also gained prestige due to the political and cultural significance of Florence at the time and the fact that it was linguistically an intermediate between the northern and the southern Italian dialects.[15]:22 Thus the dialect of Florence became the basis for what would become the official language of Italy.
16
+
17
+ Italian was progressively made an official language of most of the Italian states predating unification, slowly replacing Latin, even when ruled by foreign powers (like Spain in the Kingdom of Naples, or Austria in the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia), even though the masses kept speaking primarily their local vernaculars. Italian was also one of the many recognised languages in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
18
+
19
+ Italy has always had a distinctive dialect for each city because the cities, until recently, were thought of as city-states. Those dialects now have considerable variety. As Tuscan-derived Italian came to be used throughout Italy, features of local speech were naturally adopted, producing various versions of regional Italian. The most characteristic differences, for instance, between Roman Italian and Milanese Italian are the gemination of initial consonants and the pronunciation of stressed "e", and of "s" in some cases: e.g. va bene "all right" is pronounced [vabˈbɛːne] by a Roman (and by any standard Italian speaker), [vaˈbeːne] by a Milanese (and by any speaker whose native dialect lies to the north of the La Spezia–Rimini Line); a casa "at home" is [akˈkaːsa] for Roman, [akˈkaːsa] or [akˈkaːza] for standard, [aˈkaːza] for Milanese and generally northern.[19]
20
+
21
+ In contrast to the Gallo-Italic linguistic panorama of northern Italy, the Italo-Dalmatian Neapolitan and its related dialects were largely unaffected by the Franco-Occitan influences introduced to Italy mainly by bards from France during the Middle Ages, but after the Norman conquest of southern Italy, Sicily became the first Italian land to adopt Occitan lyric moods (and words) in poetry. Even in the case of Northern Italian languages, however, scholars are careful not to overstate the effects of outsiders on the natural indigenous developments of the languages.
22
+
23
+ The economic might and relatively advanced development of Tuscany at the time (Late Middle Ages) gave its language weight, though Venetian remained widespread in medieval Italian commercial life, and Ligurian (or Genoese) remained in use in maritime trade alongside the Mediterranean. The increasing political and cultural relevance of Florence during the periods of the rise of the Banco Medici, Humanism, and the Renaissance made its dialect, or rather a refined version of it, a standard in the arts.
24
+
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+ The Renaissance era, known as il Rinascimento in Italian, was seen as a time of "rebirth", which is the literal meaning of both renaissance (from French) and rinascimento (Italian).
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+
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+ During this time, long-existing beliefs stemming from the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church began to be understood from new perspectives as humanists—individuals who placed emphasis on the human body and its full potential—began to shift focus from the church to human beings themselves.[20] Humanists began forming new beliefs in various forms: social, political, and intellectual. The ideals of the Renaissance were evident throughout the Protestant Reformation, which took place simultaneously with the Renaissance. The Protestant Reformation began with Martin Luther's rejection of the selling of indulgences by Johann Tetzel and other authorities within the Roman Catholic Church, resulting in Luther's eventual break-off from the Roman Catholic Church in the Diet of Worms. After Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, he founded what was then understood to be a sect of Catholicism, later referred to as Lutheranism.[20] Luther's preaching in favor of faith and scripture rather than tradition led him to translate the Bible into many other languages, which would allow for people from all over Europe to read the Bible. Previously, the Bible was only translated into Latin, but after this development it could be understood in many other languages, including Italian. The Italian language was able to spread even more with the help of Luther and the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. The printing press facilitated the spread of Italian because it was able to rapidly produce texts, such as the Bible, and cut the costs of books which allowed for more people to have access to the translated Bible and new pieces of literature.[21] The Roman Catholic Church was losing its control over the population, as it was not open to change, and there was an increasing number of reformers with differing beliefs.[22]
28
+
29
+ Italian became the language used in the courts of every state in the Italian peninsula, as well as the prestige variety in the island of Corsica (but not in Sardinia, which on the contrary underwent Italianization well into the late 18th century because of the prestige enjoyed by Spanish and the widespread use of Sardinian[23]).[24] The rediscovery of Dante's De vulgari eloquentia and a renewed interest in linguistics in the 16th century, sparked a debate that raged throughout Italy concerning the criteria that should govern the establishment of a modern Italian literary and spoken language. This discussion, known as questione della lingua (i. e., the problem of the language), ran through the Italian culture until the end of the 19th century, often linked to the political debate on achieving a united Italian state. Renaissance scholars divided into three main factions:
30
+
31
+ A fourth faction claimed that the best Italian was the one that the papal court adopted, which was a mixture of the Tuscan and Roman dialects.
32
+ Eventually, Bembo's ideas prevailed, and the foundation of the Accademia della Crusca in Florence (1582–1583), the official legislative body of the Italian language, led to publication of Agnolo Monosini's Latin tome Floris italicae linguae libri novem in 1604 followed by the first Italian dictionary in 1612.
33
+
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+ The continual advancements in technology plays a crucial role in the diffusion of languages. After the invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century, the number of printing presses in Italy grew rapidly and by the year 1500 reached a total of 56, the biggest number of printing presses in all of Europe. This enabled the production of more pieces of literature at a lower cost and as the dominant language, Italian spread.[25]
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+ An important event that helped the diffusion of Italian was the conquest and occupation of Italy by Napoleon in the early 19th century (who was himself of Italian-Corsican descent). This conquest propelled the unification of Italy some decades after and pushed the Italian language into a lingua franca used not only among clerks, nobility, and functionaries in the Italian courts but also by the bourgeoisie.
37
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+ Italian literature's first modern novel, I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) by Alessandro Manzoni, further defined the standard by "rinsing" his Milanese "in the waters of the Arno" (Florence's river), as he states in the preface to his 1840 edition.
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+
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+ After unification, a huge number of civil servants and soldiers recruited from all over the country introduced many more words and idioms from their home languages—ciao is derived from the Venetian word s-cia[v]o ("slave"), panettone comes from the Lombard word panetton, etc. Only 2.5% of Italy's population could speak the Italian standardized language properly when the nation was unified in 1861.[27]
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+ Italian is a Romance language, a descendant of Vulgar Latin (colloquial spoken Latin). Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, especially its Florentine dialect, and is therefore an Italo-Dalmatian language, a classification that includes most other central and southern Italian languages and the extinct Dalmatian.
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+
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+ Italian is the closest language to Latin, most evidently in terms of vocabulary.[28] According to the Ethnologue, Lexical similarity is 89% with French, 87% with Catalan, 85% with Sardinian, 82% with Spanish, 80% with Portuguese, 78% with Ladin, 77% with Romanian.[8] Estimates may differ according to sources.[29][30]
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+ One study (analyzing the degree of differentiation of Romance languages in comparison to Latin (comparing phonology, inflection, discourse, syntax, vocabulary, and intonation) estimated that distance between Italian and Latin is higher than that between Sardinian and Latin.[31] In particular, its vowels are the second-closest to Latin after Sardinian.[32][33] As in most Romance languages, stress is distinctive.[34]
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+ Italian is an official language of Italy and San Marino and is spoken fluently by the majority of the countries' populations. Italian is the third most spoken language in Switzerland (after German and French), and its use has moderately declined since the 1970s.[35] Italian is also used in administration and official documents in Vatican City.[36]
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+ Due to heavy Italian influence during the Italian colonial period, Italian is still understood by some in former colonies.[8] Although it was the primary language in Libya since colonial rule, Italian greatly declined under the rule of Muammar Gaddafi, who expelled the Italian Libyan population and made Arabic the sole official language of the country.[37] A few hundred Italian settlers returned to Libya in the 2000s; today Italian is the most spoken second language in the country and serves as a language of commerce and sometimes as a lingua franca between Libyans and foreigners.[38]
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+ Italian was the official language of Eritrea during Italian colonisation. Italian is today used in commerce and it is still spoken especially among elders; besides that, Italian words are incorporated as loan words in the main language spoken in the country (Tigrinya). The capital city of Eritrea, Asmara, still has several Italian schools, established during the colonial period. In the early 19th century, Eritrea was the country with the highest number of Italians abroad, and the Italian Eritreans grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II.[39]
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+ In Asmara there are two Italian schools:
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+
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+ Italian was also introduced to Somalia through colonialism and was the sole official language of administration and education during the colonial period but fell out of use after government, educational and economic infrastructure were destroyed in the Somali Civil War.
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+ Albania and Malta have large populations of non-native speakers, with over half of the population having some knowledge of the Italian language.[40]
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+ Although over 17 million Americans are of Italian descent, only a little over one million people in the United States speak Italian at home.[41] Nevertheless, an Italian language media market does exist in the country.[42]
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+ Italian immigrants to South America have also brought a presence of the language to that continent. According to some sources, Italian is the second most spoken language in Argentina[43] after the official language of Spanish, although its number of speakers, mainly of the older generation, is decreasing.
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+ Italian is widely taught in many schools around the world, but rarely as the first foreign language. In the 21st century, technology also allows for the continual spread of the Italian language, as people have new ways to learn how to speak, read, and write languages at their own pace and at any given time. For example, the free website and application Duolingo has 4.94 million English speakers learning the Italian language.[44]
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+ According to the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, every year there are more than 200,000 foreign students who study the Italian language; they are distributed among the 90 Institutes of Italian Culture that are located around the world, in the 179 Italian schools located abroad, or in the 111 Italian lecturer sections belonging to foreign schools where Italian is taught as a language of culture.[45]
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+ From the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, thousands of Italians settled in Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Venezuela, as well as in Canada and the United States, where they formed a physical and cultural presence.
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+
69
+ In some cases, colonies were established where variants of regional languages of Italy were used, and some continue to use this regional language. Examples are Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, where Talian is used, and the town of Chipilo near Puebla, Mexico; each continues to use a derived form of Venetian dating back to the nineteenth century. Another example is Cocoliche, an Italian–Spanish pidgin once spoken in Argentina and especially in Buenos Aires, and Lunfardo.
70
+
71
+ Starting in late medieval times in much of Europe and the Mediterranean, Latin was replaced as the primary commercial language by Italian language variants (especially Tuscan and Venetian). These variants were consolidated during the Renaissance with the strength of Italy and the rise of humanism and the arts.
72
+
73
+ During that period, Italy held artistic sway over the rest of Europe. It was the norm for all educated gentlemen to make the Grand Tour, visiting Italy to see its great historical monuments and works of art. It thus became expected to learn at least some Italian. In England, while the classical languages Latin and Greek were the first to be learned, Italian became the second most common modern language after French, a position it held until the late eighteenth century when it tended to be replaced by German. John Milton, for instance, wrote some of his early poetry in Italian.
74
+
75
+ Within the Catholic church, Italian is known by a large part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy and is used in substitution for Latin in some official documents.
76
+
77
+ Italian loanwords continue to be used in most languages in matters of art and music (especially classical music including opera), in the design and fashion industries, in some sports like football[46] and especially in culinary terms.
78
+
79
+ In Italy, almost all the other languages spoken as the vernacular—other than standard Italian and some languages spoken among immigrant communities—are often imprecisely called "Italian dialects",[48] even though they are quite different, with some belonging to different linguistic branches. The only exceptions to this are twelve groups considered "historical language minorities", which are officially recognized as distinct minority languages by the law. On the other hand, Corsican (a language spoken on the French island of Corsica) is closely related to medieval Tuscan, from which Standard Italian derives and evolved.
80
+
81
+ The differences in the evolution of Latin in the different regions of Italy can be attributed to the presence of three other types of languages: substrata, superstrata, and adstrata. The most prevalent were substrata (the language of the original inhabitants), as the Italian dialects were most likely simply Latin as spoken by native cultural groups. Superstrata and adstrata were both less important. Foreign conquerors of Italy that dominated different regions at different times left behind little to no influence on the dialects. Foreign cultures with which Italy engaged in peaceful relations with, such as trade, had no significant influence either.[15]:19-20
82
+
83
+ Throughout Italy, regional variations of Standard Italian, called Regional Italian, are spoken. Regional differences can be recognized by various factors: the openness of vowels, the length of the consonants, and influence of the local language (for example, in informal situations andà, annà and nare replace the standard Italian andare in the area of Tuscany, Rome and Venice respectively for the infinitive "to go").
84
+
85
+ There is no definitive date when the various Italian variants of Latin—including varieties that contributed to modern Standard Italian—began to be distinct enough from Latin to be considered separate languages. One criterion for determining that two language variants are to be considered separate languages rather than variants of a single language is that they have evolved so that they are no longer mutually intelligible; this diagnostic is effective if mutual intelligibility is minimal or absent (e.g. in Romance, Romanian and Portuguese), but it fails in cases such as Spanish-Portuguese or Spanish-Italian, as native speakers of either pairing can understand each other well if they choose to do so. Nevertheless, on the basis of accumulated differences in morphology, syntax, phonology, and to some extent lexicon, it is not difficult to identify that for the Romance varieties of Italy, the first extant written evidence of languages that can no longer be considered Latin comes from the ninth and tenth centuries C.E. These written sources demonstrate certain vernacular characteristics and sometimes explicitly mention the use of the vernacular in Italy. Full literary manifestations of the vernacular began to surface around the 13th century in the form of various religious texts and poetry.[15]:21Although these are the first written records of Italian varieties separate from Latin, the spoken language had likely diverged long before the first written records appear, since those who were literate generally wrote in Latin even if they spoke other Romance varieties in person.
86
+
87
+ Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the use of Standard Italian became increasingly widespread and was mirrored by a decline in the use of the dialects. An increase in literacy was one of the main driving factors (one can assume that only literates were capable of learning Standard Italian, whereas those who were illiterate had access only to their native dialect). The percentage of literates rose from 25% in 1861 to 60% in 1911, and then on to 78.1% in 1951. Tullio De Mauro, an Italian linguist, has asserted that in 1861 only 2.5% of the population of Italy could speak Standard Italian. He reports that in 1951 that percentage had risen to 87%. The ability to speak Italian did not necessarily mean it was in everyday use, and most people (63.5%) still usually spoke their native dialects. In addition, other factors such as mass emigration, industrialization, and urbanization, and internal migrations after World War II, contributed to the proliferation of Standard Italian. The Italians who emigrated during the Italian diaspora beginning in 1861 were often of the uneducated lower class, and thus the emigration had the effect of increasing the percentage of literates, who often knew and understood the importance of Standard Italian, back home in Italy. A large percentage of those who had emigrated also eventually returned to Italy, often more educated than when they had left.[15]:35
88
+
89
+ The Italian dialects have declined in the modern era, as Italy unified under Standard Italian and continues to do so aided by mass media, from newspapers to radio to television.[15]:37
90
+
91
+ Notes:
92
+
93
+ Italian has a seven-vowel system, consisting of /a, ɛ, e, i, ɔ, o, u/, as well as 23 consonants. Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian phonology is conservative, preserving many words nearly unchanged from Vulgar Latin. Some examples:
94
+
95
+ The conservative nature of Italian phonology is partly explained by its origin. Italian stems from a literary language that is derived from the 13th-century speech of the city of Florence in the region of Tuscany, and has changed little in the last 700 years or so. Furthermore, the Tuscan dialect is the most conservative of all Italian dialects, radically different from the Gallo-Italian languages less than 100 miles to the north (across the La Spezia–Rimini Line).
96
+
97
+ The following are some of the conservative phonological features of Italian, as compared with the common Western Romance languages (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician, Catalan). Some of these features are also present in Romanian.
98
+
99
+ Compared with most other Romance languages, Italian has many inconsistent outcomes, where the same underlying sound produces different results in different words, e.g. laxāre > lasciare and lassare, captiāre > cacciare and cazzare, (ex)dēroteolāre > sdrucciolare, druzzolare and ruzzolare, rēgīna > regina and reina. Although in all these examples the second form has fallen out of usage, the dimorphism is thought to reflect the several-hundred-year period during which Italian developed as a literary language divorced from any native-speaking population, with an origin in 12th/13th-century Tuscan but with many words borrowed from languages farther to the north, with different sound outcomes. (The La Spezia–Rimini Line, the most important isogloss in the entire Romance-language area, passes only about 20 miles to the north of Florence.) Dual outcomes of Latin /p t k/ between vowels, such as lŏcum > luogo but fŏcum > fuoco, was once thought to be due to borrowing of northern voiced forms, but is now generally viewed as the result of early phonetic variation within Tuscany.
100
+
101
+ Some other features that distinguish Italian from the Western Romance languages:
102
+
103
+ Standard Italian also differs in some respects from most nearby Italian languages:
104
+
105
+ Italian phonotactics do not usually permit verbs and polysyllabic nouns to end with consonants, except in poetry and song, so foreign words may receive extra terminal vowel sounds.
106
+
107
+ Italian has a shallow orthography, meaning very regular spelling with an almost one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds. In linguistic terms, the writing system is close to being a phonemic orthography. The most important of the few exceptions are the following (see below for more details):
108
+
109
+ The Italian alphabet is typically considered to consist of 21 letters. The letters j, k, w, x, y are traditionally excluded, though they appear in loanwords such as jeans, whisky, taxi, xenofobo, xilofono. The letter ⟨x⟩ has become common in standard Italian with the prefix extra-, although (e)stra- is traditionally used; it is also common to use the Latin particle ex(-) to mean "former(ly)" as in: la mia ex ("my ex-girlfriend"), "Ex-Jugoslavia" ("Former Yugoslavia"). The letter ⟨j⟩ appears in the first name Jacopo and in some Italian place-names, such as Bajardo, Bojano, Joppolo, Jerzu, Jesolo, Jesi, Ajaccio, among others, and in Mar Jonio, an alternative spelling of Mar Ionio (the Ionian Sea). The letter ⟨j⟩ may appear in dialectal words, but its use is discouraged in contemporary standard Italian.[71] Letters used in foreign words can be replaced with phonetically equivalent native Italian letters and digraphs: ⟨gi⟩, ⟨ge⟩, or ⟨i⟩ for ⟨j⟩; ⟨c⟩ or ⟨ch⟩ for ⟨k⟩ (including in the standard prefix kilo-); ⟨o⟩, ⟨u⟩ or ⟨v⟩ for ⟨w⟩; ⟨s⟩, ⟨ss⟩, ⟨z⟩, ⟨zz⟩ or ⟨cs⟩ for ⟨x⟩; and ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ for ⟨y⟩.
110
+
111
+ Italian has geminate, or double, consonants, which are distinguished by length and intensity. Length is distinctive for all consonants except for /ʃ/, /dz/, /ts/, /ʎ/, /ɲ/, which are always geminate when between vowels, and /z/, which is always single.
112
+ Geminate plosives and affricates are realized as lengthened closures. Geminate fricatives, nasals, and /l/ are realized as lengthened continuants. There is only one vibrant phoneme /r/ but the actual pronunciation depends on context and regional accent. Generally one can find a flap consonant [ɾ] in unstressed position whereas [r] is more common in stressed syllables, but there may be exceptions. Especially people from the Northern part of Italy (Parma, Aosta Valley, South Tyrol) may pronounce /r/ as [ʀ], [ʁ], or [ʋ].[72]
113
+
114
+ Of special interest to the linguistic study of Regional Italian is the gorgia toscana, or "Tuscan Throat", the weakening or lenition of intervocalic /p/, /t/, and /k/ in the Tuscan language.
115
+
116
+ The voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ is present as a phoneme only in loanwords: for example, garage [ɡaˈraːʒ]. Phonetic [ʒ] is common in Central and Southern Italy as an intervocalic allophone of /dʒ/: gente [ˈdʒɛnte] 'people' but la gente [laˈʒɛnte] 'the people', ragione [raˈʒoːne] 'reason'.
117
+
118
+ Italian grammar is typical of the grammar of Romance languages in general. Cases exist for personal pronouns (nominative, oblique, accusative, dative), but not for nouns.
119
+
120
+ There are two basic classes of nouns in Italian, referred to as genders, masculine and feminine. Gender may be natural (ragazzo 'boy', ragazza 'girl') or simply grammatical with no possible reference to biological gender (masculine costo 'cost', feminine costa 'coast'). Masculine nouns typically end in -o (ragazzo 'boy'), with plural marked by -i (ragazzi 'boys'), and feminine nouns typically end in -a, with plural marked by -e (ragazza 'girl', ragazze 'girls'). For a group composed of boys and girls, ragazzi is the plural, suggesting that -i is a general plural. A third category of nouns is unmarked for gender, ending in -e in the singular and -i in the plural: legge 'law, f. sg.', leggi 'laws, f. pl.'; fiume 'river, m. sg.', fiumi 'rivers, m. pl.', thus assignment of gender is arbitrary in terms of form, enough so that terms may be identical but of distinct genders: fine meaning 'aim', 'purpose' is masculine, while fine meaning 'end, ending' (e.g. of a movie) is feminine, and both are fini in the plural, a clear instance of -i as a non-gendered default plural marker. These nouns often, but not always, denote inanimates. There are a number of nouns that have a masculine singular and a feminine plural, most commonly of the pattern m. sg. -o, f. pl. -a (miglio 'mile, m. sg.', miglia 'miles, f. pl.'; paio 'pair, m. sg., paia 'pairs, f. pl.'), and thus are sometimes considered neuter (these are usually derived from neuter Latin nouns). An instance of neuter gender also exists in pronouns of the third person singular.[73]
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+
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+ Examples:[74]
123
+
124
+ Nouns, adjectives, and articles inflect for gender and number (singular and plural).
125
+
126
+ Like in English, common nouns are capitalized when occurring at the beginning of a sentence. Unlike English, nouns referring to languages (e.g. Italian), speakers of languages, or inhabitants of an area (e.g. Italians) are not capitalized.[75]
127
+
128
+ There are three types of adjectives: descriptive, invariable and form-changing. Descriptive adjectives are the most common, and their endings change to match the number and gender of the noun they modify. Invariable adjectives are adjectives whose endings do not change. The form changing adjectives "buono (good), bello (beautiful), grande (big), and santo (saint)" change in form when placed before different types of nouns. Italian has three degrees for comparison of adjectives: positive, comparative, and superlative.[75]
129
+
130
+ The order of words in the phrase is relatively free compared to most European languages.[71] The position of the verb in the phrase is highly mobile. Word order often has a lesser grammatical function in Italian than in English. Adjectives are sometimes placed before their noun and sometimes after. Subject nouns generally come before the verb. Italian is a null-subject language, so that nominative pronouns are usually absent, with subject indicated by verbal inflections (e.g. amo 'I love', ama 's/he loves', amano 'they love'). Noun objects normally come after the verb, as do pronoun objects after imperative verbs, infinitives and gerunds, but otherwise pronoun objects come before the verb.
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+
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+ There are both indefinite and definite articles in Italian. There are four indefinite articles, selected by the gender of the noun they modify and by the phonological structure of the word that immediately follows the article. Uno is masculine singular, used before z (ts/ or /dz/), s+consonant, gn (/ɲ/), or ps, while masculine singular un is used before a word beginning with any other sound. The noun zio 'uncle' selects masculine singular, thus uno zio 'an uncle' or uno zio anziano 'an old uncle,' but un mio zio 'an uncle of mine'. The feminine singular indefinite articles are una, used before any consonant sound, and its abbreviated form, written un', used before vowels: una camicia 'a shirt', una camicia bianca 'a white shirt', un'altra camicia 'a different shirt'. There are seven forms for definite articles, both singular and plural. In the singular: lo, which corresponds to the uses of uno; il, which corresponds to the uses with consonant of un; la, which corresponds to the uses of una; l', used for both masculine and feminine singular before vowels. In the plural: gli is the masculine plural of lo and l'; i is the plural of il; and le is the plural of feminine la and l'.[75]
133
+
134
+ There are numerous contractions of prepositions with subsequent articles. There are numerous productive suffixes for diminutive, augmentative, pejorative, attenuating, etc., which are also used to create neologisms.
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+
136
+ There are 27 pronouns, grouped in clitic and tonic pronouns. Personal pronouns are separated into three groups: subject, object (which take the place of both direct and indirect objects), and reflexive. Second person subject pronouns have both a polite and a familiar form. These two different types of address are very important in Italian social distinctions. All object pronouns have two forms: stressed and unstressed (clitics). Unstressed object pronouns are much more frequently used, and come before the verb (Lo vedo. 'I see him.'). Stressed object pronouns come after the verb, and are used when emphasis is required, for contrast, or to avoid ambiguity (Vedo lui, ma non lei. 'I see him, but not her'). Aside from personal pronouns, Italian also has demonstrative, interrogative, possessive, and relative pronouns. There are two types of demonstrative pronouns: relatively near (this) and relatively far (that). Demonstratives in Italian are repeated before each noun, unlike in English.[75]
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+
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+ There are three regular sets of verbal conjugations, and various verbs are irregularly conjugated. Within each of these sets of conjugations, there are four simple (one-word) verbal conjugations by person/number in the indicative mood (present tense; past tense with imperfective aspect, past tense with perfective aspect, and future tense), two simple conjugations in the subjunctive mood (present tense and past tense), one simple conjugation in the conditional mood, and one simple conjugation in the imperative mood. Corresponding to each of the simple conjugations, there is a compound conjugation involving a simple conjugation of "to be" or "to have" followed by a past participle. "To have" is used to form compound conjugation when the verb is transitive ("Ha detto", "ha fatto": he/she has said, he/she has made/done), while "to be" is used in the case of verbs of motion and some other intransitive verbs ("È andato", "è stato": he/she has gone, he/she has been). "To be" may be used with transitive verbs, but in such a case it makes the verb passive ("Ê detto", "è fatto": it is said, it is made/done). This rule is not absolute, and some exceptions do exist.
139
+
140
+ Note: the plural form of verbs could also be used as an extremely formal (for example to noble people in monarchies) singular form (see royal we).
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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1
+ Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally elephants') and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals is the same, regardless of the species of origin. The trade in certain teeth and tusks other than elephant is well established and widespread; therefore, "ivory" can correctly be used to describe any mammalian teeth or tusks of commercial interest which are large enough to be carved or scrimshawed.[1]
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+
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+ Ivory has been valued since ancient times in art or manufacturing for making a range of items from ivory carvings to false teeth, piano keys, fans, dominoes[2] and joint tubes.[3] Elephant ivory is the most important source, but ivory from mammoth, walrus, hippopotamus, sperm whale, killer whale, narwhal and warthog are used as well.[4][5] Elk also have two ivory teeth, which are believed to be the remnants of tusks from their ancestors.[6]
4
+
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+ The national and international trade in ivory of threatened species such as African and Asian elephants is illegal.[7] The word ivory ultimately derives from the ancient Egyptian âb, âbu ("elephant"), through the Latin ebor- or ebur.[8]
6
+
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+ Both the Greek and Roman civilizations practiced ivory carving to make large quantities of high value works of art, precious religious objects, and decorative boxes for costly objects. Ivory was often used to form the white of the eyes of statues.
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+
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+ There is some evidence of either whale or walrus ivory used by the ancient Irish. Solinus, a Roman writer in the 3rd century claimed that the Celtic peoples in Ireland would decorate their sword-hilts with the 'teeth of beasts that swim in the sea'. Adomnan of Iona wrote a story about St Columba giving a sword decorated with carved ivory as a gift that a penitent would bring to his master so he could redeem himself from slavery.[9]
10
+
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+ The Syrian and North African elephant populations were reduced to extinction, probably due to the demand for ivory in the Classical world.[10]
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+
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+ The Chinese have long valued ivory for both art and utilitarian objects. Early reference to the Chinese export of ivory is recorded after the Chinese explorer Zhang Qian ventured to the west to form alliances to enable the eventual free movement of Chinese goods to the west; as early as the first century BC, ivory was moved along the Northern Silk Road for consumption by western nations.[11] Southeast Asian kingdoms included tusks of the Indian elephant in their annual tribute caravans to China. Chinese craftsmen carved ivory to make everything from images of deities to the pipe stems and end pieces of opium pipes.[12]
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+
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+ The Buddhist cultures of Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, traditionally harvested ivory from their domesticated elephants. Ivory was prized for containers due to its ability to keep an airtight seal. It was also commonly carved into elaborate seals utilized by officials to "sign" documents and decrees by stamping them with their unique official seal.[13]
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+
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+ In Southeast Asian countries, where Muslim Malay peoples live, such as Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, ivory was the material of choice for making the handles of kris daggers.
18
+ In the Philippines, ivory was also used to craft the faces and hands of Catholic icons and images of saints prevalent in the Santero culture.
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+
20
+ Tooth and tusk ivory can be carved into a vast variety of shapes and objects. Examples of modern carved ivory objects are okimono, netsukes, jewelry, flatware handles, furniture inlays, and piano keys. Additionally, warthog tusks, and teeth from sperm whales, orcas and hippos can also be scrimshawed or superficially carved, thus retaining their morphologically recognizable shapes.
21
+
22
+ Ivory usage in the last thirty years has moved towards mass production of souvenirs and jewelry. In Japan, the increase in wealth sparked consumption of solid ivory hanko – name seals – which before this time had been made of wood. These hanko can be carved out in a matter of seconds using machinery and were partly responsible for massive African elephant decline in the 1980s, when the African elephant population went from 1.3 million to around 600,000 in ten years.[14][15]
23
+
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+ Prior to the introduction of plastics, ivory had many ornamental and practical uses, mainly because of the white color it presents when processed. It was formerly used to make cutlery handles, billiard balls, piano keys, Scottish bagpipes, buttons and a wide range of ornamental items.
25
+
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+ Synthetic substitutes for ivory in the use of most of these items have been developed since 1800: the billiard industry challenged inventors to come up with an alternative material that could be manufactured;[16]:17 the piano industry abandoned ivory as a key covering material in the 1970s.
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+
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+ Ivory can be taken from dead animals – however, most ivory came from elephants that were killed for their tusks. For example, in 1930 to acquire 40 tons of ivory required the killing of approximately 700 elephants.[17] Other animals which are now endangered were also preyed upon, for example, hippos, which have very hard white ivory prized for making artificial teeth.[18] In the first half of the 20th century, Kenyan elephant herds were devastated because of demand for ivory, to be used for piano keys.[19]
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+
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+ During the Art Deco era from 1912 to 1940, dozens (if not hundreds) of European artists used ivory in the production of chryselephantine statues. Two of the most frequent users of ivory in their sculptured artworks were Ferdinand Preiss and Claire Colinet.[20]
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+
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+ Owing to the rapid decline in the populations of the animals that produce it, the importation and sale of ivory in many countries is banned or severely restricted. In the ten years preceding a decision in 1989 by CITES to ban international trade in African elephant ivory, the population of African elephants declined from 1.3 million to around 600,000. It was found by investigators from the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) that CITES sales of stockpiles from Singapore and Burundi (270 tonnes and 89.5 tonnes respectively) had created a system that increased the value of ivory on the international market, thus rewarding international smugglers and giving them the ability to control the trade and continue smuggling new ivory.[14][15]
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+
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+ Since the ivory ban, some Southern African countries have claimed their elephant populations are stable or increasing, and argued that ivory sales would support their conservation efforts. Other African countries oppose this position, stating that renewed ivory trading puts their own elephant populations under greater threat from poachers reacting to demand. CITES allowed the sale of 49 tonnes of ivory from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Botswana in 1997 to Japan.[21][22]
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+
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+ In 2007, under pressure from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, eBay banned all international sales of elephant-ivory products. The decision came after several mass slaughters of African elephants, most notably the 2006 Zakouma elephant slaughter in Chad. The IFAW found that up to 90% of the elephant-ivory transactions on eBay violated their own wildlife policies and could potentially be illegal. In October 2008, eBay expanded the ban, disallowing any sales of ivory on eBay.
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+
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+ A more recent sale in 2008 of 108 tonnes from the three countries and South Africa took place to Japan and China.[23][24] The inclusion of China as an "approved" importing country created enormous controversy, despite being supported by CITES, the World Wide Fund for Nature and Traffic.[25] They argued that China had controls in place and the sale might depress prices. However, the price of ivory in China has skyrocketed.[26] Some believe this may be due to deliberate price fixing by those who bought the stockpile, echoing the warnings from the Japan Wildlife Conservation Society on price-fixing after sales to Japan in 1997,[27] and monopoly given to traders who bought stockpiles from Burundi and Singapore in the 1980s.
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+
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+ A 2019 peer-reviewed study reported that the rate of African elephant poaching was in decline, with the annual poaching mortality rate peaking at over 10% in 2011 and falling to below 4% by 2017.[28] The study found that the "annual poaching rates in 53 sites strongly correlate with proxies of ivory demand in the main Chinese markets, whereas between-country and between-site variation is strongly associated with indicators of corruption and poverty."[28] Based on these findings, the study authors recommended action to both reduce demand for ivory in China and other main markets and to decrease corruption and poverty in Africa.[28]
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+
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+ In 2006, 19 African countries signed the "Accra Declaration" calling for a total ivory trade ban, and 20 range states attended a meeting in Kenya calling for a 20-year moratorium in 2007.[29]
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+
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+ The use and trade of elephant ivory have become controversial because they have contributed to seriously declining elephant populations in many countries. It is estimated that consumption in Great Britain alone in 1831 amounted to the deaths of nearly 4,000 elephants. In 1975, the Asian elephant was placed on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which prevents international trade between member states of species that are threatened by trade. The African elephant was placed on Appendix I in January 1990. Since then, some southern African countries have had their populations of elephants "downlisted" to Appendix II, allowing the domestic trade of non-ivory items; there have also been two "one off" sales of ivory stockpiles.[14][30][31][32][33]
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+
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+ In June 2015, more than a ton of confiscated ivory was crushed in New York's Times Square by the Wildlife Conservation Society to send a message that the illegal trade will not be tolerated. The ivory, confiscated in New York and Philadelphia, was sent up a conveyor belt into a rock crusher. The Wildlife Conservation Society has pointed out that the global ivory trade leads to the slaughter of up to 35,000 elephants a year in Africa. In June 2018, Conservative MEPs’ Deputy Leader Jacqueline Foster MEP urged the EU to follow the UK's lead and introduce a tougher ivory ban across Europe.[34]
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+
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+ China was the biggest market for poached ivory but announced they would phase out the legal domestic manufacture and sale of ivory products in May 2015. In September of the same year, China and the U.S. announced they would "enact a nearly complete ban on the import and export of ivory."[35] The Chinese market has a high degree of influence on the elephant population.[36][37]
49
+
50
+ Trade in the ivory from the tusks of dead woolly mammoths frozen in the tundra has occurred for 300 years and continues to be legal. Mammoth ivory is used today to make handcrafted knives and similar implements. Mammoth ivory is rare and costly because mammoths have been extinct for millennia, and scientists are hesitant to sell museum-worthy specimens in pieces.[38] Some estimates suggest that 10 million mammoths are still buried in Siberia.[39]
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+
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+ A species of hard nut is gaining popularity as a replacement for ivory, although its size limits its usability. It is sometimes called vegetable ivory, or tagua, and is the seed endosperm of the ivory nut palm commonly found in coastal rainforests of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia.[40]
53
+
54
+ Fossil walrus ivory from animals that died before 1972 is legal to buy and sell or possess in the United States, unlike many other types of ivory.[41]
55
+
56
+ The Bull Leaper, an ivory figurine from the palace of Knossos, Crete, 15th century BC
57
+
58
+ Ancient Greek ivory pyxis with griffins attacking stags. Late 15th century BC
59
+
60
+ A piece of carved ivory from the Pushkin Museum representing Christ blessing Emperor Constantine VII. Mid 10th century AD
61
+
62
+ Ivory cover of the Codex Aureus of Lorsch, c. 810, Carolingian dynasty, Victoria and Albert Museum
63
+
64
+ Madonna with Child from the Philippines, 1600's
65
+
66
+ Pig tusks
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+
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+ Ivory headpiece from Thailand
69
+
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+ Battle of Hannibal and Scipio (Alexander's victory over Poros), by Ignaz Elhafen, ca. 1700, Warsaw Royal Castle
71
+
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+ Section through the ivory tusk of a mammoth
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+
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+ Casket, ivory and silver, Caliphate of Córdoba, 966
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+
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+ Carving from Indonesia
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+
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+ The Morgan Casket, an 11th-century ivory casket attributed to Southern Italy, currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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+
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+ Virgin Mary head from the Philippines, 18th-19th century
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+
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+ A cubical ivory bead or game piece from the collections of the Hunt Museum
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+
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+ Ngo Mon ivory model from Vietnam
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+ Coordinates: 8°N 5°W / 8°N 5°W / 8; -5
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+ Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire,[a] officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country located on the south coast of West Africa. Ivory Coast's political capital is Yamoussoukro in the centre of the country, while its economic capital and largest city is the port city of Abidjan. It borders Guinea to the northwest, Liberia to the west, Mali to the northwest, Burkina Faso to the northeast, Ghana to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) to the south. The official language of the republic is French, with local indigenous languages also being widely used that include Baoulé, Dioula, Dan, Anyin, and Cebaara Senufo. In total, there are around 78 different languages spoken in Ivory Coast. The country has large populations of Muslims, Christians (primarily Roman Catholics) and various indigenous religions.
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+ Before its colonization by Europeans, Ivory Coast was home to several states, including Gyaaman, the Kong Empire and Baoulé. The area became a protectorate of France in 1843 and was consolidated as a French colony in 1893 amid the European scramble for Africa. It achieved independence in 1960, led by Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who ruled the country until 1993. Relatively stable by regional standards, Ivory Coast established close political and economic ties with its West African neighbors while at the same time maintaining close relations to the West, especially France. Ivory Coast experienced a coup d'état in 1999 and two religiously-grounded civil wars, first between 2002 and 2007[8] and again during 2010–2011. In 2000, the country adopted a new constitution.[9]
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+ Ivory Coast is a republic with strong executive power vested in its president. Through the production of coffee and cocoa, the country was an economic powerhouse in West Africa during the 1960s and 1970s, though it went through an economic crisis in the 1980s, contributing to a period of political and social turmoil. It was not until around 2014 that the gross domestic product again reached the level of its peak in the 1970s.[10] In the 21st century, the Ivorian economy has been largely market-based, and it still relies heavily on agriculture, with smallholder cash-crop production being predominant.[1]
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+ Originally, Portuguese and French merchant-explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries divided the west coast of Africa, very roughly, into four "coasts" reflecting local economies. The coast that the French named the Côte d'Ivoire and the Portuguese named the Costa Do Marfim —both, literally, mean "Coast of Ivory"— lay between what was known as the Guiné de Cabo Verde, so-called "Upper Guinea" at Cap-Vert, and Lower Guinea.[11][12] There was also a Pepper Coast, also known as the "Grain Coast" (present-day Liberia), a "Gold Coast" (Ghana), and a "Slave Coast" (Togo, Benin and Nigeria). Like those, the name "Ivory Coast" reflected the major trade that occurred on that particular stretch of the coast: the export of ivory.[13][11][14][15][16]
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+ Other names included the Côte de Dents,[b] literally "Coast of Teeth", again reflecting the trade in ivory;[18][19][13][12][16][20] the Côte de Quaqua, after the people whom the Dutch named the Quaqua (alternatively Kwa Kwa);[19][11][17] the Coast of the Five and Six Stripes, after a type of cotton fabric also traded there;[19] and the Côte du Vent,[c] the Windward Coast, after perennial local off-shore weather conditions.[13][11] One can find the name Cote de(s) Dents regularly used in older works.[19] It was used in Duckett's Dictionnaire (Duckett 1853) and by Nicolas Villault de Bellefond, for example, although Antoine François Prévost used Côte d'Ivoire.[20] In the 19th century, usage switched to Côte d'Ivoire.[19]
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+
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+ The coastline of the modern state is not quite coterminous with what the 15th- and 16th-century merchants knew as the "Teeth" or "Ivory" coast, which was considered to stretch from Cape Palmas to Cape Three Points and which is thus now divided between the modern states of Ghana and Ivory Coast (with a minute portion of Liberia).[18][14][20][17] It retained the name through French rule and independence in 1960.[21] The name had long since been translated literally into other languages,[d] which the post-independence government considered increasingly troublesome whenever its international dealings extended beyond the Francophone sphere. Therefore, in April 1986, the government declared that Côte d'Ivoire (or, more fully, République de Côte d'Ivoire[23]) would be its formal name for the purposes of diplomatic protocol, and since then officially refuses to recognize or accept any translation from French to another language in its international dealings.[22][24][25]
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+ Despite the Ivorian government's request, the English translation "Ivory Coast" (often "the Ivory Coast") is still frequently used in English by various media outlets and publications.[e][f]
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+ The first human presence in Ivory Coast has been difficult to determine because human remains have not been well preserved in the country's humid climate. However, newly found weapon and tool fragments (specifically, polished axes cut through shale and remnants of cooking and fishing) have been interpreted as a possible indication of a large human presence during the Upper Paleolithic period (15,000 to 10,000 BC),[34] or at the minimum, the Neolithic period.[35]
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+
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+ The earliest known inhabitants of Ivory Coast have left traces scattered throughout the territory. Historians believe that they were all either displaced or absorbed by the ancestors of the present indigenous inhabitants, who migrated south into the area before the 16th century. Such groups included the Ehotilé (Aboisso), Kotrowou (Fresco), Zéhiri (Grand Lahou), Ega and Diès (Divo).[36]
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+
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+ The first recorded history appears[when?] in the chronicles[where?] of North African (Berber) traders, who, from early Roman times, conducted a caravan trade across the Sahara in salt, slaves, gold, and other goods. The southern terminals of the trans-Saharan trade routes were located on the edge of the desert, and from there supplemental trade extended as far south as the edge of the rain forest. The more important terminals—Djenné, Gao, and Timbuctu—grew into major commercial centres around which the great Sudanic empires developed.
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+ By controlling the trade routes with their powerful military forces, these empires were able to dominate neighbouring states. The Sudanic empires also became centres of Islamic education. Islam had been introduced in the western Sudan by Muslim Berber traders from North Africa; it spread rapidly after the conversion of many important rulers. From the 11th century, by which time the rulers of the Sudanic empires had embraced Islam, it spread south into the northern areas of contemporary Ivory Coast.
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+ The Ghana Empire, the earliest of the Sudanic empires, flourished in the region encompassing present-day southeast Mauritania and southern Mali between the 4th and 13th centuries. At the peak of its power in the 11th century, its realms extended from the Atlantic Ocean to Timbuktu. After the decline of Ghana, the Mali Empire grew into a powerful Muslim state, which reached its apogee in the early part of the 14th century. The territory of the Mali Empire in Ivory Coast was limited to the north-west corner around Odienné.
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+ Its slow decline starting at the end of the 14th century followed internal discord and revolts by vassal states, one of which, Songhai, flourished as an empire between the 14th and 16th centuries. Songhai was also weakened by internal discord, which led to factional warfare. This discord spurred most of the migrations southward toward the forest belt. The dense rain forest covering the southern half of the country, created barriers to the large-scale political organizations that had arisen in the north. Inhabitants lived in villages or clusters of villages; their contacts with the outside world were filtered through long-distance traders. Villagers subsisted on agriculture and hunting.
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+ Five important states flourished in Ivory Coast during the pre-European early modern period. The Muslim Kong Empire was established by the Jola in the early 18th century in the north-central region inhabited by the Sénoufo, who had fled Islamization under the Mali Empire. Although Kong became a prosperous center of agriculture, trade, and crafts, ethnic diversity and religious discord gradually weakened the kingdom. In 1895 the city of Kong would be sacked and conquered by Samori Ture of the Wassoulou Empire.
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+
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+ The Abron kingdom of Gyaaman was established in the 17th century by an Akan group, the Abron, who had fled the developing Ashanti confederation of Asanteman in what is present-day Ghana. From their settlement south of Bondoukou, the Abron gradually extended their hegemony over the Dyula people in Bondoukou, who were recent arrivals from the market city of Begho. Bondoukou developed into a major center of commerce and Islam. The kingdom's Quranic scholars attracted students from all parts of West Africa. In the mid-17th century in east-central Ivory Coast, other Akan groups fleeing the Asante established a Baoulé kingdom at Sakasso and two Agni kingdoms, Indénié and Sanwi.
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+ The Baoulé, like the Ashanti, developed a highly centralized political and administrative structure under three successive rulers. It finally split into smaller chiefdoms. Despite the breakup of their kingdom, the Baoulé strongly resisted French subjugation. The descendants of the rulers of the Agni kingdoms tried to retain their separate identity long after Ivory Coast's independence; as late as 1969, the Sanwi attempted to break away from Ivory Coast and form an independent kingdom.[37] The current king of Sanwi is Amon N'Douffou V (since 2005).
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+ Compared to neighboring Ghana, Ivory Coast, though practicing slavery and slave raiding, suffered little from the slave trade as such. European slave and merchant ships preferred other areas along the coast. The earliest recorded European voyage to West Africa was made by the Portuguese in 1482. The first West African French settlement, Saint Louis, was founded in the mid-17th century in Senegal, while at about the same time, the Dutch ceded to the French a settlement at Goree Island, off Dakar. A French mission was established in 1637 at Assinie near the border with the Gold Coast (now Ghana). The Europeans suppressed the local practice of slavery at this time and forbade the trade to their merchants.
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+ Assinie's survival was precarious, however; the French were not firmly established in Ivory Coast until the mid-19th century. In 1843–4, French admiral Louis Edouard Bouët-Willaumez signed treaties with the kings of the Grand Bassam and Assinie regions, making their territories a French protectorate. French explorers, missionaries, trading companies, and soldiers gradually extended the area under French control inland from the lagoon region. Pacification was not accomplished until 1915.
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+ Activity along the coast stimulated European interest in the interior, especially along the two great rivers, the Senegal and the Niger. Concerted French exploration of West Africa began in the mid-19th century, but moved slowly, based more on individual initiative than on government policy. In the 1840s, the French concluded a series of treaties with local West African chiefs that enabled the French to build fortified posts along the Gulf of Guinea to serve as permanent trading centres.
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+ The first posts in Ivory Coast included one at Assinie and another at Grand Bassam, which became the colony's first capital. The treaties provided for French sovereignty within the posts, and for trading privileges in exchange for fees or coutumes paid annually to the local chiefs for the use of the land. The arrangement was not entirely satisfactory to the French, because trade was limited and misunderstandings over treaty obligations often arose. Nevertheless, the French government maintained the treaties, hoping to expand trade.
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+ France also wanted to maintain a presence in the region to stem the increasing influence of the British along the Gulf of Guinea coast. The French built naval bases to keep out non-French traders and began a systematic pacification of the interior to stop raids on their settlements. They accomplished this only after a long war in the 1890s against Mandinka tribesmen, mostly from the Gambia. However, raids by the Baoulé and other eastern tribes continued until 1917.[citation needed]
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+ The defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the subsequent annexation by Germany of the French province of Alsace-Lorraine caused the French government to abandon its colonial ambitions and withdraw its military garrisons from its West African trading posts, leaving them in the care of resident merchants. The trading post at Grand Bassam in Ivory Coast was left in the care of a shipper from Marseille, Arthur Verdier, who in 1878 was named Resident of the Establishment of Ivory Coast.[37]
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+ In 1886, to support its claims of effective occupation, France again assumed direct control of its West African coastal trading posts and embarked on an accelerated program of exploration in the interior. In 1887, Lieutenant Louis Gustave Binger began a two-year journey that traversed parts of Ivory Coast's interior. By the end of the journey, he had concluded four treaties establishing French protectorates in Ivory Coast. Also in 1887, Verdier's agent, Marcel Treich-Laplène, negotiated five additional agreements that extended French influence from the headwaters of the Niger River Basin through Ivory Coast.
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+ By the end of the 1880s, France had established control over the coastal regions of Ivory Coast, and in 1889 Britain recognized French sovereignty in the area. That same year, France named Treich-Laplène titular governor of the territory. In 1893, Ivory Coast became a French colony, and Captain Binger was appointed governor. Agreements with Liberia in 1892 and with Britain in 1893 determined the eastern and western boundaries of the colony, but the northern boundary was not fixed until 1947 because of efforts by the French government to attach parts of Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso) and French Sudan (present-day Mali) to Ivory Coast for economic and administrative reasons.
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+ France's main goal was to stimulate the production of exports. Coffee, cocoa, and palm oil crops were soon planted along the coast. Ivory Coast stood out as the only West African country with a sizeable population of settlers; elsewhere in West and Central Africa, the French and British were largely bureaucrats. As a result, French citizens owned one-third of the cocoa, coffee, and banana plantations and adopted the local forced-labor system.
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+ Throughout the early years of French rule, French military contingents were sent inland to establish new posts. Some of the native population and former slave-owning class resisted French settlers. Among those offering greatest resistance was Samori Ture, who in the 1880s and 1890s was conquering his neighbors, re-establishing slavery and founding the Wassoulou Empire, which extended over large parts of present-day Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast. Samori Ture's large, well-equipped army, which could manufacture and repair its own firearms, attracted some support throughout the region from chiefs who sought to play the two sides off against each other. The French responded to Samori Ture's expansion and conquest with military pressure. French campaigns against Samori Ture, which were met with greater resistance than usual in tribal warfare, intensified in the mid-1890s until he was captured in 1898 and his empire dissolved.
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+ France's imposition of a head tax in 1900 to support the colony's public works program provoked unexpected protests. Many Ivoirians saw the tax as a violation of the protectorate treaties because they felt that France was demanding the equivalent of a coutume from the local kings, rather than the reverse. Many, especially in the interior, also considered the tax a humiliating symbol of submission.[38] In 1905, the French officially abolished slavery in most of French West Africa.[39] From 1904 to 1958, Ivory Coast was part of the Federation of French West Africa. It was a colony and an overseas territory under the Third Republic. In World War I, France organized regiments from Ivory Coast to fight in France, and colony resources were rationed from 1917–1919. Some 150,000 men from Ivory Coast died in World War I. Until the period following World War II, governmental affairs in French West Africa were administered from Paris. France's policy in West Africa was reflected mainly in its philosophy of "association", meaning that all Africans in Ivory Coast were officially French "subjects", but without rights to representation in Africa or France.
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+ French colonial policy incorporated concepts of assimilation and association. Based on the assumed superiority of French culture, in practice the assimilation policy meant the extension of French language, institutions, laws, and customs to the colonies. The policy of association also affirmed the superiority of the French in the colonies, but it entailed different institutions and systems of laws for the colonizer and the colonized. Under this policy, the Africans in Ivory Coast were allowed to preserve their own customs insofar as they were compatible with French interests, such as the recent abolition of the slave trade.
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+ An indigenous elite trained in French administrative practice formed an intermediary group between French and Africans. After 1930, a small number of Westernized Ivoirians were granted the right to apply for French citizenship. Most Ivoirians, however, were classified as French subjects and were governed under the principle of association.[40] As subjects of France, natives outside the above-mentioned civilized elite had no political rights. They were drafted for work in mines, on plantations, as porters, and on public projects as part of their tax responsibility. They were expected to serve in the military and were subject to the indigénat, a separate system of law.[41]
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+ In World War II, the Vichy regime remained in control until 1942, when British troops invaded without much resistance. Winston Churchill gave power back to members of General Charles de Gaulle's provisional government. By 1943, the Allies had returned French West Africa to the French. The Brazzaville Conference of 1944, the first Constituent Assembly of the Fourth Republic in 1946, and France's gratitude for African loyalty during World War II, led to far-reaching governmental reforms in 1946. French citizenship was granted to all African "subjects", the right to organize politically was recognized, and various forms of forced labor were abolished. Between the years 1944–1946 many national conferences and constituent assemblies took place between France's Vichy regime and provisional governments in Ivory Coast. Governmental reforms were established by late 1946, which granted French citizenship to all African "subjects" under the colonial control of the French.
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+ Until 1958, governors appointed in Paris administered the colony of Ivory Coast, using a system of direct, centralized administration that left little room for Ivoirian participation in policy-making. While British colonial administrations adopted divide-and-rule policies elsewhere, applying ideas of assimilation only to the educated elite, the French were interested in ensuring that the small but influential elite was sufficiently satisfied with the status quo to refrain from anti-French sentiment. Although strongly opposed to the practices of association, educated Ivoirians believed that they would achieve equality with their French peers through assimilation rather than through complete independence from France. After the assimilation doctrine was implemented through the postwar reforms, though, Ivoirian leaders realized that even assimilation implied the superiority of the French over the Ivoirians. Some of them thought that discrimination and political inequality would end only with independence; others thought the problem of the division between the tribal culture and modernity would continue.[42]
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+ Félix Houphouët-Boigny, the son of a Baoulé chief, became Ivory Coast's father of independence. In 1944, he formed the country's first agricultural trade union for African cocoa farmers like himself. Angered that colonial policy favoured French plantation owners, the union members united to recruit migrant workers for their own farms. Houphouët-Boigny soon rose to prominence and within a year was elected to the French Parliament in Paris. A year later, the French abolished forced labour. Houphouët-Boigny established a strong relationship with the French government, expressing a belief that Ivory Coast would benefit from the relationship, which it did for many years. France appointed him as a minister, the first African to become a minister in a European government.
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+ A turning point in relations with France was reached with the 1956 Overseas Reform Act (Loi Cadre), which transferred a number of powers from Paris to elected territorial governments in French West Africa and also removed the remaining voting inequities. In 1958, Ivory Coast became an autonomous member of the French Community, which had replaced the French Union.
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+ At independence (1960), the country was easily French West Africa's most prosperous, contributing over 40% of the region's total exports. When Houphouët-Boigny became the first president, his government gave farmers good prices for their products to further stimulate production, which was further boosted by a significant immigration of workers from surrounding countries. Coffee production increased significantly, catapulting Ivory Coast into third place in world output, behind Brazil and Colombia. By 1979, the country was the world's leading producer of cocoa. It also became Africa's leading exporter of pineapples and palm oil. French technicians contributed to the "Ivoirian miracle". In other African nations, the people drove out the Europeans following independence, but in Ivory Coast, they poured in. The French community grew from only 30,000 prior to independence to 60,000 in 1980, most of them teachers, managers, and advisors.[43] For 20 years, the economy maintained an annual growth rate of nearly 10%—the highest of Africa's non-oil-exporting countries.
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+ Houphouët-Boigny's one-party rule was not amenable to political competition. Laurent Gbagbo, who would become the president of Ivory Coast in 2000, had to flee the country in the 1980s, after he incurred the ire of Houphouët-Boigny by founding the Front Populaire Ivoirien.[44] Houphouët-Boigny banked on his broad appeal to the population, who continued to elect him. He was criticized for his emphasis on developing large-scale projects.
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+ Many felt the millions of dollars spent transforming his home village, Yamoussoukro, into the new political capital were wasted; others supported his vision to develop a centre for peace, education, and religion in the heart of the country. In the early 1980s, the world recession and a local drought sent shock waves through the Ivoirian economy. Due to the overcutting of timber and collapsing sugar prices, the country's external debt increased three-fold. Crime rose dramatically in Abidjan as an influx of villagers exacerbated unemployment caused by the recession.[45]
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+ In 1990, hundreds of civil servants went on strike, joined by students protesting institutional corruption. The unrest forced the government to support multiparty democracy. Houphouët-Boigny became increasingly feeble, and died in 1993. He favoured Henri Konan Bédié as his successor.
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+ In October 1995, Bédié overwhelmingly won re-election against a fragmented and disorganised opposition. He tightened his hold over political life, jailing several hundred opposition supporters. In contrast, the economic outlook improved, at least superficially, with decreasing inflation and an attempt to remove foreign debt.
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+ Unlike Houphouët-Boigny, who was very careful to avoid any ethnic conflict and left access to administrative positions open to immigrants from neighbouring countries, Bedié emphasized the concept of Ivoirité to exclude his rival Alassane Ouattara, who had two northern Ivorian parents, from running for future presidential election. As people originating from foreign countries are a large part of the Ivoirian population, this policy excluded many people from Ivoirian nationality, and the relationship between various ethnic groups became strained, which resulted in two civil wars in the following decades.
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+ Similarly, Bedié excluded many potential opponents from the army. In late 1999, a group of dissatisfied officers staged a military coup, putting General Robert Guéï in power. Bedié fled into exile in France. The new leadership reduced crime and corruption, and the generals pressed for austerity and campaigned in the streets for a less wasteful society.
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+ A presidential election was held in October 2000 in which Laurent Gbagbo vied with Guéï, but it was not peaceful. The lead-up to the election was marked by military and civil unrest. Following a public uprising that resulted in around 180 deaths, Guéï was swiftly replaced by Gbagbo. Alassane Ouattara was disqualified by the country's Supreme Court, due to his alleged Burkinabé nationality. The existing and later reformed constitution [under Guéï] did not allow noncitizens to run for the presidency. This sparked violent protests in which his supporters, mainly from the country's north, battled riot police in the capital, Yamoussoukro.
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+ In the early hours of 19 September 2002, while the President was in Italy, an armed uprising occurred. Troops who were to be demobilised mutinied, launching attacks in several cities. The battle for the main gendarmerie barracks in Abidjan lasted until mid-morning, but by lunchtime, the government forces had secured Abidjan. They had lost control of the north of the country, and rebel forces made their stronghold in the northern city of Bouaké.
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+ The rebels threatened to move on Abidjan again, and France deployed troops from its base in the country to stop their advance. The French said they were protecting their own citizens from danger, but their deployment also helped government forces. That the French were helping either side was not established as a fact; but each side accused the French of supporting the opposite side. Whether French actions improved or worsened the situation in the long term is disputed. What exactly happened that night is also disputed. The government claimed that former president Robert Guéï led a coup attempt, and state TV showed pictures of his dead body in the street; counter-claims stated that he and 15 others had been murdered at his home, and his body had been moved to the streets to incriminate him. Alassane Ouattara took refuge in the German embassy; his home had been burned down. President Gbagbo cut short his trip to Italy and on his return stated, in a television address, that some of the rebels were hiding in the shanty towns where foreign migrant workers lived. Gendarmes and vigilantes bulldozed and burned homes by the thousands, attacking residents.
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+ An early ceasefire with the rebels, which had the backing of much of the northern populace, proved short-lived, and fighting over the prime cocoa-growing areas resumed. France sent in troops to maintain the cease-fire boundaries,[46] and militias, including warlords and fighters from Liberia and Sierra Leone, took advantage of the crisis to seize parts of the west.
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+ In January 2003, Gbagbo and rebel leaders signed accords creating a "government of national unity". Curfews were lifted, and French troops patrolled the western border of the country. The unity government was unstable, and central problems remained, with neither side achieving its goals. In March 2004, 120 people were killed at an opposition rally, and subsequent mob violence led to the evacuation of foreign nationals. A later report concluded the killings were planned. Though UN peacekeepers were deployed to maintain a "Zone of Confidence", relations between Gbagbo and the opposition continued to deteriorate.
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+ Early in November 2004, after the peace agreement had effectively collapsed because the rebels refused to disarm, Gbagbo ordered airstrikes against the rebels. During one of these airstrikes in Bouaké, on 6 November 2004, French soldiers were hit, and nine were killed; the Ivorian government said it was a mistake, but the French claimed it was deliberate. They responded by destroying most Ivoirian military aircraft (two Su-25 planes and five helicopters), and violent retaliatory riots against the French broke out in Abidjan.[47]
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+ Gbagbo's original term as president expired on 30 October 2005, but due to the lack of disarmament, an election was deemed impossible, so his term in office was extended for a maximum of one year, according to a plan worked out by the African Union and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.[48] With the late-October deadline approaching in 2006, the election was regarded as very unlikely to be held by that point, and the opposition and the rebels rejected the possibility of another term extension for Gbagbo.[49] The UN Security Council endorsed another one-year extension of Gbagbo's term on 1 November 2006; however, the resolution provided for strengthening of Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny's powers. Gbagbo said the next day that elements of the resolution deemed to be constitutional violations would not be applied.[50]
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+ A peace accord between the government and the rebels, or New Forces, was signed on 4 March 2007, and subsequently Guillaume Soro, leader of the New Forces, became prime minister. These events were seen by some observers as substantially strengthening Gbagbo's position.[51]
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+ According to UNICEF, at the end of the civil war, water and sanitation infrastructure had been greatly damaged. Communities across the country required repairs to their water supply.[52]
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+ The presidential elections that should have been organized in 2005 were postponed until November 2010. The preliminary results announced independently by the president of the Electoral Commission from the headquarters of Ouattara due to concern about fraud in that commission.[clarification needed] They showed a loss for Gbagbo in favour of former prime minister Alassane Ouattara.[53]
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+ The ruling FPI contested the results before the Constitutional Council, charging massive fraud in the northern departments controlled by the rebels of the New Forces. These charges were contradicted by United Nations observers (unlike African Union observers). The report of the results led to severe tension and violent incidents. The Constitutional Council, which consisted of Gbagbo supporters, declared the results of seven northern departments unlawful and that Gbagbo had won the elections with 51% of the vote – instead of Ouattara winning with 54%, as reported by the Electoral Commission.[53] After the inauguration of Gbagbo, Ouattara—who was recognized as the winner by most countries and the United Nations—organized an alternative inauguration. These events raised fears of a resurgence of the civil war; thousands of refugees fled the country.[53]
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+ The African Union sent Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, to mediate the conflict. The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution recognising Alassane Ouattara as winner of the elections, based on the position of the Economic Community of West African States, which suspended Ivory Coast from all its decision-making bodies[54] while the African Union also suspended the country's membership.[55]
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+ In 2010, a colonel of Ivory Coast armed forces, Nguessan Yao, was arrested in New York in a year-long U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation charged with procuring and illegal export of weapons and munitions: 4,000 9 mm handguns, 200,000 rounds of ammunition, and 50,000 tear-gas grenades, in violation of a UN embargo.[56] Several other Ivory Coast officers were released because they had diplomatic passports. His accomplice, Michael Barry Shor, an international trader, was located in Virginia.[57][58]
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+ The 2010 presidential election led to the 2010–2011 Ivorian crisis and the Second Ivorian Civil War. International organizations reported numerous human-rights violations by both sides. In the city of Duékoué, hundreds of people were killed. In nearby Bloléquin, dozens were killed.[59] UN and French forces took military action against Gbagbo.[60] Gbagbo was taken into custody after a raid into his residence on 11 April 2011. The country was severely damaged by the war, and it was observed that Ouattara had inherited a formidable challenge to rebuild the economy and reunite Ivorians.[61] Gbagbo was taken to the International Criminal Court in The Hague in January 2016. He was declared acquitted by the court but given a conditional release[62] in January 2019.[63] Belgium has been designated as a host country.[64]
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+ Ivory Coast is a country of western sub-Saharan Africa. It borders Liberia and Guinea in the west, Mali and Burkina Faso in the north, Ghana in the east, and the Gulf of Guinea (Atlantic Ocean) in the south. The country lies between latitudes 4° and 11°N, and longitudes 2° and 9°W. Around 64.8% of the land is agricultural land; arable land amounted to 9.1%, permanent pasture 41.5%, and permanent crops 14.2%. Water pollution is amongst one of the biggest issues that the country is currently facing.[65]
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+ Since 2011, Ivory Coast has been administratively organised into 12 districts plus two district-level autonomous cities. The districts are divided into 31 regions; the regions are divided into 108 departments; and the departments are divided into 510 sub-prefectures.[66] In some instances, multiple villages are organised into communes. The autonomous districts are not divided into regions, but they do contain departments, sub-prefectures, and communes.
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+
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+ Since 2011, governors for the 12 non-autonomous districts have not been appointed, and as a result these districts have not yet begun to function as governmental entities.
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+
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+ The following is the list of districts, district capitals and each district's regions:
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+
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+ The Ivory Coast is recorded to have over 1,200 animal species including 223 mammals, 702 birds, 125 reptiles, 38 amphibians, and 111 species of fish, alongside 4,700 plant species. It is the most biodiverse country in West Africa, with the majority of its wildlife populating living in the nation's rugged interior.[69] The nation has nine national parks, the largest of which is Assgny National Park, which occupies an area of around 17,000 hectares or 42,000 acres.[70]
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+
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+ The government is divided into three branches: the executive power, the legislative power, and the judicial power. The Parliament of Ivory Coast, consists of the indirectly elected Senate and the National Assembly which has 255 members, elected for five-year terms.
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+ Since 1983, Ivory Coast's capital has been Yamoussoukro, while Abidjan was the administrative center. Most countries maintain their embassies in Abidjan. The Ivorian population has suffered because of the ongoing civil war. International human-rights organizations have noted problems with the treatment of captive non-combatants by both sides and the re-emergence of child slavery in cocoa production.[71]
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+ Although most of the fighting ended by late 2004, the country remained split in two, with the north controlled by the New Forces. A new presidential election was expected to be held in October 2005, and the rival parties agreed in March 2007 to proceed with this, but it continued to be postponed until November 2010 due to delays in its preparation.
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+
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+ Elections were finally held in 2010. The first round of elections was held peacefully, and widely hailed as free and fair. Runoffs were held 28 November 2010, after being delayed one week from the original date of 21 November. Laurent Gbagbo as president ran against former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara.[72] On 2 December, the Electoral Commission declared that Ouattara had won the election by a margin of 54% to 46%. In response, the Gbagbo-aligned Constitutional Council rejected the declaration, and the government announced that country's borders had been sealed. An Ivorian military spokesman said, "The air, land, and sea border of the country are closed to all movement of people and goods."[73]
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+
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+ In Africa, Ivorian diplomacy favors step-by-step economic and political cooperation. In 1959, Ivory Coast formed the Council of the Entente with Dahomey (Benin), Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), Niger and Togo; in 1965, the African and Malagasy Common Organization (OCAM); in 1972, the Economic Community of West Africa (CEAO). The latter organisation changed to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1975. A founding member of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 1963 and then of the African Union in 2000, Ivory Coast defends respect for state sovereignty and peaceful cooperation between African countries.
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+
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+ Worldwide, Ivorian diplomacy is committed to fair economic and trade relations, including the fair trade of agricultural products and the promotion of peaceful relations with all countries. Ivory Coast thus maintains diplomatic relations with international organizations and countries all around the world. In particular, it has signed United Nations treaties such as the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1967 Protocol, and the 1969 Convention Governing Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. Ivory Coast is a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, African Union, La Francophonie, Latin Union, Economic Community of West African States, and South Atlantic Peace and Cooperation Zone.
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+
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+ Ivory Coast has partnered with nations of the Sub-Saharan region to strengthen water and sanitation infrastructure. This has been done mainly with the help of organizations such as UNICEF and Nestle.[75]
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+
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+ In 2015, the United Nations engineered the Sustainable Development Goals (replacing the Millennium Development Goals). They focus on health, education, poverty, hunger, climate change, water sanitation, and hygiene. A major focus was clean water and salinisation. Experts working on this field have designed the WASH concept. WASH focuses on safe drinkable water, hygiene, and proper sanitation. The group has had a major impact on the sub-Saharan region of Africa, particularly Ivory Coast. By 2030, they plan to have universal and equal access to safe and affordable drinking water.[76]
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+
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+ As of 2012[update], major equipment items reported by the Ivory Coast Army included 10 T-55 tanks (marked as potentially unserviceable), five AMX-13 light tanks, 34 reconnaissance vehicles, 10 BMP-½ armoured infantry fighting vehicles, 41 wheeled APCs, and 36+ artillery pieces.[77]
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+
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+ In 2012, the Ivory Coast Air Force consisted of one Mil Mi-24 attack helicopter and three SA330L Puma transports (marked as potentially unserviceable).[78]
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+
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+ In 2017, Ivory Coast signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.[79]
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+
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+ Ivory Coast has, for the region, a relatively high income per capita (US$1,662 in 2017) and plays a key role in transit trade for neighboring, landlocked countries. The country is the largest economy in the West African Economic and Monetary Union, constituting 40% of the monetary union's total GDP. The country is the world's largest exporter of cocoa beans, and the fourth-largest exporter of goods, in general, in sub-Saharan Africa (following South Africa, Nigeria, and Angola).[80]
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+
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+ In 2009, cocoa-bean farmers earned $2.53 billion for cocoa exports and were projected to produce 630,000 metric tons in 2013.[81][82] According to the Hershey Company, the price of cocoa beans is expected to rise dramatically in upcoming years.[83] Ivory Coast also has 100,000 rubber farmers who earned a total of $105 million in 2012.[84][85]
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+
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+ Close ties to France since independence in 1960, diversification of agricultural exports, and encouragement of foreign investment have been factors in the economic growth of Ivory Coast. In recent years, Ivory Coast has been subject to greater competition and falling prices in the global marketplace for its primary agricultural crops: coffee and cocoa. That, compounded with high internal corruption, makes life difficult for the grower, those exporting into foreign markets, and the labor force, inasmuch as instances of indentured labor have been reported in the country's cocoa and coffee production in every edition of the U.S. Department of Labor's List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor since 2009.[86]
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+
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+ Ivory Coast's economy has grown faster than that of most other African countries since independence. One possible reason for this might be taxes on export agriculture. Ivory Coast, Nigeria, and Kenya were exceptions as their rulers were themselves large cash-crop producers, and the newly independent countries desisted from imposing penal rates of taxation on export agriculture, with the result that their economies were doing well.[87]
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+
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+ A major study of the issue in 2016, published in Fortune Magazine in the U.S., concluded that approximately 2.1 million children in [several countries of] West Africa "still do the dangerous and physically taxing work of harvesting cocoa". The report was doubtful as to whether the situation can be improved significantly:
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+ "According to the 2015 edition of the Cocoa Barometer, a biennial report examining the economics of cocoa that’s published by a consortium of nonprofits, the average farmer in Ghana in the 2013–14 growing season made just 84¢ per day, and farmers in Ivory Coast a mere 50¢. That puts them well below the World Bank’s new $1.90 per day standard for extreme poverty, even if you factor in the 13% rise in the price of cocoa last year.
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+
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+ And in that context the challenge of eradicating child labor feels immense, and the chocolate companies’ newfound commitment to expanding the investments in cocoa communities not quite sufficient. ...
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+ 'Best-case scenario, we’re only doing 10% of what's needed.' Getting that other 90% won't be easy. 'It's such a colossal issue,' says Sona Ebai, who grew up farming cocoa in Cameroon and is the former secretary general of the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries. 'I think child labor cannot be just the responsibility of industry to solve. I think it's the proverbial all-hands-on-deck: government, civil society, the private sector.'He pauses, taking in his own thought for a moment. 'And there, you really need leadership.'"
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+ [88]
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+
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+ Ivory Coast's first national census in 1975 counted 6.7 million inhabitants.[89] Until 1998 the country's population increased to 15,366,672,[90] 20,617,068 in 2009,[1] and 23,919,000 in July 2014.[91]
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+ According to 2012 government survey, the fertility rate was 5.0 children born per woman, with 3.7 in urban areas and 6.3 in rural areas.[92]
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+ French, the official language, is taught in schools and serves as a lingua franca in the country. An estimated 70 languages are spoken in Ivory Coast. One of the most common is Dyula, which acts as a trade language, as well as a language commonly spoken by the Muslim population.
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+ Around 7.5 million people of Ivory Coast made up the work force in 2009. The work force took a hit, especially in the private sector, during the early 2000s due to the numerous economic crises since 1999. Furthermore, these crises caused companies to close and move locations, especially in Ivory Coast's tourism industry, transit and banking companies. Job markets decreasing posed as a huge issue in Ivory Coast society as unemployment rates grew. Unemployment rates raised to 9.4% in 2012.[93]
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+ Solutions proposed to decrease unemployment included diversifying jobs in small trade. This division of work encouraged farmers and the agricultural sector. Self-employment policy, established by the Ivorian government, allowed for very strong growth in the field with an increase of 142% in seven years from 1995.[94]
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+ Ethnic groups in Ivory Coast include Akan (42.1%), Voltaiques or Gur (17.6%), Northern Mandés (16.5%), Krous (11%), Southern Mandés (10%), and others (2.8%, including 100,000 Lebanese[95] and 45,000 French; 2004). About 77% of the population is considered Ivorian.
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+
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+ Since Ivory Coast has established itself as one of the most successful West African nations, about 20% of the population (about 3.4 million) consists of workers from neighbouring Liberia, Burkina Faso, and Guinea.
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+ About 4% of the population is of non-African ancestry. Many are French,[96] Lebanese,[97][98] Vietnamese and Spanish citizens, as well as evangelical missionaries from the United States and Canada. In November 2004, around 10,000 French and other foreign nationals evacuated Ivory Coast due to attacks from pro-government youth militias.[99] Aside from French nationals, native-born descendants of French settlers who arrived during the country's colonial period are present.
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+ Religion in Ivory Coast (2017 estimate)[100][101]
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+ Ivory Coast is a religiously diverse country, in which adherents of Islam (mostly Sunni) represented 42.9% of the total population in 2014, while followers of Christianity (mostly Catholic and Evangelical) represented 33.9% of the population. In addition 19.1% of Ivorians claimed to be irreligious, and 3.6% reported following traditional African religions.[102] In 2009, according to U.S. Department of State estimates, Christians and Muslims each made up 35 to 40% of the population, while an estimated 25% of the population practised traditional (animist) religions.[103]
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+
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+ Ivory Coast's capital, Yamoussoukro, is home to the largest church building in the world, the Basilica of Our Lady of Peace of Yamoussoukro.
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+ Basilica of our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro; one of the largest Christian places of worship in the world.
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+
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+ Central mosque in Marcory.
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+
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+ Life expectancy at birth was 42 for males in 2004; for females it was 47.[104] Infant mortality was 118 of 1000 live births.[104] Twelve physicians are available per 100,000 people.[104] About a quarter of the population lives below the international poverty line of US$1.25 a day.[105] About 36% of women have undergone female genital mutilation.[106] According to 2010 estimates, Ivory Coast has the 27th-highest maternal mortality rate in the world.[107] The HIV/AIDS rate was 19th-highest in the world, estimated in 2012 at 3.20% among adults aged 15–49 years.[108]
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+
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+ A large part of the adult population, in particular women, is illiterate. Many children between 6 and 10 years are not enrolled in school.[109] The majority of students in secondary education are male. At the end of secondary education, students can sit the baccalauréat examination.
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+
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+ The country has a number of universities, such as the Université de Cocody in Abidjan and the Université de Bouaké in Bouaké. In 2012, there were 57,541 students enrolled at post-secondary diploma level, 23,008 students studying for a bachelor's or master's degree and 269 PhD students. Enrolment in tertiary education suffered during the political crisis, dropping from 9.03% to 4.46% of the 18-to-25-year cohort between 2009 and 2012.[110]
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+
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+ According to the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Ivory Coast devotes about 0.13% of GDP to GERD. Apart from low investment, other challenges include inadequate scientific equipment, the fragmentation of research organizations and a failure to exploit and protect research results.[110]
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+
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+ The share of the National Development Plan for 2012–2015 that is devoted to scientific research remains modest. Within the section on greater wealth creation and social equity (63.8% of the total budget for the Plan), just 1.2% is allocated to scientific research. Twenty-four national research programmes group public and private research and training institutions around a common research theme. These programmes correspond to eight priority sectors for 2012–2015, namely: health, raw materials, agriculture, culture, environment, governance, mining and energy; and technology.[110]
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+ Each of the ethnic groups in Ivory Coast has its own music genres, most showing strong vocal polyphony. Talking drums are also common, especially among the Appolo, and polyrhythms, another African characteristic, are found throughout Ivory Coast and are especially common in the southwest.
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+ Popular music genres from Ivory Coast include zoblazo, zouglou, and Coupé-Décalé. A few Ivorian artists who have known international success are Magic Système, Alpha Blondy, Meiway, Dobet Gnahoré, Tiken Jah Fakoly, DJ Arafat, Serge Beynaud and Christina Goh, of Ivorian descent.
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+ The country has been the host for several major African sporting events, with the most recent being the 2013 African Basketball Championship. In the past, the country hosted the 1984 Africa Cup of Nations, in which its football team finished fifth, and the 1985 African Basketball Championship, where its basketball team won the gold medal.
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+ 400m metre runner Gabriel Tiacoh won the silver medal in the men's 400 metres at the 1984 Olympics.
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+ The country hosted the 8th edition of Jeux de la Francophonie in 2017.
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+ The most popular sport in Ivory Coast is association football. The national football team has played in the World Cup three times, in Germany 2006, in South Africa 2010, and Brazil in 2014. The women's football team played in the 2015 Women's World Cup in Canada. Ivory Coast notable footballers are Didier Drogba, Yaya Touré and Kolo Touré, Eric Bailly, Gervinho, Nicolas Pépé, and Wilfried Zaha.
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+ Rugby union is also popular, and the national rugby union team qualified to play at the Rugby World Cup in South Africa in 1995. Ivory Coast also won two Africa Cups one 1992 and the other 2015.
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+ Ivory Coast is also known for Taekwondo with worldwide superstars like Cheick Cissé, Ruth Gbagbi and Firmin Zokou. The country ranks sencond in Africa all time medals winning.
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+ And sport of athletics, with some names like Marie-josée Ta Lou and Murielle Ahouré.
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+ The traditional cuisine of Ivory Coast is very similar to that of neighboring countries in West Africa in its reliance on grains and tubers. Cassava and plantains are significant parts of Ivorian cuisine. A type of corn paste called aitiu is used to prepare corn balls, and peanuts are widely used in many dishes. Attiéké is a popular side dish in Ivory Coast made with grated cassava, a vegetable-based couscous. A common street food is alloco, ripe banana fried in palm oil, spiced with steamed onions and chili and eaten alone, with grilled fish or boiled eggs. Chicken is commonly consumed and has a unique flavor due to its lean, low-fat mass in this region. Seafood includes tuna, sardines, shrimp, and bonito, which is similar to tuna. Mafé is a common dish consisting of meat in a peanut sauce.[111]
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+ Slow-simmered stews with various ingredients are another common food staple in Ivory Coast.[111] Kedjenou is a dish consisting of chicken and vegetables slow-cooked in a sealed pot with little or no added liquid, which concentrates the flavors of the chicken and vegetables and tenderizes the chicken.[111] It is usually cooked in a pottery jar called a canary, over a slow fire, or cooked in an oven.[111] Bangui is a local palm wine.
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+ Ivorians have a particular kind of small, open-air restaurant called a maquis, which is unique to the region. A maquis normally features braised chicken and fish covered in onions and tomatoes, served with attiéké or kedjenou.
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1
+ Ivry-sur-Seine (French pronunciation: ​[i.vʁi.syʁ.sɛn]) is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 5.3 km (3.3 mi) from the center of Paris.
2
+
3
+ Paris's main Asian district, the Quartier Asiatique in the 13th arrondissement, borders the commune and now extends into the northern parts of Ivry. Asian commercial activity, especially Chinese and Vietnamese, has greatly increased in Ivry-sur-Seine during the past two decades. The commune contains one of the highest concentrations of Vietnamese in France, who began settling in the city in the late 1970s after the Vietnam War.[2]
4
+
5
+ Politically, Ivry-sur-Seine has historically demonstrated strong electoral support for the French Communist Party (PCF). Between 1925 and 2015 (except for the period of German occupation in World War II) the office of mayor was held by just three individuals: Georges Marrane, Jacques Laloë, and Pierre Gosnat, all members of the Communist Party.
6
+
7
+ Ivry-sur-Seine is twinned with Bishop Auckland in County Durham, England.
8
+
9
+ Originally, Ivry-sur-Seine was called simply Ivry. The name Ivry comes from Medieval Latin Ivriacum or Ibriacum, perhaps meaning "estate of Eburius (the Latinized form of the Gallic patronym Eburos)", a Gallo-Roman landowner.
10
+
11
+ In 1897, the name of the commune officially became Ivry-sur-Seine (meaning "Ivry upon Seine"), in order to distinguish it from other communes of France also called Ivry.
12
+
13
+ On 1 January 1860, the city of Paris was enlarged by annexing neighbouring communes. On that occasion, about a third of the commune of Ivry-sur-Seine was annexed to Paris, and now forms the Chinatown area of the 13th arrondissement of Paris.
14
+
15
+ Ivry-sur-Seine is perhaps most famous as the place of execution of Jean Bastien-Thiry in March 1963. Richard Ellman also notes that James Joyce's daughter, Lucia, received psychiatric treatment in the commune's hospital in 1936 and was visited by both Joyce and Samuel Beckett.[3]
16
+
17
+ Fnac has its head office in the commune.[4] The head office moved there in 2008.[5] E.Leclerc's head office is in the commune.[6]
18
+
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+ Ivry-sur-Seine is served by two railway stations on the Paris Métro Line 7: Pierre et Marie Curie and Mairie d'Ivry.
20
+
21
+ The east of the commune is served by Ivry-sur-Seine station on Paris RER line C with stops at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the city centre.
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+
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+ Orly Airport is located to the south of Ivry-sur-Seine.
24
+
25
+ Senior high schools:
26
+
27
+ Colleges and universities:
28
+
29
+ Ivry RER Railway Station
30
+
31
+ Old Windmill (Moulin de la Tour) near the 13th Arrondissement
32
+
33
+ Port à l'anglais Bridge
34
+
35
+ October Sky Ivry sur Seine Church
36
+
37
+ Main Building IPSA Paris
38
+
39
+ 2 An immigrant is a person born in a foreign country not having French citizenship at birth. Note that an immigrant may have acquired French citizenship since moving to France, but is still considered an immigrant in French statistics. On the other hand, persons born in France with foreign citizenship (the children of immigrants) are not listed as immigrants.
40
+
41
+ As of circa 1998 Ivry and Vitry-sur-Seine had a combined Asian population of 3,600. That year about 250 Asians from those communes worked in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, and the overall demographics of Ivry and Vitry Asians were similar to those in the 13th arrondissement.[7]
42
+
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1
+ Ivry-sur-Seine (French pronunciation: ​[i.vʁi.syʁ.sɛn]) is a commune in the Val-de-Marne department in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 5.3 km (3.3 mi) from the center of Paris.
2
+
3
+ Paris's main Asian district, the Quartier Asiatique in the 13th arrondissement, borders the commune and now extends into the northern parts of Ivry. Asian commercial activity, especially Chinese and Vietnamese, has greatly increased in Ivry-sur-Seine during the past two decades. The commune contains one of the highest concentrations of Vietnamese in France, who began settling in the city in the late 1970s after the Vietnam War.[2]
4
+
5
+ Politically, Ivry-sur-Seine has historically demonstrated strong electoral support for the French Communist Party (PCF). Between 1925 and 2015 (except for the period of German occupation in World War II) the office of mayor was held by just three individuals: Georges Marrane, Jacques Laloë, and Pierre Gosnat, all members of the Communist Party.
6
+
7
+ Ivry-sur-Seine is twinned with Bishop Auckland in County Durham, England.
8
+
9
+ Originally, Ivry-sur-Seine was called simply Ivry. The name Ivry comes from Medieval Latin Ivriacum or Ibriacum, perhaps meaning "estate of Eburius (the Latinized form of the Gallic patronym Eburos)", a Gallo-Roman landowner.
10
+
11
+ In 1897, the name of the commune officially became Ivry-sur-Seine (meaning "Ivry upon Seine"), in order to distinguish it from other communes of France also called Ivry.
12
+
13
+ On 1 January 1860, the city of Paris was enlarged by annexing neighbouring communes. On that occasion, about a third of the commune of Ivry-sur-Seine was annexed to Paris, and now forms the Chinatown area of the 13th arrondissement of Paris.
14
+
15
+ Ivry-sur-Seine is perhaps most famous as the place of execution of Jean Bastien-Thiry in March 1963. Richard Ellman also notes that James Joyce's daughter, Lucia, received psychiatric treatment in the commune's hospital in 1936 and was visited by both Joyce and Samuel Beckett.[3]
16
+
17
+ Fnac has its head office in the commune.[4] The head office moved there in 2008.[5] E.Leclerc's head office is in the commune.[6]
18
+
19
+ Ivry-sur-Seine is served by two railway stations on the Paris Métro Line 7: Pierre et Marie Curie and Mairie d'Ivry.
20
+
21
+ The east of the commune is served by Ivry-sur-Seine station on Paris RER line C with stops at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the city centre.
22
+
23
+ Orly Airport is located to the south of Ivry-sur-Seine.
24
+
25
+ Senior high schools:
26
+
27
+ Colleges and universities:
28
+
29
+ Ivry RER Railway Station
30
+
31
+ Old Windmill (Moulin de la Tour) near the 13th Arrondissement
32
+
33
+ Port à l'anglais Bridge
34
+
35
+ October Sky Ivry sur Seine Church
36
+
37
+ Main Building IPSA Paris
38
+
39
+ 2 An immigrant is a person born in a foreign country not having French citizenship at birth. Note that an immigrant may have acquired French citizenship since moving to France, but is still considered an immigrant in French statistics. On the other hand, persons born in France with foreign citizenship (the children of immigrants) are not listed as immigrants.
40
+
41
+ As of circa 1998 Ivry and Vitry-sur-Seine had a combined Asian population of 3,600. That year about 250 Asians from those communes worked in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, and the overall demographics of Ivry and Vitry Asians were similar to those in the 13th arrondissement.[7]
42
+
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1
+
2
+
3
+ John Griffith London (born John Griffith Chaney;[1] January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916)[2][3][4][5] was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer in the world of commercial magazine fiction, he was one of the first writers to become a worldwide celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. He was also an innovator in the genre that would later become known as science fiction.[6]
4
+
5
+ His most famous works include The Call of the Wild and White Fang, both set in the Klondike Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote about the South Pacific in stories such as "The Pearls of Parlay", and "The Heathen".
6
+
7
+ London was part of the radical literary group "The Crowd" in San Francisco and a passionate advocate of unionization, workers' rights, socialism, and eugenics.[7][8] He wrote several works dealing with these topics, such as his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, his non-fiction exposé The People of the Abyss, War of the Classes, and Before Adam.
8
+
9
+ Jack London's mother, Flora Wellman, was the fifth and youngest child of Pennsylvania Canal builder Marshall Wellman and his first wife, Eleanor Garrett Jones. Marshall Wellman was descended from Thomas Wellman, an early Puritan settler in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.[9] Flora left Ohio and moved to the Pacific coast when her father remarried after her mother died. In San Francisco, Flora worked as a music teacher and spiritualist, claiming to channel the spirit of a Sauk chief, Black Hawk.[10][clarification needed]
10
+
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+ Biographer Clarice Stasz and others believe London's father was astrologer William Chaney.[11] Flora Wellman was living with Chaney in San Francisco when she became pregnant. Whether Wellman and Chaney were legally married is unknown. Stasz notes that in his memoirs, Chaney refers to London's mother Flora Wellman as having been "his wife"; he also cites an advertisement in which Flora called herself "Florence Wellman Chaney".[12]
12
+
13
+ According to Flora Wellman's account, as recorded in the San Francisco Chronicle of June 4, 1875, Chaney demanded that she have an abortion. When she refused, he disclaimed responsibility for the child. In desperation, she shot herself. She was not seriously wounded, but she was temporarily deranged. After giving birth, Flora sent the baby for wet-nursing to Virginia (Jennie) Prentiss, a formerly enslaved African-American woman and a neighbor. Prentiss was an important maternal figure throughout London's life, and he would later refer to her as his primary source of love and affection as a child.[13]
14
+
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+ Late in 1876, Flora Wellman married John London, a partially disabled Civil War veteran, and brought her baby John, later known as Jack, to live with the newly married couple. The family moved around the San Francisco Bay Area before settling in Oakland, where London completed public grade school. The Prentiss family moved with the Londons, and remained a stable source of care for the young Jack.[13]
16
+
17
+ In 1897, when he was 21 and a student at the University of California, Berkeley, London searched for and read the newspaper accounts of his mother's suicide attempt and the name of his biological father. He wrote to William Chaney, then living in Chicago. Chaney responded that he could not be London's father because he was impotent; he casually asserted that London's mother had relations with other men and averred that she had slandered him when she said he insisted on an abortion. Chaney concluded by saying that he was more to be pitied than London.[14] London was devastated by his father's letter; in the months following, he quit school at Berkeley and went to the Klondike during the gold rush boom.
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+
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+ London was born near Third and Brannan Streets in San Francisco. The house burned down in the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake; the California Historical Society placed a plaque at the site in 1953. Although the family was working class, it was not as impoverished as London's later accounts claimed.[citation needed] London was largely self-educated.[citation needed]
20
+ In 1885, London found and read Ouida's long Victorian novel Signa.[15][16][15] He credited this as the seed of his literary success.[17] In 1886, he went to the Oakland Public Library and found a sympathetic librarian, Ina Coolbrith, who encouraged his learning. (She later became California's first poet laureate and an important figure in the San Francisco literary community).[18]
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+
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+ In 1889, London began working 12 to 18 hours a day at Hickmott's Cannery. Seeking a way out, he borrowed money from his foster mother Virginia Prentiss, bought the sloop Razzle-Dazzle from an oyster pirate named French Frank, and became an oyster pirate himself. In his memoir, John Barleycorn, he claims also to have stolen French Frank's mistress Mamie.[19][20][21] After a few months, his sloop became damaged beyond repair. London hired on as a member of the California Fish Patrol.
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+
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+ In 1893, he signed on to the sealing schooner Sophie Sutherland, bound for the coast of Japan. When he returned, the country was in the grip of the panic of '93 and Oakland was swept by labor unrest. After grueling jobs in a jute mill and a street-railway power plant, London joined Coxey's Army and began his career as a tramp. In 1894, he spent 30 days for vagrancy in the Erie County Penitentiary at Buffalo, New York. In The Road, he wrote:
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+
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+ Man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County Pen. I say 'unprintable'; and in justice I must also say undescribable. They were unthinkable to me until I saw them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface of things as I there saw them.
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+
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+ After many experiences as a hobo and a sailor, he returned to Oakland and attended Oakland High School. He contributed a number of articles to the high school's magazine, The Aegis. His first published work was "Typhoon off the Coast of Japan", an account of his sailing experiences.[22]
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+
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+ As a schoolboy, London often studied at Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon, a port-side bar in Oakland. At 17, he confessed to the bar's owner, John Heinold, his desire to attend university and pursue a career as a writer. Heinold lent London tuition money to attend college.
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+ London desperately wanted to attend the University of California, located in Berkeley. In 1896, after a summer of intense studying to pass certification exams, he was admitted. Financial circumstances forced him to leave in 1897, and he never graduated. No evidence has surfaced that he ever wrote for student publications while studying at Berkeley.[23]
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+
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+ While at Berkeley, London continued to study and spend time at Heinold's saloon, where he was introduced to the sailors and adventurers who would influence his writing. In his autobiographical novel, John Barleycorn, London mentioned the pub's likeness seventeen times. Heinold's was the place where London met Alexander McLean, a captain known for his cruelty at sea.[24] London based his protagonist Wolf Larsen, in the novel The Sea-Wolf, on McLean.[25]
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+ Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon is now unofficially named Jack London's Rendezvous in his honor.[26]
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+
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+ On July 12, 1897, London (age 21) and his sister's husband Captain Shepard sailed to join the Klondike Gold Rush. This was the setting for some of his first successful stories. London's time in the harsh Klondike, however, was detrimental to his health. Like so many other men who were malnourished in the goldfields, London developed scurvy. His gums became swollen, leading to the loss of his four front teeth. A constant gnawing pain affected his hip and leg muscles, and his face was stricken with marks that always reminded him of the struggles he faced in the Klondike. Father William Judge, "The Saint of Dawson", had a facility in Dawson that provided shelter, food and any available medicine to London and others. His struggles there inspired London's short story, "To Build a Fire" (1902, revised in 1908),[A] which many critics assess as his best.[citation needed]
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+
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+ His landlords in Dawson were mining engineers Marshall Latham Bond and Louis Whitford Bond, educated at the Bachelor's level at the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale and at the Master's level at Stanford, respectively. The brothers' father, Judge Hiram Bond, was a wealthy mining investor. While the Bond brothers were at Stanford Hiram at the suggestion of his brother bought the New Park Estate at Santa Clara as well as a local bank. The Bonds, especially Hiram, were active Republicans. Marshall Bond's diary mentions friendly sparring with London on political issues as a camp pastime.[citation needed]
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+
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+ London left Oakland with a social conscience and socialist leanings; he returned to become an activist for socialism. He concluded that his only hope of escaping the work "trap" was to get an education and "sell his brains". He saw his writing as a business, his ticket out of poverty, and, he hoped, a means of beating the wealthy at their own game. On returning to California in 1898, London began working to get published, a struggle described in his novel, Martin Eden (serialized in 1908, published in 1909). His first published story since high school was "To the Man On Trail", which has frequently been collected in anthologies.[citation needed] When The Overland Monthly offered him only five dollars for it—and was slow paying—London came close to abandoning his writing career. In his words, "literally and literarily I was saved" when The Black Cat accepted his story "A Thousand Deaths", and paid him $40—the "first money I ever received for a story".[citation needed]
43
+
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+ London began his writing career just as new printing technologies enabled lower-cost production of magazines. This resulted in a boom in popular magazines aimed at a wide public audience and a strong market for short fiction.[citation needed] In 1900, he made $2,500 in writing, about $77,000 in today's currency.[citation needed]
45
+ Among the works he sold to magazines was a short story known as either "Diable" (1902) or "Bâtard" (1904), two editions of the same basic story; London received $141.25 for this story on May 27, 1902.[27] In the text, a cruel French Canadian brutalizes his dog, and the dog retaliates and kills the man. London told some of his critics that man's actions are the main cause of the behavior of their animals, and he would show this in another story, The Call of the Wild.[28]
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+
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+ In early 1903, London sold The Call of the Wild to The Saturday Evening Post for $750, and the book rights to Macmillan for $2,000. Macmillan's promotional campaign propelled it to swift success.[29]
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+
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+ While living at his rented villa on Lake Merritt in Oakland, California, London met poet George Sterling; in time they became best friends. In 1902, Sterling helped London find a home closer to his own in nearby Piedmont. In his letters London addressed Sterling as "Greek", owing to Sterling's aquiline nose and classical profile, and he signed them as "Wolf". London was later to depict Sterling as Russ Brissenden in his autobiographical novel Martin Eden (1910) and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon (1913).[citation needed]
50
+
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+ In later life London indulged his wide-ranging interests by accumulating a personal library of 15,000 volumes. He referred to his books as "the tools of my trade".[30]
52
+
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+ London married Elizabeth Mae (or May) "Bessie" Maddern on April 7, 1900, the same day The Son of the Wolf was published. Bess had been part of his circle of friends for a number of years. She was related to stage actresses Minnie Maddern Fiske and Emily Stevens. Stasz says, "Both acknowledged publicly that they were not marrying out of love, but from friendship and a belief that they would produce sturdy children."[31] Kingman says, "they were comfortable together... Jack had made it clear to Bessie that he did not love her, but that he liked her enough to make a successful marriage."[32]
54
+
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+ London met Bessie through his friend at Oakland High School, Fred Jacobs; she was Fred's fiancée. Bessie, who tutored at Anderson's University Academy in Alameda California, tutored Jack in preparation for his entrance exams for the University of California at Berkeley in 1896. Jacobs was killed aboard the USAT Scandia in 1897, but Jack and Bessie continued their friendship, which included taking photos and developing the film together.[33] This was the beginning of Jack's passion for photography.
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+
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+ During the marriage, London continued his friendship with Anna Strunsky, co-authoring The Kempton-Wace Letters, an epistolary novel contrasting two philosophies of love. Anna, writing "Dane Kempton's" letters, arguing for a romantic view of marriage, while London, writing "Herbert Wace's" letters, argued for a scientific view, based on Darwinism and eugenics. In the novel, his fictional character contrasted two women he had known.[citation needed]
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+
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+ London's pet name for Bess was "Mother-Girl" and Bess's for London was "Daddy-Boy".[34] Their first child, Joan, was born on January 15, 1901, and their second, Bessie "Becky" (also reported as Bess), on October 20, 1902. Both children were born in Piedmont, California. Here London wrote one of his most celebrated works, The Call of the Wild.
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+
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+ While London had pride in his children, the marriage was strained. Kingman says that by 1903 the couple were close to separation as they were "extremely incompatible". "Jack was still so kind and gentle with Bessie that when Cloudsley Johns was a house guest in February 1903 he didn't suspect a breakup of their marriage."[35]
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+ London reportedly complained to friends Joseph Noel and George Sterling:
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+ [Bessie] is devoted to purity. When I tell her morality is only evidence of low blood pressure, she hates me. She'd sell me and the children out for her damned purity. It's terrible. Every time I come back after being away from home for a night she won't let me be in the same room with her if she can help it.[36]
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+
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+ Stasz writes that these were "code words for [Bess's] fear that [Jack] was consorting with prostitutes and might bring home venereal disease."[37]
68
+
69
+ On July 24, 1903, London told Bessie he was leaving and moved out. During 1904, London and Bess negotiated the terms of a divorce, and the decree was granted on November 11, 1904.[38]
70
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71
+ London accepted an assignment of the San Francisco Examiner to cover the Russo-Japanese War in early 1904, arriving in Yokohama on January 25, 1904. He was arrested by Japanese authorities in Shimonoseki, but released through the intervention of American ambassador Lloyd Griscom. After travelling to Korea, he was again arrested by Japanese authorities for straying too close to the border with Manchuria without official permission, and was sent back to Seoul. Released again, London was permitted to travel with the Imperial Japanese Army to the border, and to observe the Battle of the Yalu.
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+ London asked William Randolph Hearst, the owner of the San Francisco Examiner, to be allowed to transfer to the Imperial Russian Army, where he felt that restrictions on his reporting and his movements would be less severe. However, before this could be arranged, he was arrested for a third time in four months, this time for assaulting his Japanese assistants, whom he accused of stealing the fodder for his horse. Released through the personal intervention of President Theodore Roosevelt, London departed the front in June 1904.[39]
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+
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+ On August 18, 1904, London went with his close friend, the poet George Sterling, to "Summer High Jinks" at the Bohemian Grove. London was elected to honorary membership in the Bohemian Club and took part in many activities. Other noted members of the Bohemian Club during this time included Ambrose Bierce, Gelett Burgess, Allan Dunn, John Muir, Frank Norris,[citation needed] and Herman George Scheffauer.
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+
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+ Beginning in December 1914, London worked on The Acorn Planter, A California Forest Play, to be performed as one of the annual Grove Plays, but it was never selected. It was described as too difficult to set to music.[40] London published The Acorn Planter in 1916.[41]
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+
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+ After divorcing Maddern, London married Charmian Kittredge in 1905. London had been introduced to Kittredge in 1900 by her aunt Netta Eames, who was an editor at Overland Monthly magazine in San Francisco. The two met prior to his first marriage but became lovers years later after Jack and Bessie London visited Wake Robin, Netta Eames' Sonoma County resort, in 1903. London was injured when he fell from a buggy, and Netta arranged for Charmian to care for him. The two developed a friendship, as Charmian, Netta, her husband Roscoe, and London were politically aligned with socialist causes. At some point the relationship became romantic, and Jack divorced his wife to marry Charmian, who was five years his senior.[42]
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+ Biographer Russ Kingman called Charmian "Jack's soul-mate, always at his side, and a perfect match." Their time together included numerous trips, including a 1907 cruise on the yacht Snark to Hawaii and Australia.[43] Many of London's stories are based on his visits to Hawaii, the last one for 10 months beginning in December 1915.[44]
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+ The couple also visited Goldfield, Nevada, in 1907, where they were guests of the Bond brothers, London's Dawson City landlords. The Bond brothers were working in Nevada as mining engineers.
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+ London had contrasted the concepts of the "Mother Girl" and the "Mate Woman" in The Kempton-Wace Letters. His pet name for Bess had been "Mother-Girl;" his pet name for Charmian was "Mate-Woman."[45] Charmian's aunt and foster mother, a disciple of Victoria Woodhull, had raised her without prudishness.[46] Every biographer alludes to Charmian's uninhibited sexuality.[47][48]
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+
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+ Joseph Noel calls the events from 1903 to 1905 "a domestic drama that would have intrigued the pen of an Ibsen.... London's had comedy relief in it and a sort of easy-going romance."[49] In broad outline, London was restless in his first marriage, sought extramarital sexual affairs, and found, in Charmian Kittredge, not only a sexually active and adventurous partner, but his future life-companion. They attempted to have children; one child died at birth, and another pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.[50]
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+
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+ In 1906, London published in Collier's magazine his eye-witness report of the San Francisco earthquake.[51]
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+ In 1905, London purchased a 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) ranch in Glen Ellen, Sonoma County, California, on the eastern slope of Sonoma Mountain.[52] He wrote: "Next to my wife, the ranch is the dearest thing in the world to me." He desperately wanted the ranch to become a successful business enterprise. Writing, always a commercial enterprise with London, now became even more a means to an end: "I write for no other purpose than to add to the beauty that now belongs to me. I write a book for no other reason than to add three or four hundred acres to my magnificent estate."
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+ Stasz writes that London "had taken fully to heart the vision, expressed in his agrarian fiction, of the land as the closest earthly version of Eden ... he educated himself through the study of agricultural manuals and scientific tomes. He conceived of a system of ranching that today would be praised for its ecological wisdom."[citation needed] He was proud to own the first concrete silo in California, a circular piggery that he designed. He hoped to adapt the wisdom of Asian sustainable agriculture to the United States. He hired both Italian and Chinese stonemasons, whose distinctly different styles are obvious.
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+ The ranch was an economic failure. Sympathetic observers such as Stasz treat his projects as potentially feasible, and ascribe their failure to bad luck or to being ahead of their time. Unsympathetic historians such as Kevin Starr suggest that he was a bad manager, distracted by other concerns and impaired by his alcoholism. Starr notes that London was absent from his ranch about six months a year between 1910 and 1916 and says, "He liked the show of managerial power, but not grinding attention to detail .... London's workers laughed at his efforts to play big-time rancher [and considered] the operation a rich man's hobby."[53]
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+ London spent $80,000 ($2,280,000 in current value) to build a 15,000-square-foot (1,400 m2) stone mansion called Wolf House on the property. Just as the mansion was nearing completion, two weeks before the Londons planned to move in, it was destroyed by fire.
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+ London's last visit to Hawaii,[54] beginning in December 1915, lasted eight months. He met with Duke Kahanamoku, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana'ole, Queen Lili'uokalani and many others, before returning to his ranch in July 1916.[44] He was suffering from kidney failure, but he continued to work.
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+ The ranch (abutting stone remnants of Wolf House) is now a National Historic Landmark and is protected in Jack London State Historic Park.
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+ London witnessed animal cruelty in the training of circus animals, and his subsequent novels Jerry of the Islands and Michael, Brother of Jerry included a foreword entreating the public to become more informed about this practice.[55] In 1918, the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the American Humane Education Society teamed up to create the Jack London Club, which sought to inform the public about cruelty to circus animals and encourage them to protest this establishment.[56] Support from Club members led to a temporary cessation of trained animal acts at Ringling-Barnum and Bailey in 1925.[57]
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+ London died November 22, 1916, in a sleeping porch in a cottage on his ranch. London had been a robust man but had suffered several serious illnesses, including scurvy in the Klondike.[58] Additionally, during travels on the Snark, he and Charmian picked up unspecified tropical infections and diseases, including yaws.[59] At the time of his death, he suffered from dysentery, late-stage alcoholism, and uremia;[60] he was in extreme pain and taking morphine.
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+ London's ashes were buried on his property not far from the Wolf House. London's funeral took place on November 26, 1916, attended only by close friends, relatives, and workers of the property. In accordance with his wishes, he was cremated and buried next to some pioneer children, under a rock that belonged to the Wolf House. After Charmian's death in 1955, she was also cremated and then buried with her husband in the same spot that her husband chose. The grave is marked by a mossy boulder. The buildings and property were later preserved as Jack London State Historic Park, in Glen Ellen, California.
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+ Because he was using morphine, many older sources describe London's death as a suicide, and some still do.[61] This conjecture appears to be a rumor, or speculation based on incidents in his fiction writings. His death certificate[62] gives the cause as uremia, following acute renal colic.
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+
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+ The biographer Stasz writes, "Following London's death, for a number of reasons, a biographical myth developed in which he has been portrayed as an alcoholic womanizer who committed suicide. Recent scholarship based upon firsthand documents challenges this caricature."[63] Most biographers, including Russ Kingman, now agree he died of uremia aggravated by an accidental morphine overdose.[64]
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+ London's fiction featured several suicides. In his autobiographical memoir John Barleycorn, he claims, as a youth, to have drunkenly stumbled overboard into the San Francisco Bay, "some maundering fancy of going out with the tide suddenly obsessed me". He said he drifted and nearly succeeded in drowning before sobering up and being rescued by fishermen. In the dénouement of The Little Lady of the Big House, the heroine, confronted by the pain of a mortal gunshot wound, undergoes a physician-assisted suicide by morphine. Also, in Martin Eden, the principal protagonist, who shares certain characteristics with London, drowns himself.[citation needed]
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+ London was vulnerable to accusations of plagiarism, both because he was such a conspicuous, prolific, and successful writer and because of his methods of working. He wrote in a letter to Elwyn Hoffman, "expression, you see—with me—is far easier than invention." He purchased plots and novels from the young Sinclair Lewis and used incidents from newspaper clippings as writing material.[citation needed]
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+ In July 1901, two pieces of fiction appeared within the same month: London's "Moon-Face", in the San Francisco Argonaut, and Frank Norris' "The Passing of Cock-eye Blacklock", in Century Magazine. Newspapers showed the similarities between the stories, which London said were "quite different in manner of treatment, [but] patently the same in foundation and motive."[65] London explained both writers based their stories on the same newspaper account. A year later, it was discovered that Charles Forrest McLean had published a fictional story also based on the same incident.[citation needed]
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+
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+ Egerton Ryerson Young[66][67] claimed The Call of the Wild (1903) was taken from Young's book My Dogs in the Northland (1902).[68] London acknowledged using it as a source and claimed to have written a letter to Young thanking him.[69]
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+ In 1906, the New York World published "deadly parallel" columns showing eighteen passages from London's short story "Love of Life" side by side with similar passages from a nonfiction article by Augustus Biddle and J. K. Macdonald, titled "Lost in the Land of the Midnight Sun".[70] London noted the World did not accuse him of "plagiarism", but only of "identity of time and situation", to which he defiantly "pled guilty".[71]
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+ The most serious charge of plagiarism was based on London's "The Bishop's Vision", Chapter 7 of his novel The Iron Heel (1908). The chapter is nearly identical to an ironic essay that Frank Harris published in 1901, titled "The Bishop of London and Public Morality".[72] Harris was incensed and suggested he should receive 1/60th of the royalties from The Iron Heel, the disputed material constituting about that fraction of the whole novel. London insisted he had clipped a reprint of the article, which had appeared in an American newspaper, and believed it to be a genuine speech delivered by the Bishop of London.[citation needed]
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+ Progressive Era
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+
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+ Repression and persecution
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+
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+ Anti-war and civil rights movements
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+
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+ Contemporary
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+
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+ London was an atheist.[73] He is quoted as saying, "I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed."[74]
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+ London wrote from a socialist viewpoint, which is evident in his novel The Iron Heel. Neither a theorist nor an intellectual socialist, London's socialism grew out of his life experience. As London explained in his essay, "How I Became a Socialist",[75] his views were influenced by his experience with people at the bottom of the social pit. His optimism and individualism faded, and he vowed never to do more hard physical work than necessary. He wrote that his individualism was hammered out of him, and he was politically reborn. He often closed his letters "Yours for the Revolution."[76]
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+
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+ London joined the Socialist Labor Party in April 1896. In the same year, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story about the twenty-year-old London's giving nightly speeches in Oakland's City Hall Park, an activity he was arrested for a year later. In 1901, he left the Socialist Labor Party and joined the new Socialist Party of America. He ran unsuccessfully as the high-profile Socialist candidate for mayor of Oakland in 1901 (receiving 245 votes) and 1905 (improving to 981 votes), toured the country lecturing on socialism in 1906, and published two collections of essays about socialism: War of the Classes (1905) and Revolution, and other Essays (1906).
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+ Stasz notes that "London regarded the Wobblies as a welcome addition to the Socialist cause, although he never joined them in going so far as to recommend sabotage."[77] Stasz mentions a personal meeting between London and Big Bill Haywood in 1912.[78]
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+
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+ In his late (1913) book The Cruise of the Snark, London writes about appeals to him for membership of the Snark's crew from office workers and other "toilers" who longed for escape from the cities, and of being cheated by workmen.
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+
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+ In his Glen Ellen ranch years, London felt some ambivalence toward socialism and complained about the "inefficient Italian labourers" in his employ.[79] In 1916, he resigned from the Glen Ellen chapter of the Socialist Party, but stated emphatically he did so "because of its lack of fire and fight, and its loss of emphasis on the class struggle." In an unflattering portrait of London's ranch days, California cultural historian Kevin Starr refers to this period as "post-socialist" and says "... by 1911 ... London was more bored by the class struggle than he cared to admit."[80]
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+
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+ London shared common concerns among many European Americans in California about Asian immigration, described as "the yellow peril"; he used the latter term as the title of a 1904 essay.[81] This theme was also the subject of a story he wrote in 1910 called "The Unparalleled Invasion". Presented as an historical essay set in the future, the story narrates events between 1976 and 1987, in which China, with an ever-increasing population, is taking over and colonizing its neighbors with the intention of taking over the entire Earth. The western nations respond with biological warfare and bombard China with dozens of the most infectious diseases.[82] On his fears about China, he admits, "it must be taken into consideration that the above postulate is itself a product of Western race-egotism, urged by our belief in our own righteousness and fostered by a faith in ourselves which may be as erroneous as are most fond race fancies."
146
+
147
+ By contrast, many of London's short stories are notable for their empathetic portrayal of Mexican ("The Mexican"), Asian ("The Chinago"), and Hawaiian ("Koolau the Leper") characters. London's war correspondence from the Russo-Japanese War, as well as his unfinished novel Cherry, show he admired much about Japanese customs and capabilities.[83] London's writings have been popular among the Japanese, who believe he portrayed them positively.[13]
148
+
149
+ In "Koolau the Leper", London describes Koolau, who is a Hawaiian leper—and thus a very different sort of "superman" than Martin Eden—and who fights off an entire cavalry troop to elude capture, as "indomitable spiritually—a ... magnificent rebel". This character is based on Hawaiian leper Kaluaikoolau, who in 1893 revolted and resisted capture from forces of the Provisional Government of Hawaii in the Kalalau Valley.
150
+
151
+ An amateur boxer and avid boxing fan, London reported on the 1910 Johnson–Jeffries fight, in which the black boxer Jack Johnson vanquished Jim Jeffries, known as the "Great White Hope". In 1908, London had reported on an earlier fight of Johnson's, contrasting the black boxer's coolness and intellectual style, with the apelike appearance and fighting style of his Canadian opponent, Tommy Burns:
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+
153
+ [What won] on Saturday was bigness, coolness, quickness, cleverness, and vast physical superiority ... Because a white man wishes a white man to win, this should not prevent him from giving absolute credit to the best man, even when that best man was black. All hail to Johnson. ... [Johnson was] superb. He was impregnable ... as inaccessible as Mont Blanc.[84]
154
+
155
+ Those who defend London against charges of racism cite the letter he wrote to the Japanese-American Commercial Weekly in 1913:
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+
157
+ In reply to yours of August 16, 1913. First of all, I should say by stopping the stupid newspaper from always fomenting race prejudice. This of course, being impossible, I would say, next, by educating the people of Japan so that they will be too intelligently tolerant to respond to any call to race prejudice. And, finally, by realizing, in industry and government, of socialism—which last word is merely a word that stands for the actual application of in the affairs of men of the theory of the Brotherhood of Man.
158
+ In the meantime the nations and races are only unruly boys who have not yet grown to the stature of men. So we must expect them to do unruly and boisterous things at times. And, just as boys grow up, so the races of mankind will grow up and laugh when they look back upon their childish quarrels.[85]
159
+
160
+ In 1996, after the City of Whitehorse, Yukon, renamed a street in honor of London, protests over London's alleged racism forced the city to change the name of "Jack London Boulevard"[failed verification] back to "Two-mile Hill".[86]
161
+
162
+ London supported eugenics,[7] including forced sterilization of criminals or those deemed feeble-minded.[87] His novel Before Adam (1906–07) has been described as having pro-eugenic themes.[8]
163
+
164
+ London wrote to Frederick H. Robinson of the periodical Medical Review of Reviews, stating, "I believe the future belongs to eugenics, and will be determined by the practice of eugenics."[88]
165
+
166
+ Western writer and historian Dale L. Walker writes:[89]
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+
168
+ London's true métier was the short story ... London's true genius lay in the short form, 7,500 words and under, where the flood of images in his teeming brain and the innate power of his narrative gift were at once constrained and freed. His stories that run longer than the magic 7,500 generally—but certainly not always—could have benefited from self-editing.
169
+
170
+ London's "strength of utterance" is at its height in his stories, and they are painstakingly well-constructed.[citation needed] "To Build a Fire" is the best known of all his stories. Set in the harsh Klondike, it recounts the haphazard trek of a new arrival who has ignored an old-timer's warning about the risks of traveling alone. Falling through the ice into a creek in seventy-five-below weather, the unnamed man is keenly aware that survival depends on his untested skills at quickly building a fire to dry his clothes and warm his extremities. After publishing a tame version of this story—with a sunny outcome—in The Youth's Companion in 1902, London offered a second, more severe take on the man's predicament in The Century Magazine in 1908. Reading both provides an illustration of London's growth and maturation as a writer. As Labor (1994) observes: "To compare the two versions is itself an instructive lesson in what distinguished a great work of literary art from a good children's story."[A]
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+
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+ Other stories from the Klondike period include: "All Gold Canyon", about a battle between a gold prospector and a claim jumper; "The Law of Life", about an aging American Indian man abandoned by his tribe and left to die; "Love of Life", about a trek by a prospector across the Canadian tundra; "To the Man on Trail," which tells the story of a prospector fleeing the Mounted Police in a sled race, and raises the question of the contrast between written law and morality; and "An Odyssey of the North," which raises questions of conditional morality, and paints a sympathetic portrait of a man of mixed White and Aleut ancestry.
173
+
174
+ London was a boxing fan and an avid amateur boxer. "A Piece of Steak" is a tale about a match between older and younger boxers. It contrasts the differing experiences of youth and age but also raises the social question of the treatment of aging workers. "The Mexican" combines boxing with a social theme, as a young Mexican endures an unfair fight and ethnic prejudice to earn money with which to aid the revolution.
175
+
176
+ Several of London's stories would today be classified as science fiction. "The Unparalleled Invasion" describes germ warfare against China; "Goliath" is about an irresistible energy weapon; "The Shadow and the Flash" is a tale about two brothers who take different routes to achieving invisibility; "A Relic of the Pliocene" is a tall tale about an encounter of a modern-day man with a mammoth. "The Red One" is a late story from a period when London was intrigued by the theories of the psychiatrist and writer Jung. It tells of an island tribe held in thrall by an extraterrestrial object.
177
+
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+ Some nineteen original collections of short stories were published during London's brief life or shortly after his death. There have been several posthumous anthologies drawn from this pool of stories. Many of these stories were located in the Klondike and the Pacific. A collection of Jack London's San Francisco Stories was published in October 2010 by Sydney Samizdat Press.[90]
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+ London's most famous novels are The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The Sea-Wolf, The Iron Heel, and Martin Eden.[91]
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+ In a letter dated December 27, 1901, London's Macmillan publisher George Platt Brett, Sr., said "he believed Jack's fiction represented 'the very best kind of work' done in America."[88]
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+ Critic Maxwell Geismar called The Call of the Wild "a beautiful prose poem"; editor Franklin Walker said that it "belongs on a shelf with Walden and Huckleberry Finn"; and novelist E.L. Doctorow called it "a mordant parable ... his masterpiece."[citation needed]
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+ The historian Dale L. Walker[89] commented:
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+ Jack London was an uncomfortable novelist, that form too long for his natural impatience and the quickness of his mind. His novels, even the best of them, are hugely flawed.
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+
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+ Some critics have said that his novels are episodic and resemble linked short stories. Dale L. Walker writes:
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+
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+ The Star Rover, that magnificent experiment, is actually a series of short stories connected by a unifying device ... Smoke Bellew is a series of stories bound together in a novel-like form by their reappearing protagonist, Kit Bellew; and John Barleycorn ... is a synoptic series of short episodes.[89]
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+
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+ Ambrose Bierce said of The Sea-Wolf that "the great thing—and it is among the greatest of things—is that tremendous creation, Wolf Larsen ... the hewing out and setting up of such a figure is enough for a man to do in one lifetime." However, he noted, "The love element, with its absurd suppressions, and impossible proprieties, is awful."[92]
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+ The Iron Heel is an example of a dystopian novel that anticipates and influenced George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.[93] London's socialist politics are explicitly on display here. The Iron Heel meets the contemporary definition of soft science fiction. The Star Rover (1915) is also science fiction.
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+ London's literary executor, Irving Shepard, quoted a Jack London Credo in an introduction to a 1956 collection of London stories:
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+ I would rather be ashes than dust!
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+ I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.
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+ I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.
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+ The function of man is to live, not to exist.
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+ I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
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+ I shall use my time.
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+
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+ The biographer Stasz notes that the passage "has many marks of London's style" but the only line that could be safely attributed to London was the first.[94] The words Shepard quoted were from a story in the San Francisco Bulletin, December 2, 1916, by journalist Ernest J. Hopkins, who visited the ranch just weeks before London's death. Stasz notes, "Even more so than today journalists' quotes were unreliable or even sheer inventions," and says no direct source in London's writings has been found. However, at least one line, according to Stasz, is authentic, being referenced by London and written in his own hand in the autograph book of Australian suffragette Vida Goldstein:
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+
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+ Dear Miss Goldstein:–
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+ Seven years ago I wrote you that I'd rather be ashes than dust. I still subscribe to that sentiment.
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+ Sincerely yours,
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+ Jack London
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+ Jan. 13, 1909[94]
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+
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+ In his short story "By The Turtles of Tasman", a character, defending her "ne'er-do-well grasshopperish father" to her "antlike uncle", says: "... my father has been a king. He has lived .... Have you lived merely to live? Are you afraid to die? I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet. When you are dust, my father will be ashes."
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+
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+ A short diatribe on "The Scab" is often quoted within the U.S. labor movement and frequently attributed to London. It opens:
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+ After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, he had some awful substance left with which he made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water brain, a combination backbone of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles. When a scab comes down the street, men turn their backs and Angels weep in Heaven, and the Devil shuts the gates of hell to keep him out....[95]
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+
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+ In 1913 and 1914, a number of newspapers printed the first three sentences with varying terms used instead of "scab", such as
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+ "knocker",[96][97]
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+ "stool pigeon"[98]
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+ or "scandal monger".[99]
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+
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+ This passage as given above was the subject of a 1974 Supreme Court case, Letter Carriers v. Austin,[100] in which Justice Thurgood Marshall referred to it as "a well-known piece of trade union literature, generally attributed to author Jack London". A union newsletter had published a "list of scabs," which was granted to be factual and therefore not libelous, but then went on to quote the passage as the "definition of a scab". The case turned on the question of whether the "definition" was defamatory. The court ruled that "Jack London's... 'definition of a scab' is merely rhetorical hyperbole, a lusty and imaginative expression of the contempt felt by union members towards those who refuse to join", and as such was not libelous and was protected under the First Amendment.[95]
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+
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+ Despite being frequently attributed to London, the passage does not appear at all in the extensive collection of his writings at Sonoma State University's website. However, in his book War of the Classes he published a 1903 speech entitled "The Scab",[101] which gave a much more balanced view of the topic:
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+
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+ The laborer who gives more time or strength or skill for the same wage than another, or equal time or strength or skill for a less wage, is a scab. The generousness on his part is hurtful to his fellow-laborers, for it compels them to an equal generousness which is not to their liking, and which gives them less of food and shelter. But a word may be said for the scab. Just as his act makes his rivals compulsorily generous, so do they, by fortune of birth and training, make compulsory his act of generousness.
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+
232
+ [...]
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+
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+ Nobody desires to scab, to give most for least. The ambition of every individual is quite the opposite, to give least for most; and, as a result, living in a tooth-and-nail society, battle royal is waged by the ambitious individuals. But in its most salient aspect, that of the struggle over the division of the joint product, it is no longer a battle between individuals, but between groups of individuals. Capital and labor apply themselves to raw material, make something useful out of it, add to its value, and then proceed to quarrel over the division of the added value. Neither cares to give most for least. Each is intent on giving less than the other and on receiving more.
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+
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+ Source unless otherwise specified: Williams
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+
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+ The Jack London Online Collection
en/2798.html.txt ADDED
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+ John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American actor and filmmaker whose career spanned more than 60 years. He is known for having played a wide range of starring or supporting roles, including comedy, romance, and darkly comic portrayals of anti-heroes and villainous characters. In many of his films, he played the "eternal outsider, the sardonic drifter", someone who rebels against the social structure.[1]
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+ His most known and celebrated films include the road drama Easy Rider (1969); the dramas Five Easy Pieces (1970) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975); the comedy-dramas Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Terms of Endearment (1983), Prizzi's Honor (1985), As Good as It Gets (1997), and About Schmidt (2002); the neo-noir mystery Chinatown (1974); the horror film The Shining (1980); the biopic Reds (1981); the fantasy comedy The Witches of Eastwick (1987); the superhero film Batman (1989); the legal drama A Few Good Men (1992); the romantic horror film Wolf (1994); the science fiction comedy Mars Attacks! (1996); the comedy Anger Management (2003); the romantic comedy Something's Gotta Give (2003); and the crime drama The Departed (2006). He has also directed three films, including The Two Jakes (1990).
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+
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+ Nicholson's 12 Academy Award nominations make him the most nominated male actor in the Academy's history. He has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) and As Good as It Gets (1997), and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Terms of Endearment (1983). He is one of only three male actors to win three Academy Awards, and one of only two actors to be nominated for an Academy Award for acting in every decade from the 1960s to the 2000s. He has won six Golden Globe Awards and received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2001. In 1994, at 57, he became one of the youngest actors to be awarded the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award.
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+ Nicholson had a number of high-profile relationships, most notably with Anjelica Huston and Rebecca Broussard, and was married to Sandra Knight from 1962 to 1968. He has five children: one with Knight, two with Broussard (including Lorraine Nicholson), and one each with Susan Anspach and Winnie Hollman.
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+ Nicholson was born on April 22, 1937, in Neptune City, New Jersey,[2][3][4] the son of a showgirl, June Frances Nicholson (stage name June Nilson; 1918–1963).[5][6] Nicholson's mother was of Irish, English, German, and Welsh descent. She married Italian-American showman Donald Furcillo (stage name Donald Rose) in 1936, before realizing that he was already married.[7]:8[8] Biographer Patrick McGilligan stated in his book Jack's Life that Latvian-born Eddie King (originally Edgar A. Kirschfeld),[9] June's manager, may have been Nicholson's biological father, rather than Furcillo. Other sources suggest June Nicholson was unsure of the father's identity.[5] As June was only seventeen years old and unmarried, her parents[note 1] agreed to raise Nicholson as their own child without revealing his true parentage, and June would act as his sister.[10]
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+ In 1974, Time magazine researchers learned, and informed Nicholson, that his "sister", June, was actually his mother, and his other "sister", Lorraine, was really his aunt.[11] By this time, both his mother and grandmother had died (in 1963 and 1970, respectively). On finding out, Nicholson said it was "a pretty dramatic event, but it wasn't what I'd call traumatizing ... I was pretty well psychologically formed".[10]
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+
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+ Nicholson grew up in Neptune City.[7]:7 He was raised in his mother's Roman Catholic religion.[12][13] Before starting high school, his family moved to an apartment in Spring Lake, New Jersey.[7]:16 "When Jack was ready for high school, the family moved once more—this time two miles farther south to old-money Spring Lake, New Jersey's so-called Irish Riviera, where Ethel May set up her beauty parlor in a rambling duplex at 505 Mercer Avenue."[14] "Nick", as he was known to his high school friends, attended nearby Manasquan High School, where he was voted "Class Clown" by the Class of 1954. He was in detention every day for a whole school year.[4] A theatre and a drama award at the school are named in his honor. In 2004, Nicholson attended his 50-year high school reunion accompanied by his aunt Lorraine.[7]
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+ In 1957, Nicholson joined the California Air National Guard,[15] a move he sometimes characterized as an effort to "dodge the draft";[16] the Korean War–era's Military Selective Service Act was still in force, and draftees were required to perform up to two years of active duty. After completing the Air Force's basic training at Lackland Air Force Base,[16] Nicholson performed weekend drills and two-week annual training as a firefighter assigned to the unit based at the Van Nuys Airport.[16] During the Berlin Crisis of 1961, Nicholson was called up for several months of extended active duty,[16] and he was discharged at the end of his enlistment in 1962.[17]
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+ Nicholson first came to Hollywood in 1954, when he was seventeen, to visit his sister. He took a job as an office worker for animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera at the MGM cartoon studio. They offered him an entry-level job as an animator, but he declined, citing his desire to become an actor.[16] While accepting the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 56th Golden Globe Awards, he recalled that his first day as a working actor was May 5, 1955, which he considered lucky, as "5" was the jersey number of his boyhood idol, Joe DiMaggio. [18]
20
+ He trained to be an actor with a group called the Players Ring Theater, after which time he found small parts performing on the stage and in TV soap operas.[1] He made his film debut in a low-budget teen drama The Cry Baby Killer (1958), playing the title role. For the following decade, Nicholson was a frequent collaborator with the film's producer, Roger Corman. Corman directed Nicholson on several occasions, most notably in The Little Shop of Horrors, as masochistic dental patient and undertaker Wilbur Force, and also in The Raven; The Terror, where he plays a French officer seduced by an evil ghost; and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
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+
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+ Nicholson also frequently worked with director Monte Hellman on low-budget westerns, though two in particular—Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting—initially failed to find interest from any US film distributors but gained cult success on the art-house circuit in France and were later sold to television. Nicholson also appeared in two episodes of The Andy Griffith Show.
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+
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+ With his acting career heading nowhere, Nicholson seemed resigned to a career behind the camera as a writer/director. His first real taste of writing success was the screenplay for the 1967 counterculture film The Trip (directed by Corman), which starred Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper. After first reading the script, Fonda told Nicholson he was totally impressed by the writing and felt it could become a great film. However, Fonda was disappointed with how the film turned out and blamed the editing which turned it into a "predictable" film and said so publicly. "I was livid", he recalls.[19] Nicholson also co-wrote, with Bob Rafelson, the movie Head, which starred The Monkees. He also arranged the movie's soundtrack.
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+ Nicholson's first big acting break came when a spot opened up in Fonda and Hopper's Easy Rider (1969). He played alcoholic lawyer George Hanson, for which he received his first Oscar nomination. The film cost only $400,000 to make, and became a blockbuster, grossing $40 million.[20] Biographer John Parker states that Nicholson's interpretation of his role placed him in the company of earlier "anti-hero" actors, such as James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart, while promoting him into an "overnight number-one hero of the counter-culture movement".[20]
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+
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+ The part was a lucky break for Nicholson. The role had been written for the actor Rip Torn, who withdrew from the project after an argument with Hopper.[21] In interviews, Nicholson later acknowledged the importance of being cast in Easy Rider: "All I could see in the early films, before Easy Rider, was this desperate young actor trying to vault out of the screen and create a movie career."[22]
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+
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+ Nicholson was cast by Stanley Kubrick, who was impressed with his role in Easy Rider, in the part of Napoleon in a film about his life, and although production on the film commenced, the project fizzled out, partly due to a change in ownership at MGM, and other issues.[23]
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+
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+ Nicholson starred in Five Easy Pieces alongside Karen Black in 1970 in what became his persona-defining role. Nicholson and Black were nominated for Academy Awards for their performances. Nicholson played Bobby Dupea, an oil rig worker, and Black played his waitress girlfriend. During an interview about the film, Black noted that Nicholson's character in the film was very subdued, and was very different from Nicholson's real-life personality. She says that the now-famous restaurant scene was partly improvised by Nicholson, and was out of character for Bobby, who wouldn't have cared enough to argue with a waitress.[24] "I think that Jack really has very little in common with Bobby. I think Bobby has given up looking for love. But Jack hasn't, he's very interested in love, in finding out things. Jack is a very curious, alive human being. Always ready for a new idea."[25]:37 Nicholson himself said as much, telling an interviewer, "I like listening to everybody. This to me is the elixir of life."[26]
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+
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+ Black later admitted that she had a crush on Nicholson from the time they met, although they only dated briefly. "He was very beautiful. He just looked right at you ... I liked him a lot ... He really sort of wanted to date me but I didn't think of him that way because I was going with Peter Kastner ... Then I went to do Easy Rider, but didn't see him because we didn't have any scenes together ... At the premiere, I saw him out in the lobby afterward and I started crying ... He didn't understand that, but what it was was that I really loved him a lot, and I didn't know it until I saw him again, because it all welled up."[25]:36
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+
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+ Within a month after the film's release that September, the movie became a blockbuster, making Nicholson a leading man and the "new American anti-hero", according to McDougal.[7]:130 Critics began speculating as to whether he might become another Marlon Brando or James Dean. His career and income skyrocketed. He said, "I have [become] much sought after. Your name becomes a brand image like a product. You become Campbell's soup, with thirty-one different varieties of roles you can play."[7]:130 He told his new agent, Sandy Bresler, to find him unusual roles so he could stretch his acting skill: "I like to play people that haven't existed yet, a 'cusp character'", he said:
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+
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+ I have that creative yearning. Much in the way Chagall flies figures into the air: once it becomes part of the conventional wisdom, it doesn't seem particularly adventurous or weird or wild.[7]:130
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+
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+ —Mike Nichols, director[27]
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+
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+ Also in 1970, he appeared in the movie adaptation of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, although most of his performance was left on the cutting room floor. His agent turned down a starring role in Deliverance when the film's producer and director, John Boorman, refused to pay what Nicholson's agent wanted.[7]:130
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+
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+ Nicholson starred in Carnal Knowledge in 1971, a comedy-drama directed by Mike Nichols, which co-starred Art Garfunkel, Ann-Margret, and Candice Bergen. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor. As a director, Mike Nichols was limited in the actors who he felt could handle the role, saying, "There is James Cagney, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, and Henry Fonda. After that, who is there but Jack Nicholson?"[27] During the filming, Nicholson struck up what became a lifelong friendship with co-star Garfunkel. When he visited Los Angeles, Garfunkel would stay at Nicholson's home in a room Nicholson jokingly called "the Arthur Garfunkel Suite".[7]:127
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+
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+ Other Nicholson roles included Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973), with Randy Quaid, for which Nicholson won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival, and he was nominated for his third Oscar and a Golden Globe. Television journalist David Gilmour writes that one of his favorite Nicholson scenes from all his films was in this one when Nicholson slaps his gun on the bar yelling he was the Shore Patrol.[28][29] Critic Roger Ebert called it a very good movie, but credited Nicholson's acting as the main reason: "He creates a character so complete and so complex that we stop thinking about the movie and just watch to see what he'll do next."[30]
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+
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+ In 1974, Nicholson starred in Roman Polanski's noir thriller Chinatown, and was again nominated for Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Jake Gittes, a private detective. The film co-starred Faye Dunaway and John Huston, and included a cameo role with Polanski. Roger Ebert described Nicholson's portrayal as sharp-edged, menacing, and aggressive, a character who knew "how to go over the top", as he did in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It is that edge that kept Chinatown from becoming a typical genre crime film.[31] Ebert also notes the importance of the role for Nicholson's career, seeing it as a major transition from the exploitation films of the previous decade. "As Jake Gittes, he stepped into Bogart's shoes", says Ebert. "As a man attractive to audiences because he suggests both comfort and danger ... From Gittes forward, Nicholson created the persona of a man who had seen it all and was still capable of being wickedly amused."[32]
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+ Nicholson had been friends with the director Roman Polanski long before the murder of Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate and others, at the hands of the Manson Family, and supported him in the days following their deaths.[7]:109–110[33] After Tate's death, Nicholson began sleeping with a hammer under his pillow[7] and took breaks from work to attend the Manson trial.[16]
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+ In 1977, three years after Chinatown, Polanski was arrested at Nicholson's home for the sexual assault of 13-year-old Samantha Geimer, who was modeling for Polanski during a magazine photo shoot around the pool. At the time of the incident, Nicholson was out of town making a film, but his steady girlfriend, actress Anjelica Huston, had dropped by unannounced to pick up some items. She heard Polanski in the other room say, "We'll be right out."[34] Polanski then came out with Geimer, and he introduced her to Huston, and they chatted about Nicholson's two large dogs, which were sitting nearby. Huston recalled Geimer was wearing platform heels and appeared quite tall.[34] After a few minutes of talking, Polanski had packed up his camera gear and Huston saw them drive off in his car. Huston told police the next day, after Polanski was arrested, that she "had witnessed nothing untoward" and never saw them together in the other room.[34]
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+ Geimer learned afterward that Huston herself wasn't supposed to be at Nicholson's house that day, since they had recently broken up, but stopped over to pick up some belongings. Geimer described Nicholson's house as "definitely" a guy's house, with lots of wood and shelves crowded with photos and mementos.[35]
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+ One of Nicholson's greatest successes came in 1975, with his role as Randle P. McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The movie was an adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel, and was directed by Miloš Forman and co-produced by Michael Douglas. Nicholson plays an anti-authoritarian patient at a mental hospital where he becomes an inspiring leader for the other patients. Playing one of the patients was Danny DeVito in an early role. Nicholson learned afterward that DeVito grew up in the same area of New Jersey, and they knew many of the same people.[36] The film swept the Academy Awards with nine nominations, and won the top five, including Nicholson's first for Best Actor.
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+ The role seemed perfect for Nicholson, with biographer Ken Burke noting that his "smartass demeanor balances his genuine concern for the treatment of his fellow patients with his independent spirit too free to exist in a repressive social structure".[37][38] Forman allowed Nicholson to improvise throughout the film, including most of the group therapy sequences.[16] :273 Reviewer Marie Brenner notes that his bravura performance "transcends the screen" and continually inspires the other actors by lightening their mental illnesses with his comic dialogue. She describes his performance:
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+ Nicholson is everywhere; his energy propels the ward of loonies and makes of them an ensemble, a chorus of people caught in a bummer with nowhere else to go, but still fighting for some frail sense of themselves. ... There are scenes in Cuckoo's Nest that are as intimate—and in their language, twice as rough—as the best moments in The Godfather ... [and] far above the general run of Hollywood performances.[39]
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+ Also in 1975, Nicholson starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975), which co-starred Maria Schneider. Nicholson plays the role of a journalist, David Locke, who during an assignment in North Africa decides to quit being a journalist and simply disappear by taking on a new hidden identity. Unfortunately, the dead person whose identity he takes on turns out to have been a weapons smuggler on the run. Antonioni's unusual plot included convincing dialogue and fine acting, states film critic Seymour Chatman.[40] It was shot in Algeria, Spain, Germany, and England.
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+ The film received good reviews and revived Antonioni's reputation as one of cinema's great directors.[40] He says he wanted the film to have more of a "spy feeling [and] be more political".[40] Nicholson began shooting the film from an unfinished script, notes Judith Crist,[41] yet upon its completion he thought so highly of the film that he bought the world rights and recorded a reminiscence of working with Antonioni.[40] Critic and screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt provides an overview of Nicholson's role:
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+ The Passenger is an unidealized portrait of a drained man whose one remaining stimulus is to push his luck. Again and again, in the movie, we watch him court danger. It interests him to walk the edge of risk. He does it with passivity as if he were taking part in an expressionless game of double-dare with life. Jack Nicholson's performance is a wonder of insight. How to animate a personality that is barely there.[16] :443
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+ He continued to take more unusual roles. He took a small role in The Last Tycoon, opposite Robert De Niro. He took a less sympathetic role in Arthur Penn's western The Missouri Breaks (1976), specifically to work with Marlon Brando. Nicholson was especially inspired by Brando's acting ability, recalling that in his youth, as an assistant manager at a theater, he watched On the Waterfront about forty times.[42] "I'm part of the first generation that idolized Marlon Brando", he said.[43]
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+ Marlon Brando influenced me strongly. Today, it's hard for people who weren't there to realize the impact that Brando had on an audience. ... He's always been the patron saint of actors.[27]
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+ Nicholson has observed that while both De Niro and Brando were noted for their skill as method actors, he himself has seldom been described as a method actor, a fact which he sees as an accomplishment: "I'm still fooling them", he told Sean Penn during a phone conversation. "I consider it an accomplishment because there's probably no one who understands Method acting better academically than I do—or actually uses it more in his work. But it's funny, nobody really sees that. It's perception versus reality, I guess."[26]
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+ —Stanley Kubrick[44]
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+ Although he garnered no Academy Award for Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Stephen King's The Shining (1980), it remains one of his more significant roles. He was Kubrick's first choice to play the lead role, although the book's author, Stephen King, wanted the part played by more of an "everyman". However, Kubrick as a director won the argument, and described Nicholson's acting quality as being "on a par with the greatest stars of the past, like Spencer Tracy and Jimmy Cagney".[44]
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+ On the set, Nicholson always appeared in character, and if Kubrick felt confident that he knew his lines well enough, he encouraged him to improvise and go beyond the script.[44] :434 For example, Nicholson improvised his now-famous "Here's Johnny!" line,[44] :433 along with a scene in which he unleashes his anger upon his wife while she interrupts his writing.[44] :445 There were also extensive takes of scenes, due to Kubrick's perfectionism. Nicholson shot a scene with the ghostly bartender thirty-six times.[45] Nicholson states that "Stanley's demanding. He'll do a scene fifty times, and you have to be good to do that."[46]:38
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+ In 1982, he starred as an immigration enforcement agent in The Border, directed by Tony Richardson. It co-starred Warren Oates, who played a corrupt border official.[47] Richardson wanted Nicholson to play his role less expressively than he had in his earlier roles. "Less is more", he told him, and wanted him to wear reflecting sunglasses to portray what patrolmen wore.[16] :318 Richardson recalled that Nicholson worked hard on the set:
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+ He's what the Thirties and Forties stars were like. He can come on the set and deliver, without any fuss, without taking a long time walking around getting into it. "What do you want? Okay." And he just does it straight off. And then if you want him to do it another way on the next take, he can adapt to that too.[16] :318
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+ Nicholson won his second Oscar, an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role of retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment (1983), directed by James L. Brooks. It starred Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger. McGilligan claims it was one of Nicholson's most complex and unforgettable characters. He and MacLaine played many of their scenes in different ways, constantly testing and making adjustments. Their scenes together gave the film its "buoyant edge", states McGilligan, and describes Nicholson's acting as "Jack floating like a butterfly".[16] :330
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+ Nicholson continued to work prolifically in the 1980s, starring in such films as: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981); Reds (1981), where Nicholson portrays the writer Eugene O'Neill with a quiet intensity; Prizzi's Honor (1985); Heartburn (1986); The Witches of Eastwick (1987); Broadcast News (1987); and Ironweed (1987). Three Oscar nominations also followed (Reds, Prizzi's Honor, and Ironweed).[48][49][50] John Huston, who directed Prizzi's Honor, said of Nicholson's acting, "He just illuminates the book. He impressed me in one scene after another; the movie is composed largely of first takes with him."[51]
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+ In the 1989 Batman movie, Nicholson played the psychotic murderer and villain, the Joker. The film was an international smash hit, and a lucrative percentage deal earned him a percentage of the box office gross estimated at $60 million to $90 million.[52] Nicholson said that he was "particularly proud" of his performance as the Joker: "I considered it a piece of pop art", he said.[26]
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+ For his role as hot-headed Col. Nathan R. Jessup in A Few Good Men (1992), a movie about a murder in a U.S. Marine Corps unit, Nicholson received yet another Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.[53][54] One review describes his performance as "spellbinding", adding that he portrayed "the essence of the quintessential military mindset".[55] Critic David Thomson notes that Nicholson's character "blazed and roared".[56]
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+ The film's director, Rob Reiner, recalls how Nicholson's level of acting experience affected the other actors during rehearsals: "I had the luck of having Jack Nicholson there. He knows what he's doing, and he comes to play, every time out, full-out performance! And what it says to a lot of the other actors is, 'Oooooh, I better get on my game here because this guy's coming to play! So I can't hold back; I've got to come up to him.' He sets the tone."[57]
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+ In 1996, Nicholson collaborated once more with Batman director Tim Burton on Mars Attacks!, pulling double duty as two contrasting characters, President James Dale and Las Vegas property developer Art Land. At first, studio executives at Warner Bros. disliked the idea of killing off Nicholson's character, so Burton created two characters and killed them both off.[citation needed]
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+ Not all of Nicholson's performances have been well received. He was nominated for Razzie Awards as worst actor for Man Trouble (1992) and Hoffa (1992). However, Nicholson's performance in Hoffa also earned him a Golden Globe nomination.[58][59] While David Thomson states that the film was terribly neglected, since Nicholson portrayed one of his best screen characters, someone who is "snarly, dumb, smart, noble, rascally—all the parts of 'Jack'"[56]
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+ Nicholson went on to win his next Academy Award for Best Actor in the romantic comedy, As Good as It Gets (1997), his third film directed by James L. Brooks. He played Melvin Udall, a "wickedly funny",[60] mean-spirited, obsessive-compulsive novelist. "I'm a studio Method actor", he said. "So I was prone to give some kind of clinical presentation of the disorder."[61] His Oscar was matched with the Academy Award for Best Actress for Helen Hunt, who played a Manhattan wisecracking, single-mother waitress drawn into a love/hate friendship with Udall, a frequent diner in the restaurant. The film was a tremendous box office success, grossing $314 million, which made it Nicholson's second-best-grossing film of his career, after Batman.[27]
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+ Nicholson admits he initially didn't like playing the role of a middle-aged man alongside much younger Hunt, seeing it as a movie cliché. "But Helen disarmed that at the first meeting", he says, "and I stopped thinking about it." They got along well during the filming, with Hunt saying that he "treated me like a queen", and they connected immediately: "It wasn't even what we said", she adds. "It was just some frequency we both could tune into that was very, very compatible."[60]
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+ Critic Jack Mathews of Newsday described Nicholson as being "in rare form", adding that "it's one of those performances that make you aware how much fun the actor is having".[60] Author and screenwriter Andrew Horton describes their on-screen relationship as being like "fire and ice, oil and water—seemingly complete opposites".[62] Nonetheless, Hunt was Nicholson's perfect counterpart and delivered "a simply stunning performance", wrote critic Louise Keller.[63]
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+ In 2001, Nicholson was the first actor to receive the Stanislavsky Award at the 23rd Moscow International Film Festival for "conquering the heights of acting and faithfulness".[64]
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+ In About Schmidt (2002), Nicholson portrayed a retired Omaha, Nebraska, actuary who questions his own life following his wife's death. His quietly restrained performance earned him an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor. In Anger Management (2003), he played an aggressive therapist assigned to help an over pacifist man (Adam Sandler). In 2003, Nicholson also starred in Something's Gotta Give, as an aging playboy who falls for the mother (Diane Keaton) of his young girlfriend. In late 2006, Nicholson marked his return to the dark side as Frank Costello, a nefarious Boston Irish Mob boss, based on Whitey Bulger who was still on the run at that time, presiding over Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-winning film The Departed, a remake of Andrew Lau's Infernal Affairs. The role earned Nicholson worldwide critical praise, along with various award wins and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination for best-supporting actor.
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+ In 2007, Nicholson co-starred with Morgan Freeman in Rob Reiner's The Bucket List.[65] Nicholson and Freeman portrayed dying men who fulfill their list of goals. In researching the role, Nicholson visited a Los Angeles hospital to see how cancer patients coped with their illnesses.
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+ Nicholson's next film role saw him reunite with James L. Brooks, director of Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, and As Good as It Gets, for a supporting role as Paul Rudd's character's father in the 2010 film How Do You Know.
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+ It has been widely reported in subsequent years that Nicholson has retired from acting because of memory loss,[66] but in a September 2013 Vanity Fair article, Nicholson clarified that he did not consider himself retired, merely that he was now less driven to "be out there anymore".[67]
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+ On February 15, 2015, Nicholson made a special appearance as a presenter on SNL 40, the 40th anniversary special of Saturday Night Live.[68] After the death of boxer Muhammad Ali on June 3, 2016, Nicholson appeared on HBO's The Fight Game with Jim Lampley for an exclusive interview about his friendship with Ali.[69] He was reported to be starring in an English-language remake of Toni Erdmann in 2017 opposite Kristen Wiig, his first feature film role since How Do You Know,[70] but he later dropped out of the project.[71]
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+ —David Thomson, a film critic.[56]
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+ Nicholson's only marriage was to Sandra Knight from June 17, 1962, to August 8, 1968; they had been separated for two years prior to the divorce. They had one daughter together, Jennifer (born September 16, 1963), also an actress. Jennifer's son Duke Norfleet (b. 1999), is also an actor, under the name Duke Nicholson.[72]
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+ Actress Susan Anspach contended that her son, Caleb Goddard (born September 26, 1970), was fathered by Nicholson. In 1984, Nicholson stated that he was not convinced he is Caleb's father;[73] however, in 1996, Caleb stated that Nicholson had acknowledged him as his son.[74] At some point between 1988 and 1994, Nicholson provided financial assistance to put Caleb through college,[75] and Anspach's New York Times obituary referred to Caleb as "her son, whose father is Jack Nicholson".[76]
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+ Between April 1973 and January 1990, Nicholson had an on-again, off-again relationship with actress Anjelica Huston that included periods of overlap with other women, including Danish model Winnie Hollman, with whom he fathered a daughter, Honey Hollman (born 1981).[77]
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+ From 1989 to 1994, Nicholson had a relationship with actress Rebecca Broussard. They had two children together: daughter Lorraine Nicholson (born April 16, 1990 - named after his aunt), and son Raymond (born February 20, 1992).[77][78]
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+ For over a year, from 1999 to 2000, Nicholson dated actress Lara Flynn Boyle; they later reunited, before splitting permanently in 2004.[79]
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+ Nicholson has stated that children "give your life a resonance that it can't have without them ... As a father, I'm there all the time. I give unconditional love."[26] However, he has also lamented that he "didn't see enough of my eldest daughter because I was trying to make a career".[80]
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+ In a criminal complaint filed on February 8, 1994, Robert Blank stated that Nicholson, then 56, approached Blank's Mercedes-Benz while he was stopped at a red light in North Hollywood. After accusing the other man of cutting him off in traffic, Nicholson used a golf club to bash the roof and windshield of Blank's car. A witness confirmed Blank's account of the incident, and misdemeanor charges of assault and vandalism were filed against Nicholson. Charges were dropped after Nicholson apologized to Blank, and the two reached an undisclosed settlement, which included a reported $500,000 check from Nicholson.[81]
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+ Nicholson lived next door to Marlon Brando for a number of years on Mulholland Drive in Beverly Hills. Warren Beatty also lived nearby, earning the road the nickname "Bad Boy Drive". After Brando's death in 2004, Nicholson purchased his bungalow for $6.1 million, with the purpose of having it demolished. Nicholson stated that it was done out of respect to Brando's legacy, as it had become too expensive to renovate the "derelict" building which was plagued by mold.[82]
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+ Nicholson's friendship with author-journalist Hunter S. Thompson is described in Thompson's autobiography Kingdom of Fear.[83] Following Thompson's death in 2005, Nicholson and fellow actors Johnny Depp, John Cusack, and Sean Penn attended the private memorial service in Colorado.[84]
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+ Nicholson was also a close friend of Robert Evans, the producer of Chinatown, and after Evans lost Woodland, his home, as the result of a 1980s drug bust, Nicholson and other friends of the producer purchased Woodland to give it back to Evans.[85]
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+ Nicholson is a fan of the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Lakers. He has been a Laker season ticket holder since 1970, and has held courtside season tickets for the past 25 years next to the opponent's benches both at The Forum and Staples Center, missing very few games. In a few instances, Nicholson has engaged in arguments with game officials and opposing players, and even walked onto the court.[86] He was almost ejected from a Lakers playoff game in May 2003 after he yelled at the game's referee.[87]
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+ Nicholson is a collector of 20th-century and contemporary art, including the work of Henri Matisse, Tamara de Lempicka,[88] Andy Warhol and Jack Vettriano.[89] In 1995, artist Ed Ruscha was quoted saying that Nicholson has "one of the best collections out here".[90]
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+ Nicholson described himself as a "life-long Irish Democrat".[91] Although he is personally against abortion, he is pro-choice. He has said, "I'm pro-choice but against abortion because I'm an illegitimate child myself, and it would be hypocritical to take any other position. I'd be dead. I wouldn't exist." He has also said that he has "nothing but total admiration, gratitude, and respect for the strength of the women who made the decision they made in my individual case".[92]
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+ In 2020, Nicholson endorsed Bernie Sanders's second presidential campaign for the 2020 nomination.[93]
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+ During a 1992 Vanity Fair interview, Nicholson stated, "I don't believe in God now. I can still work up an envy for someone who has faith. I can see how that could be a deeply soothing experience."[94]
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+ In 1994, he was the youngest recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award.[95][96]
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+ In May 2008, then-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver announced that Nicholson would be inducted into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts. The induction ceremony took place on December 15, 2008, where he was inducted alongside 11 other Californians.[97][98]
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+ In 2010, Nicholson was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.[99]
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+ In 2011, Nicholson received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Brown University at its 243rd commencement. At the ceremony, Ruth Simmons, Brown University's president, called him "the most skilled actor of our lifetime".[100]
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+ With twelve Academy Award nominations (eight for Best Actor and four for Best Supporting Actor), Nicholson is the most nominated male actor in Academy Awards history. Only Nicholson (1960s–2000s), Michael Caine (1960s–2000s), Meryl Streep (1970s–2010s), Paul Newman (1950s–1960s, 1980s–2000s), Katharine Hepburn (1930s–1960s, 1980s), and Laurence Olivier (1930s–1970s) have been nominated for an acting (lead or supporting) Academy Award in five different decades.
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+ With three Oscar wins, he also ties with Walter Brennan, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ingrid Bergman, and Meryl Streep for the second-most Oscar wins in acting categories. Only Katharine Hepburn, with four Oscars, won more.
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+ In 2013, Nicholson co-presented the Academy Award for Best Picture with First Lady Michelle Obama. This ceremony marked the eighth time he has presented the Academy Award for Best Picture (1972, 1977, 1978, 1990, 1993, 2006, 2007, and 2013). Nicholson is an active and voting member of the Academy.
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+ Nicholson's acting career spans over sixty years. He has won three Academy Awards, and with twelve nominations, he is the most nominated male actor in the Academy's history.
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+ Among his most notable films are Easy Rider (1969), Five Easy Pieces (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Chinatown (1974), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Shining (1980), Reds (1981), Terms of Endearment (1983), Prizzi's Honor (1985), Batman (1989), A Few Good Men (1992), As Good as It Gets (1997), About Schmidt (2002), and The Departed (2006).
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+ Jacques-Louis David (French: [ʒaklwi david]; 30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) was a French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward classical austerity and severity and heightened feeling,[1] harmonizing with the moral climate of the final years of the Ancien Régime.
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+ David later became an active supporter of the French Revolution and friend of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794), and was effectively a dictator of the arts under the French Republic. Imprisoned after Robespierre's fall from power, he aligned himself with yet another political regime upon his release: that of Napoleon, The First Consul of France. At this time he developed his Empire style, notable for its use of warm Venetian colours. After Napoleon's fall from Imperial power and the Bourbon revival, David exiled himself to Brussels, then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, where he remained until his death. David had many pupils, making him the strongest influence in French art of the early 19th century, especially academic Salon painting.
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+ Jacques-Louis David was born into a prosperous French family in Paris on 30 August 1748. When he was about nine his father was killed in a duel and his mother left him with his well-off architect uncles. They saw to it that he received an excellent education at the Collège des Quatre-Nations, University of Paris, but he was never a good student—he had a facial tumor that impeded his speech, and he was always preoccupied with drawing. He covered his notebooks with drawings, and he once said, "I was always hiding behind the instructor's chair, drawing for the duration of the class". Soon, he desired to be a painter, but his uncles and mother wanted him to be an architect. He overcame the opposition, and went to learn from François Boucher (1703–1770), the leading painter of the time, who was also a distant relative. Boucher was a Rococo painter, but tastes were changing, and the fashion for Rococo was giving way to a more classical style. Boucher decided that instead of taking over David's tutelage, he would send David to his friend, Joseph-Marie Vien (1716–1809), a painter who embraced the classical reaction to Rococo. There, David attended the Royal Academy, based in what is now the Louvre.
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+ Each year the Academy awarded an outstanding student the prestigious Prix de Rome, which funded a 3- to 5-year stay in the Eternal City. Since artists were now revisiting classical styles, the trip to Rome provided its winners the opportunity to study the remains of classical antiquity and the works of the Italian Renaissance masters at first hand. Each pensionnaire was lodged in the French Academy's Roman outpost, which from the years 1737 to 1793 was the Palazzo Mancini in the Via del Corso. David competed for, and failed to win, the prize for three consecutive years (with Minerva Fighting Mars, Diana and Apollo Killing Niobe's Children and The Death of Seneca). Each failure contributed to his lifelong grudge against the institution. After his second loss in 1772, David went on a hunger strike, which lasted two and a half days before the faculty encouraged him to continue painting. Confident he now had the support and backing needed to win the prize, he resumed his studies with great zeal—only to fail to win the Prix de Rome again the following year. Finally, in 1774, David was awarded the Prix de Rome on the strength of his painting of Erasistratus Discovering the Cause of Antiochus' Disease, a subject set by the judges. In October 1775 he made the journey to Italy with his mentor, Joseph-Marie Vien, who had just been appointed director of the French Academy at Rome.[2]
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+ While in Italy, David mostly studied the works of 17th-century masters such as Poussin, Caravaggio, and the Carracci.[2] Although he declared, "the Antique will not seduce me, it lacks animation, it does not move",[2] David filled twelve sketchbooks with drawings that he and his studio used as model books for the rest of his life. He was introduced to the painter Raphael Mengs (1728–1779), who opposed the Rococo tendency to sweeten and trivialize ancient subjects, advocating instead the rigorous study of classical sources and close adherence to ancient models. Mengs' principled, historicizing approach to the representation of classical subjects profoundly influenced David's pre-revolutionary painting, such as The Vestal Virgin, probably from the 1780s. Mengs also introduced David to the theoretical writings on ancient sculpture by Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768), the German scholar held to be the founder of modern art history.[3] As part of the Prix de Rome, David toured the newly excavated ruins of Pompeii in 1779, which deepened his belief that the persistence of classical culture was an index of its eternal conceptual and formal power. During the trip David also assiduously studied the High Renaissance painters, Raphael making a profound and lasting impression on the young French artist.
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+ Although David's fellow students at the academy found him difficult to get along with, they recognized his genius. David's stay at the French Academy in Rome was extended by a year. In July 1780, he returned to Paris.[2] There, he found people ready to use their influence for him, and he was made an official member of the Royal Academy. He sent the Academy two paintings, and both were included in the Salon of 1781, a high honor. He was praised by his famous contemporary painters, but the administration of the Royal Academy was very hostile to this young upstart. After the Salon, the King granted David lodging in the Louvre, an ancient and much desired privilege of great artists. When the contractor of the King's buildings, M. Pécoul, was arranging with David, he asked the artist to marry his daughter, Marguerite Charlotte. This marriage brought him money and eventually four children. David had about 50 of his own pupils and was commissioned by the government to paint "Horace defended by his Father", but he soon decided, "Only in Rome can I paint Romans." His father-in-law provided the money he needed for the trip, and David headed for Rome with his wife and three of his students, one of whom, Jean-Germain Drouais (1763–1788), was the Prix de Rome winner of that year.
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+ In Rome, David painted his famous Oath of the Horatii, 1784. In this piece, the artist references Enlightenment values while alluding to Rousseau's social contract. The republican ideal of the general became the central focus of the painting with all three sons positioned in compliance with the father. The Oath between the characters can be read as an act of unification of men to the binding of the state.[4] The issue of gender roles also becomes apparent in this piece, as the women in Horatii greatly contrast the group of brothers. David depicts the father with his back to the women, shutting them out of the oath. They also appear to be smaller in scale and physically isolated from the male figures.[5] The masculine virility and discipline displayed by the men's rigid and confident stances is also severely contrasted to the slouching, swooning female softness created in the other half of the composition.[6] Here we see the clear division of male-female attributes that confined the sexes to specific roles under Rousseau's popularized doctrine of "separate spheres".
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+ These revolutionary ideals are also apparent in the Distribution of Eagles. While Oath of the Horatii and The Tennis Court Oath stress the importance of masculine self-sacrifice for one's country and patriotism, the Distribution of Eagles would ask for self-sacrifice for one's Emperor (Napoleon) and the importance of battlefield glory.
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+ In 1787, David did not become the Director of the French Academy in Rome, which was a position he wanted dearly. The Count in charge of the appointments said David was too young, but said he would support him in 6 to 12 years. This situation would be one of many that would cause him to lash out at the Academy in years to come.
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+ For the Salon of 1787, David exhibited his famous Death of Socrates. "Condemned to death, Socrates, strong, calm and at peace, discusses the immortality of the soul. Surrounded by Crito, his grieving friends and students, he is teaching, philosophizing, and in fact, thanking the God of Health, Asclepius, for the hemlock brew which will ensure a peaceful death... The wife of Socrates can be seen grieving alone outside the chamber, dismissed for her weakness. Plato is depicted as an old man seated at the end of the bed." Critics compared the Socrates with Michelangelo's Sistine Ceiling and Raphael's Stanze, and one, after ten visits to the Salon, described it as "in every sense perfect". Denis Diderot said it looked like he copied it from some ancient bas-relief. The painting was very much in tune with the political climate at the time. For this painting, David was not honored by a royal "works of encouragement".
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+ For his next painting, David created The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons. The work had tremendous appeal for the time. Before the opening of the Salon, the French Revolution had begun. The National Assembly had been established, and the Bastille had fallen. The royal court did not want propaganda agitating the people, so all paintings had to be checked before being hung. David's portrait of Lavoisier, who was a chemist and physicist as well as an active member of the Jacobin party, was banned by the authorities for such reasons.[7] When the newspapers reported that the government had not allowed the showing of The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, the people were outraged, and the royals were forced to give in. The painting was hung in the exhibition, protected by art students. The painting depicts Lucius Junius Brutus, the Roman leader, grieving for his sons. Brutus's sons had attempted to overthrow the government and restore the monarchy, so the father ordered their death to maintain the republic. Brutus was the heroic defender of the republic, sacrificing his own family for the good of the republic. On the right, the mother holds her two daughters, and the nurse is seen on the far right, in anguish. Brutus sits on the left, alone, brooding, seemingly dismissing the dead bodies of his sons. Knowing what he did was best for his country, but the tense posture of his feet and toes reveals his inner turmoil. The whole painting was a Republican symbol, and obviously had immense meaning during these times in France. It exemplified civic virtue, a value highly regarded during the Revolution.
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+ In the beginning, David was a supporter of the Revolution, a friend of Robespierre, and a member of the Jacobin Club. While others were leaving the country for new and greater opportunities, David stayed behind to help destroy the old order. He was a regicide who voted in the National Convention for the Execution of Louis XVI. It is uncertain why he did so,[citation needed] as there were many more opportunities for him under the King than the new order. Some people suggest David's love for the classical made him embrace everything about that period, including a republican government.
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+ Others believed that they found the key to the artist's revolutionary career in his personality. Undoubtedly, David's artistic sensibility, mercurial temperament, volatile emotions, ardent enthusiasm and fierce independence might have been expected to help turn him against the established order, but they did not fully explain his devotion to the republican regime, and the vague statements of those who insisted upon his "powerful ambition...and unusual energy of will" did not actually account for his revolutionary connections. Those who knew him maintained that "generous ardor", high-minded idealism and well-meaning though sometimes fanatical enthusiasm, rather than opportunism and jealousy, motivated his activities during this period.
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+ Soon, David turned his critical sights on the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture. The attack was probably caused primarily by the hypocrisy of the organization and their personal opposition against his work, as seen in previous episodes in David's life. The Royal Academy was controlled by royalists, who opposed David's attempts at reform and so the National Assembly finally ordered it to make changes to conform to the new constitution.
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+ David then began work on something that would later hound him: propaganda for the new republic. David's painting of Brutus was shown during the play Brutus by Voltaire.
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+ In 1789, David attempted to leave his artistic mark on the historical beginnings of the French Revolution with his painting of The Oath of the Tennis Court. David undertook the task not out of personal political conviction but rather because he was commissioned to do so. The painting was meant to commemorate the event of the same name but was never completed. A meeting of the Estates General was convened in May to address reforms of the monarchy. Dissent arose over whether the three estates would meet separately, as had been tradition, or as one body. The King's acquiescence with the demands of the upper orders led to the deputies of the Third Estate renaming themselves as the National Assembly on 17 June. They were locked out of the meeting hall three days later when they attempted to meet, and forced to reconvene to the royal indoor tennis court. Presided over by Jean-Sylvain Bailly, they made a 'solemn oath never to separate' until a national constitution had been created. In 1789 this event was seen as a symbol of the national unity against the ancien regime. Rejecting the current conditions, the oath signified a new transition in human history and ideology.[8] David was enlisted by the Society of Friends of the Constitution, the body that would eventually form the Jacobins, to enshrine this symbolic event.[9]
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+ This instance is notable in more ways than one because it eventually led David to finally become involved in politics as he joined the Jacobins. The picture was meant to be massive in scale; the figures in the foreground were to be life-sized portraits of the counterparts, including Jean-Sylvain Bailly, the President of the Constituent Assembly. Seeking additional funding, David turned to the Society of Friends of the Constitution. The funding for the project was to come from over three thousand subscribers hoping to receive a print of the image. However, when the funding was insufficient, the state ended up financing the project.[2]
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+ David set out in 1790 to transform the contemporary event into a major historical picture which would appear at the Salon of 1791 as a large pen-and-ink drawing. As in the Oath of the Horatii, David represents the unity of men in the service of a patriotic ideal. The outstretched arms which are prominent in both works betray David's deeply held belief that acts of republican virtue akin to those of the Romans were being played out in France. In what was essentially an act of intellect and reason, David creates an air of drama in this work. The very power of the people appears to be "blowing" through the scene with the stormy weather, in a sense alluding to the storm that would be the revolution.
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+ Symbolism in this work of art closely represents the revolutionary events taking place at the time. The figure in the middle is raising his right arm making the oath that they will never disband until they have reached their goal of creating a "constitution of the realm fixed upon solid foundations".[10] The importance of this symbol is highlighted by the fact that the crowd's arms are angled to his hand forming a triangular shape. Additionally, the open space in the top half contrasted to the commotion in the lower half serves to emphasize the magnitude of the Tennis Court Oath.
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+ In his attempt to depict political events of the Revolution in "real time", David was venturing down a new and untrodden path in the art world. However, Thomas Crow argues that this path "proved to be less a way forward than a cul-de-sac for history painting".[9] Essentially, the history of the demise of David's The Tennis Court Oath illustrates the difficulty of creating works of art that portray current and controversial political occurrences. Political circumstances in France proved too volatile to allow the completion of the painting. The unity that was to be symbolized in The Tennis Court Oath no longer existed in radicalized 1792. The National Assembly had split between conservatives and radical Jacobins, both vying for political power. By 1792 there was no longer consensus that all the revolutionaries at the tennis court were "heroes". A sizeable number of the heroes of 1789 had become the villains of 1792. In this unstable political climate David's work remained unfinished. With only a few nude figures sketched onto the massive canvas, David abandoned The Oath of the Tennis Court. To have completed it would have been politically unsound. After this incident, when David attempted to make a political statement in his paintings, he returned to the less politically charged use of metaphor to convey his message.
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+ When Voltaire died in 1778, the church denied him a church burial, and his body was interred near a monastery. A year later, Voltaire's old friends began a campaign to have his body buried in the Panthéon, as church property had been confiscated by the French Government. In 1791, David was appointed to head the organizing committee for the ceremony, a parade through the streets of Paris to the Panthéon. Despite rain and opposition from conservatives due to the amount of money spent, the procession went ahead. Up to 100,000 people watched the "Father of the Revolution" being carried to his resting place. This was the first of many large festivals organized by David for the republic. He went on to organize festivals for martyrs that died fighting royalists. These funerals echoed the religious festivals of the pagan Greeks and Romans and are seen by many as Saturnalian.
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+ David incorporated many revolutionary symbols into these theatrical performances and orchestrated ceremonial rituals, in effect radicalizing the applied arts themselves. The most popular symbol for which David was responsible as propaganda minister was drawn from classical Greek images; changing and transforming them with contemporary politics. In an elaborate festival held on the anniversary of the revolt that brought the monarchy to its knees, David's Hercules figure was revealed in a procession following the Goddess of Liberty (Marianne). Liberty, the symbol of Enlightenment ideals was here being overturned by the Hercules symbol; that of strength and passion for the protection of the Republic against disunity and factionalism.[11] In his speech during the procession, David "explicitly emphasized the opposition between people and monarchy; Hercules was chosen, after all, to make this opposition more evident".[12] The ideals that David linked to his Hercules single-handedly transformed the figure from a sign of the old regime into a powerful new symbol of revolution. "David turned him into the representation of a collective, popular power. He took one of the favorite signs of monarchy and reproduced, elevated, and monumentalized it into the sign of its opposite."[13] Hercules, the image, became to the revolutionaries, something to rally around.
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+ In June 1791, the King made an ill-fated attempt to flee the country, but was apprehended short of his goal on the Austrian Netherlands border and was forced to return under guard to Paris. Louis XVI had made secret requests to Emperor Leopold II of Austria, Marie-Antoinette's brother, to restore him to his throne. This was granted and Austria threatened France if the royal couple were hurt. In reaction, the people arrested the King. This led to an Invasion after the trials and execution of Louis and Marie-Antoinette. The Bourbon monarchy was destroyed by the French people in 1792—it would be restored after Napoleon, then destroyed again with the Restoration of the House of Bonaparte. When the new National Convention held its first meeting, David was sitting with his friends Jean-Paul Marat and Robespierre. In the Convention, David soon earned the nickname "ferocious terrorist". Robespierre's agents discovered a secret vault containing the King's correspondence which proved he was trying to overthrow the government, and demanded his execution. The National Convention held the trial of Louis XVI; David voted for the death of the King, causing his wife, a royalist, to divorce him.[citation needed]
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+ When Louis XVI was executed on 21 January 1793, another man had already died as well—Louis Michel le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau. Le Peletier was killed on the preceding day by a royal bodyguard in revenge for having voted for the death of the King. David was called upon to organize a funeral, and he painted Le Peletier Assassinated. In it, the assassin's sword was seen hanging by a single strand of horsehair above Le Peletier's body, a concept inspired by the proverbial ancient tale of the sword of Damocles, which illustrated the insecurity of power and position. This underscored the courage displayed by Le Peletier and his companions in routing an oppressive king. The sword pierces a piece of paper on which is written "I vote the death of the tyrant", and as a tribute at the bottom right of the picture David placed the inscription "David to Le Peletier. 20 January 1793". The painting was later destroyed by Le Peletier's royalist daughter, and is known by only a drawing, an engraving, and contemporary accounts. Nevertheless, this work was important in David's career because it was the first completed painting of the French Revolution, made in less than three months, and a work through which he initiated the regeneration process that would continue with The Death of Marat, David's masterpiece.
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+ On 13 July 1793, David's friend Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday with a knife she had hidden in her clothing. She gained entrance to Marat's house on the pretense of presenting him a list of people who should be executed as enemies of France. Marat thanked her and said that they would be guillotined next week upon which Corday immediately fatally stabbed him. She was guillotined shortly thereafter. Corday was of an opposing political party, whose name can be seen in the note Marat holds in David's subsequent painting, The Death of Marat. Marat, a member of the National Convention and a journalist, had a skin disease that caused him to itch horribly. The only relief he could get was in his bath over which he improvised a desk to write his list of suspect counter-revolutionaries who were to be quickly tried and, if convicted, guillotined. David once again organized a spectacular funeral, and Marat was buried in the Panthéon. Marat's body was to be placed upon a Roman bed, his wound displayed and his right arm extended holding the pen which he had used to defend the Republic and its people. This concept was to be complicated by the fact that the corpse had begun to putrefy. Marat's body had to be periodically sprinkled with water and vinegar as the public crowded to see his corpse prior to the funeral on 15 and 16 July. The stench became so bad however that the funeral had to be brought forward to the evening of 16 July.[14]
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+ The Death of Marat, perhaps David's most famous painting, has been called the Pietà of the revolution. Upon presenting the painting to the convention, he said "Citizens, the people were again calling for their friend; their desolate voice was heard: David, take up your brushes..., avenge Marat... I heard the voice of the people. I obeyed." David had to work quickly, but the result was a simple and powerful image.
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+ The Death of Marat, 1793, became the leading image of the Terror and immortalized both Marat and David in the world of the revolution. This piece stands today as "a moving testimony to what can be achieved when an artist's political convictions are directly manifested in his work".[15] A political martyr was instantly created as David portrayed Marat with all the marks of the real murder, in a fashion which greatly resembles that of Christ or his disciples.[16] The subject although realistically depicted remains lifeless in a rather supernatural composition. With the surrogate tombstone placed in front of him and the almost holy light cast upon the whole scene; alluding to an out of this world existence. "Atheists though they were, David and Marat, like so many other fervent social reformers of the modern world, seem to have created a new kind of religion."[17] At the very center of these beliefs, there stood the republic.
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+ After the King's execution, war broke out between the new Republic and virtually every major power in Europe. David, as a member of the Committee of General Security, contributed directly to the Reign of Terror.[18] David organized his last festival: the festival of the Supreme Being. Robespierre had realized what a tremendous propaganda tool these festivals were, and he decided to create a new religion, mixing moral ideas with the Republic and based on the ideas of Rousseau. This process had already begun by confiscating church lands and requiring priests to take an oath to the state. The festivals, called fêtes, would be the method of indoctrination. On the appointed day, 20 Prairial by the revolutionary calendar, Robespierre spoke, descended steps, and with a torch presented to him by David, incinerated a cardboard image symbolizing atheism, revealing an image of wisdom underneath.
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+ Soon, the war began to go well; French troops marched across the southern half of the Netherlands (which would later become Belgium), and the emergency that had placed the Committee of Public Safety in control was no more. Then plotters seized Robespierre at the National Convention and he was later guillotined, in effect ending the Reign of Terror. As Robespierre was arrested, David yelled to his friend "if you drink hemlock, I shall drink it with you."[19] After this, he supposedly fell ill, and did not attend the evening session because of "stomach pain", which saved him from being guillotined along with Robespierre. David was arrested and placed in prison, first from 2 August to 28 December 1794 and then from 29 May to 3 August 1795.[2] There he painted his own portrait, showing him much younger than he actually was, as well as that of his jailer.
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+ After David's wife visited him in jail, he conceived the idea of telling the story of The rape of the Sabine women. The Sabine Women Enforcing Peace by Running between the Combatants, also called The Intervention of the Sabine Women is said to have been painted to honor his wife, with the theme being love prevailing over conflict. The painting was also seen as a plea for the people to reunite after the bloodshed of the revolution.[20]
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+ David conceived a new style for this painting, one which he called the "Pure Greek Style", as opposed to the "Roman style" of his earlier historical paintings. The new style was influenced heavily by the work of art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann. In David's words, "the most prominent general characteristics of the Greek masterpieces are a noble simplicity and silent greatness in pose as well as in expression."[21] Instead of the muscularity and angularity of the figures of his past works, these were more air-brushed, feminine, and painterly.
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+ This work also brought him to the attention of Napoleon. The story for the painting is as follows: "The Romans have abducted the daughters of their neighbors, the Sabines. To avenge this abduction, the Sabines attacked Rome, although not immediately—since Hersilia, the daughter of Tatius, the leader of the Sabines, had been married to Romulus, the Roman leader, and then had two children by him in the interim. Here we see Hersilia between her father and husband as she adjures the warriors on both sides not to take wives away from their husbands or mothers away from their children. The other Sabine Women join in her exhortations." During this time, the martyrs of the Revolution were taken from the Pantheon and buried in common ground, and revolutionary statues were destroyed. When David was finally released to the country, France had changed. His wife managed to get him released from prison, and he wrote letters to his former wife, and told her he never ceased loving her. He remarried her in 1796. Finally, wholly restored to his position, he retreated to his studio, took pupils and for the most part, retired from politics.
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+ In August 1796, David and many other artists signed a petition orchestrated by Quatremère de Quincy which questioned the wisdom of the planned seizure of works of art from Rome. The Director Barras believed that David was "tricked" into signing, although one of David's students recalled that in 1798 his master lamented the fact that masterpieces had been imported from Italy.
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+ David's close association with the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror resulted in his signing of the death warrant for Alexandre de Beauharnais, a minor noble. Beauharnais's widow, Joséphine, went on to marry Napoleon Bonaparte and became his empress; David himself depicted their coronation in the Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine, 2 December 1804.
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+ David had been an admirer of Napoleon from their first meeting, struck by Bonaparte's classical features. Requesting a sitting from the busy and impatient general, David was able to sketch Napoleon in 1797. David recorded the face of the conqueror of Italy, but the full composition of Napoleon holding the peace treaty with Austria remains unfinished. This was likely a decision by Napoleon himself after considering the current political situation. He may have considered the publicity the portrait would bring about to be ill-timed. Bonaparte had high esteem for David, and asked him to accompany him to Egypt in 1798, but David refused, seemingly unwilling to give up the material comfort, safety, and peace of mind he had obtained through the years. Draftsman and engraver Dominique Vivant Denon went to Egypt instead, providing mostly documentary and archaeological work.[22]
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+ After Napoleon's successful coup d'état in 1799, as First Consul he commissioned David to commemorate his daring crossing of the Alps. The crossing of the St. Bernard Pass had allowed the French to surprise the Austrian army and win victory at the Battle of Marengo on 14 June 1800. Although Napoleon had crossed the Alps on a mule, he requested that he be portrayed "calm upon a fiery steed". David complied with Napoleon Crossing the Saint-Bernard. After the proclamation of the Empire in 1804, David became the official court painter of the regime. During this period he took students, one of whom was the Belgian painter Pieter van Hanselaere.
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+ One of the works David was commissioned for was The Coronation of Napoleon (1805-1807). David was permitted to watch the event. He had plans of Notre Dame delivered and participants in the coronation came to his studio to pose individually, though never the Emperor (the only time David obtained a sitting from Napoleon had been in 1797). David did manage to get a private sitting with the Empress Joséphine and Napoleon's sister, Caroline Murat, through the intervention of erstwhile art patron Marshal Joachim Murat, the Emperor's brother-in-law. For his background, David had the choir of Notre Dame act as his fill-in characters. Pope Pius VII came to sit for the painting, and actually blessed David. Napoleon came to see the painter, stared at the canvas for an hour and said "David, I salute you." David had to redo several parts of the painting because of Napoleon's various whims, and for this painting, he received twenty-four thousand Francs.
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+ David was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 1803. He was promoted to an Officier in 1808. And, in 1815, he was promoted to a Commandant (now Commandeur) de la Légion d'honneur.
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+ On the Bourbons returning to power, David figured in the list of proscribed former revolutionaries and Bonapartists—for having voted execution for the deposed King Louis XVI; and for participating in the death of Louis XVII. Mistreated and starved, the imprisoned Louis XVII was forced into a false confession of incest with his mother, Queen Marie-Antoinette. This was untrue, as the son was separated from his mother early and was not allowed communication with her, nevertheless, the allegation helped earn her the guillotine. The newly restored Bourbon King, Louis XVIII, however, granted amnesty to David and even offered him the position of court painter. David refused, preferring self-exile in Brussels. There, he trained and influenced Brussels artists like François-Joseph Navez and Ignace Brice, painted Cupid and Psyche and quietly lived the remainder of his life with his wife (whom he had remarried). In that time, he painted smaller-scale mythological scenes, and portraits of citizens of Brussels and Napoleonic émigrés, such as the Baron Gerard.
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+ David created his last great work, Mars Being Disarmed by Venus and the Three Graces, from 1822 to 1824. In December 1823, he wrote: "This is the last picture I want to paint, but I want to surpass myself in it. I will put the date of my seventy-five years on it and afterwards I will never again pick up my brush." The finished painting—evoking painted porcelain because of its limpid coloration—was exhibited first in Brussels, then in Paris, where his former students flocked to view it.
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+ The exhibition was profitable—13,000 francs, after deducting operating costs, thus, more than 10,000 people visited and viewed the painting. In his later years, David remained in full command of his artistic faculties, even after a stroke in the spring of 1825 disfigured his face and slurred his speech. In June 1825, he resolved to embark on an improved version of his Anger of Achilles (also known as the Sacrifice of Iphigenie); the earlier version was completed in 1819 and is now in the collection of the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. David remarked to his friends who visited his studio "this [painting] is what is killing me" such was his determination to complete the work, but by October it must have already been well advanced, as his former pupil Gros wrote to congratulate him, having heard reports of the painting's merits. By the time David died, the painting had been completed and the commissioner Ambroise Firmin-Didot brought it back to Paris to include it in the exhibition "Pour les grecs" that he had organised and which opened in Paris in April 1826.
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+ When David was leaving a theater, a carriage struck him, and he later died, on 29 December 1825. At his death, some portraits were auctioned in Paris, they sold for little; the famous Death of Marat was exhibited in a secluded room, to avoid outraging public sensibilities. Disallowed return to France for burial, for having been a regicide of King Louis XVI, the body of the painter Jacques-Louis David was buried in Brussels and moved in 1882 to Brussels Cemetery, while some say his heart was buried with his wife at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
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+ The theme of the oath found in several works like The Oath of the Tennis Court, The Distribution of the Eagles, and Leonidas at Thermopylae, was perhaps inspired by the rituals of Freemasonry. In 1989 during the "David against David" conference Albert Boime was able to prove, on the basis of a document dated in 1787, the painter's membership in the "La Moderation" Masonic Lodge.[23][24]
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+ Jacques-Louis David's facial abnormalities were traditionally reported to be a consequence of a deep facial sword wound after a fencing incident. These left him with a noticeable asymmetry during facial expression and resulted in his difficulty in eating or speaking (he could not pronounce some consonants such as the letter 'r'). A sword scar wound on the left side of his face is present in his self-portrait and sculptures and corresponds to some of the buccal branches of the facial nerve. An injury to this nerve and its branches are likely to have resulted in the difficulties with his left facial movement.
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+ Furthermore, as a result of this injury, he suffered from a growth on his face that biographers and art historians have defined as a benign tumor. These, however, may have been a granuloma, or even a post-traumatic neuroma.[25] As historian Simon Schama has pointed out, witty banter and public speaking ability were key aspects of the social culture of 18th-century France. In light of these cultural keystones, David's tumor would have been a heavy obstacle in his social life.[26] David was sometimes referred to as "David of the Tumor".[27]
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+ In addition to his history paintings, David completed a number of privately commissioned portraits. Warren Roberts, among others, has pointed out the contrast between David's "public style" of painting, as shown in his history paintings, and his "private style", as shown in his portraits.[28] His portraits were characterized by a sense of truth and realism. He focused on defining his subjects' features and characters without idealizing them.[29] This is different from the style seen in his historical paintings, in which he idealizes his figures' features and bodies to align with Greek and Roman ideals of beauty.[30] He puts a great deal of detail into his portraits, defining smaller features like hands and fabric. The compositions of his portraits remain simple with blank backgrounds that allow the viewer to focus on the details of the subject.
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+ The portrait he did of his wife (1813) is an example of his typical portrait style.[28] The background is dark and simple without any clues as to the setting, which forces the viewer to focus entirely on her. Her features are un-idealized and truthful to her appearance.[28] There is a great amount of detail that can be seen in his attention to portraying the satin material of the dress she wears, the drapery of the scarf around her, and her hands which rest in her lap.
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+ In the painting of Brutus (1789), the man and his wife are separated, both morally and physically. Paintings like these, depicting the great strength of patriotic sacrifice, made David a popular hero of the revolution.[28]
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+ In the Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife (1788), the man and his wife are tied together in an intimate pose. She leans on his shoulder while he pauses from his work to look up at her. David casts them in a soft light, not in the sharp contrast of Brutus or of the Horatii. Also of interest—Lavoisier was a tax collector, as well as a famous chemist. Though he spent some of his money trying to clean up swamps and eradicate malaria, he was nonetheless sent to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror as an enemy of the people. David, then a powerful member of the National Assembly, stood idly by and watched.[31]
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+ Other portraits include paintings of his sister-in-law and her husband, Madame and Monsieur Seriziat. The picture of Monsieur Seriziat depicts a man of wealth, sitting comfortably with his horse-riding equipment. The picture of the Madame shows her wearing an unadorned white dress, holding her young child's hand as they lean against a bed. David painted these portraits of Madame and Monsieur Seriziat out of gratitude for letting him stay with them after he was in jail.[32]
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+ Towards the end of David's life, he painted a portrait of his old friend Abbé Sieyès. Both had been involved in the Revolution, both had survived the purging of political radicals that followed the reign of terror.
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+ The shift in David's perspective played an important role in the paintings of David's later life, including this one of Sieyès.[33] During the height of The Terror, David was an ardent supporter of radicals such as Robespierre and Marat, and twice offered up his life in their defense. He organized revolutionary festivals and painted portraits of martyrs of the revolution, such as Lepeletier, who was assassinated for voting for the death of the king. David was an impassioned speaker at times in the National Assembly. In speaking to the Assembly about the young boy named Bara, another martyr of the revolution, David said, "O Bara! O Viala! The blood that you have spread still smokes; it rises toward Heaven and cries for vengeance."[34]
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+ After Robespierre was sent to the guillotine, however, David was imprisoned and changed the attitude of his rhetoric. During his imprisonment he wrote many letters, pleading his innocence. In one he wrote, "I am prevented from returning to my atelier, which, alas, I should never have left. I believed that in accepting the most honorable position, but very difficult to fill, that of legislator, that a righteous heart would suffice, but I lacked the second quality, understanding."[35]
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+ Later, while explaining his developing "Grecian style" for paintings such as The Intervention of the Sabine Women, David further commented on a shift in attitude: "In all human activity the violent and transitory develops first; repose and profundity appear last. The recognition of these latter qualities requires time; only great masters have them, while their pupils have access only to violent passions."[36]
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+ Jacques-Louis David was, in his time, regarded as the leading painter in France, and arguably all of Western Europe; many of the painters honored by the restored Bourbons following the French Revolution had been David's pupils.[37] David's student Antoine-Jean Gros for example, was made a Baron and honored by Napoleon Bonaparte's court.[37] Another pupil of David's, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres became the most important artist of the restored Royal Academy and the figurehead of the Neoclassical school of art, engaging the increasingly popular Romantic school of art that was beginning to challenge Neoclassicism.[37] David invested in the formation of young artists for the Rome Prize, which was also a way to pursue his old rivalry with other contemporary painters such as Joseph-Benoît Suvée, who had also started teaching classes.[38] To be one of David's students was considered prestigious and earned his students a lifetime reputation.[39] He also called on the more advanced students, such as Jérôme-Martin Langlois, to help him paint his large canvases.
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+ Despite David's reputation, he was more fiercely criticized right after his death than at any point during his life. His style came under the most serious criticism for being static, rigid, and uniform throughout all his work. David's art was also attacked for being cold and lacking warmth.[40] David, however, made his career precisely by challenging what he saw as the earlier rigidity and conformity of the French Royal Academy's approach to art.[41] David's later works also reflect his growth in the development of the Empire style, notable for its dynamism and warm colors. It is likely that much of the criticism of David following his death came from David's opponents; during his lifetime David made a great many enemies with his competitive and arrogant personality as well as his role in the Terror.[39] David sent many people to the guillotine and personally signed the death warrants for King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. One significant episode in David's political career that earned him a great deal of contempt was the execution of Emilie Chalgrin. A fellow painter Carle Vernet had approached David, who was on the Committee of Public Safety, requesting him to intervene on behalf of his sister, Chalgrin. She had been accused of crimes against the Republic, most notably possessing stolen items.[42] David refused to intervene in her favor, and she was executed. Vernet blamed David for her death, and the episode followed him for the rest of his life and after.
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+ In the last 50 years David has enjoyed a revival in popular favor and in 1948 his two-hundredth birthday was celebrated with an exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris and at Versailles showing his life's works.[43] Following World War II, Jacques-Louis David was increasingly regarded as a symbol of French national pride and identity, as well as a vital force in the development of European and French art in the modern era.[44]
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+ The birth of Romanticism is traditionally credited to the paintings of eighteenth-century French artists such as Jacques-Louis David.[45]
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+ Danton (Andrzej Wajda, France, 1982) – Historical drama. Many scenes include David as a silent character watching and drawing. The film focuses on the period of the Terror.
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+ Jupiter et Antiope (1768), an early work showing the influence of Greuze[46]
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+ Diana and Apollo Piercing Niobe's Children with their Arrows (1772), Dallas Museum of Art
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+ Antiochus and Stratonica (1774), École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts
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+ Patroclus, study (1780), Musée Thomas-Henry
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+ Hector's body (1778)
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+ Portrait of Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and his wife (1788), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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+ Paris and Helen (1788), Musée du Louvre, Paris (detail)
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+ Portrait of Anne-Marie-Louise Thélusson, Comtesse de Sorcy (1790), Neue Pinakothek, Munich
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+ Portrait of Pierre Sériziat, (1795), Louvre Museum
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+ Portrait of Madame de Verninac (1798–1799), born Henriette Delacroix, elder sister of Eugène Delacroix, Musée du Louvre, Paris
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+ Madame Récamier (1800), Musée du Louvre, Paris
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+ Suzanne Le Peletier de Saint-Fargeau (1804), The J. Paul Getty Museum
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+ Portrait of Pope Pius VII (1805), Musée du Louvre, Paris
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+ Marguerite-Charlotte David (1813), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
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+ Étienne-Maurice Gérard (1816), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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+ The Comtesse Vilain XIIII and Her Daughter (1816), National Gallery, London
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+ Portrait of the Comte de Turenne (1816), Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
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+ Cupid and Psyche (1817), Cleveland Museum of Art
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+ The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis (1818), J. Paul Getty Museum
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+ The Anger of Achilles (1819), Kimbell Art Museum