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Disk partitioning

Disk partitioning or disk slicing is the creation of one or more regions on secondary storage, so that each region can be managed separately. These regions are called partitions. It is typically the first step of preparing a newly installed disk, before any file system is created. The disk stores the information about the partitions' locations and sizes in an area known as the partition table that the operating system reads before any other part of the disk. Each partition then appears to the operating system as a distinct "logical" disk that uses part of the actual disk. System administrators use a program called a partition editor to create, resize, delete, and manipulate the partitions. Partitioning allows the use of different filesystems to be installed for different kinds of files. Separating user data from system data can prevent the system partition from becoming full and rendering the system unusable. Partitioning can also make backing up easier. A disadvantage is that it can be difficult to properly size partitions, resulting in having one partition with too much free space and another nearly totally allocated.

History
IBM in its 1983 release of PC DOS version 2.0 was an early if not first use of the term partition to describe dividing a block storage device such as an HDD into physical segments. The term's usage is now ubiquitous. Other terms used include logical disk, minidisk, portions, pseudo-disk, section, slice and virtual drive.

One of the earliest such segmentation of a disk drive was IBM's 1966 usage in its CP-67 operating system of minidisk as a separate segment of a hard disk drive.

DOS, Windows, and OS/2
With DOS, Microsoft Windows, and OS/2, a common practice is to use one primary partition for the active file system that will contain the operating system, the page/swap file, all utilities, applications, and user data. On most Windows consumer computers, the drive letter C: is routinely assigned to this primary partition. Other partitions may exist on the HDD that may or may not be visible as drives, such as recovery partitions or partitions with diagnostic tools or data. (Windows drive letters do not correspond to partitions in a one-to-one fashion, so there may be more or fewer drive letters than partitions.)

Microsoft Windows 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7 include a 'Disk Management' program which allows for the creation, deletion and resizing of FAT and NTFS partitions. The Windows Disk Manager in Windows Vista and Windows 7 utilizes a 1 MB partition alignment scheme which is fundamentally incompatible with Windows 2000, XP, OS/2, DOS as well as many other operating systems.

Unix-like systems
On Unix-based and Unix-like operating systems such as Linux, macOS, BSD, and Solaris, it is possible to use multiple partitions on a disk device. Each partition can be formatted with a file system or as a swap partition.

Multiple partitions allow directories such as /boot, /tmp, /usr, /var, or /home to be allocated their own filesystems. Such a scheme has a number of advantages:

 * If one file system gets corrupted, the data outside that filesystem/partition may stay intact, minimizing data loss.
 * Specific file systems can be mounted with different parameters, e.g., read-only, or with the execution of setuid files disabled.
 * A runaway program that uses up all available space on a non-system filesystem does not fill up critical filesystems.
 * Keeping user data such as documents separate from system files allows the system to be updated with lessened risk of disturbing the data.

A common minimal configuration for Linux systems is to use three partitions: one holding the system files mounted on "/" (the root directory), one holding user configuration files and data mounted on /home (home directory), and a swap partition.

By default, macOS systems also use a single partition for the entire filesystem and use a swap file inside the file system (like Windows) rather than a swap partition.

In Solaris, partitions are sometimes known as slices. This is a conceptual reference to the slicing of a cake into several pieces.

The term "slice" is used in the FreeBSD operating system to refer to Master Boot Record partitions, to avoid confusion with FreeBSD's own disklabel-based partitioning scheme. However, GUID Partition Table partitions are referred to as "partition" worldwide.

Multi-boot systems
Multi-boot systems are computers where the user can boot into more than one distinct operating system (OS) stored in separate storage devices or in separate partitions of the same storage device. In such systems a menu at startup gives a choice of which OS to boot/start (and only one OS at a time is loaded).

This is distinct from virtual operating systems, in which one operating system is run as a self-contained virtual "program" within another already-running operating system. (An example is a Windows OS "virtual machine" running from within a Linux OS.)

GUID Partition Table
The GUID Partition Table (Globally Unique IDentifier) is a part of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) standard for the layout of the partition table on a physical hard disk. Many operating systems now support this standard. However, Windows does not support this on BIOS based computers.

Partition recovery
When a partition is deleted, its entry is removed from a table and the data is no longer accessible. The data remains on the disk until it is overwritten. Specialized recovery utilities may be able to locate lost file systems and recreate a partition table which includes entries for these recovered file systems. Some disk utilities may overwrite a number of beginning sectors of a partition they delete. For example, if Windows Disk Management (Windows 2000/XP, etc.) is used to delete a partition, it will overwrite the first sector (relative sector 0) of the partition before removing it. It still may be possible to restore a FAT or NTFS partition if a backup boot sector is available.

Compressed disks
HDDs can be compressed to create additional space. In DOS and early Microsoft Windows, programs such as Stacker (DR-DOS except 6.0), SuperStor (DR DOS 6.0), DoubleSpace (MS-DOS 6.0–6.2), or DriveSpace (MS-DOS 6.22, Windows 9x) were used. This compression was done by creating a very large file on the partition, then storing the disk's data in this file. At startup, device drivers opened this file and assigned it a separate letter. Frequently, to avoid confusion, the original partition and the compressed drive had their letters swapped, so that the compressed disk is C:, and the uncompressed area (often containing system files) is given a higher name.

Versions of Windows using the NT kernel, including the most recent version, Windows 10, contain intrinsic disk compression capability. The use of separate disk compression utilities has declined sharply.

Partition table
A partition table is a table maintained on a disk by the operating system that outlines and describes the partitions on that disk. The terms partition table and partition map are similar terms and can be used interchangeably. The term is most commonly associated with the MBR partition table of a Master Boot Record (MBR) in PCs, but it may be used generically to refer to other formats that divide a disk drive into partitions, such as: GUID Partition Table (GPT), Apple partition map (APM), or BSD disklabel.

MBR
This section describes the master boot record (MBR) partitioning scheme, as used historically in DOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux (among others) on PC-compatible computer systems. As of the mid-2010s, most new computers use the GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme instead. For examples of other partitioning schemes, see the general article on partition tables.

The total data storage space of a PC HDD on which MBR partitioning is implemented can contain at most four primary partitions, or alternatively three primary partitions and an extended partition. The Partition Table, located in the master boot record, contains 16-byte entries, each of which describes a partition.

The partition type is identified by a 1-byte code found in its partition table entry. Some of these codes (such as 0x05 and 0x0F) may be used to indicate the presence of an extended partition. Most are used by an operating system's bootloader (that examines partition tables) to decide if a partition contains a file system that can be mounted / accessed for reading or writing data.

Primary partition
A primary partition contains one file system. In DOS and all early versions of Microsoft Windows systems, Microsoft required what it called the system partition to be the first partition. All Windows operating systems from Windows 95 onwards can be located on (almost) any partition, but the boot files (, ,  , etc.) must reside on a primary partition. However, other factors, such as a PC's BIOS (see Boot sequence on standard PC) may also impose specific requirements as to which partition must contain the primary OS.

The partition type code for a primary partition can either correspond to a file system contained within (e.g., 0x07 means either an NTFS or an OS/2 HPFS file system) or indicate that the partition has a special use (e.g., code 0x82 usually indicates a Linux swap partition). The FAT16 and FAT32 file systems have made use of a number of partition type codes due to the limits of various DOS and Windows OS versions. Though a Linux operating system may recognize a number of different file systems (ext4, ext3, ext2, ReiserFS, etc.), they have all consistently used the same partition type code: 0x83 (Linux native file system).

Extended partition
An HDD may contain only one extended partition, but that extended partition can be subdivided into multiple logical partitions. DOS/Windows systems may then assign a unique drive letter to each logical partition. GUID partition table (GPT) only has the primary partition, doesn't have the extended partition and the logical partition.

BIOS boot partition
BIOS boot partition (BIOS BP) is a share of the storage device used to keep software that boots the operating system, a bootloader. It may be an operating system kernel image or bootloader or a completely separate piece of software.

EFI system partition
EFI system partition is the same as BIOS BP, but is loaded by EFI firmware instead of BIOS.

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Supernatural

Supernatural refers to phenomena or entities that are beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin supernaturalis, from Latin super- (above, beyond, or outside of) + natura (nature). Although the corollary term "nature" has had multiple meanings since the ancient world, the term "supernatural" emerged in the Middle Ages and did not exist in the ancient world.

The supernatural is featured in folklore and religious contexts, but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal. The term is attributed to non-physical entities, such as angels, demons, gods, and spirits. It also includes claimed abilities embodied in or provided by such beings, including magic, telekinesis, levitation, precognition, and extrasensory perception.

Etymology and history of the concept
Occurring as both an adjective and a noun, antecedents of the modern English compound supernatural enter the language from two sources: via Middle French (supernaturel) and directly from the Middle French's term's ancestor, post-Classical Latin (supernaturalis). Post-classical Latin supernaturalis first occurs in the 6th century, composed of the Latin prefix super- and nātūrālis (see nature). The earliest known appearance of the word in the English language occurs in a Middle English translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue (orcherd of Syon, around 1425; Þei haue not þanne þe supernaturel lyȝt ne þe liȝt of kunnynge, bycause þei vndirstoden it not).

The semantic value of the term has shifted over the history of its use. Originally the term referred exclusively to Christian understandings of the world. For example, as an adjective, the term can mean "belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings; attributed to or thought to reveal some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature; occult, paranormal" or "more than what is natural or ordinary; unnaturally or extraordinarily great; abnormal, extraordinary". Obsolete uses include "of, relating to, or dealing with metaphysics". As a noun, the term can mean "a supernatural being", with a particularly strong history of employment in relation to entities from the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

History of the concept
The ancient world had no word that resembled "supernatural". Dialogues from Neoplatonic philosophy in the third century AD contributed to the development of the concept the supernatural via Christian theology in later centuries. The term nature had existed since antiquity, with Latin authors like Augustine using the word and its cognates at least 600 times in City of God. In the medieval period, "nature" had ten different meanings and "natural" had eleven different meanings. Peter Lombard, a medieval scholastic in the 12th century, asked about causes that are beyond nature, in that how there could be causes that were God's alone. He used the term praeter naturam in his writings. In the scholastic period, Thomas Aquinas classified miracles into three categories: "above nature", "beyond nature", and "against nature". In doing so, he sharpened the distinction between nature and miracles more than the early Church Fathers had done. As a result, he had created a dichotomy of sorts of the natural and supernatural. Though the phrase "supra naturam" was used since the 4th century AD, it was in the 1200s that Thomas Aquinas used the term "supernaturalis" and despite this, the term had to wait until the end of the medieval period before it became more popularly used. The discussions on "nature" from the scholastic period were diverse and unsettled with some postulating that even miracles are natural and that natural magic was a natural part of the world.

Epistemology and metaphysics
The metaphysical considerations of the existence of the supernatural can be difficult to approach as an exercise in philosophy or theology because any dependencies on its antithesis, the natural, will ultimately have to be inverted or rejected. One complicating factor is that there is disagreement about the definition of "natural" and the limits of naturalism. Concepts in the supernatural domain are closely related to concepts in religious spirituality and occultism or spiritualism.

"For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man partly corporeal and partly immaterial. Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, namely, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angle, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does naturally move upwards toward firmament. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to the life of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body, especially a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseases nature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world. And sometimes too, and that most commonly, we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of. And besides these more absolute acceptions, if I may so call them, of the word nature, it has divers others (more relative), as nature is wont to be set or in opposition or contradistinction to other things, as when we say of a stone when it falls downwards that it does it by a natural motion, but that if it be thrown upwards its motion that way is violent. So chemists distinguish vitriol into natural and fictitious, or made by art, i.e. by the intervention of human power or skill; so it is said that water, kept suspended in a sucking pump, is not in its natural place, as that is which is stagnant in the well. We say also that wicked men are still in the state of nature, but the regenerate in a state of grace; that cures wrought by medicines are natural operations; but the miraculous ones wrought by Christ and his apostles were supernatural."

- Robert Boyle

Nomological possibility is possibility under the actual laws of nature. Most philosophers since David Hume have held that the laws of nature are metaphysically contingent—that there could have been different natural laws than the ones that actually obtain. If so, then it would not be logically or metaphysically impossible, for example, for you to travel to Alpha Centauri in one day; it would just have to be the case that you could travel faster than the speed of light. But of course there is an important sense in which this is not nomologically possible; given that the laws of nature are what they are. In the philosophy of natural science, impossibility assertions come to be widely accepted as overwhelmingly probable rather than considered proved to the point of being unchallengeable. The basis for this strong acceptance is a combination of extensive evidence of something not occurring, combined with an underlying scientific theory, very successful in making predictions, whose assumptions lead logically to the conclusion that something is impossible. While an impossibility assertion in natural science can never be absolutely proved, it could be refuted by the observation of a single counterexample. Such a counterexample would require that the assumptions underlying the theory that implied the impossibility be re-examined. Some philosophers, such as Sydney Shoemaker, have argued that the laws of nature are in fact necessary, not contingent; if so, then nomological possibility is equivalent to metaphysical possibility.

The term supernatural is often used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural—the latter typically limited to an adjective for describing abilities which appear to exceed what is possible within the boundaries of the laws of physics. Epistemologically, the relationship between the supernatural and the natural is indistinct in terms of natural phenomena that, ex hypothesi, violate the laws of nature, in so far as such laws are realistically accountable. "Parapsychologists use the term psi to refer to an assumed unitary force underlying the phenomena they study. Psi is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "personal factors or processes in nature which transcend accepted laws" (1948: 311) and "which are non-physical in nature" (1962:310), and it is used to cover both extrasensory perception (ESP), an "awareness of or response to an external event or influence not apprehended by sensory means" (1962:309) or inferred from sensory knowledge, and psychokinesis (PK), "the direct influence exerted on a physical system by a subject without any known intermediate energy or instrumentation" (1945:305)."

- Michael Winkelman

Views on the "supernatural" vary, for example it may be seen as:
 * indistinct from nature. From this perspective, some events occur according to the laws of nature, and others occur according to a separate set of principles external to known nature. For example, in Scholasticism, it was believed that God was capable of performing any miracle so long as it did not lead to a logical contradiction. Some religions posit immanent deities, however, and do not have a tradition analogous to the supernatural; some believe that everything anyone experiences occurs by the will (occasionalism), in the mind (neoplatonism), or as a part (nondualism) of a more fundamental divine reality (platonism).
 * incorrect human attribution. In this view all events have natural and only natural causes. They believe that human beings ascribe supernatural attributes to purely natural events, such as lightning, rainbows, floods, and the origin of life.

Cross cultural studies
Anthropological studies across cultures indicate that people do not hold or use natural and supernatural explanations in a mutually exclusive or dichotomous fashion. Instead, the reconciliation of natural and supernatural explanations is normal and pervasive across cultures. Cross cultural studies indicate that there is coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations in both adults and children for explaining numerous things about the world, such as illness, death, and origins. Context and cultural input play a large role in determining when and how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations. The coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations in individuals may be the outcomes two distinct cognitive domains: one concerned with the physical-mechanical relations and another with social relations. Studies on indigenous groups have allowed for insights on how such coexistence of explanations may function.

Deity
A deity ( or ) is a supernatural being considered divine or sacred. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as "a god or goddess (in a polytheistic religion)", or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life." A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess.

Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as God), polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as equivalent aspects of the same divine principle; and nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity but accept a pantheon of deities which live, die, and are reborn just like any other being.

Various cultures have conceptualized a deity differently than a monotheistic God. A deity need not be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent or eternal,  The monotheistic God, however, does have these attributes. Monotheistic religions typically refer to God in masculine terms, while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways – masculine, feminine, androgynous and gender neutral.

Historically, many ancient cultures – such as Ancient India, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, Nordic and Asian culture – personified natural phenomena, variously as either their conscious causes or simply their effects, respectively. Some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts. In Indian religions, deities have been envisioned as manifesting within the temple of every living being's body, as sensory organs and mind. Deities have also been envisioned as a form of existence (Saṃsāra) after rebirth, for human beings who gain merit through an ethical life, where they become guardian deities and live blissfully in heaven, but are also subject to death when their merit runs out.

Angel
An angel is generally a supernatural being found in various religions and mythologies. In Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism, angels are often depicted as benevolent celestial beings who act as intermediaries between God or Heaven and Earth. Other roles of angels include protecting and guiding human beings, and carrying out God's tasks. Within Abrahamic religions, angels are often organized into hierarchies, although such rankings may vary between sects in each religion, and are given specific names or titles, such as Gabriel or "Destroying angel". The term "angel" has also been expanded to various notions of spirits or figures found in other religious traditions. The theological study of angels is known as "angelology".

In fine art, angels are usually depicted as having the shape of human beings of extraordinary beauty; they are often identified using the symbols of bird wings, halos, and light.

Prophecy
Prophecy involves a process in which messages are communicated by a god to a prophet. Such messages typically involve inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of divine will concerning the prophet's social world and events to come (compare divine knowledge). Prophecy is not limited to any one culture. It is a common property to all known ancient societies around the world, some more than others. Many systems and rules about prophecy have been proposed over several millennia.

Revelation
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.

Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. For instance, Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that the Torah was received from Yahweh on biblical Mount Sinai. Most Christians believe that both the Old Testament and the New Testament were inspired by God. Muslims believe the Quran was revealed by God to Muhammad word by word through the angel Gabriel (Jibril). In Hinduism, some Vedas are considered apaurusheyatva, "not human compositions", and are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti, "what is heard". Aleister Crowley stated that The Book of the Law had been revealed to him through a higher being that called itself Aiwass.

A revelation communicated by a supernatural entity reported as being present during the event is called a vision. Direct conversations between the recipient and the supernatural entity, or physical marks such as stigmata, have been reported. In rare cases, such as that of Saint Juan Diego, physical artifacts accompany the revelation. The Roman Catholic concept of interior locution includes just an inner voice heard by the recipient.

In the Abrahamic religions, the term is used to refer to the process by which God reveals knowledge of himself, his will, and his divine providence to the world of human beings. In secondary usage, revelation refers to the resulting human knowledge about God, prophecy, and other divine things. Revelation from a supernatural source plays a less important role in some other religious traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.

Reincarnation
Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical body or form after each biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration, and is a part of the Saṃsāra doctrine of cyclic existence. It is a central tenet of all major Indian religions, namely Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. The idea of reincarnation is found in many ancient cultures, and a belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar, and as an esoteric belief in many streams of Orthodox Judaism. It is found as well in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Australia, East Asia, Siberia, and South America.

Although the majority of denominations within Christianity and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Cathars, Alawites, the Druze, and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism, and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions have been the subject of recent scholarly research. Unity Church and its founder Charles Fillmore teaches reincarnation.

In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation, and many contemporary works mention it.

Karma
Karma (कर्म, ; kamma) means action, work or deed; it also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect). Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and future suffering.

With origins in ancient India's Vedic civilization, the philosophy of karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Indian religions (particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism ) as well as Taoism. In these schools, karma in the present affects one's future in the current life, as well as the nature and quality of future lives – one's saṃsāra.

Christian theology

In Catholic theology, the supernatural order is, according to New Advent, defined as "the ensemble of effects exceeding the powers of the created universe and gratuitously produced by God for the purpose of raising the rational creature above its native sphere to a God-like life and destiny." The Modern Catholic Dictionary defines it as "the sum total of heavenly destiny and all the divinely established means of reaching that destiny, which surpass the mere powers and capacities of human nature."

Process theology
Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and further developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000). "It is not possible, in process metaphysics, to conceive divine activity as a "supernatural" intervention into the "natural" order of events. Process theists usually regard the distinction between the supernatural and the natural as a by-product of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In process thought, there is no such thing as a realm of the natural in contrast to that which is supernatural. On the other hand, if "the natural" is defined more neutrally as "what is in the nature of things," then process metaphysics characterizes the natural as the creative activity of actual entities. In Whitehead's words, "It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity" (Whitehead 1978, 21). It is tempting to emphasize process theism's denial of the supernatural and thereby highlight that the processed God cannot do in comparison what the traditional God could do (that is, to bring something from nothing). In fairness, however, equal stress should be placed on process theism's denial of the natural (as traditionally conceived) so that one may highlight what the creatures cannot do, in traditional theism, in comparison to what they can do in process metaphysics (that is, to be part creators of the world with God)."

- Donald Viney

Heaven
Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, spirits, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter heaven alive.

Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the "low places", and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.

Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka, and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (Heaven, Hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld.

Underworld
The underworld is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.

The concept of an underworld is found in almost every civilization and "may be as old as humanity itself". Common features of underworld myths are accounts of living people making journeys to the underworld, often for some heroic purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the ancient Greek story of the recently dead Patroclus haunting Achilles until his body could be properly buried for this purpose. Persons having social status were dressed and equipped in order to better navigate the underworld.

A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river to reach this destination. Imagery of such journeys can be found in both ancient and modern art. The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most important myth for Modernist authors".

Spirit
A spirit is a supernatural being, often but not exclusively a non-physical entity; such as a ghost, fairy, jinn, or angel. The concepts of a person's spirit and soul, often also overlap, as both are either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions, and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. In English Bibles, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit.

Spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality.

Historically, it was also used to refer to a "subtle" as opposed to "gross" material substance, as in the famous last paragraph of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.

Demon
A demon (from Koine Greek δαιμόνιον daimónion) is a supernatural and often malevolent being prevalent in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore.

In Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity, below the heavenly planes which may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. In Western occultism and Renaissance magic, which grew out of an amalgamation of Greco-Roman magic, Jewish Aggadah and Christian demonology, a demon is believed to be a spiritual entity that may be conjured and controlled.

Magic
Magic or sorcery is the use of rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, or language with the aim of utilizing supernatural forces. Belief in and practice of magic has been present since the earliest human cultures and continues to have an important spiritual, religious, and medicinal role in many cultures today. The term magic has a variety of meanings, and there is no widely agreed upon definition of what it is.

Scholars of religion have defined magic in different ways. One approach, associated with the anthropologists Edward Tylor and James G. Frazer, suggests that magic and science are opposites. An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim, argues that magic takes place in private, while religion is a communal and organised activity. Many scholars of religion have rejected the utility of the term magic and it has become increasingly unpopular within scholarship since the 1990s.

The term magic comes from the Old Persian magu, a word that applied to a form of religious functionary about which little is known. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC, this term was adopted into Ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations, to apply to religious rites that were regarded as fraudulent, unconventional, and dangerous. This meaning of the term was then adopted by Latin in the first century BC. The concept was then incorporated into Christian theology during the first century AD, where magic was associated with demons and thus defined against religion. This concept was pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, although in the early modern period Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to establish the idea of natural magic. Both negative and positive understandings of the term were retained in Western culture over the following centuries, with the former largely influencing early academic usages of the word.

Throughout history, there have been examples of individuals who practiced magic and referred to themselves as magicians. This trend has proliferated in the modern period, with a growing number of magicians appearing within the esoteric milieu. British esotericist Aleister Crowley described magic as the art of effecting change in accordance with will.

Divination
Divination (from Latin divinare "to foresee, to be inspired by a god", related to divinus, divine) is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. Used in various forms throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact with a supernatural agency.

Divination can be seen as a systematic method with which to organize what appear to be disjointed, random facets of existence such that they provide insight into a problem at hand. If a distinction is to be made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion.

Divination is dismissed by the scientific community and skeptics as being superstition. In the 2nd century, Lucian devoted a witty essay to the career of a charlatan, "Alexander the false prophet", trained by "one of those who advertise enchantments, miraculous incantations, charms for your love-affairs, visitations for your enemies, disclosures of buried treasure, and successions to estates".

Witchcraft

Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups. Witchcraft is a broad term that varies culturally and societally, and thus can be difficult to define with precision, and cross-cultural assumptions about the meaning or significance of the term should be applied with caution. Witchcraft often occupies a religious divinatory or medicinal role, and is often present within societies and groups whose cultural framework includes a magical world view.

Miracle
A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being (a deity), a miracle worker, a saint or a religious leader.

Informally, the word "miracle" is often used to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other such miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds'. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.

A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed for instance by Thomas Jefferson and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, is free to work without, above, or against it as well. The possibility and probability of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of the existence of God.

Skepticism
Skepticism (American English) or scepticism (British English; see spelling differences) is generally any questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more items of putative knowledge or belief. It is often directed at domains such as the supernatural, morality (moral skepticism), religion (skepticism about the existence of God), or knowledge (skepticism about the possibility of knowledge, or of certainty).

In fiction and popular culture
Supernatural entities and powers are common in various works of fantasy. Examples include the television shows Supernatural and The X-Files, the magic of the Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings series, The Wheel of Time series and A Song of Ice and Fire series.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Supernatural


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Hard disk drive platter

A hard disk drive platter or hard disk is the circular magnetic disk on which digital data is stored in a hard disk drive. The rigid nature of the platters is what gives them their name (as opposed to the flexible materials which are used to make floppy disks). Hard drives typically have several platters which are mounted on the same spindle. A platter can store information on both sides, typically requiring two recording heads per platter, one per surface.

Design
The magnetic surface of each platter is divided into small sub-micrometer-sized magnetic regions, each of which is used to represent a single binary unit of information. A typical magnetic region on a hard-disk platter (as of 2006) is about 200–250 nanometers wide (in the radial direction of the platter) and extends about 25–30 nanometers in the down-track direction (the circumferential direction on the platter), corresponding to about 100 billion bits per square inch of disk area (15.5 Gbit/cm2). The material of the main magnetic medium layer is usually a cobalt-based alloy. In today's hard drives each of these magnetic regions is composed of a few hundred magnetic grains, which are the base material that gets magnetized. As a whole, each magnetic region will have a magnetization.

One reason magnetic grains are used as opposed to a continuous magnetic medium is that they reduce the space needed for a magnetic region. In continuous magnetic materials, formations called Néel spikes tend to appear. These are spikes of opposite magnetization, and form for the same reason that bar magnets will tend to align themselves in opposite directions. These cause problems because the spikes cancel each other's magnetic field out, so that at region boundaries, the transition from one magnetization to the other will happen over the length of the Néel spikes. This is called the transition width.

Many hard drive platters have a layer of lubricant made of amorphous carbon such as diamond-like carbon, called an overcoat, which is deposited onto the disk using sputtering, or using chemical vapor deposition. Silicon Nitride, PFPE and hydrogenated carbon have also been used as overcoats. Alternatively PFPE can be used as a lubricant on top of the overcoat.

Granular media is oriented based on whether longitudinal or perpendicular magnetic recording is used. Ordered granular media can allow for higher storage densities than conventional granular media, and bit patterned media can succeed ordered granular media in storage density.

Grains help solve this problem because each grain is in theory a single magnetic domain (though not always in practice). This means that the magnetic domains cannot grow or shrink to form spikes, and therefore the transition width will be on the order of the diameter of the grains. Thus, much of the development in hard drives has been in reduction of grain size.

Manufacture

Platters are typically made using an aluminium, glass or ceramic substrate. Laptop hard drive platters are made from glass while aluminum platters are often found in desktop computers. In disk manufacturing, a thin coating is deposited on both sides of the substrate, mostly by a vacuum deposition process called magnetron sputtering. The coating has a complex layered structure consisting of various metallic (mostly non-magnetic) alloys as underlayers, optimized for the control of the crystallographic orientation and the grain size of the actual magnetic media layer on top of them, i.e. the film storing the bits of information. On top of it a protective carbon-based overcoat is deposited in the same sputtering process. Platters typically contain several layers of materials such as a seed layer, soft magnetic under layers (SULs) that may contain Cobalt and Iron made of materials such as, an antiferromagnetic (A-FM) layer made of Nickel oxide, Nickel-Manganese or Iron-Manganese alloy, intermediate layer made of Ruthenium and a layer of Cobalt-Chromium-Palladium alloy with oxide. In post-processing a nanometer thin polymeric lubricant layer gets deposited on top of the sputtered structure by dipping the disk into a solvent solution, after which the disk is buffed by various processes to eliminate small defects and verified by a special sensor on a flying head for absence of any remaining asperities or other defects (where the size of the bit given above roughly sets the scale for what constitutes a significant defect size). In the hard-disk drive the hard-drive heads fly and move radially over the surface of the spinning platters to read or write the data. Extreme smoothness, durability, and perfection of finish are required properties of a hard-disk platter.

In February 1991, Areal Technology released the MD-2060, the first hard drive to use a glass substrate, replacing the aluminium alloys used in earlier hard drives. It was originally designed for laptops, for which the greater shock resistance of glass substrates are more suitable. Toshiba followed suit with the MK1122FC in April 1991; their factories were able to produce many more drives than Areal, which soon disappeared from the market. Around 2000, other hard drive manufacturers started transitioning from aluminum to glass platters because glass platters have several advantages over aluminum platters.

In 2005–06, a major shift in technology of hard-disk drives and of magnetic disks/media began. Originally, in-plane magnetized materials were used to store the bits, but this has now been replaced by perpendicular recording. The reason for this transition is the need to continue the trend of increasing storage densities, with perpendicularly oriented media offering a more stable solution for a decreasing bit size. Orienting the magnetization perpendicular to the disk surface has major implications for the disk's deposited structure and the choice of magnetic materials, as well as for some of the other components of the hard-disk drive (such as the head and the electronic channel).

title: Hard disk drive platter


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Talk:Manichaeism

Neo Manichaeism
I think it is important to add revival movements like https://Manichaeism.international and https://manichaean.org. The first link have reconstructed artwork and compiled fragments into readable texts. There are a lot of Youtube videos on Manichaen revivals. This is noteworthy and should be incorporated into the ongoing tradition and history of Manichaeism. Please let me know if you agree with this? Check out the links. The Ekklesia of Light is the most prominent and active revival movement. Their reconstruction of artwork and compiled texts has caught the attention of scholars. Mardanyal (talk) 09:12, 1 June 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Manichaeism


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Ashkelon

Ashkelon or Ashqelon (אַשְׁקְלוֹן, ; عَسْقَلَان) is a coastal city in the Southern District of Israel on the Mediterranean coast, 50 km south of Tel Aviv, and 13 km north of the border with the Gaza Strip.

The modern city is named after the ancient seaport of Ascalon, which was destroyed in 1270 and whose remains are on the southwestern edge of the modern metropolis. The Israeli city, then known as Migdal, was founded in 1949 approximately 4 km inland from ancient Ascalon at the Palestinian town of al-Majdal (الْمِجْدَل; אֵל־מִגְ׳דַּל). Its inhabitants had been exclusively Muslims and Christians and the area had been allocated to the Arab state in the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine; on the eve of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War the inhabitants numbered 10,000 and in October 1948, the city accommodated thousands more Palestinian refugees from nearby villages. The town was conquered by Israeli forces on 5 November 1948, by which time much of the Arab population had fled, leaving some 2,700 inhabitants, of which 500 were deported by Israeli soldiers in December 1948 and most of the rest were deported by 1950. Today, the city's population is almost entirely Jewish.

Migdal, as it was called in Hebrew, was initially repopulated by Jewish immigrants and demobilized soldiers. It was subsequently renamed multiple times, first as Migdal Gaza, Migdal Gad and Migdal Ashkelon, until in 1953 the coastal neighborhood of Afridar was incorporated and the name Ashkelon was adopted for the combined town. By 1961, Ashkelon was ranked 18th among Israeli urban centers with a population of 24,000. In the population of Ashkelon was, making it the third-largest city in Israel's Southern District.

Etymology
The name Ashkelon is probably western Semitic, and might be connected to the triliteral root š-q-l ('to weigh', from a Semitic root ṯ-q-l, akin to Hebrew šāqal (שָקַל) or Arabic ṯiql (ثِقْل), 'weight', perhaps attesting to its importance as a center for mercantile activities. Its name appeared in Phoenician and Punic as (𐤔𐤒𐤋𐤍) and  (𐤀𐤔𐤒𐤋𐤍).

Majdal (Arabic) and Migdal (Hebrew) mean 'tower'.

Canaanites to Mamluks

The archaeological site of Ascalon, today known as Tel Ashkelon, was the oldest and largest seaport in Canaan, part of the pentapolis (a grouping of five cities) of the Philistines, north of Gaza City and south of Jaffa.

The site was an important city during the Roman, Byzantine and Early Islamic periods, and particularly during the period of the Crusades, due to its location near the coast and between the Crusader states and Egypt. The Battle of Ascalon was the last action of the First Crusade. In 1270, the Mamluk sultan Baybars ordered the fortifications and harbour at the site to be destroyed. As a result of it, the city was abandoned by its inhabitants and fell into disuse.

Ottoman period

The Palestinian village of Al-Jura (El-Jurah) stood northeast of and immediately adjacent to Tel Ashkelon and is documented in Ottoman tax registers. El-Jurah was depopulated during the 1948 war.

The Arab village of Majdal was mentioned by historians and tourists at the end of the 15th century. In 1596, Ottoman records showed Majdal to be a large village of 559 Muslim households, making it the 7th-most-populous locality in Palestine after Safad, Jerusalem, Gaza, Nablus, Hebron and Kafr Kanna.

An official Ottoman village list of about 1870 showed that Medschdel had a total of 420 houses and a population of 1175, though the population count included men only.

British Mandate
In the 1922 census of Palestine, Majdal had a population of 5,064; 33 Christians and 5,031 Muslims, increasing in the 1931 census to 6,226 (6,166 Muslims and 41 Christians) with 172 in the suburbs (167 Muslims, 4 Christians, and one Jew).

In the 1945 statistics Majdal had a population of 9,910; ninety Christians and 9,820 Muslims, with a total (urban and rural) of 43,680 dunams of land, according to an official land and population survey. 2,050 dunams were public land; all the rest was owned by Arabs. of the dunams, 2,337 were used for citrus and bananas, 2,886 were plantations and irrigable land, 35,442 for cereals, while 1,346 were built-up land.

Majdal was known for its weaving industry. The town had around 500 looms in 1909. In 1920 a British Government report estimated that there were 550 cotton looms in the town with an annual output worth 30–40 million francs. But the industry suffered from imports from Europe and by 1927 only 119 weaving establishments remained. The three major fabrics produced were "malak" (silk), 'ikhdari' (bands of red and green) and 'jiljileh' (dark red bands). These were used for festival dresses throughout Southern Palestine. Many other fabrics were produced, some with poetic names such as ji'nneh u nar ("heaven and hell"), nasheq rohoh ("breath of the soul") and abu mitayn ("father of two hundred").

State of Israel

Majdal was occupied by the Egyptian army in the early stages of the 1948 war, along with the rest of the Gaza region that had been allocated to the Arab State in the United Nations plan. Over the next few months, the town was subjected to Israeli air-raids and shelling. All but about 1,000 of the town's residents were forced to leave by the time it was captured by Israeli forces as a sequel to Operation Yoav on 4 November 1948. General Yigal Allon ordered the expulsion of the remaining Palestinians but the local commanders did not do so and the Arab population soon recovered to more than 2,500 due mostly to refugees slipping back and also due to the transfer of Palestinians from nearby villages. Most of them were elderly, women, or children. During the next year or so, the Palestinians were held in a confined area surrounded by barbed wire, which became commonly known as the "ghetto". Moshe Dayan and Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion were in favor of expulsion, while Mapam and the Israeli labor union Histadrut objected. The government offered the Palestinians positive inducements to leave, including a favorable currency exchange, but also caused panic through night-time raids. The first group was deported to the Gaza Strip by truck on 17 August 1950 after an expulsion order had been served. The deportation was approved by Ben-Gurion and Dayan over the objections of Pinhas Lavon, secretary-general of the Histadrut, who envisioned the town as a productive example of equal opportunity. By October 1950, twenty Palestinian families remained, most of whom later moved to Lydda or Gaza. According to Israeli records, in total 2,333 Palestinians were transferred to the Gaza Strip, 60 to Jordan, 302 to other towns in Israel, and a small number remained in Ashkelon. Lavon argued that this operation dissipated "the last shred of trust the Arabs had in Israel, the sincerity of the State's declarations on democracy and civil equality, and the last remnant of confidence the Arab workers had in the Histadrut." Acting on an Egyptian complaint, the Egyptian-Israel Mixed Armistice Commission ruled that the Palestinians transferred from Majdal should be returned to Israel, but this was not done.

Majdal was granted to Israel in the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Re-population of the recently vacated Arab dwellings by Jews had been official policy since at least December 1948, but the process began slowly. The Israeli national plan of June 1949 designated al-Majdal as the site for a regional urban center of 20,000 people. From July 1949, new immigrants and demobilized soldiers moved to the new town, increasing the Jewish population to 2,500 within six months. These early immigrants were mostly from Yemen, North Africa, and Europe.

In 1949, the town was renamed Migdal Gaza, and then Migdal Gad. Soon afterwards it became Migdal Ashkelon. The city began to expand as the population grew. In 1951, the neighborhood of Afridar was established for Jewish immigrants from South Africa, and in 1953 it was incorporated into the city. The current name Ashkelon was adopted and the town was granted local council status in 1953.

In 1955, Ashkelon had more than 16,000 residents. By 1961, Ashkelon ranked 18th among Israeli urban centers with a population of 24,000. This grew to 43,000 in 1972 and 53,000 in 1983. In 2005, the population was more than 106,000.

In 1949 and 1950, three immigrant transit camps (ma'abarot) were established alongside Majdal (renamed Migdal) for Jewish refugees from Arab countries, Romania and Poland. Northwest of Migdal and the immigrant camps, on the lands of the depopulated Palestinian village al-Jura, entrepreneur Zvi Segal, one of the signatories of Israel's Declaration of Independence, established the upscale Barnea neighborhood.

A large tract of land south of Barnea was handed over to the trusteeship of the South African Zionist Federation, which established the neighborhood of Afridar. Plans for the city were drawn up in South Africa according to the garden city model. Migdal was surrounded by a broad ring of orchards. Barnea developed slowly, but Afridar grew rapidly. The first homes, built in 1951, were inhabited by new Jewish immigrants from South Africa and South America, with some native-born Israelis. The first public housing project for residents of the transit camps, the Southern Hills Project (Hageva'ot Hadromiyot) or Zion Hill (Givat Zion), was built in 1952.

Under a plan signed in October 2015, seven new neighborhoods comprising 32,000 housing units, a new stretch of highway, and three new highway interchanges will be built, turning Ashkelon into the sixth-largest city in Israel.

Economy
Ashkelon is the northern terminus for the Trans-Israel pipeline, which brings petroleum products from Eilat to an oil terminal at the port. The Ashkelon seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) desalination plant is the largest in the world. The project was developed as a BOT (build–operate–transfer) by a consortium of three international companies: Veolia water, IDE Technologies and Elran. In March 2006, it was voted "Desalination Plant of the Year" in the Global Water Awards.

Since 1992, Israel Beer Breweries has been operating in Ashkelon, brewing Carlsberg and Tuborg beer for the Israeli market. The brewery is owned by the Central Bottling Company, which has also held the Israeli franchise for Coca-Cola products since 1968.

Education
The city has 19 elementary schools, and nine junior high and high schools. The Ashkelon Academic College opened in 1998, and now hosts thousands of students. Harvard University operates an archaeological summer school program in Ashkelon.

Ashkelon National Park
The ancient site of Ascalon is now administered as the Ashkelon National Park. The walls that encircled the city are still visible, as well as Canaanite earth ramparts. The park contains mainly Roman, Byzantine, and Crusader ruins. The largest dog cemetery in the ancient world was discovered in Ashkelon.

A Roman burial tomb two kilometres north of Ashkelon National Park was discovered in 1937. There are two burial tombs, a painted Hellenistic cave and a Roman cave. The Hellenistic cave is decorated with paintings of nymphs, water scenes, mythological figures and animals.

Bathhouses
In 1986 ruins of 4th- to 6th-century baths were found in Ashkelon. The bathhouses are believed to have been used for prostitution. The remains of nearly 100 mostly male infants were found in a sewer under the bathhouse, leading to conjectures that prostitutes had discarded their unwanted newborns there.

Religious sites
The remains of a 4th-century Byzantine church with marble slab flooring and glass mosaic walls can be seen in the Barnea Quarter. Remains of a synagogue from this period have also been found.

Maqam al-Imam al-Husayn
An 11th-century mosque, Maqam al-Imam al-Husayn, a site of pilgrimage for both Sunnis and Shiites,  which had been built under the Fatimids by Badr al-Jamali and where tradition held that the head of Mohammad's grandson Hussein ibn Ali was buried, was blown up by the IDF under instructions from Moshe Dayan as part of a broader programme to destroy mosques in July 1950. The area was subsequently redeveloped for a local Israeli hospital, Barzilai. After the site was re-identified on the hospital grounds, funds from Mohammed Burhanuddin, leader of a Shi'a Ismaili sect based in India, were used to construct a small marble prayer platform, which is visited by Shi'ite pilgrims from India and Pakistan.

A domed structure housing the 13th-century tomb of Sheikh Awad sits atop a hill overlooking Ashkelon's northern beaches.

Museums
Ashkelon Khan and Museum contains archaeological finds, among them a replica of Ashkelon's Canaanite silver calf, whose discovery was reported on the front page of The New York Times.

The Outdoor Museum near the municipal cultural center displays two Roman burial coffins made of marble depicting battle and hunting scenes, and famous mythological scenes.

Marina and water park
The Ashkelon Marina, located between Delila and Bar Kochba beaches, offers a shipyard and repair services. Ashkeluna is a water-slide park on Ashkelon beach.

Health care
Ashkelon and environs is served by the Barzilai Medical Center, established in 1961. It was built in place of Hussein ibn Ali's 11th-century mosque, a center of Muslim pilgrimages, destroyed by the Israeli army in 1950. Situated 6 mi from Gaza, the hospital has been the target of numerous Qassam rocket attacks, sometimes as many as 140 over one weekend. The hospital plays a vital role in treating wounded soldiers and terror victims. A rocket and missile-proof emergency room opened in February 2018.

Demographics
In the early years, the city was primarily inhabited by Mizrahi Jews, who fled to Israel after being expelled from Muslim lands. Today, Mizrahi Jews still constitute the majority of the population. In the early 1950s, many South African Jews settled in Ashkelon, establishing the Afridar neighbourhood. They were followed by an influx of immigrants from the United Kingdom. During the 1990s, the city received additional arrivals of Ethiopian Jews and Russian Jews.

Culture and sports
The Ashkelon Sports Arena opened in 1999. The "Jewish Eye" is a Jewish world film festival that takes place annually in Ashkelon. The festival marked its seventh year in 2010. The Breeza Music Festival has been held yearly in and around Ashkelon's amphitheatre since 1992. Most of the musical performances are free. Israel Lacrosse operates substantial youth lacrosse programs in the city and recently hosted the Turkey men's national team in Israel's first home international in 2013.

Conflict with Hamas-ruled Gaza
On 1–2 March 2008, rockets fired by Hamas from the Gaza Strip (some of them Grad rockets) hit Ashkelon, wounding seven, and causing property damage. Mayor Roni Mahatzri stated that "This is a state of war, I know no other definition for it. If it lasts a week or two, we can handle that, but we have no intention of allowing this to become part of our daily routine." In March 2008, 230 buildings and 30 cars were damaged by rocket fire on Ashkelon.

On 12 May 2008, a rocket fired from the northern Gazan city of Beit Lahiya hit a shopping mall in southern Ashkelon, causing significant structural damage. According to The Jerusalem Post, four people were seriously injured and 87 were treated for shock. Fifteen people suffered minor to moderate injuries as a result of the collapsed structure. Southern District Police chief Uri Bar-Lev believed the Grad-model Katyusha rocket was manufactured in Iran. In March 2009, a Qassam rocket hit a school, destroying classrooms and injuring two people.

In November 2014, the mayor, Itamar Shimoni, began a policy of discrimination against Arab workers, refusing to allow them to work on city projects to build bomb shelters for children. His discriminatory actions brought criticism from others, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat who likened the discrimination to the anti-Semitism experienced by Jews in Europe 70 years earlier.

On May 11, 2021, Hamas fired 137 rockets on Ashkelon killing 2 and injuring many others.

During the October 2023 Gaza–Israel conflict, Ashkelon was a main target of Hamas missile barrages.

On October 10, 2023, Abu Obaida, spokesperson for Hamas, warned all citizens of Ashkelon to evacuate before 5:00 P.M. local time via a post to his Telegram channel. Once the deadline hit, Hamas launched a barrage of missiles towards Ashkelon.

Twin towns – sister cities
Ashkelon is twinned with:
 * 🇨🇦 Côte Saint-Luc, Quebec, Canada
 * 🇧🇾 Grodno, Belarus
 * Xinyang, China
 * Iquique, Chile
 * 🇫🇷 Aix-en-Provence, France
 * Vani, Georgia
 * Kutaisi, Georgia
 * 🇮🇹 Aviano, Italy
 * 🇩🇪 Berlin-Pankow, Germany
 * 🇵🇱 Sopot, Poland
 * 🇺🇬 Entebbe, Uganda
 * 🇺🇸 Portland, Oregon, United States
 * 🇺🇸 Baltimore, Maryland, United States
 * 🇺🇸 Sacramento, California, United States

Notable people

 * Yael Abecassis (born 1967), actress and model
 * Yitzhak Cohen (born 1951), politician
 * Avi Dichter (born 1952), Israeli politician
 * Shlomo Glickstein (born 1958), professional tennis player
 * Boris Polak (born 1954), world champion and Olympic sport shooter

title: Ashkelon