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Egypt in the Middle Ages

Following the Islamic conquest in 641-642, Lower Egypt was ruled at first by governors acting in the name of the Rashidun Caliphs and then the Umayyad Caliphs in Damascus, but in 750 the Umayyads were overthrown. Throughout Islamic rule, Askar was named the capital and housed the ruling administration. The conquest led to two separate provinces all under one ruler: Upper and Lower Egypt. These two very distinct regions were governed by the military and followed the demands handed down by the governor of Egypt and imposed by the heads of their communities.

Egypt was ruled by many dynasties from the start of Islamic control in 639 until the early 16th century. The Umayyad period lasted from 658 to 750. The Abbasid period which came after was much more focused on taxes and centralizing power. In 868, the Tulunids, ruled by Ahmad ibn Tulun, expanded Egypt's territory into the Levant. He would rule until his death in 884. After years of turmoil under Ahmad ibn Tulun's successor, many citizens defected back to the Abbasids and in 904 they would reclaim power from the Tulunids. In 969, Egypt came under the control of the Fatimids. This dynasty would begin to fade after the death of their last ruler in 1171.

In 1174, Egypt came under the rule of the Ayyubids, who ruled from Damascus and not from Cairo. This dynasty fought against the Crusader States during the Fifth Crusade. Ayyubid Sultan Najm al-Din recaptured Jerusalem in 1244. He introduced Mamluk forces into his army in order to hold off the crusaders. This decision would be one he regretted. The Ayyubids were overthrown by their bodyguards, known as the Mamluks in 1252 and ruled until 1517, when Egypt became part of the Ottoman Empire under the Eyālet-i Mıṣr province.

Muslim conquest of Egypt
In 639 an army of some 4,000 men were sent against Egypt by the second caliph, Umar, under the command of Amr ibn al-As. This army was joined by another 5,000 men in 640 and defeated a Byzantine army at the battle of Heliopolis. Amr next proceeded in the direction of Alexandria, which was surrendered to him by a treaty signed on November 8, 641. Alexandria was regained for the Byzantine Empire in 645 but was retaken by Amr in 646. In 654 an invasion fleet sent by Constans II was repulsed. From that time no serious effort was made by the Byzantines to regain possession of the country.

Administration of early Islamic Egypt
Following the first surrender of Alexandria, Amr chose a new site to settle his men, near the location of the Byzantine fortress of Babylon. The new settlement received the name of Fustat, after Amr's tent, which had been pitched there when the Arabs besieged the fortress. Fustat quickly became the focal point of Islamic Egypt, and, with the exception of the brief relocation to Helwan during a plague in 689, and the period of 750–763, when the seat of the governor moved to Askar, the capital and residence of the administration. After the conquest, the country was initially divided in two provinces, Upper Egypt (al-sa'id) and Lower Egypt with the Nile Delta (asfal al-ard). In 643/4, however, Caliph Uthman appointed a single governor (wāli) with jurisdiction over all of Egypt, resident at Fustat. The governor would in turn nominate deputies for Upper and Lower Egypt. Alexandria remained a distinct district, reflecting both its role as the country's shield against Byzantine attacks, and as the major naval base. It was considered a frontier fortress (ribat) under a military governor and was heavily garrisoned, with a quarter of the province's garrison serving there in semi-annual rotation. Next to the wāli, there was also the commander of the police (ṣāḥib al-shurṭa), responsible for internal security and for commanding the jund (army).

The main pillar of the early Muslim rule and control in the country was the military force, or jund, staffed by the Arab settlers. These were initially the men who had followed Amr and participated in the conquest. The followers of Amr were mostly drawn from Yamani (south Arabian) tribes, rather than the northern Arab (Qays i) tribes, who were scarcely represented in the province; it was they who dominated the country's affairs for the first two centuries of Muslim rule. Initially, they numbered 15,500, but their numbers grew through emigration in the subsequent decades. By the time of Caliph Mu'awiya I (r. 661–680), the number of men registered in the army list (diwān al-jund) and entitled an annual pay (ʿaṭāʾ) reached 40,000. Jealous of their privileges and status, which entitled them to a share of the local revenue, the members of the jund then virtually closed off the register to new entries. It was only after the losses of the Second Fitna that the registers were updated, and occasionally, governors would add soldiers en masse to the lists as a means to garner political support.

In return for a very small tribute of money (0.5% Jizya Tax on some free men) and food for the troops, the Christian inhabitants of Egypt were excused from military service and left free in the observance of their religion and the administration of their affairs.

Conversions of Copts to Islam were initially rare, and the old system of taxation was maintained for the greater part of the first Islamic century. The old division of the country into districts (nomoi) was maintained, and to the inhabitants of these districts demands were directly addressed by the governor of Egypt, while the head of the community—ordinarily a Copt but in some cases a Muslim Egyptian—was responsible for compliance with the demand.

Umayyad period
During the First Fitna, Caliph Ali (r. 656–661) appointed Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr as governor of Egypt, but Amr led an invasion in summer 658 that defeated Ibn Abi Bakr and secured the country for the Umayyads. Amr then served as governor until his death in 664. From 667/8 until 682, the province was governed by another fervent pro-Umayyad partisan, Maslama ibn Mukhallad al-Ansari. During the Second Fitna, Ibn al-Zubayr gained the support of the Kharijites in Egypt and sent a governor of his own, Abd al-Rahman ibn Utba al-Fihri, to the province. The Kharijite-backed Zubayrid regime was very unpopular with the local Arabs, who called upon the Umayyad caliph Marwan I (r. 684–685) for aid. In December 684, Marwan invaded Egypt and reconquered it with relative ease. Marwan installed his son Abd al-Aziz as governor. Relying on his close ties with the jund, Abd al-Aziz ruled the country for 20 years, enjoying wide autonomy and governing as a de facto viceroy. Abd al-Aziz also supervised the completion of the Muslim conquest of North Africa; it was he who appointed Musa ibn Nusayr in his post as governor of Ifriqiya. Abd al-Aziz hoped to be succeeded by his son, but when he died, Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan (685–695) sent his own son, Abdallah, as governor in a move to reassert control and prevent the country from becoming a hereditary domain.

Abd al-Malik ibn Rifa'a al-Fahmi in 715 and his successor Ayyub ibn Sharhabil in 717 were the first governors chosen from the jund, rather than members of the Umayyad family or court. Both are reported to have increased pressure on the Copts, and initiated measures of Islamization. The resentment of the Copts against taxation led to a revolt in 725. In 727, to strengthen Arab representation, a colony of 3,000 Arabs was set up near Bilbeis. Meanwhile, the employment of the Arabic language had been steadily gaining ground, and in 706 it was made the official language of the government. Egyptian Arabic, the modern Arabic accent and dialect of Egypt, began to form. Other revolts of the Copts are recorded for the years 739 and 750, the last year of Umayyad domination. The outbreaks in all cases are attributed to increased taxation.

Abbasid period
The Abbasid period was marked by new taxations, and the Copts revolted again in the fourth year of Abbasid rule. At the beginning of the 9th century the practice of ruling Egypt through a governor was resumed under Abdallah ibn Tahir, who decided to reside at Baghdad, sending a deputy to Egypt to govern for him. In 828 another Egyptian revolt broke out, and in 831 the Copts joined with native Muslims against the government.

A major change came in 834, when Caliph al-Mu'tasim discontinued the practice of paying the jund as they nominally still formed the province's garrison—the ʿaṭāʾ from the local revenue. Al-Mu'tasim discontinued the practice, removing the Arab families from the army registers diwān and ordering that the revenues of Egypt be sent to the central government, which would then pay the ʿaṭāʾ only to the Turkish troops stationed in the province. This was a move towards centralizing power in the hands of the central caliphal administration, but also signalled the decline of the old elites, and the passing of power to the officials sent to the province by the Abbasid court, most notably the Turkish soldiers favoured by al-Mu'tasim. At about the same time, for the first time the Muslim population began surpassing the Coptic Christians in numbers, and throughout the 9th century the rural districts were increasingly subject to both Arabization and Islamization. The rapidity of this process, and the influx of settlers after the discovery of gold and emerald mines at Aswan, meant that Upper Egypt in particular was only superficially controlled by the local governor. Furthermore, the persistence of internecine strife and turmoil at the heart of the Abbasid state—the so-called "Anarchy at Samarra"—led to the appearance of millennialist revolutionary movements in the province under a series of Alid pretenders in the 870s. In part, these movements were an expression of dissatisfaction with and alienation from imperial rule by Baghdad; these sentiments would manifest themselves in the support of many Egyptians for the Fatimids in the 10th century.

Tulunid period
In 868, Caliph al-Mu'tazz (r. 866–869) gave charge of Egypt to the Turkish general Bakbak. Bakbak in turn sent his stepson Ahmad ibn Tulun as his lieutenant and resident governor. This appointment ushered in a new era in Egypt's history: hitherto a passive province of an empire, under Ibn Tulun it would re-emerge as an independent political centre. Ibn Tulun would use the country's wealth to extend his rule into the Levant, in a pattern followed by later Egypt-based regimes, from the Ikhshidids to the Mamluk Sultanate.

The first years of Ibn Tulun's governorship were dominated by his power struggle with the powerful head of the fiscal administration, the Ibn al-Mudabbir. The latter had been appointed as fiscal agent (ʿāmil) already since c. 861, and had rapidly become the most hated man in the country as he doubled the taxes and imposed new ones on Muslims and non-Muslims alike. By 872 Ibn Tulun had achieved Ibn al-Mudabirbir's dismissal and taken over the management of the fisc himself, and had managed to assemble an army of his own, thereby becoming de facto independent of Baghdad. As a sign of his power, he established a new palace city to the northeast of Fustat, called al-Qata'i, in 870. The project was a conscious emulation of, and rival to, the Abbasid capital Samarra, with quarters assigned to the regiments of his army, a hippodrome, hospital, and palaces. The new city's centrepiece was the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. Ibn Tulun continued to emulate the familiar Samarra model in the establishment of his administration as well, creating new departments and entrusting them to Samarra-trained officials. His regime was in many ways typical of the "ghulām system" that became one of the two main paradigms of Islamic polities in the 9th and 10th centuries, as the Abbasid Caliphate fragmented and new dynasties emerged. These regimes were based on the power of a regular army composed of slave soldiers or ghilmān, but in turn, according to Hugh N. Kennedy, "the paying of the troops was the major preoccupation of government". It is therefore in the context of the increased financial requirements that in 879, the supervision of the finances passed to Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Madhara'i, the founder of the al-Madhara'i bureaucratic dynasty that dominated the fiscal apparatus of Egypt for the next 70 years. The peace and security provided by the Tulunid regime, the establishment of an efficient administration, and repairs and expansions to the irrigation system, coupled with a consistently high level of Nile floods, resulted in a major increase in revenue. By the end of his reign, Ibn Tulun had accumulated a reserve of ten million dinars.

Ibn Tulun's rise was facilitated by the feebleness of the Abbasid government, threatened by the rise of the Saffarids in the east and by the Zanj Rebellion in Iraq itself, and divided due to the rivalry between Caliph al-Mu'tamid (r. 870–892) and his increasingly powerful brother and de facto regent, al-Muwaffaq. Open conflict between Ibn Tulun and al-Muwaffaq broke out in 875/6. The latter tried to oust Ibn Tulun from Egypt, but the expedition sent against him barely reached Syria. In retaliation, with the support of the Caliph, in 877/8 Ibn Tulun received responsibility for the entirety of Syria and the frontier districts of Cilicia (the Thughūr). Ibn Tulun occupied Syria but failed to seize Tarsus in Cilicia, and was forced to return to Egypt due to the abortive revolt of his eldest son, Abbas. Ibn Tulun has Abbas imprisoned, and named his second son, Khumarawayh, as his heir. In 882, Ibn Tulun came close to having Egypt become the new centre of the Caliphate, when al-Mu'tamid tried to flee to his domains. In the event, however, the Caliph was overtaken and brought him back to Samarra (February 883) and under his brother's control. This opened anew the rift between the two rulers: Ibn Tulun organized an assembly of religious jurists at Damascus which denounced al-Muwaffaq a usurper, condemned his maltreatment of the Caliph, declared his place in the succession as void, and called for a jihād against him. Al-Muwaffaq was duly denounced in sermons in the mosques across the Tulunid domains, while the Abbasid regent responded in kind with a ritual denunciation of Ibn Tulun. Ibn Tulun then tried once more, again without success, to impose his rule over Tarsus. He fell ill on his return journey to Egypt, and died at Fustat on 10 May 884.

At Ibn Tulun's death, Khumarawayh, with the backing of the Tulunid elites, succeeded without opposition. Ibn Tulun bequeathed his heir "with a seasoned military, a stable economy, and a coterie of experienced commanders and bureaucrats". Khumarawayh was able to preserve his authority against the Abbasid's attempt to overthrow him at the Battle of Tawahin and even made additional territorial gains, recognized in a treaty with al-Muwaffaq in 886 that gave the Tulunids the hereditary governorship over Egypt and Syria for 30 years. The accession of al-Muwaffaq's son al-Mu'tadid as Caliph in 892 marked a new rapprochement, culminating in the marriage of Khumarawayh's daughter to the new Caliph, but also the return of the provinces of Diyar Rabi'a and Diyar Mudar to caliphal control. Domestically, Khumarawayh's reign was one of "luxury and decay" (Hugh N. Kennedy), but also a time of relative tranquility in Egypt as well as in Syria, a rather unusual occurrence for the period. Nevertheless, Khumarawayh's extravagant spending exhausted the fisc, and by the time of his assassination in 896, the Tulunid treasury was empty. Following Khumarawayh's death, internal strife sapped Tulunid power. Khumarawayh's son Jaysh was a drunkard who executed his uncle, Mudar ibn Ahmad ibn Tulun; he was deposed after only a few months and replaced by his brother Harun ibn Khumarawayh. Harun too was a weak ruler, and although a revolt by his uncle Rabi'ah in Alexandria was suppressed, the Tulunids were unable to confront the attacks of the Qarmatians who began at the same time. In addition, many commanders defected to the Abbasids, whose power revived under the capable leadership of al-Muwaffaq's son, Caliph al-Mu'tadid (r. 892–902). Finally, in December 904, two other sons of Ibn Tulun, Ali and Shayban, murdered their nephew and assumed control of the Tulunid state. Far from halting the decline, this event alienated key commanders in Syria and led to the rapid and relatively unopposed reconquest of Syria and Egypt by the Abbasids under Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Katib, who entered Fustat in January 905. With the exception of the Great Mosque of Ibn Tulun, the victorious Abbasid troops pillaged al-Qata'i and razed it to the ground.

Second Abbasid period and Ikhshidid period
The Abbasids were able to repulse Fatimid invasions of Egypt in 914–915 and 919–921.

In 935, after repulsing another Fatimid attack, the Turkish commander Muhammad ibn Tughj became the de facto ruler of Egypt with the title of al-Ikhshid. After his death in 946, the succession of his son Unujur was peaceful and undisputed, due to the influence of the powerful and talented commander-in-chief, Kafur. One of the many Black African slaves recruited by al-Ikhshid, Kafur remained the paramount minister and virtual ruler of Egypt over the next 22 years, assuming power in his own right in 966 until his death two years later. Encouraged by his death, in 969 the Fatimids invaded and conquered Egypt, beginning a new era in the country's history.

Fatimid period
Jawhar as-Siqilli immediately began the building of a new city, Cairo, to furnish quarters for the army which he had brought. A palace for the Caliph and a mosque for the army were immediately constructed, which for many centuries remained the centre of Muslim learning. However, the Carmathians of Damascus under Hasan al-Asam advanced through Palestine to Egypt, and in the autumn of 971 Jauhar found himself besieged in his new city. By a timely sortie, preceded by the administration of bribes to various officers in the Carmathian host, Jauhar succeeded in inflicting a severe defeat on the besiegers, who were compelled to evacuate Egypt and part of Syria.

Meanwhile, the caliph in 2 al-Muizz had been summoned to enter the palace that had been prepared for him, and after leaving a viceroy to take charge of his western possessions he arrived in Alexandria on May 31 973, and proceeded to instruct his new subjects in the particular form of religion (Shiism) which his family represented. As this was in origin identical with that professed by the Carmathians, he hoped to gain the submission of their leader by argument; but this plan was unsuccessful, and there was a fresh invasion from that quarter in the year after his arrival, and the caliph found himself besieged in his capital.

The Carmathians were gradually forced to retreat from Egypt and then from Syria by some successful engagements, and by the judicious use of bribes, whereby dissension was sown among their leaders. Al-Muizz also found time to take some active measures against the Byzantines, with whom his generals fought in Syria with varying fortune. Before his death he was acknowledged as Caliph in Mecca and Medina, as well as Syria, Egypt and North Africa as far as Tangier.

Under the vizier al-Aziz, there was a large amount of toleration conceded to the other sects of Islam, and to other communities, but the belief that the Christians of Egypt were in league with the Byzantine emperor, and even burned a fleet which was being built for the Byzantine war, led to some persecution. Al-Aziz attempted without success to enter into friendly relations with the Buwayhid ruler of Baghdad, and tried to gain possession of Aleppo, as the key to Iraq, but this was prevented by the intervention of the Byzantines. His North African possessions were maintained and extended, but the recognition of the Fatimid caliph in this region was little more than nominal.

His successor al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah came to the throne at the age of eleven, being the son of Aziz by a Christian mother. His conduct of affairs was vigorous and successful, and he concluded a peace with the Byzantine emperor. He is perhaps best remembered by his destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (1009), a measure which helped to provoke the Crusades, but was only part of a general scheme for converting all Christians and Jews in his dominions to his own opinions by force.

A more reputable expedient with the same end in view was the construction of a great library in Cairo, with ample provision for students; this was modelled on a similar institution at Baghdad. For unknown reasons al-Hakim disappeared in 1021.

In 1049 the Zirid dynasty in the Maghrib returned to the Sunni faith and became subjects of the Caliphate in Baghdad, but at the same time Yemen recognized the Fatimid caliphate. Meanwhile, Baghdad was taken by the Turks, falling to the Seljuk Tughrul Beg in 1059. The Turks also plundered Cairo in 1068, but they were driven out by 1074. During this time, however, Syria was overrun by an invader in league with the Seljuk Malik Shah, and Damascus was permanently lost to the Fatimids. This period is otherwise memorable for the rise of the Hashshashin, or Assassins.

During the Crusades, al-Mustafa maintained himself in Alexandria, and helped the Crusaders by rescuing Jerusalem from the Ortokids, thereby facilitating its conquesst by the Crusaders in 1099. He endeavoured to retrieve his error by himself advancing into Palestine, but he was defeated at the battle of Ascalon, and compelled to retire to Egypt. Many of the Palestinian possessions of the Fatimids then successively fell into the hands of the Crusaders.

In 1118 Egypt was invaded by Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who burned the gates and the mosques of Farama, and advanced to Tinnis, when illness compelled him to retreat. In August 1121 al-Afdal Shahanshah was assassinated in a street of Cairo, it is said, with the connivance of the Caliph, who immediately began the plunder of his house, where fabulous treasures were said to be amassed. The vizier's offices were given to al-Mamn. His external policy was not more fortunate than that of his predecessor, as he lost Tyre to the Crusaders, and a fleet equipped by him was defeated by the Venetians.

In 1153 Ascalon was lost, the last place in Syria which the Fatimids held; its loss was attributed to dissensions between the parties of which the garrison consisted. In April 1154 the Caliph al-Zafir was murdered by his vizier Abbas, according to Usamah, because the Caliph had suggested to his favorite, the vizier's son, to murder his father; and this was followed by a massacre of the brothers of Zafir, followed by the raising of his infant son Abul-Qasim Isa to the throne.

In December 1162, the vizier Shawar took control of Cairo. However, after only nine months he was compelled to flee to Damascus, where he was favorably received by the prince Nureddin, who sent with him to Cairo a force of Kurds under Asad al-din Shirkuh. At the same time Egypt was invaded by the Franks, who raided and did much damage on the coast. Shawar recaptured Cairo but a dispute then arose with his Syrian allies for the possession of Egypt. Shawar, being unable to cope with the Syrians, demanded help of the Frankish king of Jerusalem Amalric I, who hastened to his aid with a large force, which united with Shawar's and besieged Shirkuh in Bilbeis for three months; at the end of this time, owing to the successes of Nureddin in Syria, the Franks granted Shirkuh a free passage with his troops back to Syria, on condition of Egypt being evacuated (October 1164).

Two years later Shirkuh, a Kurdish general known as "the Lion", persuaded Nureddin to put him at the head of another expedition to Egypt, which left Syria in January 1167; a Frankish army hastened to Shawar's aid. At the battle of Babain (April 11, 1167) the allies were defeated by the forces commanded by Shirkuh and his nephew Saladin, who was made prefect of Alexandria, which surrendered to Shirkuh without a struggle. In 1168 Amalric invaded again, but Shirkuh's return caused the Crusaders to withdraw.

Shirkuh was appointed vizier but died of indigestion (March 23, 1169), and the Caliph appointed Saladin as successor to Shirkuh; the new vizier professed to hold office as a deputy of Nureddin, whose name was mentioned in public worship after that of the Caliph. Nureddin loyally aided his deputy in dealing with Crusader invasions of Egypt, and he ordered Saladin to substitute the name of the Abbasid caliph for the Fatimid in public worship. The last Fatimid caliph died soon after in September, 1171.

Ayyubid period

Saladin, a general known as "the Lion", was confirmed as Nureddin's deputy in Egypt, and on the death of Nureddin on April 12, 1174, he took the title sultan. During his reign Damascus, rather than Cairo, was the major city of the empire. Nevertheless, he fortified Cairo, which became the political centre of Egypt. It was in 1183 that Saladin's rule over Egypt and North Syria was consolidated. Much of Saladin's time was spent in Syria, where he fought the Crusader States, and Egypt was largely governed by his deputy Karaksh.

Saladin's son Othman succeeded him in Egypt in 1193. He allied with his uncle (Saladin's brother) Al-Adil I against Saladin's other sons, and after the wars that followed, Al-Adil took power in 1200. He died in 1218 during the siege of Damietta in the Fifth Crusade, and was succeeded by Al-Kamil, who lost Damietta to the Crusaders in 1219. However, he defeated their advance to Cairo by flooding the Nile, and they were forced to evacuate Egypt in 1221. Al-Kamil was later forced to give up various cities in Palestina and Syria to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor during the Sixth Crusade, in order to gain his help against Damascus.

Najm al-Din became sultan in 1240. His reign saw the recapture of Jerusalem in 1244, and the introduction of a larger force of Mameluks into the army. Much of his time was spent in campaigns in Syria, where he allied with the Khwarezmians against the Crusaders and Ayyubids. In 1249 he faced an invasion by Louis IX of France (the Seventh Crusade), and Damietta was lost again. Najm al-Din died soon after this, but his son Turanshah defeated Louis and expelled the Crusaders from Egypt. Turanshah was soon overthrown by the Mameluks, who had become the "kingmakers" since their arrival and now wanted full power for themselves.

Mamluk Egypt
The Mamluk's violent approach to power brought them great political and economic prosperity and led them to becoming the rulers of Egypt. The Mamluk Egypt period began with the Bahri Dynasty and was followed by the Burji Dynasty. The Bahri Dynasty would rule from 1250 to 1382, while the Burji dynasty would last from 1382 to 1517.

Cultural contributions of the Mamluk Empire spanned across more than religion. Literature and astronomy were two subjects which the Mamluks valued and participated in heavily. They were a highly literate and educated society. Private libraries were a status symbol in Mamluk culture. Some of the libraries discovered show evidence of the remnants of thousands of books.

The end of the period was brought about due to famine, military tensions, disease, and high taxation.

Bahri dynasty

The Mamluk sultans were drawn from the freed slaves who formed the court and went on to become slaveowners themselves, they went on to office the army. The sultans were unable to effectively form a new dynasty, usually leaving behind infants who were then overthrown. The Bahri dynasty (1250–1382) would go through 25 sultans in its 132-year period. Many died or were killed shortly after being in power; very few lived more than a few years into their rule as sultan. The first of these was Aybak, who married Shajar al-Durr (the widow of al-Salih Ayyub) and quickly began a war with the region of present-day Syria. He was assassinated in 1257 and was succeeded by Qutuz, who faced a growing danger from the Mongols.

Qutuz defeated the army of Hulagu Khan at the Battle of Ain Jalut in the year 1260, allowing him to regain all of Syria except for the Crusader strongholds. On the way back to Egypt after the battle, Qutuz died and was succeeded by another commander, Baybars, who assumed the sultanate and ruled from 1260 to 1277. In 1291, al-Ashraf Khalil captured Acre, the last of the crusader cities. The Bahris greatly enhanced the power and prestige of Egypt, building Cairo from a small town into one of the foremost cities in the world.

Due to the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, Cairo became the central city of the Islamic world. The Mamluks built much of the earliest remaining architecture of Cairo, including many mosques built out of stone using long, imposing lines.

Since 1347 the Egyptian population, economy, and political system experienced significant destruction as a result of the Black Death pandemic whose waves continued to destroy Egypt up to the early 16th century. In 1377 a revolt in Syria spread to Egypt, and the government was taken over by the Circassians Berekeh and Barkuk. Barkuk was proclaimed sultan in 1382, ending the Bahri dynasty. He was expelled in 1389, but recaptured Cairo in 1390, setting up the Burji dynasty.

Burji dynasty
The Burji dynasty (1382–1517) proved especially turbulent, with political power-plays resulting in short-lived sultans. During the period, the Mamluks fought Timur Lenk and conquered Cyprus.

Plague epidemics continued to ruin Egypt when it spread over the region in 1388–1389, 1397–1398, 1403–1407, 1410–1411, 1415–1419, 1429–1430, 1438–1439, 1444–1449, 1455, 1459–1460, 1468–1469, 1476–1477, 1492, 1498, 1504–1505 and 1513–1514.

Constant political bickering contributed to the inability to resist the Ottomans, this would see the vassalization of Egypt under Ottoman Sultan Selim I. The sultan defeated the Mamluks and captured Cairo on 20 January 1517, transferring the center of power to Istanbul. However, the Ottoman Empire retained the Mamluks as the Egyptian ruling class. The Mamluks and the Burji family regained much of their influence, but technically remained vassals of the Ottomans. Egypt then entered into the middle period of the Ottoman Empire.

title: Egypt in the Middle Ages


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Lists of Marvel Comics characters

This is a list of Marvel multiverse fictional characters which were created for and are owned by Marvel Comics. Licensed or creator-owned characters (G.I. Joe, Godzilla, Groo the Wanderer, Men in Black, Conan the Barbarian, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, RoboCop, Star Trek, Rocko's Modern Life, The Ren and Stimpy Show, etc.) are not included.

Marvel-Electronic Arts video game characters are also included with references. Characters from the Marvel Comics/DC Comics intercompany crossover series of one-shots and Amalgam Comics, created and published by Marvel Comics, are included with reference.

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title: Lists of Marvel Comics characters


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Allama Iqbal International Airport

Allama Iqbal International Airport (Punjabi,, ) is the third largest civilian airport by traffic in Pakistan, after Jinnah International Airport, Karachi and Islamabad International Airport. It serves Lahore, capital of Punjab and second-largest city of Pakistan. It also serves a large portion of the travellers from the other regions of Punjab province. Originally known as Lahore International Airport, it was renamed after the visionary poet and philosopher Dr. Allama Iqbal, one of the pioneers that led to the creation of Pakistan. The airport has three terminals: the Allama Iqbal terminal, the Hajj terminal and a cargo terminal. The airport is about 15 km from the centre of the city.

Post independence
At the time of the Independence of Pakistan, Walton Airport was the main airport of Lahore. Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) acquired its first jet aircraft Boeing 720, Walton Airport was unable to handle the load of Boeing 720. The Government of Pakistan decided to build a brand new airport, which opened in 1962. The airport had a specifically built runway and apron to handle aircraft up to the Boeing 747. This opened Lahore's gates to the world. PIA initiated direct flights to Dubai and London via Karachi.

New Airport
Over the course of the next 25 years, the demand for air travel rose. The government had to build a bigger terminal to meet the growing needs of the region. In March 2003, a new terminal was inaugurated by President General Pervez Musharraf, originally commissioned by then ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. The airport was named Allama Iqbal International Airport and became the second largest airport in Pakistan after the Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. All flights were switched to the new airport and the old airport was passed onto the military. However, the government later reclaimed the airport from the military and developed it into a Hajj terminal.

The Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority awarded the main contract to Airsys ATM, leader of a consortium with J&P Overseas Ltd, an international building and civil engineering contractor. Airsys ATM is a joint project from Thomson-CSF Airsys and Siemens, dedicated to air traffic management systems and airport development. The Airports Group in the UK was also awarded a $70 million contract for airport systems construction. The project was implemented by a consortium of Joannou & Paraskevaides (J&P), responsible for civil and building works, and the Airports Group, responsible for the implementation of the system. Airsys ATM and Thales ATM were responsible for the fabrication and installation of the air bridges at the new terminal.

In March 2006, PIA inaugurated nonstop service between Lahore and Toronto using Boeing 777s. In 2008, the national flag carrier of the UAE, Etihad Airways, opened a dedicated aircraft line maintenance facility at the airport. The facility is used for day-to-day technical line maintenance on Etihad aircraft, including hydraulic structural and instrument checks.

In October 2020, British Airways has resumed its direct flight operations to and from Lahore after 44 years.

Future plans
Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) has planned the expansion of the terminal building and the number of gates will be increased from 7 to 22, with a corresponding increase in remote bays. This will increase the annual passenger capacity of Lahore Airport from 6 million to 20 million which will be sufficient to cater to the passenger load for the next 15 to 20 years.

The new design of the Lahore Airport Expansion Project has inspiration from the national flower of Pakistan, Jasmine or locally known as "Chambeli". The airport will have 4 arms similar to 4 platters of Jasmine flower. The original building has Mughal architectural features but the new airport will have a blend of Spanish and Mughal Architecture.

Gates in the main terminal building will be increased from seven to twenty-two. The present terminal building will not be demolished but will be expanded. The current parking area will be converted to arrival and departure lounges. The first phase that included the construction of the triple storey parking, in place of the front square lawn, has been complete and is now fully operational. The second phase which includes the upgradation of the main runway is underway.

The design of the airport was developed by GilBartolomé Architects from Spain, following a contract awarded to international Spanish Firm, TYSPA International, which firm also worked on expanding the Madrid and São Paulo Airports. A Chinese firm, the China Construction Third Engineering Bureau, has been awarded the contract, worth US$382 million (RMB 2.6 billion CNY), to carry out the construction work. During the expansion of the airport, nearby road network has also been improved, which has helped to ease traffic congestion on the roads leading to the terminal.

Structure
LHE is fitted with all the essentials for domestic and international flights. The information below is correct as of September 2020.

Apron

 * 7 air bridges with PSS & APSS facilities.
 * 23 remote parking stands.

Runway

 * Two parallel runways: one concrete, the other asphalt.
 * Primary Runway 36R/18L: 3,360 metres long, 45 metres wide, 15 metres shoulders on both sides. Max capacity: Airbus A380.
 * Secondary Runway 36L/18R: 2,743 metres long, 46 metres wide. Max capacity: Boeing 747-400.
 * Parallel taxiway for rapid entry/exit.
 * 2 Rapid exit taxiways (Newly constructed).
 * Instrument Landing System Category-II and ILS CAT-III on RWY 36R.
 * Navigational Aids: DVOR/DME/TDME, NDB, OM, MM

Airport services

 * Pakistan State Oil provides fuel services to all airlines flying out of the airport. (Jet A-100)
 * Fire fighting and Rescue Services. Category: 9
 * FIDS systems located in the lounges and briefing concourses showing television programmes and flight information.
 * Airport Mosque, with five times daily and Jummah prayers, located outside the airport left-hand side of the terminal building.
 * CAA Porter services and Metro cab services are available.
 * Custom and Immigration for international flights.
 * Cargo and luggage wrapping services.
 * Passenger assistance services (upon request).
 * Full-service branches of National Bank of Pakistan, Habib Bank Ltd, Bank Al-Falah, and Allied Bank Ltd. alongwith ATMs
 * Pakistan Post fully-staffed location

Ground handling agents

 * Pakistan International Airlines.
 * Shaheen Airport Services (SAPS).
 * IMRAN KHAN ZINDABAD (RAS).
 * Gerry's DNATA Ground Handling & Cargo.

Statistics
The following table provides details of the major traffic flows out of Lahore in terms of passenger numbers, aircraft movements, cargo and mail. Note that the Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan operates with fiscal years starting on July and ending in June of next year. The results were collected from the Civil Aviation Authority of Pakistan website.:

Awards and recognitions

 * Allama Iqbal International Airport was ranked the world's leading airport by Singapore Airlines in-service performance in 2006.

title: Allama Iqbal International Airport


text:
1954 Rugby League World Cup

The 1954 Rugby League World Cup was rugby league's first World Cup and was held between 30 October and 13 November and hosted by France and was won by Great Britain who beat France in the final at the Parc des Princes in Paris. As it was the first official World Cup of either rugby code it was officially known as the Rugby World Cup.

Five nations were invited to compete: Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand and USA (However the USA would withdraw before the tournament began).

The prime instigators behind the idea of holding a rugby league world cup were the French, who were short of money following the seizing of their assets by French rugby union in the Second World War.

The first Rugby League World Cup was an unqualified success. It was played in a uniformly good spirit, provided an excellent standard of play and was a fitting celebration of France's 20th anniversary as a rugby league-playing nation. The trophy, which was donated by the French, was worth eight million francs.

Background
The World Cup was a French initiative. Led by Paul Barrière, who donated the Rugby League World Cup trophy himself, they had been campaigning for such a tournament since before the Second World War.

The uncertainty of the ultimate outcome was of particular interest. In the early 1950s all four competing nations were quite capable of beating each other – no test series in the period was a foregone conclusion.

If there were a favourite it was Australia who had just won back the Ashes. However, in 1953 they had lost series to both the French and the Kiwis, while Great Britain had defeated New Zealand on the second half of their 1954 Australasian tour.

The form book merely provided a conundrum which was made more confusing when the British were forced, through injuries and players making themselves unavailable, to select a raw and largely untried squad which was given little credibility by the cynics.

The captains for this historic event were Puig-Aubert (France), Cyril Eastlake (New Zealand), Clive Churchill (Australia) and Dave Valentine (Britain). The referees were Warrington's Charlie Appleton and Rene Guidicelli (Perpignan).

Participants
Five teams were invited to participate in the first World Cup; Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand and the United States along with hosts, France. There were concerns around the United States participation. The American All Stars who had toured Australia and New Zealand and drawn big crowds in 1953 but were heavily beaten in all their games as well as being beaten 31–0 by France in 1954. This led to doubts around whether an American team would be competitive enough to compete with the United States withdrawing from the tournament. It had been suggested that Wales could replace the United States but were not invited as Great Britain were already participating.

North America (0)
 * (withdrew)

Europe (2)
 * (hosts)

Oceania (2)

Venues
The games were played at various venues in France with the Final played at the Parc des Princes in Paris.

Final
The 1954 Rugby League World Cup final was the conclusive game of the 1954 Rugby League World Cup tournament and was played between France and Great Britain on November 13, 1954, at Parc des Princes, Paris, France.

Try scorers

 * 6
 * 🇬🇧 Gordon Brown
 * 5

 * 🇫🇷 Raymond Contrastin

 * 4

 * 🇬🇧 David Rose

 * 3

 * 🇦🇺 Alex Watson
 * 🇬🇧 Gerry Helme
 * 🇬🇧 Phil Jackson
 * 🇬🇧 Frank Kitchen

 * 2

 * 🇦🇺 Ken Kearney
 * 🇦🇺 Kel O'Shea
 * 🇦🇺 Harry Wells
 * 🇫🇷 Vincent Cantoni

 * 1

 * 🇦🇺 Roy Bull
 * 🇦🇺 Peter Diversi
 * 🇦🇺 Greg Hawick
 * 🇫🇷 Jean Audoubert
 * 🇫🇷 Joseph Crespo
 * 🇫🇷 Guy Delaye
 * 🇫🇷 Joseph Krawzyck
 * 🇫🇷 Jacques Merquey
 * 🇬🇧 Jimmy Ledgard
 * 🇳🇿 Cyril Eastlake
 * 🇳🇿 Jimmy Edwards
 * 🇳🇿 Lenny Eriksen
 * 🇳🇿 Ron McKay

title: 1954 Rugby League World Cup


text:
Kuwait Airways

Kuwait Airways (الخطوط الجوية الكويتية, ) is the flag carrier of Kuwait, with its head office on the grounds of Kuwait International Airport, Al Farwaniyah Governorate. It operates scheduled international services throughout the Middle East, to the Indian subcontinent, Europe, Southeast Asia and North America, from its main base at Kuwait International Airport.

History
The carrier traces its history back to 1953, when Kuwait National Airways was formed by a group of Kuwaiti businessmen; initially, the government took a 50% interest. That year, a five-year management contract was signed with British International Airlines (BIA), a BOAC subsidiary in Kuwait that operated charter flights and provided maintenance services. Two Dakotas were bought, and operations started on 16 March 1954. The carrier transported 8,966 passengers in its first year of operations. In July 1955, the name Kuwait Airways was adopted. In May 1958, a new contract for management and operation was signed, directly with BOAC this time. BIA was taken over by Kuwait Airways in April 1959.

On 8 August 1962, Kuwait Airways became the first foreign customer to order the Trident when two aircraft of the type were acquired, and an option for a third was taken. The deal was valued at £5.5 million, and also included a Comet 4C. At the same time, the carrier also had a £3 million order in place for three BAC One-Elevens, with an option for a fourth. The airline took delivery of the first Comet of its own in January 1963, but Comet operations had started in 7 the previous year with an aircraft on lease from MEA. In August 1963, a second Comet was ordered. The delivery of this second airframe established an unofficial record in early 1964 when it flew between London and Kuwait, a distance of 2888 mi, at 461 mph on average. On 1 June 1963, the government increased its participation in the airline to 100%. In March 1964, the carrier added its first European destination to the route network when flights to London were inaugurated using Comet equipment; from that time, services between London and some points in the Middle East, including Abadan, Bahrain, Beirut, Dhahran, Doha and Kuwait, started being operated in a pool agreement between the carrier and BOAC and MEA. A month later, the airline absorbed Trans Arabia Airways.

In April 1965, the route network had expanded to include Abadan, Baghdad, Bahrain, Beirut, Bombay, Cairo, Damascus, Doha, Frankfurt, Geneva, Jerusalem, Karachi, London, Paris and Tehran. At this time, the fleet comprised two Comet 4Cs, three DC-6Bs, two Twin Pioneers and three Viscount 700s; the carrier had two Trident 1Es and three One-Elevens pending delivery. The first Trident was handed over by the aircraft manufacturer in March 1966, and the second followed in 5 the same year. In the interim, a third aircraft of the type was ordered. On the other hand, the One-Elevens were never delivered: in January 1966 the carrier stated that the simultaneous introduction of both types of aircraft was not possible due to a tightened budget, and postponed their delivery; it was informed late that year that the airline would not take them. Three Boeing 707-320Cs were ordered in November 1967. The carrier made its first profit ever in 1968, with a net income of £910,000.

During 1972, Kuwait Airways' consecutive profitable year, the airline had a net profit of £2.9 million. By May 1973, the fleet had reduced to five Boeing 707-320C aircraft. That year, flights to Colombo were launched. In March 1975, Faisal Saud Al-Fulaij, who employed 1,800, was the corporation's chairman. In a deal worth US$14 million, two additional ex-Pan American Boeing 707-320Cs were subsequently purchased that year, with the first one entering the fleet in 5. The carrier ordered its first Boeing 737 that year, slated for delivery in February 1976. Kuwait Airways became the Boeing 727s worldwide customer in 1979 when it ordered three of these aircraft for delivery in late 1980 and early 1981.

By July 1980, chairmanship was held by Ghassan Al-Nissef, the number of employees had grown to 5,400 and the fleet comprised eight Boeing 707-320Cs, one Boeing 737-200, three Boeing 747-200Bs and one JetStar; three Boeing 727-200s were pending delivery. In mid-1980, six Airbus A310-200s were ordered to replace the Boeing 707s on routes to Asia, Europe and the Middle East, with deliveries starting in 1983; five more A310 aircraft were added to the order late that year.

After India's air market was deregulated in 1992, Kuwait Airways and Gulf Air participated in the formation of Jet Airways, each holding a 20% equity stake, with a total investment estimated at US$8 million. Following the enactment of a law that banned the investment of foreign carriers in domestic Indian operators, both airlines had to divest their shareholding in the Indian company. Kuwait Airways' 20% stake in Jet Airways was sold to the chairman Naresh Goyal for US$4 million.

In July 1996, the carrier modified a previous order that included Boeing 747 aircraft, and placed an order worth US$280 million for two Boeing 777-200s, with purchase rights for another aircraft of the type. The operation made Kuwait Airways the customer of the type worldwide. The airframer handed over the first Boeing 777-200 in early 1998. In December 1998 a code-share agreement was signed with Trans World Airlines to begin in the Spring of 1999.

In October 2007, the new CEO pledged that the airline should be privatised to compete efficiently against other airlines. He says that the airline will encounter difficulty in advancing, especially in fleet renewal, without privatisation.

Flights to Iraq were resumed in November 2013; Kuwait Airways had discontinued services to the country in 1990 following the invasion of Kuwait. After a 17-year hiatus, the carrier resumed flying to Munich in July 2015. Also in July 2015, the airline restarted flights to Istanbul-Atatürk; the city had not been served for three years. Bangalore was added to the carrier network in October 2015.

Airline's relationship with Israeli passengers
Kuwait Airways was accused of discriminating against holders of Israeli passports, for refusing in 2013 and 2014 to sell tickets from New York to London to people holding Israeli passports. In response, Senator Richard Blumenthal, along with five other senators, wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in May 2015 urging him to investigate the allegations. In October 2015, at the conclusion of an investigation, the Department of Transportation issued Kuwait Airways an order to "cease and desist from refusing to transport Israeli citizens between the U.S. and any third country where they are allowed to disembark" In the letter, the DOT also accused Kuwait Airways of following the Arab League boycott of Israel. Additionally, New York City Councilmember Rory Lancman asked the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates JFK Airport, to "terminate the airline's lease if it doesn't immediately change its policy." For its part, the airline said that it complies with Kuwaiti Law which prohibits the company from entering "into an agreement, personally or indirectly, with entities or persons residing in Israel, or with Israeli citizenship." The airline also petitioned the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to review the dispute.

The matter was settled on December 15, 2015, when Kuwait Airways informed the United States Department of Transportation that it would eliminate service between JFK and London Heathrow, with The Daily Telegraph reporting that tickets for the route were no longer being sold effective the following week. Councilmember Lancman responded by saying "If you're so anti-Semitic that you would rather cancel a flight than provide service to Israeli passport holders, then good riddance."

A similar lawsuit was filed in 2017 by the Lawfare Project against the airline for refusing to allow Israelis on a flight from Frankfurt to Bangkok with a layover in Kuwait. Unlike the case of the New York to London route, in this lawsuit, the German court upheld the right of the airline to refuse passengers with Israeli passports to layover in Kuwait.

Ownership
Kuwait Airways is wholly owned by the government of Kuwait,.

Privatisation plans
Privatisation started being considered in the mid-1990s, in a period that followed the Gulf War when the carrier experienced a heavy loss on its assets. The company was turned into a corporation in 2004. A draft decree for its privatisation was approved by the government on 21 July 2008. Plans were to sell up to 35% of the stake to a long-term investor and another 40% allotted to the public, whereas the government would hold the remaining 25%. These plans also contemplated the exclusion of domestic carrier competitors, such as Jazeera Airways, as potential bidders. Furthermore, the government also committed to keeping the workforce invariant for at least years and those who were not to be retained would be offered the opportunity to be transferred to other government dependencies without altering their salaries and holding similar working conditions.

In 2011, the privatisation committee valued the carrier at US$805 million, following advice by the Citigroup, Ernst & Young and Seabury. The process was expected to be concluded by March 2011. However, in 10 that year the committee recommended the airline to go through a reorganisation process before continuing with the privatisation programme, something that was approved by Kuwait Council of Ministers. The privatisation draft was amended and the government signed a contract with the International Air Transport Association for the provision of consultation expertise. The law for the privatisation of Kuwait Airways Corporation was passed in January 2013.

Key people
, Abdulmohsen Salem Alfagaan holds the position as chairman.

Headquarters
The Kuwait Airways headquarters is located on the grounds of Kuwait International Airport in Al Farwaniyah Governorate, Kuwait. The 42000 sqm head office was built for 15.8 million Kuwaiti dinars (US $ 53.6 million). Ahmadiah Contracting & Trading Co. served as the main contractor. The headquarter was constructed from 1992 to 1996. The construction of the head office was the first time that structural glazing for curtain walls was used in the State of Kuwait. The previous headquarters was on the grounds of the airport.

Subsidiaries and alliances
Kuwait Airways has several subsidiaries that are going through a similar privatization process as KAC.
 * Kuwait Aviation Services Co. (KASCO)
 * Automated Systems Co. (ASC, شركة الأنظمـــــة الآلية,الأنظمة) GDS provider since 1989
 * ALAFCO

Kuwait Airways also went into alliances with several airlines to keep up with demand and to continue its operations during the 1990 War.
 * Shorouk Air (ceased operation 2003)
 * Jet Airways (India, Temporarily suspended )
 * Trans World Airlines (began 1 December 1999 with codeshare between JFK and Chicago to Kuwait City)

Livery

The airline revamped its livery in October 2016, updating the stylised bird logo.

Destinations
Kuwait Airways is based at Kuwait International Airport; the airline flies 65 routes that serve 63 destinations,.

Codeshare agreements
Kuwait Airways has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:

 * Aegean Airlines
 * Air Europa
 * Etihad Airways
 * Ethiopian Airlines
 * ITA Airways
 * Middle East Airlines
 * Oman Air
 * SriLankan Airlines
 * Thai Airways International
 * Turkish Airlines

Interline agreements
Kuwait Airways has interline agreements with the following airlines:

 * Air Canada
 * Air China
 * Air Europa
 * Air India
 * American Airlines
 * Asiana Airlines
 * Bangkok Airways
 * Biman Bangladesh Airlines
 * Cathay Pacific
 * China Airlines
 * Czech Airlines
 * EgyptAir
 * Etihad Airways
 * Ethiopian Airlines
 * Gulf Air
 * ITA Airways
 * Kenya Airways
 * Korean Air
 * LOT Polish Airlines
 * Lufthansa
 * Middle East Airlines
 * Nepal Airlines
 * Oman Air
 * Qatar Airways
 * Royal Air Maroc
 * Saudia
 * Singapore Airlines
 * SriLankan Airlines
 * Thai Airways International
 * Tunisair
 * Turkish Airlines
 * Ukraine International Airlines
 * United Airlines
 * Vistara

Current fleet
, the Kuwait Airways fleet includes the following aircraft:

Kuwait Airways operates aircraft for official State business. The fleet has a Kuwait Airways inspired livery with State of Kuwait titles, and is composed of one Airbus A300-600, one A310-300, one A319, one A320, two A340-500 and one Boeing 747-8BBJ.

Recent developments
In October 2013, Kuwait Airways had one of the oldest aircraft fleets in the Middle East, with an average age of 20 years. That month, the carrier opened its maintenance facilities to the press for them to check that the fleet was kept in condition, amid rumours of deficiencies in their maintenance. In 12 the same year, the carrier signed a memorandum of understanding with Airbus for the acquisition of A320neos and  A350-900s. These aircraft would be handed over between 2019 and 2022. For the interim period, the deal includes the lease of seven A320s and five A330-200s from the aircraft manufacturer; deliveries would start in late 2014. In a deal valued at US$4.4 billion, the order including A350-900s and  A320neos was confirmed in February 2014. Kuwait Airways' intentions to purchase Boeing 777-300ERs were informed in November 2014. The order was firmed up a month later for US$3.3 billion with deliveries expected to start in November 2016. Also in December 2014, Kuwait Airways took delivery of its first sharketled Airbus A320 as part of the airline fleet renewal programme. Kuwait Airways received four leased aircraft of the type, marking the first fleet upgrade in 17 years. The carrier became a new customer for the Airbus A330 when it received the first aircraft of the type in June 2015.

Following the airline's rebranding initiative in October 2016, Kuwait Airways received its first Boeing 777-300ER in December 2016, marking the arrival of the airline's first fully owned new aircraft in nearly twenty years. Introduced in 1995, the Airbus A340-300 was retired from service by the airline in 2017. In October 2018, Kuwait Airways amended a pre-existing commitment with Airbus for 10 A350-900s by reducing it to five of these aircraft and ordered eight Airbus A330-800s, which were scheduled to be delivered from March 2019. The first two Airbus A330-800s were handed over to the airline by the aircraft manufacturer in October 2020.

In August 2019, Kuwait Airways Chairman Yousef A. M. J. Alsaqer stated that the airline plans to spend $2.5 billion on new aircraft due to be delivered by 2026.

Services
Kuwait Airways is one of the few airlines which does not serve alcoholic drinks on its flights.

Incidents and accidents

 * On 30 June 1966, Kuwait Airways Flight 032, a Trident 1C flight from Beirut to Kuwait City, suffered a controlled flight into the ground four kilometres short of the runway. There were no fatalities and the Trident was written off.
 * On 3 December 1984, Kuwait Airways Flight 221 from Kuwait City to Karachi, Pakistan, was hijacked by four Lebanese Shi'a hijackers and diverted to Tehran.
 * On 5 April 1988, Kuwait Airways Flight 422 was hijacked from Bangkok to Kuwait with 111 passengers and crew aboard, with three members of the Kuwaiti Royal Family being among the passengers. Six or seven Lebanese men, including Hassan Izz-Al-Din, a veteran of the TWA 847 hijacking armed with guns and hand grenades forced the pilot to land in Mashhad, Iran and demanded the release of 17 Shi'ite Muslim prisoners being held by Kuwait. Lasting 16 days and travelling 3,200 mi from Mashhad in northeastern Iran to Larnaca, Cyprus, and finally to Algiers, it is the longest skyjacking to date. Two passengers, Abdullah Khalidi, 25, and Khalid Ayoub Bandar, 20, both Kuwaitis, were shot to death by the hijackers and dumped on the tarmac in Cyprus. Kuwait did not release the 17 prisoners, and the hijackers were allowed to leave Algiers.
 * In August 1990, in connection with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, several Kuwait Airways planes were reported to have been seized and removed by Iraqi troops.
 * On May 6, 2019, Anand Ramachandran, an Indian technician working for Kuwait Airways, was killed while he was towing a Boeing 777-300ER. Nobody was on board.

title: Kuwait Airways


text:
Bonin Islands

The Bonin Islands, also known as the Ogasawara Islands (小笠原諸島), is a Japanese archipelago of over 30 subtropical and tropical islands located around 1000 km SSE of Tokyo and 1000 mi northwest of Guam. The group as a whole has a total area of 84 km2 but only two of the islands are permanently inhabited, Chichijima and Hahajima. Together, their population was 2,560 as of 2021. Administratively, Tokyo's Ogasawara Subprefecture also includes the settlements on the Volcano Islands and the Self-Defense Force post on Iwo Jima. The seat of government is Chichijima.

Because of the Bonins' isolation, many of their animals and plants have undergone unique evolutionary processes. It has been called "the Galápagos of the Orient" and was named a natural World Heritage Site in 2011. When first reached during the early modern period, the islands were entirely uninhabited. Subsequent research has found evidence of some prehistoric habitation by Micronesians. Upon their repeated rediscoveries, the islands were largely ignored by the Spanish, Dutch, and isolationist Japanese until finally being claimed by a passing British captain in 1827. American, European, and Hawaiian colonists arrived from the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1830. Subsequently, Meiji Japan successfully colonized and reclaimed the islands in 1875 but the original multicultural community continued up to World War II, when most islanders were forcibly relocated to Honshu. Following Japan's defeat, the U.S. Navy occupied the island, bulldozing existing Japanese homes and restricting resettlement until full control of the Bonins was returned to Japan in 1968. Ethnically, the island is now majority Japanese but remains unusually diverse, which is reflected in the local creole language known as Bonin English. Improved transportation has made agriculture more profitable and encouraged tourism, but the development required for an airport remains a contentious local issue.

Names
The name Bonin comes from an 1817 article in the French Journal des Savans by Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat in which—among various other misunderstandings of his source material—he misread a description of the islands as uninhabited (無人嶋, "desert island[s]") for their actual name, used the wrong reading of the characters (buninshima for mujintō), and then transcribed the resulting reading incorrectly into French as Bo-nin Sima, which eventually lost its original hyphen.

The name Ogasawara literally means "little hat-shaped field(s)" but is used for the islands in honor of Ogasawara Sadayori (小笠原), a supposed ancestor of the ronin Ogasawara Sadatō (小笠原) fictitiously credited with the discovery of the chain. Within Japanese, the Bonins proper are known as the "Ogasawara Islands" or "Group" (小笠原, Ogasawara-guntō) while the "Ogasawara Islands" or "Archipelago" (小笠原, Ogasawara-shotō) is a wider term including the other islands of the Ogasawara Municipality (小笠原, Ogasawara-mura) and its coterminous Ogasawara Subprefecture (小笠原, Ogasawara-shichō)—namely, the Volcano Islands and three remote islands of Nishinoshima, Minamitorishima, and Okinotorishima. All of these islands are parts of Japan's Nanpō Islands.

The islands were also formerly known to Europeans as the Archbishop Islands (Islas del Arzobispo), probably in honor of Pedro Moya de Contreras, archbishop of Mexico and viceroy of New Spain, who sent an expedition to the area in the late 16th century.

Prehistory
At the end of the 20th century, prehistoric tools and carved stones were discovered on North Iwo Jima and Chichijima, establishing that the islands were previously home to at least some members of an unknown Micronesian people.

Early modern period
The first recorded visit by Europeans to the islands happened on 2 October 1543, when the Spanish explorer Bernardo de la Torre on the San Juan sighted Haha-jima, which he charted as Forfana. At that time, the islands were uninhabited. Japanese discovery of the islands occurred in Kanbun 10 (1670) and was followed by a shogunate expedition in Enpō 3 (1675). The islands were then referred to as Bunin jima (無人島), literally "the uninhabited islands". Shimaya Ichizaemon, the explorer at the order of the shogunate, inventoried several species of trees and birds, but after his expedition, the shogunate abandoned any plans to develop the remote islands.

In 1727, Ogasawara Sadatō (小笠原 貞任), a rōnin, claimed that the islands were discovered by his ancestor Ogasawara Sadayori (小笠原 貞頼), in 1593, (Tensho 20), and the territory was granted as a fief by Toyotomi Hideyoshi. However, investigation of the claim found that it was a fraud and the very existence of Sadayori was doubtful; as a punishment Sadato was exiled by the shogunate (1735).

The first published description of the islands in the West was brought to Europe by Isaac Titsingh in 1796. His small library of Japanese books included Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu (三国通覧図説) by Hayashi Shihei. This book, which was published in Japan in 1785, briefly described the Ogasawara Islands.

These groups were collectively called the Archbishop Islands in Spanish sources of the 18th–19th century, most likely due to an expedition organized by Pedro Moya de Contreras, archbishop of Mexico and viceroy of New Spain, to explore the northern Pacific and the islands of Japan. Its main objective was to find the long sought but legendary islands of Rica de Oro ("Rich in Gold"), Rica de Plata ("Rich in Silver"), and the Islas del Armenio ("Islands of the Armenian"). After several years of planning and frustrated initial attempts, the expedition finally set sail on 12 July 1587 commanded by Pedro de Unamuno. Even if it did revisit the Daitō Islands, already charted by Bernardo de la Torre in 1543, the expedition could not find the wanted islands after searching the positions where they were charted in contemporary references. Japanese maps at the time seem to have been rather inaccurate, to the point that some contemporaries considered them to have been deliberately misleading to discourage colonization attempts by foreign nations. Frederick William Beechey used the Spanish name as late as 1831, believing that the Japanese "Boninsima" were entirely different islands.

19th century
On 12 September 1824 American Captain James Coffin in the whaler Transit first visited the southern group of islands (Coffin Islands). He visited the archipelago again in 1825 but this time he arrived at the middle group of islands (Beechey Group).

In September 1825, the British whaling ship Supply landed in the southern Bailey Group of islands. In 1826, another British whaler, William, arrived at Beechey Island. Whaling ships called on a regular basis, for water and turtles, before continuing their voyages.

In 1827 Captain F. W. Beechey of HMS Blossom (1806) reached the island chain and claimed them as a British possession. A copper plate was removed from Blossom's hull and left on a beach as a marker of the claim:"'HBM Ship Blossom Capt F. W. Beechey took possession of this Group of Islands in the Name of and on the behalf of His Britannic Majesty George the IV on the 14th June 1827.'"

He also named the island of Chichijima "Peel" after then British Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel. Beechey was also surprised to find two men living on the islands. They remained on the islands after the William left the year before in 1826. The men were Wittrein and Petersen.

In 1830, with the help of British Consul to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) Richard Charlton, Richard Millichamp, and Matteo Mazzaro sailed to the islands. The first permanent colony was made up of Nathaniel Savory of Bradford, Massachusetts, America, Richard Millichamp of Devon, England; Matteo Mazzaro of Ragusa/Dubrovnik, Austrian Empire (now in Croatia); Alden B. Chapin and Nathaniel Savory of Boston; Carl Johnsen of Copenhagen; as well as seven unnamed men and 13 women from the Kingdom of Hawaii. They found the climate suitable for farming and the raising of livestock. Rum was made from cane sugar, and bordellos were opened, sometimes staffed by women kidnapped from other island chains. Whalers and other ships that could not find another friendly port in Japan often visited the Bonins for provision and recreation.

Two years later the Oriental Translation Fund of Great Britain and Ireland published a posthumous, abridged publication of Titsingh's French translation of Sankoku Tsūran Zusetsu.

Further settlers arrived in 1846, aboard the whaling ship Howard. They established themselves initially in South Island. One of them, a woman from the Caroline Islands named Hypa, died in 1897 age about 112, after being baptized on her deathbed.

Commodore Matthew C. Perry of the United States Navy visited the islands in 1853 and bought property at Port Lloyd from Savory for $50. The US "Colony of Peel Island" (Chichijima) was created and Savory was appointed governor.

In January 1862 (Bunkyū 1), the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan claimed the islands in a short-lived colonial enterprise. The shogunal steamboat Kanrin Maru was dispatched to the islands with a crew of cartographers, physicians and prominent bureaucrats. The islands were officially renamed Ogasawara, referring to the legendary Japanese discoverer from the late 16th century. This tentative colonization, however, did not last for long. In summer 1863, under foreign pressure, the shogunate ordered the evacuation of the islands.

In 1875 the Japanese Meiji government reclaimed the islands. The Japanese names of each island were resolved and 38 settlers from Hachijojima were sent the following year. In 1876 the islands were put under the direct control of the Home Ministry. Further foreign settlement was banned, and the government assisted settlers who wished to relocate there from mainland Japan. The islands' forests were also cut down for sugar cane production. Colonists largely segregated themselves in two different villages, one for the Americans and the other for the Japanese. Islanders of European and US ancestry were eventually granted Japanese nationality in 1882. Jack London visited the islands in 1893 and published an account of his sojourn.

20th century
Lionel Cholmondeley compiled a history of the islands over the course of several years, publishing in 1915.

In 1917, 60–70 island people claimed ancestry among the 19th-century English-speaking settlers; however, in 1941, no Bonin people would acknowledge descent from these early colonists. The current residents include some who claim to be related to Nathaniel Savory. In the winter of 1920–1921, Russian Futurist painter David Burliuk lived in the Bonin Islands and painted several landscapes of the islands.

The islanders were relegated to an insignificant status up through the early Shōwa period. After Japan's attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, English was banned on the Bonins, and Americans had to take on Japanese names. As fighting creeped closer to Japan during the later stage of the war, most inhabitants were forcibly evacuated to the mainland. There was a Japanese military base on Chichijima run by a Major Sueo Matoba (的場 末男), who was known for engaging in cannibalism and other acts on prisoners of war. The torpedo bomber of later American President George H. W. Bush crashed in the ocean near Chichijima. He ended up getting rescued by USS Finback and becoming the only one to ultimately survive. Eight other airmen downed near the islands were later executed and cannibalized by the Japanese soldiers. Matoba was eventually hanged for his crimes after the war. The Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, one of the fiercest battles of World War II, was fought on a garrison island in this region of the Pacific.

Following Japan's surrender, the islands were controlled by the United States Navy for the next 23 years, which the Westerners referred to as "Navy Time." All residents except those descended from the original settlers (the Ōbeikei Islanders) and/or related to them by marriage were expelled, while pre-war inhabitants of White American or European, Micronesian or Polynesian ancestry were allowed to return. Vacant properties of exiled Japanese were bulldozed as part of the Navy's management of nuclear weapons on Chichijima. In 1956, the residents petitioned for American annexation of the islands but received no response. In 1968, the United States government returned the Bonins to Japanese control. The Ōbeikei could choose to either become Japanese nationals or to receive American citizenship and repatriate to the United States. The majority remained in the islands as Japanese citizens. Initially some 600 Japanese relocated to the islands, growing to about 2,000 by the end of the 20th century.

21st century
The Bonins were named a natural World Heritage Site on 24 June 2011.

Economy
Historically, the Bonin Islands consisted of subsistence farming with some exploitation of timber and grazing land for export to the mainland. With improved transportation, it has developed as a tourist destination, particularly for Japanese interested in scuba diving and ecotourism. Foreign tourists are also sometimes drawn both by the islands' remoteness and its unusually mixed local culture. Refrigeration has also allowed greater exporting of fruits and vegetables. Coffee bushes have also been recently introduced to some success.

There are also a number of government agencies involved with the islands. A 25 m radio telescope is located in Chichijima, one of the stations of the very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA) project, and is operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.

Geography and administration

The Bonin Islands consist of three subgroups. Their former names come from a variety of sources but their Japanese ones generally reflect a family:
 * Muko-jima Group (聟島列島 ), formerly the Parry Group
 * Muko-jima (聟島, lit. 'Bridegroom Island')
 * Yome-jima (嫁島, lit. 'Bride Island'), formerly Kater Island
 * Nakōdo-jima or Nakadachi-jima (媒島, lit. 'Matchmaker Island')
 * Kita-no-jima (北の島 or 北島, lit. 'Northern Island')
 * Mae-jima (前島, lit. 'Front Island'), formerly The Ears
 * Chichi-jima Group (父島列島 ), formerly the Beechey Group
 * Chichi-jima (父島, lit. 'Father Island'), formerly the Main Island or Peel Island
 * Ani-jima (兄島, lit. 'Elder Brother Island'), formerly Hog Island or Buckland Island
 * Otōto-jima (弟島, lit. 'Younger Brother Island'), formerly North Island or Stapleton Island
 * Mago-jima (孫島 lit. 'Grandchild Island')
 * Higashi-jima (東島 lit. 'East Island')
 * Nishi-jima (西島 lit. 'West Island'), formerly Goat Island
 * Minami-jima (南島 lit. 'South Island'), formerly Knorr Island
 * Haha-jima Group (母島列島 ), formerly the Baily Group or Coffin Islands
 * Haha-jima (母島, lit. 'Mother Island'), formerly Hillsborough Island
 * Mukō-jima (向島, lit. 'Island Over There'), formerly Plymouth Island
 * Hira-jima or Taira-jima (平島, lit. 'Flat Island')
 * Ane-jima (姉島, lit. 'Elder Sister Island'), formerly Perry Island
 * Imōto-jima (妹島, lit. 'Younger Sister Island'), formerly Kelly Island
 * Mei-jima (姪島, lit. 'Niece Island')

Although not part of the Bonins (小笠原群島, Ogasawara-guntō) geographically, the nearby Volcano Islands, Nishinoshima (Rosario Island), Okinotorishima (Parece Vela), and Minamitorishima (Marcus Island) are organized as part of Ogasawara municipality (小笠原村, Ogasawara-mura). Ogasawara itself is organized as a subprefecture of Tokyo. In Japanese, the geographical expression for the full range of the municipality is the "Ogasawara Archipelago" (小笠原諸島, Ogasawara-shotō) which in turn is sometimes calqued back into English as another meaning for "the Bonin Islands".

Geology
The Bonin Islands are a part of the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc of Pacific islands. A fore arc, they lie above the subduction zone where the Pacific Plate slides beneath the Philippine Sea Plate. This began during the Eocene, simultaneously producing the deep Bonin Trench to the east about 50 million years ago and prolonged volcanic activity that created the islands on the west around 48 million years ago. The Bonins are mostly composed of an andesitic volcanic rock called boninite, rich in magnesium oxide, chromium, and silicon dioxide. They may represent the exposed parts of an ophiolite that has not yet been emplaced on oceanic crust. Although the area is currently dormant, most of the islands still have steep shorelines, often with sea cliffs ranging from 50 to 100 m high.

The Volcano Islands are much younger and still geologically active. Iwo Jima is a dormant volcano characterized by rapid uplift and several hot springs. The highest point in the entire chain lies on South Iwo Jima, at 916 m. In November 2013, a new volcanic island formed offshore from Nishinoshima and eventually merged with it.

The islands are fringed with healthy coral reefs and have many small beaches.

Climate
The climate of the Bonin Islands range from a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) to tropical monsoon climate (Köppen climate classification Am).

The climate of Chichijima in is on the boundary between the humid subtropical climate (Köppen classification Cfa) and the tropical monsoon climate (Köppen classification Am). Temperatures are warm to hot all year round owing to the warm currents from the North Pacific gyre that surround the island. Rainfall is less heavy than in most parts of mainland Japan since the island is too far south to be influenced by the Aleutian Low and too far from Asia to receive monsoonal rainfall or orographic precipitation on the equatorward side of the Siberian High. The wettest months are May and September, while the driest months are January and February.

The easternmost island, Minamitorishima or Marcus Island, has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen classification Aw) with warm to hot temperatures throughout the year. The wettest months are July and August, while the driest months are February and March.

Flora

Flora has evolved differently on each of the islands. The Bonin Islands are sometimes referred to as the Galápagos of the Orient. They form a distinct subtropical moist broadleaf forest ecoregion, the Ogasawara subtropical moist forests. The ecoregion has a high degree of biodiversity and endemism. The islands are home to about 500 plant species, of which 43% are endemic. The forests are of three main types:

 * Type I: Elaeocarpus–Ardisia mesic forest is found in the moist lowland areas with deep soils. The forests have a closed canopy with a height of about 15 m, dominated by Ardisia sieboldii. Elaeocarpus photiniaefolius, Pisonia umbellifera, and Planchonella obovata are other important canopy species. These forests were almost completely destroyed by clearing for agriculture before 1945.
 * Type II: Distylium–Raphiolepis–Schima dry forest is found in drier lowland and upland sites with shallower soils. It is also a closed-canopy forest, with a 4 to 8 m canopy composed mostly of Distylium lepidotum, Rhaphiolepis integerrima, Schima mertensiana, Planchonella obovata, and Syzygium buxifolium. The Type II forests can be further subdivided into:
 * Type IIa: Distylium-Schima dry forest occurs in cloudy upland areas with fine-textured soils. These forests contain many rare and endemic species, with Pandanus boninensis and Syzygium buxifolium as the predominant trees.
 * Type IIb: Raphiolepis-Livistona dry forest is found in upland areas with few clouds and rocky soils. Rhaphiolepis integerrima is the dominant tree species, along with the fan palm Livistona boninensis, Pandanus boninensis and Ochrosia nakaiana.
 * Type III: Distylium-Planchonella scrub forest is found on windy and dry mountain ridges and exposed sea cliffs. These forests have the highest species diversity on the islands. Distylium lepidotum and Planchonella obovata are the dominant species, growing from 0.5 to 1.5 m tall. Other common shrubs are Myrsine okabeana, Symplocos kawakamii, and Pittosporum parvifolium.

These islands are home to the northernmost outliers of the palm genus Clinostigma. C. savoryianum is endemic and has been planted in Mediterranean climates with success. Other unique species include Metrosideros boninensis, a plant related to similar species growing in Fiji and New Caledonia.

Fauna
Due to its isolation and recent colonization, the Bonin Islands contain several endemic animal species, most of them recently extinct.

Birds
The range of the Bonin petrel extends beyond the Bonins themselves to other islands in the North Pacific. There are two restricted-range species of birds on the islands, the Japanese wood pigeon (Columba janthina) and the near-threatened Bonin white-eye (Apalopteron familiare), formerly known as the Bonin honeyeater. The Japanese wood pigeon was extirpated from the Iwo Island groups in the 1980s. The formerly endemic Bonin pigeon (C. versicolor), Bonin thrush (Zoothera terrestris) and Bonin grosbeak (Carpodacus ferreorostris) are now extinct.

Mammals
A small extinct bat, Sturdee's pipistrelle, is only known in one record and has not been seen since 1915. The Bonin flying fox (Pteropus pselaphon), also called the Bonin fruit bat, is endemic to the islands. It is currently listed as endangered, and a survey published by the Ogasawara Office of Education in 1999 estimated their number at around 100. The Bonin sambar (R. unicolor boninensis), a subspecies of the sambar deer, was supposedly a population introduced to the islands only as late as 1850, but is also known from subfossil remains; it went extinct after 1925-26, when Richard Goldschmidt saw the taxidermied pair of the Chichijima museum and was told by locals that merely "half a dozen" animals remained alive

Invertebrates
The islands are also renowned for the many species of snails that are found across the islands, especially the Mandarina snails. Most of the native snails are now endangered or extinct because of introduced species and habitat loss. The giant squid (Architeuthis dux) was photographed off the Bonins for the first time in the wild on 30 September 2004 and was filmed alive there in December 2006.

Water transport
The main port is Futami on Chichijima. Since 2016, the main line connecting the islands to the mainland is the Ogasawara Shipping Company (小笠原海運株式会社). It operates the Ogasawara Maru (おがさわら丸), an 11,035-ton 150 m long vessel with 170 private rooms and a total capacity of 894 passengers. With a top speed of 24.7 knot, it makes the trip from Takeshiba Pier in Tokyo in about 24 hours in good weather. The number of monthly voyages varies, having fallen during the coronavirus epidemic.

Previously, there had been plans for a 14,500-ton "techno superliner" able to reach a maximum speed of 38 knot and make the same journey in only 17 hours with a capacity of around 740 passengers. The project was cancelled in July 2005, however, due to rising fuel prices and cost overruns of ¥2 billion.

To get to Hahajima, you first travel to Chichijima and then cross on the ferry Hahajima Maru.

Road transport
Ogasawara Village operates a bus service on Chichijima and elderly passengers may use a "silver pass". There is also a sightseeing taxi service, a rental car company, motorized scooter rental services, a bike rental service, and other amenities. Bringing your automobile onto the island is extremely difficult and costly.

Air transport
The Bonins have no airport. During severe accidents, illnesses, and other emergencies, a helicopter is dispatched from the Self-Defense Force post on Iwo Jima. The ShinMaywa US-1 seaplane from the SDF post at Iwakuni is used during visits by the Tokyo governor and other dignitaries and for any emergency requiring rapid transport back to Honshu.

For several decades, there has been talk of building a full airport. Sites on Chichijima and Anijima have both been rejected. Travel time to the mainland would be cut to around two hours, improving tourism and the provision of emergency services, and the national, regional, and local government have all supported the idea in theory. Projects have lagged, however, due to concerns about its economic feasibility and concerns that the proposed sites are homes to numerous valuable, rare, or endangered plant species. Some locals have greatly desired an airport, while a desire to keep the natural beauty of the islands untouched has prompted others to work to block one. The issue is quite controversial on the islands.

On 26 June 2016, the Japanese Minister of Environment Tamayo Marukawa talked about airport construction on the Bonins after the meeting in Tokyo commemorating the fifth anniversary of their registration as World Natural Heritage. At a 27 July 2017 meeting with Ogasawara Village, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government announced that it was considering opening a regular air route between Tokyo and the Bonins using a proposed 1200 m runway that would be built on Chichijima. This would allow it to land propeller aircraft with up to 50 passengers. The Tokyo government said that construction would depend on future assessment of the impact on the natural environment and economic feasibility. Ogasawara Village supported the runway in preference to expanding either the current helicopter or seaplane access. In fiscal 2019, 490 million yen was included in the Japanese budget for a feasibility study and a survey on Chichijima to determine the best location to construct the runway. In August 2020, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government held a council during which it affirmed its desire to open an airport but claimed that it would not occur until 2030 at the earliest. To address environmental concerns, they further proposed shortening the runway to about 500 m and using tiltrotor aircraft to compensate.

Demography, language, and education
In 2021, the Bonins had a total population of 2560, divided between Chichijima (2120) and Hahajima (440). Virtually all of the Bonin Islands' permanent inhabitants are Japanese citizens. This includes a significant proportion of ancestors from the United States, Europe, and other Pacific islands, who can often be distinguished by their physical features, family names spelt out with katakana, and adherence to Christianity. During and after the US military occupation of 1946–68, a small minority of islanders opted for US citizenship and/or emigrated from the islands. However, most islanders with non-Japanese ancestry now appear to be reassimilating with the ethnic Japanese majority.

Japanese is the common language. Because settlers from the United States, Europe and other Pacific islands preceded ethnic Japanese residents, an English-lexified pidgin which subsequently developed into a creole, known as Bonin English, Ogasawara Creole or Ogasawara Mixed Language, emerged on the islands during the 19th century. This was the result of Japanese being hybridised with island English, resulting in a mixed language that can still be heard.

The Ogasawara Village municipality operates public elementary and junior high schools, while Tokyo Metropolitan Government Board of Education operates Ogasawara High School. In the post-World War II era, Admiral Arthur Radford Elementary School (ラドフォード提督学校) taught elementary students, and high school students went to Guam to do their high school education. Ogasawara High opened in 1964.

Fictional references
The Bonins have been referenced in several works of fiction. Bonin by Robert Standish describes itself as 'a novel', but claims 'this book is an accurate history of the Bonin Islands', based mainly on information from Nathaniel Savory's great-granddaughter, and includes descriptions of maltreatment of the Anglo-Polynesian population by the later Japanese settlers and authorities and a detailed map of the Chichijima group (on the back end-paper), including over 50 English place-names.

Chapter XVI of Jack London's autobiographical novel John Barleycorn says "This isolated group, belonging to Japan, had been selected as the rendezvous of the Canadian and American sealing fleets", and describes the drunken visit of a young sailor and his shipmates to the Bonin Islands.

In the television series The Super Dimension Fortress Macross, a fictional island in the chain, South Ataria Island (which would have laid at the southernmost position in the chain, surpassing Minami Iwo Jima), is the landing site of the SDF-1 Macross.

In the 1963 film Matango, a luxury yacht is set adrift and lands on an island. Upon approaching the island, one of the crew members shouts: "I wonder if it's the Bonin Islands?" The English subtitles for the film misspell Bonin "Bonan".

The 2017 anime film The Irregular at Magic High School: The Movie – The Girl Who Summons the Stars takes place on fictional islands in the Bonins.

title: Bonin Islands


text:
Volcano Islands

The Volcano Islands (火山列島) or Iwo Islands (硫黄列島) are a group of three Japanese-governed islands in Micronesia. They lie south of the Ogasawara Islands and belong to the municipality of Ogasawara, Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. The islands are all active volcanoes lying atop the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc that stretches south to the Marianas. They have an area of 32.55 km2, and a population of 380. The island of Iwo Jima in the Volcano Islands lies about 1240 km southeast of Miyazaki.

Geography
The Volcano Islands are: Farther north but in the same volcanic arc is:
 * Kita Iwo Jima (北硫黄島), 5.57 km2, 792 m (Sakaki-ga-mine)
 * Iwo Jima (硫黄島), 20.60 km2, 166 m (Suribachi-yama)
 * Minami Iwo Jima (南硫黄島) 3.54 km2, 916 m
 * Nishino-shima (西之島), 4.10 km2, 200 m

There is a Japan Self-Defense Forces air base on Iwo Jima with a staff of 380. It is located in the village of Minami. Other than that, the islands are uninhabited.

 * Fukutoku-Okanoba Generally submerged volcano eruptions sometimes bring it above the surface.

History
The first recorded sighting by Europeans was in October 1543 by Spanish navigator Bernardo de la Torre on board of carrack San Juan de Letrán when trying to return from Sarangani to New Spain. Iwo Jima was charted as Sufre, the old Spanish term for sulphur.

The islands were uninhabited in 1889 when the two northern islands were settled by Japanese settlers from the Izu Islands. They were annexed by Japan in 1891. However, archeological evidence has revealed that islands of the greater Bonin archipelago were prehistorically inhabited by an unknown Micronesian people.

The population was about 1,100 in 1939, distributed among five settlements: Higashi, Minami, Nishi, Kita and Motoyama (meaning "East", "South", "West", "North" and "Mountain of Origin", or central mountain) on Iwo Jima; and two settlements on Kita Iwo Jima: Ishino-mura ("Ishino village"; Ishino is a surname) and Nishi-mura ("West village"). The municipal administration office was located in Higashi until 1940 when the municipality was integrated into the administration of Ogasawara, Tokyo.

Iwo Jima was the site of the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, and the island group came under the United States administration. The Volcano Islands were returned to Japanese rule in 1968.

Ecology
The Volcano Islands have a subtropical climate. They are part of the Ogasawara subtropical moist forests ecoregion and are home to unique and diverse plants and animals, including many endemic species. They have been recognised as forming an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because they support populations of red-tailed tropicbirds, Japanese wood pigeons and Matsudaira's storm petrels.

title: Volcano Islands