text:
Agriculture in ancient Rome

Roman agriculture describes the farming practices of ancient Rome, during a period of over 1000 years. From humble beginnings, the Roman Republic (509 BC–27 BC) and the Roman Empire (27 BC–476 AD) expanded to rule much of Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East and thus comprised many agricultural environments of which the Mediterranean climate of dry, hot summers and cool, rainy winter was the most common. Within the Mediterranean area, a triad of crops were most important: grains, olives, and grapes. The great majority of the people ruled by Rome were engaged in agriculture. From the beginning of small, largely self-sufficient landowners, rural society became dominated by latifundium, large estates owned by the wealthy and utilizing mostly slave labor. The growth in the urban population, especially of the city of Rome, required the development of commercial markets and long-distance trade in agricultural products, especially grain, to supply the people in the cities with food.

Background
The main texts of the Greco-Roman agricultural tradition are mostly from the Roman agronomists: Cato the Elder's De agri cultura, Columella's De re rustica, Marcus Terentius Varro and Palladius. Attributed to Mago the Carthaginian, the agricultural treatise Rusticatio, originally written in Punic and later translated into Greek and Latin, is now lost. Scholars speculate whether this text may have been an early source for agricultural traditions in the Near East and Classical world.

The "delightful" life
Agriculture in ancient Rome was not only a necessity but was idealized as a way of life. Cicero considered farming the best of all Roman occupations. In his treatise On Duties, he declared that "of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is better than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming to a free man." When one of his clients was derided in court for preferring a rural lifestyle, Cicero defended country life as "the teacher of economy, of industry, and of justice" (parsimonia, diligentia, iustitia). Cato, Columella, Varro and Palladius wrote handbooks on farming practice.

In his treatise De agricultura ("On Farming", 2nd century BC), Cato wrote that the best farms contained a vineyard, followed by an irrigated garden, willow plantation, olive orchard, meadow, grain land, forest trees, vineyard trained on trees, and lastly acorn woodlands. Though Rome relied on resources from its many provinces acquired through conquest and warfare, wealthy Romans developed the land in Italy to produce a variety of crops. "The people living in the city of Rome constituted a huge market for the purchase of food produced on Italian farms."

Land ownership was a dominant factor in distinguishing the aristocracy from the common person, and the more land a Roman owned, the more important he would be in the city. Soldiers were often rewarded with land from the commander they served. Though farms depended on slave labor, free men and citizens were hired at farms to oversee the slaves and ensure that the farms ran smoothly.

Grains
Staple crops in early Rome were millet, and emmer and spelt which are species of wheat. According to the Roman scholar Varro, common wheat and durum wheat were introduced to Italy as crops about 450 BC. Durum (hard) wheat became the preferred grain of urban Romans, because it could be baked into leavened bread and was easier to grow in the Mediterranean region than common (soft) wheat. Grains, especially baked into bread, were the staple of the Roman diet, providing 70 to 80 percent of the calories in an average diet. Barley was also grown extensively, dominating grain production in Greece and on poorer soils where it was more productive than wheat. Wheat was the preferred grain, but barley was widely eaten and also important as animal feed.

In De re rustica Columella wrote that emmer was more resistant to moisture than wheat. According to Columella four types of emmer were cultivated, including one variety that he calls Clusian (named for the town Clusium). Cato wrote that if sowing grain in humid or dewy soils was unavoidable, they should be sown alongside turnips, panic grass, millet and rape. Despite listing panicum and millet among the legumes Columella says they should be considered grain crops "for in many countries the peasants subsist on food made from them".

Legumes
Of legumes, Columella lists some that are preferred for cultivation: lentils, peas, lupinus, beans, cowpeas, and chickpeas (also listing sesame, panicum, cannabis, barley, and millet as legumes).

He writes the following about lupinus: "...it requires the least labor, costs least, and of all crops that are sown is most beneficial to the land. For it affords an excellent fertilizer for worn out vineyards and ploughlands; it flourishes even in exhausted soil; and it endures age when laid away in the granary. When softened by boiling it is good fodder for cattle during the winter; in the case of humans, too, it serves to warn off famine if years of crop failures come upon them."

Olives
The Romans grew olive trees in poor, rocky soils, and often in areas with sparse precipitation. The tree is sensitive to freezing temperatures and intolerant of the colder weather of northern Europe and high, cooler elevations. The olive was grown mostly near the Mediterranean Sea. The consumption of olive oil provided about 12 percent of the calories and about 80 percent of necessary fats in the diet of the average Roman.

Grapes
Viticulture was probably brought to southern Italy and Sicily by Greek colonists, but the Phoenicians of Carthage in northern Africa gave the Romans much of their knowledge of growing grapes and making wine. By 160 BC, the cultivation of grapes on large estates using slave labor was common in Italy and wine was becoming a universal drink in the Roman empire. To protect their wine industry, the Romans attempted to prohibit the cultivation of grapes outside Italy, but by the 1st century AD, provinces such as Spain and Gaul (modern-day France) were exporting wine to Italy.

Fodder
Columella mentions turnips as important, high-yielding food crop, especially in Gaul where they were used as winter fodder for cattle. As other "fodder crops" he lists Medic clover, vetch, barley, cytisus, oats, chickpea and fenugreek. Of Medic clover, he says it improves the soil, fattens lean cattle and is a high-yielding fodder crop.

Cato the Elder wrote that leaves from poplar, elm and oak leaves should be gathered in the Fall before they have dried completely and stored for use as fodder. Turnips, lupines and forage crops were to be sown after the rainy season.

Other crops
The Romans also grew artichoke, mustard, coriander, rocket, chives, leeks, celery, basil, parsnip, mint, rue, thyme "from overseas," beets, poppy, dill, asparagus, radish, cucumber, gourd, fennel, capers, onions, saffron, parsley, marjoram, cabbage, lettuce, cumin, garlic, figs, "Armenian apricots," plums, mulberries, peaches, and hemp.

Storage
Columella describes how produce is stored and gives advice to prevent spoilage. Liquids produced for market like oil and wine were stored on the ground floor and grain was stored in lofts with hay and other fodder. He instructs that granaries be well ventilated, cool, with minimal humidity, to prolong freshness. He describes certain methods of construction to avoid buildings developing cracks that would give animals and weevils access to the grains.

Press rooms, he advised, should be warm receiving light from the south to prevent the oil from freezing, which makes oil spoil faster.

Land
Columella describes land as being classified into three types of terrain which he calls champaign (sloping plains), hills with a gradual but gentle rise, and wooded, verdant mountain highlands. Of soil, he says there are six qualities: fat or lean, loose or compact, moist or dry. The permutations of these qualities producing many varieties of soils. Columella quotes Vergil's comment that loose soil is "what we rival when we plough". Of the most preferred types of soil he says the best is fat and loose soil that is the least costly and most productive, then fat and dense which is productive though requiring more effort, and after these are the moist soils.

Farming practices
In the 5th century BC, farms in Rome were small and family owned. The Greeks of this period, however, had started using crop rotation and had large estates. Rome's contact with Carthage, Greece, and the Hellenistic East in the 3rd and 2nd centuries improved Rome's agricultural methods. Roman agriculture reached its height in productivity and efficiency during the late Republic and early Empire.

Farm sizes in Rome can be divided into three categories. Small farms were from 18–108 iugera. (One iugerum was equal to about 0.65 acres or a quarter of a hectare). Medium-sized farms were from 80–500 iugera. Large estates (called latifundia) were over 500 iugera.

In the late Republican era, the number of latifundia increased. Wealthy Romans bought land from peasant farmers who could no longer make a living. Starting in 200 BC, the Punic Wars called peasant farmers away to fight for longer periods of time. This is now disputed; some scholars now believe that large-scale agriculture did not dominate Italian agriculture until the 1st century BC.

Cows provided milk while oxen and mules did the heavy work on the farm. Sheep and goats were cheese producers and were prized for their hides. Horses were not widely used in farming but were raised by the rich for racing or war. Sugar production centered on beekeeping, and some Romans raised snails as luxury food.

The Romans had four systems of farm management: direct work by owner and his family; tenant farming or sharecropping in which the owner and a tenant divide up a farm's produce; forced labour by slaves owned by aristocrats and supervised by slave managers; and other arrangements in which a farm was leased to a tenant.

Cato the Elder (also known as "Cato the Censor") was a politician and statesman in the mid- to late Roman Republic and described his view of a farm of 100 iugera in the De agri cultura. He claimed such a farm should have "a foreman, a foreman's wife, ten laborers, one ox driver, one donkey driver, one man in charge of the willow grove, one swineherd, in all sixteen persons; two oxen, two donkeys for wagon work, one donkey for the mill work." He also said that such a farm should have "three presses fully equipped, storage jars in which five vintages amounting to eight hundred cullei can be stored, twenty storage jars for wine-press refuse, twenty for grain, separate coverings for the jars, six fiber-covered half amphorae, four fiber-covered amphorae, two funnels, three basketwork strainers, [and] three strainers to dip up the flower, ten jars for [handling] the wine juice..." It is important to note that Cato's description is not indicative of the majority of farms in the early 2nd century BC. De agri cultura is a political document designed to show off Cato's character as much as it is a practical guide.

Trade
There was much commerce between the provinces of the empire, and all regions of the empire were largely economically interdependent. Some provinces specialized in the production of grains including wheat, emmer, spelt, barley, and millet; others in wine and others in olive oil, depending on the soil type. Columella writes in his De re rustica, "Soil that is heavy, chalky, and wet is not unsuited to the growing for winter wheat and spelt. Barley tolerates no place except one that is loose and dry."

Pliny the Elder wrote extensively about agriculture in his Naturalis Historia from books XII to XIX, including chapter XVIII, The Natural History of Grain.

Greek geographer Strabo considered the Po Valley (northern Italy) to be the most important economically because "all cereals do well, but the yield from millet is exceptional, because the soil is so well watered." The province of Etruria had heavy soil good for wheat. Volcanic soil in Campania made it well-suited for wine production. In addition to knowledge of different soil categories, the Romans also took interest in what type of manure was best for the soil. The best was poultry manure, and cow manure one of the worst. Sheep and goat manure were also good. Donkey manure was best for immediate use, while horse manure wasn't good for grain crops, but according to Marcus Terentius Varro, it was very good for meadows because "it promotes a heavy growth of grass plants like grass."

Economics
In the grain-growing area of north Africa, centered on the ancient city of Carthage, a family of six people needed to cultivate 12 iugera/ 3 hectares of land to meet minimum food requirements (without animals). If a family owned animals to help cultivate land, then 20 iugera was needed. More land would be required to meet subsistence levels if the family farmed as sharecroppers. In Africa Proconsularis in the 2nd century AD, one-third of the total crop went to the landowner as rent (See Lex Manciana).

Such figures detail only the subsistence level. It is clear that large scale surplus production was undertaken in some provinces, such as to supply the cities, especially Rome, with grain, a process known as the Cura Annonae. Egypt, northern Africa, and Sicily were the principal sources of grain to feed the population of Rome, estimated at one million people at its peak.

For yields of wheat, the number varies depending on the ancient source. Varro mentions 10:1 seed-yield ratio for wheat as normal for wealthy landowners. In some areas of Etruria, yield may have been as high as 15:1. Cicero indicates In Verrem a yield of 8:1 as normal, and 10:1 in exceptionally good harvest. Paul Erdkamp mentions in his book The Grain Market in the Roman Empire, that Columella was probably biased when he mentions a much lower yield of 4:1. According to Erdkamp, Columella wanted to make the point that "grain offers little profit compared to wine. His argument induces him to exaggerate the profitability of vineyards and at the same time to diminish the yields that were obtained in grain cultivation. At best Columella provides a trustworthy figure for poor soils; at worst, his estimate is not reliable at all."

Average wheat yields per year in the 3rd decade of the century, sowing 135 kg/ha of seed, were around 1,200 kg/ha in Italy and Sicily, 1,710 kg/ha in Egypt, 269 kg/ha in Cyrenaica, Tunisia at 400 kg/ha, and Algeria at 540 kg/ha, Greece at 620 kg/ha. This makes the Mediterranean very difficult to average overall.

An agricultural unit was known as a latus fundus mentioned by Varro as a great estate, which can be interpreted as a latifundia or at 500 iugera or around 125 hectares because this is the land limit imposed by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus as tribune in 133 BC.

With the incorporation of Egypt into the Roman empire and the rule of the emperor Augustus (27 BC-14 AD), Egypt became the main source of supply of grain for Rome. By the 70s AD, the historian Josephus was claiming that Africa fed Rome for eight months of the year and Egypt only four. Although that statement may ignore grain from Sicily, and overestimate the importance of Africa, there is little doubt among historians that Africa and Egypt were the most important sources of grain for Rome. To help assure that the grain supply would be adequate for Rome, in the second century BC, Gracchus settled 6,000 colonists near Carthage, giving them about 25 ha each to grow grain.

Grain made into bread was, by far, the most important element in the Roman diet. Several scholars have attempted to compute the total amount of grain needed to supply the city of Rome. Rickman estimated that Rome needed 40 million modii (200,000 tonnes) of grain per year to feed its population. Erdkamp estimated that the amount needed would be at least 150,000 tonnes, calculating that each resident of the city consumed 200 kg of grain per year. The total population of Rome assumed in calculating these estimates was between 750,000 and one million people. David Mattingly and Gregory Aldrete estimated the amount of imported grain at 237,000 tonnes for 1 million inhabitants; This amount of grain would provide 2,326 calories daily per person not including other foods such as meats, seafood, fruit, legumes, vegetable and dairy. In the Historia Augusta, it is stated Severus left 27 million modii in storage - considered to be a figure for the canon at the end of the 4th century and enough for 800,000 inhabitants at 500 lbs of bread per person per annum

Pliny the Younger painted a picture that Rome was able to survive without Egyptian wheat in his speech the Panegyricus in 100 AD. In 99 there was an Egyptian crisis due to inadequate flooding.

Pliny the Younger stated that for "long it was generally believed that Rome could only be fed and maintained with Egyptian aid". However, he argued that "Now [that] we have returned the Nile its riches... her business is not to allow us food but to pay a proper tribute.

Mechanization

The Romans improved crop growing by irrigating plants using aqueducts to transport water. Mechanical devices aided agriculture and the production of food. Extensive sets of mills existed in Gaul and Rome at an early date to grind wheat into flour. The most impressive extant remains occur at Barbegal in southern France, near Arles. Sixteen overshot water wheels arranged in two columns were fed by the main aqueduct to Arles, the outflow from one being the supply to the next one down in the series. The mills apparently operated from the end of the 1st century AD until about the end of the 3rd century. The capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5 tons of flour per day, sufficient to supply enough bread for the 12,500 inhabitants occupying the town of Arelate at that time.

Vertical water wheels were well known to the Romans, described by Vitruvius in his De architectura of 25 BC, and mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia of AD 77. There are also later references to floating water-driven grain mills in Rome and Byzantium and to water-driven sawmills on the river Moselle by the poet Ausonius. Multiple stacked sequences of reverse overshot water-wheels were used to provide motive power in many Roman mines.

There is evidence from bas-reliefs that farmers in northern Gaul (present day France) used a kind of automatic harvester or reaper when collecting ripe grain crops. The machine, called the "vallus" or "gallic vallus", was apparently invented and used by the Treveri people. It cut the ears of grain without the straw and was pushed by oxen or horses. Pliny the Elder mentions the device in the Naturalis Historia XVIII, 296. Possibly because the vallus was cumbersome and expensive, its adoption never became widespread and it fell into disuse after the 4th century AD. Scythes and sickles were the usual tools for harvesting crops.

Acquiring a farm
Aristocrats and common people could acquire land for a farm in one of three ways. The most common way to gain land was to purchase the land. Though some lower-class citizens did own small pieces of land, they often found it too difficult and expensive to maintain. Because of the many difficulties of owning land, they would sell it to someone in the aristocracy who had the financial backing to support a farm. Though there were some public lands available to the common person for use, aristocrats also tended to purchase those pieces of land, which caused a great deal of tension between the two classes. “Mass eviction of the poor by the rich underlay the political tensions and civil wars of the last century of the Roman Republic.” Another way to acquire land was as a reward for going to war. High-ranking soldiers returning from war would often be given small pieces of public land or land in provinces as a way of paying them for their services. The last way to obtain land was through inheritance. A father could leave his land to his family, usually to his son, in the event of his death. Wills were drawn out that specified who would receive the land as a way of ensuring that other citizens did not try to take the land from the family of the deceased.

Aristocracy and the land

Though some small farms were owned by lower-class citizens and soldiers, much of the land was controlled by the noble class of Rome. Land ownership was just one of many distinctions that set the aristocracy apart from the lower classes. Aristocracy would "reorganize small holdings into larger more profitable farms in order to compete with other nobles." It was considered a point of pride to own not just the largest piece of land, but also to have land that grew high quality produce. As Cato the Elder wrote "when they would praise a worthy man their praise took this form: 'Good husband good farmer'; it is from the farming class that the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers come." The farms would produce a variety of crops depending on the season and focused on trying to acquire the best possible farm under the best possible conditions. Cato discusses many of the primary focuses of the farmer and how to distinguish a great piece of land. He notes that a good farmer must take precious time to examine the land, looking over every detail. Not only did the land need to be perfect for purchase, but the neighbors must maintain their farms as well because "if the district was good, they should be well kept." Individuals looking to buy a piece of land had to also take into consideration the weather of the area, the condition of the soil, and how close the farm would be to a town or port. Careful planning went into every detail of owning and maintaining a farm in Roman culture.

Running a farm in Rome
While the aristocracy owned most of the land in Rome, they often were not present at the farms. With obligations as senators, generals, and soldiers at war, many of the actual landowners spent very little time working on their farms. The farms instead were maintained by slaves and freedmen paid to oversee those slaves. The overseer of the farm had many responsibilities that coincided with maintaining the land. He was responsible for ensuring that the slaves were kept busy and for resolving conflicts between them. An overseer had to be dependable and trustworthy in that the landowner had to know that the person he hired to run the farm was not going to try to steal any of the produce from the farm. Overseers were also responsible for ensuring that both servants and slaves were properly fed and housed, and that they were assigned work fairly and efficiently. They had to ensure that any orders given by the owner of the land were followed diligently and that everyone on the farm honored the gods completely and respectfully, which Romans believed was necessary to ensure a bountiful harvest. Good inscription evidence of how the system was organized is visible in the Lex Manciana.

The majority of the work was done by servants and slaves. Slaves were the main source of labor. In Roman society, there were three main ways to obtain a slave. The first and possibly most common way to gain a slave was to buy one on the market. Slaves were purchased at auctions and slave markets from dealers or were traded between individual slave owners. Another way slaves were acquired was through conquest in warfare. As Keith Hopkins explains in his writings, many landowners would go to war and bring back captives. These captives were then taken back to Roman territory and either sold to another citizen or made to work on the capturer's farm. The final way a slave could be obtained was through birth: if a female slave gave birth to a child, that child became property of the slave's owner. Extramarital relations with women who were not citizens was not considered to be adultery under Roman law (and Roman wives were expected to tolerate such behavior), so there was no legal or moral impediment to having children being fathered by a slave's owner or overseer.

Slaves were relatively cheap to use because they were property; their treatment depended on the humanity of their owners, who met the needs of their slaves on what they cared to spend, not what they had to. Overseers motivated slaves by imposing punishments and by giving rewards. "If the overseer sets his face against wrongdoing, they will not do it; if he allows it, the master must not let him go unpunished." Although outright cruelty to slaves was considered a mark of bad character in Roman culture, there were few limits on the punishments an overseer or slave-owner could inflict.

Problems for farmers
Roman farmers faced many of the problems which have historically affected farmers, including the unpredictability of weather, rainfall, and pests. Farmers also had to be wary of purchasing land too far away from a city or port because of war and land conflicts. As Rome was a vast empire that conquered many lands, it created enemies with individuals whose land had been taken. They would often lose their farms to the invaders who would take over and try to run the farms themselves. Though Roman soldiers would often come to the aid of the farmers and try to regain the land, these fights often resulted in damaged or destroyed property. Landowners also faced problems with slave rebellions at times. "In addition to invasions by Carthaginians and Celtic tribes, slave rebellions and civil wars which were repeatedly fought on Italian soil all contributed to the destruction of traditional agricultural holdings.

Modern sources

 * Buck, Robert J. Agriculture and Agricultural Practice In Roman Law. Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1983.
 * Erdkamp, Paul. The Grain Market In the Roman Empire: A Social, Political and Economic Study. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
 * Hollander, D. B., "Farmers and Agriculture in the Roman Economy", Routledge, 2019,
 * Horden, P., and N. Purcell. The corrupting sea: A study of Mediterranean history. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.
 * Kehoe, D. P. Investment, profit, and tenancy: The jurists and the Roman agrarian economy. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1997.
 * Reynolds, P. Hispania and the Roman Mediterranean AD 100–700: Ceramics and trade. London: Duckworth, 2010.
 * Spurr, M. S. "Arable cultivation in Roman Italy: c. 200 B.C.–c. A.D. 100." Journal of Roman Studies Monographs 3. London: Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1986.
 * White, K. D. Roman Farming. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970.
 * --. Farm Equipment of the Roman World. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

title: Agriculture in ancient Rome


text:
Here (Leo Sayer album)

Here is the seventh original album by the English singer-songwriter, Leo Sayer, and was released in 1979.

Side one

 * 1) "The World Has Changed" (Leo Sayer, Billy Livsey, Sergio Cuevas) – 3:54
 * 2) "When the Money Runs Out" (Sayer, Ray Parker Jr.) – 3:39
 * 3) "The End" (Sayer, David Courtney) – 3:52
 * 4) "Lost Control" (Al Kooper) – 4:30
 * 5) "An Englishman in the U.S.A." (Sayer, Les Davidson) – 4:40

Side two

 * 1) "Who Will the Next Fool Be" (Sayer, David Courtney) – 4:15
 * 2) "Work" (Sayer, Tom Snow, Johnny Vastano) – 3:31
 * 3) "Oh Girl" (Eugene Record) – 3:47
 * 4) "Ghosts" (Sayer, Frank Farrell, Les Nicol) – 4:29
 * 5) "Takin' the Easy Way Out" (Sayer, David Courtney) – 4:48

Personnel

 * Leo Sayer – guitar, harmonica, vocals
 * John Barnes – keyboards
 * Jeff Baxter – guitar
 * Michael Boddicker – synthesizer
 * Arnell Carmichael – vocals, background vocals
 * David Courtney – piano, tambourine
 * Steve Cropper – guitar
 * Paulinho Da Costa – percussion
 * Chris Desmond – finger snaps
 * Mark Doyle – guitar
 * Donald Dunn – bass guitar
 * Victor Feldman – percussion
 * Bob Glaub – bass guitar
 * Ed Greene – drums
 * Bobbye Hall – percussion
 * Mitch Holder – guitar
 * Jerry Jumonville – saxophone
 * Al Kooper – organ, synthesizer, keyboards, performer
 * Billy Livsey – piano, keyboards, Wurlitzer
 * David Luell – saxophone, tenor saxophone
 * Steve Lukather – guitar
 * Steve Madaio – trumpet, flugelhorn, horn
 * Bill Payne – organ, synthesizer, keyboards
 * Chuck Rainey – bass guitar
 * Eugene Record – performer
 * Rick Shlosser – drums
 * Tom Snow – piano
 * James Stroud – Fairlight CMI programming, synthesizers, drums
 * Fred Tackett – guitar

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

title: Here (Leo Sayer album)


text:
Moritz von Schwind

Moritz von Schwind (21 January 1804 – 8 February 1871) was an Austrian painter, born in Vienna. Schwind's genius was lyrical—he drew inspiration from chivalry, folklore, and the songs of the people. Schwind died in Pöcking in Bavaria, and was buried in the Alter Südfriedhof in Munich.

Life and career
Moritz von Schwind received rudimentary training and spent a happy and carefree youth in Vienna. Among his companions was the composer Schubert, some of whose songs he illustrated. In 1828, the year of Schubert's death, he moved to Munich, where he befriended the painter Schnorr and enjoyed the guidance of Cornelius, then director of the Academy. In 1834, he was commissioned to decorate King Ludwig's new palace with wall paintings illustrating the works of the poet Tieck. He also found in the same place congenial sport for his fancy in a "Kinderfries". He was often busy working on almanacs, and on illustrating Goethe and other writers through which he gained considerable recognition and employment.

In the revival of art in Germany, Schwind held as his own the sphere of poetic fancy. In 1839 he was entrusted with the new Karlsruhe academy, itself an embodiment in fresco of ideas thrown out by Goethe. He decorated a villa in Leipzig with the story of Cupid and Psyche, and further justified his title of poet-painter with designs from the Niebelungenlied and Tasso's Gerusalemme for the walls of the castle of Hohenschwangau in Bavaria.

From the year 1844 dates his residence in Frankfurt during which he created some of his finest easel pictures, most notably the "Singers' Contest" in the Wartburg (1846), as well as designs for the Goethe celebration. There were also numerous book illustrations. The conceptions for the most part are better than the execution.

In 1847, Schwind returned to Munich on being appointed professor in the academy. Eight years later his fame was at its height on the completion in the castle of the Wartburg of wall pictures illustrative of the "Singers' Contest" and of the history of Elizabeth of Hungary.

The compositions received universal praise, and at a grand musical festival in their honour, Schwind himself was one of the violinists. In Munich he also worked on some churches, particularly the altar and windows of the Church of Our Lady.

His exceptionally mature cycle, "Seven Ravens" from Grimm's fairy stories was produced in 1857. In the same year he visited England to report officially to King Ludwig on the Manchester art treasures. So diversified were his gifts that he turned his hand to church windows and joined his old friend Schnorr in designs for the painted glass in Glasgow Cathedral.

Towards the close of his career, with broken health and his powers on the wane, he revisited Vienna. During this time, he created the cycle from the legend of Melusine and the designs commemorative of chief musicians which decorate the foyer of the Vienna State Opera. Cornelius writes, "You have translated the joy of music into pictorial art."

title: Moritz von Schwind


text:
Rohan Jayasekera (writer)

Rohan Jayasekera (born January 1961) is an English freelance journalist and advocate specialising in freedom of expression rights issues in conflict zones and repressive states. He was born in Holloway, North London, of mixed Sri Lankan-Scots-Irish parentage.

Career
Jayasekera began his journalistic career as an apprentice reporter in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire in 1980, worked for a variety of London and national newspapers during the 1980s and 1990s before going abroad, covering half a dozen conflicts thereafter including Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a former managing editor of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting and former deputy CEO of the UK quarterly magazine Index on Censorship, where he was responsible for the charity's international programmes and fundraising. He is now a freelance digital publisher managing a series of new R&D, advocacy and journalism projects on freedom of expression rights issues in conflict zones and repressive states

Between 2008 and the years running up to and during the Arab Spring, Jayasekera chaired the Tunisia Monitoring Group (IFEX-TMG), a campaigning group of 21 Arab and international free expression rights groups supporting dissidents in Tunisia.

Background
Jayasekera's maternal grandfather left Ireland as a child, fought Mosleyites in Cable Street and spent the war in the Royal Navy, which exposed him to three life changing experiences: US segregation in Norfolk, Virginia; Soviet segregation in Murmansk, Siberia, and the war itself. His paternal grandfather was the first Sinhalese owner-manager of an independent plantation in pre-war Sri Lanka. His uncle was Kingsley Jayasekera, a Sri Lankan singer, actor and play producer.

Jayasekera and David Irving
Between 2001 and 2004, Jayasekera ran an associated blog for the UK quarterly magazine Index on Censorship at www.indexonline.org. In May 2001, he provoked outrage from critics of the Holocaust denier David Irving by agreeing to share a stage with him at the Oxford Union to oppose the proposition that "this house would restrict the free speech of extremists". The previous year a High Court judge had found that Mr Irving was "an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism". Strong protest followed, including direct appeals to the then chair of the board, Michael Grade, and objections from some of Jayasekera's colleagues.

At a time before Irving's jailing in Austria, Jayasekera was criticised for breaking the so-called "no platform" rule. This policy – formally adopted by Britain's National Union of Students and other groups – requires, first, that fascists should not be given public forum, and secondly that if they do gain a platform other political parties and organisations should refuse to share it with them. Jayasekera declined to comply. The debate was eventually cancelled on the advice of the police.

John Malkovich
There was similar protest a year later when Jayasekera went online to defend Index on Censorship's refusal to cancel a charity performance of the John Malkovich film The Dancer Upstairs at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). In May 2002, Malkovich had been asked who – as the star of Les Liaisons Dangereuses – he would like to fight a duel with. He picked Robert Fisk, The Independent newspaper's Middle East correspondent, and disgraced constituent-hopping MP George Galloway, adding that rather than duel with them, he would "rather just shoot them". Fisk reacted with outrage. Reporters sans Frontieres condemned Malkovich's comments, but Jayasekera dismissed them as "flippant" in an article for the Index website. "You can cry wolf once too often over unrealistic threats", Jayasekera wrote. "It undermines the case for real action when real and present dangers to journalists raise their heads." He added:

 * Over the years since (the Rwanda genocide), and not without criticism, Index on Censorship has turned to reporting the areas where the right to free speech conflicts with these other rights. Index on Censorship is a journalistic enterprise, not a campaigning agency. This has freed it to make judgement calls – some say to equivocate – on when and where and how and why the freely expressed word can be a direct threat to other human rights.

The fundraising event went ahead in December 2002 despite a street protest outside the ICA. Index on Censorship has since changed its strategy to include a number of successful advocacy campaigns in the UK and abroad.

Theo van Gogh
Jayasekera spent much of 2003 and 2004 in Iraq working on Index on Censorship's "local media rights support" projects in Baghdad, but in late 2004 he was again involved in controversy after writing an online article that to many readers seemed to condone or justify the murder of the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh. The article claimed that van Gogh was a "free-speech fundamentalist" who had been on a "martyrdom operation[,] roar[ing] his Muslim critics into silence with obscenities" in an "abuse of his right to free speech". Describing van Gogh's film Submission as "furiously provocative", Jayasekera concluded by describing his death as:

"'A sensational climax to a lifetime's public performance, stabbed and shot by a bearded fundamentalist, a message from the killer pinned by a dagger to his chest, Theo van Gogh became a martyr to free expression. His passing was marked by a magnificent barrage of noise as Amsterdam hit the streets to celebrate him in the way the man himself would have truly appreciated. And what timing! Just as his long-awaited biographical film of Pim Fortuyn's life is ready to screen. Bravo, Theo! Bravo!'"

There were many protests from both left- and right-wing commentators at the article. The veteran feminist commentator Germaine Greer called the item "vile vomit" and told the London Sunday Telegraph in December 2004, that:

"'The problem with Index on Censorship's position is that, by its nature, they have to publish things that they don't agree with in order to prove their own point. I would hope that by giving a fanatic a platform and listening to what he says, that people would be able to see how crazy that person is and refute his arguments. On the other hand, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public.'"

Nick Cohen of The Observer claimed in December 2004 that Jayasekera:

"'...told me that, like many other readers, I shouldn't have made the mistake of believing that Index on Censorship was against censorship, even murderous censorship, on principle — in the same way as Amnesty International is opposed to torture, including murderous torture, on principle. It may have been so in its radical youth, but was now as concerned with fighting 'hate speech' as protecting free speech.'"

Ursula Owen, the editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship, and a co-founder of the feminist publishers Virago strongly repudiated Cohen's account in a letter to the Observer. She later apologised for Jayasekera's original comment article, saying she didn't think "the tone (was) right".

title: Rohan Jayasekera (writer)


text:
Islam in Bulgaria

Islam in Bulgaria is a minority religion and the second largest religion in the country after Christianity. According to the 2021 Census, the total number of Muslims in Bulgaria stood at 638,708 corresponding to 9.8% of the population. Ethnically, Muslims in Bulgaria are Turks, Bulgarians and Roma, living mainly in parts of northeastern Bulgaria (mainly in Razgrad, Targovishte, Shumen and Silistra Provinces) and in the Rhodope Mountains (mainly in Kardzhali Province and Smolyan Province).

Contact with Islam prior to the Ottoman conquest
The first documented Bulgarian contact with the Muslim world was in the early 700s, when Khan Tervel of Bulgaria helped the Byzantines break the Arab siege of Constantinople, after his army reportedly slaid some 22,000 enemy soldiers Two centuries afterwards, enmity turned into mutual collaboration, as Bulgaria under Tsar Simeon I and the Arabs coordinated their attacks on the Byzantine Empire multiple times. During the same period, Bulgarian art started exhibiting some Islamic influence, probably mediated by the Byzantines.

Later on, in the mid 1200s, a group of Seljuk Turks is thought to have settled in North Dobruja. According to Ibn Battuta and Evliya Çelebi, the Turkomans colonised the Black Sea coast between the Bulgarian border and Babadag further north. Eventually, part of them returned to Anatolia, while the rest adopted Christianity and are thought to be probable ancestors of the modern Gagauz. However, there is debate whether this settlement ever really happened, as some scholars believe it to have the characteristics of a folk legend.

Scholarly consensus holds that the first Muslim communities in Southeastern Europe, including Bulgaria, appeared in the late fourteenth century, as the peninsula gradually fell under Ottoman rule.

Ottoman rule (1396–1878)
The Ottoman Empire conquered the last independent piece of the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Tsardom of Vidin, in 1396 (or, as some historians hypothesise, in 1422), and Bulgaria remained under Ottoman and Islamic rule for almost five centuries. Christians in the Ottoman Empire were treated as second-class citizens, i.e., as dhimmis. They were often called giaour, meaning "infidel" as an offensive term. Most of the conquered land was parcelled out to the Sultan's followers, who held it as benefices or fiefs (small ones timar, medium ones zeamet and large ones hass). The system was meant to make the army self-sufficient and to continuously increase the number of Ottoman cavalry soldiers, thus both fueling new conquests and bringing conquered countries under direct Ottoman control.

Christians paid disproportionately higher taxes than Muslims, including the poll tax, jizye, in lieu of military service. According to İnalcık, jizye was the single most important source of income (48 per cent) to the Ottoman budget, with Rumelia accounting for the lion's share, or 81 per cent of the revenues. However, by the early 1600, almost all land had been divided into estates (arpalik) granted to senior Ottoman dignitaries as a form of tax farming, which created conditions for severe exploitation of taxpayers by unscrupulous land holders. According to Radishev, overtaxation became a particularly poignant issue after jizye collection in most of the country was taken over by the Six Divisions of Cavalry.

Bulgarians also paid a number of other taxes, including a tithe ("yushur"), a land tax ("ispench"), a levy on commerce, and various irregularly collected taxes, products and corvees ("avariz"). As a rule, the overall tax burden of the rayah (i.e., Non-Muslims), was twice as high as that of Muslims.

Christians faced a number of other restrictions: they were barred from testifying against Muslims in inter-faith legal disputes. Even though they were free to perform their own religious rituals, this had to be done in a manner that was inconscpicuous to Muslims, i.e., loud prayers or bell ringing were forbidden. They were not permitted to build or repair churches without Muslim consent. They were barred from certain professions, from riding horses, from wearing certain colours or from carrying weapons. Their houses and churches could not be taller than Muslim ones.

Nevertheless, there were specific categories of rayah who were exempt from nearly all such restrictions, such as the Dervendjis, who guarded important passes, roads, bridges, etc., ore-mining centres such as Chiprovtsi, etc. Some of the most important Bulgarian culutural and economic centres in the 19th century owe their development to a former dervendji status, for example, Gabrovo, Dryanovo, Kalofer, Panagyurishte, Kotel, Zheravna. Similarly, Christians living on wakf holdings were subject to lower tax burden and fewer restrictions.

Probably the worst practice Christian Bulgarians were subjected to was the devşirme, or blood tax, where the healthiest and brightest Christian boys were taken from their families, enslaved, converted to Islam and later employed either in the Janissary military corps or the Ottoman administrative system. The boys were picked from one in forty households. They had to be unmarried and, once taken, were ordered to cut all ties with their family. Christian parents resented the forced recruitment of their children, and would beg and seek to buy their children out of the levy. Sources mention different ways to avoid the devshirme such as: marrying the boys at the age of 12, mutilating them or having both father and son convert to Islam. In 1565, the practice led to a revolt in Albania and Epirus, where the inhabitants killed the recruiting officials.

Colonisation and conversion to Islam
Islam in Bulgaria spread through both colonisation with Muslims from Asia Minor and conversion of native Bulgarians. The Ottomans' mass population transfers began in the late 1300s and continued well into the 1500s. Most of these, but far from all, were invountary. The first community settled in present-day Bulgaria was made up of Tatars who willingly arrived to begin a settled life as farmers, the second one a tribe of nomads that had run afoul of the Ottoman administration. Both groups settled in the Upper Thracian Plain, in the vicinity of Plovdiv. Another large group of Tatars was moved by Mehmed I to Thrace in 1418, followed by the relocation of more than 1000 Turkoman families to Northeastern Bulgaria in the 1490s. At the same time, there are records of at least two forced relocations of Bulgarians to Anatolia, one right after the fall of Veliko Tarnovo and a second one to İzmir in the mid-1400s. The goal of this "mixing of peoples" was to quell any unrest in the conquered Balkan states, while simultaneously getting rid of troublemakers in the Ottoman backyard in Anatolia.

Nevertheless, the Ottomans never pursued or practiced forced Islamisation of the Bulgarian population, as had earlier been claimed by Communist Bulgarian historiography. According to scholarly consensus, conversion to Islam was voluntary as it offered Bulgarians religious and economic benefits. Missionary activities of the dervish orders resulted in mass conversions to Islam; though many converts retained Christian practices such as baptism, celebration of Christian holidays etc. Muslim population in Bulgaria was a combination of indigenous converts to Islam, and Muslims originating outside the Balkans. Most urban areas gradually became Muslim majority, whereas rural areas remained overwhelmingly Christian. However, in some cases, adopting Islam can be said to be the result of tax coercion. While some authors have argued that other factors, such as desire to retain social status, were of greater importance, Turkish writer Halil İnalcık has referred to the desire to stop paying jizya as a primary incentive for conversion to Islam in the Balkans, and Bulgarian Anton Minkov has argued that it was one among several motivating factors.

Two large-scale studies of the causes of adoption of Islam in Bulgaria, one of the Chepino Valley by Dutch Ottomanist Machiel Kiel, and another one of the region of Gotse Delchev in the Western Rhodopes by Evgeni Radushev reveal a complex set of factors behind the process. These include: pre-existing high population density owing to the late inclusion of the two mountainous regions in the Ottoman system of taxation; immigration of Christian Bulgarians from lowland regions to avoid taxation throughout the 1400s; the relative poverty of the regions; early introduction of local Christian Bulgarians to Islam through contacts with nomadic Yörüks; the nearly constant Ottoman conflict with the Habsburgs from the mid-1500s to the early 1700s; the resulting massive war expenses that led to a sixfold increase in the jizya rate from 1574 to 1691 and the imposition of a war-time avariz tax; the Little Ice Age in the 1600s that caused crop failures and widespread famine; heavy corruption and overtaxation by local landholders—all of which led to a slow, but steady process of Islamisation until the mid-1600s when the tax burden becomes so unbearable that most of the remaining Christians either converted en masse or left for lowland areas.

As a result of these factors, the population of Ottoman Bulgaria is presumed to have dropped twofold from a peak of approx. 1.8 million (1.2 million Christians and 0.6 million Muslims) in the 1580s to approx. 0.9 million in the 1680s (450,000 Christians and 450,000 Muslims) after growing steadily from a base of approx. 600,000 (450,000 Christians and 150,000 Muslims) in the 1450s.

The Ottoman Empire's greatest advantage compared to other colonial powers, the millet system and the autonomy each denomination had within legal, confessional, cultural and family matters, nevertheless, largely did not apply to Bulgarians and most other Orthodox peoples on the Balkans, as the independent Bulgarian Patriarchate was abolished, and all Bulgarian Orthodox dioceses were subjected to the rule of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. Thus, instead of helping Christian Bulgarians maintain their customs and cultural identity, the millet system actually promoted their annihilation. Bulgarian ceased to be a literary language, the higher clergy was invariable Greek, and the Phanariotes started making persistent efforts to hellenise Bulgarians as early as the early 1700s. It was only after the struggle for church autonomy in the mid 1800s and especially after the Bulgarian Exarchate was established by a firman of Sultan Abdülaziz in 1870 that this mistake was corrected.

Post-Independence (1878)
Following the Russo-Turkish War and the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, five sanjaks of the Ottoman Danube Vilayet—Vidin, Veliko Tarnovo, Ruse, Sofia and Varna—were united into the autonomous Principality of Bulgaria, putting Bulgaria again on the political map of Europe after five centuries. According to the 1875 Ottoman salname, the pre-war Muslim populations of the Principality stood at 405,450 males, or a total of 810,910 people, and accounted for 39.2% of the Principality's population. Most of the Muslims were so-called "Established Muslims", i.e., Turks and Pomaks, but there were also substantial minorities of Circassian and Crimean Tatar Muhacir and Romani.

As a rule, Bulgarian governments after 1878 worked to ensure the freedom of conscience and worship of all non-Bulgarian and non-Christian citizens Thus, Muslims retained the right to administer their schools and houses of worship and kept considerable autonomy in intraconfessional matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Muslims fought in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 (and all of Bulgaria's subsequent wars except for the Balkan wars and earned widespread respect as well as a high number of medals for bravery in action. Even though there were no ethnic Turkish or Muslim parties, every single national assembly until Bulgaria's occupation by the Soviet Union in 1944 had Turkish and Muslim MPs. Mosques and imams were funded by the state budget.

The Principality expanded somewhat after the Balkan Wars when the largely-Muslim Rhodopes and Western Thrace regions were incorporated into the country. The First Balkan War was accompanied by forced Christianization of Muslim Bulgarians settlements. The atrocious act was repealed immediately by the new government elected after the loss of the Second Balkan War.

Like the practitioners of other beliefs including Orthodox Christians, Muslims suffered under the restriction of religious freedom by the Marxist-Leninist Zhivkov regime which instituted state atheism and suppressed religious communities. The Bulgarian communist regimes declared Islam and other religions to be "opium of the people." In 1989, 310,000 to 360,000 people fled to Turkey as a result of the communist Zhivkov regime's assimilation campaign; however, 154,937 of them returned in the months after the fall of Zhivkov's regime in November 1989. The program, which began in 1984, forced all Turks and other Muslims in Bulgaria to adopt Bulgarian names and renounce all Muslim customs. The motivation of the 1984 assimilation campaign was unclear; however, many experts believed that the disproportion between the birth rates of the Turks and the Bulgarians was a major factor. The event became known as "the revival process" or "the renaming." According to Bulgarian historian and human rights activitist Antonina Zhelyazkova, additional 30,000 to 60,000 Muslims emigrated to Turkey between 1990 and 1996 because of the prolonged economic crisis in Bulgaria.

Muslims in Bulgaria have enjoyed greater religious freedom after the fall of the Zhivkov regime. New mosques have been built in many cities and villages; one village built a new church and a new mosque side by side. Some villages organized Quran study courses for young people (study of the Quran had been completely forbidden under Zhivkov). Muslims also began publishing their own newspaper, Miusiulmani, in both Bulgarian and Turkish. In 2022, sculptor Vezhdi Rashidov was elected Speaker of the 48th National Assembly, the highest official position ever held by a Muslim in Bulgaria.

Demographics
According to the 2011 census, there were 638,708 Muslims in Bulgaria, who accounted for 9.8% of the population of the country. According to 2014 estimates, almost one million Muslims live in Bulgaria, forming the largest Muslim minority in any EU country (percentage-wise, not in absolute numbers). According to a 2017 survey by the Pew Research Center, 15% of Bulgaria's population is Muslim. Almost all Muslims in Bulgaria are Bulgarian citizens.

Geographical distribution
According to the 2021 census, 40 out of a total of 266 Bulgarian municipalities had a Muslim majority and three additional municipalities had a Muslim plurality, or one more than in 2011. There were two municipalities with a Muslim population over 90 percent: the Sarnitsa Municipality with a Muslim population of 96.4% and the Chernoochene Municipality with a  Muslim population of 90.8%. Practically all municipalities with a Muslim majority are small and very small and generally rural. The exception, and the only provincial capital municipality with a Muslim majority, is the Kardzhali Municipality. All municipalities with a Muslim majority or plurality are listed below.

Demographic indicators
Muslims in Bulgaria have slightly better demographic indicators compared to the Orthodox Christians in Bulgaria. The reason for this difference is mostly because of ethnicity: most Muslims in Bulgaria are Turks and Roma (and to a much lesser extent ethnic Bulgarians) and those ethnic groups live mainly in rural areas; they have different reproductive traditions and they have a younger age structure compared to the ethnic Bulgarians which leads to higher fertility and birth rates. In provinces with large Muslim concentrations, birth rates are a little bit higher while death rates are lower than the country average. For example: Bulgaria had a total birth rate of 10.5‰ in 1992 while Muslims formed about 13 percent of the total population. However, in provinces with large Muslim populations the birth rate ranged from in 11.0‰ in Smolyan and 11.6‰ in Silistra to 13.1‰ in Razgrad (>50 percent Muslim) and 14.7‰ in Kardzhali (about 70 percent Muslim).

Age structure
Muslims constituted about 10 percent of all respondents in the 2011 census, but they formed around 12 percent of all respondents aged under thirty and less than 7 percent of all respondents aged seventy or more.

Ethnicity
According to the 2021 census, Muslims in Bulgaria are divided into the following ethnicities: Turks with 447,893 respondents, or 88.1% of all ethnic Turks, ethnic Bulgarians with 107,777 respondents, or 2.1% of all ethnic Bulgarians and ethnic Romani with 45,817 respondents, or 17.2 of all ethnic Romani.

Bulgarian Turks live in the Provinces of Kardzhali, Razgrad, Targovishte, Shumen, Silistra, Dobrich, Ruse and Burgas. They are most primarily a rural population. Muslim Bulgarians primarily live in the Rhodopes, in particular, the Smolyan Province, the municipalities of Satovcha, Yakoruda, Belitsa, Garmen, Gotse Delchev in the Blagoevgrad Province, the municipality of Velingrad in the Pazardzhik Province, and the municipalities of Ardino, Kirkovo and Krumovgrad in the Kardzhali Province, where however the majority of the population is made up of ethnic Turks. Muslim Romani live in the Shumen Province, Sliven Province, Dobrich Province, Targovishte Province, Pazardzhik Province and Plovdiv Province.

Tatar Muslims live in northeastern Bulgaria and the small Arab diaspora is based mainly in the capital, Sofia.

According to a December 2011 New Bulgarian University survey of Muslims in Bulgaria, roughly 64% identified as Turks, 10.1% identified as Pomaks, and 7.0% identified as Roma.

Branches
According to the 2011 Bulgarian census 94.6% of Muslims in Bulgaria were Sunni Muslim, 4.75% were Shia, and 0.65% were Muslims without further specifications. There is also a small Ahmadiyya presence in Bulgaria, but they are not counted on the census.

Religiosity
Evgenia Ivanova of the New Bulgarian University stated in 2011 that "religion is not of primary importance to Bulgaria's Muslims." The New Bulgarian University conducted a survey of 1.850 Muslims in Bulgaria, which found that 48.6% described themselves as religious, 28.5% of which were very religious. Approximately 41% never went to a mosque and 59.3% did not pray at home. Only 0.5% believed that disputes should be resolved using Islamic Sharia law and 79.6% said that wearing a veil in school was "unacceptable." 50,4% of the respondents said cohabitation without marriage was "acceptable" (41,9% said "nonacceptable" and 7,6% refused to answer), 39.8% ate pork and 43.3% drank alcohol. On the contrary, 88% of respondents said they circumcised their boys and 96% observed Muslim burial practices for their relatives.

According to a 2017 Pew Research Center survey, 33% of Bulgarian Muslims responded that religion is "very important" in their lives. The same survey found that 7% of Bulgarian Muslims pray all five salah, 22% attend mosque at least once a week, and 6% read Quran at least once a week.

Culture
During the socialist period of Bulgaria's history, most Muslims did not have access to halal food. In contemporary Bulgaria, the notion of halal food is only slowly re-appearing and only a few Muslims adhere to dietary restrictions. The majority of Muslims in Bulgaria who adhere to halal food restrictions are recent Arab immigrants to the country. In supermarkets, there are no signs indicating whether food is halal.

Few Bulgarian Muslim women wear traditional Islamic dress of any kind, such as headscarves, and most who do live in the rural parts of the country.

On 20 February 2013, the regional muftiate in Shumen organized a Sufi music concert, announced to be the first of its kind, because of the participation of a unique male choir consisting of 22 Sufi singers trained in Todor Ikonomovo village. The event was honoured by the Chief Mufti, the Head of the Supreme Muslim Council Shabanali Ahmed, diplomats from the Turkish Embassy in Sofia and other distinguished guests.

In 2013, the council of Ministers granted a day's holiday for Mawlid, two days for Eid al-Fitr, and three for Eid al-Adha. During Eid al-Adha, 2,500 packages of meat were distributed to people in need by the Chief Muftiate. The same year, the Chief Muftiate organized campaigns to help provide food and shelter to Syrian refugees.

In October 2014, the Muftiate launched a campaign during Eid al-Adha to donate packages of meat 30,000 families of any religion.

During Ashura, the Muftiate and representatives of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church distributed thousands of portions of Ashure for the poor.

Interfaith relations
Since 1989, the Muftiate has made effort to expand interreligious relations between Muslims and religious groups in Bulgaria. In 2013, Muslims helped in the repair of a church in Dyranovets. Teachers and pupils from Muslim religious schools meet with their Christian counterparts.

According to Bulgarian scholar and writer Aziz Nazmi Shakir, the relations between the local Muslim and Jewish communities are "rather positive." In August 2013, during Limmud week, the Bulgarian Jewish community organized in Bansko a scientific discussion dedicated to "The Personality of Moses in the Discourses of the Monotheistic Religions" attended by the Deputy Chief Mufti Miimiin Birali, Rabbi Aaron Zerbib, Pastor Evgeniy Naydenov and Father Petko Valov, the representative of the Catholic Apostolic Exarchate.

In 2013, during Ramadan, United States Ambassador Marcie Ries organized an iftar to which the Chief Mufti Mustafa Alish, the head of the Central Israelite Spiritual Council Robert Jerassy and the president of the United Evangelical Churches Nikolay Nedelev were invited. On 23 May and 8 June 2013, Christian and Muslim women held a charity bazaar (selling prayer beads, clothing, accessories, paintings, etc.) in the square behind Banya Bashi Mosque aimed at providing financial support for the Centre for Medical Care and "St. Ivan Rilski" Nursery in Sofia. In recent years, the Students' Council at the Higher Islamic Institute and the Chief Muftiate, in cooperation with Central Israelite Spiritual Council, the Theological Faculty at Sofia University "St Kliment Ohridski", the organisation of the Jews in Bulgaria "Shalom" and "Ethnopalitra" Foundation have organized interreligious discussions and public lectures dedicated to the philosophical, historical and political relations between the monotheistic religions, hosted by the Media Cultural Centre of the Chief Muftiate. The Chief Mufti met with the Neophyte of Bulgaria and Anselmo Guido Pecorari in 2014.

Education and income
During the transition to capitalism after the 1990 fall of socialist government, Muslim communities suffered disproportionately. Numerous Muslim enterprises were shut down and the low economic status of Muslims was exacerbated by the lack of education and poor infrastructure in the rural parts of the country. A 2001 study by sociologists under the leadership of Ivan Szelenyi from Yale University concluded that poverty and severe economic crisis affected Muslims and Roma in Bulgaria the most. Sociologists have since used the term "ethnicization" to describe the widening of the economic status gap negatively affecting several minority communities in Bulgaria. Research also shows that educational problems faced by minorities creates social stratification and magnifies negative stereotypes.

Religious infrastructure
Muslims are represented in the public arena by the Chief Muftiate. In 2013, the Provisional Prime Minister Marin Raykov visited the Muftiate. During his visit, Raykov stated that Muslims were an integral part of the nation and promised "the wounds of the past will not be exploited." Officially, the Bulgarian Muslim community is called the Мюсюлманско изповедание (Muslim Denomination). Administration is controlled by the Висш духовен съвет (Supreme Muslim Council), which has 30 members. The core institution, of the Supreme Muslim Council is the Главно мюфтийство (Chief Muftiate), which has 20 departments including Hajj, education, and public relations. There are also 21 regional muftiates. The current Chief Mufti of Bulgaria is Mustafa Hadzhi, who was reelected in 2016.

Ekrem Hakki Ayverdi documented 2,356 mosques in Bulgaria during the 1980s. Currently, the number of mosques in Bulgaria is estimated to be around 1,260. Around 400 of these mosques were constructed after the fall of the communist government, and more than 100 are not currently in use. During the communist era, the estate property acts of most mosques were purged from the archives. The largest mosque in Bulgaria is the Tumbul Mosque in Shumen, built during the 18th century.

The Scientific Research Centre (SRC) at the Higher Islamic Institute was established in 2014. The SRC aims to promote constructive and critical study of Islam and Muslims, especially in Europe. Particular areas of research include classical and modern exegesis methods, ecology and Islam, and Islamic art.

Islamic dress
On 30 September 2016, the Parliament of Bulgaria, backed by the Patriotic Front passed the law that outlaws wearing burqas by women in public places in an effort to combat terrorism and migrants flowing through Europe. However, non-Bulgarian citizens are free to wear the burqa.

Islamism
In 2012, 13 Salafi imams were put on trial in the Pazardzhik District Court for "preaching anti-democratic ideology" and "opposition to the principles of democracy, separation of powers, liberalism, a rule-of-law state, basic human rights such as gender equality and religious freedom." In March 2014, one of the imams named Ahmed Musa Ahmed, was found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison. Two other imams were given suspended prison sentences and the other ten were fined. In 2015, the case was brought to an appellate court.

In November 2014, several homes were raided in the Roma village of Izgrev of the Pazardzhik Province in southern Bulgaria. Among the 26 people who were arrested for 24 hours was Ahmed Musa Ahmed and six other preachers who were charged with support ISIS. Deputy Chief Prosecutor Borislav Sarafov stated that the preachers were propagating anti-democratic ideology and "non-native... 'Arab' forms of Islam" opposed to the "Turkish Islam" that has existed in Bulgaria for centuries.

Multiple studies, including work by IMIR, have concluded that Salafi and Islamist ideology disproportionately affect the Roma Muslim community due to the community's low economic and educational standing compared to mainstream Bulgarian society.

Opposition
In October 2014, the Chief Muftiate published a declaration condemning ISIS and appealing to Bulgarian Muslims not to respond to calls for jihad and the establishment of a caliphate.

Discrimination
Muslims in Bulgaria are obliged to register periodic conferences at the Sofia City Court, which members of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church are not required to do.

The Attack Party, IMRO – Bulgarian National Movement, and other far-right factions have used refugees to ignite xenophobia, and at least three racially motivated attacks were reported in 2013. After an Attack MP warned the country that Syrian refugees were "cannibals" and that their presence was designed to disguise an "Islamic wave" supported by American and Turkish interests, a group of Syrian refugees filed a complaint before the State Commission for Discrimination. In November 2013, a new nationalistic party was founded promising to "cleanse the country of foreign immigrant scum." Ultranationalist factions have formed "citizen patrols" to check whether migrants "comply with the law of the state". Some of these claimed to have official authorization from the authorities.

In February 2014, 19 MP's of the Attack Party and the Religious Denominations and Parliamentary Ethics Committee prepared a bill amending the Laws on Religions that would stop lawsuits for regaining waqf properties claimed by the Muftiate. In February 2014, more than 1,000 people from across Bulgaria protested against the decision of the Plovdiv Court to return the Kurshun Mosque in Karlovo, which had been nationalized during the communist era. The same month, protesters threw stones and smoke bombs at the Jumaya Mosque in Plovdiv. They waved signs holding "Stop the Islamization of Bulgaria." Similar protests were supported by the National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria.

However, local journalists and political analysts have long described Attack and the Turkish minority party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), as "communicating vessels", noting that both of them engage in outrageous acts just before elections to mobilise their voters and that the apparent hostility between them is only performative. Former DPS activists have accused DPS of financing Attack and have alleged that both of them are products of the intelligence service of the Communist regime.

In July 2014, for the first time in Bulgaria's democratic history, the President of Bulgaria Rosen Plevneliev hosted an iftar dinner. The iftar took place in the President's Boyana Residence and was attended by the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the National Assembly, party leaders, and representatives of all religions in the country.

Notable Bulgarian Muslims

 * Ahmed Dogan, politician
 * Lyutvi Mestan, politician
 * Mustafa Karadaya, politician
 * Tsvetan Teofanov, translator of the Quran into Bulgarian

title: Islam in Bulgaria


text:
John Rostill

John Henry Rostill (16 June 1942 – 26 November 1973) was an English musician, bassist and composer, recruited by the Shadows to replace Brian Locking. He wrote many of the songs by the Shadows including "The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt" in 1964. He wrote or co-wrote three songs which were massive hits in the United States—"Let Me Be There", "If You Love Me, Let Me Know" and "Please Mr. Please"—but died before seeing them succeed.

Biography
Born in Kings Norton, Birmingham, England, Rostill attended Rutlish School in south London (1953–59). He worked with several artists before joining the Shadows, including Bournemouth band the Interns (nowadays sometimes confused with Welsh band the Interns, who were based in London at this time signed with Tito Burns Agency; in fact, they were two different bands), the Flintstones and a stint as part of Zoot Money's early backing band. He also played in the bands recruited to back such visiting artists as the Everly Brothers and Tommy Roe.

Stylistically, Rostill combined the solidity of Brian Locking and the adventurousness of Jet Harris. Many of his bass lines were heavily syncopated and he developed a range of new sounds on the Burns bass during his time with the group, a longer period than Harris and Locking put together. To many players, Rostill was ahead of his time and included double-stopping in his technique. Unusually for that time, Rostill sometimes played bass finger-style as well as with a plectrum, depending on the sound he wanted.

After the Shadows' break-up at the end of the 1960s, Rostill toured with Tom Jones.

Rostill was a prolific songwriter, contributing to the Shadows' output from the start (both as a solo composer and as part of the mid-sixties "Marvin/Welch/Bennett/Rostill" team). This combination composed the hits "The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt" (a UK no. 5, 1964) and “Genie with the Light Brown Lamp" (UK no. 17, 1965) as well as all the tunes on the 1964 Rhythm & Greens EP.

They also wrote the Cliff Richard and the Shadows hits, "I Could Easily Fall (In Love with You)" (UK no. 6, 1964), "Time Drags By" (UK no. 10, 1966) and "In the Country" (UK no. 6, 1967).

He later went on to write for artists such as Olivia Newton-John ("Let Me Be There" (US no. 6, 1973), "If You Love Me, Let Me Know" (US no. 5, 1974) and "Please Mr. Please" (US no. 3, 1975), the last co-written with Bruce Welch). "If You Love Me" and "Let Me Be There" were also recorded in concert by Elvis Presley after Rostill's death.

As a Shadow, Rostill played a prototype Burns "Shadows" bass guitar which differed from the production model that followed. A replica of his bass was produced by Burns London in late 2006. His personal favourite instrument was a Fender Jazz bass, which he played in both the Terry Young Band and in Bournemouth band, the Interns. He also used it with the Shadows towards the end when the Burns instrument began to wear out.

John Rostill died in Radlett, Hertfordshire, England, on 26 November 1973 aged 31. He was found dead from barbiturate poisoning in his recording studio by his wife and Bruce Welch. The coroner recorded a verdict of "suicide while in a depressed state of mind".

He left behind his wife Margaret and his son Paul, who was a year old when his father died.

Early career

 * 1963 – Zoot Money Quartet
 * Zoot Money (keyboards); Andy Summers (guitar); Jimmy Shipstone (guitar); John Rostill (bass); Colin Allen (drums)

 * 1964 – The Interns

Discography

 * 1969: Tom Jones Live in Las Vegas
 * 1971: "Green Apples"/"Funny Old World" – Columbia – DB 8794.

Filmography

 * Wonderful Life (US title: Swingers' Paradise )
 * Finders Keepers
 * Rhythm 'n Greens (B-film)
 * Thunderbirds are Go (as puppets)

Pantomimes

 * Aladdin (appeared with Cliff Richard)
 * Cinderella (appeared with Cliff Richard)

title: John Rostill


text: Talk:Here (Leo Sayer album)

title: Talk:Here (Leo Sayer album)


text: User talk:129.10.104.188

title: User talk:129.10.104.188


text:
Category:Ice hockey statistics

This category contains ice hockey statistics (which, in some cases, are also box / indoor lacrosse statistics).

title: Category:Ice hockey statistics


text:
HMS Pandora

Ten ships of the Royal Navy have been named HMS Pandora after the mythological Pandora. Another was planned, but the name was reassigned to another ship:

 * HMS Pandora (1779), a 24-gun Porcupine-class post ship sixth rate launched in 1779. She was sent to capture the Bounty mutineers in 1790 and ran aground in 1791 on the Great Barrier Reef, Queensland.
 * HMS Pandora (1780) was the French 14-gun brig Pandour, launched in 1780, that the British captured in 1795 and renamed HMS Pandora; she foundered in the North Sea in 1797.
 * HMS Pandora (1806), an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop launched in 1806 and wrecked in 1811 off the Skaw with the loss 27 men to exposure.
 * HMS Pandora, to have been another 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop. She was ordered in 1812, renamed HMS Lynx later that year, and was cancelled in 1818.
 * HMS Pandora (1813), an 18-gun Cruizer-class brig-sloop launched in 1813, converted to a ship-sloop in 1825, put up for sale in 1827 and sold in 1831.
 * HMS Pandora (1833), a 3-gun packet brig launched in 1833. She became a coastguard watchvessel in 1857 and was sold in 1862.
 * HMS Pandora (1859), a Philomel-class gunvessel wooden gunboat launched in 1859 and sold in 1875 for use as an Arctic expedition ship. She was sold to American explorers in 1878, renamed USS Jeannette (1878) and sunk by ice in 1881.
 * HMS Pandora, a Pearl-class cruiser armoured cruiser launched in 1889, renamed HMS Katoomba (1889) in 1890 and sold in 1906.
 * HMS Pandora (1900), a Pelorus-class cruiser armoured cruiser launched in 1900 and scrapped in 1913.
 * HMS Pandora (1914), a depot ship, formerly the civilian Seti. She was renamed HMS Dolphin in 1924 and was sunk by a mine in 1939.
 * HMS Pandora (N42), a Parthian-class submarine launched in 1929 and sunk at Valletta, Malta in 1942. She was raised in 1943 and broken up in 1957.

title: HMS Pandora


text:
Micheline Lanctôt

Micheline Lanctôt (born May 12, 1947) is a Canadian actress, film director, screenwriter, and musician.

Biography
Lanctôt was born in Frelighsburg, Quebec. Her post-secondary education was in music, fine arts, and theatre at Collège Jésus-Marie in Outremont, and in art history at the Université de Montréal and the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal; she later studied film animation at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and then at Gerald Potterton's studios, Potterton Productions, where she remained for four years.

Lanctôt began her acting career in 1972, winning a Canadian Film Award for Best Actress for her starring role in Gilles Carle's The True Nature of Bernadette (La vraie nature de Bernadette). Since then, she has appeared in a wide variety of film and television roles, such as Carle's The Heavenly Bodies (Les Corps Célestes), Ted Kotcheff's award-winning The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Claude Chabrol's Blood Relatives and Guy Fournier's Radio-Canada TV series Jamais deux sans toi.

She has directed for the theatre also, directing Oleanna by David Mamet for the Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montreal in 1994, and in 1999, Bousille et les justes by Gratien Gélinas for the Théâtre du Rideau Vert.

She began her live-action film-directing career with The Handyman (L'Homme à tout faire) (1980), nominated for best direction and for best film at the Genie Awards in 1981. This success was followed by Sonatine (1984), which launched the career of Pascale Bussières and won both the Genie Award for Best Director at the 6th Genie Awards in 1985, and the now-defunct Silver Lion for Best First Film (1983-1987) at the 41st Venice International Film Festival.

Since 1982, Lanctôt has been a part-time instructor in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University.

Lanctôt defended Gaétan Soucy's novel The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches (La petite fille qui aimait trop les allumettes) in the 2004 edition of Le Combat des livres, broadcast on Première Chaîne.

In 2016 she was the curator of the Festival Vues dans la tête de... film festival in Rivière-du-Loup. She is also a matron of the Prix collégial du cinéma québécois, an annual program engaging film studies students in Quebec CEGEPs to present an award for the year's best Quebec film.

Awards and recognition

 * Winner of an Etrog (now known as Genie), best performance by a lead actress (1972)
 * Winner of the Genie, best achievement in direction, for Sonatine (1984)
 * Winner of the Silver Lion, Venice Film Festival for best first work, Sonatine (1984)
 * Recipient of the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement (2003)

Cinema

 * The True Nature of Bernadette (La Vraie nature de Bernadette) - 1972
 * The Heavenly Bodies (Les Corps célestes) - 1973
 * Noël et Juliette - 1973
 * Souris, tu m'inquiètes - 1973
 * Voyage to Grand Tartarie (Voyage en Grande Tartarie) - 1974
 * The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz - 1974
 * Child Under a Leaf - 1974
 * Little Tougas (Ti-Cul Tougas) - 1976
 * Blood Relatives (Les Liens Du Sang) - 1978
 * Blood and Guts - 1978
 * A Scream from Silence (Mourir à tue-tête) - 1979
 * The Coffin Affair (L'Affaire Coffin) - 1980
 * L'Oreille d'un sourd - 1996
 * Heads or Tails (J'en suis!) - 1997
 * The Revenge of the Woman in Black (La Vengeance de la femme en noir) - 1997
 * Streetheart (Le Coeur au poing) - 1998

 * Now or Never (Aujourd'hui ou jamais) - 1998
 * The Long Winter (Quand je serai parti... vous vivrez encore) - 1999
 * Le Petit ciel - 1999
 * Women Without Wings - 2002
 * How My Mother Gave Birth to Me During Menopause (Comment ma mère accoucha de moi durant sa ménopause) - 2003
 * The Barbarian Invasions (Les Invasions barbares) - 2003
 * Children of the Setting Suns - 2003
 * A Year in the Death of Jack Richards - 2004
 * Familia - 2004
 * Good Neighbours - 2010
 * Sarah Prefers to Run (Sarah préfère la course) - 2013
 * Winter Claire (Claire l'hiver) - 2017
 * Laughter (Le Rire) - 2020
 * Family Game (Arsenault et fils) - 2022
 * Frontiers (Frontières) - 2023
 * The Nature of Love (Simple comme Sylvain) - 2023

Television

 * Jamais deux sans toi - 1977, 1996
 * ''Omertà (TV series) - 1996
 * Réseaux - 1998
 * Le Pollock - 1999
 * Tag (2000)

 * Bunker, le cirque - 2002
 * Le Bonheur c'est une chanson triste - 2004
 * Un monde à part - 2004
 * Tripping the Wire: A Stephen Tree Mystery - 2005
 * Unité 9 - 2012-2015
 * The Disappearance - 2017

Cinema

 * A Token Gesture - 1975
 * The Handyman (L'Homme à tout faire) - 1980
 * Sonatine - 1984
 * The Pursuit of Happiness (La Poursuite du bonheur) - 1987
 * Onzième spéciale - 1988
 * Two Can Play (Deux actrices) - 1993
 * A Hero's Life (La Vie d'un héros) - 1994
 * Juniper Tree (Le Piège d'Issoudun) - 2003
 * Suzie - 2009
 * For the Love of God (Pour l'amour de Dieu) - 2011
 * The Handout (Autrui) - 2015
 * 9 (9, le film) - 2016
 * A Way of Life (Une manière de vivre) - 2019

Television

 * Eve (2003)
 * The Stones (2004)
 * Les Guerriers (2004)

Cinema

 * The Handyman (L'Homme à tout faire) - 1980
 * Sonatine 1984
 * The Heat Line (La ligne de chaleur) - 1988
 * Two Can Play (Deux actrices) - 1993
 * A Hero's Life (La Vie d'un héros) - 1994
 * Juniper Tree (Le Piège d'Issoudun) - 2003

Television

 * Les Guerriers (2004)

title: Micheline Lanctôt


text:
Alpha Pegasi

Alpha Pegasi (α Pegasi, abbreviated Alpha Peg, α Peg), formally named Markab, is the third-brightest star in the constellation of Pegasus and one of the four stars in the asterism known as the Great Square of Pegasus.

Properties
Alpha Pegasi has a stellar classification of A0 IV, indicating that it is an A-type subgiant star that has exhausted the hydrogen at its core and has evolved beyond the main sequence. Its spectrum has also been classified as B9V and B9.5III.

It is rotating rapidly, with a projected rotational velocity of 130 km/s giving a lower bound on the azimuthal velocity along the star's equator. The effective temperature of the photosphere is about 10,000 K and the star has expanded to nearly five times the radius of the Sun, emitting 165 times as much energy as the sun.

Nomenclature
α Pegasi (Latinised to Alpha Pegasi) is the star's Bayer designation. It bore the traditional name Markab (or Marchab), which derived from an Arabic word مركب markab "the saddle of the horse", or is mistranscription of Mankib, which itself comes from an Arabic phrase منكب الفرس Mankib al-Faras "(the Star of) the Shoulder (of the Constellation) of the Horse" for Beta Pegasi.

In 2016, the International Astronomical Union organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin of July 2016 included a table of the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN, which included Markab for this star.

In Chinese, 室宿 (Shì Xiù), meaning Encampment, refers to an asterism consisting α Pegasi and β Pegasi. Consequently, the Chinese name for α Pegasi itself is 室宿一 (Shì Xiù yī), "the First Star of Encampment".

title: Alpha Pegasi


text:
Gun pod

A gun pod is a detachable pod or pack containing machine guns, autocannons, revolver cannons, or rotary cannons and ancillaries, mounted externally on a vehicle such as a military aircraft which may or may not also have its own guns.

History

In World War II the Third Reich's Luftwaffe made use of many different, and most often rigidly mounted, conformal and suspended-mount gun pod systems usually called Waffenbehälter (prefix of WB, literally 'weapon container') or Waffenträger (prefix of WT, literally 'weapon carrier'), and carrying anything from rifle caliber MG 81 machine guns, all the way up to the enormous Bordkanone anti-tank cannon based ordnance weapon series, ranging from 37 to 75mm in caliber, though the usual underwing conformal gun pods fitted to Bf 109 and Fw 190 single engined fighters used either the MG 151/20 or MK 108 in gun pod mounts.

Other countries also used gun pods on their aircraft; the U.S. SBD Dauntless could be equipped with two gun pods on each wing, each with two M2 Browning machine guns.

The Bristol Blenheim Mk.1F of the Royal Air Force was a night fighter conversion of the twin engine light bomber equipped with airborne interception radar and armed with four .303 in Browning machine gun in a special gun pack under the fuselage. The Mk.IVF was a long range fighter version armed with the same gun pack.

The RAF Hawker Hurricane Mk.IID of 1942 was an early and extremely successful example of tank busting aircraft of the North African campaign armed with two 40 mm Vickers S gun with 15 rounds mounted in gondola-style pods, one under each wing.

Lessons learned during the Vietnam War showed the effectiveness of guns. Then expensive fighter jets such as the F-4 didn't even carry an internal cannon. Missiles (thought to be superior) -- in particular radar-guided missiles—had notoriously poor combat track records in air-to-air combat. Engineers and air crews quickly created a solution by attaching rotary cannons in a cut-out fuel drop tank, creating an impromptu gun pod suitable for attacking ground targets.

Since the Vietnam War, United States Air Force policy has been that the use of multimillion-dollar aircraft for strafing is not economically justified, but the Soviet Union, and subsequently Russia, have remained proponents of strafing, and have continued to develop systems for this purpose.

Soviet experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s led to an unusual innovation in the form of the SPPU series of gun pods, which have traversable barrels allowing them to continue to fire on a fixed target as the aircraft passes overhead.

Design
A gun pod typically contains one or more guns, a supply of ammunition, and, if necessary, a power source. Electrically powered cannon, such as the M61 Vulcan, may be powered from the aircraft's electrical system or by a ram-air turbine.

Gun pods increase a vehicle's firepower without occupying internal volume. When not required for a specific mission they can be omitted to save weight. On some vehicles they isolate delicate internal components such as radar from the weapon's recoil and gases, and for jet aircraft allow the weapons to be mounted away from the intakes of the engines, reducing problems of gun-gas ingestion, which may cause the engine to stall.

When designed to be suspension-mounted on a hardpoint on a typical post-WW II aircraft, gun pods are inherently less accurate than integral guns, or the type of "conformal" gun pods that are faired smoothly into or onto the nearby surfaces of an aircraft, because the "hardpoint" mounting is necessarily less rigid, so that the weapon's recoil produces more deflection. This problem is particularly acute with powerful cannon like the 30mm GPU-5 gun pod. Both hardpoint-mounted and conformal-mount gun pods also cause substantial drag on fast-moving vehicles such as fighter aircraft.

Gun pods are commonly carried on military helicopters, and are often fitted to light aircraft to equip them for counter-insurgency operations. Some air arms use gun pods for fighter bombers for use in strafing attacks.

Examples

 * United States:
 * GPU-2/A: Gun pod with M197 cannon.
 * GPU-5/A: Gun pod with GAU-13/A cannon.
 * M18/SUU-11/A: Gun pod with M134/GAU-2/A machine gun.
 * M12/SUU-16/A: Gun pod with M61A1 cannon.
 * M25/SUU-23/A: Gun pod with GAU-4/A cannon.

 * USSR / Russia:
 * GUV-8700: Gun pod (9A624) 2 GShG 7.62mm / 9A622 and 1 Yak-B 12.7mm / 9A624
 * GUV-8700: Gun pod (9A669), similar as above, 1 9A800 (version of AGS-17 30mm automatic grenade launcher) in the same pod.
 * UPK-23-250: Gun pod GSh-23L twin barreled 23mm
 * SPPU-22: Depressible gun pod GSh-23L twin barreled 23mm
 * SPPU-6: Fully mobile gun pod GSh-6-23 six barreled 23mm
 * SPPU-687: Depressible gun pod (9A-4273) GSh-30-1 high velocity 30mm (prototype)

 * France:
 * CC420: Gun pod with 30mm DEFA 552, 552A, 553, or 554 cannon.
 * CC422: Short gun pod with 30mm DEFA 553 cannon.
 * CC630: Gun pod with two 30mm DEFA 554 cannons.

title: Gun pod


text: User talk:63.246.198.135

title: User talk:63.246.198.135


text:
Cold hardening

Cold hardening is the physiological and biochemical process by which an organism prepares for cold weather.

Plants
Plants in temperate and polar regions adapt to winter and sub zero temperatures by relocating nutrients from leaves and shoots to storage organs. Freezing temperatures induce dehydrative stress on plants, as water absorption in the root and water transport in the plant decreases. Water in and between cells in the plant freezes and expands, causing tissue damage. Cold hardening is a process in which a plant undergoes physiological changes to avoid, or mitigate cellular injuries caused by sub-zero temperatures. Non-acclimatized individuals can survive −5 °C, while an acclimatized individual in the same species can survive −30 °C. Plants that originated in the tropics, like tomato or maize, don't go through cold hardening and are unable to survive freezing temperatures. The plant starts the adaptation by exposure to cold yet still not freezing temperatures. The process can be divided into three steps. First the plant perceives low temperature, then converts the signal to activate or repress expression of appropriate genes. Finally, it uses these genes to combat the stress, caused by sub-zero temperatures, affecting its living cells. Many of the genes and responses to low temperature stress are shared with other abiotic stresses, like drought or salinity. When temperature drops, the membrane fluidity, RNA and DNA stability, and enzyme activity change. These, in turn, affect transcription, translation, intermediate metabolism, and photosynthesis, leading to an energy imbalance. This energy imbalance is thought to be one of the ways the plant detects low temperature. Experiments on arabidopsis show that the plant detects the change in temperature, rather than the absolute temperature. The rate of temperature drop is directly connected to the magnitude of calcium influx, from the space between cells, into the cell. Calcium channels in the cell membrane detect the temperature drop, and promotes expression of low temperature responsible genes in alfalfa and arabidopsis. The response to the change in calcium elevation depends on the cell type and stress history. Shoot tissue will respond more than root cells, and a cell that already is adapted to cold stress will respond more than one that has not been through cold hardening before. Light doesn't control the onset of cold hardening directly, but shortening of daylight is associated with fall, and starts production of reactive oxygen species and excitation of photosystem 2, which influences low-temp signal transduction mechanisms. Plants with compromised perception of day length have compromised cold acclimation.

Cold increases cell membrane permeability and makes the cell shrink, as water is drawn out when ice is formed in the extracellular matrix between cells. To retain the surface area of the cell membrane so it will be able to regain its former volume when temperature rises again, the plant forms more and stronger Hechtian strands. These are tubelike structures that connect the protoplast with the cell wall. When the intracellular water freezes, the cell will expand, and without cold hardening the cell would rupture. To protect the cell membrane from expansion induced damage, the plant cell changes the proportions of almost all lipids in the cell membrane, and increases the amount of total soluble protein and other cryoprotecting molecules, like sugar and proline.

Chilling injury occurs at 0–10 degrees Celsius, as a result of membrane damage, metabolic changes, and toxic buildup. Symptoms include wilting, water soaking, necrosis, chlorosis, ion leakage, and decreased growth. Freezing injury may occur at temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius. Symptoms of extracellular freezing include structural damage, dehydration, and necrosis. If intracellular freezing occurs, it will lead to death. Freezing injury is a result of lost permeability, plasmolysis, and post-thaw cell bursting.

When spring comes, or during a mild spell in winter, plants de-harden, and if the temperature is warm for long enough – their growth resumes.

Insects
Cold hardening has also been observed in insects such as the fruit fly and diamondback moth. These insects use rapid cold hardening to protect against cold shock during overwintering periods. Overwintering insects remain active through the winter while non-overwintering insects migrate or die. Rapid cold hardening can occur during short periods of undesirable temperatures, such as cold shock in environment temperature, as well as the common cold months. The buildup of cryoprotective compounds such as glycerol is the reason that insects undergo cold hardening. Glycerol interacts with other cell components in order to decrease the insect's permeability to the cold. When an insect is exposed to these cold temperatures, glycerol rapidly accumulates. Glycerol is a non-ionic kosmotrope forming powerful hydrogen bonds with water molecules. The hydrogen bonds in the glycerol compound compete with the weaker bonds between the water molecules, interrupting ice crystal formation. This chemistry found within the glycerol compound and reaction between water has been used as an antifreeze in the past. Proteins also play a large role in the cold hardening process. Glycogen phosphorylase (GlyP) is a key enzyme that increases in comparison to a control group not experiencing the cold hardening. Once warmer temperatures are observed, the process of acclimation begins, and the increased glycerol along with other cryoprotective compounds and proteins are also reversed. There is a rapid cold hardening capacity found within certain insects that suggests not all insects can survive a long period of overwintering. Non-diapausing insects can sustain brief temperature shocks but often have a limit to what they can handle before the body can no longer produce enough cryoprotective components. In addition to being beneficial for insects' survival during cold temperatures, cold hardening also improves the organism's performance. Rapid cold hardening (RCH) is one of the fastest cold temperature responses recorded. This process allows an insect to instantly adapt to severe weather change without compromising function. Drosophila melanogaster (the common fruit fly) is a frequently experimented insect involving cold hardening. An example of RCH enhancing organisms' performance comes from courting and mating within the fruit fly. Fruit flies mate more frequently once RCH has commenced, compared to a control insect group not experiencing RCH. Most insects experiencing extended cold periods are observed to modify membrane lipids. Desaturation of fatty acids is the most commonly seen modification to the cell membrane. When the fruit fly was observed under the stressful climate the survival rate increased in comparison to the fly prior to cold hardening. In addition to the common fruit fly, Plutella xylostella (the diamondback moth) also has been widely studied for its significance in cold hardening. While this insect also shows an increase in glycerol and similar cryoprotective compounds, it also shows an increase in polyols. These compounds are specifically linked to cryoprotective compounds designed to withstand cold hardening. The polyol compound is freeze-susceptible and freeze tolerant. Polyols simply act as a barrier within the insect body by preventing intracellular freezing by restricting the extracellular freezing likely to happen in overwintering periods. During the larval stage of the diamondback moth, the significance of glycerol was tested again for validity. The lab injected the larvae with added glycerol and in turn proved that glycerol is a major factor in survival rate when cold hardening. The cold tolerance is directly proportional to the buildup of glycerol during cold hardening.

Cold hardening of insects improves the survival rate of the species and improves function. Once environmental temperature begins to warm up above freezing, the cold hardening process is reversed and the glycerol and cryoprotective compounds decrease within the body. This also reverts the function of the insect to pre-cold hardening activity.

title: Cold hardening


text:
CGL

CGL may refer to:

 * Cambridge Greek Lexicon
 * Catalyst Game Labs
 * Core OpenGL: Apple Computer's Macintosh Quartz windowing system interface to the Mac OS X implementation of the OpenGL specification
 * Conway's Game of Life
 * Chengalpattu Junction railway station (station code), in Tamil Nadu, India
 * Chronic granulocytic leukemia, also known as Chronic myelogenous leukemia
 * Coastal GasLink
 * Confederazione Generale del Lavoro
 * Commercial General Liability, a common type of liability insurance
 * CGL (charity)

title: CGL