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Neoclassical compound

Neoclassical compounds are compound words composed from combining forms (which act as affixes or stems) derived from classical languages (classical Latin or ancient Greek) roots. Neo-Latin comprises many such words and is a substantial component of the technical and scientific lexicon of English and other languages, via international scientific vocabulary (ISV). For example, Greek bio- combines with -graphy to form biography ("life" + "writing/recording").

Source of international technical vocabulary
Neoclassical compounds represent a significant source of Neo-Latin vocabulary. Moreover, since these words are composed from classical languages whose prestige is or was respected throughout the Western European culture, these words typically appear in many different languages. Their widespread use makes technical writing generally accessible to readers who may only have a smattering of the language in which it appears.

Not all European languages have been equally receptive to neoclassical technical compounds. German and Russian, for instance, have historically attempted to create their own technical vocabularies from native elements. Usually, these creations are German and Russian calques on the international vocabulary, such as Wasserstoff and "водород" (vodoród) for hydrogen. Like any exercise in language prescription, this endeavour has been only partially successful, so while official German may still speak of a Fernsprecher, public telephones will be labelled with the internationally recognized Telefon.

Formation, spelling, and pronunciation
These words are compounds formed from Latin and Ancient Greek root words. Ancient Greek words are almost invariably romanized (see transliteration of Ancient Greek into English). In English: Thus, for example, Ancient Greek σφιγξ becomes English (and Latin) sphinx. Exceptions to these romanizing rules occur, such as leukemia (leukaemia); compare leukocyte, also leucocyte. In Latin, and in the target languages, the Greek vowels are given their neoclassical values rather than their contemporary values in demotic Greek.
 * Ancient Greek αι becomes e or æ/ae;
 * Ancient Greek groups with γ plus a velar stop consonant such as γγ, γκ or γξ become ng, nc (or nk in more recent borrowings) and nx respectively;
 * Ancient Greek ει often becomes i (occasionally it is retained as ei);
 * Ancient Greek θ becomes th;
 * Ancient Greek κ becomes c (subject to palatalization in English pronunciation) or k;
 * Ancient Greek οι becomes e or sometimes œ/oe in British English;
 * Ancient Greek ου usually becomes u, or occasionally ou;
 * Ancient Greek ῥ (rho with spiritus asper) becomes rh;
 * Ancient Greek υ becomes y;
 * Ancient Greek φ becomes ph or, very rarely, f;
 * Ancient Greek χ becomes ch;
 * Ancient Greek ψ becomes ps;
 * Ancient Greek ω becomes o;
 * Ancient Greek rough breathing becomes h-.

Ancient Greek words often contain consonant clusters which are foreign to the phonology of contemporary English and other languages that incorporate these words into their lexicon: diphthong; pneumatology, phthisis. The traditional response in English is to treat the unfamiliar cluster as containing one or more silent letters and suppress their pronunciation, more modern speakers tend to try and pronounce the unusual cluster. This adds to the irregularities of English spelling; moreover, since many of these words are encountered in writing more often than they are heard spoken, it introduces uncertainty as to how to pronounce them when encountered.

Neoclassical compounds frequently vary their stressed syllable when suffixes are added: ágriculture, agricúltural. This also gives rise to uncertainty when these words are encountered in print. Once a classical compound has been created and borrowed, it typically becomes the foundation of a whole series of related words: e.g. astrology, astrological, astrologer/astrologist/astrologian, astrologism.

Mainstream medical and ISV pronunciation in English is not the same as Classical Latin pronunciation. Like Ecclesiastical Latin, it has a regularity of its own, and individual sounds can be mapped or compared. Although the Classical Latin pronunciation of venae cavae would be approximately, the standard English medical pronunciation is.

History and reception
English began incorporating many of these words in the sixteenth century; geography first appeared in an English text in 1535. Other early adopted words that still survive include mystagogue, from the 1540s, and androgyne, from the 1550s. The use of these technical terms predates the scientific method; the several varieties of divination all take their names from neoclassical compounds, such as alectryomancy, divination by the pecking of chickens.

Not all English writers have been friendly to the inflow of classical vocabulary. The Tudor period writer Sir John Cheke wrote:

"I am of this opinion that our own tung should be written cleane and pure, unmixt and unmangeled with borrowing of other tunges; wherein if we take not heed by tiim, ever borowing and never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt."

and therefore rejected what he called "inkhorn terms".

Similar sentiments moved the nineteenth century author William Barnes to write "pure English," in which he avoided Greco-Latin words and found Anglo-Saxon equivalents for them: for Barnes, the newly invented art of the photograph became a sun-print. Unlike this one, some of Barnes's coinages caught on, such as foreword, Barnes's replacement for the preface of a book. Later, Poul Anderson wrote a jocular piece called Uncleftish Beholding in a constructed language based on English which others have called "Ander-Saxon"; this attempted to create a pure English vocabulary for nuclear physics. For more information, see Linguistic purism in English.

More recent developments
Many such words, such as thermometer, dinosaur, rhinoceros, and rhododendron, are thoroughly incorporated into the English lexicon and are the ordinary words for their referents. Some are prone to colloquial shortening; rhinoceros often becomes rhino. The binomial nomenclature of taxonomy and biology is a major source for these items of vocabulary; for many unfamiliar species that lack a common English name, the name of the genus becomes the English word for that life form.

In the metric system, prefixes that indicate multipliers are typically Greek in origin, such as kilogram, while those that indicate divisors are Latin, as in millimeter: the base roots resemble Greek words, but in truth are neologisms. These metric and other suffixes are added to native English roots as well, resulting in creations such as gigabyte. Words of mixed Latin and Greek lineage, or words that combine elements of the classical languages with English – so-called hybrid words – were formerly castigated as "barbarisms" by prescriptionist usage commentators; this disapproval has mostly abated. Indeed, in scientific nomenclature, even more exotic hybrids have appeared, such as for example the dinosaur Yangchuanosaurus. Personal names appear in some scientific names such as Fuchsia.

Neoclassical compounds are sometimes used to lend grandeur or the impression of scientific rigour to humble pursuits: the study of cosmetology will not help anyone become an astronaut. Compounds along these models are also sometimes coined for humorous effect, such as odontopodology, the science of putting your foot into your mouth. These humorous coinages sometimes take on a life of their own, such as garbology, the study of garbage.

Some neoclassical compounds form classical plurals, and are therefore irregular in English. Others do not, while some vacillate between classical and regular plurals.

Translation
There are hundreds of neoclassical compounds in English and other European languages. As traditionally defined, combining forms cannot stand alone as free words, but there are many exceptions to this rule, and in the late 20th century such forms are increasingly used independently: bio as a clipping of biography, telly as a respelt clipping of television. Most neoclassical combining forms translate readily into everyday language, especially nouns: bio- as 'life' -graphy as 'writing, description'.

Because of this, the compounds of which they are part (usually classical or learned compounds) can be more or less straightforwardly paraphrased: biography as 'writing about a life', neurology as 'the study of the nervous system'. Many classical combining forms are designed to take initial or final position: autobiography has the two initial or preposed forms auto- and bio-, and one postposed form -graphy. Although most occupy one position or the other, some can occupy both: -graph- as in graphology and monograph; -phil- as in philology and Anglophile. Occasionally, the same base is repeated in one word: logology the study of words, phobophobia the fear of fear.

Preposed and postposed
Prefixes include: aero- air, crypto- hidden, demo- people, geo- earth, odonto- tooth, ornitho- bird, thalasso- sea. Many have both a traditional simple meaning and a modern telescopic meaning: in biology, bio- means 'life', but in bio-degradable it telescopes 'biologically'; although hypno- basically means 'sleep' (hypnopaedia learning through sleep), it also stands for 'hypnosis' (hypnotherapy cure through hypnosis).

When a form stands alone as a present-day word, it is usually a telescopic abbreviation: bio biography, chemo chemotherapy, hydro hydroelectricity, metro metropolitan. Some telescoped forms are shorter than the original neoclassical combining form: gynie is shorter than gyneco- and stands for both gynecology and gynecologist; anthro is shorter than anthropo- and stands for anthropology.

Suffixes include: -ectomy cutting out, -graphy writing, description, -kinesis motion, -logy study, -mancy divination, -onym name, -phagy eating, -phony sound, -therapy healing, -tomy cutting. They are generally listed in dictionaries without the interfixed vowel, which appears however in such casual phrases as 'ologies and isms'.

Variants
Some classical combining forms are variants of one base.

Some are also free words, such as mania in dipsomania and phobia in claustrophobia.

Some are composites of other elements, such as encephalo- brain, from en- in, -cephal- head; and -ectomy cutting out, from ec- out, -tom- cut, -y, a noun-forming suffix that means "process of".

Formation
In Greek and Latin grammar, combining bases usually require a thematic or stem-forming vowel. In biography, from Greek, the thematic is -o-; in agriculture, from Latin, it is -i-. In English morphology, this vowel can be considered as an interfix: in biology, the interfix -o-; in miniskirt, the interfix -i-. It is usually regarded as attached to the initial base (bio-, mini-) rather than the final base (-graphy, -skirt), but in forms where it is conventionally stressed, it is sometimes considered as part of the final base (-ography, -ology). If the final element begins with a vowel (for example, -archy as in monarchy), the mediating vowel has traditionally been avoided (not *monoarchy), but in recent coinages it is often kept, sometimes accompanied by a hyphen (auto-analysis, bioenergy, hydroelectricity, not *autanalysis, *bienergy, *hydrelectricity).

Its presence helps to distinguish neoclassical compounds like biography and agriculture from vernacular compounds like teapot and blackbird.

Origin
Generally, English has acquired its neoclassical compounds in three ways: through French from Latin and Greek, directly from Latin and Greek, and by coinage in English on Greek and Latin patterns. An exception is schizophrenia, which came into English through German, and is therefore pronounced 'skitso', not 'skyzo'.

Terminological variation
Most dictionaries follow the Oxford English Dictionary in using combining form (comb. form) to label such classical elements. In appendices to dictionaries and grammar books, classical combining forms are often loosely referred to as roots or affixes: 'a logo …, properly speaking, is not a word at all but a prefix meaning word and short for logogram, a symbol, much as telly is short for television' (Montreal Gazette, 13 Apr. 1981). They are often referred to as affixes because some come first and some come last. But if they were affixes proper, a word like biography would have no base whatever.

While affixes are grammatical (like prepositions), classical combining forms are lexical (like nouns, adjectives, and verbs): for example, bio- translates as a noun (life), -graphy as a verbal noun (writing). This is why some reference works also call them stems. They are also often loosely called roots because they are ancient and have a basic role in word formation, but functionally and often structurally they are distinct from roots proper: the -graph in autograph is both a root and a classical combining form, while the -graphy in cryptography consists of root -graph- and suffix -y, and is only a classical combining form.

Conservative philological tradition
From the Renaissance until the mid-20th century, the concept of derivational purity has often regulated the use of classical compounds, with a philological goal of like with like (Greek with Greek, Latin with Latin) and a minimum of hybridization. For example, biography is Greek, agriculture Latin; but this ideal has seen only limited realization in practice, as for example the word television is a hybrid of Greek tele- and Latin -vision (probably so coined because the 'pure' form telescope had already been adopted for another purpose).

Contemporary developments
Generally, classical compounds were a closed system from the 16th century to the earlier 20th century: the people who used them were classically educated, their teachers and exemplars generally took a purist's view on their use, contexts of use were mainly technical, and there was relatively little seepage into the language at large. However, with the decline of classical education and the spread of technical and quasitechnical jargon in the media, a continuum has evolved, with at least five stages:

Pure classical usage
In the older sciences, classical combining forms are generally used to form such strictly classical and usually Greek compounds as anthocyanin, astrobleme, chemotherapy, chronobiology, cytokinesis, glossolalia, lalophobia, narcolepsy, osteoporosis, Pliohippus, sympathomimetic.

Hybrid classical usage
In technical, semitechnical, and quasitechnical usage at large, coiners of compounds increasingly treat Latin and Greek as one resource to produce such forms as accelerometer, aero-generator, bioprospector, communicology, electroconductive, futurology, mammography, micro-gravity, neoliberal, Scientology, servomechanism.

Hybrid classical/vernacular usage
In the later 20th century, many forms have cut loose from ancient moorings: crypto- as in preposed Crypto-Fascist and pseudo- as in pseudoradical; postposed -meter in speedometer, clapometer. Processes of analogy have created coinages like petrodollar, psycho-warfare, microwave on such models as petrochemical, psychology, microscope. Such stunt usages as eco-doom, eco-fears, eco-freaks, common in journalism, often employ classical combining forms telescopically: eco- standing for ecology and ecological and not as used in economics. In such matters, precision of meaning is secondary to compactness and vividness of expression.

Combining forms as separate words
In recent years, the orthography of many word forms has changed, usually without affecting pronunciation and stress. The same spoken usage may be written micro-missile, micro missile, micromissile, reflecting the same uncertainty or flexibility as in businessman, business-man, business man. When used in such ways, classical compounds are often telescopic: Hydro substation Hydro-Electricity Board substation, Metro highways Metropolitan highways, porno cult pornography cult.

New classical compounds
The mix of late 20th century techno-commercial coinages includes three groups of post- and non-classical forms:
 * 1) Established forms: econo- from 'economic', as in econometric, Econo-Car; mini- from 'miniature', as in miniskirt, mini-boom; -matic from 'automatic', as in Adjustamatic, Instamatic, Stackomatic.
 * 2) Less established forms, often created by blending: accu- from 'accurate', as in Accuvision; compu- from 'computer', as in Compucorp; docu- from 'documentary', as in docudrama; perma- from 'permanent', as in permafrost and permaban; dura- from 'durable', as in Duramark.
 * 3) Informal vernacular material in pseudo-classical form: Easibird, Healthitone, Redi-pak, Relax-A-Cizor (relax, exerciser).

Similar systems
In East Asia, a similar role to Latin and Greek has been played by Chinese, with non-Chinese languages both borrowing a significant number of words from Chinese and using morphemes borrowed from Chinese to coin new words, particularly in formal or technical language. See Sino-Japanese vocabulary, Sino-Korean vocabulary, and Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary for discussion.

The coinage of new native terms on Chinese roots is most notable in Japanese, where it is referred to as wasei kango (和製漢語). Many of these have been subsequently borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese, with the same (or corresponding) characters being pronounced differently according to language, just as happens in European languages – compare English biology and French biologie.

For example, 自動車 (Japanese jidōsha, Korean jadongcha, Mandarin zìdòngchē) is a Japanese-coined word meaning "automobile", literally self-move-car; compare to auto (self) + mobile (moving).

title: Neoclassical compound


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Kingsway Hall

The Kingsway Hall in Holborn, London, was the base of the West London Mission (WLM) of the Methodist Church, and eventually became one of the most important recording venues for classical music and film music. It was built in 1912 and demolished in 1998. Among the prominent Methodists associated with the Kingsway Hall was Donald Soper, who was Superintendent Minister at the West London Mission from 1936 until his retirement in 1978.

Overview
Kingsway Hall took its name from the street on to which its main entrance opened. The address was West London Mission, 75 Kingsway, London.

In 1899, the London County Council (LCC) was given the power to proceed with major slum clearance in the area between Holborn and the Strand. The Methodist Church had operated its West London Mission since 1887 occupying a number of rented buildings in Piccadilly, St James' Hall and Princes Hall, and the Strand, Exeter Hall.

These venues were steadily reclaimed as sites for new hotels, so eventually, in 1906, the church found a more permanent home for the Mission at 67 Great Queen Street, where there was a chapel. There had been a chapel there since at least 1709 but the Methodists moved in in 1789 and from time to time refurbished and expanded it. In April 1907 this chapel was renamed as Kingsway Hall, but the building was condemned by the LCC as part of the clearance.

It was then decided to join the development taking place on the new Kingsway road and build a new Mission including a spacious chapel. An idea of the nature of the area around Great Queen Street and Holborn just before the new Kingsway was built can be found in the book Old time Aldwych, the Kingsway and Neighbourhood by Charles Gordon, published in 1903 by T Fisher Unwin.

A new seven-storey building called Wesley House was home to the West London Mission from 1911 until 1972, when it merged with the Hinde Street Methodist Chapel (a merger not completed until 1982). Wesley House included a youth club, religious meeting rooms, a luncheon club, mission offices, and accommodation for resident staff. Adjacent to Wesley House, and with a frontage on to Kingsway, the Church also speculated by building the International Buildings, which was let to many tenants and was a source of much needed revenue to run the mission.

The mission was inaugurated at Wesley House on 6 December 1911, but Kingsway Hall, the chapel attached to Wesley House, required another year of construction. Although Kingsway Hall itself has been demolished, Wesley House remains today, no longer a mission, as do the International Buildings.

Foundation stones for Kingsway Hall were laid 24 April 1912 and the hall was completed with a ceremony on 6 December 1912. The hall included a raked floor with over 2,000 seats.

The organ, built in 1912 by J. J. Binns of Leeds, was inaugurated 4 April 1913 with half its cost of £1,500 being contributed by American steel magnate Andrew Carnegie. A fourth manual was added in 1924 by Messrs. Hill & Son and Norman & Beard, along with chimes and timpani. Gatty Sellars, the hall's organist at the time, gave the inaugural performance on the new organ. The organ was rebuilt in 1932 and remained in use until the closure of the hall. The Nigerian composer Fela Sowande was the organist of the hall from 1945. As soon as electrical recording began in the Hall among the first recordings were those of the solo organ; some of these have been issued on CD by Amphion Records of Malton in Yorkshire.

Donald Soper (the well-known pacifist, later to become Baron Soper), became the Methodist minister of Kingsway Hall in 1936. When German air raids on London started in 1940, Soper opened a "rest and feeding centre" in Kingsway Hall's basement (not far from Holborn underground station). Here, the victims of the bombing could find refuge, and Soper and his family also lived there for a time. Until the end of 1944, Kingsway Hall ran a breakfast canteen. In one 6-month period alone, 26,232 breakfasts were served (and 34,178 cups of tea). At the request of the Ministry of Food, from 1942 Soper also organised the distribution of surplus vegetables from Covent Garden Market to the needy.

The Hall was used for public meetings as well as church services etc. One such meeting was held by the Free French on 18 June 1940 at which General Charles De Gaulle addressed them to encourage resistance to the very recent German invasion. On this same day, Winston Churchill addressed the House of Commons, giving his famous "Finest Hour" speech, in which he refers to the recently lost Battle of France and the forthcoming Battle of Britain. The speech was recorded at Abbey Road studios.

After the war, Kingsway Hall became an active venue for concerts and recording sessions, and was regarded as one of the best recording locations in the world. Its use for concerts and recordings continued until 1983 when it was acquired by the Greater London Council (GLC) and closed.

At the end of March 1983, the GLC purchased Wesley House and Kingsway Hall for the women's committee. Kingsway Hall was rapidly deteriorating, and an archaeological survey in August 1996 found that nothing significant about it was still present. Despite pleas from some musicians and record magazines, Kingsway was demolished in 1998 to make way for a hotel of the same name, which opened in 2000. The hotel's reception desk is on the approximate location where orchestra members once recorded.

Recording at Kingsway Hall 1925–1984
Kingsway was built for evangelistic purposes, as a place of worship, not as a concert or recording hall. However, it was considered to have the finest acoustics in London for recording orchestral and choral repertory. The acoustics resulted more by accident than through conscious design. The size and shape of the space as well as the plastered walls and wooden floor all contributed, as did the large storage chamber below the hall. Musicians were enthusiastic about performing there since the hall allowed them to hear their own playing very well.

At the same time, they found other aspects of the hall difficult since nearby parking was scarce, it was cold in the winter, was dingy and dirty, and lacked food services. For recording engineers, there was also continual rumbling from the London Underground line interrupting recordings. Directly below Great Queen Street is the main line of the Underground Piccadilly line, which opened on 15 December 1906, and under Kingsway was a branch, the rail extension from Holborn to Aldwych which opened 13 November 1907, and closed in 1994.

The sound of the underground could be heard on many recordings, and became known as the "Kingsway rumble". There were also recording problems created by road and construction noise, and even occasional interruptions from the clientele of the mission itself. Engineers complained that takes made with outside traffic noise could not be edited together with those made while traffic stopped for a red light.

Despite the drawbacks, Kingsway became the most sought-after recording venue for orchestral music in England because of its central location and excellent acoustics, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, when companies were converting from monaural to stereophonic recordings. The London Symphony Orchestra alone made 421 recordings there between 1926 and 1983; the London Philharmonic Orchestra made 280 recordings there, including its very first sessions (with Malcolm Sargent conducting choral favourites).

The hall had sufficient space for choral and even operatic recordings, and the availability of the organ offered still another benefit. Since the stage itself was not large enough for an orchestra or chorus, the metal ground floor seating was removed for recordings. The conductor often faced the horseshoe balcony, giving that individual an unusual prospect of looking at the orchestra rising rapidly away from him due to the five percent raked floor that sloped down towards him and the stage behind. Cellists much preferred to have the seating this way around so that they played "downhill" rather than up.

His Master's Voice began recording at Kingsway Hall on 3 November 1925 using electrical equipment obtained from the American Western Electric company, to whom they paid a royalty on each disc sold for the patents involved, and continued making regular use of it even after the construction of its own recording complex at Abbey Road Studios in 1931.

From about 1933, EMI used its own equipment designed by their engineer Alan Blumlein, who successfully circumvented the Western Electric patents and thus avoided their substantial royalty costs. At this time, he also developed and patented a stereo disc recording method which was eventually adopted for the LP standard set in 1958.

Decca Records only began using the hall in May 1944, introducing their famous FFRR recording system developed during war work, but it would become one of the three most-used Decca recording locations (the others being Victoria Hall in Geneva, and the Sofiensaal in Vienna). The Anthony Collins Sibelius cycle was recorded there between 1952 and 1955. Lyrita used Kingsway from 1965 to 1980 (these recordings were actually produced by Decca's recording team), as did RCA Records from 1957 to 1977.

Although primarily used for classical music recording, very occasionally dance bands and the like were recorded there, including Sydney Lipton in the thirties, and Ted Heath in the summer of 1958 and again in 1963. Mantovani made a number of recordings at Kingsway, including a carol concert album in 1953, and a Kismet album for Decca's Phase Four label released in 1964. EMI rarely used the venue for chamber music, but Decca recorded solo keyboard, violin sonatas and string quartets.

EMI and Decca had opportunities to purchase Kingsway Hall, which they did not pursue. EMI determined that although the facility was one of the best recording locations in the world, refurbishment would be too expensive. Decca's and EMI's recording contracts at Kingsway expired 31 December 1983. The final recording, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli, was made with Deutsche Grammophon a few days later: Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut, which finished taping on 5 January 1984.

Kingsway Hall, 1912–2012: A Centenary Tribute
At 3.30 in the afternoon of Friday, 6 December 1912, the Lord Mayor of London, Colonel Sir David Burnett, presided over the opening ceremony of a new Methodist Church Hall. Although this was an event that took place in central London, the opening was reported in the national press, including the Manchester Guardian, The Times, Daily Express, The Morning Post and Daily News and Leader. The Daily Graphic of 5 December, as well as several provincial newspapers, published photographs of the new Hall. That Church Hall was Kingsway Hall, well known to record collectors worldwide for the qualities of its acoustic, and it was built to replace a previous Kingsway Hall based in a chapel round the corner at 67 Great Queen Street. A chapel had existed at the site since at least 1709.

However, regular recording did not begin in the Hall until January 1926, a year of economic depression and the General Strike, when HMV signed an exclusive contract with the church authorities. That one-year agreement, the first of many, allowed for 130 sessions for a fee of £1,000. At this time, HMV also had exclusive recording access to the Queen's and Royal Albert Halls. The reason for this initiative was the coming to maturity of electrical recording technology that allowed recordings to be made in the natural acoustics of the concert hall, free of the constraints of acoustic recording and its intrusive sound gathering horns.

At first, the new technology allowed the disc recording machines to be located in other buildings in London (Queen's Hall and other HMV premises), the microphones being connected to them using Post Office telephone lines. Soon, however, disc-cutting machines were installed in the Hall itself using rooms beneath the stage. In the years between 1912 and 1926, including those of the Great War, the Hall was also used for concerts conducted by the likes of Beecham and Boult, with the young John Barbirolli among the cellists, its fine acoustic having been discovered early in its life. The Hall's active life spanned the age of the acoustic cylinder to the coming of the Compact Disc. It remained a venue for public meetings and exhibitions, for example, a model railway engineering exhibition in 1928.

The Hall itself was only part of the complex of buildings that the church had built to re-house its evangelical West London Mission, which was launched in October 1887; its partner was Wesley Hall, where the philanthropic work of the Mission was carried out. Whilst the element of the Mission that was Kingsway Hall was demolished in the late 1990s to make way for the present Kingsway Hall Hotel in Great Queen Street, Wesley Hall still stands but is now used mainly for office accommodation with an entrance in a side street.

The main entrance to Kingsway Hall in Kingsway itself is now a sandwich bar. The centenary of the WLM was celebrated at the Methodist Hinde Street premises in 1997, and the artifacts and documents of the exhibition are held at the London Metropolitan Archive. Some items are also held in the Local Studies section of the Holborn branch of the Camden library in the Theobalds Road.

During the 1930s the Great Western Railway built a series of steam locomotives in its Hall class. Number 5933 was built in June 1933 and was called Kingsway Hall. Its first home was Bristol, before being moved to Reading, Southall and finally Oxford, from where it was withdrawn from service in 1965 and scrapped at Llanelli.

Whilst the opening of Abbey Road studios in November 1931 reduced the need for Kingsway as a regular venue, HMV, now a part of the newly formed EMI, retained it under exclusive contract but available to all other EMI partner labels, including Columbia. EMI were to retain this guarded access to a prized acoustic until the Hall was acquired by the Greater London Council in 1983, after which all recording activity ceased, the final contract expiring on 31 December that year. Exclusivity was maintained throughout the whole time between 1926 and 1983 and shared between EMI, and all its affiliated labels, and Decca, and its affiliates, who joined the agreement in 1944.

Whilst both EMI and Decca used the Hall for sessions sponsored by other labels such as Lyrita, the recording teams were always those of EMI or Decca. However, occasionally, when they were not using the Hall themselves, Decca and EMI agreed to allow access to small labels using their own equipment and technicians, even loaning microphones on occasion. Such was the rare case with Bartok Records, established by Peter Bartok, the composer's son, who made a number of recordings of his father's works in 1950 (or 1951, the dates are not verified) and again in 1953. The New Symphony Orchestra was used, a pick up band organised by Jack Simmons, and for some items it was conducted by Walter Susskind. These rare recordings are available on CD.

The last recordings made at Kingsway were by Deutsche Grammophon, a partner of Philips and Decca in Phonogram since 1979, of Manon Lescaut, Sinopoli conducting the Philharmonia, recorded between 28 December 1983 and 5 January 1984. Of all the orchestras to have recorded at Kingsway, the Philharmonia/New Philharmonia spent more days there than any other. Decca's last recording was Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 130 and Große Fuge, Op. 133, with the Fitzwilliam Quartet on 10–12 December 1983. EMI's last recording appears to have been Tennstedt's Mahler 6 with the LPO in May 1983.

Whilst the vast majority of recordings at Kingsway were of London or British orchestras (e.g. the Halle under John Barbirolli, City of Birmingham under Fremaux), very rare visitors to Kingsway for recording included the Vienna Philharmonic. The VPO appeared once only, on 4 October 1949, for a recording of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder with Bruno Walter and Kathleen Ferrier for Columbia. This recording was made after a performance in London and after some contractual wrangling between Decca (who owned Ferrier's contract) on the one hand and EMI/HMV (who owned that of the VPO) and EMI/Columbia (who owned Walter's) on the other. It is available on Naxos Historical 8.110 876 as well as REGIS RRC1153 and EMI 678 722 2.

In the aftermath of World War II, Decca needed artists and so invited a number of continental orchestras to record in London, usually while they were on tour. Among these were the Turin Symphony Orchestra under Frede and Rossi, the Paris Conservatoire under Charles Munch (both in 1947) and the Hamburg Radio Symphony Orchestra under Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt. Later, the Israel Philharmonic under Mehta also recorded whilst passing through London on tour in both 1968 (Dvorak and Tchaikovsky) and 1975 (Bartok). James Galway recorded with the Zagreb Soloists for RCA in 1975. Infrequent visiting conductors were Krauss, Celibidache, Kleiber Snr, Furtwangler, Knapperstsbusch, Weingartner, Szell, Dorati, Leinsdorf and Bohm.

Although Kingsway Hall is no more, its legacy of many great recordings made over 57 years covers every genre of classical music from organ music, string quartets, solo piano, opera and choral works and film scores to full-scale orchestral symphonies. These recordings can be explored by browsing the several discographies compiled by Philip Stuart for a number of London Orchestras (LPO, LSO, ASMF and ECO) and by Stephen Pettit for the Philharmonia (up to only 1987). It even included Christmas carol recordings by the oddly named Butlin Choral Society. It was also very rarely a location for recorded jazz concerts (Ted Heath 1958 and 1963) and even Mantovani. Its acoustic added something unique to all these genres.

Its demise was brought about by a combination of events but also by factors which related to its location and the fate of the recording industry. Rumbles from the Piccadilly line plagued its whole life, as did extraneous noise from traffic and aircraft, neighbouring buildings and from the inhabitants of the Wesley Hall Mission next door.

There were always complaints about the maintenance of the building, especially when it was owned by the church, whose funds were much diminished after World War II. Indeed, the roof collapsed in early September 1969 and put the Hall out of action whilst repairs were made, and imminent sessions for the ASMF Vivaldi Four Seasons were hastily moved to St John's, Smith Square. The Church sold the whole Mission building to British Land in 1972, but this did not improve matters. After a number of attempts at justifying acquiring it, neither Decca nor EMI could envisage the building being a major recording centre, and so in 1983 it fell into the hands of the GLC, bringing its recording career to an end.

In March 1986, the GLC was abolished and the Hall put up for sale once again. In October 1987, a centenary exhibition was held at the Mission's then home at Hinde Street, near Wigmore Hall, and a history published, authored by Professor Philip Bagwell. Many of the exhibits and artifacts are now kept at the London Metropolitan Archives in London. By this time Kingsway Hall had been out of regular use for some time and was in a poor state of repair. It would seem that there were no takers, and so it was gutted and remained derelict until 1996, when planning permission for its demolition and replacement by a hotel was requested.

Gramophone magazine and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe were among the very few to object, and archeological excavations were conducted by the Museum of London, following which no widespread opposition was raised to the granting of the demolition order, English Heritage being unable to justify preservation. Kingsway Hall was demolished in 1998, and the hotel opened in 2000.

Fate seemed to dog the Mission's home; its previous two meeting Halls, St James' in Piccadilly, and Exeter Hall in the Strand, had also been demolished to make way for hotels. One Hall that was used by the WLM whilst Kingsway Hall was being built was the "new" St James, or Philharmonic, Hall in Great Portland Street. The building survives today, but now as a BBC office block called Brock House.

Events at Kingsway Hall

 * August 1913 – Emmeline Pankhurst delivers speech at Women's Social and Political Union meeting condemning doctors' force feeding of women caught under the Cat and Mouse Act
 * 16 October 1920 – The first of the British Symphony Orchestra's "super-concerts" promoted by Thomas Quinlan: Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5 and Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 conducted by Adrian Boult. Possibly the first time orchestral music had been heard in the hall
 * In February and March 1926 several recordings of the Hall's organ were made by a number of the leading organists of the day. Some of these recordings have been transferred from 78 to CD by Amphion Records of Malton in Yorkshire.
 * 15 September 1926 – First recordings with Albert Coates' "The Symphony Orchestra" (this orchestra composed of London Symphony Orchestra players billed differently for contractual purposes). Beethoven's Eroica symphony was among the works recorded with the 9th symphony recorded the following month. These recordings have been transferred and refurbished and are available on CD or for download.
 * 26 February 1927 – Ampico Concert featuring Grieg Concerto roll by Marguerite Volavy (soloist) accompanied by Gatty Sellers at the organ (orchestra)
 * 28 October 1928 – Debate titled "Do We Agree?" over distributism between George Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton chaired by Hilaire Belloc and broadcast live by the BBC (audience exceeds hall's capacity)
 * During March, April and May 1929, Albert Coates and the LSO recorded Bach's B minor Mass with Elisabeth Schumann among the soloists. This recording has been transferred from 78 to CD by the Pearl label, among others.
 * On 22 October 1929, Arthur Rubinstein recorded the Brahms Second piano concerto with the 29-year old John Barbirolli conducting the LSO. The recording is available on CD from Naxos Historical.
 * In early January 1931, Rubinstein and Barbirolli and the LSO recorded the Chopin 2nd piano concerto and Mozart's No 23. Both recordings have been issued on CD.
 * 4 June 1931 – Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and the Queen Mother), and Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth) attend recording session for Edward Elgar's Nursery Suite, with the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra (also recorded at Kingsway on 23 May 1931).
 * 19 September 1932 – first London Philharmonic Orchestra sessions with Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting the Royal Choral Society. Sir Thomas Beecham recorded much with the LPO for HMV and Columbia labels during the 1930s but it was not until 13 December 1938 that he recorded with the orchestra at Kingsway Hall with Sessions for Mozart's 36th symphony. Schubert's 5th symphony followed two days later.
 * 26 April 1933 – Virgil Fox's European debut before an audience of 1,100
 * December 1933 – Anthony Eden speech on the League of Nations
 * 18 June 1940 – General De Gaulle gives a speech to the Free French in London to encourage Resistance to German Occupation
 * 10 August 1945 – first Philharmonia Orchestra sessions
 * 27 October 1945 – Thomas Beecham conducts the first concert of the Philharmonia Orchestra (an all Mozart program)
 * 20 January 1947 – first concert of the London Symphonic Players, Harry Blech conducting
 * 27 May 1947 – first Royal Philharmonic Orchestra sessions
 * 28 November 1949 – Winston Churchill delivers speech championing the European Movement
 * 16 April 1951 – first London performance of the Hindemith Horn Concerto with Dennis Brain and the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Norman Del Mar.
 * 23 May 1951 – Leopold Stokowski's first British recording, of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, with the Philharmonia Orchestra for HMV
 * 1–2 December 1954 – Decca first experimental stereo recording in the hall of Winifred Atwell playing Grieg's Piano Concerto with the London Philharmonic and Stanford Robinson. Their first commercially released stereo recording was made on 14–15 December 1955 with Clifford Curzon on piano, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Sir Adrian Boult playing Franck's Symphonic Variations and Holst's Scherzo from his unfinished symphony H192.
 * 7 February 1955 – EMI's first stereo recordings made; Prokofiev's Symphony No. 7, Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Nicolai Malko).
 * 1956 – EMI records Falstaff
 * 21 & 23 March 1961 – EMI records the legendary performance of Brahms German Requiem with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klemperer, with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as soloists
 * 19 January 1969 (sic) – a large section of the main roof collapses and steel girders fall on the seats (fortunately after Sunday services). This date is that given in Bagwell's history of the WLM published in 1987 for the centenary. Unfortunately, Bagwell's information must be incorrect and other evidence at EMI archives and in the Academy of St Martins in the Fields discography points to early September 1969 for the roof fall. In addition, the LSO had sessions in the hall on 20 and 22 January.
 * 24 June 1980 – Celebration for the life of record producer John Culshaw with Nigel Black, Clifford Curzon, Kenneth Sillito, Neil Black, Alan Civil, Georg Solti, Humphrey Burton, Lorin Maazel, Huw Wheldon, and Leontyne Price.

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

title: Kingsway Hall


text:
Abbas ibn Ali

Al-Abbas ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib (ٱلْعَبَّاس ٱبْن عَلِيّ ٱبْن أَبِي طَالِب, c. 15 May 647 – 10 October 680 CE), also known by the kunya Abu al-Fadl (أَبُو ٱلْفَضْل), was a son of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Rashid caliph in Sunni Islam and the first Imam Shia Islam. His mother was Fatima bint Hizam, commonly known as Umm al-Banin (أُمّ ٱلْبَنِين). Abbas fought as the standard-bearer of his half-brother Husayn ibn Ali in the Battle of Karbala on 10 Muharram 61 AH (10 October 680) against the army of the Umayyad caliph Yazid ibn Mu'awiya ((r. 680 – 683)). He was killed in a desperate attempt to bring water from the Euphrates river to quench the unbearable thirst of the besieged family of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. Abbas is said to have inherited Ali's boldness and bravery, and was praised by Shia imams for his faith and fortitude in defending Husayn. Abbas is regarded by Shia Muslims as an ultimate paragon of courage and self-sacrifice. The shrine of Abbas and the nearby mausoleum of Husayn in Karbala are destinations for pilgrimage.

Titles
The kunya of Abbas was Abu al-Fadl (lit. 'father of virtue'). Another epithet of him was Qamar Bani Hashim (lit. 'moon of the Hashemites'), and he is often described as tall and handsome. Abbas is said to have inherited the boldness and bravery of his father Ali ibn Abi Talib, always carrying the victorious standard on the battlefield. Abbas is indeed celebrated as (lit. 'the warrior-lion') and  (lit. 'the valiant lion') in Persian language. He is also known as Alam-d'ar (lit. 'standard-bearer') for his role in the Battle of Karbala, and as al-Saqqa' (lit. 'the water carrier') and Abu al-Qirba ( means 'a water-skin') for his desperate attempt on the evening of Ashura to bring water from the Euphrates river to quench the unbearable thirst of the besieged Ahl al-Bayt. The Islamicist J. Calmard draws a parallel between Abbas and Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, an elder son of Ali and his standard-bearer, saying that Abbas fulfilled the same warrior functions near Husayn.

Birth and early life
Abbas was born in Medina to Ali and Fatima bint Hizam ibn Khalid ibn Rabi'a, a woman from the Banu Kilab tribe. Abbas had three full brothers, named Abd Allah, Ja'far and Uthman. Their mother Fatima thus became known as Umm al-Banin (lit. 'mother of the sons'). Abbas' brothers were all killed in the Battle of Karbala just before him. Some sources refer to him as al-Abbas al-Akbar (lit. 'the elder/greater Abbas') to distinguish him from another son of Ali, named al-Abbas al-Asghar (lit. 'the younger/smaller Abbas'). Abbas' date of birth is disputed. According to the Sunni historian Ibn Sa'd, he had not yet reached puberty when Ali was assassinated in 661, whereas some others have written that Abbas was thirty-four at that time. The Shia scholar Bahr al-Ulum reports 4 Shaban 26 (15 May 647) as the birthdate of Abbas. Naturally, much of what exists in sources about Abbas is in connection to the Battle of Karbala.

Accession of Yazid
In an appointment that violated earlier agreements with Ali's eldest son Hasan, the Umayyad caliph Mu'awiya ((r. 661 – 680)) designated his son Yazid ((r. 680 – 683)) as his successor in 676. Yazid is often presented by Muslim historians as a debaucher who openly violated the Islamic norms, and his nomination was indeed met with resistance at the time from sons of some prominent companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, including Husayn ibn Ali. On Mu'awiya's death and Yazid's accession in 680, the latter instructed the governor of Medina to secure Husayn's pledge of allegiance by force, and Husayn immediately left for Mecca to avoid recognizing Yazid as the caliph. He was accompanied by some relatives, including Abbas.

Journey to Karbala
After receiving letters of support from Kufans, whose intentions were confirmed by his cousin Muslim ibn Aqil, Husayn left Mecca for Kufa on 8 or 10 Dhu al-Hijja (10 or 12 September 680), accompanied by few relatives and supporters. A tradition attributed to Husayn identifies his intention as fighting the tyranny of Yazid, even though it would cost his life, as reported in al-Irshad, a biographical work by the prominent Shia scholar al-Mufid. Husayn similarly wrote in his will for his brother Ibn Hanafiyya that he had not set out to seek "corruption or oppression" but rather to "enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong." At any rate, on their way to Kufa, Husayn's small caravan was intercepted by Yazid's army and forced to camp in the desert land of Karbala on 2 Muharram 61 (2 October 680) away from water and fortifications. The promised Kufan support did not materialize as the new governor of Kufa, Ubayd Allah ibn Ziyad, killed the envoy of Husayn and intimidated Kufan tribal chiefs.

Water shortage
On 7 Muharram, on orders of Ibn Ziyad, the Umayyad commander Umar ibn Sa'd cut off Husayn's access to the Euphrates river. Abbas and some fifty companions were nevertheless able to bring back some water to Husayn's camp in a night sortie. Despite this attempt, the Islamicist L. Veccia Vaglieri believes that the camp suffered from thirst for three days. Among other experts, D. Pinault similarly writes that the camp suffered from thirst and hunger during the siege, and the opinion of A. Hamdar is close. Karbala has a hot desert climate.

Negotiations
Ibn Sa'd was instructed by Ibn Ziyad not to let Husayn leave unless he pledged his allegiance to Yazid. Husayn did not submit to Yazid, but negotiated with Ibn Ziyad through Ibn Sa'd to be allowed to retreat and avoid bloodshed. The governor did not relent, however, and finally ordered Ibn Sa'd to fight, kill, and disfigure Husayn and his supporters unless they pledged allegiance to Yazid, in which case their fate would be decided later.

Safe passage
As a member of the Banu Kilab, the Umayyad commander Shamir ibn Dhi al-Jawshan acquired safe passage for Abbas and his three (full) brothers from Ibn Ziyad. According to the early historian Abu Mikhnaf, Ibn Ziyad's letter of protection was sent to Abbas and his brothers, who refused it, "God's protection is better than the one offered by Sumayya's son [Ibn Ziyad]." Shamir extended again this offer to Abbas and his brothers on the eve of the battle, but they remained defiant and pledged their full support to Husayn.

Tasu'a
Ibn Sa'd decided to attack on Tasu'a (9 Muharram) after the afternoon prayer. As the Umayyad army approached, however, Husayn dispatched Abbas and some companions, who tell Ibn Sa'd to delay the confrontation until the following day. Husayn now besieged his followers in a speech to leave and not risk their lives for his sake, after which Abbas was the first to renew his support, saying that he would follow his brother in life or death. Nearly all those present stayed with Husayn until the end. Husayn and his companions spent that night praying and reading the Quran, as reported by the Shia jurist Ibn Tawus and in most  works. On this night, Zaynab bint Ali is said to have reminded her half-brother Abbas of their father's wish for the latter to be the reserves of Karbala, and to be to Husayn as Ali was to Muhammad. This Abbas confirmed and swore to do. There is a report by Ibn Tawus that Abbas was killed on Tasu'a in a failed sally to bring water, though most traditions place his death on Ashura.

Ashura

On the morning of Ashura (10 Muharram), Husayn organized his supporters, some seventy-two men, and designated Abbas as his standard-bearer, an indication of his privileged position among the companions. Husayn then spoke to the enemy lines and asked them why they considered it lawful to kill the grandson of Muhammad. The Umayyad commander al-Hurr ibn Yazid al-Tamimi defected to Husayn's side, probably after this speech. The Umayyad army then showered the camp with arrows, thus commencing the battle which lasted from morning till sunset and consisted of incidents of single combat, skirmishes, assaults, and retreats. On one occasion, Abbas helped rescue a group of companions who were surrounded by enemy horsemen. By the early afternoon, however, the companions had all fallen and were followed by the Banu Hashim.

Death
The Sunni historians al-Tabari and al-Baladhuri  are silent in their works about the details of Abbas' death. Veccia Vaglieri, however, argues that there must have existed traditions about his death and that those were reported by al-Mufid, to the effect that Abbas and Husayn were separated when they attempted to reach the Euphrates in the ultimate episode of the battle, adding that Abbas fought valiantly until the end. Another well-known account is reported by the Shia scholar Ibn Tawus and some others: Perhaps anguished by the cries of Husayn's thirsty children, Abbas set out for the Euphrates on the eve of Ashura and managed to fill his water-skin, but was blocked by the enemy near the river bank, far from Husayn's camp. Fighting alone, both his arms were severed and he was then killed. When Husayn's last warrior fell, the Umayyad army converged on the lone imam, who also fought until the end. The account by the Sufi scholar H. Kashefi in his Rawzat al-shohada differs in that it places Abbas as the sixty-eighth casualty before Mohammad ibn Ali, Ali al-Akbar, and Ali al-Asghar. Zayd ibn Varqa' Hanafi and Hakim ibn al-Tofayl San'ani are named as the murderers of Abbas in al-Irshad. Abu Mikhnaf in his Maqtal adds that Husayn wept bitterly when his brother fell. Maqatil al-Talibiyyin by the early historian Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani reports that the murderer of Abbas dreamed of being flung into hell every night, while reports attributed to the Shia imams Ali ibn al-Husayn  and Ja'far al-Sadiq  highly praise Abbas for his faith and fortitude in defending Husayn.

Credibility
Among others, al-Mufid argues that Abbas' burial place, far from Husayn and his companions, adds to the credibility of this account, which is also corroborated by another report about Abbas' death attributed to Ali ibn al-Husayn. In support of this account, the Islamicist A. Bahramian and his co-author note that the traditional supplications for pilgrims contain references to Abbas' mission to fetch water and his arms being severed. The two authors also note that Abbas later became known as al-Saqqa' (lit. 'the water carrier') and Abu al-Qirba ( means 'a water-skin').

After his death
After the battle, some Umayyad soldiers stripped Abbas' garments, and his corpse was thus dishonored. As with Husayn and his other companions, the head of Abbas was severed and brought to Yazid in Damascus, in his case by Harmala ibn K'ahil al-Asadi.

Shrine
Abbas was buried by some men of the Banu Asad tribe from nearby al-Ghadiriyya village, at the same place where he was killed. A tomb was later erected over his grave. Abbas' shrine now has a golden dome and is located to the north-east of Husayn's mausoleum. Both shrines are built on a mound overlooking the city of Karbala, which has become a destination for pilgrimage and a center for religious learning. There exist special prayers and rituals for pilgrims and several Muslim figures are buried in the precinct of Abbas' shrine. There are also other shrines associated with Abbas elsewhere, including an old shrine near Tehran, considered by the locals to be the tomb of Abd Allah ibn Abbas.

Descendants
Abbas had a young son named Ubayd Allah, born to Lubaba bint Ubayd Allah, the grand-daughter of Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib. This son was likely taken captive after the Battle of Karbala, and the lineage of Abbas continued through him. In particular, the poetry by Abbas' descendants is collected in one of the chapters in al-Awraq by the Abbasid-era author al-Suli. One of his descendants was Abbas ibn al-Hasan al-Alawi, who reached fame as a poet and scholar during the reigns of the Abbasid caliphs, al-Rashid ((r. 786 – 809)) and al-Ma'mun ((r. 813 – 833)). The Zanj rebellion was ignited in Iraq and Bahrain in the ninth century by Ali ibn Muhammad Sahib al-Zanj, who claimed descent from Abbas. However, this claim has been disputed by some historians.

Significance in Shia Islam
Abbas is regarded in Shia Islam as an ultimate paragon of courage, chivalry, love, sincerity, and self-sacrifice. Shias make the supplication of Tawassul to Abbas, thus requesting him to join his prayers with them. Abbas is thus associated in Shia with the alleviation of grief and suffering. Serious oaths are made in his name, and Shias distribute food for charity as part of vows (s) made in the name of Abbas.

Muharram rituals
Tasu'a (9 Muharram) is devoted in Shia as the day of mourning for Abbas. He is celebrated in religious passion-plays (s) as the water carrier of the Ahl al-Bayt and the standard bearer of Husayn. The of Abbas' death is among the oldest passion-plays and is frequently performed throughout the year. The green standards (s) carried in Muharram processions are often adorned on top with a metal hand representing Abbas' severed hand, with outstretched fingers that symbolize the Ahl al-Bayt. They are engraved with the invocations such as (lit. 'O, exalted Abbas') or. Food and water are also distributed for charity in his name. From West Indies to the island of Java, Sunnis and Hindus also commonly participate in most Shia Muharram rituals.

Religious art
Abbas is heavily featured in Shia art. Verses of poetry about him and his likeness historically appear in public religious buildings, particularly in the tile work of s (public drinking-water repositories), s and s (both are places to commemorate Husayn), and s (traditional Persian gymnasiums). Abbas is depicted in religious paintings often seated on a white horse and holding Husayn's banner while fighting enemies or holding a water-skin and surrounded by the womenfolk and children of the Ahl al-Bayt.

Significance in Bektashism
According to the traditions of the Bektashi Order, a Sufi community based primarily in Albania, Abbas ibn Ali (Abaz Aliu) went to Albania on a white horse to save it from the barbarians and continues to return to Mount Tomorr in Albania for five days (August 20–25) each year, during which animal sacrifices are made and homage is paid to Abbas. During these five days, Bektashi pilgrims visit the Abbas Ali Türbe, a mausoleum (mekam) believed to house the remains of Abbas. The mausoleum is located on the southern peak of the Mount Tomorr, which was originally constructed in 1620. The mausoleum lies adjacent to the Bektashi tekke on Mount Tomorr, which was built in 1916.

title: Abbas ibn Ali


text:
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Stub sorting/Stub redirects

Original discussion: Use and persistance of redirects
original discussion

...Col-stub...

This template is redirected to Color-stub. I've orphaned the template so it is suitable for deletion based on the "redundant template" argument. Courtland 11:34, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
 * This one's a tricky one. The original proposal was to make col-stub, for articles on colours, since that way it avoided people typing colour-stub and getting a red link, or color-stub and getting a redlink. I made col-stub, in line with the proposal, only to find out within minutes that color-stub had already been made. If anything, I'd favour deleting color-stub and retaining col-stub, or replacing col-stub with colour-stub (as a redirect to color-stub). In any case, it's a lot more complicated than simply a redundant duplicate. Grutness...  wha?  14:06, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

expansion of discussion

We can probably think of stub-template redirects in one of two major groups: transient and permanent.
 * Transient redirects: these are created when there is a preferred target with the intention of retiring the redirected term as soon as possible/feasible.
 * Permanent redirects: these are created to overcome problems in application of the stub templates so as to reduce the fragmentation of categorized stubs in general.

Of the redirects listed at WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Stub_types, my impression of the classification goes like this:

a notation of unloaded indicates that there were 0 articles found linked to the template on the date indicated

Transient
 * Baseball stub
 * Biostub
 * Canada-place-stub
 * Comp-stub
 * Dance stub unloaded 22 May
 * East-Slavic-History-stub
 * Edustub unloaded 22 May
 * Grisons-geo-stub
 * Health-stub
 * Hong Kong-geo-stub
 * Hong Kong-stub
 * Ice Hockey stub unloaded 22 May
 * Ireland-place-stub
 * Kde-stub
 * Mathstub
 * Mormonstub unloaded 22 May
 * Mov-stub
 * Naval-stub
 * Opera singer stub unloaded 22 May
 * Pol-stub
 * Poli-substub
 * Roc-stub
 * Rugby Union stub unloaded 22 May
 * SA-stub
 * Sg-geo-stub unloaded 5 June
 * Sub-stub
 * Substubs
 * SectStub
 * Section stub
 * Sikhi:stub unloaded 22 May
 * Tennis stub
 * Uk-stub
 * Uk-geo-stub
 * Un-stub
 * Us-geo-stub
 * Video-stub

Permanent
 * Arms-stub
 * Athlete-stub
 * Biology-stub
 * Can-stub
 * Car-stub
 * Carpentry-stub
 * Clothing-stub
 * Col-stub
 * Denmark-stub
 * History-stub
 * HK-bio-stub
 * HK-edu-stub
 * HK-geo-stub
 * HK-gov-stub
 * HK-stub
 * HK-tv-stub unloaded 22 May
 * Incomplete
 * Language-stub
 * Manga-stub
 * Manufacturing-stub
 * Maths-stub
 * Mormon-stub unloaded 22 May
 * Movie-stub
 * NYCS-stub
 * Philosophy-stub
 * Politics-stub
 * Religion-stub
 * ROC-stub
 * ROC-geo-stub
 * Russian-hist-stub
 * Scotland-geo-stub
 * Singapore-stub
 * Space-stub
 * Subway-stub
 * Typography-stub
 * Uganda-geo-stub
 * Wales-geo-stub
 * Whedon-stub

Not sure
 * Sect-stub
 * Section-stub

 * Interesting (and good) idea. I've added a couple more. Feel free to move them around or debate any which I may have put in the wrong place!Grutness...  wha?  00:50, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

In making this listing is occurs to me that more redirects might not be a bad thing and that some primary-secondary pairs might benefit from being switched. It's been pointed out that one reason for using short/cryptic template codes is to reduce typing when doing stub sorting. In cases where there is a short/cryptic code and a full-name code, my thinking is that the short/cryptic one should be redirected to the full-name one. For instance, rather than Language-stub redirecting to Lang-stub, shouldn't this be reversed, so that Lang-stub redirects to Language-stub? If this were applied consistently, then a bot could be constructed (beyond my knowledge/ability, though) that could take a thesaurus of terms and update the short/cryptic codes to the full-name codes without human intervention.
 * Courtland 13:37, 2005 May 16 (UTC)
 * I've moved one of the ones you put there - maths-stub - to permanent. Maths is the usual abbreviation for mathematics in most "British English" speaking countries, so it's on par with film-stub/movie-stub. I suspect that clothing-stub should also be a permanent, but I'd love to be rid of Grisons-geo-stub! Grutness...  wha?  01:45, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I've found the clothing stub pretty useful, in fact by sheer numbers I use it more then the fashion stub it directs to. In a perfect world I'd have the fashion stub redirect to the clothing stub. Or break it completely and let the clothing stub handle belt loops and Bermuda shorts and have the fashion stub take eye liner and bowl cuts ;). Anyway, I moved to the permanent section, if someone feels differently feel free to move it to another area. Rx StrangeLove 01:11, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Another one that might be a permanent... SA-stub. If the United Kingdom has UK-stub and the United States has US-stub, then why has South Africa got sa-stub rather than SA-stub? Grutness...  wha?  04:00, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

I think that we need to talk to the WikiMedia developers about any performance impact redirected stub templates might have before we decide to keep to many of them around. I have noticed that when you edit a page that uses a template that is redirected, that you see both the redirected and target template in the list of templates below the edit box. That suggests to me that for every edit of a page with a redirected template that there will be at least two database calls instead of one, and for every time that the target template gets edited that they will be two database calls per page that the template is on as the cache is refreshed (much like the problem with Meta-templates). Blank Verse  ∅  06:03, 19 May 2005 (UTC)
 * I also think that the Stub-softing WikiProject probably aught to come up with a more consistent naming policy and document it someplace to help decide which stubs to keep and which to delete (as well as in the creation of new topic stubs, etc.). Blank Verse   ∅   06:07, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

On the topic of server load, then, I've unloaded several of the templates in the transient list above, most being those that do not abide by the informal naming criteria ("Topic"-stub; no spaces). The unloaded transients could potentially go onto WP:TFD if there is general agreement. Courtland 03:24, 2005 May 22 (UTC)
 * I've moved the awful grison-geo-stub to transient. Why one Swiss canton sould have such a stub when Switzerland as a whole only has about 100 stubs is beyond me (the same person who made this also made several other useless templates which have been tfd'd on Switzerland and Andorra). Grutness...  wha?  06:31, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
 * Conversation on a related subject on the WSS/C page has reminded me... why does Singapore-stub redirect to Sg-stub, and not the other way round?  Grutness...  wha?  09:32, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * We don't have a guideline on redirect-target naming conventions. Would you prefer to have the "editor-friendly" (i.e. short) name re-direct to the "user-friendly" (i.e. long) name, or vice versa? Courtland 14:21, 2005 Jun 5 (UTC)
 * In most cases, the short to the long. In some cases, like sg-stub, I'd also argue about the term "editor friendly" - it's less typing (actually, virtually the same if you're using copy & paste), but far harder to remember! Grutness...  wha?  00:38, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Two points

 * Lao-stub isn't from a misspelling - "Lao" is the name of the country in Laotian.
 * If you haven't already changed it, I will. Thanks. Courtland 00:27, 2005 Jun 27 (UTC)
 * Shouldn't it be "Redirect from alternative name"? Alternate means swapping between two; alternative means other. Grutness...  wha?  08:19, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * The template title uses "alternate"; I've not looked at the history of it to determine whether there's rhyme or reason to the choice. Perhaps there's a bold change that is needed :) Courtland 00:27, 2005 Jun 27 (UTC)

Singapore
I note that Singapore-stub redirects to Sg-stub and Sg-geo-stub redirects to Singapore-geo-stub. Can I suggest we swap one around for consistency? (My vote would be making the Sg ones the redirects.) Grutness...  wha?  10:06, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Anthro
suggest linking Anthro to Anthropomorphic and Athropomorphology, and have each of those link to Anthropomorphism. (Additional info on Anthropomorphology: the study of Anthropomorphism.) Foxy 11:20, 07 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Um...I'm not sure if you realise what this list is - it's a list of redirects to stub templates. There is no stub template on anthropomorphism, anthropomormology or anthropomorphic; neither could we redirect one template to three others. What's more, since there's unlikely to be anywhere near 60 stubs on anthropomorphism, it wouldn't be reasonable to have a stub template for it, especially since it can quite easily be convered by other stub templates. Grutness...wha?  00:47, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

Possible deletion
I have started a discussion on replacing this page with the use of redirect templates now that they work again. Caerwine Caer’s whines 18:36, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

All listings checked
All the links on this page have now been checked and relevant templates added to. Please do not use this page any longer to list stub template redirects; add redirected templates to by using  Cheers, Her Pegship  (tis herself)  05:33, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
 * That category has been renamed to, and the direct coding replaced by R to stub template. – Fayenatic  L ondon 11:26, 28 February 2022 (UTC)