title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: In ca. 643, Uthman ibn Abi al-As seized Bishapur, which signed a peace treaty. In 644, al-'Ala' once again attacked Fars from Bahrain, reaching as far as Estakhr, until he was repulsed by the Persian governor ("marzban") of Fars, Shahrag. Some time later, Uthman ibn Abi al-As managed to establish a military base at Tawwaj, and soon defeated and killed Shahrag near Rew-shahr. Persian convert to Islam, Hormoz ibn Hayyan al-'Abdi, was then sent by Uthman ibn Abi al-As to attack a fortress known as Senez on the coast of Fars. After the accession of Uthman ibn Affan as the new Rashidun Caliph on 11 November, the inhabitants of Bishapur, under the leadership of Shahrag's brother, declared independence, but were defeated. The Persian historian al-Baladhuri said this occurred in 646.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: In 648, 'Abd-Allah ibn al-'Ash'ari forced the governor of Estakhr, Mahak, to surrender the city. Its citizens rebelled in 649/650 while its newly appointed governor, 'Abd-Allah ibn 'Amir, was trying to capture Gor. The military governor of Estakhr, 'Ubayd Allah ibn Ma'mar, was defeated and killed. In 650/651, Yazdegerd went there to plan an organized resistance against the Arabs, and, after some time, went to Gor. Estakhr put up a weak resistance and was soon sacked by the Arabs, who killed over 40,000 defenders. The Arabs then quickly seized Gor, Kazerun and Siraf, while Yazdegerd fled to Kerman. Muslim control of Fars remained shaky for a time, with several local rebellions following the conquest.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: The expedition to Kerman, under Suhail ibn Adi, was sent at roughly the same time as the expeditions to Sistan and Azerbaijan. Suhail marched from Busra in 643; passing through Shiraz and Persepolis, he joined with other armies and then marched against Kerman, which was subdued after a pitched battle with the local garrisons.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: The Arabs were raiding Sakastan as early as Umar's caliphate. The first real invasion took place in 650, when Abd-Allah ibn Amir, having secured his position in Kerman, sent an army under Mujashi ibn Mas'ud there. After crossing the Dasht-i Lut desert, Mujashi ibn Mas'ud reached Sakastan, but suffered a heavy defeat and was forced to retreat.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: One year later, Abd-Allah ibn Amir sent an army under Rabi ibn Ziyad Harithi to Sakastan. After some time, Rabi reached Zaliq, a Sakastani border town, where he forced the dehqan of the town to acknowledge Rashidun authority. He then did the same at the fortress of Karkuya, which had a famous fire temple mentioned in the Tarikh-i Sistan. He then seized more land in the province. Next, he besieged the provincial capital, Zrang, and, after a heavy battle outside the city, its governor, Aparviz, surrendered. When Aparviz went to Rabi ibn Ziyad to negotiate a treaty, he saw that Rabi was using the bodies of two dead soldiers as a chair. This horrified Aparviz, who, in order to spare the inhabitants of Sakastan from the Arabs, made peace with them in return for a heavy tribute of 1 million dirhams, including 1,000 slave boys (or girls) bearing 1,000 golden vessels. Rabi ibn Ziyad was then appointed governor of the province.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Eighteen months later, Rabi was summoned to Basra, and was replaced by 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Samura. The inhabitants of Sakastan used this opportunity to rebel, defeating the Muslim garrison at Zrang. When 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Samura reached Sakastan, he suppressed the rebellion and defeated the Zunbils of Zabulistan, seizing Bust and a few cities in Zabulistan.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: The conquest of Iranian Azerbaijan started in 651, part of a simultaneous attack launched against Kerman and Makran in the southeast (described above), against Sistan in the northeast and against Azerbaijan in the northwest. Hudheifa ibn Al Yaman was assigned Azerbaijan. Hudheifa marched from Rey in central Persia to Zanjan, a well-fortified Persian stronghold in the north. The Persians came out of the city and gave battle, but Hudheifa defeated them, captured the city, and those who sought peace were granted it on the usual "jizya" conditions. From Zanjan, Hudheifa marched to Ardabil which surrendered peacefully. Hudheifa then continued his march north along the western coast of the Caspian Sea and captured Bab al-Abwab by force. At this point Hudheifa was recalled by Uthman, to be replaced by Bukair ibn Abdullah and Utba ibn Farqad. They were sent to carry out a two-pronged attack against Azerbaijan: Bukair along the western coast of the Caspian Sea, and Uthba into the heart of Azerbaijan. On his way north Bukair was halted by a large Persian force under Isfandiyar, the son of Farrukhzad. A pitched battle was fought, after which Isfandiyar was defeated and captured. In return for his life, he agreed to surrender his estates in Azerbaijan and persuade others to submit to Muslim rule. Uthba ibn Farqad then defeated Bahram, brother of Isfandiyar. He too sued for peace. Azerbaijan then surrendered to Caliph Umar, agreeing to pay the annual "jizya".


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: The Muslims had conquered Byzantine Armenia in 638–639. Persian Armenia, remained in Persian hands, along with Khurasan. Umar refused to take any chances; he did not consider the Persians weak, which facilitated the speedy conquest of the Persian Empire. Again Umar sent simultaneous expeditions to the far north-east and north-west of the Persian Empire, one to Khurasan in late 643 and the other to Armenia.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Bukair ibn Abdullah was ordered to capture Tiflis. From Bab, on the western coast of the Caspian Sea, Bukair continued his march north. Umar employed his traditional successful strategy of multi-pronged attacks. While Bukair was still kilometres away from Tiflis, Umar instructed him to divide his army into three corps. Umar appointed Habib ibn Muslaima to capture Tiflis, Abdulrehman to march north against the mountains and Hudheifa to march against the southern mountains. With the success of all three missions, the advance into Armenia came to an end with the death of Umar in November 644. By then almost the whole of the South Caucasus was captured.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Khorasan was the second-largest province of the Sasanian Empire. It stretched from what is now northeastern Iran, northwestern Afghanistan and southern Turkmenistan. In 651 the conquest of Khurasan was assigned to Ahnaf ibn Qais. Ahnaf marched from Kufa and took a short and less frequented route via Rey and Nishapur. Rey was already in Muslim hands and Nishapur surrendered without resistance. From Nishapur, Ahnaf marched to Herat in western Afghanistan. Herat was a fortified town, and the resulting siege lasted for a few months before it surrendered, bringing the whole of southern Khorasan under Muslim control. Ahnaf then marched north directly to Merv, in present-day Turkmenistan. Merv was the capital of Khurasan and here Yazdegred III held his court. On hearing of the Muslim advance, Yazdegerd III left for Balkh. No resistance was offered at Merv, and the Muslims occupied the capital of Khurasan without a fight. Ahnaf stayed at Merv and waited for reinforcement from Kufa. Meanwhile, Yazdegerd had also gathered considerable power at Balkh and allied with the Turkic Khan of Farghana, who personally led the relief contingent. Umar ordered Ahnaf to break up the alliance. The Khan of Farghana, realizing that fighting against the Muslims might endanger his own kingdom, withdrew from the alliance and pulled back to Farghana. The remainder of Yazdegerd's army was defeated at the Battle of Oxus River and retreated across the Oxus to Transoxiana. Yazdegerd himself narrowly escaped to China.The Muslims had now reached the outermost frontiers of Persia. Beyond that lay the lands of the Turks and still further lay China. Ahnaf returned to Merv and sent a detailed report of his success to the anxiously-waiting Umar, and sought permission to cross the Oxus river and invade Transoxiana. Umar ordered Ahnaf to stand down and instead consolidate his power south of the Oxus.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Umar was assassinated in November 644 by a Persian slave named Abu Lu'lu'a Firuz, after having refused to lift a tax imposed upon the latter. Soon after, Abu Lu'lu'a's was either executed or committed suicide. In retaliation, Ubayd Allah ibn Umar (one of Umar's sons) killed Abu Lu'lu'a's daughter, and declared his intention to kill all non-Arabs residing in Medina. Acting upon a claim that they had been seen conspiring with Abu Lu'lu'a while he was holding the murder weapon, Ubayd Allah killed Hurmuzān, an ex-Sasanian military officer who had been working for Umar as an adviser after his capture by the Muslims, and Jufayna, a Christian man from al-Hira (Iraq) who had been taken to Medina to serve as a tutor. Just like Abu Lu'lu'a's assassination of Umar over something as trivial as a tax burden, Ubayd Allah's retaliatory killing of apparently random non-Arabs bears witness to the strong tensions that existed between Arabs and non-Arabs in the early Islamic caliphate.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Uthman ibn Affan (644–656) succeeded Umar as caliph. During his reign, almost the whole of the former Sassanid empire's territory rebelled from time to time, requiring him to send several military expeditions to crush the rebellions and recapture Persia and its vassal states. The main rebellions were in the Persian provinces of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Fars, Sistan (in 649), Khorasan (651), and Makran (650). Finally, in 651, Yazdegerd III, the last Sassanid emperor, was killed near Merv by a local miller for his purse, thus putting an end to both his dynasty and to organized Persian resistance. Meanwhile, Uthman's empire expanded beyond the borders of the Sasanian Empire, to Transoxiana, Baluchistan, and the Caucasus. For many decades to come, this was the easternmost limit of Muslim rule.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Arab Muslims conquests have been variously seen in Iran: by some as a blessing, the advent of the true faith, the end of the age of ignorance and heathenism; by others as a humiliating national defeat, the conquest and subjugation of the country by foreign invaders. Both perceptions are of course valid, depending on one's angle of vision... Iran was indeed Islamized, but it was not Arabized. Persians remained Persians. And after an interval of silence, Iran reemerged as a separate, different and distinctive element within Islam, eventually adding a new element even to Islam itself. Culturally, politically, and most remarkable of all even religiously, the Iranian contribution to this new Islamic civilization is of immense importance. The work of Iranians can be seen in every field of cultural endeavor, including Arabic poetry, to which poets of Iranian origin composing their poems in Arabic made a very significant contribution. In a sense, Iranian Islam is a second advent of Islam itself, a new Islam sometimes referred to as Islam-i Ajam. It was this Persian Islam, rather than the original Arab Islam, that was brought to new areas and new peoples: to the Turks, first in Central Asia and then in the Middle East in the country which came to be called Turkey, and of course to India. The Ottoman Turks brought a form of Iranian civilization to the walls of Vienna.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Under Umar and his immediate successors, the Arab conquerors attempted to maintain their political and cultural cohesion despite the attractions of the civilizations they had conquered. The Arabs initially settled in the garrison towns rather than on scattered estates.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: The new non-Muslim subjects were protected by the state and known as "dhimmi" ("protected"), and were to pay a special tax, the jizya ("tribute"), which was calculated at varying individual rates, usually two dirhams for able-bodied men of military age, in return for exemption from military service. Women and children were exempted from the jizya.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Umar is reported to have issued the following instructions about the protected people: "Make it easy for him, who can not pay tribute; help him who is weak, let them keep their titles, but do not give them our kuniyat ["Arabic traditional nicknames or titles"]."


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Umar's liberal policies were continued by at least his immediate successors. In his dying charge to Uthman, he is reported to have said, "I charge the caliph after me to be kind to the dhimmis, to keep their covenant, to protect them and not to burden them over their strength."


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: As a matter of practicality, the jizya replaced the Sasanian poll taxes, which tended to be much higher than the jizya. In addition to the jizya, the old Sasanian "land tax" (known in Arabic as "Kharaj") was also adopted. Umar is said to have occasionally set up commissions to survey tax burdens in order to ensure that they wouldn't be more than the land could bear. It is reported that Zoroastrians were subjected to humiliation and ridicule when paying the jizya in order to make them feel inferior.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: At least under the Rashiduns and early Ummayads, the administrative system of the late Sasanian period was largely retained: a pyramidal system where each quarter of the state was divided into provinces, the provinces into districts, and the districts into sub-districts. Provinces were called "ustan" (Middle Persian "ostan"), and the districts "shahrs", centered upon a district capital known as a "shahristan". The subdistricts were called "tasok" in Middle Persian, which was adopted into Arabic as "tassuj" (plural "tasasij").


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Zoroastrians were made to pay an extra tax called jizya, or be killed, enslaved or imprisoned. Those paying jizya were subjected to insults and humiliation by the tax collectors. Zoroastrians who were captured as slaves in wars were given their freedom if they converted to Islam. While giving freedom of choice, the Arab conquerors designated privileges for those who converted to Islam. The conversion process was slow and uncompleted, stretching over many centuries, with a majority of Persians still following Zoroastrianism at the turn of the millennium.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Muslim leaders in their effort to win converts encouraged attendance at Muslim prayer with promises of money and allowed the Quran to be recited in Persian instead of Arabic so that it would be intelligible to all. Islam was readily accepted by Zoroastrians who were employed in industrial and artisan positions because, according to Zoroastrian dogma, such occupations that involved defiling fire made them impure. Moreover, Muslim missionaries did not encounter difficulty in explaining Islamic tenets to Zoroastrians, as there were many similarities between the faiths. According to Thomas Walker Arnold, the Persian would meet Ahura Mazda and Ahriman under the names of Allah and Iblis. In Afghanistan, Islam was spread due to Umayyad missionary efforts particularly under the reign of Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik and Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: There were also large and thriving Christian and Jewish communities, along with smaller numbers of Buddhists and other groups. The population moved slowly and steadily toward Islam. The nobility and citizens converted first. Islam spread more slowly among the peasantry and the "dihqans", or landed gentry. By the late 10th century, the majority of the Persians had become Muslim.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: Until the 15th century, most Persian Muslims were Sunni Muslims, though with rise of Safavids in early 16th century and their forced conversion of Sunnis lead to rise of Shi'a Muslim faith in Iran.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: During the Rashidun Caliphate, the official language of Persia (including Mesopotamia) remained Middle Persian (Pahlavi), just as the official languages of Syria and Egypt remained Greek and Coptic. During the Umayyad Caliphate, the Ummayads made Arabic the primary language of their subjected people throughout their empire, displacing their indigenous languages. Particularly, Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (661–714) officially changed the administrative language of Iraq from Middle Persian (Pahlavi) to Arabic. Although an area from Iraq to Morocco speaks Arabic-based dialects to this day, Middle Persian proved to be much more enduring. Most of its structure and vocabulary survived, evolving into New Persian. Persian incorporated a certain amount of Arabic vocabulary, especially words pertaining to religion, and it switched from the Pahlavi scripts to a modified version of the Arabic alphabet. Today Persian is spoken officially in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan.


title: Muslim conquest of Persia

text: The Arab conquest of Persia led to a period of extreme urbanisation in Iran, starting with the ascension of the Abbasid dynasty and ending in the 11th century CE. This was particularly true for the eastern parts of the country, for regions like Khorasan and Transoxiana. During this period, Iran saw the development of massive metropolises, some reaching population numbers of up to 200,000 people. This period of extreme urbanisation was followed in the late 11th and early 12th century by a collapse of the Iranian economy, which led to large scale emigrations of Iranians into Central Asia, India, the rest of the Middle East, and Anatolia. This catastrophe has been cited by some as reason for the Persian language becoming widespread throughout Central Asia and large parts of the Middle East.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ravichandran Ashwin () (born 17 September 1986) is an Indian international cricketer who plays for the Indian cricket team as a bowling All-rounder who bats right-handed and bowls right-arm off-break, he plays for Tamil Nadu in domestic cricket and Rajasthan Royals in the Indian Premier League. He is the fastest Indian bowler (also in some records the joint-fastest in the world) to reach the 50-, 100-, 150-, 200-, 250-, 300-, 350- and 400-wicket mark in Test cricket in terms of number of innings. In 2016, he became the third Indian to win the ICC Cricketer of the Year award. Considered to be one of the Greatest spin bowlers of his generation, he is currently the highest-ranked spinner in Test cricket, and the highest-ranked Test bowler for India on the ICC Player Rankings. He has won nine Man of the Series awards in Test cricket, which is the highest by an Indian cricketer. He mostly bats at 9 as a finisher in limited-overs format and a late middle order batsman in Test cricket. He has 5 test centuries with a highest score of 124.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Having achieved little success as an opening batsman at junior-level cricket, Ashwin dropped down the order and turned into an off-break bowler. He made his first-class debut for Tamil Nadu in December 2006 and captained the team the following season. However, it was not until the 2010 Indian Premier League in which he played for the Chennai Super Kings that he came into the limelight with his economical bowling and earned his maiden international call-up in the limited-overs formats in June 2010. He was the leading wicket-taker and player of the tournament of the 2010 Champions League Twenty20 in South Africa. He was also part of the Indian squad that won the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Later that year, he made his Test debut against West Indies and became the seventh Indian bowler to take a five-wicket haul on Test debut. He took two five-wicket hauls and scored a century in that series and won the player of the series award.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin continued to succeed in the subcontinent but proved to be less effective in other places like Australia and England. In a home Test series against Australia in 2013, he took 29 wickets, the most by any Indian bowler in a four-match Test series. The same year, he took his 100th Test wicket in his 18th match, becoming the fastest Indian bowler to the milestone and the fastest in the world in over 80 years. In 2017, playing his 45th Test, Ashwin became the fastest bowler to pick up 250 Test wickets, bettering Dennis Lillee, who had achieved the landmark in 48 Tests. In October 2019, in his 66th Test match, Ashwin became the joint-fastest bowler, along with Muttiah Muralitharan, to take his 350th Test wicket.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: On 10 April 2022, he became the first batsman to officially retire out in an IPL match during a league stage match between Rajasthan Royals and Lucknow Super Giants.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin was born on 17 September 1986 in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He lives in West Mambalam, Chennai. His father Ravichandran played cricket at club level as a fast bowler. Ashwin was educated at Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan and St. Bede's Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School. He also attended SSN College of Engineering and graduated with a BTech in Information Technology. His time at St. Bede's was particularly important, as it had a cricket academy. Ashwin has stated that coaches C. K. Vijay and Chandra at St Bede's played a big role in his career, where he had changed his bowling style from medium pace to off spin.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: On the back of his impressive performance in the 2010 Indian Premier League, Ashwin was selected in a second-string squad that toured Zimbabwe in May–June 2010. He made his ODI debut against Sri Lanka on 5 June 2010, scoring a 32–ball 38 and taking 2/50 in that match which India lost to crash out of the tri-series. His T20I debut came a week later, against Zimbabwe at Harare where he took 1/22 in four overs in an Indian win. Ashwin was selected for the tri-series against New Zealand and hosts Sri Lanka, but did not get a game with Pragyan Ojha and Ravindra Jadeja being preferred over him throughout the series. In October, the selectors decided to rest first-choice players in the three-match home ODI series against Australia, enabling Ashwin to get selected in the team again. Ashwin was the most economical bowler in the only match played in the series in which he took 1/34 in nine overs while India registered a five-wicket victory.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin played in all five matches of the home series against New Zealand in November–December 2010. India completed a 5–0 whitewash and Ashwin ended up as the leading wicket-taker of the series with 11 wickets at an average of 21.90. At the conclusion of the series, Ashwin earned the praise of captain Gautam Gambhir, who called him "the find" of the series and hailed his bowling during the powerplay overs. Despite this success, Ashwin failed to make it to the playing eleven in any of the five ODIs on the South African tour, with the inclusion of lead spinner Harbhajan Singh in the team. However, Ashwin did manage to find a place in the 15-member World Cup squad that was announced during the series, with Harbhajan and Piyush Chawla being the other two specialist spinners in the squad.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin played the fourth and fifth ODI of India's tour of West Indies in June–July 2011 but picked just one wicket. Ashwin was retained in the limited-overs squad for the England tour. He emerged as India's best bowler of the series, which India lost 3–0, taking six wickets at an average of 25.16. England toured India in October 2011 and were whitewashed in the ODI series 5–0. With 10 scalps at 20.20, Ashwin was as the second highest wicket-taker of the series, only behind teammate Jadeja.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In November 2011, West Indies toured India for three Tests and five ODIs. Ashwin and Ojha were the only two specialist spinners in the squad, with Harbhajan being omitted owing to his indifferent form during the England tour. Ashwin made his Test debut in the first match at Delhi, earning his cap from Sachin Tendulkar. Ashwin took 3/81 in the first innings and 6/47 in the second, helping India win the match. He was awarded the man of the match and became the third Indian player to win the award on Test debut. He picked four wickets in the second Test at Kolkata where India registered an innings victory. In the third Test at Mumbai, he took 5/156 while West Indies made a total of 590 and scored his maiden international century in India's first innings (103 runs from 118 balls) to take India's total to 482. Ashwin thus became the third Indian to score a century and take a five-wicket haul in the same Test and the first since 1962. West Indies were bowled out for 134 in their second innings as Ojha and Ashwin shared all ten wickets between them, with Ashwin picking 4/34. The match ended in a draw with the scores level, after Ashwin took a single and was dismissed run out attempting a second run off the last ball of the match. He was awarded the man of the match as well as the man of the series for his all-round performance. Ashwin featured in four matches of the subsequent ODI series and took four wickets at 49.00.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin was ineffective on India's 2011/12 tour of Australia. He played in three Tests on the tour taking nine wickets at an average of more than 62. He also featured in the subsequent triangular CB Series against Australia and Sri Lanka and took seven wickets in as many matches at 43.42. In March 2012, he took five wickets in three matches of the 2012 Asia Cup in Bangladesh. He had a quiet tour of Sri Lanka in July–August 2012 taking five wickets at 39.40 in the five-match ODI series and 1/22 in the one-off T20I.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin returned to form during the two-match home Test series against New Zealand. In the first Test at Hyderabad, he claimed 6/31 and 6/54 helping India seal an innings victory and was named the man of the match. His match figures of 12/85 bettered S. Venkataraghavan's 12/152 for the best figures by an Indian bowler against New Zealand in Tests. In the second match at Bangalore his efforts of 5/69 in the second innings helped India win the match and the series 2–0. He was awarded man of the series for his tally of 18 wickets at 13.11 average. Ashwin played four matches in the 2012 ICC World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka and took five wickets at an economy rate of 6 and an average of 19.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: During the first Test of England's tour of India in late 2012, Ashwin became the fastest Indian to record 50 wickets in Test cricket as he overhauled the milestone in his ninth game. India eventually lost the series 2–1 in which he struggled with the ball managing to take only 14 wickets in the four Tests at an average of 52.64. However, he scored 243 runs, averaging 60.75 per innings, including two fifties and finished as India's second best batsman of the series. In the three-match ODI series against Pakistan and the five-match ODI series against England, he took three wickets at 43.33 and seven wickets at 35.71 respectively.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: While playing for India Cements at the BCCI Corporate Trophy in February 2013, Ashwin worked with former Tamil Nadu spinner and childhood coach Sunil Subramaniam to make changes to his bowling ahead of the four-match Test series against Australia. Subramaniam and Ashwin spent a few hours every day for a week at the nets in Nagpur. Among the changes made was shortening Ashwin's bowling stride.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin was highly successful on Australia's four-Test tour of India in February–March 2013. In the first Test at Chennai, his home ground, he took 7/103 and 5/95 leading India to a comfortable eight-wicket victory. He had a haul of 5/63 in the second innings of the second Test at Hyderabad where India registered an innings win. He took a total of four wickets in the Mohali Test where India sealed the series with a six-wicket victory. In the last match at Delhi, he took 5/57 and 2/55 in another Indian win which completed a 4–0 whitewash of Australia. During the match, Ashwin surpassed former India captain Anil Kumble's tally of 27 wickets for most wickets by an Indian bowler in a four-Test series. Ashwin finished the series as the leading wicket-taker with a tally of 29 wickets at 20.10 and won the Man of the Series award. It was the first time India won four or more Tests in a series and the first time Australia was whitewashed since 1969–70. Ashwin also became the third Indian off-spinner to take 25-plus wickets in a series after E. A. S. Prasanna and Harbhajan Singh.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin was a member of the Indian team that won the 2013 ICC Champions Trophy in England. His figures of 2/15 in four overs in the 20-overs-a-side final helped India restrict England to 124/8 and win the match by five runs. He had a total of eight wickets from five matches at an average of 22.62, conceding 4.41 runs per over, and ended as the joint-fifth highest wicket-taker of the tournament. He was named as part of the 'Team of the Tournament' by Cricinfo. With nine wickets in six matches, Ashwin finished as the leading wicket-taker of the home ODI series against Australia in October–November 2013 which India won 3–2.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: On India's tour of South Africa, Ashwin had a difficult time with the ball. He picked only one wicket across three ODIs and went wicketless in his 42 overs in the first Test at Johannesburg, following which, he lost his spot in the team to Jadeja for the second Test. In early 2014, Ashwin's overseas struggles continued during the New Zealand tour where he managed to bag a solitary wicket in the five-match ODI series which India lost 4–0. However, in the third ODI, coming in to bat with India at 146/5 in pursuit of 315, he scored his maiden ODI fifty of 65 runs from 46 balls. He shared a 38-run partnership with Dhoni and an 85-run seventh wicket stands with Jadeja, as the match eventually ended in a tie. In the two-match Test series that followed, Jadeja was preferred over Ashwin as the lone spinner in the playing eleven.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin was back among the wickets when India went to Bangladesh for the 2014 Asia Cup and the 2014 ICC World Twenty20. He took nine wickets in four matches of the Asia Cup and finished as the joint-third highest wicket-taker of the tournament. He played a vital role in India's unbeaten run to the World Twenty20 final. His tally of 11 wickets in six matches at an average of 11.27 and economy rate of 5.35 put him joint third on the list of most wickets in the tournament. He was named in the 'Team of the Tournament for the 2014 T20 World Cup by the ICC and Cricinfo.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin was part of the Indian team that toured England in 2014. He played his first match of the Test series only in the fourth game in which he scored 40 and 46 not out but went wicketless in an innings defeat for India. He took three wickets in the last match, which was another innings defeat. India and Ashwin found more success in the ODI series that followed. With India winning the series 3–1, Ashwin took seven wickets from four matches at an average of 24.85 and an economy rate of less than 4.5. India whitewashed Sri Lanka in a five-match ODI series in November 2014 in which Ashwin had 6 wickets to his name at 33.33.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Debutant leg-spinner Karn Sharma was chosen over Ashwin for the first Test of India's tour of Australia in December 2014. After Sharma's indifferent debut, Ashwin returned to the playing eleven as the lone spinner and took a total of 12 wickets at an average of 48.66 in the remaining three matches.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin was selected to represent India for the second consecutive ODI World cup to be held in Australia-New Zealand in 2015. He was also named as bench for the 'Team of the tournament' by Cricbuzz.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In the 2015 three-match series against Sri Lanka, he dismissed Kumar Sangakkara, who was retiring following the second Test, four consecutive times in his final four innings. At the end of the series, he finished with 21 wickets and in the process, broke the record for most wickets by an Indian bowler in a series against Sri Lanka. He was awarded the Man of the Series. These efforts led him to achieve the number 1 ranking in ICC Test Bowling Rankings for the year 2015 (which he retained in 2016).


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In November 2015, Ashwin was a star performer throughout the Freedom Trophy Test series against South Africa in India. During the course of the series, he became the fastest Indian to reach 150 wickets in Test cricket. In the third Test in Nagpur, he picked up 12 wickets for 98 runs to hand South Africa their first away series loss in nine years. His career-best figures of 7/66 in the second innings bowled the visitors out for 185 and gave India a 2–0 series win. For his performances in 2015, he was named as 12th man in the World Test XI by the ICC. He was also named in the Test XI of the year 2015 by Cricinfo.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In New Zealand's tour of India in 2016, Ashwin took 27 wickets in 3 Tests, including a career-best of 7 for 59 in an innings.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In December 2016, the International Cricket Council named Ashwin the ICC Cricketer of the Year and the ICC Test Cricketer of the Year for 2016. In the process, he became the third Indian to win the Sir Garfield Sobers Trophy for the ICC Cricketer of the Year after Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar, and also the second cricketer ever after Dravid to win the two awards in the same year.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: He made a comeback in white-ball cricket in India's third match of the tournament against Afghanistan and bowled a good spell of 2-14 in 4 overs.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In December 2021, Ashwin was ranked second in the ICC Men’s Test Player Rankings for bowlers and all-rounders.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In March 2019, in a match against Rajasthan Royals, Ashwin mankaded Jos Buttler reigniting the debate around dismissal in this manner.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In 2019, Ashwin was traded to Delhi Capitals ahead of the 2020 Indian Premier League. He took 13 wickets in the season and was the fourth highest wicket taker in the team. Delhi retained him for the 2021 season.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In the 2022 IPL Auction, Ashwin was bought by the Rajasthan Royals for ₹5 crores. During the group stage match between Rajasthan Royals and Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL 2022, he tactically retired out in the 19th over of the Rajasthan Royals innings after coming in at no 6 scoring 28 off 23 deliveries. He became only the fourth player to retire out in T20 cricket after Shahid Afridi, Sonam Tobgay and Sunzamul Islam.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: In April 2022, Ashwin became only the second off-spinner after Harbhajan Singh to achieve a milestone of 150 wickets in the history of Indian Premier League.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: Ashwin produces several variations of the ball and flights the ball, thereby giving it more chance to spin and dip on the batsman. In addition to his normal off-breaks, he produces an arm ball and the carrom ball, the latter of which he uses frequently in the shorter formats. In IPL 2013, he bowled leg-breaks and googly as well. However, in an interview, he has stated that he refrains from bowling the doosra as it requires him to bend and straighten his arm which he finds difficult to do.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: [...] what struck me was his intelligence. His use of angles, length and width of the crease. Also, guessing what a batsman was likely to do. And the kind of field placing that he is comfortable with. Those are the factors that struck me immediately – that this guy not only loves bowling, he also has a fair idea of what spin actually is. For somebody who started out at 18 or 19, I thought that was a big thing [...] Here is a guy who knew what the ball is supposed to do, where this guy is expected to play and what are the plans to keep that guy in check and put pressure on that guy. He was pretty clear at 18 itself.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: On 13 November 2011, Ashwin married his childhood friend Prithi Narayanan. They have two children named Akhira and Aadhya.


title: Ravichandran Ashwin

text: The Tamil Nadu State Election Commission used Ashwin to help create electoral awareness by encouraging voters to check whether their names were on the electoral roll.


title: James Murdoch

text: James Rupert Jacob Murdoch (born 13 December 1972) is a Australian, British-American businessman, the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and was the chief executive officer (CEO) of 21st Century Fox from 2015 to 2019.


title: James Murdoch

text: He was the chairman and CEO for Europe and Asia of News Corporation until 2013 when it was split into News Corp and 21st Century Fox. He was formerly a director of News Corp and was a member of the office of the chairman.


title: James Murdoch

text: Until April 2012, he was the chairman and CEO of Sky plc, Europe and Asia, where he oversaw assets such as News International (British newspapers; publisher of "The News of the World" newspaper), Sky Italia (satellite television in Italy), Sky Deutschland, and STAR TV (satellite television in Asia).


title: James Murdoch

text: He was executive chairman of News International from 2007 until February 2012. He previously held a non-executive chair at British Sky Broadcasting, in which News Corporation had a controlling minority stake. In April 2012, he was forced to resign as chairman of BSkyB in the wake of the ongoing phone hacking scandal, in which he was implicated. He was reappointed chairman of the company following its merger with its Italian and German sister companies to form Sky plc.


title: James Murdoch

text: He was formerly an executive vice-president of News Corporation (the controlling shareholder of BSkyB) and served on the board of directors of News Datacom and of News Corporation.


title: James Murdoch

text: In May 2012, a highly critical UK Parliamentary report said that Murdoch "showed wilful ignorance of the extent of phone-hacking" and found him "guilty of an astonishing lack of curiosity" over the issue. It went on to say that both Murdoch and his father, Rupert, "should ultimately be prepared to take responsibility" for wrongdoing at the "News of the World" and News International.


title: James Murdoch

text: Murdoch is a British citizen by birth and a naturalised US citizen. He lost Australian citizenship when his father became a US citizen, but he is eligible to reclaim it.


title: James Murdoch

text: Murdoch was born at Wimbledon Hospital in Wimbledon, London, England. He is the fourth child of billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch's six children, and the third with Scottish-born journalist and author Anna Murdoch Mann (née Torv).


title: James Murdoch

text: As a youngster James was regarded as the brightest of the Murdoch children, but also considered something of a rebel. He first came to public notice as a 15-year-old intern at the Sydney "Daily Mirror" but made headlines in the rival "The Sydney Morning Herald" after he was photographed asleep on a sofa at a press conference.


title: James Murdoch

text: Murdoch attended Horace Mann School in New York City and graduated in 1991. He then studied film and history at Harvard University, where he was a member of the "Harvard Lampoon". He dropped out of university in 1995 without completing his studies. With university friends Brian Brater and Jarret Myer, he backed the establishment of Rawkus Records, an independent hip hop record label. The company was bought by News Corporation in 1998.


title: James Murdoch

text: In 1996, Murdoch joined News Corporation and was appointed chairman of Festival Records. He took charge of News Corporation's internet operations, where he invested in a series of ventures, including financial website TheStreet and the short-lived online music site Whammo, with mixed results. He also continued to contribute cartoons to US magazine "Gear".


title: James Murdoch

text: He is credited with sparking his father's interest in the internet, and he reportedly tried to persuade his father to buy internet company PointCast for US$450 million. It was subsequently sold to another company for $7 million.


title: James Murdoch

text: After installing a new management team at Festival, Murdoch purchased the controlling 51% share of Mushroom Records in 1999, and the merged group was rebranded as Festival Mushroom Records (FMR). It was at first thought that News Corporation might use FMR as the foundation of a new international entertainment company, but FMR struggled while Murdoch was in charge and after his departure its fortunes declined rapidly. FMR was closed in late 2005 and its remaining assets were sold: the recording catalogue was sold to the Australian division of Warner Music for A$10 million in October 2005, and the publishing division was sold to Michael Gudinski a month later, for an undisclosed sum.


title: James Murdoch

text: In May 2000, Murdoch was appointed chairman and chief executive of News Corporation's ailing Asian satellite service Star Television, which at the time was losing £100 million a year, and he moved to Hong Kong.


title: James Murdoch

text: In February 2003, Murdoch became a director of BSkyB. Later that year, he controversially became CEO of BSkyB, in which News Corporation owns a controlling minority stake. His appointment sparked accusations of nepotism, with some commentators and shareholders feeling that the job had not been opened to outsiders and that Murdoch was too young and inexperienced to run one of the UK's top companies (upon appointment he was by far the youngest chief executive of a FTSE 100 company).


title: James Murdoch

text: Following the surprise resignation of his brother Lachlan Murdoch from his executive positions at News Corporation in July 2005, James was viewed as his father's heir-apparent.


title: James Murdoch

text: In December 2007, Murdoch stepped down as CEO from BSkyB and was appointed non-executive chairman of the company (a position formerly held by his father, Rupert).


title: James Murdoch

text: In a related announcement, Murdoch also took "direct responsibility for the strategic and operational development of News Corporation's television, newspaper, and related digital assets in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East." This included holdings such as News International, Sky Italia, STAR Group ltd and possibly other News Corporation related assets. He was based at News International's headquarters in Wapping, East London.


title: James Murdoch

text: In February 2009, Murdoch was appointed a non-executive director with the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.


title: James Murdoch

text: In August 2009, Murdoch delivered the MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, in which he attacked the BBC and UK media regulator Ofcom calling the BBC's expansion "chilling" and also said: "In this all-media marketplace, the expansion of state-sponsored journalism is a threat to the plurality and independence of news provision, which are so important for our democracy." The BBC chairman, Sir Michael Lyons officially responded, "We have to be careful not to reduce the whole of broadcasting to some simple economic transactions. The BBC's public purposes stress the importance of the well-tested principles of educating and informing, and an impartial contribution to debate in the UK."


title: James Murdoch

text: In April 2010, Murdoch and his associate Rebekah Brooks entered the offices of "The Independent" to complain about an advertisement campaign by the newspaper. The advertisement read, "Rupert Murdoch won't decide this election—you will."


title: James Murdoch

text: In April 2014, it was announced that Murdoch would join the board of advertising start-up True[X] Media.


title: James Murdoch

text: In June 2015, his father, Rupert, announced that he would be leaving his position as CEO of 21st Century Fox and James would take over the position.


title: James Murdoch

text: In July 2020, Murdoch resigned from the board of directors of News Corp. His resignation letter stated that his resignation was "due to disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions".


title: James Murdoch

text: In 2022 multiple sources report Lupa India, the investment company set up by Uday Shankar and James Murdoch, is in the final stages of picking up a 39 per cent stake in Viacom18.


title: James Murdoch

text: On 7 July 2011, James Murdoch announced the closure of the British tabloid newspaper the "News of the World" in the wake of a phone hacking scandal.


title: James Murdoch

text: On 19 July 2011, along with his father, Rupert, he appeared at a hearing of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee. He appeared once again before the same committee on 10 November 2011. James maintained that until late in 2010 he was unaware that more than one "rogue reporter" from the "News of the World" tabloid had been involved in phone hacking. This statement was challenged by the formal legal manager and editor for the newspaper, who claimed they had informed James of the "Transcript for Neville" email, a potential "smoking gun" indicating several of the newspaper's journalists may have been involved, during the settlement negotiations with Gorden Taylor in 2008 and alerted him to the potential liability if this document became public.


title: James Murdoch

text: On 22 July 2011, Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, said that Murdoch has "questions to answer in Parliament," a day after former top executives of the "News of the World" accused the News Corporation executive of giving "mistaken" evidence.


title: James Murdoch

text: In November 2011, British newspapers reported that Murdoch had resigned as chairman of News Group Newspapers, the holding company above "The Sun", "News of the World" and Times Newspapers Ltd, itself owner of "The Times" and "The Sunday Times". News Group Newspapers is the company subject to a series of lawsuits, all related to the phone hacking scandal. James Murdoch's resignation was also said to be related to the 12 October 2011 resignation of another Dow Jones executive, Andrew Langhoff, after a company whistleblower revealed an editorial scam and questionable circulation dealings at "The Wall Street Journal Europe".


title: James Murdoch

text: In February 2012, News Corp announced that Murdoch would be stepping down as executive chairman of its British newspaper arm. The company said he would remain deputy chief operating officer of News Corp and focus on the company's international TV business, including continued responsibility for BSkyB. He stepped down also from the GlaxoSmithKline board.


title: James Murdoch

text: In April 2012, he stood down as chairman of BSkyB, but remained on the board. He was replaced as chairman by Nicholas Ferguson.


title: James Murdoch

text: In September 2012, Murdoch was criticised by the British Office of Communications (Ofcom), which concluded that he "repeatedly fell short of the conduct to be expected of as a chief executive and chairman" and that his lack of action in relation to phone hacking was "difficult to comprehend and ill-judged".


title: James Murdoch

text: Murdoch married Kathryn Hufschmid in 2000; the couple have three children, Anneka (born 2003), Walter (born 2004), and Emerson (born 2008). Kathryn works for the Clinton Climate Initiative, a charitable foundation set up by the former U.S. President, Bill Clinton in 2006. In 2013, the couple launched Quadrivium Foundation. Murdoch also donated money to the Clinton Foundation, the nonprofit organization run by Chelsea, Bill, and Hillary Clinton.


title: James Murdoch

text: Murdoch was instrumental in the formation of Sky Procycling and is a keen cyclist himself. He maintains an early morning gym routine and has a black belt in karate.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age is a role-playing video game by Square Enix. The eleventh entry in the long-running "Dragon Quest" video game series, it was released in Japan for the Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation 4 in July 2017 and worldwide for the PlayStation 4 and Windows in September 2018. An enhanced version, Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition, was released for Nintendo Switch by Nintendo in September 2019; for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in December 2020; and for Stadia in March 2021.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: One of the first games announced for the Switch, the game was originally conceived to be fully open world, but the idea was discarded when it conflicted with the story the developers wanted to tell. To increase the awareness of the "Dragon Quest" franchise in the west, support for Windows and features such as voiced English dialogue and 4K resolution were included. Elements added later included an expanded plot and an option to listen to an orchestral version of the score.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: Upon release, the game received critical acclaim for its story, characters, narrative, and localization, though its design was criticized for being overly traditional. The game shipped over six million copies by September 2020. The protagonist, the Luminary, has also been featured in crossover media such as "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate".


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: "Dragon Quest XI" continues the gameplay of previous games in the series, in which players explore worlds and fight against various monsters, including the ability to explore high areas. The Nintendo 3DS version features a different style to the other versions, showcasing 3D graphics on the top screen and 16-bit styled sprites on the bottom screen. Outside of battle, players can freely toggle between the 3D and 2D graphical styles. Like with "Dragon Quest IX", on land, the game's battle system features no random encounters and shows all enemies on the overworld. The battle system also adds a free-form camera option inspired by the MMORPG "Dragon Quest X" that allows players to move around the enclosed battlefield, although it is purely visual and provides no other benefits to gameplay.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: The game is set in the world of Erdrea and begins as the kingdom of Dundrasil is invaded and destroyed by an army of monsters. The protagonist, an infant during the attack, survives and is found floating down a river by an old man named Chalky in the village of Cobblestone. The protagonist is adopted by Chalky's daughter Amber and raised in the village. After the protagonist's coming-of-age ceremony, Amber reveals the truth to him about his birth and adoption and sends him to meet King Carnelian of Heliodor. However, the king accuses him of being an evil entity and throws him into the dungeons.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: Imprisoned, the protagonist meets a thief named Erik who reveals that he was sent to meet him, as the mark on his hand is proof that he is the Luminary, a legendary hero chosen by the world tree Yggdrasil to save Erdrea from evil. The pair escape and evade capture, later joined by two mages: Veronica, who is trapped in a child's body due to a curse, and her twin sister, Serena. On their quest to help the Luminary reach Yggdrasil, they gain three other companions: Sylvando, a traveling entertainer, Jade, the exiled princess of Heliodor who helped the infant protagonist escape during the attack of Dundrasil, and Rab, the former king of Dundrasil and the protagonist's grandfather.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: The party eventually arrives at the heart of Yggdrasil, which contains the Sword of Light, the Luminary's destined weapon. However, just as the Luminary is about to take it, he and the party are intercepted by Carnelian and his retainers Jasper and Hendrik. It is revealed that Carnelian was possessed by an evil sorcerer known as Mordegon, also was responsible for Dundrasil's destruction, and Jasper is Mordegon's agent. The two subdue Hendrik and the Luminary's party, with Mordegon taking the Sword of Light, corrupting it into the Sword of Shadows, and absorbing the heart of Yggdrasil, destroying the tree and plunging the world into an age of darkness.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: Separated from the others, the Luminary returns to Cobblestone, turned into a fortified refuge for Heliodor citizens led by Carnelian and Hendrik, who apologize to the Luminary for all the troubles they caused him. Hendrik joins forces with the Luminary, and together they reclaim Heliodor from Mordegon's forces. At one point, a dark spirit summons a mysterious orb called Erdwin's Lantern, however Mordegon destroys it so no one stands in his way. After reuniting with the rest of the party, except for Veronica, who perished saving the others during the fall of Yggdrasil, the Luminary obtains the means to forge a new Sword of Light, which they use to defeat Jasper and Mordegon, restoring Yggdrasil and the world.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: Afterwards, the party discovers the means to bring Veronica (and other people who perished) back within the Tower of Lost Time. There, they meet the Timekeeper, who gives the Luminary the power to go back in time and defeat Mordegon before he can steal the Sword of Light and Yggdrasil's heart, thus saving Veronica from sacrificing herself and preventing Mordegon's dark age. However, due to Mordegon's absence, Erdwin's Lantern wasn't destroyed, thus the dark spirit is able to merge with it and awaken as the game's other main antagonist: The Dark One, Calasmos. The party learns that a prior Luminary named Erdwin was betrayed and killed by his mage companion Morcant, who absorbed Calasmos' powers and transformed into Mordegon. Since he could not be destroyed forever without the power of the Luminary, Serenica, Erdwin's former sage companion and lover, then sealed the weakened Calasmos within Erdwin's Lantern and attempted to return to the past at the Tower of Lost Time, but was turned into the Timekeeper instead.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: The party then confronts and destroys Calasmos, before the Luminary entrusts his mark to Serenica, who reverts to her original form and uses it to return to the past and reunite with Erdwin. Accompanied by Veronica and Serena, he also returns the Sword of Light to Yggdrasil, who reveals itself to be Yggdragon, an ancient dragon of light who was defeated by Calasmos ages ago, whose body transformed into the tree Yggdrasil and gave life to Erdrea. Yggdragon bestows upon the Luminary the title of "Erdrick", the mightiest of all heroes, and keeps the Sword for the day when a new hero will need it to defend Erdrea from evil.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: In the mid-credits, Serenica reunites with Erdwin in the past, while after the credits, a young mother, after reading the Luminary's story in a book, wakes up her child from bed, setting up the beginning of "Dragon Quest III".


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: "Dragon Quest XI" started development in 2013, with it being announced in 2015 for the PlayStation 4, Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch. It was one of the first games announced for the Nintendo Switch, which was known under the codename of Nintendo NX as it had not been fully revealed at the time. Initially, the team considered making the game fully open world, but decided against it as it would have led to issues telling its story. The PlayStation 4, Windows, and Switch versions use the Unreal Engine 4 game engine and had developmental assistance from ORCA Inc, while the 3DS version had assistance from Toylogic Inc. The 2D mode that was present in the Nintendo 3DS version and "Definitive Edition" was developed by ArtePiazza.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: In April 2017, Square Enix held a special presentation for the game, where the release date for the PlayStation 4 and 3DS versions of the game in Japan was revealed to be July 29, 2017. The same month, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Nintendo unveiled special editions of their PlayStation 4 Slim and New Nintendo 2DS XL hardware for Japan to tie into the game. Coinciding with the release, lead designer and scenario writer Yuji Horii announced that an international version, localized in five separate languages, would be released in 2018. The exact date was later revealed to be September 4, 2018, along with a version for Windows via Steam, a first for the main series. It includes voiced English dialogue, a first-person camera option, support for 4K resolution, and an additional "Draconian Quest" hard mode difficulty feature, among other minor changes. Square Enix stated they wanted to expand the "Dragon Quest" brand outside of Japan, which they believed that these features, in addition to having a Windows version, would assist it.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: The international PlayStation 4 release also saw a special collector's edition, titled "Edition of Lost Time", which includes the base game, a set of bonus in-game items, a 128-page hardback art book featuring original character design concepts from Akira Toriyama, a two-disc soundtrack featuring orchestrated versions of the game's music by Koichi Sugiyama, a cloth map of the game's world, and a steelbook case. The 3DS version was not localized outside of Japan, and the Switch version was delayed while the team updated it to a newer version of Unreal Engine 4 that the system supports. The Switch version was re-announced at Tokyo Game Show 2018. Known as "Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age - Definitive Edition", it was released worldwide on September 27, 2019, and features English and Japanese voice acting, with the English voice acting being available as an add-on in the Japanese Switch version, a 16-bit graphical mode adapted from the 3DS version, an option for orchestral music (with "Overture XI", a version of the series' main theme, from the game's opening movie, being re-orchestrated, which was taken from the orchestrated soundtrack, as with the other tracks in the game), and expanded plot elements. "Dragon Quest XI S" was also released for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Windows on December 4, 2020. It was also released for Stadia on March 16, 2021.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: "Dragon Quest XI" received "generally favorable reviews" according to review aggregator Metacritic, with critics praising it for its visuals, traditional turn-based combat, plot, and characters. The expanded re-release (XI S) received "universal acclaim" according to Metacritic. Multiple publications called it the best game in the "Dragon Quest" series, as well as one of the best contemporary JRPGs. "Kotaku" Tim Rogers, a long-time player of the series, called it one of the best games of all time. "USgamer" considered the game to be the natural followup to "Dragon Quest VIII", the last main-series console game to be released outside of Japan, and an ideal entry point for newcomers to the series. "PC Gamer" praised the English localization, calling it "the most brilliant, underappreciated writing of the year."


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: Despite the common praise, some critics regarded the conservative approach to the game as a detriment. "Polygon" stated that the upgraded visuals and presentation were "grafted onto a frail and aging skeleton" and that it was unlikely to bring in any new fans to the series due to its non-evolving nature. "PC Gamer" agreed, noting that while the Windows port ran without issue and "looked great," they believed the game itself was "disappointingly safe." "IGN" criticized some sexualized elements in the game, included a quest to dress up a female character in a bunny outfit, as well as the series' usual "puff puff" content. Some critics also wrote that the game's non-orchestrated, MIDI-synthesized soundtrack was often at odds with the game's visuals. For the Windows version, fans released a mod that replaced it with existing orchestral recordings. An orchestral soundtrack was later included in the "Definitive Edition", although the original soundtrack was also available.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: The game sold over two million physical copies on its first two days of sale in Japan; the Nintendo 3DS version sold 1.13 million, while the PlayStation 4 version sold 0.95 million. In North America, the game had the best launch month in series history, doubling the dollar sales of the previous best, "Dragon Quest IX". By November 2018, it had shipped over four million copies worldwide. "Dragon Quest XI S" sold 303,204 physical copies in its first week in Japan in its Switch version. The 3DS, PS4, and Switch versions sold a total of 5,000,000 units in Japan. By December 2021, the game had shipped over six million copies worldwide.


title: Dragon Quest XI

text: The Luminary appeared as a playable character via downloadable content in the 2018 crossover fighting game "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate". Yggdrasil's Altar is his related stage and comes with several music tracks from the series. In addition, a Luminary Amiibo was released in October 2020.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (; 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian journalist and human rights activist, who reported on political events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005).


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: It was her reporting from Chechnya that made Politkovskaya's national and international reputation. For seven years, she refused to give up reporting on the war despite numerous acts of intimidation and violence. Politkovskaya was arrested by Russian military forces in Chechnya and subjected to a mock execution. She was poisoned while flying from Moscow via Rostov-on-Don to help resolve the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis, and had to turn back, requiring careful medical treatment in Moscow to restore her health.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Her post-1999 articles about conditions in Chechnya were turned into books several times; Russian readers' main access to her investigations and publications was through "Novaya Gazeta", a Russian newspaper that featured critical investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs. From 2000 onwards, she received numerous international awards for her work. In 2004, she published "Putin's Russia", a personal account of Russia for a Western readership.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: On 7 October 2006, she was murdered in the elevator of her block of apartments, an assassination that attracted international attention. In June 2014, five men were sentenced to prison for the murder, but it is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Anna Mazepa Politkovskaya was born in New York City in 1958, the daughter of Stepan Fedorovich Mazepa (1927–2006) from Kostobobriv, Ukraine and Raisa Aleksandrovna Mazepa (1929–2021) from Kerch. Some sources say that her birth name was actually "Hanna Mazeppa". Other sources state that she was born in Chernihiv region of Ukraine. Her parents, Soviet diplomats at the United Nations, were Ukrainian. Politkovskaya spent most of her childhood in Moscow; she graduated from Moscow State University's school of journalism in 1980. While there, she defended a thesis about the poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva and married fellow student Alexander Politkovsky. They had two children, Vera and Ilya. At first Alexander was better known, joining TV journalist Vladislav Listyev as one of the hosts on the late-night TV-program "Vzglyad". Apart from her childhood years, Politkovskaya spent no more than a few weeks outside Russia at any one time, even when her life came under threat. She was a U.S. citizen and had a U.S. passport, although she never relinquished her Russian citizenship.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Politkovskaya worked for "Izvestia" from 1982 to 1993 as a reporter and editor of the emergencies and accidents section. From 1994 to 1999, she worked as the assistant chief editor of "Obshchaya Gazeta", headed by Yegor Yakovlev, where she wrote frequently about social problems, particularly the plight of refugees. From June 1999 to 2006, she wrote columns for the biweekly "Novaya Gazeta", a newspaper with strong investigative reporting that was critical of the new post-Soviet regime from the outset. She published several award-winning books about Chechnya, life in Russia, and Russia under Vladimir Putin, including "Putin's Russia".


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Politkovskaya won awards for her work. She used each of these occasions to urge greater concern and responsibility by Western governments that, after the September 11 attacks on the United States, welcomed Putin's contribution to their "War on Terror". She talked to officials, the military and the police and also frequently visited hospitals and refugee camps in Chechnya and in neighboring Ingushetia to interview those injured and uprooted by the renewed fighting.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In numerous articles critical of the war in Chechnya and the pro-Russian regime there, Politkovskaya described alleged abuses committed by Russian military forces, Chechen rebels, and the Russian-backed administration led by Akhmad Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov. She also chronicled human rights abuses and policy failures elsewhere in the North Caucasus. In one characteristic instance in 1999, she not only wrote about the plight of an ethnically-mixed old peoples' home under bombardment in Grozny, but helped to secure the safe evacuation of its elderly inhabitants with the aid of her newspaper and public support. Her articles, many of which form the basis of "A Dirty War" (2001) and "A Small Corner of Hell" (2003), depict a conflict that brutalized both Chechen fighters and conscript soldiers in the federal army, and created hell for the civilians caught between them.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: As Politkovskaya reported, the order supposedly restored under the Kadyrovs became a regime of endemic torture, abduction, and murder, by either the new Chechen authorities or the various federal forces based in Chechnya. One of her last investigations was into the alleged mass poisoning of Chechen schoolchildren by a strong and unknown chemical substance which incapacitated them for many months.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: After Politkovskaya became widely known in the West, she was commissioned to write "Putin's Russia" (later subtitled "Life in a Failing Democracy"), a broader account of her views and experiences after former KGB lieutenant colonel Vladimir Putin became Boris Yeltsin's Prime Minister, and then succeeded him as President of Russia. This included Putin's pursuit of the Second Chechen War. In the book, she accused the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) of stifling all civil liberties to establish a Soviet-style dictatorship, but admitted: [It] is we who are responsible for Putin's policies ... [s]ociety has shown limitless apathy ... [a]s the Chekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle. The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that. She also wrote:


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial—whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: "People often tell me that I am a pessimist, that I don't believe in the strength of the Russian people, that I am obsessive in my opposition to Putin and see nothing beyond that", she opens an essay titled "Am I Afraid?", finishing it—and the book—with the words "If anybody thinks they can take comfort from the 'optimistic' forecast, let them do so. It is certainly the easier way, but it is the death sentence for our grandchildren."


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In May 2007, Random House posthumously published Politkovskaya's "A Russian Diary", containing extracts from her notebook and other writings. Subtitled "A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia", the book gives her account of the period from December 2003 to August 2005, including what she described as "the death of Russian parliamentary democracy", the Beslan school hostage crisis, and the "winter and summer of discontent" from January to August 2005. Because she was murdered "while translation was being completed, final editing had to go ahead without her help", wrote translator Arch Tait in a note to the book.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: "Who killed Anna and who lay beyond her killer remains unknown", wrote Jon Snow, the main news anchor for the United Kingdom's Channel 4 in his foreword to the book's UK edition. "Her murder robbed too many of us of absolutely vital sources of information and contact", he concluded, "Yet it may, ultimately, be seen to have at least helped prepare the way for the unmasking of the dark forces at the heart of Russia's current being. I must confess that I finished reading "A Russian Diary" feeling that it should be taken up and dropped from the air in vast quantities throughout the length and breadth of Mother Russia, for all her people to read."


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Politkovskaya was closely involved in attempts to negotiate the release of hostages in the Moscow theatre hostage crisis of 2002. When the Beslan school hostage crisis erupted in the North Caucasus in early September 2004, Politkovskaya attempted to fly there to act as a mediator, but was taken off the plane, acutely ill due to an attempted poisoning, in Rostov-on-Don (see #Poisoning).


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In Moscow, Politkovskaya was not invited to press-conferences or gatherings that Kremlin officials might attend, in case the organizers were suspected of harboring sympathies toward her. Despite this, many top officials allegedly talked to her when she was writing articles or conducting investigations. According to one of her articles, they did talk to her, "but only when they weren't likely to be observed: outside in crowds, or in houses that they approached by different routes, like spies". She also claimed that the Kremlin tried to block her access to information and discredit her:I will not go into the other joys of the path I have chosen, the poisoning, the arrests, the threats in letters and over the Internet, the telephoned death threats, the weekly summons to the prosecutor general's office to sign statements about practically every article I write (the first question being, "How and where did you obtain this information?"). Of course I don't like the constant derisive articles about me that appear in other newspapers and on Internet sites presenting me as the madwoman of Moscow. I find it disgusting to live this way. I would like a bit more understanding.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: After Politkovskaya's murder, Vyacheslav Izmailov, her colleague at "Novaya Gazeta" – a military man who had helped negotiate the release of dozens of hostages in Chechnya before 1999 – said that he knew of at least nine previous occasions when Politkovskaya had faced death, commenting "Frontline-soldiers do not usually go into battle so often and survive".


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Politkovskaya herself did not deny being afraid, but felt responsible and concerned for her informants. While attending a December 2005 conference on the freedom of the press in Vienna organized by Reporters Without Borders, she said "People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think. In fact, one can even get killed for giving me information. I am not the only one in danger. I have examples that prove it." She often received death threats as a result of her work, including being threatened with rape and experiencing a mock execution after being arrested by the military in Chechnya.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Early in 2001, Politkovskaya was detained by military officials in the southern mountain village of Khattuni. She was investigating complaints from 90 Chechen families about "punitive raids" by federal forces. She interviewed a Chechen grandmother from the village of Tovzeni, Rosita, who endured 12 days of beatings, electric shocks, and confinement in a pit. The men who arrested Rosita presented themselves as FSB-employees. The torturers requested a ransom from Rosita's relatives, who negotiated a smaller amount that they were able to pay. Another interviewee described killings and rapes of Chechen men in a "concentration camp with a commercial streak" near the village of Khattuni.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Upon leaving the camp, Politkovskaya was detained, interrogated, beaten, and humiliated by Russian troops: "The young officers tortured me, skillfully hitting my sore-spots. They looked through my children's pictures, making a point of saying what they would like to do to the kids. This went on for about three hours." She was subjected to a mock execution using a BM-21 Grad multiple-launch rocket system, then poisoned with a cup of tea that made her vomit. Her tape-records were confiscated. She described her mock execution:


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: A lieutenant colonel with a swarthy face and dull dark bulging eyes said in a businesslike tone: "Let's go. I'm going to shoot you." He led me out of the tent into complete darkness. The nights here are impenetrable. After we walked for a while, he said, "Ready or not, here I come." Something burst with pulsating fire around me, screeching, roaring, and growling. The lieutenant colonel was very happy when I crouched in fright. It turned out that he had led me right under the "Grad" rocket launcher at the moment it was fired.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: After the mock execution, the Russian lieutenant colonel said to her: "Here's the banya. Take off your clothes." Seeing that his words had no effect, he got very angry: "A real lieutenant colonel is courting you, and you say no, you militant bitch."


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In 2006, the European Court of Human Rights found the Russian Federation responsible for the forced disappearance of a suspected Ingush militant, Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev. Colonel-General Alexander Baranov, the commander of the Russian Caucasus deployment mentioned by Politkovskaya's camp guide as the one who ordered captured militants to be kept in the pits, was filmed as he ordered Yandiyev to be executed.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: While flying south in September 2004 to help negotiate with those who had taken over a thousand hostages in a school in Beslan (North Ossetia), Politkovskaya fell violently ill and lost consciousness after drinking tea given to her by an Aeroflot flight attendant. She had reportedly been poisoned, with some accusing the former Soviet secret police poison facility.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In 2001, Politkovskaya fled to Vienna, following e-mail threats that a police officer whom she had accused of atrocities against civilians in Chechnya was looking to take revenge. Corporal Sergey Lapin was arrested and charged in 2002, but the case against him was closed the following year. In 2005, Lapin was convicted and jailed for the torture and subsequent disappearance of a Chechen civilian detainee, the case exposed by Politkovskaya in her article "Disappearing People". A former fellow officer of Lapin's was among the suspects in Politkovskaya's murder, on the theory that the motive might have been revenge for her part in Lapin's conviction.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In 2004, Politkovskaya had a conversation with Ramzan Kadyrov, then Prime Minister of Chechnya. One of his assistants said to her, "Someone ought to have shot you back in Moscow, right on the street, like they do in your Moscow". Kadyrov echoed him: "You're an enemy. To be shot..." On the day of her murder, said "Novaya Gazeta"s chief editor Dmitry Muratov, Politkovskaya had planned to file a lengthy story on the torture practices believed to be used by the Chechen security detachments known as Kadyrovites. In her final interview, she described Kadyrov—now president of Chechnya—as the "Chechen Stalin of our days".


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Politkovskaya was found dead in the lift, in her block of apartments in central Moscow on 7 October 2006, Putin's birthday. She had been shot twice in the chest, once in the shoulder, and once in the head at point-blank range. There was widespread international reaction to the assassination.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: The funeral was held on 10 October 2006 at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery in the outskirts of Moscow. Before Politkovskaya was buried, more than one thousand mourners filed past her coffin to pay their last respects. Dozens of Politkovskaya's colleagues, public figures, and admirers of her work gathered at the cemetery. No high-ranking Russian officials could be seen at the ceremony. Politkovskaya was buried near her father, who had died shortly before her.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In May 2007, a large posthumous collection of Anna's articles, entitled "With good Reason", was published by "Novaya Gazeta" and launched at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow. The event came soon after the birth of Anna's namesake grandchild: Vera's daughter was named Anna in honor of her grandmother. A few months later, 10 men were detained on suspicion of various degrees of involvement in Politkovskaya's murder. Four of them were brought before the Moscow District Military Court in October 2008.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Three men were charged with directly aiding Politkovskaya's killer, who was allegedly the brother of two of the suspects. There was insufficient evidence to charge the fourth man—an FSB colonel—with the murder, though he was suspected of a leading role in its organization; he stood trial at the same time for another offence. The case was held before a jury (a rare occurrence in Russia) and, after the jurors insisted, was open to the press and public.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: On 25 November 2008, it was reported that Politkovskaya's murder might have been ordered by a politician inside Russia. Murad Musayev, a lawyer for the men on trial, told journalists that the case notes—as one of the interpretations of the crime—mentioned that a politician, based in Russia (but not named in those notes), was behind her death.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: On 5 December 2008, Sergei Sokolov, a senior editor of "Novaya Gazeta", testified in court that he had received information (from sources he would not name) that defendant Dzhabrail Makhmudov was an agent of the FSB. He said Makhmudov's uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who was serving a 12-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a Ukrainian businessman, also worked for the FSB.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Russia's Investigative Committee – with help from the Belgian police – arrested the man suspected of killing Anna Politkovskaya, after he was detained in the Chechen Republic and transported to Moscow for questioning.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: After all three men were acquitted of Politkovskaya's murder in February 2009, her children Vera and Ilya, their lawyers Karinna Moskalenko and Anna Stavitskaya, and senior "Novaya Gazeta" editor Sergei Sokolov gave their reaction to the trial at a press conference in Moscow. In his comments on the end of the trial, Andrew McIntosh, Chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Sub-Committee on the Media and Rapporteur on media freedom, expressed frustration at what he perceived to be a lack of progress in investigating the murder, or the inability of the Russian authorities to find her killers:


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Two years ago, in its Resolution 1535 (2007), the Assembly called on the Russian Parliament closely to monitor the progress in the criminal investigations regarding the murder of Anna Politkovskaya and hold the authorities accountable for any failures to investigate or prosecute. The closure of the trial yesterday can only be regarded as a blatant failure. I call on the Russian authorities and Parliament to relaunch a proper investigation and shed light on this murder, which undermines not only freedom of expression in Russia, but also its democratic foundation based on the rule of law. There are no excuses for these flawed investigations into murders of politically critical journalists writing against corruption and crime within government, such as the murders of Georgy Gongadze in Ukraine in 2000 and Paul Klebnikov in Moscow in 2004.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: Before the trial ended, Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer who had investigated many of the abuses documented by Politkovskaya, was assassinated in Moscow on 19 January 2009. Journalist Anastasia Baburova, who was with Markelov at the time, died later of injuries sustained while trying to intervene.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: More closely related to Politkovskaya's work as a journalist was 15 July 2009 murder of Natalia Estemirova. A board member of the Memorial human rights society and one of Politkovskaya's key informants, guides, and colleagues in Chechnya, Estemirova was abducted in Grozny and found dead, several hours later, in the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: On 5 August 2009, the prosecution service's objection to the acquittals in the Politkovskaya trial was upheld by the Supreme Court, and a new trial was ordered.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In August 2011, Russian prosecutors claimed they were close to solving the murder after detaining Dmitry Pavliuchenkov, a former policeman, who they alleged was the principal organizer. The following month "Kommersant Daily" reported that, according to Pavlyuchenkov, Lom-Ali Gaitukayev was the one negotiating with the person who ordered the killing, and although Pavlyuchenkov did not know the name, he suspected he could be the fugitive businessman and Putin critic Boris Berezovsky.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In December 2012, Dmitry Pavliutchenkov was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in a high security penal colony.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In May 2014, five men were convicted of murdering Politkovskaya, including three defendants who had been acquitted in a previous trial. The defendants were three Chechen brothers, one of whom was accused of shooting Politkovskaya in the lobby of her Moscow apartment building. In June 2014 the men were sentenced to prison, two of them, Lom-Ali Gaitukayev and his nephew Rustam Makhmudov, receiving life sentences. It is still unclear who ordered or paid for the contract killing.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: In September 2016, Vladimir Markin, official spokesman for the Investigative Committee, included the killing of Anna Politkovskaya among the "Most Dramatic Crimes in 21st century Russia" and claimed that it had been solved. Her colleagues at "Novaya gazeta" protested that until the instigator or sponsor of the crime was identified, arrested and prosecuted the case was not closed.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: On 7 October 2016, "Novaya gazeta" released a video clip of its editors, correspondents, photographers and technical and administrative staff holding text-boards giving details of the case and stating, repeatedly, "The sponsor of Anna's murder has not been found". On the same day deputy chief editor Sergei Sokolov published a damning summary of the official investigation, describing its false turns and shortcomings, and emphasized that it had now effectively been wound up. After the three Makhmudov brothers, Khadjikurbanov and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev were convicted in 2014, wrote Sokolov, the once large team of investigators was reduced to one person and within a year he retired, to be replaced by a lower-ranking investigator. The 2000 killing of Igor Domnikov, another "Novaya gazeta" journalist, showed that the perpetrators might be identified (they were convicted in 2008).


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: "The Intercept" published a top-secret document released by Edward Snowden with a screenshot of Intellipedia according to which:


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: (TS//SI/REL TO USA, AUS, CAN, GBR, NZL) Russian Federal Intelligence Services (probably FSB) are known to have targeted the webmail account of the murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. On 5 December 2005, RFIS initiated an attack against the account annapolitovskaya@US Provider1, by deploying malicious software which is not available in the public domain. It is not known whether the attack is in any way associated with the death of the journalist.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: She was brave, she was bold, and she was beautiful. In her fearless quest to uncover the wrongdoings of the Russian State, Anna Politkovskaya inspired awe in some and fear in countless others. An investigative journalist for Moscow's liberal "Novaya Gazeta", she was the only spokesperson for victims of Putin's government. Hers was a lonely voice, yet loud enough for the entire country to hear. It was too loud. At age 48 she was assassinated for simply doing her job. A documentary about the bravery of the human spirit. As the director says, it "is especially important now, when the world is so full of cynicism and corruption, when we so desperately need more people with Anna's level of courage and integrity and commitment".


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: The international human rights organization RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War), which focuses on supporting and protecting women human rights defenders working in war and conflict zones, established in 2006 the annual Anna Politkovskaya Award in Politkovskaya's honor. The award recognizes "a woman human rights defender from a conflict zone in the world who, like Anna, stands up for the victims of this conflict, often at great personal risk". Mariana Katzarova, a close friend and a human rights colleague of Politkovskaya, founded RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in WAR) and the Anna Politkovskaya Award in 2006 in London, after working as a journalist and human rights advocate in the war zones of Bosnia, Kosovo and the North Caucasus, including 10 years as the Russia Researcher for Amnesty International.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: The award was first given on the one-year anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya's murder on 7 October 2007 to Politkovskaya's friend and colleague, Chechen activist, Natalia Estemirova, who was herself abducted and killed in 2009 in Chechnya to silence her human rights work.


title: Anna Politkovskaya

text: There is also a "Journalism-prize Anna Politkovskaja" ("il premio giornalistico Anna Politkovskaja"), which is annually awarded in Ferrara, Italy, by the magazine L'internationale and the comune of Ferrara.


title: Herculaneum

text: Herculaneum (; Neapolitan and ) was an ancient town, located in the modern-day "comune" of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.


title: Herculaneum

text: Like the nearby city of Pompeii, Herculaneum is famous as one of the few ancient cities to be preserved nearly intact, as the ash that blanketed the town protected it against looting and elements. Although less known than Pompeii today, it was the first, and the only discovered buried Vesuvian city (in 1709) for a long time. Pompeii was revealed only in 1748 and identified in 1763. Unlike Pompeii, the mainly pyroclastic material that covered Herculaneum carbonized and preserved more wood in objects such as roofs, beds, and doors, as well as other organic-based materials such as food and papyrus.


title: Herculaneum

text: According to the traditional tale, the city was rediscovered by chance in 1709, during the drilling of a well. Remnants of the city, however, were already found during earlier earthworks. In the years following the site's uncovering, treasure seekers excavated tunnels and stole artifacts. Regular excavations commenced in 1738 and have continued irregularly since. Only a fraction of the ancient site has been excavated as of today. Budget restrictions shifted the focus to preserving the already-excavated portions of the city rather than ungrounding more sections.


title: Herculaneum

text: Although smaller than Pompeii with a population of circa 5,000, Herculaneum was a wealthier town. Herculaneum was a popular seaside retreat for the Roman elite, as reflected by the extraordinary density of luxurious houses featuring lavish use of coloured marble cladding. Famous buildings of the ancient city include the Villa of the Papyri and the so-called "boat houses", where the skeletal remains of at least 300 people were found.


title: Herculaneum

text: Dionysius of Halicarnassus states that the Greek hero Heracles ("Hercules" in Latin) founded the city. However, according to Strabo, the Oscans founded the first settlement. The Etruscans took control of the area, and were later overthrown by the Greeks. The Greeks named the town "Heraklion" and used it as a trading post because of its proximity to the Gulf of Naples. In the 4th century BC, Herculaneum came under the domination of the Samnites until it became a Roman "municipium" in 89 BC, when, having participated in the Social War ("War of The Allies" against Rome), it was defeated by Titus Didius, a legate of Sulla.


title: Herculaneum

text: The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 buried Herculaneum under approximately of ash. It lay hidden and largely intact until discoveries from wells and tunnels became gradually more widely known, notably following the Prince d'Elbeuf's explorations in the early 18th century. Excavations continued sporadically up to the present and today many streets and buildings are visible, although over 75% of the town remains buried. Today, the Italian towns of Ercolano and Portici lie above Herculaneum. Ercolano was called Resina until 1969 when the modern name was adopted in honour of the old city.


title: Herculaneum

text: The course and timeline of the eruption can be reconstructed based on archaeological excavations and two letters from Pliny the Younger to the Roman historian Tacitus.


title: Herculaneum

text: At around 1:00 pm on the first day of eruption, Mount Vesuvius began spewing volcanic material thousands of metres into the sky. When it reached a height of , the top of the column flattened, prompting Pliny to describe it to Tacitus as a stone pine tree. The prevailing winds at the time blew toward the southeast, causing the volcanic material to fall primarily on the city of Pompeii and the surrounding area. Since Herculaneum lay west of Vesuvius, it was only mildly affected by the first phase of the eruption. While roofs in Pompeii collapsed under the weight of falling debris, only a few centimetres of ash fell on Herculaneum, causing little damage; nevertheless, the ash prompted most inhabitants to flee.


title: Herculaneum

text: At 1:00 am the next day, the eruptive column, which had risen into the stratosphere, collapsed onto Vesuvius and its flanks. The first pyroclastic surge, formed by a mixture of ash and hot gases, flowed down the mountain and through the mostly-evacuated town of Herculaneum at . A succession of six flows and surges buried the city's buildings to approximately 20 m depth, causing little damage in some areas and preserving structures, objects and victims almost intact. However, other areas were damaged significantly, knocking down walls, tearing away columns and other large objects; a marble statue of Marcus Nonius Balbus near the baths was blown 15m away and a carbonised skeleton was found lifted 2.5m above ground level in the garden of the House of the Relief of Telephus.


title: Herculaneum

text: The date of the eruption has been shown to be on or after 17 October. Support for an October/November eruption has long been known in several respects: buried people in the ash were wearing heavier clothing than the light summer clothes typical of August; fresh fruit and vegetables in the shops are typical of October – and conversely the summer fruit typical of August was already being sold in dried, or conserved form. Wine fermenting jars had been sealed, which would have happened around the end of October; coins found in the purse of a woman buried in the ash include one with a 15th imperatorial acclamation among the emperor's titles and could not have been minted before the second week of September.


title: Herculaneum

text: Multidisciplinary research on the lethal effects of the pyroclastic surges in the Vesuvius area has shown that, in the vicinity of Pompeii and Herculaneum, intense heat was the main cause of the death of people who had previously been thought to have died by ash suffocation. Exposure to ≥250 °C (480 °F) had likely killed residents within 10 km, including those sheltering in buildings.


title: Herculaneum

text: Prince d'Elbeuf began constructing a villa in neighbouring Granatello, and to furnish it, he grew intrigued in local tales of wells containing antique sculptures and artworks. In 1709, he acquired the site of a recently-dug well and tunnelled out from its bottom in search of sculptures. The tunnel reached what would be later identified as a theatre, where remarkable sculptures were uncovered. Among the earliest sculptures discovered were two exquisitely carved Herculaneum women, currently housed in the Skulpturensammlung in Dresden. The excavation ceased in 1711 out of concern about the stability of the structures above.


title: Herculaneum

text: Major excavations resumed in 1738. With the engineer from Zaragoza Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre, Giovanni Antonio Medrano began the excavations of Herculaneum, giving rise to a new type of activity under the patronage of Charles III of Spain, who had recently begun building his nearby palace in Portici. He appointed the Spanish military engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre to supervise the extensive new project. The publication of "Le Antichità di Ercolano" ("The Antiquities of Herculaneum") had a striking influence on nascent European Neoclassicism; by the end of the 18th century, motifs from Herculaneum began to appear on fashionable furnishings, including decorative wall-paintings, tripod tables, perfume burners, and teacups. Nonetheless, excavation ceased once again in 1762 as a result of Winckelmann's harsh criticism of the treasure-hunting techniques. The discovery of neighbouring Pompeii, substantially simpler to excavate due to a smaller layer of material covering the site (4m as compared to 20m at Herculaneum), diverted attention and effort.


title: Herculaneum

text: King Francis I ordered land acquisitions and promoted renewed excavations between 1828 and 1837. Acquisitions continued under the newly formed Kingdom of Italy, extending excavations eastwards till 1875.


title: Herculaneum

text: From 1927 until 1942, Amedeo Maiuri conducted a new campaign, sponsored by Mussolini's regime, which unearthed approximately four hectares today part of the archaeological park.


title: Herculaneum

text: Hundreds of skeletons were found in the so-called "boat houses", by the ancient shoreline, between 1980–1981.


title: Herculaneum

text: Villa of the Papyri, the northwest baths, the House of the Dionysian Reliefs and a large collapsed monument were brought to light between 1996 to 1999. However, the area was left in a chaotic state until major conservation interventions from 2000 through 2007.


title: Herculaneum

text: The classical street layout separates the city into blocks ("insulae"), defined by the intersection of the east-west (cardi) and north-south (decumani) streets. Hence Insula II – Insula VII run counterclockwise from Insula II. To the east are two additional blocks: Orientalis I (oI) and Orientalis II (oII). To the south of Orientalis I (oI) lies one additional group of buildings known as the "Suburban District" (SD). Individual buildings have their own entrance number. For example, the House of the Deer is labelled (Ins IV, 3).


title: Herculaneum

text: The settlement was encircled by walls between 2 and 3 metres thick, dated to the 2nd century BC and constructed primarily of large pebbles, with the exception of the coastal section made of opus reticulatum. As in Pompeii, following the Social War, the walls lost their protective purpose and were integrated into adjacent structures, such as the House of Inn.


title: Herculaneum

text: A single main drain was collecting water from the Forum and from house impluviums, latrines, and kitchens along cardo III. Other drains emptied directly into the street, except latrines equipped with a cesspit. For water supply, the city was directly connected to the Serino aqueduct, built in the Augustan age, which brought water to houses through a series of lead pipes under the roads, regulated by valves; eight and ten metres wells had been used previously.


title: Herculaneum

text: Due to bradyseism, which affects the whole Vesuvius region, portions of the historic city of Herculaneum today lie as much as 4 metres below sea level.


title: Herculaneum

text: The first building in insula II is the House of Aristides. The entrance opens directly onto the atrium, but the ruins are not well preserved due to damage caused by previous excavations. The lower floor was probably used for storage.


title: Herculaneum

text: The second house in insula II takes its name from a lost fresco of Argus and Io that once adorned a reception room off the large peristyle. This structure was likely one of Herculaneum's finest villas.


title: Herculaneum

text: It was the first time that a second story had been unearthed in such detail when the house was discovered in the late 1820s. The excavation uncovered a balcony on the second level overlooking Cardo III, as well as wooden shelving and cupboards now unfortunately lost.


title: Herculaneum

text: North of the House of Argus lies the House of the Genius. Although it has only been partially uncovered, it looks to have been a vast structure. Its name derives from a statue of a Cupid, once part of a candlestick. In the centre of the peristyle are the remains of a rectangular basin.


title: Herculaneum

text: The house consists of two adjoined structures with a mix of plain, simple spaces and finely-decorated rooms.