title
stringlengths 1
251
| section
stringlengths 0
6.12k
| text
stringlengths 0
716k
|
|---|---|---|
Aquila
|
People
|
People
Aquila (name), a given name or surname
|
Aquila
|
Places
|
Places
Aquila, Michoacán, a town in Mexico
Aquila, Switzerland, a former municipality
Aquila, Veracruz, a municipality in Mexico
L'Aquila, sometimes Aquila, the regional capital of Abruzzo in Italy
Province of L'Aquila, Italy
|
Aquila
|
Transportation
|
Transportation
|
Aquila
|
Automotive
|
Automotive
Aquila Italiana, Italian car manufacturer or brand
Aquila racing cars, a Danish firm
Hyosung GV250, a cruiser motorcycle nicknamed the "Aquila"
|
Aquila
|
Aviation
|
Aviation
Angus Aquila, a British aircraft
Bristol Aquila, an aircraft engine
Aquila, an air traffic management services company owned by NATS Holdings
Aquila A 210, a German lightweight aircraft
Aquila Airways, a British flying boat operator (1948–1958)
Facebook Aquila, Facebook's design for an atmospheric satellite, a high-flying drone circling a particular location
Lockheed MQM-105 Aquila, the U.S. Army's first battlefield reconnaissance drone
Global 4L Aquila, a quadcopter drone; see List of UAVs
|
Aquila
|
Boats
|
Boats
Aquila 27, a French sailboat design
|
Aquila
|
Ships
|
Ships
Italian ship Aquila, various Italian naval ships
, more than one ship of the United States Navy
|
Aquila
|
Other uses
|
Other uses
Aquila (bird), a genus of birds including some eagles
Aquila (constellation), the astronomical constellation, the Eagle
Aquila (Roman), a Roman military standard
Aquila, Inc., a former electric and gas utility in Kansas City, Missouri, United States
Aquila Capital, an independent investment firm in Hamburg, Germany
|
Aquila
|
See also
|
See also
Aguila (disambiguation)
Aquila College of Ministries, former name of Hillsong College
Aquila Court Building of Omaha, Nebraska
Aquileia, an ancient Roman city in Italy
Aquilia (disambiguation)
Aquilinus (disambiguation)
Aquilla (disambiguation)
Balanus aquila, a species of barnacle
Dell'Aquila, a surname
Macroglossum aquila, a species of moth
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of L'Aquila, Italy
|
Aquila
|
Table of Content
|
Wiktionary, Arts, entertainment, and media, Fictional entities, People, Places, Transportation, Automotive, Aviation, Boats, Ships, Other uses, See also
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Short description
|
Al-Qaeda (; , ) is a pan-Islamist militant organization led by Sunni jihadists who self-identify as a vanguard spearheading a global Islamist revolution to unite the Muslim world under a supra-national Islamic caliphate. Its membership is mostly composed of Arabs but also includes people from other ethnic groups. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian, economic and military targets of the U.S. and its allies; such as the 1998 US embassy bombings, the USS Cole bombing, and the September 11 attacks.
The organization was founded in a series of meetings held in Peshawar during 1988, attended by Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden, Muhammad Atef, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other veterans of the Soviet–Afghan War. Building upon the networks of Maktab al-Khidamat, the founding members decided to create an organization named "Al-Qaeda" to serve as a "vanguard" for jihad. When Saddam Hussein invaded and occupied Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered to support Saudi Arabia by sending his Mujahideen fighters. His offer was rebuffed by the Saudi government, which instead sought the aid of the United States. The stationing of U.S. troops in the Arabian Peninsula prompted bin Laden to declare a jihad against both the rulers of Saudi Arabia – whom he denounced as murtadd (apostates) – and against the US. From 1992, al-Qaeda established its headquarters in Sudan until it was expelled in 1996. It then shifted its base to the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and later expanded to other parts of the world, primarily in the Middle East and South Asia. In 1996 and 1998, bin Laden issued two fatāwā that demanded the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia.
In 1998, al-Qaeda conducted the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people. The U.S. retaliated by launching Operation Infinite Reach, against al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. In 2001, al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks, resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths, long-term health consequences of nearby residents, damage to global economic markets, the triggering of drastic geo-political changes as well as generating profound cultural influence across the world. The U.S. launched the war on Terror in response and invaded Afghanistan to depose the Taliban and destroy al-Qaeda. In 2003, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, overthrowing the Ba'athist regime which they falsely accused of having ties with al-Qaeda. In 2004, al-Qaeda launched its Iraqi regional branch. After pursuing him for almost a decade, the U.S. military killed bin Laden in Pakistan in May 2011.
Al-Qaeda members believe that a Judeo-Christian alliance (led by the United States) is waging a war against Islam and conspiring to destroy Islam.Fu'ad Husayn 'Al-Zarqawi, "The Second Generation of al-Qa'ida, Part Fourteen," Al-Quds al-Arabi, July 13, 2005 Al-Qaeda also opposes man-made laws, and seek to implement sharīʿah (Islamic law) in Muslim countries. Al-Qaeda fighters characteristically deploy tactics such as suicide attacks (Inghimasi and Istishhadi operations) involving simultaneous bombing of several targets in battle-zones. Al-Qaeda's Iraq branch, which later morphed into the Islamic State of Iraq after 2006, was responsible for numerous sectarian attacks against Shias during its Iraqi insurgency. Al-Qaeda ideologues envision the violent removal of all foreign and secularist influences in Muslim countries, which it denounces as corrupt deviations. Following the death of bin Laden in 2011, al-Qaeda vowed to avenge his killing. The group was then led by Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri until he too was killed by the United States in 2022. , they have reportedly suffered from a deterioration of central command over its regional operations.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Organization
|
Organization
Al-Qaeda only indirectly controls its day-to-day operations. Its philosophy calls for the centralization of decision making, while allowing for the decentralization of execution.al-Hammadi, Khalid, "The Inside Story of al-Qa'ida", part 4, Al-Quds al-Arabi, March 22, 2005 The top leaders of al-Qaeda have defined the organization's ideology and guiding strategy, and they have also articulated simple and easy-to-receive messages. At the same time, mid-level organizations were given autonomy, but they had to consult with top management before large-scale attacks and assassinations. Top management included the shura council as well as committees on military operations, finance, and information sharing. Through the information committees of al-Qaeda, Zawahiri placed special emphasis on communicating with his groups. However, after the war on terror, al-Qaeda's leadership has become isolated. As a result, the leadership has become decentralized, and the organization has become regionalized into several al-Qaeda groups.J. Feiser –
The group was initially dominated by Egyptians and Saudis, with some participation from Yemenis and Kuwaitis. Over time, it has evolved into a more international terrorist organization. While its core group originally shared a background in Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula, it has since attracted fighters from other Arab groups, including North Africans, Jordanians, Palestinians, and Iraqis. In the decade following the 9/11 attacks, Muslims from non-Arab backgrounds, such as Pakistanis, Afghans, Turks, Kurds, and European converts to Islam, have also joined the organization.
Many Western analysts do not believe that the global jihadist movement is driven at every level by al-Qaeda's leadership. However, bin Laden held considerable ideological influence over revolutionary Islamist movements across the world. Experts argue that al-Qaeda has fragmented into a number of disparate regional movements, and that these groups bear little connection with one another.
This view mirrors the account given by Osama bin Laden in his October 2001 interview with Tayseer Allouni:
however, Bruce Hoffman saw al-Qaeda as a cohesive network that was strongly led from the Pakistani tribal areas.
thumb|upright=0.8|Al-Qaeda militant in Sahel armed with a Type 56 assault rifle, 2012
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Affiliates
|
Affiliates
Al-Qaeda has the following direct affiliates:
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)
Al-Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent (AQIS)
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)
Al-Shabaab
Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM)
The following are presently believed to be indirect affiliates of al-Qaeda:
Fatah al-Islam
Islamic Jihad Union
Jaish-e-Mohammed
Lashkar-e-Taiba
Al-Qaeda's former affiliates include the following:
Abu Sayyaf (pledged allegiance to ISIL in 2014)
Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (dissolved)
Caucasus Emirate (dissolved)
Hurras al-Din (dissolved in 2025)
Jemaah Islamiyah (dissolved in 2024)
Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (dissolved)
Al-Mourabitoun (joined JNIM in 2017)
Al-Qaeda in Iraq (became the Islamic State of Iraq, which later seceded from al-Qaeda and became ISIL)
Al-Qaeda in the Lands Beyond the Sahel (inactive since 2015)
Ansar al-Islam (majority merged with ISIL in 2014)
Ansar Dine (joined JNIM in 2017)
Islamic Jihad in Yemen (became AQAP)
Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (merged with Al-Mulathameen to form Al-Mourabitoun in 2013)
Rajah Sulaiman Movement
Al-Nusra Front (dissolved in 2017, merged with other Islamist organizations to form Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham and split ties)
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Leadership
|
Leadership
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Osama bin Laden (1988 – May 2011)
|
Osama bin Laden (1988 – May 2011)
thumb|Osama bin Laden (left) and Ayman al-Zawahiri (right) photographed in 2001|alt=Bin Laden and Al-Zawahiri photographed in 2001
Osama bin Laden served as the emir of al-Qaeda from the organization's founding in 1988 until his assassination by US forces on May 1, 2011. Atiyah Abd al-Rahman was alleged to be second in command prior to his death on August 22, 2011.
Bin Laden was advised by a Shura Council, which consists of senior al-Qaeda members. The group was estimated to consist of 20–30 people.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
After May 2011
|
After May 2011
Ayman al-Zawahiri had been al-Qaeda's deputy emir and assumed the role of emir following bin Laden's death. Al-Zawahiri replaced Saif al-Adel, who had served as interim commander.
On June 5, 2012, Pakistani intelligence officials announced that al-Rahman's alleged successor as second in command, Abu Yahya al-Libi, had been killed in Pakistan.
Nasir al-Wuhayshi was alleged to have become al-Qaeda's overall second in command and general manager in 2013. He was concurrently the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) until he was killed by a US airstrike in Yemen in June 2015.Al-Qaeda Confirms U.S. Strike Killed Nasser al-Wuhayshi, Its Leader in Yemen , The New York Times, Kareem Fahim, June 16, 2015 Abu Khayr al-Masri, Wuhayshi's alleged successor as the deputy to Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by a US airstrike in Syria in February 2017. Al-Qaeda's next alleged number two leader, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, was killed by Israeli agents. His pseudonym was Abu Muhammad al-Masri, who was killed in November 2020 in Iran. He was involved in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Al-Qaeda's network was built from scratch as a conspiratorial network which drew upon the leadership of a number of regional nodes.. The organization divided itself into several committees, which include:
The Military Committee, which is responsible for training operatives, acquiring weapons, and planning attacks.
The Money/Business Committee, which funds the recruitment and training of operatives through the hawala banking system. US-led efforts to eradicate the sources of "terrorist financing". were most successful in the year immediately following the September 11 attacks.. Al-Qaeda continues to operate through unregulated banks, such as the 1,000 or so hawaladars in Pakistan, some of which can handle deals of up to million.; cited in . The committee also procures false passports, pays al-Qaeda members, and oversees profit-driven businesses.Businesses are run from below, with the council only being consulted on new proposals and collecting funds.See:
. In the 9/11 Commission Report, it was estimated that al-Qaeda required $30million per year to conduct its operations.
The Law Committee reviews Sharia law, and decides upon courses of action conform to it.
The Islamic Study/Fatwah Committee issues religious edicts, such as an edict in 1998 telling Muslims to kill Americans.
The Media Committee ran the now-defunct newspaper Nashrat al Akhbar () and handled public relations.
In 2005, al-Qaeda formed As-Sahab, a media production house, to supply its video and audio materials.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
After Al-Zawahiri (2022 – present)
|
After Al-Zawahiri (2022 – present)
Al-Zawahiri was killed on July 31, 2022, in a drone strike in Afghanistan. In February 2023, a report from the United Nations, based on member state intelligence, concluded that de facto leadership of al-Qaeda had passed to Saif al-Adel, who was operating out of Iran. Adel, a former Egyptian army officer, became a military instructor in al-Qaeda camps in the 1990s and was known for his involvement in the Battle of Mogadishu. The report stated that al-Adel's leadership could not officially be declared by al-Qaeda because of "political sensitivities" of Afghan government in acknowledging the death of Al-Zawahiri as well as due to "theological and operational" challenges posed by the location of al-Adel in Iran.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Command structure
|
Command structure
Most of al-Qaeda's top leaders and operational directors were veterans who fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were the leaders who were considered the operational commanders of the organization. Nevertheless, al-Qaeda was not operationally managed by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Several operational groups exist, which consult with the leadership in situations where attacks are in preparation. "...Zawahiri does not claim to have direct hierarchical control over al Qaeda's vast, networked structure. Al Qaeda's core leadership seeks to centralize the organization's messaging and strategy rather than to manage the daily operations of its franchises. But formal affiliates are required to consult with al Qaeda's core leadership before carrying out large-scale attacks." Al-Qaeda central (AQC) is a conglomerate of expert committees, each in supervision of distinct tasks and objectives. Its membership is mostly composed of Egyptian Islamist leaders who participated in the anti-communist Afghan Jihad. Assisting them are hundreds of Islamic field operatives and commanders, based in various regions of the Muslim World. The central leadership assumes control of the doctrinal approach and overall propaganda campaign; while the regional commanders were empowered with independence in military strategy and political maneuvering. This novel hierarchy made it possible for the organisation to launch wide-range offensives.
When asked in 2005 about the possibility of al-Qaeda's connection to the July 7, 2005 London bombings, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said: "Al-Qaeda is not an organization. Al-Qaeda is a way of working... but this has the hallmark of that approach... Al-Qaeda clearly has the ability to provide training... to provide expertise... and I think that is what has occurred here." On August 13, 2005, The Independent newspaper, reported that the July7 bombers had acted independently of an al-Qaeda mastermind.
Nasser al-Bahri, who was Osama bin Laden's bodyguard for four years in the run-up to 9/11 wrote in his memoir a highly detailed description of how the group functioned at that time. Al-Bahri described al-Qaeda's formal administrative structure and vast arsenal.Al-Bahri, Nasser, Guarding bin Laden: My Life in al-Qaeda. p. 185. Thin Man Press. London. However, the author Adam Curtis argued that the idea of al-Qaeda as a formal organization is primarily an American invention. Curtis contended the name "Al-Qaeda" was first brought to the attention of the public in the 2001 trial of bin Laden and the four men accused of the 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa. Curtis wrote:
During the 2001 trial, the US Department of Justice needed to show that bin Laden was the leader of a criminal organization in order to charge him in absentia under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The name of the organization and details of its structure were provided in the testimony of Jamal al-Fadl, who said he was a founding member of the group and a former employee of bin Laden. Questions about the reliability of al-Fadl's testimony have been raised by a number of sources because of his history of dishonesty, and because he was delivering it as part of a plea bargain agreement after being convicted of conspiring to attack US military establishments.. Sam Schmidt, a defense attorney who defended al-Fadl, said:
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Field operatives
|
Field operatives
thumb|upright=1.35|Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir interviewing Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, 1997
The number of individuals in the group who have undergone proper military training, and are capable of commanding insurgent forces, is largely unknown. Documents captured in the raid on bin Laden's compound in 2011 show that the core al-Qaeda membership in 2002 was 170.Secret Osama bin Laden files reveal al Qaeda membership , The Telegraph accessed July 26, 2013 In 2006, it was estimated that al-Qaeda had several thousand commanders embedded in 40 countries.. , it was believed that no more than 200–300 members were still active commanders.
According to the 2004 BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares, al-Qaeda was so weakly linked together that it was hard to say it existed apart from bin Laden and a small clique of close associates. The lack of any significant numbers of convicted al-Qaeda members, despite a large number of arrests on terrorism charges, was cited by the documentary as a reason to doubt whether a widespread entity that met the description of al-Qaeda existed. al-Qaeda's commanders, as well as its sleeping agents, are hiding in different parts of the world to this day. They are mainly hunted by the American and Israeli secret services.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Insurgent forces
|
Insurgent forces
According to author Robert Cassidy, al-Qaeda maintains two separate forces which are deployed alongside insurgents in Iraq and Pakistan. The first, numbering in the tens of thousands, was "organized, trained, and equipped as insurgent combat forces" in the Soviet–Afghan war. The force was composed primarily of foreign mujahideen from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Many of these fighters went on to fight in Bosnia and Somalia for global jihad. Another group, which numbered 10,000 in 2006, live in the West and have received rudimentary combat training.
Other analysts have described al-Qaeda's rank and file as being "predominantly Arab" in its first years of operation, but that the organization also includes "other peoples" .Jihad's New Leaders by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Kyle Dabruzzi, Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2007 It has been estimated that 62 percent of al-Qaeda members have a university education. In 2011 and the following year, the Americans successfully settled accounts with Osama bin Laden, Anwar al-Awlaki, the organization's chief propagandist, and Abu Yahya al-Libi's deputy commander. The optimistic voices were already saying it was over for al-Qaeda. Nevertheless, it was around this time that the Arab Spring greeted the region, the turmoil of which came great to al-Qaeda's regional forces. Seven years later, Ayman al-Zawahiri became arguably the number one leader in the organization, implementing his strategy with systematic consistency. Tens of thousands loyal to al-Qaeda and related organizations were able to challenge local and regional stability and ruthlessly attack their enemies in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Europe and Russia alike. In fact, from Northwest Africa to South Asia, al-Qaeda had more than two dozen "franchise-based" allies. The number of al-Qaeda militants was set at 20,000 in Syria alone, and they had 4,000 members in Yemen and about 7,000 in Somalia. The war was not over.
In 2001, al-Qaeda had around 20 functioning cells and 70,000 insurgents spread over sixty nations. According to latest estimates, the number of active-duty soldiers under its command and allied militias have risen to approximately 250,000 by 2018.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Financing
|
Financing
Al-Qaeda usually does not disburse funds for attacks, and very rarely makes wire transfers. In the 1990s, financing came partly from the personal wealth of Osama bin Laden.Who is Bin Laden? . Retrieved May 5, 2011 Other sources of income included the heroin trade and donations from supporters in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic Gulf states. A 2009 leaked diplomatic cable stated that "terrorist funding emanating from Saudi Arabia remains a serious concern."Eric Lichtbau and Eric Schmitt Cash Flow to Terrorists Evades U.S. Efforts The New York Times, December 5, 2010
Among the first pieces of evidence regarding Saudi Arabia's support for al-Qaeda was the so-called "Golden Chain", a list of early al-Qaeda funders seized during a 2002 raid in Sarajevo by Bosnian police. The hand-written list was validated by al-Qaeda defector Jamal al-Fadl, and included the names of both donors and beneficiaries.United States of America v. Usama bin Laden . Wikisource. Retrieved June 10, 2016. Osama bin-Laden's name appeared seven times among the beneficiaries, while 20 Saudi and Gulf-based businessmen and politicians were listed among the donors. Notable donors included Adel Batterjee, and Wael Hamza Julaidan. Batterjee was designated as a terror financier by the US Department of the Treasury in 2004, and Julaidan is recognized as one of al-Qaeda's founders.
Documents seized during the 2002 Bosnia raid showed that al-Qaeda widely exploited charities to channel financial and material support to its operatives across the globe. Notably, this activity exploited the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO) and the Muslim World League (MWL). The IIRO had ties with al-Qaeda associates worldwide, including al-Qaeda's deputy Ayman al Zawahiri. Zawahiri's brother worked for the IIRO in Albania and had actively recruited on behalf of al-Qaeda.Emerson, Steve (2006). Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the US. Prometheus Books. p. 382. The MWL was openly identified by al-Qaeda's leader as one of the three charities al-Qaeda primarily relied upon for funding sources.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Allegations of Qatari support
|
Allegations of Qatari support
Several Qatari citizens have been accused of funding al-Qaeda. This includes Abd Al-Rahman al-Nuaimi, a Qatari citizen and a human-rights activist who founded the Swiss-based non-governmental organization (NGO) Alkarama. On December 18, 2013, the US Treasury designated Nuaimi as a terrorist for his activities supporting al-Qaeda. The US Treasury has said Nuaimi "has facilitated significant financial support to al-Qaeda in Iraq, and served as an interlocutor between al-Qaeda in Iraq and Qatar-based donors".
Nuaimi was accused of overseeing a $2million monthly transfer to al-Qaeda in Iraq as part of his role as mediator between Iraq-based al-Qaeda senior officers and Qatari citizens. Nuaimi allegedly entertained relationships with Abu-Khalid al-Suri, al-Qaeda's top envoy in Syria, who processed a $600,000 transfer to al-Qaeda in 2013. Nuaimi is also known to be associated with Abd al-Wahhab Muhammad 'Abd al-Rahman al-Humayqani, a Yemeni politician and founding member of Alkarama, who was listed as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) by the US Treasury in 2013. The US authorities claimed that Humayqani exploited his role in Alkarama to fundraise on behalf of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). A prominent figure in AQAP, Nuaimi was also reported to have facilitated the flow of funding to AQAP affiliates based in Yemen. Nuaimi was also accused of investing funds in the charity directed by Humayqani to ultimately fund AQAP. About ten months after being sanctioned by the US Treasury, Nuaimi was also restrained from doing business in the UK.
Another Qatari citizen, Kalifa Mohammed Turki Subayi, was sanctioned by the US Treasury on June 5, 2008, for his activities as a "Gulf-based Al-Qaeda financier". Subayi's name was added to the UN Security Council's Sanctions List in 2008 on charges of providing financial and material support to al-Qaeda senior leadership. Subayi allegedly moved al-Qaeda recruits to South Asia-based training camps. He also financially supported Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani national and senior al-Qaeda officer who is believed to be the mastermind behind the September 11 attack according to the 9/11 Commission Report.
Qataris provided support to al-Qaeda through the country's largest NGO, the Qatar Charity. Al-Qaeda defector al-Fadl, who was a former member of Qatar Charity, testified in court that Abdullah Mohammed Yusef, who served as Qatar Charity's director, was affiliated to al-Qaeda and simultaneously to the National Islamic Front, a political group that gave al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden harbor in Sudan in the early 1990s.
It was alleged that in 1993 Osama bin Laden was using Middle East based Sunni charities to channel financial support to al-Qaeda operatives overseas. The same documents also report Bin Laden's complaint that the failed assassination attempt of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had compromised the ability of al-Qaeda to exploit charities to support its operatives to the extent it was capable of before 1995.
Qatar financed al-Qaeda's enterprises through al-Qaeda's former affiliate in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra. The funding was primarily channeled through kidnapping for ransom. The Consortium Against Terrorist Finance (CATF) reported that the Gulf country has funded al-Nusra since 2013. In 2017, Asharq Al-Awsat estimated that Qatar had disbursed $25million in support of al-Nusra through kidnapping for ransom. In addition, Qatar has launched fundraising campaigns on behalf of al-Nusra. Al-Nusra acknowledged a Qatar-sponsored campaign "as one of the preferred conduits for donations intended for the group".
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Strategy
|
Strategy
In the disagreement over whether al-Qaeda's objectives are religious or political, Mark Sedgwick describes al-Qaeda's strategy as political in the immediate term but with ultimate aims that are religious.
On March 11, 2005, Al-Quds Al-Arabi published extracts from Saif al-Adel's document "Al Qaeda's Strategy to the Year 2020". Abdel Bari Atwan summarizes this strategy as comprising five stages to rid the Ummah from all forms of oppression:
Provoke the United States and the West into invading a Muslim country by staging a massive attack or string of attacks on US soil that results in massive civilian casualties.
Incite local resistance to occupying forces.
Expand the conflict to neighboring countries and engage the US and its allies in a long war of attrition.
Convert al-Qaeda into an ideology and set of operating principles that can be loosely franchised in other countries without requiring direct command and control, and via these franchises incite attacks against the US and countries allied with the US until they withdraw from the conflict, as happened with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, but which did not have the same effect with the July 7, 2005 London bombings.
The US economy will finally collapse by 2020, under the strain of multiple engagements in numerous places. This will lead to a collapse in the worldwide economic system, and lead to global political instability. This will lead to a global jihad led by al-Qaeda, and a Wahhabi Caliphate will then be installed across the world.
Atwan noted that, while the plan is unrealistic, "it is sobering to consider that this virtually describes the downfall of the Soviet Union."
According to Fouad Hussein, a Jordanian journalist and author who has spent time in prison with Al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda's strategy consists of seven phases and is similar to the plan described in al-Qaeda's Strategy to the year 2020. These phases include:
"The Awakening." This phase was supposed to last from 2001 to 2003. The goal of the phase is to provoke the United States to attack a Muslim country by executing an attack that kills many civilians on US soil.
"Opening Eyes." This phase was supposed to last from 2003 to 2006. The goal of this phase was to recruit young men to the cause and to transform the al-Qaeda group into a movement. Iraq was supposed to become the center of all operations with financial and military support for bases in other states.
"Arising and Standing up", was supposed to last from 2007 to 2010. In this phase, al-Qaeda wanted to execute additional attacks and focus their attention on Syria. Hussein believed other countries in the Arabian Peninsula were also in danger.
Al-Qaeda expected a steady growth among their ranks and territories due to the declining power of the regimes in the Arabian Peninsula. The main focus of attack in this phase was supposed to be on oil suppliers and cyberterrorism, targeting the US economy and military infrastructure.
The declaration of an Islamic Caliphate, which was projected between 2013 and 2016. In this phase, al-Qaeda expected the resistance from Israel to be heavily reduced.
The declaration of an "Islamic Army" and a "fight between believers and non-believers", also called "total confrontation".
"Definitive Victory", projected to be completed by 2020.
According to the seven-phase strategy, the war is projected to last less than two years.
According to Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute and Katherine Zimmerman of the American Enterprise Institute, the new model of al-Qaeda is to "socialize communities" and build a broad territorial base of operations with the support of local communities, also gaining income independent of the funding of sheiks.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Name
|
Name
The English name of the organization is a simplified transliteration of the Arabic noun (), which means "the foundation" or "the base". The initial al- is the Arabic definite article "the", hence "the base".Arabic Computer Dictionary: English-Arabic, Arabic-English By Ernest Kay, Multi-lingual International Publishers, 1986. In Arabic, al-Qaeda has four syllables (). However, since two of the Arabic consonants in the name are not phones found in the English language, the common naturalized English pronunciations include , and . Al-Qaeda's name can also be transliterated as al-Qaida, al-Qa'ida, or el-Qaida.
The doctrinal concept of "al-Qaeda" was first coined by the Palestinian Islamist scholar and Jihadist leader Abdullah Azzam in an April 1988 issue of Al-Jihad magazine to describe a religiously committed vanguard of Muslims who wage armed Jihad globally to liberate oppressed Muslims from foreign invaders, establish sharia (Islamic law) across the Islamic World by overthrowing the ruling secular governments; and thus restore the past Islamic prowess. This was to be implemented by establishing an Islamic state that would nurture generations of Muslim soldiers that would perpetually attack United States and its allied governments in the Muslim World. Numerous historical models were cited by Azzam as successful examples of his call; starting from the early Muslim conquests of the 7th century to the recent anti-Soviet Afghan Jihad of the 1980s. According to Azzam's world-view: It is about time to think about a state that would be a solid base for the distribution of the (Islamic) creed, and a fortress to host the preachers from the hell of the Jahiliyyah [the pre-Islamic period].
Bin Laden explained the origin of the term in a videotaped interview with Al Jazeera journalist Tayseer Alouni in October 2001:
It has been argued that two documents seized from the Sarajevo office of the Benevolence International Foundation prove the name was not simply adopted by the mujahideen movement and that a group called al-Qaeda was established in August 1988. Both of these documents contain minutes of meetings held to establish a new military group, and contain the term "al-Qaeda".. Wright indirectly quotes one of the documents, based on an exhibit from the "Tareek Osama" document presented in United States v. Enaam M. Arnaout .
Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote that the word al-Qaeda should be translated as "the database", because it originally referred to the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen militants who were recruited and trained with CIA help to defeat the Russians. In April 2002, the group assumed the name Qa'idat al-Jihad ( ), which means "the base of Jihad". According to Diaa Rashwan, this was "apparently as a result of the merger of the overseas branch of Egypt's al-Jihad, which was led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, with the groups Bin Laden brought under his control after his return to Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.""After Mombasa ", Al-Ahram Weekly Online, January 2–8, 2003 (Issue No. 619). Retrieved September 3, 2006.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Ideology
|
Ideology
thumb|left|upright|Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian Islamic scholar and Jihadist theorist who inspired al-Qaeda
The pan-Islamist militant movement of al-Qaeda developed amid the rise of Islamic revivalist and Jihadist movements after the Iranian Revolution (1978–1979) and during the Afghan Jihad (1979–1989). The writings of Egyptian Islamist scholar and revolutionary ideologue Sayyid Qutb strongly inspired the founding leaders of al-Qaeda.. In the 1950s and 1960s, Qutb preached that because of the lack of sharia law, the Muslim world was no longer Muslim, and had reverted to the pre-Islamic ignorance known as jahiliyyah. To restore Islam, Qutb argued that a vanguard of righteous Muslims was needed in order to establish "true Islamic states", implement sharia, and rid the Muslim world of any non-Muslim influences. In Qutb's view, the enemies of Islam included "world Jewry", which "plotted conspiracies" and opposed Islam.. Qutb envisioned this vanguard to march forward to wage armed Jihad against tyrannical regimes after purifying from the wider Jahili societies and organising themselves under a righteous Islamic leadership; which he viewed as the model of early Muslims in the Islamic State of Medina under the leadership of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. This idea would directly influence many Islamist figures such as Abdullah Azzam and Osama bin Laden; and became the core rationale for the formulation of "al-Qaeda" concept in the near future. Outlining his strategy to topple the existing secular orders, Qutb argued in Milestones: [It is necessary that] a Muslim community to come into existence which believes that ‘there is no deity except God,’ which commits itself to obey none but God, denying all other authority, and which challenges the legality of any law which is not based on this belief.. . It should come into the battlefield with the determination that its strategy, its social organization, and the relationship between its individuals should be firmer and more powerful than the existing jahili system.
In the words of Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a close college friend of bin Laden:
Qutb also influenced Ayman al-Zawahiri. Zawahiri's uncle and maternal family patriarch, Mafouz Azzam, was Qutb's student, protégé, personal lawyer, and an executor of his estate. Azzam was one of the last people to see Qutb alive before his execution.Mafouz Azzam; cited in . Zawahiri paid homage to Qutb in his work Knights under the Prophet's Banner.
Qutb argued that many Muslims were not true Muslims. Some Muslims, Qutb argued, were apostates. These alleged apostates included leaders of Muslim countries, since they failed to enforce sharia law. He also alleged that the West approaches the Muslim World with a "crusading spirit"; in spite of the decline of religious values in the 20th century Europe. According to Qutb; the hostile and imperialist attitudes exhibited by Europeans and Americans towards Muslim countries, their support for Zionism, etc. reflected hatred amplified over a millennia of wars such as the Crusades and was born out of Roman materialist and utilitarian outlooks that viewed the world in monetary terms.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Formation
|
Formation
The Afghan jihad against the pro-Soviet government further developed the Salafist Jihadist movement which inspired al-Qaeda. During this period, al-Qaeda embraced the ideals of the Indian Muslim militant revivalist Syed Ahmad Barelvi (d. 1831) who led a Jihad movement against British India from the frontiers of Afghanistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkwa in the early 19th century. Al-Qaeda readily adopted Sayyid Ahmad's doctrines such as returning to the purity of early generations (Salaf as-Salih), antipathy towards Western influences and restoration of Islamic political power. According to Pakistani journalist Hussain Haqqani,
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Objectives
|
Objectives
The long-term objective of al-Qaeda is to unite the Muslim World under a supra-national Islamic state known as the Khilafah (Caliphate), headed by an elected Caliph descended from the Ahl al-Bayt (Muhammad's family). The immediate objectives include the expulsion of American troops from the Arabian Peninsula, waging armed Jihad to topple US-allied governments in the region, etc.
The following are the goals and some of the general policies outlined in al-Qaeda's Founding Charter "Al-Qaeda's Structure and Bylaws" issued in the meetings in Peshawar in 1988:
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Theory of Islamic State
|
Theory of Islamic State
Al-Qaeda aims to establish an Islamic state in the Arab World, modelled after the Rashidun Caliphate, by initiating a global Jihad against the "International Jewish-Crusader Alliance" led by the United States, which it sees as the "external enemy" and against the secular governments in Muslim countries, that are described as "the apostate domestic enemy". Once foreign influences and the secular ruling authorities are removed from Muslim countries through Jihad; al-Qaeda supports elections to choose the rulers of its proposed Islamic states. This is to be done through representatives of leadership councils (Shura) that would ensure the implementation of Shari'a (Islamic law). However, it opposes elections that institute parliaments which empower Muslim and non-Muslim legislators to collaborate in making laws of their own choosing. In the second edition of his book Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet, Ayman Al Zawahiri writes:
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Grievances
|
Grievances
A recurring theme in al-Qaeda's ideology is the perpetual grievance over the violent subjugation of Islamic dissidents by the authoritarian, secularist regimes allied to the West. Al-Qaeda denounces these post-colonial governments as a system led by Westernised elites designed to advance neo-colonialism and maintain Western hegemony over the Muslim World. The most prominent topic of grievance is over the American foreign policy in the Arab World; especially over its strong economic and military support to Israel. Other concerns of resentment include presence of NATO troops to support allied regimes; injustices committed against Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya, Xinjiang, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Religious compatibility
|
Religious compatibility
Abdel Bari Atwan wrote that:
On the other hand, Professor Peter Mandaville states that Al-Qaeda follows a pragmatic policy in forming its local affiliates, with various cells being sub-contracted to Shia Muslim and non-Muslim members. The top-down chain of command means that each unit is answerable directly to central leadership, while they remain ignorant of their counterparts' presence or activities. These transnational networks of autonomous supply chains, financiers, underground militias and political supporters were set up during the 1990s, when Bin Laden's immediate aim was the expulsion of American troops from the Arabian Peninsula.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Attacks on civilians
|
Attacks on civilians
Under the leadership of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda organization adopted the strategy of targeting non-combatant civilians of enemy states that indiscriminately attacked Muslims. Following the September 11 attacks, al-Qaeda provided a justification for the killing of non-combatants/civilians, entitled, "A Statement from Qaidat al-Jihad Regarding the Mandates of the Heroes and the Legality of the Operations in New York and Washington". According to a couple of critics, Quintan Wiktorowicz and John Kaltner, it provides "ample theological justification for killing civilians in almost any imaginable situation."
Among these justifications are that America is leading the west in waging a War on Islam so that attacks on America are a defense of Islam and any treaties and agreements between Muslim majority states and Western countries that would be violated by attacks are null and void. According to the tract, several conditions allow for the killing of civilians including:
retaliation for the American war on Islam which al-Qaeda alleges has targeted "Muslim women, children and elderly";
when it is too difficult to distinguish between non-combatants and combatants when attacking an enemy "stronghold" (hist) or non-combatants remain in enemy territory, killing them is allowed;
those who assist the enemy "in deed, word, mind" are eligible for killing, and this includes the general population in democratic countries because civilians can vote in elections that bring enemies of Islam to power;
the necessity of killing in the war to protect Islam and Muslims;
Muhammad, when asked whether the Muslim fighters could use the catapult against the village of Taif, replied affirmatively, even though the enemy fighters were mixed with a civilian population;
if the women, children and other protected groups serve as human shields for the enemy;
if the enemy has broken a treaty, killing of civilians is permitted.
Under the leadership of Sayf al-Adel, al-Qaeda's strategy has undergone transformation and the organization has officially renounced the tactic of attacking civilian targets of enemies. In his book Free Reading of 33 Strategies of War published in 2023, Sayf al-Adel counselled Islamist fighters to prioritize attacking the police forces, military soldiers, state assets of enemy governments, etc. which he described as acceptable targets in military operations. Asserting that attacking women and children of enemies are contrary to Islamic values, Sayf al-Adel asked: "If we target the general public, how can we expect their people to accept our call to Islam?"
|
Al-Qaeda
|
History
|
History
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Attacks
|
Attacks
thumb|upright=1.65|
Nairobi, Kenya: August 7, 1998
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: August 7, 1998
Aden, Yemen: October 12, 2000
World Trade Center, US: September 11, 2001
The Pentagon, US: September 11, 2001
Istanbul, Turkey: November 15 and 20, 2003
Al-Qaeda has carried out a total of six major attacks, four of them in its jihad against America. In each case the leadership planned the attack years in advance, arranging for the shipment of weapons and explosives and using its businesses to provide operatives with safehouses and false identities.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
1991
|
1991
To prevent the former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah from coming back from exile and possibly becoming head of a new government, bin Laden instructed a Portuguese convert to Islam, Paulo Jose de Almeida Santos, to assassinate Zahir Shah. On November 4, 1991, Santos entered the king's villa in Rome posing as a journalist and tried to stab him with a dagger. A tin of cigarillos in the king's breast pocket deflected the blade and saved Zahir Shah's life, although the king was also stabbed several times in the neck and was taken to hospital, later recovering from the attack. Santos was apprehended by General Abdul Wali, a former commander of the Royal Afghan Army, and jailed for 10 years in Italy.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
1992
|
1992
On December 29, 1992, al-Qaeda launched the 1992 Yemen hotel bombings. Two bombs were detonated in Aden, Yemen. The first target was the Movenpick Hotel and the second was the parking lot of the Goldmohur Hotel..
The bombings were an attempt to eliminate American soldiers on their way to Somalia to take part in the international famine relief effort, Operation Restore Hope. Internally, al-Qaeda considered the bombing a victory that frightened the Americans away, but in the US, the attack was barely noticed. No American soldiers were killed because no soldiers were staying in the hotel at the time it was bombed, however, an Australian tourist and a Yemeni hotel worker were killed in the bombing. Seven others, who were mostly Yemeni, were severely injured. Two fatwas are said to have been appointed by al-Qaeda's members, Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, to justify the killings according to Islamic law. Salim referred to a famous fatwa appointed by Ibn Taymiyyah, a 13th-century scholar admired by Wahhabis, which sanctioned resistance by any means during the Mongol invasions..
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Late 1990s
|
Late 1990s
left|thumb|upright|1998 Nairobi embassy bombing
In 1996, bin Laden personally engineered a plot to assassinate United States President Bill Clinton while the president was in Manila for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation. However, intelligence agents intercepted a message before the motorcade was to leave, and alerted the US Secret Service. Agents later discovered a bomb planted under a bridge.
On August 7, 1998, al-Qaeda bombed the US embassies in East Africa, killing 224 people, including 12 Americans. In retaliation, a barrage of cruise missiles launched by the US military devastated an al-Qaeda base in Khost, Afghanistan. The network's capacity was unharmed. In late 1999 and 2000, al-Qaeda planned attacks to coincide with the millennium, masterminded by Abu Zubaydah and involving Abu Qatada, which would include the bombing of Christian holy sites in Jordan, the bombing of Los Angeles International Airport by Ahmed Ressam, and the bombing of the .
On October 12, 2000, al-Qaeda militants in Yemen bombed the missile destroyer USS Cole in a suicide attack, killing 17 US servicemen and damaging the vessel while it lay offshore. Inspired by the success of such a brazen attack, al-Qaeda's command core began to prepare for an attack on the US itself.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
September 11 attacks
|
September 11 attacks
thumb|Aftermath of the September 11 attacks
thumb|Mohamed Atta, the pilot hijacker of American Airlines Flight 11 and leader of the September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks on America by al-Qaeda killed 2,996 people2,507 civilians, 343 firefighters, 72 law enforcement officers, 55 military personnel as well as 19 hijackers who committed murder-suicide. Two commercial airliners were deliberately flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon, and a fourth, originally intended to target either the United States Capitol or the White House, crashed in a field in Stonycreek Township near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers revolted. It was the deadliest foreign attack on American soil since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and to this day remains the deadliest terrorist attack in human history.
The attacks were conducted by al-Qaeda, acting in accord with the 1998 fatwa issued against the US and its allies by persons under the command of bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, and others. Evidence points to suicide squads led by al-Qaeda military commander Mohamed Atta as the culprits of the attacks, with bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Hambali as the key planners and part of the political and military command.
Messages issued by bin Laden after September 11, 2001, praised the attacks, and explained their motivation while denying any involvement. Bin Laden strongly supported the attacks by identifying numerous grievances of Muslims, such as the general perception that the US was actively oppressing Muslims.. In his "Letter to the American people" published in 2002, Osama Bin Laden stated: Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple:
(1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us. ....
The American government and press still refuses to answer the question:
Why did they attack us in New York and Washington?
If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and principles, so we are addressing it using the language it understands.
Bin Laden asserted that America was massacring Muslims in "Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq" and Muslims should retain the "right to attack in reprisal". He also claimed the 9/11 attacks were not targeted at people, but "America's icons of military and economic power", despite the fact he planned to attack in the morning when most of the people in the intended targets were present and thus generating the maximum number of human casualties.Hamid Miir 'Osama claims he has nukes: If U.S. uses N-arms it will get the same response' "Dawn: the Internet Edition" November 10, 2001
Evidence later came to light that the original targets for the attack may have been nuclear power stations on the US East Coast. The targets were later altered by al-Qaeda, as it was feared that such an attack "might get out of hand".
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Designation as a terrorist group
|
Designation as a terrorist group
Al-Qaeda is deemed a designated terrorist group by the following countries and international organizations:
Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia, page 8
designated Al-Qaeda's Turkish branch
United Nations Security Council
Terrorism in Uzbekistan: A self-made crisis Jamestown FoundationUzbekistan: Who's Behind The Violence? Center for Defense Information
|
Al-Qaeda
|
War on terror
|
War on terror
thumb|US troops in Afghanistan
In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the US government responded, and began to prepare its armed forces to overthrow the Taliban, which it believed was harboring al-Qaeda. The US offered Taliban leader Mullah Omar a chance to surrender bin Laden and his top associates. The first forces to be inserted into Afghanistan were paramilitary officers from the CIA's elite Special Activities Division (SAD).
The Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral country for trial if the US would provide evidence of bin Laden's complicity in the attacks. US President George W. Bush responded by saying: "We know he's guilty. Turn him over", and British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the Taliban regime: "Surrender bin Laden, or surrender power."
Soon thereafter the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan, and together with the Afghan Northern Alliance removed the Taliban government as part of the war in Afghanistan. As a result of the US special forces and air support for the Northern Alliance ground forces, a number of Taliban and al-Qaeda training camps were destroyed, and much of the operating structure of al-Qaeda is believed to have been disrupted. After being driven from their key positions in the Tora Bora area of Afghanistan, many al-Qaeda fighters tried to regroup in the rugged Gardez region of the nation.
left|thumb|upright|Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after his arrest in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in March 2003
By early 2002, al-Qaeda had been dealt a serious blow to its operational capacity, and the Afghan invasion appeared to be a success. Nevertheless, a significant Taliban insurgency remained in Afghanistan.
Debate continued regarding the nature of al-Qaeda's role in the 9/11 attacks. The US State Department released a videotape showing bin Laden speaking with a small group of associates somewhere in Afghanistan shortly before the Taliban was removed from power. Although its authenticity has been questioned by a couple of people, the tape definitively implicates bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the September 11 attacks. The tape was aired on many television channels, with an accompanying English translation provided by the US Defense Department.
In September 2004, the 9/11 Commission officially concluded that the attacks were conceived and implemented by al-Qaeda operatives. In October 2004, bin Laden appeared to claim responsibility for the attacks in a videotape released through Al Jazeera, saying he was inspired by Israeli attacks on high-rises in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon: "As I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children."
By the end of 2004, the US government proclaimed that two-thirds of the most senior al-Qaeda figures from 2001 had been captured and interrogated by the CIA: Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002; Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in 2003; and Saif al Islam el Masry in 2004. Mohammed Atef and several others were killed. The West was criticized for not being able to handle al-Qaeda despite a decade of the war.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Activities
|
Activities
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Africa
|
Africa
thumb|Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (formerly GSPC) area of operations
Al-Qaeda involvement in Africa has included a number of bombing attacks in North Africa, while supporting parties in civil wars in Eritrea and Somalia. From 1991 to 1996, bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were based in Sudan.
Islamist rebels in the Sahara calling themselves al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have stepped up their violence in recent years. French officials say the rebels have no real links to the al-Qaeda leadership, but this has been disputed. It seems likely that bin Laden approved the group's name in late 2006, and the rebels "took on the al Qaeda franchise label", almost a year before the violence began to escalate..
In Mali, the Ansar Dine faction was also reported as an ally of al-Qaeda in 2013.Baba Ahmed and Jamey Keaten, Associated Press (January 12, 2013) Hundreds of French troops drive back Mali rebels . USA Today. Retrieved August 4, 2013 The Ansar al Dine faction aligned themselves with the AQIM.Ansar al Dine. Google Books. Retrieved August 4, 2013
In 2011, al-Qaeda's North African wing condemned Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and declared support for the Anti-Gaddafi rebels.
Following the Libyan Civil War, the removal of Gaddafi and the ensuing period of post-civil war violence in Libya, various Islamist militant groups affiliated with al-Qaeda were able to expand their operations in the region. The 2012 Benghazi attack, which resulted in the death of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, is suspected of having been carried out by various Jihadist networks, such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar al-Sharia and several other al-Qaeda affiliated groups. The capture of Nazih Abdul-Hamed al-Ruqai, a senior al-Qaeda operative wanted by the United States for his involvement in the 1998 United States embassy bombings, on October 5, 2013, by US Navy Seals, FBI and CIA agents illustrates the importance the US and other Western allies have placed on North Africa.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Europe
|
Europe
Before the 9/11 attacks and the US invasion of Afghanistan, westerners who had been recruits at al-Qaeda training camps were sought after by al-Qaeda's military wing. Language skills and knowledge of Western culture were generally found among recruits from Europe, such was the case with Mohamed Atta, an Egyptian national studying in Germany at the time of his training, and other members of the Hamburg Cell. Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atef would later designate Atta as the ringleader of the 9/11 hijackers. Following the attacks, Western intelligence agencies determined that al-Qaeda cells operating in Europe had aided the hijackers with financing and communications with the central leadership based in Afghanistan.
In 2003, Islamists carried out a series of bombings in Istanbul killing fifty-seven people and injuring seven hundred. Seventy-four people were charged by the Turkish authorities. Some had previously met bin Laden, and though they specifically declined to pledge allegiance to al-Qaeda they asked for its blessing and help.
In 2009, three Londoners, Tanvir Hussain, Assad Sarwar and Ahmed Abdullah Ali, were convicted of conspiring to detonate bombs disguised as soft drinks on seven airplanes bound for Canada and the US. The MI5 investigation regarding the plot involved more than a year of surveillance work conducted by over two hundred officers. British and US officials said the plotunlike many similar homegrown European Islamic militant plotswas directly linked to al-Qaeda and guided by senior al-Qaeda members in Pakistan.
In 2012, Russian Intelligence indicated that al-Qaeda had given a call for "forest jihad" and has been starting massive forest fires as part of a strategy of "thousand cuts".
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Arab world
|
Arab world
thumb|USS Cole after the October 2000 attack
Following Yemeni unification in 1990, Wahhabi networks began moving missionaries into the country. Although it is unlikely bin Laden or Saudi al-Qaeda were directly involved, the personal connections they made would be established over the next decade and used in the USS Cole bombing.; cited in Concerns grew over al-Qaeda's group in Yemen."Yemen: The Next Front Line Against al Qaeda ". CBS News. October 30, 2010
In Iraq, al-Qaeda forces loosely associated with the leadership were embedded in the Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad group commanded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Specializing in suicide operations, they have been a "key driver" of the Sunni insurgency.. Although they played a small part in the overall insurgency, between 30% and 42% of all suicide bombings which took place in the early years were claimed by Zarqawi's group.See the works cited in Reports have indicated that oversights such as the failure to control access to the Qa'qaa munitions factory in Yusufiyah have allowed large quantities of munitions to fall into the hands of al-Qaida. In November 2010, the militant group Islamic State of Iraq, which is linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq, threatened to "exterminate all Iraqi Christians"."Iraqi Christians Mourn 58 Dead in Church Siege ". CBS News. November 1, 2010.
Al-Qaeda did not begin training Palestinians until the late 1990s.. Large groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have rejected an alliance with al-Qaeda, fearing that al-Qaeda will co-opt their cells. This may have changed recently. The Israeli security and intelligence services believe al-Qaeda has managed to infiltrate operatives from the Occupied Territories into Israel, and is waiting for an opportunity to attack.
, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are openly supporting the Army of Conquest,"Gulf allies and 'Army of Conquest' ". Al-Ahram Weekly. May 28, 2015."'Army of Conquest' rebel alliance pressures Syria regime ". Yahoo News. April 28, 2015. an umbrella rebel group fighting in the Syrian Civil War against the Syrian government that reportedly includes an al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front and another Salafi coalition known as Ahrar al-Sham.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Kashmir
|
Kashmir
Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri consider India to be a part of an alleged Crusader-Zionist-Hindu conspiracy against the Islamic world.Terrorism in India and the Global Jihad , Brookings Institution, November 30, 2008 According to a 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, bin Laden was involved in training militants for Jihad in Kashmir while living in Sudan in the early 1990s. By 2001, Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen had become a part of the al-Qaeda coalition.Al Qaeda: Profile and Threat Assessment , Congressional Research Service, February 10, 2005 According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), al-Qaeda was thought to have established bases in Pakistan administered Kashmir (in Azad Kashmir, and to some extent in Gilgit–Baltistan) during the 1999 Kargil War and continued to operate there with tacit approval of Pakistan's Intelligence services.
Many of the militants active in Kashmir were trained in the same madrasahs as Taliban and al-Qaeda. Fazlur Rehman Khalil of Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen was a signatory of al-Qaeda's 1998 declaration of Jihad against America and its allies.Kashmir Militant Extremists , Council on Foreign Relations, July 9, 2009 In a 'Letter to American People' (2002), bin Laden wrote that one of the reasons he was fighting America was because of its support to India on the Kashmir issue. In November 2001, Kathmandu airport went on high alert after threats that bin Laden planned to hijack a plane and crash it into a target in New Delhi. In 2002, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on a trip to Delhi, suggested that al-Qaeda was active in Kashmir though he did not have any evidence.Analysis: Is al-Qaeda in Kashmir?, BBC, June 13, 2002Rumsfeld offers US technology to guard Kashmir border, The Sydney Morning Herald, June 14, 2002 Rumsfeld proposed hi-tech ground sensors along the Line of Control to prevent militants from infiltrating into Indian-administered Kashmir.
An investigation in 2002 found evidence that al-Qaeda and its affiliates were prospering in Pakistan-administered Kashmir with tacit approval of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.Al Qaeda thriving in Pakistani Kashmir, The Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 2002 In 2002, a special team of Special Air Service and Delta Force was sent into Indian-administered Kashmir to hunt for bin Laden after receiving reports that he was being sheltered by Kashmiri militant group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, which had been responsible for kidnapping western tourists in Kashmir in 1995.SAS joins Kashmir hunt for bin Laden, The Telegraph, February 23, 2002 Britain's highest-ranking al-Qaeda operative Rangzieb Ahmed had previously fought in Kashmir with the group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and spent time in Indian prison after being captured in Kashmir.Al-Qaeda terror trial: Rangzieb Ahmed was highest ranking al-Qaeda operative in Britain, The Daily Telegraph. December 18, 2008
US officials believe al-Qaeda was helping organize attacks in Kashmir in order to provoke conflict between India and Pakistan.Bin Laden's finger on Kashmir trigger?, CNN, June 12, 2002 Their strategy was to force Pakistan to move its troops to the border with India, thereby relieving pressure on al-Qaeda elements hiding in northwestern Pakistan.Taliban, al-Qaeda linked to Kashmir, USA Today, May 29, 2002 In 2006 al-Qaeda claimed they had established a wing in Kashmir.Al Qaeda claim of Kashmir link worries India, The New York Times, 2006-07-13 However Indian Army General H. S. Panag argued that the army had ruled out the presence of al-Qaeda in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. Panag also said al-Qaeda had strong ties with Kashmiri militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed based in Pakistan.No Al Qaeda presence in Kashmir: Army, The Hindu, 2007-06-18 It has been noted that Waziristan has become a battlefield for Kashmiri militants fighting NATO in support of al-Qaeda and Taliban.Ilyas Kashmiri had planned to attack COAS, The News International, September 18, 2009 Waziristan new battlefield for Kashmiri militants , The News International, November 24, 2008Kashmiri militants move to Waziristan, open training camps The Indian Express, November 26, 2008 Dhiren Barot, who wrote the Army of Madinah in Kashmir and was an al-Qaeda operative convicted for involvement in the 2004 financial buildings plot, had received training in weapons and explosives at a militant training camp in Kashmir.How radical Islam turned a schoolboy into a terrorist, The Times, November 7, 2006
Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of Kashmiri group Jaish-e-Mohammed, is believed to have met bin Laden several times and received funding from him. In 2002, Jaish-e-Mohammed organized the kidnapping and murder of Daniel Pearl in an operation run in conjunction with al-Qaeda and funded by bin Laden.The Long Hunt for Osama, The Atlantic, October 2004 According to American counter-terrorism expert Bruce Riedel, al-Qaeda and Taliban were closely involved in the 1999 hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight 814 to Kandahar which led to the release of Maulana Masood Azhar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh from an Indian prison. This hijacking, Riedel said, was rightly described by then Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh as a 'dress rehearsal' for September 11 attacks. Bin Laden personally welcomed Azhar and threw a lavish party in his honor after his release.Al-Qaeda involved in Indian plane hijack plot, The Hindu, September 18, 2006Osama threw lavish party for Azhar after hijack, The Indian Express, September 18, 2006 Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who had been in prison for his role in the 1994 kidnappings of Western tourists in India, went on to murder Daniel Pearl and was sentenced to death in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda operative Rashid Rauf, who was one of the accused in 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot, was related to Maulana Masood Azhar by marriage.Rashid Rauf: profile of a terror mastermind, The Daily Telegraph, November 22, 2008
Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Kashmiri militant group which is thought to be behind 2008 Mumbai attacks, is also known to have strong ties to senior al-Qaeda leaders living in Pakistan.LeT, which is based at Muridke, near Lahore in Pakistan, has networks throughout India and its leadership has close links with core al-Qaeda figures living in Pakistan Focus on Westerners suggests al-Qaeda was pulling strings, The Times, November 28, 2008 In late 2002, top al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah was arrested while being sheltered by Lashkar-e-Taiba in a safe house in Faisalabad.Lashkar-e-Taiba Served as Gateway for Western Converts Turning to Jihad , The Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2008 The FBI believes al-Qaeda and Lashkar have been 'intertwined' for a long time while the CIA has said that al-Qaeda funds Lashkar-e-Taiba. Jean-Louis Bruguière told Reuters in 2009 that "Lashkar-e-Taiba is no longer a Pakistani movement with only a Kashmir political or military agenda. Lashkar-e-Taiba is a member of al-Qaeda."Interview – French magistrate details Lashkar's global role, Reuters, November 13, 2009
In a video released in 2008, American-born senior al-Qaeda operative Adam Yahiye Gadahn said that "victory in Kashmir has been delayed for years; it is the liberation of the jihad there from this interference which, Allah willing, will be the first step towards victory over the Hindu occupiers of that Islam land."'Azzam the American' releases video focusing on Pakistan, CNN, October 4, 2008
In September 2009, a US drone strike reportedly killed Ilyas Kashmiri who was the chief of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, a Kashmiri militant group associated with al-Qaeda. Kashmiri was described by Bruce Riedel as a 'prominent' al-Qaeda memberAl Qaeda's American Mole , Brookings Institution, December 15, 2009 while others have described him as head of military operations for al-Qaeda.Ilyas Kashmiri alive, lays out future terror strategy, Daily Times, October 15, 2009United States of America vs Tahawwur Hussain Rana, Chicago Tribune Kashmiri was also charged by the US in a plot against Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper which was at the center of Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy. US officials also believe that Kashmiri was involved in the Camp Chapman attack against the CIA.US seeks Harkat chief for Khost CIA attack, The News International, January 6, 2010 In January 2010, Indian authorities notified Britain of an al-Qaeda plot to hijack an Indian airlines or Air India plane and crash it into a British city. This information was uncovered from interrogation of Amjad Khwaja, an operative of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, who had been arrested in India.Indian hijack plot caused new UK terror alert, The Times, January 24, 2010
In January 2010, US Defense secretary Robert Gates, while on a visit to Pakistan, said that al-Qaeda was seeking to destabilize the region and planning to provoke a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Internet
|
Internet
Al-Qaeda and its successors have migrated online to escape detection in an atmosphere of increased international vigilance. The group's use of the Internet has grown more sophisticated, with online activities that include financing, recruitment, networking, mobilization, publicity, and information dissemination, gathering and sharing.
Abu Ayyub al-Masri's al-Qaeda movement in Iraq regularly releases short videos glorifying the activity of jihadist suicide bombers. In addition, both before and after the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (the former leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq), the umbrella organization to which al-Qaeda in Iraq belongs, the Mujahideen Shura Council, has a regular presence on the Web.
The range of multimedia content includes guerrilla training clips, stills of victims about to be murdered, testimonials of suicide bombers, and videos that show participation in jihad through stylized portraits of mosques and musical scores. A website associated with al-Qaeda posted a video of captured American entrepreneur Nick Berg being decapitated in Iraq. Other decapitation videos and pictures, including those of Paul Johnson, Kim Sun-il (posted on websites), and Daniel Pearl obtained by investigators, have taken place.
In December 2004 an audio message claiming to be from bin Laden was posted directly to a website, rather than sending a copy to al Jazeera as he had done in the past. Al-Qaeda turned to the Internet for release of its videos in order to be certain they would be available unedited, rather than risk the possibility of al Jazeera editing out anything critical of the Saudi royal family.
The US government charged a British information technology specialist, Babar Ahmad, with terrorist offences related to his operating a network of English-language al-Qaeda websites, such as Azzam.com. He was convicted and sentenced to years in prison.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Online communications
|
Online communications
In 2007, al-Qaeda released Mujahedeen Secrets, encryption software used for online and cellular communications. A later version, Mujahideen Secrets 2, was released in 2008.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Aviation network
|
Aviation network
Al-Qaeda is believed to be operating a clandestine aviation network including "several Boeing 727 aircraft", turboprops and executive jets, according to a 2010 Reuters story. Based on a US Department of Homeland Security report, the story said al-Qaeda is possibly using aircraft to transport drugs and weapons from South America to various unstable countries in West Africa. A Boeing 727 can carry up to ten tons of cargo. The drugs eventually are smuggled to Europe for distribution and sale, and the weapons are used in conflicts in Africa and possibly elsewhere. Gunmen with links to al-Qaeda have been increasingly kidnapping Europeans for ransom. The profits from the drug and weapon sales, and kidnappings can, in turn, fund more militant activities.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Involvement in military conflicts
|
Involvement in military conflicts
The following is a list of military conflicts in which al-Qaeda and its direct affiliates have taken part militarily.
Start of conflict End of conflict Conflict Continent Location Branches involved1991ongoingSomali Civil WarAfricaSomaliaAl-Shabaab19921996Civil war in Afghanistan (1992–1996)AsiaIslamic State of AfghanistanAl-Qaeda Central1992ongoingAl-Qaeda insurgency in YemenAsiaYemenAl-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula19962001Civil war in Afghanistan (1996–2001)AsiaIslamic Emirate of AfghanistanAl-Qaeda Central20012021War in Afghanistan (2001–2021)AsiaAfghanistanAl-Qaeda Central2002ongoingInsurgency in the Maghreb (2002–present)AfricaAlgeriaChadMaliMauritaniaMoroccoNigerTunisiaAl-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb20032011Iraq WarAsiaIraqAl-Qaeda in Iraq
Islamic State of Iraq2004ongoingWar in North-West PakistanAsiaPakistanAl-Qaeda Central20092017Insurgency in the North CaucasusAsiaRussiaCaucasus Emirate2011ongoingSyrian Civil WarAsiaSyriaal-Nusra Front2015ongoingSaudi Arabian-led intervention in YemenAsiaYemenAl-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Broader influence
|
Broader influence
Anders Behring Breivik, the perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, was inspired by al-Qaeda, calling it "the most successful revolutionary movement in the world." While admitting different aims, he sought to "create a European version of Al-Qaida."
The appropriate response to offshoots is a subject of debate. A journalist reported in 2012 that a senior US military planner had asked: "Should we resort to drones and Special Operations raids every time some group raises the black banner of al Qaeda? How long can we continue to chase offshoots of offshoots around the world?"
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Criticism
|
Criticism
According to CNN journalists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank, a number of "religious scholars, former fighters and militants" who previously supported Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) had turned against the al-Qaeda-supported Iraqi insurgency in 2008; due to ISI's indiscriminate attacks against civilians while targeting US-led coalition forces. American military analyst Bruce Riedel wrote in 2008 that "a wave of revulsion" arose against ISI, which enabled US-allied Sons of Iraq faction to turn various tribal leaders in the Anbar region against the Iraqi insurgency. In response, Bin Laden and Zawahiri issued public statements urging Muslims to rally behind ISI leadership and support the armed struggle against American forces.; . Quotes taken from and .
In November 2007, former Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) member Noman Benotman responded with a public, open letter of criticism to Ayman al-Zawahiri, after persuading the imprisoned senior leaders of his former group to enter into peace negotiations with the Libyan regime. While Ayman al-Zawahiri announced the affiliation of the group with al-Qaeda in November 2007, the Libyan government released 90 members of the group from prison several months after "they were said to have renounced violence."
In 2007, on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks, the Saudi sheikh Salman al-Ouda delivered a personal rebuke to bin Laden. Al-Ouda addressed al-Qaeda's leader on television asking him:
According to Pew polls, support for al-Qaeda had dropped in the Muslim world in the years before 2008. In Saudi Arabia, only ten percent had a favorable view of al-Qaeda, according to a December 2007 poll by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based think tank.
In 2007, the imprisoned Dr. Fadl, who was an influential Afghan Arab and former associate of Ayman al-Zawahiri, withdrew his support from al-Qaeda and criticized the organization in his book Wathiqat Tarshid Al-'Aml Al-Jihadi fi Misr w'Al-'Alam (). In response, Al-Zawahiri accused Dr. Fadl of promoting "an Islam without jihad" that aligns with Western interests and wrote a nearly two hundred pages long treatise, titled "The Exoneration" which appeared on the Internet in March 2008. In his treatise, Zawahiri justified military strikes against US targets as retaliatory attacks to defend Muslim community against American aggression.
In an online town hall forum conducted in December 2007, Zawahiri denied that al-Qaeda deliberately targeted innocents and accused the American coalition of killing innocent people.: 'In December, in order to stanch the flow of criticism, Zawahiri boldly initiated a virtual town-hall meeting... Zawahiri protested that Al Qaeda had not killed innocents. "In fact, we fight those who kill innocents. Those who kill innocents are the Americans... and their agents."' Although once associated with al-Qaeda, in September 2009 LIFG completed a new "code" for jihad, a 417-page religious document entitled "Corrective Studies". Given its credibility and the fact that several other prominent Jihadists in the Middle East have turned against al-Qaeda, the LIFG's reversal may be an important step toward staunching al-Qaeda's recruitment."New jihad code threatens al Qaeda", Nic Robertson and Paul Cruickshank, CNN, November 10, 2009
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Other criticisms
|
Other criticisms
Bilal Abdul Kareem, an American journalist based in Syria created a documentary about al-Shabab, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Somalia. The documentary included interviews with former members of the group who stated their reasons for leaving al-Shabab. The members made accusations of segregation, lack of religious awareness and internal corruption and favoritism. In response to Kareem, the Global Islamic Media Front condemned Kareem, called him a liar, and denied the accusations from the former fighters.
In mid-2014 after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant declared that they had restored the Caliphate, an audio statement was released by the then-spokesman of the group Abu Muhammad al-Adnani claiming that "the legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organizations, becomes null by the expansion of the Caliphate's authority." The speech included a religious refutation of al-Qaeda for being too lenient regarding Shiites and their refusal to recognize the authority Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, al-Adnani specifically noting: "It is not suitable for a state to give allegiance to an organization." He also recalled a past instance in which Osama bin Laden called on al-Qaeda members and supporters to give allegiance to Abu Omar al-Baghdadi when the group was still solely operating in Iraq, as the Islamic State of Iraq, and condemned Ayman al-Zawahiri for not making this same claim for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Zawahiri was encouraging factionalism and division between former allies of ISIL such as the al-Nusra Front.
|
Al-Qaeda
|
See also
|
See also
Al-Qaeda involvement in Asia
Al Qaeda Network Exord
Allegations of support system in Pakistan for Osama bin Laden
Belligerents in the Syrian civil war
Bin Laden Issue Station (former CIA unit for tracking bin Laden)
Steven Emerson
Fatawā of Osama bin Laden
International propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism (by region)
Iran – Alleged Al-Qaeda ties
Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition
Operation Cannonball
Psychological warfare
Religious terrorism
Takfir wal-Hijra
Videos and audio recordings of Osama bin Laden
Violent extremism
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Publications
|
Publications
Al Qaeda Handbook
Management of Savagery
|
Al-Qaeda
|
References
|
References
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Sources
|
Sources
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Bibliography
|
Bibliography
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Reviews
|
Reviews
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Government reports
|
Government reports
Alt URL
|
Al-Qaeda
|
External links
|
External links
Al-Qaeda in Oxford Islamic Studies Online
Al-Qaeda, Counter Extremism Project profile
17 de-classified documents captured during the Abbottabad raid and released to the Combating Terrorism Center
Media
Peter Taylor. (2007). "War on the West". Age of Terror, No. 4, series 1. BBC.
Investigating Al-Qaeda, BBC News
"Al Qaeda's New Front" from PBS Frontline, January 2005
Category:Anti-Americanism
Category:Anti-Christian sentiment
Category:Anti-communist terrorism
Category:Anti-Hindu sentiment
Category:Anti-Israeli sentiment
Category:Antisemitism in Pakistan
Category:Antisemitism in the Middle East
Category:Anti-Shi'ism
Category:Anti-Zionist organizations
Category:Islam and antisemitism
Category:Islamic fundamentalism in the United States
Category:Islamic fundamentalism
Category:Islam-related controversies
Category:Organizations based in Asia designated as terrorist
Category:Organisations designated as terrorist by Australia
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Bahrain
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Canada
Category:Organisations designated as terrorist by India
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by China
Category:Organisations designated as terrorist by Iran
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Israel
Category:Organisations designated as terrorist by Japan
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Kyrgyzstan
Category:Organisations designated as terrorist by Pakistan
Category:Organisations designated as terrorist by the United Kingdom
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Malaysia
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Paraguay
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Russia
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Saudi Arabia
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by Turkey
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by the United Arab Emirates
Category:Organizations designated as terrorist by the United States
Category:Organizations established in 1988
Category:Islamic organizations that oppose LGBTQ rights
Category:Pan-Islamism
Al-Qaeda
Category:Jihadist groups
Category:Sunni Jihadist organizations
Category:Sunni Islamist groups
Category:Qutbist organisations
Category:Violence against LGBTQ people in Asia
Category:Violence against Shia Muslims
|
Al-Qaeda
|
Table of Content
|
Short description, Organization, Affiliates, Leadership, Osama bin Laden (1988 – May 2011), After May 2011, After Al-Zawahiri (2022 – present), Command structure, Field operatives, Insurgent forces, Financing, Allegations of Qatari support, Strategy, Name, Ideology, Formation, Objectives, Theory of Islamic State, Grievances, Religious compatibility, Attacks on civilians, History, Attacks, 1991, 1992, Late 1990s, September 11 attacks, Designation as a terrorist group, War on terror, Activities, Africa, Europe, Arab world, Kashmir, Internet, Online communications, Aviation network, Involvement in military conflicts, Broader influence, Criticism, Other criticisms, See also, Publications, References, Sources, Bibliography, Reviews, Government reports, External links
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Short description
|
Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (, ; ; 18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian chemist and physicist who was a pioneer of electricity and power, and is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. He invented the voltaic pile in 1799, and reported the results of his experiments in a two-part letter to the president of the Royal Society, which was published in 1800. With this invention, Volta proved that electricity could be generated chemically and debunked the prevalent theory that electricity was generated solely by living beings. Volta's invention sparked a great amount of scientific excitement and led others to conduct similar experiments, which eventually led to the development of the field of electrochemistry.
Volta drew admiration from Napoleon Bonaparte for his invention, and was invited to the Institute of France to demonstrate his invention to the members of the institute. Throughout his life, Volta enjoyed a certain amount of closeness with the emperor who conferred upon him numerous honours. Volta held the chair of experimental physics at the University of Pavia for nearly 40 years and was widely idolised by his students. Despite his professional success, Volta was inclined towards domestic life and this was more apparent in his later years when he tended to live secluded from public life and more for the sake of his family. He died in 1827 from a series of illnesses which began in 1823. The SI unit of electric potential is named the volt in his honour.
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Early life and marriage
|
Early life and marriage
Volta was born in Como, a town in northern Italy, on 18 February 1745. His father, Filippo Volta, was of noble lineage. His mother, Donna Maddalena, came from the family of the Inzaghis. In 1794, Volta married an aristocratic lady also from Como, Teresa Peregrini, with whom he raised three sons: Zanino, Flaminio, and Luigi.
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Career
|
Career
In 1774, he became a professor of physics at the Royal School in Como. A year later, he improved and popularised the electrophorus, a device that produced static electricity. His promotion of it was so extensive that he is often credited with its invention, even though a machine operating on the same principle was described in 1762 by the Swedish experimenter Johan Wilcke. In 1777, he travelled through Switzerland, where he befriended H. B. de Saussure.
In the years between 1776 and 1778, Volta studied the chemistry of gases. He researched and discovered methane after reading a paper by Benjamin Franklin of the United States on "flammable air". In November 1776, he found methane in the marshes of Angera on Lake Maggiore, and by 1778 he managed to isolate it. He devised experiments such as the ignition of methane by an electric spark in a closed vessel.
Volta also studied what we now call electrical capacitance, developing separate means to study both electrical potential difference (V) and charge (Q), and discovering that for a given object, they are proportional. This is called Volta's Law of Capacitance, and for this work, the unit of electrical potential has been named the volt.
In 1779, he became a professor of experimental physics at the University of Pavia, a chair that he occupied for almost 40 years. Volta's lectures were so crowded with students that the subsequent emperor Joseph II ordered the construction (based on a project by Leopold Pollack) of a new "physical theatre", today the "Aula Volta". Furthermore, the emperor granted Volta substantial funding to equip the physics cabinet with instruments, purchased by Volta in England and France. At the University History Museum of the University of Pavia there are 150 of them, used by Alessandro Volta.
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Volta and Galvani
|
Volta and Galvani
thumb|Volta battery at the Tempio Voltiano museum, Como
Luigi Galvani, an Italian physicist, discovered something he named "animal electricity" when two different metals were connected in series with a frog's leg and to one another. Volta realised that the frog's leg served as both a conductor of electricity (what we would now call an electrolyte) and as a detector of electricity. He also understood that the frog's legs were irrelevant to the electric current, which was caused by the two differing metals. He replaced the frog's leg with brine-soaked paper and detected the flow of electricity by other means familiar to him from his previous studies. In this way, he discovered the electrochemical series, and the law that the electromotive force (emf) of a galvanic cell, consisting of a pair of metal electrodes separated by electrolyte, is the difference between their two electrode potentials (thus, two identical electrodes and a common electrolyte give zero net emf). This may be called Volta's Law of the electrochemical series.
In 1800, as the result of a professional disagreement over the galvanic response advocated by Galvani, Volta invented the voltaic pile, an early electric battery, which produced a steady electric current. Volta had determined that the most effective pair of dissimilar metals to produce electricity was zinc and copper. Initially, he experimented with individual cells in series, each cell being a wine goblet filled with brine into which the two dissimilar electrodes were dipped. The voltaic pile replaced the goblets with cardboard soaked in brine.
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Early battery
|
Early battery
thumb|A voltaic pile
In announcing his invention of the voltaic pile, Volta paid tribute to the influences of William Nicholson, Tiberius Cavallo, and Abraham Bennet.
The battery made by Volta is credited as one of the first electrochemical cells. It consists of two electrodes: one made of zinc, the other of copper. The electrolyte is either sulfuric acid mixed with water or a form of saltwater brine. The electrolyte exists in the form and . Zinc metal, which is higher in the electrochemical series than both copper and hydrogen, is oxidized to zinc cations (Zn2+) and creates electrons that move to the copper electrode. The positively charged hydrogen ions (protons) capture electrons from the copper electrode, forming bubbles of hydrogen gas, H2. This makes the zinc rod the negative electrode and the copper rod the positive electrode. Thus, there are two terminals, and an electric current will flow if they are connected. The chemical reactions in this voltaic cell are as follows:
Zinc:
Sulfuric acid:
Copper metal does not react, but rather it functions as a catalyst for the hydrogen-gas formation and an electrode for the electric current. The sulfate anion () does not undergo any chemical reaction either, but migrates to the zinc anode to compensate for the charge of the zinc cations formed there. However, this cell also has some disadvantages. It is unsafe to handle, since sulfuric acid, even if diluted, can be hazardous. Also, the power of the cell diminishes over time because the hydrogen gas is not released. Instead, it accumulates on the surface of the copper electrode and forms a barrier between the metal and the electrolyte solution.
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Last years and retirement
|
Last years and retirement
thumb|Volta explains the principle of the "electric column" to Napoleon in 1801.
In 1809, Volta became an associated member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands. In honour of his work, Volta was made a count by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1810.
Volta retired in 1819 to his estate in Camnago, a of Como, Italy, now named "Camnago Volta" in his honour. He died there on 5 March 1827, just after his 82nd birthday. Volta's remains were buried in Camnago Volta.
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Legacy
|
Legacy
Volta's legacy is celebrated by the Tempio Voltiano memorial located in the public gardens by the lake. There is also a museum that was built in his honour, which exhibits some of the equipment that Volta used to conduct experiments. Nearby stands the Villa Olmo, which houses the Voltian Foundation, an organization promoting scientific activities. Volta carried out his experimental studies and produced his first inventions near Como. left|thumb|Leopoldo Pollack, Aula Volta, 1787, Old Campus of the University of Pavia
In the Old Campus of the University of Pavia, there is the classroom (Aula Volta) commissioned by Emperor Joseph II to Leopoldo Pollack in 1787 for the lectures of Alessandro Volta, while in the University History Museum there are many scientific instruments that belonged to Volta.
In 1927, an international physics conference, the Como Conference was held at Lake Como for the 100th anniversary of his death.
His image was depicted on the Italian Lire 10,000 note (1990–1997) along with a sketch of his voltaic pile.
In late 2017, Nvidia announced a new workstation-focused GPU microarchitecture called Volta.
The electric eel species Electrophorus voltai, described in 2019 as the strongest bioelectricity producer in nature, was named after Volta.
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Religious beliefs
|
Religious beliefs
Volta was raised as a Catholic and for all of his life continued to maintain his belief. Because he was not ordained a clergyman as his family expected, he was sometimes accused of being irreligious and some people have speculated about his possible unbelief, stressing that "he did not join the Church", or that he virtually "ignored the church's call". Nevertheless, he cast out doubts in a declaration of faith in which he said:
thumb|The chair and the blackboard of Alessandro Volta, University History Museum of the University of Pavia
I do not understand how anyone can doubt the sincerity and constancy of my attachment to the religion which I profess, the Roman, Catholic and Apostolic religion in which I was born and brought up, and of which I have always made confession, externally and internally. I have, indeed, and only too often, failed in the performance of those good works which are the mark of a Catholic Christian, and I have been guilty of many sins: but through the special mercy of God I have never, as far as I know, wavered in my faith... In this faith I recognise a pure gift of God, a supernatural grace; but I have not neglected those human means which confirm belief, and overthrow the doubts which at times arise. I studied attentively the grounds and basis of religion, the works of apologists and assailants, the reasons for and against, and I can say that the result of such study is to clothe religion with such a degree of probability, even for the merely natural reason, that every spirit unperverted by sin and passion, every naturally noble spirit must love and accept it. May this confession which has been asked from me and which I willingly give, written and subscribed by my own hand, with authority to show it to whomsoever you will, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel, may it produce some good fruit!
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Publications
|
Publications
thumb|150 px|Front page of De vi attractiva ignis electrici
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Lesser known collections
|
Lesser known collections
Briefe über thierische elektricität (1900) (Letters about thieric electricity, Available through Worldcat.org libraries, Leipzig, W. Engelmann, publisher)
Untersuchungen über den Galvanismus, 1796 bis 1800 (Studies on Galvanism, Available through Worldcat.org libraries)
Del modo di render sensibilissima la più debole elettricità sia naturale, sia artificiale (Of the method of rendering very sensible the weakest natural or artificial electricity By Alexander Volta, Professor Of Experimental Philosophy In Como, &c. Read at the Royal Society, 14 March 1782, Held in WorldCat libraries)
|
Alessandro Volta
|
See also
|
See also
Armstrong effect
Electrophorus
History of the battery
History of the internal combustion engine
Lemon battery
Mercury beating heart
Thermoelectric effect
Volta (lunar crater)
Volta Prize
|
Alessandro Volta
|
References
|
References
|
Alessandro Volta
|
External links
|
External links
Volta and the "Pile"
Alessandro Volta
Count Alessandro Volta
Electrical units history.
Life of Alessandro Volta: Biography; Inventions; Facts
Alessandro Volta | Biography, Facts, Battery, & Invention | Britannica
Category:1745 births
Category:1827 deaths
Category:People from Como
Category:19th-century Italian physicists
Category:Battery inventors
Category:Enlightenment scientists
Category:Fellows of the Royal Society
Category:Independent scientists
Category:History of neuroscience
Category:18th-century Italian inventors
Category:18th-century Italian physicists
Category:Italian Roman Catholics
Category:Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Category:People associated with electricity
Category:Recipients of the Copley Medal
Category:Italian scientific instrument makers
Category:Academic staff of the University of Pavia
|
Alessandro Volta
|
Table of Content
|
Short description, Early life and marriage, Career, Volta and Galvani, Early battery, Last years and retirement, Legacy, Religious beliefs, Publications, Lesser known collections, See also, References, External links
|
Argo Navis
|
For
|
thumb|upright=1.4|The constellation Argo Navis as shown by Johannes Hevelius
thumb|The ship in animated dark-to-lighter-to-dark sky and then illustrated with a stick-figure drawing
Argo Navis (the Ship Argo), or simply Argo, is one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations, now a grouping of three IAU constellations. It is formerly a single large constellation in the southern sky. The genitive is "Argus Navis", abbreviated "Arg". John Flamsteed and other early modern astronomers called it Navis (the Ship), genitive "Navis", abbreviated "Nav".
The constellation proved to be of unwieldy size, as it was 28% larger than the next largest constellation and had more than 160 easily visible stars. The 1755 catalogue of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille divided it into the three modern constellations that occupy much of the same area: Carina (the keel), Puppis (the poop deck or stern), and Vela (the sails).
Argo derived from the ship Argo in Greek mythology, sailed by Jason and the Argonauts to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. Some stars of Puppis and Vela can be seen from Mediterranean latitudes in winter and spring, the ship appearing to skim along the "river of the Milky Way." The precession of the equinoxes has caused the position of the stars from Earth's viewpoint to shift southward. Though most of the constellation was visible in Classical times, the constellation is now not easily visible from most of the northern hemisphere. All the stars of Argo Navis are easily visible from the tropics southward and pass near zenith from southern temperate latitudes. The brightest of these is Canopus (α Carinae), the second-brightest night-time star, now assigned to Carina.
|
Argo Navis
|
History
|
History
|
Argo Navis
|
Development of the Greek constellation
|
Development of the Greek constellation
Argo Navis is known from Greek texts, which derived it from Egypt around 1000 BC. Plutarch attributed it to the Egyptian "Boat of Osiris." Some academics theorized a Sumerian origin related to the Epic of Gilgamesh, a hypothesis rejected for lack of evidence that Mesopotamian cultures considered these stars, or any portion of them, to form a boat.
Over time, Argo became identified exclusively with ancient Greek myth of Jason and the Argonauts. In Ptolemy's Almagest, Argo Navis occupies the portion of the Milky Way between Canis Major and Centaurus, with stars marking such details as the "little shield", the "steering-oar", the "mast-holder", and the "stern-ornament", which continued to be reflected in cartographic representations in celestial atlases into the nineteenth century (see below). The ship appeared to rotate about the pole sternwards, so nautically in reverse. Aratus, the Greek poet / historian living in the third century BCE, noted this backward progression writing, "Argo by the Great Dog's [Canis Major's] tail is drawn; for hers is not a usual course, but backward turned she comes ...".
|
Argo Navis
|
The constituent modern constellations
|
The constituent modern constellations
In modern times, Argo Navis was considered unwieldy due to its enormous size (28% larger than Hydra, the largest modern constellation). In his 1763 star catalogue, Nicolas Louis de Lacaille explained that there were more than a hundred and sixty stars clearly visible to the naked eye in Navis. So he used the set of lowercase and uppercase Latin letters three times on portions of the constellation referred to as "Argûs in carina" (Carina, the keel), "Argûs in puppi" (Puppis, the poop deck or stern), and "Argûs in velis" (Vela, the sails). Lacaille replaced Bayer's designations with new ones that followed stellar magnitudes more closely, but used only a single Greek-letter sequence and described the constellation for those stars as "Argûs". Similarly, faint unlettered stars were listed only as in "Argûs".
The final breakup and abolition of Argo Navis was proposed by Sir John Herschel in 1841 and again in 1844. Despite this, the constellation remained in use in parallel with its constituent parts into the 20th century. In 1922, along with the other constellations, it received a three-letter abbreviation: Arg. The breakup and relegation to a former constellation occurred in 1930 when the IAU defined the 88 modern constellations, formally instituting Carina, Puppis, and Vela, and declaring Argo obsolete. Lacaille's designations were kept in the offspring, so Carina has α, β, and ε; Vela has γ and δ; Puppis has ζ; and so on. As a result of this breakup, Argo Navis is the only one of Ptolemy's 48 constellations that is no longer officially recognized as a single constellation.
In addition, the constellation Pyxis (the mariner's compass) occupies an area near what in antiquity was considered part of Argo's mast. Some recent authors state that the compass was part of the ship, but magnetic compasses were unknown in ancient Greek times. Lacaille considered it a separate constellation representing a modern scientific instrument (like Microscopium and Telescopium), that he created for maps of the stars of the southern hemisphere. Pyxis was listed among his 14 new constellations. In 1844, John Herschel suggested formalizing the mast as a new constellation, Malus, to replace Lacaille's Pyxis, but the idea did not catch on. Similarly, an effort by Edmond Halley to detach the "cloud of mist" at the prow of Argo Navis to form a new constellation named Robur Carolinum (Charles' Oak) in honor of King Charles II, his patron, was unsuccessful.
|
Argo Navis
|
Representations in other cultures
|
Representations in other cultures
In Vedic period astronomy, which drew its zodiac signs and many constellations from the period of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, Indian observers saw the asterism as a boat.
The Māori had several names for the constellation, including Te Waka-o-Tamarereti (the canoe of Tamarereti), Te Kohi-a-Autahi (an expression meaning "cold of autumn settling down on land and water"), and Te Kohi.
|
Argo Navis
|
See also
|
See also
Asterism (astronomy)
List of stars in Argo Navis
|
Argo Navis
|
Footnotes
|
Footnotes
|
Argo Navis
|
References
|
References
|
Argo Navis
|
External links
|
External links
Starry Night Photography : Argo Navis Image
Ian Ridpath's Star Tales – Argo Navis
Warburg Institute Iconographic Database – Argo (Navis) (medieval and early modern images of Argo Navis)
|
Argo Navis
|
Table of Content
|
For, History, Development of the Greek constellation, The constituent modern constellations, Representations in other cultures, See also, Footnotes, References, External links
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
Short description
|
In Greek mythology, Andromeda (; or ) is the daughter of Cepheus, the king of Aethiopia, and his wife, Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia boasts that she (or Andromeda) is more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon sends the sea monster Cetus to ravage the coast of Aethiopia as divine punishment. Queen Cassiopeia understands that chaining Andromeda to a rock as a human sacrifice is what will appease Poseidon. Perseus finds her as he is coming back from his quest to decapitate Medusa, and brings her back to Greece to marry her and let her reign as his queen. With the head of Medusa, Perseus petrifies Cetus to stop it from terrorizing the coast any longer.
As a subject, Andromeda has been popular in art since classical antiquity; rescued by a Greek hero, Andromeda's narration is considered the forerunner to the "princess and dragon" motif. From the Renaissance, interest revived in the original story, typically as derived from Ovid's Metamorphoses. The story has appeared many times in such diverse media as plays, poetry, novels, operas, classical and popular music, film, and paintings. A significant part of the northern sky contains several constellations named after the story's figures; in particular, the constellation Andromeda is named after her.
The Andromeda tradition, from classical antiquity onwards, has incorporated elements of other stories, including Saint George and the Dragon, introducing a horse for the hero, and the tale of Pegasus, Bellerophon's winged horse. Ludovico Ariosto's epic poem , which tells a similar story, has introduced further confusion. Patricia Yaker Ekall has critized the tradition of depicting the princess of Aethiopia as a white; noting few artists have chosen to portray her as dark-skinned, despite Ovid's account of her. Others have stated that Perseus's liberation of Andromeda was a popular choice of subject among male artists, reinforcing a narrative of male superiority with its powerful male hero and its endangered female in bondage.
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
Etymology
|
Etymology
The name is Greek (), perhaps meaning 'mindful of her husband': from the noun 'man'; and either the verb 'to be mindful of', from , 'to protect, rule over', or the verb 'to deliberate, contrive, decide'. These verbs are related to 'plans, cunning', the likely origin of the name of Medea, the sorceress.
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
Classical mythology
|
Classical mythology
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
Central story
|
Central story
In Greek mythology, Andromeda is the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, king and queen of the kingdom of Aethiopia. Her mother Cassiopeia foolishly boasts that she is more beautiful than the Nereids,Both Catasterismi 16 (Hard 2015, p. 19) and De astronomia 2.10 cite Sophocles' lost play Andromeda as their source for this. According to Hyginus, Fabulae 64 Cassiopeia boasts of her daughter Andromeda's beauty rather than of her own. a display of hubris by a human that is unacceptable to the gods. To punish the queen for her arrogance, Poseidon floods the kingdom's coast and sends a sea monster named Cetus to ravage its inhabitants. In desperation, King Cepheus consults the oracle of Ammon, who announces that no respite can be found until the king sacrifices his daughter, Andromeda, to the monster. She is thus stripped naked and chained to a rock in Jaffa by the sea to await her death. Perseus is just then flying near the coast of Aethiopia on his winged sandals or on Pegasus the winged horse, having slain the Gorgon Medusa and carrying her severed head, which instantly petrifies any who look at it. Upon seeing Andromeda bound to the rock, Perseus falls in love with her, and he secures Cepheus's promise of her hand in marriage if he can save her. Perseus kills the monster with the Medusa's head, saving Andromeda. Preparations are then made for their marriage, in spite of her having been previously promised to her uncle, Phineus. At the wedding, a quarrel between the rivals ends when Perseus shows Medusa's head to Phineus and his allies, turning them to stone.Hard 2004, pp. 240, 242; Apollodorus, Library 2.4.3; Ovid, Metamorphoses 4.663–5.235; Marcus Manilius, Astronomica, 5.538–618 (pp. 344–51).
Andromeda follows her husband to his native island of Seriphos, where he rescues his mother, Danaë from her unwanted wedding to the King of that island.Hard 2004, p. 242; Apollodorus, Library, 2.4.3. They next go to Argos, where Perseus is the rightful heir to the throne. However, after accidentally killing his grandfather Acrisius, the king of Argos, Perseus chooses to become king of neighboring Tiryns instead.Apollodorus, Library, 2.4.4. The mythographer Apollodorus states that Perseus and Andromeda have six sons: Perses, Alcaeus, Heleus, Mestor, Sthenelus, Electryon, and a daughter, Gorgophone. Their descendants rule Mycenae from Electryon down to Eurystheus, after whom Atreus attains the kingdom. The Greek hero Heracles is also a descendant, as his mother Alcmene is the daughter of Electryon.Hard 2004, p. 243–244; Apollodorus, Library, 2.4.5. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women (fr. 241 Most, pp. 346–349) likely listed their children as Alcaeus, Sthenelus and Electryon (Hard 2004, p. 634 n. 113 to p. 243), while Herodorus (FGrHist 31 F15) adds Mestor to these three.
According to the Catasterismi, Andromeda is placed in the sky by Athena as the constellation Andromeda, in a pose with her limbs outstretched, similar to when she was chained to the rock, in commemoration of Perseus' bravery in fighting the sea monster.Smith, s.v. Andromeda; Catasterismi 17 (Hard 2015, p. 18); see also Hyginus, De astronomia 2.11.1. The Catasterismi cites Euripides' lost play Andromeda as the source of this account.
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In classical art
|
In classical art
The myth of Andromeda was represented in the art of ancient Greece and of Rome in media including red-figure pottery such as pelike jars, frescoes, and mosaics. Depictions range from straightforward representations of scenes from the myth, such as of Andromeda being tied up for sacrifice, to more ambiguous portrayals with different events depicted in the same painting, as at the Roman villa in Boscotrecase, where Perseus is shown twice, space standing in for time. Favoured scenes changed with time: until the 4th century BC, Perseus was shown decapitating Medusa, while after that, and in Roman portrayals, he was shown rescuing Andromeda.
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
Variants
|
Variants
There are several variants of the legend. In Hyginus's account, Perseus does not ask for Andromeda's hand in marriage before saving her, and when he afterwards intends to keep her for his wife, both her father Cepheus and her uncle Phineas plot against him, and Perseus resorts to using Medusa's head to turn them to stone.Hyginus, Fabulae, 64. In contrast, Ovid states that Perseus kills Cetus with his magical sword, even though he also carries Medusa's head, which could easily turn the monster to stone (and Perseus does use Medusa's head for this purpose in other situations). The earliest straightforward account of Perseus using Medusa's head against Cetus, however, is from the later 2nd-century AD satirist Lucian.Lucian, The Hall 22 (pp. 200, 201).
The 12th-century Byzantine writer John Tzetzes says that Cetus swallows Perseus, who kills the monster by hacking his way out with his sword.Tzetzes on Lycophron, 836 (pp. 820–1). Conon places the story in Joppa (Iope or Jaffa, on the coast of modern Israel), and makes Andromeda's uncles Phineus and Phoinix rivals for her hand in marriage; her father Cepheus contrives to have Phoinix abduct her in a ship named Cetos from a small island she visits to make sacrifices to Aphrodite, and Perseus, sailing nearby, intercepts and destroys Cetos and its crew, who are "petrified by shock" at his bravery.Conon, Narrations, 40 (Trzaskoma, Smith and Brunet, p. 88).
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
Constellations
|
Constellations
thumb|upright|The constellation Andromeda as depicted in Urania's Mirror by Sidney Hall,
Andromeda is represented in the Northern sky by the constellation Andromeda, mentioned by the astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century, which contains the Andromeda Galaxy. Several constellations are associated with the myth. Viewing the fainter stars visible to the naked eye, the constellations are rendered as a maiden (Andromeda) chained up, facing or turning away from the ecliptic; a warrior (Perseus), often depicted holding the head of Medusa, next to Andromeda; a huge man (Cepheus) wearing a crown, upside down with respect to the ecliptic; a smaller figure (Cassiopeia) next to the man, sitting on a chair; a whale or sea monster (Cetus) just beyond Pisces, to the south-east; the flying horse Pegasus, who was born from the stump of Medusa's neck after Perseus had decapitated her; the paired fish of the constellation Pisces, that in myth were caught by Dictys the fisherman who was brother of Polydectes, king of Seriphos, the place where Perseus and his mother Danaë were stranded.
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In literature
|
In literature
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In poetry
|
In poetry
George Chapman's poem in heroic couplets Andromeda liberata, Or the nuptials of Perseus and Andromeda, was written for the 1614 wedding of Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset and Frances Howard. The wedding, which led to a "train of intrigue and murder and executions, was the scandal of the age." Scholars have been surprised that Chapman should have celebrated such a marriage, and his choice of an allegory of the Perseus-Andromeda myth for the purpose. The poem infuriated both Carr and the Earl of Essex, causing Chapman to publish a "justification" of his approach. Chapman's poem sees human nature as chaotic and disorderly, like the sea monster, opposed by Andromeda's beauty and Perseus's balanced nature; their union brings about an astrological harmony of Venus and Mars which perfects the character of Perseus, since Venus was thought always to dominate Mars. Unfortunately for Chapman, Essex supposed that he was represented by the "barraine rocke" that Andromeda was chained up to: Howard had divorced Essex on the grounds that he could not consummate their marriage, and she had married Carr with her hair untied, indicating that she was a virgin. Further, the poem could be read as having dangerous political implications, involving King James.
Ludovico Ariosto's influential epic poem (1516–1532) features a pagan princess named Angelica who at one point is in exactly the same situation as Andromeda, chained naked to a rock on the sea as a sacrifice to a sea monster, and is saved at the last minute by the Saracen knight Ruggiero. Images of Angelica and Ruggiero are often hard to distinguish from those of Andromeda and Perseus.
John Keats's 1819 sonnet On the Sonnet compares the restricted sonnet form to the bound Andromeda as being "Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness". William Morris retells the story of Perseus and Andromeda in his epic 1868 poem The Earthly Paradise, in the section April: The Doom of King Acrisius. Gerard Manley Hopkins's sonnet AndromedaHopkins, Gerard Manley (1879) Andromeda (1879) has invited many interpretations.Mariani, Paul L. "Hopkins' "Andromeda" and the New Aestheticism," Victorian Poetry, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring, 1973), pp. 39-54 Charles Kingsley's hexameter poem retelling the myth, Andromeda (1858), was set to music by Cyril Rootham in his Andromeda (1905).
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In novels
|
In novels
In the 1851 novel Moby-Dick, Herman Melville's narrator Ishmael discusses the Perseus and Andromeda myth in two chapters. Chapter 55, "Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales," mentions depictions of Perseus rescuing Andromeda from Cetus in artwork by Guido Reni and William Hogarth. In Chapter 82, "The Honor and Glory of Whaling," Ishmael recounts the myth and says that the Romans found a giant whale skeleton in Joppa that they believed to be the skeleton of Cetus. Jules Laforgue included what Knutson calls "a remarkable satirical adaptation", , in his 1887 . All the traditional elements are present, along with elements of fantasy and lyricism, but only to allow Laforgue to parody them. The romance, crime, and thriller writer Carlton Dawe's 1909 novel The New Andromeda (published in America as The Woman, the Man, and the Monster) offers what was called at the time a "wholly unconventional" retelling of the Andromeda story in a modern setting. Robert Nichols's 1923 short story Perseus and Andromeda satirically retells the story in contrasting styles.Nichols, Robert. "Perseus and Andromeda", Fantastica: being the smile of the Sphinx and other tales of imagination, Macmillan, 1923. The variant tales are on pages 75ff, 87ff, and 95ff respectively. In her 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea, Iris Murdoch uses the Andromeda myth, as presented in a reproduction of Titian's painting Perseus and Andromeda in the Wallace Collection in London, to reflect the character and motives of her characters. Charles has an LSD-fuelled vision of a serpent; when he returns to London, he becomes ill on seeing Titian's painting, whereupon his cousin James comes to his rescue.
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In the performing arts
|
In the performing arts
+ Timeline of Andromeda's appearance in different art forms Period Story Visual arts Theatre Opera Poetry Film Classical antiquity Greek and Roman mythology; Ovid and others; myths of Heracles and Hesione; Jason and Medea; Cadmus and Harmonia; Theseus and Ariadne Painted vases, frescoes, mosaics Sophocles, Euripides (both lost); Aristophanes (parody) Middle Ages Saint George and the Dragon Paolo Uccello 16th century Piero di Cosimo; Titian 17th century Giuseppe Cesari; Peter Paul Rubens; Rembrandt Lope de Vega; Pierre Corneille verse play; Pedro Calderón de la Barca Claudio Monteverdi; Benedetto Ferrari 1st opera open to public; Jean-Baptiste Lully Ludovico Ariosto 18th century François Boucher 17 Andromeda operas in Italy George Chapman allegory for a society wedding 19th century Herman Melville Moby-Dick (chs 55, 82); Jules Laforgue satirical Frederic, Lord Leighton; Edward Poynter; Gustave Doré John Keats On the Sonnet; Gerard Manley Hopkins sonnet; Charles Kingsley free verse 20th–21st centuries Iris Murdoch The Sea, The Sea Félix Vallotton satirical; Alexander Liberman non-figurative Clash of the Titans 1981, its 2010 remake, and the 2012 Wrath of the Titans
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In theatre
|
In theatre
The theme, well suited to the stage, was introduced to theatre by Sophocles in his lost tragedy Andromeda (5th century BC), which survives only in fragments. Euripides took up the theme in his play of the same name (412 BC), also now lost, but parodied by Aristophanes in his comedy (411 BC) and influential in the ancient world. In the parody, Mnesilochus is shaved and dressed as a woman to gain entrance to the women's secret rites, held in honour of the fertility goddess Demeter. Euripides swoops mock-heroically across the stage as Perseus on a theatrical crane, trying and failing to rescue Mnesilochus, who responds by acting out the role of Andromeda.
The legend of Perseus and Andromeda became popular among playwrights in the 17th century, including Lope de Vega's 1621 , and Pierre Corneille's famous 1650 verse play , with dramatic stage machinery effects, including Perseus astride Pegasus as he battles the sea monster. The play, a , presented to King Louis XIV of France and performed by the , the royal troupe, had enormous and lasting success, continuing in production until 1660, to Corneille's surprise. The production was a radical departure from the tradition of French theatre, based in part on the Italian tradition of operas about Andromeda; it was semi-operatic, with many songs, set to music by D'Assouci, alongside the stage scenery by the Italian painter Giacomo Torelli. Corneille chose to present Andromeda fully-clothed, supposing that her nakedness had been merely a painterly tradition; Knutson comments that in so doing, "he unintentionally broke the last link with the early erotic myth."
Pedro Calderón de la Barca's 1653 was also inspired by Corneille, and like was heavily embellished with the playwrights' inventions and traditional additions.
The Andromeda theme was explored later in works such as Muriel Stuart's closet drama Andromeda Unfettered (1922), featuring: Andromeda, "the spirit of woman"; Perseus, "the new spirit of man"; a chorus of "women who desire the old thrall"; and a chorus of "women who crave the new freedom".
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In music and opera
|
In music and opera
The Andromeda theme has been popular in classical music since the 17th century. It became a theme for opera from the 16th century, with an Andromeda in Italy in 1587. This was followed by Claudio Monteverdi's Andromeda (1618–1620). Benedetto Ferrari's Andromeda, with music by Francesco Manelli, was the first opera performed in a public theatre, Venice's Teatro San Cassiano, in 1637.L'Andromeda, Antonio Bariletti, Venice, 1637, p. 3. This set the pattern for Italian opera for several centuries.
Jean-Baptiste Lully's (1682), a tragédie lyrique in 5 acts, was inspired by the popularity of Corneille's play. The libretto was by Philippe Quinault, and a real horse appeared on stage as Pegasus. saw an initial run of 33 consecutive performances, 45 in total, exceptional at that time. Written for King Louis XIV, it has been described as Lully's "greatest creation[...] considered the crowning achievement of 17th century French music theatre. Filled with dancing, fight scenes, monsters and special effects[...] [a] truly spectacular opera". Michael Haydn wrote the music for another in 1797. A total of seventeen Andromeda operas were created in Italy in the 18th century.
Other classical works have taken a variety of forms including (1726), a pasticcio-serenata on the subject of Perseus freeing Andromeda, by a team of composers including Vivaldi, and Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf's Symphony in F (Perseus' Rescue of Andromeda) and Symphony in D (The Petrification of Phineus and his Friends), Nos. 4 and 5 of his Symphonies after Ovid's Metamorphoses ().
In the 19th century, Augusta Holmès composed the symphonic poem (1883). In 2019, Caroline Mallonée wrote her Portraits of Andromeda for cello and string orchestra.
In popular music, the theme is employed in tracks on Weyes Blood's 2019 album Titanic Rising and on Ensiferum's 2020 album Thalassic.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In film
|
In film
The 1981 film Clash of the Titans is loosely based on the story of Perseus, Andromeda, and Cassiopeia. In the film the monster is a kraken, a giant squid-like sea monster in Norse mythology, rather than the whale-like Cetos of Greek mythology. Perseus defeats the sea monster by showing it Medusa's face to turn it into stone, rather than by using his magical sword, and rides Pegasus. The 2010 remake with the same title, adapts the original story. Andromeda is set to be sacrificed to the kraken but is saved by Perseus. The historian and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. criticizes both the original film and its remake for using white actresses to portray the Ethiopian princess Andromeda. The 1981 film uses the blonde Judi Bowker; the 2010 remake uses the brunette Alexa Davalos. Gates, noting that Andromeda was a black Aethiopian, writes that "their Andromedas appear to satisfy Hollywood's idea for a perfect match for Perseus". A third film, the 2012 Wrath of the Titans, repeated the white Andromeda trope by casting the English actress Rosamund Pike in the role. Kimathi Donkor comments that none of the three films provide any "hint of the disruptive racial dilemma posed by the classical setting of Ethiopia", preferring instead to continue the Western art tradition of "a hegemonic white visual space denying Ovid's mythography of black beauty."
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
In art
|
In art
|
Andromeda (mythology)
|
Merged traditions
|
Merged traditions
The legend of Saint George and the Dragon, in which a courageous knight rescues a princess from a monster (with clear parallels to the Andromeda myth), became a popular subject for art in the Late Middle Ages, and artists drew from both traditions. One result is that Perseus is often shown with the flying horse Pegasus when fighting the sea monster, even though classical sources consistently state that he flew using winged sandals.
|
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.